“Each lower leg was a piston, a thousand pounds of white bone, sunk in thick ropes of muscle, sheathed over in a gleam of pebbled skin like the mail of a terrible warrior. Each thigh was a ton of meat, ivory, and steel mesh.”

c. misogyny

is your answer.

the anwser is went creeping down the river again, across the wide lonely marshes to the sea.

i longed to go with them out into the world to seek my fortune in foreign lands—africa, india, china and peru!

and, dreaming of the lands i had never seen, i'd sit on there, watching till they were out of sight.