THAT'S MEN: Everybody – except you – is at it all the time
CERTAIN TRUTHS about women and sex in the capital city were considered immutable when I was a teenager in the country.
The first was that in Dublin there were twice as many women as men. Therefore, at least half of these women were frustrated and “mad for it”.
The second was that dances at establishments such as the Television Club in Harcourt Street attracted large numbers of off-duty nurses. The nurses (all female) had seen the naked male body at close quarters. Therefore, these nurses were all “mad for it”.
We were 20 miles from Dublin – at the time that was a long, long distance psychologically.
Were such fantasies prevalent regarding women in Cork, Limerick, Galway or other big towns and cities? I don’t know, but certainly the reputation of Dublin and its women rubbed off on one fellow who, unusually, used to go to dances there.
When asked if he was “getting off” with a lot of women, he would simply wink and continue about his business.
It was a sly sort of a wink. It left the door open to the interesting interpretation that this rural Lothario was, indeed, getting off with frustrated women left, right and centre up in the Big Smoke, and that was good enough for us.
Indeed, when he let slip casually one day that he had spent some hours at the weekend “paddling with a wan” in her flat in Dublin, his reputation as The Man soared into the stratosphere.
A “wan” in this context is a wild female, the kind who runs with wolves. But what is paddling? Of course, nobody asked. We were all, after all, men of the world and to suggest that we were not familiar with “paddling” and other sexual excesses might reveal the awful truth that we were, in fact, virgins.
When I eventually made my way to Dublin, I found that the “wans” were not as frustrated or as “mad for it” as we had convinced ourselves they were.
Nor were hordes of rampant nurses galloping up and down Harcourt Street. We had fooled ourselves, as boys and young men have been doing, I expect, for millennia, in the schoolyard and in the workplace.
What led me to this train of thought was noticing that the Rand Corporation held a seminar recently on the influence of media on boys and girls’ perceptions of sexual behaviour.
It struck me that the media have, in many ways, replaced the boys and girls in the schoolyard when it comes to such perceptions.
The impression given by the media is that everybody – except you, dear reader – is at it all the time.
Everybody else has a better sex life than you have. Everybody else has sexual encounters just like in the movies complete with earthquaking orgasms.
But don’t be downcast if you’re not getting it three times a week: all that’s happened is that the boys have grown up and got jobs in broadcasting and journalism.
Take it with a pinch of salt. And if you know what paddling is, do let me know.
Addendum: last week I wrote about how such differing styles as avoidance, shared decision-making and volatility affect the stability of marriages. A reader writes: “Coming up to our 57th wedding anniversary – September 4th – you will understand why I thoroughly enjoyed today’s column regarding ‘marriage types’. I know couples who fill each category.
“Dare I say within those 57 years we’ve probably gone through segments of all of them ourselves.
“My husband gets annoyed when I’m asked the reason for our long marriage and I always say, ‘It’s because neither one of us had the nerve to take the second step out the door’.
“Having been a deep thinker all my days, I’ll end with one of my favourite quotes, which I expected you to use in today’s feature, and which I often repeat, ‘When two people agree on everything, only one of them is doing the thinking’.”
Padraig O'Morain is accredited as a counsellor by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind - Mindfulness for Daily Living, is published by Veritas. His mindfulness newsletter is free by e-mail.