An Uneducated View of Sex, Food and Politics - Derek Haines (beach read book .TXT) 📗

to be a consummate and respected liar. As for a liar not on the public purse, they must carry the stigma of being an ordinary and unrespected ‘lying little creep’. Until, that is, they lie their way into public office, and become elected on a ‘bagful’ of lies, (called promises now!) and take their seat in one of our many parliaments or Local Councils. I live in constant amazement at how well our modern society has been structured so as to accommodate some of the less able (‘truth challenged’ I believe is the polite term used nowadays) in our midst, and create institutions where they can go to work and feel like they are contributing to society. Our parliaments are very specialised ‘sheltered workshops’ in fact, but with just a little pizzazz!

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More common than a liar, is someone who is just uninformed, unaware, oblivious, ignorant, lazy, or naive. This group of people are just normal. If this group was categorised and tagged, and removed from the planet’s face, only politicians would remain. Of this group of people, the ‘unaware’ make up the majority.
Some years ago, a friend who was also a doctor, had a puzzle he just could not solve. As a caring and assiduous family practitioner, he took his patient’s interests to heart. His patient’s liked him very much, and to many became a family friend, as was the case with our family. In many cases he had delivered young babies, who in time had their babies delivered by him. One particular family had been patient’s of his for many years. He knew the whole family, their medical histories, relationships and respected their Greek heritage and customs, and sometimes their little idiosyncrasies. Most important of all, he was a friend to the entire family.
His puzzle was this. Number one son had been married for two years and his wife had not managed to produce a grandchild. You will notice in the last sentence that it is very definitely the wife that had not produced the grandchild. This was the problem. My friend the doctor had performed every conceivable test on the poor downhearted young woman. She felt anxious in that she had not performed her duty as a good wife. And he could find nothing wrong with her. She was as fit and as fecund a young woman as he had ever seen. There was no reason that he could find to explain the barren marriage. In an effort to help the family, he invited the husband to come and see him for a chat.
Very soon after the consultation began, the doctor suggested that a sperm count might be the next step in solving the mystery. This suggestion was met with rage by the young man. His manhood was not under question at all. It was his wife who had a problem. “There is nothing at all wrong with me” he insisted, and from this the doctor gathered that it was pointless for the time being, in pursuing pathological tests. He calmed the young man down with some family chat, and football scores and tried a new approach.
Explaining the ovulation cycle of a woman to his patient, he started to probe as to whether the couple had misunderstood the times that were more conducive to success. He remembered discussing this with the wife, but she had been embarrassed to talk about the subject of sexual intercourse, insisting only that she knew about the cycle.
With a small chart as an aid, the doctor started to explain about the rise in temperature towards peak fertility, and that it may help if the young man’s wife started a daily temperature chart. It was when the doctor began this sentence that bells started to ring. “With the knowledge a temperature chart, you will know the best time to have sexual intercourse…..” The doctor was interrupted rudely by the young man, who knowledgeably said, “I know about this doctor. I am a good husband. I do what I must do. And every time the blood comes, I do my duty.”
The doctor sat flabbergasted for a moment, and then stood from his seat and came around to his patient, and sat down next to him and said, “My friend, we need to have a little chat.”
This story tells me that the only difference between this young man and myself, was that we went to different schools. Had I not stumbled on a few more pieces of information prior to my first marriage, also at a young age, I am sure that I would have been kissing my wife until our lips were chapped, in an all out effort to fulfil our baby making desires.
Being unaware of some of life’s little mysteries can cause far bigger problems. It is easy to say that our parent’s should take responsibility in this area in particular. But times, prevailing attitudes and social taboos must be considered here. With many issues of the past now being dragged into today’s news, and the tragic consequences of some of these I do not try to diminish, I do wonder if we are attaching an immediate and knee jerk guilty verdict on well meaning people of past eras. It is very easy to prove guilt and convict a past attitude, custom, believe, doctrine or even a state law that was practised by a person or group acting in another place in time.
Example. Twenty years ago, I used to smoke cigarettes on a state public transport bus. This is now illegal. Can I be prosecuted for that now? Simplistic argument I hear shouted at the page! Yes, it is a simplistic argument. And no, I cannot be prosecuted. I ask though, where does the line begin in being able to prosecute the past? Where a law or attitude has remained unchanged, there of course is no discussion. But when both the laws and attitudes (and morals in many cases) have changed over many years, can society retrospectively prosecute. This is about judging a guilt with the advantage of hindsight. I believe it to be an unfair proposition, but will leave you to ponder.
If there is one taboo, in western societies in particular, it is very definitely that sex thing! As often as we try to convince ourselves that we are now living in a sexually liberated and sexually tolerant society, we fail miserably. Could it be that we pre 1970 babies are too well programmed with the sex/guilt association, and that post 1970 babies are programmed with an even far more fearful dissuasive mental program? Death by AIDS! Serious illnesses such as hepatitis! A sex/fear mental program.
Whichever is the case, there always seems to be a mental and almost clinical decision to be made prior to having a sexual encounter. When I was young and discovering what sexual activity actually was, (there was a lot of trial and error involved at this particular point in my life) the only real fear was of two things. Well three if you count the fear of getting the lady or girl serving behind the counter of the chemist shop to serve you instead of the man when you wanted to buy condoms. Back then of course, for the information of younger readers, condoms were not displayed on little revolving racks, in easy picking reach. No, they were hidden somewhere in the chemist shop, and a search had to be carried out every time you tried to purchase a packet. I used to hate the ‘smart arsed bastard’ chemist at my local pharmacy, who thought it a great joke to murmur just loud enough so anyone not completely deaf could hear his mumbling of, ‘condoms, condoms, now where are they” as clear as a bell for two miles! His coup de grâce, after locating the condoms, was to yell at the top of his voice, “Pack of six or twelve?” I hated that bastard!
Back to the two fears. One was of course, getting a girl pregnant. Hence the condoms. And no thanks at all to that bastard chemist, and many bastard chemists like him either. I wonder how many unwanted pregnancies were caused by that smart arsed bastard’s cruel treatment of poor innocent and easily embarrassed, (and guilt ridden I might add) boys whose only crime was to have reached an age when their body chemistry and evolutionary instincts drove them to an ever pressing primeval urge to fuck anything remotely female? To make matters worse, these young hormone driven men, myself included, knew that after the savage and barbaric ritual we had survived in just preparing for the possibility, we knew our odds of successfully completing our mission were extremely slim. This caused another problem. Because it was such a trauma to purchase condoms, (yet again, that bastard chemist is to blame) and the time it took to put them to the use they were designed for, they tended to stay in a young man’s wallet until needed. While one owned condoms, there was no sane reason to revisit that bastard chemist! Hence, after residing in a wallet in a young man’s back pocket for a few months, rubber does give way to fair wear and tear. So I am sure that even when life went well for young men then, there was a fair to good chance that the precaution of a condom was a rather hit or miss affair. It must be said, that that bastard chemist was only reflecting an attitude of the times. Sex outside of marriage did not really happen. He was just having fun with us. He knew we were hopeful, but we wouldn’t do anything. Unfortunately, the bastard was right. Well, most of the time.
Second fear. Something called V.D. I wasn’t completely sure what it actually was back then, but my mates and I had heard someone mention ‘The V.D. Clinic!’ So it was medical. Apart from that we were a bit in the dark. We did however know about ‘crabs’. One of my mates got them and showed all of us in our gang. Hard to see at first, but on closer inspection you could see them moving. We were all jealous, because apparently you could only get ‘crabs’ by having sex. So this proved that our mate had scored a fuck! In all the bragging and bravado we used to try and convince our mates that we had ‘scored’, there was rarely any way to prove or disprove the fact. But hey, who could argue with someone who had irrefutable proof like a case of ‘crabs’! If you are wondering how my mate solved his little infestation problem, I can tell you this. He was shit scared of going to see that bastard chemist. So he went to the pet shop and bought a bottle of dog flea rinse. Apart from a bit of redness and mild to chronic irritation that lasted only a couple or three weeks, and a funny sort of walk for the same amount of time, he assured us that the treatment was successful.
Apart from fear, there was this guilt business to handle correctly. Apart from close mates, this sex subject was never mentioned. By anyone! It really felt as though it was a solo effort for life. No help. No guide books. (Except for National Geographic which had lots of photos of tits, and an occasional Playboy stolen from an elder brother or uncle.) The only certainty with regard to sex, made clear by the world outside our close group of ‘like confused’ young men, was that it was a criminal offence to be a homosexual. There were two words in common usage then. ‘Poofters’ and ‘Homos’. The word ‘gay’ would be a long time coming. We were fairly sure what these words meant. Sodomy wasn’t a word we knew then, so if we needed to explain the concept to a