Kim Robinson - Sixty Days and Counting

And he gathered his papers and left the room.

Well, shit. What a waste of everyone’s time.

He had been sweating, and now out on the street he chilled. His hands were shaking. He had lost it. It was amazing how angry he had gotten. Phil had told him to go in and kick ass, but it did no good to yell at people like that. It had been unprofessional; out of control; counterproductive. Only senators got to rave like that. Staffers, no.

Well, what was done was done. Now it was time to pick up Joe and go home. Anna wouldn’t believe what he had done. In fact, he realized, he would not be able to tell her about it, not in full; she would be too appalled. She would say “Oh Charlie” and he would be ashamed of himself.

But at least it was time to get Joe. At this point he had been at daycare for twelve hours exactly. “Damn it,” Charlie said viciously, all of a sudden as angry as he had been in the meeting; and then, glad that he had shouted at them. Years of repressed anger at the fatuous destructiveness of the World Bank and the system they worked for had been released all at once; the wonder was he had been as polite as he had. The anger still boiled in him uselessly, caustic to his own poor gut.

Joe, however, seemed unconcerned by his long day. “Hi Dad!” he said brightly from the blocks and trucks corner, where he had the undivided attention of a young woman who reminded Charlie of their old Gymboree friend Asta. “We’re playing chess!”

“Wow,” Charlie said, startled; but by the girl’s sweet grin, and the chess pieces strewn about the board and the floor, he saw that it was Joe’s version of chess, and the mayhem had been severe. “That’s really good, Joe! But now I’m here and it’s time, so can we help clean up and go?”

“Okay Dad.”

On the Metro ride home, Joe seemed tired but happy. “We had Cheerios for snack.”

“Oh good, you like Cheerios. Are you still hungry?”

“No, I’m good. Are you hungry, Dad?”

“Well, yes, a little bit.”

“Wanna cracker?” And he produced a worn fragment of a Wheat Thin from his pants pocket, dusted with lint.

“Thanks, Joe, that’s nice. Sure, I’ll take it.” He took the cracker and ate it. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

“Beggars?”

“People who don’t have anything. People who ask you for money.”

“Money?”

“You know, money. The stuff people pay for things with, when they buy them.”

“Buy them?”

“Come on Joe. Please. It’s hard to explain what money is. Dollars. Quarters. Beggars are people who don’t have much money and they don’t have much of a way to get money. All they’ve got is the World Bank ripping their hearts out and eating their lives. So, the saying means, when you’re like a beggar, you can’t be too picky about choosing things when they’re offered to you.”

“What about Han? Is she too picky?”

“Well, I don’t know. Who’s Han?”

“Han is the morning teacher. She doesn’t like bagels.”

“I see! Well, that sounds too picky to me.”

“Right,” Joe said. “You get what you get.”

“That’s true,” Charlie said.

“You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit !” Joe declared, and beamed. Obviously this was a saying often repeated at the daycare. A mantra of sorts.

“That’s very true,” Charlie said. “Although to tell you the truth, I did just throw a fit.”

“Oh well.” Joe was observing the people getting on at the UDC stop, and Charlie looked up too. Students and workers, all going home late. “These things happen,” Joe said. He sat leaning against Charlie, his body relaxed, murmuring something to the tiny plastic soldier grasped in his fist, looking at the people in their bright-pink-seated car.

Then they were at the Bethesda stop, and off and up the long escalator to the street, and walking down Wisconsin together with the cars roaring by.

“Dad, let’s go in and get a cookie! Cookie!”

It was that block’s Starbucks, one of Joe’s favorite places.

“Oh Joe, we’ve got to get home, Mom and Nick are waiting to see us, they miss us.”

“Sure Dad. Whatever you say Dad.”

“Please, Joe! Don’t say that!”

“Okay Dad.”

Charlie shook his head as they walked on, his throat tight. He clutched Joe’s hand and let Joe swing their arms up and down.

P leasure is a brain mechanism. It’s a product of natural selection, so it must help to make us more adaptive. Sexual attraction is an index of likely sexual pleasure.

Frank stopped in his reading. Was that true?

The introduction to this book claimed the collected sociobiological papers in it studied female sexual attractiveness exclusively because there were more data about it. Yeah right. Also, female sexual attractiveness was easier to see and describe and quantify, as it had more to do with physical qualities than with abstract attributes such as status or prowess or sense of humor. Yeah right! What about the fact that the authors of the articles were all male? Would Hrdy agree with any of these justifications? Or would she laugh outright?

Evolutionary psychology studies the adaptations made to solve the information-processing problems our ancestors faced over the last couple million years. The problems? Find food; select habitat; stay safe; choose a mate. Obviously the brain must solve diverse problems in different domains. No general-purpose brain mechanism to solve all problems, just as no general-purpose organ to solve all physiological problems. Food choice very different from mate choice, for instance.

Was this true? Was not consciousness itself precisely the general-purpose brain mechanism this guy claimed did not exist? Maybe it was like blood, circulating among the organs. Or the whole person as a gestalt decision maker. One decision after another.

Anyway, mate choice: or rather, males choosing females. Sexual attraction had something to do with it. (Was this true?) Potential mates vary in mate value. Mate value could be defined as how much the mate increases reproductive success of the male making the choice. (Was this true?) Reproductive success potential can be determined by a number of variables. Information about some of these variables was available in specific observable characteristics of female bodies. Men were therefore always watching very closely. (This was true.)

Reproductive variables: age, hormonal status, fecundity, birth history.

A nubile female was one having begun ovulation, but never yet pregnant. Primitive population menarche average start, 12.4 years; first births at 16.8 years; peak fertility between 20 and 24 years; last births at around 40 years. In the early environment in which they evolved, women almost always were married by nubility (were they sure?). The biological fathers of women’s children were likely to be their husbands. Women started reproducing shortly after nubility, one child every three or four years, each child nursed intensively for a few years, which suppressed conception.

A male who married a nubile female had the maximum opportunity to father her offspring during her most fecund years, and would monopolize those years from their start, thus presumably not be investing in other men’s children.

If mate selection had been for the short term only, maximal fecundity would be preferred to nubility, because chance of pregnancy was better at that point. Sexual attraction to nubility rather than maximal fecundity indicates it was more a wife detector than a short-term, one-time mother detector.