Chapter 5 - Germany: 30,000 Years Ago part 4

I grew into a strapping young man, the tallest in my tribe, and forsook the domed hut in which my father and his women resided. I constructed a wetus with my companion Brulde at the edge of camp, and we shared it as bachelors. We hunted our own food and did as we pleased. Slept all day. Got high on merje. We mated freely with the unattached females in our camp and attended all the ritual orgies, but eventually my father took Brulde and I aside and told us it was time to find some wives.

"You boys are getting too old to be wifeless," he intoned in a scolding voice. This, at the far end of camp where we tanned animal hides for our clothing and tents.

It was an odorous task, which involved soaking the skins in urine and then bating them with feces and animal brains. My father was scraping the hair from a deer hide as he chastised us, his lips curled back from his teeth as he labored.

"If you don't find wives soon, my sons," he said, "I'm afraid you'll become too fond of Good Practice and never bless me with grandbabies."

Brulde and I were mortified.

Bisexual behavior was an integral component of our society, as it has been in so many ancient cultures throughout history. The Greeks. The Romans. The Spartans. In our tribe, the men were expected to bond together as adolescents before taking a wife, or wives. It was called, with a small degree of snickering disdain by the older married men, "Good Practice". I could list for you a dozen reasons such behavior was advantageous in a primitive hunter-gatherer society, but as it has become somewhat taboo in your modern technological society—some actually believe it unnatural!—I will gloss over the finer points. It was simply an element of our group marriage customs, perhaps even an essential part of it, for it kept the men from becoming overly jealous of one another. While it was common to mock unmarried men-- to dismiss them as boys by saying, "Oh, them? They're still Practicing!"-- our males were only considered strange if they never sought female companions to share their tent. The only thing that was a little fuzzy was the acceptable age one could remain unmarried.

Apparently, my father had decided we were getting a little too close to that time of life for his own peace of mind. It made me wonder: were our tribesmen laughing at us behind our backs?

Brulde wanted to travel to a nearby camp and steal a couple of their women for our wives. It was a common thing for our tribesmen to do. In fact, there were at least two other Cro-Magnon camps within a week's travel that our males often raided for wives—and they us. My brother Epp'ha's wives were from those foreign tribes, and Aldh had gone to live with the Blue Tree People in the south with his companion Klosthe. Maybe that sounds strange, but it was our custom. There was even some degree of ceremony involved with the practice.

In the spring and fall, we would send a messenger to a neighboring camp to announce that a group of "stags" was planning to raid their camp for wives. The unmarried women who wanted mates would then adorn themselves in grass skirts and jewelry and paint their skin in bright colors and wait to be "kidnapped". Sometimes there were mock battles or games of strength with the men of the other tribe. It was all rather exciting. There were rarely any serious injuries, and no women were actually forcibly abducted. It was mostly just a bunch of lusty boys in deerskins chasing after girls as they laughed and pretended to elude the panting young men who pursued them. I know our tribeswomen got terribly excited when a messenger from a neighboring tribe proclaimed the coming of the stags.

I, however, found my thoughts turning to Eyya.

I thought Brulde would mock my desire for a Fat Hand bride, but I brought him around with surprisingly little debate. He only objected for fear of ridicule, but he admitted that he thought she was finely made for a Fat Hand female. "It is settled then!" I cried. "Eyya will be our wife!"

She seemed to sense my interest from afar the next time she came to the river with the Neanderthal fishing party. I watched her intently, heart racing, and she watched me back, smiling and flashing her eyes at me as she gathered berries. No matter what bush she picked from, she always seemed to position her body so that her rump was pointed in my direction.

(I won't tell you what was pointed in her direction!)

It was a cool and blustery afternoon. The sun dazzled on the surface of the river. Eyya bent and picked, and I stared and pointed. Brulde watched us pick and stare and point until he lost all patience, after which he sighed very loudly and said, "If you don't make your move soon, I'm going home and taking a nap! Look how she's bending over to pick those berries! That's practically an invitation to mount her!"

I recalled the sensation of her lips pressed to mine, so warm and yielding, and could not help but tremble with desire. Twice already I had managed to steal a kiss from her in the sun-dappled shadows of the woods that fringed the river, pressing her against the trunk of a tree with my body, well out of her father's sight. She had met my kisses both times with her own fervent desire, her nails raking down my back, but always she managed to wriggle away from me before I could plant myself inside of her. She would go running back to the water with a teasing little laugh, leaving me hot and trembling with unconsummated passion.

"She has a very pleasant shape," I said. "Don't you think so, Brulde? I've always found her to be quite comely, especially now that she is all grown up. So what do you think? Do you think she would really accept us as mates?"

"I would be more worried about her father!" Brulde said, tossing a bit of tree bark into the water lapping near our feet. As always, he was overly worried about the Neanderthal men. He glanced at them warily, running the pad of his thumb over the scar on his cheek.

I looked down the river at the Fat Hand. She looked up at me from her basket of berries. She smiled and ducked her head.

Her relatives were knee deep in the glimmering current, naked and stabbing the water with their sharpened fishing sticks. They were paying no attention to us.

Eyya glanced at her father, saw that his back was to her and set her basket aside. She shot me a meaningful look and slipped nimbly into the rushes.

Brulde laughed. "See? I told you!" Then in a low voice, "Do you want to go mate with her? She does have nice breasts."

"Why not?" I said with a grin. "Who cares what the other men think?"

I had already mated with most of the young women in my tribe, and Brulde and I had been Practicing since we sprouted the first hairs on our organs, yet I had begun to feel lonely. I desired a female companion. Someone to love me, someone I could care for and protect. I sometimes imagined having little babies of my own to play with. Always, when I felt like I needed those things, I thought of Eyya.

My father, of course, would be thrilled. He'd always shared my respect for the Neanderthals.

Brulde and I stood and, plucking our spears from the muddy riverbank, followed the young Fat Hand into the rushes.