Chapter 17. The List of Fifteen: A Study in the Supply and Demand of Sex

What follows is a continuation of a series of articles comprising a book entitled “Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman” wherein the author describes being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, spending almost ten years at their Bethel headquarters in Brooklyn, NY and then entering the ”outside”  world at the age of 27.  For purposes of continuity, I encourage you to subscribe in the column to the right so as not to miss a post.  It is free and without obligation

Warning:  Chapters 14 through 19 contain sexually explicit narratives, told in the language of the street as I learned to speak it.  I discuss these adventures, not in a spirit of narcissism or exhibitionism, but in the wider context of a former Jehovah’s Witness  who was seeking new meaning and purpose after leaving a cult-like church that had defined every aspect of my existence virtually from birth.  I was determined to experience life for the first time on MY terms, and I was going to draw my conclusions from first-hand experience, not hear-say or the value judgments of others.  If you have been following from previous chapters, we pick up the thread here as I enter the dating scene in earnest at the age of 36.  I share my observations and conclusions more or less in the order in which I formed them, and they evolve over time, as you will see.

All of life is a competition, for every resource in existence.  We compete for food, for power, for territory, for status, and yes, we compete for our mates.  Our obsession with certainty notwithstanding, there is very little in life that is a sure thing.  We compete to take from others, and we defend to keep what we value.  Over millenia of evolution we have developed behaviors that at first glance are puzzling, even bizarre, but when viewed in the context of survival strategy, make perfect sense.  Life, Nature, the Universe, however you want to refer to it, is attuned to survival of the species, and sex and mating have a high priority because of their essential participation in the survival process.  Most enduring behaviors were successful because they produced a survival advantage.

Here is how I arrived at some of these conclusions.  Most of the women I have known had babies (or children), or wanted babies, or had grown children that they still treated like babies.  In conversation, any conversation, on any subject, within five or ten minutes the topic became their babies.  I think they start thinking about babies when they are very young, maybe only five or six years old.  In the dating scene a male quickly discovers that the fastest way to a woman’s heart (and often into her panties) is to engage her in extended, rapturous conversation about her kids.  Depending on what stage of life a woman is at, her desire for a “permanent” mate will fluctuate.  A provider male provides a measure of safety, survival skills (bringing home the “bacon”), protection for the female and the young.  Sometimes a woman will flirt with someone other than her mate, or even sneak off “into the bushes” for a liaison or tryst with another male, and even this apparently enhances her survival prospects, for if her “hunter-husband” fails to return alive from the hunt, or war, she has a potential replacement for him in the wings.  Sexual jealousy plays a survival role for both the male and the female; the female retains her survival advantage with her successful mate, and the male wants to assure that his limited resources are going to promote the survival of his own offspring, not that of his competition–other males.  In the absence of DNA testing, sexual jealousy played a vital role, and still does.  In terms of survival strategy, Nature doesn’t want a male to sow his seed only when one female is ready and fertile, and then wait until she is ready again, perhaps after giving birth and breastfeeding her infant.  With the high mortality rate of primitive man, the species could easily be extinguished at that rate.  No, the man could continue to sow his seed with many women, because the chances of most of the offspring surviving to the age where they could in turn reproduce themselves was slim indeed.  No, Nature is a study in massive overkill in order to achieve her ends.  So all of this makes sense of sorts, but it also involves very conflicting behaviors.  In my opinion, a study of millenia of human sexual behavior in all cultures does not support a conclusion that we are a naturally monogamous species.    Most, but not all, cultures manifest monogamy at some level, but they also uniformly manifest pervasive “infidelity”.  Women will wander also, although not quite as often, perhaps, as men, and for different reasons. 

As I have written before, men in modern society operate at a significant disadvantage because our Western culture demands an unnatural monogamy when these males are at their sexual prime.  The culture exerts considerable pressure on these males to mate “permanently” or at least to give the appearance of such, and the culture reproaches and sanctions males who “cannot commit” to one female.  Our culture, with the aid of religion, puts a young man at war with his own nature.  The female’s biological imperative pushes her to demand this as the status quo, and the male’s biological imperative is to spread his seed.  In terms of the man’s happiness, it must be said that when he marries he has granted his new bride a monopoly on his sexual satisfaction at precisely the time in life when they have a grossly mismatched libido.  He has to sneak his needs due both to social opprobrium and also because discovery can result in a disastrous division of assets under the jurisdiction of the courts.  Which is a very dicey affair under the best of circumstances.   Because his sexual needs are the more urgent, generally speaking, at a young age, he is at a huge negotiating disadvantage biologically speaking.  Whoever wants sex the most  empowers the other party and most likely loses the negotiation.  The woman wins.

It is all about sexual Supply and Demand.  When they are in their teens, twenties, and perhaps even their early thirties, the male libido far outstrips that of the female.  If he has a girl friend or fiancee or wife, the Supply has been reduced to One!  And she now has other priorities.  Like children, for example.  She has been granted by society a monopoly on his greatest survival need–to produce offspring–lots of them!  Because from Nature’s perspective, who knows how many of those offspring, or indeed, if any of them will survive to maturity.  This is the situation I found myself in when I left Jehovah’s Witnesses, and then my wife of sixteen years.  I did NOT want to go out and immediately get into another monogamous relationship.  I wanted SEX.  I had had all of two sexual partners in my entire life; I was in my late thirties, and I definitely wanted to know what I didn’t know.  And although I didn’t have the language to articulate it at the time, I wanted to find a solution to the imbalance culture and religion placed on sexual behavior.  I felt it was very unfair that society, or at least polite society disdained a young man’s philandering as a manifestation of his fall from grace.  He is attacked by women with condescension and viewed as lacking character, and discussed in soft tones among men with manly knowing chuckles and indulgence.  Although women would be outraged by the errant behavior of their mates, I often found them to be quite indulgent with their own nubile sons.  What, I wondered, was an appropriate way to pursue my goals and feel good about myself, and without alienating the very women I wanted to get to know better?  How to correct the perverse imbalance between the supply and demand of sex? 

Here is what I learned, and would share with young men everywhere: 

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Chapter 16. What I Could Teach Tiger Woods

What follows is a continuation of a series of articles comprising a book entitled “Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman” wherein the author describes being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, spending almost ten years at their Bethel headquarters in Brooklyn, NY and then entering the ”outside”  world at the age of 27.  For purposes of continuity, I encourage you to subscribe in the column to the right so as not to miss a post.  It is free and without obligation

Warning:  Chapters 14 through 19 contain sexually explicit narratives, told in the language of the street as I learned to speak it.  I discuss these adventures, not in a spirit of narcissism or exhibitionism, but in the wider context of a former Jehovah’s Witness  who was seeking new meaning and purpose after leaving a cult-like church that had defined every aspect of my existence virtually from birth.  I was determined to experience life for the first time on MY terms, and I was going to draw my conclusions from first-hand experience, not hear-say or the value judgments of others.  If you have been following from previous chapters, we pick up the thread here as I enter the dating scene in earnest at the age of 36.  I share my observations and conclusions more or less in the order in which I formed them, and they evolve over time, as you will see.

*   *   *

Eventually of course, I moved beyond sheer anatomical curiosity.  I was still nervous about sexual activities and unsure of myself, but I was also developing a sense of annoyance and sometimes downright anger and frustration with the dating game.  It was obvious we were all, men and women, constantly negotiating, and the Grand Prize was either sex or the resources it could be traded for.  It was equally obvious that the women made the decision as to whether or not it happened.   Feminists who loudly bemoan what they perceive as male dominance and women’s victimhood overlook this one single indisputable fact:  women control the pussy in the world, and that is power.  Real power.  And like youth itself, this kind of power is wasted on the young.  Most young girls seem to be trying to find out what it feels like to be in love and they are trying out their emotions on their boyfriends, which really confuses the boyfriends, who are trying to find out what it feels like to get laid.  The boys end up thinking the girls are nuts.  And the girls think the boys are obsessed with sex.  Neither gender has enough information, or they wouldn’t be so surprised at the behavior of the other.

A woman’s beauty is a major source of her power.  This is not about vanity or a male-dominated culture.  Quite the opposite:  in cultures where women are truly powerless, such as in certain Islamic countries, women are veiled and covered from head to toe to deprive them of the power of their looks.  In a free society, women spending a lot of time on their appearance is a survival tactic, and this one, believe me, is not vestigial!  Pretty women  receive advantages throughout life:  babies like them better, and so do men, who are often just bigger babies.  We will pay their way, change their flat tires, and open their doors.  Women  will spend endless hours on their hair and cosmetics, not to mention plastic surgery in order to attract men, tempt men.  Male lust for women is a  source of great female power.  It is nature’s way.  Should it surprise men then that women don’t give away the goodies for free?

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Chapter 12. When Your Best Just Isn’t Good Enough

What follows is a continuation of a series of articles comprising a book entitled “Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman” wherein the author describes being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, spending almost ten years at their headquarters in Brooklyn, NY and then entering the ”outside”  world at the age of 27.  For purposes of continuity, I encourage you to subscribe in the column to the right so as not to miss a post.  It is free and without obligation

One of the hardest things to accept about business, and maybe human behavior in general, is that most behavior doesn’t seem to be rational, but whimsical, irrational, and emotionally driven.  Decisions are based on emotion, and then the intellect is summoned to justify them.  Business could be gained and lost for some very arbitrary reasons.  My response to this was mostly terror.  On any given day I knew the wrath of the gods could descend on my head for reasons far beyond my control.  Since all of my contracts were on a month-to-month basis, I understood that on any given day I was only 30 days from bankruptcy court, if enough of my clients were to cancel my contracts at the same time.  No business was guaranteed, even if you were doing an excellent job, and the specter of economic death hung over your head all the time.  It was imperative to build relationships inside the client’s organization on at least three different levels.  Whenever possible I would build a relationship with the CEO of the corporation, my manager would build a rapport with his peer in the client’s organization, and we would try to match up our cleaners with the personalities of key people on each floor.  Generally speaking, it took all of us as a team to keep a tight grip on business.  Everyone was important, and I always told our people to avoid stepping on hands when climbing up the ladder, because those same hands could expedite the way down (or out the door!)  A disgruntled secretary in a client’s building could make our work life miserable.

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Chapter 11. “How Much Justice Can You Afford Today?”

What follows is a continuation of a series of articles comprising a book entitled “Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman” wherein the author describes being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, spending almost ten years at their headquarters in Brooklyn, NY and then entering the ”outside”  world at the age of 27.  For purposes of continuity, I encourage you to subscribe in the column to the right so as not to miss a post.  It is free and without obligation.

Some of my most painful business lessons came from the legal system.  I was unaware that a large group of under-employed attorneys had invented a brand new field of litigation that came to be known as contract employment versus employment-at-will.  The theory apparently went something like this:  if an employer said something to an employee that could even vaguely be construed as an assurance of continued employment, it could be considered a binding verbal contract.  Let’s say, one day during a discussion with an employee that you, as the employer say something intended to show appreciation and encouragement for recent good work on their part such as “Keep up the good work.  You have a real future here”, and then let’s say that a few months later their attitude changes and their work goes south and you end up terminating their employment; they could now sue you for termination without just cause, because implied in your encouraging verbal statement months before was a guarantee of some sort of continued employement.  From that point on, in the eyes of the law, you could only discharge an employee for “just cause”.  Well , how hard can that be?  Who would want to terminate someone for an unjust cause?  The problem is, “for just cause” in the eyes of whom?  Of course it was appropriate in your mind to discharge them; you were probably fed up with their behavior, or taking a lot of grief from them and spending 80% of your time trying to correct them and taking heat from both your boss and the customer to get the situation fixed.  But the problem is, their discharge is never  for “just cause” in their own eyes.  When was the last time you heard someone say, ‘I got fired today, and by God, I deserved it.’  So now, under this concept of implied employment contract, this discharged employee can challenge his discharge in court, and you are obliged to defend your decision to let him go.  To a jury.  What if you get a jury that buys into the Hollywood stereotype that businessmen are greedy and corrupt and out to get the little guy?  You may successfully defend yourself, but it’s going to cost you money, probably a lot of it, and the plaintiff’s attorney knows that.  So he launches a paper battle that runs up the bill for the defense.  At some point the insurance company will capitulate and pay off, just to contain their spiraling legal costs.

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Chapter 10. Save the World, or Save Myself?

What follows is a continuation of a series of articles comprising a book entitled “Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman” wherein the author describes being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, spending almost ten years at their headquarters in Brooklyn, NY and then entering the ”outside”  world at the age of 27.  For purposes of continuity, I encourage you to subscribe in the column to the right so as not to miss a post.  It is free and without obligation.

 

I apologize to my readers, for I have gotten ahead of myself in this story.  Picking up where I was at the beginning of Chapter 9, I had twelve part-time people working for me, and I was taking $800 per month out of the business to live on.  I had this dinky little office in the basement of a building near the apartment where Barbara, I, and our first daughter Meghan lived.  The office was about the size of a closet, one room, and there was this deep ditch outside the basement door to the building, with a wooden plank thrown across it as an entrance.  I paid $90 per month for this.  There was a large standpipe from the floors above that went right past my desk, and whenever anyone upstairs flushed a toilet, you could hear it whistling right past my desk on the way down into the sewer.  I had an old metal battleship desk I had bought from a customer for $25.  I was drowning in problems and had no idea where to turn to for help.  And I couldn’t think of whatever else I could do if this failed.  It was not uncommon at all for me to work 24 or even 36 hours straight before collapsing in bed.  I did not consider myself a businessman at all; I felt totally incompetent and foolish.  What kept me going was desperation and fear of failure.  Barbara and my combined, adjusted gross income that first year was $5600.  We were below Appalachian poverty level.  I’m sure we qualified for all kinds of government Welfare, but we didn’t even know it existed and it never occurred to us to ask.  It never occurred to us that we were anyone’s responsibility but ourselves.

I went to the town library and looked up trade journals and sent in a card to one of them.  I started getting junk mail, and eventually I saw an advertisement for a trade association convention to be held in Orlando, Florida.  I figured out what it was going to cost for Barbara and I to go down there, and it was about $600.  I don’t remember where we got the money from, but we went.  I was shocked.  I expected to meet a whole bunch of miserable sods like myself trying to stay alive, and there were some.  But I also met many very successful operators, some of them multi-national,  with literally tens of thousands of employees each. 

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Passion, Power, and Panties . . . Confessions of a Businessman Preface, part 2

What follows is the second half of the Preface, a continuation of a series of articles comprising a book entitled “Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman” wherein the author describes being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, spending almost ten years at their headquarters in Brooklyn, NY and then entering the ”outside”  world at the age of 27.  For purposes of continuity, I encourage you to subscribe in the column to the right so as not to miss a post.  It is free and without obligation.

Psychology is the discipline that studies the fears that prevent us from perceiving reality correctly or of acting appropriately upon the knowledge and awareness of reality available to us.  One of the greatest appeals of religion is that it seduces us into believing we can short-circuit this entire process and rely on another to shoulder the burdens of dealing with reality.  This relieves us of the onerous burden of choosing our Purpose, and obviates the need for self-directed action, risk-taking, and courage to take those risks.  It welcomes us to the world of victim-hood, for having borrowed the purposes, principles, and ethics of others, we surely cannot be held responsible for the consequences of our actions, and having chosen to avoid thinking in order to avoid choices, we find ourselves unable to face life and its greatest issues with a direct gaze and our heads held high.  We are hostages of vague fears.  We can never become a champion of our own happiness, and must live our life at the most mundane, concrete level.  We have condemned ourselves to living the life of what Ayn Rand called a second-hander.   We never experience the joys of ownership–of ourselves.  Where there can be no failure, there can be no success.  Failing to empower ourselves at the deepest level, we may even attempt to substitute power over others.

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Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman Preface

What follows is the first of a series of articles comprising a book entitled “Passion, Power, and Panties–Confessions of a Businessman” wherein the author describes being raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, spending almost ten years at their headquarters in Brooklyn, NY and then entering the ”outside”  world at the age of 27.  For purposes of continuity, I encourage you to subscribe in the column to the right so as not to miss a post.  It is free and without obligation.

Man has evolved over millions of years.  Of all recorded history, it took almost 10,000 years for his entire body of knowledge to double once.  It took about 300 years for his body of knowledge to double again (the Industrial Revolution and Enlightenment), today it doubles about every 60 days (the Information Age with billions communicating with each other via the Internet).  Until recently, the one word that has characterized man’s development has been slow, with natural selection being the driving force.

 Man traditionally survived through his herding instinct, his need and desire to bunch together according to geographic, geneological , or shared-threat commonalities. These groups, or tribes,  competed with each other for resources, and often encouraged a sense of superiority among their members in relation to outsiders.  Herding provided a survival advantage in that even the less able among the herd were protected.  Such  a feeling of safety made it possible for them to contribute and succeed within their limitations, and if they successfully procreated, they also contributed  to the survival of that particular herd.  Such tribes often developed strong taboos about mixing and intermarrying with outsiders or other  forms of potential assimilation.   We know this today as ethnicity.  Ethnic “herding” tendencies have resulted in tenacious differences, each ethnic group becoming a sort of subspecies of Homo sapiens.  Some groups, as might be expected, have developed characteristics better suited for survival than others, and some groups have survived as parasites on others, something Nature allows.  An inherent problem with parasites is that their survival depends on the health of the host.  An additional problem, as the species evolves to a more conscious level, is the willingness of the host to tolerate their presence.

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