Oy! The Virgins!

So there I was at the gym, doing the elliptical. Trying to keep down the tonnage...

And who’s up on the screen? Justin Timberlake. Some video. I have no idea which one. They all look the same to me. But then, I’m not a teenager who can distinguish the subtle differences between throbbing pop offerings.

But there it was, the video, in all its unoriginality. Justin, singing at a mike in some kind of bar, with his homies backing him up (obsequiously, naturally) and there, in the room, dozens of dancing women for him to choose from.

He chooses some. He dances with one in particular. But clearly, it’s all about him having the choice of many.

Is this fantasy any different than the Muslim one of forty virgins at death?

Seems to me, at the fundamental biological level, that men have a fantasy of having a load of women at their disposal. Is it distasteful? To some, sure. Is it wrong? No. It just is. Men are like that. If they weren’t like that, the species would not continue.

So, no need to put down the Islamic men who are waiting for their virgins in heaven. It’s not much different than the video fantasy that was in my face at the gym. It’s just that we’re a material culture so we actually make our fantasies come true, or at least play at them in front of the camera and sell it on television.

The longer I watch human beings collide, the more it seems to me that most behavior is just plain biological. It gets expressed differently in different cultures, but the root is the same.

In fact, the most ludicrous acts or the strangest customs, when deconstructed, end up about as prosaic as someone trying to pick someone up at the grocery store for sex. Or for food. Or for both.