I, the gynephobe
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Entry for S&C fortnightly contest, Theme : Phobics Anonymous.
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I, the gynephobe
A man hath no fear, quoth a minstrel singing the glories of a fallen king, but in reality man has feared everything including himself. I have oft asked the divine One if he created me out of mirth for I was born to become a man of finely sculpted shape but with a mind that feared the woman. My fine features might have better helped a man who loved the woman, but strange are His ways and it is not upon us to question His judgement.
My childhood is a distant memory and I suspect that the haze that surrounds it is created by the machinations of my mind. Perhaps it hides it to protect me; I cannot imagine what horrors lie shrouded in that dark corner, but I do not wish to venture there lest I be overwhelmed by a torrent of suppressed memories. Do the roots of my fear go as far deep as that dark place, I wonder at times but I am cowardly and I will not go in to find out.
I have no tangible memory of a mother either, but a mother figure appears in my nightmares and I wake up screaming, or shuddering. She is not headless, nor a banshee either, au contraire the image is always of a lady with an angelic smile and sweet smelling hair. I do not fear decapitated dancers, blue haired banshees and the spring heeled Jack, but I shudder at the thought of the mother who appears in my dreams. She is kind to me and my childhood self is filled with love, but I am violently torn out of this scene by a gripping fear and I find myself awake at some ungodly hour, my heaving chest wet with sweat.
The nightmares grew less in frequency as I grew up to be a young man, but my problems compounded. A young man who has entered society must plunge into the society of young women, and though a young man of my age would leap in with joy, I had to step in fearfully.
"Beware the lechery of women, Erasmus", warned my mind, somehow always wiser and older than I was. I followed the advice of this voice; it watched me all my life and I fear I might not have lived so long without it.
"Women are predators", it continued, as I nodded in agreement, looking at the ones that walked past me with painted faces, lithe limbs and red claws.
"Look not straight into their eyes, lest you fall prey to their hypnotic glare."
"Cast ye eyes away from their bosom, lest ye be enamoured by their beauty."
"Touch not their hair, lest you be smitten by the silkiness and be bitten by the snakes that are hidden within."
"Speak wisely for no woman will tolerate a man wiser than her."
And beware of, I did, as women tried to enter my life and I steered them away from it.
I spent my days reading, codex upon codex, almanac upon almanac, and learned the secrets of this fear that I shared with men who lived in eras before mine. The body built natural defences to threats, they wrote, and for a man afflicted with gynephobia the best defence was asymmetry. The human mind perceived beauty in the form of symmetry and the Greeks portrayed their Gods as humanoid figures of perfect symmetry. An asymmetric visage would have no effect on the eyes of the beholder and the soul continues to lie in a dormant state. A symmetric visage on the other hand has an explosive effect on the eyes and the soul awakens, smelling the presence of a possible soul mate.
I discovered that I was born without the natural defences however, the result of a creator in a mirthful state, and my most symmetrical visage must have caused an explosive effect in the eyes of many a woman.
In the years preceding the Black Death, I was a young playwright, celebrated and arrogant and I would attend the stage plays and dramas of other playwrights and carry out a conversational critique of the performance with my coterie. I would improvise the dialogue, outpun the puns of the scene stealer, parody the theatrics of the hero and better the end. They would not throw me out; they would listen to me instead, for in spite of my cocky disposition I did better the play. When the play was enacted again the next day, it was not the same; it was a rewritten script with the changes that I proposed as I heckled and my name would appear in the credits. My humour must have had an effect on women I realised later, as I was approached by the Lady Portia,
"I must confess that my ladies had to gag me to muffle my screams of laughter when you began your act, Mr. Erasmus. Will you grace us with your presence at dinner tonight?", she said.
"The lady is extremely kind. However, I must dine with Mrs. Erasmus tonight", I replied, confident outward, shivering inward, as I employed the charade of marriage.
The ploy worked. It would not work on a persistent young lady however. Absolutely smitten by my looks, she begged that I woo her and in mortal fear I agreed and asked her to meet me after the sermon on Sunday.
"I have finally got you in my grasp, dear Erasmus", she said, "Oh, who is this person?"
"This, my dear, is Postlethwaite. He is my partner", I replied, giving dear ol' Post a prolonged hug.
And the persistent young lady quit her persistence. I was delighted that I had mastered the art of evading the predators until a very direct young woman sat herself in the empty seat at my table one day and said, "Court me, Erasmus."
I shuddered. I realised that I had to act fast or be trapped forever, so I dropped the cloak of chivalry and said, " And what else may I do for you, madam? Carry your child? Clean the dishes? I am the man here, if you have not seen the lack of breasts on my chest."
She left, shocked that one with manners so fine would suddenly speak in so coarse a manner. And yet, it had to be done, as a mother tiger ignores her fear of the musket and defends her cubs, baring her teeth at the hunter. I might never overcome my fear of women but I was now learning to face it.
My progress notwithstanding, fate rolled in the dice again in the form of whispered rumours. Why was the wealthy Erasmus yet unmarried? I hear that he has spurned many a woman, is that true? Can he not perform the will of God?
The last question stung the most. As the codex had said, ordinary men are ignorant of gynephobia. Most have not heard its name. They would not understand it and beware, as a clan of wild animals eats its weak, so shall a man be destroyed by other men when it is known that he fears mere women. Protect your secret at all costs, it warned.
The mooring line to my maleness was weakening and I had to do something about it. So, I found Orfelia.
Orfelia was not a very beautiful woman, but there was something about her that did not scare me completely. She was the only woman I could look at without feeling threatened, so I courted her for a few weeks until the day came that I dined with her and found myself accompanying her in my carriage as we rode back to my house.
The circumstances that lead us to bed might not interest the reader so I shall omit that from this narration and continue at the point at which Orfelia undressed me, herself and lay next to me. She touched me and my hands quivered, I grit my teeth, a shiver went down my spine and back up and my chest formed drops of cold sweat. I was looking at naked fear and it was tangible, a tangible form that was over me and giggling, tickling me and a pleasure mixed in with the fear, and I have no words to describe the reactions of my body to the dual stimuli of fear and pleasure and I fear my mind must have lost control of my body a moment later as my eyes closed. Words cannot describe the experience afterward either, but I can remember the colours seen by my shut eyes : Vivid shapes of yellow that shot through castles of stony red, drenched in a green, slimy rain; a violet haze descends, shattered by the most golden lightning, suddenly a white flash, white all around, milky whiteness and then darkness. Pitch black darkness.
I opened my eyes to escape the deluge of colours, and saw Orfelias above me. I blinked once, twice, and there they were again. One Orfelia and another. They had different expressions, lest I thought that I merely had double vision. One Orfelia smiled with burning eyes and the other had uplifted brows in surprise. They spoke to each other in a strange tongue and I looked on in disbelief. I remembered one Orfelia on top of me as I lay down and as I opened my eyes there were two distinct Orfelias; did she have a twin who crept in unnoticed? How could- and then it was that I noticed that they were joined at the hip, one hip that rested on mine and two different persons in their upper bodies, two persons who now looked at me. Orfelias raised their four arms and touched me and my fevered mind was capable of experiencing no more. My eyes did not shut however, it stared at the ungodly sight and as they did unspeakable acts upon themselves and then on me, my mind simply shut down my optic connections and darkness fell. I was blind and I thanked the Lord for it.
It was a day later that Post found me; I was feverish and babbling, he said. I told him that I had gone blind, but nay he said, you have not. You can see and it is your mind that fools you and keeps you blinded. You must have seen a sight so horrible. What was it, Erasmus? What phantom could have shocked you so into blindness?
I heard the mooring line to my maleness snap. "It was a woman, Post."
"A ghostly lady? The Duchess of Viscombe?'
"Nay, Post. A living, young lady. A beautiful young lady. I fear her, as I do other women, because I am a gynephobe."
posted by foogarky @ 10:25 PM,
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foogarky
foogarky is the pseudonym of the fictional construct who battles for supremacy with other constructed personas in the mind of a crazed individual. He describes himself as a man living in a non descript house in Rio De Janiero, Brazil with two dogs and a parakeet.
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The Loony Lampoonist serves to parody, spoof and satirize everything that needs to be parodied, spoofed and satirized. Due to the fictional nature of this electronic journal, any anecdotes appearing here ever so often that seem to be personal in nature, would suffer from the effects of conflicting personalities, the creation of fictional events and the inclusion of non existent characters who did not make it to the big league in the author's literary works. Thus, the Loony Lampoonist is also a purgatory for characters and ideas that have missed the limelight.
