One Eight Six: Found Objects

I asked a favourite young companion a simple question a few nights ago. If you dropped dead tomorrow, I asked, what would you be most worried people would find in your house?

She laughed about that. Not anything silly, she said. Not the sex toys. She just shrugged about that. She was, she told me, an upper-middle-class, educated white girl in the year 2016. Of course she had sex toys. All girls like her did, everyone knew it, and no one would think anything about it.  The vibrators (the USB-connected Lelo models), the dildos, the anal beads and penetrators--- she was wasn't the least worried about having those found by family or friends clearing out her rooms. After all, she'd never worried or been the least bit fazed when customs agents or theTSA found her travel vibrators. She just gave them a cool, grey-blue, posh girl's stare and went on her way.

What she'd be worried people would find would be her notebooks and journals. She pours her heart and secrets out onto paper, and she has a locked box filled with them. Those are the things she'd worry about. That's why she burned a lot of her teen years journals, too. She wouldn't want her family and friends knowing about her teen Bad Girl adventures, for all the obvious reasons--- starting very young, doing risky things, having bad things happen, having encounters with her parents' (mostly married) friends, sex with some of her father's employees, sex with friends' boyfriends or girlfriends. And because of her emotional issues from those days, things that she may be more worried about than who she was having sex with. She didn't want her family knowing how she felt about them when she was fifteen or sixteen, or that she'd done things deliberately to defy them and their beliefs and values.

She and I are total opposites about the question. I kept notebooks when I was young, and I've diligently kept paper journals since the middle of the 1990s. But I was trained to always look to archives and documents. I believe in the idea of History, in the idea of a life preserved in archives. Everything must be documented and preserved--- I spent most of my years at university and grad school being taught that, and I believe in it.  I wouldn't be ashamed of anything I'd actually written down, not if I told it as a well-crafted story. I have the historian's kind of vanity, the idea that someday, someone somewhere would go through my journals and notebooks and find small bits of data that could be useful social history. I'm male, too. Having people know I'd had encounters in risky places or with unexpected girls would count in my favor. But all that only applies to things written down, to documents. Not to anything tangible.

What I'm saying is that I'd panic at the idea of people finding any hypothetical cache of sex toys. Not the riding whips or the riding crops, mind you. Those I'm rather proud of. They go with my reputation, with the self I've constructed since my early teens, with the interests I've clearly made part of my life. I could have riding crops found; that wouldn't change anything anyone things of me. But I could never have sex toys found. I've said it before, and I'll reiterate it here. There are no sex toys as such that a male can own that will allow him to keep his self-respect and social standing.

Vibrators and dildos for girls are associated with empowerment, self-discovery, sex. Things like Fleshlights or dildos or prostate massagers or inflatable dolls for males are associated with failure, creepiness, derision. I think the Arbitrary Social Rules are very clear on that. Male masturbation is regarded as a clear sign of social and sexual failure. Haven't we talked about that before? If you're found with sex toys in your nightstand drawer, the people finding them will hold you in contempt.

Part of that is something predicated on how porn is structured these days. If a girl has a collection of dildos, people will think about sex, about how hot it would've been to see her use them. If a straight male is found with dildos, he'll be tagged as closeted gay. If a gay male is found with dildos, he'll be mocked for being too much a loser to find a partner. Sex toys are an invitation to think of a girl as highly sexed, but an invitation to think of males as sexual failures.

The fact is, I told my friend,  I don't care what you read about in my journals so long as you think I'm a good writer and have a good eye.  What I'd be afraid of is being thought a sexual failure and sexually contemptible.  My paper journals are neatly archived and dated. I'd never hide them. But I'd never have a cache of sex toys because I would have to hide them,  because I'd agonize over what people would think about me if they found them.

And that, I think, is extremely sad.

One Eight Five: Shopping

I never quite know how to behave at sex shops. I'm never quite sure what pose to strike or how to ask questions.

I've been to sex toy shops, though usually--- perhaps inevitably ---I'm there as a young companion's accessory, as the older admirer she leads by the hand. Literally leads by the hand, mind you. That's something my young companions have seemed to like--- drawing me along the store aisles in their wake. I can't say that I mind, of course. I love watching them shop. I love the way they show off their acquisitions and take me to the displays they want to explore.

It is awkward, though, if you go in alone. It's something that takes some deep breaths. Going into a sex shop alone, you have far too much to prove and far too much to hide.

I worked in a bookstore all through grad school. It was a good job. I was the evening and night manager, so I didn't have to be there 'til two in the afternoon. I'd close up at ten at night and then go out. I managed to get most of my doctoral thesis written and still spend lots of late nights in clubland. My job required me to take books home to read, and I had special authority to order History and Modern Lit and Non-Fiction. We had a good clientele, a good mix of upscale types, bohemians, and students. They valued my advice, and I tried to be knowledgeable. I hired good people to work with me, people whose lives had been built up out of books.  A very good job, and one I look back on now with special nostalgia.

I used to tell the evening staff that we were like bartenders or psychoanalysts or priests. People told us what they were looking for on the shelves, and we ended up knowing all about their inner lives and hopes. Not just the thirty-something soccer moms who'd buy a hundred dollars' worth of self-help books on reaching orgasm or saving their marriages, and not just the solemn art-school kids buying guides to Coming Out. We knew what authors you'd choose to give you the right vision of romance, the kinds of futures that the sci-fi readers believed in, the skills people wanted to acquire and the phobias they wanted to overcome.  We knew who was pregnant for the first time and who was traveling to Bali that summer. I knew--- predatory creature that I am ---which senior girls from the posh prep schools were buying "Story of O" or Anne Rice's "Sleeping Beauty" books.

So I expect I'm a bit afraid of sex shops for that reason. Shopping there shows someone what your current fantasies and fetishes are. You're vulnerable to the judgment of strangers--- always an unpleasant thing. More--- the shop clerk will see you what you buy, and she (it should always be a she) is likely only to see you once or twice in her career. Whatever you buy that night, whatever you seem interested in or excited by that one night--- that's what'll define you in her eyes.  That's a problem in general, by the way. If you tell a potential young companion about your current interest, she'll assume that's all you are, all you're interested in.

Cliche, of course, but true. It's easier to be a lovely co-ed and go to sex shops (at least those where the staff are more likely to have graduate degrees than those where the clerk looks like Comic Book Guy) than it is to be a gentleman of a Certain Age and shop there. A lovely co-ed can stare down anyone who raises an eyebrow and fiercely defend her own sexual agency and empowerment--- one of the best uses for all that training in critical theory. Someone male of my own age must shuffle and look at the floor and find some guilty way to insist that he's not a sad perv with a Real Doll at home. Possibly a Real Doll of an underage sheep.

I've been the official carrier-of-purchases for young companions at sex shops. I've been the older admirer to whom a lovely girl turns in the presence of the clerk and says, "Do you think this one will leave good marks on me?" I've been there when a young companion grasps my arm and leans her head on my shoulder and tells the salesgirl, "No--- give me the next size bigger." Those things are fun. Part of the delights of being an older admirer. But I couldn't go in alone. I certainly couldn't go in alone and ask the staff for advice or recommendations.

That's disheartening, really. I'm a gentleman of a Certain Age--- a professional, a sometime academic,  holder of post-graduate degrees. Yet I can't ever walk up to the counter at someplace like, say, Good Vibrations in San Francisco or any of its upscale equivalents worldwide and just...ask for advice and recommendations. Whatever my interests might be, from mere vanilla to the very baroque and complicated, I can't risk being judged and mocked. Whatever my young lady buys is fine. And I'm fine carrying her parcels or giving her my own take on what she's looking at. But I'm never going to be able to shop on my own.

One Eight Four: Unsolicited

My friend and correspondent Ms. Flox--- the sex blogger A.V. Flox ---wrote elsewhere not so long ago about a problem of the current dating scene: the flood of unsolicited penis photos being texted to hapless young women. She posted a meme that's been going around the web--- a "prospectus" for a service that promises to show men why dick pics are a poor idea, and, for a nominal fee, to teach men that genitals are not an acceptable conversational opener.

My own response to her was:

I really, really can't imagine ever sending a lovely girl a dick pic. I mean, I don't send pics at all. Reading lists, yes. Hints that I could be dangerous in the theme-park thrill-ride way, yes. I'd consider sending her the heads of her enemies as an introductory gift. But dick pics lack any kind of imagination...and they leave anyone male open to easy ripostes and mockery. Too banal, too cliche, too risky.

I stand by that. In all the time I've flirted with lovely girls on-line--- back to the end of the last century  ---I've sent very, very few girls a photo of myself at all. And never, never a penis pic. A girl that I trust  may get an "official" photo--- something taken for corporate purposes, something with jacket and tie. It takes a lot for me to trust a girl enough to let her see me. In jacket and tie, I can look reasonably serious  and darkly intense. There are bright and lovely girls who can look at my official photos and see more than my age and my appearance. There are a few of them, and deeply treasured they are. But they're a very small niche population. For the most part, I sent reading lists.

I'm male, and all-too-aware that the male body is open to easy mockery.  There are risks that I won't take, risks that a gentleman of a certain age can't afford. Penis pics are one of them. The risks are too high, especially in an age of social media.  Let's be very clear about how the system works. It doesn't matter if you're in the worldwide top 1% for penis length, thickness, and rigidity. If a girl mocks your penis on social media, you've just been effectively re-assigned to micro-penis status. If you're male, you can't win that battle.  Ever. It's not a risk worth taking. Be clear about that.

The whole situation with dick pics may be very different for gay males. Unsolicited penis pics may be the coin of the realm there. I really don't know. But I do know that in my own social world, there's nothing to be gained from dick pics. They're what I was taught to regard as tacky--- never socially appropriate, very much something done by people who lack breeding and social grace.

Reading lists. I stand by that. I would never use an actual photo of myself on a dating site, and I would never send a penis pic. Reading lists are much more about what I'm offering. I'm a creature who's part of a niche experience--- being part of a literary scenario, being a character in a film or novel, exploring things that have the air of the forbidden. I'm sold myself as that much of my life. When I do offer sex, it's far more as a scenario than as flesh. The girls who respond to me want to do things in bed, yes. But they want something else, too--- and the stories being generated outweigh the flesh.

One Eight Three: Letters

I've been thinking about love letters.

The explanation is easy enough, really. I've been cleaning out my flat. Trying to make space, to de-clutter, to look less like I live in a ruined book warehouse or a storage closet at a fading liberal-arts graduate school. I've been emptying out storage bins and throwing out enormous amounts of old papers. I suppose I hate doing that. I was trained to do History and Law, and I was trained to believe that archives were key, that the past is more important than the present. I know--- space is important, minimalism is good for the soul, and it's a bad thing to live on the edge of hoarding. It may be that at my age, the past is what you have instead of a life. Nonetheless, it's time for a de-cluttering campaign. And there've been love letters found amidst all the debris of my life.

The letters themselves date from all across my life. I found a couple of faded ones with stamps that date back deep into the last century, letters from girls when I was in my teens. Some have foreign stamps and add "USA" or "Oesterreich" under my street address. Those are written on airmail stationery, and I'm fairly certain that's not even made any more. Different handwritings, different inks, names I remember from long ago.

We don't do love letters any more, do we? Few enough people even do letters. I've been told that even e-mail is fading. We text, these days. Something as short as possible. We live in a time when people use "TL;DR" as an actual, non-ironic statement. You can guess that I hate that. Of course I like letters. I like the ritual of writing them--- choosing stationery and ink, sealing them with wax. I like it that it takes time for them to arrive. I like it that you can have them to remember and re-read down the years.

Now it does occur to me that in the age of the gender wars, love letters may not be regarded as a good thing. I can see the outrage machine of the Social Justice Cult gearing up to make that parrot-squawk "Problematic!" call that signals that moral evil has been uncovered somewhere.

I can hear the attacks in my head. The gender warriors will regard love letters as "entitled". After all, to send a love letter can be spun to mean that you're imposing on someone else's attention and time, that you're expecting (or demanding) a response, even if that's only some kind of emotional effect in the recipient. Isn't telling someone how you feel about them a demand that they "perform emotional labour"? Can't telling someone about your hopes and fantasies about them in a love letter be spun as something "non-consensual", something like cat-calling? It's all-too-easy to imagine that the gender warriors would hate love letters. They hate all the rituals of romance, after all. They disapprove of courtship and seduction, of the idea of exchanges. They really hate the idea of fantasy, of course. And anything traditional or archaic.

Let's make a note about that. The gender warriors and the Social Justice Cult hate the past and everything about it.  That's something I'll never understand.

In any case, now... Love letters are open to attack by the gender warriors. They're probably a dying art anyway. They take too long to write, they require too much effort. And while couples might discuss "relationships" these days, they don't discuss courtship and seduction; they can't risk sharing dreams and fantasies.

I found small stacks of love letters in my storage bins. Some were bound in ribbon. All of them were parts of my past, memories I hated losing. Some were gently romantic, some were passionate, some were clever and witty, some were full of fairly graphic erotica. All were...hopeful.  That's a part that's as key as promises of torrid encounters. They were hopeful; they were promises of a better future. That's something that makes tossing out old love letters doubly painful. You lose the memories, you lose the proofs of your past--- and you lose the promise of a future.

The letters that have been swept up in my de-cluttering may not have been re-read in years. But they were always there: proofs of my past and promises for futures that never arrived. I'll miss them, miss the idea that I had a past worth remembering. As a gentleman of a Certain Age, I may never have the chance to write more. And that's not something I want to consider.

One Eight Two: Thrill Rides

The other night I went back and re-read a blog entry from three or four years ago--- an American expat girl writing about her life in London. I know the girl a bit, or knew her once, when she was shuttling between the Pacific Northwest and DC, a self-destructive, hyper-aware, ghostly-beautiful co-ed. The entry itself is an  account of her No-Names-Please encounter with an English guy she picked up at a club in Camden Town.  I can't tell you much about the setting or the club life she wrote about.  London's not my town. I'm a creature of cities out on the Donau and not the Thames. Anyway, the story did call up memories of my own.

When the expat girl took the English guy home, she shook off the warning of a girl with her at the club not to do it: I never heed warnings.  When he fingered her in the taxi (a £35 ride? Bloody hell--- a long way back to her rooms at LSE) and told her very graphically what he's going to do to her, she thought---

You're thinking this is horrible, but the horrible part is that I only smirk. I'm not offended or scared. I feel calm and cool...

In bed, he did hurt her, and when she was loud he bit her nipple hard enough to draw blood and said, Stop making noise, you fucking slag.  What she thought was---

I'm terrified but I'm enjoying this.

I'm terrified that I'm enjoying this.

Oh, the story never goes very much farther into anything dark. Don't think that. There's rough sex all night, and some fairly gentle sex and conversation the next morning, and then he charged his phone (nice touch), dressed, told her that he did have a girlfriend, and left. She wasn't even really annoyed about that; she liked being hot enough to entice a stranger to cheat on his girlfriend. The next day she was too sore to walk much, sore from no-lube anal, and her left breast was bruised and the nipple erect with a smeared ring of dried blood all around it. No regrets, though, or only the dim and tired awareness of how much she likes courting danger. It's a very hot story, and I'm...well, envious of her for having it to tell. I can't wish I'd been the guy, though. She likes her men tall and handsome and with the whole rock-hard abs thing. And she always did strike me as a girl who's harsh enough to comment on a male partner's looks and...ummm...endowment to his face. Not anything I'd risk. There's no point at all in wanting to be the guy. I meet none of her criteria, and probably never have or will.

What I am thinking about tonight is her  whole elision of arousal and terror:

I'm terrified but I'm enjoying this.

I'm terrified that I'm enjoying this.

I envy that--- I envy anyone who has that said about them, who can evoke that in an attractive girl.

I have no idea if anyone has ever thought that around me. Or thought those things in any serious way. I've always been the Theme Park Thrill Ride for a certain kind of co-ed. They can do things that they've been taught were Bad, or at least risky, and they can do them with someone like me, who really does meet all the criteria for a Lifetime Movie of the Week villain. They can do those things--- go home with the much-older man who's certainly a predator of some kind and just might be dangerous ---and still know that it's like getting aboard the much-hyped thrill ride at the theme park. Faux-danger--- you get the adrenaline rush and get to pretend to be terrified, and you know that in a few minutes you'll be able to walk away from the ride and feel like you've had an adventure, like you've done something, like you have a story to dine out on for weeks.

I've played to that image, of course, the image of being dangerous and depraved. It's all part of roué-hood, isn't it.  I used to laugh about it. Work the creepy, I'd say. Tell the girl that, yes, you are everything Lifetime Channel and her parents and Dr. Drew and Women's Studies 101 told her to be afraid of, and is she up for the risk? It works a fair amount of the time. It really does. Faux-danger is an alluring thing. Horror films and theme parks make piles of money off the idea.

And people do dine out on stories. I've done it myself for years--- sought out experiences specifically for their value as stories. I've known many a posh girl, many a girl with a professional degree and a serious career, who's deployed stories to suggest that she had a wicked, interesting, intriguing past, one that got pretty heavy, one that endows her with a hint of danger still, one where her tales of escape will leave friends and dates begging for more.

It's still a bit exhausting for me, of course--- being the dark lover. And unsettling, too. A lovely, vodka-fueled co-ed stretched out on a bed late one night, back arched, thrusting sharp hipbones up at you and begging you to hurt her raises problems. There's always the morning-after regrets issue. There is always that. And as incredible as it is to have some lovely girl yielding herself up to you and asking you to go further, to not have any limits with her, it does put you in an awkward position. You have to be pitch-perfect at things. The girl can be telling you to do all these things she's read about or fantasized about or seen in films, and you have to get them exactly right. There's no room for error. I've said no to things, which has surprised girls. I've said no to choking girls when they've asked--- that's not something where you can make a mistake. (Scarves. I might do it a bit with a scarf, if a girl asked, but never with my hands. Not that way. Never.) There was a flat no to the one seriously MDMA-dreamy girl who asked me to cut her. That I wouldn't do; that I won't do. That's not something I ever want to have to explain to anyone later. That particular girl had faded scars on her hipbones and thighs--- she'd cut herself in high school ---and she wanted to have a lover do it for her. That was her fantasy, she said. Be clear, now: I had no moral objection. It wasn't even that I distrusted myself or thought I'd turn into Patrick Bateman. But I wasn't going to become the target and the Bad Guy if she had morning-after regrets.

I do suppose there's another kind of Thrill Ride that's easier. It's one that girls I have loved wanted. I don't have to be faux-terrifying. I only have to be older and attentive and literate. There are girls who want the experience of an Older Lover, who want what an Older Lover can offer: booklists and conversations and an introduction to things they've wanted--- being part of a world that's mannered and bookish and intellectual. They want an Older Lover who can show them things, teach them things. A lovely girl at McGill in Montreal wrote me once to say that the exchange seemed perfect to her: youth and beauty and sex exchanged for knowledge and instruction. That's easier to do. I have no especial problem with the idea of whips and candle wax, of masks and silk scarves around slender wrists. I have no problem slapping a girl at the moment of orgasm. But this latter way is just...simpler. I can be the kind of Greying Lover that my Montreal friend always wrote about. I don't know that I can teach a lovely co-ed anything about Life, but I did work in a bookstore all through grad school, and I stood up in front of classes and lectured for years. I can always talk about books and ideas. That's easy to do. A different quality of Thrill Ride. I could do it for the girls I have most loved over the years. It's not something I could do with the expat girl in London, though. It's not even something she'd want.

There's a strange lull in life these days, a strange kind of exhaustion in my life. There's maybe one girl in my life right now who'd appreciate both poses--- who'd ride the thrill ride, terrified as part of being wet-and-breathless, but who'd want the long conversations later, who'd never worry about rock-hard abs and how many miles one could run. Alas, though--- she's eight thousand miles away, living on the beach at Wainui. At the moment, the best I can do is put ink to paper and offer her tales of books and ideas alternating with thrill ride scenarios. I'd like to think that she'd say what the expat girl told the English guy:

I'm terrified but I'm enjoying this.

I'm terrified that I'm enjoying this.

I want her to say other things, too--- Have you read this? What do you see out there in the dark, in the waves? Let me tell you all the things I see in my city.  That's part of being older, I suppose: fear that you can't evoke either thing in lovely girls any more.

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?