Most men do not face life-threatening issues, save those regarding natural death. In the story, as in real life, men deal with day-in, day-out maintenance of relationships—faithfulness
Lust causes irrational action and inexplicable yearning. Lust fells its victims with smooth shape and supple form, and as the victims thud to the ground, she shackles their whirling minds with perceivably indestructible chains. Her nails slash into their stunned consciences like razors to flesh. Their resistance deadens. Lust scoffs at them, fools readily drawn aside and molded into a new image, creatures of self-seeking desire. She prods them with sedative, and soon, they desire nothing but to live in the moment, forgetting the past and ignoring the future. Pleased, they wallow in destruction. Only some startle from their slumber, but the mental scars remain, a memory of the horror and the temptation.
Lust storms over spouses. Mistrust pelts down, and deception flashs out. But why consider these things? Why do the immoralities accompanying lust repulse spouses and their sedated, self-serving companions? Conscience bears witness. Lustful feelings and lustful activities condemn men, the men among people, the we among us: We suit for nothing but kindling, and if we fuel purifying—or is it punishing—fire, we take heart, knowing that we now stoke something other than an eternal cycle of lust and guilt. We rediscover that we are not good people, as if any among us ever truly believed that lie. Within our minds, something whispers. We know that pleasure is an animalistic, pointless pulsing of stimulated nerve endings in and of itself. The disgusting actions, products of lust, only—and ever only—drag the men among us into a miry pit of hellish, reaking rot.
Dubus never clarifies men's emotional condition toward women, the raging emotions of lust, a struggle of men's wearying existence. Without excuse, Dubus avoids lust. Then again, maybe Dubus does something better, touching on something more basic to human nature. Frank enrages Richard with his relationship to Richard's wife, and so Richard downs Frank—three blasts from a metal-spitting piece of machinery. Dubus uses the fear of death to produce fear of sexual immorality. An ancient author supports Dubus's form of communication:
For at the window of my house I looked out through my lattice, and I saw among the naive, and discerned among the youths a young man lacking sense [. . .] And behold, a woman comes to meet him [. . .]
So she seizes him and kisses him and with a brazen face she says to him: "I was due to offer peace offerings; today I have paid my vows. Therefore I have come out to meet you, to seek your presence earnestly, and I have found you. I have spread my couch with coverings, with colored linens of Egypt. I have sprinkled my bed with myrrh, aloes and cinnamon. Come, let us drink our fill of love until morning; let us delight ourselves with caresses. For my husband is not at home, he has gone on a long journey; he has taken a bag of money with him, at the full moon he will come home."
[. . .] Suddenly he follows her as an ox goes to the slaughter, or as one in fetters to the discipline of a fool, until an arrow pierces through his liver; as a bird hastens to the snare, so he does not know that it will cost him his life.
(Selection from "Proverbs 7" out of the NASB Bible)
Dubus and the ancient make the same point clear: every experience yields just returns. Experience strolls about teaching many lessons, but beware. As Benjamin Franklin put it, "Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other." Strive to avoid her lessons, and instead, receive knowledge from others, apply it, and learn wisdom. Learn wisdom without knowing it.
