Author: Stuart Greene

A couple weeks ago, Don and I went out for breakfast on a Sunday morning. We were chatting amiably over our eggs and sausage, and we overheard a married couple having one of those painful heart-to-hearts. It turned out, he was getting his ass chewed for “looking at” our waitress. She was attractive, and Don and I had certainly checked her out—discreetly, of course. Anyway, the poor henpecked husband was making a feeble argument that men are biologically wired to be constantly on the lookout for attractive women, and that women who insist on monogamy need to understand that men make a heroic daily struggle to do the right thing, and we are relatively successful. Our minds and hearts are in the right place, but our other parts sometimes follow more primitive paths. You can imagine how that enraged the wife, but the poor guy was just trying to be honest.

As you know, this is a topic that comes up constantly around here. The basic theory is that a man—like virtually every other male of every other species—is genetically encoded to want to “spread his seed” far and wide. This is supposedly good for the survival of the species, in terms of evolution and natural selection. More babies is, well, more babies. But when you think about it that’s a kind of silly, simplistic idea of biological success. Everyone learns in health class that humans have one of the longest periods of maturation—taking more than a decade to reach physical maturity. (Heck, we can’t even get a rental car until we’re twenty-four!) What if those babies aren’t properly cared for after they are born? What if those children are abandoned by parents who are out looking for a good time? That certainly would not be good for the species. Conceiving is just the first of about a million steps to ensure the health and survival of the species, biologically speaking. So one could certainly make the argument that a stable, monogamous parental relationship is even better for the survival of the species.

Ironically, we happened to have a copy of that Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, which contained an interesting and inflammatory essay on the subject that has since become a hot topic among my buddies. In that article, science writer Walter Kirn mentioned that scientists had done genetic research on two species of voles, which are like mice. One species lives in grassy meadows and the males are promiscuous—they take as many sexual partners as they can. Their cousins that live in the forest, on the other hand, are naturally monogamous. So scientists were able to isolate the genetic component that accounted for the forest vole’s fidelity—in other words, the monogamy gene. Not only did they find it, they transplanted it into the libertine vole, and found—presto!—they had turned a philandering rodent into a faithful one. Well, this certainly got the writer excited. Would it be possible to do the same things in humans? Synthesize some kind of drug or supplement that guaranteed your spouse would never stray? Would we take it? (The women say: Where do we sign up for immediate clinical trials? The men say: Uh, hold on a second…)

Sexuality is an awfully messy facet of being human, isn’t it? It would be nice to have a drug that just eliminated the whole sordid business. I think there must be some biological reason that sex is so complicated for humans—some evolutionary reason that a straightforward, somewhat silly, physical act is powerfully connected to deeper feelings, to the heart, the soul, and the relentless libido.

If we could take a drug that insured fidelity, would that rob sexuality itself of something transcendental? I certainly wouldn’t argue that good monogamous sex is good because monogamy is so hard. But you could say that life itself is painful and hard—and that certainly would not justify a permanent renewable prescription for heavy pain killers. (Maybe a limitless tab at the local brewpub, though?) Somehow, I think a quick fix like a monogamy drug would only mask something that is essentially a part of the human condition. If sex were a simple, rational thing, we’d do it exactly as many times as it took to procreate, and no more… and we wouldn’t spend so much time and effort trying to get it, having it, daydreaming about it, moralizing about it, and talking about it. Trying to regularize sexual desire would be significantly more complicated than, say, correcting bad eyesight. I think the more women thought about it, the more they’d realize how undesirable that would really be. If my free choice to be a monogamous lover is no longer a free choice, but a drug-induced one—how sexy is that?

It’s a curious thing that women like to look good, but they don’t want to be leered at in public. More and more, I’m convinced that women want to look good for each other, as a kind of competition thing. My precious won’t cop to this directly, but I often rib her about getting gussied up when we’re heading out for dinner or a movie. If she’s happy with the man she married, who is she trying to impress?

It’s an unfair question. She wants to look good for herself, she says. Looking good feels good, she says. And besides, just because we’re married doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to look good for me—although she didn’t say that, I did.

Men, of course, do this in their own way too—though probably less consciously. We have our style and we stick with it. Maybe it’s a Titleist baseball cap, a T-shirt, and jeans. Maybe it’s an Armani suit. One of the funniest things is catching a guy wearing clothes he’s not used to wearing. We all know that fashion is about ninety-five percent confidence. You can see a power executive’s shriveling confidence from a mile away when once a month he puts on the pressed and starched Levi’s in an effort to loosen up for custody weekends.

Anyway, our style sort of advertises the type of person we are; on some basic level it tells you what you’re dealing with in another human being, though this is never a sure bet. My wife may dress like a slut, but that does not make her a slut, necessarily. And even though I dress nicely for the office—I have a satisfying long-term relationship with Banana Republic—my wife would be the first to tell you that I am a shameless slob. I may shave and shower every day, but hell will probably freeze over before I am able to properly clean the kitchen.

So anyway, my point was about boob jobs. Why are so many women getting them, while at the same time insisting that men not notice? Do you think women are secretly flattered when men check them out approvingly, while they know they have to toe the PC line publicly? More important, did Steve’s wife get a boob job, and is it kosher for me to ask?

I have said in the past that I’m not particularly obsessed with boobs the way some of my friends are, and yet being a normal red-blooded male, I couldn’t help noticing that Steve’s wife, Suzy, has an astonishing chest, and it beggars the imagination how she is able to go around without a bra the way she does. Now, I would never want to be caught by Suzy or Steve even glancing at her chest. I make a special effort never to let my eyes wander below her chin, but it’s become such a conscious effort that I have to admit it’s making me a little uncomfortable. Why am I working so hard to not look?

I don’t know what the answer is, and I’m not quite ready to broach the subject with Steve. We married men, despite our overall degraded state, do have our boundaries, even if they are arbitrary. It is generally considered bad form ever to speak about your buddy’s wife in this way. It’s perfectly fair to make general comments about beauty, but the moment you go into specifics is the moment you’ve overstepped the foul line. But in certain circumstances, I’m thinking a very close male friendship could lead to an opportunity to ask—in the most delicate, clinical way of course—are those real?

Now I understand from my precious that women are very particular about what is considered a safe and healthy assessment. It should be discreet and tasteful, and sunglasses are a useful tool. There is a fine line between checking out and leering; men need to understand that women have been ogled much of their lives, and they are highly attuned to the wide range of attentions both welcome and unwelcome. Women know all too well that “checking out” can easily cross into creepy and threatening territory.

Men have virtually no experience on the receiving end of being ogled, for the simple reason that women don’t do it—or when they do it, they are expert at hiding it. (They also fart, but you would never know it. Maybe not even after you marry one.) We thirty- and forty-something men are smart enough to know that we aren’t supposed to be checking out women other than our wives, but we also know that there’s probably nothing wrong—and indeed, nothing really very sexual—about noticing the finer points of the other women that pass through our field of vision. Our wives don’t need to feel threatened by this, as long as we come nowhere near crossing the line into obvious and gross male behavior.

I got a call from an old girlfriend recently, and we agreed to meet for lunch. It had been a good relationship and an amicable parting. Catching up for old time’s sake seemed like a fun idea—each of us was curious about how the other had turned out after all these years.

If there is a little place in your heart for each of your former lovers, I’ve learned to think of it as fond memories and selective sentimentality, nothing more. After ten years of connubial bliss, I don’t carry a torch for anyone but the wife. Even so, it can be hard to separate memories from other kinds of more complicated feelings—like lust. And there were enough messy endings that might have been happy ones, if only I’d had my act together when I was younger. Maybe that’s why my first impulse was not to tell Mrs. Greene about lunching with my old girlfriend. Also, she can be an awfully jealous woman.

But the more I thought about this, the more I became annoyed: What did I have to hide? I had no reason to feel guilty, nor did I have to take responsibility for her jealousy. Besides, she’s still friends with a few of her old boyfriends. I don’t find that threatening in the least. To be fair, though, she’s as loyal as she is jealous, and if I had to be objective about it, I’d admit that between the two of us, I’m the more likely to have unclean thoughts about a past lover.

Claire was a knockout when we dated fifteen years ago. Everyone has that first relationship with someone they learn the ropes with. You’re young, you’re beautiful, you’ve got time on your hands, you’re horny as a billy goat. Claire and I had a lot of fun together, though within about six months we realized the only thing we really had in common was our mutual appreciation for frequent sex—one of life’s pleasures that is wasted on youth.

I didn’t realize it then, but now I’ve come to believe that Claire is probably addicted to sex. I realized this because, as we dug into a banana split with two spoons, she was astonishingly frank about her love life, which sounds a bit like Valleyfair for adults. She’s married, but claims it’s an “open” thing. She and her husband frequently invite others into their bedroom. I was curious about how this worked, and Claire admitted that it’s really her thing. She’d had relationships with women over the years, and she liked going to bed with both sexes—at the same time. Her husband has been a willing if not enthusiastic partner.

Of course, this is just about every man’s fantasy. A lot of women fantasize about going to bed with two men, too. But we all know by now that fantasy and reality are frequently polar opposites, and if you’ve been silly enough to try to make your sexual fantasy a reality—especially if it involves bringing another person into the bedroom, either in addition to or in place of your spouse—you have probably been disappointed at best or deeply hurt at worst.

This was not the case for Claire. She said she and her husband had a perfectly healthy and normal relationship, other than the fact that she liked to pick up other women and bring them home for kinky three-ways. I found it interesting, though, that there were some pretty strict rules about the scenario. Claire said that her husband was free to ogle their playmate, but he could not touch her. This seemed unfair to me—but only within the parameters of what was a pretty screwy larger picture.

Most sexperts these days seem to have a laissez-faire attitude about such activities—as long as no one gets hurt and everyone has a “safe word,” nothing too awful can happen. On the other hand, the ones who aren’t afraid to delve deeper into moral and psychological issues seem to agree that humans are essentially monogamous by nature, and that this type of sex-play is usually evidence of some kind of dysfunction, often something very serious and hurtful.

I can’t speak for others, but to me Claire seems still to be obsessed with sex after all these years, and her obsession is apparently doubled by her bisexuality. It seems like she’s setting herself up for lot of long-term pain for a moment’s pleasure.

Lunch was fun. Despite the dirty conversation, Claire confided in me in a way she never had—in a non-sexual, just-friends manner that never made me uncomfortable. Still, I remembered the main moral of our story, the Affair of Me and Claire: Great sex does not make a relationship, just like split bananas don’t make a banana split.

Victory is especially sweet after so many defeats. Pete is going to be a father after working at it for almost two years. He was starting to get worried that he and Amanda weren’t going to be able to get pregnant. Amanda had gone to her doctor, and they had figured out that if they were having any trouble, it wasn’t down to her. So Pete had some concerns about his own virility. A couple of months ago, he called me and wanted to go out for a beer—just the two of us. I knew something was up.

“I’m worried that I’ve got mutant sperm or something,” Pete said. “Or maybe they’re just lazy sperm. What if I don’t have any sperm at all?” I could certainly empathize with him. We’ve all done a lot of stupid things in our lives, having mostly to do with drugs, drink, and debauchery. How can a man in his late thirties today not be worried that he hasn’t done some genetic damage along the way?

We tend to dismiss the shrill moral cops of our parents’ generation; the old farts who claimed that pot would reduce your sperm count were the same old farts who said masturbating would make you go blind, right? In other words, we tended to believe exactly the opposite of what they told us.

On the other hand, I seemed to recall that there was some hard science behind the claim that LSD, for example, could damage your DNA, and it was an intense and scary drug—the kind you could easily believe might screw up your genes. So, anyway, you can see how Pete was suddenly having second thoughts about the viability of becoming a father. Come to think of it, in all his years of sexual activity, he’d never had a close call with any of his girlfriends. (Despite the college drought that led to Maureen, the inflatable sex doll, Pete was no slouch.)

But what if Amanda got pregnant with some mutant sperm and they had a six-fingered baby? Pete was beginning to get very nervous. Eventually, after they’d been trying for ten months, he had to deal with the inevitable: a sperm test.

Now, Pete and Amanda had also been discussing options for a worst-case scenario. There was a whole battery of procedures, from the fairly simple (like artificial insemination) to the expensive and complicated (like in-vitro fertilization). Amanda felt strongly about being a mother, and she was adamant about wanting to adopt if it turned out that they could not be biological parents. “There are thousands of kids who need good parents out there. We want to be parents. Why wouldn’t we adopt?” she asked, reasonably.

Pete was embarrassed to admit that he didn’t think he wanted to be a parent if he couldn’t be the biological father. In fact, he was afraid to tell Amanda this, but he told me. I think I understood where he was coming from, and it seemed important to at least understand his point of view. Maybe it’s a selfish and ugly feeling. But then again, these days we’re all about honoring our biology and the imperatives of the physical body. Is there a more pressing imperative than to reproduce? Should we think less of Pete because this imperative seemed to be more literally biological than social or moral—i.e., if he couldn’t father a child, he didn’t want to be a dad? Needless to say, things would be so much less complicated, emotionally speaking, if he and Amanda could just get pregnant the natural way.

So, with these muddled feelings, Pete set off for the fertility clinic, ready to donate some sperm to find out if he had any, and if they were normal or if they were swimming in lysergic circles. Amanda had to work that day, so Pete went alone. When Amanda wanted to know how Pete had managed to perform his duty at the clinic, Pete told the truth: He had been provided with and used a dirty magazine. Amanda went ballistic and called the clinic, but when she started to chastise the nurse on the other end of the line, she was cut off mid-sentence. The nurse told her to “grow up”—and then hung up on her. Amanda was speechless. Though Pete would never tell his wife this, he counted it a small victory for Neanderthal Man, who seems to need the occasional visual stimulant, especially considering how hard it is to get in the mood at a fertility clinic. Why is porn okay for the fertility doctor’s office, but nowhere else? It’s a moot point with Amanda and Pete, now that they’re pregnant.

I was at my local the other day with Don, Pete, and Ben, having a beer. Seems like it’s been months since we were able to get together and just be guys. We have dinner parties with the wives, sure. And even though the gents always end up in the kitchen and the ladies end up in the living room, we mind our manners and watch our tongues. It’s still mixed company. At the bar, we can let down our guard, ogle the young women, and basically act like the Neanderthals that we are deep inside. A cute twenty-something waitress brought another round. She was wearing hip huggers cut so low that her thong underwear showed like a jock strap. We looked at each other, raised our eyebrows, and sighed.

As I’ve mentioned before, our particular generation of men seems to be under unusual pressure to be sensitive, politically correct, even to be feminists ourselves. If you’re between the ages of thirty and forty-five, you know what I’m talking about. We married the last of the hardcore feminists, the women for whom sex is always connected to issues of social equality, justice, and personal politics. What does this mean, exactly? Don and Ben agreed that it seems like we’re surrounded by folks who have life a bit easier than we do: Gen-Y kids in their twenties and baby boomers in their fifties have a lot in common. They do seem aware that sex can be a political as much as physical issue, but they don’t seem to let that get in the way of having a good time. They compartmentalize.

Now, I have several good friends in their fifties, both men and women. And the general consensus is that they grew up at the tail end of the mid-seventies “sexual revolution.” For the first time in five decades, women were publicly acknowledged as beings with sexual appetites, just like men. (Something like this happened in the twenties, the age of the flapper.) Of course, many boomer men took advantage of this and had a lot of sex without commitment or passion. They excused their behavior by claiming they were fulfilling women’s right to have unattached sex too. Women probably felt a great deal of pressure to loosen up, liberate themselves, have fun. That meant agreeing to casual sex every time it was demanded. Ironically, the real vanguard of the feminist movement came from the older end of this generation—people like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem saw the sexual revolution as more than a generational orgy: it was a political opportunity for women to achieve all that men had achieved—as well as liberation from both sex and sexuality. When they became mothers, they planted the seeds of strident feminism in their daughters.

Who are the women that Ben, Pete, and I married, as opposed to the kind of “post-feminist” woman now serving us another round. Don’s last girlfriend, a twenty-something, described herself as post-feminist (“the radical notion that women are sexual people too,” is how she described this, paraphrasing a popular bumper sticker), and she was one of the few women I’ve encountered in recent years who could hang with all of us guys and not be horrified by the conversation, even when it turned naughty. It was kind of liberating for us aging hipsters. We could let our depraved inner selves show without fear of getting browbeaten.

True, when you’re in your twenties, you’re still playing the field. I remember with fondness the quality and quantity of romance I had fifteen years ago and have to admit that I couldn’t have done it without the enthusiastic participation of several lovely women of my supposedly prudish generation. Perhaps we’ve all changed for the worse.

There’s hope things will improve. This is the lesson I’ve learned from my fifty-something friends: Life is too short and too hard to live in repression, and being dishonest is at least as harmful as being politically incorrect. If I’m going to be PC, let me do it for the right reasons and be sincere about it. And let me admit out loud that I have some awfully non-PC impulses. Like staring at that waitress’s bottom and offering my heartfelt gratitude for its existence, just beyond my reach (in both the literal and the moral sense—as Ben likes to say, I can look at the menu, I just can’t order).

Maybe my friends and I are just feeling henpecked. Maybe we’re just spineless, and need to learn to communicate more honestly with our lovers as we get older. Still, I think there are some interesting generational differences, and if you speak candidly to nearly any thirty-something man, he’ll tell you that he leads this dual life—walking on eggshells at home while never fully betraying the secret NASCAR fan inside.

Malcolm Muggeridge once said that sex is the ersatz religion of the 20th century, and so far I see no reason why the 21st century is any different. From Catholicism to Protestantism to Islam—all the major players in world affairs at the moment—sex still plays a definitive role in culture and politics. Of course, it happens largely in the absence of sex. In other words, the repression of sexuality has made us both great and perverse. And to the extent that our present world dilemma is a clash of civilizations, it is a clash of sexual repressions. It is hard to say which society is more repressed: the one that requires women to wear head-to-toe burkas, or the one that had a collective cow when Janet Jackson flashed the Super Bowl.

I know this is all water under the bridge, but I have to laugh at FCC Chairman Michael Powell’s sophistry on the subject. He’s been working tirelessly for months now to bring the hammer down on broadcasters who step over the line with vulgar language—he wants a 1,000 percent increase in fines for transgressions. He claims this will be a more effective deterrent against the Howard Sterns and Tom Barnards of the world. While I applaud the effort to muzzle morons like those two, I guess I know better than to listen to talk radio in the first place.

There are a lot of things to be more bent out of shape about than sexuality on the airwaves. How about blatantly lying to the public about Weapons of Mass Destruction, and using that as a pretext to institute the most fascist foreign policy of “intervention” since Mussolini? How about generating the single largest federal deficit in the history of the world—under the “conservative” pretext of “less government”? It used to be the Democrats we could accuse of promoting the nanny state. Now it’s the Republicans.

Anyway, I find it mildly hilarious that the appearance of a single, astonishingly saggy breast at a Super Bowl halftime show could set off such fireworks of moral posturing and finger pointing (hardly where I’d look for a touch of class, let’s be honest—have you ever felt edified by a Super Bowl halftime show?) Who doesn’t like boobs, no matter what the size or shape?

We like to think that people are basically devolving—that we as a culture are just getting sicker and more debased with each passing year. But in fact, the only thing that has really changed is the method of delivery. I’ve said before that I am a fan and a consumer of good pornography—or erotica, if you insist on a word that makes you feel morally blameless. I’ve argued before that there is a huge difference between the good, the bad, and the ugly—and that this can only be determined on a case-by-case basis. (Ironically, I’d have to agree with Powell and his federal blowhards that Janet’s exposure was both bad and ugly, because it just wasn’t sexy at all. There is nothing wrong with the breast itself, nor even that silly “nipple ornament” she had premeditated. But the “flash” was ultimately about as sexy as getting mooned by the nerd in math class, and that’s an abuse of her position of power, in my eyes.)

Anyway, what I was saying is that hardcore porn is not harder today than it was a hundred or even a thousand years ago. I have on my coffee table right now a wonderful copy of a new anthology of “Tijuana Bibles,” the pornographic predecessor of comic books.

Now, there is a great deal of misogyny and even bestiality depicted in these crude comics (think Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, neither of whom wear pants). I expected my precious to go ballistic when she saw the thing, but I give her a lot of credit for having both a sense of humor and a healthy libido. She shocked me by saying these extremely explicit and yet juvenile drawings turned her on.

It just made me realize that no matter how hard you work to repress these baser instincts, they will find a release somehow, and I can’t help feeling like it might come out twisted or damaged or otherwise morally suspect. Consider that most of Europe has no such hangup about bare breasts on network television—even in the notoriously priggish UK. And consider the fact that today’s nine- and ten-year-olds not only know every dirty word in the book, but they know how to conjugate them as verb, noun, and adjective.

Just how far are we willing to carry this institutional repression and hypocrisy? Note to Michael Powell: Sex feels good! People like to feel good! People like sex! In fact, one might plausibly argue that without sex, “family values” would have no meaning whatsoever.

Despite the married man’s frequent lament, there are married women out there who have healthy and wide-ranging and even naughty appetites. True, we know that men need to work extra hard to make sure that they’re doing their part in the way of romance. But women are every bit as capable of wanton, physical desire.

One of my favorite Valentine’s Day traditions with my precious is giving each other a sexy wish list. We each write down five things we want to try, no limits, no rules. We trade lists and we each get veto power over one of the items on the others’ list. Maybe next month I’ll go into details, but my point here is that women can be every bit as perverse as men, given the opportunity.

Case in point: Last year, my precious dared me to show up at her office in nothing but a trench coat, and to ravish her in the boardroom while secretaries and middle managers strolled by the curtained windows completely unaware. It was a blast for both of us.

Lots of people fantasize about getting naughty at work. I’m not sure what that says about their level of engagement in their jobs, but I do know there’s a little childish kick to be had by breaking the rules and risking getting caught. (Actually, it’s a bit more powerful and insidious than that—think of all the politicians who have gambled away their whole careers and all their dignity just to get physical for a few minutes. I blame the media. Then again, I wonder why none of them are ever caught doing the nasty with their wives. Maybe we just didn’t hear about it when Bill and Hillary, uh, took off their jackets in the Oval Office.)

Just last week, I was helping Melanie move. She got a promotion from her old cubicle to her new one, and she had a few boxes of office supplies and doodads. The bottom fell out of the box I was carrying, desk crap rained down on the carpet, and among the paperclips, file folders, family pictures, and an old telephone headset was a big surprise: a well-used, uh, vibrating device.

Melanie turned a bright shade of red, grabbed it, and stuffed it into her handbag. “A gag birthday present. From Emily in accounting,” she stammered. I just smiled and shook my head. “Sure, Mel.” I didn’t want to be mean, but both of us knew what I might ask Emily the next time I saw her at the water cooler.

It’s not like that, though. Mel and Emily and I are good office buddies who actually talk pretty frankly about stuff, and I hang with their husbands on occasion. The women are always giving me the female perspective on things. But now, of course, it had gotten personal. I decided to be cool about it. If Mel wanted to tell me more, that was her business. But I was curious. Did she—you know—at work?

The short answer was yes, the long answer was none of my business. But this got me to thinking and speculating. Did Mel slip off to the bathroom when she felt the primal urge? Did she go to her car? I thought it was kind of cool that she could be so straightforward about it—as if it were no different from a break she might take to powder her nose or get a cup of coffee.

Is it morally wrong to get sexy at work? I know most employers won’t touch that subject with a ten-foot pole. They forbid it as best they can, as well they should. The most obvious reason is to eliminate harassment and the abuse of power. But if there is no victim—either Mel with her electronic friend, or me with my lawful wife—the issue is not so black and white. The social proscriptions against it make it titillating, and the shame of getting caught would certainly be punishment enough.

I conducted a little poll among the usual crowd—meaning Ben, Pete, and Don. I asked them what they thought about the body-hair issue. I was gratified by the wide variety of answers I got. (OK, here’s your mixed-metaphor alert: Buckle up, we’re going for broke on this one.) Pete says his wife likes a completely clean slate, and he likes it that way too. Don says his current girlfriend sports a “landing strip,” but he’s actually got a kink for wall-to-wall carpet.

I have to admit that my own taste is bizarre. I won’t try to excuse it or explain it, but I like hairy underarms and bare bottoms. There is obviously much disagreement on the subject. There are plenty of women who feel that shaving or waxing is not only a pain, it’s morally suspect. Their thinking goes like this: If you want your woman in any state but the natural one, you’re probably a closeted pedophile. The suggestion is that if you get turned on by hairlessness, you’re actually fantasizing about prepubescent Lolita. (Women who, without male influence, prefer to be clean-shaven have either bought into the misogynist myth of beauty, or they have some neurotic “cleanliness” issue.)

Now that’s a pretty extreme view. Are all men supposed to grow beards, because that’s our “natural state”? Because your hubby shaves every morning, do you have a fetish for preteen boys? I doubt it, and you can see where I’m going with this. The less extreme view says that men are trained by looking at porn to want Cupid’s cupboard to be bare. My view is that you should do whatever turns you on and stop apologizing or feeling guilty about it, unless you’re breaking the law. Enlightened women dress well and wear makeup not to support the hegemony of a sexist paternalism, but because it makes them feel good. Sometimes feeling good means feeling bare.

Just as an aside, I have to point out that science is no help on the matter. There is a wide variety of views among biologists and evolutionists as to the origin and purpose of body hair. The natural assumption is that since we evolved from primates, these parts of our bodies are further behind than the rest. Though there is no consensus as to what role body hair plays, there are actually some theories abroad that it is strictly for sexual purposes (it marks the target, it retains pheromones, it signals biological readiness for mating).

We all talk about waxing, shaving, and trimming when it comes to women—but what about men? I haven’t checked into the latest generation of men’s spas, but I’d bet there is plenty of waxing going on, and not just for back hair. Still, it’s not something we talk about.

A few years ago, I happened to be at the gym with Don, and in the flash between boxers and swim trunks, I noticed he keeps things pretty trim below deck. (At the time, he was dating a woman who was obsessed with getting a piercing down below the Mason-Dixon line, so there was some adventurousness already happening in the boudoir.) I was impressed, though I didn’t say anything. There’s something inherently feminine about a guy looking after his garden, and since then I’ve asked Don about this. He says in certain mixed company, more manly men automatically assume he’s gay and sometimes give him a hard time about it.

For men, keeping trim is an interesting exercise in empathy. You do it for yourself and your lover, and no one else. You may even try to hide it from the guys. Unfortunately, most men don’t make any effort, though they secretly expect it of their wives. Seems to me that one of the reasons Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is such a hit is that it taps into the vast pent-up reservoir of straight-male vanity. Regular guys have been neglecting their hygiene and looks for decades.

Ladies, how do you like your men? I realize variety is the spice of life. Some women like burly football-players, some like ’em hairy, some like ’em boyishly bald. My precious and I like a clean work area. Recently, I’ve enjoyed taking it all off down there, and she seems to like it too. Razor burn is always a problem, but we’ve got our secret formula. Three words: Magic Shave Powder. This stuff is a chemical depilatory supposedly designed for the beards of black men, but women have been on to it for years. What the hell, guys, give it a try. Like the barber always told you, it’ll grow back. You’ve got nothing to lose but your inhibitions.

It’s not just women, of course; it takes two not to tango. So why do married couples have such a hard time talking about sex? Part of the problem, I realize now, is that women are uncomfortable talking about sex apart from all the other things that go into a relationship. Men have an easier time talking about strict issues of plumbing. Women, on the other hand, go Def-Con Five without a lot of stage setting and context- framing and handholding. We sensitive males know how to jump through these hoops. But we often choose not to, because it makes a simple conversation with your loved one so much more work than it ought to be. (There’s an obvious parallel there having to do with foreplay, but never mind.)

This is something I’ve learned through hard experience with this column. Most men enjoy reading it, most women do not. (Though I note that angry women are much more loyal readers than amused men. I assume the women like to get mad at me. All I can say is that if this is your kind of thing, you really ought to listen to Tom Barnard for thirty seconds on any given morning, you’ll have enough rage to keep you titillated for a lifetime.) As I’ve pursued conversations with the incensed women in my life, I realize that ninety percent of the time they think I’m “objectifying women.” By which they mean I am not talking about something other than their bodies. This is undoubtedly true, given the title of this column.

Sex is a lot of things to a lot of people, of course. But generally, can’t we agree that the single common thread in all of it is that it’s a physical thing, involving the interaction and reaction of bodies that are attracted to one another? In some ways, I think this whole line of thinking—the “objectifying women” argument— is hogwash. Speaking philosophically, it accepts the traditional Cartesian distinction between mind and body, and then discredits the body as a lower stratum of being. The mind, the soul, the spirit—these are what distinguish us from animals. Our bodies, on the other hand, are dirty. Our physical impulses and appetites are hollow at best, and wicked at worst. If that’s the way you see the body, and sexuality, then I can see why women get upset. I just think the premise is wrong. Why not enjoy the gifts of sensuality? Why not revel in bodily pleasure—with or without a higher purpose? Why get so pissed off at your humble, male sex columnist? Funny that no one complains to The Rake’s food columnist that she objectifies eaters by reducing them to nothing but their tongues. Maybe they do, but I doubt it. [They don’t.—Editors.]

There was an interesting study recently. A university in Israel developed a software program that could determine what the gender of a text’s writer is. The program is amazingly accurate. We writers are childish and egocentric maniacs who want our names in lights, so it’s not like there’s a widespread problem identifying whoever wrote that fabulous review of Guided By Voices or Jonathan Lethem. But what the study did prove is that women and men use language differently. Very differently. It seems that men essentially talk about objects. Women talk about relationships.

Actually, marketers have been on to this for decades. They know that women tend to prefer advertisements that are emotional, that establish relationships between people. (This sounds like a stereotype, and it is. Most stereotypes exist because they have some basis in fact.) So anyway, my point is this: Women have a very hard time talking about anything in isolation and without emotion. It is not possible for women to talk about sex the way men do, at least not without blowing a gasket.

Pete wants to buy his wife a sex toy, but she does not want one and will not discuss it. Don asked his girlfriend if she’d like to have a little shaving party in the bathtub, and she couldn’t believe he would ask her such a thing, end of discussion. Ben is dying for a change of position, but his wife thinks the suggestion itself is misogynist. If the basic problem with sex and the married man is that we are entrenched in the same old patterns, the same old positions, how can we ever break out and make sex exciting for both of us again—if you ladies won’t talk about it? If married men agree to talk about all the other aspects of our wonderful relationship, will you finally loosen up a little?

When you’re married, a funny thing happens. You lose your alone time. My pal Brad, proud daddy of two, says it’s much worse when you have kids. He says it’s been months since he had the house to himself. Why would he want the house to himself, you ask? Well, this is going to be a touchy subject, and full of goofy euphemisms, so let’s just jump right in. Married men-and presumably married women, too-need to occasionally release sexual tension. Solo. This is something we don’t normally talk about with each other; you just assume it happens, you respect that tiny bit of alone time your spouse manages to sneak, and that’s that. You wash your hands, you move on, everyone’s happy, no one’s the wiser. Unless you get caught.

Yes, the other day my precious tootled off to the grocery store. Seizing the opportunity to make an efficient end of this tawdry business and move on to more important things, I drew a tub of water and jumped in. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t planned a romantic little interlude for myself. I’ve never bought into the religious poppycock about this particular sin. What point is there in making people feel guilty about something that feels so good and hurts so few? Something that is, in any case, so inevitable? Talk about victimless crimes. Well, the water was rushing, a scented candle, a little bath oil, things were swimming along nicely, I must not have heard the door open, and there was my precious staring in horror at my private moment.

The so-called scientists who “study” this kind of thing say that nine out of ten men go solo on a fairly frequent basis. I count myself among the “infrequent”, since I do it maybe once a week at the most. I think that’s pretty reasonable. Maybe a little too rare, but hey, we lead awfully busy lives. My friend Pete, on the other hand, claims to do it-to need to do it-three times a day. I don’t know if that’s even possible for a man over the age of 18, but Pete’s always been an overachiever.

Don tells me that his doctor actually advised him to do it more. Why? Because, Don claims, men who don’t relieve themselves in this way are more susceptible to prostate problems. What’s more, Don says he works with an ultra-Christian guy who decided to swear off all sexual satisfaction, and it wasn’t three weeks before he was into his clinic for a digital exam, feeling less horny than seriously ill. A prostate infection was the diagnosis, and release was the actual prescription. Now how could a loving God expect a man to give up both sex and health on His behalf? (Obviously, release is possible with one’s spouse. The medical assumption here is that men want and apparently need sex more often than they are likely to get from the women in their lives, or more often than can be arranged. This seems to be a simple and universal fact of life, with notable exceptions that tend to turn into locker-room legends.)

The sex scientists say that only about five in ten women pleasure themselves, which I find kind of depressing. I don’t know whether my precious is one of them, but I like to assume she is, because she can go for what seems like months without any inter-squad scrimmages. I also believe that men and women are more alike than not, so I have to wonder why it’s less common in the fairer sex. Some people (like Colleen over there) say that women can survive just fine without sex; others say it’s strictly an issue of socialization and tradition. Women, perhaps even more than men, have been hammered for so long in the Judeo-Christian moral code that says this is wicked behavior. And men have long harbored a deep fear that women don’t actually need men for satisfaction. My theory is that the skewed numbers are just a “reporting” issue. Everyone does it, but no one admits it-not even anonymously, to some pervert calling himself a sex researcher.

Anyway, only a bloodless Bible banger would begrudge someone his or her alone time, and so my precious turned quickly out of the bathroom without a word. Did I fantasize that she would rip off her clothes and jump in the tub with me and take matters into her own hands? The truth is, I was happy sticking with the plan. Sometimes it’s easier, quicker, and cleaner that way. Does that make it strictly an issue of clearing the pipes, rather than an affirmation of my most intimate personal relationship with my precious? Sure. But married men are like that, sometimes, when it comes to sex.