As a result, the virile male member is in fact the least virile part of the man. The very symbol of uncertainty.
THE AUTHORS who tried to illustrate the idea of “penis inconvenience” in their books have failed to do so (it was inevitable), instead merely generating lunatic duets. Classical sculptors, on the other hand, were fully aware of it as they girded themselves to complete a project, finding themselves obliged to give form and dimension to an incongruous organ extraneous from the rest of the body that they had shaped in perfect harmony, and so they decided to diminish its size, certainly not out of any modesty, because they recognized in the sex attribute, in fact, an unbalancing, a pleonasm, the unharmonious element capable of rendering ridiculous the entire form, first and foremost due to its morbid ability to attract the observer’s gaze to it. Suffice it to think of the immediately unnerving and comical effect of depictions of a classical body with an erect penis. Nonetheless, the models for those athletes, soldiers, chariot drivers, and discus throwers must necessarily have had erections! The very improbable metamorphosis of the organ induces embarrassment in cataloguing it. Pornography aside, what would be the correct way of looking at it? How should a scientific portraitist depict it, one of those illustrators capable of rendering plants, leaves, fish, and snakes down to the millimeter, or great artists such as Pisanello or Dürer? When can it be said to be more specifically itself, in repose or in erection? Which of the two states (to say nothing of the other intermediate states, which can only be catalogued in filthy conversations) would be more amply representative?
(It is possible that a flaccid dick expresses a man’s emotions far more precisely than a hard one can. Or his authentic corporeal essence, which is fragile far more than it’s potent.)
To consider women to be incomplete and envious cloned copies then leads to negative attitudes in men, who find themselves living next to mutilated creatures, to be contemplated with horror and contempt, or else with compassion. A castrato. Who herself is ashamed of her wound, and therefore hides it. The masochistic desires of a woman over the course of her life, according to respected female psychologists: to be devoured, to be whipped, pierced, or perforated. Coitus, basically, is reduced to receiving blows. Hence the resemblance of the sex act, if viewed by someone who, hypothetically, had no idea of what was going on, to a punishment of some sort (I no longer remember whether it was Baudelaire or Laforgue who spoke of a “surgical procedure” . . .).
(THE FIRST ONES to be undermined by the suspicion that the myths about their inferiority may actually represent the truth, rather than mere propaganda, are women themselves. That is the risk that every subjugated or bullied group runs: that of giving credit to those who bully them, acknowledging the foundation of the legends that tell how and why this relationship of subjugation has always existed and must continue to remain in place. The power of myths in fact lies in their permanence: beyond all the other variants, the substance of what the myth tells us remains identical. In classical times, we find an agreement between the victor and the vanquished, the dominator and the dominated, that their relationship, thus established, has no other alternatives, that it is just, or even necessary. The victor and the vanquished see that dominion in the same manner: that it must be viewed as a natural event, which means that it is immutable. The way things stand has no reason to be called into question, and for that matter, who would even dare to try such a thing? As if, placed under hypnosis, dominator and dominated were to repeat the same identical formula, which is no longer imposed by the victor, in fact, which even he finds himself repeating without clearly understanding who actually suggested it to him. They limit themselves to handing down that which they have received, and it finds its legitimation precisely in the fact that it is being handed down: if it were not legitimate, it would long ago have vanished. If it endures, that means that it’s well founded. When everyone says the same thing, then it happens in fact that no one can even remember who said it first, or when. It is in this way that commonplace truths are formed.)
All of this, however, stopped all at once when women began to show themselves off proudly, shamelessly, with an exhibitionism nowadays turbocharged by the technology that makes it possible to display your body, or the juiciest parts of it, live, to a vast, unlimited audience, and with relative ease compared with males whose nudity (setting aside the peculiar sense of modesty that, in my opinion, is actually stronger among men than women) obliges them to that oscillating dangle, half comical and half pornographic, and the inevitable comparisons that ensue.
MALE SELF-RESPECT in erotic terms is often expressed in numbers. If they are not displayed, they are secretly reckoned. The number of women one has had, the number of sex acts performed in a single night, the endurance of the coitus, the length of the dick, and so on and so forth. Numbers, in short, numbers, numbers, no different than in a stock exchange or in the world of sports. The test to be passed these days in order for a man’s sexual performance to be considered satisfactory is not to have an orgasm himself but to make sure that his female lover has one: this is the metric by which his sexual competence will be judged (by her, by himself, by those of both sexes to whom the details will be confided). Which of course can be the source variously of a surge of pride or just as easily of fearsome lurches of anxiety and mortification.
How many girls have you taken to bed; how many times did you fuck; how often do you get a hard-on, how many times did you come, and how many times did you make the girl you were fucking come, etc. Data, mere data. Calculations. There was a time when you could measure a man’s prowess by the number of children he had brought into the world with his seed. The record is said to belong to Genghis Khan, who raped so many women during his incursions and raids that nowadays in Asia, nearly eight centuries after his death, it is estimated that one person in twenty has some chromosomes from the great military leader.
THE FEMALE BODY then becomes an interchangeable, accumulable object, which circulates in men’s conversations like a coin, allowing them to get to know one another, understand one another, compare themselves with one another, establishing certain hierarchies among themselves in accordance with who is wealthiest. Women constitute one of the methods, for some men the principal one, by means of which a man can affirm his own identity in the eyes of other men. Like money, women serve this purpose, allowing men to establish a certain credit. “He’s a guy who knows how to handle women . . .” If women didn’t exist, then men would be obliged to square off in open and direct competition, they’d have to vanquish one another: instead they conquer women and show them off as trophies. The men deserve admiration because they have been skilled and ruthless, because the women they have conquered are pretty, or else because they’re numerous, or else the women hang eagerly on their lips, admiring their speech. If women didn’t exist, there would be a constant state of war among men. But, of course, there would also be more love. Instead, a great deal of both the fascination and the brutality is unloaded upon the women as intermediate bodies.
The desire to fuck many women or a single woman many times may be viewed as an inexhaustible quest of the male identity. Every time I enter a woman I can tell myself: yes, I am a man.
ACCORDING TO A HALF-BAKED theory that was circulating when I was a boy, a man is capable of producing a limited quantity of sperm in a lifetime, corresponding to a certain number of orgasms. Have you ever heard this idea? I swear that I witnessed and was tempted to take part in a number of discussions of this topic, despite the fact that I was entirely ignorant about the subject. They unfolded roughly along these lines.
They’re like bullets.
What do you mean?
You shoot them out.
And so . . .
When you’re out of ammunition, you’re out of ammunition.
And just how many of these “bullets” are we supposed to have, tell me.
Three thousand.
Three thousand? That’s quite a few.
Not as many as you might think, if
you count the times you jack off.
You have to count them?
Of course you do.
What difference does it make? It’s an ejaculation like any other.
True enough . . .
“Ejaculation” is the most ridiculous word I’ve ever heard in my life.
I couldn’t agree more.
It’s only a technical term.
But I must have jacked off a thousand times, by now . . .
. . . if not more! Ha ha ha!
(On this specific point, I would be as evasive as possible, hoping not to be pinned down for the reason I’ve mentioned previously.)
But then, when you get to three thousand, what happens then?
You can’t get it up?
You can’t come anymore?
Do you die?
I’ve read that there are orgasms where you don’t come.
What’s that supposed to mean?
You come inward instead of outward.
Inward?
That seems impossible.
Wait, you still haven’t answered my question. When you get to three thousand . . .?
Well, I don’t really know what happens: but for sure, you’re going to have trouble.
Or else, utter peace.
So what if it was more? Like four thousand, or even five thousand?
But what if it was less . . .?
Maybe it’s just different for every man.
A porn actor must have a bigger reservoir.
Right. Otherwise by the time he turns thirty, he’s out of a job.
Then it would probably be a good idea to start as late as possible.
I know that there are people capable of fucking for hours without ever coming.
How do they do it?
Even all day long.
Fantastic!
Sounds boring!
Sure, but how do they do it?
They exert mental control over themselves. Over their bodies. They’re like . . .
Like fakirs?
Sure, like fakirs.
Some pretty fucked-up fakirs.
So why do they do it?
To preserve their energies.
And do they attain nirvana?
What does nirvana have to do with any of this?
If you ask me, plenty.
FOR ME, these discussions were the source of considerable embarrassment. Still, I couldn’t help but listen eagerly.
“It only counts if you get it inside her” (the words of a student at a summer Spanish course in Salamanca, 1979). “Listen, you have to get it up her ass. With a woman, it only counts if you can fuck her in the ass. Otherwise, it’s like you never even fucked her at all” (assertion of an Italian literary critic, 1989).
Masculinity, as we are taught by Don Juan, is not something you have, it’s something you always have to still have, it’s something you are constantly required to test, you must make your masculinity, and each time you create it with a woman. Like Sir Gawain, who every night of his life as a knight-errant, in order to win hospitality in a castle, was required to refresh his reputation as a great lover by bedding the latest chatelaine who, invariably, teases his honor, while in fact all he is looking for is a pallet and to be allowed to rest undisturbed, similarly Don Juan lives uncomfortably exposed in an interminable demonstration of his amatory endowments, and even though his reputation as a cocksman might accompany him, indeed, precisely because it does, his virility is continuously being subjected to testing, subjected to judgment, referred from bed to bed, postponed to the next conquest, the next amorous adventure. It is in fact the sum of his conquests that has elevated him to such erotic heights that he is now in danger, like an athlete constantly forced to outdo himself. However self-confident he may appear, he is instead consigned to everlasting uneasiness about his own endowment, his own virility, sooner or later bound to leave him in the lurch, and therefore fatally destined, like any hedonist, to disappointment: since these qualities, once they have reached their peak, by the relentless laws of statistics, cannot do anything but decline, wane, the hair turning gray beneath the powdered wig, just as the pubic hair must do, the cock that either slouches helpless or else remains stiff for hours, incapable however of emitting semen, neither giving nor receiving pleasure, like a dried-out club, a ridiculous umbrella.
Those who feel obliged to reaffirm their strength and confidence every minute of the day prove the exact opposite, demonstrating that they are actually fragile. A certificate of masculinity is never going to be issued once and for all to an individual: he might always fail the next test that awaits him, and suddenly reveal to the world the weakness of his nature. All it takes is a minus sign to reverse into a negative number the entire sum of virility acquired at such a high price.
These are scientific data: males are nursed longer and weaned later, they need to be carried even when they’re pretty big, they have a harder time learning, they’re lazy when it comes to being toilet trained, and they are unable to control their bladders at night until embarrassingly late ages. All these things, in brief, point to their fragility, their greater attachment to their mothers. They behave in ways that are inexplicable, endangering themselves and others, and they present all sorts of unsettling symptoms. They get themselves into all kinds of trouble. They don’t know how to handle the losses and wounds that are inflicted on their perennially developing masculinity, and above all, they don’t want to talk about it, and they won’t tolerate having others talk about it. They remain humiliated forever by the compromises that growing up costs them. They mistake gratuitous risk-taking with bravery.
ADOLESCENCE, then: adolescence was the optimal moment. Before it polarizes and is channeled into forms of sexual expression, and then, eventually, into one’s work, virility is in its pure, liquid state. It’s like a deposit of flammable material: precious, unquestionably, and perhaps useful as well, but finding a use for it is no easy task. There are disparate and sometimes interchangeable modes, one may abandon one of them to embrace another: friendship, which is fickle as it spins the wheel of its preferences, the occasional artistic inclination, tending toward solitary fixations, such as the guitar or the drums, collecting things, fighting, athletic mysticism, self-destructive impulses and pursuits. Today we have personal computers, which we didn’t have back then, along with all the interests and obsessions that go with them. But in short, there are a great many options and they might all be adopted together, in select groups, or alternately. There is no force comparable to that of a desire that has no exact object. The original desire, the most scalding one, consists in fact of the quest for an object of one’s own desire. The more powerful its impact, the vaguer the objective toward which it is directed. There is a willingness for anything. Hesitant and at the same time reckless, virility that has not yet found its name takes on forms as fleeting and virulent as any exanthematic outbreak, it manifests itself in the manner of a skin rash, which can come close to disfiguring anyone who comes down with it, but then it almost always passes, replaced by some other, further symptom. From case to case, veering with unpredictable randomness, it may result in a dramatic catastrophe or deflate into a trivial nothing, often in the context of a drama that grows out of some trifle. Lies and illusions help to produce very high levels of reality. Entire lives can be shaped by misunderstandings. Disproportionate, out of bounds, and at the same time petty and tawdry, adolescent virility still hasn’t experienced sex, or perhaps it has and yet it already recoils from it or else it fosters it and fondles it and dreams of it in some morbid fashion, and when it finally encounters it, they are like chemical products that mix all at once—perhaps nothing will happen, or any of an array of reactions may take place, heat, freezing, dissolution, evaporation, or else the volatile blend may detonate, blowing everything to smithereens . . .
JUST LIKE GIRLS with the abstract ideal of femininity, as we tried to live up to the abstract masculine ideal we were forced to sacrifice much of ourselves, while amplifying qualities that w
e possessed only to a very small degree. We’d blow them up the way you might a rubber dinghy, inflating them by mouth, exhausting our lungs. If we didn’t possess those qualities at all, then we’d borrow them, we’d imitate them. I, who am taken for an independent person, verging on fierceness or even foolishly punctilious, have actually spent my whole life imitating the behavior of others, their gazes, their postures, the way they hold their shoulders, their ways of greeting upon arrival or departure, and a great many phrases and a vast number of expressions I use I have simply copied from others; perhaps I had no reason for constructing a personal culture on the basis of books and films, except as a way of upholstering my identity, layering it with references in order to make it appear more solid and durable than it actually is; even the way I have of curving my mouth after a smile isn’t actually original with me. And if in the end I’ve resigned myself to being what I am, it’s only been out of exhaustion.
The abstract ideal of virility, well, it’s almost impossible to nail it, the vast majority of men fail to come even close over the course of a lifetime, remaining on the distant margins of the model—leaving aside those who don’t individually meet the required standards, there are also entire categories excluded a priori, teenagers, old men, skinny weaklings, homosexuals, even the poor, if the idea of a fully attained masculinity is associated with professional success and financial self-sufficiency. If you’re queer and you’re unemployed, from that point of view, it amounts to the same thing. Like the painted figures in an allegory, the archetypal evolution of the male through the ages of life ought to experience these phases: as a boy, a loyal friend; as an adult, a responsible father; as an old man, an unflappable sage. Well, I’ve never met anybody who answers to this ideal figure.
The Catholic School Page 38
