Sex

That's right: Sex.

Our topic today is: Sex.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “Dave, I have not personally had sex since the Macarena was a thing. This topic does not concern me.”

Yes it does, and I will tell you why: babies. We’re running out of them.

We used to have tons of babies in this country, back when I was one. This was right after World War II. Millions of American men had spent the war years cooped up in all-male military environments such as submarines and platoons, while millions of women were part of an overwhelmingly female factory workforce wearing unflattering bib overalls and riveting bombers together. So when the war ended and the two major genders finally reconnected, the National Sex Drive (NSD) was registering 147 percent on the Horn-O-Meter. On top of which, Americans back then were extremely fertile.

Q. How fertile were they?

A. They were so fertile that exactly two weeks after this famous V-J Day photo was taken...

Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt, Life Magazine

...the nurse gave birth to triplets.

My point is that the men and women of the Greatest Generation, in addition to surviving the Depression, winning World War II and making the United States the most powerful and prosperous nation in the history of the world, were sex maniacs. You know how we Baby Boomers are always waxing nostalgic about the Good Old Days, and one of our main talking points is how much freedom our parents gave us? How they allowed us — no, encouraged us — to roam far and wide on our bicycles? How they didn’t mind if we were gone for hours? Did it ever occur to you that the reason for their laxity was not that they wanted us to become independent, but that they wanted us out of the house so they could tear off each other’s Ozzie-and-Harriet-style clothing and generate more babies?

I hate to burst your bubble, but it’s time you knew.

Anyway, the result was a massive output of babies, a.k.a. the Baby Boom. We Boomers did not turn out to be a particularly great generation; our signature achievement, when all is said and done, was Casual Friday. But we did have sex — despite being informed by our high-school gym teachers in Health Class that the most likely biological consequence of sexual intercourse was death — and we did produce babies. The problem is, we didn’t produce nearly as many of them as our parents cranked out. And the generations that followed us — Gen X and the Millennials — produced even fewer babies than we did. And now it’s looking as though Gen Z may not produce enough babies, in total, to form a regulation volleyball team.

So we’re in a baby drought.

This is bad. We need babies. Yes, they can be annoying on airplanes. But babies are an important source of adults, without whom the economy cannot function. As the older generations retire, we’re going to need millions of former babies to replace them in the workforce. If there aren’t enough of them — if we rely on Gen Z’s volleyball team to take over — then we face a total economic collapse that would lead to a catastrophic societal breakdown, including food shortages, riots, disease, mass deaths, and — unthinkable as it may seem — even longer wait times to speak to a customer-service representative than we have now.

So to reiterate: We need babies. Which means we need young people to have sex. (I mean with other young people.) Unfortunately, there’s bad news on that front, according to this Wall Street Journal article:

This article refers to a long-term university study that has been tracking how often Americans do It. Here’s a graph showing the alarming trend:

Yes. We’re in a Sex Recession. It’s happening in all age groups, but it’s especially severe among young people, who not only are not having sex: They’re not even dating. It turns out we’re also in a Dating Recession, according to this study:

The study found that most young people today — more than two-thirds of them — do not date. At all. They’re afraid to approach a person whom they’re romantically interested in because, according to the study, they “lack faith in their dating skills.” Often this is because they’ve had “bad dating experiences in the past.”

I feel for these young people. I, too, have had bad dating experiences in the past. I’m thinking specifically of a date I had in the fall of 1963, when I was 16, with a girl I will call Pam. I sat behind her in my 11th-grade English class in Pleasantville (N.Y.) High School, and I had a major crush on her. Pam was pretty. This is what I looked like:

So Pam was definitely out of my league, appearancewise. I knew this. My strategy was to win her over with humor. Girls love a sense of humor, right?

So I drew cartoons for Pam. I drew her a new one every day. The cartoons all had the same format: There were four panels, and the main character was always this weird bird with a giant football-shaped head and huge eyeballs and, for some reason, teeth. It’s the only thing I can draw; I have no artistic talent. I have re-created one of these cartoons from memory, and I am cringing as I show it to you now:

Please do not judge me too harshly. I was 16 and trying to impress a girl, and this was what I came up with.

So every day during English class I drew a new cartoon and passed it to Pam. I don’t know how she felt about this — having a nerd with a bad haircut handing her these weird, possibly even disturbing, drawings, day after day. But she always looked at them and smiled, so I believed I was making progress. I was winning her over with humor. Girls love a sense of humor, right?

After about a month of this sophisticated charm offensive I worked up the courage to ask Pam if she’d go with me to a school dance, and she said yes. I had just gotten my New York State driver’s license, so this was my first solo-driving date. I picked Pam up in my father’s car, which was a Nash Metropolitan, possibly the least-sexy automobile ever manufactured. It could legally be classified as a form of birth control:

1961 Nash Metropolitan, shown actual size

I don’t remember what Pam and I talked about on the drive to Pleasantville High, although I probably tried to be funny, because girls love a sense of humor. Here’s what I DO remember, because my brain has chosen to store this particular memory in a Maximum Security Highest Priority EZ-Access location: Pam and I were sitting next to each other on the bleachers in the noisy and dimly lit gym, watching people dance, and I noticed that there was a boy sitting on the other side of Pam, a boy from another school who’d been hovering around and who apparently knew Pam, and when I leaned forward and looked more closely, I realized that he and Pam were holding hands.

Yes. So much for the potent allure of my sense of humor.

That was, needless to say, the end of our date. After a brief, awkward discussion, Pam and I agreed that I’d drive her home. I don’t think we spoke a single word the entire way. When we got to her house, she told me she was really, really sorry. I believed her; she was crying. I told her it was OK, which was a lie at the time: I wanted to drive the Nash Metropolitan directly from her house to Siberia and never return. But in the end it was OK. Pam and I eventually got over our awkwardness, and we finished high school as friends.

Although I did not draw her any more cartoons.

So that was my first really bad dating experience. But I got over it, and I went on to have many more dating experiences, mostly good, and now, almost 63 years later, I never even think about that moment of utter humiliation in the Pleasantville High gym, except maybe three or four times a week.

My point, getting back to (Remember?) the national Dating Recession, is that dating can suck. So I understand why so many Gen Z-ers, who are dealing with stresses that my generation never faced — like how they’re supposed to be able to buy a house when houses cost 18 jillion dollars — are afraid to even attempt to date. But I hope they find a way. Because if we don’t end the Dating Recession, we can’t end the Sex Recession, and if we don’t end that, we can’t end the Baby Drought. And without more babies, as I noted earlier, we’re screwed.

Maybe what we need is government program to get our National Sex Drive fired up again, the way it was when the Greatest Generation came home from World War II and started bonking everything that moved. Am I suggesting that we re-declare war on Germany and Japan? It’s worth a try. Of course not! But we need to do something to get Gen Z dating. Maybe we could build a gigantic federal gym and hold a mandatory federal dance.

Speaking of dancing, it’s time for a quick:

WORLD CUP UPDATE

The Tartan Army of Scottish soccer fans descended on Miami this week, and they were absolutely wonderful. This is without question the happiest, nicest, most fun and sweetest large group of drunk people I have ever seen in my life.

I took this video Monday at LoanDepot Park in downtown Miami, which is where the Miami Marlins play. That’s right, the Tartan Army showed up and partied at a baseball game, despite having no idea how baseball works, which is understandable inasmuch as 97 percent of the game consists of men basically standing around.

I took advantage of this opportunity to survey some of the Scots about an issue that comes up often on this Substack. Here, in three short videos, are their responses:

So that clears that up.

Now that we’ve heard from the Scots, let’s hear — speaking of wonderful and fun — from you paying subscribers. Today we have three scientific poll questions: