by Bev Jafek
The light of late sunset strikes the long stalks of weeds and wild grasses that oppose the family’s movement as they leave the scene, creating the contrary force that perfects the drawing’s composition. The suggestion is ephemeral beauty: enclosing this brief moment, nature destroys the original scene like a Tibetan mandala of colored gravel that is continually created and destroyed.
Sylvie’s second drawing is a rare view of the faun’s head as he looks directly into the camera. The dusk places his face in umber shadow. From this gentle darkness faintly rise the beginnings of new horns covered with fuzz. The faun has immense soft ears that lean out of the shadow for a touch of dusky light. The huge brown eyes beneath long lashes are full of tenderness. The nose is large and soft, and the subtlety and delicacy of the whole drawing is breath taking. Tall stalks of wild grass and scrub throw a plethora of green lines over the scene, as though a celebration of youth was implicit. The drawing is another ephemeral moment, a still point that is resonant and eternal while its subject may no longer exist.
“It seems so effortless for you,” I say. “I am beginning to think you are a genius.”
“There’s nothing like great love to make you one,” she sighs and we laugh.
“No, I don’t think it works quite like that, though it’s a damned good warm-up.”
After a late bath, then dinner and wine, I pitch a waterproof tent with flooring for us. Huge thunderclouds darken the sunset, and the night or the morning will surely bring rain. Then, silent, nude and innocent as children, we fall asleep in one another’s arms and awaken perhaps ten hours later to an afternoon sky that is pouring rain. We look out of the tent to heaving greenery and the ripe odors of wet mud. The tent is dry and has protected us well. Beyond the aperture of the tent is a world of continuous movement from infinitely small, shining green surfaces that delight us, the sky seemingly at war with the ground.
“I would never have known what a gorgeous place this is to be in a storm,” Sylvie says.
“We can even bathe just outside. Want to?”
I follow Sylvie out the front of the tent and we laugh and wash ourselves in the torrent. We can even brush our teeth in this downpour. Then we kiss and hold one another, our hands sliding everywhere. There is surely no one to see us today. Without bearings in the intense downpour, the rain seems to wash away some strata of our minds: we are again animals in passionate union with the world and one another. I am not surprised when she pulls me down to the ground and we make love in streams of water, mud and grass. Her legs slide over my shoulders and she instantly climaxes again and again. Our senses register nothing but the blind urgings of our bodies and the world’s rough deluge upon us. I have no sense of time passing until we begin to laugh. Then we are nothing but bodies lunging together and laughing. The laughter is much like orgasm, too, and then a single thought breaks into my consciousness. “Into the tent, wildwoman,” I say. We stand up and take a now very necessary bath in the rain and lunge into the tent, still laughing. Laughing and wrestling with one another on the tent floor like Greek soldiers, she gives me one climax after another until we are unconscious.
And we awaken into a universe of such silence and peace that I scarcely know where I am. It is no longer raining, and slowly the sounds of wind, birds and insects, and water lapping in the lake break into my consciousness. I rise and walk out of the tent into a world of such sharp sensations that I can remember how it feels to be a child. My body gives me jagged pangs of hunger and equally intense pangs of love for the earth: they are as natural and definitive as sexual passion. The rain has just ended, and the world is burgeoning into a dark red sunset and sliver of moon. Sylvie joins me and we hold one another in this darkly bleeding light that has the pure clarity of childhood. “We’ve been reborn,” I say, “and we’ve gone crazy.” I kiss her forehead.
“I love this craziness,” she says.
“Krasna život! to the beauty of it.”
“God yes, krasna život!”
“What will it do for your art?’
“Good things, wonderful things. I’ll draw that rainstorm, then two women naked, laughing and fighting on the floor of a tent—except I’ll take out the tent. They’ll fight in the night sky. What will it do for your science?”
“Good things, too. Great warm-up. When I publish my research on Doñana, I’ll have to list you as co-author for your outstanding contributions. Too bad Jane Goodall didn’t have you along.”
We laugh so long and hard we nearly can’t stop. “Shush, we’re going to start having orgasms from laughter again.” Then we are silent and look only at one another. We are lovers and strangers, for she is the one who can make the world turn, rush, become a delirium. She can annihilate my mind until I am lost in a world of violent beauty. We no longer care what will happen to us: There’s the bliss of it.
We say little and are full of tenderness for one another as we prepare our dinner, then eat and drink wine over the fire, listening to the sounds of the night, somehow much softer now. Finally, the time seems right for me to tell Sylvie what she must know, what I hope will protect her. “Can we possibly have made love enough so that I can think in your presence? I’m not sure, but it’s worth a try,” I say. “This bed-time story is in fact a lecture I have never delivered entitled ‘Who We Are, Where We Come From, and Where We Are Going, Fast.’” Yes, her eyes are following mine with interest. “Don’t be surprised if the voice of the old professor takes over. I’ve taught students for so many years that I can’t express scientific ideas in a casual way anymore.
“To begin with, being lesbian, gay or bisexual is genetic, a part of normal human sexual variation. Since it is a complex behavior and undoubtedly involves several genes, we prove this through twin studies. In men, the prevalence of homosexuality has been compared between identical twins, fraternal twins and siblings. If a trait is genetic, identical twins will show it most frequently, fraternal twins somewhat less and siblings least. This is true of homosexuality, and it demonstrates the genetic basis even if we do not know the genes involved yet. The exact function is unknown, though it must be consistent with what we know of evolution. The possibilities are these: we know for a fact that bisexuality is the norm in the chimpanzee species closest to us genetically, so we have the genetic endowment from that source. Homosexuality or bisexuality can be (or have been) a means of reducing the destructiveness of male aggression since that is its main function in chimps. There are cross-cultural anthropological studies that show the presence of gay men reducing male aggression in many types of human society. It can also be (or have been) a population control device for prehuman groups that were small and arboreal. There is some evidence for this in studies of sibling gender and birth order in the families that have gay sons (i.e. the more sons, the greater probability that the youngest will be gay), as well as a mother’s age at her child’s inception in families that have lesbian daughters (i.e. the older the mother, the greater the probability of a lesbian daughter).
“Less parsimoniously and more speculatively, it could be that evolution favors a certain number of individuals who do not reproduce and raise children because they spend their lives making unusual contributions to human civilization. There is some evidence for this. The original Kinsey data from the 1950s, for example, found that lesbianism was strongly correlated to higher I.Q., though there was no correlation in either direction for gay men. On the other hand, history is full of gay men who were clearly geniuses—Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Handel, Henry James, Alan Turing, etc. The list is endless, and some of the most brilliant periods of human civilization, such as that of the ancient Greeks, were primarily homosexual or bisexual. Gay people—male and female—are well represented among the people who have most influenced our civilization. I am most convinced by our genetic endowment from the chimps and the function of homosexuality as a male aggression control mechanism. As a scientist, I must conclude that the more speculative idea is fluff, but very interesting fluf
f, to say the least, and the jury is out on its relevance.
“What we do know scientifically concerns human sexuality and the characteristics of long-term human relationships. We know from very recent research by experimental psychologists that when we evaluate long-term gay relationships, male and female, we find that they compare favorably to those of heterosexual married couples. In heterosexual marriage, the political and economic dominance of men and the lower status of women are harmful to a continuous loving relationship, according to these researchers, and gay and lesbian couples, who are much more egalitarian, are well ahead on all indices of mental health.”
“That I can believe.”
“I found it very surprising, even shocking. We are from different generations, though. This study actually implies that the oppression American gay people receive from heterosexuals is less destructive than the oppression of heterosexual women by men. The authors of this research have even argued that the power and status differences in heterosexual marriage are not biologically determined and can be freely changed because of the example of gay couples. My favorite example is the long-term lesbian relationship between the anthropologists Margaret Meade and Ruth Benedict, both of whom I read when I was in high school. Meade said publicly that while she was bisexual, it was the ‘sweetness,’ gentleness and nurturing quality of her relationships with women that made her prefer women. It was probably the same for Ruth Benedict. The most famous anthropologist at Columbia University at the time, she was denied full professor status by her male colleagues.
“The other area in which we have actual scientific information concerns human sexuality: we know that men and women are radically different, to say the least, but not in the expected ways. Women without exception are bisexual whereas men are either gay or straight, never bisexual. The very recent research I am referring to, and it has been replicated, involves asking male and female subjects to describe their sexuality as gay, straight or bisexual, then presenting these subjects with film footage that is heterosexual or homosexual in content and measuring the actual changes in their genitals with in-place equipment. The researchers also asked these subjects to report how turned on they were by the visuals to determine how accurately they could discern and label their own sexual arousal. The results of this research’s last portion were unexpected and very fascinating.
“Men described their sexual arousal accurately if they originally labeled themselves as gay or straight, the clear majority. The men who labeled themselves as bisexual were in fact gay, according to the physical data. Women, on the other hand, described their sexual arousal accurately only if they labeled themselves bisexual or lesbian. Women who labeled themselves as straight, the majority, always described themselves as more turned on by heterosexual visuals than they were, and less turned on by lesbian and gay male visuals than they were. In other words, women are actually bisexual, with only the minority—lesbian and bisexual women—in the know.”
“I must say, I know plenty of women in Paris who don’t want to know about that research,” Sylvie says, laughing.
“And this in the international capital of love! In fact, nearly the whole world doesn’t want to know about it; but with a little courage and a lot of chutzpah, we will continue our quest for the truth. The truth is that the sexiest visual of all for straight-labeled men and women was film footage of an attractive nude woman doing calisthenics on a beach.”
Sylvie dissolves into helpless laughter. “So I do have something in common with men! Go on lecturing. This may be the most amazing bedtime story yet.”
“Well, after that one you gave me . . . I should add, since I am lecturing, that this recent research is superior to the famous (or notorious) research of the past; like Kinsey’s in the 1950s, which only interviewed people on a questionnaire, and Masters and Johnson in the 60s, who did use equipment to measure genitals, but mainly their own.
“Now then, where on earth does this sexuality—real and feigned—come from, and why haven’t we figured it out after some ten thousand years of civilization? We must look to the chimps again for the answer. As I told you when I met you, two chimp species are closest to us genetically of all animals: the bonobos, who are small and arboreal, and the more familiar chimp species, which is much larger and can live on the ground. The behavior of these two species could not be more different: they are virtually the reverse of one another.
“The bonobos are bisexual and more highly sexual generally. They are matriarchal, and high-ranking females resolve all disputes. With males and females similar in size, they are less hierarchical, more empathetic, and much less violent. There are other differences as well: they have larger brains and greater intelligence as well as more language facility. They walk upright more easily though, being arboreal, their feet look more like hands. The other chimp species, living partly on the ground, is patriarchal, heterosexual, extremely violent and hierarchical, the males much larger than the females. The males spend most of their time plotting how to increase their rank in the male chimp hierarchy, become violent when their status is challenged, and must be dominant over all females to remain in the group.”
“I must say, that behavior sounds awfully familiar. Not the violence necessarily, since it’s illegal, but all that power play and domineering. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything else from men.”
“Personally, I find that many men change over time. Right now, every man you meet starts courting you, which does not necessarily draw out the best. Most women and many older men are generally empathetic, responsible and little prone to violence. However, when we apply what we know about chimps to our human world, we find the unexpected at every turn.
“Since the human genome has been sequenced, we know that we share the affiliative portion of the genome, controlling much group behavior, with the bonobo, not the other chimp. We also know that the tendency to be liberal or conservative politically is genetic. Let’s think about that a bit. We know that we share nearly ninety-nine percent of our genetic endowment with these two chimp species, yet we are closer to the bonobo in group behavior. Of course, you would never know it from the world we live in: it is clearly patriarchal, heterosexual and prone to violence, not the reversed life of the bonobo that is matriarchal, bisexual and non-violent. What can be interfering with our strongest genetic predispositions? I think you’ve already seen one very considerable result in the sexuality research: most men know when they are and are not sexually aroused and most women do not. Obviously, women are conforming to patriarchal values rather than expressing or acknowledging their actual nature even to themselves.
“Since political liberalism and conservatism are also genetic, let’s think about them in terms of the chimp traits we are considering. I think the clearest examples of political conservatism exist in the U.S. and in the poorest parts of the world—Africa and the Islamic countries without oil revenue. Europe, Canada and New Zealand are probably the most liberal. Political conservatism, like the other chimp species, is less empathetic and more rigidly hierarchical. It supports the wealthy at the top of the hierarchy at the expense of the middle class and the disadvantaged, toward which it feels little or no empathy. Given the progress of science and technology, I have no doubt that human beings would have eliminated poverty and most preventable disease long ago, but for the influence of political conservatism. Mirroring the other chimp species but extant in the human world, political conservatism also defends patriarchal and heterosexual values. Conservatives make every effort to legislate or otherwise oppress a woman’s right to control the functioning of her own body as well as opposing gay civil rights, even protection from hate crime murder. Conservatism also refuses to allow its views to be questioned by science, even to the point of trying to prevent evolution from being taught in public schools. Men are more frequently conservative than women. If this is a genetic trait, its origin lies in the other chimp species.
“So, we can now define political liberalism in terms of chimp traits. Libera
ls are obviously less rigidly hierarchical and more empathetic. They support strong government programs to help the poor and disadvantaged as well as maintaining an accessible economic ladder into the middle and upper classes through universal education. They are much more likely to support equality for women and gay civil rights. They’re often called the ‘mommy party’ in the U.S. since they favor warfare, or group violence, less frequently. They also engage in far less violence of the personal, daily variety that may be quieter and subtler, manifesting itself as racism and xenophobia. Women are more often liberals. If this attitude is genetic, it displays our endowment from the bonobos, as does women’s sexuality.
“My greatest concern is that these two genetic predispositions are at war with one another in our time, which is one of worldwide crises such as global warming and nuclear proliferation, crises that cry out for the collective will to find solutions. I have been living in the U.S. for the last several decades, and I have seen the rise of political conservatism in union with evangelical churches as a truly horrifying anti-intellectual force that has succeeded in decimating responsible economic development as well as the national political discourse that might have led to our vanished collective will. It has even weakened the progress of science and technology when it is only they, united with economic enterprise and political accord, that can solve our problems. In fact, teaching in the U.S. for so many years made me feel as though I were living in a third-world country, as though the eighteenth-century Enlightenment vanished shortly after the drafting of the Constitution; whereas, in obvious contrast, the creation of the American constitution was a joint effort of intelligent and egalitarian collective political will that clearly shows all of the ideals of the Enlightenment. The end result, as we find today, is moral paralysis in the face of the greatest man-made threat to human life and nature that has ever arisen. The liberal element of our genetic endowment, with its non-violent resolution of conflict, is clearly . . .”