Sexo em Portugal

said the program title. It arrested. After Italy and Morocco where very daring eye-contact flourishes and people dress to seduce, Portugal seems such a tame, sexless place. People dress conservatively, there is no eye contact between genders, and girls, though they do their best to project a feminine image, have long hair, skirts (and breasts!), strike one as -- er -- no one has told them about their purpose in life.

Which all only emphasizes the looks-problem: Portuguese are not ugly -- but they are rather plain. Finding oneself in their crowd is a little like walking through an agreeable forest (it is a mono-culture, too; one look predominates): it is a pleasant experience, but I would not characterize it as gonad-stimulating.

The arresting event in question was one of those panel discussions with guests on Portuguese satellite TV. The sexologists who participated were middle aged, with indifferent haircuts and boxy suits; they looked wholly sexless. The volume was off, so I didn't know what they were saying, but looking at them it was easy to imagine that they were saying that sex once a month for the sake of good health is alright as long as it does not interfere with one's cafe schedule. Around them, on harshly lit, hygienic benches a few men and women sat in gender-segregated groups, evenly spaced out, with very much daylight between them.

It was a very unexciting affair.

Then, suddenly, a subtitle ran under the screen. It read: Porque ainda e tabu? I gasped. Ainda? What could ainda be? I let my imagination fly. Surely, you don't say?... I whispered to myself. Have I been mistaken? Is the sexless exterior all a pretense, a lie? Do these people in fact get into all sorts of weird and kinky stuff undercover? And then discuss it at depth with bored expressions on tv?

I mean funky, wild-side stuff like ainda for example?

I rushed back home to consult my dictionary. Alas, I was to be disappointed in my hopes: ainda, it said, did not stand for either ... or ... or ... Ainda simply means "still." It is sex itself that is still taboo here; not some kind of nefarious cranny of it, as the more perverse minds of middle aged men inured to Italies and Moroccos might imagine it.

Gad, I miss Tangier.