One Morning in Class
Students had chosen their optional course from a limited list of various domains. First choices weren't assured. The courses about useful or amusing subjects are soon full. Then people are stuck with more brainy subjects. Thus sixteen girls and four boys had chanced philosophy as their second or third choice. This was rather courageous considering they already followed four compulsory courses in philosophy during their two years of college. But the subject matter might be interesting. The teacher called it "The Philosophy of Love and the Mystery of Sexuality". The Ministry of Education (by way of the "coordination committee in philosophy") had simply called it "Philosophy of Sexuality".
On the program sheet, the teacher promised to "view sexuality as a part of the value of the human person and of the value of the intimacy of love". This could be original. After all, everyone loves love, and everyone would like to be loved. Even those who demean love, do not do so because they don't appreciate being truly loved, but because they are deceived in love.
There was a risk. The teacher said he would take a "magisterial" approach. In other words, he would do the talking. But then the students had to make a choice, and choices usually comprise risks. The teacher was also something original. Some students had liked his previous courses. Many had yawned through them. But philosophy teachers are ordinarily original people. And classes are classes. Those points can't be changed. However, this particular teacher was from another time on another planet. Public rumour had it that he had got ten children out of his wife. It should therefore follow that the woman was either oppressed or deranged. But the subject matter was OK.
After the usual greetings, the six-foot fellow, with an impenetrable gaze, but who would smile at times, jumped into the deep end: "Some years ago, in Manitoba, a student had a summer job at a hospital. One day he was talking to an old lady, who was in her forties. She said: ‘When you really know a dog, men are nothing.’ She was talking about her sex life."
The teacher paused. He looked at his class with a curiously satisfied look, and then asked: "Well, what do you think of it? Would you accept Fido into your intimacy? Or Fidelia, for you guys? Lets get our subject started with that. You will each voice your opinion on three points: What is love? What does sex have to do with love? And what about having Fido or Fidelia as your lover? Don't forget, the lady was sincere and spoke out of experience when she claimed a dog was a better partner than the men she had known."
Yeesh. This was unthinkable. Having a dog coming and… Oh no. This was silly. Marie-Claude shuddered. She didn't want to lose face and appear naive. And yet. Suddenly the teacher was asking her.
"Love? It's a mutual trust. A person must chose the person she loves and stick by her choice."
"What about sex?", said the teacher with all those strangers were looking and listening.
She answered with common words. The important thing was to say what she thought without giving admittance into her privacy: "Sex is a way to express the way we feel. It's a private experience."
"What about Fido?", the teacher pushed on. Wouldn't you want Fido to fill your life and some of your needs? Or some other animal? Animals can sometimes be so more caring than men."
Yeesh. The fellow was nuts. "Of course not! It's, er, immoral to have sex with a dog."
"Immoral? It isn't well viewed these days. But times change. Isn't morality just the liking of an age? How about you, John? Don't you think that the love of animals can be a legitimate form of love? Why limit oneself? Why not get satisfaction when and where one feels like it?"
Thank God, the teacher had gone on to another person. Marie-Claude stuck by her convictions. She would not imagine a dog… Yeesh.
"That's the point", John answered. "I do not feel like having sex with a dog or with other animals. I feel no sex drive towards them. And that has nothing to do with love. Love is a friendship. And sex completes love. A bitch has nothing to do there."
"You say you do not feel a sex drive towards animals. Have you ever given it a chance? The lady in question tried and was satisfied. You shouldn't be imprisoned by present-day manners.
"Look, a feeling of revulsion against novelty doesn't prove anything. Many unpleasant things have to be learned. Students in surgery have to learn to cut up a body in order to be able to help their patients, and few people like that. They have to overcome their revulsion and get to like their job. The same is true in food. Tastes are learned. What first seemed strange and even distasteful suddenly becomes tasty. So, if you want to turn down Fido or Fidelia, you must find a reason and not only a feeling."
Johanne was willing to talk about love and sex, but she wouldn't let the teacher push her around. She didn't want Fido. No reason but no Fido. Never.
And, gradually, reasons began emerging. Ghislain said Fido couldn't be responsible. Marie-Josée maintained that the infertility of the relationship disowned it as real sex. "Do you realise," asked the teacher, "that you are at the same time disowning homosexuality?" The other Johanne insisted that there can not be real love and a real relationship between a person and an animal. Lynda said there could be no sharing of intimacy with a dog. Beatrice added there could not be a true meeting of minds and hearts. Pierre supplemented: "Sex implies participation and a dog is incapable of participating in a feeling." Guy explained: "An animal can't understand." Lucy and Nathaly: "Love and sex have a spiritual dimension and animals don't have a spiritual life."
"That's right," said Nancy. "Fido is different from us." "He can't talk," said Linda. "We can't have a deep relationship with an animal," Lynne insisted.
* * *
I remember a young man of sixteen who was driving his father's car. They were on a country road. His father was teaching him to drive. The car was going at a fairly good speed. There appeared a crossroads ahead. The stop sign was on their side. His father told him to brake. But the crossroads were far ahead. The young man did not slow down.
"Brake," the father insisted. "There's a stop sign ahead."
"I've seen it. Don't worry."
And the boy kept going at the same speed.
"Step on the brake," cried the father.
The crossing was rapidly nearing. A car was coming on the other road. The father had seen it. The son also. Then, with assurance, the son felt it time to brake. He pressed on the pedal. The car slowed… slightly. It was going too fast. It would never stop in time.
Then his father's voice ordered with urgency: "Step on the gas."
They had to pass before the other car. I speeded up and we made it in time, avoiding an accident. "Whew."
"Why didn't you brake when I told you so?" my father asked me with profound annoyance.
Why? It was simple. I had felt my stopping estimate was better than my father's. I was certain. Parents are always jumpy for no reason whatsoever.
I had heard, but I hadn't listened. Even though my father spoke to me, my certainty shunned his judgement. And I had been wrong. Someone once said: "Experience doesn't teach. Experience kills. Trust teaches."
Our eldest daughter had long been the boss of her younger brothers and sisters. She had authority and character. She was no longer a kid going to kiddie school. So time had come for her to be her own boss also. She had got enough of her school-mates telling her she was a sissy, a prisoner of her home. She wanted to be like everybody of her age and group.
"Look", I told her, probably with the vexing tone a parent uses in speaking to his teenager, "the guys aren't admiring you for your mind when they see you in tight pants."
Buying her new clothes had become a wearying chore for both mother and daughter. The adversaries argued every detail. What kept them from breaking off, was her mother's sense of responsibility towards her daughter, and the daughter's need of the money, lodging and food she got from her parents. But an occasional good feeling sometimes flitted by.
Her parents were exasperating. Her father saw sex everywhere and her mother stupidly believed what he said. After all, our daughter knew her world and knew herself. All the girls wore tight pants. That had nothing to do with sex. It was a matter of taste. Everybody should have the right to dress correctly. She shuddered at the thought of how she would be dressed if she allowed her parents to choose in her stead. She'd be a laughing stock. She would dress like a child. She would… it was simply inconceivable and unacceptable. She would be "mom's little girl". A nitwit.
Then the boys would surely never speak to her. Not because she wouldn't be sexy, but because she would look like an idiot.
* * *
"You're teaching Philosophy of Sexuality!?!" Berny was flabbergasted. He was also a philosophy teacher in a Cegep. But even if he was a philosopher, there were untouchable subjects for a person who still had his wits and a heart. "There's a teacher in our Cegep who gives that course. The guy's an imbecile who talks about sexual release, the need to follow one's desires and to take no notice of sexual taboos. Well, I would never get into that subject."
"I agree sex has become murky in our day. But our students have a mind and a heart. If sexuality is a part of love, they must be allowed to see it that way. There has to be a way to do it right. And that's what I'm trying to do."
"Good luck", said he with a mixture of admiration and doubt.
As I contemplated our big boy, Richard, who had been borne within his mother's curvatures and who was now feeding from her breast, I knew that the truth of femininity went far beyond the erotic stimulation of the hips and the breasts. It must therefore be possible to tell the truth about sex even in supposedly liberated times. There had to be a way to be free for life rather than free of life. And isn't finding the sum and substance of life what philosophy is all about? As long as life is present to the mind, philosophy cannot be content with a catalogue of ideas expressed by various thinkers at various times and with promenades amongst systems of abstractions that have flickered for a time and died.
Daring took time. The new taboos are impressive. Reality had to be lived before being formulated in words. And lived properly. The life we live and the lives that come forth from it were what count first. But then, I had to dare. And I had dared.
I began my course with Fido. That was fetching far. But I was looking for an area where my students' feelings were still intact. In order to free our minds in order to see the same thing, our emotions shouldn't get in the way. I needed a common ground upon why we could begin our trek towards the truth of our heart, our body and our mind. Fido had done his job. Though some students had their mind as open as a dust bowl when it came to consider the variety of human sexual behaviour, they still had some difficulty entertaining the idea of copulating with beasts. Discovering sex as a human relationship was a good beginning to sort things out and wrench our minds away from the sexual lunacies that pulverise bodies and hearts, and to explore our thirst for happiness.
* * *
In his novel Gateway to Heaven, Sheldon Vanauken tells the story of a couple in love and married, Val and Mary. Suddenly, Mary becomes enraptured by a fascinating and flamboyant lady for whom she leaves her husband. The novel talks about lesbianism. But foremost it speaks of fidelity and infidelity.
The enchantment of Mary's feelings is perturbed by her conscience, her consciousness. Is she faithful? Not to Val, of course. But is she faithful to herself? And in her mind comes a voice that says: "Child, child! There is only one gateway to heaven."
Why "child" for an adult? Because we all start off as children, immature, weak, where we experience the conflict between foolish passions that deceitfully promise a heaven which, in reality, is a suffering, and the peace of living in harmony with our sane judgement, our consciousness of reality, our conscience. When we were young, our parents (or parent or guardian, for some) lugged for us the greater part of the burden of our fidelity towards our own self. Then they partly eased out of our life and were partly kicked out. And we found ourselves apparently alone to bear the full weight of the adult follies that destroy so many people we know and that would also destroy ourselves. This we know. We are conscious of it. But we often try to hide our conscience under a veil made up of the subconscious, of sensations and of psychological diversions. When we succumb, or wish to succumb, we are again like children, though no longer wicked by the weakness of our youth but by the strength of our adulthood. "Child, child!"
"There is only one gateway to heaven." As long as the derangement of sensitivity overcomes the sense of life, we are acquainted with hell and we live it. Sensations are contorted and a mute suffering takes hold of us. After a while, the amplification of the sensations no longer has any effect. We are addicted to our affliction, desolate when deprived and yet, incredibly, more so when provided. This is but a first hell. There is a far worst hell burning deep into ourselves that we do not want to acknowledge: it is the living hell of conscience, of being downright conscious of our infidelity to ourselves because of our infidelity towards the persons we hurt. We know that allurement, passion and intoxication do not excuse the torment we inflict upon a person that is in need of our faithfulness. We know that.
"There is only one gateway to heaven." Through truth. Our truth. Meaning being true to ourselves rather than to our desires.
Mary had freely weaved herself in with Val. She had accepted the unconditional knot of love. A tornado had burst through their lives. But it was not an excuse. She had chosen of her free will to be united to him. Now she wanted to tear away from him in order to unite herself with another person.
With lucidity, honesty and suffering, Mary chose her peace. She put an end to her enslavement and came back to her freedom, to Val in whom she had deposited her heart. Faithfully, Val took in the woman he had taken in for life: he forgave and erased the fault. Not the error. The fault.
With peace comes tranquillity. Mary and Val looked upon our world and ominously observed how the illusion of inloveness has become a sanction. Yet "being in love is not a sanction for anything. … not a sanction for the betrayal of anyone — your wife or husband, your friend, your children." There had to be something stronger than inloveness. It is commitment. "Commitment is a gift requiring an act of will. … it is a gift from one person to another."
Gateway to Heaven, an ordinary novel or a work of wisdom?
Why not both? If there can be obscure feelings, there can also be transparent ones.
I did not know who was listening and who was daydreaming in class. Perception isn't my strong point. So I tried as best I could to unravel the logic of the ideas I had got the students to express:
"And we are in line with what you said about Fido. Fido is incapable of commitment. Fido's lady avoided the tortures of a man's infidelity, which might have been at the beginning of her conversion to animal love. On the other hand, she couldn't experience fidelity. It is possible to buy a dog and the pleasure of its company. It is impossible to buy a person and the joy of his fidelity. A person can only give himself."
* * *
"Time to rise!" 6:30 a.m. We hear Claude's voice downstairs awakening brothers and sisters. We had already been awake a few minutes. Time to get up. The mother summarily washed her face and hands before breast-feeding Richard at breakfast. I awaken or allow the youngsters on our floor to get up.
"Hi, François!" I tear off his blankets so he can leap into my arms.
Terror-stricken, he starts crying: "Don't undo my blankets!" he pleads. "Christine will kill me."
I try to console him. I tuck the blankets back under the mattress. François has learned to barely move in his bed during the night and to slip gently out of his blankets in the morning.
Our eldest daughter's chore was to do the younger children's beds in the morning. The schoolers did their own beds, but the pre-schoolers were given that responsibility only when they major into school. Everyone has a chore in our house. And feeling oneself to be the boss of oneself is not an excuse not to work for others. Thus the eldest daughter was kept in her chores.
She didn't like doing her part, any more than the others did. But with domination she bore down upon the others. If those little brats dared undo their beds, they'd get bawled at. Of course, her own bed was always a mess and her room in complete disarray. After all, her room is her castle!
Her teenage fits of anger spared no one, especially not her parents. And she managed to scare us also. We didn't fear her physical violence but her psychological violence. Her brothers and sisters adopted a no-risk policy. After school, no one lingered in public places of the house: not the living room nor the playroom. The children played in the privacy of their rooms. Our eldest daughter was the prime victim of her own behaviour. As none of her brothers or sisters dared oppose her, none could become an unconditional friend. The tremors from her transformation drew an oppressing circle of solitude around her: bereft of parents and friends in a household of eleven persons, all willing to accept her if only she had wanted to. If only she could have wanted it.
"Did you notice Jesus' first miracle, during his childhood?", Danielle asked me.
"What miracle?", I answered.
"In the Gospel in St. Luke, it is said: ‘Jesus grew both in age and in wisdom.’ This is a divine miracle, if ever there was one. Children do not grow in wisdom simply because they grow up. That doesn't happen in the usual world. It's quite evident priests who dote upon little children never had any."
