FORNICATE FOR FREEDOM! (revisited)

James Thurber (pictured right), the late great humorist, wrote a book called: IS SEX NECESSARY? I doubt he satisfactorily answered the question - but he sure came up with some hilarious cartoons.

I’ve spent years investigating sex and heaps of energy exploring its possibilities. I’m tempted to conclude - after five decades of extensive research - that sex is utterly incomprehensible and only good for selling breath mints, condoms, and earthmoving equipment.

Nevertheless, I won’t succumb to that temptation. Because sex keeps your hair looking great and your breath fresh. Bad hair days and stale breath only happen when you haven’t been laid for a while. Besides, I’m a Reichian at heart. Dr Wilhelm Reich, the late great psychoanalyst and student of the Life Force, maintained that a community of sexually gratified adults would never tolerate a dictatorship. What does this reveal about sexuality in Najib’s (or should I say Rosmah's) Malaysia?

Cartoon by James Thurber

Sex has very little to do with LOVE - which is mainly about being comfortable enough with another person to be able fart freely and gleefully in their presence. In the old days kids were introduced to the forbidden topic via the birds and the bees. How utterly boring. Animals, insects and plants simply reproduce their species. They don’t have sex for sex’s sake, like humans do. With animals, insects and plants sex is merely procreational - with us, it’s recreational.


But, then, basketball, ping-pong, snooker and tenpin bowling are also recreational. Why aren’t humans content with banging a few balls around and competing for points? Have I discovered some other activity as pleasurable as sex? Indeed I have. Turn me loose in a studio equipped with a wild assortment of musical instruments. I could make music for hours, and then light a cigarette and listen ecstatically to the playback. Making music is a joy that lasts for years. One way to make sex last for years is to make BABIES - but we won’t get into that now.

Cartoon by James Thurber

Everybody knows sex has two occupational hazards: pregnancy and disease. The lubricated latex sheath popularly known as a condom is touted as a prophylactic against either condition. Politically correct modern young women (those who grew up bombarded with scary HIV ads on TV) carry condoms in their handbags. I suppose older guys keep tongkat ali in their pouches to suck on whenever an opportunity arises to display their tantric prowess.

Folks, there’s nothing ELECTRICAL about sex. Don’t believe all that mystical mumbo-jumbo. Sex is all mechanical pumping action - and we’re only hydrocarbon-protein machines. Feelings? Hrrrmph, just a fancy option, a fashion accessory, that’s all. And BIOMAGNETISM has little to do with the passionate desire to fuse with another aspect of oneself. But hold on a friggin’ second: aren’t we ultimately aspects of one another, somehow interconnected, genetically or karmically, etherically or financially, mythically or science-fictionally?

Forget it! Go ahead and rubberize your erotic experience! Lace your sexual intercourse with latex! Insulate your appendage (if you have one)! Better safe than swollen, heh heh!

Quite frankly, "safe sex” with condoms conducted in condominiums sounds like we’re more than halfway to hell. Some say danger is a potent aphrodisiac, and I’m no stranger to danger, though we don’t often meet (indeed, we tend to avoid each other). But amor omnia vincit. True love ultimately triumphs over tragedy, I say.


Of course, we could easily bypass all these sticky problems by breeding sex entirely out of our bastardized gene pool. Let’s sew up those tiny slits at birth. Lop off those dangly bits - why stop at prepuces? Within a few in vitro generations we won’t even remember we once “did it” just like the chimpanzee, the donkey, the duck, and the dog does it. Ah, let me wax lyrical here...

Never too late to self-castrate
And change your name to Fidel Castro.
Sweet is the date that grows on palms
And fills our calendars.
Why masturbate? Emancipate
Your hand from demeaning work.
We anticipate, as we replicate
Ourselves by scientific procedure,
A cleaner, purer world
Totally devoid of jerks.


My answer to James Thurber’s question: IS SEX NECESSARY? Probably not - but it’s essentially how humans can briefly experience the Grand Unified Field. The urge to conjugate and unite is well-nigh irresistible, and our souls certainly derive nourishment from physical intimacy.

However, the insertion of fear and guilt into the copulation equation has made sex a mere commodity. Labies and genitalmen, we cannot allow that to happen. Fornicate FEARLESSLY and GUILTLESSLY and regain your freedom. At least from bad hair days and sewer breath.

[Originally published in the January 2005 edition of  VIDA! First posted 24 October 2013, reposted 8 April 2016 & 

26 November 2017]