The short story Lust by Susan Minot deals with the ongoing sexual encounters that a girl has with numerous men, with her describing the tendencies of each guy and how he approaches her. After reading this essay I started to think about how sex is viewed and portrayed in our society, and how the views on it change when it deals with a male or a female. In addition, while casual sex may have been viewed as "normal" a few decades ago, the outlook on it is different now with the discovery of the HIV virus and other sexually transmitted diseases. The topic of sex is one that everybody has an opinion on, but few have the audacity to express their views, which is why Minot's essay is all the more important. It touches on a subject that we all want to know more about, but at the same time want to hear less of; sex can be dangerous.
As stated earlier, the plot of Lust is basically a list of sexual activities involving the narrator. It seemed clear to me that the she had no regrets whatsoever regarding her extremely active sex life and that she could bounce from guy to guy without any sort or consequence or risks involved. In addition, the views of males who have frequent casual sex and that of females are very different. In the story, the narrator explains "The more girls a boy has, the better. He has a bright look, having reaped fruits, blooming. He stalks around, sure-shouldered, and you have the feeling he's got more in him, a fatter heart, more stories to tell. For a girl, with each boy it's as though a petal gets plucked each time." (pg. 799) Now although this is just the narrator's opinion on the matter, it is also the same opinion shared by many other people. Personally, I can recall instances where if a girl in my high school had been known to "sleep around", she was viewed as trashy and a slut. Yet when it was a guy who was known for having various sex partners, other guys would look up to him and put him on a pedestal above everyone else.