Archibald Lindsey's Study of Women

Art Imitates Life: An introduction

I remember as a child going to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina with Mom and Dad to see the ocean for the first time in my life. It was amazing. I’ll never forget topping that last hill and staring in awe at water that disappeared past the edge of the earth.

The sand, the shops, the salty air and the seagulls were all new experiences for me. I was already in sensory overload when I saw my first street artist turn a sitting tourist into a “cartoon” right before my eyes. It was an incredibly silly sketch, but I was fascinated and wanted my own. Dad was happy to oblige and pulled out some cash with a smile. The artist asked me what I liked to do. I didn’t even have to think about it. My favorite thing to do back home on our 10 acres was putt around at full throttle on my old Honda 70.

About three min later, the artist turned his easel around to show Dad and me a caricature of a big-eyed kid with a toothy grin and a fuzzy mess of hair kicking up dirt on a red motorcycle. There was a lot wrong with the picture. For one, my Honda 70 was blue and the boy on the bike had only a marginal resemblance to me, but it was fun and humorous, and I loved it.

A written caricature of that same brown-eyed, fuzzy-haired kid has long been my goal for Archibald Lindsey’s Study of Woman. Just like that Myrtle Beach caricature was an embellishment of my unruly hair; my chubby, dimpled cheeks and teeth that looked too big for my face, this book is an embellishment of personal experience, stories I’ve heard and events that I have been privy to whether I directly participated or not.

Study of Women is FICTION, plain and simple, but I believe the greatest story tellers draw form their personal experience and the people they meet because real life is just that entertaining. The legendary Rock Band Lynyrd Skynyrd derived their name from a high school gym teacher. Lewis Grizzard made a living embellishing on his childhood and drew inspiration from the master of southern comedic literature, Mark Twain who embellished the world he lived in. There are as many stories of characters walking out of real life into Dickens' imagination as novels he wrote. The moral of the story is, we mustn’t take ourselves too seriously because none of us will make it out of our own personal story alive.

Since I first watched the movie A Knights Tale, Chaucer’s comments to the debt collectors have long resonated with me. I don’t know if the real Geoffrey Chaucer ever said anything like it, but the embellished character in a work of fiction speaking of embellishing the faults of his tormentors in his immortal imagination is brilliant. “I will eviscerate you in fiction,” he says. “Every pimple, every character flaw. I was naked for a day; you will be naked for eternity.”

No character is eviscerated in Study of Women. While Archie is no hero, there are no villains in this story either, except when personifying Archie’s ego, the only enduring antagonist of this novel. Study of Women is FICTION, but I hope the reader sees it as a funhouse mirror reflection of love, lust, heartache, fulfillment and real life. Because that's why I wrote it.

Excerpt: Chapter I: Beginnings

Archibald Lindsay was a Scottish man. He came to America to escape the noose for his part in the Scottish Insurrection. Nearly 200 years later he’s a celebrated founder of the Lindsey’s and I got saddled with his name. Maybe 200 years ago, Archibald meant “genuine” and “bold,” but I’ve never felt very genuine or bold.

I’ve noticed, as I get older, I have more tendencies to look back on my life, as people often do But it seems to me the times in my life I have been more desperate, less in control, have been when I was struggling for the heart of a woman. It seems to me now I have been desperate and out of control most of my life. A life altering phenomena such as this should indeed require more in-depth research, but why now? Why today?

No, now is a terrible time – a terrible, terrible time. Tomorrow is much too big a day for me to be second guessing my entire life now. The most interesting, intriguing, and beautiful woman I have ever known has agreed to spend the rest of her life with me. Me, painfully awkward and overly self-conscious me. My lovely Justine has joyfully entered into this arrangement with no second thoughts or misgivings while I, on the other hand, have succumbed to fear and doubt fueled by a vic1timhood I know to be selfishly imagined.

There is still so much to do before tomorrow and I still can’t shake this. I’m supposed to go out tonight, live it up, get drunk, slap strippers on the butt, and enjoy my last night as a bachelor.

Wow, my last night as a bachelor? I’ll be a married man in 32 hours … make that, 31 hours, 48 minutes, and… 22 seconds. But this party is clearly more for my friends anyway. There certainly isn’t much to celebrate about the end of my single days. There truly won’t be much to miss. Oh, but the “could have beens” and “should have beens.” Why can’t I get them out of my head? Why here? Why now? Why ever again? Have I not suffered enough at the hands of the Medusas, the Sirens, and the Delilahs?

Oh, poor pitiful me. There is my imagined victimhood again. My misery with the opposite sex has not been without fault of my own. After all, I have returned to the fray time and again. My continued failure to implement lessons learned seems a direct contradiction to Pavlov’s Theory of Conditioned Response. How funny I should compare the similarity of a man and a woman with a dog and a biscuit.

Perhaps that’s it though. Perhaps there isn’t such a difference in the two. Perhaps my life has in fact been one life-long study – a study of women.

I don’t dare start a study of women without first considering the one heart I never had to struggle for – my mother’s. I think some researchers might say men all look for our mother in the bride we choose. Maybe that explains some of my picky nature, but a mother’s love is unconditional and wholly meritless. The challenge is to seek out the desired one and compel their admiration.

Aside from that, I really don’t know where it all started, but my earliest memories of anything take me back to a trailer park in Cheribusco, Indiana. That trailer park was a metropolis to me. There were many children, and I am sure a few little heartbreakers my age, but since I can’t recall any one in particular, I will mark that up as a memory sadly lost forever.

My school years bring on more substantial memories more easily recalled. When I was old enough to begin kindergarten, we moved to a neighborhood in suburban Fort Wayne. I spent at least two years in that two-story white house on Delaware Avenue. Memories of my time there bring a few girls to mind, but one in particular best demonstrates the beginning of my life-long study.

I remember diagonally across the road from my home was a blue-gray house with lots of children. The family had so many children, the yard had been completely eradicated the slightest hint of grass. The small front yard was completely barren except for two large trees from which the roots snaked on top of the gray dirt. I seem to remember being friends with at least one of the boys my age, while the others tended to be bullies who took advantage of my small stature.

I certainly remember the family had at least one young girl who was my age, maybe a little younger. Sadly, I do not re member the curly black-haired girl’s name, but I do recall at least one visit in particular.

Young children are naturally very curious about their bodies and what makes a boy different from a girl. We had been playing behind my house in my sandbox made from an old tractor tire. Curiosity led us behind the garage out of site from the house. I draw a complete blank as to the particulars of the conversation, but I have total recollection of us both pulling down our pants.

“What happened to yours,” I asked.

“My dad cut it off when I was little,” was her reply.

Then we both bent over to get close ups of each other’s materials, even inspecting our back sides so not to leave any mystery unsolved. I distinctly remember thinking the dark circle of flesh tucked up underneath resembled the shriveled base of a balloon pulled tight by the knot and if I opened it up, she might deflate.

This was my first recollection of the opposite sex, at least what made us opposite. Unfortunately, since that day, understanding the other has not been as simple as just pulling down our pants.