Twenty-three females and a male braved the wind and rain on the wind-swept desolate west coast of Barren Island to hear the public lecture by visiting sex therapist, Dr Camille Hunter.
A celebrated feminist, lesbian and mother of four, the charismatic 43-year-old draws huge crowds wherever she speaks on the international lecture circuit β but the small town of Windy Bay is not on the circuit.
The sex expert was home visiting her mother and had been persuaded to present an admission-free exposΓ© on male sexuality. However, most of the island's good people and the bad preferred instead to go to a bar or to stay home and watch either 'Cooking with Jules' or 'Hot Chicks Mud Wrestling' on television beamed across from the Mainland.
Camille looked quite chic, dressed in a gold lame trouser suit and with a wide green headband to keep the glorious waves of chestnut flicking her flint green eyes.
Her opening greeting, "Howdy, folk β been getting your share?" was greeted with embarrassed tittering. In this community, sharing details about sexual activity is quite unusual.
According to Camille, the three great questions hanging over the world today are:
Was there a Big Bang and if not, what did happen?
When cometh Armageddon?
and
How often is normal?
"Well, folks. Would you care to give me your views on how often is normal? This is the only one of those perplexing questions I am qualified to discuss with any credibility."
An elderly woman in the front row, Mrs Peters, called out, "I've forgotten."
Liz, her daughter, blushed and helped to ease her mother's embarrassment by saying, "Once of month."
"Any ups or downs on that?" asked Camille slyly, but humour is thinly spread on Barren Island where Dour actually is a family name.
"Twice a week and thrice on pension pay-out week that is the last week of the month," said Mrs Dour. "Extra income coming into the home seems to make my Freddie more frisky."
"You sir?"
"Twice a night but it's rather rude of you to ask," snorted Stewart Hart, school headmaster.
"Hmmm," murmured the disbelieving Camille, looking at the near retiring age educationist, who flushed under her scrutiny."
"Well, less frequently," he admitted.
"Right, that gives us an idea, so let's examine the question. 'How often is normal.'
"My husband will come to bed randy after watching an adult hire DVD and we have sex; this happens once a month, and he's happy and I'm happy. Yet, I have two girl friends that would pound, finger, and toy away at me all night if I were agreeable; they are insatiable, and only steop when keeling over from exhaustion.
"Is that healthy? I think not; excessive behaviour rarely is."
Camille said she wanted to ask another question.
"Please answer this one in two bites β How long does your partner say his dick is and how long do you think it is? I mean when it's fully erect."
Mrs Peters: What's a dick?
Her daughter Liz: Eight inches but I reckon perhaps just six.
Stewart Hart: Mine measures seven so naturally I think it's seven.
Polly Prentice: Ian claims six inches but I think it's only four; it barely gets to the back of my mouth.
Lucia Peron: It feels like ten inches, especially when it's in β¦.umβ¦the secondary channel; but he claims only seven and a half.
Mrs Dour: Some years ago when my Duncan was hit by lightning and got an erection; he reckoned it reached six inches when it was belching sparks and smoke, but five would have been my guess.
Molly Wyoming: My bloke says two, and I think that's about right. There's very little difference whether it's hanging or stiff and he has trouble finding it on cold nights.
Pip Street: Rex my brother boasts ten inches, but he's always been a liar. It goes into me so easily I could take as much again, so I'd think five or six inches, but really it's thickness and the way it's used that counts.
"There you go, everyone," declared Camille.
"Pip's hit it on the head. Men are tossers with their fixation on length. Give me a shortish, thick one any day over a long slim Jim, or for that matter even a very long thick one. I like feeling it's there, but the over-bloated sensation that comes from excessive dimensions makes me puke, truly.
"Right, let's get on with it. The ideal size of a penis can be determined by answering how long is a piece of string and what thickness should it be.
"The reality is whatever it's size, if it's doing a good job it doesn't matter.
"If I were so lucky to be getting reamed twice a night or even every alternative night, I would be very pleased to know the visiting dick was six inches or a bit less and that my thumb and first finger could comfortably encircle it β when it's outside my vagina, I mean.