Dialogues with Jen. Donald R. Fletcher
humans can be comical enough ourselves, what we will do to attract the other sex,” Luc commented dryly.
“Yes, but let’s not get personal,” Ian said, with an exaggerated gesture.
We all laughed, aware of the pair of lovers among us. Then Jen took up her theme again.
“Each one of us has, or has had, experience with this almost universal impulse. Eros, the Greeks called it, and spun charming, or sometimes frightening, myths of a powerful deity who could also be perverse, like an impulsive child.”
I found that inviting. “Right,” I said. “With the resurgence of Greek mythology in the European Renaissance, Eros becomes the Cupid figure, with his bow and arrows. He may be chubby in some artistic renderings, a cute and appealing child, but he is dangerous. He can choose arbitrarily the targets of his arrows, but the choice is fateful. If Cupid’s arrow hit you, you were in love, no matter what.”
“All are fairy stories, whether charming or frightening,” Ian said. “There could be magic potions, too. A sip of this, and with the next person of the other sex whom you happen to see, you will fall madly in love. There’s a strand of truth, of real-life experience, that runs through such imaginative folklore.”
“What was it, Ian?” Beth demanded, with pretended anger. “What had you been drinking when you told me that you loved me?”
“Don’t worry,” he countered, “there are no magic potions in our world any more. The truth of the folklore is just that we don’t, and we can’t, calculate love. I know, you hear this or that married man say, ‘When I first saw her it was love at first sight’—even ‘I knew that was the person I was going to marry.’ Women say that, too. But I’d say that it’s not a matter of deliberate, rational selection. You may select a person of the other sex as being wonderfully desirable, but you can’t make yourself fall deeply in love with that person nor, much less, can you make that person fall in love with you.”
“So, what is it, then,” Jen asked, “that is operating here? We get back to the sexual impulse. In many forms of life, and taking many patterns, that impulse essentially involves aggressive pursuit by the male and, by the female, passive receptivity. And the behavior moves in cycles. Particularly among the more complex animal species, there is a rhythm established by the sex glands, times when the female is ‘in heat’ and receptive, and when the male, consequently, is more aggressive than usual, and more competitive with other males. Hunters and, in general, people of the woods know about these things—when is the ‘rutting’ season for this or that animal.”
I offered a comment. “It seems very interesting to me that of the more advanced species on this planet, we are one of a very few, if I have this right, who don’t observe a rutting, or mating, season. With homo sapiens it’s common for males to be perpetually taking notice of females and be perpetually susceptible to sexual arousal.”
Jen went on: “What we’re talking about, Eros, carnal love, is as old as the evolutionary beginnings of our species and, at the same time, one of the most basic and important drives in our most sophisticated modern societies. Looking back, we can see that the competition, particularly among males, for a chance at procreation has served a basic evolutionary purpose.”
As Jen paused, Luc spoke up.
“Right,” he said, “Here are some stags in the forest in the rutting season. You see them fighting, butting each other, locking their antlers. Some may be hurt, even killed. Why? It’s the season for mating, and the contest is to see which stag can drive the others away and claim the opportunity to mate with the does that are in heat.
“The result? Their fawns will have his genes, genes of the ablest stag. Stretch that across a hundred, a thousand generations, and you begin to see evolution in action, evolving a viable species.”
“I like that,” Ian said. “And translated into modern society, it means a constant competition and push toward the top. Hormones no doubt are part of the mix; but I’d say that they appear to blend in with much else that human nature and human social traditions add to it.”
“That opens up quite a field for thought,” I offered, “and perhaps, for the men here, a chance to shift away from the theme of the aggressive, promiscuous male.”
“Sure,” Jen responded, getting to her feet. “Let’s make it a chance for a cup of coffee, or what else that I can offer you.”
Beth and Ian followed her toward the kitchen, and soon we were relaxing, enjoying a choice of beverages and of crumpets and the like, set out on the dining room table.
When we had drifted back to the living room and resumed our comfortable chairs, Jen took the lead again.
“I’d like to move now to a different aspect of love. It’s part of the physical, certainly, but among us homo sapiens, it has a spiritual aspect as well. I mean, choosing a mate. Beth and Ian have done that. You represent our primary resource, and I find this a promising subject to explore.”
I spoke up then. “As I left home today to come over here—well, ‘home’ being the snug apartment that I’m renting—there was a honking and, when I looked up, a V of Canada geese going over. I’ve heard how these birds often mate for life. I put that into a haiku once, in a happier time. It was on a fall evening, after rain and almost dark, when this pair of geese passed overhead, low, but in silence.”
Beth prompted, “And the haiku?”
So, I spoke it:
“Gray shadows, silent,
beating damp air, these two geese
pass, faithful, my love.”
“Beautiful,” Jen said. “Thank you, Don. Our inquiry brings us unexpected rewards. About choosing a mate, including a mate for life, one might say that the purpose of coupling is procreation. Each species brings its progeny into the world. After that, it’s a question of survival, and the parts taken by the male and female mates for the survival of offspring are interesting to observe.”
“So, how about an example?” Luc said.
Jen obliged: “All right, consider a clutch of eggs left by a sea turtle, where she has lumbered up a tropical beach and scooped a hollow in the sand. She leaves them there and returns that same night to the sea. It’s the sun’s warmth that incubates those eggs, and when the hatchlings eventually emerge, it’s their instinct that prompts them to wriggle down toward light on the water and, if they escape all predators, to splash into their natural element. They get no maternal care at any point along the way.
“With the sea hawk that has a nest up on a crag, it’s a different story. She broods her eggs, and when they hatch she must begin the task of finding and bringing them prey, and tearing it into bits they can swallow. That continues until at long last, after endless squawking and clamoring, the chicks have grown wings that are strong enough for them to leave the nest, mature, find mates, and build nests of their own.”
Ian spoke up. “I don’t know how it is with sea hawks, but in some bird species the male partner, having done his part to fertilize the eggs as they were forming, stays around and helps to feed and protect the chicks.”
Beth joined in, “That’s the preferable kind of mate. We mammals have it harder, though. With us, the evolutionary process heaps the whole primary burden on the female. She has to carry the progeny in her body until it can live on its own.”
“Until hatched, that is?” Ian put in, with a laugh.
“No,” Beth countered. “The mammalian hatchling, if you want to call it that, can’t manage outside food. It has to nurse from its mother, or a surrogate mother, until it’s more developed. The male may help by foraging for the female, but she has to provide the critical nourishment for the offspring. So instinct varies here. In some mammalian species, the male stays around for protection. In others, he isn’t there, not for the birth, nor afterward.”
“A human parable.” That was Luc, with his dry humor.