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Moriah Jovan“Tequila makes her clothes fall off” — the role of alcohol in Mormon sexuality
Posted by Joseph on July 14, 2008
Joe Nichols’ song, Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off, is all good fun. But there’s really something to the idea, isn’t there?
I’ve known co-workers and friends who tend to lose clothing and inhibitions with a drink or two. For some, this leads to embarrassing moments. But for others, it’s an integral part of their sexuality.
Mormons are limited in this context. There is no socially acceptable Mormon setting for drinking. Some members may drink, but they do so outside of church settings (and often hidden from other church members).
To what extent does this limit Mormon sexuality? And, are these limits good or bad, in the end?
Practicing Mormons avoid the potential emotional (or other) fallout that others may face, following unwise, booze-fueled hook-ups. This is an upside. I’ve known some co-workers who regretted their very public hook ups.
On the other hand, Mormon ideas on sexuality are often rigid and repressed. Sometimes I have to wonder whether more Mormons couldn’t use a drink to loosen up.
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What role, if any, has alcohol played in your own sexuality? How do you negotiate the complicated potential interplay between alcohol, sex, and Mormonism? What good or bad have you found inside or outside of the traditional LDS approach?
And, what’s your favorite drink? Does tequila (or anything else) make your clothes fall off? Inquiring minds want to know.
Joe said
Oh. My. Goodness. I was honestly contemplating this the other day. I wondered if my wife might loosen up a bit if we could hang around our house and have a few glasses of wine. Oh well, makes for a nice fantasy… Actually, the only alcohol I’ve had was on my mission (long story). Kind of burned going down, but I didn’t rip my clothes off and start chasing school girls.
chanson said
The connection between alcohol and sex is very well known. This may well be part of the reason Mormons are able to keep as chaste as they do.
My favorite drink? Red wine. And by crazy coincidence (considering the previous post here), I’ve written a post about alcohol illustrated with a cartoon of me (sort of) naked in a glass of red wine!
Elaine Frei said
Gee. There must be something wrong with me. I’ve never wanted to take my clothes off while drinking.
Maybe I just didn’t drink enough.
Oh, and my favorite drink? I’m a beer kind of girl…can’t drink most wines, as I’m allergic to grapes and everything made with them, and I really, really, really don’t like hard liquor.
Joe Too said
“It provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. Therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery. It makes him, and it mars him; it sets him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him, and disheartens him; makes him stand to and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.”
Macbeth Act 2, Scene 3
Joseph said
Yowza, chanson. That looks like quite the tasty dish! And the wine looks yummy, too.
Tom Sawyer said
Like many things — food, music, movies, parties, conversation, etc. — alcohol can enhance and/or detract from the moment. Sex is no different. I’ve had some great sex while under the influence, and I’ve had some abominable sex while under the influence.
It’s probably good that I didn’t try alcohol until my mid twenties. As it happened, I was one of those bass-ackwards Teen Mormons who considered a violation of the Word of Wisdom really, really bad; but a violation of the Law of Chastity, er, not so bad. Maybe that isn’t the prevailing wisdom among LDS Youth today, but it seemed to be amongst many of my friends during my teenage years in the 80s. We’d never! touch a drink, but we’d go out of our way to “hook up” or “get some.” Weird.
So I got into my share of pre-mission trouble. Had alcohol been involved, who knows how much worse it would have been?
But as a responsible (ha!), married adult, I’ve found that alcohol sometimes enhances the bedroom passion. Inhibitions are dropped; barriers of communication come down.
On the negative side, alcohol is no repecter of moods. If you are in a bad mood, bummed out, angry, or whatever, alcohol can enhance that mood as well. An argument under the influence is worse than an argument while sober.
And too much alcohol negatively impacts feeling (i.e. sensitivity) and performance.
So, like anything I guess, buyer beware.
AnonHereNow said
Well, I decided one time a few years ago that I wanted to get drunk, just so I could experience the sensation (being Mormon and never having had more than a sip of alcohol).
After about 4 or 5 drinks of various kinds, I felt sufficiently tipsy and goofy and headed for bed. Keep in mind that I was drinking at home with my husband carefully observing (for safety reasons). The whole experience seemed rather anticlimactic. I didn’t wrestle the car keys out of his hands and take a drunken drive anywhere. I didn’t run around the house disrobing.
I woke up the next morning in a puddle of vomit, having some brief flashbacks of having had sex at some point during the night. It probably took about 15 panicked minutes before I realized that I’d sex with my husband and not with some stranger who had happened upon my drunken self in my bed.
It was kind of a weird experience. Nothing like what I expected, but at the same time a bit scary. I wondered what I would have done had I been with acquaintances–would I have still woken up having had sex and who would it have been with?
Joe Too said
This is one convention, along with no smoking, that I liked and think was more a benefit than not. Being around drunks is tedious at best. Don’t like the smell either–even as a kid growing up in the east, I didn’t like it.
One think I’ve observed at drinking parties is that even when people aren’t actually drunk, they act drunk and do stupid stuff. (Studies have supported this.)
I should add that it did cure a huge infatuation I had on a girl in High School. I arrived at a party one night to see her on her hands and knees puking on the front lawn. She spent the next few hours loudly crying about her terrible lot in life with a guy I’d grown up with (another Joe by chance–he and I used to argue over who was Joe and who was Joe too/two.) I ended up entertaining myself by successfully convincing a third Joe, who liked Jack Daniels, to catch butterflies.
Joe Too said
One other point. Several of my oldest daughter drank to excess as teenagers, as did my daughter a few times until she swore off booze (she was a lets-call-people-and-ask-weird-questions drunk.) It was all very destructive. Fights, people cheating on each other, I’m sure more than one pregnancy and so on. Yeah, most people can handle alcohol, but a rather large percent can’t and the result is rather ugly.
Joe Too said
Correction: “…my oldest daughter’s [friends] drank…”
MoJo said
I fight off the nitrous at the dentist until he cranks it up to high (no pun intended) and tells me to stop fighting it. Why? Cause I get giggly stupid. I know I’m stupid. I can hear myself being stupid. I can hear myself laughing at stupid stuff. I can hear the stupid jokes I make. I know they’re stupid. But I can’t help it.
Mind altering anythings…not for me. That goes for weird-arsed pharmaceuticals, too.
Charly said
A friend of mine told me once that a few months into his marriage an out-of-town relative took him and his wife to dinner and she had some dessert with alcohol. “Best sex we ever had,” he said. “It was the only time she ever relaxed.” They’d been married over 35 years. She didn’t marry for love but out of a sense of duty–marriage is a commandment–so there’s never been any passion in that relationship.
Steve EM said
Circa 1980 BYU, it was the LIIT. Then there’s GHB or GBL, which I have always disputed as a “date rape drug”, given it’s typically used by mutual consent.
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