Our Feelings About Boobs Are Apparently Not As Open-Source As We'd Hoped

The real reason they're asking to touch boobies is because that's all that they primarily want; talking about beauty simply isn't as interesting. The "may I touch your breasts" game is just play-acting porn. It's not friendly; it's selfish, mostly on the part of people who want to grope, but also on the part of the participating women whose decision places all other nearby breast-owning people in an unpleasant position: that of having to say "no" when it should be assumed. Just suggesting that it's even slightly acceptable to ask is unkind.

As sexually liberated San Franciscans, we're accustomed to a culture that permits somewhat more sexual directness than, say, our parents back east. That is, we terribly hip urban SF-dwellers know that if we want to avoid the Process of Courtship -- the lengthy dance of boundaries and feelings -- we can just skip over it easily enough: there, hookup accomplished, the end. But we don't do that; or at least, most of us don't. (Or rather: most of us who are happy within this 7x7-mile top of land don't.)

Because tens of thousands of years of human development have taught us -- gays and straights -- that the Process, as difficult as it is with all of its invisible rules and secret codes and total failure of logic, is something that we cannot resist.