Life can be cruel at times.  Life can be filled with contradictions.  Contradictions that become paradoxes in our day-to-day lives and as the years progress  leave us wondering,  what the hell happened?   The cruelty part is that there is no going back, no modifying the order of things or adjusting priorities.    Despite all good wishes and inspiring messages to the contrary, in pure existential terms we are left at the end of a cycle in possession of our triumphs and losses, our insights and misgivings.    Life in hindsight becomes a mathematical puzzle of sorts, but with escalating complexity as our perception of events and their outcome is constantly mutating, leaving us to readjust the pieces as time goes on.

There are different versions of assessment and readjustment, each filled with mixtures of satisfaction and regret.   I am not talking about the macro stuff here, the atrocities and eco-disasters, the flagrant disorders of the world.  Catastrophe is relatively easy to assess and reconcile on the macro level than the universal eventualities that sooner or later enter our lives.   Aging is one such area where the large, universal picture eventually makes a very lasting acquaintance.  With aging comes its usual accessories, health issues, frailty,  culminating in an intimate howdy do with our own mortality.    Such concerns are all out there, until that one day when you look in the mirror and start to think, “do I know you?”

But like it or not, we have all been programmed to deal with aging and mortality.  For the most part we think happy thoughts.  You turn on the TV and there is some saccharine commercial to remind you of all the tender moments you experience with friends and family in your approaching dotage.   We get the Lion King Circle of Life Routine , and we are encouraged that our brief blip on the radar screen may be filled with meaning and purpose.    We take heart in the acts of familial succession  and the belief we will reincarnate as we have before.    We project in the back of our thickening skulls that upon our return we will access the lush life, refusing to believe that in past lives and the ones beyond it we were meager peasants whose greatest triumph was now getting trampled by the noble’s horses.

Without all this concern for mortality and the afterlife there would not be much of a market for religion and corny movies.  All those Hallmark Cards and Kodak Moments may be selling at a discount on the dusty back bin of the  Dollar Store.   Mortality is perplexing.   It gives us food for thought and a sense of spirit and a glimmer of eternity.   It keeps us in line.  Or it doesn’t.    But few ever scoff at the notion that somehow, in some way, I am paying the price for my deeds and misdeeds.

But honestly, this is all the easy stuff.   Life and death; there’s nothing to it.  Whether you are stuffed in a hole or return again to repeat the same mistakes or make different ones, this concern is really a piece of cake.   Because at the end of the day your beliefs may give you comfort, offer solace at that heavy trafficked intersection of doubt and faith.   But the morning after, whatever you believe becomes moot.  Unless you hit the jackpot by guessing correctly on the Eternity Betting Pool  and then your journey to the other side rests comfortably on auto-pilot.

What isn’t easy is sex.   Sex is fraught with cruel paradox as if the great creator did some custom body work on Adam and Eve as if for the purpose of a practical joke.   Doesn’t really matter if it is Adam and Eve, Adam and Adam, or Eve and Eve, or any combination therein, the fact that each group is victimized by biology and its staggered time frame for sexual desire.    It is no secret that men are more interested in sex at an early age, their late teens and twenties.  Men have sexual thoughts about once every twelve seconds, barring distractions like earthquakes and fires.   And even then….  Women on the other hand may have sex at an early age but according to one study in the British Medical Journal that was also reported in Time Magazine, that for women that full blown libidinous activity doesn’t kick in until their late twenties.   The article reported that women are not having more passionate sexual fantasies between 27 and 45 but they are actually having more sex than women 18 to 26.   Sounds hard to believe, but, hey, its Time Magazine and the British Medical Journal, after all.  Who would know these things if they didn’t?

The theory is associated with evolution.  In a nut shell, in her younger years, a woman didn’t have to work so hard at sex to become pregnant.  It was only a matter of time.  Fewer times.   But over time and with aging having children was a greater challenge and as women had children at an older age, the sex fantasies and desire kicked in to accommodate the advancing years.

Here is the passage from Time Magazine–

Here’s how their theory works:

“Our female ancestors grew accustomed to watching many of their children — perhaps as many as half — die of various diseases, starvation, warfare and so on before being able to have kids of their own. This trauma left a psychological imprint to bear as many children as possible. Becoming pregnant is much easier for women and girls in their teens and early 20s — so much easier that they need not spend much time having sex.”

I believe there is more involved that physical evolution.   Reportedly, in women, the libido takes a breather, while for men it keeps right on going.    Boomer women especially, having been programmed to behave themselves in order to appear decent and marry the right sort of fellow, became sexually active a little later than the younger women of today.    Boomer women had to keep their legs crossed if they were going to be the good girl.  For extra money, the only call girling they did was to call their parents and beg for a larger allowance.   Or they worked in the college cafeteria or took a job as a waitress.  Alright, so come college they met a boy and the boy was nice…and they started to fool around.

It is only later in life that Boomer women start to smarten up and ease off the guilt that was fire forged and ice hardened by concerned but fearful parents.   Time is passing, and opportunity is dwindling.  Before you end up having heart-to-hearts with a pet iguana there is time for a virtual fling.   Some women, to avoid labeling and scrutiny even move to different and distant places.   Santa Fe in the years I lived there was fraught with single Boomer women on the prowl.  The difficulty was there were so few men, and the men who were single or available made the Peter Pan Syndrome appear the lexicon for ancient and sage-like wisdom.  Like I say, life can be cruel and full of paradox.   Even the married women aged 27 to 47 have more sex than younger or older women.  Sexual peak and all that.  As for the fantasies, let’s say more than a few do not involve their present partner.

But then, as the report contends,  after that hot and heavy decade or three of sexual desire, replete with fantasies and late night longing, the warranty on the libido begins to lapse.   The Cougar business notwithstanding, the  hunger is  more for the lascivious display at Yogurt Land than the sexual encounter.   The report, or the study, as with any other study, has its flaws.  Older women may be divorced or widowed, or are less inclined to gab it up at gray haired mixers.  I don’t know.

And there are the men.  Their trajectory is dramatically different.  They start off strong and then start to flag as they approach or enter middle age.   It is a mixed bag of reasons.   This is not to say men of this age have allowed women to corner the market on sexual fantasy and romantic pursuit.   But it just ain’t the same.   Suffice it to say they are far more interested in 3-D than a D-Cup.  Unless the D-Cup is actually on the 3-D Television, and then the may go off on his lonesome to remember old times.

But then something kicks in and as men get older they get horny again.   Go figure.  Just when you thought it was safe to crawl back between the sheets.   Back a few years in history,  a man confronted the dreaded reality that the brain may still be filled with desire, but the penis has downshifted to a lower gear.     Lust over limpness, if you will.  So in was once upon a time the awkward but somewhat natural order of things, both spouses acclimate to the new conditions of age and erosion and spend more time showing their friends more pictures of their grandkids or that wing ding at Lake Havasu.

An equilibrium of sorts had been established.  But along comes Viagra.  Men become randy old fools and, according to the report, women tend to other matters.  Statistically,  67% of the men between sixty-five and seventy-four were sexually active.   Only forty percent of the women in same age group were sexually active.   A third of the men in the age range of 75 to 85 said they had sex within the last twelve months.  Only 17% of the women in the same age group can make the same claim.  Frankly I am impressed by the men, not so much that they had sex but at that age they can still remember they had it.   As for the women, as noted before, the report did not take into consideration some easily identifiable extenuating factors.

Alright, so what has this been doing to senior America?  And you believed their main concern was losing their Medicare.  Unh uh.   Aged boners are messing up the fire drill.   Older men are zipping up the Sansabelts and jumping the reservation.   At an age when their physical activity may be a a vigorous workout on the treadmill, they are sowing sin in Sun City.   Talk about an alliance among the willing.   They are jumping off their electro carts and cruising the streets for desperate hookers in a down economy.     According to an article in the Daily Beast, they are bringing back sexually transmitted diseases to hearth and home.    Imagine this doctor’s surprise when an eighty-year-old guy shows up with the clap.   They are leaving their wives,  and they are cheating on their wives.  Or, worse, they are forcing themselves on their wives.

The result is mixed.  According to the article, some women are enthused.  But most are not.   They thought this part of their lives were over and now the long retired  Jumping Jack Flash has nothing but time on his hands and a chubby.    Many women find such entreaties annoying.   But then, if they don’t for a few bucks or a couple hours distraction someone else will.  So leave it to good old American know how to produce a female version of Viagra.   The intent was to utilize  Boehringer Ingelheim’s  flibanserin, a drug for premenopausal women, as the new boost for women who report a lack of sexual desire.  Let’s follow the credo, even if there isn’t a market, create one.   Lots of high hopes.   But in two different studies the drug failed to show any increase in sex drive.  The elusive search continues.

Like I noted, there are exceptions to all of this and there are certainly extenuating factors.   But there is still no denying that life is cruel and full of paradox.   Not only as Elmore James once declared does he love her, but she loves him and so forth…but the sexual trajectories of men and women are so different their sexual encounters are torn asunder by bad timing and nature’s doctrine.   It’s hard enough to find love, and then when you do it’s sexual manifestation can become a total pain in the ass.  Perhaps in the end, our desire for satisfaction had disrupted the natural order of things.   At this time of life, Bill Maher joked, “maybe people shouldn’t be having sex.  It has to hurt,” he said. ” It hurts just to stand up.”

For me the bottom line is like all challenges, time will eventually sort this one out.  Or not.   And maybe those who resort to prayer, asking the Lord or the Goddess or the Universe, whatever, to sort out the rights and wrongs, to give them things, bring peace and prosperity, should beseech that same supreme being  that it would really be nice to rethink the math on the cycles of human sexuality.  Life is hard enough.

When you think of China, you don’t think of it as a particularly sexy place.   Probably the Chinese don’t even think of China as a particularly sexy place as they tend to take their lead in sexual conduct from the West.   Nevertheless, with nearly 1.5 billion people, China is the most populated country in the world.   All those babies have to be coming from somewhere.

In truth, the citizens of China have practiced pre-marital sex for quite sometime now.   They may not have the long legacy of erotica  found in the West, initiated since time began and fortified by the art and literature,and ruminations of the Victorian Era, leading up through the pornographic “French Decks” of playing cards to the grand institution or erotica we extol today.   The Chinese may not even share the Japanese legacy, the artful and colorful paintings of lovers in bold colored silk robes contorted in every imaginable position, most of which having their visage in defiance of logical perspective.

Beauty shops and massage parlors permeate most Chinese cities, with each being the code word for a brothel.   While technically against the law, Chinese authorities tend to look the other way when it comes to the long stand presence of “beauty parlors,” kind of like what California does with its medical marijuana shops.  And like the medical marijuana shops, unless there is political pressure from a self-righteous group of do gooders with too much time on their hands, or the owner of the “beauty parlor” manages to upset someone in the bureaucracy, business goes on with little fanfare.

There is a preponderance of “adult health stores”.   These health stores are not to be confused with American health food stores where you can buy your granola in bulk.  Chinese Adult Health store is the given name for purveyors of every imaginable type of adult sex toy.   To say these stores are easy to find, is to equate their proximity with the nail salons of American.  If there isn’t one on every corner, then the sex toy shops are ubiquitous enough to assure no one will be waiting in line.  As for pornography on the Chinese Internet system, that is also forbidden.   But needless to say, thanks to the wonders of modern technology and with necessity being the not only the mother of invention but a matter of getting off, the Chinese can acquire software that can circumvent the government blocks.

As with most countries on an economic upswing, social regulatory efforts, if not necessarily the actual letter of the law, tend to liberalize in practice as well as theory.   When people are starving and struggling to survive, they have little time for sexual diddling.  Or if they do have time, it is because it is there only diversion from a dreary life, and those impromptu episodes usually result in the begetting or more children, which puts even more pressure on the family and its struggles, and makes for far less time in the exotic pursuits. A win-lose situation, for sure.  But when the good times are rolling, leisure and vice become a heady pursuit.

So what’s the big deal over the Chinese college professor, Ma Yahohai, who was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for having the temerity to engage in sex orgies and practice sexual partner swapping.?   Ma and his girlfriend were members of a group  of 22 persons that had some 35 swinger sessions over a two year period.  Frisky devils.  Ma participated in about half of these sessions.    Most of these sessions took place in Ma’s two bedroom apartment.   Ma shared the apartment with his girlfriend and mother.   What the adventuresome couple did with Momma during these libidinous occasions is anyone’s guess.   Maybe she took video.   Or like a good caring mother, washed off the sex toys to eliminate disease.  One can only imagine.

But the fact is that out of the twenty two arrested and charged with Criminal Law 301, Sexual Law 301, Crowd Licentiousness, eighteen of these randy souls were sentenced to prison.   While the defiant Ma was sentenced to his three and a half years, others were sentenced up to two and a half years.   No slap on the wrist, and no mention whatsoever about community service or making an anti-sex film.  The Chinese prison system has never been known much for luxury living.    So a couple of years in jail can give you a lot of time to ponder wistfully the sex orgies you will be missing.   As for the three defendants who got off without a jail sentence, I have no idea how they got so lucky.  Maybe they were only there to watch or serve hor dourves.

It could be worse for Ma and his swinging associates I suppose.  Back in the good old days of Chairman Mao and his successors,  various types of sexual congress, including group sex, could be construed as “hooliganism.”     “Hooliganism” was catch all charge for crimes that made you realize you were in big trouble.   Big trouble meant a lengthy jail sentence at a slave labor facility not of your choice.   You were looking at possible execution.  So by those draconian standards, I suppose, a couple years in jail is a slap on the wrist.

According to reports, there are 100, 000 alleged swingers in China out of the  1.3 billion population.  In terms of Chinese population this is but a measly few.    The measly few engage in group sex and brag about it by posting on the Internet.   Many more beyond the 100,000 read it as it provides if nothing else some vicarious thrills in a country that has yet to develop the 900 sex number.   But still, we are talking a small group of enthusiasts.   Not particularly threatening.  I would consider the group grope of twenty odd people in a two bedroom apartment more of a threat to the integrity of the carpet than to the burgeoning Chinese economy.

Other groups are considered far more threatening.    There are all sorts of radicals and terrorists groups who actually blow up things and don’t just brag about some sexual exploits on the Internet.    There are people trafficking in illegal everything, from counterfeit prescription drugs to counterfeit invoices.   There are myriad labor strikes and worker unrest, including violent demonstrations.   The citizens of the more rural provinces are restless and prtoesting the state appropriation of their lands.   This has resulted in massive riots.  In one riot recently, hundreds were killed in Sichuan Province.

There is airline corruption and all sorts of financial swindling.   Chinese law enforcement has been very busy as the nation pays the price of progress. Even the questionable menace of the Chinese Uighur population  would present more of a problem than a  couple bunches of swingers.   There are many millions of Chinese Uighurs, a Muslim group that is viewed by the Chinese Government as a radical faction and periodically subjects them to surveillance and harassment.   In Xinjiang Province alone, nearly half the population of 23 million are Chinese Uighurs.    I would venture very few Chinese Uighurs are swingers, but that is another story.  The fact is the swingers of China make up but a small but determined faction that you could probably fit into the Beijing Subway.  A chance at getting off at every station.

To be sure, I am not promoting swinging.  I am not promoting it in China or anywhere else.  In fact, mere photos of the swinging Internet set threatens to drive me to the monastery for contemplations of  semi-theistic metaphysics and far less carnal pursuits.  Watching the few happy partner swapping examples on the Jerry Springer Show made me seriously consider celibacy for the next millennium,.   Fortunately, reason took control of my senses.  I only took a shower, instead.   Here in America,  swingers can live large and lounge about in communal congress inside the often tacky but spacious environs of a split-level sub-tract with enough garage and driveway space for all those Toyota Camrys.     Meanwhile their kindred Chinese swingers must dangle their dongs in a measly two bedroom apartment.   Here you get to be on Jerry Springer or at least have your fat, naked ass plastered all over the Internet.   But in China you get a couple, few years in jail.

To loosely paraphrase Voltaire, I may not like swinging and partner swapping, but will defend to the death your right to engage in it, no matter how nauseating it may appear.   Alright, maybe I won’t defend it to the death, as I have better things to do than defend the randy rambling of a bunch of refugees from Wal-Mart looking for distraction in a down economy.    But at the very least,  I will give it lip service, even when I grimace and fumble with the shower faucets.  Why?

Because everybody should have the right to get laid.   It is a right, after all, and not a privilege.   Okay, so maybe sometimes it is less of a right and more of a privilege, a treat even,  a pathetically rare one, depending on the disposition and predilections of your spouse or lover.  I realize that sometimes your significant other does not find  either you or your entreaties as significant or otherwise as you might either hope for or come to expect.   So I guess like other debates over rights and privleges, there is at least a little wiggling room.  But once you do work it out with your lover or significant other you have the freedom to fire away, anytime, day or night.  Even if twenty two people are involved.

But as in China, there are some here and in parts of the world who don’t really see it that way.   They allude to some intelligent design and a divine plan where you must only do it with restrictions.   They ascribe the  damning words immoral and degenerate to a variety of sex practices that were apparently never detailed in the master plan.  Otherwise, I suppose, the master plan would have been just plain old porn and not some divine edict from the heavens explaining explicitly where Daddy and Mommy or Daddy and Daddy or Mommy and Mommy may put their thingies and Woo Woo’s.   In some cases they want to rearrange your thinking; they want to straighten you out.

Oppression always begins somewhere.   Usually in the stupid places, the places that make us wince.   But then they graduate to places where we are concerned where transgressions are made against our privacy and thought process.     We suddenly find our rights intruded upon and threatened by a group of ideologues who truly believe in this world of infinite choices they are so graced with absolute answers.   We find ourselves being subjected to embarrassment and thrown in jail for acting out on our natural impulses.  Oppression begins in the dumbest of places, and it ends somewhere else.   And we don’t know how we go there.

Chinese Professor Ma Yaohai has resigned from his teaching post.  He now lives off his savings and his mother’s pension.   He is appealing his sentence of three and a half years for “group licentiousness,” which translates into getting his rocks off with a couple dozen people.  As we have seen recently in this country, some of our own social issues that we thought were long put to rest, sexuality, racism, the right to live and breathe as you so choose, have resurfaced and been challenged by perhaps a well intentioned but vehement minority.  Given that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, we should never take the good professor’s condition all that lightly.  No matter who you are or where you sleep, something  may be lurking beneath the sheets.  Something besides your partner’s cold feet.

The head of the Intellectual Property Investigation Bureau for the Hong Kong Customs Office, recently reported that eighty percent of the counterfeit drugs seized are  used to treat impotence.  This means that despite all the diseases out there that require treatment, from heart disease to restless leg syndrome, the main concern is penis performance.   The heart arteries could be blocked, and the diabetes count could be four hundred and change; lungs could be like toasted marshmallows from years of cigarette smoke, and the brain riddled with mad cow disease, but if the penis works, then all is well with the world.

Stiffening the penis is big money wherever you look.   Between the lap dances and the porn sites, the sex junkets to Thailand, even the somewhat tame Victoria’s Secret Catalog, much of the international marketing thrust is designed for Chubby.    There are colognes promising sex attraction through Pheromones and monkey sweat.   There are any number of herbs and foods considered to be aphrodisiacs.  Where the penis is concerned, the world is its oyster.  We are not talking a few bucks here    We are talking mega-billions.

In fact the manufacture and sale of imitation Viagra and other such drugs used to treat erectile dysfunction generates more profits than any other drug sold in China.    Much of it is also exported.   But there is for the world wide boner effort, plenty of pills to go around.   Viagra and Cialis are the two most pervasive counterfeit drugs confiscated by customs officials.  Needless to say, these drugs are not regulated, so they either consist of harmful adulterants that can give the user damaging side effects, or they are merely placebos that have little affect whatsoever.   In all, it is a gamble that most customers are willing to take.   The hope of a hard on is more promising than the fear of, say, a liver disease.

I find this remarkable on at least one level.    The fact that consumers will take health risks for elusive or ephemeral benefits is really unremarkable.  In fact, it is commonplace.   People will use Botox in spite of some of the possible nerve damage it can cause.    They will smoke, drink, take drugs to excess.   They will  have themselves peeled and snipped and will disregard any possible dangers.   Hell, they will overlook all the warning signs of transmittable disease and come closing time go home with a disaster just waiting to happen.   So, I suppose, why not at least have a pharmacological  erection to accommodate that ill fated night you may long remember?

No, nothing remarkable about this.   What is remarkable is the fact that after hundreds and even thousands of years of the Chinese pursuit of the heavenly hard on, they are resorting to Western medicine to achieve their desired erections.  All those centuries of eating everything from deer antler, tiger penis, bear bladder, and even gall stones has not compared to the majestic little blue pill.  Or the yellow one.   So has all the years of imbibing Shark’s Fin Soup, Bull Dick and Testicle Soup, Ginseng,  Rhino’s Horn, Sea Cucumber and Bird’s Nest Soup not produced the results that we were led to believe?    One has to wonder if the desire for Western treatment for erectile dysfunction is because all that other crap doesn’t work, or it is largely the notion that downing Tiger Penis is a much tougher project than swallowing one small pill.   Even with hot sauce, it is hard to imagine what culinary delights the Tiger Penis has to offer.   Common sense would dictate it’s a lot easier to take the Viagra or Cialis and leave room in your stomach for some veggie fried rice or a nice, juicy steak.   But then the exotic lure of Tiger Penis is something that has escaped me, to date, so maybe there is in the end an acquired taste.

Chinese medicine has been venerated for a fair number of years.  Skeptics of Western medical practices, and there should be, believe me, have often extolled the virtue of Chinese Medicine.  We are not just talking acupuncture here, but the herbs and foods that offer curative power.   Chinese medicine is regarded highly in holistic circles as both reputable and in certain ways advanced in its understanding of the human body and the way certain diseases should be treated.   I have used Chinese Medicine.   So why, when there are nine million herbs, body parts, food sources and whatever that are over the centuries devoted to raising a woody, have the Chinese decided to eschew all that and switch over to the pill?

Perhaps it is the nifty commercials where a boomer band sits around singing “Viva Viagra,” at the top of its bar band  lungs as if a group grope at closing time is their collective reward for playing bad cover songs.  Or the kinder and gentler Cialis commercials where “when the moment is right for you.”   Yeah, like painting a room might suddenly inspire the two of you to put down the rollers and climb down off of that ladder.   I have wondered if the suggestion behind double bathtub commercial is that once the Cialis takes hold of Johnny Wonder it will drill through one tub into the other.    Better than Popeye’s spinach.

You would think with all the Viagra buying, the Chinese would have  a lot of sex on their minds.  The idea of buying counterfeit Viagra, or Cialis, or Levitra, for that matter, I would think is to keep the cost down.   If you are messing around just here and there, what’s few bucks more for  the real thing.   Okay,  one reason for buying counterfeit may be the confidentiality.   In China, where losing face, or whatever, is a big issue, the Chinese man may want to keep it on the low down that his thingie ain’t working.   It’s not like here where we are not only singing about it, but bragging to our friends.

Perhaps it is a quantitative thing and Chinese men have become a bunch of horny souls who thanks to the national surge in their economy are looking for love in all the wrong places.   It could be they went from the bitterness of short money and a lot of starvation to feeling flush everywhere but down below.   Deer Antler letting you down?  Try Cialis.   So there in the need for quantity comes forth the need for economy.  Viagra and such is expensive.   Counterfeit pills have to be a lot cheaper.  But then it is more than a tad ironic that a nation trying to retain population control is defying the odds of pregnancy that is strongly propagated by  an insistent erection.

But the Chinese have for at least the modern age been largely a prudish nation.  Movies are often censored.   National policy forbids pornography.  Yet when it comes to illegal brothels the government looks the other way.   Usually, the illegal brothels are fronted by a hair salon.  What a rude awakening for the unsuspecting soul ventures there for a cut and perm.     And since the “hair salons” proliferate Chinese cities, perhaps a pocketful of Viagra is necessary to just to work your way down the block.

In fairness, every nation has had its aphrodisiacs.   There are oysters, chili, dog meat, yes, dog meat, more oysters,ginkgo, turtle eggs, and  the skink.    After awhile, it seems just about everything but liquor and ice cream will help men get it up.   Of course, Western culture being what it is, nothing makes more sense than a single pill you pop an hour before your are ready to roll of the sofa and turn off the TV.   Can’t argue with that.

Although there are certain Westerners who are taking issue with the Viagra culture.   As the Daily Beast has dubbed them The Viagra Brigade, here are the women who at a certain age have had their sex drives diminished to levels of  a more  sedentary convenience.   Now here they are, content to pursue other interests, coping with a horny husband.  Some  of these men make increased demands on these women, depending on the size of the prescription.   And some go astray, complicating long term relationships by jumping the reservation and heading for the younger women world  for that one last time around.

Geezers with an attitude.   And then there are  the younger women who married the wealthier older man for security, companionship, and a lot of nice things his money could buy her.   Sex wasn’t really part of the package.  but now she suddenly has to perform.   Talk about an inconvenient truth.

Maybe had a way of telling us to slow down.   Maybe, in the original master plan,  with aging we were not about to reproduce so there was not much need for erections.   Maybe, after a certain point, the penis may be working with a little help from its friends, but the rest of us is not quite up to snuff.    There are aches and pains.  The aging body hurts just when you get up in the morning, yet alone when you are having sex.  So maybe we are in defiance of nature and the master plan.

But then again, maybe not.  Maybe the crap we put into our systems that we call food creates diabetes and assorted ailments that are well known to cause erectile dysfunction.  It’s possible being obese or a least a couple dozen pounds overweight may have something to do with the way the blood travels through the body.   Maybe the sedentary life and our self-absorptions, preoccupations and worries, real and imagined, impair the sexual reflect.   One could justify that screwing in the face of age and adversity is a grand act of defiance and of telling impending mortality to kiss our collective ass.   Maybe after the BMW and the decorator everything sex and its resultant pleasure is one of the only things that really matters.    After all, we have how many sexual thoughts per hour?  I have long lost track.

So for the horny Chinese and the horny rest of us around the world, if you can’t take the heat, stay in the kitchen.  Viva Viagra.   If nothing else, it is one of the few things in this world that actually works.

The Bodhi Tree has been a Los Angeles institution since I can remember.  Located in West Hollywood, on Melrose Avenue, the Bodhi Tree was one of the first bookstores of its kind.    It was a metaphysical bookstore, redolent with incense burning in its labyrinthine rooms.    Just walking through the door made you feel like you were in a different place and time.

The store  stocked books from every religion and every metaphysical pursuit.    There were 35,000 books in all.  No genre bestsellers here.   The Bodhi Tree was for reading and thinking, meditation and contemplation, things we don’t seem to do so much of anymore.   Who has the time?    The Bodhi Tree was founded by two men,  Stan Madson and Phil Thompson, who in the Angeleno hippie days of 1970 first bought one bungalow and, later, its adjacent twin.   It was name for the place where Buddha found enlightenment.

You could visit the Bodhi Tree in pursuit of metaphysics.  People did.  In fact, they came from all over the world.  Or your could visit the Bodhi Tree in pursuit of the datable guys and gals who were seeking a love partner to accessorize their spiritual enlightenment.   Yes, it was open seven days a week and late enough into the evening that singles found other singles with whom they hoped they shared a common bond.   Probably the reason that so many of their offspring have such arcane names.   In the decades where spirituality was the thing, what could be better come on lines than opening gambits pertaining to astrology, nutrition, auras, and Zen.

The Bodhi Tree was offering books on the Kaballah before the faddists had a clue about it.  There were books on herbs, and books on Yoga.     The place gave off its own special church-like aura, a much deeper sensory presence than, say, a Christian Science Reading Room.   You felt that maybe you were onto something in your search for the spiritual, even if you weren’t.  One one hand the Bodhi Tree was contained in a respectful if not reverential silence.   But there were also discussions  among the bookshelves and along the benches where customers sipped the different types of herb tea the owners put out gratis.  Some of the discussion were complex and heady, while others bordered on the obnoxious.

Celebrities, Hollywood people, cane and went, mixing it up and were part of the usual clientele.   There was no valet parking or special VIP sections.   Los Angeles people are pretty blase about celebrity sightings anyway, although there was at least a smidgen of curiosity about what the actor or rock star was actually reading.

Here at the Bodhi Tree, you could buy your talismans and amulets.  Incense, of course, was big seller, as were the crystals and figurines the stones of a mystical quality.   There were crystals to buy and even antique Chinese Coins for throwing the I-Ching.  I still have some stored away and a couple I knew reminded me recently that we had given them coins for their wedding present.   They had stumbled on them, recently.  In their garage.  I guess the oracle of  the I-Ching wasn’t high on their priorities.

Now the Bodhi Tree is closing.  It will be gone soon.  And with it goes a piece of Los Angeles History.   Like a good many products, the metaphysical offerings of the Bodhi Tree have not gone to the heavens so much as the Internet.  Spirituality has gone mainstream, and like most things mainstream, it has been dumbed down somewhat.   The more comprehensive volumes, and the antique works you could find at the Bodhi Tree have little demand in a world that takes complexity and nuance and renders them into easy to remember jargon.    Chain stores can now sell the bestsellers and a few others at deep discounts, just a  few shelves away from their celebrity volumes.

Like a mangled  Zen proverb, the intellectual quality of  many spiritual pursuits has been reduced to a simple tattoo or claim that even a crackpot theory can align you as one with the universe.   To further alter the Zen Proverb, common thinking is such that if you didn’t see it on Dr. Phil, then it probably doesn’t exist.

So long to the Bodhi Tree and with it a piece of history and part of my youth.   And say hello to the Starbucks or corporate chain store that will probably takes its place.  As the mystics claim, nothing lasts forever.

I have had at one time or another, either because of children or on my own, a pretty rich assortment of pets.   I have had a couple birds, a frog, an Iguana, enough turtles and fish to populate a small lake, the brief stint with a cat left by a runaway neighbor, and at least a half dozen dogs.   All things considered, I prefer the dogs.

I have loved my dogs, some more than others.   I grew up with a dog loving parent who kept Dog World Magazine in the bathroom for comfort reading.   I went to dog shows and probably knew more types of breeds at nine years old than most adults.

I have experienced the terrible moment when you have to put them down.    I have taken them with me on long trips and spent time walking them and doing all the things dogs love to do. The thing is, no matter how much I have enjoyed my dogs, or other pets, I realize they are not people.  Dogs are much simpler, but still require much attention.  People are  far more complex and tougher to deal with.   Some animal lovers deal well with animals, but have it rough when dealing with relationships, no matter how casual.

Lately, I have noticed more people are pet centric and less people centric.   They adore their pets, bestow on them the affections and attention folks don’t seem to be getting elsewhere.   Pets are not only pets but objects of transferal.    They lavish the kind of love and attention on them they have normally reserved for close friends, family and the people with whom they engage in romantic relationships.

What used to be reserved for people love and romance,  those with whom we have sex, share histories and develop relationships, we give to the dogs.   Perhaps it is the economy and daunting times that people need so much reassurance without complications.   Perhaps it is life and all its disappointments and knowing that tail wagging fur ball loves and accepts you know matter what.    Perhaps we are experiencing levels of arrested development and any relationship more complex than that with the pet or a twenty minute reality show is far too daunting for our childlike sensibilities.

I would like to think this perception applies largely to aging Gen Y people or Boomers.    Here it is somewhat understandable.   Whether for good or bad a lot of Boomers, especially, for reasons unknown to me, are winding it down and resting on what they mistakenly consider their laurels.   They have been hurt in love, carry enough baggage to settle in Paraguay,  and are too set in their ways to adjust to another human brain pan.     Besides, as they are climbing in the years, romance is scarce, sex for a good many is near nonexistent, and there isn’t a whole lot going on, anyway.

For those who were married with children, the kids are out of the house and are soliciting not desiring your advice and counsel.    The children are no longer dependent and will rarely show up for the holidays yet alone paddle every night up to their food dish, do a little begging or lick your hand.   Or give you the dog breath kisses so many seem to adore and even boast about on Facebook.   Notice in Facebook all the people who instead of themselves post photos of their dogs.   Subliminal desires?

So to put it bluntly, the kids are ungrateful little assholes that can barely remember to buy you a birthday card.   The dog is nothing but an everlasting expression of gratitude.   Your kids will barely let you touch them.   The dog will curl up in your lap and in your bed.   When was the last time your teenage or older kid with lie in bed with you as a gesture of affection.  You would have to be sick and dying, or close to it, before most of you would see that day again.  As for those who don’t have and never had children, will then the dog is a definite convenience.  No nasty sex with strangers, in vitro sessions, or adoption overtures.   Just a trip the the pound or a few hundred bucks if you are determined to acquire pedigree.

I see a great many women I know, and  some men.   I watch them thrust their affections on their four legged lovers.    They hug them, kiss them, buy them gourmet food and cute little dog clothes that have the kind of price tags animal rescue groups would covet as a generous donation.   They talk baby talk, and if there is a prospect of a relationship, the dog comes first.  Maybe it is smart, and maybe it is just another rationale for a missed opportunity.

But that is not the only place the pet fetish has fully taken hold.  Blame it on the lousy economy, maybe, but more and more younger people  are not only acquiring dogs but taking them wherever they go.   Living in a high rise building I can see the increase in dog ownership.   I can also smell it in the elevators or see the little urine trails the overanxious canines leave on the floor as they scramble to make it to the great outdoors of Los Angeles.

Ad when the dogs take sick or are o the verge of dying?   It is a sad moment.  As I have said, I have been there.  But the dog is old, or it is sick, and while we can reconcile it more often with people we have a tougher time letting the animals pass on to pet heaven.   Rather than let old Fluffy go when it is terminally ill or has reached the age where it is barely functional, these people are spending a small fortune for the kind of medical treatment half the people in this country do not receive.   In short, they do more for Fluffy than they would for Aunt Mary, yet alone the ailing kid down the block.

Okay, I am grousing.  And what, you may ask, is the point of all this grousing?   I will tell you.   I believe this sudden embrace of the obsessive canine code is more of a testimony to our abject failure to engage in relationships with people than anything else.  I think it tells us more about our dashed expectations, fed and fostered by relentless commercials and magazine write ups about all the glitz, glamor, and drama that is ephemeral at best, and nonexistent for the most part.  We embrace an illusion and then grow disappointed when it shreds in our hearts.

We think love with a human will be some kind of fairy tale, and life will be a constant adventure.   And then when it doesn’t turn out that way, we shun the possibility and turn to our dogs.    After all, they will give us unqualified love and a surfeit of affection.   They are grateful that we take care of them, and I am sure grateful to the good and caring souls who volunteer at the animal shelters but not the hospitals and hostels.

But the dog can give us affection, but it cannot give us the intimacy that only humans can provide.   Sure humans will give us more grief and disappoint us more than any beast, but they also leave us with complex and richer memories.   Humans are the material from which civilization moves forward.   In our relationships with humans we come to understands ourselves in ways we can never do with animals.   We realize the complexities of love and the nuances and predilections of our sexuality.   We are gifted by their involvement in the arts and sciences.

We will miss the dog, and we will love the dog.   But the people who have impacted our lives are subjects of ongoing reflection.   Through our relationships we comprehend our personal breakthroughs and failures, the measures of our personalities.   We become wiser through these human relationships and we pass this wisdom on to forthcoming generations.

So why the breakdown, besides some of the things I noted?  Why are we finding it so tough to relate to people and preferring to romance our dogs instead of men and women.   I believe it is our reliance on technology that has caused so many to turn away from people and turn to their dogs.   Maybe they have sex and maybe not, but deeper relationships are difficult to develop and sustain if your main form of communication is texting.   If the relationship is broken down to categorical components, behavioral mosaics that either fit or don’t fit into your own lifestyle, it is difficult to advance the romance.     If you want undying and one dimensional love and affection, well people can be tough and more demanding that that.

So with our dogs, we don’t text or email.  We don’t even phone them.  We spend time with them.  We talk to them.  We listen to them.  Part of that listening if to take note of every nuance, every expression, the slightest movement.   We know from their body language what they want.   We understand their nuances and can make the distinction between our dog and another dog, even one of the same species.   We are intimate and affectionate for reasons other than sex.  Well, in best case scenarios.

With people.   It’s different.   We simply don’t have the time to nurture the relationship.   It’s a few characters on a liquid crystal display and a quick roll in the hay.