Like many people, I ask myself continuously about some of life’s biggest mysteries. Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? Why do we have those strangely sparse, wiry little hairs growing around our genitals—hair that is singularly different from all the other hair on our bodies? Fortunately, a group of leading-edge scientists have managed to put my mind to rest on at least one of these daunting existential questions. In recent years, it seems, researchers have made some tremendous advances in the study of pubic hair.

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There is a man—a very well-known man, a legend of sorts—whom I’ve been privileged enough to have seen on occasion through the years at various venues and events. (Never mind his reputation. To protect my career, he shall remain anonymous.) Our exchanges have been pleasant enough, I should say—inconsequential, really, and empty of any real substance. Now, as an admiring subordinate, I have enormous respect for this person. I suspect I probably also have a mild envy given his vast and ever-lasting contributions to our shared discipline. But our first interaction, which lasted mere seconds, left me with a rather negative, viscerally based impression of him.

For years I’ve tried ridding myself of this deep-seated, queasy, blue-in-the-gills feeling that accompanies any mention of his name, any vague allusion to his ubiquitous theories or ideas. It’s all to no avail, though. That appendage of his on that fateful day over a decade ago at some banal academic conference was as revolting a thing as ever I’ve had the misfortune of holding in my own. And I’ve held a lot of unpleasant things in my hand, I hasten to add. But his grip was so exceedingly limp—as limp, I would imagine, as the collapsed dorsal fin of a newly dead porpoise. His hands and nails were oddly well-manicured and soft, betraying a cosmetic interest that I would associate more with a geisha than a man of his years and status. And his hand was warm; a little too warm, like a squid warmed in the microwave or the feverish foot of a sick infant. Together, the full sensation of that thing in my own eager, clasping, acolyte hand has never left me.

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Now that I’ve written at some length about the curious evolution of the male reproductive system in our species, I thought it only right to devote a column to the natural origins of a biological mechanism that doesn’t involve the Y chromosome. Well, at least it doesn’t have to. Needless to say, the subject of female orgasms isn’t exactly my cup of tea. As a gay man, it’s always seemed rather exotic and foreign to me, sort of like decorative basket-weaving in a small African village. As far as I know, I’ve never even been in the same room as a woman having an orgasm, let alone given a woman one.

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Earlier this year, I wrote a column about evolutionary psychologist Gordon Gallup’s “semen displacement hypothesis,” a convincing hypothesis presenting a very plausible, empirically supported account of the evolution of the peculiarly shaped human penis. In short, Gallup and his colleagues argued that our species’ distinctive phallus, with its bulbous glans and flared coronal ridge, was sculpted by natural selection as a foreign sperm-removal device. As a companion piece to that work on our phallic origins, Gallup, along with Mary Finn and Becky Sammis, have put forth a related hypothesis in this month’s issue of Evolutionary Psychology. This new hypothesis, which the authors call “the activation hypothesis,” sets out to explain the natural origins of the only human body part arguably less attractive than the penis--the testicles.

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My mother used to say, “there’s somebody out there for everybody.” It sounds sweet, I know, but when you realize she would say this only in jaw-dropping astonishment at seeing a loving couple out in public in which both partners were, shall we say, aesthetically shortchanged in some eye-catching way, my dearly departed mother somehow doesn’t sound like such a Polyanna anymore. But she got it basically right. When two people are in love, the world whittles away to them alone, and as new research findings suggest, a mere reminder of that other person can make everything seem a little more manageable—even, as it turns out, physical pain.

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Gay people are often asked by the curious: When did you first realize you were gay?” In my case, I remember undressing my Superman doll--and being terribly disappointed at the result--as well as being motivated to befriend the more attractive boys in third grade. But hormonally speaking, it wasn’t until I was about fourteen that I first looked in the mirror and thought to myself, ah, that’s what I am all right, it all makes perfect sense now.

It wasn’t much of a mystery. After all, lust isn’t exactly a subtle thing. Back then I derived as much pleasure from making out with my “girlfriend” as I might have from scraping the plaque from my dog’s teeth. In contrast, barely touching legs with a boy I had a crush on sparked an electric, ineffable ecstasy. In the locker room after high school gym class, I forced myself to picture naked girls in my head (particularly my girlfriend) as a sort of cognitive cold shower, a pre-emptive strike against an otherwise embarrassing physical response. I could go on but you get the idea: whether or not we like, hide or accept what we are, our true identities--gay, straight, bisexual--consciously dawn on each of us at some point in adolescence. We all have a natural “orientation” towards sexual contact with others, and for the most part we’re just hopeless pawns, impotent onlookers, to our body’s desires.

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At some point over the course of this human life of yours, you may have noticed that wherever there is a trail of woe, God is curiously afoot. At least, since God is often seen both as the cause and the cure of misfortune, the belief in God seems especially likely to be stirred up in the wake of some personal or naturalistic calamity. But just why is it, from a cognitive and evolutionary perspective, that belief in God and the experience of suffering are such natural bedfellows?

If you’re a believer, you might cringe at this sort of scientific question. I’m as put-off by the smugness of atheists--at least, a certain contingent of atheists--as is your average religious fundamentalist. Usually, when people believe they’ve found a sympathetic atheistic ear in me, I just focus my attention somewhere between their eyebrows (if you do it right they hardly notice) while they gab away about why religion is the root of all evil, until they get it out of their system.

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Buon giorno from Florence, where I’m presently under the Tuscan sun—sizzling like bacon, I should add—as a hive of awestruck, pale-legged American tourists wearing Nikes, cargo shorts and Polo shirts descend with digital cameras at the ready on the Renaissance city’s signature Duomo in the Piazza Della Signoria. As for me, I’m at an overpriced cafe with a “Coca-Cola Light” in my hand; in the square before me, a bedraggled carriage horse has its great tethered head to the ground, warily inspecting some lime-green gelato spilled moments ago on the cobblestones by a fussy little Australian boy. If I were of a literary rather than a scientific bent, I would find these scenes inspiring; Dante himself couldn’t imagine a stranger hell than his beloved Florence stuffed with such exotic modern characters, pigeons whiffling overhead. Instead, I’m gazing out across this piazza and wondering how many psychopaths there are milling about out there, the cleverest of whom often go unnoticed.

What prompts this strange thought is my earlier visit to a lesser-known tourist attraction here in Florence called “The Museum of Serial Killers.” After all, once one is finished marveling over masterpieces like Michaelangelo’s David and Botticelli’s Birth of Venus in the famed Galleria Dell’Accademia and the Uffizi, it’s easy to get fatigued by all the religious iconography in this city. I found myself standing before fantastic, gilded works by the Italian masters and muttering, “Just another Jesus,” and “Oh, it’s only Mary again.” (What a pity so many artists of that age concentrated their talents so heavily on so few subjects.) So, though it's sensational, The Museum of Serial Killers offers respite from these more venerable Florentine sites. Unfortunately, it’s also as tacky inside as its name on the marquee promises, mostly waxworks of notorious psychopaths such as the 15th century French sadist Gilles de Rais, a smiling and unctuous Ted Bundy leaning against a fancy sports car, even a disturbingly realistic reconstruction of John Wayne Gacy’s suburban living room—complete with decomposing corpses beneath the floorboards.

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It’s my impression that many straight people believe that there are two types of gay men in this world: those who like to give, and those who like to receive. No, I’m not referring to the relative generosity or gift-giving habits of homosexuals. Not exactly, anyway. Rather, the distinction concerns gay men’s sexual role preferences when it comes to the act of anal intercourse. But like most aspects of human sexuality , it’s not quite that simple.

I’m very much aware that some readers may think that this type of article does not belong on this website. But the great thing about good science is that it’s amoral, objective and doesn’t cater to the court of public opinion. Data don’t cringe; people do. Whether we’re talking about a penis in a vagina or one in an anus, it’s human behavior all the same. The ubiquity of homosexual behavior alone makes it fascinating. What’s more, the study of self-labels in gay men has considerable applied value, such as its possible predictive capacity in tracking risky sexual behaviors and safe sex practices.

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