The Hunters

       It was 12 o’clock midnight. Friday. We were driving through the Black Forest in Germany, about to reach our hotel hidden in the mountains. When we set out, I was a man. Along the way, I became a woman.

       Man is a strange creature. I mean human beings in general, not just men. Nature controls all the animal species, like a wise and generous mother. She tells them when to come on heat, when to breed,  how to care for their babies; when to fly south, when to migrate north, where to find food and water. Man has lost this ability. Man is controlled by societies of men. By upbringing, by a collective unconsciousness, by other men. Not infrequently by other women.

       In one instant, as a man in a car, I was invaded by the spirit of a lady demon from the forest. Suddenly I no longer thought or felt like a man. And yet I sat listening to the conversation of the two other men in the moving vehicle. The subject was hunting. Not hunting in the forest – hunting for women (listen to their song!).

      Here we had two married men professing to be hunters. Yes, they had wives. Yes, they had children. Before we set out from Spain, I personally saw one of them make the effort and find the time to drive an extra kilometre to give his two little kids a goodbye kiss, giving another to his wife too. But all that was beside the point. As soon as they reached the airport, the typical male banter came pouring out.

       “Did you see that?”

       “What?”

       “The girl going down the escalator. God, was she hot!”

       “So?”

       “I’d give her such a drilling that she’d never forget it!” 

       Seven seconds later, there were more comments as the females continued to file by. The men’s eyes were equally divided between the flight information panels and the various salient parts of female anatomies breezing by.

       I was spared more comments on the plane, because I had a seat in a different row, but upon our arrival in Germany, there was more of the same:

       “Oh my God! What torture! Didn’t you see how that air hostess kept walking up and down the aisle with that tight ass? What a backside!”

       “Well, I saw it, but I think she’d be a little too young for you…”

       “Who cares!”

       “Well, did you get her phone number?”

       “No,” said my companion, looking a little dumb.

       The next in line were the Lufthansa hostesses at the airport, then the girls at the Rent-a-Car, then some imagined blonde Germanic female in my travelling companion’s head. It didn’t stop, and two male heads kept twisting and turning with every step, only dampened by their increasing thirst and hunger. The predators had been let loose… You could hear the sound of the hunt… (listen to the hounds!)

      Back in the car, an explanation was being given of what a “hunter” is. All men are hunters, natural hunters. It is part of their makeup. They look at women and desire them. All the time. They notice things like buttocks twitching in front of them, breasts bouncing as they walk by, shapely legs in pantyhose walking past, hair blowing in the breeze. The really sensual types – not so frequent, in my opinion – will sniff the air as a woman walks past to catch a whiff of her aroma. And this hunt is always proceeding, with the hunter exerting all his innate abilities to find and seize his prey. Very, very often, he will fail miserably. No matter – his ego is hardened by failure. It makes him more persuasive. Does he learn? Who knows? Maybe some men are capable of learning, others merely repeat their ingrained patterns and hope for the best. Whatever the outcome, the repetitive hunting mechanism seems to be unleashed whenever the man is free from the surveillance of his partner.

       “But aren’t you guys married?” said my female invading spirit through my mouth at two seconds past midnight.

       “Of course we are,” said number one.

       “And happily,” said number two, “But that doesn’t prevent us from hunting at any time when we are not at home.”

       “But surely you are being unfaithful, at least in spirit,” I protested.

       “Yes and no,” was their reply. The less articulate number one simply shrugged. The more loquacious number two explained that there are two different worlds: “at-home” and “away-from-home”. “Away from home”, anything can happen. “At home” is sacred and nothing comes into the home to interfere.

       “You mean anything that happens during the hunt doesn’t affect your home life?” I queried.

       “That’s right,” said number two. “Nothing comes into the home. Nothing interferes with the wife or the kids.”

       “Well, I congratulate you!” said I. “At least under one roof you can be called ‘faithful’.”

       “But when we’re out or away, that’s a different story,” continued number two. “We hunt, we hope, we look and we taste if we can, and if something comes up, we take it…”

       “And you think that is OK?” my female spirit asked.

       “Sure it’s OK, as long as it doesn’t affect the home,” punctuated my number two.

       The woman in me now thought of a way to test their theory, so I questioned them further.

       “And do you think you are really the hunter?”

       “Yes, we are the hunters,” was number two’s reply.

       “But perhaps as hunters, you are merely expressing a wish, and when that wish is understood, you become the prey of a woman who wants to be hunted. How does that sound to you?”

       “Mmm, you mean we are not the hunters?”

       “Yes, that’s what I mean. You hunt, and you get rejected. OK, you are just hunting. But if you hunt and you get accepted, it’s because the woman is also hunting and she just lets you think you are hunting, but is really the hunter herself, because she is the one saying ‘yes’. It all depends on her.”

       “But we started the hunt, so we are the hunters,” he said protestingly.

       “Ah, but it is the woman who finally accepts and agrees, so she controls the whole process from the start – maybe she was intentionally dressed for the occasion, made-up, perfumed, you know, and she even walked and talked sensuously just to attract you!”

       “Well, of course, but she’s only placing herself on display. We do the hunting,” affirmed my now very dubious number two. 

      Ten minutes later, after passing under the dense overhanging trees of the road up the mountain, we came out onto a higher plateau, saw the lighted castle in front of us and pulled into the driveway. We got out of the car at the hotel entrance. A good-looking woman was waiting for us. I suddenly felt a strange streaming sensation, as if water was being let loose from my heart and stomach, and my female spirit whooshed out, leaving me as bare as a man in a bathtub. I looked at the lady under the welcoming lights of the vestibule and thought, “Well, now doesn’t she look nice. I wonder if we can get something going here tonight….” (Listen to these lies...)