The Archetype of the Pig

There is a very old and dirty joke among guys between 10 and 90 years old that begins with an anxious patient who tells the doctor about his fear of being a hermaphrodite, of having both female and male organs at the same time. After an accurate inspection, the doctor, puzzled, asks, “I’m sorry, I don’t see any female genitalia, where is it supposed to be?” The patient, beating his forehead, answers, “Always on my mind.” This joke — a dirty version of a well known saying among women about men being pigs — hit the headlines regarding the extramarital affairs of the Afro-Asian golfer Tiger Woods, come back to his sport in April after a long absence.

Even those who don’t care about golf — or those, like me, who had to unwillingly abandon it because of a slipped disc as a result of twisting like a grapevine in an attempt to hit that tiny ball with a very long club — had to follow the drama of this fabulous champion, beaten up by his gentle and very betrayed wife. According to the latest statistics, the number of mistresses — waitresses (his favorite), bar pickups, porn stars and so forth — with whom this true Tiger slept (or made out with against parked cars) numbers around twenty. A nice showcase of trophies.

Tiger Woods would be the archetype of the “pig,” and a few gross details of his affairs — I’ll spare you — would reinforce that definition. But in today’s America, these gross judgments no longer are seen as such. Collecting quick affairs, and some of them while his beautiful wife was pregnant with their second child, is considered an illness, like pneumonia, osteoporosis or the flu, possibly in this case the swine flu. The devil as the first motor of temptations and vices is no longer trendy, and today drinking bottles of liquor, stuffing yourself with hamburgers, french fries and frappes and making out with a waitress against a parked car are syndromes, pathologies and addictions.

Our Tiger is a clinical sex addict, or should we say compulsive sex addict, treated and, as it seems, healed in a clinic for horny people by antidepressants and chemicals like the clomipramine, which have, among their side effects, double-vision. We may hypothesize that seeing two women at the same time will confuse the patient until he or she calms down. This gross joke is actually a profound clinical intuition, even though some doubts remain about the epidemiology, symptoms, and the possible triggering factors. Is it contagious? How widespread is sex addiction? How does it show? Are some people immune, or just immune carriers, potential “pigs” but, being ugly or losers, find no way to express themselves? Does making $100 million a year, like Tiger Woods, make the conditions of the patient worse, since he’s exposed to a continuous viral load of girls and women generously available to heal his symptoms? Do women suffer from this, too, or are they just the innocent targets? And how do you recover? Do you lock the patient in a bedroom with seven shameless naked ladies, like the heroic saints of the ancient Christian martyrdom, seeing if he desires them, or if he instead ignores them to follow a documentary on TV? The fundamental thing is that medicine has given the poor male patients the answers to give to their irritated wives. I’m sick, honey. You can’t beat up a husband with a fever and pneumonia. It would be inhuman to smash a plate over the head of a boyfriend who suffers from heart disease. Two pills, a week in a rehab center for those who suffer from this tremendous (but not unpleasant) pathology, and everything will be alright. I knew I should have stayed with the golf, disc or no disc.