The Dating Gods

A bunch of men exist who know exactly how to 'level up' with women. These are the guys who have the instinctive ability to find, bed and wed the most desirable females at will. They don't need to even think about it.

We meet these dudes in high school. They're the ones who always had a girlfriend, and kept her with their smile alone. They're also the guys who had sex with their girlfriends, effortlessly, and, given their confidence, more competently than men double their age. They're the guys who just knew shit about girls, and apparently always did, as if they'd been kissed on the dick by a fairy at birth.

You know the type, right? Guys like this were a step above and beyond mere journeyman women-lovers like me. Even at this distance, I could name them all from my Year 12 class. I can see them now, flirting with their many female admirers, making it look easy. How could they keep that group of seventeen-year-old-hormone-addled schoolgirls rapt for the entire lunch-hour? It just wasn't fair.

Ahem.

At a guess, they make up somewhere south of 5% of the male population. And they're not all handsome, sporty types, either. Sometimes they are simply good communicators, or they're funny, or skilled at operating in groups. Oftentimes they look to be working effortlessly, because although they care, they never look like they care. It's a form of magic.

I chose my metaphor about 'leveling up' carefully. Especially in high school, the precise status of the relationship you have with your girlfriend is calibrated in very fine increments. Just where you are on the road to hands-in-her-pants or bare breastedness is measured zipper-tooth by bra-hook. This might be because all of this is general knowledge - after all, what's the point of finally getting your finger wet if no-one in the school quadrangle knows about it? High-school dating is nothing if not a group ritual.

'Leveling up' is from the gaming world, of course, the other obsession of teenaged boys. The irony is that those nerd-types who can easily level-up in video world demonstrate inversely proportional skills in a real life world filled with females. The nerdy types might know all the hacks to reach the ultimate game level, but the 5 percenters know all the hacks to get to the ultimate girl level.

So here we are, years later, and I still see the 5 percenters getting all the babes. Some of them turned out to be gay, for sure. Others kept leveling up, and, unable to settle, are still measuring their lives by numbers of ladies bedded. But I think most of them married (good lookers) and had all the same difficulties in life as everyone else. Still and all, they have that effortlessness that most of us will forever envy, even if they are totally unaware of it.


Bottoms Up, All-Knowing Ones.

Green Light, You Fool! Go!

Emma Caulfield

As a younger man I was a complete bonehead wrt women. I remember (amongst a few such incidents) a particular Saturday morning. The lovely dark-haired young lady and I had been on a couple of dates, and we planned to spend the morning out and about. We drove around to her mother's house, a substantial pile in a sweet part of town. Mother wasn't home. As we wandered the rooms, I failed to notice that her gorgeousness was wearing a very flirty dress, spent a lot of time close to me, and lingered long in her childhood bedroom showing me bits and pieces from earlier days. Only later did I realize just how bright and clear her green lights shone in my direction.

Damn. Another opportunity missed.

What was I thinking? In retrospect she was SHOUTING at me to CAPITALIZE on her horniness.



The single, active, hetero man requires two core skills.

1. Be able to find, charm, envelope and start the motor of attractive single women.

2. Know when attractive single women have found, chosen, and desire them.

These are the light and shade of satisfying our sexual desire. To get what biology drives us towards, we must navigate the female defenses and/or know when the drawbridge is down.

Unfortunately, the two sides of this coin share little by way of requisite skills. Going out and (effectively) hunting a woman is the light. It's the time-worn Hemmingway-esque approach that relies on confidence, optimism, showmanship and out-gunning the next guy. It's the shotgun blast and reload approach.

The shade is different. If a woman chooses, it calls for a more careful thought process. The subtleties of this path to heaven-on-earth sometimes elude younger, less mature man. Ahem. Clearly, I speak from experience, and now I understand it, would happily live in the shade. 





Bottoms Up, You Subtle Wonders You.

Expecting the Unexpected

 Eliza Dushku

Meeting and dating someone in quick succession can be one of the funnest things in the universe. If you feel you have something with this new person the exhilaration of discovery is like a drug. Gimme more!

The downside of that is if it doesn't work out, you end up in a relationship with some sketchy dude who sells you low-grade shit at street-plus prices. Wait. That's another kind of drug, although the analogy holds pretty well.

We singles are all looking for that starburst of wonder and goodwill, elusive as it might be. There's no way to pre-figure the feeling, the chemistry follows no particular rules. Encounters with this drug are not restricted to singles either - I can think of at least three married women with whom I've shared that moment of singularity, of knowing. Fortunately, my better nature prevented anything more happening. There are quite a few what-ifs hanging out there in the universe.

Like any drug, mutual discovery is best enjoyed in the right environment. Bathrooms and cars are fun, but more appropriate when you're both on a slightly more solid footing. Passion can overwhelm common sense, so at least in the beginning some dating structure is good.

That's an old-fashioned view, I understand. Trouble is that heightened emotions - all I can think about is HER - leave no room for circumspection. It's all about wondering what she's doing, whether I need a haircut and how her pussy might taste.




Bottoms Up, Newly Acquainted.

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!

Ten Dates, Ten Days, Ten Kisses, Whatever

A little history. Years ago I posited the idea that we should delay fist sex (whoops, Freudian slip, FIRST sex, although beginning with that other way would be awesome.....where was I?) to prevent our hormones running away with our lives. As Maryanne says, chemistry is not love.

Pretty boring stuff, but here it is:

Ten Date Rule Part One.

Ten Date Rule Part Two.

At the time, the second installment created a shitstorm in comments (some of which are sadly deleted, narcissism at work) because I referred to oxytocin. I dared to suggest that women are more susceptible to this hormone, and that its power might overwhelm their best interests in the long-term. The gall.

My motivation for all this argy-bargy was to hint that delayed gratification might save lots of heartache.

The idea of ten dates being the magic number is risible, of course. Everyone is different. The point was to open up discussion about some general realities of the way men and women behave around the early stages of getting-to-know-you. The point I'm trying to describe is when a man's ardency (word?) is modified by noticing that the woman is a person too. It might be at the first date, and it might never happen. Only you will be able to tell.

People still laugh at the concept, which is fine. I wish there was a catchier title than 'Ten Date Rule' - something like 'early sex might lead to a sex-only based relationship' or 'when he calls to simply chat without conditions you're good' capture the meaning, but not the spirit.

Happily there are no relationship police, because we're all self-policing. Which really works a treat.



Picture from here.