A friend showed me a clip on his iPhone. A young woman walking along what I thought was a tropical beach. Since I am in Mexico, I think of all beaches as being tropical. She is naked, it turns out, after squinting at first to make sure she isn’t wearing something skin color. Then you check the top. The back, her back—after all she’s not an object—is free of any ties. She is also barefoot, the sand is deep, so her feet swivel as she gains purchase, pushes off and moves forward.
The camera focuses on her nalgas – buttocks, which are a little exaggerated in proportion to the rest of her body. Once, she turns to smile, and you catch just a glimpse of her left breast. Then she swivels away again.
I ask my friend what his thoughts are. “I like it,” he says. I say I like it, too. But I am wondering if there isn’t more to say, if we’re not just content with the reptilian-visual part of our brain.
He says, “I like it.” And I admire the simplicity of his reaction. I have the same reaction, but I find myself thinking of another woman, fully clothed, sitting in front of a piano in Holland or Italy, in concert. The conductor has just started the orchestra on Mozart’s concerto in D minor. The piano player’s name is Maria João Pires. She sits in shock and agony because the concerto is not the one she had been prepared to play. No nalgas at work here, except the ones she’s sitting on. She is in a panic, a performer’s worst nightmare has unfolded. The conductor has changed the program on her—and she sits in horror.
She addresses the conductor, while he conducts. I don’t have the music. I didn’t prepare this one. We did not agree on this one. What am I to do? He replies, while he conducts. You know this one. You know it by heart. You can do it.
The moment draws closer where she is to place her hands on the keys. She seems despairing. Then—resigned—she adjusts her seat. You could say her nalgas—because she has them, too—and at precisely the right moment she begins to play.
You wonder whether she can remember. As spectator, all of your fears of performance are at the fore. But she continues—flawlessly—all the way through.
I am glad she also has nalgas. There is a music theory that says by rocking first onto one buttock while playing, then onto the other, the quality of the music goes way up. But if Maria João Pires began doing that, I could not see it, perhaps because it was too subtle. But as far as attraction goes, the complexity of that person, as well as having shared her panic, her vulnerability, all those things make her more attractive to me than Miss Nalgas on the Beach, who—poor lady—is in danger of presenting herself as little more than a visual stimulant of remote male (or female) sexual appetite.
Don’t get me wrong. Probably most of the babies born to this world can thank their existence to visual signals radiating from nalgas, broad shoulders, the color of eyes or any number of other body parts that both sexes (all sexes) find meaningful.
I would be the first to sing a paean to nalgas—my own included, since they are what we sit on and what may have attracted mates in the past. I have heard my current love of many, many years, even recently, call me Bubble-Butt. That is very kind of her, but with the years the bubble-butt has gone the way of all flesh—there is less of it until, in the end, the worms or the flames get what little is left.
Miss Nalgas, all of us Miss Nalgas, will go the same way. And when we go to the flames or the worms, the wonderful, simple reptilian part—that delight in nalgas (or some other part)—will go with us. For that reason, we must remember, at our last breath or two, to sing praise and thanks to all buttocks—to Ours, to Theirs and to All of Yours.