Reportedly, the retirement age for women in the sultan’s harem was twenty-two. Ouch! This is what I have either read or heard not long ago, but I cannot remember where or from whom. I just spent a while searching for the harem retirement age on the World Wide Web, but I found nothing. Have I dreamt of it, perhaps? At any rate, my interest is entirely pardonable. I was eager to learn a bit more about the reason behind the magical age. In particular, was it about women’s desirability or fertility? Or a combination of the two? One way or another, the right age certainly beats all sorts of drugs both men and women take nowadays to secure a good match in bed and beyond. As I like to say, Viagra was invented by superannuated women. The same holds for a wide variety of fertility drugs, to be sure. Although the harem retirement age of twenty-two strikes me as a bit harsh on women, it certainly says a great deal about the human species. Procreation is meant for the young, and sexual intercourse for any other reason is only a joke on Mother Nature. Personally, I enjoy that joke tremendously, and precisely as such, as a joke, but it still spells disaster for the species as a whole. Parasites that humans ultimately are, the earth can still bear a smattering of them. Whence my interest in harem retirement age to begin with.