In Our Own Image (But With A Bigger Penis)

The year is 2007, the place is Zimbabwe. A wave of hysteria sweeps the streets. The Popobawa is here again.

For those that don't know, the Popobawa is a sex demon. Having been accidentally loosed by an incautious magician in the 1970s, the Popobawah (who's name is swahili for "batwing") has come to terrorise the men of the area. How is he doing it? He's using his massive penis.

Though able to shapeshift, the spirit often appears in the form of a winged, dwarf, cylops ogre. He flys at the dark of night and attacks men, espescially unbelievers, in their own bed by pinning them down and sodomising them for hours with his freakishly large penis.

Beyond the obvious trauma of supernatural rape, the men are instructed to tell everyone the ordeal. If they fail to share the story, then the Popobawa will return and rape them again.

Sound ridiculous? For the victims it is a very real experience. Hospitals have had to deal with bruising, broken ribs and a shattered pelvis. The fear is equally as real, during periods of high activity men may choose to sleep outside rather than in the bed where the Popobawa would expect them to be.

Understandably, the international community has looked with scepticism on the claims of our Tanzanian brothers'. With very little effort, we have managed to explain the Popobawa away. There is a physiological quirk with human sleep that means we can't move whilst in REM sleep. Sometimes, this paralysis continues over into the begining of the waking state. The half awake dreamer often adds in something hallucinatory of their own making,and voila, demonic experience.

The experience of Sleep Paralysis often includes a pressing or crushing feeling,so that would explain why the Popobawa is reported as pinning down his victims, but there isn't much in the hypnpompic state that feels like a giant penis repeatedly entering your rectum. Or, for that matter, that would compel you to go out and admit your msenge status. So what's that about?

I, for one, would argue it's about the culture that the victims live in. Sleep Paralysis phenomenon have been around for a long time, and though the basic "I can't move, someone's sitting on my chest" experience always remains central, the window dressing has changed to express the important social dilemnas of the era.

Medieval men had witches ride them, because witches repressented unbound female sexuality and power over men. Monks of the time, who slept with crosses clasped to their groins, where visited by succubi. Female demons who represented sexual sin and nocturnal temptation. (Nuns, conveniently for them, could blame unwanted pregnancies on incubi, the male equivalents of the succubi. Incubi penises, which could be identified by their massive size and freezing temperature, squirted the semen collected by their succubi sisters. Hence why so many of the nun's demonic children looked suspisciously like local men). In the secular era modern America suffers from a surfeit of alien abduction stories, each of which makes an interesting study on America's relationship to the concepts of foreigness and anal-probes.

And Zimbabwe, for all it's comparative liberalism, still suffers from strong taboos against men being penetrated. In a country where same-sex handholding can result in imprisonment, it seems inevitable that the queer should become monstrous. I think it's telling that Popobawa is literally a "one eyed monster".

In all honesty, any country with Mugabe (a rabid,vocal and violent homophobe) at it's head is going to have a gay sex demon in it's head. I find it hard to look at the Popobawa and not see a nation suffering from a masculinity crisis. Popobawa is, to my uninvolved non-sociologist eyes, a voice given to the voicless characters in the national psyche.

But this, I think, is my point. Though it is easy to make a judgement and interperet other people's myths, it's not always the best response. Popobawa shows us that there is a mirroring link between a society and the religion it creates. Our spirits sometimes reflect ourselves more readily than they reflect our reality, and it would be arrogant to assume that the same process is not at work in our own beliefs.

Why, for example, is it important that the Virgin Mary has a perpetual virginity? What does us say about our view of female sexuality? Why are our superheroes straight men,and why can they fly? What does that tell us about our attitudes to the ground and to masculinity?

The Popobawa, for all it's oddness, is an important lesson in the nature of metaphysical belief. As strongly as our beliefs are held, we often hold them for reasons that are more psychological than philosophical.

That's not to say I don't believe giant penises fly through the window. Just that my belief might be based more on personal needs (and who doesn't need a flying penis?) rather than the spiritual reality.

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To Bed

I’m pretty sure that the inventor of the bed intended it to fit two people at all times.

I’ve thought about it: isn’t it interesting that the smallest size bed—a single—has also been dubbed a twin? After that comes a double bed, and only then is the bed called full. At their largest dimensions, beds even become gendered—a Queen, followed by a King—as if beds were meant to serve couples.

Obviously, Mr. or Ms. Bed Inventor had more than just sleep on his or her mind. I’m realizing that, when I’m in bed, whether I share it or not, I have the same thoughts too.

Last night, as I began my nightly five-hour nap (alone), I rolled onto my left side and wrapped my arms around one of my four pillows. I know: it sounds a bit crowded, but, as far as my memory can reach, I’ve slept with two or more pillows. It’s my routine; it’s comfort.

I began my multi-pillow habits when I was four: for my head, I had a pillow encased in Teddy Ruxpin covers; as an extra companion, I kept another checkered in baby blue penguins. Yes, I had stuffed animals to boot, but I opted to embrace my largest, roundest bed partner of all: pillow #2. Although the soft fur of Brownie (my favorite) had its appeal as a plaything to be tossed about, I needed something that mirrored the size of my own human form, a closer match for my growing kindergartner figure. Did I, with my childish wants, express an inherent urge to share my bed with someone more like me? Sheltered by my parents and unexposed to any idea of sensuality or sexuality, how could I have created such a craving on my own?

I couldn’t have. Until I turned 18 years old, I lived with my parents. Our established sleep norms included wearing a shirt and shorts to bed—not boxers or pajama pants as one might expect from movie depictions of sleepovers, but actual shorts with pockets and Nike or Reebok emblems embroidered on the bottom of the right leg. (It’s as if I had jogged from a workout, into my bedroom, and then hopped directly into bed—minus the perspiration.) The notion that the world clothed itself to sleep sucked all sexuality out of my childhood bedroom. If the bed wasn’t made for sleeping, it only, at most, accommodated the occasional reading or journaling session. It was no longer a crib, but it may as well have been a teenage equivalent.

It wasn’t until college that I remember shedding those ideas about bed and replacing them with a more adult skin. After growing up attired in bed, it came as a surprise that many of the guys on my first-year dormitory hall slept in their underwear. How homoerotic, I thought: straight men stripping to their skivvies and then bidding each other good night across a 12 x 14 room. Not what I expected from a single-sex residence hall at a college steeped in split-sex tradition. It seemed to me that being almost-naked, a notch below being totally-naked, was within an arm’s length of doing things naked. I wonder if there is a correlation between kids who grow up sleeping almost- or totally-naked and their sexual activity as adults.

The first time I slept with anyone (for purposes other than to share a bed) was during my sophomore year—in a tiny twin bed. After a night of partying with his friends, Ken and I made a 4:30am decision to stumble into his off-campus house. We rehydrated on his couch, made small talk on some chairs in his room, and then, after cautious move after cautious move, went for it. It was the first time either of us did anything homosexual. Furniture that seemed fit for one caved into the warmth of a heavy make-out session. That night, I completely bought into chemistry; we forewent the discomfort of his cramped space and came to understand that heat really does expand space. Twin bed or not, there was going to be room for two.

I never understood the allure of cuddling until that point. I thought that the experience would be a lie: romantic and sweet in intention, uncomfortable and intrusive in truth. Before that night, I pictured an arm pinched beneath someone’s heavy body, stuck in its place until a fortunate choice by the other’s subconscious to shift ever so slightly. I had visions of sweat smearing from arm to arm, bringing to mind overwhelming heat waves rather than the welcome embers of a tryst.

I gladly discovered that the reality of sharing a bed produced a sensation quite the opposite—that of inconceivable, thrilling independence. It’s freeing to choose to face consequences so extreme and intense. The electric spark of touch is perhaps the largest contribution to confusion in the world; once contact occurs between two hormonal humans, passages at once pleasurable and vulnerable zip wide open, leading to outcomes either amazing or regrettable. I learned that there’s something about skin resting against skin that sends charges into the body, to the nook where I would imagine my soul to live. Who would’ve thought that the simple act of taking up space with another person, physically filling voids in an attempt to metaphorically fill voids, would result in that? In its irrationality, I found the unexpected combustion of relief and excitement.

It began to make sense to me why I had been hugging pillows all my life. I needed a substitute for that adult skin, even as a kid. Perhaps, then, adult skin is a misnomer; perhaps human is more like it. I’ve begun getting used to my new skin by experience: shedding my shirt and shorts for boxers or less, adapting to all types of sleeping spaces—twin-size, foldable mattresses to fully-outfitted luxury king-size beds—not all of them my own.

And yet, some things have not changed. Despite my willingness to assimilate into the world of the sexualized bed, I hang onto certain innocent habits of old: cuddling with pillow #2—and now, in my mid-twenties, rendezvousing with pillows #3 and #4… because, of course, I’m a little bigger than I was when I was four, and the void in my bed is getting larger by the day. I have a double to fill and only a single me to do the job.

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