NIMBY

I’ve had it with sex.

No, I mean it. There’s no point in trying to change my mind: I understand its benefits, all right. Where else, as they say, can you have so much fun with your boots on? Or was that with them off?

Whatever.

And of course there’s that whole thing about how it mixes up the gene pool, combining things in never-before-seen ways. In a world where TV ads urge us to “Celebrate (those who are) Different,” celebrating sex would seem as natural as, well, sex itself.

And so it has been for as long as I remember. Watching 1940s movies on TV during the 1960s, even the tween me could sense the sexual tension smoldering through movies like Black Narcissus (A nun! A soldier! Lingering looks! Unchaste thoughts! Imagine!). Even the squeaky clean Doris Day and Rock Hudson movies I saw in theatres had sexual innuendo, albeit a little bit smarmy even for that day. The mores were different, but the underlying theme was the same: Sex is good!

As a society, we’ve bought into this notion enthusiastically, not that it was a hard sell, exactly. (Of course there have been changes over time. Back in the 1950s, a married-on-TV couple slept in twin beds–if they even had a bedroom–whereas today’s cable audiences routinely see explicit sex scenes between unmarried partners, both hetero- and homosexual.) And if sex is good, in all its forms, then other things become good by association with it.

And so we use sex to promote everything from cars to beer in a way that would have embarrassed or even offended my grandmother. And we use sex as a metaphor in a way that would have startled my grandmother. Think tasty cocktails — Sex on a Beach — and luscious desserts — Sex in a Pan. Talk about your oral sex.

Well, enough already. Natural or not, you can have too much of even a good thing. Sitting at my dining room table this week, I watched in horror out the picture window as two black squirrels started to mate on top of our backyard fence.

This being late July, they’re a little outside their typical breeding period, but spring was late this year. But the real issue is not their timing but their frequency: this being late July, they’re clearly working on their second litter of the year.

Do I really need to say any more?

Given my encounters over the years with these fluffy rats, them having two litters in a season is Just Too Much. And them mating on my fence is adding insult to injury.

Yup, I’ve had it with sex, at least of the rodent variety.

Hey, fuzz-face: Don’t be doing that. Not in my backyard.

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