posted October 01, 2001 03:36 PM         

quote:

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The impulse to sleep with someone, even a stranger, comes from an instinctive place and may have nothing to do with attraction.

It's the end of the world as we know it, especially in New York City, where what is being called "end-of-the-world sex" or "terror sex" has become a means for some to cope with terrifying feelings of fear, vulnerability and sadness.

"What's sick is that on the day that it happened, I watched the towers crumble, and then I'm walking north, really freaked out, but I was noticing more women than I ever do," said an unmarried Manhattan record executive in his 30s who contacted several women he was dating casually, all of whom he has had sex with since the attacks.

"Usually there are girls where you say she's not my type. Everything was my type all of a sudden. Everyone has been through a shared experience and people's defenses are down. People are vulnerable and that can be really attractive. It's biology at work--gotta procreate if the world is coming to an end."

Post-disaster sex is similar to sex that happens before, during and after war, said Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington sociologist. There is a sense between departing soldiers and their partners that this sex may be the last. Many soldiers marry before they are sent off to war, not because they are magically seduced but because of something more instinctual, Schwartz said.

Demographers should expect a hike in the birth rate about 10 months from now, she added.

Although the phenomenon seems to be more common in Manhattan, people all over are reporting heightened libidos.

"I have heard all kinds of people say, 'I don't know why, but I feel like going out and having sex with strangers,'" said Schwartz, author of "Everything You Know About Sex Is Wrong" (Putnam, 2001). "I heard this from a married friend of mine, who if you looked at her, you would never expect it. But the act of sex is a very elemental, primal feeling of being alive and connected to somebody. Sex is part of a life force. When asked, 'How do you want to die?' a lot of people say, 'Making love or having an orgasm.' What they are saying is, 'I want to be most alive the moment before I am dead.'

...

A 27-year-old magazine editor who lives and works in Manhattan was so horrified, so frightened and felt so vulnerable after the Sept. 11 attacks that she and her roommate pretty much lived in different bars watching the news with other New Yorkers. "We all sort of wanted to be with a man," she said, adding that they were also perplexed by this physical impulse.

She said that she has never been "hit on" more often than she has been in the last three weeks. "People were looking at each other differently as if they were thinking, 'Would I be with this person? Would I have sex with this person?' It was kind of weird. I immediately called this guy I had been dating on and off for a year. I just wanted to be with him."

She spent the next three days and nights with him, at his apartment. "You feel weird about it because some people said the last thing they wanted was sex. Maybe it is because on some subconscious level you do it because you want to ensure the survival of the species, but all of us are probably on birth control. It may be a way to experience humanity and be connected."

The magazine editor's roommate, a 29-year-old television production assistant, put it this way: "I just wanted random sex," she said, adding that she tried to call a man she had dated six times and slept with once. Unfortunately, she said, the attacks compelled him to write "his masterpiece" rather than accept her offer for sexual healing. "I wanted a man's arms around me even though I knew it wasn't going to be real," she said. "I just wanted the escape. I was so frightened. I wanted to feel protected."

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posted October 01, 2001 05:28 PM         

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"You can't make it in 30 minutes? I find your lack of faith disturbing..."

posted October 02, 2001 02:40 AM            

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What kind of cerial was that again?

posted October 02, 2001 06:32 AM            

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~Fnordia
/X\(..)/X\
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"End up? End up? I'm a paste eating Cross dresser! And I'm in charge!"
-Spritelord

"...there might be a shortage of it one day and you'll be thinking "I gotta go borrow TP from Sputnik, and he's going to whine about it."
-Sputnik2

posted October 02, 2001 06:51 AM            

I much prefer sex with my best friend.

posted October 02, 2001 07:05 AM            

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"According to the late French postscructuralist philosopher and historian Michel Foucault, it is impossible to truly understand what it means to have a body without having sex with strangers. If Foucault was right, based on my experience, having a body is awkward, furtive, mildly embarassing, over too quickly, and leads to tense, wordless breakfasts."
-Cropherb, the second smartest man in the world

posted October 02, 2001 09:09 AM            

As a side note, I've applied at Cloned-Clown labs ...

posted October 02, 2001 02:55 PM         

The original story ran on the first page of the "Living" section of yesterday's LA Times. Today, in the exact same spot, they run This story.

quote:

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It's not the most dramatic fallout from Sept. 11, but it is surely the most fattening: From coast to coast, in big towns and small ones, social networks are buzzing with tales of sudden cravings for food. "Appetites are roaring," said Barbara Haber, a culinary historian at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies. "People seem not only to be eating as if there's no tomorrow, but they're cooking as well."

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It doesn't purport to be part of a series, but is basically the exact same story as yesterday, with "eat" replacing "have sex."

posted October 03, 2001 06:23 PM            

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Ack, bec's geometry homework wants to sell me a Tiny Wireless Camera! - Cropherb, via IRC