Kenneth's Conference

(from Viewfinder, February 1985)

They met at a national entomology conference and from what he told me about it, I have got to go to one some day. Nothing like this ever happens really at an English teachers' conference. I know that because I've been to a few of them and the movies you see on the motel tv and the stories you read in bed after a long day of English teaching conferencing is about the closest I've ever gotten. Which isn't far. But Kenneth lost his wallet at the conference, and happily I've never had that happen to me.

They met at a national entomology conference. To Kenneth's eye, she was a woman of extraordinary physical grace and beauty, the last type he expected to find at a professional conference.

Kenneth was struck by her slender, hairless forearms, the delicate cruve of her neck, the proud way she carried her rather small head.

His small thin frame and slightly bulging eyesa dn glasses that made them look even bigger reminded her of the subjects of her first highly successful entomological research project. it was a strong and fond memory. The project had extablished her reputation for creative insectology.

If you know Kenneth this is the part that is hard to believe, but I've known him since grade school when we used to chase him up a high chain link fence and try to pull him off so we could pull the back of his underwear up over the back of his head. We laughed so har, his underwear like a hood and elastic band like a hat brim on his forehead.

At the conference he approached her during cocktail hour after the first day's papers.

"Hello," he says he said, "I'm Kenneth Shelley."

"Shelley? Oh, yes. Termites."

He was pleased.

her name was Phyllis Johnson and he knew and admired her work on fire ants. Partly out of luck, he was seated next to her at the dinner. She allowed him to call her "Phyl." Their mutual attraction was very strong, so strong that their exchanges took on a quality of escalation, advancing their intimacy in a series of small byt rapid steps, a breathless spiral like a pagan ritual dance.

An attraction strong enough to evoke real fear.

A revelation occurred over the mocha bombe and espresso that excited her more than she cared to show. Kenneth saw her excitement in the red patch of skin on her white chest exposed above the cotton blouse and the erect nipples he thought he could see beneath it. She realized that as part of the research he was describing in termite neurobiology he had developed a computer program that could save her six months in her statistical analysis of fire ant brain function. She expressed her interest in a low key, oblique way. he was encouraging but noncommittal.

Oh, the games entomologists play.

Shortly after the dinner, by unspoken agreement, they ascended in the motel elevator to her floor and entered her room. They undressed without speaking, he in the bathroom, she in the bedroom.

He entered the bedroom and paused, standing beside the bed. She stood naked across the bed from him. They openly examined each other's pale, slender, white, almost hairless bodies.

Kenneth adjusted his glasses and spoke first.

"The female praying mantis is nearsighted and dangerous. When the male is impelled to mate, he approaches her slowly and with great caution, sometimes waiting motionless for up to twenty minutes before the next short advance. When he finally summons the courage to dash forward and mount her from the rear, she typically responds by twisting her upper body around and biting off his head. This act quite literally removes his innate fear of her, since it removes the ganglia and neurons in which that fear resides. he then copulates to a successful conclusion and dies presumably as happily as any creature can without its head. After he dies, she eats the rest of him."

he paused and looked at her expectantly, not moving.

When Phyl spoke, she took off her glasses and used the same didactic tone as he.

"The female empid fly also has a nasty habit of eating the male when he approaches her during mating season. To devert her attention, the male typically finds a morsel of food and wraps it elaborately in a silk balloon formed by his glandular secretions. The time it takes to unwrap his gift is often to copulate successfully and escape unsathed. But in one empid species, whether through cleverness, laziness, or just bad faith, the male fails to put any food inside the balloon. The female is tricked into copulation with an empty promise."

These things they said to each other were well known to both as indeed they were to any first year graduate student in entomology.

There was a pause after she spoke. They continued to stare at each other. Kenneth half-smiled and said, "I love you."

It could have gone either way.

Then they fell upon each other.