RELATIVITY

One day Miranda turned to me at table and, referring to a recent essay of mine, said: "You seem to have the next civilization in mind more than anything else these days, Jim. You must be its leading authority!"

I smiled defensively, though not without an undertone of pride, and confessed to the probable truth of that assumption.

Miranda shot me one of her characteristically ironic smiles and, while pouring me some more tea, remarked that, as I saw it, life in the transcendental civilization struck her as being a good deal better than it had been in any previous civilization - indeed, so good as to be virtually heavenly. "For instance, there won't be any noisy dogs barking and well-nigh driving one mad in the process, since, as you say, they'll have been removed."

I nodded confirmation and said: "Yes, dogs may be acceptable within the confines of a relative civilization, such as exists in the contemporary West, but they'd be totally unacceptable in an absolute civilization that happened to be transcendental. Those animals would have to be removed during the interim phase of evolution between the end of the old civilization and the start of the new one, so that, by the time transcendentalism got properly under way, everything that smacked of allegiance to the pagan, diabolic roots of life would have been extirpated, whether one includes under that rubric the toleration of dogs, the teaching of Latin, the perpetuation of absolute class distinctions, the worship of the Father (not to mention His only begotten Son), marriage, sexual discrimination, or anything else equally applicable to the relative past."

Miranda smiled wanly while listening to my enumerations, then said: "An absolute society could not tolerate beasts who weren't strictly essential to human survival.... Hmm, not being a dog-lover myself, I kind of approve of such a measure. Dogs are such low creatures!"

"So low," I confirmed without hesitation, "that they can only utter a monosyllabic grunt or bark or growl or whine, assuming 'monosyllabic' is the correct word! No, a transcendental man won't be partial to creatures that, when not barking or messing the pavement, spend most of their time dozing or sleeping. The mere sight of that would be objectionable to him, as it now is to me, since I already live, at least theoretically, on the transcendent plane."

Miranda wasn't one to quibble with that, though I could tell there was something else on her mind which might have amounted to a quibble, if pressed into the open. "Another thing that intrigued me about your essay was its reference to women, particularly skirt-wearing ones."

"Ah yes," I responded, breaking into a wan smile of my own. "I doubt that women will be encouraged to wear skirts in the next civilization, since that would connote with the vagina and thereby denote bourgeois sexism. A post-atomic society would be elevated above heterosexual distinctions, and so women, or rather their superhuman successors (as we should call the truly liberated proletarian women of the future), would always dress in trousers or, more specifically, some kind of synthetic pants."

Miranda raised incredulous eyebrows. "Always?" she quibbled.

"Yes, just as men, or rather pseudo-men, always used to wear skirt-like clothing in the truly pre-atomic age of, for example, the ancient Greeks and Romans," I averred. "That was a unisexual feminine absolutism which contrasts, if only in imagination at present, with the unisexual masculine absolutism of the future post-atomic age. During the atomic age, however, trousers made their first appearance in society, stressing, in contrast to skirts, the phallic aspect of life. Thus men came into their own, albeit as bound-electron equivalents, to maintain a separate identity from women, who continued to wear skirts or dresses, being proton equivalents in the heterosexual duality of atomic society. Even these days, at the tail-end of relative civilization, women are entitled to wear unequivocally feminine attire if they so choose; though the threat of an absolute age is seemingly never far away, in consequence of which many of them also wear trousers, at least intermittently, in accordance with their evolving status towards Supermen."

Miranda blushed at this point. For, as usual, she was wearing a pair of tight-fitting denims which asserted a superhuman status in confirmation of what I had just said. Living in a petty-bourgeois world, however, she was less than partial to the permanent use of such jeans. She had her skirts all right, and they were reserved for special occasions. Most of them were short and, mindful of this fact, I now ventured the theory that the length of a skirt or dress varied with the degree of relativity pertaining to each phase of relative civilization, as well, of course, as with the class integrity of individual women in any given phase of it.

"Please explain yourself in greater detail," Miranda requested of me, avid, as ever, for concrete knowledge.

"Well, let's just say that, generally speaking, a long skirt or dress will be most relevant to the grand-bourgeois phase of such a civilization, a medium-length skirt or dress most relevant to its bourgeois phase, and, finally, a miniskirt or minidress most relevant to its petty-bourgeois phase," I responded. "Thus as evolution proceeds towards a phallic absolutism the vaginal symbolism of the skirt and/or dress is reduced, so that the feminine contracts as the masculine expands."

"How expands?" Miranda not unreasonably wanted to know.

"In terms of the number of people wearing trousers as opposed to skirts or dresses, most modern women wearing trousers at least some of the time and thereby confirming the expansion of the masculine element in life," I confidently replied. "Of course, the individual's class, not to mention age, will condition her choice of clothing, which is why, even in this bourgeois/proletarian age, many women wear either medium-length or long skirts and dresses in accordance with their bourgeois or grand-bourgeois status, whereas it's usually proletarian women, by contrast, who wear trousers - either literally or, more usually, in the sense of jeans or slacks. Petty-bourgeois women, as already suggested, are more disposed to miniskirts and/or minidresses, though they occasionally settle for medium-length feminine attire and trousers as well."

Miranda smiled confirmation of this perception and reminded me, by drawing attention to what she was currently wearing, that jeans were her first choice. "So we have this relativity in terms of evolving skirt-lengths as well as with distinctions between skirts and trousers, the latter mostly for men, in between the two extremes of very long skirts and trousers only, do we?" she concluded, after a short but evidently reflective pause.

"That's broadly how I see it," I confirmed. "Though the first extreme, which is essentially pagan, calls rather for the designation of robes or togas, as pertaining to an aristocratic age. Thus from robes to long skirts and/or dresses, and from that grand-bourgeois stage of evolution to the medium-length feminine attire of the bourgeois stage, which in turn led to the miniskirt/minidress stage of the petty-bourgeoisie in the late-twentieth century - the stage still officially prevailing in the greater part of the Western world."

"A stage that will presumably be superseded by the exclusive absolutism of trouser-wearing humanity with the future advent of proletarian civilization?" Miranda conjectured.

"Absolutely," I somewhat ironically assured her. "It will be illegal for anyone to wear a skirt or a dress, even of short length, in the transcendental future, since such a tendency would imply relativity in deference to heterosexual criteria, and no relativity could possibly be tolerated in an absolute age. Quite simply, women will no longer exist, having been effectively superseded by female supermen who, in the interests of social uniformity and post-sexist freedom, will dress like their masculine counterparts. Even phrases like 'sexual discrimination' will cease to apply, because there'll be no women to discriminate against, such phrases being relative to bourgeois/proletarian civilization - like, for example, the term 'liberated woman'."

Miranda looked slightly puzzled. "You mean, a liberated woman is only relevant to petty-bourgeois relativity, in which a degree of sexism still prevails?" she ventured to suggest.

"Absolutely!" I replied. "The term 'liberated woman' is itself petty bourgeois, being on approximately the same level as the miniskirt. There'll be no such liberated women in the transcendental civilization, only female supermen, who'll have evolved out of the proletariat."

"Thus feminism only has applicability to the bourgeois West," Miranda deduced.

I nodded confirmation and then remarked: "Feminism, as Westerners currently understand it, would be as irrelevant to a transcendental society as ... petty-bourgeois abstract art or acoustic atonal music. It pertains, in the main, to petty-bourgeois women who, in a late relative age, desire more sexual/social freedoms than their gender were previously accustomed to, and who consider themselves liberated when such freedoms are granted. Yet they don't consider themselves female supermen, since that would pertain to an absolute age and then only to proletarians - the class from which such people are destined to spring."

Miranda looked quite relieved by now, as though a doubt or muddle had been cleared up. "Ah, so now I understand how irrelevant skirts would be to female supermen!" she averred. "Just as trousers had been irrelevant to pseudo-men in the age before they evolved into genuine men and acquired, on the electron side of an atomic integrity, the right to wear them. Tell me, would these female supermen of the future be encouraged to wear make-up or long hair and nails?"

I emphatically shook my head and replied: "Out of the question! They would have to look like men, genuine men, as well as dress like them. They would be quasi-electron equivalents, the lesser equals of free-electron equivalents. And, of course, they would never become wives, as relative women tend to do. After all, I haven't married you, since that would be contrary to my post-atomic principles and undermine your status, in my eyes, as a female superman."

"Ah, but officially I suppose I'm really a liberated female," Miranda countered, "because we don't as yet exist within the absolute confines of a transcendental civilization."

"Even so, a liberated female doesn't have to become a wife," I retorted, blushing slightly in spite of my apparent cool. "Though, alas, most of them eventually do! But you aren't really a petty bourgeois, so you can't be a liberated female. Just someone who's potentially a female superman."

She smiled indulgently and admitted to the probable truth of that statement.

* * *

I find it difficult not to like Jim, even when he says things that puzzle me or does things to me that seem odd at the time but which, on reflection, appear logical and just. He has a special aptitude, these days, for thrusting a vibrator into my crack, which he claims saves him unnecessary coital effort and thus makes life easier for us. It's as if the vibrator has become a substitute for the real thing. At least, that seems to be the case at present, though he's not averse to a little physical effort concerning one or two other channels of communication!

"What are you thinking about?" Jim asks, as well he might under the circumstances. He is half-smiling, like he suspects some kind of foul-play.

"You!" I candidly confess, to his evident relief, since his half-smile blossoms into an overt display of positive emotion, such as he only occasionally indulges in with me, and then usually in bed. Smiling he despises, regarding the habit as bourgeois. He never smiles in public.

"And what have I done?" Jim asks innocently.

"What haven't you done?" I retort, trying to keep a straight face.

"Perhaps I don't want to do it today," Jim replies in typically oblique fashion. And I have to chuckle, which is also something he never does.

"You're not always absolutist," I remark, trying not to sound critical.

Jim blushes faintly and says: "The next civilization is still ahead of us, though I doubt that such absolutism as you're alluding to would be strictly necessary, nor could it be consistently enforced."

"Maybe that's just as well," I smilingly remark, "else mankind might die out."

Jim emphatically shakes his head. "They'll have devised artificial means of safeguarding mankind's survival, involving, amongst other things, artificial insemination from sperm banks. Children won't be born to couples, as in bourgeois civilization, but will be brought into the world on an impersonal basis and raised in a no-less impersonal, collective way. There won't be any couples, but only people - female supermen and male supermen - who'll be free to select partners on a temporary basis, as their sexual preferences dictate. Probably sex will mostly become an individual, personal affair in any case, so that partners, in the traditional marital sense, won't be required - people taking care of their respective sexual needs with the aid of either computerized models or plastic inflatables/vibrators, depending on their gender."

I open my mouth in astonishment. "You mean that female supermen will find sexual satisfaction through vibrators, like the one you've just thrust into me?"

Jim smiles defensively and replies: "Yes. Whereas the male supermen will find such satisfaction or relief as they may desire in the contemplation and/or perusal and possible utilization, with or without a sex doll, of pornographic erotica, using the term in a general rather than a particular way. Sex, in other words, will become artificial and transcendent, as to a certain extent it already is these days in the bourgeois/proletarian West, where a limited degree of transcendentalism prevails and one is accordingly free, though under no obligation, to purchase such pornography - more usually in magazine and video formats - or sex aids as one may desire."

I nod my head as if in confirmation, though more out of impulse than anything else, and remark: "Whereas it would presumably be obligatory, in an absolute civilization, to indulge in artificial or personal sex."

"Yes, since the relativity which accrues to bourgeois/proletarian civilization would have been transcended, making it morally untenable to perpetuate dualistic and naturalistic sex. Consequently there would be no couples, because a post-atomic society would be elevated above an atomic integrity. So those who continued to indulge in atomic sex might well find themselves exposed to the risk of prosecution, not to mention official contempt."

"So it's unlikely that people would swap partners on a heterosexual basis, as frequently happens in the contemporary West," I find myself saying.

"Highly unlikely," Jim confirms in deadly earnestness. "What happens these days would seem to be a step towards the complete severance of dualistic ties, a kind of loosening of them in pseudo-atomic promiscuity. With the dawn of a post-atomic civilization, however, no such promiscuity could be countenanced. For it might lead to a female superman becoming pregnant naturally, through heterosexual intercourse, and that would be morally unacceptable in a transcendental society, where pregnancies would have to be achieved artificially, compliments of artificial insemination."

"So female and male supermen would not have heterosexual sex together," I respond, drawing the inevitable conclusions.

"No, definitely not!" Jim assures me. "That would be atomic and could lead to grave consequences. In this respect, modern contraception may be seen as a petty-bourgeois stratagem designed to get the better of nature without transcending heterosexual ties. Where, however, there were no such ties there would be scant need for or justification of contraception, since birth control would be regulated from an artificial standpoint, as pertaining to sperm banks and the artificial insemination of female supermen according to requirement and suitability, following the dictates of careful planning. No-one would think of having heterosexual relations with anyone else; for female supermen couldn't be treated as women, not even as liberated ones, which would be a reversion to petty-bourgeois criteria. Even homosexual relations would be frowned upon - there being too much flesh involved for a transcendental civilization to countenance."

I give vent to a slight feeling of relief and say: "So in the actual transcendental civilization, only artificial sex would be morally acceptable, the idea of establishing or maintaining sexual ties with anyone being taboo, since relative."

Jim nods in confirmation, then qualifies my remarks by adding: "Of course, people of genuinely homosexual inclination ought to be allowed access to homosexual pornography, assuming there'll continue to be a distinction between the genuinely homosexual and the unisexual; though most pornography will probably continue to be unisexual, as involving the services of female supermen whose rumps are fairly prominent or, at any rate, prominently displayed. Probably the majority of such supermen will be more disposed, in any case, to the use of a vibrator than pornography ..."

"Not to mention certain other types of stimuli," I interpolate, more as a suggestion than a qualification.

"And yet there may come a time," Jim continues, still deeply engrossed in speculation, "when even pornography and plastic inflatables/vibrators will be frowned upon and prohibited."

"On what grounds?" I ask, becoming puzzled.

"Primarily on the grounds that they cause sexual pleasure, a fact which, whilst acceptable in a relative civilization, may become less than credible in an absolute one, where pleasure, together with other manifestations of sexual indulgence like love and happiness, would be effectively taboo, since connected with the soul rather than the spirit. In a civilization dedicated first and foremost - one might almost say exclusively - to awareness, anything that serves the senses wouldn't find much official support. So your vibrator might well be disapproved of at that juncture in time - possibly a mature phase in the evolution of post-atomic civilization."

I smile defensively, slightly censorious of Jim's long-range style of puritanism, and say: "If that's the case, then man may well end-up not indulging in any form of sex at all."

"That's quite possible," Jim says, "since he is destined to be

superseded by a life form, namely the post-human superman, dedicated to spiritual concerns, and would have to evolve towards that largely artificial being in the course of time."

I nod my head in apparent agreement, then remark: "So the path of evolution, in sexual matters, would seem to lead from pagan pre-dualistic orgies to Christian dualistic marriage, and from there to transcendental post-dualistic artifice."

"Which could alternatively be defined, in relative terms, as a progression from feminine to masculine via androgynous sexuality," Jim avers solemnly. "The feminine stage of sexuality focusing on the vagina and implying vaginal-biased oral sex, or cunnilingus; the androgynous stage dividing the focus of attention between vagina and penis; and, finally, the masculine stage focusing attention on the penis and implying phallic-biased oral sex, or fellatio ... this being the liberated woman's approach to masculinity, which complements, it seems to me, the anal approach to masculinity - a difference between the spiritualistic and the materialistic, as pertaining to alternative aspects of petty-bourgeois relativity. So one must distinguish between vaginal oral sex on the grand-bourgeois level, vaginal/phallic oral sex on the bourgeois level, and phallic oral sex on the petty-bourgeois level - each phase of relative evolution betokening a progression from the feminine to the masculine, though this last phase falls short of the artificial sexuality of ... computer-generated erotica and plastic inflatables/vibrators, which is, after all, the goal of sexual evolution."

I smile anew, baffled and wonderstruck by Jim's extraordinary powers of logical acumen. "Thus after the cock-sucking/pornographic relativity of petty-bourgeois civilization, we must expect a progression to pornographic absolutism via an interim period of unisexual absolutism, or something of the kind," I conclude.

To my great surprise Jim laughs briefly and, removing the vibrator from between my numb legs, exclaims: "Oh Miranda, you're such a darling muddlehead that I shall just have to go barbarian in you for a few minutes in order to cure you of your petty-bourgeois cock-sucking tendencies and impress upon you, once and for all, that proletarian women are not to behave like liberated females, or to consider themselves as such!"

"But I'm a female superman!" I protest, trying to sound serious.

"Then I shall have to step down from my theoretical perch and damn-well treat you like one," Jim says. "Which should give you cause to smile." And, sure enough, he sticks to his word, switching on the vibrator and thrusting it deep inside me.