Who Is This Girl Next Door?

A cursory glance at some online dating profiles - the generalist sites, not those catering to, ahem, specialist tastes - shows that many women self-describe as "the girl next door".

Clearly, none of their childhoods were blessed with the Stannaford family as neighbors. Tanya and Lindy were...how shall I put this...adventuresome, and I don't mean in the building a tree-house sense. Tanya was my age, Lindy a few years older, and they were both scary in that way that wordly girls intimidate innocent young boys. For a start, they had bodies with curves, and boyfriends with attitude. They were fascinating and mystifying in equal measure. I spent a lot of time pondering them.

But I can only realistically assume that my model of girls next door is the exception. The mature woman of today looking for a date online obviously believes men are attracted to the memory of someone from their own childhood. Thought of like that, there's a not altogether wholesome infantilist tone to all this. What mental image are these women trying to send to attract men? Do they think we're looking for the playmate from twenty years ago all grown up and now with makeup and stockings?

I think I've inadvertently struck upon the magic word here, which is 'wholesome'. The archetypal GND is a wholesome gal who understands your background and the culture that raised you. You'll be able to connect on a familiar level, and talk a common language. Or, if you get lucky, you'll find Lindy Stannaford and have a really good time.


Bottoms Up, Neighbors.

Man 1.0

Photo credit. 

Civilization depends in large part upon men curbing their instincts. Restraint, self-discipline, filtering, gratification denial; call it what you like, it's all about out-thinking the first reaction.

In a monogamous relationship, it's natural for a woman to want to see a little (or, umm, a lot?) of the unrestricted male. I don't mean violence, of course. That's where trust comes in. But for everyone's benefit, raising the gate on a few more basic instincts leads to a happier experience. How many times have I heard women ask:

How do you really feel?

or

Just let go!

or variations thereof.

Not so easy. Curtailing the civilization software and (temporarily) re-installing Man 1.0 requires practice and understanding. My practice and your understanding.

Now. Where are those 5 1/4" floppy disks?



Bottoms Up, Coders.

What Kind of Person is Google?

If we had the power to turn search engines into people, what kind of person would we shake hands with if Google turned biological? IMO, he'd be that guy who sits off to the side of the party, close to the door but away from the kitchen. When people ask "Where can I put my coat?" or "Is this beer cold?" he answers immediately without looking up from his smartphone. An Android, natch. He's dismissively inclined, dispatching we unclever mortals without even a smile.

Google IS a male. He LIKES direct questions, and issues direct answers in response, taking a kind of smug satisfaction in being right. Right is a relative concept in Cyber. Mr Google has no filter for the crass, nor discernment for subtleties of certain kinds of search terms. In that way, he's like a savant - knowledgeable without being smart. Like an immature male. Master Google rather than Mister Google?

And I wonder about his name. Master Google isn't Andrew or Tom or Stavros. He's not Shamal or Riccardo, and he's definitely not a Buddy. I'm tempted to call him Neil. As in Neil Armstrong, another emotionless numbers-butt who did amazing things but looks like a stiff in a bar. Master Neil Google.

I don't know.

What I DO know is that we need a female Google. Girl Google is a more emotionally-grounded and nuanced Google who tends more towards asking how you feel about the answer. We should call it Booble. Miss Booble is the girl-next-door who won the scholarship to a fancy university and ended up turning her pep into $600 per share. Miss B is probably hosting the party. She's catered amazingly - including Inuit appropriate snacks for her friends from Far North Canada - and gets to talk meaningfully with all her guests.

Miss B is totally the girl every man wants, but she is oddly attracted to the moody loner in the corner engrossed in his phone. He's short and cool. He's achingly aloof. He ignores all but her most direct questions. And she wants him with all her being.





Bottoms Up, Searchers.

Lessons from my Cat

Pic credit.

Pain is so closely related to pleasure that we sometimes lose track of where one morphs into the other. Hormones, I guess, all those interesting wee chemicals our bodies live and die by create this intriguing dichotomy.

During sex, with the taught pleasure string and the altered pain threshold, pain and pleasure can even be reversed. In the cool calm of a Sunday morning, HOW WEIRD IS THAT?

Not really so weird, as long as we understand that a good flogging is excellent for one's wellbeing. Alright, so maybe just a light flogging, between consenting adults, with all the usual precautions. Gawd, I can't even make a small joke about the pleasures of a little S&M play without safety caveats. What have our sex lives become now that the Safety Nazis and PC Police are in the corner watching us act out our fantasies?

Oh, did I mention to ALWAYS use a safeword?

Anyway, my cat teaches me much about the nature of women. Cats have claws. Cats, when happy, knead those claws into one's flesh. It's a classic pleasure and pain scenario: my sweet tortoiseshell purrs and punctures my skin. She's in ecstasy, and I'm...happy she's happy. But OUCH, those things are sharp!

Remember, women have claws, too. Thank goodness.





Bottoms Up, Felines!

Wombatgram #17 - Field Guide to the Egotist

In the heat of dating, ego is easily mislabelled. I've seen it called confidence, or arrogance or even a mask for shyness.

The egotistical man is relatively simple to spot.

Of course, I'm assuming you think it's undesirable...and I might be wrong.





Bottoms Up, Super Id.

Never Look a Gift Babe in the Brain

Mr Nights' comment yesterday neatly captured one segment of men's response to women.

Never look a gift babe in the brain translated means if she's willing to have sex, the conversation won't matter. So we don't worry about it.

Compartmentalization rules. Women will fall into a few obvious categories, with some variation from man to man. Women will be:

-> for sex and sex-related activities if it's clear that's what they want.

-> for company and conversation if they mesh with our intellectual/physical interests.

-> for fun and amusement if our senses of humour are compatible.

-> for marriage and procreation if our spirits are synchronous.

Overlaps occur; think of them as interconnecting doors between compartments.

In a perfect world one woman would fulfill all of our needs, or, to complete the metaphor, fill all our compartments.

I have a half-formed idea that we can have sex with all of the woman-types, but that might be because I'm tired. We probably even attempt relationships (longer than a few shags) with one-compartment women, with predictable results. These are doomed.

Realistically, a decent level of all four compatibilities should be the minimum for an attempt at something serious. Figuring out that kind of thing takes time...and really, who has the patience for that stuff thesedays?





Bottoms Up, Compartmentalists!

Menage a Snooze

A certain animus towards Hugh Hefner wafts around the place, which is appropriate because he smells like stinky old person. He smells like old person because he is old person, wearing that funky fragrance like it's Old Spice.

The problem with Playboy's playboy-in-chief is his lost relevance. The niche he fills is that of the delusional male baby-boomer, an admittedly large demographic but one with vanishingly small future attraction. The days of women needing media-savvy pimps and a nude portfolio to kick-start their careers are over, although a distressingly large number of babes have yet to get the news. Hello internet, hello digital photography, hello do-it-yourself pimping.

I have a small sneaking admiration for Hugh. His redeeming quality is the ability to raise the ire of the Permanently Outraged. That gormless smile and the ridiculous three-girlfriends-at-a-time lifestyle are a parody of what he used to be - a fact that escapes only those who take it seriously.

And given what I've seen of his taste in chicks, Hugh and regular guys really have nothing in common. Those dopey blonde bimbos Hef likes are so far removed from the kind of sexy captivating non-perfect women I like as to be out of sight. Hugh's a fossil, and that's his only value.



Bottoms Up, Bikini-ed Babes!





Pic of Heidi from Playboy.

Holes in Socks

Manliness is many things. The many things include knowing how to repair a balky carburettor, the ability to distinguish cows from bulls, and panache when stringing a tennis racquet. Others don't necessarily see it this way, but eventually everyone comes to understand that the quality "Man" doesn't reside in your trousers.

Which is a nice segue into the problem with men and trousers, and our clothing items in general. We have favourites. Yes, I know it's progressive and compassionate not to discriminate, but the fact remains that all guys pick winners among their wardrobe.

I, for instance, own many shirts, but the one closest to my heart is a putty-coloured camp shirt. It just feels so right, and I know that I will wear it way beyond the point at which it should be a car-wash de-greasing rag. Way beyond.

This is a common thread thread in most men's lives. Once we find the perfect pair of jeans, we'll wear them until they're more hole than denim. Socks, the same. Underduds, the same. We simply cannot bring ourselves to toss out perfectly serviceable garments (oh, and shoes, too) in favour of new stuff.

We like our friends, and mistrust strangers. It's part of being a man.


Bottoms up, fashionistas.





Pic from here [link]

Rock Her World.

At first it's amusing, this habit of porn stars taking nominative determinative screen names. There's Anna Malle (RIP), Chesty Larou, Busty St Clair, and Shy Love, to name a few women. Nothing malign in that, of course, the history of false nommes is long and illustrious. George Eliot's successful books were written not by a man, but by Mary Ann Evans, who, amongst several other reasons, wanted to keep her affair with a married man secret.

Even bloggers sometimes choose to supplant their real-life tag with something more evocative. Ahem.

So it's not the fact of taking a fanciful name that plants the seed of doubt, it's the quality of the name. Really: John T. Bone?

This whole field speaks to how The Industry looks upon us, the end-users of porn, or 'mooks'. That's how they refer to you people who like a bit of video filth, by the way, which leaves even the cynics and manipulators from Hollywood looking like soon to be beatified saints - at least they call us 'the audience'.

The difference between The Valley and Hollywood is only a small range of hills and a slight shift of attitude. They're both after your wallet. One takes what they think is the high road, and the other one shows you the pussy. One makes you go to the movie theater, and the other has the decency to allow access from your computer. One says "...fuck you, this is the way you should think..." and the other one says...well, just choose your preferred hole.

Which brings us to Mr Seymore Butts. First negative: that name. Had he chosen 'Seymour', we might assume a modicum of cleverness. But he didn't. Which is the nub of porn's problem, that it's a caricature, a two-dimensional medium just close enough to possibly reflect real life, and yet it so obviously doesn't. He's a porn star of some standing apparently, boasting over six-hundred notches on his bedhead. That gives him more insight that the average mook, and he chose to let us all know how much insight in his recently published 'Rock Her World: The Sex Guide for the Modern Man.'

Mr Butts' book is a how-to for guys wishing to become as good a lover as its author. It's his way of giving back, I suppose, but giving back in the same way that the IRS gives back tax refunds; it's all your dough to begin with. Yes, he steps out in logical style running through the equipment and various techniques in the three sections of the book: About Him, About Her and About Sex. Diagrams and humorous quotes pop up at odd times (reflecting a porn shoot perhaps?) but the Kama Sutra this ain't.

His description of the Missionary position "Allows for total access to both her pussy and ass, plus it is perfect for eye contact!"

Or in About Her: "3. Knowledge of Your Anatomy. The more you know about your body and how it works the better!"

Frankly, I did not read every word in this opus. It's the same principle I use when playing Russian Roulette with a loaded revolver. Sometimes less is more. This is sexual information written by someone who has literally seen it all, but seen it all through the mindset of a thirteen-year old. And a myopic, anal-obsessed thirteen-year old at that.

Which is pretty much what porn is. It's Warner Brothers with an orgasm, Saturday morning cartoons on Viagra, or two-dimensional voyeurism watched on the basis that VH1 is only showing repeats today.

Seymore Butts? No thanks.



Rock Her World, The Sex Guide for the Modern Man, by Adam Glasser, AKA Seymore Butts. Published by Gotham Books, a Division of Penguin. ISBN 978-1-592-40447-6



This review is part of the Blogger Critics Network. (Note the name change from Blogger Review Network.) Next to review will be 30ty, of her Life Begins at 30ty blog.[link] Yes, I know this is a book designed for men, but you never know, she might pass it on to a male blogger after she's critiqued it for us.

Send me a good real-life mailing address, Doc30ty, and I'll send you this magnificent work.


Bottoms up! (Quietly.)


My pic.

Dental Nurse Daydream

Having spent all last week obsessing over a cracked tooth, I was reminded again of the peculiar relationship the (generally) women assistants/nurses/hygienists have with (oftentimes) male dentists. Lust can blossom over a gaping jaw and a whining drill, apparently.

The time I became aware of something more than professional courtesy between two these trained specialists was in my childhood. Dr Begley was the family dentist, a mild-mannered man with a moustache and an acerbic wit. Now I see that the jokes weren't for my benefit - they were for Louise, his beautiful blonde assistant.

I loved Louise, but I think Dr Begley was getting all the action. Plus I was only ten. She actually fit the mould of the chaste-but-slutty nurse, with the white dress, white hose and full bob. Maybe she modelled for bedroom attire catalogues in her spare time. In any case, she was all that and a bag of chips, and I think it wasn't coincidental that there was always a gap between the Doctor's appointments. Never did I ever see a patient waiting after me, nor someone limping out, sore and pale before me.

It's a guess, of course, but one can pick up much from subtle looks between man and woman when their faces are six inches away.

A dualistic nature pertains to these dental-office relationships. Not only does the competence of the assistant/nurse/hygienist need to be there, but they are also completely subservient to the god-dentist. My question is whether this extends to their romantic lives as well, or whether the demure woman turns domme when the last patient leaves for the day.






Nurse romance cover from here [link]

High School Archetypes

The archetypes we become later in life are born in high school, the point at which I think we're rawest as humans. Australian archetypes are a little different than the American, but fall into the same general categories. Sadly, lots of people get stuck in their high school persona. Rare is the individual who begins, say, as The Jock, and matures into The Brain, although it's possible for anyone to tumble down the ladder to being The Criminal. White collar crime sucks like that.

The Nerd, for example, will likely be a life-long nerd. That's not to say he can't morph at the edges. Perhaps he winds up at Goldman Sachs running the country and ripping off taxpayers with clever trading algorithms. He'll wear Italian suits, but probably won't appreciate them as costumes of beauty. To him equations are hot; Armani's not.

The Nerd is probably the archetype of the moment, possibly at the top of the wanted list by women. Nerds can have qualities that I think are like catnip for felines. [Edit: typed felines, meant females. Telling, no?] For one, they're not good communicators. That can be interpreted as mystery in the imagination of a nerd-centric chick, and so instead of being just silent, The Nerd looks to her like James Bond - strong and silent, with everything left unsaid.

In 1989, he just looked mousy.

Nerds too are a shopping mall of characteristics ripe for change. In case you're reading this and have never met a woman, women love (love!) to change men. I often contemplate that women have the 'remodelling' gene, because they can always find something to alter. The typical nerd has remodelling potential in his wardrobe, in his house, in his hairstyle, in his eating habits, in his weekends, in his automobile, in his vacation choice; frankly, Nerds would be better off wearing a sandwich board that says "Renovator's Delight".

Lest you think I think all members of an archetype family are the same, I don't. We're talking generalizations here, and of course there is wide variety within all groups. I'll write more about that tomorrow. But I do believe that we tend to stick with who we were at seventeen unless we consciously recognize it and change our lives accordingly.

Luckily, beauty (or handsomeness) is in the eye of the beholder, so although we men might be stuck, women's view of us can change to the point where a quality that was out of favour in 1999 (thrift, sensible non debt-fuelled lifestyle) might end up being the honeypot for ladies in 2009.

Don't despair, dudes, just be yourself. Even if you do change clothes in a phone box, someone will ravish you eventually.



More on K & B: Stereotypes Part One, Stereotypes Part Three.