I was going to write about the terrorists like everybody else this week, but then I decided to write about Rachel. I thought readers of the weekend paper could do with a break.
Rachel doesn't have a husband (or "partner," as some people say these days). Tim, a film type, buzzes around, but won't commit. "It's a puzzle to me," a friend observed a while back, "why someone hasn't snapped up Rachel. I mean, the girl is as sharp as a razor."
Yes, and she looks like one, I thought. Of course, I said nothing. Fact is, I like Rachel. She's kind, considerate, and good fun. Also, her real name isn't Rachel -- not that it matters.
"You don't see men snapping up razors," I said instead. "They handle them rather gingerly,"
My friend gave me a scathing look. "Well, we all know," she said, "that men are afraid of smart women. We threaten them," she added modestly. "I tell you, a guy as smart as Rachel would have been snapped up ages ago."
This was likely true. Far from being afraid of brainy men, some women find them sexy. Mind you, women also find brawny men sexy. And rich men. Ditto for daring, and courtly, and saintly men. Or ghastly men. There's probably no quality of the human mind, spirit, or body which wouldn't impress some woman as being ripe with erotic allure.
Men aren't as flexible -- which is bad news for Rachel. She's a fine woman, not a sexy one: The kind men tend to merely snap at, not snap up.
Women do exactly the same thing -- snap at fine men and snap up sexy ones -- with one crucial difference. Women can find all kinds of qualities sexy that have nothing to do with sex. Men can't -- at least, not as a rule. That's one of the fundamental differences between men and women.
Men do appreciate kindness, or learning, or wealth; they just can't convert their appreciation into erotic or romantic feelings. Whether the female of the species is deadlier than the male, as Kipling has it, in our species it's the female that elevates appreciation into romance. The male is better at reducing romance to appreciation. One result is that after 20 years of marriage it's easier to find a woman who loves her husband than one who appreciates him, and easier to find a husband who appreciates his wife than one who loves her.
But before Rachel can reach this hurdle, she has to pass the first one and be snapped up -- no easy task for a woman whose main assets are kindness and a razor-sharp mind. In the 1970s, people used to quote a remark attributed to the actress Raquel Welch: "The mind is an erogenous zone" (though it was probably Henry Kissinger who said it). This could have been an accurate observation for many women, but for most men erogenous zones are -- let me put this delicately -- elsewhere.
Women are generalists when it comes to love. Men are specialists. A woman's affection, like the appetite of an omnivore, can feed on many things. Men are more like panda bears in their habits. Their appetites can only be satisfied by comestibles of one kind.
The feminine libido may be engaged by a bewildering array of qualities. It may respond to such seemingly asexual attributes as intelligence, spunk, wealth or social position. A woman (and I don't mean a gold-digger) can genuinely fall in love with a man for his money.
This is often a lucky thing, allowing women to have erotic responses to fine but sexually neutral qualities such as loyalty or decency. It can also be an unlucky thing, inviting erotic responses to instability, pugnacity, or plain evil. It can create the phenomenon of the jailhouse groupie, the woman who proposes to serial killers.
The erotic wiring of men is different. The masculine libido is normally engaged by 1) looks, 2) youth, and 3) vulnerability. Few men respond erotically to female traits of any other kind. This isn't to say that men appreciate nothing else. Far from it: Men are impressed by position, money or power just as much as are women. They admire courage, decency, loyalty, integrity and brains. Only they're less likely than women to have an erotic response to them. Women may respond romantically to wealth without being gold-diggers, but show me a man who has a romantic response to a bank account, and I'll show you a gigolo.
Who wins in nature's design, men or women? Look at it this way. A woman can fall in love with a man directly for his kindness. A man can only hope that, with luck, the woman he falls in love with for her big hair will turn out to be kind.
Postscript: Happy ending. Rachel is engaged. The community is galvanized. My wife just got off the phone. No, it isn't Tim. It's a multicultural gentleman, named Ahmed. Met at some conference in Frankfurt. He wants to settle in Canada.
Printer-friendly version
Email this item to a friend