The Boulevards of Extinction. Andrew Benson Brown

of the moralists, an altruistic sacrifice is proof of innocence.

      A statue stands with its finger raised in the air. Its admirers, fascinated by how the stone seems chiseled out of life, walk that way. Soon they come to another statue pointing in another direction. And so on. The history of morals is such a sculpture labyrinth, where people would feel lost among the paths of experience if earlier generations had not poured cement over their pedants, prophets, and polemicists. They don’t realize that in these cases life was animated out of stone, and the cement was merely added as a finish—capital punishment often serves as a protective coating.

      Love’s Novelty

      If first love is always young, every love thereafter is like the old woman in the rocking chair: enfeebled by experience and swaying to a memory. Love ends in the recline position, the skin still enjoying the bulk of feeling—this is perhaps true only of noble souls; with all the rest, every love feels original: they leave their pre-teen playmate to marry their high school sweetheart, only to refresh their bed at college enrollment. Every new season of life obliges a new excitement. The modern lover has internalized the essence of comedy: that happy endings always round off at the commencement of the relationship. Love becomes a fading echo. Without a right side to cast our nets over, we drag them through thinned, polluted seas, hungering for the succulence of perpetual novelty and surviving off of chunks from driftbones. When our life partner, passion, finally leaves us, comes the realization: that we should have held on the first time.

      The Highest Necessity

      “How delicious it smells,” the wino says, referring to the glass of tap water. “But . . . if I were lost in the desert I would spill it in a heartbeat for a good box of cabernet.”—It is when a man is most thirsty that he needs his appreciation. And in the wilderness, without anyone to praise his connoisseurship, he can at least savor the glass that will end his urgency. The moral principles of addiction will not permit infidelity; even in extreme circumstances gratitude to the grape is paramount, hydration the betrayal of a meager satisfaction. His is a disinterested dependence. Dying, he would set fire to a vineyard to spare its contents from being dried into raisins or shipped away fresh—to prevent service to a lesser obligation. “Oh,” whines the wino, “what a loss that would be!”

      Feast or Famine

      Taking our most cherished dichotomies out to brunch: eating cereal with sandwiches, mixing orange juice with champagne, leaving a generous tip with a poem, On the Virtue of Indigence, scribbled on the bill. White and black, good and evil, ugly and beautiful—all muddied somewhere between the hash brown casserole and the toilet. For as long as one is satiated, dualities will hold hands and twirl. But when hunger returns the senses lose their dullness and no longer see gray.

      Plagued by Love

      His clothes were moth-eaten, his stomach full of butterflies. Love, infesting one with a sense of homelessness and indigestion as it does, is only exacerbated further by the application of insecticide.

      Moth musk—perfume for all those heading towards the bottom of the food chain. He buys a new shirt, pops an antacid, spritzes himself, and is swarmed by every flirter in a seven-mile radius. Cured of the feeling of love, he finds himself thrust into the phenomenon of it. Leper among Lepidoptera, he spreads drab wings in the clubbing hours, transformed into a barfly’s fuzzy ideal of beauty. Impersonation is his only defense, pollination of weeds his only purpose.

      And to think that all he ever wanted was . . . a bug zapper.

      Seasons of Womanhood

      Virgins want to wait, spinsters to give it all away. After the petals of her youth have fallen comes the Autumn Philanderer, deflowering her honor by insinuating himself into her will. People who allow themselves to be cheated after their death are never said to have spent their life well. If only he had caught her in spring instead of winter! Still taking what wasn’t ready to be given, by introducing her into an early summer he would have saved her from the expectation of virtue.

      The Workshop

      Our “art of love”: apprenticed to the internet, we are members of passion’s craft guild. The monopoly on masturbation prepares us to become journeymen of jealousy. When we finally do produce our magnum opus of courtship and are promoted to master, we seethe and grumble and set up our own workshop, accepting students on a pay-per-view basis.

      The ambidextrous masturbator: one hand’s fatigue is an opportunity for the other to show its tenderness. But eventually a man tires of the slow and gentle, seeking again the intensity that would rub him raw. Alternation has been the rule for so long that he never thinks to ask his girlfriend to use both hands at the same time. For the same reason, in his emotional life he thrives on a dialectic of abuse and babying instead of just bending over to be spanked.

      Celeranimous

      “There is a vastness there,” the foreign traveler reports—looking up from his map to point to our bellies. As we measure our lifespans, so do we hold and feel our largevity. But with spirit it is otherwise—that we swallow. Falling short of magnanimity, we settle for being “fast-souled.” In a society characterized by the vicarious lifestyle, alcohol and drugs are the most direct modes of secondhand experience: having no great events to give shape to existence, one resorts to the intravenous joie de vivre. But the real intensity is the man intoxicated by blood alone—his own and others.’ It rouses little to see red if you can’t also smell and taste red—if you can’t drown all of your senses in the nectar of life and death.

      The Language of Modern Love

      A polyglot love: forms of address that go beyond body language to the argot of objects: stale candy, flat champagne, unarticulated children. To know each liaison by a peculiar gift. A construction paper heart cuts wrists more painfully than scissors.

      My Free Love Gave to Me . . .

      Love quadrangles: four geese a laying, three substitutions, two confused goslings—twelve days of Christmas abridged in one seedy hotel room.

      Hopping from bed to bed is as natural as channel-surfing, misplacing household trash, applying for a new baby while nursing a job, planning late bills while prepaying a vacation. A multislacking love hones all the senses in on distraction from many objects at once. One sheds condoms like snake skins and juggles diseases with the finesse of a hemiplegic acrobat.

      Faithful to the Ideal

      Idolatry, adultery: if the first is genuine, it overflows into the second. Zeal needs a physical outlet the more it achieves fulfillment. An object of mistreatment, a plaything to scorn, jealousy to encourage appreciation. If only both were socially acceptable at least one might be common.

      A Dying Groom’s Wedding Speech

      Beloved Wife,

      You were to be both my restraint and my onslaught. As my ball and chain I would have flailed you about with the vigor of a medieval knight; together we would be safe in my castle. That these words we have exchanged would have been enough to tie us together fast, I am sure. But since this glass of punch has poisoned me and I have but a few moments left to express my love, I can only speculate what our life would have been like: me sitting on the porch enjoying my early retirement, the nanny tending to the children, you out in the world earning a living—I respect your modern ideals. A woman’s place is no longer in the home. She must know the virtue of a good work ethic. This is why, as you know, I only employ women in my household: chef, chauffeur, butler, maid—all female. I am only too happy to foster the advancement of woman’s position in the professional world. And whatever the temptations, I promise that you would have always remained my highest duty. Curse the bridesmaid who took revenge on my faithlessness; which one it was is anyone’s guess (though I myself have a working theory). Forgive me, I am still amorous despite my age. Though yesterday I wanted to experience my singlehood one last time, today I am yours forever, since tomorrow I will belong to the worms. I make a young widow of you, it’s true, but I hope you will take my promises into account and remain faithful to my memory: please, do not take another lover, but remain as chaste as I have always known you to be. I know