Taki: why would anyone want 72 virgins? They’re useless in bed

The long lazy summer is upon us, and as I walk the Swiss hills below the mountain ranges my thoughts are always of the past, the long hot summers of long ago, girls in their pretty dresses, my father in his whites sailing around the Saronic Bay with a ball-and-chain standard flying from his main mast. It meant ‘Wife on board’, which really meant: when I drop anchor in some nearby port, local talent should stay away. Dad was famous, infamous rather, for flying that ensign, because he loved partying with loose women on his boat, and, during the rare occasions my mother would come on board, he didn’t want to embarrass her with the inevitable visitors. After his death, I would drop anchor at different islands and people would ask what happened to the flag. ‘Unlike my father, I am monogamous,’ I’d lie, and they’d invariably answer, ‘If only you could be half the man he was…’

Yep, that’s how it was long ago.