We had to see Opera Australia’s production of A Little Night Music which was too divine.  Appropriately our bedtime reading is the latest Christos Tsiolkas, The Slap, which is set in Melbourne.  I recommend both.

These two works and the latest NRL sex scandal have caused me to reflect on social and sexual mores today.  Surprise, surprise! One of my fave numbers from Sondheim’s show is Madame Armfeldt’s 'Liaisons' – “Liaisons. What’s happened to them?”  It’s a wonderful word – so refined, so discreet; and such delightfully old-fashioned connotations.  Can you image an NRL ‘star’ caught fooling around confessing, “Actually, I’m having a little liaison”?   

I’m reminded of Roxy Hart’s line from Chicago, “First I started fooling around. Then I started screwing around.  That’s fooling around without dinner.”  Much more apposite for the NRL fraternity, I would suggest.  There’s little doubt that Western sexual mores have become more relaxed, certainly acknowledgement of them. Whereas once one might have owned to a ‘little liaison’ and left it at that, nowadays we tend to ‘let it all hang out’ and tell all.  Do we need to know?  Do we want to know?

I must admit to avidly reading and watching reportage of the NRL sex scandal involving Matthew Johns.  If you were one of the other eleven involved would you come forward and confess?  Rightly there has been a tone of disgust that ‘the team’ joined in. Indeed they must have been invited to do so by either Johns or his teammate, otherwise how did the other ten know that it was ‘on’?

Several commentators expressed moral outrage because the incident involved group sex.  Of course I’m concerned that these silly blockheads are giving group sex a bad name.  I hold that group sex can be an acceptable, appropriate and enjoyable sexual expression, but not in the manner in which it was performed here.

I was most interested in homoerotic references.  Apparently it can be considered ‘team bonding’ to masturbate together while watching a teammate copulate.  Hmmm!  Certainly those with long… memories will recall my history walk, From Sacred to Secular, in which at our Adelaide Oval stop, I referred to the ‘elephant walk’.  This is the reputed rugby bonding exercise where players form a conga line by holding the penis of the player in front.  Now I call that homoerotic!

Dear readers, I’ve been riveted by the insightful depiction of relationships in The Slap. The writing and language are strong and very sexy, although I think the use of “fuck”, “cunt” and racial slang is excessive!  And why do straights even bother with the pretense of monogamy?   

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