introducing bonobos

Man: Well, maybe for the time being, yes. But I'll talk also about Eveline. Have you heard of bonobos?

Mentor: Yes, you know I have, but it's your narrative, tell me about them.

Man: They're perhaps an example to us, an example of the use of sex for enabling us to be less violent and aggressive. Bonobos are along with chimpanzees our closest living relatives, but bonobos display much less aggression than chimpanzees. They're also much more highly sexualised than chimps. To me, and I'm sure to the ethologists studying these animals, there's a strong connection between high levels of sexual expression and low levels of expressed aggression. I'm interested in looking at this further, and in looking at sex and aggression and their linkages in human society. For example, the sexual treatment of women in societies where women are given little autonomy. We know of all the extreme cases, where women are punished by their families for being raped, or from running away from a sadistic, usually much older husband. Or simply for being outspoken. But what about overall rates of male-to-female violence in countries like Saudi Arabia?

Mentor: I'm sure if you get in touch with the Al-Saud family, they'll release all the details to you forthwith.

Man: Yes, or perhaps if we look at all the violent hotspots in the world and check out the attitudes there to marriage, female autonomy, expressions of sexuality and the like. But all that sounds too much like hard work. Why not just go with the subjective impression that if you're getting it regularly you feel more at peace with the world. 

Mentor: So you must be feeling rather at odds with the world these days. 

Man: Maybe, but I certainly am used to it. I know that when I was getting it regularly, I felt more at peace, for a time. 

Mentor: Yet you threw it all away. 

Man: I suppose I was hoping to get closer to my ideal, and I had this view that it would be wrong of me to string Zelda along while I imagined myself with more ideal lovers. 

Mentor: The old she deserved better argument, eh? 

Man: There were other issues. I was crying out for more autonomy. Zelda was overwhelming me in various ways. Writing was important to me, ideas were important to me, and Zelda wasn't really into that sort of stuff, at bottom. She was bright, and just occasionally she could go deeper - I once had a thrilling conversation with her about physics and cosmology, though no doubt experts in the field would've scoffed. Generally, it wasn't enough. Of course I expected too much of her, didn't seek out others who would've satisfied those needs, but I think what really irked me was that she would switch off from listening to me, both privately and in public. She would say things that indicated she hadn't heard anything that I'd been enthusiastically explaining to her in the previous ten minutes. Maybe this is a typical married couple thing, I don't know, but I hated it.  Especially when, as often happened, she would ask someone in public about something that I'd often given her the answer to, and I would wonder if she ever listened to me, or if she just didn't trust or respect my opinions or claims to knowledge. I wondered what my purpose was - was I merely a trophy husband? 

mind v body

Mentor: So you were reconciling yourself to staying put, and making the most of your relationship. Which brings us back to sex.

Man: Yes, sex and a snifter of guilt. I was confused, I suppose. I didn't think this relationship could possibly last, yet I sensed it was doing me good. The sex, well I don't want to dwell on the sex really, I don't want to hurt her. Not that the sex was bad mind you. 

Mentor: It's going to be hard to avoid the sex, considering. 

Man: Mmmm. Well, one of the good things about the sex was how appreciative she was, and how accommodating. Anyway it was all good for a while, but from the start I was aware that I was sustaining it by fantasy, and I was very uncomfortable about that. I couldn't very well raise the matter with her, and so I felt a dishonesty at the heart of things, and I knew that, or I felt that honesty was key to a successful relationship.

Mentor: Maybe it isn't.

Man: Yes, maybe it isn't. When I look back, I feel perhaps I've lost more than I've gained by the break-up of our relationship, even though we really weren't so compatible. I mean, I've lost many of the wider connections, and my ties with Zelda, who's my best and just about only friend now, are much more fraught. Not to mention the Eveline debacle. But the major reason Zelda is so important to me is that I'm reluctant to seek out other women, or other people. I simply don't socialize. Full stop.  

Mentor: That's a problem. What are you going to do about it, live in the past? 

Man: No, you're right, I should break out. Why am I telling you this whole sad sordid story - sordid, it's not even sordid. It's nothing. It's about a woman, a family, a sexy daughter with whom I became friendly at first, but who later started acting as if she hated me, while getting sexier and sexier. It's about how I found myself on the outer with the woman and her family, not so much because her family rejected me but because I felt uncomfortable about the whole scenario, and life was becoming a struggle and I'd lost what little sense of charisma I had. I don't so much live in the past as I live in theory, in fantasy, and in sly observance. I've always been a bit of a sly observer, but as you get older, and fattier and uglier, or not so much uglier but more middle-aged and worn-out and invisible to wannabe lovers, it gets harder to make your sly sensual observations more palatable to others. I'm advised to join a club, like the humanist society, or a political organisation or a philosophy group. That's probably a good idea - I've reached the time of life when my mind is sexier than my body. 

Mentor: Cycling, bushwalking, since you're so concerned about your physical condition. 

Man: Are you trying to turn me into something other than a theoretical libertine, at my age?

Mentor: Would you prefer to talk about theory? 

changes

Mentor: So you decided to stay put? 

Man: I received a call from the publisher I sent my MS to, much earlier than I expected, and he expressed interest, and talked about editors and the possibility of a contract, and as you can imagine this was all a bit overwhelming. It seemed that my brilliant career had begun. Naturally this made me rethink the Sydney or interstate thing, but on reflection I decided I should go interstate, because I still needed a shake-up, and the editing and the contractual stuff could surely be managed by mail, email and so forth. In fact, this news meant that I could go forth on an interstate adventure with a modicum of confidence - unusual for me. So, I waited for the news from interstate, fully expecting to have a choice of places. The responses trickled in, and they were all negative. Nobody wanted me. I considered contacting them again to tell them I now had a publisher, but that wasn't official, and I wondered if maybe that info wouldn't be more negative than positive for my chances. Better for their rep to take on newbies and guide them to greatness than to take on someone already guaranteed publication. Where would be the kudos in that? But the final nail in the coffin of my interstate dream came in the form of another call from the publisher. He asked me how I was off financially and suggested I apply for a state grant, letting it be known that he might be able to use his influence... This made it seem more clear to me that my book would be published, but I realized that if I applied for a state grant, it would tie me, morally if not physically, to the granting state. Forces were conspiring to keep me in South Australia. I applied for a grant, and was successful.

Mentor: And Zelda was in the loop about all this?

Man: Oh yes. I mean, she was privy to the confusion and provisionality of my plans. Let me see now. I moved in with Zelda in October 1995, and it might be that I'd already started writing to creative writing courses before that. I must have sent my MS to the publisher in late 95 and received a call within a couple of weeks. I received an arts grant for either the first half or the second half of 96. Probably in the second half but I was informed about it in the first half. I was thirty-nine years old, and it was all happening for me. I felt rejuvenated. No doubt my relationship with Zelda benefitted from that. I was lively, enthusiastic, confident, open-hearted, gregarious, more like the sort of person I'd always wanted to be. You see, to be recognised as a writer, that had been my great desire for so long, it had so shaped my existence that I was almost beginning to think it a burden, a weight I'd been forcing myself to carry around, wearing me out, making me crabbed and anxious, unappreciated and vaguely ashamed. At last I felt accepted and released, I'd come out in a sense, and on top of this, rarety of rareties, I was in an actual relationship, with an actual woman, and had become an accepted part of her community, in from the cold. 

all quite normal

Man: Yes, it seems so. Even when you're getting old and fat and smelly and ugly yourself. The fact is, it wasn't long at all before I was mostly thinking of someone else while having sex with Zelda. 

Mentor: Someone younger.

Man: Younger women, more attractive. The stock characters of my masturbatory fantasies. Often I got stuck on a particular one. There was a young woman I was haplessly chasing in the few years before I moved in with Zelda. Ridiculously young in fact, and ridiculously beautiful, but I'd managed to put myself forward and befriend her for a time, which was very daring for me. I knew I had no hope of bedding her, so I just tried to maintain the friendship, to keep close to someone so beautiful and sexy, but she chose to reject me completely, which created an obsession for a time. In fact I've never gotten over that. So, yes, I fantasised about her, but there were plenty of others to toss in the mix. A waitress I glimpsed regularly, a woman at the bus stop, the lovely Eveline, Geena Davis, etc etc.

Mentor: So when you were fucking Zelda you were imagining fucking her daughter.

Man: Sometimes. Yes, I have sinned in my heart. All quite normal, surely. And sometimes, depending on her response and how my emotionally labile mind was working, I imagined I was fucking Zelda. Anyway, I expected it to be temporary. I moved in on the understanding that it would be temporary. I was on my way to Sydney, to start a new life. That's what I told her, and myself. I was feeling wildly confident at the time about my writing. I'd almost finished writing a novel, and I fully expected it to be published, though I knew all about the odds. I'd had the first chapter published in a magazine. Extraordinarily easy success after years of writing and avoiding publishers and publications. One of the first things I did after moving in with Zelda was to apply to every creative writing program in every state other than my own [which didn't have any such programs anyway]. Creative writing courses had become all the rage, and they seemed the obvious course for me, and moving interstate would shake me up, rejuvenate me, set me back on my resources. This sense that I was moving on somehow made it easier to take advantage of the situation with Zelda. And it was a good situation. It made me feel normal and healthy for the first time in a long long time. And I was giving her something too, quite a deal in fact, and she was lapping it up. 

Mentor: But you didn't get to Sydney.

Man: No, well... I say Sydney but that was my first choice. I applied for all these courses, two or three in Sydney, but also in Melbourne, in Queensland, in Western Australia. Some of these universities, I had no idea where they were located. I sent them bits of my manuscript, and the piece I had published in the magazine. I knew the writing was pretty good, I was sure I'd have a choice of places. I didn't know how I was going to pay for the course, getting in was the first concern. And then there was the book. I'd picked out a local publisher, and then wondered if moving interstate was such a good idea after all. What if the local mob agreed to publish it? The book was set in South Australia, after all...  

blame evolution

Man: No, really, I moved in with her, purely as a lodger, and I knew it would happen, and from the start I was wondering how I could extricate myself... And yet, and yet, we got on brilliantly, and I was of course flattered by her interest, and impressed with her hard-won wisdom, and she was a thorough sensualist, and she loved my cooking, we shared many epicurean delights. She didn't have quite my intellectual bent, and she was continually apologetic about this, while I felt apologetic about my years of impotent dilettantish self-indulgence, though I wasn't so vocal about that. 

Mentor: What about physical attraction?

Man: Ah, there's the nub. She had an attractive face, a warm, loveably attractive face, and when we first kissed her face flushed and her eyes shone. I'll never forget that. She was dazed and excited like a child. Her body was, as she described it, middle-aged and matronly, and I  must admit to not finding it overly exciting. Of course now I myself am older than she was then, and my body has gone almost, but not quite, the way of the Marquis, so it would be churlish to complain. I personally think it would be a crime to offer this body I have now to any woman. Of course I intend to work it into shape, sometime. But there were other things about Zelda; she had no illusions about herself, she dealt with herself with humour and realism, and sexual relations with her were easy, gentle, affirming. I've described it before as a healing relationship. Sexual healing, that's really what it was, and I'll always be grateful for that.  

Mentor: And yet?

Man: Hah. I suppose my problem was that after years of sexual fantasy, my ideal woman hadn't changed. At nineteen, at twenty-nine, at thirty-nine, my ideal woman was young, smart, taut, and twenty or so. Of course I could stretch the ideal, to thirty, thirty-five.  Approaching fifty though, that was a real stretch. Needless to say, I hadn't come to terms with myself approaching forty.   

Mentor: So you liked her, you were very fond of her, you were grateful to her, but you weren't sexually excited by her?

Man: Well, I was sexually excited by her, by her excitement, and her lovingness, for a time, but I didn't think I'd be able to keep it up, so to speak. It was a bit like being a prostitute, I imagine - if you're with a customer who's in one way or another not quite ideal, you start fantasising about someone else. And all this made me feel very guilty, and I never felt like a prostitute, and it was only the body thing. I never felt that I wanted someone gentler, or kinder, or more sensitive. Or rarely. She was pretty well ideal in those respects.

Mentor: You can always blame evolution.

Man: Sounds good. What do you mean?

Mentor: The sex drive is about spreading the seed. You're programmed to anticipate with the maximum of pleasure sexual relations with the woman best equipped to successfully carry your seed. Middle aged and matronly generally doesn't cut it, no matter what your age. 

problem fathers

Man: How could she be a Christian when her sister was? I was intrigued to observe the divergent paths these siblings took to carve out their niches. Esther the religio-spiritualist, Eveline the political activist, Christopher the scientist. Not entirely defining characteristics of course... Anyway, they were a treasure trove for a compulsive diarist like me. All three were magnificently intelligent and complicated and vulnerable and puzzling. I mean, they all struggled not to fit in and to stay on top, to deal with family and to overcome its limitations in their case. 

Mentor: A typically unorthodox bunch.

Man: Absolutely typical. I don't suppose there's really any orthodox lower middle class trajectory, if that's how you'd classify this family. In this case, no father - he'd flown the coop, finally, after a good few years of trying to tame Zelda into fitting into his life of dreaming of money-making schemes and never holding down a job and trying to force her to be a housewife and a devoted mother while he did bugger all. Of course I only heard Zelda's side of this, but he really seems to have been a very poor sort, and none of the kids thought much of him, clearly. Zelda had essentially brought these kids up herself while fending off and covering for this adult kid. He was Austrian I believe, but possibly with gypsy blood. It took her a while, once she realized they were better off without him, to get him out of her hair. He even tried to kidnap the kids at one stage, causing much trauma. When he was finally out of the picture, Zelda hooked up with an old friend, who she apparently didn't realize was an alcoholic. They married and she fell pregnant with Lola. She described her bond to this her final child as fanatically intense, but unfortunately the girl grew up out with all the social gaucherie and addictive nature of her old man, who was also a compulsive gambler who began selling Zelda's furniture on the sly to feed his habit. Exit husband number two. Both of them complex and sympathetic victims of difficult families themselves when seen in the round, no doubt. I never really met these gentleman, though I did have them pointed out to me on one or two occasions. I think it's reasonable to say that even the kids saw me as a vast improvement, at first. All complicated by genetics of course. Anyway, I felt so warmly welcomed in those early days that... I felt a strange of achievement somehow. I never thought it wouldn't last, which was strange, because I never really expected my sexual liaison with Zelda to last. Anyway, obviously the kids' lives were massively affected by their mum's failed relationships, but whether for the better or the worse who can say?

Mentor: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. But may I remind you that we're supposed to be talking about sex?

Man: Sorry. Theoretical sex. So I started banging this Zelda chick. 

 

some children and their children

Mentor: I think I know the allusion.

Man: You would of course. Anyway, more on Eveline anon. Finally there's Zelda's third child, Christopher, the last of the brace of three from her first marriage. When I moved in, Zelda had not long returned from a cheapie trip to Europe - to get away from her family, as she described it. I'm not sure what the arrangement was with Lola, who would've been rather young to be left alone. I didn't want to inquire too deeply into all that. Now, I'm sorry to introduce so many names here, but there are more. Zelda not only had four kids but also two grandkids when I first met her, to which have been added an extra five since my advent. Esther, the Christian, had a six year old child, Andrew, out of a disastrous relationship. The father chose to deny paternity, and when it was proven in the usual way, he disappeared, never to be seen again. When I arrived on the scene, Esther was in a relationship with an odd handsome wannabe writer, excruciatingly untalented. He'd had a book self-published at some expense, and its awfulness made him a laughing-stock. As someone about to have my own book published, in more traditional and 'legitimate' fashion, I naturally kept him at arm's length, which was easy enough given my solitary disposition. Their relationship was very volatile, due to both characters' characters. No doubt it would've died the death, but Esther fell pregnant again. Actually, this may have been the event that doomed the relationship or brought it to a quicker conclusion, for the handsome bad writer insisted that Esther had deliberately fallen pregnant [and others in the family, most notably Eveline, had their strong suspicions]. I tell you all this as a taste of the dramas I’d dropped myself into, through Zelda, the mother hen as she called herself. It was all very fascinating. I tried to keep out of the various controversies, but with the Esther case, yes I had my own suspicions, as Esther was the traditionalist of the family, after getting over her youthful flights. Christianity was clearly part of that tradition which also involved marriage, family, home ownership, the whole shebang. She was very much into catching her man. It might have seemed manipulative, but it was also sad in its desperation. In any case, if she'd wanted to entrap, it didn't work, and Esther was soon left, single and struggling, with a hyperactive seven-year-old and a baby girl, and a perennially precarious housing situation. 

And then there was Eveline, also a single mum when I arrived, with a daughter of six or seven months. This little girl, Sophie, was the product of a liaison between Eveline and a Greek medical student who turned out to have severe psychological problems. The relationship had already foundered by the time I came along, though they still used each other for sex on a semi-regular basis. Eveline worked casually as a nurse, struggling to make ends meet, and like her older sister, moving from house to house in the rental market. 

Mentor: But she wasn't a Christian.