Saturday, May 22, 2021

Three Two Three: Mediation

 I have noted this before, but I take very little direct physical pleasure in...well...anything.

That's not just a statement about sex. It applies across my life, to pleasures both sensuous and sensual. It applies to food and wine and travel as well as to sex. 

I do not experience direct pleasure. I have never really have, or at least not since early childhood. Everything I do is mediated.

I had a new single-malt whiskey at lunch today. The whiskey itself was a recommendation, and one that was much appreciated. It's not that I didn't like the whiskey-- it's not that at all. It was everything I could've hoped: deliciously peaty, with just a hint of something like sea salt.  I sat at the bar and sipped at my drink and realized that I was abstractly aware of the taste and the scent, but that what I was focused on wasn't the whiskey in my glass. What I was thinking of, what meant something to me was the idea of what I was drinking. I was imagining being inside a novel or a film, imagining where and how and with whom my character would be having a drink. What mattered wasn't the drink. What mattered was the story I was living inside.

It's been like that with sex, too. It's been like that with sex all my life. Sex is only good for me when I can turn it into a scene in a novel or a film. Whatever it feels like in the here-and-now, whatever physical sensations I'm experiencing--- those things aren't important. I want to please my partner, yes. But I can't say that I feel very much-- if anything --physical myself. What I'm focused on is the setting and the symbols. Where we are, how the girl I'm with has been dressed... I'm focused on how my character in a novel or a film would be having sex, on what the backstory would be.

Sex for me has been something that matters in terms of social validation, in terms of being part of the kind of story I'd want for my character in a film or novel. The setting matters, and costumes matter, because those things help shape the story. They help define the class and social markers for what I'm doing. 

I have never been able to just be a body experiencing pleasure. Is this part of a good story? Is this a story that puts me into a better world, into a better social and class and style milieu? Those things matter. Touches on skin matter only insofar as they're part of a story, part of something happening in a better world, to the better character I want to be. Sex has always been a way of getting outside my body and into a different, better world and life.

I suppose I should note that I don't have sex in pursuit of orgasms. I very rarely have them-- almost never. Now I've told myself that not having orgasms can be a useful thing. No girl can accuse me of being one of those men who's over-and-done in two minutes. They may be able to accuse me of seeming distracted or distanced, but never of finishing too early. I'll also note that men can in fact fake orgasms. It's not difficult to do if you're inside a girl.  I'd never want my partner to think that she couldn't make me reach orgasm. (What does it say about me that I couldn't write "...that she couldn't make me cum"? I have never liked "cum" as a word; I can only write "reach orgasm".) I can fake orgasm to show that I'm enjoying myself with my partner, but I'm far too busy thinking about what I'm doing as a scene in a novel to feel anything physical.

This is true about having sex or drinking good wine-- everything is mediated through the prism of what kind of story it would make. It's true about travel, too. A new city or a new experience in a city or place can only mean something to me if I imagine it as a chapter in someone's travel memoir. Walking through a new city isn't about the city or about what I'm seeing, hearing,  experiencing. It's about whether this is the kind of experience a favourite travel writer might have. The same is true about sex. If I'm sliding a hand along a girl's bare thigh while we drive,  what matters isn't the warmth and sleekness of tanned, silken-smooth flesh, it's comparing this to a scene in something like "Story of O" or the two "Emmanuelle" novels and trying to make sure that what I'm doing and feeling is as good as a scene in the book. 

It gets harder and harder to experience anything directly with a partner, and it gets harder to feel anything that isn't a reflection of a book or a film. I don't have orgasms with a partner, and I'm not about to risk the Solitary Vice in a world where male sexual fantasies are regarded as pathetic and/or creepy. 

I can live inside my head-- that's something I've done most of my life.  But it is a melancholy thing that no matter much I like a whiskey or a lovely, long-legged Comparative Lit co-ed  I can't feel anything like pleasure. Pleasure for me exists only as a symbol. 


Sunday, May 2, 2021

Three Two Two: Celebration

 An email notice from Good Vibrations in San Francisco ("Educate, Explore, Empower") arrived this weekend. The notice informs me that May is "National Masturbation Month". What can I do but sigh in exasperation?

That notice isn't meant for me. I'm absolutely not the demographic for the ad, let alone the celebration itself. I'm male-- cishet male.  Everything that I am falls outside the target demographic. I'm a gentleman of a certain age, of course, and I'm sure that aging cishet white nominally-middle-class males aren't aren't the people Good Vibrations is targeting.

Educate, Explore, Empower... All good things, I suppose. But masturbation is not something that aging white cishet males are supposed to engage in...or even admit to. It's assumed in popular culture that males don't need any education in the activity, since it's something they've obviously been doing compulsively since something like age twelve. It's also assumed that any exploration in the activity by males, aging or otherwise, is by definition creepy and unacceptable. All male sexual fantasies these days are considered to be creepy and tantamount to sexual assault. And male participation in the activity-- in the Solitary Vice --is regarded as pathetic, creepy, and risible, and never as "empowering". 

Male participation in the Solitary Vice is regarded as a sign of sad failure, never about learning about pleasure and what to tell a partner about how your body responds. Sex toys and masturbation aids designed for women are seen as charming, sexy, something to be proud of. Women of the target demographic can talk about favourite vibrator or dildo preferences (Lelo seems to be the choice of hip, late-twenties young ladies in the know). It's impossible to imagine anyone male-- straight or gay --talking about Fleshlight or inflatable doll comparisons.

Consider the moment in "Stealing Beauty" where the young Liv Tyler is almost discovered masturbating by Jeremy Irons, who's in the next room. She's reasonably blasé about what she's doing. Her concern is about being seen three-quarters naked by a stranger, not about what she's doing. Compare that with the moment in "Pulp Fiction" when John Travolta mutters to himself that he won't risk making a pass at Uma Thurman-- his boss' wife --and that he'll just go home and jerk off. The audience is supposed to laugh at him. The very terms used for the male Solitary Vice ("jerk off" or "wank") are regarded as pathetic and open to instant mockery.

At my own advanced age, there isn't a way I could indulge in the Solitary Vice without feeling the instant lash of self-contempt. Admitting that I found physical pleasure in any activity (sexual or non-sexual) would be far too risky. I am not now and will never be in any sort of target demographic for someplace like Good Vibrations. I suppose I might be a target demographic for the Blue Pill or ED clips or penis pumps, but that's yet another reason why I'd never go into any shop that markets sex toys.

Here this May I have nothing whatsoever to celebrate about my body, or about sex, or about avenues to physical pleasure. I wish I could find a good cultural history of attitudes towards male masturbation in the last hundred or so years...or even since the 1960s. How did the male version of the Solitary Vice become so treated with contempt and derision? How did male desire itself become derided as inherently creepy? I'd read about those issues. A monograph with the full academic panoply of footnotes would mean something to me. Educate, Explore, Empower can't (by definition) mean anything to me.