Big Ed's Place

Recently, I came across a blog written by a former strip club manager, Strip Club Hound. I’ve been enjoying it and one of his posts dovetailed neatly into last week’s post on objectification. In it, he talks about a customer who said, “what do I have to do to get one of these bitches to go out with me?”

Err, you can’t.

As Strip Club Hound discusses, even though the customer was being nice to the dancers on the outside, they could sense his attitude anyway. Strip Club Hound says

Dancers in a club are very sensitive to how men view them. They know they’re sex objects to the customers who come in. If they’re going to relate to a man in any other way than to just sell him lap dances, they want to believe he thinks of them as more than just sex objects.

Now I happen to think this applies to women in general and not just strippers. Strippers may just be more conscious that they’re being objectified and reduced to bodies on display.

The thing is, the objectification is then usually mutual. The customer who sees a dancer as just tits and ass is most likely viewed as just a wallet to the dancer. The problem comes when the customer wants to pretend he’s more than a wallet, but won’t (or doesn’t know how) to stop objectifying the dancer and see her as a human being. There’s a fundamental hypocrisy there that the customer often doesn’t see.

The thing is, it’s this hypocrisy that’s causing him the pain. Want to be someone who is seen as dateable? Desirable? More than a wallet? That’s what the customer asking the dancers out wants, right? Because if it’s just to get laid by a beautiful woman, I’m pretty confident that enough money would get him some dancer at the club. It’s not a huge enough step to go from lapdances for pay to sex for pay if the money’s right. So either the customer is being cheap or stupid.

Aside–I’m quite serious about “some dancer.” Sure, a specific dancer may say “no” no matter what the offer, but the odds of getting some stripper to agree to sex are pretty good if the money is high enough. For example, $10,000 for one night would probably get a taker. Heck, for $1 Million, most women, stripper or not, would probably stop and think about it. If a guy can be honest that all he’s interested in is sex with an objectified body, the rest is just price and shopping around.

But if a guy wants an interaction with a person instead of an object, the currency isn’t money. It’s, at a minimum, respect. Interest, appreciation, and even simply liking the other person all come into play too. It’s treating the other person like a person instead of an object. Ultimately, it’s proof that you get what you give.

It doesn’t even matter what the woman does. When I was a regular at strip clubs, I quickly figured out that if I treated the dancers as people as with respect, they returned the niceness. Sometimes that was just attitude. Sometimes it was small favors, like extending a private dance another song for free.

There’s a place for objectification, like I wrote previously. There’s not a place for hypocrisy. So part of our ‘growing up’ is learning to spot and eliminate such hypocrisy in ourselves. It’s not easy, but always worth it.

This past week I rambled across another protest about the objectification of women. We all know that’s bad, right? No one should be stripped of their personhood and reduced to an object in the eyes or behavior of others. Every person, male or female, should be honored for their individuality and their soul and treated with respect. We agree, right?

And now that we agree, can we get back to the real world?

We all reduce other people to objects all the time. To the CEO, the factory worker is an objective set of numbers–cost, productivity, risk. The soldier’s the same to the general. The survey participant to the social scientist. Even the rape victim to the rape advocate arguing for increased police presence. People are reduced to utilitarian numbers to advance a cause, argument, or business objective.

Ah, but statistics are a special case, right? I think not. Is the grocery store clerk more to you than someone to take your money and bag your groceries? Are the other drivers on the road anything more than objects to avoid? We all reduce people to a role all the time. We turn them into titles that we read about in kid’s books. Fire fighter. Police Officer. These are the people in your neighborhood, to quote Mr. Rogers. How many of them do you even know their name?

So perhaps we’re talking about inappropriate reduction. We agree that treating a saleswoman as if she was nothing more than tits and ass is wrong. We’ve objectified her for things that have nothing to do with her role, right?

But that logic says that objectifying a stripper would be perfectly okay. Or a runway model. Or anyone who trades on those items being objectified to make a living and define who they are.

Like perhaps that saleswoman? If she dresses sexily to try to make the sale, is it still wrong to objectify her as a sex object?

And for fun, let’s step into some other areas where we as a society objectify all the time, and somehow think it’s a good thing. Sex offender. Addict. Adulterer. Cheater. Pervert. As the joke goes, “fuck one goat and that’s what you’re known for for the rest of your life.”

I’m always amused when I hear the same people decrying sexual objectification and then turning around and doing the same for sexualities they decry. “I don’t want you looking at me as if I was just a body (despite how I might dress or act), but I will look down on you for being a perverted voyeur in turn.”

Because isn’t that what it’s really about? There are times we want to be objectified. We want people to look at us and reduce us to the desirable trait of our choice. We don’t want the boss to know the whole person–if she did, she might be disgusted! Instead, we want her to reduce us to just those traits that show how great of an employee we are. Heck, if someone were denied employment because “we think you’d be a great worker, but when we look at you as a whole person, we’re not interested” the lawsuit would be instantaneous.

Sometimes that’s even sexually. I know many women that want Guy X to push aside all their traits except for how hot and desirable they are. Maybe not all the time, but at least once in a while. At the same time, they don’t want Guy Y to do the same thing.

To me, the problem of ‘sexual objectification’ is mostly one of education. Not enough “Guy Y”‘s know how to transform themselves into “Guy X.” They don’t know how to recognize “this is the time and place” and “this is not.” Strip club objectification–okay. Workplace–no. Saleswoman–it can vary moment to moment even with the same woman. A mature man can navigate those waters. A boy in a man’s body, not so much.

Objectification is something we all do, and often very appropriately. Sometimes it’s even desired. Decrying it is simplistic or naive. Instead, how about if we focus on getting more maturity in the world?

Recently, erotica author Mike Kimera hung up his pen. More precisely, he hung up his erotica pen, as he plans to fiction in other genres under another name.

Now Mike’s been around and is pretty popular at the Erotica Readers and Writers Association (ERWA). I happen to consider his story, The Last Taboo, to be a masterpiece. He’s written many others–some very dark, some completely ridiculous (The King’s Cocksucker is ridiculously silly). As a rule, they’re very good. And I add that qualifier “as a rule” simply because I haven’t read them all.

Now Mike’s stated reason (and I’m paraphrasing here) for retiring his erotica persona is that he awoke to how much separation it was creating between him and his wife. She wasn’t comfortable with the fact that he wrote erotica and he “came to realise that the more time I spend being Mike Kimera, the less time I spend being someone that she feels close to.”

Sadly, I understand. “Mike Kimera” was just as real a “self” for him as his given name. For me, “Big Ed” is just as real as the name on my driver’s license (the DMV won’t put “Big” on it for some reason). It’s hard to say it’s a persona when it’s really just another facet of myself. Not separate per se, but not the sides that shine in polite company.

Which is where the challenge of being an erotica author comes in. I get the separation. Not because of any separation with my wife (she reads most of my stories anyway) but because of the societal one. I can’t tell my Born Again boss why I’m taking longer lunch hours these days. I can’t share my triumphs with some of my friends. And I certainly can’t whip out the laptop and write when we’re visiting my in-laws. The fact that I write about sex forces a separation between the self they see and the one y’all here do.

Now I know there are some who believe the maxim of being true to yourself and being “out” no matter what. I can appreciate the philosophy, but like most pure points of view, practicalities too often interfere. I mean, it’s easy to be “out” when your livelihood and peace in your family relations doesn’t depend on it. It’s even easy to say that being out helps to educate, which is clearly the case with homosexuality. The prejudices started to lift over the past two decades in part because so many people realized that they knew gays and that the people they knew were normal and wonderful people.

But, honestly, do I want my son to endure a frosty atmosphere when we visit my in-laws? Because even if they could accept my writing in toto, there would be no way to avoid an adaptation period where they assimilated the new facets with what they’ve already seen. Similarly, do I really want to trust that the guy who determines whether I get laid off or not won’t take into consideration that my, ahem, personal values are rather different than his?

The separation exists because the alternative is worse.

Obviously, one could argue that in a marriage, it’s different. I don’t know Mike nor his wife and I don’t know if there was any attempt to bridge the gap. I do know that giving up parts of ourselves is the process of being in love. We say, “this person is more important than this aspect of myself, and so I will change.” If we don’t, we’re not building a “we”. (and, as an aside, one of the hardest challenges is figuring out when “I will change” is the right answer and when it’s the worst possible answer. It’s never obvious). I had to give up much of my neatnik ways to make things work with my wife. We both had to give up the concept of sleep when we had a child. It was worth it.

But even if Mike’s wife hadn’t had a distaste for his writing, there likely would’ve been some separation. It’s simply from the time and energy to maintain the persona. Every minute I spend at my computer, be it writing or musing or doing website maintenance or participating in chatroom discussions, is a minute I’m not spending elsewhere. There’s a strong argument that that time could be spent increasing the closeness with my wife. That’s part of the choice Mike’s made, I’m sure.

For me, though, that’s not as clear of a trade. I need a lot of alone time to stay sane. I can steal “Big Ed” time from that, and from lunch hours, and from a variety of windows where time with my wife is not an option. I also draw a lot of personal emotional sustenance from my “Big Ed” time. My wife has noticed I’m more pleasant to be around if I’ve been writing recently, so in some ways it actually helps.

Furthermore, I truly believe in the his-hers-ours relationship model (insert gender pronouns of your choice here). Relationships thrive when each person has some aspects of their lives that are separate from the other. It gives them something to bring to the table when they’re together. I allows them to be full independent individuals. It results in a partnership, rather than a single entity with two heads. Watch any cop show to see how partnership trumps a single entity every time.

I realize not everyone will share this philosophy. My response is, “that’s fine. But show me what you really do in your life–not what you say you do or what you believe you do. The philosophy is fine, but what’s the reality?” I’ve had some interesting conversations as a result.

And in the end, there may be some folks for whom it is truly different. Mike’s clearly different than me and I wish him luck. At the same time, I can only say, I’m glad I’m me and not him. The separation of selves serves me well.

Often, erotica is shoved into a ‘taboo’ corner where it’s unacceptable to be openly consumed or created. Magazines and books don’t come in plain brown wrappers any more, but erotica and porn companies still use neutral sounding monikers for billing and shipping. Due to the opprobrium, most erotica writers use pen names. Additionally, both porn and erotica exploded when it became easy to consume them in the privacy of one’s home. VCR’s meant that people didn’t have to get caught going into adult movie theaters, or endure an unpleasant environment while they were there. Similarly, the internet dramatically increased porn consumption, with porn leading the way in many developments.

One unintended side effect of the disdain and marginalization of porn, however, was that it created a world with almost no limits. It has been like the traditional Japanese concept of shame. Once a Samurai brought shame on himself, well, it didn’t matter how much shame. There wasn’t a gradation going from “bad” to “worse” to “awful.” The line had been crossed and that was it.

But if the line has been crossed and it doesn’t matter, why not take it to the limit? What difference does it make, really, to cheat on your wife twenty times instead of five? Or to spend three days on a drug induced binge instead of one? There are obviously some celebrities in the news recently who’ve made that calculation.

Similarly, porn saw the rabid push to the limits. Rule 34 is proof of that. So is the explosion of some of the most tasteless boundary pushing porn imaginable. If being taboo or being shocking is all you have to differentiate yourself, and there’s no social penalty for being shocking because you’re already across the line, why not go for it?

So… cue the problem with where the line gets drawn. There is a movement in many quarters to bring quality erotica out from behind the line. Or to move the line so that “erotica” doesn’t have the disdain in popular culture. Of course, that’s much of the basis for the erotica vs. porn definition fight. Erotica is on the “acceptable” side of the line and porn is on the other.

Now rather than wade into that fight in this particular musing, I want to go back to my original metaphor and ask–is there really only one line? Or is there more than one? Or is there really a gradient?

And I’ve come to believe there are really two lines. The first is when something gets looked down on socially. The second is when it motivates a section of the population to actively go after the producers.

That second line, in porn, is clearly child pornography. I’ve discussed my views on it previously and don’t wish to repeat myself about how it should be treated. Instead, I’d like to steer into the area of fictional child porn.

In written erotica, or cartoon erotica, there are no actual child victims. It all comes from the creator’s imagination. As such, I believe it should be harmless and, in America, protected under the First Amendment.

But what I think doesn’t matter. I know of several erotica authors who have run into legal difficulties as a result of using pre-teen characters. Red Rose accepted a plea deal after facing criminal charges for obscenity. Frank McCoy chose to fight his, even though it meant traveling from Minnesota to Florida to defend himself. Dorsai was contacted by authorities and warned but not charged. I know of a handful of other cases that have other complications as well (like the authorities actually finding child porn on the author’s computer). All it takes is a prosecutor out to make a headline or acting out of personal moral revulsion to make someone’s life hell. It’s not necessarily a consolation to win the legal case if you’ve been dragged through the mud along the way.

This is, surprisingly, not purely academic for me. I recently had an opportunity to do graphic novel scripts for a new website for pay. Anyone who’s followed my Deep Dish discussions here knows that I would love to do more graphic novels, but having to pay an artist is holding me back. However, the website was going to allow comics that had pre-teen characters involved in sexual situations. Even if I was willing to be associated with a site that allowed that from a personal taste and morals standpoint, the legal jeopardy is too much to risk.

That’s what made me aware of this second line. Post-puberty teenagers–okay, that’s a grey area since the age of consent varies so much. Pre-puberty? Line. Big Red and flashing, for those who see it. And for me–I’m not going to cross it, even by second hand association.

I once had lunch with a man who produced porn films in Southern California. It was a fascinating conversation, particularly about STD management within the industry, but he did make a snarky comment that stuck with me. He said his was the only industry where no one aged. They were always 20.

Now he was in part referring to how “official” ages were always adjusted down. But he was also referring to the turnover within the industry. And the snark came in because he said that he didn’t mind 20 year old bodies, but he was sick of 20 year old minds.

I kind of know what he means. There’s something to maturity that makes a woman more attractive than merely firm flesh can do.

A friend of mine once said that it was the confidence. An older woman knows what she wants and knows how to ask for it, he said. He recalled college girls getting out of bed after sex and taking the sheets with them. Err… he just finished screwing you–why the modesty now? Older women were more confident.

I happen to agree. I’ve had some wonderful younger lovers, but there’s always a special place in my memories for my older lovers. By that, I mean a decade or two older.

One of those women just moved back into town, which brought back a slew of delightful memories. We had a strong sexual chemistry and only discovered midway through our first date that we also have a 19 year age difference. It didn’t stop her from taking me to bed a few dates later, nor me from inviting her into mine after that. We eventually ended it because we knew it was unsustainable–I wanted kids and hers were in college and she was done. Nonetheless, we stayed friends, though our connection faded with distance (after she moved) and time.

At the time, and later when I was involved with other older women, it seemed natural and fun and playful. The term ‘cougar’ hadn’t entered popular vocabulary and when it finally did, I just had to giggle. The term implies a predatory woman, stalking helpless younger men. In reality, it was as much me as them. I knew a good thing when it happened and wasn’t shy about going for it.

Aside–it does surprise me how many older women I know who have difficulty finding decent similar age single men. Have the good men started dying off? Or have they just given up on trying to be good and retreated into their foibles and quirks? I dunno–I’m taken. But I do wonder sometimes.

Because, honestly, older women beat their younger sisters in overall sexuality hands down. And there are a lot of guys out there that just don’t know what they’re missing.

In last week’s musing on lingerie, I told a story about my college roommate and lingerie. That reminded me of another story where the moral is about the value of being respectful.

It was early December one year in college. I’d gone shopping for a Christmas present for my girlfriend and, in walking through a strip mall, decided to stop in a classy lingerie store that happened to be there. Later I’d learn that it was the most high end store in town, but at the time, I was a bit naive. Nonetheless, I wandered in.

The store was impressive and the two older ladies working there were the definition of MILF, though that term didn’t come into being for a few more decades. I was clearly just a college student, in jeans and a sweatshirt, and definitely in over my head. Nonetheless, I knew my place. I was respectful to the ladies, and their wares. I wandered around and let them help me a bit, before eventually picking out an inexpensive purchase.

In the process, I spent some time talking with one of the ladies who turned out to be the owner. I expressed my admiration for the classiness of her store. As I was ringing up my purchase, she asked if I would like an invitation to a private lingerie modeling show the store was having the following week. I swallowed my surprise and said yes.

So the night of the party, I persuaded my roommate to come with me. I was a bit nervous and, well, he had a car and it would have been a long walk otherwise. We showed up punctually and nicely dressed. The owner remembered me, greeted us as I introduced my roommate and gave us each a glass of champagne.

Now, at the time we were under 21, which made it illegal for us to be drinking champagne. This was not, however, something we were going to call attention to. In fact, I consciously decided I would ‘act older,’ which meant doing my best to not appear like the neophyte I was. If we didn’t make jackasses of ourselves, I figured, no one would question what we were doing there.

To my then-surprise and now-not-surprised-at-all, the older men present weren’t under that constraint. Many of them were loud, openly lecherous, and drinking very heavily. The concept of ‘class’ was something I’m sure that some of them didn’t grasp. That was okay–it meant my roommate and I could just move away from them in the room, talk quietly, and not attract any attention.

So it soon became time for the modeling. The owner had the men form two lines that defined the sides of the ‘runway.’ The models (there were four) would change in the dressing rooms in the back, walk down between us, stop at various points to twirl and tell us what they were wearing, and then circle back after they’d completed the line.

That said, due to the layout of the store, it wasn’t a straight ‘runway’. It has a small jog, about eight feet long, to get past a heavy clothes rack. So the models would walk straight for a while, then make a 90 degree left turn, go about eight feet, make a 90 degree right turn, and continue forward again.

My roommate and I happened to be standing, quietly and respectfully, at the corner of the second jog. The most obnoxious older men were standing at the corner of the first jog.

This turned out to be unexpectedly significant, because when the models stopped at the other corner, they’d get catcalls and hands they had to bat away, and other immature behavior directed at them. When they stopped in front of us, they got smiles, comments like “wow, beautiful,” and the wide gaze of happy voyeurs. It took about two passes before every one of the four models was stopping in front of us instead of the other guys. They’d smile back, do their slow turns, and even flirt with us a bit.

Additionally, the women were wearing off the rack lingerie, which meant that many of the teddies and cammies and other silk tops were both scoop necked and loose. I’m 6’3″. That means when a model would stop in front of me and lean forward a bit, she’d give me a view straight down her top.

I saw many bare breasts that night. I even got caught, with one model asking, in a sultry voice, “do you like what you see?” I blushed, she chuckled, and she shook her breasts slightly to tease me even further. None of the models seemed to mind.

Now if this were an erotica story, one or more of the models would have gone home with me or my roommate. But, of course, I clearly had a girlfriend and they were clearly looking for their paychecks and then a chance to get out of there. So nothing much beyond the pleasure of looking at women in skimpy lingerie happened that night.

With one exception. Eventually the rowdy guys figured out what was going on and jokingly complained. The next model through told them that we were being respectful, and that’s why we were getting the better views. She then invited me to feel how soft the fabric of her outfit was. Which I did, to the envy of the other guys.

The experience stuck with me for some time after that. Being a respectful voyeur could pay off. And later, there were many times it did.

In my last musing, “Look at Me”, I waxed rhapsodic about exhibitionistic women. I thought I’d expand that with a riff of lingerie.

Lingerie is special. It’s not underwear–functional and only as decorative as it takes to make the wearer feel non-dingy. Lingerie is designed to be seen. It’s designed to say “look at me” to those eyes so privileged to see it.

Of course, without the energy and sexual attitude, it’s just clothing. Madonna’s outerwear lingerie in the 80′s wasn’t sexy at all, and pretty much failed to provoke me. The shock value was about all it was worth. It could have been on a hanger for all the sexual energy it conveyed.

My college roommate, in fact, discovered this when he was out buying lingerie for his girlfriend once. The very attractive sales girl asked, in a bedroom voice, if he wanted to see what a teddy he was admiring would look like the night he gave it to his girlfriend. He swallowed hard, with questions about fidelity running through his head. Eventually, he slowly nodded, hoping no one would find out about the ‘show.’

Except the sales girl then wadded the teddy up and threw it on the floor. “There,” she said, “that’s how it’s going to look most of the night.”

He laughed and bought it anyway. The sexiness of the moment, after all, had been in the innuendo and not the fabric.

But, as I said, when the energy is brought together with lingerie, it can be magic. By being impractical and just for the eyes, lingerie calls attention to what is not seen, or what it frames. A wisp of transparent chemise hints maddenly at magic underneath. Garters and stockings frame a treasure that might be in full view–forcing the eye to the center.

That’s why they appear so often in my stories. A woman in thigh high stockings, with or without a garter belt, has made the decision “look at me”. She wants to be seen as sexy, in most cases, and that makes all the difference.

I, for one, love the result.

Remittance Girl riffed on my last post to talk about ideals and the disappointment of being real. While my original post had focused on the non-existent dream girl that many guys desire, she added the Mr. Right of the Romance novels. She wrote:

Similarly, women are forever tantalized by the strong, silent and unbearably buff Mister Right, who sensitive when it matters, with an IQ off the scale, masterful in bed and fiscally responsible to boot. Tender in all the right moments and utterly lacking in any baggage that might get in the way of them fully committing to a lifetime of blissful domesticity – or even a couple of months of it. Romance featuring just this sort of mythological creature still outsells every other form of genre fiction. And, in the 48 years I’ve been on this planet, I can’t honestly say I ever met a single one of those.

In doing so, she reminded me about the secret to seducing women: be that guy.

Now obviously, this archetypal romance novel alpha male won’t be able to seduce every woman. Nor will every guy be able to pull it off for an extended period of time. But those are only issues if the guy is trying to seduce a specific woman or aiming for some long term result like marriage and kids. If the guy is just looking to bed a lot of women, all he needs to do is ‘be that guy’ from first meeting until he’s done fucking the woman du jour.

And I do mean “fucking” on more than one level, because we’re talking about fucking women over as well as fucking their bodies. There’s a certain lack of moral compassion required to be a pure pickup artist. For even if a guy is being an ‘ethical slut’ and clean in his communication, he’s still taking advantage of deeper hungers that he almost certainly lacks either the intention or the ability to fulfill.

I know. I’ve been there. I’m not proud of it.

While my twenties had been very lonely and very troubled, by my early thirties, things had begun to change. I won’t go into all of what happened, but by the time I was 32, I had learned a fair amount and knew how to at least project self-confidence on early dates with women. I’d also discovered internet dating, which is a great way to make sure one’s first impression is intellectual instead of physical.

So I had a first date with a woman I’d met over the internet. It went well, in large part because I was in full alpha male romance novel lead swagger. By the end I could tell she was itching to be kissed. I did so, hard and passionately. We had the second date in my part of town and afterward I invited her back to my place. She left late that night, but not before saying it was the best sex she had ever had.

I was chuffed. I spent the next two weeks strutting in ways that would have embarrassed reality TV stars. I bragged to my friends. I invited this woman to spend the night over Valentine’s Day weekend for a sex marathon that I was sure would rattle the roof.

And I fucked up beyond belief. I was so high about having ‘scored’ that I really didn’t see her as a person. While I was confident I’d said that I wasn’t looking for anything emotionally serious with her and that I wouldn’t be monogamous, I honestly couldn’t be sure she’d heard me. In hindsight, even if I’d said them, I certainly hadn’t made sure that they weren’t lost in the blizzard of “I’m a great alpha male” malarkey I was also throwing her way (and trying to convince myself was actually true).

So she showed up for our overnight date with a bag of presents for me. Lots of presents. Handmade presents.

Oh, crap.

I learned in that moment that it doesn’t matter what the words are nearly so much as the what the energy and actions are that accompany them. For her, I was the Romance Novel dream come true. I knew better.

I did end the relationship as kindly as I could and we each went our separate ways. Later, as I continued to date via the internet, I encountered several other women who were projecting that same desire in early dates. If I came across as close to the men of their novels, they were eager to invite me into greater intimacy, be it emotional or physical. If I had had less of a conscience, I could have gotten laid often.

Since then, I’ve poked at the peripheries of the men’s pickup subculture, where guys buy a book or pay for a workshop to learn how to score with women. I haven’t waded into it enough to know for sure, but I haven’t encountered anything that would contradict what I’ve learned myself. The best teaching material is the romance novels that women buy.

Now I know that somewhere there’s a guy reading this and thinking, “yeah, but I’m not the guy from the romance novels and I don’t think I could be. Even if I could, I’m not sure I want to stoop to the low ethics of a pickup artist.” To which I say, “great!”

Now, as I’ve said, not all women want the Romance Novel idea. Also, there are plenty of women who are smart enough to know that the Romance Novel ideal is impossible. They’d be happy with just some of those qualities in the guys they date. In particular, “sensitive when it matters,” “masterful in bed,” and “fiscally responsible,” from Remittance Girl’s quote above, are learned behaviors that any guy can achieve. Additionally, in my experience, self-aware honesty is pretty high on the priority list for many women, and especially for women beyond their own early 20′s experimentation phase. So being self-aware enough to know you’d rather treat a woman as a person than a score is a great start.

Which brings me around to a conclusion similar to Remittance Girl’s. The Romance Novel guy is unreal. So is the pickup artist, and they go hand in hand. But isn’t reality, with all it’s beautiful flaws, better?

I came to that conclusion rather firmly before I was 35. Then I met my wife, and proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt. I’ll keep the Romance Novels as light entertainment because there are better ways to actually live.

So… if you could fulfill all your fantasies, would you?

In the comments on my Submission 24/7 post, FG said, “the quickest way to ruin a fantasy is to think about it rationally,” which is of course a variant on my opening question. That’s the problem with moving fantasies from an ideal to reality. Rational thought kicks in, or should kick in, along the way. But that doesn’t prevent the speculation about what it’d be like to seriously go after it…

I can think of two people who’ve gone after their fantasies, at least in the sexual sense. One is Mr. Acworth from kink.com (see my review of The Upper Floor). The other is, of course, Hugh Hefner.

Now I admit that I haven’t studied Hefner or Playboy closely. I did investigate their stock several years ago and decided it was a bad buy because Hugh wouldn’t let anyone run the magazine other than the way he wanted, and that approach was clearly no longer competitive. It might have been in the 50′s and 60′s, but the sensibility was out of touch with the Maxim crowd. I did hear about parties/orgies at the Playboy mansion and also unsubstantiated rumors that a girl couldn’t become a Playmate without sleeping with Hefner.

Then, a tell-all came out recently. The author alleges that Hef still has Viagra-assisted sex with 10-12 women twice a week in what can only be viewed as an assembly line (each woman rides him for a couple of minutes). They’re all paid quite well for this coupling. I haven’t seen anything that vouches for whether this is true or not, but I could imagine it being true. It sounds exciting at first, until I start really thinking about it and the reality sets in. It honestly doesn’t sound very much fun after the first couple of times as the novelty would wear out and it would be just a chore.

But what strikes a chord is that it sounds like Hef is “living the life” that he wanted. The company can go down the drain because the magazine and company really only exist to let him have that life. He got the sexual life he set out to have.

But is that the life I’d want to live?

If I’m honest, I’m living most of the life I want to live. This came up for me recently because a friend asked the question that’s formed the basis of many time travel stories–”if you could go back and do it all over again, knowing what you know now, would you?”

I have to answer “no.” Yes, I’d probably have gotten laid a helluva lot more often, and possibly been richer (since I’d know who to bet on in major sporting events), but the rational thought makes me consider all the things I’d be giving up (my wife and son for starters) and all the real practical issues involved. Sure, I could seduce the-one-that-got-away, but what if she’d turned out to be crazy, or had an STD, or a handful of other problems I didn’t know about because I didn’t end up with her? The most beautiful woman I ever bedded turned out to have serious depression, after all.

Instead, I have to consider that perhaps I’m already “living the life”…

I’m often surprised by people who don’t recognize how powerful the feminine is. By ‘feminine’ I mean feminine energy, particularly when embodied in a woman. The apex of it is of course feminine sexual energy.

Now I do mean feminine and not feminist. The latter is a political/cultural attempt to get women to be seen as more than just their sexuality. At least as it tends to engage me. My personal experience is that people who call themselves feminists rarely are interested in talking to me, and even more rarely interested in listening to me. There’s a political price to this disengagement, which is probably a topic for a different post.

For open feminine sexuality is incredibly powerful. Masculine men (hereafter referred to as ‘men’ or ‘guys’ depending on their maturity/awareness) simultaneously crave it and fear it. We adore it. We love being with it. We daydream about. And part of us is absolutely terrified of being overwhelmed by it.

The Koran says, “God made desire in ten parts and gave nine to women.” It’s used as justification for forcing women to cover up, which is little more than a recognition of how powerful their sexuality is. Similarly, prohibitions against women’s displays of sexuality throughout history would be meaningless if men weren’t afraid of it. You cage the tiger and not the housecat, after all.

Now I believe that a real man could resist temptation and carry on with his life, unlike boys in men’s bodies. But there are few real men in the world, making it in many ways a moot point. But I do recognize and have felt the fear of being drawn and consumed.

But that doesn’t prevent us men from craving women’s open sexuality at the same time. We create and visit strip clubs, which give us a simulacrum of open sexuality. We fall all over ourselves chasing the Mae Wests of the world. We write porn that is full of hot assertive women who crave sex with us, and often with more than us. Just spend some time on storiesonline or other free sites. The female characters usually have that open sexual energy–loving sex for sex and not being afraid to go after it. Also consider, why else would lesbian porn and bestiality porn be exciting to guys? There aren’t any guys in the picture for us to imagine ourselves as. But the thought that a woman likes sex so much that she’d be willing to get it wherever–that’s the draw.

I often think the whole madonna/whore or virgin/slut dichotomy can simply be traced to men’s push/pull fear/attraction of honest open female sexuality. Hookers and sluts let us get a taste of it for an hour or a night without having to live with it day in and day out where it might overwhelm us.

Now of course, I could be way off. I can only speak for myself and my observations, plus some of the men I’ve had honest conversations with about sexuality.

But one observation by Michael Korda made sense to me. He said that most guys can remember that point in their life when puberty played a nasty trick on them. They woke up and discovered girls and their desire for girls. Unfortunately, the girls their age had long hit puberty and were chasing or involved with older guys. Older girls wouldn’t look at them, and the younger girls were too young. As a result, they felt a strong sense of powerlessness.

I know I did. And it was awful, both then and later. To want, and to not know how to get. Why are time travel stories also popular on Storiesonline? I think largely because they provide a way of revisiting that time with the knowledge and therefore obliterating the residual memories of powerlessness. I also consider much of the ‘sour grapes’ behavior I’ve seen in guys in their 20′s as part of this. Some still don’t quite know how to get that energy, so they denigrate it.

But I also learned, in my transition from guy to man, to live with and surpass that fear and sense of powerlessness. After all, it wasn’t the women/girls doing it to me anymore–it was myself.

And as a result, I discovered a richness of living that was previously unimaginable. Being with a woman in the full throes of her sexuality can be like being in a boat in a storm. Yeah, ya gotta hang on, but what a ride! At the same time, just being with women can help me open my heart and feel deeper. A woman embodying her feminine energy can pull me out of my head faster and more effectively than any other trick I know.

It’s amazing, and I’ve come to adore women as a result. Because power is just that–energetic power, neither bad nor good. When we stop fearing it, we can find amazing uses for it. We just have to see what’s there.