The year is 2104. Men and women fuck in the street as children are placed in protective booths and suck on meat-flavoured lollipops.
Strangers queue at disused hoverparks to have sex with strangers - there is the risk of disease but AIDS was cured 75 years ago and unwanted pregnancies no longer exist. However, most of the public have bored of human-human sex and are either jacked into the internet and cybersexing with dead filmstars, or off their heads on McOpiates.
Approximately 25% of the population is transexual: either men who have perfect breasts and luscious hair, or women who have grafted penises above their vaginas.
Of course, this is just the first world. In the Third World, men and women just fuck as usual, although the Pope's endorsement of contraception has cut the population. Even the Imams decided to give the intravenous pill their blessings.
Meanwhile, in London, and old, old man called Greg fucks another cloned 18-year-old fuckdoll, endless reliving the fantasies of his youth, but each fuck seems more and more meaningless.
and your drug of choice is?.....
Tskkk... you show an ounce of creativity and people scream "DRUGS!".
My drug of choice is Seroxat. Actually, it's not my choice, it's just nigh impossible to quit the fuckers. Aside from that, a spliff every 6 months and a pick-me-up once a year. I am hardly a debauched hedonist.
Well, it was a more a metaphor for what is happening now.
There's more sex than ever, but people seem generally unhappy with their choices. People don't want to connect directly with those around them. Increasingly, people are shut into impersonal relationships with people off the internet, where they can be an open and honest as they want, but escape at any time by turning off the PC. And then the pendulum swings in the other direction, because you realise you are so starved of basic human contact that you end up in a car park somewhere, fooling around with a stranger because it makes you feel less alone.
I'm not knocking the internet and the sexual freedom it gives.... has been amazing for me. But I also realise that the more strange/disconnected sex I have, the more my soul seems to ebb away.
We have more choice than ever, but I am not sure we use it wisely.
I think it is very imaginative and very different to anything I've read here for a bit.
It does rely on the forecaster's trick of the quantum leap, which shocks the reader, who naturally, tries to relate to it. The reality is that the people in the scenario have arrived there by imcrements and it is normal and acceptable to them. They would view our lifestyle with disgust and, if they hadn't heard about it before, with shock too.
The greater proportion of transgendered people would be a voyage of discovery for a short while but then it would turn into voyages into the same territory after a bit wouldn't it? Vive la difference I say - as long as la difference has got plenty of kinks in it we're OK aren't we?
Got any more Greg??
Very good being a person of limited imagination Im very impressed. Paints a very Blade runner type image of the future.
Sorry. That was suppsed to be a PM
Wibbly... you kinda have my idea. I think that one of the dangers of the internet/sex with strangers/swinging is that you stop looking at people as human and start looking at them as pornography. Instead of seeing a whole human, with all the good/bad things that involves, it's easy to start thinking in terms of she'll do anal/he swallows/he's 9"/she's busty.... you're no longer trying to connect to another human being, you just want an ultra-realistic version of porn.
And no, I am not hungover this morning. I wasn't drunk/wasted last night.
Most sci-fi isn't about the future, it's a metaphor for the past and the present.
Ok, just some thoughts inspired by Gregs post!
I take your point that some people treat others as porn. I think it comes down to the individual, about their approach to sex. Some people use others as an aid to masturbation, for sure. Yeah, then sex can become meaningless if that's the attitude. Personally, I don't find the encounters I've had to be meaningless. Even sex with a complete stranger, you never forget that they are human and I find that sharing of a basic human need for sex is a profound turn on! Funnily enough, I have had sex with someone I have just met and then that has developed into a friendship. Without the sexual encounter we may not have 'bonded' and gone on to be friends. That's the beauty of this site SH and in particular the forum. People here get to know each other and often share their most intimate thoughts. They develop friendships and relationships which are very real, because we are real people! We do get to meet, at the munches and elsewhere, so we are not disconnected entities floating in cyberspace. So when people do get to meet through SH, there is already a real sense of familiarity and belonging. If there is sex, then it takes place within a context and is not meaningless, as far as I'm concerned. The internet is a fantastic tool for communication. Personally, I'm always aware that there is another person at the end of the bit stream. True it is not like meeting or talking face to face initially! But it does lead to real encounters with real people and I find it hard to regard them as just being sex objects! True, the rules of swinging are different to that of the accepted boundaries of "normalised" relationships that we have been educated to believe in. But this does not mean we have to exclude a sense of caring about others just because we are swingers. I think this site proves that this is the case or perhaps the exception.
LC
I think the internet can be fantastic, and I've made loads of friends over the web, but I generally know quite quickly which people I like enough to meet and have as real friends. I've also had enough bad experiences with people off the net that I know that the web can give a very false sense of intimacy - you chat to people online and you think that you know them and there's a real friendship, but often it's an illusion. It's not that people are false or insincere, it's just that (for me anyway) the building blocks of friendship (meeting, sharing a joke, chatting, drinking) work better in real life.
I'm certainly not against sex with strangers. I met a great couple in a club and we got on like a house on fire and ended up shagging. That experience - which all took place within a couple of hours - meant more to me than weeks of cyber or chatting on the internet.
Two of our favourite posters on the same thread ( knew this one would attract the commando) at their abstract and cynical best .
The thoughts are perhaps not to be taken quite as literally as a Spielberg script , although I guess they work that way too .
I am well aware of the magic that is seroxat , but assure you the views you have have been focussed by and not caused by the chemicals . We are witnessing in our generation and the next a seed change in attitudes to relationships and sex , and its something Ive certainly discussed briefly in many forms with many people . The opinions range from a so called hedonistic view that any relaxation of sexuality can only ever be good right through to comparisons with the debauched fall of Rome .
I have to say that the truth falls between the two somewhere although it has to be said as a structured society it does feel like the world we live in is on something of a directionless knife edge. Silky and myself have both experienced almost the full gamut of sexual adventure ( we still havent found the puzzle box from Hell Raiser but not sure we want to ) and having been round all the blocks we both ended up deciding that loving each other was the most important thing there is , not only that but accepting that jealousy and possesiveness isnt always a bad thing when in the context of love.
What I do know is that " as long as no one gets hurt" is a completely nonsensical platitude , as much as I know there are many things that will send me to the proverbial Hell before a little casual sex would .
People often say these days that sex has become too important , but that isnt right . It has become to large a part of life in the wrong way . Its not a question of sex and morality its a question of sex as a proportion of your whole life . The most scary and insidious part of the new 'internet sexual revolution' is its tendency to replace anything of meaning in an individuals life with sex and the pursuit of it . In many ways sex is less important , which is what makes it more routine and ultimately leads to what Greg described so wonderfully eloquently - when you wake up and realise that the sex youre having is just about as important as scratching an itch and then immediately realise that you are devoting all of your life to cultivating the next skin irritation .
Great thread G mate
G
Thanks Silk and Big G... I have only been here a couple of weeks so it's nice to know I am one of your favourite posters - thanks!
I've just discovered your website, which is great (aside from the fact that I hate sites built totally in Flash). Would you mind if I added a link to your site on my links page? You'll probably not get too many extra hits, just a few bemused office workers on the west coast of the US.
Just going back to WibblyWobbly's point about android sex. Isn't the main difference that, as humans, we can say no. An android, in the scenario painted anyway can't - result? soulless sex with no real point unless you're into forming a meaningful relationship with artificial genitals.
In some ways, I think Greg's point is that relationships formed on the internet run the risk at least of being somewhere in between these two extremes. At least that's what I'm inferring from it. That is why the wise ones hereabouts want to meet people before diving for eachother's private parts. It heightens the experience and opens the possibility that it could blossom into more.
But Greg is right that if you have not tested it with the face to face human factor (the real chemistry?) it ain't established as a relationship - so don't expect too much. It also has to be borne in mind that quite a lot of people don't want full blown relationship in amy event.
Thankyou mate , very thought prevoking . While youre there we'll have a large vodka with lots of ice and a bacardi . never let anyone make you think intense is a bad thing , after all given the choice between intense and shallow id almost always choose the former.
Cheers G