“How do you bridge the distance?” he asks.

He is not wearing a shirt. I’d like to reach out and run my hands down his chest, but I don’t. There is not much point. Instead of warm and supple skin, my fingers would encounter the flat, unyielding surface of my computer screen.
In 2560x1440 resolution my lover-who-is-not-my-lover looks almost real, but not quite.
“Technology helps,” he sighs. “I guess Skype has its uses.”
I’m wondering what exactly it is we have been doing. There can be no touch except your own, but it’s not just masturbation either. There’s a webcam and although the audience is just one person there is an element of performance involved, which I doubt either of us would worry about if we were alone. We are both the stars and the spectators. It’s pleasure, but also entertainment.
The most basic view is that sex is one man, one woman and vaginal penetration. For religious extremists of various persuasions anything else is somehow ‘unnatural’ since it cannot result in conception. That is both hopelessly limited and limiting. Sex is as much to do with pleasure as procreation, and pleasure comes in a variety of forms.
I’m fascinated by the space where sex and technology interface. If two people bring each other to orgasm using toys, by choice not necessity, is that sex or is it something else?
Some of the more radical and interesting prototypes and inventions, such as lifelike dolls, remote kissing machines, tactile suits and 3D porn, will potentially take sex to a whole new area of experience. We’ve had cybersex for nearly 20 years. In the next ten we may have cyborg sex or sex post-human style.
If you think about all the various toys that sex shops provide, it seems to me that many of us already engage in some form of cyborg sex. Take the We-Vibe for example. This toy conforms to a woman’s shape and is worn during sex. The marketing material claims that this gives extra pleasure for both partners, and I’m not disputing that, but what it also does is turn a regular vagina into a bionic one. The same goes for cock rings. While nature may let you down, a cock ring can prolong a hard-on, and if it vibrates, then it allows the penis to become something other than what the good lord, or indeed evolution, intended.
If Sex And The City taught us anything, it was that a contemporary woman who wants to have a fulfilling sex life needs a credit card as much, if not more, than a boyfriend. SATC popularised the rabbit vibrator and it is thought that one in four Western women own one. It is hardly natural to get your kicks from a rubber rabbit, and no fingers can vibrate at the speeds those ears can achieve, but the fact is that for many women, the best or most reliable way to orgasm is with a toy instead of a partner.
If something is unnatural does that make it wrong? No, of course not. It is not natural to drive cars or live much past the age of 30, but we do, and I’m grateful for the fact.
Perhaps sex is more ‘unnatural’ than it was 20, 30 or 50 years ago, but maybe not. Is sex ever really natural anyway? I’m not so sure.
Consider all the technology that goes into even a straightforward heterosexual encounter. Chances are a condom, and/or the pill will be used. Years and years of scientific inquiry and testing have gone into making and refining these products. Strictly speaking, it would be more natural to risk pregnancy and disease. But unless you are very religious, it is unlikely you’ll think of condoms or contraceptives as unnatural – you’ll think of them as necessities.
Long before we had the pill or latex or multiple speed vibrators we had all kinds of tricks to prevent pregnancy or to assist it: archaeologists have uncovered carved sex toys that are thousands of years old. Sex may be ‘natural’ to start with, but it seems that from time immemorial we have sought to control or enhance nature. Perhaps sex has never been natural as such, but has always been a product of both nature and human imagination. But if that is so, then that leads to a whole new set of questions.
They say that sex happens in your head, a cliché I would have to agree with. What we find attractive, exciting, erotic or fulfilling is to a considerable extent dependent on factors beyond the skills a partner brings to a sexual encounter. However, sex is also something that happens to your body. It engages your senses as well as your imagination. How much brain and how much body is needed for an experience to be sexual?
If your brain is committed but your partner’s body is absent then what exactly are you doing? If two or more bodies are involved but your mind is elsewhere – fantasising about Michael Fassbender, worrying about bills – is it sex, or just, well, duty? It seems to me that the dividing line is rather enigmatic and that with technology it has become even more so.
Technology has enabled us to move across the planet relatively easily; a globalised market, the European Union and the recession have made it possible or preferable to move jobs and countries. I have friends and exes in Africa, Australia, America, China and all over Europe. Technology enables us to cross the geographic divide, to see, speak to and interact with people on different continents and in different time zones. Some of this technology makes it possible for people separated by great distances to engage in forms of sexual intimacy in ways we couldn’t have considered a generation ago.
It’s sex-but-not-sex. It’s sex but not as our parents knew it.
It may be unnatural, but – dammit – that doesn’t stop it being wonderful. Can you bridge the distance? Yes, with technology to a large degree you can. But is it enough to fully quell the need that exiled lovers feel? No – at least not yet. Interesting times ahead…