Harmonized Humping

I once had an occasional girlfriend who, as she approached orgasm, was wont to howl like a cat. (And quite often a cat would howl back – or maybe it was some other woman in the same street similarly in extremis, or a combination of both. Who knows? ) However, over time, I also became aware of another concurrent background sound: The Cuckoo Waltz. Albeit a very Muzak-like rendition of it.

You often hear the expression “Music played for us” when sex is discussed. Notwithstanding, in these circumstances one usually expects something rousing like a Mozart number or the finalé of the 1812, certainly not a cheap, tinny tune. So at first I persuaded myself that what I was hearing reflected my own personal degree of satisfaction. This is because, to be quite honest, while she was obviously enjoying herself, I wasn’t much. But that’s by the bye.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, subsequent investigation on my part revealed that there was actually nothing otherworldly about the music at all. In fact, it was the woman’s key-ring fob: one of those designed to respond to sound so you don’t lose it in the dark or under a pile of clothes. When she produced a specific pitch, it would automatically activate and play. For a time, therefore, it proved a useful gauge of exactly how well I was performing. But all things come to an end. As the battery died, so, too, did the relationship.

Looking back on this, though, I sometimes wonder: if the musical accompaniment had been any better, would I have felt more satisfied? Had it played, for example, the entire score of Man of La Mancha or Oklahoma, might I have been so engrossed by that that I’d have overlooked the mediocre nature of the shag, such that our brief union not only endured but went to fruition, with marriage, children, and all the rest? Quite possibly.

In my opinion, therefore, producers of i-Pods and MP3 players should offer an additional service to couples whereby a salesman or saleswoman goes to bed with one or both of you and gives an assessment of exactly how good the subsequent sex is. Then they’d sell you a package corresponding to its quality, or lack thereof. So, for instance, a really lousy lay would entail the purchase of an advanced i-Pod with the ability to store 50 or more of your favourite albums to take your mind off it, while something truly superlative in the sex department would require only a cheap MP3 device playing Ave Maria on a continuous loop.

Of course, if you couldn’t get it up at all, you’d probably need the entire London Philharmonic Orchestra on a daily basis, which would be quite costly. On the other hand, I suppose you could recoup some of the money by selling the broadcast rights to the BBC. Watching some couple attempting and failing to have sex, set to Land of Hope and Glory or Jerusalem, would make for far more entertaining television than The Last Night of the Proms. And, on the up-side, at least the “party poppers” would go with a bang.