“Monkey Business”
Evidently, Zizi was a guileless virgin during his foremost matrimony: “Frankly, it (‘love in bed’) gave him nothing but trouble, especially at the start… but whatever it was no miracle, and it certainly wasn’t easy. Samira cried all night and the next, and on the third night they didn’t even try. Zizi dare not confess his failure, even so he quickly became the subject of village jokes. At last, a married cousin who was visiting from America - and who didn’t think any of this funny - took Zizi aside and explained everything, answered every question until both their faces were red: the how, the why, the when you do this or that.” Zizi’s prime matrimonial is case of innocence espousing innocence or virginity cracking virginity. Sumira’s cries surmise that she too was a green virgin, so each one of them was not seamless in the art of inauguratory sexual intercourse. Joseph Geha’s satirical portrayal of male virginity exhibits twofold societal criteria which obliges men to be machos for the ‘village jokes’ render Zizi a lame duck male who cannot bully his wife in bed. Whereas feminine virginity is unquestionably lionized, male virginity is contemptuously teased.
“Through and Through”
The narrator in “Through and Through” executes an exemplary Mixed Analysis of Straightness: “Well, there I was, twenty-two, and I remember trying to grasp the whole five thousand years, imagining all the sweat, blood, and urine spilled on this one piece of ground, the semen and the spit and the tears. Not long ago the National Enquirer had an insert that I cut out and put in my wallet: it says that, per minute, a human being at rest sheds more than a hundred thousand microscopic particles of flaked off flesh, saliva, lint, sodium, dandruff, dead mouth tissue. Per minute. At rest. A slight head movement, and the number jumps to five thousand particles. Five million when you walk real slow. Thirty million before you even get going good.” The quantitative facets of Straightness encompass “five thousand years”; “ per minute” ; “a hundred thousand microscopic particles”; “five thousand particles.”; “Five million “ and “Thirty million”. The qualitative physiognomies consist of the biological fluids and infinitesimal solid particles which human bodies discard. The qualitative and quantitative countenances of Straightness unveil a resilient, undeviating correspondence between biological processes and geography.
