Tales Of Seduction - Where Have All The Don Juans And Casanovas Gone?

Harlan Adams was a typical boy who hated girls until it was time to love them, and love them he did. There is something in certain men that is irresistible to women, a je ne sais quoi virility without show or pretense, an innate confidence without arrogance, and an absolute love of them. 

He was handsome in that classical that is most attractive to women - strong, well-aligned features, perfect symmetry but never feminine, an innate masculinity, a certain, subtle sensuality - but more importantly, he was interested.  He listened, he paid attention, he was attentive - far more than women were used to and out of a genuine like. 

As such, he could have any woman that he wanted, and the more he had, the more those who had been left behind wanted to know what is was that drew women to him, and as a result he had them too. 

Strangely the women were never jealous, and there grew an unusual sisterhood among them.  They talked about him, told pleasant anecdotes and reveries; and his reputation grew. 

There were some women of course, those far out of his ambit, who criticized him for his typical machismo - the brutish predatory male who blundered on without a sensitive, respectful, or considerate thought in his head.  A sexual thug, a throwback. 

Of course he was nothing of the sort, and this kind of sniping was just sour grapes. These caviling women barked from the outer fringes, consigned there not by men but by women who wanted them out of sight, reminders of how if they looked carefully in the mirror, they might see something of the misshapen mess of the outcasts. 

As a result, the marginalized, carping women resorted to each other for sexual comfort, and so became even more unpleasant, unattractive, and malignant. Even Harlan with his eclectic, all-encompassing love of women, kept his distance. 

At university he fell afoul, although through no fault of his own, of feminist cabals who condemned him ipso facto. Beauty is as beauty does was their motto, their meme; so beauty was to be mistrusted, especially in a man.  In the worst sort of exclusivity and bias, Harlan got a reputation for being a white, privileged, sexist oppressor without lifting a finger.  The more girls flocked to him, begged him for favors, and followed him like pilgrims to Mt. Ararat, the more the feminist sisters hated him. 

They had good reason, for his sexuality challenged the progressive canon. Straight men were at the far end of the gender spectrum, deliberately marginalized in favor of the more evolved and mature sexual categories.  Not only that, their type of sexuality - pursuing, single-minded, deliberate, and sexually obsessed was antithetical to the central premises of the progressive canon. 

So much for principle. From the margins, Harlan Adams ruled the roost.  He was not the misogynist, retrograde, simian throwback feminists claimed, but the most sexually successful of anyone on the spectrum.  How could that be? But no matter how much these women singled him out for his sexual opportunism, women simply could not get enough of him. 

It was a matter of Nature over Nurture, another anathema.  Progressive principles denied both the hardwired nature of human traits and their permanence.  Human beings have been aggressive, self-interested, violent, and territorial since they first descended from the apes, but progressives have argued that with investment, commitment, purpose, and belief, the world can be peaceful, verdant,c compassionate, and inclusive. 

Harlan defied Nurture.  No matter how social reformers had tried to create a more equal and accommodating world of diverse sexuality, one which would automatically marginalize and remove the persistent individualism of the male, the Harlan Adams of the world never went away. 

Marva Link, a member of the University Feminist Caucus, was determined to give Harlan Adams his comeuppance, to destroy his self-aggrandizing womanizing, and to leave him sexless, soulless, and insignificant. 'An inside job', she said, left her flannel shirts, E-boots, buckles and butch haircut aside and tarted herself out in feminine fashion.  It had been a number of years since she had 'dressed up', as her mother had called it, and when she looked in the mirror she was surprised at her reflection.  She was a beautiful woman after all. 

She immediately hated herself for the thought, returned to the business at hand - the finery was a costume, nothing more. 

Harlan was not what she expected, and his clear, considerate, and attentive welcome was a a complete surprise.  Reality was far from canonical prediction.  Aha, she thought, again pushing anything other than the mission from her mind, an act, the old trickeroo, the Don Juan tomfoolery which wasn't going to fool her.  She knew who he was and she would soon topple him from his high horse. 

Yet, like all women before her, she was captivated by his charm, his good nature, and his clear interest in who she was, not just what she looked like. He asked about her studies, her family, her outside interests and not once did he push, maneuver, or deceive.  He seemed truly interested, and beneath that interest was that unmistakable sexual interest which had tempted so many women before her. 

Marva's years at the university had been solitary ones. True, she had her sisterhood, but it was community without empathy and certainly without warmth.  Her life had been uniquely political, filled with meetings, demonstrations, marches, and protests.  The sisters were passionate about the cause, and the brothers kept a respectful distance. 

So in the company of a man who appreciated her, who found her attractive and inwardly appealing, she melted.  Her refusals, her prepared animus, her predetermined suspicions and mistrust vanished.  She was all smiles, and when they went to bed, she was delighted. 

Her colleagues didn't know what to make of Marva's transformation.  The 'costume' had become hers, her persona decidedly feminine, her attitude, demeanor, even language betrayed a true reversal.  She was not the feminist harridan of a month ago, but one of those blonde prom ditzes who smelled of department store perfume. 

Needless to say Marva was dunned, dismissed, and forgotten.  Her former colleagues circled the wagons and armed themselves for protracted battle.  The fight was going to be more challenging than they ever thought, 

They had been so convinced of the progressive canon of social reform, progress, and the eventual Utopia at the end of the line, that they were blindsided by the Harlan-Marva affair.  Not only did she fail in her mission to destroy the enemy, but she became a turncoat and joined his forces of evil. 

Worst of all, they were forced to entertain the thought that perhaps Nature did rule.  There was an ineluctability about male-female heterosexual attraction and that there were potent purveyors of it. Harlan was not a one-off pop-up, but a permanent fixture. 

The next in line, the woman who took Marva's position of leadership wondered what all the fuss was about, leveling the male fool could not be all that hard, but still, all in all, she looked forward to meeting him. 

Cowboys And Indians - White Wolf, White Massacre, And Manifest Destiny

White Wolf was a Comanche chief whose savage, bloody massacres of white settlers on Indian land were legendary and feared.  Union troops ordered by the government to pacify the region hesitated.  Entering Comanche land regardless of strength of arms would be suicide.  The Army had seen nothing like it.  

White Wolf was as brilliant and bloody a warrior as Genghis Khan. White Wolf knew that a purposeful barbarity would intimidate the enemy.  Just as Genghis Khan posted severed heads on roads leading to conquered villages, gruesome warnings to the next settlements in his sights, so did White Wolf use unconscionable savagery as a tool of war.  He knew that the Christian soldiers would see his tribal, animist, ferocity, understand that they were up against a frightening, unfathomable enemy with no moral restraint and would turn tail. 

 

Jonathan Foreman, writing in The Daily Mail said:

S C Gwynne, author of Empire Of The Summer Moon about the rise and fall of the Comanche, says simply: ‘No tribe in the history of the Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan, and American occupations of this land had ever caused so much havoc and death. None was even a close second.’

He refers to the ‘demonic immorality’ of Comanche attacks on white settlers, the way in which torture, killings and gang-rapes were routine. ‘The logic of Comanche raids was straightforward,’ he explains.

‘All the men were killed, and any men who were captured alive were tortured; the captive women were gang raped. Babies were invariably killed.’

‘One by one, the children and young women were pegged out naked beside the camp fire,’ according to a contemporary account. ‘They were skinned, sliced, and horribly mutilated, and finally burned alive by vengeful women determined to wring the last shriek and convulsion from their agonized bodies. Matilda Lockhart’s six-year-old sister was among these unfortunates who died screaming under the high plains moon.’

Not only were the Comanche specialists in torture, they were also the most ferocious and successful warriors — indeed, they become known as ‘Lords of the Plains’. They were as imperialist and genocidal as the white settlers who eventually vanquished them.

When they first migrated to the great plains of the American South in the late 18th century from the Rocky Mountains, not only did they achieve dominance over the tribes there, they almost exterminated the Apache, among the greatest horse warriors in the world.

In an ironic article in the Rocky Mountain Times Gazette written when the Washington Redskins were choosing a new name for the team, staff writer Hardy Lane wrote:

The Redskins front office should consider changing the team name to White Wolves in honor of the brave Native American who valiantly defended his land from opportunistic, territorial, white invaders.  He embodied the best of American courage, patriotism, pride, and valor. He took scalps not as a matter of barbarity - how white America saw the Indian - but as a matter of defiance.  His savagery - the disemboweling, raping, decapitating, and dismembering of white settlers - was a matter of legacy, honor, and rectitude.  He was truly American in spirit, energy, and devotion to tribal integrity. His name on the burgundy and gold and his image displayed prominently would be a fitting tribute to a great American. 

 

Harold Jacobsen, a prominent Democrat and tireless promoter of the progressive canon of Diversity Equity Inclusivity, when asked about the Gazette article completely missed the point, hemmed and hawed, and babbled on about Native American rights, the unholy genocide of the Indian by white oppressors, and the like.  When pressed about the article's suggestion that the Redskins should be named for White Wolf, he said, 'A fitting choice of an honorable American'. 

When the New York Times picked up the exchange on the wire services, its editors also so blindered and captivated by the progressive meme of Native American inclusion, noted that finally the Indian would get his due. 

Journalist Lane didn't stop there.  From the Boulder, Colorado Archives of the American Indian, he found early photographs of White Wolf's massacres and after editing out the worst bits - e.g. the bloody entrails of disemboweled women being picked over by prairie dogs and crows - printed them in a follow up piece called, 'White Wolf, Champion of the World' in which he lobbied even more strongly for the renaming of the Redskins. 

When the Times editorial board realized their mistake - yes, they were for the Native American, and yes they honored his courage and defiance of the white man, but they never realized how absolutely barbaric, and unconscionably 'primitive' White Wolf and his Comanches were, and said so. 

Which of course got the paper into hot water.  No one was to speak of the Native American as 'primitive', a harshly ignorant, demeaning term.  In other references in the paper the Indian was described as 'a sentient traveler of the Plains...a personage of dignity and respect...a soul in tune with the environment...' and so on. 

The Redskins ownership dodged the issue and renamed the team the Commanders, a name without history, relevance, significance, or pride. Although the choice of White Wolves was obviously made tongue-in-cheek by the Western journalist - no self-respecting owner would ever dare to claim allegiance to a rapist and baby killer - the idea of a heroic Native American enshrined on the national team might be a good idea.  Ownership bailed, however, capitulated, and ended up with the most trite and indifferent name possible

 

The American Left has always been in tears about Westward Expansion and Manifest Destiny, President James Polk's ambitious program to extend America's borders from east to west - an initiative that was nothing less than genocide, said progressives, a heinous, unconscionable assault on the indigenous population of the land. 

Of course, this was all nonsense, a canonical ignorance of history, and ex post facto political hysteria. Expansionism, territorialism, and occupation were the sine qua non of empire.  When Pope Urban II send the Crusades across Europe to Jerusalem, the purpose was to kill Muslims, slaughter them, eliminate them, and return the Holy Land to its rightful owners.  

Genghis Khan, the Mongol emperor who led 50,000 troops from the steppes across Europe and Asia to establish the biggest empire the world had ever or would ever see, was no more genocidal than White Wolf or James Polk.  He had his own version of Manifest Destiny. 

The Persians, the Ottomans, Muhammed's Islamic colonialism, and a hundred lesser but no less determined territorial regimes were no different. If you got in the way, that was your problem. 

The ranchers of the Southwest killed any Indians who threatened their sovereignty. It was cowboys and Indians until every Indian was either eliminated, pacified, or removed to a reservation. Genocide? Hardly, just the give and take of human nature, and not without a fight.  There were plenty of White Wolves among the Indians who defied the cowboy ranchers who had taken their land. 

The Indians of the Plains were so ferocious, tenacious, and warlike that in modern times their names and images were adopted by American sports teams, symbols of courage, manhood, dignity, and valor.  Only in the recent years have the heroics of this noble people been erased in a self-righteous, revisionist view of history.  Instead of fortitude, patriotism, and honor, Indians became victims - colored people alienated and murdered by the white oppressor. 

The whole Redskins flap and the selection of an uninspiring, unimaginative, and spiritless name illustrates the ignorance of the Left. In forcing the Redskins renaming and putting every other Indian-inspired sports team in their sights, progressives have done their best to remove every semblance of the courage, valor, tenacity, and heroism of Native Americans.  They thought they were doing them a favor, and instead further consigned them to the reservation. 

Were Native Americans killed by white settlers, ranchers, and the Union Army during Westward Expansion? Yes.  Was this territorial expansion any different from any other in recorded history? No. 

Belle De Jour - D.H. Lawrence, Sexual Epiphany, And Woman, Incomplete

D.H. Lawrence perhaps more than any other writer, understood the epiphanic possibilities of sex.  Of course Tantrism and mystical ying-yang Buddhism reflected the idea of spiritual epiphany, but Lawrence translated it into recognizable, natural desire. 

 

Connie Chatterley did not sleep with the gamekeeper Mellors with this in mind.  She only wanted release from the chattels of marriage to a physical cripple and emotional child; but found in the increasingly passionate adulterous affair a psychic release that went far beyond simple sexual satisfaction and touched the possibility of true spiritual satisfaction.  

It was the coming together, Lawrence's sine qua non, that escaped her at the beginning but when realized, turned a sexual coupling into something tremulous, exciting, and without parallel. 

It wasn't that Mellors was an ideal mate - the two lovers were from different worlds, of different composition, different zeitgeist, and different social expectations.  It was that there was an undefinable, illimited, sexual attraction that when realized and consummated produced an indescribable, insurmountable release and feeling of completion. 

Life of course is not the stuff of fiction, and such epiphanic sexual ecstasy will always be a matter of speculation and hope; but there are real Connie Chatterleys out there - women for whom sex is not only a matter of marital duty or even adulterous adventure, but something necessary, obligatory, and absolutely compelling. 

Barbery Byfield was such a woman. Married to a scion of Wall Street, direct descendant of colonial Anglo-American aristocracy, son of a first family of both Virginia and Massachusetts, she was secure enough in a prescribed alliance of the best and the brightest. 

 

For the first years of their marriage, she was contented with her profession, her social circle, her support of the arts, and her family; but as time went on she felt disquieted - not quite restive or unhappy, but feeling a twinge of regret at her choice of a settled life and a desire to at least stretch its perimeter. 

This was all window dressing for what she really wanted - a sexual life that went far beyond obligation and ventured into diversity, risk, and reward.  Her breeding and temperament were brakes on such bohemianism but her desires were female, primitive, and clawingly demanding. 

Her first lover was a cut not far from the base of her social tree - an attractive young man with turquoise belt buckles but with an old Pacific heritage.  Her second was a naval officer, Annapolis trained, battle-proven, a derring-do Navy Seal who had once infiltrated well beyond Iranian lines and taken out the high command.  Her third was simply a man who loved women, who reveled in their sex, rutted until the cows came home, passionate beyond belief, as insatiable as she, a real find. 

The marriage stayed put, a kind of Nicholson-Sackville West open affair.  Her husband had frequent, although desultory affairs of little consequence.  Neither he nor she had to bother with explanations or excuses.  Both were more than adult in their negotiated freedom, and both brought some of the spice of foreign lovers to bed with them; but both had desires well beyond the bed chamber. 

It was not long before Barbery's lovers became more than just afternoon diversions, but the most important part of her life; for it was at this time that she realized that her extramarital sexual escapades were not the usual break from routine and boredom, but essential. 

She became Catherine Deneuve in the movie Belle de Jour, the story of a well-to-do Parisian matron by day and an impossibly accommodating prostitute by night.  It was not love for money for both the Deneuve character and Barbery. The five hundred francs left on the dresser were insignificant, finalities of contractual obligations nothing more. The real episode was flesh and blood and the search for that special assignation that Lawrence had described. 

Could a woman find this mutuality with a random lover? Was there any chance of a Lawrentian epiphany with a john? Was Barbery simply stochastic - one in a hundred, but that one would be the one she was looking for?  Perhaps but there had to be something worthwhile in the ninety-nine, and as much as she claimed she was searching for the diamond in the rough, there was something about the seriality of the sex that was - in the best deconstructionist terms - signifying.  

 

In fact, this insatiability, this insistent sexual itch was defining.  She was becoming a woman of easy pleasure, a neighborhood courtesan, a prostitute however one might call it; and despite her pedigree, her stable and respected marriage, her affection for her husband, and her social currency she found nothing unseemly in what she did. 

Her husband, as progressive as he was, a partner in the open marriage he and Barbery had concluded, he was still a man, and as jealous as any.  The more he realized that her liaisons were not just occasional but compulsive and necessary, the more he was tempted to rein her in, to stop what had become infidelity. 

Infidelity is not restricted to the one-off affair or even philandering.  Anything outside the parameters set in a marriage is a breach of contract.  One lover or a hundred, no one is counting.  In Barbery's case the sheer voracity of her sexual desire defined her infidelity, and her husband was upset. 

'You might as well charge for it', he said. 'A little egg money'. 

Barbery was so far gone into her sexual hejira that nothing could lever her from the rails.  She had become not just a Biblical harlot or a Freudian hysteric, but a self-fulfilling prophecy.  She was goddess, Woman, satisfier, and what God had intended her to be; what she would be until she found out differently. 

A man with a hundred lovers would be called a Casanova, a Don Juan, a Lothario; but a woman with a hearty sexual appetite, a whore.  Why is that?  What social construct could be more oppressive and patriarchal?

Was there some number of lovers beyond which became prostitution even if money was not exchanged? Certainly a man could graze to his heart's content and even be in demand by women who wanted to know what he offered that could seduce so many women; but a woman?  Salacious, incontinent, immoral, and reprehensible. 

There was a bit of Freud in Barbery, some driven quality which bordered on the psychotic but never drifted fully into that category.  There was a drop of feminism to be sure, a businesslike approach to supply and demand; and there was uniqueness.  She had simply come out of the womb more sexually sentient than most other women. 

Whatever it was, Barbery persisted until she was let go by her husband and dunned mercilessly by her peers.  Whatever were the parameters of social propriety, she had overstepped them.  She was, as Father Brophy would have said, 'a fallen woman'. 

Time has a way of smoothing out irregularity, and Barbery ended up on a chaise lounge on a Miami beach just like the old Jews of her mother's generation, reflectors under the chin to get a nice tan. 

Why should this be a surprise? Nothing lasts forever, nor should it.  She had had her fling, or whatever anyone wanted to call it, and few of us ever get anywhere near that particular epiphany.