THE MALE SPINSTER

The male spinster is not a bachelor. The term bachelor holds connotations of frivolity and licentiousness: his is an existence filled with hard liquor, soft women and long nights; he samples the goods, sucks the marrow from the great carnal bone, bides his time until his society pressures him into settling down; he is an extremely valuable ore, sought by masses of women; he is the illusive symbol in the female formula; his ultimate goal, whether he knows it or not, is to pass on his genetic code; often this materialises in the sporadic, visceral objective of sexual intercourse; in order to achieve his end, therefore, the bachelor’s body becomes his prevalent asset, though the mind can play a certain role.

The male spinster has no interest in heredity. He sees it as a selfish, unkind and ultimately fruitless ambition. The male spinster is not simply a virgin; the virgin’s lack of sex is more often than not imposed, be it through societal circumstances, religious conventions or simply a lack of opportunity. If the male spinster is virginal, it is incidental. The male spinster may have experimented with sexual practices, perhaps to perverted extremes, but will finally reject sexual ambition; he does not see sexual custom as derisory or uninteresting but simply as something that is foreign to him, therefore he observes it with the curious but detached perceptiveness of a tourist or zoo-goer. Though the male spinster is nonsexual, he can quite readily distinguish beauty in both the sexes.

The male spinster is a passer-by in life, a voyeur, an inert entity in the conduct of others; he keenly documents human behaviour, from its insignificant gesticulations to its global interactions, but seldom sees himself as worthy of being documented. As a consequence, the male spinster will often be introverted, almost to the extreme of being antisocial; though paradoxically he can be quite comfortable with his discomfort in social settings.

The male spinster is civil and ethical, but, unlike the stereotype of his female counterpart, he is not prudish. He is sympathetic and nonchalant (almost apathetic) towards the shortcomings of human nature

The male spinster is a creature of the mind; he aspires only to comprehend, to unravel the byzantine knots of existence. He begins with the realisation that the cosmos responds to the perpetual why with an empty because, but also with the realisation that a mind which can appreciate such a thing is quite magnificent, to say the least. He understands that his conception is quite imperfect, that his intellect being entangled in the primitive impulses of an animal brain provides both pros and cons; he acknowledges that it permits him to discern and benefit from his species’ aesthetical language throughout the artistic media, but he also must concede that it limits his true objectivity. Still he will sit at his desk for hours, sipping cup of tea after cup of tea, deconstructing why it is he deconstructs why it is he deconstructs why it is he deconstructs, and will emerge with nothing but scribble-drawings of umbrellas and a mild migraine.

The male spinster reveres intelligence and beauty, acumen and bravura. Nothing more. The male spinster will commonly make a living by means of artistic passions. The male spinster accepts his own mortality without much concern, as he recognises that the voluminous mortal coil he shall be shuffling off will soon enough rust and perish itself; he is atheistic. The male spinster is a dying breed, or possibly a new breed in emergence; either way he is a rarity.