a little faith in me

This Spitzer thing's been bugging me. It's been bugging me since it broke and I've been wanting to write about it, but I seem to be having a problem forming any kind of substantive opinion about it. And wishy-washy-ness doesn't make for compelling blog posts. But I'm going to try anyway. This post might be unwieldy, disorganized and prone to tangential jaunts and it's likely to head into even more personal terrain than I generally like to examine in this forum. But it's bugging me. So what else am I supposed to do?

Firstly, I should say that I find all the hoopla that arises when a politician has sex outside of the socially-sanctioned strictures of the marital default setting of monogamy to be a gigantic waste of a media spotlight. I'm certainly not the first person to opine that a person's bedroom activities do not correlate with his or her abilities to function in a position of public service. Honestly, so long as everyone involved is consenting (and yes, I realize it's debatable whether the wives are consenting, but I'll get to Silda in just a sec), I couldn't give a fig about who these guys fuck.

The truth is that we have absolutely no insight whatsoever as to the arrangement between Eliot and Silda Spitzer. True enough, her countenance during umpteen press conferences did not exactly convey a particularly laissez-faire attitude regarding her husband's assiduous trysting with call-girls, but it seems to me that any among us might don a grim, blanched mask if the necessity of discussing, on a national platform, any of our sexual activities that might fall out of the range of matrimonially-sanctioned, missionary congress were to arise. I've read quite a few articles in which commentators say this exact thing-- what business is it of ours what was going on in that marriage? But I'm also reading a lot of articles that are either condemning poor Silda for being a doormat or are busy perching halos on her head for "doing the Tammy Wynette thing" (really, the journalistic article's Tammy Wynette reference is SO frickin' cliched at this point that I'm wondering what sort of effort I would have to put forth to stage a boycott on both the song and on reporters who refer to it.). Some chide her, saying she should build a bonfire out of his golf clubs. Some question her commitment, as an extremely high-powered attorney in her own right, to feminism, wondering why she would display her "servility" to her husband subsequent to a public "betrayal." And some say that the whole point of marriage is that you're supposed to stick it out, regardless of brand of strife (um, yeah, that's appealing, hot and romantic... 50-odd years of "stickin' in out!").

But I'm wondering, where the eff do these pundits get off? This woman chose her role, alternately described as "stoic" or "pathetic," for herself. As we can expect that she's a highly intelligent and self-contained person, why can we not all respect both her choice and her ability to make it? Doubtlessly, she has her reasons for throwing herself to the blackbirds of the press and who am I to have an opinion about what kind of person that makes her? Obviously, she knows more than I do... and more than bajillions of professional opinion-havers do. Let's just give her a rest already, how 'bout it?

Now, I want to talk some more about biology and monogamy. With an extensive backlog of research, many evolutionary biologists agree that there's not a sexually-reproducing species on the planet (with the notable exception of the Diplozöon paradoxum, a parasitic worm that lives in the intestines of fish. Apparently, the genitals of the male and female actually fuse together during intercourse. This seems like a reasonable arrangement if your lifespan is a day or two. If these worms were expected to spend a a few decades in such a state, well, just imagine the bickering! And the chafing!) that actually maintains life-long monogamy. Sure, there are much-mythologized species of birds who pair-bond for life, but they've been observed having numerous twinkies on the side. Hey, if you could have your swan-cake and eat it too, you would, wouldn't you? This article discusses the biology of monogamy so that I don't have to go into any further detail here, but it comes out on the other end of it than I do. Here's what the author, David Barash, says:

"Some readers may bridle at this characterization of Homo sapiens as EPC [extra-pair copulation]-inclined, but the evidence is overwhelming. That doesn't justify adultery, by either sex, especially because human beings -- even those burdened by a Y chromosome and suffering from testosterone poisoning [testosterone poisoning? Is this dude kidding me? Having a sex drive is now a symptom of toxicity?] -- are presumed capable of exercising control over their impulses. Especially if, via wedding vows, they have promised to do so. After all, "doing what comes naturally" is what nonhuman animals do. People, most of us like to think, have the unique capacity to act contrary to their biologically given inclinations. Maybe, in fact, it is what makes us human."

ARGH! True, being biologically predisposed to feeling a need to produce spawn with anything that moves doesn't justify the aspect of adultery that involves LYING and betraying our loved ones, but is sure as hell does justify a greater acceptance of polyamory. Yes. We have control over our impulses. But we also have an obligation to our partners and to ourselves to own up to the fact that picking one person to fuck for the rest of your life does little more than establish one of those proverbial uphill battles. Beyond that, I think I have a bigger question about the idea quoted above. Why does my sentience confer upon me a necessity to deny my animal nature? Just because I'm capable of analyzing, fretting, moralizing and freaking out about my expenditures of of sexual energy, I'm somehow OBLIGATED to do so? This concept is based in the faulty, dualistic (Judeo-Christian) thinking that the body should be subservient to the mind. Why are we so intent upon privileging one above the other when we can't exist without either? Ugh. See? I told you this was going to get big in a hurry.

From a biological perspective, the meaning of life is to produce more life. That's right, folks, I said it. No matter all my gnashing of teeth about my anxieties about actually using my own body for said project, I think reproduction IS the meaning of life (put that in your fortune cookie and smoke it!). So, it makes SENSE that our bodies do everything in their power to convince us that we need sex all the time, with as many people as will have us, in whatever positions we are creative enough to think up, with variety and orgasms for all!!! Holy hell! Yes. But David Barash thinks this makes us LESS than human? What?

OK, I know advocating wild orgiastic fornication is slightly polemical. I'll come back and mitigate that stance in a minute. First, however, I have to take Dr. Barash to task on something else.

While he doesn't come right out and say it, there's an underlying implication behind that article that men are more predisposed to non-monogamy than women are. And indeed, the conventional wisdom backs this up. The fact that the male of our species produces billions of sperm cells to every one of the female's ova provides for the seemingly logical extrapolation that the male desire to "spread seed" far and wide (as opposed to, say, all over the bare ass of the one and only one female of the species, perhaps) differs from the female's desire to nab a babydaddy and lock him up and force him to play house. And hence, this idea accounts for a differential between male and female "fidelity." And further hence, women who enjoy scratching itches with numerous partners are thought to have some sort of pathology or psychosis (see my discussion of Christina Ricci's character in Black Snake Moan for more thoughts on that), rather than "doing what comes naturally." Sheesh, that's frustrating!

He also talks a little about the "power-as-pheromone" concept-- and this is yet another idea that makes me feel like a freak of my gender. The argument is that it's widely observable that, across species, females are more attracted to those with power and or social status. Hence, Spitzer, with his perpetual "bitter-beer" face, is given copious opportunity to bag any hot chick he feels like because he's (was) governor of the most populous state in the union. So why then, does this not work for ME? Money and power don't impress me. If you are a guy who drives a fancy car, you can bet, not only will I feel less attracted to you than I did before I knew you drive a fancy car, but I'm likely to lecture you about your contributions to the war effort via petroleum purchases and the fact that your carbon footprint is substantially bloated. (Yes, I own a car. Yes, I feel guilty about it every time pull up to the gas pump. And no, my guilt doesn't mitigate my hypocracy. I know. Let's not talk about it.)

So, case in point: I know a man who is fairly prominent in his field. So prominent, in fact, that he is called upon to speak up on The Hill--even in front of Congress--fairly regularly. Unfailingly, he shows up in the threshold of my office to allow me to admire his schmancy suit after each of his presentations. Given, I had (past tense) a MAD crush on this man for other reasons, but even at my crushiest, I found his preening to be uproariously funny. He is handsome and brilliant and overtly sexual and that's quite enough to win me over, thank you. So why the hell would he need to put on a show so that I would see him as something of a big deal? Because women are drawn to power and money, right? Perhaps this is nothing more than another example of how I'm a poor specimen of my gender, in terms of living up to proscribed conventions. Of course, calling myself a freak on this point is a little bit disingenuous. I don't actually think I'm such an anomaly. Not every girl demands her johns--uh, I mean dates-- leave gold coins under her pillow.

On a almost related note, there's significant documentation of the scientific basis for the "seven-year itch." Although, apparently, it's really more like a four-year itch. And it affects people of both genders. Four years is the span of time it takes to raise a child out of infancy. It makes good sense that all four eyes begin to wander when a sexual pair-bond approaches its fourth birthday. I recently read an article (I'd link it, but can't seem to find it again) that talked about female infidelity having its basis in emotional disappointment, as opposed to the male biological-diversity-of-mating justification for non-monogamy. It said something about how women are more likely to mistake infatuation (defined in the article to mean "powerful sexual attraction") for love than men were and then, when the hot sex part burns out, women think they've fallen out of love and begin to stray. Not surprisingly, this tends to happen right around that four-year mark.

Now, first of all, who's to say that a waning of sexual attraction ISN'T what falling out of love means, at least in part? Beyond that, it seems ridiculous to me that this article wanted to assert that female infidelity is psychological while male infidelity was biological-- when reasons for both genders' dalliances exist under the auspices of both disciplines. It's almost as insulting and reductive as the notion that female sexuality is motivated out of pedestrian greed and power-hunger, while male sexuality is motivated out of a mindless, doltish yen for the indiscriminate dissemination of DNA. Is there anyone of either gender who could emerge from either of those lines of reasoning smelling like anything vaguely resembling a rose?

Furthermore, I'm troubled by that model in which infatuation = sexual attraction but does not = love. Putting aside the sheer subjectivity that we are bound to encounter if ever we try to define what makes love love, what are we to make to the early stages of romantic relations? You know what I mean: those days when you somnambulate through your workday, bow-legged, slitty-eyed and hungover from your night-long fucking binge. You're so tired and so punch drunk that you catch yourself grinning like an idiot at your food spinning behind the microwave window. Or staring dreamily into space when the red light turns green... True, you can have a sex hangover after a night with someone about whom you could care less, but you're unlikely to audibly giggle and blush whenever you recount memories of the night back to yourself. This is eros, my friends, in its most etymologically pure sense. To discount sexual love as though it's not "real love" seems like such a shame, don't you think? And embedded in that dismissal is the idea that "mature love" or "companionate love" is somehow superior. Obviously, I'm not so sure that's the case.

A couple of years ago, I was asked to write a few capsule reviews for new and forthcoming poetry monographs for the UofA Poetry Center newsletter. One of the books I reviewed was Eavan Boland's Against Love Poetry. I began my review with the line, "What's a poet to do when the first flush of love goes the way of a 30-year marriage?" Indeed, this is the question central to Boland's book. Ultimately, the accumulated voices of the speakers of her various poems decide they prefer the comfort and affection and sacrifice of a companionate relationship to the stimuli and precipices that are to be found in the jungles of new love. It's true. We distrust hot sexual passion. For good reason-- it fleets and we know it. If we're lucky, it'll chug along for a full four years... and then will ultimately smolder into a warm, if staid, affection.

It's been nearly four years now since I was last in love, not counting a few almost-loves that I sloughed off fairly painlessly. Four years. For the first three, I suppose I was slitty-eyed-ecstatic about my single-hood. I was so pleased to be free of my very trite four-year itch (well, it took me five years, actually). And I was also pleased to be free of the humiliating little ritual in which my ex and I would engage-- the one in which, after six weeks of near-nightly wet dreams, I'd forgo my pride and begin to cajole her into fucking me. After another several days of her calling me "demanding" and "needy" and "oversexed," she'd relent. And then we'd go another 6 weeks before I became a whiny brat again. And I was pleased, too, to be free of her surveilling eye. It was so watchful, so wary that I was not a lesbian ( I wasn't), that I was out on daily cock-hunts, scouting or something (I wasn't... well, I was and I wasn't). The last two years with her exhausted me.

So, I felt euphoric when I got single again.

But lately, my infatuation with single-hood has been wearing thin. That's right. You heard me. For the last 6 or 8 months, I've been wondering what it would be like if I broke up with being single.

Dare I say I'm thinking about wanting to be in love again?

The sentence above is probably the single scariest I've written in the history of this blog.

I submit it for your consideration, fair readers. I submit it while feeling wholly pessimistic about love lasting for more than four years. OK, sure, that's an arbitrary cut-off point, but I don't see too many relationships that can sustain the swell and thrust of true eros much beyond that. My own surely didn't. No, I don't think that "mature love" is superior, but rather, it is the thing for which we settle because we know erotic love is temporary. But I LOVE erotic love! Most of us do, don't we?

And I'm scared of falling in love again not just because the desire for love renders me more vulnerable than I ever care to be but because I'm scared of committing to monogamy. It's not that I'm not capable of it-- I am and I've proven it under less than optimal conditions (as described above). It's just that I'm not sure monogamy makes me happy in the way that erotic love does. It's easy being monogamous when all your sexual fantasies pertain to the person with whom you are currently having sex. It's actually not all that difficult to be monogamous even when other people manage to meander into your fantasies-- you just don't engage. Inertia is ultimately far easier than following more proactive trajectories anyway. But it's not easy feeling happy, stimulated, not bored, and sexually satisfied once a relationship has long since weathered the throes of new lust. And who wants to swear to god, a congregation of friends and family, and your beloved that you'll never want to feel all that excitement of newness again? And who among us is truly capable of making good on a promise that we'll forgo all lures toward such excitement? Forever?

Maybe I wish I was capable of that kind of promise. I'm not sure than I am. But then again, I'm not sure that I'm not, either.

But I want it. I do. I want so desperately to be proven wrong. I don't want to believe that monogamy is futile, based on our biological imperatives. I don't want to believe that established relationships all become sexless and sterile.

I also want to never again feel the sense of failure that you encounter when you renege on the promise that you're gonna be in love forever. Mine is not a pretty sort of shame. It tends to flounce itself out of mouth of my emotive duffel bag and land gracelessly at the feet of anyone who cares to read this blog. Or wants to know me on an intimate level. I'm not proud that I failed her. Even four years later.

Or maybe all I really want is a compassionate companion who appreciates the comforts of long-terming it, but is as disinclined as I am to swear off those first flushes, too.

Surely there is compromise to be had?



Gracious. Maybe it wasn't Spitzer that's been bugging me after all. Hey, surprise! I'm worried about the feasibility of relationship. Or rather, the feasibility of myself in relationship. Apparently, I can't even read the news without devolving into sad self-involvement. Me & Spitzer: wanting cake while simultaneously gorging ourselves upon it. Oh, that's nice. I'm a disaster.

Crap. I never did get around to talking about prostitution. Ah, well. there's always the next post.