Nippled Irish Royalty and Their Less Fortunate, Usually Dead, Nippleless Relatives

My museum time today yielded the following:

Sucking a King's nipples was an ancient Irish form of submission. It rains a lot here (Dublin) and is rather chilly, so I would think the King would cover his chest. That means there must have been royal reception days when the King exposed his nipples in order to facilitate nipple sucking.

So much easier to just bow and kiss a ring.

As with all royalty, there were power games in the nipple hierarchy. Cutting off a royal descendant's nipples made him ineligible for kingship. Not as subtle as poison, but undeniable evidence of his unsuitability for a kingly role. No nips, game over.

A Celtic King was wedded to the Earth, and as her representative his nipples were important. His/her power is transferred to the grain. When it's harvested, his power is sacrificed. The Lord must die, Joseph Campbell said: "A God dies for his people so that they may live." The story repeats itself in multiple mythologies, legends and religions. But must the mortal king die in order to insure a successful harvest?

Human sacrifice was apparently a normal part of the Celtic rituals, especially of kings in hard times. "The king had great power but also great responsibility to ensure the prosperity of his people. Through his marriage on his inauguration to the goddess of the land, he was meant to guarantee her benevolence. He had to ensure the land was productive, so if the weather turned bad, or there was plague, cattle disease or losses in war, he was held personally responsible," said Ned Kelly, keeper of antiquities at the Irish National Museum.

His kingly role required him to keep nature and society in equilibrium. A little nipple sucking would surely increase his self-esteem and help him on his way.

Also at The Huffington Post

FIDELITY & MORTAL ILLNESS

How would you feel about your mate having an affair if you were stricken with a mortal illness and  uninterested in having sexual relations?

The usual first response for people who love their mates is that their sexual drive would die, too.  But what if your loved one was not hooked up to tubes and drains?  What if they were functioning, yet with death hovering?

In graduate school, I did an internship in a tutorial center.  My boss was a kind and knowledgeable man who loved his wife and family dearly.  She'd had two heart attacks and the prognosis was not good.  You would have never suspected it to look at her.  She was robust and cheery, the affection between them palpable.

At that time, I had no experience with grief of the death-inspired sort, but one of the tutors in our group was dying of leukemia. Everyday he appeared paler and weaker, but he still attended classes and reported for work.  "You can tell his family has made the separation," Dr. Jackson, my boss, said one day after meeting the tutor's family. Responding to my expression, he added, "It's not that they don't love him, but when you know someone is going to die, you go through grief while they're still walking and talking.  You protect yourself from the finality."

"Does that mean you become more feverish about your own life, about living, and everything that that means?" I asked.

"I hope so," he said, "but you also pull back a little.  Your love is there, but a boundary is there, too." That's when he told me about his wife, and how a hardening within him had taken place.

Over a decade later, I hooked up with a cheap bus tour of Italy. The tour was packed with Europeans. . . Germans, Irish, British.  The only Americans were a Sikh family from Silicon valley.  There was also an Iraqi couple.

But it was the Irish couple who fascinated me.  They were in their forties, possibly early fifties. Attractive in a dull, settled way.  The wife was a bit tight-lipped.  Pissed, actually.  The husband was in a constant low-key frenzy trying to please his wife.

After a short time it became obvious that there was something wrong with her.  I decided she was mortally ill, and that this vacation was supposed to be a last hurrah for them.  Not that she ever got sick in front of us.  It's just that his behavior became more frantic at the same time that she glared at all the art and beauty around us.  It looked as if she were saying angry goodbyes to everything, as if she hated the way life just went on ready to skip right by her.

I was wallowing in my European jaunt, one of the happiest periods of my life.  One night in Rome, the three of us had dinner together.  She ordered a lavish meal and didn't touch a bite of it, just jousted with me all night, looking like she wanted to scratch my eyes out.  And not because of her husband (with whom I had no attraction whatsoever), but because I was so damn cheerful.

Death had a grip on her and she had a death grip on her husband, ready to drag him into the grave with her and not because she loved him.  Because she hated that it wasn't him dying instead of her.

Those were my thoughts, then.  Now, even though she was clearly punishing him, perhaps she wasn't dying.  I don't understand the kind of negative vehemence she had, nor do I understand her husband remaining under its power.  Only if she had a death sentence would it make sense for him to stand by her side.  If he'd chosen to seek affection elsewhere, could you blame him?

Why would I think of this now?  Just finished Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, which is a treacherous tale of a sick marriage.   The wife in it reminded me of the Irish Wife in Italy and her forlorn husband.  With the passage of time and lessons learned from my own marriage (a happy one, but not without bumps), and my friends' marriages and divorces, I've reconsidered the death sentence I'd given her at the time.  Maybe they were just miserably bound for life.

Adventure #1: Mexico, 1967

My best friends and I drove a '60 Chevy from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Mexico City, Guadalajara and Acapulco during winter break in 1967. Not only did I turn 18 on the trip, but my bff's were all guys: Arturo, from Juarez; Donald, from Española, NM; and, Hugo, from Venezuela. We liked to dance salsa in the rec room of the girl's dorm. I accepted the invitation to join them on the road trip without hesitation. My first adventure as an adult was about to happen. 

Before your imagination goes dark, or brightens with anticipation, you should know that I left Albuquerque a virgin and returned intact. The sexual revolution was in full throttle and the Pill was readily available. But I wasn't. 

I had more important matters on my mind, like planning my wardrobe for the trip. I wanted a bikini, but couldn't find one in Albuquerque. No worries, we were going to Acapulco! What better place to buy my first bikini? The itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny bikini hadn't hit the fashion pages yet; bikinis were more like hip-huggers. 

In those days, I was thin and flat-chested so I cut up a padded bra and brought along large safety pins to secure the cups to the inside of the top. Part of my meager savings also went toward high fashion-purple wide-leg lounge pants, a matching top and a head scarf which could be tied around my hips. 

Far out!

In the '60s, the roads in Mexico were not all paved and there were few signs indicating which way to go. One moonless night, we got behind a bus with a sign saying it was heading for Mexico City. We ate its dust all the way into the smoggy capital, checked into a youth hostel and slept soundly until the city awoke with a clamor I'd never before encountered. No matter; I was traveling and took it all in hungrily. Speaking of eating, I also ate everything the guys ate and drank the water without hesitation. 

That first day, we visited the Museo Nacional de Antropología, which was just like the National Geographic pictures I'd lingered over as a kid. Of course we traveled out to the Teotihuacan Pyramids. We took the next available bus heading to the pyramids. Our bus gave us a villager's view of the back way to get there. We exited the paved highway and traveled on a dirt road where there was the occasional mud hut. A naked toddler exited one and pooped in front of his home. A man sat nearby smoking a cigarette. An industrial building sat alone in another section. It had a chain-link fence around it and the only sidewalk in the area running along the front. The yard was dirt. An old woman swept the sidewalk clean, but the bus churned up dust as we passed. She reached the end of the sidewalk, turned and swept in the opposite direction. 

At last, we reached Teotihuacan. We raced up the steps of the Pyramid of the Sun and raised our arms to the sky in youthful triumph. 

Next stop: Acapulco and my new bikini. 

The skies cleared, but the day grew hot and muggy. There was no air conditioning in the car. We stopped to buy tacos and fruit from a street vendor. Across the way, children frolicked naked in a stream. Hot and sweaty, I joined them in shorts and brought along a bar of Dial soap. It was refreshing to be clean again. I was clean, wasn't I?

In Acapulco, we stayed in a beautiful hilltop hotel. The guys didn't want me to go anywhere alone, but I insisted on shopping without a male chaperone. On the walk back to the hotel, two boys about my age headed in my direction. As they passed, one of them grabbed my crotch. I screamed and swung my bag with the bikini at him. They laughed and walked on, slapping each other on the back.

My adventure buddies shook their heads and tsk-tsked at the risk I'd taken. They were in love with me and I was in love with their love. Undaunted, we danced that night at the Tequila a Go-Go. Yes, I am so old I danced at the precursor to disco.

At around 4 a.m., we loitered on the curb outside the club and my friends befriended a taxi driver. The cabbie promised us something unusual. We piled in and he took us far out of the city.

We traveled on an unpaved road to an unlit area. In the distance, dim light outlined crudely assembled shanties. People -- male tourists -- roamed a rutted lane with the structures on either side. Women sat outside the huts and beckoned us in. Light seeped out through gaps in the walls of the tiny casitas. There were no street lamps or power lines visible so the light must have been from candles or kerosene lamps. Tall, blond Nordic-looking men dressed in tennis whites peeked through the gaps at what was going on inside.

I sat in the middle of the back seat of the taxi with Donald and Hugo on either side of me. Arturo sat in the front seat next to the driver, who slowed so that we could see what was offered. A middle-aged woman beckoned us with a graceful sweep of her arm. The taxi paused. She lifted her skirt and spread her legs wide.

In unison, without consulting one another, every guy in the taxi except the driver pressed the lock button on his door. Ha! My friends were innocents, too. The sun was coming up when we returned to our lovely tiled rooms high on a hill overlooking Acapulco Bay.

Sleep mattered little, but we managed to sneak in a few hours before heading to Revolcadero Beach, where thunderous waves pounded into shore. I had never bodysurfed in my life. Nevertheless, I swam out with my pals. A high shimmering wall of water towered over us. I dove into it as the guys had instructed, fully expecting a pleasant ride to shore. 

The water seized me and curled my body into an O, spinning me in circles until it spit me out on the beach. I stood as the water withdrew and looked down at my bikini. My padded inserts still clung to the giant safety pins, but now hung below my bikini top. Before I had a chance to tuck them back in, a wave slammed into me and dragged me out, then whirled me to shore again. When I stood this time, the padded inserts andthe giant safety pins were gone. 

I spent the rest of the afternoon lounging on the sand in all my unpadded and crumpled glory. We ate dinner there, a round fish cooked by a little old lady over a campfire. 

It was time to head home. We'd planned a visit to Guadalajara, where Arturo had relatives. We stayed in that first night, but the next evening we went out to an upscale nightclub. I wore my glamorous purple outfit. They wouldn't let me in because women weren't allowed to wear pants! The guys argued vehemently with the management in Spanish and I was finally allowed entrance. It occurs to me now that they may have bribed them.

The music was love sung by an older gentleman whose name I don't recall. The lyrics were filled with longing. He closed his eyes while he sang. His posture and every wrinkle on his face expressed loss and regret. Spanish was the language my grandparents spoke, but I wasn't fluent. Still, his meaning was clear: Love while you can and hold onto it for as long as possible. 

Donald laid his head on the table. He'd become more solemn as our journey progressed. It was he who held my hand when I became ill on the drive home. I'd had the warning signs of La Turista for several days but was too embarrassed to tell the guys. 

Student health back home said I didn't have anything ominous in my system and expressed wonder and chagrin that I'd nonchalantly bathed in a stream, eaten food from street vendors and drank the untreated water in Mexico.

Hey! I was having an adventure.

Also at the Huffington Post: http://huff.to/1uD0jkj