The Quantum Guide to Semi-Instant Gratification – Carley Dolch
An Inconvenient Truthiness
Quantum foam (foam, haha) according to Wikipedia, is “a qualitative description of subatomic spacetime turbulence at extremely small scales of time and space,”-similar to the slim chance you will find willing females at a party in any given basement in New Brunswick on a Friday night, a phenomenon Anthony Xerri noted in a recent article. But the “uncertainty principle allows particles and energy to briefly come into existence, and then annihilate, without violating conservation laws.” Read: The uncertainty principle is what will allow you to get in some quality intimate time without having to retain the girl for lengthy stretches of time.
Men are thinking of the instant gratification of pleasure and release. Albert Einstein once wrote, “I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.” Maybe men should be more open to the possibility of working in a much broader dimension of space and time. According to my careful calculations, a man’s chances that any given drunk girl, on any given weekend, in any given month will be ovulating is .8%- not a very reassuring statistic for men trying to get did.
I was debating whether to ask this scruffy finance guy that I had been casually chatting to for a few months out for some equally casual cappuccino. I was armed and ready to do it one morning at one of our usual intersections, adorned in a cute outfit that took my roommate three days to convince me was simultaneously unassuming and appropriately hot. Just as I was heading out the door, my phone buzzed. He wanted to know if I thought I might be hungry for Japanese next Friday at 6. I was famished!
I ran into my roommate’s room to show her the text and squeal excitedly. Dinner on a Friday night? This was a date. My roommate took a breath from our high-pitched spasms to think.
“You know what the best part of it is, Car?”
“What’s that, baby girl?”
“Next Friday we’ll be ovulating.”
I knew what that meant. I would be markedly thinner, having had two weeks to run off my PMS-stimulated ice cream and fat sandwich swamped cry-fest. My skin would be clearer, and certainly my cheeks would glow with the effects of 24-hour pyrexia. I would be in prime date condition! Now, normally on dates I am a proper lady, having even been known to end a date with a firm and enthusiastic handshake. But just knowing I would be ovulating meant I was probably going to be rendered completely helpless against its most dramatic symptom: terrible and impossible and overwhelming lust.
One of the most influential moments of my academic pursuits was when I attended a lecture on the history of the burka. It seems that this representation of female oppression was actually rooted in the male fear of feminine sexuality. I remember the lecturer clearly explaining that there were accounts of a man being so stimulated by the luxurious length of a woman’s hair falling down her back that he felt he could not move until he had her. Women, the men felt, possessed a mode of sexual aggression that threatened the very fabric of their society. According to texts, the voluptuous splay of Middle Eastern women’s hips incited men into a disastrous economic latency, unable to function with what I imagine were salivating men cuckolding a Kim Kardashian display, each biting their lip in the promise of trouble. Men felt they needed to confine women to the inside of their homes or covered under layers of the most opaque fabric, far from the reaches of any man’s gaze, so that society could even function. How could this female image be juxtaposed with the chaste, passive virgin we have so ingrained in our culture? These poor men, I am sure of it, were probably just victims of ovulation.
I have seen women do some downright outrageous things during this time in their cycle. I have seen one go through her phone contact list and seriously consider calling up that guy from her bio lab with the questionable mole which before had so rigorously deterred her. “I’ll take a shot before I go,” she leveled. One girl I knew had actually had some success obtaining a date in her time of heat, but the terrified boy called it a night promptly after they finished their pitcher of Blue Moon. She called me in a drunken stupor begging me to drive her to upstate New York, where an unattractive boy from her sculpture class promised to give her what she needed on his weekend cabin excursion. My sympathy nearly led me to overcome my fear of bears, grab a set of keys and go, until I found her vomiting and passed out on the apartment floor. Yet another friend of mine and I were tempted to purchase Viagra at 10 am at a strip club about a month ago on a Tuesday, and considered combining it with Ecstasy so that we could eliminate any “uncertainty” in the situation. We voted it was too risky, even for us.
Lesser extremes are also taken, but these are all attempts to get men into bed within their twenty-four hour window. This is reflected in the female penchant for variety in clothing, with every woman’s closet filled with an armory of secret weapons. Its not that we don’t like the act of seduction at any other time, its just that ovulation marks when we are most completely irrational for it. Thank goodness for Victoria’s Secret, lip plumpers, Benefit blush and anything else that we can use to entrap men when we need them most.
Ovulating is just one of the numerous monthly effects of menstruation, guiding female behavior to a much greater extent than the infamous PMS that so terrifies the male species. Yet it is only the most apparent symptoms that men can identify. Perhaps this is why most religions have strict regulations on menstruation. Women, on the other hand, know that something greater might be going on.
According to evolutionary biologist Leonard Schlain, the mechanics of evolving upright bipedalism caused an increased narrowness in the pelvis while simultaneously resulting in the disappearance of estrus, or what we know as animals in “heat.” What women developed instead of a seasonal sexuality was the complex lunar monthly cycle we all deal with in some way or another today. The intriguing aspect of Schlain’s argument is that he offers the idea that monthly periodicity gave women a much more apparent link between sex and menstruation and pregnancy. This was the development, he contends, that allowed humans as a species to understand the concept of deep time.
A girl won’t sleep with you on your first try? Perhaps she is just not in a prime state! Of course I realize that there may be other factors. I have heard a slew of excuses, including the following:
-”I forgot to shave my legs this morning and the stubble was completely forbidding.”
-”He was an awful kisser. We’re talking about a lizard-esque Saint Bernard here.”
-”I was wearing Bridget Jones underwear.”
-” I wasn’t wearing any underwear.”
-”I was wearing mismatched socks.”
-”My friend wanted to do him.”
-”My friend said she’d never do him.”
-”I knew I had seen him before! I hooked up with his roommate last week, and that’s just bad form.”
-”After kissing, he started making Russian jokes in a Russian accent- which were very funny until it became apparent that he would not break character. I gave up and left after an hour.”
-”There was a picture of Audrey Hepburn next to his bed and I couldn’t perform.”
As a deep-time thinker, here is my suggestion for Mr. Xerri and the rest of you. Stop wanting instant gratification. If you can wait it out, let us know that you’ll be there for us in our time of need, we will be far more willing to give you what you want (and then some) in return. Two weeks from any given first date and we’ll be sure to call you up wanting to give you all we got, probably in the form of an unmistakable drunk text. If you’re lucky enough to find a girl all aglow on the first try, just let us know you’re willing to be there if we need it again before you pull a move. We’ll make it worth the line. Need further assistance? Don’t hesitate to utilize this free online tool, http://www.americanpregnancy.org/gettingpregnant/ovulationcalendar.html, allowing you to simultaneously manage different sets of ovaries. And what will really seal the deal is if you let us know that there is ice cream involved. You know, for another part of a cycle when we are in need.
brilliant. lets date.
I love men’s reasoning…”those women with their dangling hair that makes us want to tap it…they are clearly the sexually deviant ones…waving their hair around as such!” I’m not sure if the burka lecture teaches us more about men or women’s sexual natures. Women: the world’s original scapegoat. I’m pretty positive there’s a John Lennon song about this, but he uses a more offensive term.
It is interesting to explore the implications of the ovulation cycle. It’s one of the only things that really make women distinctly women. Sure there are other internal differences, but it’s one of the things women between the ages of 13-50 generally share, and is definitely worth consideration when trying to consider the complex mess that is the gendered subject in society. As much as I’m a terrible example of estrogen-pumping femininity (my mom told me she grew a beard when she was pregnant with me,) something about that lunar cycle of ours causes me to say…stay in on a Saturday night with my best friend eating Ben and Jerry’s and watching Grey Gardens…a “high brow” chick flick, but a chick flick nonetheless…as she concludes her piece on quantum foam.
I then regained my proverbial man-member and made inappropriate jokes about foamy women, but nonetheless, we all succumb to the pull of the moon sometimes, no?
Carley,
I must say that this has been a most insightful glimpse into the intricacies of the menstrual cycle. However, your article, while informative, does not help to quell the sexual frustrations of the male gender. While you find yourselves to suffer “impossible and overwhelming lust” once a month, we are in constant heat. I guess burkas would help a little bit.
Looking Forward to More,
Anthony
P.S. Viagra and Ecstasy–I think you may have discovered a way for women take an equal share in the date-rape market.
P.P.S. Mine’s the red cup.
Good article. Two short comments:
1) You say that guys need to let girls know that they want to be there for them later on. The problem with guys (at least me) is not that we aren’t willing to be there in the future; the problem is that we want to be there now(!) too. Especially in the heat of the moment, the short term desires outweigh any rational desire to show persisting interest.
As Anthony said, consider guys’ lust-levels all the time to be somewhere near girls’ while ovulating. Only we live with it full time, so (hopefully) control it a little better than you described above. (Maybe not?)
2) More importantly: the cartoons=hilarity
i enjoyed reading your article and appreciate that you discussed what seems to be the most logical explanation for female libido. However, while your article provides a statistical answer to the problem plaguing the hook-up scene, I am still confused by specific case-by case examples. What about the girls who want to hook up (i.e. in the throws of ovulation), but hold out on sex? Is it because their cycles are in wack or is it because they are bound by social norms to portray themselves as “different”, and “good girls?”
Boys! I am so pleased with your responses and concerns. I think that perhaps I did not elaborate well enough on the “solution” to our statistical analysis here (thank you Kerrin again for drugging me with 5htp and making me believe it would heighten my creativity and not make me fall asleep).
The thing is that if we are hooking up with you, we probably want it. Anthony, love, when you wrote in your article about your frustration in not getting, don’t think for one moment that we are holier than thou and immune and not running back to our empty beds all tied up in knots. Why do you think we’re so impatient in hoping to hear back from you asap? We’re dying here!!
At least for the girls I know, Shikha, we are definitely NOT concerned with maintaining some sort of good girl persona– we’re bad, bad, bad and we know it and we sure as heck hope you are well aware, too. If it were social norms that were dictating our behavior, don’t you think we’d be rebelling all over the place? C’mon now. Girls are too crafty for that.
On that note, which I realize none of you mentioned but I feel it is important to point out- I am not holding out because I want to cuddle. Get off my leg with your koala antics. I feel like poor boys are just plagued with this “dark matter” in regards to female resistance and will try everything in the book to get it. But perhaps a Hadron Collider nor a clinging koala imitation is necessary.
We want it now ( just like you Ben, with that impatiently placed exclamation point right back atcha) but we know we will a.) either want it even more at a later date or b.) want it right now but know we will want it again at a later date (when our legs are shaved, etc). I am trying to convey that women are not thinking in the here and now, we are thinking further down the road hoping you’re gonna give it up when we demand it. We want men like we want our general practitioners- skilled and on call.
Listen closely to my suggestion, hopefully better articulated than in the actual article.
There are two ways to ensure you’re going to put out when we want it. First, we will refuse giving you sex upfront so that you’ll hopefully be piqued and come back begging for more. In this scenario, we hope to be the ones holding the cards so we can reply, “Next Wednesday. Any time, any place.” Just make sure that the time is in the evening and that you have no scheduled appointments following because we have an agenda. Secondly, to be quite crass, we’re not giving you the sex because we give mind blowing blow jobs, which we use as collateral to lure you into our on-demand traps. We hope you’ll be thinking, well goodness if she can do THAT, I am definitely going to want to see what else is on the menu…
But if you analyze this properly, you can see your magic loophole, boys. Listen closely, because I am pretty much betraying every woman on earth by telling you this. We want it. You want it. But we need to know at that moment that we can have it on demand. What do you do? (I cannot believe I am saying this…) Literally, start hooking up with your little drunk hottie. Take a pause and in that moment start talking about how its getting warm outside and that you’re really excited about taking her to try the new flavors at Thomas Sweet. Maybe even use this as an opportunity to get her number, in which case get all fake mad and be like omigosh you totally gave me a fake didn’t you. Then call her phone (so that juuuust in case this tactic doesn’t work, she will drunkenly text you in 48 hours begging for “ice cream.”) and get a laugh when the call goes through. Then go back in for a kiss, and watch the girl just pounce on top of you. Worst case scenario, you get blown. If that’s the worst of it, stop whining and be happy that you’re getting some epic action from a girl that is trying her darndest to fool you into doing her later.
Let me know how it goes!
As for the red cup/ date requests… let me check my calendar….
Oh and kerrin, the middle eastern perception of women = a certain neighbor with a well fertilized lawns girlfriend. “I keep getting RAPED, yo!” You can see why they’d want to keep that literally under wraps.
But I think alot of PEOPLE like the feelings associated with desire -denial. It can be a turn on, and maybe people are thinking this, consciously or subconsciously, when they don’t put out on the spot. A free-love hippie like Anthony can’t always get what he wants – try sometimes and you just might find you get what you need.
ahhaha oh my god, I forgot about her. Good point.
So true Alex, because if I really really like you, I am going to make you wait. It may take months. Even years. And I top-secretly love it when a boy plays hard to get, but don’t let them know that because that leads to me fantasizing about them. Then I start doodling their name in my chem notebooks. Then before I know it I am complete mush. I have a feeling that the excessive, elaborate hotness of sex games is the pretext of some deeper emotional trangressive love play… but I am just tryin to streamline the singular goal of sex to ease the frustrations of both ends. Because nothing is worse when you hook up with a guy tell him “I’m not that kind of girl ( right NOW),” in hopes that he’ll call you back, then he never does because he has a sour taste in his mouth from not getting it.
However, like coffee, if you want instant, you’re going to have to make some sacrifices. The real good stuff, however, definitely needs some time to properly brew.
haha you’re right. we are bad bitches, but i still don’t get what goes through some females’ minds when they agree to let guys titty fuck the shit out of them, pearl necklace and all, but staunchly refuse to allow those very penises to enter their vaginas, im confused as to what the criteria are that make some acts of passion raunchier than others. in my opinion, girls want to avoid being labeled slutty and an easy way to avoid that is to let loose and have a good time, while keeping your panties on(for the most part).
on a side note, other forms of rebellion, such as prolonged substance abuse, are internalized, and usually don’t require another person to be acted out, except maybe your dealer. sex on the other hand, involves opening up (pun intended) to another person. that’s why i think when it comes to sex, girls behave more cautiously because atleast one other person is aware of the sexual transaction, and it’s true, everyone talks.
anyway, i appreciate your response and look forward to reading more from you.
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