by Jilly Cooper
Men and Supermen
Jilly Cooper
Jilly Cooper
Men and Super Men
TO GODFREY SMITH
In every way a Superman
Introduction
My only qualification for writing this book is a lifelong interest in the subject. The male—I have found—is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness and kindness, can be trained to do most things. It is important to have one in your life to turn on your bath water, do up your zips, carry your suitcases, work out tips, tell silly jokes to, use as a threat when you are having trouble with tradesmen or unwelcome suitors and ultimately to arrange your funeral.
Men, according to legend, want only one thing, are deceivers ever, are not interested in gossip, like a cosy armful, need two eggs, and seldom wash behind their ears.
They come in all shapes and sizes except for their organs, which according to all the sex books, are exactly the same size when erect and similarly capable of giving pleasure.
At present men are under fire from the Women’s Lib movement, which has been described as a storm in a B-Cup, and the biggest bore of the century, only rivalled by the Common Market. One cannot dismiss something, however, because it is boring. Every day through my letter box thunders Women’s Lib propaganda: The Feminine Mystique, Women on Women, Women under Women, and so on.
Men in fact have come in for such a pasting that when I started to write this book, I intended it to be in their defence—my charger and my white plume at the ready. But I found as I progressed how fundamental the antagonism between the sexes really is—how although I love a few individual supermen very deeply, as a sex men drive me up the wall. In fact if there was a third sex, I doubt if they would get a look in from me.
I find I resent the fact that I can’t live without them, that they hurt me emotionally, that I hate yet secretly enjoy being bullied by them, that they can do tasks domestic far better than I can, that they enjoy the company of other men so much, and on the whole prefer a bat to a bit on the side.
My husband once went to a cricket week at his old school. I joined him for the weekend, and felt de trop from start to finish. I wasn’t allowed to have meals with him, or even sleep in the same bed. He was in the dormitory with the rest of the team, while I was allotted one of the boys’ studies (alas it was after the end of term) and had to hang my clothes on a row of male chauvinist pegs.
The second evening, bored with my own company and seething with resentment, I walked round the grounds. The air was heavy with the scent of lime trees, the black night blazed with stars. By the pavilion the two teams were having after dinner drinks. Unobserved I sat down and watched them wandering around a little unsteadily, swapping anecdotes, laughing immoderately, rolling up and down a grassy bank, scampering around in a doggy way sniffing out the most entertaining group, forming and re-forming. Away from the tension of the male-female encounter, they looked so young, handsome, carefree, and unguarded as they would never have done if there had been a woman present.
And like the Ancient Mariner, a spirit of pure love gushed from my heart, and I blessed them unaware. The self-same moment, the albatross of my resentment fell from my neck. But it was back with a vengeance as soon as I returned to my lonely truckle bed, and saw all those male chauvinist pegs again.
I have enjoyed writing this book because it enabled Tim Jaques, who did the marvellous drawings, and me to yap about sex every day on the telephone for six weeks. But when we reached the end we decided neither of us ever wanted to look at another man again.
Part 1
This is a book about men—at work and play, in bed and out of bed, in sickness and in stealth. It is also about Superman. Superman is a cross between Charles Atlas and Einstein. He keeps his figure by lifting dumb-blondes above his head before breakfast, and is sent to stud like Nijinsky at the age of twenty-one. The real hero of the book, however, is an individual called Sexual Norm.
Sexual Norm lives in the suburbs. He is married to a wife called Honor whom he has 2·8 times a week. Honor is sometimes satisfied. Norm thinks continually about other girls, but never does anything about them unless it is handed to him on a plate. He is riddled with guilt afterwards. He is doggy, pink faced, with sticking-out ears, nudging eyes, a road-up neck and a fixed avid grin. He blushes easily, laughs loudly, sweats profusely at the back of his neck, and wears dandruffy blazers.
He always has a bath in the morning—just in case—and although he has never dared enter a strip club, if a girl makes him promise not to look he usually does. He is inclined to get out of hand at office parties. His lifelong ambition is to meet a nymphomaniac.
Apart from Sexual Norm and Superman, any man a girl meets will probably fit into one or several of the following categories.
Male Types
THE SERVICES
“I’M BI-SEXUAL—I like Sailors and Soldiers.”
Soldiers have yelping laughs and very short hair, tend to have very shiny buttons on their blazers, and never talk about women in the mess. They have broad shoulders and narrow outlooks. They are straightforward and uncomplicated. Occasionally they pounce on the wives of junior officers, but the passes they are most interested in are forty-eight-hour ones. They wear mental battle dress in bed, and fatigues afterwards.
Soldiers tend to be overridden by their wives. Behind most famous soldiers you will find a very powerful dragon who has rammed her husband up the army list as a gunner might force the charge into the breech.
Sailors are always away or having it away. They have far-seeing blue eyes, and there are very few of them left now. Although they have a wife in every port, and two in Cape Town because they stop there twice, nice girls are supposed to love them. Twenty years ago they were considered very glamorous, now they are all trying to get out of the Service and failing to make it in Industry.
Sailors are always rabbiting on about their fine tradition, which as Churchill claimed consisted of nothing but Rum, Sodomy and the Lash.
There is absolutely nothing I can think of to say about Airmen at all.
SCIENTISTS
Scientists have the shortest hair and the thickest spectacles. They wear white coats, talk in whispers, and have never read a book. When they meet a pretty girl they turn pink like litmus paper and have difficulty raising a retort stand. They are all described as brilliant to compensate for being on the non-smart side of the two cultures, and tend to be left wing.
They have a curiously cold analytical approach to women, and are too busy making explosions to have much fire in their bellies.
They are the first target for Rats’ Lib.
THE CLERGY
“For what we are about to receive …”
In theory the clergy don’t—except with their wives or the bishop if he asks them. In fact it is difficult for them to get off with anyone, as unlike catholic priests they don’t have the intimacy of the confessional. It must also be a bit turning off to have a whole pewful of parish hats gazing at you with adoration every Sunday.
Perhaps they say: “For who we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful,” before they pounce on you, and then send you to the jumble sale afterwards. They are all tone deaf.
DOCTORS
Very easy to get at. Anyone can pretend to have a migraine or pains in the chest. But the Hippocratic oath stops doctors doing anything about it, unless you meet them at a cocktail party or down in the shopping centre. I think most women imagine that because doctors know so much about the female body, they’ll be better at making love to it. I should hate to have it off with a doctor in case he found some bump or cavity he shouldn’t.
LORRY DRIVERS
Available to hitch-hikers. They make love at 20 miles an hour and have red lights o
n their rears. They spend a lot of time in lay-bys. A girl friend of mine had a fantasy about lorry drivers in which she passed them a note saying: “You can come home with me as long as you don’t speak.”
STOCKBROKERS
Stockbrokers play squash all the time—they squash themselves against women all the way to the City on the Tube, then play squash in the evening to keep their weight down. Later in the evening they play bridge, or go to cocktail parties and shout at girls with flicked up hair and bare foreheads. During the day they make up filthy stories and think about Bulls and Bears.
At weekends they make desperate attempts to be trendy, tripping off to the launderette in sweaters, paisley scarves flowing through a brass ring, their trousers held up under a spreading stomach by a stockbroker belt.
There are very few pretty girls working in the City, which is one of the places to go to if you want to hook a man.
THE LEGAL PROFESSION
Most women, being irrational, will be driven up the wall by the pedantic exactitude of the legal mind. Occasionally a lawyer sends you a legal document covered in kisses, and you really think you’re getting somewhere until he tells you he only wants you to sign your name, in three places. And his indecent proposal will be couched in such convoluted jargon, you won’t have a hope of defending your honour against him. He will overrule all your objections.
On the whole, barristers are more interested in their briefs than yours. They tend to be pompous and divide you mentally into twelve good men and true when they talk to you. They also put their upper lips in rollers every night, so they can sneer better at their opponents.
TELEVISION (See Fairies)
Men in television brush their hair forwards, and wear white polo-necked sweaters, suede jackets, name-tag bracelets, and deaf aids. They spend their time gossiping—the television centre in Wood Lane is built in a circle to enable the gossip to travel more quickly—and in backbiting—you can recognise a television man once he takes his clothes off because his shoulders are covered in stab marks.
POLITICIANS
Vote Libertine.
Politicians have ringing voices, graciously waving hands, and an all-embracing smile that passes over you like a lighthouse beam. They also make love on all three channels.
Like most men in power they have a hayride sexually—all women wanting to go to bed with a 20,000 majority.
Because on the whole they work so hard, politicians become tremendously randy on the rare times they are off-duty, and because the newspapers are always saying nasty things about them and thwacking them on their marginal seats, they need the reassurance of sexual conquest to soothe their bruised egos. It is very easy for them to be unfaithful because once they’re in the House they become completely ungetatable, and their wives never know if they’re snoozing on a back bench, chairing a committee meeting or carrying on an affaire of state.
Women, being naturally subservient, are generally attracted to a man in a position of authority—whether he’s a doctor, a psychiatrist, a solicitor who advises them when they’re in trouble, a general in time of war, a teacher at night school, a ski instructor, or most often their boss.
SCHOOLMASTERS
Going for a Thong
Schoolmasters however are a very different cup of tea—‘children among men, men among children’, as Dr Johnson called them. They have chalk in their hair, are dry as dust, hearty, antiseptic, and almost invariably undersexed. They adore the sound of their own voices, and often develop tics and private jokes. Ill at ease in the company of women, they prefer the adulation of a captive audience, their pupils, or the fusty misogyny of their colleagues.
Being accustomed to school dinners, they invariably take girls to awful restaurants. Naturally bossy, they treat their wives like little boys of eleven.
Recommended for masochistic ladies—they are very good at knocking the stuffing out of those smaller than themselves.
FARMERS
Farmers have red faces, purple raw hands and straw in their turnups. They wear long jackets, frequently suffer from calf love, and wear gumboots to keep the sheep steady. They get up very early in the morning and assist in the sexual couplings of animals. In summer they get bitten by insects, and summon milkmaids and landgirls to come and see their itchings. Their houses smell of pigs.
“But I have taken them off, darling.”
Gentlemen farmers spend their time drinking at lunchtime, butchering wildlife, riding in point-to-points and swapping wives. At hunt balls, one glass of bubbly turns them as scarlet as their coats, and soon every cordoned off fourposter is heaving with occupants.
ACTORS
Actors, unlike farmers, get up very late, and go to bed after midnight, unless they are getting up at the crack of dawn to play in some film. As a race, they’re inclined to be surprisingly insecure, self-obsessed, only interested in talking shop, and finding out whether Quentin was perfectly frightful at Bristol.
Actors like to make love in front of a looking glass so they can admire their own performance, or with the television on, so they can see how ‘perfectly frightfully’ all their friends are acting. If they keep their socks on, they’re either a blue movie star or terrified of getting foot rot.
On the credit side, they are marvellous at playing out one’s fantasies, whether you want them to dress up as a sadistic schoolmaster, a vicar, or a gentleman farmer.
MUSICIANS
Musicians dress very badly, sometimes suffer from Hallé Orchestra and enjoy playing the eternal triangle. Singers however have the most marvellous breath control and can kiss for at least ten minutes without stopping. Trumpeters and any player of woodwind instruments are also very good at kissing, having such mobile lips. Violinists have very versatile left hands—I really dig that double stopping.
Conductors have superb timing: anyone who conducts a whole orchestra shouldn’t have much trouble conducting an affaire.
If a man keeps boasting: “Look no hands,” while making love to you, he’s probably a concert pianist or a brain surgeon and frightened of losing his no-claim bonus.
WRITERS
Writers are alleged to write about it better than do it. Certainly they always regard you as copy, and if you make a bon mot while they’re making love to you, they’ll leap off you and rush away to find a pen and write it down.
However, it is nice to get sonnets from time to time. They also write wonderful letters, which are absolute hell to answer, not much about oneself and full of all those fragments from Donne and Marvell.
One writer I know has an unnerving habit of taking two extra copies of all his love letters, one for himself, the other for the British Museum.
PAINTERS
Painters dress well, and have very nice handwriting. But don’t be fooled by that line about only seeing you as a beautiful form not as a sexual object. It’s the easiest way I know to get a woman to remove her clothes.
I think on the whole those involved in the arts make the best lovers, for they have more imagination, more ability to cater for your fantasies, and a bigger repertoire. Most of them have a kind of feline, slightly feminine mind—pure heaven from start to fetish. But don’t expect fidelity. Art has very little to do with morals.
ADVERTISING MEN
Most of their time is spent making presentations or discussing whether they should insert their eight-inch single column more than three times a week. They dress very well, if somewhat uniformly—navy blue suit, pink shirt—and are generally doused in free sample scent. When you meet them at parties, they say: “Actually I’m in advertising,” in a very apologetic way, because au fond they feel they ought to get out and do something worth-while like writing unprofitably, or painting unsellably. Nearly all of them have unsold novels in their bottom drawers and most of them live in Fulham. They have hearts with natural breaks in them.
Stages of Man
NOW LEAVING THE professions we move on to some of the stages of man.
YOUTHS (See Schoolboys or Students)
/> “But of course there’s nothing wrong with you, Adrian darling—I just can’t stand red hair …”
In my youth, youths used to breathe heavily, say thank you three times if you gave them a cigarette, open the matchbox upside down so that the matches cascaded onto the floor, and finally knock over the ashtray.
Today youths are extremely cool, have lean and hungry pelvises and hip measurements in single figures. They often marry at seventeen and refer to their father-in-law as ‘baby’. They don’t talk if they don’t feel like it, but this is probably because in the places they frequent, the music is so loud as to make conversation impossible. They wear clothes, which disconcert their elders, including tight jeans to emphasise a bulging crotch. They spend most of their time strumming on guitars or trendy-looking girls who look as though they’ve just crawled out from underneath a rolling stone. Secretly these girls will worry about tight jeans making a man impotent.
STUDENTS (See Airmen)
OLDER MEN
Peter Pan and Trendy.
It has always seemed unfair to me that no one bats an eyelid if a man goes out with a girl thirty years younger than he is, but everyone starts prophesying doom and desertion if a woman shacks up with a man even three years younger than herself. A woman left by her husband when she is forty either faces living alone or has to break up someone else’s marriage if she’s going to get married again, whereas a forty-year-old divorced man can have a ball with any dolly he chooses.