Independent Publisher Online Highlights ‘The Guys Who Spied for China

Life can be cruel at times.  Life can be filled with contradictions.  Contradictions that become paradoxes in our day-to-day lives and as the years progress  leave us wondering,  what the hell happened?   The cruelty part is that there is no going back, no modifying the order of things or adjusting priorities.    Despite all good wishes and inspiring messages to the contrary, in pure existential terms we are left at the end of a cycle in possession of our triumphs and losses, our insights and misgivings.    Life in hindsight becomes a mathematical puzzle of sorts, but with escalating complexity as our perception of events and their outcome is constantly mutating, leaving us to readjust the pieces as time goes on.

There are different versions of assessment and readjustment, each filled with mixtures of satisfaction and regret.   I am not talking about the macro stuff here, the atrocities and eco-disasters, the flagrant disorders of the world.  Catastrophe is relatively easy to assess and reconcile on the macro level than the universal eventualities that sooner or later enter our lives.   Aging is one such area where the large, universal picture eventually makes a very lasting acquaintance.  With aging comes its usual accessories, health issues, frailty,  culminating in an intimate howdy do with our own mortality.    Such concerns are all out there, until that one day when you look in the mirror and start to think, “do I know you?”

But like it or not, we have all been programmed to deal with aging and mortality.  For the most part we think happy thoughts.  You turn on the TV and there is some saccharine commercial to remind you of all the tender moments you experience with friends and family in your approaching dotage.   We get the Lion King Circle of Life Routine , and we are encouraged that our brief blip on the radar screen may be filled with meaning and purpose.    We take heart in the acts of familial succession  and the belief we will reincarnate as we have before.    We project in the back of our thickening skulls that upon our return we will access the lush life, refusing to believe that in past lives and the ones beyond it we were meager peasants whose greatest triumph was now getting trampled by the noble’s horses.

Without all this concern for mortality and the afterlife there would not be much of a market for religion and corny movies.  All those Hallmark Cards and Kodak Moments may be selling at a discount on the dusty back bin of the  Dollar Store.   Mortality is perplexing.   It gives us food for thought and a sense of spirit and a glimmer of eternity.   It keeps us in line.  Or it doesn’t.    But few ever scoff at the notion that somehow, in some way, I am paying the price for my deeds and misdeeds.

But honestly, this is all the easy stuff.   Life and death; there’s nothing to it.  Whether you are stuffed in a hole or return again to repeat the same mistakes or make different ones, this concern is really a piece of cake.   Because at the end of the day your beliefs may give you comfort, offer solace at that heavy trafficked intersection of doubt and faith.   But the morning after, whatever you believe becomes moot.  Unless you hit the jackpot by guessing correctly on the Eternity Betting Pool  and then your journey to the other side rests comfortably on auto-pilot.

What isn’t easy is sex.   Sex is fraught with cruel paradox as if the great creator did some custom body work on Adam and Eve as if for the purpose of a practical joke.   Doesn’t really matter if it is Adam and Eve, Adam and Adam, or Eve and Eve, or any combination therein, the fact that each group is victimized by biology and its staggered time frame for sexual desire.    It is no secret that men are more interested in sex at an early age, their late teens and twenties.  Men have sexual thoughts about once every twelve seconds, barring distractions like earthquakes and fires.   And even then….  Women on the other hand may have sex at an early age but according to one study in the British Medical Journal that was also reported in Time Magazine, that for women that full blown libidinous activity doesn’t kick in until their late twenties.   The article reported that women are not having more passionate sexual fantasies between 27 and 45 but they are actually having more sex than women 18 to 26.   Sounds hard to believe, but, hey, its Time Magazine and the British Medical Journal, after all.  Who would know these things if they didn’t?

The theory is associated with evolution.  In a nut shell, in her younger years, a woman didn’t have to work so hard at sex to become pregnant.  It was only a matter of time.  Fewer times.   But over time and with aging having children was a greater challenge and as women had children at an older age, the sex fantasies and desire kicked in to accommodate the advancing years.

Here is the passage from Time Magazine–

Here’s how their theory works:

“Our female ancestors grew accustomed to watching many of their children — perhaps as many as half — die of various diseases, starvation, warfare and so on before being able to have kids of their own. This trauma left a psychological imprint to bear as many children as possible. Becoming pregnant is much easier for women and girls in their teens and early 20s — so much easier that they need not spend much time having sex.”

I believe there is more involved that physical evolution.   Reportedly, in women, the libido takes a breather, while for men it keeps right on going.    Boomer women especially, having been programmed to behave themselves in order to appear decent and marry the right sort of fellow, became sexually active a little later than the younger women of today.    Boomer women had to keep their legs crossed if they were going to be the good girl.  For extra money, the only call girling they did was to call their parents and beg for a larger allowance.   Or they worked in the college cafeteria or took a job as a waitress.  Alright, so come college they met a boy and the boy was nice…and they started to fool around.

It is only later in life that Boomer women start to smarten up and ease off the guilt that was fire forged and ice hardened by concerned but fearful parents.   Time is passing, and opportunity is dwindling.  Before you end up having heart-to-hearts with a pet iguana there is time for a virtual fling.   Some women, to avoid labeling and scrutiny even move to different and distant places.   Santa Fe in the years I lived there was fraught with single Boomer women on the prowl.  The difficulty was there were so few men, and the men who were single or available made the Peter Pan Syndrome appear the lexicon for ancient and sage-like wisdom.  Like I say, life can be cruel and full of paradox.   Even the married women aged 27 to 47 have more sex than younger or older women.  Sexual peak and all that.  As for the fantasies, let’s say more than a few do not involve their present partner.

But then, as the report contends,  after that hot and heavy decade or three of sexual desire, replete with fantasies and late night longing, the warranty on the libido begins to lapse.   The Cougar business notwithstanding, the  hunger is  more for the lascivious display at Yogurt Land than the sexual encounter.   The report, or the study, as with any other study, has its flaws.  Older women may be divorced or widowed, or are less inclined to gab it up at gray haired mixers.  I don’t know.

And there are the men.  Their trajectory is dramatically different.  They start off strong and then start to flag as they approach or enter middle age.   It is a mixed bag of reasons.   This is not to say men of this age have allowed women to corner the market on sexual fantasy and romantic pursuit.   But it just ain’t the same.   Suffice it to say they are far more interested in 3-D than a D-Cup.  Unless the D-Cup is actually on the 3-D Television, and then the may go off on his lonesome to remember old times.

But then something kicks in and as men get older they get horny again.   Go figure.  Just when you thought it was safe to crawl back between the sheets.   Back a few years in history,  a man confronted the dreaded reality that the brain may still be filled with desire, but the penis has downshifted to a lower gear.     Lust over limpness, if you will.  So in was once upon a time the awkward but somewhat natural order of things, both spouses acclimate to the new conditions of age and erosion and spend more time showing their friends more pictures of their grandkids or that wing ding at Lake Havasu.

An equilibrium of sorts had been established.  But along comes Viagra.  Men become randy old fools and, according to the report, women tend to other matters.  Statistically,  67% of the men between sixty-five and seventy-four were sexually active.   Only forty percent of the women in same age group were sexually active.   A third of the men in the age range of 75 to 85 said they had sex within the last twelve months.  Only 17% of the women in the same age group can make the same claim.  Frankly I am impressed by the men, not so much that they had sex but at that age they can still remember they had it.   As for the women, as noted before, the report did not take into consideration some easily identifiable extenuating factors.

Alright, so what has this been doing to senior America?  And you believed their main concern was losing their Medicare.  Unh uh.   Aged boners are messing up the fire drill.   Older men are zipping up the Sansabelts and jumping the reservation.   At an age when their physical activity may be a a vigorous workout on the treadmill, they are sowing sin in Sun City.   Talk about an alliance among the willing.   They are jumping off their electro carts and cruising the streets for desperate hookers in a down economy.     According to an article in the Daily Beast, they are bringing back sexually transmitted diseases to hearth and home.    Imagine this doctor’s surprise when an eighty-year-old guy shows up with the clap.   They are leaving their wives,  and they are cheating on their wives.  Or, worse, they are forcing themselves on their wives.

The result is mixed.  According to the article, some women are enthused.  But most are not.   They thought this part of their lives were over and now the long retired  Jumping Jack Flash has nothing but time on his hands and a chubby.    Many women find such entreaties annoying.   But then, if they don’t for a few bucks or a couple hours distraction someone else will.  So leave it to good old American know how to produce a female version of Viagra.   The intent was to utilize  Boehringer Ingelheim’s  flibanserin, a drug for premenopausal women, as the new boost for women who report a lack of sexual desire.  Let’s follow the credo, even if there isn’t a market, create one.   Lots of high hopes.   But in two different studies the drug failed to show any increase in sex drive.  The elusive search continues.

Like I noted, there are exceptions to all of this and there are certainly extenuating factors.   But there is still no denying that life is cruel and full of paradox.   Not only as Elmore James once declared does he love her, but she loves him and so forth…but the sexual trajectories of men and women are so different their sexual encounters are torn asunder by bad timing and nature’s doctrine.   It’s hard enough to find love, and then when you do it’s sexual manifestation can become a total pain in the ass.  Perhaps in the end, our desire for satisfaction had disrupted the natural order of things.   At this time of life, Bill Maher joked, “maybe people shouldn’t be having sex.  It has to hurt,” he said. ” It hurts just to stand up.”

For me the bottom line is like all challenges, time will eventually sort this one out.  Or not.   And maybe those who resort to prayer, asking the Lord or the Goddess or the Universe, whatever, to sort out the rights and wrongs, to give them things, bring peace and prosperity, should beseech that same supreme being  that it would really be nice to rethink the math on the cycles of human sexuality.  Life is hard enough.

When you think of China, you don’t think of it as a particularly sexy place.   Probably the Chinese don’t even think of China as a particularly sexy place as they tend to take their lead in sexual conduct from the West.   Nevertheless, with nearly 1.5 billion people, China is the most populated country in the world.   All those babies have to be coming from somewhere.

In truth, the citizens of China have practiced pre-marital sex for quite sometime now.   They may not have the long legacy of erotica  found in the West, initiated since time began and fortified by the art and literature,and ruminations of the Victorian Era, leading up through the pornographic “French Decks” of playing cards to the grand institution or erotica we extol today.   The Chinese may not even share the Japanese legacy, the artful and colorful paintings of lovers in bold colored silk robes contorted in every imaginable position, most of which having their visage in defiance of logical perspective.

Beauty shops and massage parlors permeate most Chinese cities, with each being the code word for a brothel.   While technically against the law, Chinese authorities tend to look the other way when it comes to the long stand presence of “beauty parlors,” kind of like what California does with its medical marijuana shops.  And like the medical marijuana shops, unless there is political pressure from a self-righteous group of do gooders with too much time on their hands, or the owner of the “beauty parlor” manages to upset someone in the bureaucracy, business goes on with little fanfare.

There is a preponderance of “adult health stores”.   These health stores are not to be confused with American health food stores where you can buy your granola in bulk.  Chinese Adult Health store is the given name for purveyors of every imaginable type of adult sex toy.   To say these stores are easy to find, is to equate their proximity with the nail salons of American.  If there isn’t one on every corner, then the sex toy shops are ubiquitous enough to assure no one will be waiting in line.  As for pornography on the Chinese Internet system, that is also forbidden.   But needless to say, thanks to the wonders of modern technology and with necessity being the not only the mother of invention but a matter of getting off, the Chinese can acquire software that can circumvent the government blocks.

As with most countries on an economic upswing, social regulatory efforts, if not necessarily the actual letter of the law, tend to liberalize in practice as well as theory.   When people are starving and struggling to survive, they have little time for sexual diddling.  Or if they do have time, it is because it is there only diversion from a dreary life, and those impromptu episodes usually result in the begetting or more children, which puts even more pressure on the family and its struggles, and makes for far less time in the exotic pursuits. A win-lose situation, for sure.  But when the good times are rolling, leisure and vice become a heady pursuit.

So what’s the big deal over the Chinese college professor, Ma Yahohai, who was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for having the temerity to engage in sex orgies and practice sexual partner swapping.?   Ma and his girlfriend were members of a group  of 22 persons that had some 35 swinger sessions over a two year period.  Frisky devils.  Ma participated in about half of these sessions.    Most of these sessions took place in Ma’s two bedroom apartment.   Ma shared the apartment with his girlfriend and mother.   What the adventuresome couple did with Momma during these libidinous occasions is anyone’s guess.   Maybe she took video.   Or like a good caring mother, washed off the sex toys to eliminate disease.  One can only imagine.

But the fact is that out of the twenty two arrested and charged with Criminal Law 301, Sexual Law 301, Crowd Licentiousness, eighteen of these randy souls were sentenced to prison.   While the defiant Ma was sentenced to his three and a half years, others were sentenced up to two and a half years.   No slap on the wrist, and no mention whatsoever about community service or making an anti-sex film.  The Chinese prison system has never been known much for luxury living.    So a couple of years in jail can give you a lot of time to ponder wistfully the sex orgies you will be missing.   As for the three defendants who got off without a jail sentence, I have no idea how they got so lucky.  Maybe they were only there to watch or serve hor dourves.

It could be worse for Ma and his swinging associates I suppose.  Back in the good old days of Chairman Mao and his successors,  various types of sexual congress, including group sex, could be construed as “hooliganism.”     “Hooliganism” was catch all charge for crimes that made you realize you were in big trouble.   Big trouble meant a lengthy jail sentence at a slave labor facility not of your choice.   You were looking at possible execution.  So by those draconian standards, I suppose, a couple years in jail is a slap on the wrist.

According to reports, there are 100, 000 alleged swingers in China out of the  1.3 billion population.  In terms of Chinese population this is but a measly few.    The measly few engage in group sex and brag about it by posting on the Internet.   Many more beyond the 100,000 read it as it provides if nothing else some vicarious thrills in a country that has yet to develop the 900 sex number.   But still, we are talking a small group of enthusiasts.   Not particularly threatening.  I would consider the group grope of twenty odd people in a two bedroom apartment more of a threat to the integrity of the carpet than to the burgeoning Chinese economy.

Other groups are considered far more threatening.    There are all sorts of radicals and terrorists groups who actually blow up things and don’t just brag about some sexual exploits on the Internet.    There are people trafficking in illegal everything, from counterfeit prescription drugs to counterfeit invoices.   There are myriad labor strikes and worker unrest, including violent demonstrations.   The citizens of the more rural provinces are restless and prtoesting the state appropriation of their lands.   This has resulted in massive riots.  In one riot recently, hundreds were killed in Sichuan Province.

There is airline corruption and all sorts of financial swindling.   Chinese law enforcement has been very busy as the nation pays the price of progress. Even the questionable menace of the Chinese Uighur population  would present more of a problem than a  couple bunches of swingers.   There are many millions of Chinese Uighurs, a Muslim group that is viewed by the Chinese Government as a radical faction and periodically subjects them to surveillance and harassment.   In Xinjiang Province alone, nearly half the population of 23 million are Chinese Uighurs.    I would venture very few Chinese Uighurs are swingers, but that is another story.  The fact is the swingers of China make up but a small but determined faction that you could probably fit into the Beijing Subway.  A chance at getting off at every station.

To be sure, I am not promoting swinging.  I am not promoting it in China or anywhere else.  In fact, mere photos of the swinging Internet set threatens to drive me to the monastery for contemplations of  semi-theistic metaphysics and far less carnal pursuits.  Watching the few happy partner swapping examples on the Jerry Springer Show made me seriously consider celibacy for the next millennium,.   Fortunately, reason took control of my senses.  I only took a shower, instead.   Here in America,  swingers can live large and lounge about in communal congress inside the often tacky but spacious environs of a split-level sub-tract with enough garage and driveway space for all those Toyota Camrys.     Meanwhile their kindred Chinese swingers must dangle their dongs in a measly two bedroom apartment.   Here you get to be on Jerry Springer or at least have your fat, naked ass plastered all over the Internet.   But in China you get a couple, few years in jail.

To loosely paraphrase Voltaire, I may not like swinging and partner swapping, but will defend to the death your right to engage in it, no matter how nauseating it may appear.   Alright, maybe I won’t defend it to the death, as I have better things to do than defend the randy rambling of a bunch of refugees from Wal-Mart looking for distraction in a down economy.    But at the very least,  I will give it lip service, even when I grimace and fumble with the shower faucets.  Why?

Because everybody should have the right to get laid.   It is a right, after all, and not a privilege.   Okay, so maybe sometimes it is less of a right and more of a privilege, a treat even,  a pathetically rare one, depending on the disposition and predilections of your spouse or lover.  I realize that sometimes your significant other does not find  either you or your entreaties as significant or otherwise as you might either hope for or come to expect.   So I guess like other debates over rights and privleges, there is at least a little wiggling room.  But once you do work it out with your lover or significant other you have the freedom to fire away, anytime, day or night.  Even if twenty two people are involved.

But as in China, there are some here and in parts of the world who don’t really see it that way.   They allude to some intelligent design and a divine plan where you must only do it with restrictions.   They ascribe the  damning words immoral and degenerate to a variety of sex practices that were apparently never detailed in the master plan.  Otherwise, I suppose, the master plan would have been just plain old porn and not some divine edict from the heavens explaining explicitly where Daddy and Mommy or Daddy and Daddy or Mommy and Mommy may put their thingies and Woo Woo’s.   In some cases they want to rearrange your thinking; they want to straighten you out.

Oppression always begins somewhere.   Usually in the stupid places, the places that make us wince.   But then they graduate to places where we are concerned where transgressions are made against our privacy and thought process.     We suddenly find our rights intruded upon and threatened by a group of ideologues who truly believe in this world of infinite choices they are so graced with absolute answers.   We find ourselves being subjected to embarrassment and thrown in jail for acting out on our natural impulses.  Oppression begins in the dumbest of places, and it ends somewhere else.   And we don’t know how we go there.

Chinese Professor Ma Yaohai has resigned from his teaching post.  He now lives off his savings and his mother’s pension.   He is appealing his sentence of three and a half years for “group licentiousness,” which translates into getting his rocks off with a couple dozen people.  As we have seen recently in this country, some of our own social issues that we thought were long put to rest, sexuality, racism, the right to live and breathe as you so choose, have resurfaced and been challenged by perhaps a well intentioned but vehement minority.  Given that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, we should never take the good professor’s condition all that lightly.  No matter who you are or where you sleep, something  may be lurking beneath the sheets.  Something besides your partner’s cold feet.

Emotionally speaking, we are a schizophrenic society.  Perhaps we are a schizophrenic world.   Quite often we have incredible needs where romance and sentiment are concerned, but we mitigate those needs with the crassness of survival in the modern context.  While we recognize a deep seated need to satisfy our emotional requirements we obscure these sentiments by approaching romance and marriage, even  relationships with our families, as some form of corporate merger or social detentes.   To our most romantic and sentimental instincts we add complex  layers of material opportunity and the cultural acceptance.

We buy into the movies, and the romance novels that manipulate our sentiments.   In media world, as opposed to the real one,  couples from the opposite sides of the spectrum, different cultural interests, ethnic backgrounds, economic stations, find themselves linked eternally.    The normal  obstructions of social norms and divergent interests,  to say nothing of peer pressure and cultural prejudice, withdraw from the sexual battlefield as love triumphs over all.  We can’t get enough of this stuff and buy into it, hook, line and sinker.

Media feeds on our  romantic idealism.   It manipulates our sentiments.   Now in the digital age we  are bombarded with these paint by numbers constructions from every possible angle.   We walk the streets and stand in lines, surrounded desire in fact our insistence on romantic denouement.   Often in paint by numbers, formulaic arcs, the illusion of true romance is served up to us at ten to fifty bucks a pop.    We wait in knowing anticipation while the fated lovers stumble over themselves and respective situations, overcome peer pressure and cultural differences, to finally reconcile their desire for each other so we the audience can reinforce our illusive pursuit of pure romance.   We buy greeting cards and watch endless maudlin commercials where parents race across the world to be home for their kid’s debut in their grad school play.   We watch endless commercials where families come together as one for that happy holiday meal.  Where they hug and eat and never argue.

In quest of love we do many things to ourselves.   We say things that we really don’t mean or even care about.   Sweet nothings, or broad generic terms of world peace and humanitarian considerations while berating the busboy for not cleaning our table.   We wear funny outfits that we hope make us attractive and then we become disgruntled when people are staring.   We once smoked cigarettes to look cool and sexy.  Now we smoke because it is a habit.  We take drugs, drink too much, eat too much, and more often than we care to remember we find ourselves in the sweet embrace of the toilet bowl at three a.m.

If you are male, you preen and shine and hope not to look as awkward and as uninvolved  on the first date as you most certainly will on the fourth or fifth date down the line.  If there is a fifth date.    You dress like a boy and think you’re a man and hope that you can somehow discover the equilibrium between looking like schlep and a cardboard cutout from Details or Gentleman’s Quarterly.   You get pierced and tattooed and claim it is not really an esteem issue but an expression of your individuality.   You bathe in cologne unaware that you are the only one who knows that smells like  a men’s room at fifty yards away.

If you are a male, you try to show that you are sensitive and caring, but that you aren’t just another pussy.   You avoid like the plague being categorized as a guys’ guy or a ladies man.  You try to be different from the pack, but not so different that your date or your lover starts to think you are strange and burdened by a hidden agenda where you secretly boast of a butterfly collection or bury skulls in your flower bed.   You go to the gym and run for miles, claiming it is all about our health when you know damn well you are far more attractive with an athletic physique than the slob who sits in the cubicle right next to yours.

You get your penis enlarged by adding fat tissue and cutting tendons that make it dangle more than nature may have first intended.   You do this to impress yourself and to impress her.  You wonder if you have impressed her enough that she will go to bed with you.   And then you worry if you were good in bed and and if you measure up to her previous experience.   You wonder how in the hell you can leave in the wee hours and not look like a shopworn cliche.   After all this, you visit your shrink who invites you back for another year of analysis.

But the price men pay for love, even when they actually pay for sex, is nothing compared to the gauntlet of tribulations that women must endure.   From bleaching to waxing, to shaving certain body parts that will itch for days, until you scratch like a monkey, showing off at the children’s zoo.   You get your first face lift at fourteen.   After which there is are future years where you engage in sessions of liposuction, ass and tummy tucks so that you still look good walking the unbearably painful walk of three inch heels.  You pluck your brows and paint your nails.  You wear perfume, but you worry if it is the right perfume, whether it defines you or makes you smell like just another slut.  You go backless and braless, you eat too little and then eat too much, only to show penance once again with your arms wrapped in the cold and familiar embrace of the proverbial toilet bowl.

You get stitched and sewn, tanned and tailored.   You wear clothes too tight and shoes too small.   You go blond, brunette, step it out as a redhead for a minute and a half and wish for the day when you can say “screw it,” I’ll leave it gray and live with those oh so natural, murky yellow highlights.   Like men you date and you wonder if you are attractive, if he really wants to go to bed with you.  You wonder if you are good in bed, if you measure up to his other lovers, or if his previous lovers were of the barnyard variety.   And then you wonder how in the hell you can leave in the wee hours of the morning and not look like a shopworn cliche.  And then your remember, it’s your place, so there is no escape.  After all this, you visit your shrink who invites you back for another year of analysis

You worry about aging, whether you are still attractive, and whether you are a sexual being.  You start worrying about this when you are eleven, and you don’t stop worrying until they put you in the grave.   You worry so much your brow wrinkles.  And then you get your Botox shots.  You realize Botox is not the best thing for you as the secret ingredient causes Botulism, a deadly poison.  A deadly poison that may in the long haul cause nerve damage.  But who cares?   You look better and this is then and later is later.  And by then you are dead anyway, so who cares?

So now what did they do?   New studies have discovered a relationship between paralyzing your nerves, which Botox does, and your inability to express emotion.   People on Botox are slower to smile or frown or show anything other than the stoic expressions the ancient Greeks used to proffer as a viable lifestyle.   According to the recent study, some of it summarized in the Los Angeles Times, among other place, Botox shots will confuse the brain.   Botox Shots, researchers discovered, block facial nerve impulses, seemed to slow the ability to comprehend emotional language. Emotional expressions apparently send feedback to the brain.   It is a combined effort between smiling and frowning and our awareness as to whether we are having a good time or a lousy one.

Simply put the reaction time between the stimulus and the emotion takes longer than it does for a senile geriatric to cross the street in St. Petersburg.   Facial expressions make the brain make sense of the world around us.  No facial expressions the world around us is tough to grasp, as if it isn’t tough enough already.    Stuff happens to you, and you don’t know what you are feeling.  Good times, bad times, there you be, unable to grasp whether you are ecstatic or really pissed off.   Or at least, according to the study, it may take awhile before the brain gets the message.

If we extrapolate this study, then for all we know, Botox could affect our sexual congress.    Enough Botox could freeze the facial expressions and delay the sensory signals to the brain.  It would be the orgasmic version of the late arrival.   It’s like showing up for the banquet when they have already removed the  dishes from the tables and folded up the chairs.   The Botox orgasm.   Between the big sensation and the “Oh God” screaming,  hours may have passed.  By then it is Sunday morning.  Your neighbors don’t know if you had an orgasm or you were getting ready for church.

Anyway…it’s not that I am critical of our vanity.  Observant, maybe, but hardly critical.  It is what it is, and far be it for me to provide any meaningful alternative where I don’t sound like a rescued speed freak from an abstinence ministry.  Besides, I am too vain for that.   People need to do what they do and in a world of chaos and uncertainty at least try to have a good time.

The only thing is, if you dose yourself with Botox, how will you ever know it?

We all think the other guy is a lousy driver.   What’s odd,  is that at least one out of five times.  According to an article in Media Post a new report from the2010 GMAC Insurance National Drivers Test we are correct in our assessment.  At that is before we delve into our biases in the way we rate our fellow drivers.   Add in some of the more obvious and extenuating factors and a great many of us should never be anywhere behind a wheel.    Quite a few in fact shouldn’t be allowed to pull a little red wagon, yet alone power a three thousand pound automobile.

The recent report from  the 2010 GMAC Insurance National Drivers Test contends that one in five drivers, nearly 38 million drivers in all would flunk the written driver’s test, if it were given today.    The test incorporated basic driving questions that were culled from the driving manuals in the fifty states.  Nothing too arcane or esoteric.   Just stuff you maybe need to know before you head off for your bag of Doritos and double Mocha Latte with your cellphone in your ear and your makeup in your lap.

Okay, so  maybe in addition to the twenty basic questions there were some other, more directed questions.   There were questions related to the texting while driving.   You know, difficult interrogations that are only slightly less challenging than reading the fat content in a Denny’s Grand Slam.   Questions, from what I gleaned, like whether or not you should duck your head back into the rear seating area for a quick peak  at the monitor where Finding  Nemo is preventing your kids from beating each other with their Young Einstein action heroes.

The study indicates that a number of licensed Americans continue to lack knowledge of basic rules of the road; the national average score decreased to 76.2% this year from 76.6% in 2009.   No need to convince me we are dumbing down. About 85% could not identify the correct action to take when approaching a steady yellow traffic light.  Many drivers remained confused by safe following distances.  This would require math, not a strong suit as of late.    Hell, we can’t even estimate correctly how much oil is leaking into the Gulf of Mexico on a daily basis.   Small chance we can estimate how many feet it takes to stop a car.   And then there is the matter of reading, actually understanding the questions that were being asked.  Other studies report that fifty percent of our citizens are functionally illiterate.   Perhaps we should have left our more serious reading to the dinosaurs who lived with us in domestic harmony a mere 6,500 years ago.

The drivers in some states did better than the drivers in others.   Kansas may not have grasped entirely the radical theory of  Evolution, but at least as a state it came in first on on the written driver’s test with an average score of 82.5%.   New York State finished last with a 70% average score.    That means three out of ten drivers in the Empire State should always be taking the subway.  In general, drivers in the Northeast may not be as well informed about driving regulations as their Midwestern counterparts. The Northeast had the lowest average test scores (74.9%) and had the highest failure rate (25.1%). The Midwest region had the highest average test scores (77.5%) and the lowest failure rates (11.9%).

Not surprisingly,  the older the driver, the higher the score.  The aged are still able to read, which is probably their greatest advantage.   Males over age 45 earned the highest average test score. Males also outperformed females overall in terms of average score (78.1% male versus 74.4% female) and failure rates (24% female versus 18.1% male).    I suppose the one caveat about the vaunted  elderly drivers is that you can also see him driving down the street with his turn signal flashing and a shopping bag perched on the roof of his car.   Then it might be wise to think differently.

As for female drivers, overall, a significantly higher percentage of females than males reported engaging in the following distracting situations: conversation with passengers, selecting songs on an iPod or CD/adjusting the radio, talking on a cell phone, eating, applying make-up and reading.   We are talking multi-tasking.   Not always easy at sixty miles an hour.   And then every once in awhile you do need a hand on the steering wheel, whether you want to or not.    The other day I watched a woman in an SUV while she juggled muffin, coffee, makeup and cell phone, while trying to negotiate the traffic in Beverly Hills.  It was almost an art form, until her one angry bite severed the muffin so it fell out of her mouth and into her lap.    The look on her face was priceless.

George Carlin used to comment in his comedy act that the driver poking along ahead of you  and who won’t let you pass is an imbecile.  On the other hand, the driver whipping around your slow and sorry ass and blazing on up the highway, well that driver is a maniac.   Everyone else, I suppose, is somewhere in between.  And where is in between?   Cutting corners so tightly that they clip the car in the left turn lane who was just sitting there waiting for the light to change.   Trying to figure out how to parallel park sometime before the second coming.    Or not knowing that four wheel drive can help you drive through the ice and snow, but it doesn’t assist much in the way of stopping.

And drinking.  Let us not forget drinking.  I used to live in New Mexico where the rules were such that you could pull right up to the drive-through liquor store without having to suffer the inconvenience of staggering out of your car.   Small wonder, the Land of Enchantment is the number one state in single car fatalities.   Miles and miles of open spaces.  Nothing to hit, really.  But, still, they manage.

This report may go a long way to explaining the forty thousand people who die every year in car wrecks, and the couple, few million who are injured.  These figures are actually down from a decade ago, but you can attribute that more to the safety of the vehicles than our collective driving prowess.   I suppose, if you want to get picky, you can also remove from the list the false claims of injury and incapacitation that are mounted to sustain the driver-lawyer-quack doctor menage a’ trois.  Most accidents are not of  the gnarly paralyzing and dismembering  type that will get you a prime spot on the late night commercials sponsored by your local ambulance chaser.

Now bear in mind, the GMAC Insurance is just that…an insurance entity.   Their job is to sell insurance to drivers.   This is where their money is.   And despite the fact that they need and want to sell as much car insurance as possible, they are contending that one in five drivers shouldn’t be behind the wheel.   I would think this is a conservative estimate.    Should we ever get realistic about these estimates, auto sales would plummet even further, insurance policies would go wanting, and the country would have to actually do something about viable public transportation.    Ancillary benefits would mean less of a dependence on oil, and possibly in urban centers you could actually breathe the air. We can’t have that.

But we all know there is no such thing as reality anymore.  Pragmatism is a thing of the past.   If we had common sense, knowing the destruction they cause from distracted driving, we would be draconian in enforcing laws about cellphone use in the car.   In my humble opinion, instead of some measly fine, for first offense they shove the phone where the sun won’t shine, and for the second offense, they remove it with a chainsaw.   But I am being moderate here.  Oprah Winfrey is spending real bucks on commercials where she is dragging out the victims and survivors of victims killed by distracted drivers.   She admonishes us about using driving and cellphone use, and she is a national icon.   Tears fall.  Voices tremble.   This is Oprah., for god’s sake.   Everyone adores her.   Everyone listens to her.  Except when she tells us that when you are driving put down the damn cellphone.   Then even Oprah is a just another pain in the ass.

Perhaps it is wise to use the GMAC Insurance estimates as a base figure and take a closer look.    By utilizing some of the GMAC survey questions we can start to approach the truth.   On the survey, only five percent admitted to texting while driving.  So we are not only a nation of lousy drivers, we are also a nation of liars.    Couple that with the fact that, according to reports, fifty percent can’t read and understand the survey anyway, so there answers may be more guess work than actual comprehension.  Add into this mix those out there who are driving without a license.   There are more than a few.   So this group wasn’t even asked to take the test.      And if you still think it is only a mere twenty percent of the driving population that shouldn’t be behind the wheel, I have one final suggestion.   Take a trip to your local DMV.  Look around.  Then tell me how safe you feel with some of these people motoring down our highways.

By no means does this make us the worse drivers in the world.  Americans are merely the worst drivers in the United States.   Anyone who has driven anywhere else knows the tribulations of, say, the Indian National Highways, or the vagaries of traffic rules in South America.  We can’t all be Canadians, after all.   Even in the South of France, unless you demonstrate you are committed to running over pedestrians, it is nearly impossible to get from here to there.   And these are places where they have some semblance of highways.  Or paved streets.   There are many parts of this world where even the Yak is ill informed to who has the right of way.

And then, despite our whining and sniping, we Americans are pretty much a tough breed.   Come some national holiday where perseverance and John Wayne’s rectitude  are compulsory, before we head out on the highway with a six pack of beer, and a bevy of off-road vehicles trailing behind our four miles per gallon bargain RV.    We are a nation that meets its challenges.  Well, sort of.

Well, there are many challenges ahead of us.  The least of which is being able to read the driving manual.  As John Kennedy implored as President, about our reaching the moon in ten years, we have to continue moving forward.  Which is fine with me.  As long as  we don’t have to drive there.

For the curious sort, you can take the 2010 GMAC Insurance National Drivers Test by clicking this link.