Damn the Snooze Alarm: Sex at Dawn

Now here's a 300 page book that can be read, avidly, in a day: Sex at Dawn -- The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha. The authors are both research psychologists but the book focuses on their interpretive view of anthropology and evolution brought crashingly up against social mores and dictates. Ryan and Jetha's intent is blow to smithereens the long held "scientific" given that human monogamy is biologically preordained and that human sexuality is a zero sum economic transaction of trading a clear paternal line of heritage for protection and material benefit. R & J say, nope, humans are more like bonobos and present evolutionary physical bodily manifestations to support their theory that by nature, both men and women came from a prehistoric age of foragers who readily shared and sought out many sexual partners. And they do this all with wit and laugh out loud quotes.

In the introduction, they state what they want to prove in the book: " What is the essence of human sexuality and how did it get to be that way? ... we'll explain how seismic cultural shifts that began about ten thousand years ago (basically, the shift from foraging to farming) rendered the true story of human sexuality so subversive and threatening that for centuries it has been silenced by religious authorities, pathologized physicians, studiously ignored by scientists, and covered up by the moralizing therapists."

Getting a bit more polemic, the authors go on to espouse: "The campaign to obscure the true nature of our species' sexuality leaves half our marriages collapsing under an unstoppable tide of swirling sexual frustration, libido-killing boredom, impulsive betrayal, dysfunction, confusion and shame. Serial monogamy stretches before (and behind) many of us like an archipelago of failure: isolated islands of transitory happiness in a cold, dark sea of disappointment. And how many of the couples who manage to stay together for the long haul have done so by resigning themselves to sacrificing their eroticism on the altar of three of life's irreplaceable joys ..."

By chapter three, the humor is more prevalent, making an otherwise scholarly thesis a fun read: "Willpower fortified with plenty of guilt, fear, shame, and mutilation of body and soul may provide some control over these urges and impulses. Sometimes. Occasionally. Once in a blue moon. But even when controlled, they refuse to be ignored. As ... Schopenhauer pointed out, One can choose what to do, but not what to want."

In a chapter on jealousy, R & J align sex against other loves: "First-born children often feel jealous when a younger sibling is born. Wise parents make a special point of reassuring the child that shell always be special, that the baby doesn't represent any kind of threat to her status, and that there's plenty of love for everyone. Why is it so easy to believe that a mother's love isn't a zero-sum proposition, but that sexual love is a finite resource?"

I love the following analogy about the difference between male sexual sprinters vis a vis female marathoners: "The symmetry of dual disappointment illustrates the almost comical incompatibility between men's and women's sexual response in the context of monogamous mating. You have to wonder: if men and women evolved together in sexually monogamous couples for millions of years, how did we end up being so incompatible? It's as if we were sitting down to dinner together ... but half of us can't help wolfing down everything in a few frantic, sloppy minutes, while the other half are still setting the table and lighting candles."

And the 180 view of When Harry Met Sally: " ... but if the roles were reversed, the scene wouldn't be funny -- it wouldn't even make sense. Imagine: Billy Crystal sits at the restaurant table, he starts breathing harder, maybe his eyes bug out a bit, he grunts a few times, takes a few bites of his sandwich, and falls asleep. No big laughs. Nobody in the deli even notices. If male orgasm is a muffled crash of cymbals, female orgasm is a full-on opera."

Of all the non-fiction books on the lust list this year, this was certainly the most fun, the most thought provocative, and the lustiest.