Prongscald has lately found himself wondering why after 200,000 years or so of vigorous human coitus that the current era has become characterized by a mandatory, not to say Stalinist, regime in which all humans must be known chiefly by their sexual proclivities. If such a categorization was ever necessary, it seems like something that should have been done a long time ago.
Prongscald—whose family name by the way does not derive from the main symptom of an STD or urinary tract infection, but is from early Danish, and means something like “liar” or “teller of bawdy tales,”—thinks this recent and incessant focus on overt and exaggerated sexuality is a sign of some more general derangement in Western culture. It hardly needs to be said that in almost any form or instance of media, there will be articles, films, videos and Tik Toks (whatever they are) whose main purpose is to extol the virtues of the new sexual license. And it is not just licentiousness that gets Prongscald’s short hairs standing, but the insidious idea that one must be exposed to and then heartily approve each and every one of the different ways men and women can canoodle each other.
Alas, Prongscald admits that his age many be a factor in not finding himself thrilled by the amount of attention he is forced to spend dealing with the inescapable topic of sex every day. On the other hand, he also thinks that this trend has recently come to a climax of sorts, one that should give us pause. Prongscald refers of course to the very public and disconcerting courtship of Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson. And he wonders if some of the absurd attention lavished on this new coupling is in part because it makes others squeamish as well and that he is not the only one who finds Ms. Kardashian’s new love interest an odd and nearly sexless duck.
It was bad enough before the uncomely Mr. Davidson arrived on the scene, as Prongscald followed Ms. Kardashian--that avatar of full-contact, fertility-goddess grade sexuality, a woman whose exaggerated curves pose nearly insoluble problems in geometry—as she dated men who were not Prongscald. But at least in those days her choices were young, vigorous athletes who could shoot and dribble.
And then came Mr. Davidson, who reminds Prongscald of his childhood friend, Ritchie Letwinski, who was probably on the spectrum before we knew there was a spectrum, and was given to flapping his hands when overly excited. That is to say, that Prongscald chooses to imagine, in his envy of Mr. Davidson, that Pete Davidson is what Ritchie the hand flapper would have grown up to be if someone back then had thought to give him Prongscald’s favorite book, “How to Be Cool in Ten Easy Steps.”
Prongscald supposes that Mr. Davidson must have some redeeming virtues in order to entice the voluptuous Ms. Kardashian to give up basketball. Someone other than Ms. Kardashian obviously thought Mr. Davidson was funny at one time in the past and so one might imagine that he makes her laugh in bed. On the other hand, he has not made anyone else laugh in public for a very long time, as far as Prongscald can tell, so we ought not to put much credence in this speculation.
Prongscald, frankly, gives up trying to understand why anyone would be interested in what passes between Ms. Kardashian and the unflappable Mr. Davidson when they are naked and in bed. He only wishes that we might lower the sexual temperature a bit, at least in public. It seems completely unnecessary to spend our days and evenings either watching other people hump and grind, or, talking about them humping and grinding. After all these millennia of human humping and grinding, Prongscald wonders if we can we finally change the subject.
