29. Chained to a Madman!
... being a reflection on lapses of judgement which might be attributed to having a body pumped full of testosterone.
There have been a few recent news stories about members of parliament getting into bother because of what they call sexual misconduct; groping, sexting, looking at online pornography in the commons, being held to ransom after getting involved with characters from shady online dating apps and sending compromising photographs of themselves to mysterious strangers who asked for them on WhatsApp, all manner of misdemeanours. Its been all over the papers! What a palaver! And its not just the UK Government. Donald Trump is still being hauled over the coals about his hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, and there has always been the suggestion that some of his past indiscretions were set up by the Russian government, to whom he is said to be permanently indebted for a manifold reasons.
The politicians who govern us leaving themselves open to blackmail and manipulation can never be a good thing. But sexual indiscretion isn’t something that only affects politicians. We read about the faux pas of the royals, and of the celebrities and wannabe celebrities, and roll our eyes, but if the truth be known, I reckon that all men are prone to such lapses of judgement, as we like to call them.
Just below the surface, we men are all such beastly fellows. Its the testosterone. Once that stuff starts bubbling through a lad’s system, on or around his thirteenth birthday, it governs his life until he hits old age, and even then the experience of it all leaves its scars. Its all to do with having a sex drive.
Yes, I know that women have sex drives too, but in general, they seem to be rather more sensible about it than men are. Women have more of a sense of proportion. From time to time women actually engage in tasks without fantasising that what they are doing might actually lead to a sexual encounter. For example, if a woman washes the dishes and puts them away tidily afterwards, it is probably because she likes to have a tidy house and a clean kitchen. If a man washes the dishes and puts them away tidily afterwards, it is probably because he knows that most women like a tidy house and a clean kitchen and that one of them, one who either lives with him, or is a potential visitor to his home, might reward him with some sort of sexual favour for having achieved these goals. He will tell himself this, even if the only realistic potential visitor is a WPC coming to make routine enquiries about a series of petty thefts from washing lines in the neighbourhood.
Virtually half a century of the average man’s life is disrupted by being unable to go for more than a few minutes without thinking about sex. And not just thinking about it as he might think about the Roman Empire, or the football results, but actually deeply fantasising about it, imagining having it with all shapes and sizes of partners, all genders of partners, and partners from all species of creature, even with inanimate objects if nothing else is available. Leave a testosterone fuelled man on his own in a private room with a wet lettuce and a jar of vaseline, and he will be thinking of sex in seven seconds flat. And if he is sure that the door is locked, he will more than likely act on his impulse. He might not even have the clarity of mind to draw the curtains before he gets cracking. Never mind. If he is caught he will put it down to a lapse of judgement, which was completely out of character.
Perhaps that fact is where the seven second rule comes from. The old idea that men think of sex every seven seconds has been dismissed as an urban myth, but I am not so sure. Some scientists (probably blokes) who had nothing better to do one semester (or whatever unit of time research scientists work in) suggested an alternative statistic to get themselves and the rest of us off the hook. Thy reckoned that men think of sex a much more reasonable sounding 19 times a day, which works out at around once every fifty minutes. I dispute that. How did they get to that number? Apparently, they asked people to click a button on a handheld counting machine every time they thought of sex. The results are clearly invalid, You might get an accurate result if you asked a bloke to click a button a button every time he thought about the role of art in the European renaissance, but when a man is thinking about sex, he doesn’t want to be clicking buttons on counting machines, he has better things to be doing with his fingers, and besides, he has completely forgotten that he was taking part in a research project anyway.
I am convinced that even when a man is involved in an activity that is not normally considered as having anything to do with sex, for example when he is in a public lavatory, sitting alone and evacuating his bowels, he is more often than not thinking about sex. I base this assertion on having read a great number of inscriptions on the insides of the cubicle doors in public lavatories. Furthermore, I am given to understand that if there are two men in the public lavatory, there may be more than graffiti going on, even if they are both happily married with kids who they think the world of. When there is enough testosterone around, there is always the possibility of a spectacular lapse of judgement.
Of course, I read all those toilet doors a long time ago. Perhaps their utility as a means of anonymous self expression has since been rendered obsolete by the advent of the internet. Now, when men are alone and accessing the internet, they are faced with a vast interactive toilet door upon which they can not only leave messages, but look at stuff, suggest stuff and pester other internet users about stuff that they would rather not have their friends and relatives know about.
George Melly was an art critic, performer, and larger than life personality who used to appear on the television and tour up and down the country singing old Jazz songs from the America of the 1920s and 30s. He was really tuned in to the salaciousness of the lyrics from that era,1, Which were even even dirtier than George Formby’s British ones.2
What I liked about Melly was that he seemed to both wallow in the filthiness of his subject matter and simultaneously rise above it. By the time that I got to see him perform, he was getting on in years. He once claimed that he was often asked if, now that he was an old man, he missed his sex drive. “Ohh No. Not all!” - he would say “It was like being chained to a madman”.
I loved that answer. It resonated with me. Thats what all that testosterone feels like. It is the source of lifestyles that have onlookers quoting the phrase, he thinks with his dick. And it explains the behaviour of all those middle aged MPs who end up in the news because of their lapses of judgement. They really ought to know better, but they are chained to madmen. Every last one of them.
Of course, it might explain their behaviour, but it doesn’t excuse it. We blokes have to keep that madman under control. I might argue that all men have the potential to be beastly fellows, but I believe that most men are up to the job of ensuring that they do not realise that potential, or at least of restraining themselves sufficiently to ensure that harm only comes to the occasional lettuce. We must also remember that it is not just the sexual madmen within us that we have to watch out for, we really ought to keep all of our appetites under control. Nobody likes a drunken letch with his snout in the trough, elbowing everyone else out of the way because he wants it all for himself.
Unfortunately we seem to have a habit of electing such people to govern us.
Chained to a Madman!
I’ve been chained to a Madman near on fifty years He’s a massive distraction Always in my ears with salacious suggestions improper ideas He pesters me, badgers me, hounds me To tears Chained to a Madman! A right royal pain! I can’t concentrate with him frying my brain with his one-track mind and his ribald refrain He drives me doolalley, crackers, Insane Chained to a madman! it’s NEVER alright. From first thing in the morning to last thing at night he’s nowt but a nuisance, a canker, a blight, demanding I satisfy his appetite But now old age beckons. He’s starting to flag. Not quite as insistent. Not quite such a nag. He’s not gone completely though. Aye, there’s the snag So… ...any of you ladies fancy a shag?
You want a hot dog for your roll You want it hot cause you don't want it cold, Ohh baby, you won't be disgusted Cause my dog is just oozing with mustard Don't need no excuse Its got plenty of juice You want a hot dog for your roll
George Melly - Hot Dog Man
There’s my girl and me She sits on my knee And watches the rhubarb grow
George Formby - In my little Wigan Garden
Very insightful Mr O.
An interesting issue (as opposed to several illegitimate ones) and, depraved as I might have been (non-commital), for which several females I apologise to but I confused sex and love as a combined article - that is, love between a man and a woman, not rude rhubarb. But knowing how scheming girls could/can/will be I thought we'd be united in those escapades. But people see things differently and we can read our own interpretations into what is or isn't happening.
This is an interesting read - or perhaps girls will see it differently and picture male readers groping for their halibut, bent as that may be. But hormonal control is something we all should acknowledge - I.E. ITS control over us.
Once one has attained the capacity to hug/look at women without wondering about abandoned groans etc as most of their lives had been, it feels a little calmer if not dissappointing. We can turn it off, but the madman, ol Belzebub, he can convince us it's him who swayed our amorous thoughts on the Virgin Mary, grandma etc.
Yet, on a cleaner note, is it not our 'drive', whatever that may be, that sends explorers, artists, avaitrixes and even poetses into that rarified air, that relentless effort? And whose drive is it? Nature? - ah, you mean that thing that seems to destroy as well as create? Alas, there are no chains for me, for I'm as mad as mad as mad can be
Really funny, specially the last line
It's interesting to hear about the madman and hear things from a male perspective.
When I was in my teens I just had crushes,for want of a better word, left right and centre and romantic stirrings filled my day but, being happily single, for years I think I possibly prefer a good chat, to a romantic tryst
though it depends on the company .Maybe its easier for girls and possibly less manic