I notice, Rick, I notice.

We’ll talk about this later.

President Hu Jintao – also his nation’s Paramount leader, General Secretary of the Communist Party, and Chair of the Central Military Commission -- certainly is one of the world’s most important politicians, listened to and heeded wherever he goes. Hu, moreover, is a learned man, admired for promulgating a Confucian moral code about what self-controlled citizens in an “Harmonious Society” should regard as an honor and as a shame. Nonetheless, up to now he has not spoken, one way or another, in public at home or abroad, about (let’s be blunt about this) female orgasms (there! I wrote it -- and online at that.

Lucian Freud, Rick, and I turn to Hu as he coughs, leans forward, and puts this question to Elisabeth Lloyd: “How to say this delicately? The female orgasm -- whenever and however it occurs -- it is necessary for fertility? That’s its purpose, is that correct?”

Again, not necessarily. Elisabeth is careful to caution, “My view isn’t necessarily the right explanation. It’s just that at this time, it’s the best explanation that’s supported by evidence.”

What the evidence to date does suggest is that “female orgasm is NOT correlated with any aspect of fertility, pregnancy, or reproductive success, according to the evidence we have.” Contrary then to what purpose-seeking evolutionists have declaimed, the clitoris and female organism have not necessarily been “improved” or “adapted” by natural selection over time for better performance in fertilization.

Elisabeth has a caveat: “Of course sexual pleasure and stimulation is adaptive. The clitoris itself is adaptive in its promotion of intercourse and in its stimulating sexual excitement and lubrication and all of that. It’s clearly adaptive. But there is simply no evidence that the physical reflex of orgasm itself is adaptive. That’s a very important distinction. If that were the case, orgasm would correlate with an increase in the number of children. The women who are orgasmic would have had to have contributed more genes to the future.”

At present then, Elisabeth sees the sexual excitement of a female orgasm as just a happy accident.

Brightening, Hu says that if the male is sufficiently caring of his female partner, inciting her orgasm via her clitoris, assuredly he has proven himself worthy. In effect, Hu continues, that lover is the traditional Mr. Right: he has demonstrated that he will be caring and responsible, first as a mate and later as a father. “That inciting enables us to conclude that the orgasm, assisted or not, does serve a reasonable purpose, namely pair bonding. Elisabeth, that’s correct, isn’t it?”

Again, Elisabeth: “It seems intuitive that a female orgasm would motivate females to engage in intercourse which would naturally lead to more pregnancies or help with bonding or something like that, but the evidence simply doesn’t back that up.”...

(We're really into it. I’m sitting on our couch, taking in the flow, the opposite of being bored as hell. I’m flexing my disgustingly huge ego, jubilant that Barb and I somehow managed to attract and hold this set of luminaries. Their high ideals seem more important to them than their robust egos. Besides using terms like ‘charismatic’ or ‘energetic,’ it’s hard to describe people you appreciate. So I’ll just say they fill the room.

(Additionally, I’m relishing the affable banter between Billy Graham and Bob Geldof. They’re just foolin', not riding each other hard. When one of them seems to put on airs, the other zings a friendly insult, and that’s enough to sand-down the other’s rough edges. It’s not so much what they say as how they say it, how they play well with others.

(Before I retired a decade ago, all the time I’d give and receive the same sort of ribbing with work buddies. We’d keep each other real.)

Billy acknowledges that he has had faults and missed opportunities. Some of the many thousands of conversions to Christ that followed his sermons may have been short-lived. Billy regrets that he did not always bring the Gospel to the White House -- Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter could be “prickly.” Billy’s concerned too that some clergy scorned his moderate and inclusive teachings, i.e., fundamentalists have found him insufficiently conservative for a southern Baptist. Billy laments a 'with us or against us' disposition that is out there.

As the talk gets around to the meaning(s) of God, Joan of Arc pitches in. At one point, a maxim she offers sounds like something provocative from the outdoor marquee of a church: “Lying in bed and saying ‘Oh God’ is not the same as going to Church.”

Bob likes that, and in turn Joan likes that he likes that remark. Billy laughs and says something indecipherable.

Bob re-frames the discussion to the Church in the past and organized religion’s misuse of God in medieval wars. He is stumped about why good people do bad things in the name of religion. He seems open to the possibility that divinity could exist without religion.

Joan glowers at Bob as he holds that “The world doesn’t need any more Christians…” She relaxes, however, as Bob finishes his thought, “any more than the world needs more Buddhists or Muslims." Bob glances at Billy, as if to reference him for introducing the notion earlier, "What the world now is more compassionates."

You can't argue with that, and I think we've hit a dead zone in conversation.

Barb is visual-minded and eventually inquires into a prayer-wheel she’d heard about, one that Billy distributed at one of his New York crusades. Billy describes how you could turn a dial to questions on the outside of that wheel -- for instance, “Have you had personal sorrow?’ and ‘Do you hate someone?’ A window on the wheel then would cite the Gospel text that provided an answer. At best, Joan and I are only indifferent to the wheel. In a friendly way, though, Bob reaches over to tap Billy on the back, “Dude, that’s cool, technologically and aesthetically.” Billy thinks of the wheel as “a handy and simple self-help guide.”

Later, Barb’s interest in watercolor painting comes forward when we dive into art and religion. She’s familiar enough with religious subjects (like Bellini’s angels, Durer’s virgins, and Raphael’s Madonnas) -- only she hasn’t put them into her own artwork, at least not consciously. Joan, evidently now on one of her favorite turfs, tells us about faithful relationships that Giotto, Michelangelo, Leonardo, et al. had with God. She regrets that the era of great religious paintings ended with Venice’s Tiepolo.

Joan is on Picasso’s case for declaiming that “God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just keeps on trying other things.” For Joan, it’s blasphemy that Picasso equates himself with God, even if the painter is only teasing.

Concepts in play now include "heal,” "care," “charity,” "salvation," “redemption,” “spiritual,” “eternal wisdom,” and "God's love." Joan at one point throws in “firmament” as in “God’s firmament,” a word I associate with hymns. Can’t remember which one, though. Surely it must be in more than one hymn.

Then we take up the recent wave of books by tenacious anti-religionists such as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. Visibly Billy is the most stirred. With eloquence, he disavows those writers’ ideas of an impersonally originated universe. He mentions Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne’s use of a probability formula known as Bayes' Theorem to place the odds of Christ’s resurrection at 97 percent. Still, Billy does not insist upon "sufficient evidence" of divinity that this Oxford chap (Swinburne) provides or that Hitchens et al. demand. And later by invoking assorted lessons from religion, Billy demolishes their argument that a broad education in religious faith is 'child abuse.'

True eloquence may make fun of eloquence (folk saying), but nobody here tonight outrightly mocks Billy’s stand.

Barb does remark that skepticism and religiosity can co-exist within an individual.

Joan says that an emotional need for faith cannot be denied.

In response to the question about whether God is dead, Bob points out that there's no conclusive way to disprove the existence of God. But then he gets in a quasi-jibe, good-naturedly of course. When Billy remarks “I'm for morality, but morality goes beyond sex to human freedom and social justice,” Bob allows that “Beyond Sex” would make a great title for something.” Just as calmly, Billy bespeaks, “Maybe even better than ‘Boomtown Rats’?”

Appreciating our giggles and grins, Joan says that “laughter is god-given. It reduces blood pressure, it lowers stress hormones, it increases muscle flexon, and it raises the immune function by boosting levels of infection-fighting T-cells and disease-fighting proteins which produce disease-destroying antibodies.” Each of us takes a deep breath and laughs again, which prompts Joan to characterize us as “triggering the release of endorphins, the body's natural painkillers. See? We’re each producing general senses of well-being.”

I register silent surprise as I hadn't realized Joan was into smiley or scientific stuff. Is her occasional laughter a mask for her deep pain?

With regard to laughter’s benefits, vocal agreement comes especially from Billy who says he used to begin sermons with funny stories.

The five of us then have a number of back-and-forths on the bombastics of Hitchens and the other anti-religionists, the charged’ tone of that atheistic vanguard, and the counter-itch that pulls folk toward God.

Ultimately pressed to declare myself on matters of the soul -- and this on an empty stomach -- the best I can quickly summon is this: “As a Christian, I prefer the anti-religionists’ chaps’ frontal attacks…I value their directness ahead of agnostics’ flapdoodle. It seems to me that agnostics merely pretend open-mindedness to uncertainty about God while underneath generally they’re concealing an arrogant disdain for believers.” That’s my little speech.

(Actually, I didn’t say that -- it’s what I wished I’d said. What I’ve just typed is a highly edited version of my stumbling-around. As a result, I've not paid attention to or noticed the last five minutes of talk. You see, I‘m not always a reliable narrator.)

Then, out of the blue, I hear and smell a fart. No one claims authorship.

‘Tis a good time to move on to the next room for dinner at 8. Barb goes to the kitchen for last-minute preps and to move dishes to the table. Everyone looks starved.

Joan says we have "touched on" a lot of things. I tell myself that her touched-on description means our approach has been too scatter-shot for her taste: we haven't even begun to 'cover' our holy topic.

When I get a signal from Barb, I say, “Church on the move,” and everyone digs that slang for “It’s time for our group to leave this location.”

Billy is first through our French doors and into the dining area. I wonder if he's always first through doors.

Rick tells the Chairman of the U.S. Professional Bowling Association that “A friend of mine met his future wife at a bowling alley -- actually, at a beauty pageant in a bowling alley.”

Which friend? which future wife? I muse. I so muse because, well because you know what ‘they’ say about couples who have been together as long as Rick and I have: that we already have said everything to each other. But here my hubby is announcing something I never knew about. Nice.

I discern a young-man’s perkiness in Chris Peters. He gets the autobiographical give-and-take rolling by asking if Danica Patrick could tell us how she became interested in her daredevil sport. “Auto-racing,” Chris beams, “takes far more courage than rolling a fairly heavy ball across a greased floor.”

Danica seems to intuit that Chris genuinely wants to learn about this, and is not just being social. She replies, “My father used to race snowmobiles, midges, motorcycles…He met my mom at a snowmobile race on a blind date. We’re very much a racing family…”

Chris says fathers have been supportive of top bowlers too. For example, Kelly Kulick -- a woman who made bowling history in Chris’s PBA league not long ago -- was encouraged by her dad, for whom she works in an auto-body shop.

Danica endorses Chris’s allusion to Kelly Kulick with a smile, and returns to her narrative: “It’s just racing. It sounds so goober, but I just don’t think about it.” Hmmm. From our kids, I know that ‘goober’ means ‘goofball,’ but that may not be Danica's connotation.

James Dean is eye-balling Danica. She refuses the lighted cigarette and ashtray he offers to share. He looks like his feelings are hurt.

Rick is not immune to Danica’s charms either. He is paying more attention to her than to our other guests, even more than he paid last month to Joan of Arc.

Danica, it develops, is an endorser for all sorts of commercial products, including PEAK Antifreeze. Rick professes an interest in winning PEAK’s upcoming sweepstakes. He wants to be 1 of the 15 fans to whom Danica will give driving tips during the Pole-Qualifying Weekend this coming May. Thereafter, each of the 15 will drive a single-seater around the Speedway. To qualify, evidently all you have to do is send in proof that you have bought PEAK antifreeze.

Not long ago, Rick saw a horrific car crash. Since then, he has become a very cautious driver, almost pokey. I can scarcely envisage him tooling a single-seater around the Indy…

I am handing this blog biz over to Rick for now -- one or two things to do in the kitchen...

Leaning towards Dietrich, Anna Amalia lowers her voice, “My husband was very gentle.”

Anna Amalia asks if Rick and I are married, and when I specify that we are and that we had two sons and a daughter, she asks if we married once our kinder were old enough to be part of the ceremony.

Earlier, I had noticed that Kenny Chesney twigged to the mention of annulment. Now he says that after a four-month courtship in 2005, he had wed the Hollywood star, Renee Zellweger. “I remember coming back from the wedding and we landed in Little Rock, Arkansas. I had a show. We didn't have a honeymoon, you know? Welcome to Little Rock, Baby! Happy Honeymoon!”

Another four months later, Baby filed for an annulment, citing fraud as the reason. The couple believed that was the broadest of the available legal reasons that could be filed in her home state of California.

It must be difficult for dual celebrities to make a go of it. And then there is that gentleman's code, 'Never badmouth a lady.'

According to Kenny: “The only fraud that was committed was me thinking that I knew what it was like...that I really understood what it was like to be married and I really didn't."

(Allow me this aside: My Rick here is one of those billions of men who love being loved and loving, even in a long-term marriage. But my girlfriends -- we call ourselves “The Golden Girls” -- tell me about bachelors who are busy entrepreneurs, state judges, teachers, et al.) who are commitment-phobes. These guys also have shows coming up, always. They are happy boozing, working, staying up late, traveling, doing jock things, dating Babies-of-the-moment. The complicated relationship and lifestyle of marriage and fatherhood simply is not on those guys’ ‘To-Do’ lists. Like, Kenny has to spend months on tour with the 100 full-time employees of Kenny Chesney Inc. Hence I can understand why he has taken –- at least for now -- an Incomplete in Long-Term Marriage.)

Dietrich jumps in with a reflection on his own experience, much of it as a widower and father of three: ”I was rarely at home, often inaccessible. And when I was at home, I had to work [study scores, familiarize himself with composers as persons and with the times in which their work was created, develop an interpretation that is original]. I was subservient to this work. I was its slave…One tries again and again to scale back, to make adjustments, to fulfill one’s obligations…But in the final analysis, I don’t think it can really be done. You have to make the sacrifice, and unfortunately others are a part of this sacrifice as well. It is a bitter lesson, which everyone in my position will experience. I think the same thing has happened to everyone who has seriously devoted himself to Music...”

How should I react to Dietrich's lesson? Well, people (other than my sister who had to endure hours of my practicing) used to tell me that I could elicit mellow tones out of my clarinet. But now -- as happens most days -- I am glad that I did not seriously devote my whole life to music. I do not verbalize that opinion in front of our guests, though...