I Learn to Think, or,
Fun With Dick and Brain I/2
by Estragon

Copyright 1996, 1997
Estragon Productions
For adults only


I'm taking this philosophy course called "Learning to
Think." So the TA who runs the discussion-classes tells us
we have to keep a journal - of our thoughts about thinking
throughout the semester. I think that's a good idea. There,
that's my first journal-thought. Wait! It's the first
thought I've written down in my journal, but is it really my
first journal-thought, I mean, the first thought I had once
I sat down to take care of this journal-business? God, this
is going well. (Should I have mentioned God, since I don't
really intend to think about him at this time?) Anyhow, my
truly first thought..., well, it was about the TA. I'm not
sure it was what philosophers mean by a thought. I don't get
the impression from the philosophers we're reading - big
names like Plato and Aristotle and Ren Descartes and Ludwig
Wittgenstein - that they thought a lot about women. Plato
liked guys, so you couldn't expect anything interesting from
him about girls. But it isn't just that. At least Plato has
something to say about sex in his writings, even though it's
hardly x-rated stuff by our standards (despite being gay).
The other philosophers don't say a word about it. (Ludwig
Wittgenstein was of the gay persuasion too, but he didn't
out and announce it in his philosophy the way Plato did, so
he's no help to anyone.) Like it's beneath them, too
physical, too everyday. It's the biggest fucking mystery
since the big bang, but hey.... Maybe they thought there was
nothing in it to think about. It was all action and no
thought. That could explain it. But if you're going to make
thinking your business, shouldn't you be thinking about
everything? That's what I think.

So, using the above logical methods of thought, I've come to
the conclusion that it's appropriate for me to be thinking
about the TA. Not just appropriate but (if you consider data
supplied by parts of my body lacking in free will)
necessary. Okay, I'll be serious. What goes on, I ask
myself, when I'm doing what I have reason to call "thinking
about the TA"? (I think, by the way, that I put the last
question rather well, by the standards of philosophy in any
case. It's more or less the way Professor Smart, our
lecturer - do you believe the dude's name? - , states, no,
"formulates," - his questions.) It turns out that several
things are going on. First of all, I'm seeing a picture of
her in my mind. So, is that actually thinking, or is it
seeing? I say, thinking. Because I'm not really seeing her,
because my eyes aren't doing it, so "seeing" is just a
figure of speech for something happening...yes, exactly, in
my thoughts. If it's happening in my thoughts, then it's
thinking. (Shit, I'm good at this. I'll probably major in
philosophy. But you don't decide that until your junior
year, so I've got a couple of years to fool around with it.
I wonder if the TA will still be here when I decide.) Okay,
seeing the TA in my mind IS thinking. So what does that get
me? Excuse me, US. Philosophers always talk as though it's a
group effort. We're all seeing this picture of the TA,
Nicole Altman, in our collective mind. So what does that get
us?

Let us be frank. (Why not? I can always delete this later.)
The first thing it gets us is a bunch of erections. (Or one
collective erection? Too weird.) That's assuming "we" are
all male, of course. However, since the existence of girls
has been overlooked by philosophers, it is a fair assumption
that we are all males here. I surmise (pause to enjoy having
used this word)...I surmise that we all agree - eagerly, I
would bet - that a girl, like our TA for example, can be an
object of thought despite the fact that we philosophers
don't officially believe in her. I find it particularly
challenging to this belief, or unbelief, or disbelief -
that's the word I prefer, "disbelief," since it describes
how I feel whenever I see a girl, especially a beautiful one
like Nicole Altman, who's a perfect Platonic idea of a girl
(except that Plato himself didn't happen to have such an
idea, being drawn to oiled, naked boys down at the corner
gym, to which I reply, Dufus!).... I was saying that I find
it challenging to the non-existence of girls as posited by
philosophers that the object in question, Nicole Altman, is
not only a girl, but a Teaching Assistant in the Department
of Philosophy. Because there is an excellent chance, given
the apparent purpose of the Department of Philosophy in
hiring teaching-assistants, not to mention the fact that
they are all graduate students OF philosophy, that the
holder of the position of Teaching Assistant in Philosophy
will be an actual philosopher. So Ms. Altman (as she prefers
to be called, hence proving that she proudly acknowledges
herself to be female without giving Plato and Ludwig
Wittgenstein the time of day) is both girl and philosopher.
Is this a paradox? Maybe. I mean, Perhaps. But at least it
justifies us (are we all still here?) in thinking about her,
even if the great thinkers of yore aren't going to lend us
their wisdom for this fruitful activity. We'll have to
address the problem all by our lonesome.

Problem? The truth is (I may get back to the question of
WHAT truth is - I suppose I'll have to to pass the course),
it's no problem at all thinking about Ms. Altman. The reason
is: beauty, i.e. hers. Without taking up the issue of what
is beauty, I think I've established that, sometimes anyhow,
beauty helps you think, making the object of thought
wonderful to think about. I remember the first day of
lecture-class. Of course, it was only two weeks ago, but I
remember it as though it were yesterday, or right now.
Because that's the effect the teaching-assistant has on me.
Anyhow, Plato says (I think) that real knowledge is just
remembering. So there it is. We're all drifting into the
class-room, a lot of us because the course is required, and
I notice this truly lovely, rather small girl in a maroon
jersey and short black skirt taking her place at the end of
the first row. She's got long dark hair, slightly frizzy,
and she's wearing glasses and also lipstick. I like both
those things on girls: not only lipstick, but glasses. If
anything, I thought this girl was young-looking even for a
freshman, and I remember (after all this time) wondering if
maybe she was an advanced-placement student or some such
thing. She certainly looked bright and sharp. But I thought
- I was already thinking, you see, even before the lesson
began - she'd probably have looked younger without the
wonderful lipstick and brainy glasses, so it was clever of
her to wear them now that she was in college.

Professor Smart lectured for an hour or so, living up to his
name as far as I could tell, mentioning this and that
philosopher as if he spent Friday nights out with them, and
telling us how hard it is to think about anything, let alone
about thinking, but well worth the trouble, he said. He made
some jokes, quite a number in fact, including one about
horticulture and political correctness for some reason I
didn't follow. "You can lead a whore to culture," he said,
"but you can't make him or her think." We all enjoyed being
let in on this adult humor, though, since it certainly
wasn't the kind of thing you got from your high-school
teachers. And then he got really thoughtful and said, "So,
ladies and gentlemen, you can learn how to think, but nobody
can make you do it, and not just anyone can teach you how to
do it either. I'd like you to meet one person who surely
can" - (I have four professors, and every one of them loves
the word "surely"; I'm getting fond of it myself) - and then
he signals with a wave that someone at the end of the first
row should stand up and he says, "Miss Nicole Altman, your
discussion-class instructor," and up stands my so-called
advanced-placement freshman, with this pretty, very adult
smile on her red lips and her hair falling over her
shoulders down to the tops of her breasts, which stood out
in her jersey with impressive authority and firmness,
especially considering their small size. When she turned
toward Professor Smart and her back was to me, I strained to
follow the outline of her bra-straps across her shoulders. I
don't know why, but this sight filled me with profound love
and tenderness for the TA.

**** ****

It was just after the first class-meeting with the TA, the
one in which she assigned this journal and in which with
considerable effort I restrained myself from raising my hand
and announcing my total loyalty to her and my readiness to
defend her honor against all foes and asking if anyone had a
problem with that.

That same afternoon I'm in Toiletries-R-Us and I'm heading,
as I always do in super-drugstores, down the feminine
hygiene aisle. Of course I can't linger there the way I'd
like. I have to make it look like I've taken a wrong turn.
But there's still a charge in it for me. Just to think that
every single woman you know has to visit this section of
some store, that it's universal and categorical and
necessary (see, I'm not forgetting the purpose of this
journal, which is to help me learn how to sound like a
philosopher)...that causes me an incredible amount of
arousal. So I'm striding purposefully down the aisle, doing
my quick corner-of-the-eye inventory of napkins and
cramp-relievers and disposable douches, and I brush against
the retreating arm of a customer who's just taken a
feminine-hygiene item from the shelf, and she drops it - she
drops the carton of tampons. I start to apologize, and who
is she but Nicole Altman, beautiful and very bright TA, in
snug blue-jeans and a light cotton sweater. I drop to my
knees and retrieve the carton and hand it up to her. (This
act was surprisingly pleasurable. The knees, it turns out,
are an excellent position to view a beautiful lady from.
Nicole Altman looks taller than she is. She's short,
actually, but while I was down there I learned why she
doesn't look it: long leg-to-height ratio.) I'm about to
say, "There you go, Ms. Altman," or "Sorry about that, Ms.
Altman," or, "Hey, Ms. Altman, fascinating class today.
Here's your...your...item." But then I realize that of
course she doesn't recognize me yet. It's only the first day
and there are two dozen of us in class. So I simply
apologize for being clumsy, climb to my feet and make my
getaway, reviewing as I scramble all the information I've
collected on this unplanned foray into Nicole Altman's life,
everything from preference in absorbency to lack of
preference for applicators. Of course, I've also noted the
Miss Smoothie razor-cartridges and the Lady Verbena All
Natural Deodorant and various shampoos and soaps in Nicole's
basket, and they give me food for thought as well. I am so
turned on by cleanness. Nicole curtly thanks me as I go.

The things that then occupied my mind! I think details would
not be appropriate here. But I certainly meditated with some
rigor on Nicole's probable behavior once alone with the
product in question, focusing on how SHE, the woman, would
intuit the experience of insertion. This is called by
philosophers "the problem of other minds." To my mind, to
cite but one example, it was a matter of the greatest
interest that Nicole would have to experience her own pubic
hair as she proceeded to introduce the tampon into her
vagina. What a sensation that must be, I meditated.
Hair...very dark and in a perfect Euclidean triangle, as she
would know a priori after fifteen years of seeing herself in
the mirror...hair softly curling at the tips of her
beautiful sensitive digits as they ease the way for her
cotton guest into heaven's vestibule, and then the warmth
and moisture of her lips around them and "him." I drew
conclusions as to the injustice of the fact that for Nicole
herself, the "other mind" in this case, a naturally glorious
experience, which she had full freedom to linger over
besides, would appear completely ordinary and uninteresting.
Philosophers refer to this as the problem of appearance and
reality. Plato makes a very sharp distinction between the
two, and I have been in total agreement with him on this
point since bumping into Nicole in the drugstore.

**** ****

Since writing the previous paragraphs, I've heard another
lecture by Professor Smart and had two more
discussion-classes with the TA. From all this
philosophizing, I've discovered that I made a few serious
mistakes of reasoning in the first pages of this journal.
First, I speak of existence, and even worse, non-existence
as qualities, which I now understand they're not. (Don't ask
me what they are, though. Professor Smart is keeping that to
himself for a while.) And then, stupidity of stupidities, I
actually use the phrase "posit non-existence," which looks
okay but makes no sense, just like certain people in my
"Learning to Think" class. Like the ones who laughed at me
in Ms. Altman's class when she asked, "What does Plato mean
by Truth?" and I blurted out, "What do you mean by 'mean'?"
and everyone - everyone except the Divine Teaching Assistant
- thought I was clowning. But Ms. Altman nodded
thoughtfully, then asked my name, and when I told her
"Joseph," she automatically called me "Joey," which amazed
me and caused something that didn't logically follow to
occur in the part of me that we males are said to think
with. I thought Ms. Altman gave me an odd look, though, as
if she was trying to remember why I looked familiar. "Thank
you, Joey," she said, "that's a thoughtful question." When
she asked if I had any idea how to answer it, I froze. I had
this crazy idea that Ms. Altman could see me through my
clothes, that she saw my erect penis pointing straight at
her like a "One Way" sign. I felt that, if this were...well,
if this were what Professor Smart would call "the case" - I
mean, if I was transparent to the TA with my straight-arrow
hard-on - then it wouldn't embarrass me at all. I'd be proud
to have her see how responsive and dedicated to her I was.
This also gave me an idea that unfroze me.

"Well, Ms. Altman," I said, "I don't have the whole
answer...I mean, of course I don't...but I know that one
way...sometimes...you explain what you mean is by just
pointing...at the thing you mean...I, uh, mean." The kids
laughed again.

The TA didn't think this was hopeless. In fact, she thought
I was doing some real thinking, "Joey." She said I had
discovered a kind of meaning called ostensive definition. I
very much wanted to thank her and to say "Ma'am" as part of
it. Just thinking about calling Ms. Altman "ma'am,"
young-girl-looking Ms. Altman, the youngest female, I
suddenly realized, who'd ever had official power over me -
just thinking about this had the effect of firming up my
ostensive definition of MS. Altman.

 
 




    

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