with Bingo Night. The woman's dedication was undeniable. The proof was all up there on her fridge calendar, like some diabolical Master Plan. Every bingo night in the city. Cataloged and accounted for. Complete with directions and estimated travel times. May 15th @ 7:30 p.m. (basement of St. George's) There's strength in numbers but peace in solitude. Hence the paradox of social life Freud ably described in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930): we need the strength in numbers that comes with social life, but, at one and the same time, social life makes demands upon us that often make us miserable. A species composed of rugged individualists who really didn't need each other would have gone extinct long ago. We're not particularly strong or fast. Like bees and ants, our strength is derived from our amazing ability to work together. But why bother when people can be so annoying? Because we need them. This leads me to suspect that evolution selected for human neediness. Among other things, this explains the voracious nature of human sexuality. Unlike tigers, bears, and salamanders, who only have sex during the mating season, we have sex all year round. What's more, we have a great deal of sex that's clearly not going to result in pregnancy (e.g., gay sex, straight sex after menopause, etc.). This suggests to me that sex's primary purpose has long since transcended procreation. Sex renders us needy and draws us to others; it makes us far less self-contained than we might otherwise be. In other words, sex gets us out of the house. Love takes us out of ourselves and into the world. It makes hunters of us all. The greatest loves of our lives are like spoils we bring home from the field of battle.

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