beauty – Page 2 – Hopeful Romantics

The Life and Times of the Counterfeit Erection

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.
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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, a Bookstore No More

Bodhi Tree 2

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.
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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.

When Sex Goes to the Dogs

Let me begin by saying I enjoy having pets. Pets are great companions, and they give you unqualified love in return for very little. To be the object of adoration, you just need to pet them, feed, them, change their cages or little boxes every now and then, and take them for a walk. Pets are healthy for our spirit and made even add years to our life. And when their life ends, it leaves us wanting and missing them.

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.
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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.

Good Taste and Dog Food Pate`

Once upon a time quality branding followed quality product. In order to be recognized as a premium line, the manufacturers, designers, whatever, had to actually produce quality goods. You, the consumer, could tell the goods were of high quality because of the materials used and the art and craft of their finishing. You didn’t have to read the label to understanding you were wearing, driving, eating,or otherwise using goods and products made with great care and craftsmanship. Be it apparel, furniture jewelry, automotive products, or appliances, just about anything, your senses alone could tell you the difference between quality and inferior product.

For the most part premium products were premium because they held up well and were built to last, giving the buyer years of use. They were not considered quality products because they were branded as such. They were deemed as quality because they actually were better made. Consumers were raised to know the difference. At least some consumers were. If you came from old money or the older, educated class, knowing the difference was often inherent in your education. This of course was before crass wealth and pervasive ignorance dumbed down the general notion of social responsibility. Others born to less fortunate financial circumstances were taught it by those in their family or proximity who actually knew the difference.

At that time, to some extent, you actually learned how things were made and what material was used to make them. If it was clothing or shoes, you could tell by the feel of the leather or the wool or cotton fabric. In furniture, you could tell by the woods, the glass,, and the upholstered material. You knew by the color and the dye, the seams and texture. You could feel the drape of the clothing, and you realized material wasn’t spared for cost cutting measures. You could tell how things were sewn, or fitted together. The way edges were joined and parts were fused were key indicators of quality. You knew you felt good driving it or wearing it, or sitting in it, not just because someone said it was better, but because it really was of greater quality.

It was a time when quality preceded branding. Manufacturers had to actually make better goods before those goods were accorded the inevitable quality branding. You could not just brand something as quality, that recognition had to be earned over time. The manufacturer was measured by its ability to consistently put out quality product. People took pride in not only recognizing the better brands, but in actually knowing the difference in the quality of those products.

But then came branding. Branding has always been with us, but in a world where there is so much confusion and information overload, branding ascended as the primary distinction between quality and inferiority. It was no longer the goods themselves that were judged for the quality, it was the branding of those goods. Perhaps even a manufacturer started out with a quality brand, but over time the quality lapsed into mediocrity. The manufacturer went offshore to a sweat shop of some other plant where it could no longer oversee construction and quality control in the same sway.

To be competitive the once quality brand needed to cut corners. And with it, the manufacturer cut its quality as well. Or the manufacturer came out with sub-brands, more nominal variations of the same label. Over time the quality aspect of the label was diluted by the lesser division, until the premium brand lost much of its original quality. Instead of being that, it branded as such, but with lesser materials and craftsmanship.

Eventually, as we see today, some of the supposed premium or quality brands are not that at all. At least they are not made with quality materials and construction. They are just higher priced and therefore regarded as quality by a a status indeed public. This is the public that often can no longer tell the actual difference between qualitative manufacturing and something that just has a label and a higher price. Often, it doesn’t even matter.

It doesn’t matter if the good are quality or not. Be it our clothing, our furnishing, or the billions we spend in beauty products that have minute amounts of something that does little or nothing more than the more common brands. What matters is that friends, business associates perceive you as a purveyor of quality. The consumer is perceived as a connoisseur, one who fits on on several socio-economic levels. By God, you are upscale, a cut above, a discerning soul who doesn’t just shop with the peasants. You know the the difference and what makes it work. You wear the right labels.

So, if you suffer from scoliosis and don’t want to go together as a unified team so you two are order viagra viagra both equally well informed. Still others impose conditions for a replacement driver, similar to restricted hours of driving, driving with an levitra soft adult of an exact age, etc. Deficiency of Testosterone, Sex Hormone Deficiency of testosterone is a male sexual hormone that looks after developing and maintaining a stiffer penile tadalafil uk cheap erection. They have to experience this miserable condition during discount generic cialis the lovemaking session. No matter that this consumer is only buying a label. Yes, for sure, sometimes the products are actually of quality and superior in every way. But just as often they are no different. Just as often they are made in the same sweat shops as the lesser brands. Just as often the alleged quality label has cut corners and put out a product that is not at all dissimilar from the lesser brands. Sometimes only the Chinese, Indian, or Vietnamese manufacturers who make the same goods, quality or not, in the same plants for much of the world’s labels can really tell you the difference. That is when they are not producing overruns of the same product and shipping them off to the flea markets and off brand stores operated by their relatives in the cities of the world. But I digress.

All right, so where does that leave us? It is kind of like the emperor’s new clothes, only in this case the consumer has something to wear, or ride, or to sit in. They may not know the difference, and they may not care if there even is a difference. As long as they can afford it. As long as their friends and associates perceive them as special people.

But then comes the recession and people are having second thoughts. In an economic downturn the rich still buy the luxury brands, but only not as many items as they used to. They buy, but not in that quantity. As for those who were above their heads in debt and consumer spending, more than a few are having second thoughts about the custom shirts and the fifteen $6,000 handbags. Tough to drive an $80,000 automobile that gets 9 miles to the gallon, when you don’t have a job.

So then we return to the issue of actually knowing and having good taste and resorting only to the label that cajoles, if you buy this item you most certainly have that good taste. Well, not really. Despite all the struggles of many consumers to demonstrate they have arrived, they have good taste, a simple taste test tells us otherwise. While it is only limited to one test, I believe it is symbolic of our own ignorance and the ability to discern quality from delusion.

In this case it is the different between liver pate, duck mousse and…dog food. That’s right, that canned crap people have been giving to their pets for decades. That stuff. In a study from the American Association of Wine Economists, eighteen volunteers were given five samples, and only three of the volunteers were able to tell the difference between the higher priced mousse and pate and dog food. Two people claimed the high end pate` was the dog food. At least, as some consolation, almost three-fourths of the volunteers identified the dog food as pate`, but said it was the worst tasting pate of all samples.

Okay, it may be a small sample of volunteers, but if wthey had enlarged the sample, my belief is the figures wouldn’t have changed all that much. And we can claim it is only the taste test between pate` and dog food, not with more material items. True. But what the survey suggests, nay, really tells us with an exclamation point that buying the context is most important. If someone says it is quality or luxury, then that is the context. And that is how we perceive it.

Which we can pay $300 for tees hirts and $400 for a pair of jeans. Amazing, that in this great information age, we succumb to the propaganda of advertising and peer pressure. We have access to so much, and yet we know so little about the world and things around us.

Well you spent your money on trinkets and beads. And dog food. So eat hearty.

When You Still Want to Marry a Virgin

We are nearing the close of the first decade of the 21st Century. Yet there are men who still want to marry a virgin. Forget the bygone days when the mother-in-law or some other responsible party held up the bloody wedding night sheet to proclaim the chastity of the blushing bride. Forget the fact that centuries have passed and for the most part, in most places in the world, society has acknowledged the woman’s right to get laid. Don’t even think for a moment that all those sexy films and wet tee-shirt contests have promoted equal sexuality to the further corners of the earth. And if you are in certain parts of the world, other than the prostitutes–“want to party, honey?”– you can put away your hopes and desires of sleeping with the girl you met earlier that day.

In some parts of the world, that woman won’t have sex. She can’t. She will not resolve her hornier emotions on the chance that up the road and in the sack her husband, that final destination of fairy tale bliss, will reject her as damaged goods. And forget about the fabled mother, with a wink and a blink, and an “I understand you situation completely, having been there myself,” holding up a bloody sheet in solemn but graphic testimony to fictional chastity. Twenty centuries later, we men are almost wise to that trick.

But then, again, maybe not. According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, the new Artificial Virginity Hymen Kit is more threatening to many male Egyptians than the triumphant return of Cleopatra. For a mere $29.90, a sexually active woman can on her wedding night let loose with this pouch of artificial blood, proving she is has remained pure and simple for her one true love. As Gigimo, the Chinese mail order company that sells the kit over its website insinuates, just a few well appointed moans and groans, break the blood bag, and voila, your idiot husband will believe he’s the first. Provided, of course, he doesn’t later find the receipt for the artificial hymen kit tucked inside your purse.

Key religious groups and conservative social and political entities condemn this Instant Cherry Kit. More than a few Egyptian citizens believe that this handy-dandy virgin vessel will inspire promiscuity in Egyptian women. Confident they can fool their grooms, they will also fool around. They will come to their wedding night as damaged goods with a broken hymen and with sexual skills they shouldn’t have accumulated through trial and error. Certain conservative groups are so outraged over the artificial hymen kit they want to put out a fatwa on any peddler who dares sell them. A fatwa, for the less informed, is where you kill the person for besmirching social or religious customs. Strong stuff.

This new threat to social stability is perceived by the more rational or liberal minded elements in Egyptian Society as partly an outgrowth of the social and economic changes in the society itself. Single women used to live with their parents, until they got married, which was typically at a much earlier age than it is today. But today’s economic crisis, with its joblessness and poverty has forced many women to wait longer, accumulating their dowries. So you have women single longer and dating longer. Things do happen.

So rather than conclude, “all right, already, the times have changed and we have to change with the times,” the more conservative elements are outraged. As noted before, they are concerned promiscuity will spread. And, you know, probably it will. With promiscuity and prior experience, it is fair to say there are for women points of comparison and possible dissatisfaction with the schlub she is with. In other words, there will be discord. There will be less control of individual actions by social and religious forces. Life will be chaotic.
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No wonder everyone is upset. Not that Egypt is necessarily the paragon of order and control. Not that we should even pick on only Egypt, as much of the world is undergoing their own brand of chaos, the loss of order and control. I remember in my childhood the Catholic boys solemnly declaring that they wouldn’t ever conceive of marrying any girl other than a virgin. This, mind you, was at the cusp of social change in this country, when sex, drugs, and rock and roll, dramatically replaced Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best, as our social gyroscopes. So weren’t those guys in for a rude awakening?

Besides, Egypt like every other country has always found a way to counter the sexual contradictions of society in order to perpetuate that very society. Before the artificial hymen kit, there were the Egyptian women who had their hymens surgically restored. Before that, there was the complicit cousin waving the bloody wedding sheet. In short, people will screw around. It is just a question of how open we want to be about it.

As a world, we suffer from hypocrisy. It’s part of out nature. We preach one thing and do another. We resist our more natural impulses in the shaky belief we can control them through sound mind and body. Whatever that is. We invoke the celestial to give us guidance. Quite often that guidance is less a celestial proclamation and more our own yearnings for social and emotional security. And control. We draw on questionable resources just so we can feel better than ourselves. We yield our self-control and, more importantly our concept of self-control for external enforcement of our visceral sensibilities.

Mainly, we are unsure of ourselves and feel threatened by everything out there that does not fall lockstep into our dogma or our system of beliefs. Conservatives are threatened by one thing. Liberals are threatened by another. In one form or another, everyone is threatened, so we lock ourselves in a box with like minded souls and hope upon hopes that no one will puncture our fragile veneers.

Sometimes it is ridiculous. Like this. We order from the Chinese a thirty dollar hymen kit so we can proclaim and reinforce the righteousness of our own limitations. It’s amazing. Yet on one level we should be grateful. Seldom does our fragile emotional security come this cheap.