Trench Love Phenomenon: Crazy About Abraham Maslow

Trench love. How romantic does that sound? There is just something basic, something almost sacrificial about that phrase that conjures up images of raw, animalistic passion in the face of death, a sort of odd combination of martyrdom and instinctual reproduction. Who wouldnt want to experience the pleasure of sexual release just one more time before the Luftwatha makes one final, devastating pass? Isnt procreation the last dying wish of every man on a doomed and descending aircraft? To heck with worrying about oxygen masks and floats when you are ten thousand feet over the Atlantic in freefall. Maslows hierarchy suggests that human needs must be met in some order; and sex is number one, everyone; right up there with the need to breathe, eat, shelter, and sleep. So bear with that pitiful creep on the plane and the two Iraqis making out in the afterglow of a roadside bomb in a snipers crosshairs. Maslows hierarchy might just explain the whole trench love phenomenon.

There is a poignant scene in the old, yet unforgettable situation comedy, M.A.S.H. that may best depict our trench lovers. As Hawkeye Pierce and the voluptuous Hot Lips Hullahan are hunkering along the baseboard of some small shack in a remote Korean battlefield, the two suddenly realize that they are uncontrollably attracted to each other and begin to make passionate love between explosions and an occasional tear. Incidentally, there is a basic need to be clothed in Hollywood, so the nudity was omitted in the show, and coitus assumed. Absurd? No. Its Maslowian. According to the pyramid, the two were behaving as Maslow, himself, would have predicted.

This Hollywood scene must validate the hierarchy. Certainly, there are other instances of putting ones safety on the line to satisfy ones basic sexual desire. This scene is natural; it cannot be an ad hoc fallacy. The kissing Iraqis and the plummeting passenger are anecdotal examples, sure, but certainly two of perhaps billions (pinky to lip and eyebrow raised). There is just something disturbing about looking at Maslows evolving pyramid, and reconciling the idea that sexual gratification comes before safety and security. Equally so, the idea that sex ranks first (with food and water and fig leaves), and affection and belonging come third as if sex has nothing to do the latter, is reprehensible. Maybe this explains why there is no outcry when a man cites mismatched libidos as a reason to divorce his lonely wife. Judges understand Maslow. Aha.

Isnt human connection primary? Ask any fetus. But I ask you, the biologist, doesnt loneliness have some potent chemical correlate, like sex has its testosterone? Lets name it now. We will call it Allleftalone. It is produced in the thymus and disappears in proportion to the glands disintegration. That might explain why Maslowians might consider alleftalone less dominant than testosterone, which remains into late adulthood and can always be replaced with Viagra supplements. There is, for the lonely, however, no synthetic alleftalone. The best we can do is SSRI therapy, which might make you suicidal. At least it makes you want to sleep which is a primary "need." Another possibility is injectable amphetamines, which makes you feel like you are surrounded. It is yet and unlikely to be approved because it rots your teeth and, oh by the way, kills you. Dont forget,I am reminded by some screaming inner animal, we are NOT talking about parental love or the selfless love of Christian agape, we are talking about the trench! Damn my id all to hell. He doesnt care if he is alone or with three people or with a beast. Where is Freud when I need him, and where did my superego and thymus go?

So, safety isnt the primary need. Then what is shelter: Maslows safety concubine? We have a primary need for a wigwam, is that it? Or a hut? Is shelter an umbrella? How about the bomb shelter I built over in Jersey at the expense of countless hours at home? Does that qualify as a safety concern, or should I burn my airline tickets when we are invaded and bed down with the spouse? Give me a sexual break! I suppose Maslow would say that I was building an underground sex parlor, not a bomb shelter. Yeah, Baby, he says, with horn-rimmed glasses and an English accent. Maslow can explain why two soldiers, bunkered down trying to evade shrapnel, experience an intense and overwhelming need to procreate, heterosexual or otherwise. But he cant explain my bomb shelter! Wait, can homosexuals reproduce?

Heres the protocol for all us wannabe X-ray techs according to Maslow. 1) Understand where the patient is on the hierarchy and attend to those needs in order. Patients will have concerns about sex and food and whether they are covered. Remind them that lunch is at noon and dinner at five. Make sure they have a gown or gonadal fig leaf. And oh yeah, offer them the yellow pages so that they can look up the number of an escort service assuming they are single and willing, of course. This need for sex is more potent than any fear of falling, so have the yellow pages ready and secondarily, a gate belt and sponges. 2) Every patient comes into Medical Imaging fearful to know and to understand. But wait, this ranks fifth. This is way up the pyramid of needs, somewhere ahead of spirituality. Oh wait, thats not a need according to Maslow, even though Nitzche said that if there wasnt a God, it would be necessary for man to invent Him. Sounds like a need to me. But, I need to make sure their esteem is good. To hell with anyone elses. But, they need to feel belongingness and love, too. Lets see. Belongingness and love has nothing to do with sex or spirituality or other-esteem according to my id, or knowledge, so that leaves 3) polite conversation and aesthetics. Light a candle and have fresh cut glads about the room to make it feel more like home (glads are as resilient to radiation as a Venus flytrap). Wait, I cant probably have fire around 84,000 volts of electricity. If there are allergy concerns about the glads, than pictures will do. Nod as if you care about what is said, just like you do in your recliner when your mate says something unintelligible. Aesthetics is extremely important, right up there with self-actualization, which probably has an autoerotic component. 4) Take decent film, and shield the gonads but not necessarily in that order.

Remember, trench love is in the back of every persons mind. You may need to fend off exhibitionists in x-ray. Just look at the floorboard fire of Major Hullahan and she was a nurse.

We are talking about trench love, so watch your creepy touch. You might just be arousing the battlefield beast within this 400-pound female sumo wrestler. Who doesnt want to experience the intimacy of raw lust in a cloud of pulverized Korean Japanese Maples or in the sterility of a medical imaging room, where that hovering cancer looms like a Blackhawk helicopter? Wait! Intimacy and raw lust probably arent inclusive. Darn it! But ah, it all brings to mind an image of the late Francis Scott Key writing our national anthem while undergoing a Craniogram somewhere in a remote Philadelphia sick ward. How schizoid, yet how romantic.

Final thoughts on Maslow. First, he must have known someone who died from, for lack of a better word, horniness. How awful to die of a ruptured seminal vesicle. How painful to be consumed by a firestorm of raging testosterone? Perhaps though, Maslow was onto something. Could the trench love theory possible explain the phenomenon of death by spontaneous combustion? Voila! He has done it! Human beings can burst into flame from sexual deprivation, just as though they might waste away from starvation. Scary, scary stuff.

But perhaps I have it all wrong. Perhaps I am a victim of my own religious beliefs. Have I made the basic mistake of equating love with sex? Has my religion obliterated the gray area between these exclusive ideals? Was my abstinence a betrayal of my manhood? Is marriage, the context in which I have lumped these two needs, a Euro-Christian convention that has artificially divided my vas deferens from my heart? Will my wife really refuse me this release until I consent to buying her a blindfold and chaps? Wait! Where do blindfolds rank? I can only pray that my overactive id be irradiated, and my mismatched libido doesnt get me in trouble with my shrink, and wind me up in x-ray where some cute young thing with creepy touch threatens that gray area that I hold so dear.