17 September 2006 Oxytocin I was out by the pool, shivering as I toweled off under the leaden sky. Peter, the owner-manager of the Deep Blue swimming empire, had ceased his occasional glances across the deep end to see if I was still afloat. His phone chirped periodically as other pools checked in, and schedules and time cards were arranged. Peter looks a little like heartthrob Favio, the muscular long-haired hunk who began a career on the cover of romance novels. His torso is well developed, when not covered by a windbreaker, and his color is deep bronze. He would go well with Ms Hamilton, if he had a chance to bask by the pool. He is busy, though, since the pool business he started as a kid has changed into something quite extraordinary. He manages an international labor pool, recruiting lifeguards in the Czech Republic, arranging visas, coordinating travel, renting apartments to be used as barracks, and then sending out his hardy Slavs and Magyars to stand guard over the swimming establishments of the tall buildings all across Arlington County. When the foreigners depart, he covers the last weekend at Big Pink himself. Then he turns out the sun, covers the pool and locks the gate until tanning can safely resume on Memorial Day weekend 2007. I don't know how he keeps it all straight. He must have a real head for business, which is not at all what one would have thought about a college drop-out twenty years ago who wanted to work outside. There might have been two of us in the pool all day. It was a grim day, and my mood reflected it. There was a Big Game that started at three in the afternoon. I was determined to ignore it. It looked like my team was going to be hopelessly outmatched. We were overdue to fire the coach, recruiting had been lousy, and a hundred-odd years of tradition were going to make the humiliation that much worse. If I paid no attention, I theorized, I might make the pain less real. I take credit for a historic win over Penn State several years ago by hiding under the workbench in my garage, but I had no such hope this Saturday. I wandered down to the pool, and past Peter as he conducted business at the table next to the gate. The water was cold, and as I paddled I could hear muffled cheers emanating from the building. It could only signify some heroics in some game somewhere, and I felt the worst of my fears coming true. My resolve finally crumbled as cocktail hour arrived, and I will not disclose the outcome of the contest except to say that when it was over, I called my son and was treated to an outburst of jubilant hysteria which will continue through what is left of the weekend. In another call, a more sober one, I attempted to explain the significance of the game, and my response to it. The way my respiration increased, even as I willed myself not to touch the remote control. It is not logical, I know that, and it is only a game. But there is something that is positively primordial about how it affects the legion of true believers on both sides of the pigskin. I'm sure there are women who feel the same way about the rivalry and the game, but I believe that there are relatively fewer of them than in the male population. Like most rational people, I have learned to just be quiet about the clear differences in the way the sexes approach things. Women, by and large, appear to be much more rational than men in many regards. I know of no women who have hurled televisions out of windows over the results of a college football game, or burned couches on the front lawn to commemorate victory or defeat. There are other observable differences, of course, but it is extremely dangerous to notice them. With the rise of social activism that masquerades as science, we have learned to just keep our eyes down keep moving rather than be clobbered by the intellectual fashion of the moment. Accordingly, it was with some interest this morning that I noticed in the Times that a psychiatrist with impeccable feminist credentials is taking on some of the bio-chemical aspects of why we act like we do. Why some of us huddle under work-benches or launch furniture out windows, or others are better at communicating feelings in less than a bellow. He name is Louann Brizendine, M.D, and she has academic credits from UC-Berkeley, Harvard and Yale. All of them have football programs of long standing, incidentally, though she seems to have been quite unaffected by them. In 1994, she founded the Women's Mood and Hormone Clinic at UC-San Francisco. It is a trail-blazing institution that is designed to assess and treat women of all ages who experience “disruption of mood, energy, anxiety, sexual function and well-being due to hormonal influences on the brain.” While not dismissive of the male brain, she considers the sexes to arrive at birth fully wired to be what we are. The female brain is a little more complex than that of the male. Not better or worse, just different. Women are wired to communicate and organize, network and order the world around them. Men appear to be wired for other character traits, having been bathed in testosterone in the womb. I presume she must mean beer and organized team sports, or other activities related to Stone Age behavior. Dr. Brizendine has compiled a body of work that could be useful for all of us, particularly after an afternoon of aberrant behavior involving a game conducted hundreds of miles away by people you have never met. Her research indicates that the female brain naturally releases oxytocin after a twenty-second hug. That hormone has been associated with the ability to maintain healthy interpersonal relationships, and the embrace bonds the huggers together, triggering the brain's trust circuits. So Brizendine advises “don't let a guy hug you unless you plan to trust him. And if you do," she said, "Make sure it lasts twenty seconds." Most male bonding at this time of the year seems limited to a quick slap on the butt running back from the huddle, which takes about a second, and has a bit of a sting. That probably releases testosterone or something. It would seem to explain a lot. I'm just glad the game is over for this year, and I don't have to worry about that one for a while year. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |