Of Nappies and Nipples

In his later years the great American actor Spencer Tracy was incontinent. Katharine Hepburn looked after him. She was his soul-mate, his partner, his life. She was with him when he died. Katharine was Spencer’s backbone. His rib. And it was in that guise that she starred in a movie with him—Adam’s Rib (1949). It of course evoked the biblical proclamation that God created Eve from Adam’s rib. Why the rib, I don’t know. I would have thought there is at least one other male appendage more crafted for creation than a rib. But a rib it was. I won’t mess with God. But that doesn’t explain nipples. If woman is derived from man, in that order, why does man have nipples? On a man, they must be about as useful as a George W. Bush dissertation on quantum physics. But they exist. And according to the Bible, they existed first on a man. Why? Was God experimenting? Is man an experiment—a try-out, a prototype—and woman the real thing? Did God, when He was designing the male architecture, say I’ll put one of those there and that one there and see if that works and if it does I’ll give them to Eve and make them super sensitive so that Adam has something other than apples to munch on? If that is the way it worked, I guess God simply forgot to take them off Adam. God can be forgetful—look at Hamilton. But if we do not accept God as the answer then there is still the question: why do men have nipples? For the answer to that, I trod the oft-trod passage of modern pilgrimage: I went from God to Google. And according to Google, all men are bisexual, which of course explains the rugby scrum. It appears that when we first appear, God has a bet both ways. It is only later in the piece that he bestows an extra piece. Or not. Meanwhile, the nipples stay. And maybe God has a point. Nipples do no harm. In fact, they give men a small glimmer of equality with women. Something shared. And in that context nipples have a stand-out quality—unique as a body part. I could kiss them for that.

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