p.342:
Pentheselia was a mythological Amazon queen, and Themiscyra
was their mythological home, so Henry is reporting a dream event about
dangerous women here. It does seem to me that if a guy—“a fierce old man”
actually, which is either pathetic or hilarious, depending on your mood at the moment,
even though it is just a dream—I say, if a guy treated women like B. seems to
have treated women in his life, mainly as ground and fodder for his appetites,
then it stands to reason that the Amazon queen might visit in your sleep for a
bit of chat. In armor, one breast cut off the better to shoot her bow with,
sturdy helmet, and a serious sword at her belt, don’t mess with this woman. It’s
all anxiety and dread on his part though. Not that she’s here outside the window,
only that it might be her, which is
all the more dreadful.
That line about women in helmets and miniskirts that he sees
down at the mall all the time, that’s pretty telling. Women’s appearance and
sexuality, in other words, makes them formidable and “armored.” I’ve learned, I
hope, to see through this kind of thing. There is something so adolescent about
that line. I went through a phase in my life, like most hormonally over-torqued
teenage boys, when the image and body of girls and women did this, filled me with
the dread and anxiety B. is describing from this dream. I totally get where
that comes from. But I was a kid. At
the time, I couldn’t understand the guys my age able to talk to girls, or
actually tease or even mistreat them as much as anything, and eventually I more
or less came to think it was because they were such blockheads that the dread
and anxiety I struggled against never even entered their dense skulls. A phase
followed when I resented what the
image of women did to me—not really resenting the women behind the image and
the body, as much as resenting what the images caused in me. In line at a
bookstore, looking forward to some book I was buying, then seeing the
oversexualized image of a woman on a magazine cover and my cool, intellectual
sophistication flew out the window and there was absolutely nothing I could do
about it. It made me furious. With contemplation and a frank appraisal of what
this all had to be, I learned not to resent women and the image and presence of
their bodies, but to resent the advertisers using the women exactly to have the
effect on me they were having. Beautiful women still catch my attention, but
the response now is much cooler and coupled with the understanding that most of
the time women just want to be left alone or else treated within the bounds of
whatever the customs and etiquette adhering to the situation dictate. Just because
a woman is attractive that doesn’t mean I can proposition, stare or even flirt.
You just coolly look past all that to the person, which is really what mattered
in the first place. Going through all this is a process of growth toward
maturity that boys and men have to move through. You wind up here: “She’s
beautiful. Don’t bug her about it.” She’ll have ways to let you know if she wants
you to pick up on her sexuality and act, or respond and flirt, or whatever the etiquette and
customs provide for. It’s complicated, though, and even adult men often resent
it. Probably the same ones who were so callous and confident back in seventh
grade.
I’m realizing that the picture, the image of sexuality, is
almost completely culturally conditioned, and if that’s true, there are
cultural ways to compartmentalize it, relegate it all to its proper sphere, and
defend against it if you have to. B.
seems to have never been able to do that. If he has gained any calm in the face
of the onslaught of sexualized imagery we face every day, it has come through
age and the decay of physical vitality brought on by self-abuse. You start
looking gray and wrinkled, and wisdom substitutes for heat. But for him, I just
don’t see him finding his way toward true wisdom. The psychic ghosts of the
women he used, fought with, or who loved him and whom he ignored, they’re
stalking him in his dream as a result. He fears them because they’re pissed and
they’re dangerous in their anger, and also because if it came to it, they’d
break him in half or put an arrow through his throat. He’s a Pussy-cat all
right, waking sweating and sordid. Another of those well-earned nightmares, I’m
afraid.
Women are as screwed up as men are, of course, but they have
one advantage. They have to learn men better than men have to learn them. A man
who is strong enough to recognize that through the façade of advertised
sexuality waits half a world of genuine people, he will learn right back. But
too many men, and this Henry cat is one of them, mainly care to learn about
women’s sexuality so that they can work with it and more to the point, work it,
to their own gratification. If that happens, so it appears, she may just send a
representative warrior back to visit your dreams. Even the baddest ancient
warriors knew that when the Amazons showed up, shit was gonna get real. The
dread of battle is overcome in battle by fury and adrenaline, and when it comes
down to it, if you die you die. In a dream? It’s purified, concentrated, and
there’s no fighting through it. You get what you’ve earned. The subconscious
takes no prisoners.
Yeesh, I'm exhausted reading this!
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