Author: Inthegazeoftheother

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Polygyny: birds do it, bees do it…

I wondered if the evolution of the mistress (and the lack of a counterpart for the male other than paramour [equally applicable to either gender], gigolo, or lover) as a socio-historic phenomenon has a genetic component. This is what I found. 
Polygyny threshold model graph

The polygyny threshold model is an explanation of polygyny, the mating of one male of a species with multiple females. The model shows how females may gain a higher level of biological fitness by mating with a male who already has a mate. The female makes this choice despite other surrounding males because the choice male’s territory, food supply, or other important characteristics are better than those of his competitors, even with two females on the territory.

Fitness (biology)

Fitness (often denoted w in population genetics models) is a central idea in evolutionary and sexual selection theories. It can be defined either with respect to a genotype or to a phenotype in a given environment. In either case, it describes individual reproductive success and is equal to the average contribution to the gene pool of the next generation that is made by an average individual of the specified genotype or phenotype. The term “Darwinian fitness” can be used to make clear the distinction with physical fitness.[1] Where fitness is affected by differences between various alleles of a given gene, the relative frequency of those alleles will change across generations by natural selection and alleles with greater positive effect on individual fitness will become more common over time; this process is known as natural selection. Fitness does not include a measure of survival or life-span; the well known phrase Survival of the fittest should be interpreted as: “Survival of the form (phenotypic or genotypic) that will leave the most copies of itself in successive generations.”
Fitness can only measure heritable differences, and these can then be chosen in mate choice, causing sexual selection. An individual’s fitness is manifested through its phenotype, which is affected by the developmental environment as well as by genes, and the fitness of a given phenotype can be different in different environments. The fitnesses of different individuals with the same genotype are therefore not necessarily equal. However, since the fitness of the genotype is an averaged quantity, it will reflect the reproductive outcomes of all individuals with that genotype in a given environment or set of environments.
Inclusive fitness differs from individual fitness by including the ability of an allele in one individual to promote the survival and/or reproduction of other individuals that share that allele, in preference to individuals with a different allele. One mechanism of inclusive fitness is kin selection.
credit: quoted from wikipedia, biological fitness, polygyny

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textual insinuation

  
“What time is your flight?”

“9:07. No actually it’s 9:55. Gates open at 9:10”

“And you land at 11 something?”

“Yes.”

“Short flight. I like short flights.”

“And long sex?”

“I wish I still smoked cigarettes. Seems like the perfect moment, the perfect accessory. I would take a long, sultry drag of a cigarette and with half lids and pouty mouth, slowly exhale smoke and say in my best Marlene Dietrich, ‘Yes, my dahling. And long sex.’ And then wink.”

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You Want Fruit?

  
“You want fruit? I’ve got all kinds of fruit. I’ve got apples, pears, watermelon, grapes and bananas.”

It’s the same every day. R and I smirk at each other and silently mouth the words as they are spoken with our eyes rolled up. 

R says quietly to me, “It will be his epitaph.”

The old man talks banana, fish, ice cream, Snickers bars, BK hamburgers, pizza and spaghetti and meatballs, the gustatory language of care: communing in eating words.

On any given day, each member of the family undergoes the same interrogation upon first notice or first entering the house:

“You hungry? I’ll get you something to eat. What do you want?

“No thanks, I just ate.”

“No, really, it’s no problem. It won’t take me long. I can go right now. What do you want?”

“No thanks, I just ate.”

“Are you sure? You’ll be hungry later. You want me to get you something for later?”

“No thanks.”

“You’re going to be hungry later, you know.”

“No thanks.”

Like a song on repeat, he echoes an unstoppable refrain, worse than an ear worm. The first words of the litany dull my brain and my mood instantly. Even if I am hungry, I reactively reject the offer out of sheer negation, the will to make it stop, and discourage the behavior.

But I breathe, blink and behave: he only knows this way. He means well, and even if he doesn’t, he just does this, utters these syllables like a tic, an eye twitch or knee jerk when the rubber mallet hits the reflexive sweet spot. 

Because we will laugh at his eulogy reciting a thousand and one inanities, even as we cry the quiet of the house into our eyes, awaiting the ticking off the names of fallen fruit.

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Post Matris Vitae

 

 
And I thought to myself, “Where shall we bury her?”

Startled by the sheer absence of an idea, I winced.
Those who never come to see her haven’t a notion

or they would have asked at Thanksgiving dinner.
We buried her so long ago somehow yet there it is,

the question of her final resting place looming large.
A few weeks will bring another birthday celebration

that she passes unaware of her previous 77 years.
And she, stuffed in a back room while we all feasted,

the family she grew and fostered, living as if we know.
Did anyone see her in the shadows of her own wake?

Will anyone mourn the body’s cease post matris vitae?

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Capital Mist

  

 

Strafing the boulevard, the store lit signs obscenely shout their names

as if no one could hear them, remember their wares and goods, so well,

I can tell which aisle to find band aids for this wound that refuses to heal

scabbed and picked and bled and smoothed and scabbed over and over

or salve for the rims of my heels dried and cracked in winter’s brutal beat.
 

Restaurants, all sizes, shapes and price ranges scaling a rainbow’s fare

for appetites unending, cresting at habitual hunger hours’ gurgling songs.

How a child longs for happiness in a meal and a toy, romping a petri dish

soaked in saliva and snot and piss and crap laced red plastic pinged balls

or cushioned blows to bodies flung down chutes and ladders’ padded iron.
 

CVS Pharmacy and McDonalds and Chase bank and Pizza Hut/Taco Bell,

the art of commerce accompanies the blank of night the wreckage left me

twisted in elbowed chin to slump, knee over knee gaze reflected glass cut

through another plane of recognition, climate shift, and chance transformer

where a mind observes facts like neon signs wailing wisdom’s mist, capital.

 

credit: mattperfectblog.blogspot.com

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A Stranger Shook my Hand

image

From the sky, like rain on a sunny day,

blazing like arson, a stranger walked in,

shook my hand and asked how I fared.

His hand melted goo through my fingers.

Jumped back in warped skill, he took me,

fled with my expression still open wide,

shut tight in frightened delighted airspace.

And we toured the streaming veins of time,

spinning til the G’s popped open our eyes.

By then his smile lingered Cheshire drawn

while the faint stain painted a rose dying

in my hand’s palm he clasped as life lines.

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When the Well Runs Dry

 
 
When the well runs dry the sea gulls cry.

When the firefly lights go dark they die.

When lovers leave to marry someone else

removing love’s chess game rook itself,

no black unchecked a queen yet survives.

When the well runs dry the words go sere.

When the howls sound out with nary a tear.

Then opportunities swing in and then out

since you never knew they clamored about

though they hovered over you ever so near.

When the well runs dry nothing left I fear.
  

credit: thewordin365.wordpress.com

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Knock Knock

  
Knock, knock, knocking

They constantly want inside

takers disguised as networkers

giving me something I don’t need

just so they can. I don’t want them.

I crave holing, gathering up my wits

acute, incisive, slipping out my ears.

Who can write with so much chatter?

so much irrelevant noise, never ending

polluting the pristine powder of ideations

pure and unsullied, untouched and virginal?

There, freshness whisks, tucked away, shiny

bright and ready to reflect the sun of its making.

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In Gratitude…#Nanowrimo completed: 23 days, a novel

  
Seems befitting that on this weekend of gratitude, I conclude this huge though not impossible endeavor with the following:

While reintegrating to my life by inches, loving the smallest favors first like the grip of a long handled toothbrush or the pleasure of a private shit and shower, my own bed with more than two inches of mattress and a box spring in the quiet of my home, ragged as it was and is, snuggled inside the lefthand loop of a cul de sac; then appreciating bigger things like the love of a family that has been loving me–hard–more than I let myself feel, all this time. 

My family, blood and adopted, came through for me in a way that shocked me, even though it could not have been more predictable. They wrote, visited, and watched; they stood by and pitched in. They witnessed helplessly as I crumbled and paid enormous sums to secure my freedom, cried for me in my grief but did not pity me nor make themselves the heroes; they took care of me. 

JM stepped up for me and suffered like the brave and strong he never knew he was, taking up the mantle where I had dropped it. He came through for all of us, doing whatever he had to, and he proved to himself he was strong, something he needed to know but couldn’t since he had never needed to before. That was my job–ensuring that no one needed to be strong. I coddled them as organizer, unifier  and fixer. Now they took up the reins and showed themselves worthy of the task. And I received.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

  

Once again, just like the last ten or more years, I got to host Thanksgiving dinner for my loud, wacky family, both immediate and extended. I spend days cooking and cleaning for this event, pulling a 14 hour day of non-stop cooking, serving and cleaning today. And the clean up will not be done for another couple of days, maybe three or four dishwasher loads on top of a few sink loads of dishes by hand and dismantling the serpentine table and chair arrangements wending through the dining and living areas. This year there were thirty of us, including the usual stranger who has no place to go for Thanksgiving. I am proud of my family members for offering a spot at our table–and there is always one or two each year. I love my family. They’re good people.

I have the great good fortune to belong to a family that can gather once or twice a year like this and break bread together, catch up on lives, loves and laughs. I take great care to provide them with a memorable meal and gathering, cooking two turkeys, one barbecued and one roasted, accompanied by apple-leek stuffing and cider gravy, the butternut apple cider soup they all love and rave about all year long, and pumpkin pie from scratch. And everyone else brings the wonderful sides: mashed and sweet potatoes, fresh asparagus in butter sauce, fresh cranberry sauce, honey baked ham (Dad doesn’t care for turkey), root vegetable medley, and pies, lots of pies. We love our tradition, and these foods make up our tradition no matter who has been added or subtracted from our gathering.

Though she stays in the back room now, unaware that her entire beloved family that she grew and raised and helped raise, my mom is still with us bodily, and sometimes mentally. But I am hopeful she knows with some other part of herself that we are here, senses it deep within her neurons, some vibrations. And I am so grateful to have her, have them, and have all that I have. I truly won the lottery. I hope I never take that for granted. 

Peace and love to you and yours,

Gaze

 

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