Social Science — The Fiction

By Olga Isolina

I am an old lady.  A seriously old lady.  I did come up through the 60s so mini skirts and free love are part of the lore of that time even though the closest I got to that stuff was listening to pop music.  I don’t always love pop music, but sometimes a song just gets it.  Despacito is one of those songs and I want to talk a little bit about what might be called the Despacito school of sexual relationships.

You don’t need to know the details of my sexual history, and I don’t need to know the details of yours to be pretty sure that we share an experience.  When you first have sex with someone it is likely that neither partner had the slightest idea of how the encounter should go or, for that matter, how it should have gone. 

The “talk” most of us receive about sex did nothing to help us navigate those experiences.  As I remember the talk —- and in my case my parents simply handed me a book that had been written by my pediatrician —— it was more about anatomy than sex.  It would be akin to trying to prepare for a gourmet meal by describing the workings of the digestive system — a non-starter. In the case of sex, the talk is worse than a non-starter.  It is a distraction from what I think sex needs to be about.

It would not have helped had my parents simply included a copy of the Kama Sutra along with the pediatrician’s book.  If you have ever looked at some of the stuff in there you have to wonder who in the hell ever got out of some of the positions described without a crane.  That manual is as useful as handing a couch potato a training manual for people who have completed six marathons and one iron man.  Worse, most of the stuff in there needs to be seen as prelude if it is anything at all.

There seem to be only two approaches to sex…both about the body.   The first is the “parts” show.  What part does what where.  The second is the “sensations” show.  How to hold those parts (and the other parts that are attached) to get different sensations.  All of this really should be a small aspect of something we do not spend much time talking about: sex as language development. We never seem to get to that.

Sex needs to be widely seen as what I think it really is about —- a mechanism for developing a full language of complete trust.  This is the real “body language.”  It isn’t about conquest.  It is not about orgasms (but that helps).  It is the event in the world that allows two human beings to create a language between them that carries over to the rest of their dealings with each other.  That is why repeated one night stands sells sex short. It is why prostitution really is damaging to the prostitute.  It is why sex and commitment is even a thing.  It is why after 50 years of marriage my husband and I are not bored out of our minds. 

It is also why infidelity is a problem. If sex is the event that helps you develop a private language with all that implies about closeness and exclusiveness, then having sex with another person is a statement concerning what you think about what you have.  In fact I think that infidelity is about anger and not about the need for better physical sensation at all.   Generally two people can find something to do that works well for each other: that is what your private sexual discussion allows you to do.  When we can’t it is rarely because there isn’t stuff to do, it is more likely that the partners have fallen out of the desire to find that out for other reasons.  It might also be that the partners are too far apart in their world views to sustain communication at any level.  Partners can get over infidelity, but only if they can excise the cause of the anger at its root.  If the cause was differences so basic that it impeded communications at every level, then a realistic assessment about the likelihood of changing that needs to happen — no fault attached.

I think we want to get to #notmeUS.  While it might be that, in the future, we can simply go there, right now we have to get from where we are (me, me too) to us.  I think a place to start would be to begin by adopting the sexual relationship worldview described in the song Despacito.  That song makes me blush purple even at my age.  It is about as explicit as it can be without being consigned to the dark web, but with a viewpoint that makes me grin like a Cheshire Cat right after I blush.  It describes what each partner in the relationship needs to be thinking as they go about developing their special private language.  It is usually sung by a man, but it could just as well be sung by a woman.  In my thinking, the Despacito school of sexual relations would be best understood if partners to a sexual encounter would sing it as a duet.  It asks the sexual question “can I find the things to do that will make this wonderful for you.”  That means, of course, that not everything I try will work to do that.  We can try stuff and I can even encourage you to try stuff, but if it doesn’t work for you then it doesn’t work for me. 

A bad sexual experience is one where there is no conversation going on between two people.  Each has a soliloquy that is being played out on the sexual stage.  If you imagine how that would work in a theater you can see why it would not work in bed either.  If partners are not listening to each other, then the private language cannot develop.  If one partner encourages another to try something but when they do, it is not something they like, then if they do not move on to try something else, that is bad sex. 

Moving on, however, means that you need to have more than one encounter to get that done.  It also means that if you engaged in a trial in a single encounter that was not fun, it is not necessarily a sign of disrespect unless there was coercion.  It might just be the soliloquy thing.  If we have been fed a particular page of the Kama Sutra that tells you what works generally and we sing it like a gospel song in bed, then we are liable to get it as wrong as we would if we tried to make clothing for a family of 2.3 people.   The whole thing about the Despacito school of sexual encounters is that sex needs to be about developing a vocabulary and syntax that works between two bodies, minds and souls. 

Sex is always about us.

by Anna Jacks

The air seemed filled with the sea. The dampness made me feel cold even though we were deep into the encore of the summer heat in mid-September.  The morning sun bounced so many times among the tiny airborne droplets that it had little energy left to light our way as we walked back from town with the pricey coffee my husband’s old college roommate Gary and his wife Dengsi loved.     

“What was Dengsi on about last night?  Usually all I have to do is mention the name Nigel and she mutters under her breath in Chinese. Last night she was singing his praises.”

My husband Seth shifted the tray of coffees to his left hand and scratched his forehead.

 “The only thing that fits,” I continued,  “is that she was practicing for the speech she might give at his funeral like the one she gave for her mom — and she really hated that woman. Nigel isn’t sick is he?”

My husband stopped to look at a painting of a train in the window of a gallery.  

“Her mother had a black belt in sarcasm but Dengsi forgave her. As for Nigel, I would know if something was wrong. Karen handles all the medical test requests from Dr. Man as well and she would have said something.  No —Dengsi was just loaded.  ”

“Dengi does not usually react to alcohol that way. Her mood always goes in the same direction as the level of wine in the bottle.  By the dregs she is always mean enough clear a crowded room.  Last night she became euphoric.”

“Gary seemed to appreciate it.”

“Wouldn’t you appreciate it if you were married to a woman who could find something judgmental to say about a daisy?  Last night she just seemed to have turned into a Chinese Pollyanna.”

“I appreciate you almost all of the time — but not when you behave like a sick dog who goes off into the woods when it is “time.”  What were you going to do exactly?  Did you think I might not notice that you have lost 20 pounds in about a month or that your “tan” has a light yellow tinge?

“I am not going to get it treated.  I just can’t.”

“We have been married for 40 years.  Do you think that decision is a surprise to me?  We both knew it might return.  We both agreed about what to do if it should come back.”

            “I just wanted a little normal left.  If I told you there would be no more normal.  We would be planning my funeral and figuring out how to tell our family. ”

            “That whole thing could take us the better part of an hour.  We have time.  We have time if you allow me to do my part to walk with you now.”

            “You are walking with me — and carrying all the coffee too.”

            “Cute… We will do what we do until we can’t.”    

We rounded the corner and walked up the steep lawn to the white rambling frame house that my husband’s roommate inherited.  I took the coffees from the cardboard tray he was carrying and gave the cappuccino to Gary and the latte to Dengsi.  I took a seat in the large wooden Adirondack chair next to Dengsi and Gary got up and grabbed Seth by the arm saying something about wanting to show him a fishing boat he is thinking of buying down at the harbor. They started to walk off.

“Are you two going to be back in time for the Farmer’s Market?”

Seth turned around but Gary kept walking. 

“I will see to it.”

Dengsi sipped at her coffee and stared into the mist.

“Dengsi, do you have a copy of the speech you gave at your mother’s funeral a year ago?”

 “No.  I threw it out.   It was not true to her.   Mother expired a year before she died. That was when all of her spirit left her.  She had no more fight for her or for me.  When the fight goes away you just wait to die.  My grandmother was like that too.”

“You said in the speech that you thought your mom had always been a fighter.”

“She was.  She wanted me to be a fighter too.  She tried to toughen me up.  I let her down.

“You are a scientist, a disgustingly gorgeous woman, and a formidable opponent in an argument. How can you say you let her down?”

 “My family provided tutors to help me excel in science.  I wanted to be a writer.  Not in English: In Chinese.  I did not want to be a biologist.  That way would have been a real fight.  Instead I became mean, like her. When she saw that even my time had passed, she gave up.  She let her spirit go.  She became nice and she simply waited to die.”

“You are not dead yet.  Why can’t you write now in Chinese?”

“I stopped wanting to. ”

Dengsi finished her coffee and we sat in silence on the porch watching the mist lift.  The sun came and then hid behind clouds. 

                                                *****

We bought their house after I was told I was in remission. I had not accepted treatment, but the disease decided on its own to give me a respite — again. I left the red Chinese iron lawn lantern Dengsi left the “house” in her will.  She had a massive stroke a month after our visit.

We sit on the porch in the morning and waited for the sun catchers in the windows to cast their rainbows. 

CONTRIBUTION FROM THE “VIEW” GUY

Think of me as a guard reporting from some lonely outpost.  I am not an important person.  I am not going to tell you what is right or wrong.  I am an ordinary human being doing what we do.  I am reporting what I see.

  It is always a unique perspective.  You can always learn something.  Even ants have a perspective you might learn from.  Do you know what the bottom of your shoe looks like?  It is more important than you would think.  Those little wear spots and dried black chewing gum bumps change the way you walk.  That can make some muscles tense. It can make your leg muscles hurt and you won’t know why unless you know what the bottom of your shoe looks like.  An ant has things it could tell you.

I am 43 years old, male, and skinny.  I have good upper body strength and calf muscles.  I am good with wood.  I can see what kind of wood you need to use.  I can see how a piece of wood can be shaped to follow its grain wave so it stays strong.  I am really terrific with wood.

I had a wife and a child, but after my daughter died in her sleep when she was an infant, I no longer have a wife.  I have not had steady work for about 5 years.  I put together jobs to keep body and soul together, but I am beginning to wonder why I should bother doing that.  No point.

It is not just that I lost my family.  That didn’t help, but it isn’t just that.  It isn’t just that work is not steady.  My dad went through times when his work was less than steady too — so I know how to get by.  I do.  The difference is that I am not sure I care that I don’t have steady work or a family.  I don’t seem to care about anything.  I am reporting from this place because I think where I am isn’t right.  I am reporting because I need to know if anyone else sees what I see and if anyone else out there can show me what is not right once they know what I see.  If I know what is not right maybe I can do something about it.  

My cousin Evan worked with concrete.  He knew how to make it look like marble or like an ordinary sidewalk.  He knew how to mix it so it lasts forever.  Last year he still had more work than he could manage.  He made less money because they paid him less, but he didn’t need much money because he lived on his wife’s parent’s farm.  The house was rent-free and they had plenty to eat. 

Evan died of a drug overdose in March.  Heroin.  His wife lost custody of the kids to Evan’s mom because she had the habit too.  His wife didn’t seem to be too bothered about it.  She disappeared.

I never thought Evan would die of an overdose.  I thought maybe he would be crushed by a cement mixer because he tended to really get up close so he could watch everything like a cat watches a mouse.  He loved the way he could get that goo to look any way he wanted.  He watched to make sure everything would come out the way he knew it could

His mom told me that he had started heroin after the prescription for his painkillers ran out.  She looks like someone took the air out of her. She told me that nothing happened to her five years ago when she was given pills to help her when she had a shoulder operation. From down here it looks to me that what changed was the pain the pill actually was working on. 

Evan hurt his shoulder real bad by trying to lift two bags of cement at once while showing off when his wife came to meet him with sandwiches one day when his work took him close to the house.  He tore up several ligaments and stressed out of shape a bunch more.  The pain pills helped him sleep and they allowed him to keep working as a supervisor until the muscles healed.  All that was as it should be.  Half the working people in the county had used the pills since they were invented.

  The difference now is that it isn’t just the muscle pain that goes away.  These pills don’t just act to get rid of the pain in your arm or shoulder.  There is another pain — the pain in the soul — that the pills make better. If you want to fix that pain, if you really want to fix it and not just turn it off, you need to know what is torn or broken.  It is very hard to see that by yourself. Showing where it hurts is not an easy thing to do either.  It is like showing someone an oozing boil in a nasty place on your behind.

I told you that Evan loved what he did.  He didn’t have to stay working with concrete all his life.  He was just a guy who wanted to stretch what the material he was working with could do.  Whatever he did in his whole short life was about that.  He worked his garden so that the soil was rich enough to grow vegetables with a flavor that would knock you out.  They weren’t big.  He was not going for the country fair prize for the biggest tomato.  His produce just had the deepest flavor I have ever tasted in any produce anywhere.  Not that I have traveled far and wide, but I have eaten my share of vegetables.

Evan had work, but the work had changed.  It had changed just like mine had.  There was a formula for the work now.  Evan nearly got fired two years ago when he changed the formula for cement that was going to be used in a new strip mall because he knew the concrete would become too brittle since the mall was using a new HVAC system.  The change saved money and made the concrete more durable, but he had not followed the formula so he lost a month’s pay and got a warning on his record.  That bothered him, it really did.  It ate at him.  His wife had been worried about him.  It is why she brought lunch.  It is why he tried to lift the two bags. When he took the pain pills, it helped the pain in his muscles, but it also dulled his shame and anger at what had happened.   

From down here, we are beginning to see what a person’s soul looks like — it is easier to see from down here.

Down here I can see our souls because they hang on our backs for dear life. Down here we carry them on the outside so we know where they are.  We didn’t always.  We were like people up there until things changed.  Before we thought that a soul was just something you are told you have.  You don’t have to wear it to know you have one.

I know when a person is carrying a soul outside because they are bent over.  They don’t stand straight up.  They are always looking at the ground around their toes.  After the warning, Evan was so bent over he could hardly see ahead enough to walk down the block.  After I lost my family, I was bent too, but I straightened up now and then.  It was after other things that I got permanently bent.  You know a person is bent over when they can’t see what is a yard right ahead of them.

Don’t lose patience with me.  I have not lost my mind.  I don’t see some ghostly thing clinging to the backs of people around here.  What I see is people ignoring the things they loved as if they couldn’t look straight at them any more.  What I see is people not looking ahead to make some better future.  When we can’t look ahead, we are bent over.  I ask myself what could it be that we could be carrying on our backs that would bend us up so bad.  What would be so important that we wouldn’t just take it off or just put it down for a bit?  Evan’s death made it clear that it had to be his soul.

The thing that caused the pain inside him was that his whole way of doing things — his way of connecting to things in the world that made him who he was had been taken apart and used for scrap. When he lost the month’s wages and had been written up it was like he had been punished for what was in his soul.  You carry your soul around after something like that to make sure it is still with you and to get to know it better.  You want to see if there is something else to it other than what you always thought was what made you who you were.  You allowed it to stay on your back hoping that it might show or tell you who you are now — and it bends you over. 

OK — so there is no thing really on your back, but it might as well be there.  You are always trying to figure out what you need to be doing given that you can’t be who you always were.  You keep listening for some answer and you walk through life as though you are bearing a heavy weight that will talk to you when it gets ready.  You need to hear what it says and your whole being is positioned so you can.

In February of last year I enrolled in a community college program.  I decided that the world was changing and that if I wanted to be part of it I had to change what I knew about.  I was told that before I could take an advanced math class I had to pass a basic arithmetic course since I had really bad grades in arithmetic in grade school and high school.  The thing is, as a carpenter I do lots of arithmetic.  I need to use a calculator because for some reason I can’t do it either using pen and paper or in my head.  But I can do really complex calculations and I know what I need to figure.  I continue to do really bad on the tests, because they only let you use calculators for some of the test.  I have been working with calculus books and online lessons and I have been doing really well, but they won’t let me take those courses because I won’t make the cut on the test they say will tell them when I am ready to learn calculus. 

I gave up and just took on work out of town.  A car driven by a kid who had to drive three hours each way to get decent work hit me and I spent three weeks in a hospital. I was going to have to have about five more surgeries before I got out of the wheelchair.  I qualified for a special work program.  The first part of the program was a session on how to dress for work and how to manage your budget.  That attitude hurt me more than the bashing I got in the car wreck.  Who the fuck — I mean really, who the fuck did they think I was?  What the fuck did they think I had been doing all my life? 

I was so beat up that I qualified for Medicaid and welfare.  They told me that I had to do whatever work I could get to keep the benefits.  Like they had to tell me to work.  I found a job checking workers in with a construction company building a strip mall.  I had a chance to talk to the owner when he came to inspect.   I knew the wood they were using wouldn’t hold where they were using it so I told him.  I told him what I used to do before the accident.  He patted me on my sore shoulder and told me he hoped I would be better soon.  Nothing changed.  The wood frames broke.  Two workers died.  The owner called to tell me he had to let me go, but because he thought I was a nice guy he was going to pay me for a full year and keep me on the payroll so I could be square with the county.  He told me not to show for work or answer any questions anyone might ask or the deal would be off.

I have full medical care now.  I have a salary without having to do much work and the government gives me money too so I can afford great food.  I can keep my home. All I have to do is stay out of people’s way and pretend that I am who they need me to be: A person who can’t do much.  I need to be a person who has no skills and doesn’t want or know how to get them.  Both red and blue politics see me that way.  The red sees me as lazy and stupid, the blue sees me as a poor idiot who needs constant help.  One side wants me to be the doormat it needs for business, the other has good feelings toward me but somehow manages to see that I don’t threaten their jobs by helping me get real skills.  That isn’t who I have ever been.  It is a deep hole I am reporting from right now and I need you to see how things look from down here.

CONTRIBUTION FROM “THE KING GUY”

If only we had a King.  You know, a guy who we are sure is not only ON first base but who IS first base.  I don’t go in so much for Queens.  That’s why I am not a monarchist.  Some people want royalty.  I don’t want just any royalty.  I want a King. 

It isn’t that a guy like me thinks he can be King.  A guy like me knows that his street cleaner father and his convenience store clerk mother will never find out that they are actually related to someone who was related to someone who was related to someone who was ever considered to be any kind of royalty whatever.  I also do not dream of marrying a princess — and she would have to be one old maid princess for me to be a contender at that. No.  I want a King exactly and precisely because no King could ever be in the situation I am in.  That is in itself very comforting.  I need to think that there is some path in this world that will absolutely prevent anyone from ending up where I am.

Now, as you probably have figured out, I am a guy.  As a guy, even in these times, it would be difficult for me to become a Queen.  Add the gender stuff to everything else standing in my way of becoming a King and you can bet serious money that I have no chance of being Queen even if I wanted to be one — and I don’t.   No, I don’t want to be a Queen.  In fact, I can’t exactly understand how anyone would want to be Queen.  Aside from one or two of them, Queens don’t seem to have had the kind of power their rank suggests because their gender stood in the way.  Now, I really am not in the mood to argue about gender because I am way, way beyond that kind of concern right now. I can tell you, though, that the kind of royalty I need must have been as solid as the sun throughout most of recorded time.  I need a royalty with the historical narrative nailed, not royalty tossed by the winds of ethical fashion or even justice. 

I won’t go into detail about why no one should be where I am.  I will just tell you to take it on faith.  I am not “learned.”  I am not rich.  I do not have a skill that makes me able to get a decent job because about as soon as I get a skill some damned robot takes it or it is regulated out of existence or they ship it to some country where the monthly wage wouldn’t buy a candy bar here. 

My son came home yesterday and tried to set fire to our shed.  He was crying. He told me that I was going to be responsible for the death of every human being on earth.  I asked him to explain and he just pointed to a can of weed killer in the front corner of the shed post.  I asked him if I made the weed killer.  I asked him if he knew of a better way for me to make sure we had enough to eat.  He said he tried to tell the class speaker that, but the lady just told him that I had to find a better way.  She said that it was just stupid to do things everyone knows does serious harm.  She said that each one of us has to do whatever we can to stop the poisoning of our environment.  My son tried to burn down our shed because he didn’t want some important person to think he is either stupid or a criminal.  Instead he thinks I am both.

A King would set this right.  If I used weed killer the King would approve of it or I wouldn’t be using it.  The King would have me do what I had to do.  I would have a place.  I would be stupid to some, but there would be enough company in my life neighborhood to make me feel right at home.  My son would know what he could do and no, he could not become King, or even a knight or maybe he would not even be able to work in the convenience store my mother worked in, but he would work in something that was OK for him to work in if the King knew his stuff.  I don’t want an idiot king — the progeny of centuries of inbreeding.  I want a smart, intelligent guy who bears the responsibility of his people as part of his very DNA.  I want a King who knows his place in history so I can know mine.   

I am not an idiot.  I know that we started our whole country by running from Kings and royalty.   Kings are most often not the kind of men anyone would want to be running things.  That is why we set the country up the way we did.  But things just aren’t working out for people like me.  We can’t seem to make our own way any more.  I know that makes us sitting ducks for people who will set things up so they can get their own way — a ruler for them — not a King who will help us find our way. I already see those people make up all manner of religious nonsense to justify some scary crap that will set us at each other’s throats so they can step in to restore order. These are people who like the idea of martial law — who think that it would be great to imprison and execute those who disagree with them.

 That is the trouble with wanting a King. Mostly a King becomes King when many, many of us give up.  You can get a ruler that way, but odds are you won’t find a good King.  The bottom line though is that I need to find a steady place and all I can think of right now is that a good King could do that for me.