My pal Steve used to travel a lot for work, and he found himself in Thailand a few years ago. He tells me that one night in Bangkok does, indeed, make a hard man humble. He says there are hundreds of beautiful women who literally throw themselves at you. You cannot make eye contact with a woman in Bangkok, or you will find that you suddenly have a new best friend. This is depressing, I know—at least in principle. But Steve claims he had several conversations with these sorts of women, and he came away more impressed than depressed. While there are plenty of hard-luck cases, and there is little doubt that most young Thai women working Bangkok are looking for a ticket to America, many told him that Thailand is an open, accepting, joyful place. As an example of this openness, most Thai people will tell you that there are actually three genders: male, female, and transgender. Steve did not find it all that hard to behave himself—after all, he is a devoted husband and his wife was on the business trip with him. Still, he was astonished at the number of American men he saw availing themselves of the local offerings.
Prostitution is a terribly exploitive and dangerous business—but that’s partly because sex itself can be exploitive and dangerous. Prostitution and promiscuity are two very different things, but they are parallel. And there are a lot of cultures in the world that think and act differently than we do about sex. Remember the old stereotype about Eskimos? That they considered it normal hospitality to offer their wives to visitors, and distrusted visitors who rejected the offer? That’s simplifying the matter quite a bit. Where it happened (and this is in the, uh, pre-missionary period), it was more accurately a form of spouse swapping for religious and social purposes. Even so, it happened enough to early white explorers that it seems some of them actually got tired of the obligation, but saw the necessity of assistance and goodwill in a harsh climate.
And isn’t it interesting how indignant Americans can get about the old Mormon practice of institutionalized polygamy? Despite being “against the law” even in Utah, it is a fact that numerous Mormon men live today in situations where they have multiple wives, in practice if not in name. Never mind the shockingly resurgent activity of “swinging.” I recently stumbled across at least one website dedicated to helping married Minnesotans find willing and discrete extramarital partners. By the way, polyamory is not always a one-sided, misogynist phenomenon, either. In some Himalayan regions, and also in Oceania and Africa, there are polyandrous societies where a woman takes numerous husbands (or sexual partners).
The reason I bring up all this anthropology is that ever since I started writing this column, I have received a considerable amount of mail about my first column, which asked the question, “Should married men go to strip clubs?” I have now pretty much heard every possible opinion on the matter—and mostly from thoughtful Minnesotans. On the far end of the spectrum, I have heard from women who were tortured and angry about their husbands going to strip clubs (or, say, looking at porn), who were literally getting divorced because of it. I am certainly not saying their pain isn’t real; at the same time, though, I wonder how it is possible that—at the other end of the spectrum—there are lots of women who don’t find it threatening at all, who maybe even find it a bit of a turn-on themselves. (Then the recriminations begin, the prudes claiming the promiscuous are self-deluded, and vice versa.)
I suppose it all comes down to jealousy. Most of the women I have known have been incredibly jealous, not because I am any great shakes as a lover, but because that’s just the way they are. My precious has been an amazing exception to this rule. She wants and expects me to be unfailingly true to her, the way I promised I would be the day we got married. But a few weeks ago, she admitted that she sometimes fantasized about me making whoopie with another woman, sometimes a stranger, sometimes a friend of hers. Is that creepy? She made it clear to me that this was her own private fantasy. Like the widespread (usually male) fantasy about an orgiastic multiple-lover session, these are just ticklers for the biggest erogenous zone of all, the brain. But I do think it is a healthy check on jealousy to admit to each other that we find other people attractive, and that sexual fantasies can add a little spice to life. Jealousy is ultimately a very selfish, very insecure kind of emotion—as if to say to your lover, “If you can’t love me, then you shouldn’t love anyone.”
Leave a Reply