Sex For a Troubled World

It’s official. I have bailout burnout. Econmic fatigue. I scan the headlines and have trouble finding anything I can bear to read these days. (No wonder, I’m posting about egg shell removal and cranberry relish!)

And today? Sex!

Yesterday, I stumbled across two articles that eased my troubled mind. Not because they solved any problems, but because they distracted me from all the seemingly unsolvable problems in the news right now. The first piece was an Associated Press article that said John Updike had won a lifetime achievement award from judges of Britain’s Bad Sex in Fiction Prize, “which celebrates crude, tasteless or ridiculous sexual passages in modern literature.”

The article said that Updike has been shortlisted for the prize four times in the contest’s 16-year history. He lost out this year to a British writer, Rachel Johnson, who wrote in her satirical book, Shire Hell, of a woman in the midst of a “mounting, Wagnerian cresendo.”

As a writer, I’d like to think my best sex scenes have yet to be written, but when I finally do get them down, I could do worse than vie for a prize that has been awarded to the likes of Sebastian Faulks, Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer.

The second mind-settling article I read yesterday was Tucker Carlson’s piece in the Daily Beast, “Why Are Christians Having Better Sex Than The Rest Of Us.” In it, he points out that according to a multitude of studies…

A daily romp is healthier than yoga, a five-mile run, and a handful of multivitamins combined. Sex has been shown to ameliorate memory, posture, depression, anxiety, insomnia, menstrual cramps, digestion, bladder control, dental health, and the sense of smell.

It’s a natural analgesic that also reduces the risk of prostate cancer and heart disease. It lessens the incidence of colds and flu. It burns calories. Overall, according to a 1997 study in the British Medical Journal, men with the most active sex lives have a death rate half that of those with the least active. Sex prolongs life.

Yay! Some good news! Finally!

So yesterday, when I’d hit my limit, when I’d read, watched and listened to all the crisis news I could stand and it seemed like maybe there really is no end in sight to the layoffs, and bailouts, and closures, and Sarah Palin coverage, I discovered a new, sanity-saving philosophy that will no doubt carry me through whatever lies ahead: In my darkest hours, there are worse things I could do than grab a little lovin’. But probably not many better things.