by Robin Baker
Testis size and penis size vary not only between males within a population, they also vary between populations and races. On average, even relative to body size, Negroes tend to have larger genitals than Caucasoids, and both have larger genitals than Mongoloids. The number of sperm inseminated during intercourse varies accordingly. It has been claimed that these differences between populations reflect different balances in sexual strategy, just as they do between men within populations. In other words, populations with larger genitals (on average) should contain more men pursuing sperm warfare than populations with smaller genitals (on average). Although this claim has not been tested for different populations within the human species, it has been tested between species.
In some species of primate, such as chimpanzees, females often mate with several males and nearly every conception involves sperm warfare. In others, such as gibbons, females rarely mate with a male other than their partner and conception rarely involves sperm warfare. Linked with this difference, chimps have much larger testes relative to their body size than do gibbons. Humans, with 4 per cent or more of children conceived via sperm warfare (Scene 6), are intermediate between the two, both in terms of warfare risk and testis size.
Not only primates but many other groups of animals have been shown to have testes of a size appropriate to the risk of sperm warfare. From butterflies to birds and from mice to men, the more likely a male’s sperm are to engage in conflict, the larger his testes relative to the size of his body.
SCENE 36
Exquisite Confusion
His moment had come. It was a year since his second partner had left him, a year of celibacy, anticipation and nothing but masturbation. But, unless he did something totally stupid, it looked as though this was going to be it.
It wasn’t the first party he had thrown since she had left. It was an easy way of filling the house with lots of young women (and a few men). But it was the first at which he had managed to keep anybody’s attention for more than about ten minutes. He had targeted this young girl, nearly thirty years his junior, the minute she walked in the room. A friend of a friend, she stole his attention immediately. He had waited until she looked drunk, then moved in. They had been talking for hours. Even when she had gone to the toilet, always a dangerous moment, she had come back to him. For the last hour, their conversation had been about sex. With an honesty born out of drunkenness, they had traded increasingly personal details, such as how often they each masturbated and how many partners they had each had. She was well into double figures and sometimes despaired of herself, she confided, but she could never really think of a good reason to say no.
She began to look sad and emotional. He said she shouldn’t think badly of herself. Without her experiences, she wouldn’t be the person she was now: so worldly, so relaxed and so attractive. Those past sexual experiences had surely helped her become the person that he, for one, was now finding so irresistible. With that, he had stroked the side of her face with the back of his fingers. She leaned her face against his hand and small tears appeared in her eyes. She smiled and apologised as he wiped the tears from her cheeks. Then, as he continued gently to touch her face, tracing his fingers round her eyebrows, nose and mouth, she looked him in the eyes with an expression he recognised from a previous lover – she wanted sex. There were still people in the room, but the pair of them were now oblivious. He moved his hand from her face to her neck, then back again, stroking with his finger tips. Then he moved down and traced round the edge of her low-cut dress, briefly slipping his fingers inside so that they brushed over an erect nipple. She made a tiny noise in her throat. His moment had come. He took hold of her hand and suggested they go somewhere more private. Unhesitatingly, she let him lead her.
As he led her upstairs to his bedroom he congratulated himself. Maybe, at last, he was becoming competent at the sexual arts. The thrust of the conversation he had just used to interest this girl had been almost identical to the one he had used when he first seduced his last partner, ten years ago. In fact, apart from this girl’s relatively tiny breasts, she could almost be his last partner.
Within seconds of bolting the door, they were lying naked on the bed and he had started the routine that according to his ex-partner had made him an exquisite lover. His hands, lips and tongue began to move over her body, with varying degrees of lightness and strength. It was a well rehearsed routine that had never failed to stimulate her to orgasm when she was as aroused as this girl seemed to be. She used to lie there as he caressed her, getting more and more excited as he spent more and more time massaging her clitoris until she eventually climaxed. However, as he worked slowly over the young girl’s body, judging the right moment to move to her clitoris, he realised that she wasn’t reacting. Then suddenly she seized him by the neck and kissed him passionately, almost violently. Taken aback, he did his best to respond before trying to take the initiative again. Rolling her on to her back, he forced his hand between her legs. For him it was an unfamiliar angle, and she was moving so much he couldn’t find her clitoris. He had rarely had such a problem with his ex-partner. But then she had always lain still while he stimulated her.
Thrown from his usual routine, he placed his fingers in the girl’s vagina instead. She was very wet. But instead of allowing him to gently move his fingers up and down, in and out of her vagina, as did his ex-partner, she responded by vigorously rubbing her pelvis against his hand for a few seconds. Then she quickly manoeuvred him on to his back and herself up his body. Next, in a movement he had never come across before, she seemed to grab his penis with her vaginal lips and virtually suck him in. He felt awkward lying on his back because he was used to being on top. He tried to start thrusting but the girl was thrusting too. His ex-partner used to lie still and leave him to orchestrate the whole intercourse. But then, she had usually climaxed during foreplay, if she was going to climax at all.
Concentrate though he might, he just could not synchronise his thrusting to the girl’s. He kept coming out. Each time she lost his penis, she would simply relocate it with her vaginal lips and suck him in again. In the end, he gave up trying to thrust and left all the movements to her, patiently and politely waiting for her to climax before he ejaculated. The sounds in her throat grew louder and louder. Then, suddenly, she stopped – no contractions, no apparent release or relief, no anything. As she stopped moving he began to thrust, but he was too late. Without waiting for him to ejaculate, she removed herself and lay breathlessly on the bed, leaving him erect, wet and frustrated.
As she lay, recovering, he kissed and stroked her. Desperate to inseminate her, he tried to keep her interest, but it didn’t work. A few minutes later, she got off the bed and started to dress. He assumed she was going to the toilet, but as she got to the door she said goodbye. She had really enjoyed it, she said, but she had to go. He protested that he hadn’t yet come. She told him to do it himself – if she had more time she would help him, but she really had to go. Her boyfriend was coming to pick her up and take her home. As she opened the door, he suggested they should do it again sometime. She smiled, shook her head, and went.
After dressing, he went back down to the party, but most people had gone and none of the girls still there attracted him. He ushered the last few people out and went back to bed. But he couldn’t sleep, even after masturbating. He couldn’t believe he had missed his chance. He was nearly fifty and still he couldn’t guarantee making the most of his opportunities. It wasn’t that he was inexperienced - just that he had never met anybody like this girl before.
He had had little opportunity to learn about sex during adolescence, and hadn’t really got to grips with intercourse until he had met his first partner. During their fifteen years together they had produced two children. Yet not once in their entire relationship did she have an orgasm. She had been totally passive. She didn’t like him touching her between her legs and refused to allow his face anywhere near her pubic hair. Because of their lack of foreplay, she was rarely wet when
he tried to enter her. To get herself lubricated, she used to urge him to put the tip of his penis just inside her vagina and then work himself backwards and forwards gently. Once he was fully inside, she then liked him to ejaculate quickly. If intercourse lasted too long, it was as if she became embarrassed. On more than one occasion, she had actually made him stop and withdraw because he was taking too long. Ironic though it seemed in hindsight, he had convinced himself while he was with her that there was no such thing as the female orgasm.
When he was thirty, he had his first opportunity to be unfaithful. At a party at work, one of the junior girls had started stroking his leg with her foot. They went back to his office and lay uncomfortably on the uncarpeted floor. Assuming she would want the same as his partner, he missed out foreplay completely and, in a tangle of half-removed skirt and knickers, trousers and pants, tried to penetrate her immediately. She was offended by his lack of consideration and disappointed that she wasn’t going to get an orgasm. Suddenly she had seemed to become aware of the discomfort of the situation and equally suddenly became overtaken by guilt – she, too, had a partner at home. Pushing him away, she said that maybe sex wasn’t such a good idea after all, and left.
He nearly suffered the same fate three years later when he tried to make love to his first real mistress. She, too, took offence at his initial urgency. But instead of dismissing him after the first occasion and despite being ten years his junior, she set about educating him - and there was a lot he needed to know. For example, in all his time with his partner he had neither touched nor seen her clitoris. In truth, he didn’t even know she had one and, with the benefit of hindsight, he suspected that neither did she. Two things his mistress did share with his partner were a mild liking for having her nipples sucked and a strong dislike of having his face between her legs. Whenever he tried, she restrained him. He never did in fact see her clitoris. However, she managed to show him both how to find it with his fingers and, having found it, what to do with it. She didn’t like him to touch the clitoris bulb directly, preferring him to massage and squeeze the area around it. But she never wanted to climax during foreplay. He became expert at judging the right moment to move from using his fingers to using his penis. And as long as he judged the moment correctly, she always seemed to climax during intercourse. Somehow, though, he always had the feeling that she was faking it. This first infidelity lasted a year and passed undetected by his partner. It ended when his mistress met someone nearer her own age. A year later, he began his second affair. He was now relatively experienced at the deceptive techniques of infidelity, but was still not fully convinced that the female orgasm was a reality. As it turned out, his second mistress was not the person to enlighten him.
Most of the time he was with her he felt like her puppet. They worked together and from time to time had legitimate reason to spend time together away from their respective partners. Eventually, she let him into her bed on condition that he did not try to penetrate her. On their first night, she helped him to ejaculate in exchange for having him stroke her body and, particularly, to place his head between her legs and lick her. At first he had no idea what he was doing. Though he was now thirty-five, she was the first woman who had actually urged or even allowed him such intimate contact. Yet she was virtually insatiable, wanting him to lick her genitals, thighs and anus for twenty minutes at a time so that she was covered in his saliva. Even so, she never had an orgasm or even became excited; she seemed to find his attention therapeutic rather than stimulating.
A year later, on what was their tenth assignation, she was still insisting that he could only have his excitement as long as he did not penetrate her. This time, their business was abroad and they were away for a fortnight. For two nights, he let her tell him what to do but on the third night, as they lay naked and he had his head between her legs, his excitement and frustration at last took him beyond the threshold of reason. He slid up her body, kissing her as he went. Then, while kissing her face and mouth, he slipped his penis into her vagina. She immediately struggled but he pinned her down, smothering her protestations with his mouth and free hand. She became violent, hitting and scratching him whenever she could free a hand. But he was too strong for her and so excited that he ejaculated quickly. When it was over, she called him a bastard – but didn’t throw him out. Nor did she get dressed, and within an hour she was taunting him into forcing her to have sex again. Over the remaining week, they had sex every night. Each night, he had to find a different way of restraining and forcing her. She conceived that week but three months later miscarried when her partner, having been denied sex for well over a year, decided to leave her rather than bring up somebody else’s child.
Until his mistress miscarried, our man had been tempted to leave his partner and help her raise the child. After the miscarriage, though, he could not face the prospect of years of having to force sex, and finished the relationship. But it was too late. His partner had been told of his affair by his mistress, and three months after finding out she left him for another man, taking their two children with her.
There followed three short relationships, each girl as different from the others as she could be. The first was afraid of sex. Raped as a young girl, she had a fear of the erect penis that distressed him almost as much as it did her. They drank excessively. Over the course of a year they shared a bed perhaps five or six times, but never managed to have intercourse. He didn’t realise her similarity to his last mistress until, at their last meeting, she asked him to rape her. He obliged, emotionally torn at watching her distress as he forced his penis inside her. Unlike his last mistress, however, she did not come back for more and he never saw her again.
Now nearly forty, his next experience was a great shock. He had been out celebrating with a small group of friends from work. They had all returned to the house of a young couple barely in their twenties, and were soon plunged into a drunken party with very loud music and much raucous laughter. Almost immediately the party was under way, the female host had disappeared to her bedroom. She returned a few minutes later wearing a short, almost transparent, white dress. Then, seemingly unnoticed by her very drunk partner, she openly took the hand of one unattached man after another and led him away to her bedroom. When it came to his turn, she told him she had been saving him till last. She took him upstairs and, without locking the door, removed his trousers and underwear. As she took off her knickers, he could smell the semen from the previous men.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, she began to give him oral sex. From the noises she was making, she was becoming excited even faster than he was. Eventually sounding frantic, she pulled him on top of her and scrambled with her hands to insert his penis. As he pushed himself in, she let out a blood-curdling scream and her body began jerking wildly. The violence of her reaction was such a shock to him that his erection began to fade. He carried on thrusting, trying to rejuvenate himself. But just as she was building up to a second crescendo and his own ejaculation was only seconds away, her partner burst into the room. Only an instant before he ejaculated he was pulled off her, pushed to the ground, and ordered out. With apparently little surprise and with minimal aggression, her partner proclaimed that now it was his turn. Hardly faltering in her build-up at the change of penis, the girl released yet another blood-curdling scream.
His third experience was with an exotic woman with whom he had sex about five times. The first two times were clearly a disappointment to her. She had refused to let him enter her without extensive foreplay. Yet the foreplay he provided, borrowed from his technique with his first mistress, seemed to do nothing for her, and on each occasion it was with reluctance that she eventually let him have intercourse. The third time, she told him she would do it herself. She masturbated in front of him and, after she had climaxed, allowed him to have intercourse. Years later he was to realise that, had he already experienced the woman who was to be his second long-term partner, he would probably have been able to excite this woman. What she did to he
rself was precisely what that second partner later taught him to do to her. After twice watching his exotic lover masturbate, he began to feel fairly incompetent. In the end he found himself wondering if what she really wanted was for him to force her, like his second mistress. He tried this, failed, and was thrown out, never to be invited back.
Soon afterwards he met his second long-term partner, twenty years his junior (the woman who had just left him, taking their child with her). The first time they had sex she was so upset by his urgency that he almost forfeited his second chance. Instead, she relented and taught him what she needed. After two or three years of education he became quite proficient. Quiet and sensuous, she liked him to stroke her gently while she lay back, soaking up the sensations. Unlike his first mistress, however, sucking her nipples did little for her. She showed him precisely where her clitoris was and how to find it. She liked the bulb itself, once lubricated, to be rubbed and massaged directly.
Eventually, he could virtually guarantee giving her an orgasm during foreplay, as long as she wanted him to. Rarely, very rarely, did she have or even want an orgasm during intercourse, saying they were so weak they weren’t worth having. When each episode began, she would tell him whether she felt like an orgasm during foreplay or whether she just felt like intercourse. If she changed her mind or if for some reason he was unable to excite her, she would openly masturbate to satisfy herself. And she told him about her nocturnal orgasms. As far as he knew, none of his other partners had experienced them.
After ten years with her, he had felt able to excite and satisfy any woman. Tonight’s events had proved him wrong. Shocked and disappointed, he drifted off to sleep in a sea of confused thoughts. He would never understand women.
Compared to men, women are incredibly varied in their sexual characteristics. Some women (2-4 per cent) never orgasm; others (5 per cent) have multiple orgasms, scarcely coming down from one climax before building up to the next. Ten per cent never climax during intercourse; another 10 per cent nearly always climax. Some prefer to be totally passive in their build-up to climax during intercourse; others prefer to be more active. Fifty per cent masturbate regularly; 20 per cent never do. Finally, 40 per cent have nocturnal orgasms, whereas others cannot even imagine such an event.