Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Beyond the Edge

Beyond the Edge

Once the writer decides to skirt the edge of acceptability and finds the effort was a success then what is the next step?

Pageant was certainly a case in point. I suspected after it was written that it would excite the ire of the female readers because it basically glorified the dominant male submissive female theme. The woman was led around like a model on a concourse, leashed like a dog, paraded naked in bondage and then made to dance with abandon while at the same time having intercourse with her partner before a live audience.

If that story won’t get you shot as a chauvinist I don’t know what will.

That however was not the reaction. Outside the obligatory review by the contest sponsor which awarded it first place and a review that characterized it as “Surreal” that was about the extent of the “Reviews.” The views however told another story….that it resonated with many readers giving them a look at something forbidden in a context of a fashion (dog) show, a slave auction and a dancing with the stars, sex show.

Now it came as no surprise that males liked the vignette….but why the interest by women? Here are some possibilities.

1. Perhaps the vignette spread word of mouth as an example of how disgusting a writer Percy Goodfellow is and the lengths he is willing to go to put down women

2. Perhaps many women in their heart of hearts find a strong man appealing and are titillated by a strong male assertion of dominion.

3. Perhaps there are still women who are comfortable in a role of a male walking the point and providing a buffer to the outside world.

4. Perhaps the historical male/female social relationship is so deeply engrained in our DNA that despite all the hoopla about woman’s rights and equal opportunity there is still recognition of the need for a man strong enough to protect while a woman provides nurture to their children.

5. Perhaps assertiveness and submission are ends of the same emotion and one excites the other.

6. Perhaps there are qualities in each of us that both ennoble and damn our characters and our lives are so insulated from conditions that could excite these emotive forces, that when we do have opportunity, they resonate with a thrill of novelty.

7. That men and woman but for the intervention of a sperm began life as the same thing….and for all the differences we ascribe, as a consequence of some differention that took place…(Mars and Venus) we still have elements of both sexes that reside deep within us.

In the wild of our early evolution and even today in primitive societies could it be that people experienced/experience an intensity of physiological and emotional experiences that we have escaped the edge of knowing, by our sheltered existences….That we are attracted to the forbidden edges to know more of ourselves like a moth to a flame….to see beneath the tip of our awareness into the deeper recess of our being?