Where have all the gamma males gone?

The alpha male. Given writer Lise Horton’s astute comment from yesterday, I just have to keep going. First I have to tell you a little about Lise and how I “met” her.

She’s a virtual friend, which speaks to our burgeoning electronic society today. It’s not just for adolescents anymore! I met Lise because she coordinated a contest for a chapter of the Romance Writers of America. For those who aren’t familiar, RWA is an enormous international organization, subdivided into smaller chapters. Some of these chapters are regional and involve bricks & mortar meetings, while others are organized by topic and exist only on the internet. And many of these chapters conduct writing contests. These contests are extraordinary in my experience in the world of writing, because they almost all offer putting your manuscript in front of an agent or editor, either as the prize or as the final round of judging. There are a lot of contests and you can choose by which agent or editor’s desk you’d really love to sprawl across. Manuscriptually speaking, of course.

Lise is an amazing gal because she read EVERY ENTRY for the contest she coordinated. And, though I didn’t final in that contest, in the “so sorry” email she wrote to me, she told me her impressions of my manuscript, which were really complimentary. I can’t tell you how much that meant to me. I bill my book, Obsidian, as paranormal romance. Again, this is an RWA thing, but it means a story with sci fi/fantasy elements that’s also built around a love story. Only in my story, the heroine doesn’t meet the hero right away (she’s too busy with being unexpectedly dumped in fairyland) and he’s more of an antihero anyway, being a mercurial and manipulative fae, and the love relationship is more of a love/hate thing (c/f: mercurial and manipulative). At any rate, Lise gave me much-needed words of encouragement that, though my book doesn’t fit the mold, there is a place for it in the world.

Now, I don’t know how many contest coordinators read every entry. Lise said she did it because she felt a responsibility to have a sense of the manuscripts, so she’d know something about them to make sure the judging was fair. I thought it was a spectacular assumption of responsibility.

Plus, Lise has such interesting things to say about the alpha – and, lest we forget, the beta – males. She’s right: romance is escapist entertainment. And so the fantasy of the man who can take control of a chaotic world and make it perfect for us is the ultimate escape. Yes, dress me in designer clothes, plop me at a resort and make sure nothing unpleasant ever happens to me. It’s not reality. It’s not even what we really want. But for escape? Sign me up!

Swim Boys

10:00 am, the first Saturday of the month, so the mournful wail of the tornado sirens drifts over town. Dogs lift their heads to howl along. In the summer I'd be already outside in the garden. Instead, the January cold keeps us in. Wind gusting along the eaves. Only a test.

They were having a swim meet at the Rec Center this morning. Always a bad omen: yellow school buses in the parking lot. They cheerfully list the counties across Wyoming. Sweetwater. Fremont. Campbell. Former Governor Mike Sullivan called Wyoming a small town with very long streets. To have a sporting event, schools must compete against schools from across the state, not from across the city. Only a couple of towns have more than one high school. School buses in the parking lot mean kids swarming the weight machines, the walking/running track, traveling in packs to look cool on a visit to the "big city."

On Saturdays, the Rec Center opens at 8:00 am. We sleep in and head over there around eight o'clock. Saturdays is our treadmill workout. David and I like the side-by-side treadmills that overlook the pool through tall glass windows. During my twenty minute run, I watched the families assemble, settle into the bleachers and the steamy warmth. Not a bad place to be on a sere winter day.

Bleachers are the natural habitat of teenagers. While the adults perch uneasily on the hard plastic benches, the young men -- this meet seemed to be all young men -- sprawled. The accepted pose required at least three tiers: Feet on one, butt on the middle and elbows on the highest. An elegant laid-back pose, especially well adapted to being shirtless, which they all were. Little kings, they surveyed their territory with cocky athleticism, reclining so that all might admire them.

But I felt no admiration. I've never quite gotten the stories of the older woman and the teenage lover. These high school boys are no more attractive to me now than they were when I was in school myself. I think that for me it’s because attraction to a person is all about the personality and character, which are not yet formed in most of these guys. Sure we can talk about a man with nice hands or strong shoulders or intense eyes. But in the end, it’s about his presence. His manliness.

The romance authors talk about the alpha male. As the genre dabbles in other areas, growing and drifting into science fiction, mystery, thriller, even mainstream fiction, those who work in the field struggle to define the genre. One particular I see most often is there must be an alpha male. That and an “emotionally satisfying ending.” The Happily Ever After (HEA) is no longer a prerequisite. But the alpha male: a must.

Which is interesting because, biologically speaking, alpha males are the exception, not the rule. There is only one alpha male wolf in the pack. There is only one alpha stag in the herd. As females, is that our biological imperative – to seek out the alpha male and ignore all of the secondary bachelor males? Is that what romance is about, the animal drive and nothing else?

Perhaps there’s something else to look for in the man of our romantic dreams: someone between the unformed boy and the elusive alpha male. After all, in nature, the alpha leads for only a short time before he’s taken down by the young males waiting restlessly in the wings for their turn at the females.