Sunday, August 06, 2006

Sex & Air

One of the things I hate about sex is the way that it shrinks my world. When I’m horny or feeling that nobody wants me or whatever, my world narrows down to people who are getting it, people who aren’t getting it, people who I can get it from, etc.

It kind of reminds me of air, water and food – when I have these things, they don’t seem that important. When I don’t have them, nothing else exists.

I understand, from an animal standpoint, why this is. A critter that doesn’t worry about things like breathing and water will soon be dead. Hence the ones that survive tend to have rather strong drives in those areas.

Similarly, with sex, we have a very strong drive. Animals that don’t reproduce do not pass on their traits to offspring (OK, there is next of kin selection), and for most of the time that human beans have been on the planet sex = reproduction.

The sex drive is weird in that, with food, water and air, the drive to get these things is coupled with a physical need. If you don’t get water, you die. End of story. No air? Well, you are going to have a short and painful existence. No sex? You can expect to live about as long as someone who is getting sex. A drive without a need.

The part where the whole train got derailed and smashed into the natural gas refining plant was when sex got tangled into the social aspects of human existence. For example, human beings do not obsess about water as much as we do about how we look to potential mates, even if we’re “getting some” and we don’t need another mate at the moment.

The actual, physical sex act doesn’t really need to take that long, so why can’t it be like water, food or air: oh, I need to have sex, fine. Lumber over to female or whatever, grunt, grunt, done. Wander off mindlessly and do something else.

But noooo! Is this mate acceptable to my friends? Does the attractiveness of my mate change my status with the group? What about when the two of us are just staggering around? What about her group, do I want to fit in with them? Is this mate of an acceptable age? And on, and on.

And then there’s the whole physical aspect of it. The size of her breasts and butt really don’t have a lot to do with the sex act itself. After you’ve been together for a couple of months or so, it stops mattering even to you. And yet people (alright guys) obsess about these things: are her boobs large or small? Do they sag or are they perky? Are the nipples sorta small or large? Blah, blah, blah.

So it’s really annoying when sex grows to consume my world. There’s a whole universe of things going on: music, philosophy, science, trying to bring world peas, etc. And here I’m stuck thinking about how long a girl’s legs are, or whether she likes “doggie style.”

To add insult to injury, this is all related to reproduction. Having kids. I really don’t think I should have kids. Many geneticists agree.

The mindless beast we carry within can be annoying in many ways, but for me, the worst is when it takes over my thoughts. Of all the aspects of ourselves that we have some measure of control over, like weight, strength, etc. it seems like one of the more responsive things are our minds. We choose to think about something and we think about it. It seems like we should be able to at least control that.

There is nothing more annoying to me then when the ole peskie grey critter gets clobbered by my sex drive so that, no, the regularly scheduled program has been pre-empted by “I dream of booty.” I mean, we can’t control the fact that we age, we can’t control the needs for air, water, food, you’d think that at least we could control what we think.

I guess that’s why I sometimes take the whole sex-drive thing as such a person affront.

3 comments:

Shay said...

I guess this sort of thing should give us all a sense of humility. Sure we humans are capable of great things and ideas, but it can all come crashing down with a little re-directed blood flow. ^_~

Anonymous said...

I wonder if lower animals would obsess about sex if they had more free time or security.

On second thought this does not hold water. Inhabitants of strife-torn , poverty-stricken nations still obsess over mating activity.

Anonymous said...

I wonder if lower animals would obsess about sex if they had more free time or security.

On second thought this does not hold water. Inhabitants of strife-torn , poverty-stricken nations still obsess over mating activity.