The Imaginary Stud -- What's In A Name?

So the Imaginary Stud was beaten to a pulp and his two front teeth knocked out, and of course he was upset. But I used some of my great people skills to calm him down and send him home to find a comfy chair and settle in with a good book. I told him I'd come check on him.

When I got there earlier this morning, he was stretched out on the floor. The blanket was half on him and stretched to the chair. On the nightstand I saw evidence that he had been trying to drown his sorrows with a half can of beer. How sad. He looked every bit a dead man, the illusion only broken by his rough snoring and violent thrashing about. He was obviously reliving the experience of the deranged sister and wild bulls who had put him in this sorry state.

I shook him and gently called his name. He came up fighting, swinging his fists, and had a hard time breaking the dream's hold. But he finally realized it was me and settled down. "What time is it?" he asked, provoking me to mercifully relieve his curiosity as to the hour of the day by glancing at my cellphone and faithfully conveying the information back to his wondering mind.

He got up, went to the bathroom, did his personal cleansing rituals, then came back and went into a whole yoga/exercise regimen he follows. But before that, he tossed me a "Composition" notebook that he uses to keep track of his dates. He motioned me to open it, which I immediately saw was his way of convincing me that everything he says about his conquests is true.

Indeed, it appears that maybe he really is the father of a very large number of children in the community, assuming the notebook itself isn't part of the ruse. Until I know for sure, I will continue to refer to him as the Imaginary Stud.

He kept the yoga exercises going, bringing his hands together, dangling his foot, breathing in/breathing out, and stretching as I quizzed him on some of the names.

CARMEN -- "She definitely sounds hot," I said. Carmen is a fiery name. I'm sure she was with him every step of the way, a gal who could keep up and give as good as she got! If she had red hair, I wouldn't be surprised. And if she did, I'm sure she had everything that goes along with it! He gave me a gesture that said, "I'm not that good at names, but you're probably right." The two scratch marks indicated twins.

KAYLA -- She sounds like a handful, just going by the name. I'm thinking of kiss, ecstasy, la-la land, and climbing the walls, Kayla clawing his back, Kayla calling out for more, more, more. "Where do you find these chicks?" I asked with a laugh. He kept up the yoga, only gesturing as if to say, "It's really nothing, dime a dozen." There was only one scratch mark, so that'd be a litter of one.

ESTHER -- I'm thinking, Esther? "Come on, you gotta be kidding!" I said. And yet, I got a hold of myself, names aren't everything. She wasn't responsible for her own name. If he had her in the notebook, she must have somehow raised herself above the limitations immediately suggested by her name. I started thinking, maybe he's not kidding me, because what's the chances of him putting "Esther?" If it were all a scam, surely he would've come up with something a little sexier, like Mildred. Be that as it may, there were three scratch marks, so at least she was fertile. Traditional girl from some little village, her first date, stoved up with eggs.

TAWNY -- OK, Tawny, now we're back on good soil. I can well imagine him meeting and sweet-talking a stripper into submission. Of course they can be the toughest cookies to crack, having had all kinds of bad experiences with the male race. But a charmer -- whose charm is real and doesn't quit -- is all it'd really take. And a sweet promise: "I'll take you away from this life and share with you my riches." She'd fall into his arms. Then a quick trip back to her place at the Pine Cone Motel, a roll in the hay, and an angry goodbye. She was good for a single scratch mark, a single kid to keep in the dressing room, sucking his pacifier while Mom grinds out another set.

I thumbed through the book, estimating there had to be at least a hundred names. But his exercises only took 15 minutes, then he needed to get out, see the dentist about a couple of implants, and perhaps work in one or two seductions before lunch.

The Imaginary Stud -- Something So Precious

You remember the Imaginary Stud. He's just a guy, respectable in every way, simply out obeying life's prime directive to reproduce as far and wide as he can. There shouldn't be any problem with that.

There shouldn't be a problem, but of course it's right when you think you're home free that your real troubles begin. Others, in jealousy or obeying some social injunction, step in to hassle you. It's not like he was doing anything he shouldn't! Spores, seeds, the whole thing, are nature's way. No one chops down a tree for dropping its seed.

And it's not the fruit of his actions that's disagreeable, the baby. That's where we all came from. The rest of us, for the most part, are out there doing our part to perpetuate the species, so there really should be no objection. "Children are precious," the Imaginary Stud insists.

Maybe you can tell I'm coming around to a greater belief in the Imaginary Stud's claims that he's the father of every child he sees. Although I'd have to tweak that, I know he's not the father of every child, but perhaps he really is the father of quite a few of them. (I'm still going to refer to him as "the Imaginary Stud" just to keep it clear who I'm talking about.) It would definitely explain the very real tension he shows when he sees a pregnant woman or a woman pushing a stroller. "Hide me!" he hisses.

Be that as it may, I definitely agree with him that children are precious. To have a baby on board, what greater fulfillment could there be for any woman? And to have a houseful of them, such love you're not going to get anywhere else. They are precious, and yet there's always someone to get in the way and deny it.

I saw the Imaginary Stud all banged up the other day and asked him WTF? He looked at me and recalled one of the worst nights of his life. He'd arranged a rendezvous with a particular woman, then found out too late it was a set-up. He'd cried out, "It's a trap!" The woman had him cornered, screaming, "You knocked up my sister and abandoned her, you bastard!" That was her big beef. And if that wasn't enough, she'd arranged a few bulls to be hiding outside in the brush.

He described his thoughts: "It's bad enough I have to deal with a troupe of evil mamas, now their crazy deranged sisters, too?!" He tried to pacify her, a clearly deranged woman, but it was no go. She opened the door and in rushed the bulls. A couple of them held him while the other pummeled him, even knocking out his two front teeth (uppers).

The sister was cackling like a maniac, "Kick him where it counts!" Meaning he would be the sad recipent of a swift, painful assault to the crotch. They took him out and left him in a heap in the middle of the road. Cars veered to miss him and honked their horns, and it was with the greatest struggle that he managed to crawl to the ditch.

He complained to me, "How can something so precious go so terribly wrong?" The whole thing had been a scam. She had lied to him when they could've shared so much. Again, what was precious was trodden underfoot by deceit. Then, capturing him as they did, the kicks, the broken teeth, it was all so wrong, like a blasphemy in the face of life itself.

"But what can you do?" I asked. "There's always going to someone who doesn't get it, so all you can do is rise above it and go on, knowing that you're doing the right thing even if the whole world doubts you." With that, he calmed down, enough that he was able to go back home, get an ice pack and find a comfy chair, and settle down with a good book.

The Imaginary Stud -- Johnny Peopleseed

There is this guy -- The Imaginary Stud -- I'm focusing on for a while. Because he's so extraordinary. He feels, at least he says, that he's responsible every time a pregnant woman walks by or a woman with a baby. "Hide me!" is his constant plea.

Maybe he is responsible for a few of them. Like I said, maybe he's gotten lucky a few times after a wild drunk. But could he be the father of every baby out there? Somehow, I seriously doubt it!

But whether he is indeed the True Stud he thinks he is, and not just the Imaginary Stud I think he is, that question will have to wait for the DNA results, if we're ever able to get him to take a test. Because he appears to be forever on the run, pausing just long enough, according to the story, to impregnate some poor gal who hasn't heard of him. Assuming he's ever impregnated any actual women...

He fancies himself a regular Johnny Peopleseed. Like Appleseed of lore, Peopleseed also has his mission in life, armed only with a single front appendage and a sack of seed. To hear him tell it, the sack continually replenishes itself like the oil and fishes, the cruse of oil and the 5,000 fish of the Bible. He cruises into town, the tank topped off, an eye out to disperse what is needed, knowing it will be replaced later. Like perpetual motion!

I'm only imagining what must happen on one of these encounters: "Hello." A possible likelihood is at hand, a doll face who doesn't know she's meeting the sire of thousands. He's quite open with her now, until he gets his way, then we'll hear him hiss, "Hide me!"

She's standing there with blue jeans cut midriff-high, with enough buns to start a bakery. His eye scans her like the Six Million Dollar Man. Her beauty is one thing. But the Imaginary Stud makes complex evolutionary calculations. "Her nose plus mine. Her pleasant eyes plus mine. Her fantastic build plus mine. She's got the hips for quintuplets!"

He's done it many times, the story goes. And if that's true, the calculations he makes must become less and less conscious and more instinctual. Like the hidden knowledge of a spore or seed, doing its thing, knowing not how. Spore trailing spore, seed/egg, peach/pit, vital essence, the rupture of the egg, he senses all of it at the primal level, raising his head in a sign of joy at the recognition, hearing distant thunder as the lightning delivers another soon-to-be-born soul. Who can blame him? He didn't ask for this duty of nature, we're assuming.

I was reading a few pages of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, and came across a passage that reminded me of the Imaginary Stud:

"And, to make a long stoney badder and a whorly show a parfect sight, his Thing went the wholyway retup Suffrogate Strate." (p. 242.)

I couldn't have said it better myself. But I can try:

Needles to say, he epistemologized her, in the bibbling sinse, with an episiotomy probelly in her suture, big heads tending to run in his lying.

The Imaginary Stud

The imaginary stud is a guy whose eyes perk up when he sees a woman walking by with a baby. "Hide me," he says, because he doesn't want the mother of the child to see him.

Except you keep going down the road and eventually see a woman pushing a stroller built for two. "Hide me," he says, quickly averting his face, because two kids, that's so much worse. If she sees him, knowing he hasn't paid whatever child support he would be obligated to pay, he's going to be in big trouble.

You keep going. The imaginary stud is wiping the sweat away from his brow, so much so that the tissue (or cloth) is wringing wet. And he's checking out some of the sweet femininas swinging their hips down the sidewalk. These are some of this thoughts: "Ooo, mama! Look at the butt on that one!" and "Yesss! Come to papa!" And, "I'll take a piece of that ... right now!"

Since we, along with everything else, were meant for reproduction, with the result of our reproduction being meant for reproduction, all the way out to the most distant generation being the same, naturally the guy's eye is going to rove, only finally coming to a rest when he sees something worth feasting his eyes on that would, given the right circumstances, fulfill nature's purpose.

He's in a state of agitation even if you can't see it, because, let's face it, he's socialized (civilized) to a certain extent, and able to keep his pants on and pass by undetected in ordinary circumstances. In other words, we're not talking about Herman Cain, although the guy of our story is still potentially an actual stud.

He is definitely an "imaginary" stud, because, look, he can't physically be the father of every baby in every stroller! There's others out there being the bull in most of these cases. But who knows, maybe he's gotten lucky a time or two -- after some especially wild drunks -- and you never can tell whose kid may be whose! Even if twins, triplets, or quadruplets don't run in his family, there's no way of absolutely excluding the possibility; they could be his!

Speaking of triplets, that's the next group we pass. The mom looks like she might be overwhelmed, because a stroller built for three is rare, and yet there she is, the proud (maybe not) pusher of three. A boy, a girl, and another boy, just to give an example of what we might see were we to stop and look inside. But the proud papa, the imaginary stud, won't be looking that closely, averting his eyes and face: "Hide me," he says, himself overwhelmed, thinking maybe he actually does know her. What a life of drudgery and expense! Diapers for three!

The only thing worse than that .... for our possible papa .... is an even more unusual sight, a woman pushing a stroller with four babies. Four? That's an entire litter! Now we're talking some severe fertility drugs! Something's made nature go haywire! The imaginary stud isn't ready for that kind of commitment! He's barely able to support himself! Still, he did the crime, why shouldn't he be doing the time?

If indeed he did it.