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.

The Mermaid Conundrum

Long sea-borne men of yore yearned for the sight of women so much that their imaginations went nuts. The power of desire for anything feminine - together with the isolation - sent their minds on weird pathways, including morphing fish into females. Such is the power you have over us. No wonder that when explorers found themselves in places like Tahiti, with its ripely available beauties, they had to trick their crews into leaving.

The attraction of the half-fish, half woman is two-fold:

1. She cannot run away when caught.

2. She is, for the most part, bare-breasted (or close enough).

The sub-text is that the mermaid is both attainable and detainable, fitting right into the fantasy template - after all, what use is there dreaming of something uncatchable?

 (We need to think like a horny sailor stuck on a stinky sailboat during a years-long voyage here to capture the zeitgeist.)

All-in-all, mermaids are women, perfected. They're available mid-ocean if one uses the right bait, they won't escape if lured shipboard and they're sexually out there. Regarding the matter of below-the-waist details, I shall refrain from making tasteless banter about whether they de-scale. Some waters are best left uncharted.

It occurs to me that land-only ladies share at least one mermaid attraction, the high-heeled shoe. Heels hinder you running away just as a lower-half flipper slows the mermaid down. We like a little chase, but want the odds stacked on our side.



Bottoms Up, Stilletos.

Be Careful For What You Wish

Eva Amurri

A recurring theme in my life is how often I learn lessons about living by making mistakes. I write Kiss & Blog because airing my thoughts on dating and relationships helps with nailing down at least a few rules of engagement. Falling flat on one's face is a universal experience for anyone who has ever had more than one encounter with the opposite sex, but I can't help wondering how much better my nose would look had I been privy to some inside skinny before I began. Your nose, of course, is as cute as a button.

It does begin with one's parents. Not only do we have DNA shepherding us behind the scenes, we all model our behaviour on the example they provide(ed). Some examples are good, of course, but many aren't and a number are downright destructive. Awareness of this helps. Out-thinking one's formative environment can lead to a better life. That's pretty much where I'm at, figuring out what my programming is - genetic and environmental - and deciding whether any of it is any good.

Taking a long, hard look around leaves me quizzical at how many others are in the same position. My parents gave me precisely zero sexual education, no tips on relationships and not one guiding principle on how to avoid girl-trouble. (Not that girls are intrinsically trouble - it's the way I behave around them that creates such a thing.) So it's an almost universal co-ed dorm room, this University of Life and Love where we all start from scratch, generation after generation. Wouldn't it be cool if we could build knowledge of what works and what doesn't and pass it on to our babies? Yes, but apparently we don't.

Everything I know is a synthesis of experience (good and bad), both mine and peers as related to me. Which is a problem of itself. When we grope for understanding based on what our buddies tell us, dating life can easily slip into some odd movie combination of American Pie and American Psycho. Finding the path that's right for each of us as individuals requires a lot of going it alone. No way around it.

All of which leaves me in the following position: I work to discover the architecture of how to live life. Finding a framework on which to hang a desirable façade, one that's true to the underpinning foundations, is a lifetime quest.



Bottoms Up, Lifetime Questers.

I Smell Sex and Candy

Anna Holtblad pic credit.

 I imagine that, if pressed to quickly - hurry, hurry! - come up with the name of a sexual position, most people would say "missionary". Okay, men might say "doggy". But both answers are a travesty, because female superior loses out to missionary and rear entry for no good reason.

"Female superior" lacks the snappy nomenclature of the other two, granted. But as an all-around winner, FS takes the Gold Orgasm every time. Thanks to the Dummies Guide people, you can compare missionary v fem sup here. Link.
 
(Who'd have thought: a Dummies Guide to Fucking?)

However. I have been told by women that female superior makes them feel vulnerable. Vulnerable? Well, sure. I have access to your lips, your breasts, your clitoris, and all the other wonderousness on your front side, which goes a long way to explaining why I like it so much.

Isn't vulnerability (read: unfettered access) the whole point? We're naked and my penis is inside your vagina. So I'd say we're both pretty vulnerable, especially to having a really good time.






Bottoms Up, Or Fronts Up, Whichever.

All The Power. Women Have All the Power.

 Elisabetta Gregoraci photo credit.

I know she was testing me, because no other explanation works.


The casually over-opened blouse, the lingering lean-over, these are the weapons of war. It's not a conventional war - in the parlance, this is an asymmetric battle.

Winning and losing are fuzzily defined. For instance, do I win or lose by giving into temptation, allowing my gaze to drop below her neck?  The upside is that I see some bra, definitely, and some portion of breast.
 .
If I steel myself and exhibit self-restraint by not checking her out, does she notice and figure that she needs more firepower next time? Or is she disgusted by failure to compliment her with a gaze at her goodies? 

Either way, I am outgunned and suffer from hopeless intelligence.


Bottoms Up, Wandering Eyes.

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!

Cut Fruit

Apart from driving my car, yesterday's most dangerous time was the thirty minutes I spent eating a bowl of cut fruit from the supermarket. Once those nice people with the hair-nets break the seal on rind fruits, it's an invitation to ne'er do well bacteria. The California Canteloupe Advisory Board is clear on this; "melons should be washed before being opened or cut to remove any traces of bacteria which may have adhered to the rind."

Cut fruit bowls are expensive. The economical way of obtaining the sweet pleasures of nature is to buy whole fruit and wield the knife yourself. Then place the self-cut fruit in a bowl. This plan never works. Uncut fruit suffers from Whole Fruit Inertia, which is to say that it remains in its current state forever ie: whole, uncut, and motionless in the crisper compartment until it rots.

Deception plays a big role in the cut fruit department. Look at the refrigerator cabinet and the bowls have interesting stuff on top. Strawberry halves, ripe grapes, nice pineapple pieces, mango in season, slices of kiwi-fruit, juicy watermelon - these are the temptations to get you to buy. Once you're through that layer of delight, you realize you've been duped, again. Underneath the flavoursome hotties of the fruit world lies a huge core of blandness. Large unkempt chunks of honeydew and canteloupe are all that's left, but you plow on through that stuff vaguely resentful that even life's simple pleasures are a rip-off.

Today is a new day. Today is the day I'll walk into the supermarket and choose the cut fruit bowl that's laced with delicious fruit pieces all the way through. And those pussies at the Canteloupe Board be damned! If I'm contracting a food-borne illness, let it be in pursuit of my fantasy fruit.




Bottoms Up, Thrillseekers.



Miss Melons from here [link]

I Don't Care About Your Band

Also published at Blogger Critics Network.

Julie Klausner has Double-D-sized breasts.

I have yet to meet Julie or her breasts, but when I discovered this awesome fact, the whole thing made sense. Trouble was, her mammarial revelation didn't come until the second half of her book, so I had to start over.

This, then, is why I read "I Don't Care About Your Band"* two and one-thirds times. Breasts give a man perspective, a couple of reference nipples from which to view the rest of the woman. Until that point I was amused but lost. Once Julie's chest found sharp focus, I had to re-read everything up until the breast-size epiphany; then I had to finish it off (the book, pervs); then I had to re-read all the dirty bits.

The picture in my mind is of a sex-obsessed redhaired girl with big tits, blindfold, in lingerie, groping around a room in a desperate quest for a penis. She's a Jewish Princess at a piñata party, smashing her way into the pants of any man who shows even the vaguest interest. As an idea for a role-play sex game, that sounds like fun, but as a metaphor for finding someone, it's a disaster. Which is a great word for Miss Klausner's dating life in New York, although by her own admission, it's a selective history.

My question is: How did she miss with those puppies? I constantly referred back to her picture on the cover, wondering how the hell this vixen failed so well so often. Maybe if she'd walked around Manhattan topless, her love life would have been different.

Which of course is the point of the book. Who wants to read about dating suxxess? It's infinitely more fun for we readers to get smug at dating horror. Even hotties don't get laid.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Something That Might Interest You

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Because we dating and relationship bloggers are a cool bunch, I want to start something new.

I will be sending this copy of Julie Klausner's book to another blogger for review. That blogger will read it and post his or her thoughts, and then send the book on to another blogger for their review, and so on. Everyone who reviews will link back to all previous reviews, thereby forming a kind of extended multi-review.

Should we call this the Blogger Book Review Network or something more snappy?

I am looking for input; if you're interested in participating, whether a better system exists, whatever you think.

Edit: Snaf will be receiving the book to review. She seemed the best fit, being both single and a New Yorker like Miss Klausner. Next week I have another item to check out.




*I Don't Care About Your Band. What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Felons, Faux Sensitive Hipsters, and other Guys I've Dated by Julie Klausner. ISBN 978-1-592-40561-9

Published by Gotham Books, a divvy of Penguin. They sent it to me, free.


Klausner links [site] [tumblr]

Edited for overuse. Words, that is.

Friday Fluffer - Be My Valentine

Sunday is Valentine's Day, some bogus made-up celebration designed to make men anxious.

For those of you with nipples and an interest in low-energy technology, this might be a pleasing VD surprise - the LED Pasty.

Talk about green lights. [link]








Or if you are looking for something less outré, this might be more valuable. [link]

Suburban Swingers

This carnal mind of mine is stuck on the swingers I met on Saturday night - you know, the suburban couples where every wife has enhanced boobs. I can't help wondering what came first, the swinging, or the plastic surgery. Is the swinging scene like Hollywood redux, where everyone tries to make it big (ahem) any way they can?

One step back. Yesterday I asked a friend if he knew these folks. He nodded, slowly, and moved closer.

You know they're into that swinging shit, he whispered, eyes widening.

So my suspicions were confirmed. The four couples in consecutive houses in a boring suburban development in Florida have sex with each other. Frankly, what else is there to do? Taunt the alligators? Hunt down and shoot Jimmy Buffett? Try to sell your chronically upside-down residence? They're all stuck between swamp and mortgage payment, looking for any kind of distraction from the heat.

For me, the disconnect lies in the juxtaposition between mowing the lawn and watching your wife blow Bob, the neighbour. My guess is that they have designated times, like last Saturday, when everyone agrees to do everyone else. But I can't help but think it can't be that easy. Jealousy is bound to appear at some point, because, as we all know, jealousy hides in the same places you'll find herpes.

Finding two people who can get along most of the time is difficult enough, but having a team do the same whilst naked smacks of the biblical. Requiring a miracle, I mean, not that the bible is full of orgies...or maybe it is, and that's how it works.

Here's another way.

More than a mouthful

There is a street in my town in which four houses in a row contain four women. They're all married, all mothers but one, all thirtysomethings, all attractive - and they all have enhanced breasts. I know this is true because I have seen all the women together, and let's just say that none of them went for subtlety. Spotting the decoy amongst the ducks ain't that hard.

Completely brazen about it, they were out on the town last Saturday, flaunting their curves. Being neighbours and plastic warriors, they call themselves the Breastford Wives. I smell the odour of some group couplings amongst this lot, but what they do with their Tupperware is their business.

I spent time chatting with the husband of the woman last to visit the cosmetic surgeon. I asked him what he liked most about his wife's new assets.

Well, he said, it puts the lie to the saying that more than a mouthful is a waste. And then there's the smell.

The smell, I asked?

Oh, for sure. For the first two weeks they have that new car smell. I tell you, it's like being in heaven.




Photo from here.

Consider the Penis

Consider the penis. Poor thing suffers from negative headlines and poor approval ratings. Nobody likes him, at least not publically, and those who are supportive choose to shmooze in private. His life is - as the old chestnut goes - like a married man's; he's always in the shit, it's only the depth that varies.

He needs a new PR firm. The current one has either lost the client file or is concentrating on more lucrative accounts, like breasts or the vagina. I believe that the penis's lousy popularity is all about the way he's spun, media-wise, and not something intrinsically bad about him. How not to like what is basically a telescopic injection system?

At the moment Mr P has about the same cachet as Gary Busey, or, worse, David Hasselhoff. You know these guys have talent, and they've done good work in the past. But you'd be less surprised to see them featured on TMZ or the Smoking Gun than at the Oscars or the Emmys. Ditto the penis. His resume is filled with solid if dull work: he's a journeyman, and that's fine, but things are slipping in that 'I heard he's doing pills/saw him drunk at noon' kind of way. He's better than that.

A big part of the problem is the arm's length relationship men have with their penis. To most of us he's that distant friend we're not sure how we met, always there, mostly good company, generally well behaved. Unabashed mateship is possible, but we're aware that he harbours the ability to go rogue. Horrid cliche that it is, the penis has a mind of his own, and he can be willful in a way that leaves the rest of us looking bad. So we remain less close than you might imagine.

Vaginas have their Monologue, breasts have Hooters. What does the penis have? Yes, there is that puppet show, but does that really help to uplift the image? I think not. With an eye to engaging a marketing firm, the penis's abstract would go something like this:

External variable-length dual-function mammalian appendage needs re-imaging. Delightful pleasure-centre with whimsical side sometimes appeals to adult women. Mysterious qualities worth highlighting. Relationship with owners usually good, but lacks spark without female interaction. Penis name is stale, although the right campaign might rescue it. Key issues: bad reportage, low public awareness, downside only highlighted in mainstream media. Recommend completely new media strategy.

Food Plus Sex

I accidentally slipped a strawberry into Carol's pussy. That was my first time, some years ago now - my berry-busting if you will. Accidentally is not the right word because, just between you and me, it was not truly a slip-up. More of a pre-planned spur of the moment event.

There was chocolate sauce present too, in one of those squeezable bottles that make it easy to overindulge. Portion control is hit and miss with those things. We'd been fooling around with the chocolate, engaging in what we considered sexually sophisticated foreplay. I would spurt chocolate over her breasts, then lick it off, taking great pleasure in teasing about with her nipples. Carol was quite tasty enough without the sticky sweet stuff, but she seemed to enjoy it.

The downside of food in sex is the mess. Egyptian cotton sheets absorb really well. If you're enthusiastic with your congress and edibles are in the mix, the wet spot can be the whole bed. Makes for a squelchy kind of icky afterglow.

Perhaps your experiences are better.

Edit: Because TFABS can read my mind, here's the defining moment.

Lana Turner, Green Lights, Murder.

Lana Turner was Hollywood's biggest female star in the 1940s. She was possessed of a "...lustrous mane of blond hair (and) dirigible-sized breasts..." despite which (because of which?) her love life was problematic. By 1957 Lana had been married and divorced four times.

A man called John Steele began chasing Miss Turner in April 1957. He sent her flowers and love notes, and phoned her constantly. Ignoring this stranger's approaches at first, the man's taste in music, his apparent refinement and debonair style began to pique Lana's interest.

John Steele was on a mission to win the intoxicating movie star, spending a lot of time discovering her likes and dislikes, whatever made her tick. Eventually they met, and when they did so, she was "...pleased and titillated to discover that he was tall, husky, dark-haired and handsome."

So began a year-long relationship of passion and violence. John Steele was a nom de lust - the man's real name was Johnny Stompanato, a Mafia thug who worked for Mickey Cohen. Johnny was possessive and jealous, and stated more than once that he would never let Lana be with another man.

Matters came to a head in April of 1958, when Turner's daughter, Cheryl, decided to put an end to Stompanato's consistent beating of her mother. With a carving knife, Cheryl stabbed Johnny Stompanato to death in her Beverly Hills home, an act the courts called 'justifiable homicide'.

I can't decide which of the following truths applies:

If you commit murder, be a minor.

Over-the-top men are too good to be true.

Ownership of a large bosom doesn't guarantee a happy life.




Green Lights Part One, Green Lights Part Two, Green Lights Part Three, Green Lights Part Four.


All quotes from 'Among the Mansions of Eden' by David Weddle.