The Foxhole #3: My Wife's Surprising Secret

Plus Descartes, Hokusai, and Bread Dildos...

Note: Some of the links in this article are NSFW.

Note #2: “The Boss is Away So Let the Fox Play” Sale is still happening, but it ends at 11:59pm EST tonight. Click the link to get maximum Bystandin’ at a discount, plus limited-time reprints of all our issues.

Today, during a rambling early-morning phone call, a friend and I were debating whether The Legend of Rene Descartes’ Animatronic Daughter was fair game for a sex column. 

My position? “Oui.” 

I find it fascinating that the first modern philosopher–a man who was wary of passion and emotion, and emphasized the importance of a rational worldview, “I think therefore I am”—was rumored to have designed and built a wind-up mechanical mannequin of his deceased daughter, Francine. 

Dude supposedly took it with him when he traveled. He wound it up at night to speak to it. It “slept” in a coffin-sized box next to his bed. 

“You only find that kind of commitment in a sex thing. Bare minimum a sex-adjacent thing,” I told my friend. “But we’ll never know. It’s not like ol’ Rene would have written that down.”

Then the conversation shifted to shunga (Japanese erotic art) and how Hokusai—he of “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa”—created some very NSFW art. For example, “The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife”, shows a woman sexually intertwined with two octopi, father and son. 

How do we know they’re father and son? Well, Hakusai wrote a little squishy flash fiction to go along with his art.

“Hokusai, and shunga in general, make the genitalia highly detailed and ginormous,” I said. “Phalluses the width of Coke cans—” 

My friend interrupted my TEDx talk. 

“I wonder—how often is normal to think about stuff like this?”

(I can tell when I’m being shamed.)

“Well, I’m mostly interested in it as anthropology.”

“Uh-huh.”