HOW TO BE LONELY IN MEDELLIN

Analyzing Hidden Phenomena in Asymmetric Complex Systems

Anecdote: Aline is telling me about this beautiful place on the West coast of Colombia, where the jungle ends where the beach starts, and she watched the sun set on the Pacific recently with a friend, and it felt like paradise. I get erect inside my jeans as she speaks, sitting across the small pink table of a café on a hill above Medellín, and I wonder if she’s had sex with that friend, maybe on that beach, maybe bathed in the glow of the setting sun? But I don’t ask her: sure, we slept together a few times back home, two months ago, and I’ve just arrived for a week-long visit which entails, evidently, an evaluation of our romantic potential; but that tentative repetition, while suggesting a further interest in each other, did not, obviously, imply an interim commitment to monogamy. So it is none of my business.

Background: Yet I don’t commonly get erect in conversation, nor in any situation really that isn’t clearly defined as leading to sex, so this unexpected burgeoning tells me that something strong is in play between us. I am feeling possessive of her. Even hypothetically imagining that she may have had sex on that beach with a black man whom she had just met at her hotel (she has mentioned having traveled alone, on a small twin-engine plane; and also that among the many physical types coexisting in Colombia, she finds black men most attractive¹, my own sexual instincts are awakened. I don’t say anything, but it gets me thinking.

Principle: Some years ago, I noticed that imagining the woman I love being unfaithful is actually a turn-on. Jealousy may come later, if she ends up rejecting me, or becoming unavailable to me for another reason. But in itself, picturing her fully aroused, a physical phenomenon which I intimately know and find delightful, in the grasp of a virile, erect lover (the visual of the erection is important, seeing this hard, male member about to plunder that juicy, quivering boiled oyster—enticing yet deceitful, concealing a hollow like a tiger trap), makes me physically, well, want to join in. This is not what I was led to expect by the behaviors depicted in books and movies, where only rage seems to prevail in such a case, murderous, devastating urges of revenge for an untold and yet apparently obvious blow to a man’s feelings; but this construed betrayal I myself find, or so it seems in real life, a rather pleasant and ultimately inviting abandonment.

Memory: The first time was in a relationship that had been going on two years. After the summer, we were to attend separate Ph.D. programs, a thousand miles apart, and before going on a vacation together, she had taken a job in a café for a few weeks, while I stayed home as I didn’t need the money (my future campus being located in an inexpensive college town, while hers not quite). There, during a break, a colleague had kissed her, and yes, she had returned the kiss. Why? Well, because she wanted to. But she didn’t intend to go any further: she was just telling me to be honest about it, and because I might see the guy if I came along Friday night, when their team had plans to meet for drinks at the local tavern. Indeed, I felt that I must, and before the furious gaze of that young man, as well as the amused witnessing of others, silently reclaim the woman as my own. That kiss, narrated by her on the porch of our house, cocktails in hand of an evening, was my first thrill of cuckold arousal. I did not tell her at the time, as I wasn’t yet willing to encourage this type of behavior, but it got me thinking. And later, when she did cheat on me for real with a famous professor of that distant university, I cried and banged the floor with my fists in sentimental despair, sure, but I still had a very frank erection as I pictured, following her contrite description, the two of them flung on a leather couch, her wet, white underwear, his massive cock rubbing on it².

Theory: But by then, I believe I knew why: if sexual competition was the norm, in the polygamous—orgy-prone, rather—bands of hominids that for millions of years combined to engender our oh, so civilized species, seeing another male about to penetrate the female that you desire is not a signal to go and fight him, or wallow into tears and self-pity, gobble fast food in front of TV and sink into depression, but to quickly sign up for seconds. She is going to mate with everyone around anyway, as it maximizes her chances to conceive. Seeing this other male just tells you, from a far away perceptible sign, more prominent and garishly noticeable in the darkness of the cave than hers, that she is open for business. If the male is already inside her by the time you get there, you still have options: poking him in the butt, should you be so prepared, is sure to make him come swiftly, and let you take your turn. Otherwise, luckily your penis possesses such a shape that, if thrust back and forth inside a wet and appropriately sized container, it produces a suction effectively capable of extracting the sperm of your predecessor, to be replaced by yours³. Now, this can explain getting aroused at the sight of any available female in the arms of an erect male, which might well be the case (but I lack experience to confirm). Adding onto this the contemporary (at this scale) phenomenon of romantic infatuation, I conjectured that by loving a particular woman, I wanted her more, wished to impregnate her more specifically than any other, and thereby reacted more intensely to the visual of her impending penetration by someone else.

Relevance: So on that day with Aline, I learn from my penis that I’m attached to her in that special way, wanting to claim her as mine, but I’m also curious to know how I know—or am I right to think, since she hasn’t said anything, nor did I ask—that she indeed had sex on that beach at sunset. It would be a pretty nifty skill to possess, that of smelling or divining the sexual behavior of one’s partner when one isn’t around. Don’t you think so? In this specific case, I’ll find out about three months later: having confirmed in the course of that first visit that we like each other, I return home with a plan to come back for a few months, once I’ve worked out some financial and professional parameters. We’ve still not discussed exclusivity, and I assume that my dick feeling was right, so I keep going on dates also, and two weeks before flying back to Medellín, I sleep with a nice brown woman⁴. When Aline and I meet for a weekday lunch—coy as we are and pretending to be casual about this whole thing, me dropping my life to, not join her in Colombia as that would be excessive at this stage of our budding relationship, but make sure that we have a chance to see each other more, by moving to Colombia and renting an apartment two blocks from hers, in that nice neighborhood of Belén Malibú—, I tell her that I did, being that kind of guy. (What kind? Well, less subtle. I should probably have described a nice garden, in which I’d taken a wonderful walk with someone. She might have gotten it and wet.) Turns out, I had guessed correctly, but it didn’t mean anything to her, whereas now, this does. No, she cannot keep exploring our relationship, knowing that there is someone back home that I may, I did not lie, want to see again. No, she is not, and this is quite insensitive of me to ask, she says holding back tears, no she isn’t aroused right now under the table. No! She isn’t even hungry anymore.

1. And because she mentioned it, you may assume that she is white; and because it registers as a relevant fact in my beach scenario, you may assume that so am I. Beyond that, I am not sure if it matters. ↩

2. That he was Black also is purely coincidental. I think. I mean, these are real situations, I’m not making this shit up. And yes, in case you are wondering, I also get aroused if the lover’s penis is white or another color. Just these two most relevant examples happen to involve two distinct black men—the first of which I have never seen, only imagined (like you are now doing for all of us), making his appearance a particularly abstract and subjective projection[a] Come to think of it, for the second, I have never seen his penis: only by hearsay (or lack of contradicting hearsay, rather) do I assume to know its color. (By the way, how does she look to you?)
   [a]: I guess the point of playing with linguistic mental projections is to show that this is what we do always, even when we think we are interacting with reality as opposed to fiction; and to provide, along with that distanciation, options and agency as to how one projects, through language, into one’s self and reality[i].
   [i]: And this conflicts with political identities and worldviews, for sure. As it asserts a much more small scale variability of perception and meaning than collective discourses can (or usually do) allow. ↩

3. I’m not making this shit up. See Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality, Christopher Ryan & Cacilda Jethá, HarperCollins, 2010. ↩

4. I’m still not sure what I am supposed to do with these skin color facts. In my narrative (and memory), they are part of the sensory experience of someone’s body. But yeah, I get it: a lot of baggage in the fantasized sexualization of other races, especially by mine. ↩