The 24/7 Enigma

Look at yourself, if you dare. What strange combination of wild genes and willful theft caused you to end up this way? How in the world did an otherwise garden variety ape lose his hairy overcoat and his sexual restraint and end up like you? Bare naked and blessed with 24/7 sex and pretty much unable to cope with it.

Well, granted the full time sex thing was nobody's fault; just a few genes run amok. Probably came in handy in the tussle between the early folks and those lumpen Neanderthals who had a bad attitude about newcomers. Fortunately those big gorilla's gals only came into season periodically (like any decent mammal actually) and so they avoided the women folk the rest of the time. Hah! Easy for the busy breeders to gang up on them and, well you know who won the laurels (and the real estate!).

About the theft thing. Maybe theft is too strong. Call it borrowing, really long term borrowing. (Of course everybody knows it was really stolen.) Yeah, yeah, blame it on Prometheus, poor old guy gets the blame every time. No, the early folks took it, the fire secret that is. Seemed the thing to do at the time. Look what it's led to, though. Another mixed blessing!

Now fire's a bit dicey to handle in your big furry overcoat so not much happened with it at first. But one day some little bundles of joy came along sans overcoats, starkers that is, and the game was on. All that bare skin! My, my, what next?

Our horny cousins, the Bonobo apes, gave us a run for a while in the eros department. They were really no match. Not with those tiny little patches of bare tush. What a joke. We have acres of lush, soft, silky epidermis and full time amor. No bothersome overcoats. Well just a token patch... for auld lang syne. Like the deer's white tail, a signal flag to keep everybody interested and alert.

Okay, just one of these deals, full time 24/7 naked sex and/or the secret of fire is enough to give any self respecting ape, whoops, human type, a world of grief. Both things together is a big, big pain. And it doesn't get any easier. There's this business of putting on and taking off of our surrogate overcoats. Clothes, that is. Big waste of time and energy, weaving and skinning and sewing. And the rules!
Oy vey. How much, how little, when ,where, on and on ad nauseam. But they had to have some cover up to keep order in the cave and make time to sweep out the joint and find something to eat.

Ah, truly a burden all this bare skin and full time sex business. But if they were only content with a nice bonfire , a decent barbeque, some new clothes... but no. Not to be. Got fire, all nice and warm, keeping the beasties away at night too, women folks close at hand, so now what? Well, the old cave and those same old ladies was getting boring, the kids were noisy, had to get out and have a look. See the world. Make some new stuff. Lots of stuff. Do things.

Thus it began.

THE BEGINNING