What HUMAN, much less a man, would say 'no' and resist going to bed with someone they have spent an absolutely dazzling night with?

You, for one, o shining ornament of the heavens, o hypocrite! See your letter above in which you say you would never have sex on the first date and that you regard sex as akin to sacramental.

Actually you do kind of pinpoint an affliction that many suffer from. Historically birth, sex, marriage, death etc. have all been regarded as sacramental offices over which the church presided, and many people still preserve this attitude long after their religious affiliations have faded away.

Hence for many people participating in a fuck does not quite come under the same heading as taking a shit, even though both tend to leave one feeling better than before. There is this massive delusion that sex is something called making love that is mystical and sacramental.

I blame DH Lawrence and Lady Chatterley's Lover, the archetypal chic lit, for this.

She lay still, in a kind of sleep, always in a kind of sleep. The activity, the orgasm was his, all his; she could strive for herself no more. Even the tightness of his arms round her, even the intense movement of his body, and the springing of his seed in her, was a kind of sleep, from which she did not begin to rouse till he had finished and lay softly panting against her breast.

Then she wondered, just dimly wondered, why? Why was this necessary? Why had it lifted a great cloud from her and given her peace? Was it real? Was it real?

Her tormented modern-woman's brain still had no rest. Was it real? And she knew, if she gave herself to the man, it was real. But if she kept herself for herself it was nothing. She was old; millions of years old, she felt. And at last, she could bear the burden of herself no more. She was to be had for the taking. To be had for the taking.

The man lay in a mysterious stillness. What was he feeling? What was he thinking? She did not know. He was a strange man to her, she did not know him. She must only wait, for she did not dare to break his mysterious stillness. He lay there with his arms round her, his body on hers, his wet body touching hers, so close. And completely unknown. Yet not unpeaceful. His very stillness was peaceful.

Because most people are not writers or artists, they don't experience sex or any other sensual experience as acutely as those who depict it for our entertainment, or if they do, then only occasionally. This leads to a general aura of disappointment and overexpectation when it comes to sex, with every women expecting sex every time to be like the first time Mellors takes Lady Chatterley in the henhouse, and, of course, it hardly ever is.

There always has to be some government interference, because a government provides the safe environment, stable convertible currency etc, which provide an environment in which banks can operate.

So really there is no free market, just a greater or lesser extent to which government regulates banks, and all other businesses and professions.

Doing nothing is certainly one option for the government, but if it leads to a complete collapse of the social order and the disintegration of the United States, perhaps with states issuing their own currencies, it will not be seen as a very successful strategy.

Maybe you should have worked on those social skills? Not so good looking guys with not much going for them hookup every night in cities all over the world...

I wonder how true this is, or whether it depends so much on differences in cultures.

I was talking to a buddy the other day, who had just read a Paul Theroux book with a strong autobiographical element that contained many references to sexual adventures of the author.

What my friend could not get over was how many women the Theroux character had experienced over a lifetime.

Now, my friend is happily married (I guess) with two children, and says that in his younger single days he never had much female companionship, and that in college there were just parties with 50 guys and a few girls, so he never got a look-in.

Yet, my friend is slim, sensitive, good looking in a swarthy way, charming, very intelligent, has a great smile, AND, get this, is a semiprofessional musician who has played lead guitar in rock bands all his life since adolescence--though he says this never parlayed into much success with women (contrary to popular theory).

My own experience is that it is easy enough to hook up with women UNDER CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES--for example I once started a 4-year relationship the same day my divorce was finalized, but that most available women are looking for long term relationships.

While some events that look like casual hookups do occur, often they are really disguised free samples provided to successful or wealthy men in the hope of a much bigger sale down the road. Hence professional athletes may do very well as they have a lot of money, but often don't have corresponding intellectual skills. (Then again, it seems that Mike Tyson has not had a lot of success finding volunteers to share his bed.)

It seems inherently unlikely to me that there are large numbers of women in any population who are emotionally stable and intelligent who just regard sexual encounters as casually as buying a pair of shoes or getting a massage, though probably a number of women go through promiscuous phases at some time of their life--though again this might be perceived as disguised courtship or a period of instability.