An analogy

Toward the end of John Scalzi’s rather witty and sensible (to my mind) rant about the Purity Balls where Daddy’s Little Girl pledges to remain Sexually Pure and Daddy pledges to beat the crap out of anyone who looks at her funny, and besides, to search her room for contraceptives and vibrators and harlequin romances every day until he finds the note saying she’s left with the man from the motor trade, he mentions that he thinks it’s a good idea for a couple who are considering marriage to have a little whoopee before getting under the chuppe. “Waiting until you're married to find out if you're sexually compatible with your spouse is like waiting until you're married to find out if you actually speak the same language as your spouse.”

Now, I haven’t anything to say about James C. Dobson and his Purity Balls that hasn’t been said better and more profanely by others. Nor do I have any advice, Gentle Reader, about who you should or should not shtupp, or marry, or in what order. Not in this Tohu Bohu. But the analogy used by Mr. Scalzi stuck in my head for long enough that I was able to stretch it well past the snapping point, and having a few minutes free, I though I should inflict on you the results of my musing.

You see, in a lot of ways, the comparison is not only good but interesting and informative. Let’s imagine two people who are committed to forming a life and a family together but who do not share a spoken language. Well, and presumably they will put a great deal of effort into learning each other’s language. I’m afraid it’s still more likely that she will learn his language (if the couple includes a he and a she, which for the sake of simplicity, I will posit) than that he will learn hers. Still, I will hope he does put the time and energy into learning her mother tongue, that in the process of teaching each other how they speak, they form the kind of bond that does form between two people learning something together. Furthermore, I suspect that over the years, they will together create a sort of Creole unique to them, a combination of languages, private, able to express things they only express to each other, intimate and exclusionary and beautiful.

Of course, this will be easier if neither grows up with the notion that speaking is inherently disgusting. If she is told often enough that he will want her to speak his language, and that she will have to, and that it won’t be too bad, well, then, their Creole will never develop, and she’ll never teach him her language at all, and I won’t be surprised if she never learns enough of his to have any serious conversation. If he is told often enough that she doesn’t really have a proper language of her own anyway, well, the same thing will happen. Even if they just get married without understanding that it takes a lot of work to learn a new language, well, one or the other may quickly decide that it just isn’t worth it.

And, of course, the confusion over languages may mask a deeper and more serious incompatibility that they will only really discover when they are past the initial communication trouble. I imagine that a couple who share no common tongue will share fewer basic observations about the universe than they imagine. Once they recognize that, though, there’s the chance that they will share and open up their perceptions, and that their resulting universes will be bigger, more complex, and a trifle more like the actual universe. Or that they will find themselves spending less and less time together, even doing those things that don’t require talking.

Of course, the analogy won’t stretch forever. One thing about a person’s mammaloshen is that it doesn’t change much over time. It’s far more likely that a couple that is pleasantly busy ten times a week when they are twenty will find twenty years on that one still wants that ten times action, and the other would be happy with once or twice, or with a cuddle and a nap. Or that one of the forty-year-olds still would like to have a twenty-year old ten times a week, and that the other is, you know, not twenty anymore. Or any of a zillion other things. Libido ain’t stable nohow. The Creole project isn’t ever really finished, and thank the Lord for that.

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.