If You Don't Know What a Libertine is, I Won't Have Sex With You... Apparently

I don’t know why, but it sounds shallow to say that I didn’t sleep with someone because she didn’t know what the term Libertine meant. I feel it's snobbish, somehow, to set your standard on a single word. However, looking back on the situation... yeah that’s totally why we didn’t bang.

See, I met her through a mutual friend. Now he had some specific things to say about her, because he was kind of a tight-assed misogynist who I think was probably struggling with some issues regarding his own sexuality. That’s neither here nor there, but it’s important to understand that he said she was a slut who’d fuck boys or girls because she didn’t care and she was a slut. Yes, he started and ended the sentence with the slut declaration. Now, if you know me, you know where this is going. I had to meet this person. If this guy I knew was going into full granny pearl clutching mode, I had to meet the person who was causing those pearls to be clutched.

And she was... really good looking. I mean, really cute and had the sort of body that makes a guy in his mid-twenties sit up and take notice. And she had... a habit. She would laugh and lean against whoever was nearest and press herself against them and press her cheek next to theirs and laugh and it was MUTHAFUCKIN’ enticing. She had a certain sexual aggression, which I like, and a confidence of self which I’m also a fan of. Her stated preferences, sexual and otherwise, put check marks in a lot of boxes for me. I'm way into sluts is what I'm saying.

One of the first conversations we had, she was driving and either I mentioned that he had told me about her or she had asked if he had. I can’t remember and I don’t intend to go into the fine details of the memory palace to find out. I could, but what the fuck is the point? The important part of this story is that I admitted he had indeed mentioned her to me.

“He said you were something of a modern day libertine.” I said, she said she studied poetry and literature, so I figured that little softball would be good.

“What does that mean?” She asked, which I judged to be a decent question, because that statement could go multiple ways.

“Well, I’ll admit, those weren’t his exact words. I’m not sure he knows what a libertine is.”

“Well, I don’t know what that is.” she admitted, and I kind of deflated a little.

“He intimated that you were a sexually free individual.” I said, because I had all these two cent words, I’d already paid for them, fuck if they were going to rest on the goddamn shelf!

“Did he call me a slut?” She asked.

“Yeah, that was closer to his terminology.” I said. “And he said you didn’t make distinctions between genders.”

“I’m bi if that’s what he means.”

And that was the first problem, there were others, but that was a problem. I mean... I mean... I mean I’m sitting here on the bench, I’m sitting here on the not getting Altoid blowjobs bench, because she doesn’t know what a libertine is. And do not think for one moment that was her idea, because telling me she had Altoids and mentioning how amazing they made her blowjobs was very much her idea. Her ideas had to do with me getting peppermint blowjobs as a starter. Then we’d go over to a friend and she would show me exactly how bi she could be.

Looking back as I am now, I should have been all over that. She was hot, into me, and while trying to court me explained that she had absolutely zero limits if only I would make suggestions. She enjoyed the sort of music I liked, she enjoyed the kind of sexual shenanigans I enjoy. And there was no good reason to avoid this, besides having a slight, niggling feeling that to bang her would be a violation of Rule #2, which I knew better than to ignore. Her habit of sliding her hand down the front of my shirt to run her fingers through my chest hair could have overcome that though, I’m pretty sure.

But she didn’t know what was meant by the term “libertine” and a apparently, that’s my Rubicon. Or my Durin’s Bridge if you are of a geekier mindset. Instead, we did nothing. There is more than the one word, she had a certain level of incuriosity about the world. She just wasn't someone I could stoop down to mentally and she wasn't up to climbing my mental tree. As a result, I never laid an indecent hand on her (my right, if you're keeping track) , or even kissed her, because she missed out on basic terms. Had she known what the term meant, I could have been – it’s unsavory to say what (or where) I could have been, frankly.

So the moral of this story, and there is one, is that frogs should never give rides to scorpions. Or something. I don't know, do what you want.

The Making of a Gentleman Scoundrel - Part Two: On Objectification and Being Used

So here’s the thing. I’m a good looking guy who has something of a knack for being charming. I know a lot of stuff about a lot of things, and I can break down complex ideas into digestible chunks. I’m a good listener, and have so much empathy that I often have to shut myself away from people to avoid being overtaken by their emotions. I’m also a member of the polyamory community, and because of certain things, I feel (to a lot of women) like a safe person to be around. Protip: Avoid the sex jokes until she makes them, and then only make as many as she does, that’ll help you look less like a creeper. I’m actually kind of shy though, and I have social anxiety issues. So I don’t actually approach and talk to people very well. Once we talk for a couple of minutes, I’m fine, and I can be relatively charming and fun to be around. I have been labeled as “Best Guy” by the Guy Grading Board. This can cause some problems.

See, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but (some) women have a tendency to complain that the Best Guys are either gay or taken. And here is a best guy who is one of those, but... not really? That takes a lot of the pressure off, because while I’m taken, I’m also available and the women with me always seem to be pretty well adjusted which means one of the best ones. Flexible morals will get you around the corner, as we used to say in Shanghai. As a result, I get flirted with a bit more than the average bear. It’s my own fault, I am a terrible flirt and more than a little bit of a coquette. Coquetter? No, that’s a dress maker. Coquet? That sounds like some kind of little pastry. My French is really, REALLY bad. This is why, when I flirt with beautiful Belgian women, we do it in English. I will get flirted with by a great many women, that’s my point.

AND, there are problems...

Hiding The Light Under a Bushel.

Six months ago, I was at Nino Salvagio, which is a local grocery store. Kind of a highish end fruit and international market, you know the sort of place. It’s not really important, but you need to understand that it’s not a corporate place, it’s local. Now I was getting a few things and I saw... her.

She was beautiful, even though there were several things she had going on that aren’t to my tastes. Dreadlocks always look weird to me on blonde girls. Almost... contrived? She had gauges in her ears, which is fine, but not something I’ve ever been fond of. There were scars on her arm, a remnant no doubt of an earlier cutting habit. A few bad tattoos and some misbegotten make-up, and a sullen slouch completed the look. And through all that, she was beautiful. Jaw dropping, heart aching, mind ceasing, utter beauty. The sort of beauty you’d talk about until she became some kind of legend, and when people saw her they’d say “Okay, so one time reality has it over legend.”

Through what seemed to be a considerable amount of effort, she had tried her best to negate what the dvergar that assembled people that day gave her, and all that came to was that she was stunning. Not in a Venus in Blue Jeans kind of way, but in a “Why did you bother fighting it?” kind of way. There was nothing short of going at her face with a straight razor and a hammer that would do anything to hide the perfection of her features. And I’m guessing she hated every moment of it.

I didn’t talk to her about it, of course I didn’t. People say that sometimes “So I talked to her.” But no, they usually didn’t. If they did, they didn’t get an honest answer anyway. She wasn’t going to talk to someone nearly twice her age about her life choices. Had I asked, I would have gotten a few non-committal answers and she would have run to her phone and tweeted “OMG some gross old man just tried to hit on me, or shame me about my tats I don’t know #fuckoffoldman” Because that’s how these interactions really go, I know. I have had to give nosey fuckers non-answers when they try to ask me questions that they have no right to.

I understand, I was an attractive child. From infancy I had the sort of face that made people think I was up to something. At the age of two I had perfected the little lop sided grin that says “I’m going to get away with it, and you’re going to let me get away with it because look at this face.” I grew from an adorable infant to a beautiful child. Some teenage girls clustered around me one day, talking about how beautiful I was, how dark and black my eyes were and so on. I would have been in with a chance if I hadn’t been four at the time. That was what life was like. I was a good looking child.

No one much wanted to listen to me, (besides a few people) I guess, they’d have rathered I was quiet and attractive and did what I was told. I had different ideas, more self-directed. I was adored by many, but also deeply frustrating because I wouldn’t do the “good things” people had planned for me. There comes a problem though, even though I was adored, I could never really trust anyone. No one wanted to listen, they wanted control or at best to be liked by me and my prettiness. I am, several people said, easy to like in a strange way.

I’m good as many things. I can paint, and sing, and draw, and cook, and listen, and write, and make love, and identify songs and why a place might be playing them on Fourth of July Weekend. I do some of these well, and some of them less well. The problem is, there are some people who never let me know I wasn’t doing something well. I was smart enough to identify bullshit when I heard it as a child. For example, I am shit at making clay sculptures. I have one that I keep, to remind me of how shitty I am at it. It’s a good thing I do too, because otherwise people would still be telling me how great I am at making clay sculptures.

Now sure, if I practiced, and worked at it, I could become good at clay. I’m not interested though, I don’t like it enough and I don’t care. Sign of genius that, quitting something because I wasn’t instantly good at it. I was interested to learn that last year, before I thought I was just kind of lazy because I didn’t want to work at things I wasn’t good at. Writing is something I can be good at, even though I tend to entertain myself through my writing too much. I sacrifice flow and readability for the sake of something I find fun. As you well know, I can often go on irritating tangents and fill paragraphs with things that only connect for me and links. However, sometimes I let it burn because I like it burned, so there. Most of this paragraph was filler, but I like the filler. It’s good filler, and I won’t hear a word against it.

I’m pretty sure I was making some kind of point here. Allow us to wallow past the point and into this little pool of thought that’s sort of bubbled over from the main stream. Lay on your back and just float for a moment...

I try to be honest, and posts like this one are an attempt at the sort of honesty I’m talking about. I try to give you an idea of what being inside my head is like. And yeah, this is what it’s like. The sudden gear changes, the references to old books, movies and music, because melody haunts my reverie. Some things are so obscure, and the connections change so quickly, I won’t remember why I thought A was connected to B when I read this later. Syd likes the honesty, it baffles a lot of other people. Some people are always looking for a duplicity that doesn’t exist, and that sort of depresses me because I’m always doing my best to be honest. I’m not good at dishonesty, unless I dedicate myself to it, and then I can’t even stand to be around the asshole that it forces me to become. So I go for the honest thing, because it’s easier and nobler and I can. I know other people lie though, because they do.

Back to the story (about this girl named Blah Blah Blah that adored me)

It always leaves me wondering, how much of any compliment is real. It becomes more complicated when people compliment me for things that are automatic for me. I do some things without thinking and other people are all “Holy shit! You did that thing!” and I’m standing there saying “Yeah... I have pretensions to being a person and in order to maintain the facade I have to do shit like this.” It deeply complicates the matter when 80% of the things people have said to me have been either A) Bullshit or B) Stupid.

Did I mention this above? Screw it, I’ve gone this far and I’m not re-reading this thing again. People will offer empty compliments to attractive people. I often have trouble knowing if I told a funny joke, or if the person I’m talking to just thinks I’m cute. Is my painting any good, or were certain people blinded by desire and as such said they liked the horrible splotches of mangled color? I don’t know if I like the paintings that much myself and around the 30th re-write, or the 90th re-read, everything looks like shitty half formed ideas put together by someone as smelly as a monkey with a typewriter, but not as bright. You can’t trust anything anyone says after a while, and when you’re also smart enough to understand what’s going on you quickly start to feel like you’re on an island about two feet by two feet... and the water is rising. At some point we’ll talk about depression, but not today.

I can understand that girl’s problem and her attempt as a solution though. I would assume she has some intelligence and doesn’t want to just be pretty. She had no choice, but she wants more. She’d like to be thought of as a person, an individual, maybe even someone with a thought and an idea. It’s harder for girls, because society still wants women to be ornamental baby makers. Guys can have thoughts, but no one ever really listens or understands. They just try to keep up as best they can and act impressed when he says a big word. If I could do what that girl did, I just might.

There isn’t much I can do, if I leave off showering I just get smelly. I don’t like being really smelly. My hair actually gets more manageable and gets really shiny on the third or fourth day, so that can be worse. If I don’t shave, I just get rugged stubble. It takes a week to get to the just too much stubble to be sexy, but not enough for a beard which is a different kink all together. I can’t do a lot of other things without running afoul of the honesty issue. I can’t say the weight issue came about because of that. The weight and other things came because of an already discussed depression issue. I’m working on that though.

That’s what can happen sometimes though, people just want to look at you, but not talk or listen to you. It can become deeply frustrating, and can lead to a beautiful young person trying to uglify themselves in various ways. Just so they can try to be taken seriously, even though I’m sure this young woman’s activities are already begin dismissed as “A Phase” by people who were never quite as pretty and probably not as smart. Maybe I’m projecting, but if we’ve gone this far then why not? Who are all these posts about anyway?

I think the other reason I never went to try and uglify myself is that in all honesty I have always had to fight stupid shit. From the age of five, when I first worked out people where bullshitting me about my skills, I decided to just fight through it. If I was going to deal with stupid people saying stupid shit then so be it. Before I’d read enough, or understood enough to know what was going on, I’d picked fighting as the way to go. I’d decided on the natural as my way forward, doing things without aid would be the standard I would carry into battle. My combat is more subtle now, but I still do it the same. I’m not taking diet pills to try and slim my waist. I’m working out and trying like hell to avoid the things that made me fat. I’m not putting on make-up to hide or accentuate things, I just want people to be able to take them straight on. I say this with no complaint about people doing it another way. This is the way *I* have to do it, this is the way that I feel is most honest for *ME* in this instance.

I have always been aware enough of the privilege that these midnight black eyes, long lashes, tumbling ravenesque locks (and so on) bring to not wish to not be what I am though. Of course, I’m also aware enough of the privilege this level of intelligence brings as well. I wouldn’t want to be ugly anymore than I’d want to be stupid or lame or deaf or unable to taste sweet things. I know that the cross I’m talking about is less to bear than some people’s, but while I’m talking about myself, I’m also thinking of that poor girl.

I don’t think she has the strength to really fight. She’s putting up a good front, but I fear this battle may be beyond her. Does she have the resources to fight for her own identity? Can she maintain against the pressure? It’s different for girls, they’re given so much more pressure than boys, and the pressure I felt at her age was enormous. I haven’t seen her lately, I hope she got a job where she fits in better, where she can get away. I still think about her, like I think of so many I have seen.

You wanted to know what it was like in here. Now you have one more piece of the puzzle. When you work the whole thing out, let me know. I’m curious to see if it’s a barn or the Space Shuttle Endeavor.


Probably it'll turn out to be The Pillar of Cheese in the Shape of Jane Austen.

Why Do You Still Need Feminism?

We sat at the counter and ate and drank. "Did you make the spaghetti sauce?" she said.
"Yeah. A secret recipe I got off the back of the tomato paste can."
"And the salad dressing? Is there honey in it?"
"Yep. Got that from my mother."
She shook her head. "Fighter, lover, gourmet cook? Amazing."
"Nope. I'll take the fighter, lover, but the gourmet cook is a sexist remark."
"Why?"
"If you'd cooked this no one would say you were a gourmet cook. It's because I'm a man. A man who cooks and is interested in it is called a gourmet. A woman is called a housewife. Now eat the goddamned spaghetti." I said.
She did. Me too.

Promised Land - By Robert B. Parker (1976)


There is something you are taught in therapy, I have been told. I myself have never had more than a brief fling with therapy (it becoming obvious quite quickly that it actually wasn’t me that had the problem the one time I went in for real) but I have been told and I have read a lot. You’re not supposed to make “You Statements” when you talk about something bothering you, but rather “I Statements”. It’s not supposed to be “You do this to annoy me!” but instead go for “I am annoyed by this.” which brings charges that therapy makes people selfish, because they talk more about themselves than other people. I’m often thrown by this, because the complaint often becomes “She just talks about herself and doesn’t want to gossip anymore.” or “They won’t just sit and listen to me anymore!” and I check out of the conversation from there. As a result, I’m going to try to use a lot of I Statements here, because I want to talk about how a thing effects me as well as others.


I’ve listened to a lot of Men’s Rights stuff over the last few years, and almost agreed with some of it. The problem is that they often loose me the more they talk, see if you can see where I’m going with this little playlet.

MRA – Men aren’t allowed to be what they want in this society!
Me – Okay, you’ve almost got something of a point there. (Let’s see what you do with it)
MRA – We’re as trapped as women by the expectations of modern life.
Me – Here! Here! (Why can’t a man wear a dress?)
MRA – Which is why feminism needs to go away!
Me – I’m sorry?
MRA – Women need to get back into the kitchen and remember their place!
Me – Wha-Huh?
MRA – And then men can be MEN again!
Me – What in the seven levels of hell are you talking about?
MRA – Bitches won’t date me! I’m Unwillingly Celibate!
Me – Um....
MRA – I mean, I open doors and everything.
Me – Okay, you need to shut up now or I will beat you to death with this small decorative elephant that a relative gave me as a memento of their trip to Mexico. Why a brass elephant from Mexico, I’ve always wondered, but I will kill you with it.
MRA – You’re just saying that because *URK*!
Me – *thump* Muthafucka! *thump* I did say. *thumpthumpthump*


NOW! Why was I even listening to this person at the start? It has to do with the quote I started with. A person starting with that phrase can go one of two ways, you can either go towards some idea of gender equality, or towards the idea that you should be handed “hot bitches” free with every oil change. I am not going to go into the whole argument here, but if you shower and if you open doors because you’re polite (instead of making a speech about chivalry and how now people OWE YOU for being a decent person) then things will actually go easier for you. It’s not that women love jerks, if they did, they’d go for some of you self-professed Nice Guys.

That’s not even what I called you all here to discuss!

I cook, I have always cooked, ever since I was a child I have cooked. When I have cooked, there have always been people who have treated this like it’s some kind of magic. As if I stood back away from the stove, rolled up my sleeves and yelled “Ala-ca-muthafuckin-ZAM!” and with a brilliant yellow flash (which would mean there was sodium in the mixture) there was suddenly food. Even people who themselves knew how to cook treated this mystical skill of mine like something I learned at the foot of Wong Fei Hung. Because I was a male, cooking, it was regarded as an odd and noteworthy event.

I was quite old before I realized that I actually could cook quite well, enviably well in fact. That it wasn’t just people reacting to the notion of a male-child applying the mystic roots and ancient flames to ingredients in order to create food from non-edible matter. The concept of a male cooking has become less noteworthy over the last twenty years or so, but well into my early twenties it was still an odd and interesting thing to talk about. That I was basically the only one in our house that did the cooking, was often seen as weird and frankly wrong.

Now, Syd can cook some. In that she can cook some things, when she puts her mind to it. I suppose if she had to cook all the time, she would probably be good at it, but she doesn’t need to. Holly could just about toast bread and spread peanut butter on it without burning the house down. She was more than happy to let me do the cooking, because she had no interest at all. In fact, most the women I’ve dated haven’t had much use for the notion of cooking, allowing someone else to do it as much as possible. Just a thing, like so many others. Women I have dated have many a similarity. ANYWAY. I get annoyed at the idea though, that because I cook I am performing magic. It’s bad enough when I actually do something magical, like make a marshmallow. It’s doubly annoying when someone treats any application of heat to food like I’ve performed some kind of goddamned miracle and should have statues erected in my fabulous honor. (Note, I’m not saying cancel the statue, it’s a great statue, but honor my skills as a world-class lover, not as someone who can cook.)

The latest kerfuffle Penny Arcade got into actually reminds and prompts me on this. The problem with all gender issues boils down to the cooking thing for me. Sexual identity means something to me, because all identity issues mean something to me. How you identify yourself is important, because without self-identity where are you? What you decide to be, who you are, how you act, how you present yourself to the world, it all has an impact. Sometimes it’s changing everything about you (even fixing physical errors you were stuck with by the cheap dvergar laborers that the gods hire for people construction) and sometimes it’s just doing what you feel most comfortable with.

Cooking should not be considered some kind of transsexual affair, and I should be considered a hero for doing it. And yet, I was by people who thought they were admiring me. I often got treated like I was some brave pioneer, throwing off the yoke of gender identity roles while... I dunno, cooking without an apron. I have never worn an apron, I don’t tuck a towel into my belt either. I just keep a hand towel on the stove and this isn’t important. I was actually called “Pretty Brave” by someone who was well meaning and thought they were delivering a compliment. When asked to elaborate, they said some people would “call you queer for doing that” and that “it’s kinda gay for a guy to cook” but that I made it “look masculine”. I almost felt bad killing that person and leaving their body in a peat bog but it was the only way people will learn! Now remember, that was supposed to be a compliment. It didn’t feel like one at the time, and the person began to see how I felt about it as the interview continued.

No one has ever tried to insult me, or threaten me because I canoodle in the kitchen (cooks have VERY big knives) but they do belittle the event with this notion of gender normativism. It’s deeply insulting to think that only a woman is really supposed to cook, and it harms both me and the woman not cooking to say so. That, if I may conclude where I intended to begin, is why I still need feminism. Yeah, it’s not as big as other people’s, but I’m a cis-gendered middle class white male. If I don’t like something you do or say to me, I’m still legally allowed to burn your house down (unless you are an upper-class white male) because, you know, privilege. That’s just it though, as a therapeutic tool, this has to be about me, not about you. Still though, it’s a sign, one that comes even up to the cis-gendered middle class white guy level that says “Shit’s still broken!” and asks us to fix it. The deeper we go, the more problems we're going to find, and if this one made it to the surface...

When I’m still being applauded for being a man that cooks, and rape culture is still a thing that people pretend doesn’t exist, and gender stereotypes are still rigidly enforced... can any of us say we’re truly free? There are eight million stories in the Naked City Internet, this is one of them.

We may need to change the name...

So just lately, I've been seeing some interesting statements on Twitter. Seems some young feminists are worrying that men aren't on board with feminism as a whole. There have been quite a few conversations about how isolating the conversation can be. It seems that some of them have a solution, but it will require some work. The problem, as they see it can be boiled down to a single sentence.

"We need to make it clear to men that the goal behind feminism is for their benefit as well."

This is a good idea, but it needs help for implementation. First off, there needs to be obvious and not so obvious signs that it is, in fact, for the benefit of everyone. This is hard when people will continue to be people. It can be very frustrating to hear how women shouldn't be judged on the basis of physical appearances and then be told that any guy she dates has to be at least an inch taller than her. Or that while it's important to fight stereotypical gender roles, it's the man's job to propose. Those are minor issues though, vague complaints that are easily answered. They are important points to raise, but they're also You Statements and as such as less useful in a discussion like this than some I Statements might be.

So what are some things that might bring more men on board? I have some ideas.


#1. Change Feminism to a Gender Neutral Term.

In many ways, Feminism is as out dated a terms as Women's Lib. The problem with the term is that men will always know that they are not the focus of the discussion, so long as it's geared towards one gender. As a term, from the starting point, Feminism becomes a series of You Statements for men. We often feel like we're being cast as the bad guy, even when current theory is painting us as just another victim of a greater problem with society. Being cast as a victim is a problem for most men as well, for a whole raft of reasons. So much of the movement has become about gender identity lately. The other half has become trying to examine how to deal with male backlash, so maybe something that doesn't divide from the word go would be helpful.

We need a new, more inclusive name. I would like to suggest something along the lines of Gender Neutrality. This would free the whole movement from of some of its initial divisiveness. It's not about subjugating men, or raising women at the expense of men, it's about raising everyone so that we can all be who we're supposed to be. Yes, this is purely a cosmetic change, but you need to get people in on the ground floor and quite frankly just saying Feminism stops some people from even walking through the door. Too many men look at the term and decide that it has nothing to do with them, despite the fact that it would really help them personally if they joined in the discussion.


#2. Everyone Needs to Stop Talking About The Patriarchy

The Patriarchy is just saying The Man with more syllables. It continues the idea that men are The Problem, and as long as things are cast in those terms, many men will not join the discussion. Besides, The Patriarchy is ill defined and sounds like a Batman TV show villain, played by Peter Lorre. Just call it Society's Problem, we can all own it equally. It belongs to all of us anyway.

Along with that, phrases like "You need to own your privilege" do nothing to help the conversation. If anything, they derail any conversation you might have been trying to have. The whole idea of talking about privilege is to show off that the privilege enjoyed by some is not universal and in fact is really enjoyed only by a genetically lucky few. It needs to go from "You've got that privilege" to "That's not universal, that's a privilege that other people lack." which is a subtle variation, but no one feels like tuning into a conversation where they're exclusively cast as the Bad Guy. Particularly when they themselves didn't do anything, and extremely when they've got the privilege of not tuning in.

This is part of a larger problem of You Statements that need to be turned into I Statements or really, We Statements. I would rather see We Statements on that, quite frankly. One of the big issues here is that any man who doesn't feel like playing along can point out how many women do all these things that "Men need to stop doing" and gives them an out if they don't want to own any of this. We need to work towards making rape jokes inappropriate. We need put a stop to slut shaming. We need to stop expecting men to be sole or at least chief breadwinners. We need to stop acting like a wife is her husband's property. We need to stop forcing gender stereotypes on children. We all of us need to stop using gay as an insult. We need to stop acting like there is a black and a white to human sexuality. We need to stop equating softness as weakness. And of course, we need to stop wearing Crocs... cause SRSLY!

And my final suggestion for today...

#3. Men Need to Step Up to the Plate, Like Now.

It's time gentlemen. Allow us to admit, there are some things that only guys can talk about when it comes to talking to other guys. There are situations where only a guy can tell another guy "That's not cool" or, conversely "Ain't no problem with that." Things that have nothing to do with gender relations, beyond the thin veneer of social expectations. There are time when only a guy can say to another guy "Because because I like to feel the wind on my balls, that's why I'm wearing this skirt!" We, as guys, need to allow ourselves to drop some of this He-Man Woman Hater's Club bullshit and admit that we like watching The Expendables AND My Little Pony, and making delicately frosted cupcakes with pictures of Rainbow Dash... holding Barney's Knife. Someone make that fan art a reality. GO! GO! GO!

We need to step up and start talking seriously about gender issues, and the problems and difficulties behind them. Granted, some have started, the ball is rolling but the rest of us need to join in. We need to really get on board and have a long talk about this shit, probably over some Jameson's 18. We need to take away some stigmas that have been building up, we need to express some emotions that aren't anger and we need to be okay with those expressions. We need to make it okay to talk about male depression, fear, desire, and do so without shaming the person admitting these things. There is still a great deal of comedy geared towards men putting on high heels, and that's got to stop. Some guys wanna wear high heels and stockings because it makes them feel something they can't feel any other way. I get my kicks in a different manner, but I can see where the attraction lies.

Even if we find it weird, we have to stop leaping towards questioning someone's sexual identity for having a brief fling outside of gender norms. We need to break down the idea of gender norms, but I think that's a subject for another time. Right now, we need to not leap to homophobia, because that helps exactly no one. Softness isn't weak, weakness isn't gay, gay isn't bad, and it's okay to be a Brony. Once we, as guys, can start to accept that even our own sexual identity need not be black or white, once we stop being distracted by all these gender expectations, we can start to relax and get to working on important things like building that robot gladiator we've been talking about.



Yeah, almost everything I've mentioned has been done or is being done to some degree, but we maybe need to step it up a tad. I'm kind of tired of still talking about Equal Pay for Equal Work in 2013. That shit should have been over a long time ago and we should just pay everyone the same. I'm tired of still having to tell people that joking about putting roofies in some one's drink isn't goddamn funny. I don't want to have to still be mired in an argument about rape culture, I want someone to help me build Spinestro, The Mechanical Blade so I can go back in time and get on Battle Bots.

"So what's wrong with being a Nice Guy?" You mean besides everything?

So we need to discuss this... I guess.

The other day I posted this link on another social media that sounds like a horror movie* if you say it right. The person I snagged the link from had kind of a discussion on their board because someone wanted to know what was so bad about being nice. He hadn't quite twigged to the idea of what Nice Guy actually means to the internet, and was soon set straight. Now, since most the Nice Guys I've met don't have the self awareness of a Rotary Club Sign, it might be time that we lay this mutha out for everyone.
*Seriously The Book of Faces! Also, Twitter is a romantic comedy, Tumblr is an action movie and My Space is a wacky Sci-fi comedy probably starring The Weasel himself, Pauly Shore. Yeah, I have a mentally undemanding job and a lot of time without interaction.


So the basic facts first, I think... and there is no nice way to say what I'm going to say here.

If you describe yourself as a Nice Guy, you might want to stop doing that. See, everyone outside of Nice Guys (note the capital lettering) thinks anyone who self-identifies as one is an asshole. Seriously, it's like a code that Nice Guys don't actually know and it's frankly kind of sad. Is that fair? Sorry, what the blazing blue fuck does fair have to do with this? Fair is for sports, and this ain't no sport. There ain't no points and you only loose by failing to play the game. Go read over that link I provided, that will give you a great deal of the problem. The sort of guys who call themselves Nice Guys are so often not, and in fact are just assholes in disguise that most everyone else sees the word Asshole when they read the words Nice Guy. So yeah, stop calling yourself that.

I'm not going to go into the whole Nice Guy thing, except to say that you need to either understand some women aren't as attracted to you as you are to them and be a man about it instead of a bitter little baby. Here's the thing, they might want you later if you keep being a good friend. I don't say that it WILL happen, but it COULD happen. However, if you take the rebuffed advances with the attitude of "All bitches are bitches and they don't know a good thing when it's in front of them." then it WON'T happen. Not only won't it happen with her, but if she networks right, it won't happen with any woman inside the tri-state area. They don't always share talk about the good ones, but they will always warn someone off a bad one. You should be nice, but be nice for its own merit and as its own reward. It's not a game, you don't build up points, the friendzone is not a penalty box.

In fact, let us talk about The Friendzone for a moment. I have only once or twice heard the term used by women. It's almost totally used in the context of "That bitch put me in the freindzone and *blah blah misogynistic whining and entitlement issues* what a bitch!" For starters, call her a bitch again, women love to be insulted by guys. If you can't spot the sarcasm in that last sentence, please break off a chair leg and beat yourself in the face until you see spots, I honestly can't be bothered to come over and do it for you. Most the people who use the phrase use it as a complaint, and I can't understand why. I am firmly in the Friendzone of a woman I know. She's married, and monogamous, and possibly not into me despite my long flowing hair and dark as midnight eyes. Thing is, I love her deeply and dearly. We've never been to bed together, we've never even kissed. I've kissed her on the cheek a couple of times, that's the closest we ever got to that and as far as I know it's the closest we will ever get. And I'm okay with that because I love her and to an extent I love her husband and I care deeply about them both. I can't imagine that being a bad thing. She didn't penalize me, she didn't even consciously "Put" me there, that's just where I ended up.

I did however once have a woman explain that she had to "Friendzone" a guy. This surprised me, as she and I always refer to each other as friends. Now... spoiler alert, she had slept with me before and did so again soon after this conversation and the whole time referred to me as Her Friend. so I was surprised to hear that "Friend Zone" didn't come with a side of sex for the poor bastard. She explained that she had sort of intended to sleep with him, but he went on this hateful rant about what a bitch his ex was and it totally turned her off him forever and ever. And that's the other part of that, I am friends with a great many women, and I've had sex with more than a few of them. Unless there was an ongoing, committed relationship, all those women called me their friend. So yeah, even in the friendzone, there is sex.

The problem is, if you approach with desperation, with bitterness, with the attitude on your face... they'll know and they won't want to be with you. Maybe they don't want to be with you anyway, but you don't want to poison the well as it were. Okay, this one woman doesn't want to date you. Maybe that's because she's with someone right now, maybe it's because she doesn't have those feelings for you, maybe it's just not the right time. If you react badly, if you throw a tantrum, they'll talk to other people about it. Even if you throw a tantrum outside that one woman's sight, other women will see it. The network is strong. The network includes all types and genders. There is no escape from The Network. Fear the network. The only thing worse that labeling yourself a Nice Guy is for The Network to label you.

AND THEN THERE'S THIS!

Even if "Nice Guy" wasn't being used by everyone but Nice Guys to mean "dickhead", is that all you have going for you? That you're nice? Really? Because where I come from, that's like saying "I have a pulse and metabolize sugars in my liver" or "I am a person" No matter what, you've got to have more game than that you are "nice" by whatever we mean by that. Nice is a baseline, nice is expected, nice don't even get you through the door. You need some skills. Probably more than video games, although maybe not. If you can avoid calling a girl a Fake Geek because she's better than you at Medal of Duty: Call of Honor, you might be in with a chance. Look at me. Yes, I'm pretty, but there is so much more. I write bad novels, I take amazing photographs, I sing, I dance, I know more about the history of film making than is good for me, and I write truly atrocious poetry. Result? I still strike out seven times out of ten. Some people just ain't into me, but I have a fairly decent reputation and I know how to self-congratulate in a way that is sort of endearing and appropriately lamp shaded.

Point is, grow the fuck up, be an actual man, and quit pretending that Nice ever was enough for anybody.

Thank you and goodnight.

Okay Feminists, listen...

You're basically right. Let's get that out of the way. 98% of what feminist are currently saying is more or less correct. Dismissal of Intellect? Yeah, that happens. Objectification on a Mass Scale? Yeah, we still do that. Rape? Yeah. Reproductive rights? We've got problems like wow. Male Gaze? Guilty, though I'm not really sure how you intend to fix it without changing genetics. I agree with the substance of your arguments and endorse the whole of your ideas. (you can already hear the "but" coming, can't you?)

HOWEVER!

Pretending that there was NEVER a time when the man-hating feminist was a thing?

That's a lie.

Argue they were a minority, argue they don't matter, argue that those ideas were part of a process and are no longer needed, but don't say they never happened. Valerie Solanas was a popular and influential feminist of her time. And the SCUM Manifesto was, by her word, a serious work. She stated several times that she meant every word. Now, if you want to say "That doesn't represent current feminist attitudes and never really represented mainstream feminism" no one would be happier to listen to you than me. I don't think those ideas where ever really picked up on by most women who were looking more for better pay, less objectification, and maybe a little more understanding about what we all have to go through.

Except of course, a few mainstream feminists pick up on those ideas and expressed great admiration for those works. Gloria Steinem does represent mainstream second wave feminism and I found her hateful enough that I recoiled from her works when I tried to read them. Germaine Greer gives me similar problems as well. Both of them are intelligent women, with a lot of important things to say, but it gets lost in passages that left me going "Oh, it's like that is it?" Sort of a shame, but there it is. I got burned at an early age by some very harsh talk and had to make my way to the idea that you're getting fucked over on my own. I've had problems with a lot of the second wave feminism that I've read. I've read a lot I agree with as well, but on the whole I end up feeling like being born with a penis was a failing on my part. I sort of prefer the purity of the first wave, from what I've read of it. I'll grant, I haven't read all there has been to read, but I've read a few of the books and articles over the years. Of course, you also have Betty Friedan, who is the originator of the phrase, "Men weren’t really the enemy — they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill." which is pretty good.

NOW!

Current feminist? Third Wave Feminist? Fine group, interesting ideas. I'm sort of annoyed that many of them are saying the exact same things that first and second wave feminists said, but that's more of a "Are you really still having to talk about that? Haven't we fixed that yet?" which is more a problem with society than the writer. I find that those feminists are much more even handed, and tend to extend out the idea that men aren't the enemy, but a fellow combatant. I like the idea that it won't really work until we're all free. I get a better feeling that third wave has done more to embrace the "Man is not the enemy here, but the fellow victim." mindset.

So far I haven't had much of a problem... EXCEPT! This wish to pretend those second wave feminists didn't exist. It is a problem. It smacks either of ignorance or of dishonesty, and we can't have an intelligent conversation with either of those hanging over our heads. It's like saying misandry doesn't exist. Yes, it does. I can prove it does. I've seen examples of misandrists in my own life. The level of misandry I have seen, as compared to the level of misogyny is akin to that of the rainfall of Des Moines as opposed to the rainforest of the Amazon. But let's not try and pretend that it never rains in Des Moines, okay? It does, just not as much as the Amazon.

To say that it never rains, or that there are no man hater, when we can pull out sheets of paper to the contrary, is far more problematic than having to deal with the fact that someone can justifiably call you a liar. Stand up tall, say "Yes, that happened, however that doesn't invalidate everything else I've just said. The amount of shit women have to put up with is far and away far more than men have to deal with." Yeah, some asshole will try to shut you down once you agree it happens to both sides, but that guy is shutting you down RIGHT NOW with far more justification because you are either lying about or are ignorant of what your own side has previously said.

You can't let those assholes have any more ammo than you can help. Why give them that? I don't want to be 60 and still having people asking if there are any funny women despite the fact that Kate Beaton, Josie Long, Susan Calman, Tina Fey and Ellen DeGeneres out there. Never mind the republicans talking about how awesome rape is, let's sort out if women can be funny first. Yes, they can. Okay, glad that's settled.

Look, I'll make it simple. It comes down to veracity, and I want this discussion to have some. We must remain truthful. Yes, the bra-burning was false, never happened, but that doesn't mean that nothing bad has ever come from our side. Accept it, and move on.

I have never considered myself a feminist, because I don't have the equipment for it. I mean the mental equipment, there is not going to be a cheap penis joke here. I am far to entrenched in the male mindset to really understand what women are going through, in much the same sense that I can never really understand what it's like to be a poor black growing up in the ghetto. I can say "Yeah, that's bullshit and it shouldn't happen." but I can't even begin to say I understand what that person went through. I've got my own sexual-socio-political problems to work out. Now it may be that some of our issues actually coincide, but I've got to come from a different angle and I'm attacking from the other side. But I do so with as much honesty as I can muster and I ask you to do the same.

Also, if anyone can tell me if Anne Rice was endorsing Valerie Solanas's ideas in Queen of the Damned or satirizing them, I'd appreciate it.

Kinky Tales

BDSM Fairy Tale

Have you ever read about the psychology of BDSM, and then tried to read a fairy tale? Yeah, you can’t unsee that shit. Most the fairytales can be seen as BDSM allegories of one kind or another.

The most obvious example is Beauty and the Beast, in which a subbie who wants to be a collared slave. The Dom in the situation is kind of a dick, but the sub is going to turn him into a better master through being a loving slave. Through her love, she becomes the possession of the kind of master she wants. All the beast’s behavior is just bad dom behavior. Red Riding Hood’s story has role play, crossdressing, age play… and a guy who comes in at the end to beat on one of the participants at the end. Cinderella has humiliation, cosplay, foot fetish. Snow White has just about everything when you think about it. And in Prudent Hans, he litterally ties a rope around a girl's next and forces her to sit crouched on the floor of the stable and eat hay. You change the last two paragraphs of that story, and you have the start of a BDSM epic on your hands.

Actually the thing is, where I really want to go with this is not the action beats. The SM part doesn’t interest me here nearly as much as the BD part does. What you have in most fairy tales, particularly those of the Grimm’s stories, is a series of agreements and fulfillments. The very basics of BDSM is one person agrees to do what the other person says, and agrees that if they don’t do what they said they would, then there will be a punishment. You can argue that it’s more complicated than that, and indeed it is, but I used the word ‘basic’ a little while ago. While there are layers and further layers, at the core this is what you have.

Once you have that in your head, Hans My Hedgehog is a very different tale indeed. Not the version Wikipedia has, which is a sanitized version some Victorian masturbator came up with. Much closer to the original is the Jim Henson made for The Storyteller. Watch all three parts of that and tell me that the only thing missing isn’t leather and collars. Granted, Hans My Hedgehog is one of the stories Beauty and The Beast is based on, so that might be a bad example.

The point is that throughout the fairytale world is a series of agreements and fulfillments, or punishments for failure to fulfill. There are regional differences here and there, of course. Russian fairytales then to rush right to the punishment of bad behavior, where as German stories reward good behavior. Of course, that’s because the Russians are more into beatings than the Germans are. The French are more into perversity on every level, and the Irish are just about enduring the events until eventual reward.

Not every story works on this level of course, but if you think about it too long, I bet you could make the 3 Little Pigs kinky. Hell The Billy Goats Gruff is about a troll looking for a harsh master that can take him in hand and make him behave. This shit is easy, once you start looking for it.

Mind you, you can also see penises in the clouds if someone throws a couple of boxes of dildos out of a plane.

The Recreation of Manhood

I got to thinking about macho bullshit today, and an idea about it struck me. We’ve been slowly watching the death of the traditional male for about 100 years now, but macho bullshit still remains. If anything, we have an increase in what I’m going to call MBS, because I intend to write it many times and I don’t want to write the whole phrase over and again until the end of the world.

What I’ve been seeing, and I think we really started seeing it in the 80s, is Hyper-MBS. There used to be 2 groups, quiche eating wimps and MBS-muscle men. The wimps were small, vegetarian, and possibly gay. The MBS guys on the other hand were built to an extreme unobtainable without steroids, probably ate trees, and were probably gay. Gay came up as a pejorative quite often in those days either because it was the worst thing they could think of to be or the other side knew that the previous side thought it was the worst thing to be. Many gay jokes have the air of “And I’m only saying that because it was bother him” about them, but that doesn’t make it okay. I think after this, we shall dispense with the pejorative. I simply wanted to acknowledge its existence.

Here is the thing though, 150 years ago, or there abouts, men had all the responsibilities. They earned the money, paid the bills, set the rules, made sure everyone abided by the rules, provided discipline and served as the head of the house. Along with those responsibilities, went certain privileges. We know the privileges, we don’t need to go into that right now. I’m not even saying that those men were cruel, or ill tempered, I’m merely pointing out that they were responsible for everyone in their family. They were the one who had to provide, to take care, to make sure things worked. He couldn’t show much emotion because everyone depended on him. If he was seen to be worried about something, then it must have been really serious. Atticus Finch may well be the perfect shape for a father in some ways.

About 100 years ago, some women started to assert themselves. They spoke of privileges, but what they really wanted was responsibilities. They wanted the responsibility of deciding political matters for example. You can look at this as the right to vote, or you can look at it as trying to be responsible for the shaping of local and federal matters. As some of them now earned money, some of them took more responsibility for the running of the household. They began to balance checkbooks, and serve on local councils and make decisions. You can call this taking privilege, but a lot of stress comes with those responsibilities and I call them as they are.

When this started, some men simply saw it as the woman offering to share the load. Many a man in the past leaned on his wife, asked for her help and sought her advice. Now it was just being done more widely. Slowly, by degrees, the social order changed. Soon men were being told that not only were they going to be forced to give up those responsibilities, but they would also be loosing the privileges they once afforded.

This is where MBS really got started. It was a response to being told to give everything up. MBS men decided they not only wouldn’t give up their masculinity, they would become hyper masculine for fear anyone thought they might succumb even one inch. As a result, these men became walking parodies of manhood, until they couldn’t even see a reasonable idea with a telescope. But really, they were just tired of being told to give things up without ever seeming to get anything in return.

I think this is where the rage comes from, when someone wants to have a discussion about sexism on the internet. Men have been asked to give up so much, that any talk now has the instant feeling of “Oh what am I supposed to loose this time? When will it EVER be enough?” Consider for a moment, many of these young men live in a world that tells them they can’t have a private Men’s Only club, but women can have gyms where men are not allowed in any way. There are train cars where men are barred, but if men try to have anything of their own, some female makes it her mission in life to insert herself into their tree house. Not, I will admit, without reason do these things exist. However, you men today are born into a world where the are given less than any time before, are allowed no exclusive spaces while everyone else has some, and are constantly being harangued about how much privilege they possess, when to them it looks like the privileges are being enjoyed by everyone but them. For a 15 year old, who doesn’t understand how the word works, being misogynistic can feel like the only recourse they have.

And it shouldn’t be that way.

We’ve taken a great deal away from men through the last century of feminism, but we’ve given very little to them. The idea of a man crying at a movie is still cause for humor. A man wearing clothes for style rather than ruggedness or comfort makes many question his sexuality. Any sense of feminizing is seen as a wholly wrong thing, by both men and even more importantly, women. Women say they want a sensitive man, but several will go for the square jawed gorilla 6 times out of 10. A man that doesn’t work on his abs is lazy, a man that reads poetry is suspect, a man that says he wants to know what a woman wants is subject to anger and mockery for not already knowing.

What we need, is to give something to these young men. We can’t give them the old world, that’s never going to happen. What we can do though, is turn down the hyper MBS that’s turning them into something wholly repugnant. I personally find the statements young men make about women, any women, repellent. That’s not manhood to me, that’s the screeching of scared little boys. When it comes from little boys who are in their late 60s, we have done something wrong as a society. We need to offer them some idea of manhood, and I think we can offer it though simply loosening the reigns a little.

Hear me, hear me…

In many ways, men were never really told they can let go of all those responsibilities. We’ve never been told its okay to cry our eyes out at a sad movie, or to wear what we feel like wearing when we feel like wearing it. We’ve failed to give a reasoned and responsible role model for these guys to follow, partly because our fathers didn’t have one and their fathers didn’t seem to have much of one. We started going down a strange and unknown path about 100 years ago, and we’ve never really been able to find our way. We need to make it okay to admit we’re lost. We need to say it’s okay to ask for directions. We need to show particularly our young men, its okay to make a fresh start.

In some ways, we need to let go of our old responsibilities, and in some ways we need to gain new ones. Mostly, this MBS hasn’t gone away because we’ve never really offered a viable option to that MBS. We need to make it okay to abandon that, and gain a new place. Be responsible for your own self, and be a little more responsible for those other men around you. Explain that no Real Man would in fact ever say “Bitch, go make me a sammich.” because a Real Man is confident enough not to need to say anything so childish. Syd pointed out a while ago that it’s kind of ironic that the things that make people say they’re taking you Man Card away is usually when someone has done something that makes them a Real Man in the first place. BTW, a Real Man, doesn’t need a man card.

We’re going to have to do something, this situation ain’t going away by wishing.

On the Question of the Internet as a Platform for Courtly Love and Its Relation to Polyamory

Once Upon a Time, I said a thing.

Some long ages ago, I presented the idea that if Courtly Love has a modern place in the world, it is on the internet. My main idea behind this shocking revelation, that shocked the world by reveling the fact that it was a shocking revelation, was that the central idea of courtly love is perfect for the internet. While the days of courtly love included much stage management and adultery, there was at its core a pure idea. The idea being that love was above such petty things as physical contact. In the days of arranged marriages, there was a definite need for people to be able to sigh at each other in a garden over the azaleas. A safety valve had to be invented, or the whole system would have collapsed under its own weight.

Okay, you say, so what? We don’t live in the medieval system anymore, as you might have noticed what with the relative rarity of witch burnings. Castle sieges are a thing of the past and we haven’t had a dragon attack in months now. In fact, we are so far from the medieval world that any attempt to turn back the clock makes people wonder when I’m going to come out against birth control and women wearing pants. I’m not, don’t worry, but I would suggest things are not as much changed as they appear.

With poly, and distance, comes new problems, vis-à-vis relationships. Perhaps problem is not the word, perhaps issues is more the phrase we should be looking for. Even the idea of traditional relationships is slowly, but steadily breaking down. If you like, the concept of Friends with Benefits, is changing (or has changed) everything. While I’m not going to suggest that now is the time to go jump that hottie in marketing for a quick fling (although, you know, if you don’t do it now…) I am going to suggest that the traditional model is outdated and in need of a serious overhaul. The concept of love has become far more malleable over the last decade or so and the acceptability of that change is growing.

So where does that take us? Why to the internet of course, where the concept of Courtly Love should be able to exist easily. The idea of long distance flirtation, with a flexible amount of emotional investment is what many people are forced to do these days. We find people we want to stay in contact with, people we’re attracted to for one reason or another, and we use the internet to do that. In some ways, we come closer to the ideal of Courtly Love, since in many cases we have no real idea what the person at the other end of that wall of text looks like. Yes, we might find out through one method or another, but we often fall for the person’s thoughts and ideas first.

That’s what the purer idea of Courtly Love is supposed to be about. I say supposed because pure things rarely ever exist in the wild and we both know it. I have many people on line that I care quite deeply about, some of them I am attracted to physically, but as I continually bang on, I’m far more interested in a woman that has something to say than one that will flash her tits. I’m not against tit flashing, and I’ve seen a lot of the flesh of people I’ve never seen in the flesh, but it’s less important than the thoughts and ideas that she might have.

When it comes to the exchange of ideas, and the exchanging of affection without coming in contact with one another, you can’t get a much better medium than the internet. You can either form your missives in short tweets, long epic poems, photographs or drawings that represent your feelings, or even a video where you explain your love to the objects of your affection. The playing field is quite large and open, for whatever expression of whatever emotions you’re having. You could even learn to play the lute, or possibly the banjolele and record a song where you express your feelings like the troubadours of old did.

We live with an ideal platform for expressing affection, while further breaking down or at least redefining the concept of relationship, which has been plaguing mankind for some time. Polyamory has rightly gained a wider acceptance among those plugged into the internet among our generation than those who are not. I was going to talk about poly more, but I don’t want this to get unreadable in length. At the very least, we’ve given the world a way to flirt shamelessly and harmlessly with good looking people from all over the world. And that is not nothing, that is something.

Also, you’re looking quite hot lately, have I mentioned that darling?

Sex talk that I fail to have a clever title for due to the late hour and cold medicine.

Some one, I won’t say who (but she knows that she eats puppies) is having an enforced “Low Self-Esteem Day” brought to you by “Some Asshole in the Street” and other shaming types. As a result, she was asking if those of us with ladies would express what we liked about our ladies bodies. Now this is hard for me, because I have a plethora of Secret Internet Girlfriends (most of whom I only know through outdated photographs), and I have Syd, who hits me for saying anything about her body at the best of times. No matter who I talk about, I’m going to get in trouble.

So here is what I’m left with, I’m asked to make a series of statements about women’s bodies, but without accurate documentation. Now on the one hand I could ask you each to send me photos of yourselves in your underpants, for science purposes, but that’s a wee bit creepier than I had planned on being today. Instead, I was hoping for a slightly less creeptastic drive down Girl-Body Lane. Wait a second… did I just insinuate that I would be driving a car over a road comprised of dead women? Because that would be even creepier than asking you to send me photos of you in your undies. Fuck it! Let’s get to objectifying!

Let us instead talk in more general terms. I like all bodies, granting that I like them to be within reason. I like them long and lean, short and stout, medium and... um… medium? Okay, so that sort of falls apart, but it’s true. I like girls with curves, and I like girls who are skinny. I like all kinds of bodies, even though there are extremes on either end of the spectrum that turn me off. It would be impossible to claim that these extremes don’t exist, even for little old me, but the markers are generally further out than you probably think. I don’t know, maybe by now you know me well enough to know that my goal posts for fuckability are not quite where everyone else’s are. I rarely worry about where other people’s posts are, because to be frank, they don’t really count. If you can understand why I like this one, or that one, then good for you. If you can’t, well I can’t understand your desire for that one over there either, but I won’t begrudge you your desire for her.

I like all the bits of women too. Rather, I like something different on each woman. Each and everyone, a slightly different set of features to be explored and memorized. This one has such lovely eyes, that you could stair into until the end of time. That one has a strong jaw line and that comes down to a perfect chin. She has slender tapering arms, she has powerful shoulders, she has a thick wrists and she has graceful thighs. And yes, of course, obviously I notice the breasts and buttocks of every girl that I come across. That, however, is merely a matter of course. Save for a few, I’m mostly just glad that those parts come along at all. In many ways, it’s also a matter of how well those parts fit in with the rest of the body.

For the most part, however, that’s all just male gaze stuff. And while I understand its place as both a positive and a negative factor in male/female relations, how you look is not that important to me. If I were simply looking for someone who fit into a narrow body image, I could find her easily. However, there are problems there. Looks fade, and when you look exclusively for appearance you forget that they probably have habits that will annoy you. They might like the wrong kind of music, they might like Reality Shows, they might even think that reading is for like… squares and stuff? What do you do then? Dump her and move on to the next girl who looks nice, but will annoy you? Do you leave a wake of angry and resentful women behind you?

Or, do you do what I do? See, while I’m perfectly willing to admit that physical looks hold some level of importance, it’s far more important that a lady excite my mind. I could, quite easily, get some girl* to take to bed, if that was all I was interested in. The problem is, I need to talk to her afterwards and I need there to be some kind of connection between periods where sex isn’t happening. I’m a modern man, I need modern women. Without brains, there isn’t much I can do with you.

The mind is the sexiest part of any woman, and should be considered in any conversation of sexuality. If you’re not kicking it at the very top, then it really doesn’t matter how much you’re kicking it further down the body, because without mental stimulation I will get bored of you. I’m not even saying someone needs to have read all the books I have, as I said before, it might be better if she hasn’t, because then we could discuss different things.

Now, looking at my earlier posts, I can see that I was going to discuss slut-shaming, body-shaming and other such things, but I’m afraid I’ve run out of steam. I’m not fans of them, and it occurs to be that bi-shaming would take at least two pages for me to discuss and I can’t look down that barrel tonight. Still love me?

Okay, despite all my talk a moment ago, I’m not even that comfortable with dumb-shaming. You can be annoyed by ignorance, but you shouldn’t try to shame someone out of it. There, I talked a little about it. Now it’s time I went to bed.





*This boast brought to you by the year 1998

A Sexy Accent

No one finds my accent sexy. I think I have the single most boring accent on the planet. I have what is often called “An American Accent” or possibly “Standard American English” even though those are misnomers. Those of you from outside the US might not be fully aware of this, but the accent you hear on TV shows tends to be what is called the Northern cities vowel shift although it used to just be The Mid-West Accent.

This is the accent chosen by broadcasters in the early 20th Century, because it is the most intelligible and easily understood pronunciation. As a result, it tends to be what people think of as an American Accent, and also… dull. While the British Received Pronunciation is often seen (at least by Americans) as the voice of cultured, intellectual authority, mine never seems to elicit and emotional reaction at all. It’s just “Oh yeah, American” and then people get on with their day. Sometimes, there is an aggressive edge to the accent, but then people tend to say it becomes “More New York, or Southern” and at that point is no longer the Mid-West.

The Welsh and Irish have sexy, musical accents. The French and German have very sexy accents, for very different reasons. And there is no way to talk about the Scandinavian accent because that’s one that goes right to the lower nerve endings and does something to me. So does the Russian accent, but that’s probably because all three of the women I’ve known who have Russian accents are very attractive and you wouldn’t mind Valley Girl talk coming from them*. The Canadian Accent is at least cute, with its “aboots” and “doolars” and the Scots are also so damn cute you want to put the whole nation in your pocket. Actually, you could do that with Susan Calman and just take her out when you have a bad day and listen to her talk. She’s also damn funny, which always helps.
*This is comic exaggeration. If Kitty starts talking like a valley girl to me, I’ll have to kill her with a fire axe. All the while crying and telling her “I love you so much that I can’t let you live like this.”

Even the Australian and American Southern accents have that sort of innocent, roll in the hay, aw shucks thing going on. I’ve got nothing to fall back on besides good diction, and an ability to say absolutely anything in a clam, restrained, dead pan. As a result, you get the sever impression that bombing public statues and selling priests into white slavery is the sort of thing I got bored with before my testicles dropped. On occasion, that’s nice, because I like having my depraved indifference to human suffering to be taken as sarcasm.

Actually, I have a mixture of my mother’s accent and father’s diction to fall back on. When I am very, very tired, people will occasionally ask if I’ve lived in Kentucky or have relatives there. My mother’s accent is a relatively pure Michigan Accent. She says “worsh” instead of “wash” and everything. She’s not dumb, or ignorant, or anything, but every once in a while she sounds like she is. My mother sounds like a literate hillbilly who spent a lot of time in Wisconsin. When mixed with the good diction I posses (even when outrageously tired) that accent creates some kind of Southern Gentleman from Kentucky, by way of Maine, and the Ozarks. If you find that sexy, let me know, there are probably doctors who can cure you.

I would like a sexy accent, or at least a cute one, or even one that makes someone sit up and take notice. I think I have the dullest accent on earth. Even if you hate the accent, that might be something. I could be wrong of course, and someone might mention that they think the Cultured Japanese accent is more boring than mine. I can think of some accents I don’t like. I’m not going to name them, because I don’t want those people who have them to feel bad, but those accents at least bring a response. So far though, I’ve not found one that’s as dull as this.

I’ve talked to many, many people, and not one has ever remarked on my accent being anything but background noise to what I’m saying. My accent is the clarinet of accents. It’s fine, but no one wants to play it unless they want to just slink to the back of the band and not get noticed.

Quick Robin! To the Equality Mobile!

Some one recently said that being fat makes you public property. You're no longer a person, you're an object for ridicule and disdain. Now, there is a lot to say about that, like that person is right, but also that they don't go far enough. I would like to point out at this moment some fascinating research that has come to light that when you give two mice the exact same diet, but subject one to city air and one to country air, the city mouse gets fat while the country mouse doesn't. This about that for a second, just being around cars is making you fatter. So can we please agree that eating too much isn't the cause now?

Where was I? Ah yes, fat as public property. Men get it, women get it, women get it a hell of a lot more. I think being fat does do this, but so does simply being female.

I would like you to look at this cover for GQ magazine, where a photo of Michelle Williams features prominently. Tell me she is not being treated like a piece of public property. The headline alone comes to me as "How dare this bitch not show us her tits before?" and acts as if she should have posed in her underwear a long time ago.

I would like to blame our old foe in this one, and explain why I rarely mention it.

See... when every I read the words "The Patriarchy" I tend to think of Adam West saying it. Try it with me for a moment.

Best Batman Ever: Yes Robin... it's our old foe... The Patriarchy!

The Only Robin We'll Really Accept: Holy slut shaming! (punches own palm) You're right Batman, it's the only explanation!

Best Batman Ever: I wonder what... diabolical scheme that... enslaver of souls has planned this time.

You can hear him can't you? You know The Patriarchy is played by Peter Lorre or some shit, right?

I normally roll my eyes, since I've seriously heard someone claim the patriarchy as why their shoes didn't fit them right. That is as opposed to the real problem, she bought the wrong size. However, I think that actually probably is the problem here. I mean, you can't even make a music video that's supposed to celebrate geek girls without having all the girls in it conform to the 8% body fat rule. Also, they have to be naked and on their backs. Natch!

There is a massive feeling that women are just public property, from shaming one who gets fat, drooling over anyone who happens to conform to the momentary standard, to telling one that gets raped to be glad it happened, society acts like women are public property. So yeah, for all those reasons, I want people to leave Paula Deen the hell alone. Also, I want someone to bring back the old Batman crew for one last caper against The Patriarchy, because how cool would that be?

And he could make a pun after doing it too.

BIFF! POW!

Best Batman Ever: Your days of corseting humans into rigidly defined gender roles are over Patriarchy.

Why I Hate Man Food

When I hear the phrase Man Food, what I really hear is… “I’m a MAN! And I’m gonna prove I’m a MAN by eating lots of BEEF and RIBS and things! Because I’m a MAN and not a faggit and I sure don’t want to be fucked up the ass or nothing. I’ll prove how straight I am by eating loads of hotdogs and drinking beer and OH GOD PLEASE SOMEONE SODOMIZE ME! I need it so bad… my butt is waiting.”

So yeah, talking about Man Food sort of makes me think you’re very, very gay. I know, I know, I shouldn’t use gay as a pejorative, and I’m not really. Nothing wrong with being gay, so long as you know what you are and accept the fact. It’s when men try to prove themselves to be Extra Manly with Manly Sauce that I stat looking at them and shout “GAY!” because if you were really confident that you’re a hetro man, you wouldn’t be trying so hard to convince both me and yourself.

Few things are as pervasive as the gender identity roles for men. They extend far further than you think, run much deeper than we’ve previous suspected and are far, far more stringent than those for women. While the consequences for women might be much direr in the long run, many of those consequences revolve around men who are unable to escape the grasp of their gender identity. So really, I shouldn’t make fun of guys who can’t let go of pork ribs and football, but they all come off as so amazingly gay to me. Even though, really, it’s an expression of desperation and fear from someone who probably isn’t gay, but is terrified of being perceived as gay… and I just called them gay. Yeah, you can’t fucking win. Might as well wear a pink angora sweater and ride a big penis shaped rocket while waving your hat Slim Pickens style. If someone is going to call you gay no matter what you do, then why pretend?

And all of this is a side issue to the fact that women eat ribs and chili and drink beer and burp and have even been known to get into football of all things.  How can it be Man Food if girls are allowed to eat it? And, is there any such thing as woman food? Quiche? Strawberry Cheesecake? Calzones? Oysters? Tacos? Cherry Pie? Orchids? Cellos? Perhaps two semi-spherical mounds of panna cotta set next to each other with a cherry on each one? No… that’s too Caucasian-Centric, and I’m already being quite hetro-normative with this as it is. Besides not even all white chicks have pink nipples and certainly not cherry red ones.

Polyamory Q&A: Question 11 (hints)

Is there something you just wish you did better?

You know something sweetheart, I’m glad you asked that question. As it turns out, there is something I wish I was better at.

I wish I were better at getting and interpreting hints as they’re being dropped.

See, there have been times in my life, when I wasn’t just the handsome, charming and debonair fellow you see before me. There was a time, long ago, when I was down right pretty. I say this with no ego or self aggrandizement, because it never did me a bit of good seeing as no one ever mentioned it to me until it was far, far too late to do anything about it. By the time the phrase “Too pretty for words” came along, I wasn’t anymore. Weight and age had laid upon me and I was no longer the heart wrenching beauty I once was. Sadly, this really was something I didn’t know I had until it was gone.

It seems, as I have been told later, that about 98.7% of all females fell into a maddening, lustful, unrequited, crush that was akin to the gravitational force of a black hole. Only, unlike those massive dead stars, you could escape because I had no idea of the powerful draw I possessed in those days. Evidently, when there were mass faintings, I just assumed that there was some kind of gas, or I didn’t notice them fainting, or I was busy talking to someone, or… something. I have been told that it was happening though, just as I left the room all the girls would collapse and fan themselves and make sighing noises AND THAT’S NOT FAIR!

Why they couldn’t have done it while I was in the room… I don’t know. I was not consulted on this; no one asked my opinion at the time, and if they had I would have suggested changes. Most the females I knew in High School that were candid enough to discuss this were lesbians and didn’t see the attraction because they weren’t into men. When my opinion was asked for later, upon someone revealing that she had carried a massive crush torch for me all through high school, I said that she could have done things differently. Actually, I remember swearing and saying that I never even had an inkling of an insinuation that she wanted me. I remember a string of profanity and vocabulary words spewing forth, because that’s sort of what I do sometimes.

You remember me talking about red socks a while ago? This girl claimed that she had worn the local equivalent of red socks around me for four years just hoping and praying I would notice. Now, we were friendly, but I have to tell you that I NEVER saw the myriad of signals she claims she was throwing my way. By the time she was telling me this, she had hooked up with a nice guy and I was with Syd and the word “Poly” wasn’t even a thing yet and, and, and… nothing. Nothing ever came of that because it was too late to do anything about it. However, that would not be the first time I would be so frustrated.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten no better at seeing hints and signs. The only thing that has changed is that I am now aware that such sings and hints exist. To some extent, this has made things easier, and to some extent this has made me paranoid. It’s laughable to be paranoid about ancient aliens helping the Freemasons to come over here and steal our cheese, because that’s an absurd thing to be concerned about. It is not, however, absurd to be paranoid about missing signals that you know exist and that you know you have a history of missing. See, when you have later been told that a girl talking about how she loves brown eyes and guys with long hair, directly to you – a brown eyed long haired guy, is supposed to be a hint that she’d like you to take her roughly and ravish her under the bleachers, well it makes you feel silly for not having ravished her. It makes you feel particularly silly when you spent three years thinking said girl was the seventh loveliest thing you’d ever seen and had often wondered how she’d look while being ravished under the bleachers. Sadly, I was only informed of this after ravishing, bleachers and long hair had all gone out of style. Also, said girl has since dropped to the fifteenth loveliest thing I’ve ever seen, but that’s more because I have seen so much more and less that her beauty has decreased. Also, I later learned that she was kind of a self centered jack-ass and counted myself as lucky not to get wound around her little finger like many another I knew.

Sorry, where was I? Oh, yes, hints!

Now, I’ve learned a few other things about girls since then, and a few things about grown women as well. One of the things I’ve learned is that sometimes, when a girl says she likes your hair, all she’s saying is that she likes your hair. That’s one of the really hard things to deal with, at least for me. Men are easy, men think you’re pretty and they say “You shure is perty! You got a perty mouth. I bet you could squeal like a piggy.” and then you start to run with knives drawn, ready to kill. Women are more subtle and say things that could mean they’re just making pleasant conversation, or that they’re trying to lure your dumb ass into bed if you weren’t so damn dumb and could be lured into the place you clearly really want to go. AND! Sometimes, they’re trying to sound you out, see if you’d find them slutty for wanting to bang you like a screen door in a windstorm. So, sometimes it’s a come on, sometimes it’s not a come on, and sometimes it could lead to a come on if you answer the unasked question correctly.

Now, you throw polyamory into the mix. You have friends who know where you stand, and where they stand, and yet there are times when you think they’re flirting. But then, you think that they can’t possibly be flirting beyond telling a joke, because as far as you know they aren’t poly. OR ARE THEY? Because while you’re talking to them, and they seem to be flirting, they mention that they’ve thought about living in a group situation and that the idea sort of appeals to them. Then she mentions being bi and thinking your GF is cute and letting the rest sort of hang there. I’m making it sound like those all came in one sentence, which doesn’t do her or me any favors. Of course, by the time I’d worked out what her signals meant, I’d also worked out that there was a stability problem with her.

The other reason I find this frustrating is that in other circumstances, where no sexuality is involved, I can read 99.6% of all people like a large print book. Partly it’s that I’m a good listener, partly it’s that I’ve got enough empathy to understand where a person is coming from, and partly I have a conman’s knack for observing those tiny clues about a person that even they don’t know they’re doing. Probably, a big part of my problem with hints is that I’ve probably got this whole shyness/self-esteem issues going on. Yeah, I have a natural ability to decide that those hints aren’t what I might think they possibly could be. No, it must just be pleasant conversation, she’s just answering my question in a frank and unambiguous way because she feels comfortable with me and I talk in a fairly frank and straight forward manner most the time. Yeah, that’s it, that’s why she told me what she told me in a way that could be considered provocative and alluring, not because she’s trying to tell me that her bedroom is just upstairs and gosh I’ve got nice legs.

So yeah, I wish I was better at hints and clues. While we’re at it, I would also like to no longer be dyslexic and I would enjoy a cure of ADD if you’ve got one handy. I know the question wasn’t asked in a poly poll, but I’ve decided to drop it in here anyway.

Polyamory Q&A: Question 10

10. How do I know if poly is for me?

You don’t.

Yup, gonna be plain and simple at ya there. To give you just one example, you could be in a poly relationship for (let’s say) ten years and then suddenly decide during, the eleventh year, that this isn’t working anymore and you have to go. That has been known to happen on at least one occasion.

Conversely, you could live in a quite, button down, boring old peanut butter and jelly monogamous relationship for most of your life and then, suddenly BOOM(!) Cornchips! you meet someone so amazing you have to be with them, but you realize that you can’t be parted with your current partner and decide that instead of sneaking around and having affairs, you move them into the spare room and all live together as a little commune for the rest of your lives. That has also happened on at least one occasion.


You remember back at Question 4 I started making comparisons with food? Wasn’t that fun? Let’s do that again. Do you remember being a kid and not liking asparagus? And then, do you remember having it one day during your adulthood and saying to yourself “This ain’t so bad. Actually, I kind of like this.” That’s because tastes change over time, unless you still hate asparagus, but if you’re going to be obstinate and refuse to work with me by eating your vegetables, then I’m afraid there will be no pudding for you. Well, all of life is kind of like that. One day you realize that Pepsi is just too damn sweet, that lemons are too damn sour, and that living with only one lover it too damn limiting. Like wise, you can realize that asparagus is tasty, that you prefer more peas to a slice of pie, and that sharing your loved one with another person is actually kind of refreshing. Or, you might decide after three years that it’s not so awesome as you’d previously thought. This is going to sound like something you’d get if a 13 year old wrote a fortune cookie, but I know of no other way to say this… “You just never know.”

You might think it might not work, you might think you could never handle it, but you won’t know until you’ve tried it. You might think you’ll be a wiz at it, but that’s always someone’s thoughts pre-smashing the car into a lamp post because they have no idea how to drive and just slammed their foot on the gas. Either way, you just don’t know until you’ve given a whirl and seen how you reacted. Each person is different, and each group is different, but until you’ve been there, you simply will not know.

Now, sure, you can look for some of the factors that are listed in other places around the internet, but you didn’t ask about factors, you asked how you know and I’ve gotta tell ya, you never know. Of course, you might be gay, or a secret kitten hater, or a Doors Fan and not know that either. I know, it sounds sort of mealy mouthed and wishy washy, but it’s all I’ve got for you.

Polyamory Q&A: Questions 6 and 7

6. What's your ideal relationship plan?
Hard to say, I want more than I’ve got now, that’s for sure. I would like at least one more person, maybe two, who knows. My plan is one where everyone is happy. If everyone is in love with each other, that would be best. A semi-closed triangle or square? Yeah, that sounds okay. Now, don’t get on me about fairness, or about what other people in the relationship might want, that wasn’t the question. The question was about MY ideal and MY ideal has a small group of lovers, each of whom I can form connections with on different levels with semi-regular intervals of group sex.

I just want all the little empty cracks in my heart to be filled. I learned long ago that one person wasn’t going to excite all my interests, so I needed more than one. Also, group sex is a lot of fun, I’m not going to lie to you. Three ways rock and I’m assuming four ways rock even more.



7. Would you like two co-primaries, a staggered hierarchy (primary, secondary, tertiary), or a partner and a host of casual fuckmuppets?

I am made very uncomfortable by the idea of the hierarchical layout. I just can’t get into that vibe much. I don’t like putting one person above another. Some people, that’s totally for them, but not so much for me. Of course, as things currently stand, who knows what the situation will be the next time someone shows up at our door?

That being said, I could see the advantage to casual fuckmuppetry, but I could also see the downsides. I’m fairly fluid mentally, so I could have a friend, and be sort of a lover, but still technically be a friendship, I suppose. I’d already have deep feelings for them, if we were going that far, so it wouldn’t be that big a shift. Maybe? I’ve never had a fuckmuppet before, so I can’t say.

And they asked, "So what's your problem with flowers anyway?"

For sometime now, I’ve had a public stance of being against the giving of flowers to pretty girls. My personal view is that A) they are transitory (they’ll be gone in a week) and B) they don’t show any real thought. I’ve also got the basic problem that they’re cliché, but all artists complain like that if something has been done more than twice and flowers have been done more than twice. Now, this doesn’t mean I never buy flowers for a girl. I have done so several times, but the effect is heightened because when I do it, it proves that I did some thinking, went through my bag of tricks and decided that as Hardison said, you can’t hack a classic.

Speaking as an artist, my specialty is packages. Providing not one gift, but five. A little surprise package, with a continuing run of surprises. Sometimes, there’s even a cute little instruction sheet explaining the uses and reasons for each item. The result is a gift meant only for one, and a more impressed girl who knows that real thought went into this. And I still spend less than a dozen roses cost, even with shipping. I’ll give an example, I once sent someone a bad day kit. The bad day kit included (if I’m remembering correctly) a CD of music, a bag of candy, a comically small teddy bear and… oh I’m sure there were some other things. This was years ago now and I can’t remember every damn thing. However, I’m sure the girl (or girls because I’ve used the kit more than once) can chime in down in the comments section and tell you what was in theirs. It’s a memorable gift and always gets a good reaction. Now granted, once the candy is eaten a major part of the gift is gone, but you still end up with more than just a pack of dead flowers that you thrown away with no memorabilia besides an odd smell.

Okay, so maybe you don’t want to produce an entire package, sometime you just want to give on gift. I know people aren’t always ready for a huge collection of surprises. Sometimes you don’t want to deliver a blast of fun, sometimes you want a little something. Better yet, sometimes you want something that can sit on her desk at work. You like things to sit on desks at work because someone might ask about them and she can go “Oh that? Yeah, someone thinks I’m really special and gave me that today.” There is something to be said for making your girl the prettiest little princess in the office pool. HOWEVER! Flowers have been done my friend and there is a world outside that flowery box. I once had the idea to send a bag of flour to a girl, but I never went through with it. That would have been awesome though, flour instead of flowers. It would have totally gotten me laid when I thought of it in 1993, because conceptual jokes like that were huge at the time. The problem is, that’s a pun and we here at Fancy Industries are above puns.

So what do you do? You can have things delivered, but what? Well, that depends on the girl. Or perhaps it depends on the guy. Maybe you’re a girl/gay man who wants to give her/his boyfriend a nice something. It’s not my place to assign gender roles, particularly when I live in a world where no one ever sends me flowers EVER! I once got flowers on my birthday. ONCE! No one ever sends ME presents at work. I’m not disappointed or hurt, I’m just terribly, terribly angry. I’m not prepared to get into a big talk about gender politics so if you want to discuss that, go talk about it somewhere else. Today, we’re talking about guys giving gifts to girls and my problems with flowers. We’ll talk gender relations later. Right now, I’ve got other things on my mind.

So you want to send just one gift, one quick thing, right? Okay, here’s my suggestion to you, pay attention to her likes and dislikes. I’m fully aware that sounds like dipshit advice. That sounds like we should be sitting on the floor with our legs crossed, but I promise you this isn’t kindergarten. It’s just… that’s the sort of thing people forget when buying a quick gift. That’s why flowers are so much of a staple, it’s something girls are supposed to like, which I guess is another problem for me. It’s like, after that you might as well buy a unicorn poster or possibly some kind of ring with a big rock on it. Also, get her a kitchen and steal her shoes because your mentality is already in the 14th century and there are precious few dragons to kill these days. It just shows no thought whatsoever beyond “Dur… thing with boobs like pretty stuff” and I am against that sort of non-thinking in all its forms. Also, damn, I just nearly made flowers part of the rape culture. Good thing I deleted the sentence where I was going to the logical place after the kitchen comment. One must check and see if flowers are the best gift, or would something more personalized (or at least specific beyond kindergarten-level basic gender roles) go down a little better.

Examples help, so here is one. About a year ago, Syd was having a couple of bad days, so I girded my loins and decided to make her lunch. I had to go to the store to get some lunch things for her, and it was late, so I went to Meijer, which if you're from the wrong part of the world, is a 24 hour market/superstore. One of the things that Meijer has is a toy isle. I walked down it, just looking to see what I could see, and I saw this guy here. At least, I think that’s the one, I’ve never seen it since I pulled my trick. See, I put the toy at the bottom of the bag and piled her food on top so that it wouldn’t be obvious until she got her lunch out and ate it. She really liked Iron Man, and was mega enthusiastic about the whole thing last year, so she really liked the thing. It’s still at her desk at work, presumably protecting her reproduction of a Chac-Mool statue she also has on her desk. So I gave her a happy meal, that’s what it amounts to, and she was happy and the item is still on her desk reminding her of it. So that worked better in that situation.

Now we’re getting to the place I really want to take us. If you’ve skimmed most of this, start reading now. There are subtle hints a girl will give you, if you listen for them, that will give you an idea of what gifts are going to go down well. She will say things like “I’ve always loved Moby Dick, but my copy is really beat to shit. I’d love a hard cover version, but it’s expensive.” Now, it’s not usually appropriate to run to your computer and order a copy right there and then, but you can squirrel that idea away for the next gift giving opportunity. Or perhaps she’ll mention a lifelong love for unicorns, but never (EVER) rainbow colored unicorns. Ah, now you have a go to idea for a gift. You just look for unicorns that don’t have rainbows for manes and tails. That’s harder than it sounds and sometimes you have to guy your nephew a dinosaur to cover up the fact that you also bought a couple of unicorns for her birthday and then forget you bought her those unicorns until like two weeks after her birthday and only find them on your own birthday and decide, fuck it, and give them to her on your birthday because what the hell, right? This happened to a friend of mine.

There are places where flowers are a good idea. Those places are only reachable through researching the recipient’s likes and dislikes, which is always a requirement for me anyway. What I’m saying is that I don’t do flowers for an opening salvo, I go for something else. It might seem like a little thing, but I don’t think so.

Next time, we’ll talk about reversing gender policies and you girls can send me a gift at work once in a while, ‘kay? The patriarchy won’t destroy itself you know.