Maybe The Vulcans Were Right About Sex
Wouldn’t Humans Be Better Off If We Were Horny Only Once Every Seven Years?
By David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
As every geek knows, Vulcans are only sexually active once every seven earth years when they become subject to a neurochemical imbalance that propels them into in a mating season called “pon farr.”
The rest of the time they are as prone to sexual excitement as a second-hand toaster.
With all the #MeToo revelations of hanky-panky in the workplace, I began to think about sex in a broader, more cultural way, and it was pretty depressing.
Talk about compulsive behavior! A heroin junkie is no less preoccupied with getting his next fix than the human race is obsessed with sex.
We’re so absorbed by the topic that we don’t even notice it any more. It’s like the stench coming from the swamp behind your house that you went nose-blind to decades ago until, out of the blue (not unlike the sudden explosion of the #MeToo meme), some Fed Ex guy rings your bell then curls up his nose and says, “Jeez, what’s that smell?”
Then, for a little while, you notice it again.
But if you think abstractly about sex as a species-centric activity, wow, I mean 24/7, it’s everywhere.
If you think I’m exaggerating our species’ obsession with sex, I offer this recent news story:
Yucheng, China is a placid little town, known mostly for its grapes and turtle ponds.
Chinese government officials decided to boost the economy in Yucheng by turning it into a “sex town.” They signed a $1.5 BILLION dollar development contract to transform Yucheng into what their PR flacks are calling a “Happy Town” full of sex toy shops, adult-only hotels, a sex exhibition center.
What do you think they mean by a “sex exhibition center”? I can make a guess. If you still think I’m exaggerating the human species’ obsession with sex I have two more words for you: Las Vegas.
OK, pretend for a moment that you’re an alien, maybe a Vulcan from back in pre-Federation days secretly observing humans as part of your PhD thesis at the Vulcan Science Academy.
You check out popular human music and what do you get? Whining ballads about old love, new love, lost love, found love, imaginary love, real love, fake love, spiritual love, hot love, well, a whole lot of love.
And breakups and make-ups, suicides and homicides, all in the name of love, which is to say sex plus an overlay of really potent neuro-chemicals thrown in by nature to make the whole process seem more spiritual when, actually, it isn’t much different from what happens to the Vulcans in Amok Time, but for us it’s an exhausting twenty-four/seven compulsion.
And that’s just music. Beyond that are the plays and movies. And don’t forget business.
Without sex, Madison Avenue would be half a ghost town. I mean, have you seen the Carl’s Junior burger commercials? What does a wildly pneumatic woman in a skimpy bikini have to do with fried meat sandwiches you might ask, but Andrew Pudzer believes that there is a link and he’s apparently right.
Have you noticed that humans apply the term “sexy” to anything and everything we really like? An Aston Martin db11? Sexy! A three-year-old Corolla? Not sexy. Your latest and greatest electronic gizmo? Sexy. A burner flip phone? Not sexy.
Don’t even start talking about sex and work. Judging by the #MeToo revelations, the office is all one big hotbed of needs and desires. Showing, flashing, suggesting, touting, bragging, demanding, joking, looking, watching, touching. Sex, sex, sex. It’s a wonder we get any work done at all.
Technology hasn’t been left behind either. What’s the most profitable product in history? The smart phone. And what is it constantly used for? Taking pictures of your erogenous zones and then sending them to other people, whether they want to see them or not, and often they do. But, I admit, not always. I’m talking to you, Mr. Weiner.
And not just sending them. Saving them. Looking at them. Trading them. And don’t get me started on sex and the Internet. That’s an encyclopedia of sexual obsession all by itself.
Looking at us through that Vulcan PhD candidate’s eyes, it pretty obvious that we’re all enthralled and addicted to sex. Editing a line from Two And A Half Men, “We’ve got a vagina on our backs and we don’t know how to get rid of it.”
We must appear crazy to any visiting alien species. To us humans shapely breasts or tight buttocks are exciting, attractive, desirable, in a word, sexy. But to an alien, they’ve got to be like, “Yuck!”
Imagine yourself as a passenger on an alien, interstellar cruise ship. You wander over to some giant insect with seven-fingered hands and say “Hi.” He pauses for a few seconds and you follow his gaze. He’s staring at another big bug. Finally, he turns to you.
“A friend of yours?” you ask, your implanted Google NatLan gizmo automatically translating your words into Interstellar Bug-Speak.
“If I’m lucky,” he says. “Boy, is she hot or what?”
You sneak a peek at the object of his desire. Five feet tall, purple-green scales, two chicken-footed legs, six arms, a head like a grasshopper with two hooked horns vibrating left and right on each side of her mouth.
“She’s quite something, all right,” you reply, trying to be diplomatic.
“I mean,” he continues, “have you ever seen floopers like that? They must be two feet long, at least.”
You follow his eyes and notice, springing from the back of her skull and arching high over her head, are two antennae terminating in dandelion puff-balls.
“Man, I’d sure like to shove those twenty or thirty times into my gorp,” he mutters, staring at her longingly. You glance at your watch and babble, “Holy shit, I’m late!” and you make a run for the turbo lift.
Well, I figure that’s how those Vulcan anthropologists must see us. And who can blame them?
We’re disgusting, but we just don’t notice it anymore. We’ve gone sex-blind.
Still, there may be some hope for us. Perhaps the Vulcans have shown us the way.
I suggested as much in my short story, Dr. Buick’s 30-Day Plan which appears in The Wilaru Chronicles.
In it I posited a world where the renowned Godzilla Brothers, Inc. scientist, Dr. Werner Buick, has invented a drug that allows men to only want a woman once every thirty days. Admittedly, that’s a far cry from the Vulcan’s seven-year, long-distance abstinence, but you have to start somewhere.
How would this work? you ask.
I will let Dr. Buick explain in an excerpt of a conversation between himself and the company’s new wordsmith, David Wilaru:
*-*-*-*
“One little pill every three days and you will not want sex more than once a month,” he told Wilaru.
“Want sex? But I thought you had invented. . . .” Wilaru stammered to a halt.
“What? Aphrodisiacs? Love potions? Ridiculous! A trap. The trick to staying out of trouble is not getting what you think you want, Mr. Wilaru, but not wanting it in the first place. Besides, why give a love potion to one woman when, with these little pills, you can have any woman?”
Deep in thought, Wilaru stared at Dr. Buick.
“Yes, yes you are starting to see it now, ya? If a man wants a woman only once a month, then it is they who will chase us! Today, tens, hundreds of men chase every lovely woman, but, after the introduction of The Buick Plan, beauty will become a drug on the market.
“Just think of it, Wilaru! When we want them only one day a month all those lonely, love-starved women will be begging, panting for you to spend it with them — ya? Ya?”
Sharon! Wilaru thought. My God, that would fix her! This is without a doubt the most incredible, fiendishly clever, overpoweringly brilliant example of pure, unadulterated genius I have ever come across.
*-*-*-*
So, you see that by following the trail laid out by the Vulcans and so brilliantly pursued by the fictional Dr. Buick, we can end sexual harassment in one fell swoop.
No more #MeToo incidents. No, almost overnight we will convert #MeToo into #NotThisMonth.
I’m betting that Dr. Buick’s Thirty-Day Plan will fix everything.
–David Grace (www.DavidGraceAuthor.com)
