The Thing About Life is That One Day You'll Be Dead by David Shields Read Free Book Online Page B

thirty. At halftime, Allie and the team gulped down sandwiches and sodas. Hardly the recommended diet for players engaged in a clash with finely trained athletes—rested and ready for the game against those ‘tough guys’ from Brooklyn. Puzzy gave the team a pep talk at halftime and the second half was a different story.
    â€œPuzzy, Allie, and Artie began hitting their shots. The game ended in a tie. We played two overtimes and lost by a basket. The Yale captain thanked us and paid me the hundred dollars, twenty of which immediately went to the farmer-driver to drive us back to the bus station in Wilton. We got on board the bus around midnight and arrived back in New York at about six A.M. The players made a dash for the Automat (now defunct; you placed nickels in food slots, and out came the food, from main dishes to dessert). I distributed what was left: each player got a few bucks. I took nothing. We had enough for subway fare—five cents back to Brooklyn—and the game was history. It soon became a neighborhood legend.
    â€œA month later, Kappy went back to Wilton for the inquest. He was declared innocent. We never played another game.”

Why Lionesses Prefer Dark Brunettes, or Why Both Men and Women Are Attracted to Deep Voices
    The olfactory system—the sense of smell—bypasses all the brain’s thinking processes and directs its information exclusively toward the regions that control sex and aggression. In order to mate with a female hamster, male hamsters must have this system functioning. Male mice need it in order to respond to female fertility signals, and female pigs need it to be aroused by boars. In humans, scent no longer dominates sexual response; scent is nowhere near as significant for us as it is for the rest of the animal kingdom.
    Sight is much the most important human sense; appearance is what attracts us. “Gentlemen prefer blondes,” but lionesses prefer dark brunettes, which are believed to have higher testosterone levels and potentially better genes.
    Humans and many other species find voices attractive. In humans, deep, husky voices—considered sexually attractive by both sexes—are also correlated with high testosterone levels and therefore potentially high sex drive and good genes.
    Fear and terror, not shared pleasant experiences, are more likely to result in mutual attraction. The release of stress hormones activates the brain’s neurochemical systems that promote attachment bonds. In a famous experiment, an attractive woman interviewed young men on a swaying rope bridge 200 feet above a river, and also on the ground. Midway through the interview, she gave them her phone number. Over 60 percent of the men she interviewed on the rope bridge called her back; only 30 percent of the men on the ground did so.
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    I was 17, as was my girlfriend, Carla, and neither of us was sexually experienced. Rain fell like needles, but Carla’s parents’ cabin’s back porch, sheltered by a lean-to roof and enclosed by a tight green net, kept us dry. I wanted to sleep outside, catch cold. I wanted to share disease and shudder. Carla wanted to brush her teeth. She liked the smell of bathrooms, mirrors, warm toilet seats. Toothbrush and towel in hand, she pushed open the screen door and sought linoleum.
    I unfolded the sleeping bags and unrolled them on the wooden floor, fluffing up our backpacks, tucking them into the mouths of the sleeping bags. I pushed the bench out of the way into the corner of the porch. I rearranged things and waited.
    â€œEverything’s wet out here,” Carla said when she emerged. “Let’s sleep inside.”
    â€œNo,” I said. “The rain’ll stop soon.”
    I shut the door to the house, jiggled the doorknob, and pronounced the door locked. The only way to get in was to find the key somewhere on the porch come morning.
    Carla got under the covers and lay