And he's causing a helluva fuss. Ever since he wrote It's the Demography, Stupid! last year, and then expanded it into America Alone, it feels as if he has singled me out to personally save civilization by breeding. And as if that's not scary enough, my biological clock now ticks in his unusual pseudo-British voice.

I am bombarded daily by walking watermelons in the office, oversized prams blocking the sidewalk on my way to Saturday brunch, this week's Macleans with the cover screaming "Hey Lady! What will it take to make you breed?" and myriad other not-so-subtle hints.

It's normal to feel persecuted by my own ovaries. I'm thirty years old, healthy, moderately content with life (a massive improvement over how I felt in my twenties!), and female. My brain knows what it wants out of life, but my basest physiology is very much in tune with biology and survival of the species. How in tune? The Steyn-Clock only starts ticking in the presence of an Alpha Male. I am happily married to the world's most wonderful Beta Male, but Mother Nature and Mark Steyn have advised me that it's my ovarian destiny to breed super-children with an Alpha Male. And there's no fooling Mother and Mark.

It's usually easy to ignore. After all, I live in Toronto. Not a lot of Alpha Males here. So Im able to go about my business, scowling at the Yummie Mummies taking up valuable rush hour space on the subway or at the endless streams of welfare baby-mommas taking up valuable oxygen that Al Gore says we'll be out of soon. Mr. Right - beloved Beta Male - and I can joyfully and selfishly coexist, with the cats and the dog for unconditional love and (I shamefully admit) the occasional miniature designer outfit. We would be a deplorable parental duo. Both of us far too focused on our own issues and interests. Both of us lazy. Mr. Right is an excellent parent to me, wrangling the demons of my childhood that I carry with me. He's warm, caring, infinitely patient... but would forget a baby in the bathtub or even the grocery store. I have all the necessary instincts - right down to waking in the middle of the night if I hear one of the kitties being sick - but I would be one of those women you read about and shake your head, the one who drives her minivan full of kids into a lake.

But put me in the vicinity of an Alpha Male, and my ovaries stand up and salute! They sing the Star Spangled Banner. Five minutes with an Alpha, and I'm picking out names. Hawaii was a nightmare for a child-phobe like me - surrounded by the very best America has to offer in the form of Army, Navy, Marines and yes, even the Air Force. Not to say that every one of them is an Alpha - far from it. But the available percentage was much, much higher than under normal circumstances. So there I was, in Paradise, surrounded by Alphas, with Mark Steyn screaming from my nether regions. When it comes to my biological makeup, I'm no better than a cat. Gross.

The biggest problem is that Mark hasn't quite figured out that we're home now. We've been home nearly a month. But still all I hear is tick-tick-demography,stupid-tick....

Labels: Alpha Males, Biology, Demography, Mark Steyn, Science, Sex