Bradenton (Brady) Porter loved women. He used to position himself at the top of the stairs and peer down through the railing at his mother’s beautiful friends who came to her dinner parties dressed in emeralds and fur and trailing scents of Dior and Chanel.
He loved their air kisses, jewelry, and chirpiness; their mink stoles, sheath dresses, and high-heel shoes.
He heard them cry over afternoon tea, sobbing about men whose names he couldn’t make out, watched them leave the house with smeared lipstick and running mascara, and timed the clicking of their heels as they paced the floor below.
He had made up his mind about women at a very early age. They were indeed the belles of the ball, the center of attraction and attention, and absolutely, positively irresistible. Women had so much drama, so much melodrama, show, and presence. They didn’t just come into the foyer but made an entrance. They didn’t just give his father their wraps, but held out their mink stoles and Persian lamb jackets with flair, and only with the tips of their fingers to show off their diamonds and perfectly-polished nails.
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He saw how the most handsome men circled around the most beautiful women, offering them drinks, and putting their arms around their shoulders. The women smiled, put their hands on the men’s arms, shook their hair, and moved closer to them.
In eighth grade he couldn’t keep his eyes off of Nancy Booth who in the warm days of Spring and Fall wore sleeveless blouses and he could see her new but full breasts. He loved the way Joyce Martin walked, getting used to her woman’s hips and unselfconsciously sashaying through the halls of Muirland Hill School with a train of boys behind her.
Mrs. McCurdy, the young wife of the biology teacher, reminded Brady of Nancy Booth; and she was all he could think of during Mr. McCurdy’s ‘sex education’ or ‘how-to-get-a-girl-hot’ class when he talked about hard nipples, wet pussy, soft lips and ‘yielding’ bodies. He couldn’t wait to serve at the McCurdys’ table at dinner so he could set down Mrs. McCurdy’s pork chop in front of her and smell her perfume; or, when removing her plate, lightly touch her arm.
By the time Brady graduated from Lefferts the sexual table had been set. He understood women, the ineluctable sexual dynamics between them and men, and the melodrama of courting, relationships, and parting.
Yet, something happened to this nicely-arranged order when he got to college. His year was the most vulnerable to the social changes that were occurring in America. Whether a matter of demographics (there were more Americans between 20-30 during his college years than any other time ), circumstances – Vietnam, France ‘68, or unexplained but radical changes in social mores, the young men in his class added the overlay of social justice and equality to sex and gender. Women became defensive if not aggressive. There was no such thing as a feminine nature. Men would cry too if they would only free themselves from the chains of repressive social conservatism. They would swish and sway, wear ermines and minks, totter on high heels, gossip, bitch, and scheme if they would only let themselves.
To right the swing of the gender pendulum, women eschewed ‘attractive’ and seductive dress. They no longer shaved their legs, bathed less, wore no perfume or make-up and confronted men with the unvarnished reality of unalloyed female sexuality.
“Pay not attention to it”, said Carlton Porter, Brady’s older brother. “Their looks have changed but they haven’t.” In other words, as he explained, women still are alluring, seductive, emotionally fragile, and dependent on men as they always have been. They might never more be slave to Kinder, Küche, Kirche as they had been in the past; but there was no way that in one generation they would lose their deference to patriarchy and more importantly their hardwired feminine sexuality.
The proof of the argument was in the pudding; and for Carlton Porter every hippy commune was his stud-horse stable. Women there might be open to free love, but every last one of them wanted attention, respect, and more than anything else, a man who would listen to them. Carlton had no interest in serial or communal sex. The real pleasure and satisfaction of the sexual act was the elicitation of a dependent emotional response. It was one thing – and an easy one - to stimulate the sexual organs of a woman; but something else entirely to elicit her more fundamental and deep-seated needs. “Women still marry their fathers”, Carlton advised his younger brother. “Tap into that and you will be a happy man,.”
Yet all around him, both men and women were outraged at the social injustice done to women over the centuries. Forgetting Lady Macbeth, Tamora, Dionyza, Rosalind, a hundred other powerful, demanding, and authoritarian women of Shakespeare; and dismissing the ur-feminist Hedda Gabler, Hilda Wangel, and Christine Mannon, these social activists simply urged women to move from one male prison to another. The Seventies created a new species – The Endangered Woman – and the most outspoken activists of the era ironically demeaned women more than they every had been. “They need our help”, said the socially sensitive man.
Brady Porter was confused. This new mantra made no sense. Although women loved men, reveled in sexual difference, ying-yang complementarity, and Tantric oppositional dynamics; and sought the emotional and psychic complementarity that only a male-female union could afford, they were demanding a sexless, practical, juiceless, judicial world.
Brady and his classmate Jacko Mattel had gone up to Wellesley together, spent weekends at Connecticut College for Women, dated Smithies, and had a grand ol’ time during their four years of college. Neither one had regarded Yale as much more than a convenient social launching pad. The Ivy League was still an exclusive club – likes married likes and men and women avoided the online mess of years to come – and one expected profitable ends after diligent means. They dated, they consorted, and they dallied, all within a very well-defined socio-sexual pattern. Both Jacko and Brady understood women, the social context within which mating rituals were performed, and the expectations of parents, community, and friends.
Surprisingly, Jacko bought the neo-feminist line. He had been wrong, he confessed, to look at Vassar girls as sexual objects, conquests, and trophies. They had the right to their own ‘sexual integrity’, and he for one was no longer going to subject himself to the retrograde and primitive hunt for women.
Brady simply found a likeminded classmate to hitchhike up to Smith, Holyoke, and Vassar and continued his ‘predation’ as Jacko called it. “Have you lost all respect for women?”, he asked after Brady had wandered in at 9 o’clock from the Taft where he had spent the night with a girl from Radcliffe.
Jacko didn’t get it, nor did he ever get it. After Yale he joined every important progressive social movement. He marched, demonstrated, and sat in solidarity with his gay, female, and anti-war brethren. To be crude, he never fucked them, just acted in solidarity with them. After graduation he never budged from his activist, socially-committed, compassionate trajectory. He married early, stayed faithful, and wondered at Brady’s persistent dalliances.
There was never a social or professional situation in which Brady had not been sexually involved with women. No social commitment, no subscription to campaigns of justice and equality, no membership in progressive causes could ever trump sexual dynamics. There was no such thing as a secular, non-sexual activity. Belonging to a cause was no different than wearing a stylish suit of clothes. It provided immediate identity and familiarity. It shortcut random dating and singles bars.
Until his retirement Jacko remained socially active. A member of the United Methodist Church, lifelong supporter of the Democratic Party, Greenpeace, Planned Parenthood, and the National Organization for Women, he never gave up or gave in. He was into social reform for the long haul. “Is pussy all you think about?”, he once said to Brady. “What about the final accounting?”. Jacko had not only remained faithful to secular progressive causes and his wife, but had rediscovered religion. Life had to have a purpose, he felt, and Brady had none.
Men think about sex 24/7 until the day they die. There is not a man of seventy alive who will not fix his hair in the mirror, think twice about what he will wear, and smile at the opportunity of meeting the woman of his dreams. Most men like Brady learned their gender lesson early. Men and women are differently hardwired; and the sooner men realize this, the more successful they will be.
Far from the sexist, retrograde, irrelevant men portrayed by feminists, the likes of Brady Porter are society’s winners. They have ignored temporal cant and political propriety, and looked at women for what they are – impossibly fascinating, attractive, alluring, and desirable creatures.
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