Compartmentalization

I had breakfast with L yesterday. She has been working through a variety of feelings, some of which have a lot to do with me, some of which have something to do with me, and many of which have nothing whatsoever to do with me. But she said, and we discussed, a few things that I thought interesting.

She observed, with some distaste, that my blog sits here and is an effective “trawler” (her word) for women. That I need do nothing, really, at this point, and there are women who read my blog and who seek me out.


I suppose this is (theoretically) true, though I should point out that, to my knowledge, I have fucked exactly one woman whom I met as a result of this blog (and one whom I knew before I started the blog, but who found the blog and used it to ask me to allow her to suck my cock). There was one other with whom I went on one date as a result of the blog. If the blog’s a trawler, it’s a pretty damned inefficient one. (And, as L points out, there are some efficiencies: people who get to know me here really know me pretty well, and it’s “quite a bit more efficient than anything in [my] past.”) AND, while it may well be true, it’s so far from why I started the blog, or why I keep writing, as to be almost laughable. If I make a new friend, form a new connection, or whatever, that’s phenomenal, and I’m psyched. But I blog here because, well, because at this point, I need to.

In any event, what the blog has done is help me to get to know virtually a steady stream of women. And I enjoy these distant buddies. And some of them have become downright compulsions/obsessions for me, at times, for sure. Right now, there are two with whom I engage on a daily basis. H and one whom you have not yet met (who’s very new). And the longest-lived of them, and least substantive, which ticks along at a very low level (every week or two I ask her to send me a picture; she does). These relationships – of which, at this point, there have been something like a half dozen of substance since I started – are fascinating to me, both in terms of what the women get, and in terms of what I get. And one day, I’ll explore that a bit more. Suffice it to say, for the purposes of this post, that when these relationships work for me, what I get tends to be a mix of compliance and verbal and visual stimulation. I think I need some of each to sustain me for more than, say, a week.

In recent days (weeks, months), though, I’ve been struck by another category of distant interaction, virtual friend: women who want to connect with me on a purely verbal level, for whom the visual with me (sending pictures) either is threatening, uncomfortable, or simply undesired. There have been a number of these as well, women who seem to get off on my writing (thank you! thank you! thank you!), and who want to get to know me better, to get known by me, and to launch epistolary flirtations with me.

I’ve been having one conversation with such a woman recently over on FetLife. She closed a note to me recently by saying, “Honestly, now, and all jokes aside, why the fascination with seeing what my ass looks like?” (The answer is, if I don’t know what your ass looks like, I can’t even know that I want to be exchanging e-mails with you.)

L has been made a bit uncomfortable by the “affectless” way in which I write about sex, by the seeming uniformity and repetition in my description of my various partners’ “heart-shaped ass,” “perfect breasts,” “hips that flare out.” I think she feels a bit cheapened by the way in which I not only seem to reduce women to body parts, to leave out whatever affect may characterize my relationships with women, but, having done so, can’t even be bothered to write well about those body parts. She says it makes her feel  objectified – “in the not good way.” I’m intrigued by this. I spent the first forty years of my life terrified of objectifying women. I’ve spent the last few learning that many of them like it, and learning how to do it. And now, it seems, at least according to L, I’m somehow doing it wrong. Shit.

“Maybe it’s just that I’m a shitty sex writer?” I suggested. Which I think, by the way, is true: I write much better about thoughts, feelings, emotions. Sex? It seems to me, at the end, all to be fairly the same and (actually) not all that interesting. What’s interesting isn’t how I put my dick where. It’s all the more subtle and intense stuff that surrounds that. It’s power, it’s romance, it’s discovery and exploration. And that’s the stuff I like writing about more.

[Incidentally, this is why I think the half-life of sex blogs is so short, why I find so many of them ultimately unreadable. Because so many of them all really are about the very basic acts of foreplay and intercourse, rather than the far more complex acts of power exchange and dominance and submission, though L points out, wisely, I think, that when I write about power and dominance, my partners often come across as “incidental.” This feels to me powerfully, viscerally untrue – though I don’t dispute that my writing may make it seem so. To ponder….] And she writes, “I’d like to see more of the parts that get you *to* the sex, or what interaction inspired the ruminations. The wooing, whatever form it takes. The interactions that reveal a person to be of interest- whether it’s the quick compliance, exceptional ass, or some snappy repartee.” Point taken. I’ll try to do that.

There’s more, of course: writing about sex isn’t particularly emotionally complex. Writing about emotions? It is. It’s much “safer” for me to write about what I do with women than about what I feel about them. I think that, in her heart, L knows this – both that this is true and that the paucity of words about what I feel about the women I fuck doesn’t equate to a paucity of emotion. L knows how, what, I feel about her, what I felt about her when we were fucking. And she knows that, as much as I talk a good game, and am, on occasion, capable of fucking a woman I’ve just met, the truth is, I like getting to know a woman, and actually developing a friendship, a somewhat intimate bond that is formed around a sexual connection, but that incorporates affect and affection as well. (I’m not such a slut after all – notwithstanding the tag line for the blog.)

But I take as valid her criticism, her observation that you might not know any of that about me from reading my blog. And you may never learn it first-hand – I may never show it to you, for a whole host of reasons, some of which are characterological (I don’t think I’m all that capable of showing it to you, rather than gesturing toward it), and some of which are more tactical (I just think it’s better, easier, if I don’t).

One final note, re: L. As we were saying good-bye this morning, she commented that I had shown particularly poor taste, a week ago, when I told her I found a mutual friend of ours hot. “It’s like pillow talk,” L said, without our having fucked. “You didn’t even butter me up by telling me you think you want me.”

[Well, lest anyone wonder, I’m enormously frustrated by L’s ultimate unavailability to me sexually. The issue for me is, she, her husband, my wife, and I all have agreed that L and I aren’t going to have a sexual relationship. So the way I roll is, I just don’t go there. Don’t even joke about fucking. The way L rolls? She wants to flirt with me, with the edges of propriety. She gets off on that shit. Whereas it makes my dick shrivel up and die. Seriously. (But for the record, she is hot, and I’m particularly fond of her tiny little ass.)]

Some months ago, Jen asked me if I might not write something positive about her when she read a draft I had written. I was mortified, and went back, immediately, and inserted words that attempted to communicate how hot I find her.

See, I just don’t like writing about women’s bodies, or faces. I like writing about their compliance. And/but I need both in order to be turned on: I’m not, in the end, a sapiosexual, much as I might wish I were. Intelligence turns me on, but looks and compliance do it more. I’m not sure I like this about myself. If I had my druthers, I think I would be a sapiosexual. I’ve written before about how I’m not particularly attracted to fat chicks, and about how I have a “type” – petite – the smaller the better.

This is one of the things I’ve had to come to terms with as a progressive, pro-feminist, guy: I like the women I fuck to be cute, in a fairly conventional sort of way. And I want them to be compliant. And both of these are more important to me than that they be intelligent. Although – and this is key – if there’s to be any longevity to a relationship between me and a woman, intelligence becomes essential after, say, the second or third date.

In other words, the way to my cock is through my cock, but if you want to stay there, you have to appeal to my brain, too.

One comment

  1. i don’t understand your friend. she seems to be investing too much time/thoughts on you (?). why does she feel cheapened? you’re not a bad sex writer. it’s your blog for fucks sake.

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