86 years on, this is how I see a baffling topic

Sex is the one subject we never outgrow, outthink, or get right. We spend our teenage years confused by it, our adult years negotiating it, and our later years pretending we’re above it. We are not. Attraction still ambushes us, embarrasses us, and occasionally ruins our judgment—proof that maturity improves many things, but not

this.

From the start, boys are confused.
I remember spending an entire week rehearsing how to ask a girl for a date. When Friday came, she said no—because she didn’t want to feel like an afterthought. Fair enough. Unfortunately, I delivered my invitation sounding like a hostage negotiator with a speech impediment.

Today, texting makes rejection quicker and less humiliating. Progress.

Still, the basic problem hasn’t changed. Men project confidence while privately feeling like impostors. Women hope for sincerity while dodging awkwardness, disappointment, and worse. Everyone wonders: Is this consensual? Safe? Smart? And yet the attraction obsession rolls on, undiminished.

So how did we end up here?

Nature seems to manage sex just fine. Salmon spawn. Bees pollinate. Mushrooms—God bless them—do whatever mushrooms do, without consulting therapists, lawyers, or in-laws. Mountain goats ram heads. Birds preen. Nobody files a complaint. Nobody ruins their life.

Which suggests an uncomfortable possibility:

We humans took a wrong evolutionary turn.

Once upon a time—about 1.2 billion years ago—life was simple. Single-cell organisms divided politely. No dates. No misunderstandings. No regrets.

Then came sex.

Science tells us it may have started when one cell—let’s call her Yvette—ate another cell—let’s call him Harry. Not romantically. Not consensually. She simply swallowed him. But instead of fully digesting Harry, she kept his DNA. Their genes combined. Sexual reproduction was born.

I apologize to readers hoping for a sweeter origin story. There was no flirting. No candlelight. Just cannibalism with long-term benefits.

And those benefits were enormous. DNA mixing made life more resilient. Disease resistance improved. Evolution sped up. Complex organisms—eventually us—became possible.

So yes, sex gave us romance, passion, poetry, and pleasure.
It also gave us jealousy, heartbreak, scandals, Epstein files, and headlines that make you shake your head and mutter, “We should know better by now.”

But knowing better has never stopped us.

Yvette and Harry didn’t debate appropriateness. They didn’t think at all.
Looking around today, it’s not clear we’ve improved on that part.