Ah, sex, sex, sex. . . what can one say? I am bright enough to see that most of these exasperatingly indefinable differences in women are products of enculturation, rather than mysteriously deriving from two X chromosomes. What puzzled me was that there was still somehow a feeling of mystery regarding a group which was more than half the population, a group with many members highly intelligent and articulate, and sometimes rather alarmingly candid. The answer was an embarrassingly long time coming to me. It has two parts, and for what they're worth, here they are. (1) I was implicitly assuming that I was some sort of detached intellectual viewpoint, without bias. Wrong, stupid. I'm just as mired in the culture that produced me as anyone else. There are a few shadings and qualifications to this, but it is essentially true. Culture attacks when we are young and defenseless, and I now have little choice but to perceive through its distorting lens. And speaking of culture, (2) I was assuming that it would have to make some sort of sense; perhaps subtle, perhaps concealed, but sense nonetheless. Wrong again. Culture is not a physical structure, and so not constrained by the requirements of physical reality. (One might say that it is constrained by the requirements of psychological reality, but since nobody knows what those are, it's a fairly useless statement.) Culture is the behavioral residuum of a long chain of historical accidents. It can be pathological and kill those whom it controls, or coercively normative and strongly resist all change, or almost anything; but in almost no case was it intelligently designed or directed to any end, and in all cases it carries an enormous amount of incidental and tatterdemalion ideological baggage which plainly shows its haphazard origins. In the few cases in which there actually is no real history, as with Joseph Smith and the Latter-Day Saints, it is partly invented and back-dated, and partly stolen and redacted from other, proven successful cults, in this case Freemasonry and Christianity. A single generation of distance from its real origins will give all the desirable patina of age necessary, and remove the embarrassing eyewitnesses who knew better. In a very rare and extreme case, Scientology, the dogma was literally and totally fabricated by a third-rate science fiction hack, and doesn't even make much sense; but what I'm saying is that it doesn't have to. Since the only definable requirement of a culture is that it doesn't kill all of its members, it's not surprising that there's a lot of variety out there.

There are, of course, a few partially designed cultures. Most of them represent only a small deviation from their parent cultures, and were usually formed around charismatic leaders lusting for sex and power, such as Joseph Smith again or Hassan-i-Sabbah of the Thuggee, and most of them were destroyed or subsumed back into the parent culture after their leaders' deaths. One particularly interesting one was the Oneida colony in New York. Like the Mormons, they had several curious practices which scandalized the neighbors, but the neighbors in those days were very easy to scandalize. One of those practices was that they encouraged sexual intercourse between young men and women beyond childbearing age. The exact reasoning behind this is uncertain, since most of the surviving commentary was written by hostile or bemused observers, but still I can't help speculating that it was intended in part to defuse the madness of teen testosterone. More subtly, it could have also served as a cultural binding ritual, associating pleasure and intimacy in young minds with an act that censorious, self-righteous neighbors considered loathsome. The Mormons, of course, had their polygyny, justified by reference to various sciptures. It is a mark of rare philosophical and ethical maturity to realize that scripture cannot justify anything, and one that neither of these cultures attained. The Oneida colony was destroyed, and the Mormons survived only at the cost of giving up one of their central tenets. The point here is that almost anything in the way of social or sexual customs can "work," but only because almost nothing is demanded of the ideological framework, except that it allows survival. If there is a "natural" (a word I use with many-dimensioned misgivings) mode of human organization, we haven't found it yet.

And with that, I will now proceed to tell all that I know about sex, from the straight male contemporary American bachelor perspective. I know that the above is fearfully dull, and perky nipples are infinitely more interesting.

There are obvious, enormous, and enormously divisive differences between men and women, and nobody knows what they are. Any attempt to make a general statement about women and men as classes causes a hundred counter-examples to instantly spring to mind. For what it's worth, one may say with moderate assurance that any general statement about the presumed differences is either trivial or wrong, or, of course, both. Nevertheless I, like you, feel sure that there's a big difference of some kind.

Women love men, and to my frequent sorrow and eternal hope, the choices that women make among men are sometimes grotesque, inexplicable and horrifying, and sometimes seem informed by a noumenal wisdom strange to Earth. Most often, of course, they are merely not too unreasonable. The aphorisms dealing with just what sort of woman may be "won" by money, power, and fame are all true. If this sort of relationship, using a user, seems just fine to you then you are already lost and damned.

From a distance, one sort of silence sounds very much like another. If you intend to aim a meaningful silence at somebody, remember that the meaning remains entirely in your own head unless you give the person enough context to properly interpret it, and the necessary amount of context is often much greater than you imagine. Aside from this, it is a ridiculous, time-wasting self-indulgence which strongly suggests a perceived weakness in your own position. I ignore the significant sliences which come my way, with sinuous pleasure and ultimate profit, losing thereby nothing worthwhile.

"Love" is a word, referring indiscriminately to an enormous range of only presumably related emotions and actions, all mutable and coming in many sizes and flavors, and some undoubtedly quite unrecognizable to any one observer. If you imagine that it's some sort of metaphysical Platonic ideal that you may approach more or less nearly, you'd best forget that right now. To the impassioned question "But is it love?", the answer is always "Of course, more or less."

Or, regarded from another perspective, love is what people do - and nothing else. Emotions, reasons and motivations are all internal, and communicate only in the most partial and erratic fashion; and even if they do, it is often far from clear what to do with it. We are endlessly facile in inventing reasons for doing whatever we feel like doing, as a little introspection will assure you; and the roots of our emotions are beyond our immediate reach or control. What we can control is what we do, and any protestations of love which consistently fail the test of action are probably showing a love, or something, that you can do very well without.

Penis size does matter, but not much. If you find yourself with a woman to whom it seems to matter a great deal, be aware that she likely has other peculiar ideas. Consider yourself warned, and proceed with caution, if at all. This is still true, for somewhat different reasons, even if she is using the size business as a metaphor for something else entirely, which she may well be.

People can change, but they generally don't. Marriage is not magically transformative, and the person you walk away from the altar with will be the same schlump you knew all along, with all the irritations and deficiencies. Be very, very sure that's what you want. Women, in particular, accept him as he is right now, or don't marry him.

Cast a cold eye on the current spate of pop-psych "relationship" blather. Every disagreement of a couple does not constitute a reason to call in consultants. Among other things, there are a few secrets that you arguably should keep, and there definitely is such a thing as too much communication. Fights as much as possible should be simply avoided, or if they must be fought, they should be fought only when nobody's tired or low on blood sugar or high on cortisol, and then kept absolutely and rigidly on the point.

Women, especially, often seem to go into marriage with something that looks very much like a hidden agenda. I've seen several marriages which were preceded with an active sex life; but as soon as the guy is hooked, or as soon as she's had whatever number of children she had decided on, her sex drive throttles back to about 10%. I don't know how to predict this behavior, or what it means, or what if anything can be done about it, but it is something to be aware of. Don't yell at me; I'm observing, not moralizing.

There need be no shame in mistaking lust for love, as long as your actions were honorable. It's not a distinction that our language or culture equips us to make very well, and can sometimes be impossible to decide even in cold blood, well after the fact.

Unlikely as it may seem, ladies, the fact that you probably don't much resemble your guy's airbrushed fantasy figures is almost entirely irrelevant, unless he's exceptionally young and stupid. You and they belong to only distantly related categories in his mind, and he will feel quite honestly puzzled and put-upon if you tax him with the differences. Basically, you can have a guy with an occasionally roving eye, or a guy who conceals his thoughts and lies to you. Your choice.

Never try to have the last word unless you're prepared to actually get it. Trust me on this. The pleasure is fleeting, and often your victim is too imperceptive to play out the neat little scenario you have in your head, and the situation will end in emotional violence and an ugly, inconclusive and most unsatisfying scene. A willingness to forgo the Parthian shot can pay off a thousand times over, in doors left open and bridges unburned, and an honest examination of your own emotions in such a situation can be an immensely valuable, if probably rather unpleasant, revelation.

That's all for now. You may think I don't know much about sex, and you may be right. I intend to research the matter further, as frequently and as deeply as possible, plunging headlong into my subject. Stay tuned.

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