Sperm Wars

by Robin Baker

  As usual, she got her own way. She didn’t climax from his licking, but pretended that she did. Then, with the charade over, she let him have intercourse.

  Humans are not, of course, the only animals to indulge in oral sex. Most male mammals, from rats and dogs to elephants and monkeys, nuzzle, smell and lick the female’s vulva during foreplay. Monkeys also touch a female’s genitals, sometimes inserting their fingers into her vagina, then smelling and licking them on withdrawal. What all these males are doing is collecting information. They are seeking the answer to three questions. Is the female healthy? Is she fertile? And has she recently had sex with another male? A man is doing exactly the same – and the information he collects can be a big help in his pursuit of reproductive success.

  If a woman’s secretions smell or taste particularly unpleasant, the male may lose interest in penetration altogether. The smell may indicate disease. Such information is most useful when a man is contemplating sex with a new woman. And because diseases can come and go, it is also worth a man testing the health of even a long-term partner’s secretions from time to time.

  In many mammals, the smell of the female’s secretions is clearly different and more pleasant to males during her fertile phase. In women, though, and in other mammals which hide their fertile phase, the change in smell during the cycle is much less apparent. In one experiment in the USA, a group of volunteer women each wore a tampon overnight on different days of their menstrual cycle. The tampons were placed in open tubes, so they could be smelled but not seen, then given to a panel of assessors. The smell of each tampon was ranked on a scale from ‘very unpleasant’ to ‘very pleasant’. Pleasantness of smell changed with stage of the menstrual cycle, being most unpleasant during menstruation. On average, the smell was slightly, but not consistently, more pleasant during the fertile phase. So by nuzzling a woman’s vulva, a man can at least tell if she is menstrual.

  As long as a woman’s secretions pass a man’s health and fertility test, the main piece of information he is seeking is whether she has recently had sex with another man. The man’s body can then use this information to change the number of killers and egg-getters he introduces into hers. As we have already seen, crude adjustments are made on the basis of what proportion of time he has spent with the woman over the past week or since their last intercourse (Scene 6). The less time he has spent with her, the greater the possibility that she might contain sperm from another man and the more sperm he introduces. This method works, but it is crude. If his body could know whether sperm from another man are present, it could make a much finer adjustment to its own sperm numbers.

  In Scene 10, the man came home to a partner who, at some time during the day, had clearly been unfaithful to him. She had covered her tracks as best she could by changing the bed, washing the sheets and preventing him from seeing her back in case he noticed the small marks left by her lover. Most important of all, however, she had also had a long bath to try to remove all traces of her lover from her pubic hair, thighs and vulval lips. In all of this, she was obeying her conscious mind, albeit driven by a body that wanted neither to be beaten nor deserted.

  Her body had ejected her lover’s flowback many hours ago, but some traces of semen always remain in the vagina, sometimes for up to a day. At first, she had tried to avoid sexual contact with her partner completely. Her body favoured the lover and wanted to give his sperm as easy a victory as possible. At the same time, though, she did not want to lose her partner’s support. Consequently, when he began to nuzzle her vulva, and the risk of her infidelity being discovered increased, she changed her strategy. She switched from avoiding intercourse to precipitating it solely to distract him from oral sex.

  On the other side of town, the woman had returned home to a suspicious partner. She had the advantage, however, that her vagina contained no evidence of how close she had come to infidelity. As a result, she had the opportunity to both reassure and mislead her partner, not only verbally (by criticising the man she had been with) but by forcing him to smell and lick her vulva so as to confirm her innocence. By the end of the evening, both his mind and his body should have been reassured.

  Together, the two scenes of oral sex we have just witnessed illustrate the interplay of reassurance and subterfuge that is a hallmark of routine sex between couples. Men may not be able to lick their partner’s infidelity via oral sex, but they can certainly collect information useful for deciding what to do next. In the short term, this information can help men to prepare for sperm warfare. In the medium term, it can help them to adjust the intensity with which they guard their mate or search for another partner. In the long term, it can help them to assess the desirability of desertion and, if their partner produces a child, to judge the probability of the child having been fathered by someone else. At the same time, through strategic prevention or encouragement of oral sex, a woman can attempt to reassure or dupe her partner with regard to the actual situation.

  Of course, people do not always realise that they are indulging in oral sex for the above reasons. Consciously, what a man thinks he is doing when he licks a woman’s genitals is stimulating her into becoming lubricated for penetration. Most often, in the absence of infidelity, what a woman thinks she is doing is seeking sexual stimulation. Both of these things are happening, of course, but they are merely the conscious veneer of the behaviour, not its ultimate function. As in so much of sexual behaviour, the mind consciously pursues superficial stimulation at the behest of a body aiming to achieve much more potent ends.

  There is no intrinsic reason why licking a woman’s genitals should stimulate her sexually any more than stamping on her foot. Nevertheless, one action is a sexual stimulus, the other is not. What tends to happen in the evolution of sexual stimulation is that unequivocal signs of sexual interest become stimulating, while other signs do not. If this were not the case, males and females would be continually responding sexually to the most irrelevant signals.

  For the reasons we have already discussed, male ancestors were driven by their bodies to seek the valuable information contained in and around a female’s vagina – the inevitable site of insemination. Failure to seek this information before intercourse cost the male in four ways: it meant a greater risk of disease, more chance of inseminating an infertile female, less chance of winning sperm wars, and a reduced chance of combating infidelity. From the female’s perspective, these pressures on the male meant that, when a male nuzzled her vulva, it unequivocally signalled his sexual interest. If she was uninterested, she could simply walk away. If interested, she needed to prepare for intercourse by lubricating her vagina, and so forth. Such advance preparation would make the process of insemination itself more efficient and less damaging. All in all, females who responded to being nuzzled by an attractive male by becoming aroused will have reproduced more successfully than those who did not.

  The same arguments apply to the male. If female ancestors allowed him to nuzzle their vulva, instead of walking away, this indicated that they were interested in receiving his sperm. Males who responded by becoming aroused will have missed fewer opportunities for intercourse than males who did not. All in all, males who gained sexual stimulation from nuzzling the vulva of a female will have reproduced more than those who did not.

  All of these responses were shaped long before there were humans. When our species first evolved, the males simply inherited from our primate ancestors a predisposition for nuzzling, smelling, licking and fingering the female’s genitals. We also, male and female alike, inherited a predisposition to find such behaviour stimulating.

  SCENE 11

  Checkmate

  The bright-red display on the bedside clock changed from 11:59 to 12:00. It was midnight. While his lover had slept her post-coital sleep, the man had been clock-watching. Reluctant though he was to swap the warmth of her bed for the chill air of her room, it really was time to go.

  He gently began to wake her by kissing the middle of her back. Their affair had
begun half a year earlier in a dark summer wood when, in an unplanned, abandoned moment, they had stripped each other naked and she had helped him to ejaculate. Two months later, soon after she had moved into a bed-sitter of her own, they had full intercourse for the first time. Although they worked in the same building, they rarely met during the day, taking great care to hide their liaison from everybody. Two or three times a week, he visited her bed-sitter for sex. They always went straight to bed. Time was short – they rarely had more than an hour together. Even so, they often had sex twice in a session. He was inseminating her about five times a week, while still inseminating his partner once or twice a week. His lover was eleven years younger than him, but he had learned more about sex in six months of snatched moments with her than he had in ten years with his partner.

  For his partner’s benefit, he had created a fictitious web of weekly events at work. These gave him routine, almost infallible, alibis which freed him to call in on his lover sometimes on his way to work, sometimes on his way back. Tonight, however, had been special. This freezing late-January night was his lover’s birthday and she had insisted on more of his time than the usual hour. Otherwise, she would spend the evening with friends. In the end he had invented a story which, he had to admit, seemed rather good. He had told his partner that a long-term visitor from the other side of the world, on discovering his interest in chess, had challenged him to a match and had offered to cook him an authentic ethnic meal into the bargain. He had reminded his partner that chess took a long time, that they would probably play the best of three, and that it could be a long evening, maybe even midnight before he came home.

  The evening had been perfect, a memory for a lifetime. He had cooked his lover a meal and by seven they were in bed, drinking wine, listening to music, and playing with each other’s bodies as passion came and went. Altogether it came and went, if with increasing difficulty, four times. The last time he had only pretended to ejaculate, but she had climaxed for the second time that evening. Now, though, their party was over, and ahead of him were two prospects he could do without – running the gauntlet of arrest for drunk-driving and, even worse, the guilt and discomfort of having to fabricate the evening’s events to satisfy his partner’s curiosity.

  He had never quite been able to fathom why he worried so much about being discovered. It wasn’t really the prospect of his partner leaving him, though he would miss their two children. In truth, it would worry him more if he lost his lover. Maybe it was his partner’s threat to spend every penny he had rather than let him squander it on another woman. Or maybe it was her oft-repeated ‘joke’ that if he were ever unfaithful she would cut his balls off. He was sure she didn’t mean it. But would he ever feel safe again when she picked up a pair of scissors or a knife? Whatever the reason, the prospect of being discovered terrified him.

  When his young lover finally surfaced from her sleep, she asked him not to go, gently at first, then with mounting irritation. Finally, indicating more than a little disfavour, she told him he must go. He dressed in the cold of her room, kissed her, hesitated a little in a vain attempt to pacify her, then left to walk to his car. He always parked two streets away. The police did not stop him as he drove home, despite a bad few minutes when he thought he was being tailed. Thirty minutes after leaving his lover, just after one o’clock in the morning, he was home – and his partner was waiting for him.

  Hardly had he closed the front door than he was being asked almost hysterically what was going on. Taken aback, he apologised for being so late. The games had lasted longer than expected. But he had won in the end, he added, seeking conviction in detail. She paused, then asked him why, if he had been playing chess with his foreign friend all evening, had that very same person phoned a couple of hours ago and asked to talk to him. The man felt his mouth freeze open. Panic swept through him. He couldn’t believe his bad luck. In the two years that his colleague had been at his institution, not once had he phoned. How was it that, of all the nights to break his silence, he had chosen tonight?

  The man’s mind raced as his face reddened and his underarms prickled with sweat. For a moment, he almost told her everything. Then he lied that it had been his assistant’s birthday. He had been invited to a men’s night out of drink, food, strippers and pool. He knew how much she hated him going on such nights and worried about him drinking and driving, so he had thought it best not to tell her.

  She stared into his eyes, trying to work out if he was telling the truth, then went across to the telephone. Pausing, phone in hand, she asked him for his assistant’s number. He said he didn’t know. In any case, the others wouldn’t be back yet, because they had gone on to another club. He had left them to come home because he knew she would be worried if he was too late. She stared at him again. Not knowing how to respond, he hid behind laughter. He said this was silly. He was sorry he had lied to her, but he really had been trying to save her worry. It wouldn’t happen again. He would tell her next time – and couldn’t they please go to bed because he was drunk and tired.

  She moved towards him until their faces were almost touching and stared into his eyes. She told him he was lying – that she knew he was lying. Why didn’t he smell of smoke and beer? She paused, then accused him of infidelity. He denied it but she shouted him down, asking who it was. He proclaimed his innocence yet again and objected to her refusal to believe him.

  She went quiet for a second, thinking hard. Then she told him to take off his trousers. He protested. She insisted. He said she was being stupid. Angrily, she began to unzip his trousers. He pushed her away, told her to stop, and said that he would do it. As he dropped his trousers and underwear, he hoped against hope that there would be nothing for her to see or smell. But there was. She swore at him, slapped his face, told him to leave her, their children and their house, and said that she never wanted to see him again. When he hesitated, she pushed him, trousers still round his ankles, towards the door.

  At first, he didn’t resist but at the door he refused to leave. Eventually, she agreed to his spending the night on the settee as long as he had gone by the morning. He spent an uneasy night, unable to sleep partly through discomfort, partly through worry about the future, but most of all because he was afraid. The thought that his partner was about to enter the room, knife or other weapon in hand and intent on revenge, plagued him all night.

  He left early, before she came downstairs, but returned home at mid-day. With the children at school, they had a long argument. His partner told him she could never trust him again and that she couldn’t live with someone she couldn’t trust. He maintained that the evening was a one-off. He said the woman was an ex-girlfriend who had emigrated years ago and then, just last week, had contacted him out of the blue. About to visit the country again for a few days, she wanted to look up old friends and to see him again. He had agreed, not expecting anything to happen after all this time. But they had got drunk, she had invited him back to her hotel and things had just happened.

  He was really sorry. He wished he’d resisted, but she had gone now and it would never happen again. He’d had time to think and the fear of losing her and their children had made him realise that all he really wanted was her, his home and their family. He would leave if she wanted but did she realise they couldn’t afford to keep the house and pay for a flat for him? If she wanted him gone, they would have to sell the house and buy something smaller for her and the children. Was it really worth putting the children through a separation? All because of a night’s weakness on his part that would never happen again?

  In the end she agreed that he could stay but said he would have to sleep on the bedroom floor. Nor should he imagine he would ever have sex with her again. Or that she would stay faithful. As soon as she could find another man, she would be gone, taking the children with her.

  In fact, he was allowed back in her bed after only a few days and they had sex again after six weeks. He never did tell his lover what had happened and their affair continu
ed undiminished for another six months. She then met a man of her own age and ended their relationship. He stayed with his partner for another five years but during that time, without her knowing, was unfaithful with three women. The first, another girl eleven years his junior, conceived during their affair. But then, after two months, the man she was living with deserted her, doubting that the child was his, and she miscarried. Just briefly, he considered leaving his partner for this younger woman but after some hesitation the girl herself decided she did not want him.

  Ironically, despite his four affairs, it was not his infidelity but his partner’s that eventually ended their fifteen-year-long relationship. As good as her word, as soon as she met another man she left, taking the children with her. She didn’t know it but her timing was perfect. His final infidelity had given him gonorrhoea and she departed just in time to avoid being infected herself.

  This was the beginning of the worst phase of his life. With treatment, he recovered from his infection but was warned by his doctor, correctly as it turned out, that he might no longer be fertile. He was forced to sell the house so that his ex-partner could take her share of the equity. The cost of supporting his two children combined with losses from two silly financial gambles reduced him almost to penury. His days of affairs with younger girls apparently over, he moved in with a widow, ten years older than himself, whose children were living abroad. After this, life slowly began to improve.

  At first his own teenaged children had lived amicably with their mother and her new partner. But when she began a second family, relationships in the household became strained. Eventually, his children moved back to live with him and his new partner. Luckily, she proved to be a good stepmother, treating his children in the few years before they left home as if they were her own.