He did not want them [girls] themselves really. They were too complicated. There was something else. Vaguely he wanted a girl but he did not want to have to work to get her. He would have liked to have a girl but he did not want to have to spend a long time getting her. He did not want to get into the intrigue and the politics. He did not want to have to do any courting. He did not want to tell any more lies. It wasn't worth it.
He did not want any consequences. He did not want any consequences ever again. He wanted to live alone without consequences. Besides he did not really need a girl. The army had taught him that. It was all right to pose as though you had to have a girl. Nearly everybody did that. But it wasn't true. You did not need a girl. That was the funny thing. First a fellow boasted how girls mean nothing to him, that he never thought of them, that they could not touch him. Then a fellow boasted that he could not get along without girls, that he had to have them all the time, that he could not go to sleep without them.
That was all a lie. It was a lie both ways. You did not need a girl unless you thought about them. He learned that in the army. Then sooner or later you always got one. When you were really ripe for a girl you always got one. You did not have to think about it. Sooner or later it would come. He had learned that in the army.
Ernest Hemingway's short story Soldier's Home presents us with the typical boy-girl dilemma. This goes beyond the introductory short cut (one night stand style) that men prefer. The ability to abandon the complications and move in to the substance. Skip the courtships and the dalliances and just get the business done (for a Christian that would mean marriage). Women generally take longer in their decisions, hence the complications. But that's not the point. No, the point is not to distinguish from which planet came which creature. Men can very well be from Mars and Women from Venus, that's not the point.
No, the point is: do men need women? I mean, sure we needed them at one point. Adam needed Eve, but was that just because there was no other real conversationally intimate material available? I mean, I'm sure he didn't get much of a response from the animals prowling about. So he needed someone to talk to and KA-ZAM! Eve arrived on the spot. But I guess even though we now have all sorts of people around us and can have a ton of friends in our own social circles I suppose we still need women. We need them for sex. More importantly though we need them to keep our race - the human race - alive. Without them there will be no future for our civilization.
Still I rub up against the idea of men needing women. I rub up against it and feel a little disgruntled. I admit I want them. I admit I need them. But I do not want to be dependent upon them. It has, it seems, become an obsession. Women have infiltrated every area of masculinity by means of the media. You can't get much more macho than the wilderness or the army. Both of these arenas will place women in the proper perspective. Important, yes, but not irresistible. In fact, it is, as I've noted before, much more important to find a girl who is irreplaceable than to find one who is irresistible.
Women have not only infiltrated everything masculine but they have also come to dominate it all. With my own penchant for the arts I observe this most forcefully in this arena more than in any other. The arts have become a strong source of feminine propaganda. Perhaps not of their own will or choosing nevertheless they are in film, music, art, literature, and all other art form as a sort of object worthy of worship. One is told again and again to not objectify the female sex. It's true that ought not be done. Yet it is done, again and again, by all of these art forms.
No comments:
Post a Comment