Alexander Theroux - Darconville’s Cat

“Here, but this is tiring. Have you ever seen a woman try to throw a ball?

“No, nature, I’m afraid, has been very unkind to women — indeed, it perhaps best explains their vindictiveness. They have small sense of humor, less of continuity, and constantly live in the throes of morbidly excitable hysteria — female tear ducts, scientifically, are almost twice as active as men’s — the attributive demonstration of which, while doubtless the result of their constitutional irrationality and its boiteuses journées , is especially felt in the presence of high-principled, essentially masculine men. They can panic most mightily under such circumstances — and of course when a woman loses her hypnotic power, then what? Of course. She straddles a bike, becomes a religious crank, and proceeds to teach Latin. Their so-called meekness, however, is usually the result of finding discretion more necessary to them than eloquence because, as thinking and feeling for them are in opposition, they have less difficulty in speaking little than speaking well. Mind, in fact, cannot really be predicated of her at all — only the sexual instinct, and yet it is virtually impossible for women, because they are only sexual, to recognize their sexuality or the indiscriminate dispensation thereof, for the recognition of anything requires a kind of duality which they can only understand, experientially, in the thoughtless and brazen act of cozening two men at the same time. But what of it? By the very nature of being what they are, they consequently need never inquire what they should be, refusing the gambit right out and generously leaving that task to the philosophical speculations of the male, whose uncertainty about it all is at once both the source of his romance and the germ of his malady. Women aren’t called whores, you see, in the same way penguins aren’t called homely: all aren’t only because all are.

Reductio ad absurdam

“Sex! I hear no echo in this briefest word that could ever make it song. Sex is merely lust — the batrachomyomachia of bunghole and battery from which love, apparently, can do anything but shelter one! It is the lowest form of communication, the vilest expression of need, and the most brainlessly discerptible action in the entire realm of human behavior. Coitus is the price men have to pay to women for their oppression. Their sex organs — a passive pot for fools to spend in — are nothing, emptiness itself, the jar of the Arabian Nights into which every Solomon tries in vain to pack his genie. What is their twammy, however, that you need to know it? How value what you can partake of without loving and yet love without partaking of? Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week or sells eternity to get a toy? Love as passion is a scam, the invention of the Provencal knight-poets to justify their verse! There is, moreover, no distinguishing haecceitas in the glands: they are all the same, functioning in witless independence of that self we vainly believe to be loved, for any one part of an extended substantive is existentially other than any other part. Leave such things for the sexly sex! The Hindus correctly look upon sexual intercourse as a victory for woman, the degrading passion, in my opinion, by which Adam and the serpent were actually tempted by Eve , for, ask yourself, was there any betrayal by the former two until the introduction of the latter? Any contentiousness? Any lack of trust, excess, disobedience?

“No, copulation is abomination — you become susceptible in the act to your own venom like the pigmy rattlesnake that dies when it bites itself on the lip during its frenzy to swallow mice! The violence! It’s a biological fact that peaceful matings are nearly always sterile. The vice! Who, in reference to this beastly whingeing, has ever dared admit the crucial and contradictory paradox involved in taking by giving? Then the vulgarity of it! The sparrow stands erect in coition, the hen crouches, whales swoop up vertically, bears hug one another, hedgehogs go at it face to face — only monkeys and women fall into any posture whatsoever! H-o-double-r-i-b-l-e spells horrible! Democritus of Abdera, who plucked out his eyes to avoid the sight of female skirts, called it ‘the short epilepsy.’ Odysseus refused to couple with Circe on the grounds that his vigor would be impaired. Hector went straight from Andromache’s bed to battle — and was butchered! And both Ambrose and Tertullian declared that the extinction of the human race was preferable to its propagation by sexual intercourse. Sex? O, Darconville, it is there in the womb that we have all been taught cruelty and fitted for works of darkness, fed with blood, deprived of light, and blinded and warpled and set upsidedown in the cerements of our burial scene. We live— inter urinam et faeces nascimur —between graves! We wake only to celebrate our own funeral cries, perpetually driven to abysses as if instinctively burdened with the true and terrible knowledge that looking into a hole is nothing more than looking into the future we, all of us, must share!

Admonitio

“Stop to think where they are now, your desertrice and her impe-trating, impenetrating groom! Who have known each other so briefly must then want each othef so well. Lichens liken: about her he disapproves nothing, nor does she anything of him, for to be overestimated is the only real appreciation. And so it is a Dutch concert of lies — and, my, but they do lie a lot! But, here, can castwhores pulladeftkiss if oldpollocks forsake ‘em? With relish, my man! But, wait, is it limited to kisses? Cry broom! Were kisses all the joys in bed, why one woman would another wed! No, don’t turn away! Look, picture her, there she is noting his every want and, mad to forestall it, tears away her clothes — she quivers, she pants, she clucks, squealing now in language grown greasier than her pigs and waggling in the air two legs turned to a shape more crooked than a judas tree! Why, a woman, like a cat, could calmly walk over your dead face! And will you still talk to me about ideals, when then- ideals, like mantles, cover up their palfreys so that two beasts seem to move beneath one skin? Yes? Than take the fie out of fo and fum for you have paid the fee!

“A new period of history is aborning! I would have you free! Freedom and idleness — Allah’s greatest gifts! I would have you join the 144,000 virgin males in Revelations undented by women! Why, tell me, must a man’s qualifications as a male become identical with that sole and lowly value so esteemed by women? To but acknowledge himself proud in the eyes of a tribe of blowsy she-dowds, repulsive skates, and drabs? The moral sanction that has been invented for coitus, in supposing that there is an ideal attitude to the act in which only the propagation of the race is thought, is hardly sufficient defense. It is no defense. It is defenseless. St. Paul, remember — who was blessed with his vision only after the daughter of the high priest of Jerusalem had rejected his ill-considered offer of marriage — says that the single life is the only perfect one. He countenanced marriage of necessity and against his own conviction, and his views on the subject show at best a reluctant sanction, as I’m sure you know, for he knew well the confusion, dullness, and strife apposite to that way of life. Eris is only Eros with an eye. On the other hand, don’t be confused. The term ‘virginity’ when applied to women is merely a geographic expression — to them, little more than a point of commerce — and the outward endeavor on their part to try to correspond to man’s demand for physical purity must not be taken for anything but a fear lest the buyer fight shy of the bargain. I hardly think you can be unaware of the view women actually take of virginity, can you? It’s the drats! They not only disparage and despise virginity in other women; they are nothing less than terror-fraught at the thought of their own — except, of course, that men prize it so highly. Spry? O yes, they’re spry. Spry as a sprint of sprue! But don’t be fooled — the Queen, remember, unites the power of both the Rook and Bishop in her movements and, commanding both the straight and the oblique, can get behind you faster than wind. But that’s as it is, isn’t it? Simply, you must avoid them. Let them alone to sprout up sins somewhence, somewhither, and somewhere else! Take to heart the wisdom of the holy ancient saints, Jerome, Anthony, and Hilarion who, along with your own holy martyred kinsman, left no doubt as to what women really are: obstacles to spiritual piety. Whoever, that lived its tragedies, says that life must be propagated? That it must continue? Why, that’s nothing but the worship of life , the foulest of heresies! The prophet Jeremiah—16:2–4 of that book — was actually commanded to remain single. Virginity, you’ll note, was essential for success in the search for the Holy Grail, and if it comes as no surprise to you to learn, parenthetically, that after the destruction and dissolution of the Round Table all the surviving knights became hermits, how then even in the absence of explicit statement should I ever hope to expect, my friend, anything less of you? The sole purpose of radiators is to lose heat. No, I’ll vouch you up a chastity, my child, if to it you’re disposed, and there shall by a virgin be a viragin deposed!