Stranded on an island
Despite the fascinating and entertaining technological gadgets we have now, people watching still prevails as the primary occupation of our free time. It always will, I think, on the trains, at the airport, at school or church, in the shopping mall or just walking on the streets. My greatest encounter with free time comes on the trains. There are other contenders there for people’s spare time: dozing or sleeping; E-mailing by cell phones, or watching TV shows on cell phones; playing with electronic games and listening to music on iPods. And, the old custom of reading books and newspapers/magazines persists.
I do not have a cell phone or any electronic games, so my time on the trains here is spent mostly reading my newspapers, or else reading a novel or dozing. People watching is also one of my most common occupations. I look at the high school kids in their uniforms - some carrying sports bags, others with musical instrument cases - and try listening to their conversation. Or, I watch the young couples nuzzling each other, or the young mothers (sometimes with their partners) accompanying infants or toddlers. I watch the old passengers hobbling on and off the cars with their canes. But the most common type of people watching I do is imaginatively making mating pairs of the people I see.
If I see a group of males and females sitting on the opposite bench from me - an equal number of females-to-males is ideal - I wonder, if we were stranded on an island, which of these people would mate with the other? I mean, what mating pairs would form among strangers, how quickly would it happen, and how lasting would they be in a situation like being alone on an island? I do the same when I am among strangers on an elevator. I look at this guy who appears to be in his 20s and imagine he might pair up with that woman two spaces to his left who looks of a similar age. Then that man in his fifties at the end, he might possibly match with this woman directly across from me who looks to be the oldest of the three women on the bench. Never mind those two there who are obviously already a couple, but this high school girl over here, she is a little young, but if I had to pair her up with someone then it would have to be that guy there next to the twenty-something man because he looks like a college student and they appear to share a similar fashion sense.
I don’t think that in a situation of males and females alone on an island mating pairs would not form. It would be inevitable because sex is a universal need among both genders, not just for reproduction but for recreation. Love causes stress and sex relieves it, and being alone/stranded on an island would make for a lot of relief-seeking stress.
Why bother with such fantasies in the first place? Well, maybe it’s a substitute for real sex, like pornography. If you’re not getting any it is fun to imagine other people getting some. Or, maybe not.