Some Like it Rough

It wasn’t that she was too drunk to know what she was doing. We’d only been in the club for an hour and she was still sipping her second drink.
It wasn’t that I was jealous. No indeed – I certainly didn’t want him for myself. Definitely not!
It wasn’t that his accent suggested he was from one of Dublin’s less salubrious suburbs. Plenty of good people grow up without money and only unreconstructed snobs think otherwise; besides which it’s not like my childhood featured Mercedes Benzs and show ponies either.
Nor was it that he was wearing a wife-beater and a tacky onyx ring – although that didn’t help.
No, it was more that she’d met him when he tried to sell her drugs. That and the fact that Johnny was missing a tooth and had a scar down the side of his face. He looked rough – and that of course is why Triona was attracted to him.
The sexual attractiveness of rough trade of is something I don’t really understand. Granted, I’d be unlikely to bed a preppy accountant in a pink shirt and Pringle jumper, and I like guys with tattoos and long hair as much the next girl, but really bad boys – ones that get into fights, spend their disposable income on smack and are on first name basis with their local gardai – they leave me cold. It’s one thing if your sexual partner sneaks off in the middle of the night, but anyone who may sneak off with your TV, DVD player and credit card as well is best avoided.
From an evolutionary psychology perspective, my feelings make perfect sense. According to this branch of research, apparently, human beings aim for the best sexual partner they can get. First off, this means that whether we’re straight or gay, want children or abhor the very idea, we all like people whose physical appearance suggests fertility.
In some ways sexual attraction is quite narcissistic: most of the time we like people who remind us of our first loves – ourselves. We are drawn to those who come from a background similar to our own, who hold the same religious and political views, whose physical appearance is about as good as our own and who have as much education. Any great deviation from this and we tend to think that we’re in different leagues and that one of us could do ‘better’. That way lies misery, and most of us avoid it.
Psychologists have found that, in relationships, most women prefer a man whose seems stable and dependable – the kind of man who will change a nappy now and then and not spend the grocery money down at the bookies. For casual flings and one-night stands, we’re most likely to go for hotties. But Triona’s drug dealer was neither, and I just couldn’t see the attraction.
Triona doesn’t take drugs and is a nice-looking girl who is well able to flirt. She was hardly desperate for male attention. She could do better, and generally does. But sometimes, despite the best efforts of evolution, we prefer to go downmarket – like a Michelin-starred chef stopping for curry fries on the way home.
A quick scan of celebrity scandals shows that this is common enough: Hugh Grant and Divine Brown, Jude Law and the nanny, or George Michael cruising in public conveniences – all rich, all successful, all well able to do better, if that’s the word.
I got thinking of this when the Tiger Woods scandal broke. Now, the fact that a fit, attractive, multi-billionaire sportsman strays on his wife is not particularly surprising. But the women he chose were.
A man like Tiger has access to some of the most beautiful women in the world – actresses, models and pop stars, many of whom would have had plenty of reason to be discreet. But who did he chose? Waitresses, porn stars and club hostesses. Not a single one of them as attractive as his wife if you ask me, and quite a few them as rough as bears’ arses as the expression goes.
Of course, men aren’t always particularly fussy when choosing a partner for a one-night stand. Quite frequently, proximity and availability are the key. But Tiger allegedly had lengthy affairs with some of these women – giving them monthly stipends and flying them across America to meet him at tournaments. I don’t get it – why shag the same tacky-looking, fake-tanned, fake-boobed wannabee when there are bound to be plenty more wherever you’re going?
Am I just being unkind? Looking for answers I consulted psychologist and relationship therapist David Kavanagh. The attraction, he says, is all in the taboo.