Spider Sex and Christian Denial

For the past few minutes, I have been watching a spider repeatedly raise and lower itself by a strand of web, quickly dropping down, climbing back up, then quickly dropping down again. I was alarmed when I first noticed it, but I did nothing because I have made peace with the spiders in my apartment, and have actually named seven of them (Esmeralda, Arachne, Euripides, Trifle, Carlotta, Areola, and Frank; Frank is dead and is hanging with dried, bent legs upside-down above the patio door).

This spider I have been watching, however, just appeared in the window next to where I sit at the computer. It's not nearly as large as my hand, but easily larger than a grain of brown rice (the spider, not my computer). It took me a little longer to notice the second spider, which I have also been watching. It is not nearly as large as a grain of brown rice, but easily larger than the egg of a fertile human female. It too has been up and down its own strand of web, appearing much more frantic in its movements because its minutiae requires it to work much faster in order to keep up with its grand counterpart.

My first thought - I, optimist, idealist, utopian - was that I was watching a mother spider teaching her baby to spin a web. Of course, mother spiders do not have "a baby," they have a swarm of babies, none of whom will ever be "taught" to spin a web because the mother will die pre-natally and the babies will devour her dead carcass after they explode from her egg sac. So that warm, fuzzy thought faded pretty quickly and was replaced with the realization that what I am witnessing is carnal. I am watching a mating dance in progress, and soon, once the deed is done, that large spider will kill and eat her little mate. That itsy, bitsy spider is so driven by his primal urges that he is willing to be killed and eaten by his lover. Wham, bam, bite off my head. This forces the obvious question: Is it possible that spiders experience more powerful orgasms than human beings? Auto-erotic strangulation is a commonly known, albeit ill-advised, practice. What about decapitation? A man can only wonder what this would feel like, and hope, perhaps, that this is how his life will end. And might the female spider be in an orgasmic hysteria that incites her to kill? How else can one explain such seemingly illogical behavior? They're animals, driven by lust - and it must be damn good, if you ask me. It would have to be!

I think most people don't want to be reminded that they are animals. This is why cultures construct taboos around excrement and sexual behavior. It allows us to pretend that we're different from the beasts of the world. But, no matter how hard we pretend, we can't truly eliminate these things from our lives. Instead, their existence is simply denied. We're taught that civilized people don't talk about such things, nor the parts of the bodies associated with them. But of course we run and hide, and lock ourselves away, and poop and pee and screw - like filthy beasts! You do it. I do it. We can't avoid it. It's in our nature. We are what we are.

What does set us apart, perhaps, is this uniquely human desire to not be what we are. Most religions teach us to believe we're something more. And it works. It's lovely. Bliss - as long as everyone else plays along. As long as we poop and pee and screw in secret, and don't talk about it too much, we can keep pretending we're not like those beastly creatures that just do it out in the open, whenever they feel like it.

But when people don't play along, the illusion is disrupted. Religions need the power to control the behavior of the entire populace (even those who don't follow their belief system) in order to perpetuate their illusions of superiority among the creatures of the world. Even more important, actually, is the need to maintain the denial of our place among the animals. Because, if we're not completely separate, we're merely EVOLVED.

Whoa! Hold on a minute... you might be saying. Are you suggesting that people should just poop and pee and screw whenever and wherever they feel like it? That would be anarchy! Civilization would crumble! WE CAN NOT HAVE THAT! blah blah blah...

NO NO NO. Of COURSE I'm not suggesting that! That would be ridiculous... is what I would have said, before I moved to San Francisco. But I have lived in San Francisco now for almost eight years, and I gotta tell ya, people pretty much do poop and pee and screw whenever and wherever they want to here. And you know, I admit it can be a little annoying - but a threat to the stability of civilized society it's not.

I'm neither a spider, nor a Christian. And though I can't recall ever being lathered up into a sexual frenzy so intense that I considered allowing my mate to cannibalize me in the warm afterglow of lovemaking, I do close the door when I go to the bathroom. Call me a prude, I guess. In fact, I'll have you know I can be just as oppressive as even the most seasoned fanatic. For instance, if you'll excuse me, I need to put a stop to this carnality in the window before I have a couple hundred hungry orphans to deal with.