Sex Degrees of Separation

An AFP story recently broke from London with the headline, “How many people have you slept with? 2.8 million?” Given the limited time in a day and limited days in one’s life, that figure is physically impossible. Well, the article explains that when you sleep with one person, you expose yourself to the risk of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) from all the people that person has slept with and all the people those people have slept with and so on. In STD world, you are sleeping with lots of people anytime you sleep with someone who has had sex with anyone other than you.

This logic makes sense. It follows the same idea studied in academic circles during the 1950s and 60s and eventually popularized by John Guare’s 1990 play, Six Degrees of Separation. The idea is that social links connect every person on Earth. These links form a human web where no more than six links connect everyone. That’s a clever idea, even though many people doubt the world is connected as such.

Who cares about social networks, we are talking about sexual networks. Just thinking about “Sex Degrees of Separation,” as coined in the article, is real nasty. It’s yucky.

A few minutes of pleasure with one person could expose you to as much nasty as can be seated in a football stadium. That’s why I don’t get how some sexual health expert could encourage such a stupid precaution as “getting… checked out where appropriate.” Isn’t a “precaution” something done beforehand to avoid harm? If you are checking yourself out for nasty, it is too late for precaution; the damage has been done. Sure, if you catch nasty, you could avoid spreading it by changing your lifestyle and never having sex again. But, let’s be realistic. If some dear soul has the nasty, he probably doesn’t care about further precautions since he already has what he would otherwise guard against. I suppose there could be a change of heart. Some person may make an immediate vow of celibacy for the good of others, but come on. A little nasty isn’t going to slow many people down from the pleasure of sexual networking.

I’m thinking the best precaution against STDs is to save sex for marriage. Actually God thought of that before me. I won’t pretend to be the bright one.