Wednesday, February 01, 2017
A new love drug?
Many moons ago, I asked the manager of the safari camp if he used Viagra.
“You cheeky ape!” he squealed. “Why would a man like me, in the prime of my life, need Viagra?”
“Even men in the prime of their lives can suffer from flaccidity at the point of coital engagement,” I replied. “I read about this in an issue of Cosmopolitan I borrowed from your good lady wife.”
“Is that so?” said the dagger-eyed manager. “Well let me tell you, my hairy friend, that at the point of coital engagement I’m as flaccid as a flagpole made of granite. And don’t ever quote stuff from Cosmopolitan to me, it’s a highly overrated magazine that encourages women to be judgemental and dissatisfied.”
I thought of this tetchy exchange after hearing about a new wonder drug that stimulates the erotic impulse. It’s called “kisspeptin” and a trendy young journalist called Mirandi Larbi wrote this about it:
Researchers from Imperial College London injected 29 guys with kisspeptin and found that it boosted the brain’s response to pictures of couples in sexual or romantic situations.
This seems to suggest it’s a drug for the voyeur rather than the lover, but perhaps the two are closely related. I remember watching a horrifying film called American Psycho in which a narcissistic young banker watches himself on TV while cavorting with a pair of strumpets. And what about couples who have a mirror on their bedroom ceiling? You wouldn’t endure the embarrassment of hiring a workman to install one of those things unless you got a big kick out it.
It wouldn’t surprise me if this new drug becomes more popular than Viagra. I read somewhere that the blue pills give men the granite flagpole without increasing their desire to use it. That’s more like a bicycle pump than an aphrodisiac. Kisspeptin, by contrast, sounds more like one of the love potions you read about in medieval fairy tales. It ought to work for women as well as men. Although it may not be powerful enough to make a fairy queen enamoured of an ass, it might well give women the soft and gooey sensations they need to get in the mood for it. Who could possibly complain about that?
Of course, there are teething problems that will have to be sorted out, the most obvious one being the use of injections. I can’t believe humans will be desirous of hanky panky after being pierced by a sharp piece of metal. A woman doesn’t want to be thinking of needles when she’s about to be penetrated by a broader, if blunter, instrument. Creating kisspeptin pills would put the drug on a level playing field with Viagra, but I would advocate a nasal spray as the optimal solution. My old circus buddy, Smacker Ramrod, always stressed the role of his olfactory organ in whetting his carnal appetite. I would go so far to say that he thought of the nose as a secondary sexual organ.
Labels: kisspeptin, love potion, nasal spray, Viagra
