The Pleasure Boy 25

"Oh, well," I thought, with a mental shrug. "There will be time enough to worry when it comes to that. If she tries to shut me out of the academic world, I'll have my geisho career to fall back on."

This was true enough, and Mistress Natasha and I went on as if nothing had happened. But something had happened. I had lost a certain innocence in my relationship with her; and, from then on, I had to be less spontaneous with her, and more professional.

Though it gets ahead of my story, this is a good place to mention that by the end of my first year as a graduate student, I already had an idea for a thesis. Derived in large part from my geisha training, its core was a line of objection to materialist theories of history (as advocated by Marxists and by anthropologist followers of Marvin Harris) which focus on the structural preconditions for human culture - for economic behaviour, in particular - to the neglect of human agency. My idea was to do a thesis on the role of fun and comfort, the twin sources of human pleasure, as central drivers of human history. I wished to to argue for a theory of culture grounded in pleasure, as my Geisha training had led me to understand it.

Human pleasure cannot be identified with self-interest because it's not necessarily rational. Indeed, what we find pleasurable - from unprotected sex with multiple strangers to bull fighting, auto racing and wingsuit flying - may be not just dangerous but downright self-destructive. For many, war and conquest have been pleasures of this kind. Their role in history is undeniable; and for all the suffering and death they inflict on unwilling participants, there is no doubt that many have looked forward to combat, and delighted in it, relishing its exhilaration, comradeship and risk. As well, economists too have had to recognize that investment and market behaviours are not well-predicted by rational self interest. The conclusion must be that feelings and perceptions matter, and that pleasure - broadly understood as the obverse of pain, fear, anxiety, boredom and sadness - of all that we dislike and try to avoid or get away from - is the source of human motivation.

As I'd been trained to understand it, 'pleasure' (in this technical sense) is an emotional state with a basis in human physiology - evolved to motivate behaviours which are conducive, on the whole, to survival and reproduc­tive fitness. As a matter of experience, we're driven by two main types of pleasure which may be labelled 'Fun' and 'Comfort.' For the most part, these are antithetical. Galloping and shooting the bow on horseback is fun, but it is not comfortable. Dozing or lazing around in a warm place, after a good meal, is comfortable but not what we'd call 'fun.' It seemed to me that human history - the history of central Asia, in particular, could be profitably studied as a quest and competition for fun and comfort, and that research along these lines could be the basis of a doctoral thesis and then a career as a historian.

When I made this argument to Prof. Sorkin, she agreed that it was an interesting point of view on Central Asian history, even on human history in general; but she pointed out that for a doctoral thesis, I would need a more specific research topic. "That's the sort of book you write when you're a university professor, or when you have tenure at least. The point of a PhD thesis is just to demonstrate that you can do sound research in your field, bring this to one or more worthwhile conclusions, and then defend your claims against objections and counter-arguments from your future colleagues. You don't know enough about my field to choose a topic yet. I'll help you pick one when the time comes. We'll find a small but interesting question, just at the edge of current knowledge, that can be answered with due diligence in a finite amount of time."

"Thank you, Professor," I said, feeling deflated. "I'll do as you say. But I'm not sure I have the patience to do that kind of work until I have tenure - or sufficient professional standing to do what I really care about."

"Well," she answered, "if you want an academic career, you'd better find that patience. No one will take you seriously if you get too grandiose too quickly."

It had already occurred to me that an academic career was a bit too regimented for my taste. With their carefully patrolled areas of specialization, what are professors anyhow, if not our bureaucrats of knowledge? A lecture I'd attended several years ago in a course on medieval Europe had made this point when its prof explained how the monasteries had become repositories of learning through their selfless labour of copying the writings of ancient authorities, and how the modern university had evolved from monas­tic factories of this kind. I could see how academic discipline was an outgrowth of the self-denying discipline of the medieval monastery with its Christian fear of pleasure (including the pleasure in learning) that we geishi seek to cultivate. After that lecture, I found myself thinking that I might learn more - and write more interesting books - as an amateur historiographer who did geisha work for a living. But I stayed silent and never shared those thoughts with my Mistress. Having come so far, I would stick it out and do my doctorate as Sorkin guided. Career decisions could be made later, when I had specific options to choose from.