The Bathtub: Men in Cages: Circle Jerk

Last year, I read a book entitled "The Inner Circle." This work is T. C. Boyle's imaginings of what life was like working as an assistant to Dr. Alfred Kinsey - the father of sexology. Kinsey considered his assistants to be his "Inner Circle" - he worked closely with them, very closely.

If you've never read this book (or seen that movie about Kinsey that has an identical plotline to this book, but whose title has nothing to do with circles and is consequently irrelevant to this post), you might wonder what life is like in the Inner Cirlce. What does life entail when you're Dr. Sex's assistant? Well, you have three primary duties:

1. Interviewing people about their sex lives. This was of course Kinsey's big thing: travelling the country and talking to people about acts unmentionable for hours on end. It's oft been noted that Kinsey was a miraculous interviewer. He supposedly had a way of putting people at ease, such that they were comfortable sharing all of their dirty secrets with him. I've gotta say; dude must have been really good. I mean, there's "putting people at ease" and then there's "getting people to tell you about the time they and their cousins ran train on a mountain goat." But anyway, point of the story: Kinsey was a kick-ass interviewer, and his assistants were under serious pressure to perform admirably as well.

And by no means was it easy for them. There are lots of no-nos in the world of sex interviewing. Some extreme hottie is telling you about how much she loooves giving head? Don't go gettin' a boner! All you're allowed to do is nod. Some freak show is detailing his use of maple syrup as lube? As much as you might want to run far, far away; you're required to say, "Ooh, that sounds like sticky fun! Please tell me more."

2. Doing math. The majority of Kinsey's assistants' time was spent performing statistical analyses on data collected during interviews and on creating graphs and charts depicting this data. This might sound kind of lame, but remember, this isn't just math; this is math about sex. I mean, it had to have been at least kind of fun to create this chart:

That is, of course, unless you happen to be a guy with a 3.75 inch penis. Spending hours creating a chart that summarizes your inadequacies can't be all that enjoyable. You've probably spent your whole life wondering, "Am I smaller than other guys?" and then, suddenly, you have scientific proof that, yes, according to the empirical rule, you're smaller than 99.7% of white men in America. Score.

(I can actually really relate to that scenario. I spend a good part of my days reading articles about sex education programs. And, I've got to admit, all the time, I read statistics about the average age kids are losing their virginity or the proportion of kids who are having oral sex before they turn 18 and I'm totally envious. I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to read those statistics and think, "How sad; let's fix this," but honestly, I just lament the fact that no one wanted to have sex with me in high school.)

But moving on from my personal life, Kinsey's assistants probably never got jealous of statistics about frequency of sex because of their third duty:

3. Have sex with Kinsey. Have sex with Kinsey's wife. Let Kinsey have sex with your wife. Have sex with all other members of the Inner Circle. Show complete disregard for normal conventions of human interaction. Have sex with everyone. All the time. You see, that's the thing about being a part of Kinsey's Inner Circle - it's basically one big circle jerk. Everyone is required to be getting everyone else off. As you might expect, the complications that arise from a set-up like this are manifold (and they are what make up the meat of T. C. Boyle's book).

Kinsey advocated for this constant communal love-making on the grounds that we shouldn't be denying our primal desires and urges. He didn't like that sex was such a taboo subject. It's a part of life - celebrate it, practice it, learn about it. In the sense that he made sex something that gets talked about and studied, I say hooray for Kinsey. (I mean, if it hadn't been for him, I probably would have to major in something worthwhile during college.) But I really can't advocate for the whole "have sex with everybody" thing.

The problem with the "don't deny your primal desires and urges" argument is that we, as humans, actually have a lot of desires and urges. Think about evolution for a minute: Humans have evolved to want to make lots of babies. Humans have also evolved to get hella jealous when the people they want to make babies with are making babies with other people. Practicing monogamy isn't "denying a primal urge" so much as it's balancing two urges: we want to make babies with someone; we don't want that someone to be making babies with anyone else, so we concede that we will only make babies with that person if they'll only make babies with us.

Here's a similar balancing act: humans have evolved to want to make lots of babies. Humans have also evolved to want to eat as many calories as they can get their hands on. When we practice healthy eating, we aren't denying our primal urge to ingest as many tacos as we possibly can; we're recognizing that we want to enjoy tasty treats AND we want to make other people interested in touching our bodies (particularly our nether-regions).

Sometimes we mess up (and accidentally eat two pizzas in one sitting) just like sometimes monogamous people mess up (and accidentally get it on with the pizza delivery guy while their boyfriend is out of town).

But moving on to a conclusion of sorts, I'm sure life in Kinsey's Inner Circle was never boring, but I don't know that it would have been for me. I'd probably giggle when interviewing people who reported masturbating to images of battleships. I'd have trouble resisting the urge to alter data just to freak people out. (You know, like, report the average penis length of men in America as being 11.5 inches.) And I definitely wouldn't want to have sex with all the other Inner Circle members. I mean, I might want to. But I know better than to get myself involved in a mess like that. And as for having sex with Kinsey himself? No matter how you balance my many sexual urges; there's no way I'm ever going to find that hott: