What Lies Beneath

Today’s sexual standards are much different from when I was growing up. Marketplace sex - sexual experience and satisfaction available at any time, place, and price - didn’t exist. Back then men had to work hard to find prostitutes, topless bars, and pornographic magazines, let alone women who were willing to be had with no strings attached. It was challenging to be something of a philanderer without being labeled immoral. Now, morally untethered consumer sex is part and parcel of American life, as fundamental as eating, bathing, and dying.

Few boundaries exist when it comes to shopping for sex. In one recent study, only 26 percent of Millennials thought the word moral best described the ethic that teaches sex should only be within a marriage between a man and a woman while 20 percent chose the word unrealistic. In a study from 2014, 61 percent of Christians indicated they would have sex before marriage. Over half said it was OK to cohabitate with a member of the opposite sex after dating for a period of time.

Chris decided after twenty-six years of unashamed sexual and alcoholic celibacy that life without allowances for lust and intoxication wasn’t worth it. What could be unforgivable about getting wasted and laid at his age? After all, his friends told him that if he didn’t use it he’d lose it.

Trevor was a young narcissist with a typically hedonistic view of sexuality. While looking only for fun he finally hooked up with a coworker but he recoiled at her attempts to become a more integrated part of his life beyond just an object of sexual pleasure. He wondered what was so wrong with working together during the day and banging each other at night.

Aidan shared an apartment with a young woman with whom he had no relationship. One day he purposely left his bedroom door open, stripped naked, and opened his laptop beside him to watch porn while he aroused himself. In time the roommate came to the doorway to ask if he had any dirty clothes to launder. Without any regard for her interruption, he casually mentioned the clothes on the floor. As she was leaving she asked if there were any special instructions. While she waited for an answer he climaxed. Then they both laughed nervously and he thanked her for not distracting him so close to the finish line.

I wonder about all three of these young men and their appetites for unrestrained sensual expression, but I wonder most about Aidan. Where did he find the chutzpah to be so daringly brazen? He was as unabashedly indecent as a porn star. Unchecked by any moral or cultural norm whatsoever, Aidan saw what he wanted and took it without so much as one tiny thought of modesty. The sheer lewdness of the act was crushingly repugnant. Only a man void of all virtuous conviction would consider such an act to be purposeful or even enjoyable.

Consider Jerry Falwell Jr. Here you’ll find an example of the mindset lying deep within Chris, Trevor, and Aidan that has little use for sexual integrity. Allegedly he agreed to invite a young man to have sex with his wife while he watched from the wings, and this wingman behavior may have gone on for several years.

In a Vanity Fair article published this year, Falwell revealed he was not the man thousands of Liberty University students thought he was. Although he defined himself as an evangelical Christian, he didn’t consider himself to be particularly religious. In fact, his father also may have had a far more liberal approach to moral limits than the parishioners at Thomas Road Baptist Church were led to believe. His mother was a hardline Baptist teetotaler, but to get around that strict decree his father substituted NyQuil for wine.

I routinely contemplate what lies beneath the male façade, and in the case of Jerry Falwell Jr. it’s nearly mesmerizing. Here was a man who never wanted to be the heir apparent but was shoved into the role when his famous preacher father died suddenly in his office. Just as his father had chafed under some of the inflexibilities of draconian fundamentalism when younger, including wanting to escape his wife’s provincial worldview, so it wasn’t long before the son did the same.

At times he would show up smelling of alcohol and slurring his speech. He and his wife played a game called Would You Rather where they would single out students for hypothetical sexual encounters. He made comments about oral sex and how his wife couldn’t handle the size of his penis. An Instagram photo shows him on a private yacht with his pants unzipped, a drink in his hand, and his arm around his wife’s assistant. His wife confessed to a friend that one of his fantasies was to watch her have sex with a student.

All of this and more tells me Jerry was intolerably bored with his faith, his job, and his wife. His private life was colliding with his public life, and as the sense of his own invincibility intensified he became more cavalier about his civic image and more insulated from the accountability that can prevent such carelessness. Eventually the trajectory and legacy of his life would be altered forever when he let a pool boy named Giancarlo have sex with his wife while he watched. Later, topless photos of her and the existence of sex tapes featuring the pool boy would further complicate his life.

On the surface, Jerry, Chris, Trevor and Aidan can pass for the average American male. They look just like the rest of us. Yet, underneath their outer layers are souls transfixed by full-throttle sexual immersion. If this is true for these four, then how true can it be for the rest of the male population? Is the obsession with sex a symptom of widespread male boredom with life in general? Or is omnipresent pornography the cause of sexual preoccupation and aggression so common in men like the four featured here?

I’m never sure what lies beneath a man’s shell. My guess is that at times the soul wars against deep needs. Chris needed significance but settled for mindless conformity. Trevor needed commitment but settled for endless self-interest. Aidan needed empowerment but settled for shameless impudence. Jerry needed honesty but settled for reckless hypocrisy.