It is 1956 and a couple of ”India old hands” are sitting in their London club, recalling the good old days before partition. They are wondering what had become of some of their fellow officers in the 23rd Lancers. The one old hand asks what became of its adjutant, Colonel James Hiddlestone.
”Very strange story,” says the other. ”Old Jimmy never came back to England. He was posted to Burma in 1946. Hadn’t been there three months when he quite suddenly upped, left Jennifer and the two brats and had a passionate love affair with a teenaged orang-utan. Last I heard, he married it and set up home in an araucaria tree.”
”The orang-utan — male or female?” enquires the first old hand. ”Oh, female of course. There was never anything queer about Jimmy Hiddlestone.”
I was reminded of that rather dated joke when reading Barry Ronge’s always entertaining column in last week’s Sunday Times Magazine.
Ronge was enthusing about a new play from noted American playwright Edward Albee that is entitled, quite simply, The Goat, since that’s what it is about. A quite respectable married man brings home a goat called Sylvia and announces to his family that she is his mistress.
Ronge commented that this apparently outrageous theme invites a dramatic exploration of some depth. ”It is as if Albee is asking his audience to question just how much more we can justify in the name of personal freedom, the right to privacy and global democracy. Is anything beyond the pale?”
My first reaction was to think that Albee is somewhat down-queue when it comes to making out with goats. Goat-herders have been rogering their flocks since biblical times. It goes with the job.
And goats are not only reliable sexual surrogates. About a year ago, in the Limpopo village of Mamvuka, these accommodating animals were reported to have been awarded an extra vocation, half medical and half sociological in nature. Mamvuka’s goat community was being used both for sexual relief and viral firewalling by village teenagers.
”We know about Aids,” said one Mamvuka teenager. ”That is why we have sex with these goats. Goats don’t have Aids. We boys discussed how people in our village are dying. We agreed to stop sleeping with women and settle for goats.” Socially very responsible, I’d say, but how much this goat-shafting contributes towards global democracy I’ll leave to Ronge to decide.
Having not seen the play, I don’t know whether Albee’s characters are motivated by considerations of sexual hygiene as socially culpable as those of the Mamvuka lads. As long as they mark the bathroom towels His and Hircine, it’s okay with me.
What I do wonder is where all this unbridled liberalism is going to stop. Later on the same Sunday, I watched a television series, The Wedding Show, which told the quite touching story of two young men, Charles and Riaan, tying the knot in a so-called gay marriage. Now, before the fires of gay fury scythe down to scald my weathered dome, let me say that I have nothing personal against people of the same genders getting set up in some sort of nuptial contract akin to established male-female marriage.
What intrigues me is that this most welcome spirit of free marital association will no doubt be taken even further and that one day, not too far in a utopian future, humans will become free to marry creatures of different species as well. And it won’t just be orang-utans or goats. The range is endless.
Don’t tell me that there aren’t unhappy housewives out there who harbour more genuine affection for their dogs than for their husbands.
Why shouldn’t such a woman make something more permanent with the borzoi? They could read the banns at the SPCA.
And what a relief for the woman. No more slaving over a hot stove all day. In the canine ideal, haute cuisine is a few pellets and a bowl of water. If the marriage doesn’t work out, it’s no big deal.
She’ll easily outlive her mate and if it comes to actual divorce, it’ll only be a matter of who gets custody of the kennel. If he’s sexually precocious, she can have him doctored. If all that fails, she can have him put to sleep for R150. I know a few women who would leap at that option for their human hubbies.
Why stop at dogs? Prince Charles is currently conducting a passionate affair with a horse called Camilla. Think of Catherine the Great. If the royals are allowed to violate the privacy of the stables, why not everyone else? There are lots of perfectly ordinary people who wouldn’t mind having to muck out the bedroom once a week.
Let’s not stop at mammals. There’s a whole piscine range to consider. Take a swim up the aisle with your goldfish? What about birds? It is said, if you haven’t loved an ostrich you haven’t lived.
I can’t help wondering what will be next from the inventive Albee pen.
Will he rewrite it as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf?