I’ve been crazy busy, and haven’t been able to write much lately. Also, there just hasn’t been much happening in my sex life of note. Well, that’s not quite true. There’s my recent evenings with Cricket and Tamora, each of which I hope to reprise soon enough. And, Isabel and Tamora seem to be on board with meeting, and sucking my cock together. But it seems it’ll be at least a little while before circumstances conspire to make that possible. Things with Sofia (the most intense, longest-standing, satisfying sexual relationship I’ve had other than, you know, marriage) have been… complicated… but we seem to be reaching a new equilibrium. V and I had a brief flirtation, but circumstances intervened and our flirtation came to a screeching halt. It will, I trust, resume. But not for a bit. A new hottie just sent me her orgasm – one I’ll share with you shortly. It’s scorchingly hot. And I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.
But not a lot of writing.
Just a couple of things I’ve been thinking about:
Anger: I think (I know) I carry around a fair amount of rage that I don’t express, don’t even consciously feel much of the time. I tend to just bottle it up and carry it in my muscles. In my calves, in my shoulders. This anger is, I think/suspect, disproportionately directed at women, in ways that I protect myself, and them, pretty comprehensively from.
Empathy: I feel empathy almost preternaturally. My impulse always is toward empathy. For everyone. For Bill Cosby. For Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. For Rick Perry (!). It’s like a reflex in me, one I can’t suppress. And/but, I find myself particularly drawn, and empathetic toward, those who utterly lack empathy. (See above.) WTF?
Frequency vs. duration: why is it that I’d rather a four-hour session of sex in which I come once than a four-hour session in which I come twice, or three times, or seven times? Why do I insist on making the orgasm the end of a sexual interaction. (Mostly. Not always.)
Sex work: There’s a new book, Paid For, by Rachel Moran. I haven’t read it. I won’t read it. But I read this review of it in the Times, and it just… made me angry. Not the review. The review seemed spot on. But the book. Why do people think it’s ok to generalize from their experience? Rachel Moran is a woman who began sex work as a teen, and, after a number of years, reached some conclusions about it – notably, that it’s not possible for any woman to engage in sex work in a manner that is consensual, freely chosen, and that all sex work = sex trafficking. Obviously, as a man who – at least consciously – really likes women, and who paid a lot of them for sex, it’s important to me to believe that those transactions (ideally all of them, but at a minimum, the vast majority of them) were indeed consensual. And/but, while it’s important to my own self-concept to believe that, I also don’t understand the turn of mind which says, “Because I didn’t choose freely, no one possibly could.” So. Is it possible to be a “happy hooker”? Certainly, a number of women, friends and otherwise, have told me so. What proportion do they represent of the total sex working population? I don’t know. I can’t know. But I know this: the stigma associated with sex work can’t possibly be good for the women doing it.
Sexuality: I recently have been thinking about how the Kinsey scale might be flawed. There are men, for example, who think of themselves as straight, whose primary sexual and emotional relationships are with women, but who nonetheless just love sucking cock. Does this make them bisexual? Somewhere further right on the Kinsey scale? Or is the linearity of that spectrum misleading? Might we have two spectrums (spectra), one with respect to each (binary) gender? And what of non-binary gender? Someone smarter than I am should reconceptualize all this.
Polyamory: Never mind the linguistic incoherence of the term (“poly” is Greek; “amory” is Latin), what of people who claim not simply that they are pursuing a polyamorous existence, but that they are, in an essential way, polyamorous? Is “poly” an adjective describing individuals or relationships? Or both? Is poly an orientation, as some claim? Or is it an organizational choice for relationships?
Swinging: I’m a guy who’s spent my share of time in swingers’ clubs. But I don’t get it. I mean, I get voyeurism. I get exhibitionism. And I get an infinite desire for sexual connection with others. But I don’t get compressing that connection all the way down to an instant, to simple sex between naked bodies heretofore unknown. I’ve done it. It’s fine, I suppose. But I don’t really understand it. Not in the “it’s not for me” way, but in the “I don’t understand, conceptually, how it works” way.
Male bloggers: Why are there so damned few of us? I don’t get it. The interwebs are filled with smart, thoughtful, sexy women writing about sex – the sex they have, the thoughts they have about sex, and so on. (They’re also filled with boring, banal women writing about sex.) But there just aren’t very many men writing about sex. WHY NOT? Related: why are women so much less interested in reading men’s blogs than women’s blogs? In the few conversations I’ve had with female bloggers about stats, I’ve been just blown away by how much bigger their audience is than mine. Some of this, surely, is horn-dog men just desperately seeking porn, and the fantasy of fucking a woman. But not all of it. Here’s an example: look at the comments sections of any of the blogs on my blogroll, or any other woman’s sex blog, and you’ll see so much more activity than here, on mine. I don’t believe that this is simply because my blog sucks, or is forbidding, or whatever. The numbers, the scale of magnitude of the difference, suggests to me that something else is going on. And I don’t understand it.
There. Just a few thoughts. More (always) to come.
Plenty of things I want to comment upon. I’ll start from the end (closer to look back to when writing my thoughts down).
Blogging: I’m going to write this in a very raw manner. Understand that everything I write are just my thoughts on the subject, I have no particular certitude about it all. I think the reason why women comment more and write more is similar to the reason women go to therapy more readily, or go to their BFF to pour their heart out. Men don’t do that as readily because they’ve been told from the beginning that boys shouldn’t show their feelings, let alone discuss them!
Maybe this could actually explain the reason why women comment more on women’s posts than men’s? Because they feel that their words are expected, encouraged, where as they’re not used to men welcoming their comments? These are just questions going through my mind upon reading your words.
One more thought: maybe it’s to do with the reasons everyone likes women on women porn where not all men will enjoy men on men?
Swinging: Having done it a few times… there is a definite attraction for me to experiment more than I have in the past (which was close to nil). But I must say, when I am in a swinger’s club, if a different man is fucking me, I don’t feel a connection to *him* but to the lover I went in with. I understand this may be different for men, at least for some men, as there are many who go with an escort or someone they’ve just met. But to me, the men I have sex with on these occasions are not much more than a sex toy. Sorry guys 😉 They’re not the ones I’m seeking contact with, through touch or sight, the ones I crave a connection with.
I mean, obviously all this comes in addition to the exhilaration of the exhibitionist side of me, and the voyeur as well I guess.
Polyamory: I think this is more about the person than the relationship. I notice in my own life that there is one central person, with no doubt. But there are a few others orbiting not far. Men (for now there have been no women, though this may change) towards whom I feel physical attraction, but also something deeper, a connection of sorts, whether a deep friendship or something closer to universal love? I can’t quite put my finger on it. But I think I’m a bit poly. And it’s got nothing to do with the relationship, the main one. It’s just that the openness of *that* relationship allows for the others which means I’m not constrained by moral standards. Or don’t feel constrained. And it’s a different feeling altogether from the swinger’s experience. I don’t think I’d go to a swinger’s club with anyone else than my main lover.
Sexuality: I think I agree with you 🙂
Sex work: Here too, though I have very little experience of it myself, so I wouldn’t want to take too much of a stance here.
Frequency vs duration: you gave me something to ponder and discuss with my lover. Thank you 🙂
Empathy: I’m like you. I feel empathy for many people, and not just the ‘victims’. Sometimes, you’ve got to guard yourself against it.
Anger: I’m sorry. It’s all I can say 🙂
Here, a post’s worth of a comment! Or maybe you would have preferred that I cut it into 8, to raise the stats? 🙂
Thank you for all this, Dawn!
🙂
Thank you for making me think 😉
There’s so much to say here, but I’m going to *try* to keep it essential.
Anger: this is something that I’ve always believed about men who pay for sex. I believe that they generally have issues with their relationship toward women especially anger (not necessarily violent) issues toward women.
It’s something that I have always believed but this obviously doesn’t mean that it is true.
We could analyze you…. rather, you could analyze yourself, especially your relationship with the female figures in your early life to see what/why it is that you so desperately feel you need to control women(I say control because it makes sense to me that your need to dominate comes from your anger)… Maybe you’ve already done that. Maybe I missed it … Or maybe it’s totally irrelevant.
Frequency vs duration: I have just been asking myself this exact same thing. Why is it that men would prefer to last? I would rather come 10 times than last 4 hours. It’s not just you though, it’s most men. It baffles me and it’s frustrating. Personally I’d rather have a man last a decent time like 20 minutes rather than 4 hours. It shows that I’m hot enough to make them cum. It shows me how much they want me. 4 hours is like saying, I don’t want you, I want *you* to want me. It seems egocentric.
Sex work: I don’t believe the happy hooker exists, again, it’s my own belief, not truth. But psychologically speaking I think that women who go into sex work do so because they have issues: approval, poor self image or self esteem, need for adrenaline (alternative to drugs), abandonment issues… the list goes on. They might think they are happy, but on the whole I don’t think they really are. I also think these issues will eventually surface.
Male bloggers: Personally I would love to see more male bloggers, and the few that I knew have mostly disappeared. Perhaps Dawn is right, maybe it’s because they have difficulty expressing their feelings. Maybe men have a different way of working through things compared to women. However, most of my commenters are men. I don’t have too many women who comment anymore.
I also think that comment activity has dropped for everyone because we’re on our computers less and our phones more, commenting from a phone sucks the primordial bucket.
It could also be that most women who are blogging are better at networking, so they comment on other blogs to keep interest up. I’ve given up on all that.
I guess essential didn’t really work.
Your flirtation with V on Tumblr was sexy. I hope you are right that [something] will resume. Your stories about her are by far my favorites, and largely illustrate why the idea of sex [or anticipation thereof] with you appeals to me. Someday …
I’m so pleased to learn that you’re reading/paying attention. And thrilled that the idea of sex [or anticipation thereof] with me appeals.
Rest assured: I’m fully engaged with anticipation thereof.
Oh, yes. Still. And good! And, yes.
On another note, the topic of paid sex, about which I can’t offer much except: (1) confusion about the semantic differences between this and the many socially acceptable ways that affection can be bartered and compensated; and (2) this poem, which was sent to me by a lovely young lady on OKC during a bout of date planning, about whom and which I promise you will hear more (privately, in good time): http://exceptindreams.livejournal.com/397744.html
That’s quite an interesting poem. And I look forward to hearing more. As you know, I’m very (im)patient.
N.
I had meant to comment earlier on this post but life got the better of my time until now.
I don’t have much to offer which is actually what I wanted to address. Above you wrote, “why are women so much less interested in reading men’s blogs than women’s blogs?”
For me this is untrue, a good majority of the blogs I read are men’s blogs or women whom I find of a higher intelligence than myself. I’m drawn to you folks like a moth to a flame. I want to see what you see, get a better understanding of men and what makes them tick, how do you process feelings and compartmentalize, etc…
The down side of this is that because I am here in learning mode, I am often left with nothing to offer. That doesn’t mean however that I am not reading or absorbing. I am!
But if you’re reading good men’s blogs, I want to know what they are!
I didn’t say they were good. lol
I suppose you didn’t. But why read them, then?