The Woman From the Cave of Ice

The women who have forever held the most allure for me are mysterious, in some unfathomable way.

Many men can claim to not understanding women, and I certainly qualify, but only in that I don't really want to understand them.

If they are a different species, and they are, then they are as alien to me as I to a fire ant.

And I don't really have a reason to want to change that. I had some trouble with women early on, in which I wanted, needed, to perceive the world through their eyes. Now, it should be said that I'm a man, and sexual desire is at least 70% of interest in any woman, but I don't say that to demean them. It's more a condemnation of myself and men. If we were less physically swayed, we'd treat women like we treat everyone. Women become ordinary, average examples of people by definition, in that regard. But also a woman's beauty and sensuality should not force a man to create fictional histories for these women. I was one of those men; if I could not salvage meaning from a woman's gaze, I had to capture their attitudes in fictional fantasy.

With age, I've learned how much women mean to me, how astonishing I find them, and without any wish to push a pin through their beauteous torso and adhere them to a bug-collecting grid. I enjoy women as I enjoy photographs of tigers. The mystery of a primitive world is found in every inch of a woman's naked flesh, in the fall of her hair, and the sway of her hips. They have walked from caves of frozen ice with the hardened gaze of a creature which has lost its husband and protector, held its dying children, buried memories back in the blue subzero depths using their bare hands moist with tears.

Nothing has halted these unimaginable beings, as they are invincible catalysts of life itself. That they taste of blood and that they willingly mix their blood with mine, is but one small gesture they make to affirm I have purpose in this world.