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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15. God and Women

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

Warning:  Chapters 14 through 19 contain sexually explicit narratives, told in the language of the street as I learned to speak it.  I have made no effort to be politically correct in the telling of this story; and I seek neither approval of my choices nor the expiation of guilt.  I would remind my readers that upon leaving Jehovah’s Witnesses I had made a committment to myself to never let the judgments of other humans, traditions, and cultures get between me and my quest to understand existence, to discover reality, to know what IS, and to find or achieve meaning in my own existence.  I was not interested in adopting other people’s meanings; I was done with all that.  I was continually in shock at the pervasive human need to BELIEVE.  Belief came first, reality was always a distant second.  For a short while I was convinced that this was a phenomenon unique to Jehovah’s Witnesses, or maybe cults in general.  As time progressed I came to the same conclusions as scientists who coined the term CONFIRMATION BIAS.  Belief trumps reality–at all levels of all societies. At this point in my story, women and sex were very high on my list of unresolved internal conflicts.  I wanted to know who they were, how they thought, what they believed, how they viewed men, and why they had  sex (or not).  I also wanted to become better acqauinted with myself as a sexual being and how this  related to my larger quest for meaning.  I attacked this challenge with my usual gusto and determination, and relate events herein without regard to saving face or winning approval.  In doing so I understand that I am foregoing any chance of ever running for political office for the rest of my life.  The things I did , you do AFTER getting in office, and standard operating procedure when suspected of such activity is to deny, deny, deny.

When you are growing up, you are taught that there are certain things that are never discussed in polite society; politics, religion, money, and sex.  I have discussed all of them in considerable detail in this and my blog www.financialliteracysource.com, so let’s finish what we’ve started.  I do not wish to offend, so if you find the subject of sex, as learned by a middle-aged neophyte and related in an honest but not intentionally salacious manner, to be offensive, you may want to resume with this narrative with Chapter 20.  I offer my observations in the light of what I understood at the time the events took place.  Some of those conclusions evolved over time, as you will see.

The Three Great Questions

 At this point all the confusion in my life distilled down to three great questions:  (1)  Was there a God?  (2)  If there was a God, and the Bible was his Word, why was He such a lousy communicator?  (3)  If there was a God, was woman his practical joke on men?  It just seemed to me that male and female natures were custom designed to nurture disharmony and aggravation.   Bear in mind that at this point in time I did not have “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” to guide me. 

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Chapter 13. Sex for Resources

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

In time we exhausted, and dominated the market in our part of the state, and I decided to enter the market of a major metropolitan area about 170 miles away.  

I spent about six months doing market research on the cheap, which meant asking what local fast food restaurants were paying their help in order to get a frame of reference what the current wage rates were in this new city.  At the time most fast food restaurants were paying $3.45 per hour, so I based my quotations on that wage rate.  What I did not know, was that at the time, there were over ten million square feet of new office space under construction in this city.  When all that office space was completed and was occupied, there was going to be a major surge in the demand for new housekeepers.  With the supply of labor more or less fixed, and the demand for cleaners surging, the result was quite predictable:  a surge in the price of labor.  Which meant that all those new contracts I had just sold in this city were going to lose money, because we were going to be unable to staff the buildings at the wage rates we had quoted, and if we raised the wages, we could not raise the prices, and so were going to take a serious financial hit.

 We tried to hold the line on our wages at the level we had quoted the new business at:  remember we were in the cleaning business, and labor is by far the largest cost of doing business.  As we tried to hold our wages at the levels we had quoted the business at, the competition for labor was intensifying in the city, and our competitors were slowly offering more money.  And so were the fast food restaurants, and every other enterprise that operates with entry-level labor.  I would often pass the same Wendy’s unit on my way to work, and they constantly had Help Wanted signs in the window, and I noticed that the offered rate of pay went up about $.25 per hour every two months or so.  The significance of this had not quite seeped into my consciousness, but I woke up at a trade show in St. Louis later that same year.  I was talking over cocktails with one of my Jewish competitors from back in my home state, and he said about one 22-story office building we cleaned:  “My cousins run that building.  Don’t you think I’d have that contract if I wanted it?  Why do you think I don’t have it?  Because I don’t want it, because I can’t make any money at it.” 

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