Less Animal

I am the only man of my village allowed to mate. I have hundreds of children, and dozens of grandchildren, all of my own making. All of the women must come to me: young, old, comely, unsightly, fertile, past the age of bearing yet still in the season of yearning. They come to me when the urge is upon them, be their cycle right or not. It is not a practical matter: it is a purity matter.

The men of the village do not like it, but they honor it. Tradition is a way with us. Our culture surrounds itself with the beliefs it finds most spectacular. We are a proud and simple people. When there are marriages, the new husbands send their wives the night of their honeymoons to me, and again through the nights of those first months of infatuation. My sons send me their betrothed; my son’s-in-law send me my daughters. The widowed circle about my door at dusk. Husbands will send their wives even when their wives have no desire to see me, thinking a visit with me will improve their domestic situation, bring calm to a troubled house.

When we were a small village, and I a younger man, anyone could show up at my door and I was happy to perform my duty extemporaneously. I could almost always be counted upon. But as our village grew, and one generation added to the needs of the still greedy previous one, I developed a system and began to work only by appointment. The women of the village would come to my secretary, who would unroll my calendar and walk in front of my cabin along all the calendar’s open and filled slots, pointing at available times and offering to negotiate.

Even then there were rumors and complaints: more slots went to the younger women, to the prettier women, to the women of means. I explained that this was normal, that the needs of a new bride would be greater than the needs of a grandmother. Everyone said that, of course, this was true; but there was a matter of degree here that seemed to exceed the natural course, and that there might be a favoritism based purely on appeal and not on need. The grumbling mixed in with the frustration of our men and there was a noisome level of disharmony running in our village affairs: a suspicion.

Still, we remained true to our mores. I continued to service as many as I could, as fast as I could. Matters became so hectic that I began to farm out any foreplay, reserving myself just for the heart of the matter. Women would make an appointment with one of my assistants, would be driven expertly to the pinnacle of priming, and then be pushed at the point of impact into my chambers for the act to occur. My productivity increased, but it did not lessen the frustration of the men, and there were ever more women to consider as generation settled upon generation and we could tell from the mathematics that, if there were no disaster to thin our population, there would be a disaster.

So it was decided that I had to select a deputy. Our tradition would be bent, but perhaps not broken, if it were I who selected the assistant: someone to service the village women alongside me and in my name. All the men put on their best courting suits and pushed out their chests and fashioned outsized codpieces that could be filled with nothing but pure fantasy. For the day of the selection, nothing was accomplished in our village: all was strutting and shoulders held back, manly breasts thrust forward and glistening thighs. As though any of that would impress me. It was I who was doing the selection, not one of my swooning granddaughters.

I chose Joshua. Joshua had been resident in my home for years, and had sired a litter with the stray that sometimes could be found a week next door, a week out on the town. His children were seen yapping and yelping and had been cute enough to find homes throughout the village, yet still ran free much of the time and would soon surely be the source of ever more like him. It seemed he had the qualifications.

Of course, the biologies being different, there would be no trouble with children: I would still be the source of our village’s continued growth; but Joshua could fill in on the need, be an outlet for simple satisfaction, for mundane recreational purposes. Those for whom I could see no further path to the future, I could turn over to Joshua. Those I had no time for, my assistants could schedule with him, and pass them his business leash.

The idea was not well received at first. I was initially as busy as ever. But my assistants, against the village, insisted on the plan, ensuring that for some it was Joshua or nothing at all: providing advice and tricks, methods and diversions. It took some time, but those willing from the start to schedule Joshua began to rise, and soon there were some who came and asked first for Joshua. Women would come to rap on my scheduler’s door and Joshua would stand up in his corner, wagging his tail, his breath in short, excited gasps. Women would glance over at him and wink. Some carried a fistful of treats, or a bit of pork fat left from the evening meal.

I had my first night free in years. I went out amongst the frustrated men and found that there was no competition with Joshua. It was me they were envious of, but Joshua they found only to be an expedient, a temporary solution to our long-range problem. They were true enough to our village heritage to accept my plan for societal happiness. They swallowed their frustrations and breathed the smell of Joshua on the hindquarters of their wives and slept fitfully. They would listen at the edge of sleep to remote barking, or the loathsome howl of an unrelated canine, and churn emotion at night in their guts, adding insult and anger to their unfulfilled fantasies. As father to them all, I could not discount their disquiet, their fear that their respect for me would slip soon out of the public discipline. We had grown too large. I had done too much. The dances of a small village would soon no longer be our dances, and even the most sacred of our methods might come into question. Yet they trusted me and my position. They required of themselves that they love me like a father, and father I was.

I was not unmindful of the growing popularity of Joshua. But I was still the producer, the one who sired the village children. Nonetheless, in some of my encounters I would ask the village women to kneel, to go to all fours, and I would come up crouched behind them to commit my duty. More and more I found this method to be my favorite, the one where I was most effective. It was becoming my only approach, the only way to keep my interest through to conclusion.

And even though I knew I was the father of many generations, and the only one to father anyone in our village, I would not have minded so much if for one appointment a girl I had not seen before showed up, a coat of yellow fur and a white spot on the chest, long ears that hung down to midway her neck and the barest stubble of a tail that wagged as I slipped out of my clothes. She would kneel down, and with no human fear, wait, looking back on me on all fours, and I would say No, my lovely, on your back.