Three Seven Seven: Positivity

 I haven't been here in two months, and I'm sorry about that. This year hasn't been one where there's a lot to say about sex and romance. Everything this year has been about politics-- the war in Gaza, the upcoming election here. No one has time to think about sex and pleasure.

If there's been anything to say about sex, it's all been about the Trans Wars. That's not something I want to get involved with. After all, I still struggle to define "non-binary". And as someone who's boringly vanilla and cis-het, I have nothing to say about the Trans Wars. Well...I might have something to say about why "cis-het" is regarded as "boring". I might have something to say about why "boring" is the worst possible thing to be in an information economy. But we'll get to that later.

Tonight I'm thinking about why there's so little room for males to think about their bodies or explore their bodies. There's no social room at all for males to be "positive" about their bodies. There's really no way for males to think about their bodies outside of the gym, let alone to see their bodies as instruments for feeling pleasure. 

I can remember being very young and seeing photos from various James Bond films that showed one Bond Girl or another naked in a bed, partially covered by a sheet. I thought that was incredibly hot and alluring, but it never occurred to me that I or any other male could ever sleep naked. It just didn't seem like something anyone male did, and even at eleven or twelve I couldn't imagine why anyone male would ever sleep naked. 

I've always encouraged beautiful girls to sleep naked. That's one of those things-- like lovely Young Companions avoiding all underwear --that's a particular kink (or fetish) of mine. But it's not something I could ever do myself unless I was actually sleeping next to a Young Companion...and even then I'd have an urge to pull on gym shorts and a t-shirt. 

Girls I've spoken to have almost all told me that sleeping naked is one of the most freeing and delicious things they've done, especially with a breeze through a bedroom window. Girls tell me that there's a sense of empowerment (that word!) in being naked under crisp, fresh sheets, that there's a delight in feeling sensation from their bodies. Well, they trust their bodies, and that's not something I can do.

One girl spoke of never wearing underwear in a dress or skirt as feeling like "glory". "Glory" was actually her word.  It made her feel brave and made her feel at home in her body, she said. As a male, I can't feel anything about not wearing underwear except fear at the possibility of an impromptu and/or accidental circumcision. I also have a deep, deep fear based on the possibility of any...ahem...gastric upsets. 

But then...I can't even imagine being comfortable being shirtless. It took years for me to be able to wear shorts or go into a swimming pool. The male body seems to me designed to be something kept well-concealed. I can't imagine anything attractive about a male body, mine or anyone else's. That's just a blank space for me. I have good eyes (dark, brooding) and long, slender hands. Girls have paid me compliments on both. But I would assume that any compliment about my body was meant either in sarcasm or as a way to manipulate me. Worse, it might be a soothing lie. 

I can't think of anything that would be "empowering" about my body, or any male body. Male bodies are too vulnerable to mockery. If a woman tells you that your penis is tiny, it doesn't matter that you might actually be in the global top 1% for penis size-- if a woman says it's tiny, it's tiny. Any mockery of anything about a male body by a woman is alway, always true.  

Tonight I'm thinking that it's not possible to be male and do anything to derive pleasure from your body. There are no male equivalents of sex toys that aren't the stuff of mockery. Any male actions to make oneself feel at home inside one's body are risible.  Even caring about your body-- even being a gym rat --is regarded as suspect. 

Sexual pleasure is not something that society allows males to feel-- or at least not any physical pleasure, There's no male equivalent of the vast array of how-to books and videos about the female orgasm. The male body is regarded as something that allows you to walk, see, eat, sleep. It isn't supposed to be a sexual or sexualized object. 

I can't imagine doing anything to feel pleasure from my body. I can feel a kind of intellectual pleasure about sex-- doing things in a well-crafted story arc, doing things that create a story. But I can't feel anything like physical pleasure. I'll never be at home in my body, and I'll never feel anything like "empowered" by my body.

Three Five Seven: Walls

 I'd written here about the woman I met this summer-- the high-end phone sex worker. She and I had been speaking-- not in any way involving her profession --for a while. We'd exchanged emails and had FaceTime conversations. She is, as I've noted before, bright and fun and kind. I've enjoyed all our conversations. Again, this was not a phone sex set of conversations. This was two people who'd met, shared drinks, and stayed in touch to talk about our lives and thoughts. Call it a friendship, or the beginnings of one.

And suddenly I've become too afraid to talk with her. 

I have no idea why that's happened. Or at least I haven't any coherent set of ideas about what's happened. I know rationally that she and I have enjoyed one another's conversation and presence. What's happened feels like a sudden rush of fear and anxiety.

Call it an upwelling of self-loathing. That would be about right. I don't feel good enough to be talking to her. Social anxiety has always been a problem for me. I've been able to stand in front of classes and teach with no problem at all. Yet talking to a specific person or being in smaller social settings leaves me right on the edge of panic.

I've become too afraid to talk with or email my friend. I've somehow convinced myself that I'm not someone who should be-- at least according to the Arbitrary Social Rules --talking to her. I look at myself and see only decay and failure. I may be able to make conversation. I may have a bank of decent stories and memories to recount. But I just can't imagine that I have any social value. 

I have not asked my friend to deploy her professional skills with me. I would not do that. That's not what knowing her is about. Yet I have a still, small voice in my head telling me that I'd never be good enough to be her client in any case. Too old, too poor, too underemployed, too socially inept-- I'd never be good enough to be a client, and I'd never be good enough to be a friend or even an interlocutor. 

This has happened to me before. I have given up going back to bars or pubs where I've flirted with or even made out with lovely girls. I've walked away from places I liked because I'd become someone who wasn't anonymous-- where I'd become someone who could be looked at and judged. I suppose my NZ friend falls into the category of people I pushed away because I knew I wasn't good enough for them and didn't want to be there when they noticed that. 

Tonight I do feel empty. I miss the conversations I've been having. I miss having an interlocutrix. But I just can't bring myself to contact her. I can't believe that I'm good enough to be speaking to anyone, let alone someone like her.

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. 

Two Eight Zero: Wires

Here during the time of the Red Death, here in the plague lockdown, there's been remarkably little written and posted about sex.

I've seen a few on line posts about how couples who first thought that quarantine sex would be a hot thing are now suffering from cabin fever and too much proximity.  I'm waiting for those entries to turn into a Coen Bros. scenario.

A friend in Scotland wrote last night to say that she and so many of her female friends are burning through packs of batteries for their vibrators and that her male friends had been telling her that their "wanking frequency" was now "off the charts".  My leggy blonde friend down in Wellington NZ tells me that while she swears by her Lelo vibrator, she's always found the Corona beer bottle to be a perfect dildo...but can't use one now. She has bottles, yes, but because the plague is the Coronavirus, she just can't bring herself to use her carefully washed and stored Corona bottle.

I'll note that as a male of a certain age, talking about my own experiences with the Solitary Vice is just not something I can do. The Solitary Vice is something that's aesthetically attractive and "empowering" only for lovely girls. Girls can buy, use, and discuss vibrators and sex toys--- but it's all something that males can't discuss. Girls can self-pleasure, but men...wank. What men do is regarded as inherently pathetic and/or disgusting. So take it as a given that I'd be utterly ashamed to talk about the Solitary Vice in my own life.

That's sad in a way, and all the more so in that I was always a major fan of phone sex. Phone sex was something that played to my strengths--- being verbal, being able to construct stories, being able to make girls feel like they were part of a story.  Phone sex was something I discovered late in high school and remained devoted to for years and years. It was always something I enjoyed teaching my young companions to do and enjoy.

I'm sure that phone sex is regarded as some archaic thing in a world of sexting and webcams, but I miss the nights when lovely young companions would call me late at night and talk and exchange fantasies until dawn. I miss looking at my phone (yes, a landline by the bed) and seeing the area codes for distant cities. I miss the time when girls called me from the other side of the continent or (yes) from overseas. Girls have phoned me from London, Melbourne, Wellington, Montreal, St. Petersburg, and Belgrade to do phone sex. I was always amazed and thrilled by those calls.

Here in the time of the Red Death, though, my phone remains silent. I'm not sure whether phone sex has simply become obsolete and unfashionable, or whether plague quarantine depletes the energy levels needed for phone sex.  My fear these days is that I've lost my ability to do phone sex, lost the ability to construct new fantasy scenarios, lost the ability to tell stories. Are my fantasies ones that mean anything when everyone is suffering from cabin fever? In a world of frayed tempers and gnawing boredom, do I have anything to say that would excite girls?

I can't sext. You know that. I type far too slowly, and the character limits make it impossible to construct complex stories with details and dialogue. I certainly can't do webcam or FaceTime.  My face and body are guaranteed to drive lovely young companions away. My face and body aren't designed for visual presentation.

My own cabin fever is destroying any thoughts of being with a lover by phone. I'd never risk having my body seen, but in a better world my stories would be valuable--- and, yes, they were valuable and valued once upon a time.  I can't believe in my value or my skills any longer.

If any of you out there over the aether are still doing phone sex, let me know what it means to you these days. Let me know whether it feels awkward and unfashionable. Let me know if your own interest in the Solitary Vice has waned during quarantine or whether you're feeling desperate for physical release.

Two Six Three: Despair

I've made this blog about being an aging roue. I've never hidden that. Tonight I am feeling my age, and not just my age. I'm feeling a certain kind of emptiness.

Time runs out.  We all know that. And tonight I'm feeling that. I do feel as if a part of my life is closing out. There's a sense of loss here, a sense that there's less and less of a way for my life to involve either physical pleasure or any intimacy with a lover.

I have tried these last few years to avoid making this blog too personal or to use it to lament my own failings. Here in the last days of October, though,  it's hard to avoid a sense of melancholy.

I've always hoped that this blog would generate comments and discussions, that there would be lovely interlocutors with whom I could talk about the ideas behind sex and social lives. There isn't an interlocutor tonight, and I feel that lack very deeply. I've never minded writing into the void. I've spent a great many nights pacing through my rooms talking to imaginary classes and audiences, telling stories and posing hypotheticals. I was an academic for a long time, and I've never lost the style.

The other evening I noted here that I find myself unable to talk to others any longer, that it's become harder and harder to imagine opening myself up to a young companion or a potential lover. Asking about likes and dislikes, about preferences and fantasies, seems increasingly dangerous in the age of the gender wars--- and in an age of social media and public shaming. Any kind of openness about those things, any sharing of your life and what it means seems far too dangerous these days. Conversation, let alone seduction, feels too much like a trap.

Fear of opening up, fear of asking, fear of conversations and seductions. There's that. And there's also a growing fear of and disgust with my own body. I am less and less willing to allow my body to be seen. I have less and less faith in my body. It's served me reasonably well all these years, but I find myself thinking that it's now a failure.

I have purchased several packets of "speed shower" body wipes, and I find myself compulsively swabbing myself down. I would never ask anyone to touch my flesh these days, and I would be far too terrified to ask anyone to taste or accept my flesh as part of lovemaking. I live in fear of having a smell, of having a taste, of having some disgusting texture. Hot showers all through the day, repeated body scrubs, antiseptic wipes. "Speed shower" body wipes whenever I have a few moments. I do live in fear of the moment when I'd see disgust and revulsion in a lovely young companion's eyes. Flesh is a failure. At least my flesh is a failure.

It's going to be that kind of November, and it's going to be that kind of life--- one where any ability to be with a lover, a partner, a young companion has been closed off.

One Seven One: Hearts

Today is Valentine's. It's  a celebration that I wish I could like more than I do. I'm well aware that it's currently regarded as a slightly silly faux-holiday, and I'm very well aware that it's regarded as problematic by the gender warriors. Ms. Flox, who's one of the few sex bloggers I find worth reading, has dismissed Valentine's--- and Steak & BJ Day, its semi-serious March equivalent for males ---as both ridiculous and somehow oppressive. Nonetheless, Valentine's has the power to make me melancholy.

I enjoy rituals and formality, of course. I like the clear guidelines for social rituals, and I like it that social rituals are goal-oriented. There's a clear goal to social rituals, an everything is about checking the boxes on the way to the goal. A graduation ceremony, a Mass, a wedding service, a funeral, a formal dinner party: clear goals, and clear steps to reach the goal. Once you begin the ritual, you say the right words and make the correct gestures and the protocols carry you through to the end. I have to like that.

Valentine's, I always believed, was about the formal presentation of romance. That matters to me. The romance itself is important, yes, but I like the formal, ritual presentation of romance.  Just as New Year's Eve is a night for champagne and stylized kisses at midnight, just as where you kiss someone on New Year's Eve matters at least as least much as who you kiss, Valentine's is about dinner and drinks as a couple, about stylized gifts, and about sex infused with the power of ritual. You can have champagne and chocolate truffles any night of the year, but 14. February has the special power of ritual. Ritual has that power, you know. A gift given on 24. December or on a lover's birthday has an aura that makes it very different from one given on a random night, no matter how heartfelt the gift may be.

Presentation matters. Restaurants and museums know that, and it's no less true for romance.

I suppose that Valentine's is a FOMO thing. Being alone on Valentine's means missing out on socially-assigned rituals of romance. It means missing out on the aura of high romance. It mean missing out on one night where romantic gestures are encouraged, and where all the accoutrements of romance are on display. You're encouraged rather than just allowed to make stylized gestures. Whatever happens physically, in bed, isn't just sex or lovemaking on 14. February.  It's regarded as somehow qualitatively better, as occurring on a higher level of style and passion. And of course having a lovely girl agree to be your Valentine's date is a way of affirming your own social value. You've been judged by a beautiful girl and found ritual-worthy. What could be better?

I'm sitting here on a Valentine's night typing on my laptop rather than holding hands across a table while champagne is poured for the two of us. I'm sitting here all-too-aware that no one in this city found me worth being with tonight, that I didn't fit anyone's idea of a romantic partner for the evening. No champagne in my glass, no chocolates shared. No warm, silken, taut, tanned, bare flesh to caress--- no lovely young companion's bare thigh under my hand in the taxi or under the table.  Well...I am all-too-aware of my failures. I'm missing out on the actual physical experience of romance, I know. But missing out on all the social proofs of romance--- the ritual of chocolates and champagne, of dinner and passion in stylish locales ---may be worse.  Missing out says too many things about your social value, about whether you're worth the time and effort for a ritual of romance. That makes14. February more melancholy than any birthday or New Year's Eve spent solo.

One Seven Zero: Landline

I own two phones. I have an iPhone in my briefcase, and there's a small cordless landline on a table in my flat. I'll confess at the beginning that the iPhone is rarely turned on. I don't encourage calls to my mobile number. I use it for very occasionally calling out and for its web connection. I don't use the camera, and I dislike texts and texting. Texts have always seemed intrusive to me. They demand an immediate response, and I dislike that kind of demand. A text is limited to some fairly small number of characters; it's not a way to have the kinds of conversations I enjoy. Texts are for a handful of basic exchanges---- meet me at ________, call me at __________, what's the address/phone number? I don't send photos via text, and I almost never receive a photo.  I like conversations and telling stories, and texting isn't a way for me to do either.

That leaves the little landline. No one has landlines at home any more; that's just taken as a given in Millennial circles. I can't imagine not having one, though. I'm a gentleman of a certain age, and in my youth not having a phone at home was very socially suspect. Respectable people had telephones in their houses or apartments. That attitude is still with me. The mobile in my briefcase is something I'll always see as an accessory, as something just a bit secondary, something that's a bit frivolous or trivial. My real phone is there on the desk, and there should be a listing in an actual paper telephone directory.

A few years ago I read an on line article that said that landlines were making a bit of a comeback in places like Brooklyn. They were retro, yes--- having a 1950s-style desk phone or a 1960s-style Princess phone was hip. And hipster girls (and aren't attractive young girls always the arbiters of what's socially acceptable?) were starting to see a certain value in landlines. The article said that landlines were taken as a marker for stability, for saying that a boyfriend or potential boyfriend wouldn't just vanish. I like that attitude, of course. I can't escape the idea that having a landline is a social marker.

The landline will always seem like more of a connection than the mobile. It's far more an instrument for telling stories.  It's far better for flirtations and seductions as well.  I've never quite grasped the idea of sexting. I'm a painfully slow typist, and sexting doesn't allow for the things that would make the exchange work for me--- descriptions of place and time and costume, long complex accounts of what's happening or should happen. If there's going to be flirtation and seduction, it has to be structured like a novel. It can't be just blunt, direct questions in text-speak. If there's anything that kills the mood for me, it's poor grammar and text abbreviations.

I've no idea what the social status of phonesex or flirtation and seduction by phone is these days. I've noted before that any male participation in the Solitary Vice these days is regarded as pathetic or creepy, and in the age of the gender wars asking a girl to participate in phonesex is almost certainly regarded as a violation and an act of oppression. My suspicion is that even if the girl initiates the call,  the gender warriors would see it as "problematic". After all, a male is participating, and by definition he'd be pathetic and regarded as a loser. And revealing one's fantasies to a girl would be regarded as an act of aggression.

A 20th-c. poet (Muriel Rukeyser, I think) said that our lives are made up of stories, not atoms. Stories matter far more than flesh. Flesh can be turned into stories, but it's the stories themselves that last all down the years.  I can't imagine flirtation and seduction that doesn't grow out of stories told late at night over landlines. It's always a image I treasure--- voices crossing back and forth over landlines, stories told by phone in the post-midnight dark of a city bedroom, stories and exchanges that last until the dark turns dawn-blue.

I have to wonder, though, what the social valences are these days for long flirtations by phone. Does anyone stay on a mobile for hours? Are long telephone conversations still something that can be regarded as erotic? Tell me what you think--- here in the new century, is phonesex--- not sexting ---still an acceptable thing? What are its semiotics?

One Five One: Incel

Let's see, now... Who recalls the term "incel" these days? Remember that? "Incel" = "involuntary celibate". It's a word that comes up in the angrier precincts of the "manosphere" for males who feel bitter and angry and betrayed that they've been left out of things sexual, that they aren't being granted access to the Forbidden City. I read this morning that back in the later Nineties there were support groups on line for "incel" people (male and female both) that really were about support and encouragement, groups that gave the lonely and bereft places to talk about being alone in a world of couples, groups that had a wistful air to them rather than a bitter one--- and read, too, that at some point those early people were driven away by rage-filled MRA/anti-feminist types. 

I've been wondering if any trace of that earlier culture still exists. The internet is a more brutal place than it was back in those days; we can take that as a given. I recall times when groups at places like Nerve.com would've talked about "incel" in terms of individual loneliness and how the lonely could help one another through their solitary times. I don't have any problem with the term, mind you--- in an earlier day "involuntary celibate" wouldn't have about seeking out some ideological enemy in feminism; it would've been about personal loneliness.

Being unwillingly celibate (the criteria seem to set six months as the time past which simple lack of luck becomes "incel") is pretty much something everyone goes through at points in their lives. And despite all the Social Justice Cult ranting about "entitlement" and reducing the pain people feel to just "privileged straight white tears" about not getting laid, there's a whole world of emptiness and social failure implicit in the term. We all have a need for someone else in our lives, a need not just for flesh but for all the social things that go with having a romantic partner. Involuntary celibacy means more than just not having sex, although the gender warriors seem to think it's about nothing more than being "thirsty" or wanting to get laid at will. (Funny, though, how they denigrate sex-as-pleasure or sex-as-adventure) Involuntary celibacy means being without the social part of being partnered--- being able to go to social events where the expectation is still that everyone is in a couple, not feeling excluded or useless in social settings, being able to share the closeness of romance, and, yes, being seen by others as valuable and valued enough to have a partner. Everyone has empty periods, everyone knows the discomfort of being single in a social world of couples, a world where the dyad is considered the norm. Everyone knows that. But it wasn't always a state that was associated with simmering rage and ideological disdain.  

I'd like to think that somewhere out there in corners of the web there are still communities where people offer one another kindness and support and hope about being able to alleviate loneliness or find romance. I'd like very much to think that, to think that there are still groups where members can tell one another that, even alone, they have some social value, that being alone doesn't mean that you have no worth in others' eyes.

I do wonder, too, whether "incel" as a term ever made it into gay or lesbian circles. Involuntary celibacy isn't restricted to straight white boys. I've no idea what the social dynamics of the gay world are these days, but I remember the dance club world of my Lost Youth as being one where the gay scene had its own exclusionary rules and lots of members who were painfully alone despite all their efforts to find romance. I remember reading Andrew Holleran's "Dancer From The Dance" where Holleran talks about the early gay disco scene as one of a "great and terrible" democracy of beauty...and thinking how hard that world must be for anyone not pretty enough to meet the scene's standards. Wouldn't involuntary celibacy have existed in Holleran's world--- and been at least as painful as in the straight world? In that era, in that world, in places that celebrated beauty and the casting off of old strictures and denials, wouldn't being incel have hurt even more than in the straight world?

A lovely young friend in Chicago tells me that she thinks "incel" never made it into usage outside outside the whole loathsome MRA/Red-Pill world, that she never heard it used in the gay or lesbian worlds at university or when she was a gallery girl in Manhattan. I do wonder, though--- are there self-described gay incels, and how do they perceive themselves? Do they use the word? Do they write about it? Is there a gay counterpart to "incel rage"? And...are gay males who call themselves incels attacked by the gender warriors and the Social Justice Cult the way straight users are? Gay men, I think, are currently being moved into the category of Bad Guys by the gender warriors--- see the whole feeding frenzy over "gay misogyny" or the way queen-speak "appropriates" black slang, see the way gay males are now treated by the gender warriors as bearing inherent male evil the same way straight males are. And what about the lesbian world? That's completely opaque to me; I have no travelers' tales to rely upon. How do non-straight-male worlds handle the idea of involuntary celibacy? That's something that the flaneur and the quondam academic in me would like to know. 

I'd like to know, too, if there are still groups who use the word "incel" without the ideological baggage of the gender wars and the whole dreary Red Pill nonsense. I'd like to know if there are still places where people can discuss loneliness and social exclusion with wistfulness and personal sorrow--- with mutual support, but without mockery, rage, and ideological derision. 

One Four Three: Empty Rooms

I'll pose a simple enough question tonight. If you're reading this, I do hope you'll take the time to respond.

It's been a hope of mine since I started writing here that I'd be able to open up exchanges and conversations, that I'd be able to talk about some of the issues I raise here with others.

Let's try a very basic question tonight.

What if the last person you had in your arms or in your bed was the last person who'd ever be there?

What if you knew to a clear certainty that you'd never be touched again in any romantic or sexual way?

What if you knew to a moral certainty that you'd never have sex with anyone else ever again?

If you knew those things, what would you do?

I've seen columns written by the gender warriors where any sense of dismay or loss about such things is dismissed with contempt. Not having sex ever again, they say, is no loss at all, and to feel fear or dismay or loss is a sign of...what? "Privilege", of course, and misogyny.  To be dismayed over never having sex again is regarded as being complicit in "rape culture".

But amongst those who aren't ranting cultists of the Social Justice Cult---- how would knowing that make you feel?

It'll happen with everyone, sooner or later. Some kiss, some night in bed with a lover, will be a last time for you. Do you see that as too far in the future to make the question worth considering? Have you ever wondered what it would be like on the morning after you realized it was true? What would you see when you look into the mirror after such a realization?

It'll happen with everyone, sooner or later. But tell me--- tell me what it would mean to you to know you'd never be touched again, that you'd never have sex again. What would you do? What would you think about yourself and your future.

Do think about it and get back to me.

One One Two: Ekdysis

I've never had a lap dance.

I've never had a massage, either, though for different reasons.

Somewhere in the last twenty years lap dances became part of popular culture, just as pole-dancing has. I've never had a lap dance, though. Part of that is mere poverty. I've never had the money to buy lap dances or for the necessary tip. I've told myself that it's about money, but that's not strictly true.  Most of it, though, is that I'd be terrified of not knowing what to do or how to act.   

I'd never try to touch the dancer. Let's be clear about that. I'd never touch.  No touching--- obviously.

If the dance were given at a girl's flat--- not in a club ---and done by a girl I was dating, I'd still never touch. And indulging in the Solitary Vice while she danced would never, never happen. Males are always wrong to indulge in the Solitary Vice--- too symbolic of being pathetic or a loser, too easily described by ugly and mocking terms (e.g., wank or toss).

I'd never speak to the dancer. That's a given. And if it were a girl dancing for me at her flat rather than a professional at a club, a young companion dancing for me....well....I'd probably still just nod politely but never speak. Speaking would be too risky, too filled with the chance of making a fool of myself.

 For any lap dance, I'd sit rigidly and silently, hands palm down and immobile on my knees, eyes fixed dead ahead and slightly unfocused, muscles tensed, face expressionless--- I mean, I'd do that, but, again, it doesn't seem to be the right thing.

Clapping politely at the end somehow doesn't quite seem right, either.

For whatever it's worth, I'd always feel like I was badly dressed for the occasion. I'd always feel like I wasn't dressed correctly to be in a high-end club for a lap dance, always feel like I wasn't dressed well enough (or handsome enough) to be the sort of person who's allowed to have a lap dance. There are social requirements here, just as there are for everything. 


As always, I'd be terrified of being thought a rube or a mere flat, and I'd be wary and bitter about that. I'm just not socially adept enough to get a lap dance.

I mentioned all this to a friend in England yesterday, and she told me that the correct response to a lap dance is "an appreciatively lustful smirk". I couldn't do that. I'd never believe that I was allowed to make that kind of face, that I was high enough in the male rank ordering to do that. 

My friend Ms. Flox once wrote an article at one of her websites (Slantist.com or Sex And The 405) urging male customers to sit back and enjoy the lap dance as a performance, as art. I couldn't do that. Mere enjoyment would mean allowing myself to be socially relaxed, and I'm not someone who can do that. I'm not one for letting down his guard, and I'd never be able to enjoy the experience. 

My friend in England tells me that it's not that the dancers despise their customers. She tells me that the dancers don't pay attention to the customers at all, that they're just white noise in the background. I can understand that. When I was in grad school I worked in a bookstore, and customers really were just background noise, a minor irritation. But emotionally I can't believe it. I'd be far too afraid of doing something or being something or looking like something that the dancer would feel contempt or derision for. I'd be far too insecure to ever meet the dancer's eyes.

If I were in a young companion's flat rather than a club, I'd still feel badly dressed and unable to meet her eyes.  That's less explicable than being afraid in a strip club (where you just might be handed over to the bouncers), but it's still true. 

I've never had a lap dance, and no girl has ever offered to strip for me. Other things, yes.  But not that. There's no way I could bring myself to go to a club for a lap dance.  I'm genteelly-impoverished, so there is that problem. But I'd never feel secure enough to go. I wouldn't know how to act, and I'd never think I was well-dressed enough or socially adept enough to be in a high-end strip club, let alone be allowed to purchase or enjoy a lap dance, even if I had the money.   

Fifty-Six: Bubbles

The cartoon is simple enough. It's called XKCD: a web cartoon fairly well known in tech and science circles. This particular strip is one that I hadn't seen until a few days ago, and one that generated a remarkable amount of hostility.

The particular strip (it's called "Creepy") shows a stick figure boy seated near a stick figure girl on a subway. She's working at her computer. The boy says, "Really cute new netbook." The girl looks up and says in horror, "What?" The boy says, "Your laptop. I was just----." The girl then snarls at him, "No--- why were you talking to me?" She goes on--- "Who do you think you are? If I were even slightly interested in you, I'd have shown it!" She turns to everyone else in the subway car and announces that, "Hey, everyone--- this dude's hitting on me!"  You see other voices from the car: "Creep!"  "(mocking laughter)" "Let's get his picture for Facebook to warn others!" The next panel shows that it's all been the boy's thought bubble, and that the boy is facing away from her and sitting as far away as he can get. The girl is tapping away at her laptop, and what she's typing is, "Dear Blog: Cute boy on train is still totally ignoring me."

It is a cute cartoon, and a situation that's probably been the basic premise of thousands of small romantic comedies: mutual misunderstanding, missed opportunities, mutual insecurities. The gender warriors, though, found the strip to be "problematic" and an attack on their whole ideology. You can probably guess the argument. The cartoon, the gender warriors tell us, legitimises harassment. Commenters at the gender warrior blogs all express horror and outrage that someone might speak to a stranger in public, that someone might expect a reply. I'm simply struck dumb by all that.

The gender warrior blogs seem to argue that there are and should be bubbles surrounding everyone in public, that everyone in public should be an atomised particle, with no part in any social network or any   social exchanges. That's a sad way to live. A dreadfully sad way to live.

I'm reasonably shy in public. I dislike inconveniencing anyone, and I dread being thought impolite. So I do sympathise with the boy in the cartoon. There have been any number of times when I didn't speak to a girl at a cafe or a bookshop or a bar simply because I was afraid that she'd be hostile in a public setting. But I'm also someone who seems to attract people--- in airport bars, on subways, at conferences ---who have stories to tell. I've spent more than a few afternoons listening to strangers tell me their stories or having random conversations about what's on the television screens above the bar.

There is such a thing as harassment, certainly. And I do value a certain amount of solitude. But there's just something disheartening about the gender warriors' ideas. They seem to conflate some sort of sexual harassment with what I can only think of as random social interactions. Anyone out in public is out in a social world. At some point random strangers will speak to you. Courtesy demands that you don't cross a line into being intrusive, but courtesy also demands that you acknowledge others and that you respond to politeness with politeness. The gender warriors phrase everything in terms of "rights" and violations--- how dare someone expect me to respond? how dare someone enter my world? No one deserves to be pestered, but...is anyone saying that they do?

A part of the gender warriors' claim is that any time a male speaks to a female he doesn't know, it must be a kind of sexual advance, and an unwelcome one by definition. That's fairly self-evidently untrue, though it is in line with the gender warriors' view of males and all male-female interactions. So many commenters who joined in the attack on the XKCD cartoon took that position for granted. Many others were outraged that a cartoon seemed to be saying that speaking to a stranger was acceptable, that they might have to someday say a few polite words in response.

There are limits and distinctions here that seem to elude the gender warriors and their commentariat. What most disheartens me, I think, is simply the attitude that being spoken to at all is a kind of violation. I'm not terribly social, and I'm shy enough in person. I would be deeply ashamed to be found intrusive, to be found a pest. I also value my own ability to just be somewhere and be alone with my thoughts. But I've had wonderful conversations with some strangers over the years, and I'll always respond politely to a polite question or remark.

I do sympathise with the stick-figure boy in the cartoon. His fears are hardly unwarranted. And I once again find the gender warriors disheartening. I'd like to think that one can still be part of a world where it's possible to have polite, random social interactions--- a world where we aren't all sealed inside armoured bubbles, a world where other people aren't regarded as simply a set of demands and intrusions.

Twenty-Nine: Amitié

Classical writers regarded friendship as the greatest gift, and one of the greatest goods. Without friendship, Aristotle said, no man would wish to live, though he had all other goods. Friendship is a dying art, now. It's not something we're comfortable with. Sex we understand, and we valorise love in ways the classical writers never imagined. But friendship is something that doesn't fit well with contemporary sensibilities.

I seem to remember twenty-odd years ago, and stories in news magazines proclaiming that the 1990s would be the Decade of Friendship. I don't remember why. Was it that after the plague years, the AIDS decade, that sex was something we were afraid of? Was it that passion was supposed to have burned itself out it Eighties excess? I don't remember at all why the trendspotters announced that "friendship" would be so key in the Nineties. I certainly don't remember that friendship played a major role in that decade. What I do remember is that friendship as an art had faltered all through the twentieth century, and that it continued to sicken all through the decade.

We do understand sex, and lust, and we insist that the pair-bond, the romantic couple, is the standard against which all relationships are measured. Friendship sits awkwardly in contemporary eyes. It's too often seen as something that takes away from the pair-bonding that's regarded as the only serious or valuable kind of relationship. Time spent with friends is time not devoted to the pair-bonding of spouses. Friendship and its emotional ties are seen as...what? Competing with something more serious, more socially valuable, more mature. I think, too, that it's hard for contemporaries to see any kind of close emotional or affectional tie and not read it as somehow sexual. A close friendship is seen as really just a love affair that's being hidden or denied.

I'm male, and a bachelor, and I feel the loss of friendships keenly. Yet I know that I'm sensitive to the implication that to have close male friends past one's undergraduate days is either  willful immaturity or closeted homosexuality. It's male friendship, of course, that carries those implications. Friendships between women are celebrated as empowering, not as clinging to juvenile life or as subterranean sapphistry.

I'm told that Japanese culture still values male friendship. I'm told that in societies where the sexes are still not integrated socially, where men and women have separate social spheres, males can have friendships that aren't suspected of either being a way to escape domestic life/adulthood or a hidden gay affair. We expect a close relationship to be a pair-bond where two people share everything and "complete" one another. There's no room left for friendship past one's mid-twenties, for anything that competes with the domestic pair-bond.

There's a bit of fear here, I know that. I feel a certain amount of fear about being regarded as either a Peter Pan or a paederast should I have close male friends. I'm a bachelor, too--- a status already suspect enough. To have close male friends now is to invite raised eyebrows from women. To make--- or try to make ---male friends now is to invite even more suspicion, if not derision.

This raises the perennial question, of course: can men and women ever be friends? I used to say that so many of my friends were women, and that my friendships with them weren't simply stalled courtships. But the truth is that while, yes, my closest friends are female, they're all people with whom I have a history. Not ex-lovers so much as ex-friends with benefits. They're women with whom I once had affairs in passing, affairs that didn't stray into dangerous areas of passion. Ex-friends with benefits--- shared past, shared beds, and now still able to talk and trust one another and share confidences. It would never work if I hadn't slept with them already. It wouldn't work if I'd once been deeply in love and lost that. Lovely young companions who were once friends-with-benefits have become my friends. I know that the sexual past--- even where we don't talk about it ---is what makes the friendship work.

I wouldn't know how to have male friends here at my age. I wouldn't know how to have female friends with whom I hadn't slept already. I'm not sure at all how to define friendship or what I hope for from friendship. I hope that if you're reading this, you'll tell me about how you define friendship for yourself, about what you think of male friendship as such. I suppose I'm hoping that lovely and literary and thoughtful girls--- the Comp. Lit. graduate student who's always my Implied Reader ---will comment on this. What are we to make of friendship here in the second decade of the new century? Is it even possible to be male and still have friends?