hard at work

There will come a day when women lose all interest in men. The need for protection will diminish, as will the physical attraction towards the very features that made men indispensable for the first couple million years.

As such, procreation will become more and more challenging. And if we’ve learned anything about evolution, it is happy to pivot if the survival of the species is in jeopardy.

So it was that the male genitalia underwent a rather dramatic transformation. It went from a fleshy thing designed for consensual intercourse to something resembling a stinger, straight out of the wasp playbook. The more time passed the larger and more terrifying it became.

Now females, perhaps begrudgingly, also had more than a passing interest in continuing to churn out more offspring. They just weren’t that excited about it involving men. Once again evolution jumped in and created a region of the female brain that would jump-start the baby-making once it felt the release of a certain set of chemicals.

This is a nice way of saying that men would feel a primal imperative to drive their newfound stingers between the eyes and through the skull of a female when she was least expecting it.

The writer pushed back from his desk and tried to wrestle with what would come next. He had already been paid to write the script for an adult film and his deadline was fast approaching. Porn was not his first choice but the Sci Fi Channel wasn’t returning his calls. He wanted to do something innovative but he wasn’t sure if the studio would have any interest in his premise.

He picked up his empty coffee mug and strolled to the kitchen. After a quick rinse he put it in the dishwasher and then made the usual trek to the garage to put on the prosthetic stinger that he’d fashioned for himself out of plastic and foam. Once it was secured over his penis he felt a familiar flood of endorphins.

Obviously this way of reproducing was painful, but not terminal. Along with a baby came a small scar on a woman’s forehead and a larger one on her psyche. Scars that no amount of chocolate or flowers could remedy. It created an awkward tension between the sexes to say the very least. Comedy all but disappeared and courtship was no longer the stuff of romantic movies. In fact it was usually preceded by someone yelling “Look out!” whenever a woman removed her helmet. Fashionable helmets taking up at least as much room in a woman’s closet as her shoes. Hair dressers all but went out of business and the same could be said of dating apps.

“Look out” he repeated to himself a few times in a tone that sat somewhere between sultry and apologetic. He slowly made his way up the step ladder he’d acquired for just such an occasion and looked down on the female mannequin below him. For some reason he preferred to come in from above.

There were, of course, women that blamed themselves for this radical change in how civilization now perpetuated itself. “Maybe we played a little too hard to get” they would offer up. There was another group that considered themselves lucky, considering how some wasps paralyze their prey and then lay and egg inside the host. An egg that eventually consumes the unfortunate victim. “Things could be worse” these women would say.

“Much, much worse” the writer said before launching himself onto the mannequin. Moments later it was done. He would pretend it was research, but he deep down knew better. “Back to the grind” he would eventually say as he zipped himself back up. “Grind” he thought with a laugh, “what an ironic choice of words.”