Now Make a U-Turn.

Fortunately for everyone concerned, not all men have movie-style bedding ability.

James Bond-like moves on ladies are (mostly) restricted to actual movie/rock stars and the Überconfident alpha-male types. You know the ones, the guys who basically have women bumping against them day and night. All they really need do is say "Yes". There is also a subset of guys who are so keyed into women's body language and ways of thinking that they can inveigle their way into immediate sex. Again, they're a minority.

The majority of we dudes rely on what I call the Garmin Effect. If you've ever taken a wrong turn, your GPS will patiently explain how to get back on course. Depending on the voice you've chosen (the subject of a whole other discussion) he or she will advise a u-turn or taking of the next exit or some other second chance at getting it right. And third and fourth and fifth and sixth chance. She's indefatigable.

So it is in real life. When a woman likes a guy, she'll often give him many, many opportunities to break through the mutuality barrier. Sure, she'll bitch to her girlfriends that so-and-so's an idiot for not making a move, but that's for show. When she sees him again, she'll attempt to send him green light after green light.

Now, there will be a limit to the lady's patience. Women aren't sophisticated navigation computers, after all. Whilst your Garmin will never give up on you, the hottie who's after you will, men, so keep that in mind. Her persistence to get you will last only so long.


This process gels with the theory that women decide early-on whether they're interested in a guy. They're always ahead of the curve. Men, mostly, are much slower at figuring it out. They need more evidence upon which to base a decision. The nexus - and the opportunity - lies in the gap between. If you're a guy and you know you're slow, try to short-circuit your own plodding microchip, and be more aware of her quick-fire processor.

Opportunity, they name is clock speed.



Bottoms Up, carbon-based lovers.

How Do I End A First Date?

Make no mistake, first dates have but one aim, which is to ensure a second date.

Our natural instinct is to complicate the first date by imbuing it with too much stuff: There's no way to convey just what a beautiful/worthy/honest/sexy fox with exemplary hygiene you are in a few minutes. So don't even try. Do. Not Try.

Instead:

1. Smile.

2. Listen.

3. Ask follow-up questions as if you are listening.

4. Be gracious.

5. Talk honestly - and briefly - about yourself without filtering.

That's more than good enough. Remember, you have both probably decided upon second-date worthiness within the first five minutes, so all we're attempting at this point is to not mess up.

Now for the parting. Recognize that whatever socialization your dating partner has undergone in their life will determine how they behave. Folks from smoochy and huggy families will tend towards more physicality;more stand-offishly trained individuals might not.

Frankly, if you can't see immediately which way to move, I'd ask. Make a joke of it. Say something like...

You know, I wonder if it's okay with you if I say good-bye with a hug?

...or whatever works for you and the vibe.

Believe me, men, communicating something like that will be deemed cute, gentlemanly and self-deprecating, all qualities that will stand you in good stead where it matters most - in the eyes of her girlfriends.




Bottoms Up, Hug-Monsters.

When Do I Talk About My Ex?

When do we fess up about our history?

I wish I knew. It shouldn't be the first thing you talk about on your first date, that's for sure. Alternatively, you could never talk about your exes, which might be a leeettle bit secretive.

My opinion is that this is an entirely individual matter. Some people will want to know about your exes in short order, and others won't. I, for example, won't want to know until ten years after we're married -  I truly don't care.

But let's think about normal people. It seems to me that if you are looking for some information about past dating habits, it's about figuring out where you fit in. Am I of a type, or does she date eclectically? Am I likely to be better or worse - richer, poorer, bigger, smaller? - than the most recent guy/s? Will I measure up?

That last question is the most critical. That's the information we're really after.

Will she see me in a good light and think well of me? What are the comps?

On the other hand, if I don't know about her past interests, there is no comparison to make...

Take me at face value, or don't take me at all.

When people get close, it's natural to want to know about loves left and loves lost. The trick is to be sensitive to the other person's fears and insecurities. Being vague and a little uninterested in talking about exes is a great way to defuse things. Just be aware that even if you don't care about your past, your date might.

In the end, folks want validation that they're okay. I think these are reasonable guidelines:

1. No talk of exes until he/she asks. 


That's it.




Bottoms Up, Sweet Sensitive Ones.

Dating for Dummies

Wouldn't it be awesome if a Date Store existed for failing or unsatisfactory romances?

At the Date Store - beautifully appointed, BTW, in complementary shades of slate and shiraz - the smart folks at the People With Experience and Perspective Bar would diagnose your love life. Within a few minutes, the details of your relationship would be downloaded, inspected and prioritized. Long-term red flags would top the list, grading down to the fact that she flosses in public.

If, in the sad case that Date Store determines that you and your sig. oth. are in the "terminal" category, those sensitive souls will take you out back and break it to you in a special You're Done room. There, you can cry in peace and mourn what you thought might have been. Then, when you're all cleaned up, they'll give you a script to use to actually break up with the person, and recommend a replacement model better designed for your needs.

~!oOo!~

People seek and use dating advice in approximately the same way they buy and use toilet paper, with more or less the same result.

Only financial commonsense and earthquake tips are ignored with the same energy.

What I think most people are after is affirmation, some kind of backstop so they can continue in the same direction. Most folks don't actually want honesty or even-handed feedback because I know me, and I'm a reasonable person, and you don't know what I know about her anyway. So there. She's the best and I'm gonna stick with her.

I'm at least as bad as the next person at relationships. Ignoring truth and reality to keep it going is my specialty, I know how that shit works. But at least now I know I suck. In that counter-intuitive way that life has, it's the best place to be.



Bottoms Up, Justifiers.

Wake Up and Make Love to Me

I should have learned more at the feet of the master.

A housemate from my youth had the whole thing wired. He had carefully figured strategy, kept mental catalogues of tactics, and knew how to close. Never, men, underestimate the power of a good close. This guy had so woven the chasing and conquest of women into his life that a trip to the post office was, for him, as ripe with opportunity as a Friday night at our local meat-market.

It's important to note that he created his...what shall we call it?...art, around who he was. Artifice and posturing were kept to a minimum so that at times of stress, he didn't need to remember what to say. Everything flowed naturally from his personality.

Mind you, the smooth and successful end result required a lot of practice and discipline. Repetition and habit, he always said, were the key. Just do the same stuff over and over, so that when the babe for whom that shit works finds herself standing next to you, she is powerless.

One morning, I was having coffee when one of his ladies rushed downstairs and out the front door.

Morning Wombat!

Morning Kimbo!

She wore a big grin.

Later I asked my buddy why they were all so chipper when they left.

"Oh, that's easy," he replied. "From the very first night they stay, I insist on having a morning meeting with them."

You mean you boff them in the morning?

"Right. But I make a game of it, with a little role-play. They play minute-taker for the meeting, and I'm the chair." 

 He smirked.

I must have looked quizzical. He looked disappointed in me.

"The key is that she has to take the 'minutes' on the bed. That naturally puts her butt in the air. We avoid the whole morning breath thing, we don't have to look at each other after a big night, and she gets to call it her morning meeting rather than dawnbuster or some such."

"Once is enough. Then they're hooked. They often wake me up and say it's time for their morning meeting." 

"Plus, if they're late to work, they can simply say Sorry, there was a morning meeting I had to take."









 Bottoms Up, Stenographers.

Heaven on Earth

With the female to male ratio of US colleges at 60:40, the obvious place to be is at a US college. Now, I had not the pleasure of attending university here in America. What I remember from my engineering undergrad days in Oz, however, is a sea of sweaty blokes - NOT a heavenly cloud of perfumed mademoiselles.

No wonder I dropped out.


If I found myself in one of these babe-rich campus situations today, I'd totally be considering, like, a four-year degree followed by some (not too taxing) post-grad work and then a little doctoral dabbling. What red-blooded bloke wouldn't want to exercise both his mind and his body for as long as possible before dealing with the real world?


Colleges are sufficiently like the real world in one respect: If we subtract the geeky, virginal, religious, frightened, stoned, gaming and clueless dudes from the student population, we're left with around three guys at each school getting all the action.

That's what I call winning life's lottery. Plus you might even get a job afterwards.




Bottoms Up, Education Firsters! 

Crazy Motherfucking Bitch

 Miss W pic credit.

There is no pleasing this woman.* She looks at you and observes potential unfulfilled, possibilities unattained. There's no way around it - she sees you as a compromise, a worthy non-profit cause goofy enough to love, not smart enough to admire. We muddle through, chatting up an acceptance storm, nibbling on settling-brand cheese, drinking best-I-can-get wine. Who cares, it's approximately where everyone else is at, right?

It's a downer scenario. There are plenty around like it; indeed, I've been in at least one affair like this. But I'd like to offer some optimism. There is hope if we recognize the following:

1. Love is waking up every morning wanting nothing more than to make the other person's day better.

The difference between dalliance and to-die-for is motivation. 






*Obviously I am not impugning the fetching Miss W, shown. She's a paragon of selflessness.

Bottoms Up, Upward Managers.

Relationship Mash-Upship

Sophie Marceau pic credit.

Beautifully matched couples are boring. Kens and Barbies together are meant to be seen as a pair, batteries sold separately. Surely they have their tiffs and differences like any other be-coupled life forms, but it's less dramatic when you know there'll always be someone else. The drama of a bust-up barely registers when the danger is only of when they'll find another one just like the last. Answer: It won't take long.

Couples who are clearly different in appearance raise interesting questions. Do they know they look mismatched? What is it they have in common? Which one of them has the most devious motivation? Are they together out of spite? Which of them is desperate?

[You'll note that I attribute less than honourable motives here. That speaks to my mind, not to our theoretical odd pair.]

In my experience, there are a few broad categories where couples look noticeable. There's the big age difference, the big looks- or body-style difference, and the style difference. A style difference would be, say, someone fully tatted-up with a cleanskin. Cheatin' Jesse James and Sandra Bullock is one example. Less obvious mismatches are those involving social ability, wealth and intelligence. Intelligence is a tricky one, because measurement is so subjective.

Looking around, it's clear that we tend to meld with those who more-or-less look like they belong to us. That might simply be because all we want in a partner is the opposite-sex version of our favourite person. Us.






Bottoms Up, Self-Esteemers.

Kissing Confidential

Gwendolyn Whiteside's photo credit. 

I was seven and she was seven. She kissed me once, then she kissed me again. She turned into my first kissing partner, a classroom conspiracy engineered by her. I was a lost but complicit co-conspirator, unsure of what it was all about. Why is she doing this? What part should I be playing here? Why does she taste so good?

Jane Phillips, where are you? Wanna give it another shot?

The kissing faded, as did her ardor for me. Perhaps our mutual lack of make-out skills doomed us from the start, but my suspicion is that I killed it. Too much thinking, not enough action. I should have just rolled with it, especially as Jane not only brought extra lunch to school for me, but went out of her way to walk home with me too. She was the definition of the perfect girlfriend. With memory of the kissing faded, what remained was her smell, which I can conjur to this day.

But Jane wasn't the first person to kiss me. That would, presumably, have been my mother. Right, so they're two completely different kinds of kissing, but they're the same physical action separated only by context. Interesting that at a family function we can kiss a close friend or relative as a sign of connection and fealty, then go on to kiss our wife or husband and communicate something so much more. Kissing is both an instrument of alliance and of overt sexuality.

If you're a mechanistic evolutionist you'd look for a reason for the kiss. For kissing to survive as a behaviour it must have some benefit for both parties. Let's see. There is the transfer of germs - good for babies acquiring their parents' immune sophistication. There is the shared smell of swapping skin flakes and saliva - a sort of hazmat solidarity. And there's the busting of the very last ring of personal space - a what's yours is mine suspension of physical defences. Add up these elements and we have that most endearing of human qualities, the ability to give yourself to another, signalled by the pressing of one's mouth onto the body, head or mouth of another.

Evolution is a brutal judge of superfluous behaviour. Kissing survives for only one reason, and that is because it aids species continuation. Kissing is a quick and dirty way of figuring out if you're a sexual match. Bad kisser, bad lover. If she tastes wrong, she probably is wrong. On the other hand, someone who gives good kiss moves a long way up the list of preferred partners, and, speaking personally, a good kisser is a heavenly gift notwithstanding the outcome. A good kisser stands alone as such, or can lead to extra complexity ie: another generation of kissers.

Which brings me to the undeniable fact - that kissing has power beyond simple intimacy. We're social creatures, and we're tactile too. We want to meld with a special other, and the power of this drive appears to go beyond mere reproduction. At a fundamental level, we understand that attachment to another one and then descending levels of closeness to relatives and non-related individuals in concentric circles fulfills us. It's tribalism, the need to belong and know that we belong. Hence the kiss of enormous variation, from the humble kissing of the hand - at your service, Your Majesty - to the unbridled heat of connection during sex.

 Kissing sends the universal message - I want to be a part of you.




Bottoms Up, You Big Beautiful Kissers You.

Disbelief

Photo of Miss Shahi from here.

I shake my head and close my eyes in disbelief at how we proceed to find partners. We go looking - actively looking - for complete strangers and give them the once-over with an eye to compatibility. We imagine, project, hope, wish, long, mask and guess our way to deciding that he or she might be a good-un, despite evidence to the contrary.

I'm criticizing me and my own behaviour, in which I can confidently assume others indulge.

From my own experience, a few words from someone familiar with dating and mating ins-and-outs would have been infinitely valuable. Parents are supposed to give us a clue about all this...a problematic concept if ever. Relationship education exists, but we need to learn earlier than the point at which, say, I would turn to self-help books or seek the advice of trusted peers.

So that's the thing - trial and error, mistakes and recovery, and hope and optimism are the three Donkeys of Dating Discovery, and 'twas ever thus.

Or is that six donkeys?




Bottoms Up, Eternal Learners.

Sex and Cabbages

Frankly, there's no guidance as to where souerkraut and sex meet.

You have objections as to the introduction of fermented cabbage into love-making, and I don't blame you: sauerkraut is as much an acquired taste as pussy, especially if you're young and inexperienced.

Soon, my young man, you'll be sniffing the air.


Bottoms Up, Sausage Eaters!

When is she my girlfriend?

We lack for accurate descriptors when it comes to romantic attachments.

A vast yawning chasm exists between meeting and marriage, a vast yawning chasm chock full of emotion, imagination, miscommunication, good communication, veiled motives, expressed desires, hidden agendas, agendas right out in the open, fear, love, hate, texts, phone calls, emails, dinners, breakfasts, appointments, missed appointments, disappointments, misunderstandings, understandings, mistakes, nights, days, sleeps and exhaustion.

Hmmm. I think I just described male/female relationships.

Q: What do we call someone in whom we're interested, after the first signs of mutual interest?

A: My potential lady interest.

Q: How about between first make-out and first formal date?

A: My impending woman.

Q: And in the area between arranged date and assumed date?

A: (Unsure) My putative squeeze.

Q: Okay, between assumed date and home base?

A: (Resoundingly) Now that's when I can call her my girlfriend!

Q: Between first sex and sophomore sex?

A: God, I hope she wants to do it again.




Bottoms Up, New Lovers!




Emilie Autumn photo from here [link]

The Girlfriend Experience

I want to write something along the lines of:

The Girlfriend Experience is about the closeness of two people meshing at inter-dimensional levels for spiritual reasons.

But that doesn't ring true - the contradictory evidence in my life alone is overwhelming.

Maybe that's because the whole relationship-dating complex tends toward hard-bitten-ness as people age. We begin to appear as - or begin to look for - financial saviours or mental leaning-posts rather than specially connected individuals.

My golden age was from fifteen until twenty-one. Innocent of wordly motives, a girlfriend was just that - about having a girl as a friend. Girls are soft and smell great and feel different and look at shit differently. That's nice. I want one of them close to me, on my side.

Innocence. That's the key word, implying a voyage of discovery with someone. From innocence to knowledge. And then to BDSM, but only after a decent interval.



Girlfriend Experience illustration from here [link]

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.

Friday Fluffer - Freedom of Speech

Pussy Power might work on heterosexual men, but the 'tween legs dynamo does not influence the majesty of the law.

Jennifer LaPenta wore her I Have the Pussy, So I Make the Rules tee in the gallery during her friend's court hearing. The Judge was not amused - and Jennifer was cited for contempt.

She left the court in cuffs with a 48 hour sentence to serve. Unfortunately for Jen, this was not an elaborate submission game, and the man who led her away was not taking her to his dungeon for some fun.

The Smoking Gun has the story and the pics. [link]



Bottoms Up, New Inmates!

A Bird in the Hand is Worth More Than Two in the Bush.

Unless you are Mr Pitt or Mr Clooney, a single man would do well to not approach two women together in a bar. The chances of a lone male detaching one from the other are slim at best, verging on impossible at worst.

If you like a challenge, just try. Proceed into a bar on your own, purchase a cocktail, and walk up to to a birdie pair. You will not separate them, no matter how good your script.

Men rarely share this kind of folk-lore. That's because we see all other men as enemies in the game of finding willing women, an insane way to behave.

There's a great deal of fun to be had trying, though. If you're in a group, or just up for the rhetorical sport, give it a go one day. Women stick together like God's adhesive if they're in even numbers. An odd-numbered group gives the man way better odds until the number of females is greater than five, when it's cash bar time.

My friend Sam (who happens to be a woman, so her real name is Samantha) was intrigued by all this at happy hour this evening.

But Wombat, she said, tilting her head suggestively to two ladies along the bar, Don't you like the blonde with the pink pig-tail?

Sam. No. I'm a brunette aficionado, and in any case it's a pair of women. I'm not stupid.

Sam and I need to talk more.

Bottoms up!




Picture is from somewhere, but I am too mesmerized by her bust to worry about linking.

Edited for all kinds of horrid abominations of HRH English.

Friday Fluffer - Robotic Love

Wombat's Second Maxim should be:

Never underestimate the capacity of men to find new ways to stick their dicks in things.

If you thought the Pocket Pussy was bad enough - as I do - meet Roxxxy. Roxxxy is a programmable sex bot. She was developed by....

....you know what? This is so stupid, I can't continue. Decide for yourself. I'm not often embarrassed by my fellow man, but this is beyond pathetic. [link] Safe for work.




Pic from here [link]

Sex Education

Horrified. That's how I remember my first exposure to sex education. I was ten or thereabouts, and hugely embarrassed as only a little boy can be.

Not that the boring presentation about all that stuff in which I had no interest bugged me. I was horrified at having to sit next to Karen Goodier. For a full forty minutes I was boxed in, with my mother on one side, and Karen's next to her, with no escape other than to disappear under the rows of chairs in front or behind. Believe me, I considered doing a crawl and a runner, to head out to something I understood and loved - the playground!

Karen was okay I s'pose, but the ignominy of my mates seeing me thigh to thigh with her might have led to merciless ragging later, especially as I was SO CLOSE to the parts of her shown in glorious detail on the screen.

Wombat loves Ka-ren, Wombat loves Ka-ren.

It was bad enough seeing cutaway pictures of my own parts, surely she was cringing at her private architecture's public revealing?

What's more my penis didn't look like the one in the presentation. Mine wasn't nearly that big (why do they show men's dicks to boys?) and I am circumcised, so even the shape was different.

Sigh.

Like so much we take for granted, this stuff is misnamed. What Karen and I were subjected to here was Reproductive Education, not Sex Education. Why do we insist on conflating the biology - the organs and blood - with the abstract and emotional, which is all in the mind?

They are not the same thing. Even ten year-old boys understand that.




For one result of this kind of Sex-Ed. [link]

Breaking up is hard to do

Breaking up used to be easy. You'd call your girlfriend, tell her you need to talk, and deliver the news. As a callow youth in Australia, I dumped Stephanie in the comfy chair room of the local pub one night. We called it the comfy chair room because it had nice big wing-backs and deep-cushioned arm-chairs of the sort one's grandparents owned. It was the kind of place pretentious teenagers would sip red wine and solve the world's problems, in that way only teenagers who know nothing can.

Ending a relationship in such a setting isn't recommended. Much better to choose somewhere well-lit and uncomfortable with many exits.

After 'the talk' I went straight to the back bar to be with my mates. Brutal, but honest. Stephanie and I reunited a week later, but eventually split. The first time never takes, right?

Thesedays one needs a checklist for action items after the fact. First, change your Facebook and/or Myspace status. Write a blog post reflecting same. Then Tweet that, plus any other random social networking site modifications you need. Rifle through your Flickr or Snapfish or similar accounts to consider whether to remove cutesy pics of you and the now-ex. (Special consideration to what your next girlfriend might think.)

Now you need to email everyone you've ever told you had a girlfriend and inform them of your status. Maybe call parents and siblings, if they haven't already IMd you from Facebook. Check your place for pieces of clothing she might have left, plus makeup, shoes, toothbrushes and 'personal items' and return them.

Lastly, make a decision about the most sensitive stuff. What to do with the sex videos? Delete them, joint custody, or just lie about deleting them? Hmmmm.





How to break up gracefully. [link]

Thanks to Kat for the inspiration. [link]

Her Pussy Smells

I met my boss's girlfriend over the weekend. Ex-girlfriend, more accurately, although they're still friendly.

Do you know why I dropped her? he whispered conspiratorially.

No, I replied, thinking: because you're married?

Because she smelled bad.

What. BO?

No, he said, moving his index finger under his nose, eyebrows raised.

She had a smelly pussy?

Yep. I couldn't handle it.

Did you tell her? She might have an infection and doesn't know.

No. I can't deal with that shit.

But they all smell a little bit. It's part of their charm.

Yeah. But it was easier just not to see her anymore.





I'm figuring a way to ask him for her number.





Image from here [link]