The music reached a, uh, climax

I was looking for my tickets to a Madison Symphony Orchestra performance this weekend earlier today and just ran across this article about a woman who is purported to have had an orgasm during a Tchaikovsky piece. And no, not the 1812 Overture.

We shall see what happens during the Cour d'amours section of Carmina Burana. No pressure, MSO. No pressure.

You, Madam, Are An Asshole

I found this quote today:

"Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women's bodies."

It was made by Andrea Dworkin. Now, I grant you that I haven't read the book from which it was culled so I don't know the context of the statement but, unless it was uttered by a fictional character that the narrator portrays as insane, doesn't this make little to no sense? I wonder how she justifies the remark. How can she equate het intercourse with contempt? She generalizes here so ALL het intercourse is contempt. Issues such as procreation, consent, love, et al are thrown out the window. It seems to me that this statement is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for humanity.

Ally McBeal in Belsen

I saw some disgusting pictures yesterday. They were of women and so heinous that I began to feel sick. You see, I was in line at the grocery store and decided to flip through one of those stupid papers they have at the check-outs of grocery stores. And it wasn't a good one like the Weekly World News either - like Star or something similar. Anyway, there was an article on the weights of various actresses including Calista Flockhart and Lara Flynn Boyle. It showed picture of these 2 women in which they looked almost completely emaciated, like they were adjusting their weights for roles in a movie about the Holocaust or something. They were all boney and scraggly and just disgusting. What the hell were these women thinking? Where were friends and family during their declines to 96 pounds? Christ, the cinematographer and the make-up artist can only do so much to make you not look like death on 2 legs. Sheesh! How many wardrobe ladies have size 0 outifts at their disposal? You'd need the computer animators from the Lord of the Rings movies to make Flockhart and Boyle not look like Golem. Here's a couple pictures of the former Twin Peaks honey. Christ, I even found an article which stated that casting directors are avoiding her because of her weight, or lack thereof. Now, when you're a woman and you can't land a gig because you're too thin, you know you're shit's fucked up.

And who are these guys that find this Auschwitz chic attractive? Don't these women's boyfriends get scared of breaking them in half?

Purrrrr...

Everyone who knows me (or has read enough here), knows that I'm a computer geek. Part of my geekiness involves watching TechTV. One of the shows is hosted by the lovely Cat Schwartz. Due to a wee technical oddity unknown to her (or the webmaster), pictures of her topless were gleaned from her web site. Hopefully Jessica Corbin will be next...

Through a CRT, Darkly

 Give a clue; leave a kind word
Hint as to a destination
A domain where our cyber-souls might meet
I read the blog of a woman here in Madison on a fairly regular basis. Earlier this year, she had an abortion and found herself in a downward spiral. It was a real shame as she is very intelligent, fun-loving, beautiful, and has a good heart. I have never met her and don't maintain regular email contact with her or anything, but it still depressed me to read about her predicament. Take for instance:

"i still see babies and preg women on tv and i cry at them, at episodes of ER, of episodes of anything really"

"the bathtub vision of me and warm red water seems better every day skin is so soft and vulnerable"

Now, I grant you that people who write do take liberties and also indulge themselves with literary devices such as hyperbole, but I still find such things irksome.

She has friends and family that read her blog which must make things a bit more difficult. Ya know, there are times when I rue having let certain people know of this place. There are certain things that, however tempted I may be, I dare not publish here. I had another online ditty a couple years back which no friends nor family knew of. It was rather a lot of fun to be able to write with impunity. I mean, I put some stuff in there that I've only told 1 or 2 friends and other things I've never confided in anyone I know. Plus I was able to put anything in there no matter how poorly written it was. Some oddball writing techniques, poetry, my puerile attempts at erotica - whatever struck my fancy.

One really neat thing about that journal was the comments of readers. Since we didn't know one another from Adam, our dialogues were very open and honest. Now, they could have been lying, of course, but I suspect not. People are very willing to reveal some of their most intimate secrets to total strangers under the veil of anonymity. I have some very revealing emails stored away. It seems a shame that we are often times incapable of removing our masks with those we trust. You know, to speak in confidential terms and share a dark, unspoken fear. You'd think we'd be able to stop the performance for a while.

From one reader:

"Last Christmas I attended a bonfire at my mother's house (she's crazy). It's a long story, but I was taking the loss of my marriage badly and she thought it would be therapeutic. The idea was to write down your pain and toss the shards of paper into the fire - confront the demons and burn them alive My mother and sisters watched as I tossed my pain into the fire - only I don't think they knew what to do when I stripped off my clothes in the 20 degree weather and tossed my underwear into the flames.

I guess I got caught up in the symbolism and wanted to be free of everything he'd touched. I think if I could have shed my skin, I would have. I'm better now, but I thought you knew me, knew my story when you left the note, 'I've heard about you and bonfires'. All of the sudden you became very dangerous - someone that could know too much about my real life. I know, I'm a freak, but a very private freak."

From another woman:

"You want to know what I fantasize about? By the way, sexually I'm usually fairly white bread, but my fantasies are decidedly wicked. I guess we are all that way. *wink*

Anyway, when I'm alone, and I feel the need for release, I fall into many different fantasies. My imagination is extensive (not always a good thing :). The one that never fails goes something like this:

Note: In real life I am decidedly hetero, but somewhat bi-curious. (i.e. have never acted on it and most likely never would)

In my fantasy I am with a man and another woman. The man is an artist and loves visual stimulation as much as physical arousal. The woman is present as a helper of sorts. The man begins by tying my entire body in a spider web of intricately arranged knots. The effect is that my breasts are bare, but framed by rope which criss-crosses my shoulders in front and back and weaves patterns across my smooth, flat stomach. The patterns continue around my buttocks and between my legs so that my pussy is bound by silken twine on either side - leaving my core bare and exposed. My wrists are tied together and secured above my head by a larger rope that can be raised or lowered so that I may either kneel or stand.

While the man decorates me, the woman caresses my body with her hand and mouth lavishing attention on my breasts, buttocks and pussy. When he is satisfied with his artwork, he lowers me to my knees..."

I think you get the picture.

All of the people who wrote to me were women. It amazed and saddened me that several of them were in really bad relationships of whatever ilk and it seemed like they were reaching out through the aether for someone to listen. So they didn't feel like they were just a voice in the crowd.

"When I explain things, it is probably going to sound a little crazy. I know there is obviously a problem with myself, a problem with my marriage that I would get myself in this situation, that things would get to this point. I am very aware of things. I know it's not healthy but as much as I know this, I cannot control what I feel. That's one of my major problems...my feelings always control me."

JoAnna, a woman in a bad marriage, wrote this to me:

"Hi there~ I just wanted to let you know that I enjoy your entries...it is an escape..."

She and I had very interesting email conversations. Even in her most upbeat emails, there was always something to betray all that had come before, something that revealed her intense loneliness and the sense that she felt trapped in her life.

"I am sitting in my empty house and thought that while I am all alone I would write you a note...I am imagining what you look like. It turns me on, not knowing. I like the way you write to me. I find your stories very arousing and some times I have to step into my room and lie upon my satin sheets and 'relieve' myself. As a matter of fact I can feel myself about ready to go to my room. I want you to write to me, and tell me what you imagine, your fantasies. Tell me that I turn you on and just what you would do to me if you could. Make me want you. Make me imagine what you can do...I'll give you all the details about what you are doing to me. Oh God, how I am longing for some touch, not necessarily physical, but emotional. Can you make me feel special?" (Emphasis mine.)

"I just wanted you to know that I truly appreciate your kind words in your entry. Talk about tingles. It is so nice to hear those things. It is something that I have needed for quite some time."

"I look forward to your e-mails, and reading your diary. I love the way you talk to me, as if I were the only woman in the world. I seriously felt as if I were going to cry..."

It was nice to be able to bring a smile to her face, to make her feel "special", even if my powers were ephemeral. It was rewarding to be able to bring a modicum of cheer to someone who seemed to have an otherwise fairly gloomy life. And it was fun to write erotic stories about a woman that I had never seen. An exercise for the imagination. But this woman obviously had problems that some schmoe sitting in front of a keyboard hundreds of miles away was powerless to cure.

What does this say about people? I mean, what did housewives trapped in bad marriages do before the advent of the Internet? Take little yellow pills and just lead that life of quiet desperation?

A girl (she was 16, if memory serves) wrote this to me in an email:

"as for the honesty in email, isn't it queer how easy it's become to open up to strangers?!"

So much said about the Internet is negative: pornography is luring men away from women, behind every chat room door lurks a stalker, most email is spam, and everyone out there is seeking only to relieve you of your money. All of the utopian rhetoric has fallen by the wayside and we're left trying to figure out how to assimilate the technology so it can co-exist with all the foibles and failings we've always had and can't get rid of no matter how hard we may try. As I discussed in a previous entry, the Internet is too new to really to set many sociological impacts in stone. We can do so with the Industrial Revolution because it ended well over 100 years ago. But the Internet has only been a major force for less than 10. Aside from stalkers, spammers, and the salacious, surely millions of people put the Net to good use. Emailing kith & kin, chatting with loved ones on the other side of the globe, shopping, paying bills, et al. But let's return to the question posed above. Are people so dislocated, so estranged from the real people in their lives that they are compelled to make "confessions" to a total stranger via the anonymity of the Internet?

I think that being anonymous is the key. There are plenty of reasons to wear one's heart on one's virtual sleeve. For instance, telling a flesh & bones person a secret opens you up to opprobrium. It does as well on the virtual side of things but this can be remedied by closing a window or putting someone on a chat program's ignore list. You don't have to suffer scornful glances on the Internet and, generally, word does not leak out to everyone else in your neighborhood. Secrets are usually no fun to keep and the swellings of the heart need to be relieved. So confessing to a stranger across the aether can be a relief - a relief without repercussions. You can say what needs to be said while saving face, in essence.

While it's not fair to say that this phonomenon is wide-spread based on a dozen or so people from my experience, I surely can't be the only one to see this happening. I'm no sociologist but I wonder if we are interacting with our fellow human beings face-to-face less and in less intimate ways. By this I don't mean to suggest, like Naomi Wolf, that men prefer porn to real women, but rather do people go online to meet "friends" instead of social gatherings in their communities? Is there a general way in which friendships are declining? About 400 years ago, Francis Bacon wrote, "A principal fruit of friendship, is the ease and discharge of the fulness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce." Are we discharging the swellings of our hearts electronically more often that when looking a friend in the eyes? Lots of questions without answers.

Being optimistic on the odd occasion, I don't believe that we've lost touch with the people in our lives. I do think, however, that, as our lives become more hectic, we lose some patience and, in general, become less willing to just listen. Perhaps, in a certain sense, we have come to expect everything from the news to entertainment to the deepest feelings of those in our hearts to come packaged in short, pithy sound bytes. And I think this is the primary reason those people (women all of them) opened up to me as they did. My blog entries were open, honest, as well as lengthy (and, often times, meandering like this one). And when they wrote to me, I wrote back and answered their questions in addition to asking questions of them - and I "listened" instead of spuriously passing judgement. Here's an excerpt from a chat I had with a woman who told me about a boyfriend she had had who beat her:

Her: I dont talk about this enough, I am very ashamed
Her: I have flashbacks
Me: Don't feel ashamed!
Her: after he beat me I did not leave him right away
Me: How long did it take you to leave him?
Her: 3 months
Her: I was beat a lot in that 3 months
Her: I called the abuse hotline once - useless
Me: why did you stay with him? did u think he'd change?
Her: its like I was in a trance or something - SO much fear
Her: I felt like I could not live without him
Her: a common thing with abused women apparantly, it builds slowly
Her: it was absolute agony - like an addiction
Me: Why didn't you report this guy to the police?
Her: too scared - get this - the truth is - I DID NOT WANT TO LOSE HIM
Me: Emotions are such wonderful things but can be so fucking weird sometimes.
Her: thank you for not telling me to 'get over it' or saying 'what the hell is wrong with you'
Her: very rare - you are cool

I don't mean to come across as Joey Blow-My-Own-Horn here but I think this dialogue really says something. People want others to listen to what they have to say, to share themselves, and to know that they are not alone in how they feel. If this takes an interlocutor hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away, so be it. Francis Bacon began his essay On Friendship thusly: "IT HAD been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth and untruth together in few words, than in that speech, Whatsoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god." Setting aside the "untruth" which Bacon goes on to consider, it must be admitted that human beings are not merely the solitary beasts that Hobbes envisions. We are creatures of proximity - social creatures. Sure, we do require time alone but we also spend a good chunk of our time craving and seeking the company of others. Love is supreme and criticisms do sting, especially from those we love. Was Brutus' cut not the unkindest? It is a bitter irony to think that, in our attempts to get closer, we look to people far away. How many of us read or hear the words of a friend and feel something bubbling underneath the surface - a need to explain or get something off of the chest - yet turn away onto the next email or let the comment go thinking "well, they'll get over it"??

We also all have the need for not only emotional closeness but for physical nearness as well. And I don't just mean sex, I mean also the simple consolation of touch such as pats on the back, holding hands, and hugging - just simple acts. Who among us hasn't sat around petting a dog or a cat and thought how wonderful it must be to have such physical affection given so freely and so often? What kind of society would we have if it one could touch another (in a non-sexual way) without fear of being seen as too effeminate or of a lawsuit? Men espeically. Generally, we can only engage is such activities if our team wins the Super Bowl (subliminal message: Go Pack!!) or if a loved one dies.

While it may seem like an odd notion, touching is part of listening. It indicates understanding and sympathy. The next time you find yourself in a conversation, think about this. How well do you know this person? How are away do you position yourselves from one another? Do you or your interlocutor touch one another during the conversation? For instance, does one of you slap the other on the shoulder with the back of a hand to indicate agreement? Or perhaps put your hand on the other's? We, in America, at least, have this sense of "private space" or "zone of comfort". A radius of 2' or so from our bodies and, if a stranger enters this space, it's considered intrusive or threatening. But, for people we know, it engenders a feeling of intimacy. When you're at a table with just one other person, do you sit next to or across from them? Perhaps some things to cogitate upon.

Writing this brings a whole host of things to mind, not the least of which is irony in my act of writing this in a blog. In addition, Ervin Goffman's ideas of our front and back selves and how we present ourselves to each other. Also, why were the people who wrote me all women? But I suppose these are for another time. I leave you with a quote from Erasmus which is nice because it presents a view of the topic at hand, sort of summarizes Goffman's theories, and ties in with a recent entry of mine about Marillion as it appears on one of their album sleeves. To wit:

" If a person were to try stripping the disguise from actors while they play a scene upon the stage, showing to the audience their real looks and the faces they were born with, would not such a one spoil the whole play? And would not the spectators think he deserved to be driven out of the theatre with brickbats, as a drunken disturber? . . . Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each one his part, until the manager waves them off the stage? Moreover, this manager frequently bids the same actor go back in a different costume, so that he who has but lately played the king in scarlet now acts the flunkey in patched clothes. Thus all things are presented by shadows."

An Admonishment

Let me give you guys out there a word of advice: If you’re a poor sap like me, don’t ever read any books about the evolutionary psychology of sex. They are just too depressing. I’ve read two or three now and, after finishing each one, I have spiraled downwards past melancholy, past utter perdition, and straight to suicidal. This is because these texts lend scientific credence to what I have suspected all along, namely, that I am not particularly attractive to women.

These books all tend to say the same thing: “The idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder is basically a bunch of junk. Look. Genes are selfish and just want to be passed from one generation to the next. And evolution has instilled within us various methods for finding the best possible person with whom we can reproduce. These methods vary depending upon our role in the whole affair, i.e. – our gender.”

Women, for example, bear the burden of having an embryo develop in their wombs for nine months, risk life and limb in that dreadful business of childbirth, and then suffer with an infant suckling at their breasts for a stretch, causing them to become sore, etc. Men, on the other hand, don’t have wombs and thusly needn’t worry about some parasitic fetus gestating therein or its egress. Ergo, the only worry we have is getting frustrated for a time because we are forced to watch some wrinkly ball of skin take our place at the breasts of our goodly wife. We tend to think that those tits are ours and don’t like to see anyone else playing with them. Except, of course, if another woman is playing with them. (Or our wife is playing with her own tits.) Let’s face it here, we men just want to get laid. It wasn’t a bunch of women drooling over the release of the DVD director’s cut of When Larry Ate Sally or The Hunt for Pink October – it was men.

What this all boils down to is that women invest quite a bit in this whole sordid baby-making affair while we men ideally need only donate a single sperm and then bust out of Dodge. The spanner that gets thrown into our works is that we human beings take forever and a day to grow up and become self-sufficient. Other animals are out in the world kicking ass and taking names within a few months of birth while we humans are weighted down with lazy-ass, unemployed slugs who live in our basements well into their thirties. (You never see adult horses playing Nintendo in Mr. and Mrs. Ed’s stable, do ya? Sloth seems to be a uniquely human trait.) Ergo, human fathers need to hang around after meiosis.

“So what?” you ask. “The fact that men go out and try to get laid all the time while women seek commitment isn’t exactly news.” Fair enough. But I’m getting to my point. You see, these various roles dictate what we seek in a mate. When we say men primarily look at the physical beauty of women, we are really saying that men are looking for signs that a woman is healthy and can carry a pregnancy to term and beyond. Our male ancestors sought women with clear skin, long hair, good hips, etc. and so do the men of the 21st century. (Regarding the last item, there seems to be a universal preference for women whose hip-to-waist ratio is about 0.7.) While this may be the year 2003, our brains are still wired in the same way as those of men c. 40,000B.C. If a woman can’t grow a decent mop and her skin is all carbuncular, she probably ain’t long of this earth. And if her hips are too narrow, what are the odds of being able to squeeze out that eight-pound mini-me from her belly?

Women, on the other hand, are thinking, “If that son of a bitch doesn’t want to stick around, I will just have to make him.” One of the ways they do this is by concealing the fertile time in their menstrual cycles. Unlike female chimpanzees, our closest genetic relatives, women don’t find their labia turning pink when in estrus, however funny that would be. Instead, women merely undergo a small change in temperature. Although I’d be willing to give it a shot, I suspect that most women would be turned off by some Neanderthal wielding a thermometer during foreplay. Thusly, we men are compelled to stick around to ensure that the offspring we raise are our own and not the milkman’s.

Anyway…So what do women seek in a partner? Since women invest so much of their time and physical effort into the production of progeny, they, not surprisingly, seek men who can materially invest in them and their children. Hence, women seek men of stature and material abundance. Joe Six-Pack may be a nice, handsome guy, but if he’s poor, what will he be able to provide to his offspring? The Aztec Sun-King didn’t have a harem of 1,500 nubile, young women because he blew his paycheck every Friday night down at the tavern.

Women look for men with power and with stuff. And it is for precisely this reason that I am unattractive to women and thusly get depressed. I may have a basement full of stuff, but it ain’t the stuff women are looking for. I haven’t amassed piles of wealth nor do I have armies of men who obey my every word. As Hank Kissinger observed, “Power is a great aphrodisiac.” And, being a lowly Help Desk Analyst, I ain’t got none.

About the only thing I’ve got going for me, say the evolutionary psychologists, is my above-average height. If someone is bigger than we are, it is natural for us to feel at least some initial intimidation. Our brains equate physical size with power. This probably accounts for why men tend to make $3000 a year above the norm for every inch of height they are above the average. This also probably explains why I’ve gotten laid in the past. My height sort of fools women for a time, they go temporarily insane. But it wears off eventually and they leave.

If you think this is all bullshit, sit back and ponder it for a while. Did the hot chicks in high school date the A students or the jocks? You don’t see groupies hanging out backstage after the performance of a symphony orchestra. They’re looking to hook up with a rich rock’n’roll star. Do you think Anna Nicole Smith married that old geezer because she thought he resembled Brad Pitt? Fuck no! He was rich and powerful. Did I mention he was rich and powerful?

Despite how positive my mother says it is that I am a nice and intelligent young man, neither of these traits has gotten me very far. After all, nice guys finish last. Rich and powerful guys finish first, however. (And most rich and powerful people are assholes.) This being the case, in the interest of my sperm, I have decided to forsake my niceness and become a jerk. $$ + power = pussy. When I’m in public, I’ll have a gorgeous babe on my arm featuring a slender gynecoid figure and its attendant 0.7 hip-to-waist ratio. She’ll be nice and hypermammiferous too. I’ll be able to buy her collagen injections for her lips so they’ll look like she could suck a golf ball through a garden hose. I don’t care if she’s only after my money because I am only after her snatch. True love is a myth, people! And since I’ll be so rich, I will be able to afford to hire someone to keep an eye on her. Yeah, you heard me right. Men have always felt that way – witness eunuchs, chastity belts, and female circumcision – we just have gotten to the point of using less gruesome methods of making sure the pussy stays put. I ain’t footin’ the bills for some other guy’s genes getting passed on down the line.Despite how positive my mother says it is that I am a nice and intelligent young man, neither of these traits has gotten me very far. After all, nice guys finish last. Rich and powerful guys finish first, however. (And most rich and powerful people are assholes.) This being the case, in the interest of my sperm, I have decided to forsake my niceness and become a jerk. $$ + power = pussy. When I’m in public, I’ll have a gorgeous babe on my arm featuring a slender gynecoid figure and its attendant 0.7 hip-to-waist ratio. She’ll be nice and hypermammiferous too. I’ll be able to buy her collagen injections for her lips so they’ll look like she could suck a golf ball through a garden hose. I don’t care if she’s only after my money because I am only after her snatch. True love is a myth, people! And since I’ll be so rich, I will be able to afford to hire someone to keep an eye on her. Yeah, you heard me right. Men have always felt that way – witness eunuchs, chastity belts, and female circumcision – we just have gotten to the point of using less gruesome methods of making sure the pussy stays put. I ain’t footin’ the bills for some other guy’s genes getting passed on down the line.

So, if I seem a bit glum, know that it’s only because I am all-too aware of my brackish countenance. And if I seem a bit quiet, know that it’s only because I am plotting away to become rich and powerful. My goal is to put as many copies of myself on this planet as possible.

The Body and the Flesh

It's your day -- a woman's day
It's your day -- a woman's day
Turning the tide, you are on the incoming wave
Turning the tide, you know you are nobody's slave
It is quite fitting to be listening to “Shaking the Tree” at the moment. This is because I’ve got women on my brain. More specifically, women’s/feminist issues and problems. Honestly, there is no surprise considering the events of a few days heretofore.

The whole mess started fairly early on Sunday when I read some of Andrea Dworkin’s writings. Personally, I found most of them to be venomous screeds full of misandry and etymological obfuscation. The lone exception was her mournful tale of having been drugged and raped at a hotel in Paris a few years ago.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I did a stint of dogsitting despite the fact that I had retired. If Michael Jordan can emerge from retirement, so can I. At least I think that was my friend’s reasoning. Another friend of mine stopped by Sunday night to drink a few cocktails and to avoid festering on her couch alone. Well, not having eaten much and gulping down bourbon as we did only served to loosen out tongues hastily.

Conversation took a turn towards the prurient after Buddy, the Black Lab-Dalmatian mix, began his customary post-prandial activity – licking his penis. Buddy is 12 years old and has not had gonads for most of his life. Nonetheless, he remains cuntstruck and tries to hump Pesto, the Airedale, often. Since Pesto is a cocktease, however, he is always denied. Apparently getting blue balls transcends the actually possession of testicles so, after failing with a bitch (as well as after dinner), he heaps generous oral pleasure upon himself. And thusly we sat there drinking bourbon & sours while Buddy licked his erection.

Although human, my companion and I are still animals and sex became the topic of choice. As the night harrowingly progressed towards its climactic drunken stupor, I was complete unaware that I would be learning more than I had bargained for. In fact, it didn’t take long for me to realize that my understanding of women and relationships was distressingly more limited than I had previously imagined.

Things began innocently enough with the usual not-getting-enough/any bitching. Then came the first lesson – my friend’s knowledge of erections was a bit hazy. I made a comment to the effect of being a schoolboy again and getting hard-ons.

”What?!?” she asked incredulously.
”You know, getting an erection in the middle of class…”
This did not register with her. “What?!?
I was a bit shocked. “Don’t you remember in, like, 4th grade, the teacher would call on some boy to come up to the blackboard and diagram a sentence or write out a multiplication table and he’d be like ‘No way!’?”
”Yeah, so?” she replied. “Maybe they just didn’t know the answer.”
”OK, sure there were times when that was the case but I’ll betcha at least 75% of the time the kid had gotten a boner and didn’t want everyone to see it.”
”What the hell were you guys thinking about in the 4th grade to get a hard-on?”
”Nothing. It’s just that, when you’re a boy, you get spontaneous erections. I’d be sitting there thinking about how much I hate math and BAM! Next thing I know, I’ve pitched a tent and I’m sliding my chair further underneath my desk.”
”Really?”
”Really.”

Honestly, I thought all women knew this. Granted, not when they were in grammar school necessarily, but a full-grown woman? Come on. As boys, we males sit in school during the day and get erections for no reason and then go to sleep at night and have wet dreams. I’ve always assumed that women knew this shit and that these things figured heavily into their view that men are simple pigs who just wanna eat, sleep, and fuck. Surely I can’t be the only one to have seen an infant boy touching his tiny pecker. We come out of the womb priapically inclined and we spend the majority of our lives trying to get back in. The penis is the center of our lives.

To summarize: As infants, we touch ourselves. A little time goes by and we’re pee racing with other boys when we’re not trying to get some girl to play doctor. Then erections start to appear out of thin air and usually at the most inopportune moments. Not long after that, we find our reproductive systems doing trial runs while we’re asleep. From there it’s all downhill towards jerking-off and chasing skirts until we die with our sexual peak at roughly the age of 18. How depressing.

The conversation continued. Yadda yadda yadda. Then came the next interesting bit. My friend’s ex-husband was one of those assholes that Andrea Dworkin feels characterizes the entire male gender. I knew that he was emotionally and verbally abusive towards her but I never knew that he’d grab her hair and basically force her to give him a blow job. I was mortified. While I might have gotten fellated more often in past relationships if I had done the same, I could never do that.

This revelation was followed by others equally shocking though, thankfully, less horrifying. She said that she’d never had an orgasm with a man. Then she revealed how controlling her ex was. For instance, she would have to ask permission from him (and would often be denied) to just go out with her friends.

I sat there listening in stunned silence. For my part, I’ve never required a girlfriend to ask for my permission to do something with her friends sans myself. WTF? All they had to say was, “Since we’ve got nothing planned, I’m going out with Jill and Julie.” OK. Well, I must take this concept of trust and recognition that she’s no my serf to an extreme because I’ve had more than one girlfriend tell me that she feels this attitude means that I don’t care about her. Each time this completely flummoxed me. The only conclusion I have been able to draw from this scenario is that most women want a benign dictator for a mate. If you’re too controlling, then you’re a malicious asshole. But if you’re not controlling enough, then that means you don’t love her. See, nice guys finish last.

Anyway, now that the events of that night are a few days removed, some of the details are lost to my mind. I will say that I am unable to say if some of the things I recall were part of a dream or actually transpired. I am hoping for the former. Whatever the case, I still feel a profound sense that Dworkin is perhaps not as crazy as I may have previously thought. Don’t get me wrong, I continue to take offense at her notion that romance = rape + wine. And while I don’t think she ever really said “All sex is rape”, one certainly gets the feeling that she’s dying to. She writes as if evolution was actually some patriarchal force that gave men first dibs on choosing genitalia and we knowingly made our selection. Dworkin constantly bemoans the fact that the penis penetrates (emphasis mine) the vagina. Indeed, at some point in her life she chose not to “have intercourse” which I presume means that she is so offended by the plumbing nature has endowed us with that she refuses to allow a lover anything into her naughty bits. I personally don’t understand how this is a blow against patriarchy. If anything, it seems to be an act of self-loathing and pointless restraint.

Alright. I don’t wanna think about the crap Andrea Dworkin has written any more tonight. As for dogsitting, I did a couple more nights but have been emancipated – finally. What’s happened this week? Aside from the usual fecal matter, not a helluva lot. Been doing a fair amount of reading - The Wealth and Poverty of Nations by David Landes. It’s one of those meta-history texts which attempts to explain why the West has come to so dominate the globe. I’m only 150 pages or so in but, so far, Landes seems to be taking a different tact than Jared Diamond did in Guns, Germs, and Steel. Diamond seemed to put more emphasis on geography than Landes (so far). Being an historian, Landes throws the reader smack-dab into the middle of the Age of Explorers. Although I’ve read about it in several places, I still cannot understand why China encysted itself in a shell of stagnation about 600 years ago. They thought themselves so be so highly advanced that everyone else was a barbarian and not worth having relations with. Harumph.

I have been doing much of my reading over at a coffee shop. As I was sitting there one day this week, a guy walked in and ogled at the book. He came over and asked if I were taking an economics class. I told him not to mistake Landes’ tome with that of Adam Smith’s. So we struck up an all-too brief conversation. It was nice to have a midday chat with a liberal artsy-fartsy type like myself.

Oh! I got an email from an old friend of mine from Chicago. He’s spent the last 8 months in Morocco and has posted some pictures at a web site for perusal. Looks like he had a blast and some of those North African women are drop-dead gorgeous.

I made the mistake of watching a thingy called Scarborough Country on MSNBC last night. The host was a complete maroon. Let’s bash Howard Dean for weaseling out of a stint in Nam but let Bush off scot-free for the same thing. Fucking hypocrite. Not that I’m a big Dean fan or anything, mind you. I must admit that I did enjoy the host ripping into Paris Hilton and her fame or infamy or whatever you wanna call her media presence. I was just thankful that someone on TV came out and called her stupid. I don’t know if this is just because of a dislike or wealthy people or only of certain wealthy people. I mean, Ms. Hilton is not dot com rich, she’s like part of a landed gentry. There’s just something about seeing wealth as a license for hedonism that gets in my craw. With the possibility to go to the best institutions of higher learning, she decided that college was a waste of time. Rather than better herself as a person, she wants to make a life of putting her body on display. And how the fuck could her daddy call the release of her little homemade porno vid onto the Internet a “tragedy”? 9/11 was a tragedy. A spoiled blonde airhead getting fucked on tape is vulgar humor.

Christ, dumb blondes are everywhere. Jessica Simpson was given a TVs how for reasons only know to a small cabal of people bent on littering television with only the most vapid, banal crap. These same people have given Jessica’s little sister a shot at fame with her own reality TV show. Then there’s Anna Nicole Smith. And Ann Coulter.

This brings me back to that schmuck of a host on MSNBC last night. What a dickhead. He gave preference to those with whom he agreed. They got the first and last words, he’d interrupt the “liberal” guest and give the soapbox back to the “conservative” guest. And he made out every question he had to be of paramount importance. Lacing each syllable with the urgency normally reserved for people in life and death situations. Every other question for the lefty either setup a straw man or false dichotomy. He was a joke. So much, in fact, that I just burst out laughing at him at one point. I was incredulous that this shit passes for journalism or learned discourse or whatever. Why does it seem like all conservative commentators on TV today lie and/or are in need of a lesson to discern logical fallacies? Despite the fact that Bill Buckley and I have little common ground ideologically, I have tremendous respect for the way that he goes about engaging issues with people. It’s easy to find someone saying that he laid the foundation for the modern conservative movement but it seems to have gone off course. Most conservative pundits share little of Buckley’s class, reasoning skills, and vocabulary. Instead they turn to Jerry Springer for help in these areas. The discourse is not civil – it’s about wrapping oneself in the flag and yelling at the opponent. It’s the kind of shit that goes down in a schoolyard.

I’m outta here…

Tiresias Was Right

Courtesy of Reuters via Yahoo:

LONDON (Reuters) - Wanted: women to test new orgasm machine.

No, really. An American surgeon who has patented a device that triggers an orgasm has begun a clinical trial approved by the Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) in the United States and is looking for female volunteers.

"I thought people would be beating my door down to become part of the trial," pain specialist Dr Stuart Meloy told New Scientist magazine on Wednesday.

But so far only one woman has completed the first stage of the trial, with apparently breathtaking results, and a second has agreed to take part.

Meloy, of Piedmont Anesthesia and Pain Consultants in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is hoping to find eight more volunteers willing to have electrodes inserted in their spine and be connected to a pacemaker-size machine implanted under the skin to heighten their sexual pleasure.

The married woman who tested the machine, dubbed an orgasmatron, had not had an orgasm for four years. But during the nine days she used it, she had several.

"She even told me she had the first multiple orgasm of her life using the device," said Meloy.

He stumbled on the unexpected side-effect while using a spinal cord stimulator a few years ago to treat a patient suffering with severe back pain. The woman had already had back surgery for degenerative disk disease and fusion surgery.

When Meloy placed the electrodes into a specific spot on her spine to find nerve bundles carrying pain signals to the brain, she moaned with delight.

"You're going to have to teach my husband how to do that," he quoted her as saying.

The tiny impulses of electricity applied to the electrodes seemed to have turned on the patient's orgasm button.

Although the device has been compared to the orgasmatron featured in the 1973 Woody Allen film "Sleeper," Meloy envisions patients using it temporarily to retrain their sexual response.

The women in the trial described it as "really excellent foreplay."

Although some medical experts are skeptical about the procedure and say a vibrator can produce the same results, Meloy believes it could help to improve sexual response in women who cannot have orgasms and might even help men as well.

A full implant of the device would cost about 13,000 pounds ($22,000).

"I don't see it any differently from procedures such as breast implants," Meloy told the magazine.