As much as we may or may not want to admit it, our world and
our society are incredibly dominated by sex. I mean, think about it: clothes
get tinier and tinier, gym memberships get more and more expensive, and workout
moguls like Jillian Michaels have hour long reality shows chronicling their
daily lives. Popular culture isn’t about being smart or talented. It’s about
being skinny, fit and sexy. It’s about Microsoft Selfie and getting people
addicted to your hypersexualized self-portrait.
No one cares about how smart you are or where you’ve been.
They care about what you look like naked
and whether or not you’re willing to provide horizontal refreshments. And not
only that, but they are probably wondering how many drinks it will take to get
you there and how many they’ll have to commit to actually paying for. Listen to
me: wise words from the woman working at the Sexiest Brand on Earth. I get paid
to help people showcase their assets.
And while you may say that this seems like yet another one
of my neurotic, bitter diatribes about how terrible men are, let me stop you
right here and congratulate you because YOU’RE RIGHT.
But to be honest, this realization can make you a little
paranoid and unwilling to trust. The understanding that men only care about
what you look like and what you can physically do for them is absolutely
infuriating. What is even more enraging is that if you don’t reciprocate this
shallow attraction, you’re accused of being too guarded. You are deemed un-fun
and antisocial. It couldn’t be that you just wanted to be appreciated for
something more than your 32DD’s, could it? Of course not! You’re obviously frigid,
frozen and deflecting attention, right?!
From zero to even, I can’t.
Sex without love is
as hollow and ridiculous as love without sex. –Hunter S. Thompson
All of this reminds me of a story: There was one time, a
very long time ago, when I exhibited interest in a man. (Although as more and
more time has gone by, I have come to affectionately call him Infant Man
Child.) He was (and probably still is, despite his primarily unhealthy
lifestyle) very handsome and some of the trouble was, he was totally aware of
it.
He came from money and liked to flash it in an ironic, I-don’t-even-care-about-money
way. It sort of annoyed me how charming he was when he would talk with his
hands, drawing attention to his well-maintained Cartier watch. He had been
here, there and everywhere and loved to recount the stories to me. To be
honest, it sounds like I can’t stand the guy but on the contrary, I actually
liked him. And even though I felt like there were still lots of layers to
uncover, I was relatively sure he was a good egg. I even signed my name a
couple of times with his last name. You know, just to see how it flowed.
One night, I met up with him and I tried really hard to look
good. This was primarily because I was under the misguided impression that he
was too good for me, too handsome for me, and probably too sexual for me. How I had ever managed to wrangle a date
with him, I’ll never know, I told my much younger, much more insecure self.
Looking back on it, I don’t know why I let him have that much power over me. He
was basically unemployed and living off of his parents.
Anyway, we had a really good night for the most part. We
talked for what was probably hours but felt like only minutes. He gave the
impression that he cared about what I had to say, which is saying something because
back then I had a lot less stories. They weren’t nearly as interesting as the
ones I have now and I wasn’t particularly good at telling them.
At one point, we even interlocked fingers without realizing
it because it just felt so natural. When we realized it, neither of us moved; we
just sort of sat there measuring each other. He was probably wondering how far
he could actually take this. I was wondering if it was dark enough in there to
hide my freckles. To this day, I’ve only allowed a handful of people to
actually see them.
We waste time looking
for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love. –Tom Robbins
At the end of the night, he walked me to my car and stood
there sort of gazing at me. Looking back on it, he almost looked a little lost.
This is it, I thought to myself, I’m going to have to kiss him goodnight and
who knows what will happen after that.
The truth is, even back when I hadn’t quite figured out the
importance of winged eyeliner, I had this gift of figuring out men. Maybe it came
from knowing a lot of men who pathologically lie for a living but with this
particular man, I could sense it early on. Maybe he liked to hear me talk but
what he really wanted was to get my clothes off and bang me in his living room.
I knew this from the beginning; I just tried to breeze past
it. I could sense it when I walked in the bar and he jumped from his place and
hugged me. He wrapped both of his arms around me and held me close, like he was
taking me in. (He later told me, in a quieter moment, that my scent was
intoxicating, which probably would have been a panty dropper if he hadn’t acted
later like such an #InfantManChild.) Listen, sex is important, sure. But I don’t
think it should really be the first thing on your mind when you’re on a first
date with someone.
I knew by the way he clung to me when he walked me to my
car, like he didn’t want me to go. At the time I thought it was really cute
because quite frankly, I wasn’t really used to all the attention and I was
enjoying it immensely. But then things got super weird and everything was
quickly becoming clear.
He was either heavily intoxicated (which could very well be)
or super clumsy. He was haphazard and sloppy, like he wasn’t sure if he wanted
to kiss me or look into my backseat. And that’s not a euphemism. He was all
over the place.
It weirded me out because he made a perfect night crazy
awkward. It made me angry that after the way I had opened up to him, all he
really wanted from me was a tousle in the sheets. I feel like a well-dressed
hooker!
Listen, I understand how the world works. I’m not completely
submerged in a Nora Ephron movie. I just felt like I deserved a little more
than that. I don’t understand why I can’t sit across the table from a man
without expectations. It couldn’t just be that they want to have lunch with
you, right? Oh, most certainly not. Because men don’t think with their brains!
Everything in the world
is about sex except sex. Sex is about power. –Oscar Wilde
But that’s the reality about sex, friends. It’s about power
and calculation. It’s an exchange, a business transaction, a way of silencing
someone or getting them to talk. It’s a secret spiller, an erotic show and a
mind game you play naked.
One of my oldest, dearest friends used to be a model. I
always gingerly called her “the lingerie model” because essentially, that’s
what she was. She has an array of all these incredible photos in really sexy,
beautiful lingerie. I still look at them sometimes and think to myself, I can’t
believe she’s real. Like, she’s really that beautiful in person. But the
reality is, she did all sorts of modeling and is absolutely one of the most
beautiful women I have ever seen.
I remember she told me this story one time and her face was actually
getting red because she was just that
angry. She was shooting a music video somewhere in south Florida and as she
puts it, these shoots are about the street cred. She didn’t get paid any exorbitant
amount of money but it was a way for her to meet people. It was a way for her
to show her face and gain some professional contacts. And naturally, as
beautiful as she is, things like that didn’t come difficult.
So she takes a sip of her fresh whiskey and slams her hand
down on my grandmother’s table. “Basically what had happened was,” she took
another sip and an angry breath, “I met this man who told me he had this
project I would be perfect for.” From what I can remember, and it’s been a few
years, it was essentially a bit part in a small movie project. She was ecstatic
because she had wanted to branch out into acting for some time. “It was nothing
crazy popular,” she told me, “but it would get my name out there.”
He tells her that he wants to meet with her after the shoot,
grab some dinner and they could talk about it. She agreed and ended up sitting
across the table from him. “But we were in this round booth,” she laughed and
demonstrated a circle with her finger, “and he just kept scooting closer to me.”
He offered her drink after drink, which she declined because it was a business
dinner. She had a long drive home and she wanted to keep her wits about her.
But this man was persistent. He kept trying to shove drinks
down her throat and continued to close the space between them in the booth.
Eventually she got fed up and excused herself. She got up to leave and started
heading toward the restaurant exit when someone grabs her arm out of nowhere.
She turns around, sees it’s him and punches him square in the face. “I only
wish I had thought to kick him in the balls instead of punch him in the face,”
she laughed.
Moral of the Crazy: I’m
not saying that men are animals and women are angels. I’m just saying that men
have a way of missing what is important. Obviously, everyone has needs.
Everyone, men and women included, like to feel sexy and attractive. They like
to be touched and caressed and reminded what it feels like to be physically loved.
But what I don’t understand is the male propensity to just
forget all of that in order to most easily spread their seed. I mean, in some
cases, it seems like they don’t even care who the person is as long as they’re
able to get their satisfaction. And that’s the part that I hate.
Do you know that my husband and his friends play this
stupid, godawful game called “How many?” “How many?” is this game that explores
how many beers it would take to have sex with an unattractive girl. So
basically like, they’re out having a Boy’s Night (which of course includes a
bunch of random shots and drinks because their wives aren’t there) and they
find a woman who is considerably “unattractive” and they try to figure out how
many drinks it would take to bang her.
And this is coming from one of the most sensitive,
thoughtful, absolutely caring individuals I have personally ever met. This just
furthers my point. Like seriously, who the fuck comes up with this shit?
Maybe it’s just that women are sexual because they want to
feel love and they want to show love. For women, it’s all about a connection
and feeling special. For men, it’s a hot way to decompress. I just wish that
there was some way we could come to an understanding, a happy medium.
Maybe men take sex for granted. Maybe they incessantly act
like children and think with the wrong body part. Maybe they don’t appreciate
women the way they ought to. But maybe that’s the advantage of being a woman.
Maybe we’re really the ones with all the sexual power. Maybe it’s a woman’s prerogative
to make sure it’s really memorable.
You know they say the best way to get a good man is to train
him…
The difference between
sex and love is that sex relieves tension and love causes it. –Woody Allen
Comments
Post a Comment