How to NOT Have Sex

How to Have Sex (2023) is a debut feature of Molly Manning Walker that inspired me to a short reflection. This is not a film review and I am of the opinion that if a spoiler spoils a movie, it’s a bad movie but still … there is gonna be spoilers. Also, I really recommend the film.

It tells the story of three British teenage girls on summer holidays, looking for fun and sexual adventure. The protagonist is a virgin and wants to experience her first sex but she is also scared of it: the aggressively sexual atmosphere of the beach resort is in strong contrast to her poorly concealed shyness. A mutual attraction begins to develop between her and a boy staying at the hotel next door, but in the end, she ends up having sex with his friend in a semi-violent situation, albeit after giving reluctant consent.
I guess I am too much of a millennial and not Z enough to consider it, you know, outright rape. But regardless of the clumsy and selfish sexual act, I will criticize something else. The filmmakers ingeniously portray the protagonist’s mixed feelings of pride and shame when she joins her friends the next day: “I had sex with Paddy …” These feelings are soon replaced by sadness and disappointment, when her “lover” completely ignores her: “It’s weird that he didn’t say anything.”

Curiously, people usually criticize men for bragging about getting laid but that’s not the worst thing. I want my lovers to brag about me because it means that I am someone to brag about, that it is a privilege to fuck me. I also brag about my lovers (unless I need to keep it a secret for not-so-noble reasons) because sex is fun and gives me the strongest feeling of being alive. No, the worst is when your lover is ashamed of you. It might be bad enough to be a trophy, a girl that boys bet about and then exaggerate their sexual achievements with but it’s nothing compared to the morning disappointment when you expect an exchange of coy smiles and fleeting touches that are supposed to manifest the new intimacy between you and your lover to each other as well as to others, but instead you get frosty indifference. Because then you realize that not only are you not going to marry the guy, but you are not even worth his macho stories to tell his pals later – you really were just a piece of meat to be consumed.

I am lucky enough to have experienced all my firsts with nice boys. This was however not the case of all my summer lovers. There was a guy who wanted to have me at night so he stopped being my friend during the day so that “no-one could tell.” There was another one who hid my toothbrush from his bathroom before going on a date (the date didn’t bother me, obviously – as most my readers know – but the fact that he was trying to erase me did). The best was probably the guy I sucked off at a party and he didn’t even look at me afterwards. Mind you, I really didn’t want anything from him, I don’t even remember his name, I never wanted to exchange numbers or anything but he managed to prove to be a first-class asshole in about 30 minutes.
I don’t care much, I am old enough, “just another filthy memory,” in the words of Jill McBain in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). I am just very glad that this was not the way I got introduced into sex because I would have been a completely different person. You know, many women (just like many men) really don’t want casual sex. But a lot of women do. I do. Thanks to the fact that most of the guys (and crucially, the first few guys) I met sexually were decent people. We don’t (necessarily) want eternal love til death do us part, we only want basic recognition. If you want to fuck us, at least own up to it.