I need to explain my obsessive love. Nature makes women passive,
Yet in control, slowing the aggressive rush of the foolish male.
I’m not aggressive. Okay, no big deal; let the women be aggressive.
Nature lays down the template, but not all obey.
Nature, wise, knows to leave open more than one way.
There are males so passive, they have children
With women they do not love or pursue. But “have children”
Is what nature wants—aggressive women are fine, then.
But many males are aggressive, to a stupid, reckless degree.
The average woman is strongly passive, and takes no interest in me.
Women prefer the meaty guy, solid and unwavering,
Nature’s model most conductive to solid, common sense breeding.
Me? I’m as skinny as a girl, and can’t make up my mind.
Nature has varieties, but also creates kind for kind.
A certain kind of moody, aggressive woman pursuing me
Had been the sum total of my romance and sexuality.
Enter Rosalinda. She is my obsession. Can you love one forever?
How did she defy the infinite combinations?
How did she make it so that beside the millions I love only her?
Rosalinda! A story for all people, and all nations!
Desires and children pour forth, but there is only one love like this!
Rosalinda! Rosalinda! To say her name. Only her arms. Only her kiss.
Only her! Only poetry and philosophy for her. Rosalinda.
All my troubles come from this: aggressive women leave me cold.
The aggressive woman who nature decided is right for me
I accepted. As nature’s male, I accepted nature’s women—
But I never loved aggressive women. I was passive,
And I was unhappy in my passivity. Rosalinda made me bold.
Rosalinda, modeled in nature’s perfection, was strongly passive,
And drew out of me, by slow degrees, my male aggression,
Which I had never known. And like all obsession, Rosalinda,
In the way her passivity madly enticed me, was what fate had to be.
She knew I was passive, and Rosalinda was incomplete, like me.
Rosalinda had the gift of passive female genius, proper to entice
Any aggressive male—she was beautiful, passive, and not too nice.
Her passivity was perfectly designed to feed my fire, and my desire
Was fed by her—who showed me her charms, oh charming fires of ice.
I was made aggressive by her, who was passive, and she knew
In her discerning passivity, aggressive wasn’t something I could do.
And though nature made her passive, as the most desirable women are,
Like me, Rosalinda was different. Rosalinda loved under a different star.
Beneath her natural passivity, Rosalinda was aggressive, and so she
Was not fully happy. She caused me to love, but couldn’t quite love me.
Unkind fate. Rosalinda was not equipped to complete nature’s plan.
She did not want children. Rosalinda had the gift to attract a passive man,
And turn him aggressive—which nature wants males to be.
But Rosalinda’s refusal used love to punish the passive side of me,
And her perfect female passivity, even today, deeply unsettles me.
I, the passive one, loved her aggressively. She, the aggressive one,
Loved me passively. Oh Rosalinda. Look what we have done.
Rosalinda has wasted her genius, alone, barren, and sad.
I grieve for Rosalinda! Though with poetry, desire, children, I should be glad.