One Eight One: Seating Arrangement

I've said before that I have my dislikes among the sex bloggers. I'm fine with Karley Sciortino at Slutever and Vogue, who's lovely and a delight.  But the two writers I'm currently regarding as my leading candidates for an enemies list are the blogger who calls himself "Dr. Nerdlove" and the woman who calls herself Arden Leigh.

I'm sure they're both well-meaning. I'll give them that. But reading either of them leaves me depressed and angry. There's nothing in either writer's archives to make me feel the least shred of hope, and both seem to take a positive delight in belittling, haranguing, and mocking hapless male readers. The so-called Dr. Nerdlove enjoys using "tough love" slogans to humiliate and bludgeon male readers. He enjoys mocking any male with limited social skills or who's the least bit shy. Arden Leigh uses New Age and psycho-babble terminology to the same end. Leigh sets herself out as a female PUA, as someone who's studied the skills of seduction...and then lashes out at any idea of romance, or fun, or actual flirtation.

And what have I learned from them recently? Well, I've learned this:

If you're sitting at dinner or drinks with a girl (but should you be? after all, asking anyone out is a show of "entitlement", isn't it?), be sure never to sit directly across from her. Always sit on the diagonal. Make sure you're the one sitting close to the wall and that she's always close to an exit/escape. Never, ever meet her eyes. Never under any circumstances hold her hand. Never touch. Never introduce any topic of conversation. Never attempt to add any information to a topic, never attempt to explain anything no matter what you may know about a topic. Reply only in monosyllables. Never show any emotion in your voice, and of course never raise your voice. Never ask a question, never ask for any information, never ask about anything personal. Never disagree; never defend a viewpoint. Offer nothing. Keep looking away, head down.

If you're on the street with a girl, it goes without saying that you never hold a date's hand or put an arm around her. Always walk just a bit ahead of her so that you're never behind her, where you might seem to be a looming threat. Never stop--- keep walking no matter what. Never give directions. Do not speak while walking--- certainly never speak first. Do not suggest destinations or routes. Call attention to nothing around you. Make no comments on anything. Again--- never meet her eyes, never look directly at her. Keep your body language close, keep your own social space to the barest possible minimum. At a bar, on a subway, on a bus--- keep at least one empty seat between the two of you. There at the bar, sit half turned away. Draw in on yourself. Never allow yourself to seem like a physical presence.

And never, never, never ask for anything, especially not any kind of show of attention or support or affection. Offer none, lest that be taken as being "entitled" to a response, or as a kind of manipulation.

Do all these things. I'm sure "Dr. Nerdlove" and Arden Leigh would approve. This is how we live now.

This is what I've learned.

Though the question remains open: how exactly does one make a dignified withdrawal from the emotional post-apocalyptic hellscape of romantic and sexual interaction?

One Eight Zero: Galt

Not long ago I ran across the acronym MGTOW. That's Men Going Their Own Way--- a subset of the MRA world. One on-line commenter described the MGTOW types as "the 1970s lesbian separatists of the Manosphere", which is rather funny.

The idea behind MGTOW is that men, or at least those men who've been wounded in the gender wars, should just walk away from those parts of the social world (romance, dating, marriage) controlled by women and live on their own.  There's an unfortunate linkage between the MGTOW philosophy and "exit" libertarians--- the people who talk about "going Galt" and withdrawing from a corrupt and collapsing society.  Somehow there's a connection made between not wanting to pay child support or pay for dinner on a date and not paying taxes.

All this does baffle me.  The political linkages baffle me, certainly. And the tactics here baffle me. Announcing a withdrawal from social life? That's all-too-easily mocked as defeatism. It's all-too-easily mocked as futile vanity, too--- commenters at articles about the MGTOW movement laugh at the idea of men who are self-described losers expecting that women will care about their withdrawal.

I'll say, too, that some of the Going Their Own Way types don't help their case by claiming that they've been traumatized and plundered in divorce settlements. Alimony is no longer what it was in 1950s movies or tabloids.  Here in the state where I'm writing, having to pay periodic support (it's not even called alimony these days) longer than eighteen months can happen under only a few very limited circumstances--- e.g., a spouse who's clearly disabled. If a middle-class couple have even rough parity of income, it's not going to happen at all. And there's no sympathy out there for anyone who feels aggrieved at having to pay child support.

It's unfortunate, too, that the movement pronounces its own name as "Mig-Tau". It's not possible to take seriously a social/political movement that calls itself "Mig-Tau".  Let's remember: it's not possible for anyone male to indulge in the Solitary Vice with any self-respect at all once he's become aware of the words "wanking" and "tossing".  It's just as impossible to maintain any self-respect while belonging to something called "Mig-Tau".

Nonetheless, there are some serious questions that the MGTOW types approach, but can't answer while blathering on about Red Pills and going "off the grid". What about the males who consistently don't do well at games of sex and romance? What about the ones who've run out of the resources (financial, psychological) that you need to deal with dating, sex, or relationships? Is there a case to be made for simply withdrawing from the sexual marketplace--- whether that case is based on age or cost-benefit analysis or just on emotional exhaustion? If there is a case to be made, how do you argue for a dignified withdrawal? How do you maintain yourself in some kind of dignity afterwards?

The world as it stands now isn't all that accepting of the old idea of the bachelor.  I'm not talking here about the recluse, about the aging fellow who lives at the top of the stairs in a walk-up flat and comes out only to go to the market or the liquor store, who snarls at anyone who speaks to him.  I'm thinking of someone who simply doesn't participate in the rituals of pair-bonding or mating. Do we still have social room for the extra man, the quietly courteous dinner guest who'll fill a BGBG-arranged table? Can we accept that someone might want to just withdraw from the search for a mate and devote himself to...reading, or male friends, or a quietly successful career? Is it possible to be accepted as being happy (or not diagnosed with something unpleasant in the current DSM) as an unmarried, solitary male?

Is the social world prepared to accept someone's principled resignation? Can you say "sorry, I just can't afford this" or "sorry, this is too emotionally risky" and not be mocked as a loser who couldn't attract someone anyway, or as someone hiding some deep inner flaw?

I've no idea what Mig-Tau believers do after "going their own way". Perhaps it's only that I see them as having poor cultural capital, or that "Mig-Tau" sounds too close to H.P. Lovecraft's dread Mi-Go. But I'll them serve as examples in a slightly different list of arguments. Is it possible to make a dignified withdrawal from the world of relationships and pair-bonding? Is it possible for someone who's announced his resignation to retain any social value or avoid outright mockery? Does contemporary society have any use for--- or understanding of ---the solitary male?  Can you be a bachelor and be regarded with anything other than poorly-concealed derision?

Any thoughts on any of this?

One Seven Nine: Towers

Geoff Dyer wrote an essay some years ago called "Sex and Hotels". I know that it was posted at Nerve.com once upon a time, and it was probably in one of his earlier collections of essays. I saw it referenced not long ago, and I'll be having the local library find me a Dyer collection with the essay. I usually like Geoff Dyer, and "Sex and Hotels" is something I do need to read--- or re-read.

Not long ago I wrote about Karley Sciortino's little essay on hotel sex, and I'd like to pair that with Geoff Dyer's essay. Hotel sex has always had a special valence for me, and I always love hearing girls' stories about the hotels where they've gone with lovers or beautiful strangers.

Location has always been an important part of sex for me. Backseats, desktops, library stacks, wagons-lits...  Location matters. It matters for establishing a mood, for establishing literary or film tradition. A lovely friend in New Zealand messaged me the other night to say that she wanted the measurements of my office desk, just in case she ever found herself spread out atop it.  Wellington NZ is something like eight thousand miles from where I'm sitting, but it never hurts to be prepared.

Hotel sex, now--- hotel sex comes with so many literary and film connections. Each hotel tells a different story about a city and about a particular affair. Each different hotel puts you in a different story.

I have my favourite hotels in Manhattan--- the Royalton, the Parker Meridien, the midtown Pod Hotel, the Night Hotel. Different lovers in each, different kinds of stories being told. My New Zealand friend told me once that she kept a log of every hotel pool where she's swum naked late at night, and that she has a list of Auckland hotels divided up into those where she's been with married men and those where she's just been with boyfriends or girlfriends. I admire a girl who keep lists of things, of course. I admire a girl who keeps score.

Karley Sciortino noted that hotel sex is about temporarily leisured, about being able to pretend for a few days that you're accustomed to luxury. Maid service, room service, the decor--- sex in hotels always feeds on class markers. Though there's something to be said for the stories you can create in decayed roadside motels or faded railway hotels in provincial towns. Both the four-star hotel and the places that probably house people who have "suspected" in front of their names promise anonymity, whether from the paparazzi or the FBI.

Hotel sex for me has always been about early mornings, too, about leaving a sleeping companion and looking out at cities just as the sky lightens. I don't smoke, but it would almost be worth starting just to stand with a cigarette and look out the window while the city began to stir. There are memories there, of course: kissing a companion's bare shoulder and slipping out of bed to watch the day begin.

If you're reading this, and if you're one of the quiet, literary girls I picture as my Imaginary Readers, I suppose you could tell me about your own favourite hotels and hotel sex memories. You could tell me about whether you see the hotel as an adventure in luxury, or an adventure in transgression (a married lover, say, or an alluring stranger), or as away to have anonymity and freedom.

Hotel rooms are for adultery,  as both Ms. Sciortino and Geoff Dyer tell us. They're for being sealed off in a room or a suite and not having to follow the rules of the outside world. Hotel sex is for call girls and clients, for escorts sent up after a discreet call to the concierge desk. Hotel sex can be about all the activities and positions and games you'd never feel comfortable trying at home. Hotel sex is about escape--- and all the best things in life are about escape from the quotidian.

If you're reading this, tell me about the hotels in your past. Tell me what desires you've been able to live out in hotels, and what you think about when the door closes behind you and you toss a carry-on bag onto a hotel bed.

One Seven Eight: Stones

I remember being once upon a time at a huge state park somewhere in the Smoky Mountains. I forget why I was there--- a vacation with my parents, maybe ---and  I recall hiking down through hills and thick woods. I remember that there was a stream, and that you had to cross it by going from rock to rock in the stream. It was easy enough to do. You just sprang from one rock to the next without a thought. But then, halfway over the stream, I stopped and looked around and then discovered that I'd lost my rhythm. I'd started to think about what I was doing, about how to make the jumps, about how much I didn't want to end up in knee-deep, chilly water. Once I did that, I just couldn't make the leaps--- however small, however simple ---any more.

The same is true of sex these days.  I've become afraid that I've lost my ability to just act. I'm afraid that I've begun to overthink that needs to be done.

Some of that may be age, or fear of age. I'm at a place in my life where I'm worried that some things will just be beyond me---- more precisely, worried that I'll make that discovery at some moment that will leave me open to derision and humiliation. I seem to spend too much time worrying over whether the last time for doing one thing or another has already happened. Haruki Murakami wrote in "I.Q. 84" that everyone secretly longs for some version of the end of the world. I have to hope that's not true. Or at least hope that I haven't made the transition from abstract speculation to actual longing.

It's not all age, though. Some of it is overthinking, taking counsel of my fears. There is a Zen kind of moral here: the conscious mind becomes a hindrance to true understanding. I look at a lovely girl and know what I should do with her while we make love. I know the things I'd like to do, the things my history and body say to do, and then I find myself paralyzed. Too much thinking, too much analysis of what it all means, of what could go wrong, of why whatever it is unlikely to be as good in the flesh as it is in my thoughts and hopes, of why fleshly bodies are untrustworthy and aesthetically flawed. A Zen moral, yes. The conscious mind gets in between things and trips up all your hopes and desires.

Maybe it's only that all desire is suffering, but I think that it's more. It is the Zen thing, the overthinking thing. I can't let a kiss or a touch or a taste be satisfying on its own, and once I stop to think about it, then my fears reduce it to being no good at all.  Needless to say, I also assign my own fears to whomever I'm with. I assume that she'll recoil in disgust at touches, tastes, sights.

I did once talk myself into being unable to board an aircraft for some years--- for almost a decade. Now I've talked myself into being afraid to touch or taste or caress or discuss any needs or hopes. Too much thinking. Too much taking counsel of my fears. Too much sense of all the things that are encoded into anything that involves the flesh.

One Seven Seven: Rooms

I write from the bed of room 1014 at The Standard, Downtown LA, where I may or may not have “made love” in the ginormous bathtub last night. 

My goal in life is to live in a hotel. Reality can be so boring, so predictable—I prefer a lifestyle of constant escape, because why not? However, since I can’t afford that yet (sigh), for now I use hotels for their most basic functions: travel and sex. The first, of course, is self explanatory, but it’s easy to take for granted what a night in a hotel can do for your sex life.

The quote is by Karley Sciortino, "Karley Slutever" of the rather delightful Slutever blog (and her own column at Vogue these days, too). It's from a piece at the blog that Standard Hotels has at its website for 05 April 2016.  I'm an admirer of Ms. Sciortino, and I have to agree with her about hotels and sex:

Hotel bars and restaurants have a slightly different vibe than most others—there’s an inherent level of intimacy and possibility, which often leads to more free and open conversation. Who knows what can happen at the hotel bar: maybe you’ll meet an exotic stranger and have a surreal, Lost In Translation adventure. 

Hotel sex is a sexual luxury item, and the novelty of it allows you to play into fantasy. Basically, when you check into a hotel, you check out of life, which enables you to take on a new identity. I’ve had the most hedonistic, Helmut-Newton-style sex of my life in hotel rooms. It’s sort of like how an actor puts on a costume to help get into a new character—in a hotel, a space of both elegance and anonymity, you can be a different, more adventurous you. Also, the huge bed, good lighting and 400 thread count sheets don’t hurt.

I've always believed that a new city isn't really yours 'til you've had sex there, preferably with a beautiful stranger. Hotels, of course, are the classic venue for that. They're temporary places--- stage sets, really, if you follow the precepts of travel marketing. Well-designed, well-managed hotels are supposed to offer elegance and anonymity, an interlude where you're in a new world, where the stage is kept perfect for you. Fresh linens on the bed, the sheets turned down, the room immaculate, the view breathtaking. It's a fantasy locale, and there's nothing like the intersection of anonymity, elegance, and an unknown city to suggest that sex is, well...required.

I stayed once at a boutique hotel in Manhattan that made a discreet point of suggesting that its upstairs club--- which had an indoor pool with its own banks of benches and a poolside d.j. ---might lead to a night in one of its sleekly Euro-styled rooms. The main desk had its own little shop where "intimacy kits" with condoms, lube, and blindfolds could be purchased. The design was all about suggesting not just the hot-sheets hotels that used to be all over Midtown in the days when New York was on the edge of apocalypse, but a venue for adventures. Not romance, mind you, and not commercial sex--- adventure.

Hotel bars are like airport bars, of course. They're like some Interzone fantasy, some Casablanca or Tangier fantasy. Step inside, order a drink, and you don't come from anywhere, you aren't going anywhere, your name and particulars cease to matter. Hotel bars and hotel beds encourage confessions and stories. Insofar as they do that, they're my natural habitat. 

Once, long ago, I spent a Christmas Day in a boutique hotel. There was snow outside, and grey skies, and a language I barely understood. The hotel's theme was something Anglophile, something about foxhunting prints  and dark velvet. There was a restaurant with a Christmas dinner designed to bring up Oxbridge-life novels and films. I ate alone, and found myself talking to a girl who'd been sitting alone with her drink, very obviously near to tears. That ended a couple of hours and  a few drinks later with the two of us in her bed, exchanging stories and watching the snow outside mask the city lights. I left her asleep and never saw her again. I may have left her a note with my contact address--- not e-mail, no: this was before e-mail ---on hotel stationery. I do remember that it mattered to me that there was hotel stationery in the drawer. I did wonder if any of the things she'd told me were true--- name, upbringing, past, why she was there and what (who, of course) had left her crying on Christmas Day. I may or may not have told her stories of lives I wished I'd led rather than anything about the one I was living. 

In hotels I always think of the rooms as tiny, individual worlds, little display cases for lives and hopes. When you walk hotel corridors, you're walking past cells filled with ongoing stories. When the door closes behind you, you're cut off from the outside world, alone or not. 

Hotel sex is a statement about stage sets and making oneself part of some half-remembered (or half-imagined) film or novel. Hotel sex offers that--- escaping into being part of a novel or film. That's not such a small thing. 

Hotel sex is a way of marking out that you've been to a new city, a foreign city, an unexplored country, and been part of a film or novel there. It marks out the unexpected and the singular. It's a marker for discovering that, here in some new world, you do have social and sexual value. Those things aren't small, either. 

Hotel life and hotel sex offer up many of the same markers. And both things offer up hope of being outside the world, at least for a while. 

I do miss hotel bars and hotel restaurants tonight, and of course I miss hotel sex--- a lovely girl sitting naked on the bed, framed in half-light from a window looking down on a foreign city. 

If you're reading this, I hope you'll tell me about the hotels and cities where you've found moments of escape, where you've found Adventures.

One Seven Six: Iterations

I have been considering the idea of fantasies these last few nights. Obviously, everyone has preferences and hopes and dreams. The question here in these latter days in what we're allowed to do with those things.

A friend in London Town told me  the other afternoon of her recent Sex Dreams all about the young Vivien Leigh. If I'd had Sex Dreams (and in a Classic Hollywood mode) they'd involve 21-year old iterations of the Two Hepburns. If I were in a mode for Year Sixteen fashion models, of course it would be Anja Rubik, Karlie Kloss, and Aymeline Valade. I probably shouldn't go into the idea that having those thoughts would be of no use, since the Solitary Vice, while "empowering" for attractive girls, is socially unacceptable (creepy, pathetic, a sign of being a loser) in males---- though that social fact is always lurking somewhere.

The age of the gender warriors and the intersectionalistas has meant that kinks, fetishes, and preferences are judged far more harshly than they were in the 1950s or the 1980s. I've been talking about that for a while now. It's much more dangerous nowadays to reveal a set of kinks or to be seen as seeking to explore new things--- the standards for judgment are political rather than moral and aesthetic, and there are the clear risks in being judged on social media.  Judgment is based on politics, and on what I call Authenticity Fetish--- the idea that it's morally culpable to want to explore things that aren't "authentic" to oneself. For example, it's fine nowadays to come out of the closet, but wrong to experiment with being gay or bi just to see what it might be like. I've seen the term "sex tourism" expanded to that as a criticism, with the term having all the overtones of  an attack on the sort of cultural imperialism that's involved in trips to Thai or Moroccan brothels. I suppose that goes for s/m as well--- doing s/m as part of an organized "community" is fine; doing it because it was intriguing in films or French novels is wrong. It's now wrong to seek out adventures and new experiences for their own sakes.

The trick of course is to have fantasies and kinks that aren't "problematic", to tailor one's sexual interests  so as not to risk contempt, disdain, political/ideological attacks, or the dread and fatal accusation of possessing "privilege".

The age of the gender wars is one where it really is less and less easy to explain to a potential partner what you might like. The risk isn't so much being told that the proposed scenarios aren't interesting (which is painful enough) or that they're aesthetically icky. The risk is being told that you're a Bad Person in some social and political sense. And having that Bad Person status regarded as intrinsic...and broadcast to the world on social media.

What should a fantasy/kink/preference be? It should be...complex and stylish enough to establish that you're literate and imaginative and clever. But it should under no circumstances trigger  social disdain or political attacks.

It should however be seen as contingent--- something you may enjoy for a time or two, but not necessarily something defining your identity. That way you're free to change over to new preferences, new ideas, new games without being trapped in an identity. That of course is harder now, since only Authenticity counts.

It seems to me that it's less and less possible to do any sort of role-play, too. The roles you might want aren't "authentic"--- by definition. There's the accusation that role-play traffics in cultural appropriation and stereotypes. Though it might be worse if the assumption was made that the role-play roles you'd fancy really are "authentic", and that you were now trapped inside them--- that there was no allowance made for play or imagination, for trying on masks simply because they were different. There's something exhausting and disheartening in having a partner in role-play believe that she knows what you "really" are, to have her think that the scenarios you've created reflect your true inner life and self-conception.

But the serious part of things is simply finding fantasies that are socially acceptable. They should have enough of an edge to give girls a slight frisson of wickedness, but they should still avoid any territory that could be labelled as "problematic". Under no circumstances should any kinks or preferences lay you open to attacks or social disdain or be tools that could be used against your social standing. That's always the heart of the game---- learning to play defense. That remains the hardest thing: establishing a list of fantasies that you can deploy without being treated as someone deserving of social and political contempt.

One Seven Five: Risk

I've written before about how it's become too risky to talk about one's fantasies or fetishes or preferred scenarios. I stand by that, mind you. These days, here in the age of the gender wars, it's far too risky to tell a partner or potential partner what it is you like. It's become too easy to be shamed all across the web, and in the call-out culture, there's a social premium on outrage and finding reasons to attack others' preferences.

I do remember long conversations with girls back in the days of my lost youth--- conversations across tables or over late-night phone lines, conversations in the dark across beds in residence halls or off-campus apartments. I recall talking with lovely companions about dreams and fantasies--- sexual and otherwise ---and offering up visions to one another: I've always dreamed of this? Have you thought about doing this? What would you do if you had the chance, or if this could be the right place? I remember the nights of girls looking at me and whispering, Show me. I remember girls looking shyly across the table and saying, I've always wanted to do this, I just didn't have anyone to trust. I can remember the two of us laughing about suggestions and clinking glasses: And why not? I mean, let's just try it.

I wouldn't do that now. I'd never risk revealing myself, even to a lover I'd been with for a while--- let alone to someone I was trying to seduce. I really never thought it would come to this. I grew up in an era that had discovered experimentation, where art and music and film celebrated transgression and crossing boundaries. And I've spent much of my life marketing myself as someone with whom girls could cross boundaries, as someone with whom girls could experiment.  My own experiences with suggestions and shared fantasies had been largely successful. Girls had seen me as a partner who wouldn't judge, who'd be willing to follow them into their own dreams. As the well-read older lover, I was useful--- a resource for girls who needed or wanted encouragement to feel free to try things.

I wonder if it's as simple as a generational thing, as the new century passing me by. The culture no longer encourages fantasies and fetishes. It no longer encourages role-play or scenarios. We no longer valorize experimentation, and we certainly no longer valorize the idea of transgression, of pushing past boundaries just to see what's on the other side.

There are people with whom I used to share stories and fantasies who I feel deeply uneasy about talking to these days. I no longer trust anyone not to secretly be feeling contempt for me. It's not the particular content of my fantasies that might be contemptible, it's that I'd have (or need) fantasies. I've always lived in fear that my fantasies and kinks are boring--- there's always that. But I especially hate the nagging fear that even having fantasies marks me for judgment.

Perhaps it's that I no longer trust potential partners. I've been burned during the last few years in ways I hadn't experienced in a pre-social media world. I hope that I've always been discreet and trustworthy around girls' dreams and fancies, and I'm certainly not given to divulging secrets. But I have developed a gnawing fear of being held up to public (or social-media) ridicule.  I have developed a gnawing, paralyzing fear of seeing contempt or derision in a girl's eyes when I talk about what I like and what I'd like to try. I have a gnawing fear that what I might like is no longer regarded as wicked and alluring, but as politically/socially unacceptable and contemptible.

I've spent a lifetime regarding fantasies and scenarios as stories, as roles one can step in and out of. I never saw them as saying anything about my "authentic" self. We live an age of authenticity fetish now, and any games, any stories, any preferences are unacceptable unless they're part of something essential to the self. It's no longer acceptable to sample and explore identities and interests, and I'm very old-school PoMo about that. Nowadays, though, I'm paralyzed.  There's less and less chance that a potential partner will accept kinks and fantasies as purely menu items for play rather than a statement about one's value and social rank.

Let's just say that all of this makes it harder and harder to flirt or play with lovely girls, even ones with whom I have a history.  It can't just be age and flagging enthusiasm. It's a fear that keeps me from saying anything about what I might like, and it keeps me from asking lovely companions what they might like.

I used to offer up new experiences, and I used to be someone who could persuade girls that it was safe to explore things with me. I won't do either thing now.