Dirty talk

After my arrival in Paris in 1962, I was exhilarated—among countless other things—by the possibility of purchasing and reading the original editions of various famous banned books such as those of Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell.

[My copy of the Olympia Press edition of The Black Book,
which I purchased and signed in 1963, is not for sale.]

The literary censorship of the middle of the 20th century is rather has-been. Today, it's the the walls, not books, that talk. Dirty talk. But they don't necessarily need words. Graphic images suffice to get the sexual message across.

I've just encountered, with stupefaction, the supposedly clinical description of the allegedly evil acts of Dominique Strauss-Kahn in the company of a Guinean girl in a room of the Sofitel in New York.

OK. Enough. Let's put all that fucking fuzzy US legal shit between parentheses, for the the moment, and do a bit of simple dirty talk.

It so happens that I've just been reading the most alarmingly explicit document that could possibly exist today on the fucking all-important subject of foul language:

The brilliant Harvard professor Steven Pinker does a splendid job of explaining dirty talk, sex and sundry. And he thrusts vigorously all this lovely dirty stuff, in a manly fashion, into the soft warm global context of the hairy and smelly psychology of sex. Nice, mildly nasty at times, excruciatingly honest, amazingly revealing… essential reading for all us aficionados of dirty talk. Click the above image to access my article of 25 April 2011 entitled Books by Steven Pinker.

King-sized Jesus in Oklahoma

I found this funny story in the excellent Pharyngula blog by PZ Myers [access].

The history of Catholicism is filled with magic happenings. In the case of St Francis of Assisi (the fellow who preached to birds), we encounter the phenomenon of a talking cross, shown here:

In the church of San Damiano, the image of Jesus on the cross said to Francis: "Repair my church. As you see, it is falling into a state of total ruin." Francis immediately set about repairing the actual building, but he soon realized that the words of the cross of San Damiano were to be interpreted as a metaphorical order, meaning that it was rather the ecclesiastical institution and its members that were in need of repair. So Francis finally started work on that much bigger task.

Over the centuries, the San Damiano Cross has inspired countless reproductions. The latest copy, some three meters in height, has been hung above the altar of a church in Oklahoma. And the least that can be said is that it's well hung.

This copy was executed by a local artist named Janet Jaime. She has highlighted the abdominal muscles of Jesus to such an extent that a naive observer might imagine that the King of Glory is exhibiting a king-sized erection. Needless to say, this copy has given rise to controversy among Catholic parishioners in the Oklahoma town of Warr Acres, where the church is located. The artist, though, gives the impression that she doesn't understand what the fuss is all about.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the illicit sexual behavior of certain Catholic prelates and priests. The last thing the Church needed was yet another much-publicized sex-oriented incident, particularly when it takes the form of a giant phallus emerging from the crucified body of the Lord. One can't help wondering whether this Oklahoma painting is in fact yet another element of an international conspiracy, orchestrated by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, aimed at screwing Joseph Ratzinger. And, talking about screwing, that awesome Oklahoma apparatus elicits an exclamation of admiration. In a word, as Mary Magdalene might have gasped: Jesus!

Balls and holes

Friends assure me that, when you get addicted to golf, you can't get it out of your system, and you can't get enough of it. Come rain, sleet, snow, hail or high winds, all you can think about is getting it into the hole. It? I'm talking of balls, of course, rock-hard balls. When I was a kid in South Grafton, I recall that serious golfers hired a person referred to as a caddie to talk care of their sporting equipment. This US guy named Tiger appears to have got together a whole harem to handle his sporting equipment.

Wow, what a drive he must have! A hole-in-one every day he hits off. Surely a great mattress-putter, too. In any case, a splendid role model for horny youths who yearn to become top players, indeed champions.

Getting sex right

I don't claim to know the sense of the concept of "getting sex right". We humans, like many living creatures (those that exploit sex to procreate), have always been obliged to take sex seriously. A priest, accompanying tourists to the Holy Sepulcher, was faced with a naive question: "So, the tomb's empty?" He replied: "Madame, if He's in, then we're out." Similarly, in a fabulous creationist Procreation Park, in the midst of joyful evocations of rustic Neanderthals getting sodomized by randy dinosaurs, we might imagine a profound question from a troubled visitor: "Is sex serious?" The guide, if he were truthful, would be obliged to reply: "If sex stops, then so do we."

On the other hand, I know what it means to get sex wrong... and that's apparently what has been happening for decades, according to a damning report, in Catholic-run Irish institutes for children. The situation involved sexual abuse that was so disgusting that I refrain from evoking it explicitly. If you happen to be interested in Ireland (for genealogical reasons, say), I advise you to touch this sad land (which I have never visited), like I do, with antiseptic gloves, with a long pole, or maybe solely through memories... by means of the Internet.

Soon, in a final chapter of my document called A Little Bit of Irish, I'll insert the following anecdote, which I've often related to various friends in emails. Long ago, in Paris, I got to know a charming Irish girl named Marie. This happened during a period of my life in Paris when I used to spend my evenings playing the guitar and singing folksongs in a café called Le Petit Gavroche. I seem to recall that Marie had probably married a French guy, but I forget the details. In any case, during my short but delightful relationship with Marie, she talked to me a lot about her home land, since she realized that I was intrigued by the Ireland of my ancestors. One day, lovely Marie decided to teach me a wonderful lesson, which she prefaced, almost solemnly, in the following terms (approximately, as well as I recall her words, and supplemented by facts):

William, I'm going to give you a little novel: The Poor Mouth. It's the English translation of an Irish novel, An Béal Bocht, written in Gaelic by an Irish journalist named Miles na Gopaleen, who calls himself Flann O'Brien in English. Knowing you a little, William, I'm fairly sure that you'll be thrilled by this little novel. In my opinion, William, you happen to have an Irish sense of humour, and I'm convinced that you'll find The Poor Mouth one of the funniest stories you've ever heard. But I'm not giving you this little novel to amuse you. I want you to read it for far more serious reasons. This novel will tell you, in a way, the story of your ancestors, William. You don't know exactly who exactly these ancestors were, and where they lived. Besides, you'll never be able to know such things. For all traces of them have disappeared forever. Your Irish ancestors have left no records, and their places have disappeared. But The Poor Mouth will tell you exactly how they lived, and how they thought. The novel will tell you everything you need to know about the spirit of your ancestors. One final word: If you're sensitive to The Poor Mouth, as I predict, I hope you'll never make the mistake of wasting your time and energy by setting foot in modern Ireland. That would be totally unnecessary, and it could only have a negative effect upon all that you've learnt from the novel by Miles na Gopaleen.

Marie was a prophet. I lost track of her. But I read the amazing novel. And I learned the nature of my ancestors. I've avoided visiting modern Ireland, because we descendants have nothing to learn there (on the contrary)... because our likes will not be there again.

Correlation between balls and brains

When I was a teenager in Australia, a good way of insulting a fellow was to call him a dickhead. I must admit, though, that I never really knew whether this was intended to mean that his head had the same shape as a penis, or an equivalent degree of intelligence, or a similar vocation in life, or some other more subtle resemblance.

Today, scientific research carried out in the UK has revealed that men of higher intelligence appear to have sperm of better quality. Results indicated that smart males who obtained higher notes in IQ tests tended to produce a greater quantity of sperm with greater mobility.

Now, if you're anything like me, I'll bet you were surprised to learn—in that last sentence—that mobility is an important factor in the clinical evaluation of sperm. We don't generally tend to imagine that these little critters need to travel to and from work every day, or that they like to go out driving in the countryside of a weekend. Well, the truth of the matter is that a lazy sperm who is not constantly up and about, in the style of an early bird catching worms, serves no useful purpose. The unique raison d'être of a self-respecting sperm is to track down an egg, crack it open and devour it in a single gulp, sunny side up. There's lots of tough competition from other sperms, who are totally lacking in brotherly love. In their search for an egg, they jostle and trample one another violently, like US shoppers stampeding into a Wal-Mart on sales day. Suffice it to say: May the best sperm win! We're talking of the most mobile young chap, in top physical form, with first-class sporting footware, at the wheel of the procreative equivalent of a red Ferrari. The brutal battle between competing sperms is a terribly vicious affair... like the Democratic primaries in the USA or the installation of a governing committee in the French Socialist party. Weak-hearted sperms, those that have let their regular gym work slip, those that drink, or those that have wasted their physical resources hanging around in bars with loose women, don't stand a chance. The quest for the egg, like the Graal, is even more terrifyingly Herculean than the Triwizard Tournament in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

The "dickhead" epithet might therefore be a disguised compliment, designating a superior male with balls in his brain (or maybe rather brains in his balls), whose gushing intellect and spurts of wisdom have the same volume and mobility as his sperm. In any case, this correlation between superior intelligence and award-winning sperm has an interesting corollary. Normally, according to Darwinian evolution, top-quality sperm should have a greater survival value, and it should be giving rise to more and more offspring with superior intelligence. In other words, our planet should be subjected to a relentless phenomenon of ever-increasing intelligence. Spiraling brilliance, wisdom, creativity... you name it. Frankly, I don't know. From my personal viewpoint, I'm convinced that, in our marvelous modern world, there are indeed more and more... dickheads.

Bread and meat

It often pays to memorize an important principle in the vivid form of a vulgar proverb. In Australia, where we've always had a healthy habit of calling a spade a fucking spade, I learned, as a young man, that it's an error to look around for your meat in the same shop that provides you with your daily bread. [I can hear you correcting me. Supermarkets provide us today with almost everything we need. Meat, bread, sugar and spice and all things nice, you name it. OK, I'm old-fashioned.] Wise and experienced Aussie elders told me that, to succeed in a professional career, it's preferable to avoid trying to pick up office chicks [I'm talking from a male viewpoint]... unless, of course, you happen to be engaged in the honorable process of looking around for a legitimate spouse, in which case no legal behavior is barred. When I settled down in France, though, I had the impression that this great Australian proverb was largely unknown, or in any case unpracticed, no doubt because both French bread and French meat are, well, rather different to what I had been accustomed to eating in my native land.

Most people in France admire the Socialist politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn, seen in the above Gala photo with his wife Anne Sinclair, a former TV journalist. When he left for the US to take up an appointment as director of the IMF [International Monetary Fund ], the first premature question that sprung into many left-wing minds—such as mine, for example—was: Will Strauss-Kahn be back in France in time to oppose the current president, if need be, in a future election? A couple of weeks ago, Strauss-Kahn spoke with authority on French TV concerning the current financial crisis. Naturally, his economic talents and wisdom, not to mention his role at the IMF, lend weight to his analysis of the situation. Then everybody was shocked to hear that DSK [as he's called in France] was accused of being on over-friendly terms with one of his female colleagues. Today, it's reassuring to hear that the IMF has concluded that there was no genuine misdemeanor on the part of DSK, merely a serious but forgivable error of judgment of a bread-and-meat kind.