Cows are cuddly, I’ll hand you that. Check out a cow at close quarters and her eyes will blow you away, so beautiful are they….large, with long eyelashes, those eyes are trusting, serene, all comprehending – as if she is saying to you, “I know you need my body for your daily nourishment, your survival. Don’t beat yourself up with guilt when you use me – I completely understand….”

One Sunday, last summer, a colleague and I had to be at work finishing a project that we had to present, Monday. Around 3 pm we were done, when Marie-André said she was going over to her parents’ at St. Bruno, a farming community on Montreal’s south shore. She suggested I come along and check out what a typical Quebec farm looks like from up close. Marie-André’s dad is a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel who rears cattle and sheep.

I couldn’t resist the invitation.

The farm has around a hundred head of cattle and fifty odd sheep and these animals are having a ball. Judging by its neatness, one get’s the impression that the farm really knows how to look after the animals. They are healthy and they are organic. They are raised exclusively for meat.

Marie-André’s dad went to great lengths explaining that the animals are killed very humanely, without cruelty. “I could have fifty pounds of sirloin, chuck and ribs ready for you to pick up this fall. Pick your animal and I’ll call you when it is all shrink-wrapped and ready,” he said.

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Most folks feel very strongly about animal suffering and yet we all seem to get along fine with the idea that we can kill and eat them. Looking at the cows, lazily grazing across a lush green meadow, I wondered how both those feelings could be held within one’s conscience at the same time. And when I wonder, I Google and therefore this piece.

Sometimes seeking an answer to certain questions have a habit of broadening the issue until it becomes an unmanageable web of little but important angles.

Australian moral philosopher, Peter Singer, currently a professor of ‘bioethics’ in Princeton University, is also author of Animal liberation. I picked up a copy last summer but left it after fifty pages since it isn’t exactly my kind of reading. But his arguments are convincing.

The central message of the book is that even though there are far more differences between a chimpanzee and an earthworm, than there are between a chimp and a human, we humans still lump the ape and the worm together as ‘animals’ while we see ourselves as privileged – above all other species. Therefore while we find it not okay to kill a human, it is fine to kill another species of animal.

Singer argues that we should treat killing animals as an ethical issue because there is no ‘red line’ between humans and non-humans. He explains this by going into an analogy, substituting the word ‘species’ with the word ‘race’ – so when a white man looks at another white man and says ‘he is like me, so I’ll treat only him and folks like him as I treat my own’, it should be acceptable and appropriate, but it isn’t – it is racism.

Again, suppose we consider a really intelligent orangutan, like say, Clyde, in the 1978 Clint Eastwood movie “Every which way but loose”. Clyde is a trained pet who acts like he is almost human. Orangutans are known to be highly intelligent and display human-like social behavior patterns.

Now if you compare Clyde with say, a child suffering from acute Down Syndrome or a cognitively impaired woman stricken by Alzheimers, it is quite possible that the orangutan would trump the human in all those qualities that we pride in ourselves as setting us apart from animals. And yet we would treat that child or that woman with far more deference than we would treat Clyde.

So, do we have to lose any sleep over killing a cow to eat it’s meat? One argument is – no, humans have evolved with mouths, teeth and digestive systems that are specifically designed to eat meat and therefore we should not worry about the morality of it. But some behavioral scientists take exception to this sweeping statement on how we were designed to eat other animals. Since men have evolved to be stronger, should it then be natural for them to dominate over women?

Spreading the net wider, if one went by the ‘evolved to dominate’ assumption, then slavery was a natural instinct, wasn’t it? Of course it was. White folks were better in every way – they were stronger than the impoverished negro villagers of Africa, had better technology, better weaponry, were healthier and better educated. So, the argument that those white folks in America simply evolved to lord it over the Negros would seem quite reasonable, if one went by the evolved-to-dominate theory. But slavery is universally condemned, as it should be.

It is also not true that we need to eat meat, for our sustenance. Any nutritionist will confirm that meat consumption is not absolutely essential. Take India for instance – almost 35% of all Indians, that is around 400 million people, are vegetarians.

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Now about the morality in killing other animals – how does one justify the killing of animals, on moral grounds?

Peter Singer suggests we consider a hypothesis. He says that, for argument’s sake, let us assume that all sheep and cows are reared on farms like Marie-André’s dad’s, where animals are treated humanely, right up until the time they are slaughtered – painlessly – for food. Let us further assume that up until the last instant, the cow or lamb is unaware that it is going to be killed and is therefore it’s usual happy, normal, cud-chewing self.

So we have put aside the question of cruelty toward those animals and their suffering. In those perfect conditions, is there anything wrong with killing an animal for it’s meat? I don’t really know but the trip to Marie-André’s dad’s farm did throw up interesting arguments…….

When we had come upon him, the old man had been walking a bullock toward the tailgate of a pickup truck that had a tall rectangular wooden enclosure in the back. He had opened the gate of the pen and solemnly herded the animal forward, seeming sombre and deferential toward it. “I’ve done this a million times but it is still saddening,” he said.

“Why so? Guilt – that he has to die?” I asked.

“I guess you could call it that.”

“But wasn’t he just like one of those other faceless animals in your farm?”

He turned sharply, almost as if I had offended him by calling the beast faceless. “I know each one by name. This one is Gucci. She came to us one stormy night in 2011. She has this habit of coming up silently behind and giving you a gentle nudge and then brushing past, as if to say,’ It’s been a while and I’m famished. How about some chow, big guy?’

Chuckling to himself, the old man guided Gucci up a slanting ramp onto the back of the pickup. He stooped to carefully arrange a bed of hay and some fodder and emerged, closing the tailgate firmly behind him. “When you live among them, feed them, look after them, it dawns on you that they all have distinct personalities,” his voice was gravelly, filled with emotion.

Then he said something that sounded strange but which I later realized could be absolutely true – “If humans didn’t rear cows and lambs for meat, milk, leather, etc, these animals might not have existed at all. Given how fragile, harmless and vulnerable they are, they would probably have been rendered extinct by carnivorous predators long ago.”

I was amazed at the idea. “So, maybe, we have done them a favor and they should thank us for letting them live and exist this long at least – is that what you are saying?” My tone must have sounded incredulous.

“Why, of course. At least they have had some existence – comfortable, disease-free lives inside a farm where food is abundant and a vet comes and checks them every now and then. Isn’t it better than not having existed at all? As long as they have no inkling that they’ll be killed and so long as they are killed painlessly, I don’t see why killing them is morally wrong.” he replied.

“So, a lamb is better off living for a year and then being killed for it’s meat, than not having lived at all. Should he thank us for the opportunity?” My incredulity grew and I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not.

‘Absolutely,” he replied. “A morally good action is one that maximizes happiness (which we do by looking after the animals’ needs while they are alive) and which minimizes pain (which we ensure, by killing them painlessly).”

By this time, I was willing to take up their invitation to stay for supper, so interesting a man was Marie-André’s father.

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I did stay for supper and the steak was succulent. It had been breathing just that morning. I felt a tinge of guilt eating it. Aren’t animals’ rights – the right to live and not be killed – the same as humans’ rights? Moral philosophers like Peter Singer believe that they are.

Marie-André’s father admits that each cow and lamb behaves differently, as individuals. To someone like me, visiting the farm, they might all look and behave alike but to someone who interacts with them on a daily basis, they are individually identifiable, with distinct personalities. He senses that they have the sentience – the capacity to feel. They respond when called by name and they act in a manner that clearly indicates that they have memories. At times they clearly are happy and playful, says he.

Therefore, judging by the old man’s own admission, what happens to his cows and lambs in the future matters to them and, given a choice, they would like to live as long as they possibly can.

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Jeff McMahan, another moral philosopher who teaches at Oxford, has found a way to draw a line between those animals that should not be killed and those that can be killed without suffering moral injury. He says that there are living beings that are – unlike cows and lambs – unaware of their past, present or future. They do not have a narrative. Like worms, for instance. I have never heard of any moral dilemma attached to the killing of a worm.

McMahan recommends that before we kill an animal, we need to ask ourselves ‘ how psychologically connected is it, to it’s future self?’ The more connected it is, the more morally unacceptable it is – to deprive the animal of that future.

My religion, Hinduism, has never encouraged any debate on animal slaughter, at least not one that I have read about. Hinduism bans killing cows not because it considers killing another living being immoral but simply because Hindu scriptures say cows are sacred, period.

The hypocrisy shows when one considers the fact that, while Hinduism reveres cows and bans cow slaughter, it is totally indifferent about buffalo slaughter, even if buffalos are from the same taxonomic classification as cows. But we know why that is. It’s simple – cows are white and buffaloes are black. Indian society equates white with good/revered and black with bad/inferior.

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A male colleague at work is an avid hunter who believes that hunting must be as humane as possible. Before he skins and cleans his kill, Francois lays his open palm gently on the rump of the whitetail and says,” I apologize for this but it had to be done for my sustenance and that of my family. I promise I won’t waste any of your flesh….” He makes himself believe that without the kill, he and his family would die of starvation.

Francois always takes careful aim so he won’t just wound the whitetail and let it skimp away only to drop from exhaustion and lie dying a mile away, writhing in pain in the thick brush or somehow survive and live out the rest of it’s life a cripple, unable to outrun and therefore be set upon and torn apart by a coyote or wolf pack.

Francois doesn’t pull the trigger until he is certain he’ll drop the animal in it’s tracks. With his bolt-action Ruger, he waits until he has the animal within 15-20 feet, facing broadside. Once he has the animal positioned perfectly, he shoots through the near-side shoulder. The high-powered 129-grain projectile snaps the spinal cord and takes out the upper lung area (and maybe even the forelegs) and exits through the opposite shoulder. It’s hard for even the toughest buck to remain standing after a hit like that. The animal remains transfixed for a few moments – in ‘hydrostatic shock’ – and then collapses in a heap, literally not knowing what hit him.

Francois is the most ‘ethical’ hunter I know. The whitetail might differ though.

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After supper, as Marie-André’s dad lead me out to my car, I decided to place an order for one of Gucci’s rumps.

“But Grandpa, where’s God?”

– Boy who ventured into the main hall of the US Supreme Court and stared at the friezes of famous law makers from ancient times

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A section of the carved friezes in the great hall of the US Supreme Court, depicting legendary law makers. The friezes are meant to represent justice, liberty and peace. There’s Moses, second from right, clutching those laughably useless Ten Commandments. 

Occupying nearly the highest point of the luminous, gold-edged hall, above the 30-foot Ionic columns, the friezes inspire awe. When Sherman Minton, a Supreme Court justice from 1949 to 1956, pointed out each historic figure to his grandson, the 10-year-old listened in silence and then asked in puzzlement, “But Grandpa, where’s God?”

Indeed. Looking at today’s America, the question does reverberate….Where is God?

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The US Supreme Court building is an imposing sight, ringed by pillars, it’s walls covered with carvings and quotes and bas reliefs. There’s sheer white marble as far as the eyes can see and great big Ionic pillars that rival the Acropolis. The ceilings are high and the marble staircase – it appears to lead directly up to the heavens.

It is not really a court by the definition of the word. Rather, the US Supreme Court is a hyper-partisan institution whose members are not really concerned with delivering justice as mandated by the American constitution. They are nominated and installed solely to pander to partisan political interests, by whoever happens to be in power with a majority in the Senate. There is this continuous tug-of-war between ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’, when the conflict should be about proving crime and upholding innocence.

Over the past century, the US Supreme Court has delivered such travesties of justice and held up such emblems of hate and bigotry, that to outsiders like me the US Supreme Court seems more like a sick joke rather than a symbol of the rule of law. And yet, even storied liberal political commentators like Fareed Zakaria have refused to criticize it, insisting on calling it “the last bastion of the free world that is above the political frey.” Flowery words. But then, America and its millionaire media personalities have always believed in perceptions, rather than the reality.

If you spoke with an Indian or a Chinese or even a Brit and asked if they knew the names of even one of their Supreme Court justices, you’d draw a blank. An Indian judge performs his task without fanfare and is rarely quoted or mentioned, other than when major cases are being argued in front of them. Even then, I doubt if any member of the Indian or Chinese public would pay much attention to who the judge actually was.

Not the Americans. Americans might not be able to name all 50 states in the US or which countries are their neighbors, but they sure know their Supreme Court judges. To them, the Supreme Court must be perceived to be this great big haloed institution. A hush must fall over everyone when the US Supreme Court is mentioned.

Just imagine, documented evidence and reams of witness testimony make it clear that at least two of the nine US Supreme court justices have been sexual predators and they continue to sit on the bench, despite the evidence. I am referring to Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh. Two more are actually owned by billionaires.

Hey, ten out the first twelve US presidents were slave holders. Nearly every speaker of the US House of Representatives was a slave holder. 18 of the first thirty-one US Supreme Court justices were slave holders.

Which direction do you think the US constitution would go, from the very beginning that this cesspool formed? What can Americans really expect from this court? Justice?

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And then, there are those grandiose wall friezes. The nine sitting justices (who enjoy cushy lifetime appointments) are not the only presiding presence. High above the mahogany bench, are friezes with the figures of 18 historical lawmakers from different races and ethnicity, dating to as far back as 5800BC (give or take).

The South Wall Frieze depicts personalities from the ancient pre-Christian world. It includes Menes, Hammurabi, Moses, Solomon, Lycurgus, Solon, Draco, Confucius, and Octavian.

The North Wall Frieze shows lawgivers from the Middle Ages on and includes representations of Justinian, Muhammad, Charlemagne, John of England, Louis IX of France, Hugo Grotius, Sir William Blackstone, John Marshall, and Napoleon.

The courtroom of the US Supreme Court, the three friezes of those 18 lawmakers, high up on the walls. 

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The friezes are meant not only to honor the above mentioned historical figures but also to depict diverse legal tradition and heritage from around the world that have directly or indirectly shaped the concept of what Americans perceive to be law and justice in America. For Americans, those 18 dudes on the friezes are the gold standard of justice, law and order.

Now let’s take a closer look at some of these 18 dudes and judge for ourselves whether they really are the great judicial geniuses that America idolizes…..

Menes (c. 3100 B.C.)

The first Pharaoh of Egypt’s first dynasty, Menes single-handedly created the world’s the first nation-state. Centralized government, through a coherent set of laws, was born. Menes did many great things but, like all great men, Menes had his quirks. At his Temple of Ptah in Memphis, Menes liked to offer human sacrifices to the Gods “whenever the Gods demanded it”. And that was on a pretty regular basis. Like once, maybe twice, a day. And don’t hold your breath over who made the shortlist of the sacrificial suckers – slaves, of course. Egyptian gods were particularly slave thirsty.

What if one of Menes’ slaves came alive and traveled through time to the US Supreme Court, to be confronted by the frieze of Menes up there on the wall? Would he be pleased?

Hammurabi (c. 1792-1750 B.C.)

Reigning in Babylon, Hammurabi produced the first surviving set of laws. A compilation of legal procedure and penalties, the ‘Code of Hammurabi’ covered all civil and criminal disputes and reflected the belief that law can be fixed and certain, rather than a series of random responses by political leaders to various forms of conduct.

And boy oh boy, were they laws. Here is a sampling….

If a man has stolen goods from a temple or house, put him to death and he that received the stolen property, put him to death too.

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If a woman has loafed around, neglecting her house, not caring for her husband’s needs, drown that woman in the river

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If a man is in debt and is unable to pay his creditors, take away his properties, his wives, sons or daughters. Use them, deliver them up for “servitude”

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If a boy steals talents from his father’s money bag, his hands shall be “hewn”

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Imagine Hammurabi as one of the nine American Supreme Court justices. Would this be a courtroom or would it be a body-parts wholesale business?

Moses (c. 1270 B.C.)

According to biblical accounts, the great Hebrew prophet delivered his people from slavery and received the Ten Commandments. His figure on the frieze is meant to suggest existence of a higher authority, beyond human control. There are just a few things that escape reason…..

It is virtually certain that, had Moses chosen to remain in his position as Prince of Egypt, he would have succeeded the great Pharaoh, Seti I, to the Egyptian throne, since the old man had already chosen him, over his own biological son, Ramases II. Had he hung in there and succeeded Seti-I, Moses could have, from his position of power, accomplished a great deal of good for his people – the Jews – a people who had by then developed the uncanny ability to get screwed into an art form. Moses, as Pharaoh, might have been able to elevate the Jews to the status of full citizens.

In any case, looking at Israel, a nation that is constantly under turmoil and the ever growing scourge of Antisemitism in the non-Jewish world today, one gets the feeling that Moses ultimately failed.

Now let’s look at the Ten Commandments. Aside from the fact that most of the commandments are no longer considered cognizable offenses in almost all courts of law in the modern free world, Moses can’t take credit for them, anyway – you see, Moses didn’t think them up. They were handed to him by God, remember?

So why is messenger boy up there in those friezes?

Solomon (c. 992-953 B.C.)

Regarded as a great king of Israel, Solomon’s name is synonymous with judicial wisdom. When two women came to him, both claiming to be the mother of the same child, Solomon determined who was the mother by watching the women’s responses to his suggestion that he cut the baby in half and give each a share. One woman agreed to the proposal while the other yielded her claim, thereby proving through her concern, that she was the real mother.

Great, but here’s the thing – King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Any woman he took a fancy to, whether she was already married or not, had to be his. Some of them later turned him toward idol worship and orgiastic drinking parties. Being predisposed to debauchery, Solomon wholehearted took part in bacchanalian galas.

King Solomon’s descent into sin has been recorded in the Bible. What is Soly doing up there in the US Supreme Court? No, wait, its the perfect spot for a philanderer like him!!

Lycurgus (c. 800 B.C.)

A leading statesman of Sparta in ancient Greece, Lycurgus guided reform of the Spartan constitution and instituted more efficient public administration. All his reforms were directed towards the three Spartan virtues: equality among citizens. Note the word ‘citizens’. Since slaves weren’t considered citizens, they didn’t figure in the equality gravy train. The other two values were austerity and military fitness.

According to legend, Lycurgus believed that the most serious crime of all was retreat in a conflict. He had never bloodied his own hands in battle, I hasten to add. Even so, at first glance Lycurgus seems like the only one who deserves a place at the US Supreme Court frieze.

There is just one tiny little problem – Historians are still debating whether he really existed or was just part of a mythological legend, like Achilles and Hector and Thetis and Zeus, yada, yada, yada.

Solon (c. 638-559 B.C.)

The Athenian, whose name survives as a synonym for “legislator,” codified the laws of the Greeks and is credited with laying the foundation for the world’s first ‘democracy’.

Wait till you hear what the word ‘democracy’ meant to the Greeks. Solon ended exclusive autocratic control of the government, substituting it for an elitist version of democracy in which a cabal of wealthy citizens governed, somewhat akin to the Senate of ancient Rome, prior to the Julio-Claudian era.

Great, haven’t I heard something like this being called an oligarchy? So, where is the real justice for the common folk here?

Draco (late 600s B.C.)

Another prominent legislator in Athens, Draco was the first to write an Athenian code of laws. The problem is that Draco knew of only one punishment for all crimes, even the most trivial – death. You swiped your neighbor’s strawberries and the next thing you knew, you were sleeping with the fishes. It is not for nothing that today the term for harsh and cruel laws is ‘Draconian’.

Draco sure does merit a permanent spot at any US court. He’d have loved to administer justice in the US. Cops randomly shooting unarmed folk would have warmed the cockles of his heart. If Draco could make it to the Supreme Court chamber walls, so could they.

Octavian (63 B.C.-14 A.D.)

The first dictator of Rome, Augustus Caesar single-handedly put an end to collective decision-making in the Roman Senate, killing what little democratic process there was.  A singularly dour individual, he was a vainglorious man. Forever ready to go to war (like the Americans today), he chose ‘Imperator’ (victorious commander) as his first name – Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus. As in the case of Solon, the laws that we lionize Octavian for, were meant to make life for the wealthy and well-connected easy. The slaves, who constituted as much as 30% of the population inside the Roman Empire did not figure in this Octavian dude’s jurisprudence. Neither did the free commoners.

Muhammad (570-632)

He was a loner, a man who liked to be by himself. I am such a man myself. Like him, I too like to find myself in a secluded hilltop, gazing down at my surroundings or staring up at the night sky. In fact, we do have a grassy knoll behind our backyard, where I like to spend late summer evenings sometimes. I am just plain unlucky that the Angel Gabriel hasn’t appeared before me. Maybe he knows that I’ll tell him to go fuck himself.

But if Angel Gabriel does appear before me, surely I cannot take credit for what he asks me to note down and convey to my fellow humans? After all, am I not pretty much like a secretary who takes shorthand?

Just like Moses, Mohammad too was only the accidental messenger. He was not the lawmaker, God was. And pretty much like Moses, he left his community in a much worse shape than when he founded it.

King John (1166-1216)

The last time I heard the words “Magna Carta” was when Barack Obama eulogized the Brits in his speech at Westminster Hall sometime around 2011. For 800 years, Magna Carta has been something most Brits are proud of and it is still the most popular term used in eulogies and speeches by foreign dignitaries wanting to suck Brit cock.

Ruler of England from 1199 to 1216, King John’s claim to fame was the Magna Carta, a document which was supposed to have elevated the importance of individual rights and the concept of due process – the idea that laws must be administered in the same way for all.

The only problem is that King John didn’t write the Magna Carta on his own. He had to be persuaded, with the threat of a coup-de-tat. Imagine a group of the richest and most powerful people in the country who are tired of paying high taxes, having their rights restricted by government – a cabal of robber barons who think the King is an asshole and detest him. Imagine that they get together and agree to use their wealth to force the government to behave the way they want it to behave.

Sound familiar? It should. It’s the way it has always been, and probably always will be. Wealth is power, even in governments supposedly of, by and for the people. The Magna Carta barons were analogous to wealthy campaign donors, corporations or Super PACs using their wealth to gain special privileges.

Consider this one clause in this ‘revered’ document so often cited as the foundation for the rule of law and ‘a jury of your peers’……

“… no freeman ought to be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized of his freehold, liberties, or privileges, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any manner destroyed, or deprived of his life, liberty, or property, but by the judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.”

Equal rights and the rule of law for all freemen. Cool, right? Except for another tiny fact. The word ‘freeman’ had a very narrow definition and meant the wealthy barons, no one else. All others – the serfs, the infantrymen, the farmers, the blacksmiths, the bakers and the road layers – worked for them or were outright owned by them as bonded labor. Equal rights, my ass.

In any case, King John was a greedy and cruel monarch who was hated by 99.999% of his subjects, nobles and serfs alike. With King John, nobody’s wife was safe. When your approval rating is 0.001%, should your likeness be on a frieze in the highest court of the world’s most haloed democracy?

Louis IX (1213-1270)

King of France from 1226 to 1270, Louis IX led the seventh and eighth crusades against the Muslims, in the process of which he came to hold, albeit temporarily, vast tracts of territory that belonged to the Muslims. He was known to exhort his troops on the battlefield not to take any prisoners. The King was even canonized as Saint Louis, for these acts of aggression, by the Catholic Church. By that yardstick, I would think that today the late head of ISIS, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, has a similar right to being accorded a place on that US Supreme Court frieze.

John Marshall (1755-1835)

In 1820, the U.S. Revenue Service cutter Dallas seized a slave ship that was carrying a ‘cargo’ of 281 African slaves, some of the claimed owners being Portuguese and Spanish. The U.S. Supreme Court heard five days of arguments before packed courtrooms. On the fifth day, the Chief Justice himself delivered the unanimous opinion, beginning by stating that he himself did not find any moral fault with slavery. He then went into some legal ‘spin’, declaring the slave trade a violation of natural law but not the law of nations, meaning that it may be wrong but is legal where protected by legislation.

Since the international slave trade was by then deemed illegal in the United States, slaves bound there were released, but since it was legal in Portugal and Spain, slaves of those owners were returned to bondage.

Guess who that Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was – John Marshall, a slave-owner himself. Oh yeah, John Marshall should definitely be up there in the frieze, no?

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

Emperor of France, Napoleon is celebrated and demonized for his warfare. But his legacy in the law is an 1804 civil code that influenced laws in Europe, Latin America and, to a lesser degree, the United States. Louisiana’s unique civil code traces to the Napoleonic Code. Among its overriding principles were personal freedom, the ability to make contracts, equality among citizens and an end to church control of civilian institutions.

Too bad that those for whom his civil code was meant, didn’t live long enough to enjoy the fruits of the legislation, thanks to his almost insatiable thirst for raw unprovoked military aggression. Thousands upon thousands of his soldiers trusted in him and he simply rode them off the cliff, waging foolhardy invasions of neighboring countries.

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I heard that the sculptor of the Supreme Court friezes got a crick in the neck and stopped, otherwise he had plans of fitting in Genghiz Khan, Lynndie England and Mohammad Bin Salman too, in the frieze

So, a recap… A cursory glance will tell you that 9 of the 18 gents up there on the friezes, were either slave-holders themselves, actively abetted slavery or at best found ‘nothing wrong’ in the owning of slaves.

In a way, I can understand the friezes in the US Supreme Court. They are in fact quite apt, for an institution that has constantly lied to it’s black, latino and aboriginal citizens over the past century, making them believe that it’s justice was accessible to them all, quoting those flowery words of the constitution to tell them that they counted, that they were free.

But I am not impressed by the sham presented by the cavernous room, the red carpets, the marble pillars and the grandiose friezes. They can all go fuck themselves.

It takes more to deliver true justice, than shitty wall carvings.

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In the above painting by Luca Ferrari [1605-1654], Roman Emperor Nero is standing with his arms outstretched over his dying mother, Agrippina the Younger.

Nero is like, “What the fuck happened here, I say? I was gone only a minute, for fuck’s sakes!” And then, knowing Nero’s proclivities….”Wow, get a load of mom’s jugs, will ya!”

It is more likely that the painter intended to show Nero appear grief-stricken, even though 1st century AD Roman grapevine suggested he actually had had her assassinated by a hired Libyan assassin, because she was on a power-behind-the-throne trip and had gone a bit too far undermining him.

Plutarch told me all this.

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Let’s look at Agrippina’s two jigglipoos with a critical eye – no sag, no overt heaviness, no hand grenade-sized nipples, non-existent aureoles. Pure and virtuous, not naughty and seductive. They’re just not enough of a palmful……

That painting is a disgrace.

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A 19th Century oil, ‘Liberty Leading the People’, (Delacroix 1830), depicting liberty in the form of a bare breasted woman leading the charge against the French King Charles X’s forces.

Certainly not the recommended outfit for hand to hand combat. But she won. The French monarch abdicated.

No wonder King Chuck lost. If I were there, facing off with this woman, would I give a fuck about fighting? Look at those boobies. Musta spilled out when a bayonet accidentally snipped a strap. Again, no sag, no obscene bulge, no plum nipples, armpits shaved, just runa-the-mill plain and guileless, not saucy.

They are the “Oops, sorry they just fell out” kind, not the “Come and get it, Tiger” kind. The men around her don’t seem aroused at all. They appear to be saying matter-of-factly,” Cover yoreself, Libby honey and let’s go kick some butt”.

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Faust, lying spent after a night of pleasure with multiple nymphs, with the Satan standing over him (Falero 1880).

No, Satan isn’t saying, “Now, Fausti-boy, remember the deal”. The Satan is actually apologetic, his head bowed in shame as Faust falls asleep in sheer boredom. And Satan is saying, “Sorry bud, they’re all I had. If you wanted real tits, didn’t you know all broads with big tits go ta heaven?”

Again, the breasts Falero has painted are helter skelter, disorganized and plain. Rogers and Hammerstein would have observed, “They are flibbertigibits, they are willow-the-wisps, they are lambs.”

Yawwwn. I’ve never been so bored writing a post. Tennis anyone?

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And don’t even get me started on paintings of Aphrodite, or Penthesilia, the queen of the Amazons or Venus or Helen of Troy. Tits, tits and more tits. All less than ordinary. Personally I like tits so large that they give me a crick in my jaws when I try to orally stimulate ’em.

Then there’s the male nudity thing in art, where the obsession is with penises……. shamefully little peanut richards. Muscular men with tiny dickies.

Michelangelo’s “David”. Just take a look at his tiddlytoo. So tiny. If you held up your pinkie in front of it, you’d block the view totally. Of course, it can be inspiring to a certain demographic – men who have tiny penises. Like “look, you can have wee little richards and still be able ta slay Goliaths.

Michelangelo’s famous fresco “The Creation of Adam”. If I had had a richard like Adam’s, I would be bullied outa boarding school.

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Classical painters insisted on painting tiny richards. Maybe they didn’t want dick-envy so they painted richards that were smaller than theirs’. I am willing to bet you never saw a renaissance painting that had a hunk with a 12-inch boner.

I recently visited the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and I really think they should name the joint “Montreal Museum of unimpressive tit and dick pics”.

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But honestly, what’s with all this nudity thing that early impressionists were so obsessed with? Please, I know all that crap about symbolism, aesthetics and the ethereal beauty of the human body. I get that their focus was not on eroticism but on natural beauty. The impressionists did not count on teenaged boys in the shower three centuries later, trying to make something more outa their paintings. I was one of them.

All I want to know is how a guy like Rembrandt could sit through all those sessions with those gorgeous nudes and not end up with an erection? I guess he just strapped his boner to his inner thigh and kept repeating,”aesthetics first…aesthetics first…aesthetics first…aesthetics first…aesthetics first…”

But why the mundane tits and tiny dicks?

If I had been a Duke in 17th Century Italy awarding an impressionist a commission, I would tell him, “So go ahead and paint tits and dicks all you like – even in unusual settings like the battlefield or the farmer’s market, I don’t care. But please paint ’em big is all I ask, with richards that can knock on a castle door and nipples that can crack your skull if you bump into them.”

I reached for AI. DeepSeek says it all started with the ancient Greeks. The raunchy Greek vase painter, Aristophanes, thought that the ideal male should have a little ‘psolí’. The Greeks equated small richards to rationality and control and large cocks to idiocy and impetuousness.

I don’t give a flying fuck about rationality and control. I wanted so much to be an impetuous idiot. Sigh….look what I got.

“The first thing that Almighty Lord did was plant a garden……” – Anonymous

A trip to the Montreal Jardin Botanique de Montréal leaves one kinda unfulfilled. When it’s time to leave after spending the day there, one is always left feeling like, ‘Hope I didn’t miss anything’.

There’s simply so much to see in this 75-acre picture postcard Garden of Eden.

Besides, how do you decide just how long you need to spend at each section – the rolling Chrysanthemum beds crowded with red-yellow, blue-purple and angel white Chrysanthemums so huge that if they were any bigger, they would have their own atmosphere, gravity and moons. Or the gushing brook that’s stuffed with colorful bass and overfed rainbow trout that brazenly waddle up and pout at you and let you caress them before they say ‘stop touching me’, wriggle free and scoot away.

Or the sunflower section? You thought there were only them inch sized sunflowers on God’s earth? Nope, the Jardin Botanique has those but they also have ones that are a foot in diameter, teeming with bees that look like salesmen exchanging stories of great deals at the sports bar I go to Friday nights.

Or the weeds section? Oh yeah, the much maligned weeds. Weeds are plants too, some even having their own pretty flowers. It’s only that they appear at places you don’t want them ta be in. Just because they are hardy, need no maintenance to survive and multiply like crazy, they are considered evil. Personally I love weeds because I love the underdog, like. The Jardin Botanique has a whole section here that teems with buttercups, goldenrods, thistles, catnips, jasmines, milkweed and of course, dandelions.

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Then there’s the book. I always have a book with me wherever I go. I can’t stand being somewhere by myself with nothing ta read. I’m fidgety, but that’s okay. All geniuses are fidgety people.

Today I am rereading “The girl with the dragon tattoo”. It’s not the ideal book for a trip to the botanical gardens but it’s so fucking interesting, I can’t put it down, so I brought it along. I am fascinated by Lizbeth Salander. She is unruly, unwashed, probably has bad breath but I am turned on by her. I  picture her savagely squeezing me with her vaginal muscles while I have torid sex with her. Wild, tightly coiled women drive me nuts.

How did this post turn to sex? It was supposed to be about flowers for Christ’s sakes. I was wanting ta write a post on my visit to the Botanical Gardens and here I am, with a stiffening richard the lion heart, thinking of fucking Lizbeth. (Maybe I really want to fuck Rooney Mara).

Wherever you go, you have to choose the book you want ta take with you very carefully. If you are in a doctor’s waiting room, take something comic, like a Richard Gordon, an Emma Bombeck or a Wodehouse. Nothing too racy like a Jackie Collins or else you might fail ta hear the nurse call out your name and even if you don’t, the doc might decide you have high BP. Don’t take Nevile Shute either or else you’ll be stuck being told you have hypotension. A long train journey or a trans-Atlantic flight is true crime / serial killer time. You need the hours ta fly. But if you’re on the bus or the subway, try not to read at all lest you miss your stop. Just watch the girls and day dream like I do.

The Jardin is strewn with reclining wooden armchairs and my ambition is to find the right spot where I can settle and read. As I make my way from one section to the next, I am constantly scoping it out for the armchair that is positioned just right for a long delicious read.

Alas, in the end I don’t actually get ta spend much time reading, because I have been spending the whole time looking for that perfect spot. And by the time I have found it, it’s nearing closing time. What a jerko di tutti jerki I am.

With a half hour ta go before the gates close, I end up at the Restaurant Organique. Soon as I enter, I feel the pure oxygen in there. I munch a vegan sandwich and an ice cold melon kombucha. All 100% organic. The food is excruciatingly healthy, something that my body simply isn’t used to. But I’m famished so I eat it anyway.

The girl at the counter is a picture of health. Plump, baby blue eyes, pink-cheeks, boisterously vivaciously bouncy. I tell her I want ta adopt her and she blushes and laughs, displaying pearly white teeth.

That’s one of the advantages of being an old man. You flirt audaciously and instead of being offended, they blush.

It must have been 1966, in a small eastern Indian town called Durgapur. I was 11 and so was she. I am going to be 71 soon, but listen, you’ll never ever forget your first smoocherooney, trust me.

It was like yesterday, I remember that day so vividly. The rest of the school was out at the stadium race-track for the annual parade dress rehearsal. The morning had gone by playing the fool, leaving corny notes on each other’s desks, hiding our compass boxes from each other and generally poking good natured fun at one another.

This thing between Rashmi and me had been going on for a while and we were beginning to feel like it was all sort of building up to something but we didn’t know what that was.

Just last week my lips had brushed against her ear while we were on an arts and crafts project together and I had managed to say, “Surprise attack!” and grinned. She had expressed mock shock and given me a playful slap and run off to the other girls.

This was 1960s India, a deeply conservative joint where girls were supposed to act demure and aloof.

That day, the bell rang for the parade rehearsal and everyone began trooping down to the stadium – except Rashmi, who had been loitering behind. Instead of following the crowd, she gave me a quick glance to ensure she had my attention and slipped away and disappeared inside the chemistry lab.

I followed her in. The Spanish conquistador, Hernán Cortés, would have been proud of me.

I found her at the far corner, behind a cupboard filled with the burettes and pipettes. She just stood there facing the doorway, her arms outstretched, gripping the shelves, her sparking eyes filled with delicious foreboding. The moment I swung into her field of vision, her hands flew to her face and covered her eyes, her middle and forefingers parting a crack to see if I was making any progress toward her.

In a few strides I was on her and as I held her tight, she kept trying to wriggle free, though not with any genuine conviction. Rashmi somehow knew she was desirable and therefore her brain was configured to be coquettish and frisky. I guess its one of those things that no one teaches pretty girls, they are just born knowing it.

Instead of breaking out of my grasp, she kept real quiet and that should have told me something but it didn’t. In fact I kinda lost my balance holding her and she thought I was stepping back. Her hands snaked up my back and yanked me back to her tight.

Now that should definitely have told me something, no? This time it did. It emboldened me. I stared at her beautiful lips and said,“ What would you do if I kissed you right now?” Her beautiful face took on a devilish twist. She seemed like she wanted nothing else.

“I would kiss you right back,” she whispered and before her palms could fly right back up to her face, I had them in mine.

Rashmi was a head shorter and had her face buried in my chest so I wouldn’t be able to reach her lips with mine. Still, I tried. I crouched low, not letting go of my grip on her shoulders for even a moment, as I tried to reach down with my lips, but they could barely make it down to her pretty nose. I

About to give up, I sighed and gently gave the tip of her nose a peck and started to move away, when she stopped struggling and went slack in my arms. She brought her face up to mine, her bright beautiful eyes an inch away from mine, so close that I had only her eyes in my vision. Suddenly their texture changed, the pupils widened and the corners crinkled. Though I couldn’t see her full face from up that close, I knew she was grinning.

Taking this as a cue, I plunged my lips down but instead, I felt her knee come up and connect with my adolescent testicles with a crunch and I let go with a yelp. She sprang free and ran, but then she came to a stop a few yards away.

Then she did a funny thing. She stopped turned. Woooooo!! It wasn’t over yet, I rejoiced silently. Pretending to be really seriously hurt, I fell to the lab floor and gasped, my face screwed up in mock agony. Taking hesitant steps, she inched back toward me, the devilishly naughty look now replaced by one that was puckered in genuine concern.

Curling up in a ball, gasping for breath, I bided my time letting her come within reach until she was stooping over me to take a closer look, strands of her hair falling all over my eyes and my chin. Suddenly my whole being was being assaulted with the scent of Brahmi Amla Kesh Coconut Oil. It took all my adolescent self-restraint to keep my eyes open just a slit, like as if I was in agony.

I don’t know when exactly she caught on I was pretending but it was too late by then. As she knelt over me, I uncoiled in a speedy blurr, reached out and grabbed her. She responded by letting out a high-pitched squeal, more in excitement mixed with delight, than fright. Sometimes all you need to win a girl is a little subterfuge.

As we lay entwined, the chill of the chem lab floor made Rashmi shiver and she whispered, “They’ll look for us!” said she and shivered,” Hurry!”

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Now take it easy. Between the 1966 ‘hurry’, and the 2025 ‘hurry’, there have been genuine advances. Bras and panties became passé, folks streaked naked over open ground and the word ‘f–k’ stormed the lexicons of the world. The 1966 ‘hurry’ meant just a kiss. And not even a French kiss, just a close-lipped kiss.

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It was bliss as we lay there, Rashmi on top of me with her head on my chest, her curls tickling my nose, one leg draped over me with her black uniform shoes touching the floor on my other side.

The thought of progressing toward something more just didn’t cross our minds. This, what we had achieved so far, in itself was manna – like summitting Everest. Around us, two silent shelves filled with syringes, glass bowls and distilling columns were still, staring down with disapproval, like Lhotse and Cho Oyu.

After a long while we stood, retreating to a corner. I took her soft hands in mine and my lips skimmed over her forehead, her eyes, her ears and her nose just grazing against each while her breath clouded my specs. I could write a saga on just that breath – it had a scent of Amul butter, milk and bread crumbs on it.

Till then, I had never known anything about myself, never known want, never felt so utterly aroused. I was inhaling greedily when finally I found her lips and tarried there a while. It was the first time my lips had been on a girl’s and I explored the tiny ridges that run vertically along lips that are maiden – they form when the weather is cold and dry. I didn’t know it was cold out there, jeeze, I was sweating like crazy.

For a moment the Amerigo Vespucci in me took over once again and I couldn’t resist feeling those ridges with my tongue but she recoiled in horror, so I hurriedly put my tongue back in. That didn’t deter the oral explorer in me, though. Since that day, my lips have been on safaris that have ventured into more than twennie pu…baby cats, in my adulthood.

Honestly, if Capt. James Cook was hiring scouts for his Australia expedition, he would have offered me a handsome signing bonus.

Getting back to Rashmi, we remained that way, giving each other tiny pecks and kisses, for what seemed like an eternity. Nothing was said, the words pouring out through our lips, google-translated into kisses. The Almighty created lips for communication but I am sure even He didn’t figure how well kisses can articulate.

In the middle of our kiss, her lips stretched, her teeth made contact with mine and her eyes crinkled and once again that Amul baby breath lingered out and engaged my nostrils and I knew she was smiling again. Right then, if she had demanded that I walk off a cliff onto jagged thorns and hyenas below, I woulda.

The shouts and yelps alerted us to the fact that the parade dress rehearsal was over and the kids were coming back in. She pushed me back against the burette/pipette shelf, making it jangle and almost tipping over some of the pipettes that were near the edge.

And then she ran away, blowing a kiss at me as she turned the corner and disappeared.

After that first time, the back of the chemistry lab served us well in our canoodling, being empty most of the time. Our chemistry teacher sucked and hey, doesn’t chemistry suck on the whole?

Anyways, there we would crouch – not speaking, just kissing interminably long kisses. I think 1966 kisses were definitely longer than 2025 kisses, simply because they didn’t come with any feeling up or squeezing you-know-whats.

About a year later, Rashmi moved away with her family, to Asansol, another nondescript small town like Durgapur where nothing really happened. Rashmi had lovely feet and wore nupurs (ankle bracelets) that jingled just a wee bit and drove me nuts. The day before she left we had one last marathon canoodle behind a rack of bunsen burners. She cried a little and knowing how much her nupurs turned me on, she left me a pair of faux silver ones.

“I’ll tell my mother I lost them,” she tearfully whispered.

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Actually I am not sure how much of this anecdote really happened – all those years and all. Throw into that my imagination and y’know how it is, things get a bit hazy. Did I find her behind the cupboard in the chemistry lab or did our trysts happen in the library? Did we have a chemistry lab at all, or was the lab from my memories of my next school, La Martiniere where, a few years later, I ….. oh, forget it, you won’t believe what happened in La Marts anyway.

But, listen, if you haven’t yet kissed anyone and want ta, prepare yourself for a very surreal roller-coaster ride. As your lips meet, every nerve ending shall twang, every hair stand on it’s end. Your eyes shall swim, finding it nigh impossible ta focus. It isn’t a sexual thing. Guys, you won’t even get a hard-on even if you are old enough to have one, but the excitement will be so intense as to make you feel faint. At that moment you’ll be ready to do anything for the girl. If her lips are slightly parted and she uses a breath freshener, the sensation of slipping your lower lip in will simply blow your mind. Take this from a man who has kissed maybe a thousand women.

Those days, Indian girls were very passive and demure. They made no moves by themselves. They just sat back and loved being kissed all over. I would say Rashmi was a bit more precocious than most other girls of that era. Rashmi’s face would take on a flushed glow when we kissed, I swear to ya.

And me – I was flushed too but suffice it to say that those days the parts of me that were usually soft during the normal course of the day, remained that way even when I was flushed with excitement. I believed then that a stiff dick was just another term for an obstinate 12th century English King with a backache and a lion heart.

I will never be able to go back and stand there in that school in that tiny town in India, without feeling the taste of Amul butter on my lips.

 

 

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A civilized world is one where there are no taboos – Socrates

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‘Abduction of Ganymede’ (painting by Peter Paul Reubens, 1611)

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For any female, born in an urban slum or in rural India, there is an 80% likelihood of her being either raped or molested at least once in her lifetime. For a boy who was born in 500BC Greece, the odds of something similar happening to him were identical.

Ganymede was a Trojan boy barely out of his teens, whom the 8th Century BC poet, Homer, had described as the most beautiful of mortals. Even the Gods couldn’t take their eyes off him. So taken by his beauty was the lecherous old Zeus that he stole in one day, disguised as an eagle, lofted Ganymede into the heavens and whisked him away to his pad at the Mount Olympus.

Oh yeah, Zeus had this habit of appearing in disguise as a bird whenever he felt horny. He once appeared before Leda, the Spartan King Tyndareus’s wife, as a swan and ravished her. Legend has it that, out of the union was born Helen of Troy. Helen of Sparta actually. Helen of Troy is a misnomer.

Spartan Queen Leda, being ravished by Zeus disguised as a swan. Even Gods can be pricks.

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As for Ganymede, in exchange for steamy anal sex, Zeus gave him eternal youth and immortality and a permanent position as the official cup bearer – like a bus boy – to the gods.

There is no record of what Zeus’s old lady, Hera, had to say about this new love-affair. Probably nothing. Given the times and the open practice of pederasty that was the custom among adult Greek noblemen and their Gods in those days, she may have just yawned and said,” Tennis anyone?”

The same milk of forgiveness ran through Roman wives as well. The emperor, Hadrian (76-138AD), took a male lover in the form of a Bythinian youth named Antinous. As a foreigner it was perfectly acceptable for Antinous to appear in public next to the emperor and his wife Sabina.

Hadrian and Antinous were lovers for five years until Antinous fell overboard from a galley into the Nile and drowned. Grapevine has it that Sabina had a centurian persuade the boy to jump one night when Hadrian wasn’t looking but I can’t submit any evidence of it. Heartbroken, Hadrian had Antinous declared a god, built temples to him all over the empire, named a star after him and built a city in Egypt, Antinopolis, in his honor.

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Up until the Roman Empire turned Christian under Constantine the Great and Christianity began being rammed down everyone’s throats under threat of death all across Europe and beyond, homosexuality in all it’s forms was a universally accepted practice in the so-called ‘civilized’ world. Sodomy was practiced mostly among the upper classes. (The hoi-polloi were too busy trying to survive invasions and deprivation).

In the pre-Christian world, men f–king other men was du jour.

Philosophers of the day, Aristotle and Socrates, waxed eloquent on how the human anatomy had placed the anus in just right level and orientation to be shtupped by the erect penis of another man, so convenient that even the anal passage had the same angle of inclination to the horizontal as a fully erect penis.  Therefore, they surmised, we were all meant to be fucked up our asses. I can see Euclid exclaiming, ‘QED!’

Around the 400BCs there were other ancient cultures that practiced homosexual sex. The Indian philosopher, Vatsayana, writing in his “Kama Sutra”, held forth on the number of ways adult males could pleasure each other orally.  But the deluge of direct evidence of homosexual liaisons in ancient Greece that archeologists have dug up is astonishing. Hundreds of vases have been unearthed along the Aegean Sea coast of Greece, that have erotic paintings on the sides, depicting males in sexually intimate positions, dating back to 1000BC.

The vase paintings have a common theme running through them – the sexual intimacy depicted is invariably shown happening between a bearded adult male and a pubescent or adolescent boy, usually the son of another free citizen with whom the adult has a business or family connection. One might wrinkle his nose in disgust today but that was the norm then. The boy knew that his coming-of-age required submitting to anal penetration by a grown adult male, who took him under his wing like a mentor and proceeded to take charge of his education. It started invariably with a period of elaborate courtship when the mentor showered the boy with presents until he eventually broke and submitted.

The Greeks had developed a strict code of conduct as regards homosexuality. An adult Greek male could not have sex with another adult Greek male. It would make the man being penetrated (the pathikos or passive partner), seem effeminate and submissive. That was something which the Greek society – essentially a martial culture – deemed a humiliation and therefore inappropriate. It would bring down the submissive male to the level of women, who at that point in history were considered lesser mortals in this highly patriarchal culture. He could be ridiculed and laughed out of town and even lose the right to hold public office.

The ban on adult to adult male sex did not extend to slaves however. It was open season on slaves. You could do absolutely anything you wanted with your slave, since you owned him. An adult Greek male could f—k an adult male slave till he was blue in the face. Slaves, usually the citizens of conquered lands, were acquisitions and had no rights whatsoever.

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In ancient times, you had to be prepared to be a slave if your city-state got invaded and sacked by an invasion force. A run-of-the-mill invasion usually netted around 15-20000 able-bodied slaves who could then be sold for hard cash. The slave trade was the by far the largest and most profitable business venture in not only Ancient Greece, but all across the ‘civilized’ world.

During his 8-year long expedition of conquest through the Middle-East, Asia Minor, right up to the banks of the Jhelum River in present-day Pakistan, Alexander the Great is reported to have taken into captivity and sold more than 500,000 slaves from the lands he conquered.

Thanks to Alexander’s zeal, soon there was a glut in the market. Supply outstripped demand and the powerful slave cartels in Greece and Asia Minor, pretty much like the OPEC of today, hated him for flooding the market.

Besides the booties that Alexander looted from the vanquished Persian King Darius III’s coffers, the slave trade was a major source of revenue that helped pay his soldiers’ above-average salaries and frequent bonuses. It is said that on one occasion, after he had sacked the city of Tyre, he paid his troops the equivalent of 8 years’ pay as bonus. If it hadn’t been for his largesse, his men, tired of the fighting and homesick, would have turned and gone back much earlier.

Alexander was huge on the slave trade but he was also a fair man. If a state readily submitted to his invasion force and acknowledged him as their monarch without a challenge, he not only spared them a massacre but in fact enthusiastically waded into their culture, encouraging his commanders and troops to go forth and marry their women and intermingle. He allowed the citizens of the annexed lands to retain their culture and traditions and even offered sacrifices to their Gods at their temples. The slaves came from the states that tried in vain to repel his invasion and faced his wrath as a result.

Alexander was a horny bastard too, of that there is very little doubt. He didn’t believe in harems like his arch-rival, Darius III, who had 365 concubines, one for every night of the year (I suppose he rested on leap years). Alexander however had a string of affairs and wives and he also had at least two male lovers that I know of. He was very respectful of folk he had sex with and there was no rough stuff, unlike other conquerors of his time.

Alexander was a good looking guy, as per the 1st Century AD historian, Plutarch. Says he, “…Not very tall, perhaps a little over five podes and a half, Alexander was light brown skinned and had a tinge of red on his face and upon his breast. Aristoxenus, in his memoirs, spoke at length of Alexander’s sharp features and bright blue eyes. He had heard Aristotle speak in amazement of a most alluring scent that emanated from his skin. His breath and his body were so fragrant that they perfumed his undergarments……” Ugh!

Powerful city-states like Athens and Sparta and empires too, like the Persian and Roman empires, had large populations of slaves who had been nabbed from conquered lands and put to work in mines or construction and even as domestic help. At the height of it’s golden age – around 450BC – one in three inhabitants of Greece was a slave.

The slave-to-citizen ratio was even higher with the Romans and that could be a reason why in the 1^st Century BC, a Thracian slave named Kirk Douglas managed to band together a well-organized fighting force of 70000 slaves against the Roman legions and was able to get as far as he did, massacring thousands of well-trained and superbly equipped Roman legionaries, before he was finally apprehended and killed. Even though he did not succeed in the end, Douglas is still an interesting example of how far the will to be free can take you, but I shall have to leave that for another occasion.

What? Did I say Kirk Douglas? Oh, sorry, the slave was called Spartacus. Kirk Douglas only played the role of Spartacus and co-produced the 1960 Stanley Kubrick movie by the same name. At my age, it is easy to get mixed up a bit. Do watch it if you get the chance.

But during the heroic and classic ages of the Greek civilization, a few centuries before Spartacus, the thought of organizing their own ‘Greek Spring’ hadn’t yet occurred to the slaves.

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While the adult-to-adult male sex was a no-no in ancient Greece, the acceptable practice was what we term today as pederasty – sex between an adult male (the erastes) and a boy in the age bracket of around 10 to 17 (known as the eromenos). It was pedophilia with a slightly narrowed age range. Pederasty was a practice that was regulated by the State as an institution, no kidding. It was generally taken as a supplement to a heterosexual marriage, which the Greek deemed as essential for the purpose of procreation. Thus, the adult men who practiced pederasty were basically bisexuals.

Today, the age of consent varies from country to country but overall, pederasty is considered just as heinous a crime as pedophilia and most nations in the modern world have strict laws against it. The same Socrates, whom we like to lionize, would be cooling his heels inside a maximum security penitentiary, serving a lengthy sentence, had he been around today.

Back then, institutionalized as it was, pederasty was commonplace. There were even public places where noblemen met and swapped their boy lovers. The Grecian baths for example were places where nobles lazed around and exchanged boys. If they had internet they would probably call it swapboy.com or something.

An Erastes with his Eromenos, on a Greek vase (Image coutesy: Wikimedia)

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The pederasty practiced in ancient Greece was in fact cyclic – as soon as the eromenos began to sport a beard, it was a sign that he was now an adult and therefore could not continue his sexual liaison with his erastes. He could in fact himself start leading life as an erastes now and have his own eromenos. Oh Goody!!

In ancient Greece, if you were a male from the upper classes, you were either an erastes or an eromenos. You didn’t fight it. You humped or you got humped. By another male. That was that. Grecian stores even stocked different varieties of depilatory products to help you keep your eromenos looking young and therefore ‘acceptable’.

The Greek poet, Anacreon, and his little lover. Anacreon’s poetry was all about passion, love, infatuation, revelry and parties, like an ancient version of Jackie Collins, except in his case, the protagonists were invariably pederasts. 

Interestingly, most sculptures, bas-reliefs and paintings depicting ancient Greek pederasty, are found in the Vatican palaces and museums today. Should this be a surprise at all?

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The Greek city-state of Sparta mandated an austere existence, devoid of any kind of extravagance (and hence the adjective ‘spartan’). Military training was mandatory and stretched right through a boy’s formative years, starting at age six, right up until twenty-two. During this period, the little boys got paired off with the older boys or men in the military academy, who became their mentors. They spent long hours working out inside gyms and arenas, practicing the five exercises of the pentathlon – wrestling, races, long jumps, throwing the discus and hurling the javelin.

The youths in the gymnasia were always naked and sexual intimacy was inevitable and encouraged as an essential part of the kid’s education. The word ‘gymnasium’ is reported to have been derived from the Greek word ‘gymnos’, which means ‘naked’.

It got so bad with the 22-year old graduating cadets of the Spartan military academy that, on their wedding night, their brides had to resort to dressing like men in order to arouse their grooms and help them make the transition from homosexual to heterosexual sex.

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Isn’t it an irony that we see the ancient Greeks as the very fountain of western civilization, when most of what they practiced – pederasty, slavery – are considered heinous crimes today?

“Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Do pay it. Don’t forget”

― Socrates to personal aide, minutes before he was forced to kill himself by consuming hemlock, 399BC

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The citizens of Athens bore a massive grudge against Socrates.

The philosopher preached totalitarian dictatorship as the only feasible way to govern and spawned through his teachings, students who specialized in overthrowing democratically elected governments and instituting a reign of terror.

Socrates shaped the world view of at least two of his star pupils, Alcibiades and Critias. Alcibiades (450-404 BC) was an Athenian General who proposed that the only successful mode of governance was not democracy but an oligarchy of a few powerful leaders who should decide the fate of the populace. The other pupil, Critias, became a member of a group of bad guys called the thirty tyrants, a pro-Spartan oligarchy that unleashed a reign of terror on the Athenians for more than a year, around 404 BC.

Together, with Spartan support, Alcibiades and Crtitias usurped power and wreaked havoc, in which thousands of Athenians were deprived of their property and either banished from the city or executed.

Aside from his extreme views on governance, Socrates was also well known for his pederasty, the practice of forcing young pubescent boys into having sex with him.

The world lionizes this guy today.

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Ancient Arab merchants had a saying – “if you teach your pupils how to kill, it is only a matter of time when you will yourself be the victim”. So it came to pass with Socrates.

No one knows exactly when or how Socrates fell afoul of the oligarchs or if his open sexual deviance did him in. One day in 399 BC, he was made to stand trial before a  jury of 500 of his fellow Athenians.

Those days, just about any offense could be deemed a capital crime. Long story short, Socrates was found guilty and sentenced to die by lethal poison. His famous student, Plato, has recorded what happened next – an executioner handed Socrates a cup that contained an extract of hemlock called coniine and said,” Just drink it and walk around until your legs begin to feel really heavy. Then lie down. It will soon act.’

Socrates did as directed and then walked around until his legs began to feel heavy like the executioner had said they would and then, he lay down on his back.

As the chill sensation got to his waist, Socrates suddenly rose up on his elbows as if he had remembered something, rubbed his eyes and said to his faithful Crito, “ Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Do pay it. Don’t forget.”

Do you just believe this guy? He was about to die and here he was, thinking of something as inane as repaying a personal debt of a cock.

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Socrates’ last-minute command to his servant might be considered trivial but inanity at a moment of deep personal trauma is not uncommon. At the point of death, condemned men seek to suppress the conscious knowledge of the direness  of their circumstances by speaking of inane things and trying to maintain an illusion in their minds that everything is normal.

The English King Henry VIII’s Queen, Anne Boleyn, insisted on leaving detailed instructions for the maintenance of her potted plants. The serial murderer, Ted Bundy, repeatedly reminded a warder to post a letter of complaint he had written, to a magazine that had incorrectly mentioned his place of birth.

Nobel Laureate and Nazi concentration camp survivor, Eli Wiesel, has written about a neighbor whom he heard asking an SS storm trooper (who was shoving him into a truck bound for the Bogdanovka Concentration Camp) in an everyday matter-of-fact tone, to turn off the lights inside his apartment, since electricity was expensive. The act of turning off lights in an empty apartment of a man who knew he was being carted off to his death, would in no way change his circumstances and yet that was the first thing that came to Wiesel’s neighbor’s mind.

Just seconds before the trapdoor he was standing on, gave and he plummeted to his death, Saddam Hussein was asking the Shiite militia guy adjusting the noose round his neck, to move the knot a bit to the side as it was tickling his nose. The executioner obliged, in a final act of kindness toward a man who did not deserve any.

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A similar urge toward the inane also happens when one is on the verge of saying farewell to loved ones, just before the last call for departure is announced at the airport or when the signal turns orange at the rail station. As parting becomes imminent, the mind goes sort of numb, unable to think of anything consequential to say. Desperate to keep a conversation going, to maintain the feeling of being together, we say the most inane of things.

When I left India for good, my mother was at the airport. There was a wall-to-wall plate glass window inside the lounge where we sat waiting, watching aircraft take off and land. Security had already been called and it was just minutes before departure would be announced. I had no words to say to the one person to whom I owed so much.

“See how cute that kid is?” I said pointing at a toddler who was trying to break free from his mother’s grasp by biting on her fingers. My mother smiled and nodded, trying hard to hold back her tears.

“Can you read what’s written on that counter over there? I do have to get my eyes checked. Haven’t done it in a while,” said she. I nodded and smiled.

We kept up a banter, while inside us raged emotions like wildfire, real conversations, that remained unsaid. Instead one was trying to read something hung up on a counter while the other found a pain-in-the-ass unruly kid, cute. The closer you are, to the one you are leaving behind and the closer it comes to the good-byes, the more inane the conversation seems to turn.

Ah, but for the soothing emptiness of inanity. We are brimming with inanity. Getting rid of our inanities cannot be achieved without getting rid of ourselves.

 

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“The land north of Gangadwar is known to the wise as Paradise Ground. Apart from this land, the rest is called Earth elsewhere.”
― Kedarkhand Skanda Purana [4th Century AD Hindu folklore]

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Everest at night, as seen from the Nepalese town of Namche Bazaar from which every assault on the south side begins (Photo source: Wikimedia)

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Annapurna-I (Triangular peak in the back ground, centre), as seen from Pokhara.

Annapurna-I is one of the ‘14 Sisters’, the world’s 14 tallest mountains, scattered around the borders between Nepal and Tibet in the Himalayas and Pakistan and China in the Karakoram ranges. They are the only peaks higher than 8000 meters, an altitude above which lies the “death zone”, where the air contains just 15% of the oxygen it has at sea level.

In the death zone, the chances of survival beyond 12-15 hours, are very slim, regardless of the quality of outfitting, presence of trained sherpas or access to supplemental oxygen.

The Himalayas, and particularly the Everest, have held our fascination for centuries. Formed when the Indian plate collided against the Asian plate 50 million years ago, the greatest mountain range in the world has been growing ever so gradually taller and inching laterally toward the north-east as new crust emerges and the two plates continue to grind against each other. Since the 1850s when the first serious attempts at scaling the ‘14 sisters’ began, the Himalayas are believed to have grown taller by about 40 inches.

As the sisters have aged, they have demanded more and more respect from us. Of the 14, the Annapurna’s demands have been the most strident. Steep chiselled ice-covered flanks provide very little shelter against hurricane-force blowing snow and thus, she has claimed as her own 75 climbers, drawing them into her deep crevasses and shrouding them in her ice. Taken against the 167 who summitted and made it back alive, this is a death-to-summit ratio of 32%. Two of the other sisters, the Kanchenjunga(28500ft) and the K2(28700ft), both equally hazardous climbs, have been nearly as vengeful toward us but not as deadly as Annapurna.

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300 kms east of Anna, striding Nepal’s border with Chinese-occupied Tibet, is Anna’s big sis, Chomolungma (‘Mother Goddess’ in Tibetan), the tallest mountain on earth. Indians call her ‘Sagarmata’ and in the English speaking world, she is known as ‘Everest’.

Goddess she is and that is what all who live around it call Everest.

Compared to the Annapurna, Everest is warm and cuddly, ie: a relatively easier climb. As of the beginning of the 2023 season, only 310 have succumbed since George Mallory’s 1924 attempt, against 6100 successful summit attempts. That’s a death to summit ratio of only a little over 2.5%, far below Anna’s 32% and K2’s 25%.

Of the duo who summited Chomo first, the white guy, Edmund Hillary, got a “Sir” added to his name even before he had made it back to base camp.

Sir Edmund Hillary (1919-2008) and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay (1914-1986), May 1953 (Photo courtesy: Wikimedia)

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The other guy, without whom Sir Hillary would probably have ended up as a permanent part of the landscape, happened to be a brown guy, deemed unworthy of knighthood. He was a brave sherpa, named Tenzing Norgay.

First the British government behaved like Tenzing didn’t exist. Then, unable to fight the global outrage, Britain awarded him some crummy medal called the ‘George Medal’. The explanation given as to why Tenzing too wasn’t awarded a knighthood was ‘because he was Indian’.

Taking a principled stand against obvious discrimination and refusing the knighthood obviously wasn’t on Sir Hillary’s mind either. I however hold nothing against him though. He has, in his personal capacity, done an immense amount of charity and social work for the ordinary Nepalese over the years.

After the Tenzing-Hillary summit, the Everest remained the exclusive domain of the elite among alpinists for three decades until an American rancher and businessman named Dick Bass became the first non-alpinist to summit it, in 1985, with the help of an alpinist named David Breashears and an army of guides and sherpas.

Suddenly it began to seem like the Everest summit was within the reach of the average person and all he or she needed was a lot of cash, approximately $100000 plus per head that a summit package operator charged. Simultaneously, the Nepalese Government began to see the huge amounts of money it could make from the permit and the spin-offs from the surge in tourism.

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Bass began the ‘post-modern’ era of Everest summits where folks from all walks of life – school teachers, dentists, firemen, cops, nurses – they all began climbing, aided by tour companies that mushroomed to carve out their niche in a growing new tourism business.

Many never made it back alive, of course. Over the past century, the slopes of the 14 sisters have been dotted with the corpses of climbers who did not make it, strewn along the routes that climbers usually take. If you are scaling the Everest, you will come across these grim reminders as you climb higher and higher, their bodies perfectly preserved, frozen in time, their faces blackened by the sun. Of course, at that height you’re yourself struggling to survive, so you’ll just step over them and move on.

The dead have grown so recognizable that they have even taken on nicknames. ‘Green Boots’ lies on his side in a small open-mouthed cave-like overhang at 27800ft on the North face. He had been an Indian, a member of the crack Indian Special Forces Commandos, the ITBP. He was a part of a 6-man team attempting to summit from the Tibetan side on a stormy afternoon in May, 1996. Separated from his group, and snow-blinded, Green Boots had sought refuge from the elements in that overhang.

As he sat there shivering in the cold, Green Boots slowly froze to death. He was seen by other passing climbers, sitting rigidly upright for a year or two before the wind blew his body over on his side into the position that you see him in, below. Two others from his team also perished, their corpses never found.

Green Boots now serves as a wayside marker that climbers use, to gauge how near they are to the summit.

Green Boots, perished 1996, this photo taken by another climber in 2006 (Photo courtesy: Wikipedia)

The cave where Green Boots lies has since been named the ‘Green Boots Cave’. Nine years after he breathed his last, he finally acquired a cave-mate, another climber, who had stopped by to rest in 2006 – 32 year old Britisher, David Sharp. Sharp is still seen sitting there today, another grotesque marker that climbers are forced to pass by on their way to the summit. Sharp’s body froze in place as he sat down to rest, rendering him unable to move. Unlike Green Boots, Davy dear hasn’t toppled over yet.

David Sharp, perished 2006, photo taken 2011 (Photo courtesy: Wikipedia)

The day he perished, over 30 climbers passed Sharp by as he sat freezing to death.  Some heard faint moans and realized he was still alive.  They stopped and spoke with him.  He was able to identify himself but was unable to move.  Some brave ones among the passersby moved him into the Sun in an attempt to thaw him but eventually realized that he would never be able to move. They were forced to abandon him.

19 years have gone by since. The two must be friends by now, one sitting up and the other lying on his side, frozen in time, immobile, silent against the howling winds. In time, over a century, I am sure Green Boots Cave shall grow into a fraternity, of deluded thrill and fame seeking souls, of whom Green Boots and David Sharp shall have the honor of being the founding members.

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Why do we humans bring this kind of torture upon ourselves? Is it the mesmeric challenge, the irresistible fascination of besting the seemingly insurmountable?

Then why do we cheat? Why the supplemental oxygen? Why the Nepalese Sherpas who prepare the trails in advance, fix all the ropes and set up all the tents prior to the start of the summit season? Why the mules to carry all the load? Doesn’t all that seem like the end justifying the means? In what way then are performance enhancing drugs criminal? Surely, an oxygen cylinder in high-altitude climbing, must be the equivalent of steroids in cycling?

Just as Lance Armstrong, the legendary cyclist, was forced by society to descend into ignominy, so should the world condemn these so-called “intrepid explorers” on Everest be disgraced for their cheap thrills.

An Everest summit attempt has been reduced to a contrived and sterile pantomime today. Preparations begin way ahead of the start of the climbing season in early May. A group of forty of the best Sherpa guides set about breaking trail and fixing ropes and ladders, right up to the summit, an enterprise so hazardous that one in ten don’t return. Breaking trail is when someone has already waded through waist-high snow ahead of you, making it easier for you to do the trek. It also acts as a real trail, showing you the way. Without this initial work, climber deaths would sky-rocket.

So, where is the sport, the adventure, if your hand is virtually being held all the way? The 16 sherpas who died, swept away in a deadly avalanche, on the Khumbu Icefall at the base of Everest in 2014 were doing exactly that – breaking trail and fixing ropes and ladders over crevasses so that amateur climbers who paid $100000 a pop, could get to the top without incident.

Sherpas do many other auxiliary duties, such as preparing the four staging camps on the Everest, installing and clearing toilet tents and transporting garbage down the treacherous slopes. I will not even mention the pittance ($225) that they earn per climb and the peanuts that their families get by way of insurance payouts if they perish.

All for the great white adventure tourist. The work that a sherpa does is 15 to 20 times more dangerous than the most hazardous job in the west, which is commercial fishing.

Apa Sherpa(a.k.a. “Super Sherpa”), used to hold the record for reaching the summit of the Everest more times than any other person in history. Apa made his 21st summit in May 2011, but he has since been overtaken by another Sherpa, Kama Rita, who made his 24th summit this May, summitting twice in the same week once.

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I imagine what must have happened that led to the 2014 Khumbu Icefall disaster. For a week prior, Chomolungma (the Nepalese goddess we know as Everest) had been rumbling and sending smaller seracs (boulders of ice) crashing onto the Khumbu Glacier intermittently, between periods of calm, as she waited to see if we would get the message and stay the hell out of her pristine slopes.

We didn’t and 06:30am on 18th Aril, 2014 she finally spoke. An already well-known serac the size of a Costco superstore, that had been hanging for quite a while off the Everest’s west shoulder, broke loose and crashed downward on to the Khumbu Glacier just as droves of Sherpas were carrying supplies into the base camp, obliterating 16 of them instantly.

Chomo sent another stop-fucking-with-me message a year or two later, with 10 dead already and the season hadn’t even started yet. The time, it is the overcrowding and the hours-long waiting in queue at the Death Zone and the subsequent delay in getting back down before sunset.

No, this is not a line outside a rock concert. Everest climbing season will be defined by this photo, taken at the Death Zone where the oxygen level is just 15% of that at sea level. This is where you have to stop and take 10 deep breaths every step you take. It is also where most deaths occur on the Everest.

The pic shows a line of around a hundred climbers, balancing themselves precariously on a knife-edge ridge just a short distance from the summit. They are tethered to one of only two safety ropes that had been attached to the rock face with pitons, before season began. Just imagine the strain on those pitons….. 

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I think that extreme sports or adventure tourism are just delusional arrogance, though there are some who will ask us to see in it the ‘glory of human endeavor’. Remember that Swiss female adventure tourist who was gang-raped in 2013 while trying to cycle through one of the world’s deadliest places, the dreaded Chambal valley in Madhya Pradesh, central India? Later on she said to NDTV that she “had wanted to see if she could make it”.

She is no different from those dead climbers. She and them, they were all asking for it and got what was coming to them.

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I have a colleague named Sylvain who is one of those macho types who go on marathons and cross-country swim-a-thons every summer. He loves coming to work in a 2 km/litre Ford truck in winter and a 1900cc Harley in summer.

Sylvain bought a package to Everest Base Camp. He obviously thought that a trek to the Everest Base Camp couldn’t possibly be any worse than the 123km TriMemphre that he regularly ran/biked/swam, so he signed up for a $35000 package that would take him to the Base Camp and back.

The Everest Base Camp is situated at a height of 19500 ft, at the foot of the Khumbu Glacier, a river of ice that creeps down the valley between the Lhotse and the Everest. The Base Camp is where climbers and their back-up crew gather and while the back-up crew settle down, the climbers begin the month-long process of acclimatization before launching their final summit attempts.

On his second day at the base camp, Sylvain developed HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema) an affliction where fluid rapidly starts filling up inside the lungs till the victim literally dies of drowning, in his own fluids. HAPE can happen at altitudes usually higher than 8000 ft and is fatal if not treated immediately.

Sylvain was transported down in a chopper, barely alive and later recovered in a Kathmandu Hospital sufficiently enough to fly back home. The entire experience cost him an extra $75000.  He thought that the Everest base camp would be a cinch. He is lucky to be alive. And broke, deeply in debt.

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Climbing Everest is a 7-week effort that includes a series of acclimatization rotations. Over a 4-week period climbers climb higher and higher and come back down each time to rest, gradually acclimatizing the body to the lack of oxygen. These rotations take them up as high as Camp-3 at 24,500 ft and then down again, until the time arrives for the actual summit attempt. Beyond Camp-3 is the Death Zone where acclimatization no longer works.

So, lets say you have completed your acclimatization rotations and you’re back at Base Camp gearing up for the final summit push. You cannot wait too long because your body will lose it’s acclimatization and you’ll have to acclimatize all over again. You try to think positive and wait. You wait for a narrow window of calm weather, that appears at a specific time in June every year and remains in place for just 5-12 days, when the jet streams are diverted by seasonal storms on the Bay of Bengal, opening up that tiny weather window.

That’s when you, along with hordes of other climbers, rush upward to the summit. That’s why the overcrowding and the massive line-ups. And the deaths. And the barbarism of stepping over bodies, your oxygen-starved mind unable to even feel sorry for the dead guy, trying to concentrate on just trudging ahead.

But then I pause and hear the words of T.S Eliot – “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.”

Eliot failed to add that those who take that risk foolishly, shall instead find themselves shattered and broken, buried by an angered Goddess in snow at the bottom of a crevasse, frozen in eternity.

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ps:

Recommended for further reading – the ill-fated 1996 Everest disaster, when Murphy’s Law was once again conclusively proven……

“The history of the world is but the biography of famous men” – Thomas Carlyle(1795-1881)

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“…..He used to marry a new wife every day, and chop off her head next morning. And he would do it just as indifferent as if he was ordering up eggs. ‘Fetch up Nell Gwynn,’ he says. They fetch her up. Next morning, ‘Chop off her head!’ And they chop it off. ‘Fetch up Jane Shore,’ he says; and up she comes. Next morning, ‘Chop off her head’ – and they chop it off….”

– Excerpt from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn

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Richard Burton as HankVIII and Genevieve Bujold as Anne Boleyn in ‘Anne of a thousand days'(This is a publicity still, not a movie scene)

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The guy Huck Finn was referring to was Henry VIII, King of England from 1509 when he ascended the throne at 18, until his death in 1547. Though Huck’s was an amusing remark, it came pretty close to being very accurate.

Imagine it is early 16th Century London and you are a commoner, a serf, a helot, a menial. Take it easy, I’m just showing off my vocab, relax.

You are a nobody and it is a dark and treacherous place in a dark and treacherous time, reverberating with squelching sounds as folk step on horseshit on the roads. If you are taking a morning walk, you learn to stay away from the sidewalk and walk in the middle of the road even if a passing horse might kick you in the nuts.

You avoid the sidewalks because folks clear out their ablutions by simply opening a window and chucking the contents of their bedpans out and you wouldn’t want that in your face, would you? They haven’t yet gotten on to the concept of bathrooms and toilets and sewer systems.

The history that we usually study doesn’t tell us about the world that folks like you – shit shoveling ornery dumb suckers – lived in. Instead, the history we read is actually the biographies of famous men, of monarchs and the battles they fought. So if your dad happened to be king, chances are good you’d be in the history books and I’d be reading about who you fucked and who you ordered whacked and so on.

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So let’s imagine you’re not a commoner and instead, you’re a member of the elite. It is 16th century England and your Dad is King. In those days Kings would give anything to have a male heir to carry on the dynasty and your Dad is no different. He has two sons, you and your elder bro.

You are a magnificent specimen – tall, well built, with flaming red hair and you enjoy jousting, a sport where two knights bear down at each other on their steeds, with long lances in hand and try to unseat each other with the tips of their lances.

You don’t have to worry about being unseated from a horse. You are King Junior. The other guy won’t touch you, unless he fancies having his own little dungeon in the Tower of London and likes to help the executioners’ union with some overtime pay. But of course, nothing stops you from letting the other knight have it with your lance. What the fuck’s he going ta do? Sue you? Hot damn, you are the heir to the fucking throne, you’re the fucking law.

Jousting. Relax, this is a 21st century demo. Spectators didn’t wear jeans those days (Photo courtesy: Wikimedia)

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Now about your elder bro. He is a frail, scrawny kid who is always falling ill. Not surprising. With all those charcoal and wood burning stoves right in the middle of the hearth and London’s typically dank and muggy climate, folks are always just a step away from contracting tuberculosis, which right now is a terminal illness. Why, even a bout of flu can get you killed these days. Add to that an unhealthy diet of almost exclusively red meat, probably slightly putrefied in the heat…. hey, you have to have a pretty solid constitution to get to the double digits.

And so it is with Prince Arthur, your big bro. Your Dad had gotten him hitched with the daughter of the Spanish King Ferdinand when he was just two. That is quite normal with European monarchies, this advance booking, since royals want to marry only other royals and there aren’t many going around. Besides, marriages these days have little to do with love. A lot of gold, territory and favors change hands as dowry and new wartime alliances are forged.

A cute plump and unassuming 16yr old, Catherine of Aragon unfortunately never gets laid. By Arthur, that is. Arthur dies before the marriage has been consummated. They call it ‘sweating sickness’, whatever that is.

Your Dad doesn’t break out in a sweat either, since he still has you.

Now, you are quite unlike your elder bro, may the Lord rest his soul. You’re a horny stud. You’ve been escorting Cathy around, holding her soft pudgy hands through her bereavement. You’re just 12 but your crotch-hugging long hose breeches are bulging fit ta burst. You can’t wait to have your left hand inside her bodice while your right wants to blaze a trail into her padded skirt. That’s you with Cathy, all grown up, below:-

 Hank and Cathy

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The moment your Dad gives up the ghost in 1509, you are pronounced King, being next in line. You’re 18 now and young dames and duchesses are being lined up for you ta marry but you decide to marry old Cathy. You’re a pushover for sweet young widows with puffy, unexplored pussies.

You fuck. All the time – in the antechamber, in the chapel, before a joust, after a joust. Like your father and his before him, you want a male heir, remember? And besides, you’re just a plain horny guy. Alongside, you carry on affairs galore, with women who are commoners. You have a commoner-girl fetish. Hey, I live in the twennie-first century and I have a commoner girl fetish. If you’ve seen those Malayalee Indian farm girls who don’t wear bras, you’ll know what I mean.

Now take it easy, this isn’t about me, it’s about you, Hank the 8th.

The years go by but Cathy fails to give you a male heir. She does give birth to the famous future Queen Mary I, but that doesn’t matter to you. You want a guy, period. When Cathy starts gaining too much weight, you realize that your interest in her is inversely proportional. It is round and about the same time that you set your horny eyes on one of her maids-in-waiting, Anne Boleyn.

Maids-in-waiting are nubile young girls from noble families who are ostensibly employed on an honorary basis by the queen to keep her company and help her get dressed and all. However, their actual job profile and key performance criteria are to be spirited away and get laid by the King whenever he wishes. In this, Anne Boleyn excels and you’re soon infatuated. She has these massive breasts that resemble those East African baobab fruits and you love getting lost in ’em.

(Actually there is no evidence that Anne Boleyn had big tits. But then this is my blog and if I say Annie had big jugs, she had big jugs).

You want this Boleyn broad but can’t, because there’s only one church these days and that’s the Roman Catholic Church and it won’t allow you ta divorce Cath because Catholicism says divorce is a sin. The church’s message is that you can fuck all you want and whomever, even your horse if you are into such dalliances. But you absolutely cannot get a divorce.

Anne is a nymph, adroit at getting to your erotic zones and you are one big erotic zone, you. She is dark complexioned, perky, impish, impertinent and has a flash of a temper. She drives you nuts and leaves you with one perpetually sore richard.

The Roman Catholic Church has not morphed into the ‘Facebook for pedophiles’ yet. That will happen in later centuries. Right now it has enormous power and greed and it is represented in every European country by an archbishop who runs things like a parallel government, collecting taxes directly from the citizens while the monarch sucks his thumbs and picks up the crumbs and bows allegiance to the fucking Pope.

Hank weds Anne

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But you are King, dammit. And you are hot headed. You have been chafing against this no-divorce papal leash for some time. You see an opportunity here. When the Pope refuses to allow the divorce so you can marry Anne, you show him your bejeweled middle finger and establish your own church, the Church of England.

What the Almighty would think about all this – creating a new church just for the sake of a pussy – does not cross your mind.

You go ahead and have all those bishops who still insist on allegiance to the Pope, beheaded. Oh yeah, an executioner’s is the only recession-proof job around, these days. All that a rookie executioner needs to know is how to swing a fifty pound axe and get the sucker square on the neck.

After you’re done with the bishops, you confiscate all church property and wealth, which is enormous and parallels the King’s. Anne, a power hungry harlot, is thrilled. You wed her, you import a kama sutra expert from the land of spices and gold and you fuck Annie any which way but alas, she has an air but no male heir and we all know what you do with broads who don’t give you a male heir.

All that frenzied fucking does provide Anne with a baby – England’s most successful monarch of all time, Queen Elizabeth-1. But she is a broad. Not good enough. You are fixated with having a son.

Like I said before, your new queen, Anne, is brash and arrogant and that doesn’t go down well for a lady – even a queen – in 16th century England. Soon she ends up making powerful enemies in your court – men you have to depend upon and occasionally mollycoddle, in order to maintain your own power.

Very soon Anne Boleyn turns into a liability. From this point, her days are numbered. Soon you begin looking for ways ta get rid of her.

You fabricate a story about Anne sleeping around and even screwing her own bro and plotting against you and all and then – after having laid the brick and mortar groundwork, you sentence her to death. You had originally wanted her to be burnt at the stake but then, thinking of all the times she gave you awesome head, you decide to have her beheaded.

For the execution, you get an expert swordsman from France. (You have your own executioner but you don’t trust the bastard alone with your Annie). The swordsman is an authentic French knight, hung like a bull, his biceps (and his stretch pants) bulging. You schedule the execution for the next Friday. You have plans with another MIW that weekend. MIW Maid-In-Waiting.

Anne is thrown inside the Tower of London. This is a forbidding structure made from huge blocks of stone. There is a dark dank dampness and the air of death in there, torches flickering along the walls, stone steps leading down to infinity. Umm…that was in Ben Hur, sorry, I do get mixed up these days.

Anne is a fighter. It’s been written that she uses all her charms to persuade her jailer to unlock her dungeon door and look the other way while she slips away in the dark and boards a schooner to Tunisia, but he doesn’t bite and she is executed.

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I have to go now. Will definitely let you know what happens after Anne’s beheading and all Hank’s other wives, soon as I get another Stella Artois. Story telling makes me thirsty.

Toodle-oo.

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