Shalampax Speaks

Well peeps, the ongoing tale of Openfly continues. And it just keeps getting weirder.

I mentioned last time that I emailed Dr. Donald Rivers (Don), the zoologist who is holding Openfly captive on a research ship. In my first email to him I asked him why he locked her up. Since then, we’ve exchanged a number of emails.

The email stream is much too long to paste in its entirety here. Instead, the following is a synopsis of our exchange:

Me: Openfly tells me that you locked her in an observation room after she said she wouldn’t have sex with you for a few days. Is that true?

Don: You have the chronology right, but you’re mistaken about the causation. I didn’t lock her in the observation room because she refused to sleep with me for a while. It was the reason she gave that shocked me. She refused to have any sexual encounters for a few days because she said she was fertile.

Me: Her reaction is perfectly understandable. I don’t know what things are like where you come from, but here there is nothing women hate more than the thought of bearing and, worse, caring for a child. It gets in the way of their napping.

The only time Shalampaxian women will agree to get pregnant is when they’ve been duly and fairly selected to bring the population of Shalampax back up to its full complement after a death. Even then, they patriotically go through with it only after several weeks of loud, nonstop whining and bitching about their horrid luck.

So you see, Openfly isn’t alone. Many Shalampaxian women refuse to have sex while they are fertile.

No birth control method is foolproof. Those Shalampaxian women who can’t control their sexual urges while they are ovulating don’t go on only the birth control pill. When they’re ovulating, they also insist that their partners wear three layers of condoms, just to be sure.

I always thought Openfly was of one of those women who has to have it when she has to have it, which is always, but it just goes to show you how much Openfly can surprise you at times.

Don: You have different customs and practices. I accept that. However, that’s not why I’m studying Openfly. (Did I mention she’s in the observation room so I can study her?)

The reason I’m studying Openfly is, when I asked her how she could be so certain that she was ovulating, she said, “Don’t be silly. Of course I’m certain. My vagina has turned a bright, bright red.”

Me: Yeah, so? All women’s vaginas turn bright red when they are fertile.

Don: That’s what Openfly told me. There’s just one problem. It’s not true. I’ve never heard of it happening to any other women. Never. And I did considerable research. There’s never been a recorded case of a human female’s vagina consistently turning bright red every time she ovulates.

The bodies of a number of other primate females do display some sort of signal when they are in estrus, but not humans.

Me: Estrus? Who is Estrus? I’ve never heard that name before. Did you mean Esther? Wasn’t she someone in your bible? And who cares if she displays something when someone is in her? That’s her choice.

Don: No, no; you misunderstand. “Estrus” is a term for the period of sexual receptivity and fertility in many female mammals. The vernacular for “in estrus” is “in heat.” The point is that, unlike most of the animals that are most closely related to humans, the female human body does not show any external signs of ovulation.

If you’re not sitting down, you might want to do so. And, if you don’t have a medical attendant standing nearby who can restart your heart if it stops, you might want to summon one before you read what I’m about to say.

My theory is that Shalampaxians aren’t Homo sapiens. If I’m right, they constitute a different, but related species.

Me: Don, whoa! I have to stop you right there! We consider “homo” to be a derogatory term. Shalampaxians are, by nature, very accepting people. (Although, that’s mostly because we don’t care much about anything whatsoever.) We call them gays and lesbians. I’d appreciate it if you don’t use the “homo” word in the future.

And sapiens? I don’t know what that is, but it doesn’t sound like a compliment.

Don: I’m sorry. You’re misunderstanding me again. Homo sapiens is the scientific term for the human species.

I’m going to have to ask you to be patient with me. Remember, it’s only a hypothesis of mine. But we’ll soon know for certain whether Openfly and, by extension, Shalampaxians are human. I’ve taken a DNA sample from Openfly. As soon as we get to a port I’m going to courier it to a lab that can analyze it for me.

Me: Now you’re totally baffling me. How can analyzing some pages from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy determine Openfly’s species? Besides, I didn’t know that Openfly read anything other than comic strips. Hearing that she has a book with her comes as a total shock to me.

Don: I see where you’re confused. In this case, DNA does not stand for Douglas Noel Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It stands for deoxyribonucleic acid. Don’t ask. It’s complicated. Just trust me when I say that analyzing it will allow me to determine if Openfly is human.

That’s where it stands, peeps. Clearly this has serious implications for Shalampaxians. For example, if it turns out that Dr. Don is right and we’re not human, does that mean that eating humans who trespass on our little island would no longer be considered to be cannibalism? That takes away some of the thrill, doesn’t it?