A Nation Of Dreamers - America's Dalliance With The Pure, The Righteous, And The Good...Which Has Never Existed

Bob Muzelle was a creature of the trenches, the barricades, the million man march, protests, demands, and jamborees. 

'Going to the abortion thing?', he asked his friend and comrade in arms. They were brothers, both hewn from the same timber, both flying the same jib, both tacking towards Utopia.  They had both been acolytes of the Reverend Parker Allworth Morris, Yale Chaplain and Negro First freedom rider, a man of unimpeachable rectitude, honor, courage and commitment. 

  

Bob thought that Morris was more than just an honorable main, but a prophet, a secular saint, and a man of vision, purpose, and import.  Bob's apprenticeship with the Chaplain was seminal and epiphanic. After four years at the altar of this man-god, Bob's life's work was ordained.  He would fight for social justice until he drew his last breath. 

So the two of them - Bob and Jackson Finch - went down to the National Mall and joined there sisters in demanding abortion rights for all women.  'Abortion - any time, any place, any moment' was the rallying cry, for the protestors had had enough compromise.  Late term abortion was just as viable and righteous as early term.  A woman's body was hers and hers alone, and no man was going to abridge that right.  The fetus was nothing but a piece of phlegm, an unwanted visitor, an intruder, a violator. 

Bob particularly liked abortion rallies because they were existential and personal.  Climate change was indeed existential, for if global warming continued, the human species would cease to exist; but abortion was immediate, real, with visible consequences.  Pregnant women had been violated by predatory, pleasure-seeking, Paleolithic throwbacks whose 'article', that bit of unwanted scum needed to be flushed and removed. 

Both crises - blatant male patriarchy and forced pregnancy; and the warming climate - were stimulants to Bob's limbic system.  His perpetual state of euphoria was one of generic happiness.  A more verdant, peaceful, tolerant, and compassionate world was at hand, and that was cause for emotional bliss. 

Bob did not let things rest there.  While he had a particular fondness for abortion and climate change, his panoply was festooned with the black man, the transgender, the disenfranchised, and the poor.  He marshalled his resources and parceled out his energies to that all causes could be addressed.  Utopia was not simply a world of women, but one of a diverse, multicultural universe of plenty.  

Now, Yale should have taught him something.  Back in the day it was a beacon of rational discourse, serious study, analytical thinking, and promising scholarship; but Bob had been shanghaied by the Reverend Morris, caught in his web of earnest compassion, and from Day One did not listen to reason. 

It mattered not that the world had been eternally violent since Cain killed Abel, that wars killed millions each century, and that the most recent, the Twentieth, was the bloodiest of them all.  Humanity was not progressing towards a new, peaceful, communal world, but mired in the same brutal territorialism that had always characterized it. 

 

Social distinction - 'Stick to your own kind' - had been the rule ever since the first human settlements.  There would always be the most intelligent, the most ambitious, the most productive, and the most wealth.  They would reside at one asymptote of the bell curve, and the least able at the other; and yet, despite the infamous, failed  Soviet Communist experiment of recent years, progressives like Bob earnestly believed that it could work - that a communal, fair, just, and equal society was possible. 

Despite natural law, the physio-genetic determinants of sexuality, and millennia of heterosexual reproduction, Bob and his associates truly believed that sexuality was a social phenomenon, open to choice, and open to all. 

Despite slavery challenging prostitution as the world's oldest profession, and despite the incontrovertible fact that there would always be slaves and slavers of one kind or another, Bob hammered away at 'racists' everywhere.  He held a particular animus for the American South, vowed never to set foot on desecrated land, and continued to blame the region for the most callous racist recidivism in the West. 

Something had happened to Bob at Yale where he lost his way.  Perhaps it was Reverend Morris - one had only to remember the leader of the cult religion in Guyana a few years ago who convinced 1000 of his followers to drink poisoned Kool Aid and commit suicide to understand how much an influential leader can have over the desperately credulous and gullible. 

 

It might have been a resurgence of his childhood religious faith.  One does not get rid of Jesus and his Christian mission that easily.  Or perhaps it was that mystifying randomness of genetic combination - Bob was predisposed by a compassion gene for looking out for others. 

One wonders how much is left in the tank, and whether the generator has enough spark to keep the engine running, especially at the full speed Bob was used to.  He was getting on in years, and sooner later the Great Beyond would be too close to ignore; but Bob seemed to be as tireless as he was in the freedom ride years, marching across the Pettus Bridge with Martin and Ralph, being set upon by Bull Connor's dogs and beaten with ax handles and iron pipes, sitting in with Negroes in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa.  Ahh...those were the days, and they had not dimmed one bit. 

Nothing else mattered to Bob other than doing the right thing.  He lived in a rented, shabby Fifties rambler, disparaged his neighbors' petty bourgeois insistence that he mow the lawn and trim the hedges, and laughed at their garden parties.  The older he got, the more immersed in this febrile vision of Utopia.  Anyone who did not do his part for world betterment was automatically a reprobate to be cancelled.  

There was no such thing as half way when it came to social justice, no sitting on the fence; and so it was that the list of cancelled grew.  He was as thorough as Stalin's secret police, East Germany's Stasi, or the Shah's Sevak.  His purges were legendary, but he was left with only a very tight circle of friends now as unhinged as he. 

 

Bob was not alone, despite his narrowing cabal of zealotry.  America itself had become almost as launched into political reverie as Bob.  Trump hatred was viral, nasty, ugly, and insistent.  Ordinarily useful men and women went complete around the bend when it came to the President.  Once stabile intellects wandered into uncharted, wooly, dark and desperate conspiracy theories.  The level of Trump's transgressions,  thievery, lies, duplicity, and villainy reached unimaginable proportions. Americans were apoplectic about the man, and like Bob lost all sense of grounding, objectivity, reasoned thought, and intellectual distance. Half the country had turned into a rabid mob - exactly as Alexander Hamilton had feared. 

Bob died in his traces as he had often wished he would - face down in a tumbled stack of policy papers, dead as a doornail, found by the after-hours cleaning service who thought he was finally taking a much needed rest from his fatiguing schedule.  One last nudge before leaving toppled him onto the floor, and such as the end of Bob Muzelle. 

His wife, expecting accolades, public eulogies, ceremonial last wishes, and the presence of the leaders of America, was disappointed.  A five-line obituary in the Washington Post, a gathering to celebrate his life attended by the few who kept him company, and that was that. 

Obsession is never a good thing especially when it is for a lost cause - or rather a cause never worth pursuing.  

'It was that fucker Parker Morris', said one Yale classmate who had missed the bus along with Bob; and perhaps it was, but the viral disease that has infected millions cannot be laid at his doorstep.  

Bob's will stipulated that he wanted to be buried next to the Reverend Parker Morris, but there was no room, so his wife opted for cremation, a flowered urn, and his picture on the mantelpiece. 

The Harder A Wife Works, The Cuter She Looks - You've Come A Long Way, Baby...Or Have You?

The plays of Ibsen and Strindberg set in late Nineteenth Century Scandinavia, are the tales of strong women who break free of patriarchal tethers.  Hedda Gabler, Rebekka West, Nora, Hilde Wangel, and Laura are all women who in their own way defy their husbands, manipulate men for their own ends, and represent the first outcries of feminism. 

 
Miss Julie of Strindberg's play of the same name makes Jean, her valet, jump through hoops and behave like a trained dog.  Raised as a proto-feminist by a misandrous mother, Julie takes every hateful word to heart. 

The irony of it all is that she is sexually attracted to him.  Like Lady Chatterley and her gamekeeper lover Mellors, Julie wants a caricature - sexually confident males. 

Of course such attraction is not caricature at all, for women who despite feminism, the glass ceiling, boardrooms, and independent income seem to fall for the same men.  The caricature comes from little girls who, despite the discouragement of their modern mothers, insist on playing princesses.   

They read about Rapunzel, the princess in the tower, who lets down her hair so that her Prince Charming can climb up and take her away. Before they know what love, sex, and romance is all about, they begin the search.  That is the irony and the caricature. 

These little princesses are not from the Fifties, a Petrarchan era of love and romance where women wait for men's advances, hoping for a handsome, wealthy, attentive, and supportive partner.  They are from today, and from the age of two are dressed in tutus and ribbons.

They will be taught that women are now the equal of men in all things, and that their ideas of romance, being swept off their feet, falling deeply and romantically in love are outdated.  There are no Prince Charmings, just legitimate partners. 

This indoctrination never works, for once out of class these girls fall for bad boys - the pursuers, sexually forward, confident, predatory males.  For all the instruction about men who are sensitive to a woman's feelings and can love her for who she is, these young women want defiant sexual confidence.  

The 'sensitive New Age guy', parodied in the early days of women's rights was a wilting flower. a man who likes women, but only as reflections in the mirror.  For all women's claims to want a man with a distinctly feminine side, they want nothing of the sort.  Evolution has dismissed the sensitive, dutiful, uxorious male and favored his exact opposite - the male who takes women, impregnates them, and goes off to hunt. 

Comedian Bill Maher summed it all up:

The inversion of nature that we have experienced as a culture, and the subversive aspect of flipping traditional roles, with its subsequent destruction of society, serves as a signal that we live in a dying system.  It has led to a pussified, sissy, pathetic, lovey-dovey/touchy-feely country of wimps, who put emotion over logic, feeling over reason, in our nurture-heavy/nature-deprived, culture

Maher was really taking aim at ‘progressive’ men – the feminist lapdogs who attend women’s conferences, who have made their careers in promoting female agendas, and who find feminism consistent with other liberal beliefs.  

Concern about the environment has a feminine cast to it.  After all men like to chop things down, build things, and expand.  Who thinks that Manifest Destiny was Martha Jefferson’s idea? Or that knitting wives were behind the Civil War?  The Pentagon is no different from Wall Street.  Although there may be many women in the armed forces, the top brass are men who kill for a living.

Marfa Potter considered herself a 'second stage' feminist. She thanked her mother and her associates for breaking through the glass ceiling, rejecting Victorianism, patriarchy, and unequal rights; but her world was different.  Women could do anything men could do, and in most cases better.  Her challenge was negotiating a world where men and ‘the rooster's contribution' were still needed.

'Now you have fulfilled your function as an unfortunately necessary father and breadwinner, you are not needed any longer and you must go', Laura tells the Captain, her husband in Strindberg's The Father.

Some lesbian women have decided to avoid men entirely and get the rooster's contribution from a sperm bank. One of the two women will be the mother of the randomly selected child, the other will be the father surrogate.

Lesbian couples are awaiting  genetic recombination which will do away with men's DNA altogether and replace it with an enhanced variation of women's, enabling a lesbian couple to have their own child without any male interference, but until that time Donor 352 will have to do. 

Straight women don't have it so easy. Their still Paleolithic sexuality wants bad boys, but their still Petrarchan sentimentality wants princes. Second stage feminism has created in Bill Maher's words, 'a nation of pussies’ and virile, forwardly confident men are in retreat.  Last but not least women have been told to dress as provocatively as possible - lewd desire is men's problem not theirs - but they cannot reap the benefits from overt sexual allure. 

So Marfa was on the lookout, but for what?  Without thinking she was attracted to the men who defied all woke censure and who paid attention to them as sexual objects; but when thinking she was trolling for 'a New Age sensitive guy'.  

However, she was put off by these deferent, cowed hesitating men - the 'may I, could I, would it be all right if I...' ones who had been safely corralled and penned in; and drawn by men who clearly found her attractive and told her so. 

She dressed in décolleté and high heels, but men were not supposed to pay attention. 

What was a modern woman to do? 

A Hollywood ending would be nice - a strong, chisel-jawed, confident man of means who loves her both for her body and her mind, who will carry her off but give her free rein, who will provide but will respect her provision - but Hollywood is Hollywood after all, and one must settle for far less. 

Caught in this terrible bind, Marfa went through many affairs and two marriages, stayed unmarried after the second.  Sex, men, romance, and adventure were overrated, and she had all she needed in her condo overlooking Tampa Bay. 

As it happened, her next door neighbors were a lesbian couple with a nine-year old boy who apparently was an uncontrollable terror - the very spitting image of the unbridled male energy the two women wanted to avoid.  They screened the sperm for as many genetic anomalies as the technology allowed and read the anonymous donor biography, but nothing prepared them for this rampant, uncontrolled, male energy. 

The boy ran up and down the halls, knocking over planters, writing obscenities on the wall with indelible markers, screaming bloody murder and howling at all hours of the morning.

'No man to whack the daylights out of him', thought Marfa, childless but her balance sheet was what it was. She gave it all a good go, came up with positives and negatives, and was not unhappy drinking a sundowner overlooking the bay.

Sex Kitten - Why The Mature Man Does Not Pursue The Mature Woman

Ardmore Wright was reaching that age, that uncomfortable age betwixt and between.  No longer a young man, not yet old, but too old to be desirable and too young to stop looking. 

'Ah, the conundrum', his doctor told him when Ardmore confessed his sexual frustration.  The physician went on to suggest that mature women still are in the mood for love even if their ovaries are old and stale. 

 

Ardmore sat up in his seat at this.  A doctor was not supposed to speak in such catty, dismissive terms about women even if it was in confidence and with a male patient. 

'I see you're surprised', said the doctor, 'but I was only making a point'. 

But of course the idea of intimacy with Mrs. Blanchard in 4F, for example, recently widowed, clearly happy to be rid of her husband, and on the prowl was off-putting.  The old crone was sixty if she was a day, dry as a bone, tarted up with eyeshadow and rouge...Christ what did Dr. Sherman have in mind? Not her, certainly. 

A waft of Arpege as they crossed paths in the hallway, almost overpowering in the elevator.  She looked at him, smiled, and touched up her lipstick in the convex mirror. 'She could be had', Ardmore thought and shivered.  He was not ready to throw in the towel. 

He found petty excuses to consult with the company attorney only to meet Sally from Accounting in the office next door, a delicious young woman so nubile, unblemished, smooth, and fresh that she didn't need a drop of makeup.  She was perfect as is, sensual without trying, fertile, moist, desirous and oh, so desirable. 

'Hello, Mr. Wright', she said as he walked by.  The 'Mister' was deliberate he thought - a kind of reverse Miss Julie, a woman who desired an older man titling him, tempting him to go beyond the faux formality and speak to her.  Or a defense against yet another schlumpen old man who had come to the 7th floor to have a look at expensive merchandise.  Which?  Ardmore wished he could ask Dr. Sherman. 

'Here's a prescription in case you need a little boost', said the doctor.  'Older women do not necessarily excite with their clothes off.  Let me know how it works out'. 

Now, Sherman, a lowly internist had more in common with brain surgeons or cardiac interventionists - arrogant pricks with life and death in their hands who could have any woman they wanted - than his GP colleagues. Sherman's dalliances in dark corners of the the Mayflower the Willard bars were well-known - the envy of medical professionals who had spent twenty years with bed pans, prostates, and menstrual blood and who had no time for flirtations. 

He was older than Ardmore and there he was in the Old Ebbitt Grill with interns from the Treasury Department across the street, charming them with his wit and generosity.  '

What's wrong with me?', Ardmore wondered, and why is he farming me out to old ladies when he is sitting there, fondling Maria from Treasury?'

Ardmore knew the drill - older women, stuck for so long in loveless marriages, plodding through days and rolling over at night, unhappy, desirous and dreaming of knights in shining armor would do anything to be taken seriously, to be loved for who they are, easy pickin's for older men like Ardmore. 

Yet it was that December-May affair that he was looking for, that early gift under the Christmas tree, that momentary but transformative sexual episode that few men experience.  

Of course rich men could have whatever women they wanted, everything has a price, and a weekend on a yacht in Barbados or a skiing week in Gstaad would do just as well as a few Franklins on the dresser.  Women are cheap when the high rollers step to the table, but the likes of him had to work for their rewards. 

Now, Edna Blanchard from 4F had her own fantasies. Yes, she was well beyond her sexual pull-date, headed into a resolute widowhood in Florida, but since Bullard had died, she demurred.  Maybe she was heading off to pasture too early.  There might be untold adventures awaiting her now that she was single again, unattached, and with the millions left to her in annuities, dividends, insurance policies, and off-shore bank accounts, footloose and fancy free. 

'What about the man in 4G', she wondered, remembering their elevator ride down to the lobby and for the first time in years felt a twinge 'down there'; and why not him?  Availability was a cheap commodity in the divorce/death years. Yet wouldn't she be exchanging one used car for another?  Why would he be any different than her deceased husband, attentive, kind, solicitous at the beginning then asleep on the couch within a month.  

While their stars were not exactly crossed, and only barely aligned, the affair with 4G was a fait accompli. It simply had to be; and so with many misgivings on both sides, it began.  First there were more elevator rides, then an after-work drink at the Russian Tea Room, then a dusky corner of the Mayflower bar where they shared intimacies, and finally a Saturday afternoon idyll at the Rodney, a small out of the way hotel in Dewey Beach. 

 

Ardmore needed the little blue pill - Sherman was right.  The sight of Mrs. Blanchard standing stark naked in the middle of the room like the world owed her a living, although it was the first woman he had seen without her clothes since his divorce and should have aroused him somewhat, left him unmoved.  Only after the Viagra kicked in did he move off the mark. 

It was more grappling than anything, both looking for the toe-holds they were used to from their previous marriages, and getting tangled in the sheets; but who said the first time was as easy as it was in the movies?  Two strangers - in in this case, two lumpy ones - had to quickly negotiate 'differences', somehow make do, just to make it to the next stage. 

Ardmore realized that Sherman didn't know what he was talking about - talking him into sex with an old  bag like Edna Blanchard when what he wanted - only what he wanted was Sally from Accounting, if only for an hour, for that one chance to feel that soft skin, taste that delicious mouth, entera the bower of bliss; and so the affair with Mrs. Blanchard ended as quickly as it had begun. 

Edna on the other hand, true to a woman's eternal perspective, was convinced that she was still an attractive, desirable woman and that the love she felt for a man who had opened up her inner rooms was that for a Roman god

She kept calling him waiting for his footfall on the 4th floor carpet, hoping to tell him how much she needed him; but he took the stairs, didn't answer her calls, and after a while he was content to moon after Sally from Accounting and Edna realized that her epiphany was short lived. 

Edna lived quite happily in Boca Raton in a condo overlooking the ocean, and Ardmore was successful wooing Sally - she, like many woman, had a father figure complex and she was indelibly attracted to older men. 

'How'd it go?', asked Dr. Sherman at Ardmore's next physical. 

'Which one? First or second?', Ardmore replied, and then went on to give him Edna Blanchard's phone number.  'She's expecting your call'.