the japing ape

Another evening tending bar at the safari guesthouse, and I witness our guests discussing the thorny topic of how lesbians should procreate. The women favour the use of sperm banks and mechanical squirting devices, but the men reject this method as unreliable and mean-spirited. The broody lesbian, they argue, should interview potential fathers face-to-face and allow the successful candidate to impregnate her, not necessarily face-to-face. 

“Having sex with a man is the only sure way of knowing who the father is,” says one of the men. “You can’t trust a sperm bank. They may say the donor is a Nobel laureate, but he might be some snotty-nosed teenager who walks around with his butt cleavage showing. Letting a man do the business is safer and more natural.” 

“You just like the idea of sleeping with a woman who won’t expect anything from you afterwards,” declares one of the women in a somewhat accusatory tone. “What you don’t understand is that being penetrated by a man is unnatural for lesbians. Why would they willingly go through such an ordeal?” 

The men seem offended by this question. “If lesbians hate penises so much how come they use strap-ons?” asks one of them. 

“Because they’re permanently hard and easier to clean,” replies one of the women tartly. “Lesbians don’t hate penises anyway. They just don’t find them exciting when they’re attached to the body of a man.” 

The debate fizzles out without consensus or conclusion. I breathe a sigh of relief that I have avoided involvement, either as mediator, adjudicator or advocate. I know little about lesbians and their mysterious ways and might have exposed myself to derision by making a schoolboy howler. On the reproductive question, I would say that a woman is entitled to put whatever she wants up her cha-cha (within reason). How lesbians reproduce is nobody’s business. 

Yet like most things which are nobody’s business, one is very curious to know. 

My readers will have heard of Jodie Foster, the Oscar-winning actress. I always thought she had a singularly pretty face for a woman who found the male of her species unappealing. I believe she has given birth to several babies of indeterminate male parentage. The manner of their conception was kept a closely guarded secret. 

Now suppose we bribed some random fellow to publicly claim fatherhood of Ms Foster’s children. She would only issue an immediate denial if she were certain of the real father’s identity, and had presumably allowed him to mount her, which is something even a lesbian might endure in a good cause. But a delayed response would imply that she was making frantic enquiries with her sperm bank, which would have to check that our stooge wasn’t a disgruntled former employee who substituted his own man-goo for that of Ms Foster’s preferred donor. These things can happen in the best of sperm banks. 

I admit such a ruse would be roguish and unethical, but can anyone think of a better way of winkling it out of her? 

A Japanese government minister says he believes in UFOs. Hats off to the man for speaking his mind rather than telling people what they want to hear. He may still be talking codswallop, of course. If alien spaceships have visited the Earth, their occupants have been pretty cagey about the whole thing. I don’t know about you, but if I’d travelled half way across the galaxy to a new world, the first thing I’d do is make contact with the local chiefs. I’d present them with the finest gifts that the Solar System has to offer – sparkling gemstones, pompadour wigs, antique nose-hair clippers and so forth. If they had any sense of hospitality, they’d then feel obliged to give me a suite in their swankiest hotel with 24-hour room service.

Anyway, I announced this piece of news at the safari camp, whose guests included the American comic Orlando Jones. Professional comedians go on vacation to take a break from being funny, so I wasn’t expecting anything more than polite conversation. I told him Japan’s defence minister was mulling over the legality of using military force against flying saucers.

“If they’re not bothering people, why not leave them be?” asked Mr Jones. “Let them do their research and stuff and go home.”

“Some people claim to have been abducted by aliens,” I replied. “They say they were removed from their beds at night and taken to a spaceship.”

“No shit, what they do to them?” asked Mr Jones.

“They say the aliens surgically milked their gonads so they could use the sperm or eggs to make new humans.”

“Aww man!” exclaimed Mr Jones. “That’s a ASSAULT! First thing I’m doing when I get home is order a dessert from Burger King. If the aliens sneak up on me at night I’m saying ‘Hey man, there’s a whole ice-cream cup of my man-goo on the table. Take as much as you need, baby, coz I ain’t into your shit with the knives and the tubes.’”

How everyone laughed! Mr Jones quickly got into his stride to brighten up the evening with more jive-ass humour.

On due reflection, the aliens are probably wise not to give conclusive evidence of their presence. Just imagine how the devoutly religious would react, first conferring with their learned beardies about what it all meant, then proclaiming the aliens were fulfilling some ancient prophecy about Armageddon or the Horseface of the Apocalypse. If I were the alien leader, I’d be tempted to announce I was a prophet and give them a new holy book saying that God wants his children to pretend they’re atheists… apart from Dicky Dawkins, who has to host a new Praise the Lord TV channel.

Even the non-believing types would be pretty disturbed about the whole thing. Deep down, most humans are anthrocentric. For all their faux self-criticism, they’ve got used to thinking of themselves as the smartest dudes in the universe. Finding out there are 1000 more intelligent life forms in the galaxy, of which 921 are prettier and funnier as well, would be a crushing blow to the human ego. I bet a lot of these aliens also have incredible sex lives, with orgasms lasting over an hour. That might be the bitterest pill of all for humans to swallow – especially for a certain type of woman who is strangely jealous about that kind of thing. Don’t ask me why.