The Psychology of Arousal {Redman}

There's a gaggle of girls, ages 12 to 14, on my lawn; 
our daughter in the center of their giggle circle. As a 
psychologist I look at them, reviewing all I've learned 
of adolescent psych and all I've continued to apply in 
my career. I can note their stages of development, 
clinically assessing which ones are maturing, which 
ones are delayed.

As a father I can say with pride that our daughter is 
the best of the brood. More confident, more 
intelligent, more generally well adjusted. Not that I 
take much credit for myself. She's largely been raised 
by her mother and taken most of her good traits from 
her X chromosome and not my Y.

But as a man, I look out on this field of virgin soil 
and a part of me is aroused.  I think about the words 
of a female colleague who just yesterday, throwing her 
hands up in frustration with our clients, practically 
screamed out, "Do all men just want to have sex with 
children?"

I didn't volunteer an answer. Thankfully it was 
rhetorical. But her question has resonated in my mind 
ever since.

I've examined myself and I think that I'm within the 
boundaries of normality. I've never exhibited deviant 
behavior, but I know that everyone (or perhaps as my 
colleague's question begs - every man) has deviant 
thoughts on occasion. So I think of all those deep 
debates we argued over in graduate school. What is 
normal? What is deviance? It's today's equivalent to 
the debates of medieval monks. What is holiness? What 
is sin?

I have no better revelation than the monks did. 
Thankfully the world survived their dreadful dogmas and 
will probably survive through mine as well.

My eyes and thoughts return to our modern day vestal 
virgins. The man in me sees their firm, slender thighs 
and envisions their budding breasts. The psychologist 
speculates on which secondary sex characteristics each 
one would have: pubic hair, changes in body odor and 
the natural increase in libido. 

The father in me can't escape the thought that perhaps 
their mothers should be concerned with leaving them in 
my presence.

So I raise my hand to my nose, catching the faint, 
lingering scent of my wife's arousal. It's her way of 
marking my boundaries. Whenever we go into a crowd with 
women, she marks my hands. At the end of the day, if 
she detects another woman's scent on my fingers... 
Well, some things I don't want to consider.

I move into our living room, witnessing the gaggle of 
mothers - laughing, sharing conversation. I catch my 
wife's eye, noticing anew her lovely form and grace. I 
raise my hand to my face, deliberately sniffing my 
fingers as she looks at me. She grins; knowing that 
something has aroused me. She looks from when I've come 
and sees the girls on the lawn. Shaking her head and 
laughing silently, she wags her finger at me like I was 
her son.