Forms of Devotion

by Diane Schoemperlen

  Also good for crying on is the chest. Many male chests have a little recession in the middle where, if you cry long enough, your tears will collect in a salty pool. The chest should have well-developed pectorals of such definition and muscularity that they cannot be mistaken for breasts. Some men can flex their pectoral muscles individually, making them jump up and down like puppies. This is disconcerting, as are male breasts which are more shapely than your own.

  Although men’s nipples have no known function, they are attractive in their own way. A chest without nipples would be like a face without eyes.

  The issue of chest hair is a matter of personal preference. Usually a chest which falls between the two extremes is the best choice. A completely hairless chest is too slippery and may produce embarrassing sucking sounds when you press your own sweaty chest against it. On the other hand, a thick mat of black fur is not pleasant in the summer. Men whose chest hair sticks out from the tops of their shirts are likely to be inordinately fond of gold medallions, polyester, and pinky rings.

  Housed within the chest is of course the heart. Do not assume that a man’s heart is essentially the same as a woman’s. There are many theories as to the best way to a man’s heart. Feel free to try any or all of them but be forewarned that, in truth, this journey remains as much of a mystery as what you are likely to find when you get there. Some men have stones where their hearts should be. Others have holes.

  Of the 206 bones in the male body, twenty-four are the ribs, twelve on each side. You should not be able to verify this from the outside. One out of twenty people has an extra rib and this person is most often a man. Be careful about attaching too much symbolic significance to this fact.

  The stomach is better without hair and, although it need not look like a washboard exactly, it should not hang over the belt either. If you press your ear to the stomach, you may hear swishing and gurgling sounds like the tide coming into an underwater cave. This could be because the male body contains more water than the female body. Or maybe he’s developing an ulcer, to which men are more prone than women.

  Below the stomach is the navel which should be tidy and clean at all times. You should be able to stick your finger or your tongue into it without flinching or gagging.

  The hip bones should be sturdy but not so prominent as to leave bruises. His bones can withstand stress of 24,000 pounds per square inch but yours may not. The male pelvis is narrower than the female pelvis and more heart-shaped. Forensic scientists have found the shape of the pelvis to be the best indicator of the sex of an unidentified skeleton.

  Then there are the genitals. This is the area where most of the commotion is traditionally concentrated.

  The average length of an erect penis is six inches. No man likes to be thought of as average. It is better not to mention that the penis of the African elephant weighs sixty pounds and measures six feet in length when erect.

  Apparently it is not the size that counts anyway. Marvel instead at the seemingly poreless skin of the penis, and also the color, which is darker than the rest of his flesh, sometimes with a purplish cast. Feel cheered by the way the penis bursts free with such springy enthusiasm from its cage of clothing, as if it will never ever get tired of you.

  A penis that bows slightly to the right or the left is endearing. One that seems to nod and wink at you while drooling a single polite drop of semen is enchanting. Many men have pet names for their penises. It is best to tolerate this silliness with equanimity. Do not tell the name to your friends.

  Nestled behind the penis is the scrotum. Brown, wrinkled, and prickled with sparse hair, it is the sensitive pouch inside which the testicles lurk. Do not be alarmed by the way the testicles float around inside the scrotum like hard-boiled eggs. It is within the testicles that the sperm are produced. Remember that, while all 400 of a woman’s eggs are present in her ovaries at birth, a healthy man will produce 400 billion new sperm during his adult life. It is hard not to admire such industry.

  II.

  Much as the male torso is tantalizing (evoking, as it does, the image of a treasure chest crammed with mysterious organs, intricate ductwork, and powerful plumbing), the appendages which issue from it are estimable in their own right. They give the male body more range.

  You may find it is the arms that you most often long for. The arms with their hard hairless biceps: throwing a ball, lifting a cup, picking up the telephone, shaking the wrinkles out of a sheet. The arms with their firm flexed triceps: reaching out to you, wrapping around you, holding you tight. Pay close attention to the wrists: blue-veined, small-boned, resting on a table, vulnerable, sensitive, and open to interpretation.

  Whether the fingers of the hands are long, short, slender, or stubby, they should be gentle but strong. Ideally, a man should have all of his fingers still attached. However, a man who is missing a finger or two will have at least one interesting story to tell. Be wary of hands speckled with scars or too often too quickly clenched into fists. Men’s hands are usually warm. This is because the blood flow to a man’s hand is greater than that to a woman’s. Be suspicious of a man with consistently cold hands. His blood flow may be sluggish and thin. Men with hands like meat hooks should not be dentists, brain surgeons, or magicians.

  At the other end of the torso are the legs which should split off from the trunk in a straightforward and symmetrical manner. A severely bow-legged man only looks comfortable when seated on a horse.

  Of the 656 muscles in the male body, you may find those in the thigh among the most compelling. A male thigh in motion is a joyous sight to behold. Wrapped around the femur, which is the longest bone in the body, are the sartorius, the rectus femoris, and the vastus, both externus and internus. These muscles are like flowers: you do not need to know their Latin names in order to appreciate them. The action of these large muscles can be enough to make up for any number of other shortcomings.

  Below the thighs are the knees which are seldom attractive and frequently make strange cracking and popping noises. Athletic men of a certain age are prone to problems in this area. This may lead to many long boring conversations about cartilage, liniment, and famous hockey players whose careers have been ruined by recurring knee injuries. Some men’s kneecaps have a tendency to pop out of their sockets. They will expect you to be able to pop them back in again without passing out.

  The knee bone is connected to the shin bone, formally known as the tibia. The shins of a full-grown man should not be covered with scrapes and bruises. Unless of course these injuries were incurred while rock climbing, white-water rafting, or groveling at your feet while begging for mercy, forgiveness, and a second chance.

  The ankles should be big-boned and strong. Men with weak ankles tend to use this minor infirmity as an excuse to avoid all kinds of physical activity including ice skating, strolling in the moonlight, taking out the garbage, and mowing the lawn.

  Attached to the ankles at a 90° angle are the feet. Either you like feet or you don’t. After years of abuse and neglect, some men’s feet are hideously decorated with bunions, calluses, and corns. The foot contains twenty-six small bones and in some men, all of them are knobby and misshapen. Their toenails may be yellow and gnarled, too thick to be trimmed by normal means. Some men are squeamish and have not cut their toenails properly for twenty years. Often their toes are hairy, their second toes are longer than their big toes, and their baby toes are deformed stubs that look like dead slugs. Men with ugly feet should not expect you to rub, kiss, or lick them. Men with ugly feet should spend a lot of money on socks and shoes which they should then remove only in the dark.

  III.

  With so much excitement going on in front, the bodies of men are often more restful when viewed from behind.

  From this perspective, the nape of the neck is displayed to its best advantage. It, like the wrist, emits an aura of vulnerability and sensitivity. Herein lies its power. It is best observed by accident when he does not know you’re watching him. The sudden sight of the down
y nape of a male neck bent over a book in a yellow circle of lamplight will set off a spasm of love in your sentimental throat, your startled heart.

  The back itself should be as hairless as possible. Men with hairy backs are frequently embarrassed by this inappropriate hirsuteness. They tend to apologize profusely when taking off their shirts.

  A hairless back provides ample opportunity for admiring and exploring an expanse of uninterrupted skin. A single square inch of skin contains 19 million cells, 625 sweat glands, 90 oil glands, 65 hairs, 19 feet of blood vessels, and 20 million microscopic mites. The largest organ in the human body, the skin of an average man covers an area of twenty square feet and weighs about ten pounds. In order to verify this information, the skin would have to be removed entirely and measured accordingly. This is not advisable for amateurs as the procedure is messy and the chances of being able to put it all back on again are slim. It is better to take this on faith, the way you took it on faith for all those years that men were stronger, braver, less emotional, more rational, better at math, and just naturally good with machines.

  The skin itself should be smooth and relatively unblemished. Remember that a man’s skin, like his blood, is thicker than a woman’s. This explains a lot of things.

  Running straight down the center of the back is the spine, the largest of its twenty-six vertebrae looking like knuckles, the smallest like peas. On either side of the spine is the latissimus dorsi, the largest muscle in the human body. It is here that you are most likely to catch a glimpse of that legendary rippling effect. At the base of the spine there are often two large dimples which always invite a smile or a friendly kiss.

  All men like to have their backs rubbed. This is not an unpleasant activity for either party, but bear in mind that if you do it once, he will expect you to do it all the time. Before offering this service on a regular basis, be sure that he is prepared to reciprocate in kind at least once a week.

  The back should taper off gently at the waist. Men without waists can still make good companions but they are harder to slip your arm around when walking down the street. Even men with slim waists frequently have pockets of flesh fondly referred to as love handles. These are not always unattractive and can indeed be useful in certain circumstances requiring a firmer grip. Men with very small waists and very broad shoulders have an annoying tendency to strut.

  Call it what you will, the male bum is the most frequent focus of attention in the rear view. It may well be the only thing that makes watching professional sports bearable. The gluteus maximus is the strongest muscle in the body and so deserves respect. The bum should be entirely free of pimples and hair. It should not be too baggy, too bulging, or too flat. Men with no bums have trouble keeping their pants up. Whatever the size of the bum itself, the crack should never be exposed above the waistline of the pants. This offensive spectacle is frequently observed in plumbers in your kitchen squatting down to examine the pipes under the sink, and in family men in shopping mall parking lots bending over to put the groceries in the trunk.

  The truth is many men look better with their clothes on. This is not a gender-specific trait. It is also true of many women, the difference being that the women usually realize this while the men usually don’t.

  IV.

  The pinnacle of the male body, like the star on top of the Christmas tree or the cross on top of the steeple, is, of course, the head. Some men’s heads don’t match their bodies. Some small thin men have large fat heads. Some large muscular men have small wobbly heads. Some men with beautiful bodies have ugly heads and vice versa. The problems arising from this type of discordance are largely aesthetic.

  The fundamental basis of the head is the skull which is comprised of twenty-two large and small bones. These should be fused together neatly without too many bumps or ridges. This consideration is of particular importance to bald men or those likely to be overwhelmed by a sudden impulse to shave their heads.

  Housed within the head are several interesting but potentially problematic features. Not the least of these are the eyes, which should be bright and warm, brimming with promise and virility. Some men’s eyes shoot off sparks. Calm yourself with the knowledge that after death all eyes change color, usually becoming a dull greenish-brown.

  Some men’s ears have hair growing out of the holes in unruly black tufts. You might assume that this is why he never seems to hear half of what you’re saying: his ears are plugged with hair. But the truth is that a man’s sense of hearing is not as sharp as a woman’s. This explains why he never hears the phone ringing, the dog barking, or the baby crying in the middle of the night.

  The nose should not be so large as to have you recommending the name of a good plastic surgeon on the first date. It should not be red and bulbous, covered with blackheads, or grossly misshapen from having been broken seventeen times. A nose with some or all of these qualities is a parody of a nose and cannot be taken seriously. The nose should work well, not requiring hourly administrations of nasal spray or endless honking into handkerchiefs. It should also work quietly, without drawing undue attention to itself. Men who breathe loudly are annoying even to sit in the same room with. Men who snore loudly should be informed post-haste that there are now surgical procedures available to correct this problem.

  Below the nose is the mouth, a major site of activity and interest. The production of saliva in the mouth should be kept under control at all times. Men who drool and slobber cannot be taken out in public. The lips should be soft and moist, not perpetually chapped and flaking off bits of dead skin. The teeth need not be perfect and pearly white but they should be all there, at least in the front. The tongue should be nimble and not too big. It should not appear to be flopping around of its own free will. You should never look at the underside of the male tongue because it, like the female’s, is repulsive. The muscles of the tongue are supported by the hyoid bone which is shaped like a horseshoe and is the only bone in the human body that does not touch another bone. In cases of death by strangulation, the hyoid is usually fractured or crushed and so its condition often provides useful evidence in homicide investigations.

  What makes one male head handsome and the next one not remains unclear. There is more to it than the quality and arrangement of these various features. Why the look of one man smiling at you across a crowded room makes you go weak at the knees while the gaze of the perfectly presentable man beside him causes nary a flicker is still one of the great unsolved mysteries of life, like Stonehenge, the Bermuda Triangle, and the disappearance of Amelia Earhart.

  The same can be said of the male brain. It, like the male heart, is, by turns, intriguing, alarming, exasperating, and utterly unfathomable. Having completed a thorough examination of the more superficial features of the male body, you will eventually find yourself forced to deal with the brain. You cannot put this off forever.

  The male brain, like the female, is not much to look at. A glistening convoluted lump of pale gray matter shot through with red arteries and blue veins, the brain should have tripled in size from birth to adulthood. The size of two clenched fists held tightly together, the average male brain weighs three pounds. The heaviest brain ever recorded weighed 5 pounds I.I ounces and belonged to a thirty-year-old man. The lightest brain weighed 2 pounds 6.7 ounces and belonged to a thirty-one-year-old woman. Should any man try to make too much of this, remind him that there is no correlation between brain size and intelligence. Point out that although the male brain is 10 percent heavier, the female brain contains 11 percent more brain cells. The blood flow to the male brain while thinking is smaller than that to the female brain. Some men do not think with their brains anyway.

  The capacity of the human brain has been expressed as the number I followed by 6.5 million zeros—a number so large it would stretch from the earth to the moon and back again more than thirteen times. Because the brain has no nerve endings, it can be burned, frozen, hit, or sliced without feeling a thing. Each day between 30,000 and 50,000 brain cells die
and are not regenerated. Instead they are eaten and digested by other cells. As men age, their brains deteriorate two or three times faster than the brains of women. Although this fact has been documented only recently, it hardly comes as a surprise.

  Unfortunately there is no way of knowing anything about a man’s brain by looking at his body. When looking further into the bodies of men, the most important thing to remember is that what you see has absolutely nothing to do with what you’re going to get.

  The brain continues to send out signals for up to thirty-seven hours after death. Brain waves, posthumous or otherwise, are like the wind: you cannot actually see them, you can only see their effects. Imagine a warm breeze wafting through a fragrant field of wildflow-ers, gently lifting your hair off the back of your neck. Then imagine a tornado scooping up the contents of your heart, ripping it to shreds, flinging the pieces away in all directions at once.

  Brain waves are a form of electricity. Imagine a cozy room at dusk, pools of yellow lamplight, the sound of soft music floating on the air. Then imagine sticking your finger in the light socket.

  COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS (A FAIRY TALE)

  Once upon a time there was a young woman named Grace. She was very beautiful. She possessed in ample measure all of the attributes deemed desirable in women of her time. She had a small waist and shapely but not heavy hips. She had generous but not floppy breasts and a flat stomach with a tasteful navel. Her shoulders were graceful and her neck was elegant. She had a clear and healthy complexion, large dark eyes and long dark eyelashes, full red lips and straight white teeth. Her auburn hair was naturally full of body and shine. She also had firm buttocks, long legs, and dainty little feet.