I actually pay for on-line access to The Wall Street Journal. I expect The Journal to provide me a reasonably accurate and non-woke account of the news of the day. I expect to read editorials that I mostly agree with. Of course if you want to know what is going on in the world of business and finance, you’ve got to have the WSJ. And they have one sports writer named Jason Gray, who is pretty clever and writes about cycling more than most mainstream media. He’s no Dan Jenkins (anybody remember him?) but Jason does entertain.
But the WSJ also has lots of ‘life style’ and ‘relationship’ articles that catch my eye. Like this one…
Frankly it never occurred to me to ask, but apparently some people are stressing out about the quantity and quality of their intimate encounters. The article postulates that there is a spike in interest in the subject in the summer, what with warmer weather and skimpier clothes and getting more sun and drinking stronger cocktails. This thesis is directly at odds with the wisdom of the American musical theater as expressed by Cole Porter in Kiss Me Kate:
According to the Kinsey report
Ev’ry average man you know
Much prefers to play his favorite sport
When the temperature is low
But when the thermometer goes way up
And the weather is sizzling hot
Mister Adam for his madam is not
Cause it’s too too darn hot!
So how much of this kind of thing is going on? The Kinsey Institute did a survey, although I have long believed that everybody lies about sex, just as they lie to pollsters about who they are going to vote for. But for what it’s worth here are the numbers:
People reported having sex an average 5.6 times a month, or just more than once a week, according to a soon-to-be-published, nationally representative study of 1,500 Americans ages 18 to 88 from the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University.
I don’t know if the survey made a distinction between soloists or duets or trios or quartets. And I’m pretty impressed with any 88 year-old, either riding a single bike or a tandem, who can hit that average. But the average is only part of the story:
Yet there is a great deal of variation among individuals: About a third of people surveyed said they don’t have sex in a typical month; 30% said they have sex between one and four times; and 29% said they have sex between five and 16 times. The final 8% reported having sex more than 17 times a month.
That upper 8% group has got my head spinning a bit; are they not worried about dehydration? Chafing?
Being one of those childless couples JD Vance is worked up about, this isn’t an issue on Brumby Road, but one couple profiled in the article experienced child interruptus
Danielle Savory and her husband were naked in bed one recent afternoon when they heard the unsexiest of sounds: a Harry Potter audiobook being played at peak volume by their 10-year-old daughter.
The couple turned up the air conditioner to try to drown it out. When that didn’t work, they added a white noise machine. Then they got back to the business at hand—and missed hearing their older daughter, age 13, enter the room.
“I just wanted to ask you if it’s OK to bake macaroons,” Savory says her daughter asked. She and her husband dove under the covers.
I’m sure no long run damage was done to any of the parties involved, but the experience might be a distraction akin to the ‘yips’ in golf or the ‘twistees’ in gymnastics, especially for the husband. See, I am watching the Olympics.
Ms. Savory probably won’t be bothered since she seems to be an ‘influencer’ in the area of intimate interludes:
Savory has thought a lot about how to keep the spark alive in the summer. She’s a sex coach for women who also hosts a podcast on the subject. To spice up her own life, she likes to wear sundresses that make her feel sensual and read steamy novels to get in the mood.
The fact that she is a sex coach and has a sex podcast makes me wonder if her surname really is ‘Savory’. Kind of a more tame pseudonym than Linda Lovelace or Kandy Cane or Pussy Galore (a Bond Girl from Goldfinger, shaken not stirred), but tasty none the less.
If Ms. Savory had a sex instruction partner named Karen Sweet, they could market themselves thusly: “Savory and Sweet: Not a foodie podcast but we’ll get you cooking!”
Rich Freggiaro Cycling Blog 