Not Tonight, Dear, the Scuds Are Coming

Israelis were angry enough that the Scud missiles whistling across the border from Iraq were destroying their homes, frightening their children and making them sleep with gas masks next to their pillows.

But now married couples are complaining that the almost nightly barrage of warheads since the beginning of the Gulf War is playing havoc with their sex lives.

Call girl services say business from frustrated male clients is booming, and the situation has gotten so grave that Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the tiny TV sexologist, has flown in to the rescue.

“You stay up so late watching the war news on TV, waiting for the attack to come, and then it never does. By that time, I’m too tired to do anything,” said Gershon Baskin, 35, director of an Israeli-Palestinian research center in Jerusalem and father of one girl.

“The best nights are when the Scud attack is early,” he said. “Then you can relax and enjoy the rest of the evening.”

Indeed, Israeli newspapers have been crammed with advice from various experts for men and women whose libidos take a dive every time the highly explosive missiles streak across the sky.

“Be creative. Try to find time for privacy at other times than the night,” Dr. Ami Sha’ked, director of the Institute for Sex Therapy at the Sheba Medical Center, told readers of City Lights, a Tel Aviv weekly.

“Even if neither partner is interested in sexual intercourse, there are other ways of being close in a sexual way, such as, for example, caressing and massaging,” Sha’ked said.

Surveys showing that the bombs generally bolster the sex drive of men while dampening the desire of women appear borne out by a sampling of escort services that advertise in daily newspapers and say the sex business is up considerably.

The Fantasy agency in Tel Aviv, which boasts “gorgeous girl soldiers home on leave” for its clients, reported that business has increased threefold even though it closes up shop at 6 p.m.