The new sex

De una rubia artificial: Sex has never been about the proficient, planned and safe pursuit of pleasure, about counting your orgasms and varying your positions as though it were a high-impact workout. Except that now, all of a sudden, it is. It's one big party and everyone is allowed - is, indeed, obliged - to come. Even supposedly dangerous and dark kinks such as S/M, cutting, and asphyxiation have been covered in such loving, open detail on the pages of respectable broadsheets that it seems a perfectly tame and sensible way to behave. I really can't think of anything less sexy than Angelina Jolie wittering tweely about her love for Billy-Bob and the pints of blood they exchanged on their anniversary. Hygienic bloodletting is for hospitals, children. The symbolism (passion, death) of blood is undermined when you just get it out of a chiller like a frozen curry. Today's safe sadists and moderate masochists play at being naughty, but we have long passed the point when a pierced and tattooed leatherboy or girl is likely to frighten the horses. Dressing sex up in a rubber bikini doesn't make it any more dangerous or erotic. It just makes it really sweaty.

Caramba, caramba... que dices, Antonio?