by Robin Baker
In order to have a two-day-old column of sperm waiting to be introduced, a man needs to anticipate his next intercourse with his partner. Subconsciously, the brain must play a major role in this anticipation. The urges that men get to masturbate are timed by their brains and bodies to achieve this gap between masturbation and intercourse. The man in Scene 12 most often masturbates on Tuesdays and Thursdays in routine anticipation of sex on Saturdays. Occasionally, he may masturbate only on Wednesdays. The result is that he rarely inseminates his partner with an ejaculate older than three days or younger than two. This should mean that, at each intercourse, the army he injects is ideal for the circumstances. More often than not, of course, an army is unnecessary: no war takes place, and all he really needs is to introduce a few million egg-getters of different ages. But, just in case his partner has been or might be unfaithful, he injects a measured number of blockers and killers.
The major reproductive problem a man encounters with routine masturbation is that there is an unpredictable element to routine sex. As we have seen, this unpredictability is generated largely by the conflict between men and women over the function of routine sex, and the problem occurs when anticipated inseminations fail to materialise (though spontaneous and unexpected seduction by his partner can also be problematic).
For example, thanks to his masturbation routine, the man in Scene 12 arrives for intercourse each Saturday night with an ideal ejaculate waiting in his tubes – a balanced mixture of blockers, killers and egg-getters. Suppose, however, that one Saturday night the couple argue, pass out through drink, or experience any one of the myriad circumstances that can prevent them having intercourse. On Sunday, the man now has in his tubes an ejaculate that is rapidly going past its best. His body then has the choice of either waiting for the next intercourse or masturbating. If he waits for the next intercourse, he will introduce in his partner an ejaculate that is on the old side of its prime, with too many geriatric blockers and many ageing killers and egg-getters. On the other hand, if he masturbates, but then unexpectedly has the chance of intercourse with his partner only an hour or so later, he will introduce an ejaculate short on blockers. Neither alternative is ideal and could put him at a disadvantage if either of those ejaculates really does have to fight a sperm war.
This problem for the man is an opportunity for the woman. One way she can manoeuvre her partner into injecting a sub-optimal army is to change their sex routine unexpectedly. If she is then unfaithful in the next few days, her lover’s army will have the advantage (Scenes 6 and 26).
SCENE 13
Multiply, But Don’t Divide
The evening flight had taken three hours. Arriving just after midnight, the four business colleagues, two men and two women, had taken a taxi from the airport and gone straight to their hotel. Their rooms were all on the same corridor. As they unlocked their respective doors, the man said goodnight to his three associates, then went into his room. They all had an early start in the morning.
Once unpacked, he undressed and showered. The room was very hot. Too restless to sleep, he lit a cigarette, then lay naked on his bed, staring at the ceiling. Handling his cigarette dextrously with one hand and his genitals abstractedly with the other, a kaleidoscope of thoughts began to pass through his head. Momentary images of his children flitted by – followed closely by images of his partner. Remembering their last intercourse, two nights ago, he mused over whether she had really climaxed. Or had she been faking? Perhaps her performance had been a gift to him, a memory to take on his trip. If so, it was a pity their mutual sexual act had been superseded. The following night, the one before his trip, he had slipped into the bathroom and masturbated while she was on the phone to her mother.
His thoughts turned to his companions and his strategy for the next two days. He could hardly have been luckier. The two most desirable women in the organisation were both on the trip, and he had two nights in which to try to bed them. Not for the first time since the trip had been announced, he toyed with the idea of being in bed with them both at the same time. He imagined them naked, writhing over his body, each begging him to enter her first.
As his fantasy unfolded, his penis grew in his hand and his brain whispered that maybe he would like to ejaculate. He stayed on the bed for a while, enjoying his fantasies and the growing sensation in his genitals. Then, when the time came, he went over to the wash-basin and finished himself off. Later, as he drifted off to sleep, he wondered how well the next two evenings would match his fantasy.
The following evening, back in his hotel room, he phoned home. After talking for ten minutes, he sent his love to the children, blew his partner a kiss, and rang off. Reassured that everything was as it should be with his family, he went to his fifth-floor window and looked out over the city skyline. Perhaps his wasn’t a bad job, after all. Business was over for the day. Now all he had to do was look forward to the evening with his three colleagues. There would be food, drink and, with any luck, sex.
The evening began well but ended badly. In the taxi to the restaurant, he sat next to the woman he most wanted to see in his bed and interpreted her body language favourably. However, as soon as they hit the city bars, it was obvious she preferred the other man, his boss. As the evening progressed, he could do nothing but watch as they became more and more physical. He made a few vain attempts to get between them but she virtually ignored him. Trying to make the best of the situation, he turned his attention to his second choice. But after a few drinks she began complaining of feeling tired and unwell. He suggested accompanying her back to the hotel, hoping the evening might not yet be over – but it was. At the hotel, she made her excuses and went straight to her room. He stayed in the hotel bar for a while, then went to his own room.
All he had left for the evening were his fantasies. For the third night running, he masturbated before going to bed. It was like being a teenager again, masturbating nearly every day for a week or so at a time. He slept only fitfully. At two in the morning he heard his boss and the woman come back and, as far as he could tell, both went into his boss’s room. At five he thought he heard her leaving.
The following evening was quite different. The boss ignored his conquest of the night before and made immediate overtures to the other woman. Without hesitation, she responded warmly. He tried to capitalise on the turn of events, but for a while the jilted woman was single-mindedly sullen. Then suddenly, almost as if a switch had been flicked, she began to respond to his advances. Eventually, he realised that her responsiveness had more to do with making his boss jealous than with genuine interest, but he made the most of it. She became very drunk and by the time the four of them arrived back at the hotel, he thought she was either going to pass out or throw up. He was undecided whether he should try to have sex with her, but she made the decision for him.
Waiting until the boss and the other woman could see what was happening, she grabbed his arm and virtually dragged him into her room. Once in, she fell on to the bed and began a verbal assault on their two companions. Her tirade scarcely faltered, even when he undressed and then entered her. As he had masturbated three times in the last three days, and as he was fairly drunk, intercourse was long. He needed many minutes of thrusting before he began to feel like ejaculating. His concentration wasn’t helped by the way the woman scarcely seemed to know he was inside her. Throughout his sexual performance, she never once stopped talking.
After he had ejaculated, she gradually ran out of verbal steam and fell into a drunken sleep. Two hours later, he tried to have sex with her sleeping body. But she woke and, with irritation in her voice and manner, told him to stop and leave. She wanted to sleep - but first, she had to be sick. In the end he gave up, got out of bed, and went back to his own room. He was just in time to see the second woman closing the boss’s door and crossing the corridor, naked buttocks peeping out from the clothes she was clutching round her front.
The four missed each other at breakfast and did not meet until it was time to ta
ke a taxi to the airport. There was an uneasy politeness, and nothing was said of the night’s events. At the airport, the man bought toys for his children and perfume for his partner. The woman whose bed he had shared the night before spent most of the flight in the toilet, being sick.
That evening, back at home, he told his partner he thought his boss had had sex with both of the women. Responding to her questioning, he denied that he had found either of them attractive. Later that evening, unusually for a Thursday, he and his partner had sex, and over the next few days life at home and at work returned to normal.
Two months later, the woman who had slept with both men on the business trip announced her pregnancy. There was some story about being sick and her pill failing, but the man never quizzed her too closely. Six months after the business trip, he met the woman and her partner at a party. As he listened to the certainty with which the couple spoke about their forthcoming baby, even he began to wonder if he had really ever had sex with her.
The role of masturbation in a man’s pursuit of reproductive success is not limited to its role in routine sex (Scene 12). In fact, in many ways, it becomes a much more potent weapon in his preparation for infidelity and sperm warfare.
As we discussed in Scene 12, most of a man’s sex life with himself is just as routine as his sex life with his partner. Not surprisingly, as routine sex is the main focus of his sexual activity, it is this to which his body is most finely adjusted. But infidelity introduces a non-routine element into his sex life with his partner - and, therefore, into his sex life with himself as well.
When a man has an opportunity to inseminate a woman other than his partner, he has a problem. The ejaculate waiting in his sperm tubes is tailored to top up his partner, and so is relatively rich in blockers. What he needs for infidelity, however – if it is to be reproductively successful – is an ejaculate rich in killers and egg-getters. The woman he is about to inseminate has an above average chance of containing sperm from another man, especially if she has a regular partner. She will already have blocking sperm in her cervix. These may or may not need topping up, depending on how recently she has had sex, but blockers are not a lover’s main concern. What he needs is young, active sperm that can get through the cervix in numbers and prevail in combat. Blockers are at best a luxury; at worst a hindrance. As with the man in Scene 13, once the brain begins to anticipate infidelity, the body increases the masturbation rate, thereby producing and maintaining a young, killer-rich ejaculate in his tubes, ready and waiting for action. The ideal inseminate for infidelity is one that has been waiting to be ejaculated for no more than about twenty-four hours.
Another situation in which the ideal inseminate is twenty-four hours old or less occurs when a man has no regular sexual partner. (All men have such a phase during adolescence, and many have additional such phases later on when ‘between partners’.) In this situation too, he needs to keep his sperm column young and in a state of continuous readiness – intercourse and sperm warfare could be just around the corner. As he searches for a sexual opportunity, he needs a waiting ejaculate that is heavily dominated by young, energetic killers and egg-getters primed to head straight for the oviducts. Frequent masturbation maintains such an ejaculate – hence the appropriate urges experienced by single men.
Almost as interesting as the function of masturbation is its secrecy and lack of social acceptability. Among humans, it is most often conducted in private. It is often also the target of prejudice. The graffiti artist in the lift in Scene 12 has his counterparts all over the world. Everywhere, people vilify men for masturbating, often using terms of abuse specific to the behaviour. So strong is this social disapproval that many cultures and religions actually outlaw the activity. Even in cultures that stop short of outlawing it, stories and folklore may exist (such as ‘masturbation leads to blindness’) that are designed to scare men into refraining. The irony, of course, is that the graffiti artist and all his counterparts world-wide will almost certainly practise masturbation themselves. So why is masturbation so often surrounded by secrecy, prejudice and hypocrisy?
If a man is to hide infidelity from his partner, it is important that there is no overt change in his behaviour: any change could alert her to his new situation. He cannot, for example, alter their usual sex routine. Nor – if she is aware of it at all – must his partner notice a change in his masturbation routine. As we have seen, a sudden increase in his masturbation rate could mean he is anticipating infidelity. A sudden decrease could mean he is already being unfaithful, ejaculating so often through intercourse that he would gain no benefit from masturbation.
Assuming, again, that he had always been secretive about his masturbating, he has two options. The first is to maintain his usual routine. But if he does this, he injects inefficient sperm armies into his lover. The alternative is to continue to be generally secretive over his masturbation so that no change in routine can be noticed. It is, of course, no threat to a man’s strategy if his partner detects an occasional episode. In fact, deliberately allowing detection can sometimes be a strategy in itself – especially if it reassures or misleads. A man need worry only if his partner detects so many occasions that she is able to work out his whole masturbation routine.
Obviously, secrecy is most important once males have partners, or are competing for partners. Then, masturbation patterns need to be hidden not only from the partner but also from other males. Imagine a situation in which a man allowed a male friend to know his routine. Then his body urged him to increase his masturbation rate in anticipation of infidelity – with the friend’s partner! Just in case such a situation might arise, it is far better for a man to hide his masturbation routine from everybody in the first place. Only among groups of adolescent males without partners is such secrecy perhaps less important. All adolescents know that they are each on the lookout for intercourse. Frequent masturbation, even if obvious to other partnerless males, gives little away.
The secrecy which surrounds masturbation is therefore understandable, given its function in the context of reproductive success. So, too, is prejudice and hypocrisy. Since the aim of masturbation is to give the male an edge over others in sperm warfare, he gains most if he masturbates but can dissuade those around him from doing so. That way, he gains competitive benefits that his rivals do not. The world-wide tendency to criticise, even victimise, other people for masturbating while continuing to masturbate oneself is thus as strategic as masturbation itself.
There is one further element in Scene 13 that should be discussed now – alcohol. This is, and has been (probably for many thousands of years), an important factor in many people’s sex lives. It also has a very well documented effect on sexual behaviour. The more men and women drink, the more they both seek intercourse – or, at least, the less they resist it. Perversely, however, beyond a certain level of intoxication, both men and women find it more difficult to become aroused. Men find erection more difficult – the ‘brewer’s droop’ syndrome – and women find their vaginas, and often their clitorises, less sensitive. This secondary effect eventually makes intercourse impossible for a man, but not for a woman. Thus, the more men drink, the more they want sex but the less able they are to have it. In contrast, the more women drink, the more they want and can have sex. It is just that, beyond a certain point, they may not enjoy it much.
Alcohol does not negate any of the strategies we discuss in this book. All of the patterns are still there: for example, women still show a menstrual cycle of varying sexual interest. Even under the influence of alcohol, they are still more likely to be unfaithful during their fertile phase and still more likely to have sex with their partner during their infertile phase. The only difference is that, under the influence of alcohol, intercourse at all times is more likely to occur.
In Scene 13 we have no way of knowing who in fact fathered the woman’s child. At the time she ovulated, she probably contained sperm from three different men – her partner, her boss and the main character. Her pa
rtner had a two in three chance of being tricked into ‘fathering’ another man’s child. For the purposes of this discussion, let us assume that this did happen and that the father was the scene’s main character. This man will thus have achieved the primary reproductive advantage of infidelity (for a male): he will have multiplied, increasing his number of children. Yet he will not have divided his relationship - there will be no price to pay from being deserted by his partner. Moreover, having successfully tricked another man into believing that he is the father of a child that is in fact not his own, our main character will not be called on to help support the child. In short, he will have reaped the reproductive benefits of infidelity, but suffered none of the costs.
If the man’s infidelity did give him a genetic child extra to those with his partner, he probably owed his gain to his secret preparation. His success may well have been due to those three masturbations and the resulting potency in sperm warfare of his young and deadly army.
SCENE 14
A Wet Dream
The man stirred in his sleep as his partner turned over in bed. Briefly her hand brushed his erect penis. His nightmare was interrupted, but only for a second. The shower cubicle had opened into the street and he had gone out by mistake. It was early morning, still dark, and there were few people to see him as he wandered naked around the streets, looking for the way back to his shower. But two or three had walked past him, pointing. He could hear them laughing, but couldn’t see their faces. Then a gang of lads with knives saw him from across the street. They chased him, shouting that they were going to castrate him. He ran and ran, breathing more and more heavily, wishing his penis would lose its erection so that he could run faster.
