Chapter 8 - Germany: 30,000 Years Ago part 7

I suppose you are somewhat confused and maybe even a little outraged by the sexual practices of my people and the family dynamics of my era. I can assure you, I was a typical man of my culture and my living arrangements were a common thing.

To me, you denizens of this modern epoch seem terribly superstitious and prudish. To my way of thinking, your culture has rejected nearly the entirety of possible human experience for an unnatural and oppressive supernatural belief system. You slice off the most sensitive and pleasurable parts of your anatomy and go mad in your attempts to stifle all sexual urges and for what... vague and contradictory promises of some afterlife reward?

Why not enjoy your brief lives as my people did? We didn't live like wild animals. We had our traditions, our rituals and customs, but our rules were much looser and more forgiving. Pleasure was freely given. No one fought over mates. Not often, anyway. There was no shame of the body and no concept of ownership, human or otherwise. If a woman wanted a divorce, she packed her belongings and left her man's tent, usually after informing him, quite loudly, of his failings. Child rearing was more of a group endeavor than an individual burden. Mates were shared and it was customary to be grateful if someone pleasured one of your partners-- for pleasure was a good thing to us, not the sinful thing it has become in this modern world.

Our spiritual practices included the use of mind-altering drugs (the dream weed, which was pronounced "merj" in our tongue, and sometimes a hallucinogenic tea we made from mushrooms called framash), the orgies we held on the nights of the vernal and autumnal equinox and during marriage ceremonies and coming-of-age celebrations, and the remembrance and veneration of our ancestors. Music and dance was a component of all these practices, often to physical exhaustion.

We believed in spirits and honored our deceased, but we did not create elaborate myths about all powerful entities or attribute a storm or the flooding of a river to the ire of some make-believe deity. A tree was just a tree; a stone simply a stone. We did not possess the concept of "sin" or "hell". For the things we did not understand, we had a word. It was nuhnhe. It meant "who can know?" Question: Where does the sun go at night? Answer: Nuhnhe. Usually with a shrug.

The Neanderthals believed Doomhalde was the world and we were as fleas upon the beast's back. My people had no such myths. The origin of the world, to us, was simply nuhnhe.

The sexuality of our tribesmen and women was openly discussed, a thing to be celebrated and enjoyed, free of guilt and condemnation. It was, in fact, a subject of great interest among my people. Who had slept with who and what they thought of it. Who was leaving her husbands. Who was now with child. Absent literature and moving picture shows, there wasn't much else to gossip about really. We weren't ashamed or afraid of our genitals. Men were not isolated and enslaved as they are now to such strict yokes of propriety and responsibility. Women in my day were true equals with their male counterparts, not the hapless possessions of men as they've allowed themselves to become in more recent centuries-- and still continue to be in some backwards nation-states.

Do I dare tell you of Brulde? I know some of you will be dismayed, perhaps even disgusted, by our relationship.

Brulde was my male companion. The word my people had for our relationship could roughly be translated today as "tent mate" or perhaps "husband"-- but that has so many negative connotations for you modern religious fanatics.

A distant cousin, Brulde was a few inches shorter than I, compact and muscular, with long curling blond hair and a thick, bushy beard. He had deep-set eyes, bluish-gray in color, a wide mouth and a tendency towards somber contemplation. He was often overly cautious, but he was loyal and he was trustworthy.

He was my constant companion, my hunting partner, and yes, from time to time a lover. He protected me when I was vulnerable, when I was drugged or asleep, cared for me when I was ill, guarded me from predators when I was shitting or mating... and I did the same for him. He helped me to protect and provide for our wives and our numerous troublesome children. He groomed me and tended to my wounds. He entertained me when we were hunting far afield. When the rare fight erupted in our camp, he was there at my back, fighting with me... for me... and I him.

It is a relationship that I think you modern men sorely miss. Look to your popular culture if you do not believe this is so. How often is the two-male dynamic depicted in your books and movies and television programs? It is a theme that is repeated with telling regularity. You have an approximation of this social convention. You call it "best friend", I believe. Or sometimes "blood brother". But it is much circumscribed now by your phallus-mutilating, Hell-condemning desert god. In your culture, it is taboo for men to share pleasure. You may live or die for a man you love, but the admission of affection, the intimate touch, that is a forbidden thing.

Not so in my time.

Brulde came to our wetus as a child. He was orphaned at an early age and slept at my side from that day forth. We were roughly the same age so we became close companions in our childhood. When puberty overtook us, we explored our blooming sexuality together. We were curious. Why should there be shame in that? We knew the older boys engaged in such behavior, and often even the grown men did as well. We knew that certain rituals were observed before battle, rituals only departing warriors participated in, and that some of the rites were sexual in nature. It was a natural thing for us.

I was the bigger, stronger boy, and so I took the more dominant role. Yet there was nothing effeminate about my companion. He was just as masculine as I was, and we both preferred to couple with females. Our people just didn't have any taboos about other forms of sexual expression.

As I said before, the men of my tribe joked about that kind of behavior. They called it "Good Practice". Well, we "practiced" a lot when we were boys. The girls our age were not so free with their affection, and boys are so curious during that stage of development. But it was not simply lust that drew us together. We shared a close bond. I respected his quiet strength. He admired my boldness.

Brulde shared my tent, my wives, my children and my life, but so that it doesn't jar you, my modern day reader, I will simply refer to him as my companion.

He was my Hephaestion. My Patroclus.

When he died, I abandoned my will to live. When he descended into the earth, I descended into the eternal ice.

Or so was my intent.