Sperm Wars

by Robin Baker

  On the pretext of wanting to watch the movements of his naked body, she urged him to walk slowly across the field to a tree on the far side, then run back. After making her promise not to run off with his clothes, he complied. He felt self-conscious and silly. But he also felt excited. As he walked away, she studied him closely. Nice bum, she thought. One day, one day . . . but not today.

  Even if she hadn’t beckoned to him to return, he would have run back anyway. No sooner had he reached the far side of the field than they heard the sound of a car coming along the narrow road. Momentarily he froze. He just knew it would be a police car. He could see his career and his relationship disappearing in front of him. Caught naked in a field with another woman. In sudden panic he ran towards her. By the time he reached her side and sank panting to his knees, she was laughing hysterically. The car drove straight past.

  In the stress and hilarity of the moment they each put a hand on the other’s thigh as they knelt and composed themselves. This is it, he thought, and when his breathing returned to normal, leaned forward to kiss her. For a few seconds she responded, but as soon as she felt his urgency mounting she gently pushed him away. She told him she didn’t want to, not here, not now. Disappointment clouded his face. She felt sorry for him, and a bit guilty.

  Placing her hand on his thigh again, she promised him there would be better moments and places. One day, they would have sex. In fact, one day, she would have his baby. She watched his face, looking for a reaction. She loved melodrama.

  Completely at a loss as to what to say or do he pulled her to him, hugged her long and gently, then kissed her again. This time, she thought she had better respond. As they kissed, she felt his naked penis rise against her belly. His kisses became harder and deeper. When he began to pull up her dress, she knew she had to act quickly, but as she pulled away, he resisted, holding her even more tightly. For a moment, she thought he was going to rape her.

  As he let her go, she sank back on her haunches. With him still on his knees, her face was level with his now very erect penis. She took it in her hand, kissed its tip, and spoke to it softly, stroking it as if it were a cat. After a few moments, she took it into her mouth and slowly worked backwards and forwards. He tasted clean and waxy. After twenty seconds or so, she took it out, formed a tunnel with her hand, and began very slowly to pump. Then she let go, saying she wanted to watch him finish himself off.

  Convinced by now that they weren’t going to have intercourse, he needed little encouragement. If he didn’t ejaculate soon, he would go crazy. As she watched him pump, her gaze switched from his penis to his face and back again. She watched intently, so as not to miss the moment. He came quickly, turning sideways so as not to spray her. The first two spurts shot out so fast she couldn’t see where they went. Then she saw the final three spurts emerge more slowly and drip on to the grass in front of them. After he had worked out the last drop with his hand, he too sank back on his haunches.

  Almost immediately it was over, he felt depressed and a little cheated. He had wanted to come inside her, not in mid-air. For her part, she felt relieved that his urgency was now gone. She also felt a genuine tenderness for his body and, she had to admit it, some pleasure at the way she had made him dance when she pulled his strings.

  Humans are not the only mammals of which the female smells, licks or sucks the male’s penis as part of courtship. Monkeys and apes do so often. So do rats, dogs and many others. Usually, such intimate activity follows through to intercourse, but not always. Sometimes (as in this scene – which involves the same couple as in Scenes 10 and 26) the male responds by ejaculating in mid-air, rather than in the female. Is this a mistake – some error in male or female programming? Or is it possible that when a male ejaculates without intercourse in the presence of a female they both increase their reproductive success?

  Of course, most people would probably argue that such behaviour is simply the result of the generation of sexual excitement and its gratification. As we have already discussed (Scene 10), however, any behaviour that has evolved to be sexually exciting usually has repercussions in terms of reproductive success. This is as true for a man ejaculating in a woman’s presence as it is for any other sexually exciting piece of behaviour.

  In effect, a man seeks or allows oral sex as a display of health or fidelity. He ejaculates openly as a display of health and potency. From time to time, the benefits of such display outweigh any cost. The man in the scene, for example, gained from ejaculating in front of his potential lover. Moreover, he gained more than he would have done from saving those sperm for inseminating his partner later in the day (Scene 10).

  The sperm he ejaculated were shed, not wasted: the consequences for his next ejaculate were the same as if he had simply masturbated (Scene 12). Whether a man stimulates himself or whether he is stimulated by a woman, the number of sperm he sheds is the same. Only when he has intercourse are the numbers different. Often, of course, as in this scene, a man does not know until the last minute whether he is going to have intercourse or ejaculate in mid-air. That the two ejaculates are different shows how quickly a man can adjust his ejaculate (Scene 4).

  After shedding sperm, the man in Scene 20 had an even younger and more killer-rich ejaculate waiting in his tubes than he had before. If the woman did now change her mind and allow him to inseminate her later anyway, his new sperm army would be as good as, if not better than, the one he would have introduced earlier. The problem comes when he returns home to his partner. His waiting ejaculate is now right for inseminating a mistress (Scene 13), not for routine sex with a partner (Scene 12) - or at least, not a faithful partner. The point is, however, that if his partner really is faithful, he can afford to introduce into her body the occasional sub-optimal ejaculate. If she is not, he cannot.

  Men’s bodies seem to work to the following rule: ‘If I have had the opportunity to be unfaithful, then while I was away so too has my partner.’ In the case of the man in the scene, this possibility was in fact a reality – his partner had been unfaithful in his absence (Scene 10). So, when he inseminated her later that day, he had the inseminate he needed. It was the young, aggressive and fertile inseminate appropriate to immediate sperm warfare, not the defensive, low-fertility sort appropriate to routine sex. Once a man enters a phase of infidelity, therefore, similar ejaculates become appropriate for both his partner and his lover. Having sex with two women does not prevent him from producing an ejaculate suitable for both – no matter how often he has sex with either.

  So the man lost little, if anything, by ejaculating on to the grass – except, of course, that ejaculating on to grass does not fertilise eggs. He might have missed the chance of making his companion pregnant. But even that may not be as lost an opportunity as it might at first seem. If the woman didn’t want him to inseminate her, there was a good chance that she was not in her fertile phase anyway. Since, as we saw in Scene 6, women are most likely to have sex with a lover during their fertile phase, a man has little to lose reproductively by leaving his mistress to decide when they should have sex.

  The man’s strategy was to be patient now in the hope of future rewards. In order for this strategy to pay off, his behaviour in the field today needed to increase his chances of gaining those future rewards. He didn’t know it, but as the pair of them prepared for their picnic, his prospects were on a knife’s edge.

  The woman’s body did not want his partnership, only his genes. In this new man her body saw qualities that would suit her next child, if she were to have one. She would commit herself to having his child only if these qualities outweighed the potential costs of infidelity. The equation was finely balanced, not least because her potential lover had so far given no evidence of sexual potency. From her body’s point of view, this afternoon was to be a test of his potential – the final collection of facts, the final balancing of the equation. Subconsciously, she was not after sperm, but information.

  First, there was his body. She had never seen him naked
but, when she did, she found his body as good as she had expected. Like most men, of course, he assumed her main interest would be in the size of his penis and muscles. What in fact interested her most in his nakedness were his buttocks. The best indication of a man’s health and hormones is the ratio between his waist and buttocks. Ideally, a tape round his waist should measure nearly the same (about 90 per cent or so) as a tape around his hips and buttocks. Firm, tight buttocks are a good, though of course not perfect, indication of his health and fertility.

  Next, there was his ability to gain an erection and ejaculate. Not until he began to kiss her after the incident with the car was her body finally reassured that he was not impotent.

  Finally, there was his sexual health. The best way to check for infection was to examine his penis closely. She looked closely, then licked and tasted him. Absence of rashes and sores and a reasonably pleasant taste are a good sign of health, and her body knew this. The ejaculate also gives away a great deal. A liquid, whitish ejaculate with a normal smell is a sign of health, whereas discoloration, particularly bright yellow or orange, or a bad smell, are often signs of infection. So, too, are traces of blood.

  In those few minutes the woman collected an abundance of information about the man, much of which would have been hidden from her if she had simply had sex with him. As it happened, he passed all of the tests.

  It is not only during her first encounter with a potential lover that a woman might gain from tasting a man’s penis. From time to time, she may also gain from doing so during routine sex. Partners who were once healthy may become diseased. A woman benefits from being alerted to this change by seeing, smelling or tasting an unsavoury penis. She can also use oral sex to taste or smell infidelity (as can a man – Scene 10). Traces of a lover can remain on a man’s penis for hours. Not only a man’s partner but also his mistress can gain from oral sex. The latter will expect to find traces of her lover’s partner on his penis; if she can also taste her vagina, she can either be reassured that the other woman is healthy or be alerted that she is not.

  There are a number of other ways in which a woman might gain from making a man display his ejaculate – again, not only on her first encounter with a potential lover, but also from time to time as part of routine sex. As well as seeing and smelling his ejaculate, she can be alerted to possible disease by its taste. She should also scrutinise more closely a partner who unexpectedly cannot ejaculate or who produces a small ejaculate. Of course, if it is several days since they last had routine intercourse, the explanation may simply be that he has masturbated recently. Even discovering this is useful to her (Scene 13), but, much more importantly, the explanation may be that he has recently been unfaithful. The time scale for scrutiny is rather short, but not so short that a woman cannot sometimes catch her partner out. For example, many men would have difficulty ejaculating in front of their partner in the first hour after inseminating a mistress. Moreover, the volume of their ejaculate will not return to normal for twelve hours after infidelity.

  Despite this scrutiny, a man can still gain from deliberately ejaculating in front of his partner from time to time. Choosing each occasion carefully so as to display a good ejaculate can be a powerful way to advertise his continuing good health. He can also reassure, or mislead, his partner over whether he has recently been unfaithful. It is testimony to the success of this male strategy that most women probably would not notice a smaller ejaculate than usual. This is precisely because most men do not display their ejaculate very often – and when they do, they pick their moment. So most women never get a chance to learn the subtleties of how their partner’s ejaculate normally varies. Consequently, they never get a chance to learn how to recognise a departure from normality. Any man who does display his ejaculate too often may find it more difficult to hide ill-health or infidelity if he ever needs to. In particular, he should avoid placing his penis in his partner’s mouth or displaying his ejaculate too soon after being unfaithful. It follows that a woman’s best strategy is occasionally to pick her own moment to give oral sex, or to stimulate open ejaculation. The more unexpected she can make those moments, the more information she is likely to collect.

  SCENE 21

  An Abandoned Selection?

  The girl was wearing only a bikini and a thin see-through wrap-around, but she was still hot. She fanned her face with her hand. The young man next to her in the back seat of the car saw her action. Nodding and smiling, he mimicked her hand movement in unspoken agreement. She smiled back, wishing he could speak her language better.

  Under a clear blue sky, the road ahead of them snaked up and round the side of a hill. The sea was to their left, mountains to their right. She shouted her intentions to the driver and his male companion in front, then stood up, poking her head and shoulders through the sun roof. Despite its heat, the air cooled her as it rushed past. A short distance ahead, just disappearing around the first corner, was a similar car containing the other three members of their group. The only other female, a woman a few years older than herself, was also standing. The girl tried to attract her attention, but the sound of the wind drowned her shouts.

  Soon, both cars pulled up in a lay-by under overhanging trees. As the noise of the engines died, it was replaced by the cicadas’ loud singing. The seven people gathered together their bags, parasols, beach mats and towels, then set off along a tree-lined path, easy and relaxed in each other’s company. Six of them had been travelling together for weeks, seeing as much of the continent as they could, as cheaply as they could. Since arriving at the coast a week earlier, their days had been spent on secluded beaches. Their nights had been spent at beach bars, intoxicated by cheap alcohol, cheap drugs and good company. It was on such an evening, two nights ago, that they had met the young stranger who was now with them.

  After a few minutes’ walk, they arrived at the top of a high cliff overlooking sand and sea. Pausing, they took in the view, each casually putting an arm round the person next to them. The girl had one arm round the woman’s waist, her other round the stranger’s. In sudden exhilaration, she kissed first the woman then the man, then ran forward urging the others to follow. Once over the brow of the cliff, they had to make their way down a long, zigzag path, steep and obscure enough to deter the casual holidaymaker. They were lucky. They had inside information – the young stranger had been born in the area. Although he had travelled the world, every summer he came back to his beloved coast.

  The path was very narrow. The girl, in front, did not notice the four young men walking up the path until she turned the corner and nearly bumped into them. They exchanged greetings, but she was concentrating so hard on not falling off the cliff that she failed to notice the close interest they took in her and the rest of her group. They were to change her life in a way she could never have guessed – but even had she known, she might not have cared. Elated by her surroundings and excited at the afternoon’s prospects, she was feeling particularly frisky.

  First to arrive on the beach, the girl took off her sandals and ran across the sand to the water’s edge, soon to be joined by the others. After allowing the water to lap around their feet for a few moments the group moved on, following their local friend. They walked purposefully along the deserted beach towards tall rocks, jutting out into the sea. As they drew nearer, they could see that the rocks had ‘nudista solo’ crudely aerosolled in white paint, high up on their surface.

  The six friends and their guide clambered over the first outcrop into a small sandy cove. Ensconced under a parasol, stretched out in the shade were two naked women. Nearby, their naked children were playing with a beach ball. A short distance out to sea a small boat-load of tourists travelled slowly past. At the top of the beach, almost hidden in the entrance to a small cave, was an old man. Wearing nothing except a straw hat, he was perched on a folding chair. One hand held a walking stick, the other rested on his genitals. He was watching the naked women closely.

  The group clambered over more rocks and cr
ossed two more coves, both deserted, before entering a third, more secluded, one. An overhanging cliff face shielded the beach from above, and a curve in the seaward rocks hid it from boat-bound voyeurs. The group threw down their towels and bags and immediately removed their scanty clothes. The local man was no stranger to nudity and had welcomed this chance to take his new friends to the nudist beach. They seemed to share his relaxed attitude to nakedness and were obviously quite used to each other’s bodies. What he did not know was that at one time or another since coming on holiday, both women had had sex with each of the men, as well as with each other.

  Almost within seconds of removing their clothes they were all cooling off in the sea. The younger girl began some horseplay with two of the men, splashing them, jumping on their backs, and grabbing at their genitals. They responded by pushing her under the water, then swimming strongly out to sea. She began to follow, but soon turned and swam back to the beach.

  One by one, they came out of the water. Soon, they were all stretched out naked in the sun, passing around a bottle of wine and the first of that afternoon’s joints. There was little real conversation, just a relaxed, drug-induced sense of well-being. The girl was lying with the other woman, resting her head on the other’s stomach. As they talked, drank and smoked, they occasionally touched and stroked those bits of each other’s bodies that they could reach without effort.

  The women stayed like this for nearly an hour, sometimes talking, sometimes drifting in and out of sleep. After a while, the girl began to feel restless. As she looked around, she could see that some of the men were also asleep. Sitting up and stretching, she nudged the other woman and pointed to the young stranger next to them. Fast asleep, his arms and legs were gently twitching. So too was his very erect penis. The girl whispered in her friend’s ear. They smiled in anticipation, then went across on hands and knees to the man’s side.