On the Pleasures of Adultery

I've been reading and posting on polygamy posts all week and in the process was reading in Religion and Sexuality by Lawrence Foster with a couple of excellent chapters on Mormon polygamy. He cited some evidence of Joseph Smith expressing anxiety that in his quest for spiritual (and I suppose, sexual) enlightenment, that he had committed adultery. It was this candid admission and the obvious concern that I find most intriguing about old Joe, because it sounds so human.

I am cynical, but I still don't believe the vast majority of people want to cause pain to their spouse because they want to get laid (or laid in a different way). Now, I don't want everyone to get in an uproar and start shouting and screaming that Elder Wanker has gone off his rocker and is espousing rampant adultery. I'm just really not in a place where I think that all proper modes of behavior have been dictated by the finger of God on stone. Our lives are much more rich, diverse and exciting than to be prescribed on Sinai stone tablets ostensibly etched over 2500 years ago.

And if the New Testament is right -- if all I have to do is lust after a woman to be as guilty of adultery as if I had actually stripped off her clothes and did her on the spot, then at judgment day I am so incredibly fucked it isn't even funny. Good thing Mormons only believe in degrees of glory.

But if there is anything as irritating as religious morality now-it-alls, I think it is the evolutionary "Darwinian" biologists. (In case any one reads my blog that isn't already reading Main Street Plaza, you should probably go check it out.) On Little Miss Raving's Main Street Post, Johnathan Blake posted a comment citing six "new" findings by evolutionary biologists/psychologists based on a Psychology Today article:

o A woman's capacity for orgasm depends not on her partner's sexual skill but on her subconscious evaluation of his genetic merits.
o Women's orgasm has little to do with love. Or experience.
o Good men are indeed hard to find.
o The men with the best genes make the worst mates.
o Women are no more built for monogamy than men are. They are designed to keep their options open.
o Women fake orgasm to divert a partner's attention from their infidelities.

I read this article and was incredulous. This is worse than religion, this is religion masquerading as bad science. If anyone thought and didn't turn off their brain, simply because a "scientist" said it was so, it would be hilarious. Instead, from out of the burning laboratory, the Scientist appeared to Moses and etched in ink six results on the pages of Psychology Today.

To summarize the article, women's orgasms are a problem for evolutionary biologists, because no one can agree why women have them. (Apparently the need to feel some pleasure before undergoing nine months of vomiting hell isn't enough of a biological imperative to make sex feel good for the female.) Two chauvinistic camps of thought have arisen: the old school version finds that the female orgasm has the same function as male nipples -- none. The new version is contained in those six statements above, but can be summarized as evolution requires us all to be sluts and studs. (If some religious guy said "Good men are hard to find, so women you need to share me." Everybody would be in an uproar. The FBI would chase him down and the poor guy's stab at making a heaven here on earth for himself would instead turn into a living hell.) All the important questions are answered with the new "God", Biology.

What makes illicit sex drive a woman to orgiastic delights? Biology. What makes women want to fuck good lucking men? Biology. And men are so vain and self-centered that if she can pull a Meg Ryan orgasm off in bed, he'll be clueless that she is fucking someone else, because of -- Biology.

Darwin Guru 1:
Lab Fact: If a woman has an orgasm during sex, she retains more sperm.
Evolutionary (pulled out of the scientist's ass) Fact: By controlling who she orgasm's with, the female gets to pick and choose whose sperm she accepts.

Of course from this follows that women only get off then if she subconsciously feels that the guy is sperm worthy. If that were the case, then evolution would have resulted in most males with a terminal vibrating stutter -- throughout their whole body. We would be a race of Hitachi Magic Wands and Shower Massages. Not to mention, the conclusion flys in the face of a huge number of women who get very pregnant without having had the privilege of a decent orgasm. If they were right, why doesn't Planned Parenthood preach the "don't let the girl come" method of birth control.

Darwin Guru 2:
Lab Facts: Women find symmetrical men more attractive and more symmetrical people tend to be more healthy.
Evolutionary Conclusion: Women come more with hot partners because it is evolutionarily beneficial and they are more likely to retain the sperm if they come (see Lab Fact 1).

Maybe the come more, simply because they find their partner more aesthetically pleasing.

Darwin Guru 3:
Lab Facts: Women have better orgasms when they are cheating, than when they are staying put and they fake orgasms with their regular lover, when cheating.
Evolutionary Conclusion: The better illicit sex and the faked (yet faithful) orgasms are more biological evidence that women only want genetically superior sperm.

Ok, I just have to say that this is better than anything that Joseph Smith came up with (and at least he had some moral qualms about it.) I'm just doing the wrong fucking job. Imagine this geeky scientist's fantasy:

Scientist: I'm an evolutionary biologist genius.
Woman (married): Oh really? But you are so symmetrical.
Scientist: This means that I'm the prime of the evolutionary crop. My seed will spawn nations without number and save the slowly de-evolving human race. Would you like my contribution?
Woman: My, isn't that a little bit forward?
Scientist: Yes, but our research has also shown that you'll come until your eyes pop out of your head, you'll subconsciously want my sperm so bad.

Sorry, buddy -- all the research in the world in the world won't get you laid.

I present my own evidence: Why do women come more in illicit relationships? Because tension and adrenaline add to the sexual experience. I mean its obvious.

Elder Wanker -- The Blog Guru

Story Fiction: Fiction is so much better at getting at facts than science sometimes. Read the story and you tell me who is right -- me or the evolutionary biologists.

Literary Facts: What do we learn about evolutionary sexuality? She gets no sperm, yet she comes like never before, because sexual arousal is not just about reproduction despite the Darwin Gurus (Oh, and a little bit of evil can go along way to making better orgasms).

ON THE PLEASURES (AND PAINS) OF ADULTERY

The couple meets. She's married, he's not. She hasn't had sex with her husband in who knows how long, because of the kids, because they are on the outs and she is just wanting some. (It's been awhile.) The kissing, necking and petting bring out all those youthful emotions of emerging sexuality that she hasn't felt in so long. Her panties get wet. He says, "Let's get a room."

Now, as hot and wet as her panties are, her cerebral cortex is in fine working order. "Do you have a condom?" she says. "Oh, shit" is his reply, " I wasn't planning on hooking up with anyone tonight." What follows are several abortive attempts to locate condoms in Utah after 10:00 p.m. at night, as gas stations suffer premature closings, and Smith's becomes the last bastion of condom sales. Not wanting to be seen in her neighborhood Smiths, she remains hidden in the car as he ventures forth after rearranging his erection so it isn't so obvious and waltzing into Smith's to buy a twelve pack of Lifestyle condoms, gum and an energy drink. The somewhat befuddled cashier stammers out her routinized "Have a Good Night!" a little too cheerily.

Back in the car, it is dashing off towards a hotel -- any hotel. The fondling continues only abated by the gear shifting until a Vacancy sign appears on the horizon. Again, she stays secreted in the car, avoiding being seen. He rents the room and they sneak in the back way.

Safely in the room, the stripping of the clothing is the rapid perfunctory stripping of the ravenous. He chews at her neck, her nipples, her ears. His hand slides down between her legs. He slides his mouth down her body and kisses her inner thighs. This isn't her husband's mouth and tongue breathing hot air on that little indentation between thigh and cunt. Suddenly he is eating. His fingers are jammed in her cunt, curled up to try and hold her clit still and keep it from moving away, as his tongue works frantically on the little clit.

Her body is singing, awake, sexual after a long dreary sleep of marital celibacy. The juices run down off his chin, it is time for his cock to go in. He breaks out the condom, slides it on and then begins the well-lubricated slide into sexual nirvana. His cock keeps going until his pelvis crushes against her clit and the cock by some miraculous coincidence hits bottom and stays there as her whole body shudders at being so full. She comes, hard.

An hour and a half they fuck. She comes repeatedly -- clitoral, vaginal, cervical, oxygen deprived orgasms -- one after a fucking another until her body is quivering nerve endings. He finally comes with a "Oh shit, I didn't want this to end." Biological imperatives take over and the rigid turns to soft and the bodies pool together on the bed.

"I've got to get home." They dress with a functionality that is as purposeful as the undressing was chaotic. They walk out. Except for the ruffled bed and one condom in the garbage can, the hotel room is untouched in its pasteled uniformity, only to remain empty throughout the wee hours of the morning, until 8:00 a.m. when a maid will come in and straighten up a little bit, while the woman, her clit throbbing, will be making breakfast for her children.