We decided to have a quiet night in, just the two of us. It had been a hard week and we were tired. While Thomas was having a refreshing shower, I considered my options. To shag or not to shag, that was the question.

Whether ‘tis nobler for a girl to relax by indulging the pleasures and delights of naked flesh or to take refuge against a sea of troubles by heading off to bed to sleep? To sleep, perchance to dream…
Thomas bounded out of the shower in far better form than he’d been in 20 minutes earlier. Such good form that he was prancing around the bedroom in his boxers and waving his towel like a cabaret star’s feather boa. “Get thee to the shower, wench, and I’ll ride ya!” Romance, huh? You can’t beat it.
As I was heading to the shower I had time to consider my other options. What kind of a sexual experience would I like this evening? Should I dress up or go naked? Use toys or not? Keep it simple? Or go for an elaborate production? There was a bottle of sparkling wine in the fridge and some fresh fruit. That could provide the basis for some good, ahem, healthy fun. And somewhere on the premises, I knew I had a goodie bag filled with several different types of condoms, lubes and massage oil.
What to choose?
So many options! Hey, but that’s one of the best things about a modern sex life. You have choices of various kinds. You can have a regular partner – if you find someone to your liking – or play the field with different people as often as you can. You can log onto the internet and find someone with tastes as vanilla or as exotic as your own. You can have a relationship. You can have a fuck buddy. Or you can just find people to fuck, no strings attached. One at a time – or more than one at a time if that’s what you’re after. You can have a girl, you can have a boy – and it doesn’t matter which gender you are yourself: as long as they’ve reached the age of consent, it’s all legal...
You can compare and contrast the hundreds of toys available and purchase as many as your tastes, and budget, will allow. You can film yourself or download an erotic movie. You can share fantasies with strangers on the other side of the planet. To a large extent you are the author of your own sexual destiny – in a way that would have been unthinkable 30 years ago when Hot Press first hit the newsstands.
In 1977 there is no way I could have written a sex column for this magazine. Firstly, because at that stage I could barely write my own name, let alone a thousand word piece – but more importantly because so many obstacles stood in the way of people having any kind of sex life at all.
Not that Irish people weren’t having sex in 1977, of course they were. But you don’t have to be a student of history to know that for many young people – women in particular because of the possibility of pregnancy – sex was fraught with a horrible combination of guilt and fear that had been instilled by the religious upbringing that was imposed on people from the moment they arrived in what were almost without exception religious-run schools. And if you were male, and gay, why that was against the law…
It would be two years after the launch of Hot Press that Charles Haughey, then Minister for Health, introduced a family planning act which allowed doctors to prescribe contraceptives, including condoms, for family planning purposes or for medical reasons. Well, Sodom and begorrah to you!
Just think about it for a minute. To get hold of a condom you had to have a prescription. This was Ireland in the late ‘70s. And even if you were lucky enough to find a sympathetic doctor willing to give you a prescription, there was no guarantee whatsoever that your local chemist would be willing, or able, to fill it – particularly if you were misfortunate enough to live in a small country village.
1977 seems like a long time ago, but this deeply conservative attitude towards sex didn’t disappear overnight. When Thomas attended NUI Galway in the early 1990s, the college authorities took exception to condoms being sold in the Student Union and called in the Gardaí to remove the dispenser. It seems a remarkable turnaround that these days the government is attempting to persuade us to use condoms, not legislating against them.
It’s not just access to contraception that has radically changed, but attitudes have – perhaps to an even greater extent. In Ireland, like most Catholic countries, the ban on premarital sex applied much more stringently to women. Although attitudes were changing by 1977, a woman who lost her virginity before donning the white frock and marching up the aisle was liable to be regarded as stupid and cheap, particularly if she was unlucky enough to become pregnant.
What’s the sex life of an average 25-year-old like these days? I asked four people to give me a rundown of their Friday night on the June bank holiday weekend to provide a snapshot of where we are and what we’re doing sexually.
Triona* spent Friday night with her new boyfriend. As it’s a relationship that’s barely a few weeks old, they are in that ‘Can’t get enough of you’ phase and they had sex twice that evening – before and after going out to the pub. Condoms and lubes were used, but no fancy stuff, although he did shave off all her pubic hair for her. The lucky boy!
Jim went out on Friday night with his best mate, Damien. Both are single and were looking to score. Jim wants a girlfriend and Damien is “Open to offers”, whatever that means. Neither of them got anywhere, poor lambs. I asked how often they’d masturbated, but neither of them would tell me. I’m presuming more than once in that case!
My friend Emma decided to try Internet dating a few months ago. She was tired of casual relationships and was looking to meet someone for a more serious relationship. She did – but as it turns out he was a bit too serious and wanted to get married and have kids as soon as possible. She is currently “off men” and claims that the most action she’s had in the past few weeks has been courtesy of the Magic Bullet I gave her for her last birthday. Glad it’s been put to good use.
And me? Well, on Friday night I decided to dress up in my favourite Agent Provocateur ensemble. It was a present from Thomas and always makes me feel super-sexy, although I have noticed he tends to rip at least some of it off fairly soon into the proceedings – “Those panties are nice, but they’ll have to go!” Afterwards as we lay in each other’s arms talking, I fell asleep.
Sexually speaking, 2007 is a much better place to be than 1977, and it’s all down to the fact that we have choices. Do I worry about pregnancy? No, I use contraception. Am I embarrassed that I have a sexual history? Not at all. Do I feel guilty about living in sin? No, it’s lovely thanks. But I do wish I had more cupboard space.
Modern men have far too many clothes.
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*All names have been changed to protect the innocent. Except mine, of course – but since you keep asking, yes, my name really is Anne Sexton.