Excuse Me Miss, Are You Ovulating?

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Daniel Bergner's new book, What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire, is packed with useful information. In a previous post, I told you about women's secret predilection for porn. Researches have also discovered that the strength of a woman's desire for smut is predicated upon the time of the month when she first views an x-rated video. Women whose first exposure to porn occurred just prior to ovulation showed greater interest and excitement than women who first viewed porn in different phases of their menstrual cycle. However, the women whose first exposure coincided with ovulation maintained their level of interest in watching porn throughout the rest of their cycle, whereas those whose first viewing occurred at other times in their cycle never achieved the same level of interest. The importance of this finding did not escape Kim Wallen, the researcher responsible for this discovery: "One lesson is that you don't want a woman to form her first impression of you when she's in the wrong menstrual phase. You'll never recover."

Unfortunately, Bergner's book offers no clues about how to determine when a woman is about to ovulate. If you work for the National Security Agency and have access to the PRISM database with a complete record of a woman's browsing history, web searches, phone calls and credit card purchases, then determining her point of maximum fertility is a trivial intelligence exercise. Computer geek Edward Snowden had obviously mastered that technique to land his pole dancing girlfriend, Lindsay Mills. Those of us without a top secret clearance have to resort to more rudimentary intelligence gathering techniques. For some men, this may require them to stalk their prospective mate a little more frequently than they are normally comfortable with.

The most obvious strategy is to set up surveillance posts in the candy and feminine hygiene isles at CVS and record the license plate numbers of women buying chocolate, tampons and Midol. Kellie has pointed out some drawbacks with this methodology. She buys tampons for our daughters so the purchases may reveal nothing about the buyer's cycle. Also, the purchase may simply reflect the need to replenish a severely depleted inventory.

A more accurate technique is to sift through a woman's trash looking for telltale evidence of menstruation. This technique, while gross, is highly accurate. But it is time consuming and difficult to perform in a covert manner and therefore is not recommended unless you are pursuing a single target. The is one situation where this method could be fruitfully employed against multiple females. Research has shown that women who live together have synchronized cycles, making trash tossing an excellent technique on college campuses with a large sorority populations.

Time, menopause and the irregular use of birth control pills have rendered it impossible for me to accurately calculate the exact phase of Kellie's cycle when we first met, though I have my suspicions. Our first encounter was at the hot tub of our apartment building the night before the final court hearing for my divorce. I had not had LASIK yet and still needed small telescopes to correct my 20/800 vision. The steam rising from the hot tub kept fogging my glasses, which I periodically cleared by using my pinky like a miniature windshield wiper. Only an ovulation induced hormonal psychosis can make that image look sexy. 

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