Hoo boy, Amanda really dismantles the erotically named Dawn Eden's delightfully pornographic thought experiment on fluid absorption. Nevertheless, Eden's attempt at higher-order thought processes end in such a memorable train-wreck that I just can't deny you folks the excerpt:
suppose you could French kiss your beloved boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse without exchanging spit?
No, seriously. Suppose exchanging spit greatly increased one's fertility at certain times of the month and was hence something to be avoided at all costs by those wishing to be childless.
You could take a pill that would dry up your saliva glands and prevent your own mouth from absorbing your partner's saliva.
To preserve that nice gushy feeling, you could swish some prefabricated spit substitute, just like the real thing, between your teeth before locking lips. But neither you nor your partner would be capable of transmitting any of your own natural wetness to the other.
Physically, it would feel just like a real French kiss. But would it be one?
Is a kiss still a kiss when it's only sensation, with no substance shared? Is it still a soul kiss when you're purposefully withholding part of yourself — something that's always been an essential element of a smooch?
The money shot to this tortured metaphor is that sex using contraception just ain't no sex at all, which is a fairly bizarre argument considering it only harms the concept behind condoms, and I'd be the first to agree that condoms essentially ruin intercourse, making it something closely related to, but not quite, sex. In that way, though, I'd think folks like Dawn would encourage our little latex friends; so long as more casual encounters are hampered by condoms, sex with someone you know and trust is guaranteed to be both more meaningful and far more pleasurable. Condoms, by deadening hook-ups, create an incentive for monogamy...
As a sidenote, the pill allows for the full and free exchange of fluids, which makes coitus more like kissing your sniffling partner after you've had a flu shot. And little, I'd submit, is a better analogue for affection than that.
