Love and Genes

"You don't think he should at least try?"
"He doesn't like baseball, he doesn't like any sports."

My mom was upset, I remember. I was up in my room, writing an essay about a book I had to read; something about some teenagers who go exploring a gold mine and have some sort of adventures. My door was open, and I heard them downstairs arguing in the kitchen, so I crept out of my room and listened from the stairwell. I was ten.

"Because he's never tried them. He could like it; he could be good. Take him to a batting cage, he could like it," my mom said.
"Hon, he just isn't into sports," my dad said, "I know what that's like, being the one kid on Earth who doesn't care about sports."
"You were all-state in high school!" my mom wasn't yelling, just excited.
"Yes, but I didn't like it. I just played baseball because my parents forced me to, I don't want to force him."
"You don't have to force him, just ask him if he wants to try out. It says here, 'beginners are welcome'."
"If I ask him, he'll think I'm pressuring. And they put that there just so they have someone to reject. It's a school team, not a community league. They want good players."
"He might be good!"
"He could get hurt."
"Are you kidding me?"

I can't remember how I felt. I can't remember if I wanted to try baseball. I probably didn't; I wouldn't now.

My freshman year of high school, I came home from school one day and collapsed on the couch with a groan.

"Tough day?" It was my dad.
I pulled myself up to see over the couch to find the voice; he was sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper. "What are you doing home?" I asked.
"I made it an early day," he said.
"Tough day?" I asked, dropping again and laid flat.
"Not for me," my dad said, "Why for you?"
"Valentine's Day," I mumbled.
"What? Nobody wanted to be your Valentine?"
I sighed in teenage disgust, "It doesn't work like that, nobody says 'Be my valentine.' It's not the fifties anymore."
My dad paused, then said thoughtfully, "I don't think it ever worked like that, come to think of it. So what's the problem, then?"
"It just drives me crazy," I said, "all the guys and girls pairing up and trying to be romantic or clever, when all they're doing is falling into stereotypes."
I heard the newspaper being folded and set down. "What do you mean?" my dad asked.
"I don't know," I started, "it's just, 'ooh, you gave some girl some red crap today so she's your true love, you're real original'. When in every high school in every city in the country, every brainless idiot is doing the same thing for some girl. How can people like that? How is it romantic to do the same thing everybody does? Why do people get so excited about doing something a fake holiday tells them to?"

My dad stood up and walked into the TV room, he sat in the sofa opposite mine. "This frustrates you?"
I scoffed, "You're not a psychologist." I rolled around so I was facing him and not the back of the couch.
"No, but what I am gives me a few unique insights into this field," he said, crossing his legs.
I tried to put how I was feeling into words. "It's just," I started, "what am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to ask a girl out, or flirt, or whatever when I know I'm just playing a role? A guy asks a girl out, it's clear what his intentions are. But he can't say them, he has to say the right thing, when everybody knows he's just saying what she wants to hear. It's all just a routine set up so young people can try to slam their body parts together. How can I ever join that world when I know it's not real?"
"You know, despite what people like to think, humans aren't terribly clever or original creatures," my dad said. "Everything we do or think is wired either by our psychology or our genetics. The only thing that adds any variance to human behavior is personality."

I didn't say anything, so he went on.

"Like you said, any male is motivated by the need to pass on his genes, whether he knows it or not. Our whole culture is based on males' need to have sex, but the entire motivation is based solely on our genes. As a species, we need to create offspring and repopulate the planet so our species can keep winning."
I spent a while trying to get over the fact that my dad had said the word "sex" and again said nothing.
"While guys are wired to just want to perform 'the act', girls are programmed to actually want babies and to be selective. A guy can impregnate a different woman every fifteen minutes if he wanted to, but a woman can only be pregnant once at a time, and about once per year; so, she has to be choosy. Whether people realize it or not, the entire female side of attraction is based on paternal candidacy, and the male side is all based on fertility."
"Gross. What?"

"What do guys like? Mostly thin girls with good color, round butt, big breasts? Those are all things that tell our brains that she's prime for baby-making and raising. What do girls like? Physically, it varies, but most of it is based on whether or not they have specific muscles used for the -- um, you know. But attraction for females is more based on traits. They want someone that can protect them and provide for them. They want someone who isn't going to 'fertilize' them and run off. For them, it's all about someone who will give them a healthy baby and will be able to provide for it."
"Are you sure this subject matter is appropriate for a 14 year old?" I asked.

He laughed, and then said, "You're the one who brought it up, I'm just giving a definition to the discovery you've already made. Anyway, the guy just wants to do it, the girl wants a healthy baby. So, for the guy to have any chance, he has to do the right things and say the right things so the girl will think he's suitable. Some psychologists I talk to say that it's speculated that 'love' is just a euphoric type of ignorance that makes us overlook any fertility flaws based on overpowering positive features. This is the problem you mentioned. The species is hard-wired to keep making babies, but male-female dynamics require all kinds of rituals and routines of saying things when everybody knows you mean something else. So, these routines become part of our culture, and most people don't even recognize them. Understand?"

I nodded, or did the closest thing I could to a nod while laying sideways on a couch.

"This system works perfectly because people don't recognize it," my dad continued. "For people whose jobs it is to examine these subjects, like psychologists and geneticists -- and for people like you who are just perceptive enough to recognize them on your own -- life sucks. It's like Descartes or The Matrix: Can you live in an artificial system if you know it's artificial?"
"So what's the answer? How do people who know that dating and mating are just tricks of the brain deal with dating and mating?"
"The answer is a particularly interesting recent discovery in genetics," he said. "That no matter how intelligent we may be in recognizing our genetic programming, our genetic programming is always more powerful."
"Huh?"
"Our brains say, 'Hey, genes. You can't trick me into falling for a girl when I know it's just your way of getting me to repopulate the planet,' but your genes say, 'Screw you, buddy. See that girl over there, you are absolutely in love with her.' Your genes win."
"You genes are more in control of you than your brain?" I asked, shocked.

An epic battle between mind and body, I thought.

"Well, I shouldn't be using the word 'brain' really, it's more your consciousness, because your genes use your brain via your subconscious. So it's your subconscious telling you to procreate and your conscious realizing that it's all a system. This is where psychology and genetics really meet."
"So what you're saying is, even though we realize that it's all a bunch of silly routines and stereotypical behaviors, our genes overpower that realization and will eventually make us fall in love or want to mate?"
"Yes," he said plainly. "Love conquers all."
"This is your fatherly advice?" I asked.
"No," he said, "that was the preface. This is the part where I tell you about STDs and condoms."

And then the awkwardness began.

The trees and pavement on the road from Quantico faded into a single dull background of reality as memories of my father strung back in unison like a reel of film. After he died, it seemed for a while that I'd completely forgotten he ever existed. Now, having seen the town of secrets where he spent his whole life working, the walls of self-protection seemed to crumble. I wrote my dad off as a secret himself when he died, and somehow I was trying to find the answers that would make him real again.

Instead, I only found more secrets and more questions. My dad was dead, I finally realized with the appreciation of its full weight.

My dad was dead.

And I could finally cry for him.