Polygamy, monogamy with repression, monogamy with affairs, monogamy with prostitutes, serial monogamy. Auden's flare for finding call-boys in every town. Picasso who simply refused when wife and mistress demanded he choose between them. Then there is always the hair-shirt of course. But perhaps the thing to remember when you wake up with a life full of fresh paint and tortuous complications is that eroticism wasn't invented for you, nor merely for the survival of the species perhaps, but for a divinity's entertainment.
Nothing generates so many opportunities for titillation and schadenfreude as eroticism.
Which is why it lies at the centre of so much narrative. And your friends are watching too. Your antics have put the shine on many a late-night conversation. On the borders between mythology and history, that wily survivor Odysseus was the first who learnt to trick the gods. And perhaps his smartest trick of all was that of lashing himself to the mast before the Sirens came in earshot.