Category: Essays & Bad Ideas

An assortment of ramblings; some thoughtful, some thoughtless

Memories

My first sexual fantasy came to me in a dream. A dream that I had every night for weeks, and then sporadically for months on end. And it was –perhaps unsurprisingly– quite fucked-up.

I don’t know exactly where my child-brain got the raw material for the dream. My babysitter hadn’t yet given me a guided tour of the female reproductive system, but I did have a neighbor girl who kept trying to expose herself to me… that could have had something to do with it. More likely, it was the result of my parents’ questionable decision to let me watch both Logan’s Run and The Stepford Wives.

Either way, every night, they’d come to my room… the sacrifices, I mean.

You see, something had gone catastrophically wrong out in the world. I didn’t understand everything –I was just a boy, after all, so they hid the details– but it seemed that someone, somewhere, released something terrible into the wild. An exotic contagion had worked its way through the adult male population, ultimately rendering it sterile. Humanity lived on in anxious misery, knowing that the only thing standing between it and extinction was a single generation of boys who were still convinced girls had cooties.

The only solution? Brave young lads such as myself would have to dedicate our lives to looking beyond the cooties, toward our genetic destinies; with our world crying out for help, we couldn’t afford to falter. It was decided that the ruined, wasted men of the world would send their wives and daughters to boys like me, to be used as training material… as fodder for a fire to be lit in the empty hearth of womankind. The program was voluntary at first, but after burnout proved to be an issue, lottery conscription inevitably began.

So the sacrifices came to us, one, two, or a few at a time; some dedicated (or at least resigned) to serving a Greater Good, and some longing for a choice they couldn’t have. They were assigned to our homes for short tenures, but through their vital, compulsory work, the reproductively mature men of tomorrow would prove to be the finest force of fast-fathering fuckers to ever bestride one godforsaken planet!

Of course, I was a kid, so the backstory was the most interesting part of the dream. The action consisted entirely of women in fur coats and heels filing into my room, approaching me, dropping their coats to reveal bikinis, and then… well, the rest was a bit of a mystery. There was some light petting, stuff happened, and I woke up. Again and again, night after night.

Sometimes the sacrifices were happy and enthusiastic about doing their duty; sometimes they were sad, and I had to comfort them while they taught me to use their bodies. Sometimes I would fall in love with the latest girl and want to keep her; sometimes she would disappoint me and I would have her sent away. The only constant seemed to be a baseline understanding that my sexuality was all-important and must be served at any cost.

Which, honestly, is a crazy idea to have in your head when you’re six.

Foreseeing the future and living in it are two different things.

I dreamed about a lot of stuff as a kid. Back in the early ‘80s, when I sold my beloved BMX bike to buy my first computer, I dreamed of a day when everyone would have such devices in their homes. I dreamed of random people actually getting my X-Men references, and of girls who wouldn’t walk away if you said you loved video games. And I dreamed of modem networks that would let people all over the world communicate asynchronously about anything that interested them, including the X-Men, girls, and video games.

Through unrelenting, geeky advocacy and hard work, those dreams all came true; the 21st century is basically a bespoke era, designed by me and my ilk to suit our priorities. We won. I got everything I wanted and more.

Ah, that sticky, messy, unfortunate “more”.

Everyone has a computer in their pocket, but Google and Facebook are actively trying to convince them that algorithmic search results and the half-baked opinions of someone’s belligerent uncle or freshman niece are useful substitutes for knowledge. Half the TV shows and movies made today begin with a MARVEL title card –turning the 35 cent passion of my childhood into mainstream fare– but the underlying comic books are reduced to glossy, deeply cynical cash-grabs that prey on the obsessive-compulsive inclinations of middle-aged malcontents. We finally figured out how to make games interesting enough to catch a woman’s attention, but then immediately started looking for ways to keep those bitches from getting any of their touchy-feely girl-goo all over our fantasy fiefdoms. And the networked, nerdy Algonquin round tables I sought? Well, Donald Trump joined Twitter.

Be careful when you dream, children. The universe is often listening, and has ideas of its own.

TFW you see something really stupid on Tumblr that you would normally ignore, but a lot of people are lavishing praise on it and it seems like you ought to add a critical male voice to break up the misplaced harmony, but you can never fucking tell who’s a Colbert-esque pseudo-misogynist and who’s actually a bipedal, ambulatory bag of dicks, so you just kind of grind your jaw and move on.

Also, TFW you know you’ve probably given other people that feeling.

My Fetishes?

I like chicks who feminize all the significant inanimate objects in their worlds. Their cars are girls, their computers are girls, their phones are girls; whether it’s pink and covered in flowers or jet black as the empty eye sockets of Death, if a thing exists, it’s a “she”.

Because with women like that, all you have to do is wait a while until one of those objects breaks down or disappoints her; then you’ll hear it.

“What the hell? You stupid, stupid bitch!”

“Don’t you die on me while I’m using you! Fucking cunt!”

“Please, just start. I need this. I’ll be good to you from now on, I promise… OH, YOU WORTHLESS WHORE!”

It’s like porn to me.

Mea Maxima Culpa

The American Right is deeply disturbed, but it’s time the American Left copped to our part in making them so. We spent the 1990s gaslighting them over Bill and Hillary Clinton, successfully convincing the body politic that up was down, black was white, and wrong was perfectly okay if you were cool about it.

I can’t help but think about the shit we fed them, and then pause to savor the flavor that currently dominates my own palate; it’s a pretty gross way to learn a pretty gross lesson.

  • “That wasn’t a lie, that’s just the way he talks.”
  • “She was horny and desperate, and he was famous. You know she was asking for it.”
  • “There’s nothing strange or inappropriate about a President’s unelected family being injected into major legislative efforts and foreign policy.”
  • “This special prosecutor is a partisan hack who’s chasing a fake story!”
  • “That wasn’t a lie, because it sounds true.”
  • “Who cares about shady business deals where the family lost money?”
  • “Rape? Don’t make me laugh! They just want to be on TV and file lawsuits.”
  • “Why do we keep talking about stuff that might have happened years ago? What about the economy right now?”
  • “That wasn’t a lie, he was only defending himself.”
  • “She’s so brave, standing by her man like that, not letting those greedy little bitches take them down.”
  • “All men are like that, so who cares?”
  • “We’re so lucky to have a President with a woman in his life who’s even better than he is.”
  • “That wasn’t a lie, because being in charge is fun.”

At some point, we really need to stop doing this to one another.

Fun Date Idea

You —a person who’s insecure about her trashy accent— and I —a well-known bastard— spend an afternoon exploring a crowded museum, where I insist that you express your thoughts about each display. Every time you finish speaking, I respond with “Say again? I can’t understand a fucking word coming out of your head.”

When a group of schoolchildren pass, I get their attention, point at you, and roll my eyes while you repeat yourself. The kids’ chaperone gives me a dirty look, but then pauses to listen to what you’re actually saying, shrugs, and gives me a sympathetic smile.

Then the chaperone and I go get a drink while the kids ask you if you were dropped on your head when you were little.

How Men Lost the 21st Century

I have a number of things to say about the post-Weinstein era. This is the first piece.

People who are surprised by all of the #metoo’ing have been ignoring an increasingly obvious fact: somewhere along the way —by my guess, the late ‘90s or early 2000s— men began to cross a line. A line that had somehow survived 10,000 years of male cultural domination, if only by becoming an invisible part of the apparatus of control. Without a thought, we boldly went where no men had gone before.

We wrecked women’s sexual shame.

I mark the start of it with *Girls Gone Wild*, although an argument can be made that *The Real World* and other proto-reality-tv stuff might have set it off. We started conditioning girls to see how intimate, uncontrolled exposure in front of large audiences can be as exciting as it is terrifying.

From there, the process worked its way through the Paris Hilton and Kim K. tapes, and into a newly, dramatically more extreme porn business that was suddenly open to more women than ever, as both creators and consumers. Acts that were once seen as fundamentally degrading became… not so much *less* degrading, as much as *differently* so. Women figured out en masse that the pursuit of debasement and pain can be a bit like art, and a lot like an extreme sport, only one where you can’t trust your teammates for fuck-all. And it could be profitable, too.

Finally, the process brought itself home with revenge porn. That’s when men showed every woman alive that it didn’t matter if she sent us the photos we demanded, if she fucked us the nasty way we liked, if she remembered not to provoke us when we were drunk, if she adamantly insisted to the ER nurse that the bruises were from a slip in the shower, nor if she forgave all the drug money we “borrowed”… it was all for nothing. Even when she ultimately compromised everything she had just to get us to leave her the hell alone, we would still share pictures of her semen-soaked face and cunt for our sleazy little buddies to post and mock online. We had one of history’s great lopsided bargains tilted in mankind’s favor —we won’t tell everyone what you’re willing to do as long as you’re willing to do it— and *we couldn’t be bothered to stick to the fucking deal*.

I’d say the last stage really kicked in around The Fappening. It makes sense that the dominos would start to fall first in Hollywood; once we stripped women like Jennifer Lawrence of their privacy and dignity in front of hundreds of millions of people, after making it abundantly clear that no matter what their standing in life they would always be targets, and after turning public humiliation into something that looked survivable, well… why would they ever again put up with a man’s shit? What would be the point? We took away everything they had to lose.

This generation of men has truly been special. We accidentally made the world a better place by being the biggest assholes we could possibly be.

Someone asked if I have any thoughts on the Weinstein fallout, and the answer is: oh fuck *yes* I have thoughts. So, so many. I’m just not sure what I want to do with them.

I’ve got a half-written post where I speculate about a subterranean cultural connection between the rise of *Girls Gone Wild* and the #metoo explosion, there’s a long list of things I want to say to men in general about not being complete fucksticks all the goddamned time, I have a little side-rant about the manspreading cock-goblin that sat next to Lady Macbedtime on the bus yesterday and proceeded to play with himself all the way to their destination, I can go on at length about the Roy Moores of this world and what it’s like to grow up among them, and I can finally explain why I never connected with the work of Louis C.K.

So… yeah. In case it isn’t obvious, none of this would be part of our regularly scheduled Dark Sexy Fun. And in order to feel right about broadcasting my complicated, conflicted opinions at all, I’d need to ante up my relevant experiential bonafides, the thought of which makes me mildly uncomfortable. I’ve found that real vulnerability —like cheerfulness and plaid— is not a good look on me.

But given my subject matter of choice, I more or less feel a responsibility to say *something*. And I shall.

Seen on Tumblr:

“I think the biggest turn on is knowing you turned someone else on”

I don’t know about *that*, but it’s certainly important.

In fact, that, in a nutshell, is why there are limits to my sadism; it’s simply no fun for me if you don’t want to come back for more. If you don’t want to follow me out of the room and curl up next to me on the couch, or at least come scratching at my door the next week like a lost animal in heat, then I’ve missed the mark. If there’s not a part of you that yearns for me just a little for the rest of your life, then I’ve let us both down.

It might seem a cheap trick, but I want you to want me.