Sperm Count: Squirting the Issue

“If it’s been done it’s been said and if it’s been said it’s been done” is the old saw that's usually applied to human sexuality. But do you give credence to everything you're told? Boccaccio, Rabelais, Frank Harris, Charles Bukowski and Henry Miller all regaled their readers with tales of bravado, but the guy or girl confiding/bragging about their exploits in the locker room is no Pauline Reage, the pseudonymous author of the Story of O. Still sex seems to be a source of inspiration especially when it comes to the creation of tall tales. Do you believe the tour operator friend who tells you about the woman who picked up her blouse after booking her Disney "package"? Do you believe your lawyer acquaintance who describes how she walked into her colleague’s office, shut the door behind her and asked him to relieve her afternoon itch? Do you believe there are squirters (women who ejaculate)? And do you believe the friend who met one who demonstrated her unique ability on on a deserted stretch of Caribbean beach? And of course there are the historical examples of the monk Rasputin, who had outsized appetites, of Catherine the Great who supposedly had sex with her horse, the Batista era’s munificently endowed Superman and of George Bernard Shaw who reputedly never consummated with his wife at all? Then there are the elixirs. The Bill Cosby case has brought Quaaludes back into the news, but what about urban legends like the mysterious Spanish fly, which is supposed to make women hot but which some claim only works on men. Here is one on-line citation,  “Why Spanish Fly Works Only on Men, and Is Deadly?” Lot of people tell tales. For instance politicians are great practitioners of hyperbole, but the willing suspension of disbelief tends to go with the territory when it comes to sex. We buy even the most far flung scenarios because we want to. If religion were like sex, everyone would be a believer.

The Girl or Guy of Your Nightmares

What if you were grotesquely deformed and you wanted no one to see you? Yet you had a need for contact and so began to communicate on line employing another avatar. This isn’t even the stuff of science fiction. It probably takes place. One thing the on-line universe provides is an almost unlimited series of possibilities when it comes to hooking up and there are sites which cater to literally every wish imaginable. Whether cyberspace has unlocked a Pandora’s Box of paraphilias that might have been repressed at other times of human history remains to be seen. If it’s been said it’s been done and if it’s been done it’s been said goes the old saw. Yet again it’s not only possible, but probable that many secret urges that are unearthed in cyberspace come to fruition in reality. The marketplace is just that much larger. Shame naturally exists, but there will be no dearth of prospects who will find x, y or z totally permissible and if shame itself is your thing you will find plenty of candidates will to share or inflict it on you--depending on just what does or doesn’t turn you on. If Catherine the Great had sex with her horse, who is to say that in the age of cybersex there isn’t someone who has engineered sex with a polar bear or someone with a death wish who has laid in bed with a boa constrictor or even a bug. The famous Twilight Zone episode, "Eye of the Beholder," told the story of a grotesquely deformed woman who actually turns out to be beautiful by the standards of the television viewer. That is the chilling climax as we stare up at the ghouls looking down at her and pronouncing the attempt to revamp her face a failure. No doubt today there are sites where women with beautiful faces can hook up with the ghouls of their nightmares or the Wicked Witch of the West types can be rescued by knights in shining armor who have a thing for what might be euphemistically be called imperfection. The surrealistic nightmare becomes a reality thanks to the cyber universe and you wake up to find the girl or guy of your dreams lying next to you, only he or she has a paper bag over their head.

Sex in Cyberia

A Kyoto Geisha by Yamaguchi Soken (1796)

CNN did a story about sex workers in the Silicon Valley (“Sex Valley: Tech’s Booming Prostitution Trade,” 7/14/13), attendant upon the overdosing of a Google executive by a prostitute (“Police: Prostitute killed tech exec with heroin,” CNN, 7/10/14) One wonders if CNN will do a follow up on the sex business in the Silicone Valley. Apparently the huge profits generated by the tech business have created a number pashas who spend their money on harems. Interestingly part of the story included an interview with a young women involved in the Silicon Valley sex trade who used a striking locution calling prostitutes, “professional sexual providers.” What’s interesting is that the syntax is derived from an expression that is usually associated with firms that provide connectivity to the internet, which as we know is one of the greatest sources of prostitution in the history of civilization. However having sex with a provider rather than depending on your internet provider for sex is tantamount to getting them while their hot or buying something wholesale instead of having to pay the middleman. In the interview the "professional sexual provider' explained that many internet moguls are very busy and don’t have time to be involved in relationships and so people like her are actually furnishing a service that is socially constructive. You had famous courtesans like Madame de Pompadour and elegant geishas, but  “sexual providers” may be one of the most artful euphemisms ever created to describe the world’s oldest profession. The nimbus created around these "sexual providers" is certainly a far cry from the old Mexican whorehouses, where one of the acts of degradation used to attract customers was to have ugly crones urinating on ingénues. Havana’s Superman and the mythology of Catherine the Great making love with a stallion are also eons away from sex in Cyberia. In the Silicon Valley, you tip your “server" and have sex with your “provider" before logging off for the evening.

An Outline of Sexual History

The English writer David Lodge has written in a novel about H.G. Wells called A Man of Parts. Lodge wouldn’t have been true to his subject if he hadn’t painted the famed author as bedding everything in sight. Apparently Wells had the kind of charismatic intellect that made women forget any of that famed piece of psychobabblese known as boundaries, but Wells certainly didn’t stand alone. Cross the channel almost a century earlier and you’d find Hugo and cross it a few decades later and you’d find Georges Simenon, the human bunny. Bertrand Russell was man of peace, but he also was a swordsman. It’s always refreshing to know there are people like Wilt Chamberlain who reputedly slept with  l0,000 women and Catherine the Great who, according to myth, was a great stud in reverse and whose doomed relationship with a horse was harbinger of the partitioning of Berlin during the cold war. Sexual appetite when it reaches these gargantuan proportions has something in common with extreme Genius (Shakespeare) and Evil (Hitler). There is something almost spiritual about it that represents the departure of the soul from the body to the extent that the body begins to function soullessly and without the burdens of conscience. There are great talents like Chaucer, Rabelais and Henry Miller who have undertaken to imagine extraordinary feats of sexual prowess. However it’s one thing to write a dirty poem like Catullus and another to be Caligula himself.  The interesting thing about Wells was that he was of modest birth and had none of the entitlement that characterized the great dandies of the Edwardian period. The fact that he lacked the Sadian noblesse oblige makes him one impressive Lothario.