"Chimera" - A Prologue

By Arthur Brewster

PROLOGUE

[NOTE: The reader is welcome to skip this portion of the narrative, which contains Mr. Brewster’s somewhat eccentric personal observations about sex. I have included the essay at his insistence, but against my better judgment. To paraphrase the oft-ignored editorial tag line, "these ideas do not represent those of the ghostwriter." MPB]

Men have little appreciation for the depth of the power women have over us. I’ve spent a good part of my life trying to deal with this fact, to recognize it, understand it, and, finally, to overcome it. I’ve tried to be scientific and rational in my approach to what is basically a very emotional — and perhaps even a spiritual, problem. I have reached certain conclusions.

I should confess that I am not a scientist; I see myself as more like one of those 19th Century English gentlemen, a self-educated naturalist, who simply observes, reads a little -- my modern equivalent is the Nature Channel -- and lives long enough to reflect on experience and reason. I have done all of that with curiosity and a drive to understand my life, especially as it relates to the women who were part of it. On this topic, I am frequently, as you shall see, simply a rambling fool, as are most men on the subject.

Nevertheless, I have come to believe that this power women possess derives from the needs of evolution. Women surely will be offended at this hypothesis, but I have observed that most female mammals were designed to await the roaming male and to lure him, then decide whether to mate with him. The male seems to be attracted to almost all females and will mate with any or all who will accept him. Females, it appears, are far more selective than males. The basis of their selectivity among all mammals was and, among humans, still is somewhat influenced by the genetic imperative to determine whether the male will make successful offspring. In humans, this has become slightly more subtle than with pigs, or even chimpanzees.

Primitive human society divided the roles of the sexes according to practical necessity. Generally, males being bigger and more aggressive, became hunters, or perhaps the cause and effect were the other way around. No matter, it is a fact. Females were child bearers and therefore had to stay put, became gatherers, and thus, accepted the burden of establishing the patterns for domestic social life. Males banded together, left the females with the elderly, the infirm, and small children, and went off to chase their dreams and to conquer their nightmares by killing them. They returned to tell tall tales of their bravery, to paint them on the walls of their caves, to heal their wounds, to eat, to rest, and to make new children.

All of this resulted in females needing to develop a subtle understanding of human emotions and the psychological underpinnings of sexual attraction. Female humans were not born with plumage or musk, were not seasonally in heat, but could mate far more frequently than other animals. They needed to compete for the "best" males and devised strategies for success.

From these meager facts and dubious theories, I have deduced that the pleasurable aspects of the sex act — including seduction, foreplay, infinite acrobatic positions, the wonderful variety of non-reproductive acts, the concentration on duration, multiple simultaneous orgasms, as well as cuddling afterward — were all advances invented or encouraged by the female for several purposes.

First, athletic sexuality in her mate was viewed as an indicator of virility, a necessity for evolution to progress; second, all these devices contributed to the bonding the female hoped would keep the male interested in her and the incidental goal of procreation; and third, because of her understanding of the male’s need for competition and the perpetuation of his illusion of his own sexual power. This last purpose shows the sophistication which females developed in understanding the power of emotional dominance.

Whether my theory is true (and I have no basis in scientific expertise to support it — just an accumulation of my own wry observations), the fact is that women have a far greater comprehension of their own emotions. Most men have a primitive emotional vocabulary. When faced with the need to articulate feelings, we men tend to express ourselves in terms of what we think, even when we use the words: "I feel."

Let me give you an example, which you will surely recognize, with but few variations. When in the course of a serious discussion crucial to a relationship — a conversation which the woman has begun, usually while the man is in the middle of doing something really important to him — like watching the seventh game of the World Series, or something educational like a re-run of "The Man Show" — the woman will ask: "How do you feel about us?"

If the man has lived for any length of time in the world of women — and the given proposition that he is in a relationship posits that to be so in this case — he will have a vague sense of mild alarm that something may be at stake. He will make a face, shrug, and after some thought, will say something like "I feel like we need to communicate more," in the hope that such words will placate the woman and show that he is "sensitive." His ear will still be tuned to the TV, but he will be ready to shut it off if absolutely necessary.

She will then insist: "But how do you feel about us?"

He knows enough to now aim the remote — and at least press mute. He will grope for words, perhaps take her hands in his, look deeply into her eyes, and say something like: "I feel that we are doing okay in general, but that we have things we need to work out. It’s probably my fault."

It now seems to the man that he has made a breakthrough: he has reached deep down and dredged the truth, revealed something about himself, making himself vulnerable, and therefore has shown commitment.

Not even close. He has expressed what he thinks. But the woman doesn’t want that. She has been crying, maybe whining, or screaming. She is nauseous, hyperventilating. She hurts as if she was punched in the stomach. She is in a dizzy panic as her life ebbs away. She wants to know if he feels her pain.

This, obviously, is how Bill Clinton became elected — gained the votes of more women than any candidate in history. He had the vocabulary to speak to women. It apparently made him very attractive — whether on TV or under the desk in the Oval Office.

Many men asked the logical question: How could the President of the United States risk everything for a blow job — from Monica Lewinsky, who isn’t even very attractive?

For most women, the last two clauses of that question are irrelevant, and many would cite their inclusion as evidence of male depravity. But for men, they are necessary conditions.

If the question was modified to: How could the President of the United States risk everything for a blow job — from (for example) Claudia Schiffer, who is the hottest babe on the planet? there would be no need for an answer.

Actually, Clinton’s actions were completely normal for a man. The answer is instinctively understood by anyone who knows how men behave when faced with sexual arousal.

Some scientists refer, somewhat sarcastically, to the existence of two brains in men’s bodies: the little reptilian one, which is, at such times, dominant over the larger, but more uncertain, thinking brain. Whether such an organ actually does exist, or is merely a metaphor, it is apparent that men react sexually on the most primitive level, over which our rational minds have no control and little comprehension.

Men have no long term memory about sex. No matter how many times our internal computers have crashed from being led around by our penises acting like dowsing sticks, the next hard-on always deletes the file containing the last bitter experience. In a similar way, women forget the pain and misery of pregnancy, childbirth, infancy, and, eventually, want to do it all over again. It is all chemistry, designed by Nature for the very logical purpose of ensuring procreation, and developed by the human species for far more complex, but equally natural, purposes.

The result is that when a man — whose rational mind requires law and order, truth, justice, loyalty, fidelity, and other promises he truly intends to honor — when such a man sees a woman with a jiggling rack with firm round nipples defined in the cloth of a blouse, hormones are triggered like saliva in Pavlov’s pooch, and images invade his brain unrestrained — at least for the time it takes for the synapses to fire and spread from his reptilian depths to the lobes responsible for rationalization and then action.

Many times the larger brain can wrest control, and the man goes about his business, filing away this rack among all the other racks he has encountered since his mother began nursing him. His natural sense of logic and order grades them, puts them in perspective and he goes on about the business of hunting — which in our advanced society means the hunting for business, i.e., making money.

Actually, this reaction doesn’t require a "great rack" for most men. It may be just any set of breasts, whether they are boobs, hooters, titties, or boobies. They may be a tiny pair owned by a pimply teen running for a bus or a middle aged overweight postal worker sorting through the mail resting on her ample bosoms.

No matter whether men think of themselves as "calf men" or "ass men" rather than "breast men," it is scientifically clear that the earliest and most primitive of attractions was the breast. This makes sense because it is usually the first thing that feeds them, tastes great, feels warm, and has a pleasing shape (something like an egg?). Of course, female babies also suckle, but I haven’t quite worked that out yet. I’ll leave it to K.D. Lang to explore the issue, for the time being.

Parenthetically, this phenomenon of breast attraction has occupied gobs of my thoughts and I have come up with another junk scientific theory to explain it. It is not because large breasts are indicators of fertility or better nurturing, because it seems that size in this case does not determine the ability to feed infants or the quality of the product. It may be that the fat cells of larger breasts suggested greater resistence to Ice Age chills and provided comfort in an era before the invention of the pillow.

Whatever the reason, it is clear that men have — generally, I admit — preferred women with larger breasts since time began. Ancient art, including fertility statues of the oldest civilizations, strongly suggest the case.

The logical result, assuming the preferences of genetic selection, was that women with large breasts were able to mate with less need for conniving, while smaller breasted females had to be wiser in order to attract and keep a mate. Mendel’s and Darwin’s laws inexorably yielded the result that in a thousand generations, the dumb females with small breasts gradually all but died out (at least became a rare recessive characteristic), resulting in the modern phenomenon of smart small breasted women being numerous, relatively speaking. Because large breasted women did not have to be as smart, dumb broads with big racks are more numerous and continue to thrive, especially in L.A. and parts of the Midwest.

Parenthetically, cosmetic surgery may change the entire future course of evolution and eliminate the need for genetic engineering.

On the subject of "ass men," which seems to be the second most popular obsessive preference, the prevailing theory (not mine, but I have heard it from other men who have their own theories) is that rumps trigger some ancient memory of primitive sex, because "doggie style" was the preferred position for most mammals, including early man.

I have already explained the popularity of other sexual positions, and it should be apparent that a wise female generally prefers those which permit her to keep an eye on her mate without getting a stiff neck.

Back to the main theorem about male attractions. Males do not need to be aroused by breasts alone; it might be an upper arm, or lower lip, a color or texture of lipstick, a gently curved or muscular calf, a pointed or lip-moistening tongue, any sort of hips, shoes which reveal a heel or toes or which elevate the calf and firm the rear, a color or style of hair or the complete absence of hair, a shape of nose or eyebrow, a dimple, an ear lobe, a shoulder, an elbow. Or it might be something as ephemeral as an offhand gesture: a yawn, smile, pout, a look back at her nylons to see if there is a run. Of course, it can even be a voice — I know a few "voice men" who can get a hard-on when hearing a husky woman’s purr from across a noisy restaurant, or when speaking to a disembodied female-sounding voice on the telephone — and who spend fortunes for the pleasure.

The point is that men are slaves to these powerful drives without comprehending them in the least. Women who sense this have great power — and all women do to some extent. If they haven’t learned it long before the day after puberty began, their mothers, older sisters, friends, teachers, every female they encounter, all provide ample role models.

Art, literature, media, celebrities, and certainly, advertizing, are all so pervasive and obsessed with the subject of what will arouse a male that it is the rare female who is not fully apprized of the available arsenal by the time she is out of the crib.

When females decide to join the fray to lure males — which in modern society now starts in earnest no later than in sixth grade (around age 11), females fully understand the purpose and subtleties of eye make-up, push up bras, tattoos, nose rings, giggles, dancing, notes with hearts drawn on them and all the other, and ever imaginative newly invented means to their goal.

I remember almost the exact moment when all this began to affect my life, though at the time and for many years afterward, I did not have the least notion that it was happening. I have now developed a theory about that, too.

The best moments of a man’s life, when he has the least stress and the most freedom, occur when he is about 12 years old, the day before the occasional boner — which since infancy has been merely his most available toy — has suddenly become a purposeful and incessant annoyance. Before that instant, the boy’s needs are few, his problems are simple and uncomplicated — the needs met by, and the problems handled by, the adults who care for him. The typical boy has few compulsive drives, hence little need to learn, to impress, to earn, to spend, to entertain, to plan. Friendly competition and comradery are all he lives for. Eden is an understated metaphor for this state of boyhood.

Suddenly, like an overflowing bathtub, his hormones reach the flood stage and can no longer be stemmed. From then on, he begins a race he can never win or even end of his own will. He will wistfully yearn the rest of his life to get back to where he was when he was 12. Finally, when his lifelong hunger gradually recedes until it disappears, he no longer needs to work, to impress, to spend. Adults and children will once again take care of him. If he is lucky, he will have the wit and the time to reminisce, and when Spring breezes blow skirts in the park, he will, as my grandfather once wryly noted, "still look and smile, and barely recall the reasons why." And then he will die contented, having returned to Eden.

The gun sounded for my race when I was almost 13 years old. Up to then, as I recall, my life had been manageable, if not ideal in every respect. I had two parents who took care of my needs if not all my selfish wants. My father was not a world class hunter, but he provided adequately. Food was on the table for dinner and in the fridge all day for other meals and snacks. My mother was no great cook, but I was so used to the tastelessness of her cooking that I preferred it to the meals and snacks set out by my friend’s parents when I visited their homes after play.

School was no problem for me at that age; I was a fairly good student, getting good grades with little effort. I made no connection between school and the necessity to earn money, felt no real drive to learn about the world. School was a place where my friends congregated for most week days during most of the year.

In my society, I was "popular" enough, sometimes accepted as a satellite of the most popular kids, but really more comfortable in the "B" flight, even recognized as a leader among that lesser group. I had friends with whom I shared the important aspects of relationships among boys my age. I had developed enough skill in sports so that, while not being the best athlete, I was also not the last one chosen for the games we played on our street. Our games were seasonal. We played stickball, touch football, basketball, roller hockey, "It."

And we had fights. Arguments about sports often led to fights, and I had established my position within my society when it came to this critical occupation. I was respected, even if not feared, by all but the most psychotic of our tough companions. In Autumn, we had fights in piles of dead leaves; in Winter, we had snow fights; in Summer, we chased each other around the beach and into the water. Between the end of school and dark, I was out on the street, playing. Brooklyn, New York in the 1950's might not have been Hanibal, Mo. in Twain’s time, but Huck Finn had nothing on me when it came to barefooted carelessness.

At dark, supper was on the table. During supper, I often quarreled with my kid sister, not realizing that she was using our disputes to test her nascent feminine power. My parents were not impartial referees: "Don’t be mean to her," they scolded me. "You’re older — and you’re a boy." I objected that "She started it," resented her ability to cry on cue, using those blue eyes my parents loved, to secure her victories. Much later, my sister became a born-again Feminist and told me that she resented our parents’ favoritism more than I did, because it reduced her to "only the girl," thereby discriminated against and diminished as a person.

I was flabbergasted that my sister was able to turn my gripe into her cause; even more amazed that she had managed to make me feel guilty for my part in her loss of self-esteem. I have since given the matter more thought and have come to admire my sister’s ability to use her power for any side of any issue to make her point. It is an awesome proof of my theories.

Back then when I was twelve, after dinner there was TV, little homework, the pleasant chore of oiling my baseball glove while listening to games on the radio. When he was out, I sometimes read my older brother’s Playboy with faint amusement; like a cat watching TV for the movement of the images, I had little understanding then of the implications of what I was looking at.

In seventh grade, I fell in with a group of friends who wanted to stay after school to dance in the auditorium. Blackboard Jungle had recently provoked panic among adults about the newly coined evil of juvenile delinquency. The dance program was the brainchild of a progressive teacher who, thinking to keep the kids off the streets and out of mischief, brought a portable record player and encouraged kids to bring their rock ‘n’ roll records, and to socialize.
I did not understand until it was too late that the concept of socialization was a feminine euphemism for taming the natural bucking of colts, so that we could be ridden in comfort and safety. This socialization process never ends. It employs phrases like "use your words" when fists or hammers are sensibly raised by toddlers during disputes, proceeds to toilet training (which continues after marriage with the repeated warning to "put the seat down"), advances to table manners, and becomes deadly serious when applied to gift giving, thank you notes, flowers, treatment of in-laws, swap meet shopping, decorating, and similar activities which are necessary to break the spirit of the colt and keep it broken long after he is a sway back nag.

Dancing was the tool which led to my socialization. From the time I could walk, my mother had often bragged about winning a Charleston contest when she was a teen in the 1920's. She loved to sing, mostly to the radio playing swing music, and had a collection of 78's, the thick vinyl RCA and Decca records of Frank Sinatra with Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Harry James, and her favorite group, the Andrews Sisters. My mother would sing along with Ba Mir Bist Du Shoen or Harry James blaring And The Angels Sing, and she taught me to dance the Lindy Hop, which I sometimes performed with her at family occasions to the delight of grandparents and other antiquities.

At first during the after-school gatherings, I stood on the sidelines watching the dancing, joking with friends about the girls who were mostly dancing with each other in their poodle skirts and saddle shoes. Then I noticed that the dances they were doing — to Elvis’s slurring Don’t Be Cruel, or Jerry Lee Lewis’s thumping Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On, or Little Ritchard’s squealing Tutti Frutti — were a lot like my mother’s Lindy Hop, but with a few updated skips which I later learned had been modified in Philadelphia and popularized on American Bandstand.

So I tried it and quickly became the most popular boy in seventh grade — to the girls of the seventh grade.

This turned out to be the turning point of my life. As soon as I put my arm around a girl’s waist, held her hand, noticed that she followed with glee my every suggested move, something began to stir. The juices — aroused by Jerry Lee’s suggestive, rumbling piano, and the snarling words: "Come on over baby, we got a chicken in da’ barn-a ..." were unstoppable.

Someone brought some slower dance songs. The first was innocuous enough: The Stroll, which was a line dance, but had a growling sax line that vibrated deep down and forced the girls to make movements that I found strangely pleasing without knowing quite why, or how they did it. This led to another plateau: Johnny Mathis, singing Chances Are and Wonderful, Wonderful.

At first, the slow dances done to these songs seemed boring; there was no athletic skill and rhythm required as in The Philly, now my forté. Also, I was shorter than most of the girls of the seventh grade, and was self-conscious about standing face to face with them to emphasize the point, which was irrelevant when we were moving faster.

Then I danced with Sonya Shearson. She liked to Philly and became my best partner. We seemed to have a natural rapport. She always knew when to twirl under my arm and when to come back and never missed a step. She laughed at my feeble jokes, and when I missed dancing for track practice a few times, she mentioned it in class and said she missed me. One day, when a slow dance was played after a long series of sweat inducing fast ones, Sonya didn’t let me walk back to my friends who were standing near the juice table. Instead, she drew close and we started to dance the way I had seen them do on Dick Clark’s show.

I knew how to do the steps to slow dances, and Sonya followed, moving backward as I swayed and stepped forward in time with the song’s gentle provocative rhythm. Something happened there while my face was close to Sonya’s kinky thick black hair. I smelled her, and, unknown to me, pheramones wafted, and hormones were triggered, and synapses flashed.

My next memory is making out in her finished basement, humping desperately, one ear attuned to the window nearest the garage door for her mother to come home. Apart from that one ear, the rest of me was intent at learning the skills needed for unlocking mysteries that now seemed far more crucial than how to hit a curve ball.

I did not have an inkling then, but the gentle curve of Sonya’s budding breasts were a slippery slope that I would never recover from. Soon, I would be thinking about buying her gifts, gathering the courage to ask her to go steady. I planned for an ID bracelet, and a necklace with a silver dollar cut in two, half for each of us, to seal the deal, as was our tribal custom. I had to get an after school job to save up for these tokens, this tribute that was needed to pay for the favors I was seeking.

In no time, I was obsessively concerned with my looks. Every new pimple gave me cramps. My hair required taming; I needed presentable clothes. This required more money and led to unbearable stress, but had rewards. Sonya became my "date" at my bar mitzvah, and all the miserable pinching by aunts and cousins, the misery of learning the Hebrew, and fear of looking absurd in front of the entire world, all of that was forgotten during the party afterward when we danced to all the slow songs, and made out in a dark corner, and I felt like I was at the center of the known universe.

That was in June. Sonya spent the summer with her parents in the Catskills while I spent it watching the Dodgers win the pennant again, and delivering clothes for a dry cleaner on my bike. By September, I had saved enough for the ID bracelet (engraved "To Sonya with love, Artie"), and the silver dollar necklaces. I hid them in my drawer and waited for Sonya’s return from summer vacation.

Of course, you’ve guessed the rest. By September Sonya had metamorphosed into a more advanced creature, now surrounded by a sensuous but vaguely ominous glow. She was unapologetic about the high school guy she had met during the summer and the fact that she was hopelessly and giddily in love with this older man.

I kept the gifts in my jewelry box — among other obsolete artifacts from that bygone era: cuff links, tie clasps, collar stays — until I was well into my Forties and approaching my umpteenth move and my second marriage.

If I had been sensible, able to think rationally with the larger, but less potent, brain which evolution had provided, I would have learned the lesson from The Sonya Disaster that might have saved me. The misery of her rejection was crushing enough to scar me for life; I would never be so naive and trusting as to assume a female was thinking or feeling as I was.

But rather than giving up the whole enterprise as I had given up baseball when I found that I was not good enough at it to allow me to feel good, I entered high school and ran smack into girls who had matured to another level of being, and reeked of chemicals far more formidable and omnipresent than Sonya’s had ever been.

And the one that changed everything, Penelope Miller.