It’s everywhere. So many of the stories that present themselves to the general world, and to university-minded UD, are, lately, all about SEX.
Like the ongoing tale my friend Philip calls “the profs and pros scandal.”
But there are so many others… And so I thought we might take a look at a sex poem. A poem that wants to share some thoughts about sex.
Here we go, stanza by stanza.
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Unnatural Selections: A Meditation upon Witnessing a Bullfrog Fucking a Rock
by Jim Dodge
Amalgam of electric jelly,
constellated neural knots
in the briny binary soup,
as surely as stimulus prods response
brains are made to choose.
[Starts with a physical description of the human brain, center of understanding and volition, starry glory of that most divinely advanced animal, the human, who can use it to choose. To act intelligently.]
And through a major error in pattern recognition
or a significant cognitive fault,
the bullfrogs brain has selected
a two-pound rock
as the object of his rampant affection,
a rock (to my admittedly mammalian eye)
that neither resembles
nor even vaguely suggests
the female of his species.
[Pity the cerebrally underdeveloped frog, whose brain has chosen poorly.]
He does seem to be enjoying himself
in a blunted sort of way,
but since the rock so obviously remains unmoved
one suspects it’s not the blending of sweet oblivions
that fuels his persistence,
but a serious kink in a feedback loop–
or perhaps just kinkiness in general.
The less compassionate might even call him
the quintessentially insensitive male.
[More on that last thing here. Plus, there’s no knowing what floats your boat, and it’s not my place to judge… What’s sneaking in here is a sense that the frog may not be so different from us. Us being men.]
Assuming a pan-species gender bond
and a common fret,
I advise my amphibious pal,
“Hey, I don’t think she’s playing hard to get.
That’s the literal case you’re up against, Jack–
true story, buddy; stone fact.
And I’d be fraternally remiss if I didn’t share
my deep and eminently reasonable doubt
that she’ll be worn down
however long and spectacular the ardor.”
[We’re both guys; lemme tell you. I know what it’s like to pursue a woman and come up against frigidity or rigidity or whatever. I know the difference between a cockteaser and rockteaser. Give it up.]
Ignoring my counsel
as completely as he has my presence,
the bullfrog continues his fruitless assault
with that brain-locked commitment to folly
which invariably accompanies
dumb, bug-eyed lust.
[With “dumb, bug-eyed lust,” our John Donneian metaphor sheds its clothing and steps forth as a naked truth about frog and man. Under the influence of lust, the high mammalian and low amphibian brain are equally dumb.]
But, in fairness,
whose brain hasn’t shorted out in a slosh of hormones
or, igniting like a shattered jug of gas,
fireballed into a howling maelstrom
where a rock indeed might seem a port?
[Grenouille, c’est moi. Although I think he’s still claiming only men are this dumb.]
One can only conclude
that such impelling concupiscence
serves as a species’ life-insurance,
sort of a procreative override
of any decision requiring thought,
thought being notoriously prey to thinking,
and the more one thinks about thinking
the thinkier it gets.
[An argument from evolution here. If we (men?) weren’t like this, the human species would have died out, since the bigger your brain gets, the more you think, and the more you think, the less you act. Sexually. All the out-of-control-sexually guys we’ve been reading about lately are hopelessly caught in procreative override.]
Therefore, though the brain is made to choose,
its very existence ultimately depends
on the generative supremacy of brainless desire–
for with all respect to Monsieur Descartes
you am before you can think you are.
Dirt-drive compulsions riding powerful desires
render any choice moot, along with
reason, morality, taste, manners,
and all those other jars of glitter
we pour on the sticky and raw.
[You wouldn’t even get a brain – you wouldn’t even be born – if the human world weren’t full of mindlessly horny men humping anything. The rest of it – reason, etc. – is icing on the horn.]
The hard truth is we never chose to choose:
not the brains we use to pick
between competing explanations for our sexual mess
nor these hearts we’ve burdened with our blunders
in the name of love.
Do whatever we decide we will,
the choice isn’t free;
we live at the mercy of more pressing needs.
[The turgid truth is that we’re always between a rock and a hard place, always at the mercy of evolutionary drives. We can put on little Freud suits and come up with “explanations for our sexual mess,” but it’s nature-driven hormones.]
Thus, urges urgently surging,
we mount a few rocks by mistake.
A bit more embarrassing than most of our foolishness, true–
but so what?
The power of the imperative
coupled with the law of averages
virtually guarantees enough will get it right
to make more brains to be made up
about exactly what steps to take
toward what we think we need to do
on this stony journey between delusion and mirage–
when to move, where to hide our dreams–
a journey where we finally learn
freedom is not a choice
a brain is free to choose.
[We’re condemned by birth to this bizarre unfree freedom in which we hop about trying to do this and to do that until we eventually land on a live one.]
Fortunately, my warty friend,
the soul is built to cruise.
[A very Donneian conclusion. Wanton-prisoners we may be, but we have a soul as well as body, and the soul can truly wander free.]