We learned about family planning with the help of Makati City Hall, the Department of Health (DOH) and a wooden phallic symbol.

After enduring government-mandated mental torture with a Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) pre-marriage counselor for the better part of the morning, my fiancée was ready to lubricate the wheels of City Hall bureaucracy just so that we could avoid the afternoon session with a representative from the DOH.

“But pangga (dear),” I pleaded. “We have to attend the afternoon session! It’s about family planning and responsible parenthood!”

“Tell them you will get a vasectomy!” she fumed.

“But there’s a big surprise during the session, I promise you!”

“What!?” she folded her arms. “A free Pap smear!?”

“More than just that, pangga!” I beamed. “Two years ago, a friend of mine attended the same pre-marriage session, and he said that the health official showed them something that has greatly aided in their marriage.”

My fiancée smirked. “And what exactly is that? Edible underwear? Chocolate body frosting? A face mask of Piolo Pascual?”

I scanned the area to make sure no one was in earshot. Then I turned back to my fiancée and whispered in her ear, “It was a wooden penis.”

My fiancée quickly reached into her handbag and pulled out her cellphone. “Dad, you were right about him. Please call the authorities. We’re still here at City Hall.”

“No, no, no you don’t understand.” I waved both my hands furiously in front of my face. “I mean she uses it for demonstrations during the family planning session!!”

“Stay away you sick &^$#^%@! I have five-inch heels and I am not afraid to use them!!” she shrieked.

“But we need that wooden penis, pangga! And not just for illustrative purposes, I might add.”

“We!? Weeee!? What do you mean we!? Why in God’s name would we need a wooden penis!? Is there something wrong with the one you already have!?”

I edged closer to her. “No, no it’s nothing like that at all pangga. I mean –”

I tried to explain further but it is hard to string a sentence together when five-inch heels make sudden contact with your right scrotum. “We… need… it… for… fertility.”

“Why, what do you plan to fertilize? A Barbie doll!? You’re a sick sick man!”

After several minutes of rolling around on the floor in a fetal position, I finally moaned a reply, “Pangga, that wooden penis has magical powers of fertility. Think of how effective it will be, I think, for a stressed person like me.”

“You think you’re stressed!?” she said while popping several pills of Norvasc. “I’m the one who has to marry a person who thinks a wooden penis can make hocus-pocus!”

I cupped my groin. “Pangga, before you attack my left scrotum, please hear me out.” I breathed in deeply. “I have unusually high cholesterol levels for a vegetarian. I have irregular sleeping habits. I have a stomach that breaks down more regularly than a secondhand truck on Edsa. I go to the bathroom every thirty minutes. I cannot sleep with the lights off and without yaya beside me. I have lost enough hair on my forehead for me to lease space to Shoemart. I am a victim of constant groin injury. And now, you and I are getting married. I am the product endorser for stress. And stress can cause impotence. Promise.”

“Are you saying that I am stressing you out!?” she growled.

“Noooo pangga of course not!” I insisted as a few thousand hairs on my head made way for more real estate.

“And what, pray tell, makes you think that magical wooden penis will help?”

“Those wooden penises are like fertility symbols! They go back many generations and cultures!” I reached into my clutch bag and pulled out a dog-eared copy of my book The Natural History of Love. “Look here! On Velia, one of the first hills of Rome, there was a temple dedicated to the Mutanus Tutunus who was represented in the form of a penis.” I flipped over a couple of pages. “Then here, in Tantric Shavaism, the lingam is a phallic-shaped symbol of worship for the Hindu god Shiva.” My fiancée flinched. Ah, I had her on the ropes, I thought. “And in the Philippines,” I proudly declared. “We have a symbol that is not only worshipped by souvenir hunters worldwide but also provides hours of lowbrow entertainment. Our well-endowed spring-loaded wooden barrel man from Baguio! ”

She rolled her eyes. “I wonder if we can still cancel our contract with the church.”

“Pangga, my friend tells me that after his wife visited the wooden penis, she has been pregnant every year since they got married. In fact, he has to take out a restraining order on her or else they might have a basketball team!” I gushed.

My fiancée’s eyes grew large. “You are NOT taking off that chastity belt my dad gave you when we get married.”

“Think about it, pangga! After our visit to City Hall, our babies will be more ubiquitous than the posters of Bayani Fernando on EDSA.”

She sighed. “And what are we supposed to do when we see that wooden penis? Light some incense? Give it a floral offering? Show it some dirty magazines?”

“Well, we’re –” I coughed. “We’re supposed to rub it, pangga. Vigorously.”

And her other foot found its way to my left scrotum. After I had regained sensation in my nether regions, I continued my explanation. “Love, these symbols have miraculous powers when you rub up against them! Promise. It’s like when you rub a rabbit’s foot for good luck. Or when you rub Buddha’s belly for good fortune. Or when you rub the Blarney Stone in Ireland to get the gift of language. Ask any teenage boy, he will tell you that vigorous rubbing always produces good results!”

My fiancée lifted the cellphone to her ear and muffled her mouth. “Dad, are you near? He’s scaring me.”

“And if that health worker is more accommodating, baka (maybe) we can have some take home pa! In Naples, Italy, there is an image of Saint Guignole who is depicted with a large erect, uhm, symbol which is referred to as ‘the Holy Member.’ Women actually approach the image and scrape off a splint from the Holy Member as a conception charm! You can do some scraping of your own in City Hall.”

“Please, for the love of God, stop before I make sure that both of us cannot have any children through regular means.”

“But that’s not all, pangga!” I raised my index finger into the air.

She smacked the side of her head. “How can there be more?”

“The wooden penis can also help ward off evil spirits!”

“What else can I hit you with so that you shut up?”

“No, really! Really! Did you know that in ancient Rome, they worshiped the phallic God Fascinus? Their children were made to wear erect penis-shaped amulets with wings to avert the evil eye,” I enthused. “Maybe after the DOH gives me that free vasectomy, they might also give us a matching pair of souvenir wooden penises that we can wear around our necks! Imagine what you could ward off with that amulet – muggers, kotong (corrupt) cops, Dirty Old Men (DOMs)! Heck, I’d be scared of you too if you wore a wooden penis around your neck.”

She pulled her cellphone close to her ear. “Dad, call the SWAT Team. Malala na ‘to (This is too much).”

“Think about it. That DOH representative must keep a wooden penis on her person wherever she goes! It’s with her when she takes the bus to work, when she goes to the grocery store, when she takes merienda, and when she goes to sleep at night. Man, she must be the safest woman in the world!” I flipped my arms into the air. “And aside from being a teaching device and an amulet to ward off evil, the wooden penis has other uses as well. It can be used as a conversation piece! As a confidante! And, when the need calls for it, an embarrassingly lethal weapon.”

But before my fiancée could reply, my face was crunched to the ground while a chorus of SWAT police boots rained down my back. “Fascinus, protect me!” I begged.

“Can I borrow your night stick, officer?” my fiancée’s eyes glowed fiercely. “I would like to show my husband another use for a phallic symbol.”

Later that afternoon, after my fiancée tired of showing me the several hundred ways that a batuta (nightstick) can be used on a human body, the SWAT escorted both of us into the family counseling session. I slumped down on my seat and sat beside an engaged man who looked old enough to be my grandfather. “He must have a life-size Baguio barrel man at home,” I thought. I looked up from my seat and saw our DOH representative scribbling on the board. While she scribbled away, I spied an unfamiliar bulge in her left pants pocket. “Fascinus, protect me.” And I smiled a toothless smile to myself.

But before the lecture could start, an announcement rang out in the PA system. “For the armed men who are inside City Hall: You are strongly advised to vacate these premises immediately. We have captured your photos with our closed circuit television cameras and we will not hesitate to send these pictures to the media if you attempt to commit any acts of violence inside the building.”

Normally, this type of announcement would result in my involuntary bladder discharge. Fact is, most of the people inside City Hall at that time must have spontaneously soiled their underwear when that announcement was blurted out. But as for me? Ha! I was as calm as our Chief Executive. After all, I was under the protection of a wooden penis.

Did you know that ninety-seven percent of all mammals are polygamous by nature? Unfortunately, my three female readers, even if you complain to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources about it, men will never belong to the monogamous three percent (And with a diabolical grin plastered on their faces, several hundred men furiously scribble down this factoid with the hope that they can use it when loss of limb is imminent).

Men and women have always been on that quixotic search for that “one true love” whom they will form a lifelong bond with that will not require shackles, illegal substances and cattle prods. many societies value a culture of monogamy, so much so that monogamy has been elevated into the form of religious doctrine, valid law and corporal punishment.

But most monogamy laws are like most local laws: just because it’s there, it doesn’t mean it has to be followed. And men, if the book is to be believed, have the propensity to be unfaithful. In one of the many polls on infidelity, seventy two percent of married American men claimed that they’ve been unfaithful. We wanted to conduct our own survey among Pinoy men, but whenever we approached them questions, they would look around nervously and retort, “Sinong nagpadala sa inyo, yung asawa ko (Who sent you, my wife)!?” then scamper away cursing.

Monogamy just doesn’t seem to be compatible with the male operating system, despite the constant threat of dismemberment. According to The Natural History of Love, the reason that men have the tendency to meet, mate and stray (even when cattle prods are involved) is because men have a different set of biological priorities from the female. And, because the discussion was going to end up here anyway, let us take the example of the male ejaculate.

An average man’s ejaculate can shoot out at twenty eight miles per hour, which is faster than most cars trawling EDSA during rush hour. Can you just imagine the type of pressure that is building up in the average man’s gonads when he is standing at attention? At that speed, his ejaculate could puncture tires, take down slow-moving mosquitoes and cause eye injuries (or so I have been told). Well, you would probably feel that much pressure inside your bikini briefs if your ejaculate contained about two hundred million sperm. Theoretically speaking, that means that the No Girlfriend Since Birth (NGSB) seated beside you holds an army that could conquer this world twenty times over and maybe even some neighboring planets. That is unless he has bought latest issue of FHM this morning.

(As an aside, I participated in several novenas during the Holy Week and encountered a practice that made me question my examination of conscience. During the tail end of one of the novenas, the prayer book said I should perform several hundred ejaculations. This was something that I had counted on doing, was not keen on doing, and probably did not have the capacity to do in front of all those parishioners. But being raised in a strict Catholic school, I was taught in religion class to “Believe or burn in hell.” I later found out that, in grammatical terms, an ejaculation is an utterance that expresses a feeling often in the form of an exclamation. Oh well, I will never be invited to a novena prayer again.)

This is where the struggle between men and women is constant, a struggle that is more constant than deciding who should be in charge of the remote control at home. Because of the colossal pressure that is building up inside a man’s pink parts, a man has two choices: to follow his biological dictates and spread his DNA by impregnating as many females as possible before he is shot down, caught, tortured and turned to mulch; or to spontaneously explode. If I may be cruder than a noontime game show host, this is because a man’s biological imperative is to ‘love’em and leave’em’.

Meanwhile, from a Darwinian perspective, a female can only produce one egg a month and has a limited, usable supply of these eggs in a lifetime. If she becomes pregnant, she will be more vulnerable and less able to support herself over the next mine months. On top of that, she will nurse and look after the child for years. Therefore, it is in a woman’s best interest to choose a man who will not lie about spontaneous explosion and stay with her to support the child. If I may channel the demi-goddess Oprah, this is because a women’s biological imperative is to find a man who will stay put with her or else he will need to be put down.

Roosters have an even better excuse to crow about infidelity: Because Colonel Sanders demands it. A rooster can copulate with more than sixty hens in one mating period He cannot however, for reasons that even Colonel Sanders is frustrated with, mate with the same hen for more than five times in one day. By the sixth hen, Foghorn Leghorn can’t even get his cock-a-doodle to doo. But if the rooster is presented with a new hen, his drumstick will rise again to the occasion. They even have a name for this cockamamie conundrum: Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps call it the “Rooster Effect” (duh). According to the book, this is nature’s way of making sure that a species survives and propagates, until it finds its way to your dinner plate. This gives a new meaning to the word Chickenjoy.

So, are there alternatives to male infidelity, my three female readers? Should you just contemplate a vow of celibacy? Should you try to evolve into a hermaphrodite? Should you take a pair of rusty pliers to a man’s philandering body parts and show him what it means to sacrifice for monogamy? I guess you should know that there are other ways to cure a man’s infidelity that does not involve the snipping of pink parts – and that cure is with rats. Or voles – a ratlike rodent – to be exact.

Researchers from Emory University have been doing some interesting work on the genetics of attachment and pair bonding among voles. The first type of vole is the prairie vole. He is the type of vole that makes all the other voles look bad. Why? Because this irodent that belongs to the three percent. The prairie vole comes packaged with monogamy software built into his genes. To install the software, the prairie vole needs requires a twenty-hour mating period (At this point, do you still think I am making this up?) with the female prairie vole. But after reaching a climax that would make Sting feel inadequate, the male prairie vole enters blissfully into reclusion perpetua with his impregnated partner. No threats to pink parts need ever be made again.

In contrast, we meet the prairie role’s pabling (playboy) cousin the montane vole. Although the prairie vole and the montane vole share ninety-nine percent of the same genes, the montane vole makes Ramon Revilla look like an amateur when it comes to infidelity. After mating, the montane vole shockingly abandons the female instantly after mating, and has no role in raising the offspring whatsoever. And, even more shockingly, no researcher has documented the length of a montane vole’s mating period (Hoy, ‘di ako magpaptalo kay prarie – Montane vole).

The saving grace behind the prairie vole’s monogamy (Yes, I assure you it is a saving grace. Forget what the D.O.M.s have told you) is a hormone called ‘vasopressin’ that is released when it has intercourse. Emory University scientists measured the vasopressin levels in both species of voles. They discovered that, although both types of voles had the same level of vasopressin hormones, the receptors for these hormones in their brains were different. Scientists further discovered that if vasopressin is suppressed in the prairie vole, he will grow some sideburns, swagger like a drunk, start making porma to the first female vole he smells and proclaim, “I don’t know what you did to me, but line me up for two more shots!” On the flipside, these scientists inserted a vasopressin suppressor into the montane vole, which rendered him as monogamous as his prairie cousin (And with a diabolical grin, several hundred women furiously scribble down this factoid because inserting vasopressin suppressors might be cheaper than chopping off limbs).

But before they could start mass-producing vasopressin suppressors and injecting them into the Pinoy male population, a rabid pack of D.O.M.s and roosters stormed the laboratories, freed the vasopressin suppressed prairie voles (“Volare my friends! Volare!” the D.O.M.s hollered. “Bok! Bok! Bok! Bok! Bok!” the roosters cawed), and razed the lab to the ground. (“Never again.” the D.O.M.s cried while reaching for their inhalers. “Never again.”)

My three female readers, may I recommend a stopgap measure that will not only protect you from random acts of D.O.M. terrorism, but will also protect hapless monogamy-happy from further vasopressin suppression research? And it even makes good use of “The Rooster Effect”. A little caveat, though: this solution may only be employed those who are matrimonially bound, or else I will burn in hell.

For argument’s sake, let’s say that you and your husband exercise your biological imperative five times (if he is able to exercise his imperative five times, he would probably not be able to exercise it with anybody else). After the fifth time, you revive your husband with smelling salts, and he suddenly blurts out:

“Pangga (Dear), remember what we read about the rooster effect?”

“What are you trying to say, sweetheart?” you reply.

“Well, this is our (ubo, ubo) our fifth time to consummate our marriage this evening.”

“I see,” you sneer. “And you want to see if it’s true?”

He shrugs his shoulders (and whatever body part he can still shrug). “Weeellll….”

You smirk. “Go ahead. Try it out.” And its your turn to shrug your shoulders. “I’ll even pay for it!”

His eyes grow large. “For the woman!?”

“For the chicken.”

(And, somewhere out there, vasopressin suppressed prairie voles are laughing)