It's "titfucking," not "tittyfucking," just for the record.
"The Sexual Pedant" would be a good title for a romance novel.
Ok, I didn't expect the pedantry to come out for "tittyfucking." You are, technically, correct, but any time one can say "titty," one must say "titty."
Any man who is old enough to get an erection is too old to say "titty."
Since babies get erections, this basically means that the word is verboten.
That wasn't Dave Weman's story. That was a post of Yglesias's from way back when he was on Blogger.
Wait a sec - having slept with 39 guys in 25 years doesn't shock you, but an extra 11 is 15 years trips the trigger wire? Is this on the principle that you should have less sex as you get older?
Timbot, I didn't mean those as rules, but as the actual shocking instances; I changed "shocks" to "shocked" to clear that up.
Also - hand jobs shouldn't be included in "sex".
Tell it to your fourteen-year-old self, Tim.
I don't think I send holiday cards to 40 people.
Yes, but do you send holiday cards to everyone you've ever had sex with?
send holiday cards
I have internet access and all, but this is one I haven't heard of.
At what point do you say, "You've slept with how many people? I'm outta here."
It isn't how many, but which ones. If I've never met them, the number is irrelevant up until it starts to suggest professional work.
hand jobs shouldn't be included in "sex".
Gotta agree with Tim here. Tittyfucking only barely makes it, and I could be dissuaded on that.
Any man who is old enough to get an erection is too old to say "titty."
Don't go oppressing me with your bourgeois notions of proper mammenclature, B.
Does hush money count as a holiday greeting?
I find the self-imposed version of this weirder, like when people I know (invariably women, but in principle it could be anyone) suddenly start struggling with a desire to keep their "count" below some quasi-arbitrary number.
Handjobs count as sex, and titfucking surely does. B/c I am sorry, but any activity where I"m gonna get spunk on me counts as sex.
Just fyi, the last time b complained about the word "titties," it led to a very funny thread.
It isn't how many, but which ones.
That's a good point. I've felt unclean after finding out someone I slept with also slept with someone I didn't much like. Not long for that relationship.
Yglesias's post. Elapsed time to find in Wayback machine: 4 minutes. I have mad skillz.
struggling with a desire to keep their "count" below some quasi-arbitrary number
I've never run into this; these must be people who also read The Rules.
any activity where I'm gonna get spunk on me counts as sex
Well, none of the handjobs I've received resulted in any spunk on you, B, and though you may be able to prove otherwise, I suspect the number of handjobs that have ended with sunk on you constitute a very tiny fraction of the whole. So no. Still not sex.
22 - There was a questionable article on that in the NYT style section a while back. It claimed that some women went back to old flames for flings instead of hooking up with a stranger just because that didn't count towards raising their number.
24 -
Unlike your average questionable Times article this has happened to me. Style Section article + personal anecdotes = truth. I don't complain, per se, but it's odd behavior.
In which "I" is synecdoche, goddamnit.
Last "titty" discussion also led to a brief exchange on the difference between "lay" and "lie," which reminds me that last night Mr. B. asked if our bed was big enough for Ben w-lfs-n to occupy it along with both of us.
Apo - how is tit-fucking not sex? Esp. if a blowjob is?
I think it's irrelevant to consider whether titfucking counts as sex because I think it is unlikely that there would be people with whom one might engage in titfucking but not intercourse, unless you're some sort of titfucking specialist.
30 - I think that's what I mean, but yours is much better.
Are there titfucking specialists?
One of my girlfriends once dated a guy she referred to as "the fastidious titfucker."
I think the ambiguity over "what counts as sex" is a feature. It allows one to inflate or minimize one's number depending on the audience.
And, definitely, who matters more than how many (at least up to a certain quantity).
17, 24: out of curiosity, was there a generally accepted quasi-arbitrary number?
26 - It's weird enough for someone to do it, but it's even weirder to think of someone admitting it to their partner. I can just imagine the phone call: "I'm horny and you don't count, so wanna come over?"
Personally, I think titfucking is the most pointless semi-mainstream sexual activity ever invented, so I hope there are no specialists.
30: This is hilarious, but not necessarily true, as there might be a progression of sex acts in a relationship, where titfucking comes before intercourse, and the relationship might end before that progression is complete.
I'm just sayin'. Not that this is from personal experience or nothin'.
33: Is that even possible? What, did he make her wear one of those lobster bibs?
34 - The article mostly talked about people trying to keep it under 10 but some in the article had other quasi-arbitrary numbers.
35 -
It's never gone that way. But say I was going out with a girl and we were talking and she mentioned that when she's single she sometimes likes to hook-up with some of her exes because that way she keeps her count down. Then say we break up. Then say a certain amount of random post-breakup sex takes place. Am I crazy to draw conclusions from that? And say this goes down with two different people. That's a trend in my book.
#37: He liked titfucking, and then he would always disappear into the bathroom to get a towel and clean her up afterwards.
Why she was sleeping with him, I have no idea.
39 was me, name vanished for some reason.
#40 - Considerateness is a very attractive quality, B.
I've never had sex (vaginal, oral, hand, tits) with anyone besides my wife, and she had sex with somewhere in three figures men before she met me. It would be nice to at least be within a frigging order of magnitude . . . .
I don't blame 43 for hiding behind anonymity.
last night Mr. B. asked if our bed was big enough for Ben w-lfs-n to occupy it along with both of us.
And?
39 - Ah, I see. That reduces the weirdness of disclosing the motivation behind the hookup. To have worked out an understanding beforehand seems kind of prudent, if keeping one's number down is a concern.
Genghis Khan was definitely type II. Normally he killed the previous partner, so jealousy was somewhat moot. He had about 800 wives, but he was only close to 8 of them. Something like 0.5% of the world's population is his direct descendant, and if I'm not mistaken that's male-line descendants only.
One of the regular commenters here knows who I (43) am, but I'm sure that person isn't so mean as to "out" me.
Folks, that was Bill Clinton posting anonymously. None of the things you've heard are true.
People seriously tittyfuck*? I thought that was a stupid pr0n thing.
*The name has to be stupid because the nature of the activity demands it.
Apo - how is tit-fucking not sex? Esp. if a blowjob is?
Tim - I said it just barely qualified. But to my way of seeing it, it's just a fancy handjob.
But to my way of seeing it, it's just a fancy handjob.
Those are some damn fancy hands you have there, ma'am.
Folks, that was Bill Clinton posting anonymously. None of the things you've heard are true.
I'm not Bill Clinton, John, and it's all true.
damn fancy hands
Must be hell finding mittens for them.
Only Bill Clinton would deny that he was Bill Clinton!
damn fancy hands
Must be hell finding mittens for them.
More difficult than I would have thought, based on BPhD's opus on bras and the comments thereto a couple of weeks ago -- but not impossible.
Well, the things you've heard about Hillary are true, if you've been listening in the right places. But Bill is an innocent.
Only Bill Clinton would deny that he was Bill Clinton!
I'm Bill Clinton, and that pathetic, pussy-starved wretch is no Bill Clinton!
titfucking is the most pointless semi-mainstream sexual activity ever invented
I take it peeing on somebody doesn't rise to the semi-mainstream level (even in a post-R.Kelly world)? Because I really, really have trouble seeing any point to that.
At least one of these cartoons is on-topic.
Fokke & Sukke, English-language version
My second girlfriend not only had had sex with more than fifty before she was twenty, but carried a list (1st names only) on which she ranked them in order of performance. I think she thought it was important that she remember them all.
I wasn't in the top half, but not at the bottom of the list. It was a little deflating, metaphorically, but she did want to be with me rather than the hotter one-night stands, who were just fucks. And I did manage to move up some with practice. I thought she taught me something about women, but I was probably wrong.
I take it peeing on somebody doesn't rise to the semi-mainstream level (even in a post-R.Kelly world)? Because I really, really have trouble seeing any point to that.
"Semi-mainstream"? Is that a pun? To count as sex, I think ideally (i.e if things go to the satisfaction of the participants) at least one party ought to get an orgasm out of the act, which I assume is not the case with peeing on someone. Concededly, I am no authority on this.
I should have known better than to think this thread might stay on topic. But I confess I don't see why y'all are hating on tittyfucking. Variety is the spice of life, people, and tittyfucking, with the right tits, is some nice variety.
peeing...mainstream...
there's a joke in there somewhere...
Peeing on someone is past the point of "sex act" and well into "humiliating act."
I wasn't in the top half, but not at the bottom of the list. It was a little deflating, metaphorically, but she did want to be with me rather than the hotter one-night stands, who were just fucks. And I did manage to move up some with practice.
Ohmigod. "Bob, you were at No. 47 out of 63 after our first time, but after that incredible performance I'm moving you up from 18 to 13!"
Bob was pre-Access, so his girlfriend had to type out the whole list all over again every time.
Or maybe she used a cardfile.
This is my favorite Stones trivia: Wyman and Jones three figures, Jagger two figures, Richards low single figures, Watts zero. This was on one tour several or many months long.
64: I'm with you. I can see why the tittyfuckee might think it stupid and annoying (although in my case, all of the recipients made the initial proposal) but I don't think it's quite as lame or deviant as it's been made out to be here.
66: I think those two categories overlap for some people.
I'm sure titfucking is great for guys, but as a girl, I gotta agree with Dan Savage's assessment that it's kind of like watching a turtle poke its head in and out between your breasts, and at the end the turtle pukes on your chin.
In other words, HOTT.
Ben, I told Mr. B. that although you are tall, you're kinda skinny, so probably we could fit you in, sure.
The Fokke & Sukke link has a similiar comment on fisting.
You're really going with the puking turtle metaphor?
Yeah, why not?
I gotta speak in favor of fisting, though.
I gotta speak in favor of fisting, though.
Well, speak. We're all ears.
I'm feeling so innocent in this thread.
Dude, if I wanted to go into detail I'd do it on my blog and boost my traffic.
Fisting always struck me as a little mean and possibly damaging. Though I guess a baby is bigger than a fist.
I'm sure my partner wwould be shocked and appalled with the number of partners I had before her.As a matter of fact,so am I.Some of that seems to be a Sam Malone-ish
inability to commit or unwilligness to grow up.A bit of advice:
1)do not divulge the number unless you want to be looked at differently forever.
2)Never have sex with anyone you wouldn't want to be seen with as your partner.
Anything's possibly damaging if you don't do it right.
Some men have tiny, impotent fists.
Not me, though.
kind of like watching a turtle poke its head in and out between your breasts, and at the end the turtle pukes on your chin.
This is my point exactly. It's just a fancy handjob. Not that there's anything wrong with handjobs, whether fancy or old-school.
But the point is, if it involves fluid, an orgasm, and another person, it's sex.
It can also be instructive to imagine your reaction to hearing your wife say "while you were at work, the electrician was here and tittyfucked me."
But the point is, if it involves fluid, an orgasm, and another person, it's sex.
Rubbing someone through their jeans 'til they come? I have a line that may well exist only my own head that divides heavy petting and sex. and handjobs fall on the heavy petting side. Not that it really matters.
But it's not sex if the handjob doesn't culminate in ejaculation? That doesn't seem right.
It can also be instructive to imagine your reaction to hearing your wife say "while you were at work, the electrician was here and tittyfucked me."
Especially since I've always heard it used with the subject and object in a different order than you just placed them. I would certainly have to pause to try to figure out the mechanics of it all first.
Is there a methodologist in the house? Our theory-construction seems impacted.
Without getting more than halfway through, so many thoughts. One is that lesbians actually do have sex. Many, anyway.
Another is ObObvious that many men, both het and not, at least during some periods in their life, would screw anything more attractive than a tree. And a fair number would do the tree. But, of course, women are sluts if they like sex too much.
One woman in my past was too embarrassed to give me a figure, but allowed in a weak moment that it was well over a hundred before she got out of college. She happened to like sex a lot. Which made her like me (except, you know, not in the numbers, or in many other ways; in that). My reaction: kool. Man, was she good at sex. And, not oddly, ready any time.
Anyone who wants to tell me there's something bad there about having a sweetie like that, I will tell them they are nuts.
Also, the whole "what counts as sex" is, again, strange binarism; why is it people seems to always see everything only as one or the other, rather than on a continuum? Am I the only one who lives in the latter universe?
Although, mind, I do make a distinction between woman I've done sexual things with, beyond talk, and those I have not; I'm not saying there are no binary distinctions to be made in the universe; I thought I'd get that out of the way before someone pointed it out to me.
One thing on the numbers -- they look much larger as a lump sum than spaced out. 40 before 25: Assume the girl was an early bloomer, having sex from 14. That's 11 years at under 4 partners a year. Not so bad. And 50 before 40? Starting from the age of 20 (just to be conservative), that's 2.5 partners a year. That really so shocking?
"...between woman I've done sexual things with...."
Pre-emptively: women.
#86: Apostropher, I hate to be the one that tells you that fluid is involved even before ejaculation occurs.
Also, one decent distinction between coming in your jeans and a handjob is that no one is put at risk of an STD if you keep your dick in your pants. Having said that, though, I'd go along with Gary and say that coming in your pants damn well can count as sex in some circumstances.
That really so shocking?
I personally would be impressed with such consistency.
why is it people seems to always see everything only as one or the other, rather than on a continuum?
You can always divide up a continuum and label that division. Ice->water->steam, ROYGBIV, etc.
As far as binarism, I don't think I've got just two categories on the sexuality spectrum. Hell I can start dicing it all up into more categories than Carter has little liver pills, as could we all. But any one divider on the line necessarily creates two segments.
That's actually quantitative differences becoming qualitative difference, a non-continuum or anti-continuum. But you knew that.
Young people today just sleep through the Engels class.
Also, nearly 100 comments, and no one (aside from Mr. Anonymous) has yet given a number. Interesting.
All my orgasms deriving from my wine fetish make me a promiscuous fellow.
"...I think it is unlikely that there would be people with whom one might engage in titfucking but not intercourse...."
As we all doubtless know, some women don't find that intercourse does anything for them; some actively dislike it. But still are thrilled with other practices. What other people's favored interests might be isn't my business, and I don't care as long as they're not scaring the horses in the street, but I don't think it's all unlikely in the least. "People" is an non-small set.
50: "I thought that was a stupid pr0n thing."
The only things done in pr0n not done by some in real life is engage in the awful acting, the bad camera angles, and pretense that sex is all plateau at orgasm, rather than arousal, plateau, and release (I'm leaving out a stage; I read about this stuff as a child, from my parents' bookshelf, with their permission).
No, wait, I'm sure some do those, as well.
Fond memory: early lover (I was 21, she was 23) who turned to me after we went through about six or eight things, and she came six times, and said "I thought it was only like that in porn films!"
But now I'm bragging. Sometimes the truth is just like that. Pinky-swear, no exaggeration.
Also, Michael, all sex is stupid.
Well, first we have to establish what does and doesn't count as sex.
Plus, honestly, who keeps track? And no, that does not mean that I've slept with dozens of people, thank you very much.
"Because I really, really have trouble seeing any point to that."
It's long been my observation that sexual arousal is, commonly, strongly associationally based, and that this is cumulative. That's sufficient basis to understand that absolutely, literally, anything can be sexual to someone, and doubtless is (the internet also constitutes proof, I would argue).
That it's associated for some with a bodily function is even less surprising, if you think about it. It has more in common with mainstream sexuality than, say, being turned on by large rocks. Which I'm sure someone is.
I hate to be the one that tells you
Well don't worry, others have gotten there before you with the information.
I personally would be impressed with such consistency.
Probably a Capricorn.
96: matt, i was just going to comment the same thing. if we're going to base it on ogged's definition in the original post, i can come up with a number in a few minutes. i gotta use the way-back machine to think about it.
It has more in common with mainstream sexuality than, say, being turned on by large rocks. Which I'm sure someone is.
9, i think. though i won't break it down into who did what. also, i'm 25, fwiw, and i've been in a monogamous relationship for the past 5+ years.
Oh wait, 14. Let's just say 15ish, and call it done.
Barring failures of memory, 13.
If I recall, the question was "how many prior partners is too many?"
Oh, in that case, the answer is I don't give a rat's ass.
That was pretty much mine as well.
Well, I feel rather puritanical now, but I'm at 4. Though I am a number of years younger than all of you.
But really, given that expansive definition, B, you're way below what I would guess for most people our age.
Ah, well, given the actual question, I'd say 3 digits and above is a warning flag. Aside from that, doesn't really matter.
63: "To count as sex, I think ideally (i.e if things go to the satisfaction of the participants) at least one party ought to get an orgasm out of the act, which I assume is not the case with peeing on someone."
There are a variety of what we might loosely call "formal" practices, or traditions, of sex whose point is denial of orgasm. These traditions go back thousands of years. One of them is commonly known as "tantra."
Other folks merely get off on not getting off, but on frustration. Some are into BDSM. Some are not (depending upon definition, which I wouldn't dream of offering).
Really, sexual practice is varied, and more than what lives in our own heads and imagination.
And one common view probably runs something like this: I am enthusiastically open-minded, you are weird, they are horribly disgusting perverts who must die.
Another view is that it's common for many people's sexual development to be a long, slow, process of discarding previous notions of what's disgusting (or, at least, boring). Often for the sake of one's partner, if one is generous. But views, as I say, vary most widely. And plenty of people believe it would be evil to like anything they didn't start with (I think that's a shame, but it's their head and body).
79: "1)do not divulge the number unless you want to be looked at differently forever."
An alternative way to go is that if you wish to have an honest, trusting, mutual relationship, learn to trust each other with that and almost everything else. I can vouch that this can work fine. (With the right person, of course; not those other people.)
"2)Never have sex with anyone you wouldn't want to be seen with as your partner."
I'm fully with you on that one.
83: "It's just a fancy handjob."
The physical part between bodies, it turns out, is all just parts rubbing against each other, at base. (If you're doing it right, in my opinion, there's a lot more to it; but that's still the foundation of most of the physical part.) It's all silly. (Not to mention repetitive.) Except, you know, for the way it makes us feel; mostly people don't get bored; if you're doing it right. (It's also largely, though not entirely, in our heads, if you follow me.)
86: "But it's not sex if the handjob doesn't culminate in ejaculation? That doesn't seem right."
If you have a lesbian friend, my guess is she'd agree. (Not going into female ejaculation, which I have no direct experience with.)
#111: I am full of surprises.
Also, isn't it marvellous that in just one generation we've gotten to the point where a number in the teens for a woman in her 30s doesn't seem particularly remarkable? Yay feminism! Yay birth control!
90: "That really so shocking?"
Ezra. why should any number be "shocking"?
92: "Apostropher, I hate to be the one that tells you that fluid is involved even before ejaculation occurs."
If you're doing it right. Important tip, fellas! Make a note!
"Also, nearly 100 comments, and no one (aside from Mr. Anonymous) has yet given a number."
Hard to give a number if one doesn't believe in bothering to make fine distinctions. But mine isn't huge: somewhere between, I dunno, 25 and 35, or so. Probably closer to 30 than 35, but I'm not going to count. Largely before I was thirty, and none in quite a while -- since my last live-in sweetie, circa 1999 (the only really major mistake, that one). And for years before that they were spaced out, after I was about thirty years old.
I'm basically using the "one of us had an orgasm after some stuff got rubbed by some body part of the other's" definition here. There were another dozen or so less than that that, um, came close.
Some of those back in my pre-thirty busy days were, as folks who consistently read me might gather, were simultaneous involvements with mutual consent. For a couple of years I was living with both my main sweeties, but also sleeping regularly with three others. This was, I admit, a bit tiring, and required some scheduling, especially considering that everyone else had multiple lovers, and most of those lovers had lovers, and....
But that was when I was between 21 and 25, and I've not done the multiple involvements thing since, nor gone looking; just stayed friends with others who have been group married for thirty years or so -- you know, the people who don't exist. (Yes, it's a tiny minority, I agree, though much larger than you think, because the overwhelming majority are in the closet to the mainstream world; people in the Fifties though hardly anyone was gay, relatively speaking, as well.)
And as I've mentioned here before, I started at age 15, and my third was the 23-year-old girlfriend I then moved in with, a couple of months before I turned 16. (My first was also age 15, and the second, um, I don't remember for sure, but definitely between 18 and 21.) (I provide the data for the spreadsheet I expect someone's doing.
I'm going to agree that titfucking is a fancy handjob, and a handjob just ain't sex. Ogged raises the point that sexy acts like titfucking can be sex if they're transgressive (e.g., what the wife did with the mailman today), but on the other hand, a guy doesn't say "we had sex last night" if he got a handjob.
Also, how often does titfucking happen in the absence of other indisputably sex-qualifying acts?
Ah, Arm, but why does the guy get to define sex? ;)
So far, my experience having sex has been as a man. But I can imagine it just as well for a woman—who'd say, "I nailed that guy last night," if it were just a handjob involved?
(And under any circumstances one assumes the fellow reciprocates.)
"other, indisputably sex-qualifying, acts"
I dunno, there are lots of ways to have very fun sex involving one person's genitals and the other person's hands.
Obviously, we can draw the distinctions many ways. We're not trying to fix the definitions for all eternity. (But you can try a variant of the "electrician" definition: if your partner did it with someone else, would you consider it cheating?) The question was, if we include the various "minor" sex acts, is there some number that would put you off?
Thirteen. But more impressively, the group contains an Anne, an Anna, an Ana, and an Anya.
Saiselgy worked his way through the Harvard student directory, listed by first name.
"Started to work his way," you mean. Surely there are more than 13 students at Harvard.
The "electrician" standard is clearly wrong. If your wife was frenching the electrician, you'd be pissed, but it's still not sex. See also the foot massage thing in Pulp Fiction.
Handjobs and other penumbral cases are useful for maintaining double-standards. Dudes who want to boast can pretend it's sex, and chicks who want to seem chaste can pretend it's not.
See, I think that the electrician standard is far better than the "is it cheating" standard.
"Started to work his way," you mean. Surely there are more than 13 students at Harvard.
He must just not have had much success, is all.
Those of us destined to be forever victimized by alphabetical order -- all those years last in line for snacktime at school, etc. -- are drawn to the alphabetically blessed, hoping desperately to bask in their aura.
Surely there are more than 13 students at Harvard.
The assumption is that the names Saiselgy posted are merely a representative sample.
Fair enough, B. I'm trying to put myself into that frame of mind, that age, in which the numbers were a more important determinant of sexual maturity (or deviancy). Maybe I'm discounting handjobs because at that time I wasn't getting very good handjobs.
I dunno. Anne, Anna, Ana, and Anya is a pretty good track-record in the "An-" range. What would be the hypothesis for it suddenly falling off when one gets to the Bs?
What would be the hypothesis for it suddenly falling off when one gets to the Bs?
Bitches, those girls.
There's also an "ad-" and an "ar-" on the list.
The question was, if we include the various "minor" sex acts, is there some number that would put you off?
You're trying to elide an issue that can't be avoided. The number is much higher if you're counting handjobs. Otherwise, it's half her/his age + 7.
"Also, isn't it marvellous that in just one generation we've gotten to the point where a number in the teens for a woman in her 30s doesn't seem particularly remarkable? Yay feminism! Yay birth control!"
Well, those active in the "free love" movement at the turn of the last plus one century might be a bit upset at not being mentioned, but it's true that they, also, were a small minority.
Join mightly in the yays, to be sure, I will and do.
116: "I'm going to agree that titfucking is a fancy handjob, and a handjob just ain't sex."
Once again: do lesbians not have sex? This is not a trick question.
I've had a few handjobs that were vastly better than several occasions of intercourse (hint: you're not suppose to just lie there like you're dead, while I do everything for us both), and a couple of mediocre blowjobs (that saying about no such thing as a bad blowjob? wrong). So I'm hardly one to agree. (although there's actually only one woman I ever just had a handjob from [while I got her off doing the parallel to her], but she was 16, I was 17, and she was my 4th).
I'd also suggest that what sex "is" is something we get to define for ourselves, not for others, but I suppose I'm being either all liberal or libertarian there.
"...but on the other hand, a guy doesn't say "we had sex last night" if he got a handjob."
Guys, as studies show, are often idiots about sex (many women, too, to be sure).
118: Lesbians. Exist.
120: "I dunno, there are lots of ways to have very fun sex involving one person's genitals and the other person's hands."
Many people lack imaginaton, or experience. We must condescend to them and pity them, not be kind to them. (I considered deleting this, because someone would take me seriously, but then I remembered where I was commenting.)
Also, I mentioned earlier that, as we know, many women don't get off on intercourse, and some actively dislike it. Same applies to every other sex act, including every common one. One lover adored being manually stimulated, only sometimes got off on intercourse without simultaneous stimulation (doncha love the clinical language? such a turn-on, baby!), and was happy to give oral sex, but was repelled at the notion of receiving it. We all have our quirks. Boy, do we. (Girl, too.)
I trust, Ogged, that I've been clear that no number would put me off. But, yes, absolutely, that you had the rotten taste to do Lover X, that takes a bit of talking and dealing with, for me. (Lusting after someone who is a moron or evil, is fairly trivial, though; lust is lust, and wants to be free; action is a whole 'nother matter.)
In the words of Ol' Dirty, "I don't have no trouble with you fuckin' me/ But I have a little problem with you not fuckin' me." Hence, those bitches who won't hit up Saiselgy.
Arguably a good, satisfying handjob = sex, whereas the sort of disappointing "I made out with you for two hours and all I got was this stupid handjob" handjob one might obtain senior year in high school is not.
those active in the "free love" movement at the turn of the last plus one century might be a bit upset at not being mentioned
They're included if they were feminists; those who were in it just to score some pussy, I have no praise for.
"I made out with you for two hours and all I got was this stupid handjob"
See, that attitude right there is the problem with guys who cop that kind of attitude.
It was senior year in high school! Anyone expecting anything better than utter scumbaggery from teenage boys needs a reality check. One lives, one learns, etc.
that attitude right there is the problem with guys who cop that kind of attitude.
You just made my head spin.
the group contains an Anne, an Anna, an Ana, and an Anya.
I have a DeAnn, a Diane, one variant of DeAnn that's too distinctive for me to list here thanks to Google, a Dawn, and two Danas.
#141: Having dated teenage boys and raising a boy who I hope is a future teenager, I must register my dissent.
You're trying to elide an issue that can't be avoided. The number is much higher if you're counting handjobs.
Dios mio, it's like trying to talk about sex with a bunch of Jesuits. The point was just to get a sense of whether people are bothered by their partner having been too free with his/her affections. If the woman you're about to propose to was holding her tits for some guy who splooged on her face, that fucking counts, people, whether you call it "titfucking," "fooling around," or "sex."
144: Yeah, but to expect otherwise isn't, as saiselgy notes, very realistic.
do lesbians not have sex?
Lesbians engage in both heavy petting and sex, just like every other potential pairing of people, sure.
They're included if they were feminists; those who were in it just to score some pussy, I have no praise for.
And the women who were just in it get to get laid? I know people of both sexes like that today, you know. I figure it just isn't my business, since I'm not having to deal with the genitals of any of them.
When I was in college I started seeing a girl who'd had more than 4 times as many partners as I'd had (and was not holding to a Clintonian definition). I definitely balked. But I chalked it up to my own insecurity. I knew it was doomed, though, when she told my roommate and me that she thought it was horrible and ridiculous that anyone would play video games when they could be making art.
Does it count if she was holding someone else's tits for some guy who spooged on someone else's face?
Also, is there anyone here who is honestly going to say, "Yes. Anything above 20 is right out"?
144, 146:
Indeed. Pseudonymous Kid, doubtless adorable at the moment, will almost certainly transform into a scumbag and then eventually untransform and re-emerge as a fine upstanding young man. Such is the way of the world -- social forces beyond the control of mere parents are in play.
anyone would play video games when they could be making art
Obviously a person to be avoided, due to insufferable cluelessness. Who could eat this stack of pancakes when a child in Eritrea is starving?
Without getting too specific here, you all need to lower your standards and drink much, much more. Jesus, I feel like a fucking libertine in here.
#146: To fail to expect otherwise is to perpetuate the tragedy of low expectations.
#147: Loving a double standard, I'd say that arguably a woman at the turn of the 19th century who was fucking around just to get laid was a feminist by definition.
Also, is there anyone here who is honestly going to say, "Yes. Anything above 20 is right out"?
Under the handjob definition, no. Using a straight intercourse definition - I dunno, I'd want to see a scatter plot of the events. Things that happened a decade ago (10 partners in 10 days!) seem sort of irrelevant.
is there anyone here who is honestly going to say, "Yes. Anything above 20 is right out"?
Well, I would say it if I believed it, but you know the commenters here are all whipped and single. I can't figure it out. I will say this: when talking to a friend about this general topic, we decided that a woman who had been simultaneously anally and vaginally penetrated was out. I think that would be in the category that Labs calls "too freaky."
I'd say that arguably...
Again, I'd say that unarguably it isn't any of my business and that assigning social signifiers a century after the fact is pure projection.
"...They're included if they were feminists; those who were in it just to score some pussy, I have no praise for."
I wasn't clear; you were referring to women, as I understood you, and also meant only "women." I may also have just misunderstood you. After all, women didn't solely invent birth control, so that was my careless reading. I was referring to that generation of feminism, although that term wasn't, that I recall offhand, in use then. Emma Goldman, Edna St. Vincent Millary, Margaret Sanger, Mabel Dodge, Louise Bryant, and so on.
I'd want to see a scatter plot
Until someone tops it, SCMTim wins best comment.
#155: Following that logic, we can't call Mary Wollstonecraft a feminist, which is ridiculous.
#154: A woman who'd had sex with a guy who had a finger up her ass would be "too freaky"? Prude.
a woman who had been simultaneously anally and vaginally penetrated was out
Keep lowering your standards; I'll open another bottle.
Does it count if she was holding someone else's tits for some guy who spooged on someone else's face?
Was there a film crew?
I had a Chasing Amy-style crisis of conscience when I discovered a girlfriend had previously been involved in some four-way action followed by some Chasing Amy-style realization that this was a stupid crisis to be having. Then the new plan became to avoid being freaked out about other people's behavior and that seems to have worked okay so far.
Keep drinking, Saiselgy. A blog-worthy crisis will break out eventually.
#160, Ok then, I amend my question: is having been involved in a 3-way, by definition, too freaky, or is it simultaneous a/v penetration only that crosses that line? E.g., the holding someone's tits while someone else spooged in the tit-owner's face: too freaky? Simultaneous oral and vaginal penetration by cocks? Fucking while someone else watches?
I'm half-joshing you, but also kind of serious, in a Jesuitical way. It's kind of interesting to think about what specific acts trip people's freak meters.
Chasing Amy-style crisis
I think this is a good crisis to have. I was also quite jealous of a partner's past experience until someone said something to me, which, characteristically, I've completely forgotten, but which made being jealous seem silly.
B: the operative line appears to be "that which I have seen in porn but have not personally experienced." To which I answer again, keep drinking.
Pour me a glass, I'll pull up a chair.
"Anyone expecting anything better than utter scumbaggery from teenage boys needs a reality check."
Cough.
I'm an outlier, to be sure. Always have been. Although, actually, the overall arc of my life has been pretty much towards "more normal" in almost every area. Frightening thought, innit?
(I forget if I've mentioned on this blog that when I was 13-17, hardly anyone could tell my age unless I told them; I was commonly taken for at least 18-25, due to the way I spoke, which is essentially identical to the way I do now [though my writing had absolutely no control, and little sense of either grammar or punctuation back then; okay, only slight difference now]; this is how the 23-year-old decided to sleep with me; she wanted to jump out a window when she learned my actual age after a few weeks or she had no idea I was a minor.)
152: it's not a double standard if the objects of comparison exist with differing standards of treatment by their environment, or if said objects (people) have differing degrees of class power, or any such significant difference of meaningful context. That's not a double standard, it's what I've always called "false mirror syndome" (personal terminology since age 14 or so).
"...you all need to lower your standards and drink much, much more."
Did my quota last week; I'm off the stuff for A While.
The initial question is badly formed. "Too many" for what? If we're talking about just having sex with someone, without many emotional strings, the more the better. The freakier the better. If the aliens come to take you away to a never seen planet (assuming a return), you have to go, even if you never see your loved ones again. The answer is different for a long term relationship.
Along these lines, are there acts which would be deemed unacceptable if previously engaged in by a partner, but are still personally appealing?
"...Lesbians engage in both heavy petting and sex, just like every other potential pairing of people, sure."
And what's your understanding of what most lesbians commonly define as "sex"?
#168 to 152: Of course I agree with you, I was just being flip.
think about what specific acts trip people's freak meters
Actually, it was more my friend's line than mine, and I'm not sure what I think--I expect everything would be colored by what I thought of the person who'd done whatever. But, given that I'm basically pretty conservative about these things, and that I'm put off even by casual sex, freaky sex would raise issues for me, quite apart from whether it made me jealous.
until someone said something to me, which, characteristically, I've completely forgotten, but which made being jealous seem silly.
See, I just watched Chasing Amy again and came to my senses. Worst of all, I don't even like that movie and yet it's become an important touchstone in my life. Though of course that was three-way, rather than four-way action so maybe it's not even relevant.
Did my quota last week; I'm off the stuff for A While.
I wasn't referring to you, Gary. You're down here in the libertine trolley with me, you fucking freak.
"Too many" for what?
For whoever is asking, of course. It's not meant to be a complicated question.
And what's your understanding of what most lesbians commonly define as "sex"?
I don't care. It's my fucking arbitrary line.
I'm somewhat vindicated—thanks, SCMT.
I should probably stop drinking now.
it's become an important touchstone in my life
It's the only movie (that I know of), that takes a square look at a feeling that just about everyone has at some point. And though it's not great, it's good enough to get the wheels turning.
"for what" vs. "whoever". Where the fuck is w-lfs-n?
I should probably stop drinking now.
And here I thought apostropher was the hero.
Discretion is the better part of valor, Smasher.
160: "158: sorry, I meant by cocks."
Dildos and vibrators are ok, then? Does it matter if one of the guys has a cock ring? Shall we stroll through a list of of other sex toys? (We have to do something to keep Apostropher awake through his bottle. I've damn sure done my part.)
As usual, I do love the way subjective opinions are being phrased as objective, universal, facts. Projection, indeed.
if the # exists for me, it hasn't happened yet. but i'm curious why it would disqualify someone? fear of disease? of infidelity? a sense that you're not special to that person? worried you won't measure up to previous partners? concern they're crazy? sluts are icky?
seems most of the reasons one might be turned off by a high number are more specifically addressed by other questions, such as "how many strains of herpes are you carrying?", or "cheat much?"
"for what" vs. "whoever". Where the fuck is w-lfs-n?
In and out.
#173: I think it really does boil down to what one thinks of the person who'd done whatever, rather than by whatever, honestly. But of course that would render the original question pointless....
It does surprise me that folks are skeeved, even only theoretically, by casual sex. But then again, that too depends on why the skeeving, and on who is being skeeved, doesn't it? I mean, if the objection is "people who have casual sex are whores" then that's vile; but if it's "in all honesty, I take sex seriously and have a hard time with the concept of intimacy with people one isn't pretty serious about," then it's not only charming, but actually a sobering kind of rebuke to the jocular nature of the way we usually talk about these things, innit?
I take sex seriously and have a hard time with the concept of intimacy with people one isn't pretty serious about
Well, you've pre-complimented it, but yes, that's exactly right.
#179: Discretion may be the better part of valor, but failing to keep a woman company after proffering her wine is ungentlemanly in the extreme.
Apostropher didn't say he was drinking wine.
#190: Okay, I am a bad person maybe, but actually Hugo's way of talking about these things skeeves ME. It seems so fucking patronizing, really.
190 - Ah! That was the article I was thinking of back in 24. I wrongly attributed it to the NYT. No wonder I couldn't find it.
Dude, my lady is soooo asleep that if I tried to keep her company, I might go to work tomorrow with a black eye.
#189: Okay then, but in that case isn't asking the question "what number of sex partners is too many" kind of inimical to the idea of taking sex seriously? The question implies the kind of scorekeeping ethos that precludes taking sex seriously. It seems to me that the only serious answer (in that sense of the word serious) to such a question is "it doesn't matter, and I wouldn't ask."
"The assorted musings of Hugo Schwyzer: a progressive, consistent-life ethic Anabaptist/Episcopalian Democrat (but with a sense of humor), a community college history and gender studies professor, ENFP Gemini, an avid marathoner, aspiring ultra-runner, die-hard political junkie, and proud father of the most amazing chinchilla on God's green earth."
b, any room in the "bad person" trolley?
192: I'm almost always drinking wine. It's my poison and it's Spanish night.
First bottle: Vinos Sin-Ley 2004 Garnacha G-2. Split this one.
Second bottle: Carro Tinto 2004. I think just the one glass is going to be the extent.
What troubles me is the conviction that serious relationships are an impediment to (rather than a vehicle for) one's personal growth. (From the link in 190.)
This seems to be a theme in The Ethics of Authenticity.
198: any college professor who has fathered a chinchilla is definitely in the bad trolley.
It seems to me that the only serious answer (in that sense of the word serious) to such a question is "it doesn't matter, and I wouldn't ask."
Well, we can discuss it on the blog, because it is something that's an issue in the culture. As for me, personally, I have no idea what "the number" is for any of my exes.
194: The link wasn't an endorsement. I don't read his blog for pretty much that reason, even though I'm sure I miss some interesting topics. But he lists that as one of his "top posts" so I remember reading it when I was trying to figure out what his blog was about.
197: No, because the number is a proxy for seriousness. Just as asking, "How many times have you been truly in love?" would be a proxy for seriousness about love. If your answer to the "love" question is in the tripple digits, you are not serious about it.
(Actually a really bad example; using the phrase "truly in love" or even "in love" should be an automatic cock-block.)
162: Kevin Smith's understanding of relationships is under-rated. Chasing Amy is one of my favorite movies. (Also, there was, yes, the lesbian whom I was sweeties with for a year; no details, but there was sex [with complications, granted]; I swear I don't make any of this stuff up.)
175: "You're down here in the libertine trolley with me, you fucking freak."
I did write this only two days ago (it's still Thursday for me for another 50 minutes). Followed the next day with this.
180: "And though it's not great, it's good enough to get the wheels turning."
It's a lot funnier if you've ever been much of a comics reader, and get all the comics jokes. "You're a fucking tracer!"
But I agree, of course, that the relationship aspects is the main goodness, along with the dialogue and camera work. Lousy special effects, though; the exploding cars were hardly noticeable.
I'm a fan of most things Kevin Smith, although his online daily diary is an example of why I don't wish to go far down that route; I don't find news of his dumps at all interesting, thank you, Kevin.
I was thinking about writing some remarks on Jersey Girl, his least artistically successful film since Mallrats, but still with some positive aspects (in my view; not that of many critics, but, as we know, I've not been writing much -- except, the last two days, comments, trying to work my way back to it).
"I don't care. It's my fucking arbitrary line."
The point was that several people here keep insisting on what "sex" is, and if they're right, most lesbians don't have it. (see 118 for one example.)
As the saying goes, "what lesbians call sex is often what men call 'petting'" It certainly doesn't have to involve penetration (although it often does, as well, whether via fist, sex toy, or whatever; for for many others, not); ditto, not so much ejaculation.
"Discretion is the better part of valor, Smasher."
And if one does intend to drink on New Tear's Eve, it helps to not be too hungover. Unless one is just drinking straight on through, perhaps.
Indeed. To go back to the original Yglesias post that spawned this discussion, I think the main lesson that can be learned from Fire Door Girl is that only bad things can come from asking that question.
#200: What troubles me is the conviction that fucking around is an impediment to Serious Relationships. Likewise, the conviction that doing things just for fun is an impediment to Personal Growth.
Unless one is just drinking straight on through, perhaps.
I refer to this as my thirties.
What bothers me is that people actually think that they know exactly what someone else should do to achieve something as vaguely and variously defined as personal growth.
What troubles me is the implication that high school students should be engaged in Personal Growth. Again, people should never expect too much of teenagers. If they manage to stay out of jail and eventually leave home, that's success.
only bad things can come from asking that question.
To a partner, perhaps. Though as I was laughing at an earlier point in this thread, the missus asked what my number was. While I'm now officially of questionable character in her eyes, nothing truly bad resulted. Yet, anyhow.
the conviction that fucking around is an impediment to Serious Relationships
This is about 180° off-target.
People with personal growths might want to consider getting them looked at by a doctor.
94: Ice->water->steam
Late, uninteresting physics pedantry - this isn't a continuum, involving as it does well-defined phase transistions.
As to #s: more than Newton and Emily Dickinson combined, fewer than Byron. Maybe an Elizabeth Bishopish or Richard Wilburish number.
212: Without legitimate fucking around, minor fucking around is easily mistaken for Serious Relationships. I spent far too much of my life turning one night stands into four-month relationships.
Re #194
Mr. Hugoboy sez:
"I have enraged a few folks in my classes and in the blogosphere by suggesting that much (not all) of the modern feminist movement has its roots in a "profound disappointment in men.""
Wherever on earth could that possibly have come from? It must be for no reason whatever. (My read was a hasty skim, to be sure.)
205: "using the phrase "truly in love" or even "in love" should be an automatic cock-block.)"
[head scratch] Being in love is a turn-off?
216 confusion: Well, I no longer want to bang SCMTim. QED?
#197: No, it isn't. It seems to me that saying it is is kind of like people saying that because I have a boyfriend, I can't be serious about my marriage, for instance. One can have lots of recreational sex and still know the difference between recreational sex and intimacy.
Now, re. folks who, like O., aren't really comfortable with casual sex, I can see arguing that asking "how many" could serve as a rough (very rough) barometer for "do you, like me, take sex seriously?" But then the issue isn't the number, it's the attiude; and it still doesn't follow that someone who is comfortable with casual sex would be a bad partner for someone who isn't, or incapable of intimacy or taking sex seriously. So, again, I'll invoke my marriage: Mr. B. was a serious Catholic when I met him, a technical virgin, and disapproved of his sister's having lived with a boyfriend. He didn't, however, disapprove of the fact that *I* wasn't a virgin (and once I pointed out that the double standard for me vs. his sister was flattering to neither of us, he dropped his disapproval of his sister, to his great credit). Given that he thought that casual sex before marriage wasn't okay, fine; we didn't have casual sex. Given that he wasn't a possessive or jealous type (and the relationship was long-distance), I did occasionally sleep with people I wasn't intimate with. It worked out fine.
What troubles me is the implication that high school students should be engaged in Personal Growth.
What have you got against puberty? Or is it just that you don't like the people who didn't pubesce in middle school or before?
I don't find news of his dumps at all interesting, thank you, Kevin.
Not having read any of his online journal, I couldn't really say, but if it were devoted just to news of his dumps, described with oenophilic connoisseurship, that could be kinda interesting.
"It's kind of interesting to think about what specific acts trip people's freak meters."
Cop/ophilia and ped/philia are turnoffs. Although there was a 14 yr old hanging around my crew I never touched her. I have known people into violent role-playing, but I don't even get the cheerleader/upstairs maid stuff.
Been with 12 women and 3 guys. There, 1st on the thread. Not exactly in crisis over my identity or preference at 55. Not bi or confused, let's just say in the early 70s I did a lot of things just to prove I could. One guy paid me, again because the ladies of the evening I was living with dared me, and because I wanted to know if I could survive.
Oh yeah, virgins. No way I'd do a virgin.
Until I figured out that the slashes were replacing letters and not merely separating parts of the words, I thought bob was saying he doesn't like people who are into officers of the peace.
207: "...is that only bad things can come from asking that question."
And yet reality proves that isn't so. Many witnesses! (You probably weren't being literal, and meant something like "often bad things can come," I expect.)
On the other paw "I have a right to know!" is debatable.
208: stop saying the same things as me (okay, just on certain topics). It frightens me. (Okay, you have permission to continue.)
210: Absolutely.
211: "What troubles me is the implication that high school students should be engaged in Personal Growth."
If high school isn't about personal growth, you're apt to wind up very fucked up.
Oh, wait.
215: "I spent far too much of my life turning one night stands into four-month relationships."
Still, arguably better than the reverse.
"One can have lots of recreational sex and still know the difference between recreational sex and intimacy."
Some people can't, though, observation says. Possibly theoretically the might learn, but we all have different capabilities in such matters.
What bugs me is the insistence by many that Everyone Is Like Me. Not that this is a new story. (You may have missed "polyamory" flashing by again in the prior thread that parented this one.)
219: "...but if it were devoted just to news of his dumps, described with oenophilic connoisseurship, that could be kinda interesting."
no, but every time I've dropped by -- which isn't many, despite my enjoyment of his other work, it's included as part of how he starts his complete break-, er, day. It doesn't repel me, mind, but I'm really quite willing to stipulate that he engages in many normal things that are boring as all shit to those of us not writing them.
Then he gives details of his daily poker games. It's a thrill a minute. Of course, it is called My Boring-Ass Life. I already credited him with much perceptiveness. (Hmm, apparently he's been off being busy for the better part of a couple of months.) And he can be funny in it at times. But, still, this was why "editing" was invented.
Okay, flipping back towards when I last looked, I see a lack of dump news. Congrats; this is typical of a dump-free entry. Last I had read, he wasn't working at the time; maybe filming changes his focus on the priorities of life, or diarying, or something.
Still, arguably better than the reverse.
It's arguable.
Since I'm on the second bottle, employing the bizarrely liberal definition we're apparently obligated to use, I'm somewhere in the high 40s/low 50s. Using a strict intercourse definition, low 30s. I'm 37, fwiw, and went through high school and most of college before AIDS was really a household term, and I don't underestimate the impact that had.
I have many HIV-positive friends and have lost three.
All the same, I am absolutely white bread and middle of the road in my circle of friends, and while I'll accept that we're all weird, we aren't ginormous outliers. I know plenty of those people, too.
One of the nice things about being home on break is that the Unfogged timestamps reflect the actual time. Happy December 30, Gary.
(Sorry for the lack of relevance in this comment, but since my count approximates Newton's I have nothing on-topic to say.)
205: I think the phrase "in love" suggests meaning where there is none. I totally buy loving someone, I totally buy different types of love that demand different types of promises and future prospects. I don't believe that the phrase "in love" ties well to any subset of all of the above. "In love" seems like a high school stand in for a discussion I lacked the vocabulary to have in high school.
218: I'm not sure I disagree with you, B. I meant only that it was a proxy for ogged and his conception of intimacy. If his definition effectively precludes multiple partners, then it seems reasonable to say that his seriousness and your seriousness are not the same. Not better or worse, just different. And I don't think there's anything wrong with his (purely imputed) sense of seriousness.
Here a dump, there a dump, everywhere a dump. (Not going further back; this is already too weird. No, neither excretion nor pissing do anything positive for me sexually (but YKIOK).
Apparently, after September, he's ceased elimination. Good for him!
What bugs me is the insistence by many that Everyone Is Like Me.
Gary, I'll tell you one of the Secrets of Unfogged, which might make your sojourns here less upsetting: precisely because we all know that we all know that all our definitive pronouncements on matters of taste and personal conduct should be caveated with "YMMV," we all enjoy never saying "YMMV," and just making definitive pronouncements.
I totally buy different types of love that demand different types of promises and future prospects.
ATM.
227: Ditto. That's part of what caused the knee in my sexual activity/relationships, although lots of other stuff happened to me in 1984; that's when my first major illness hit, and I was informed, due to several successive complete misdiagnoses, that, according to one (ARC), I might only have a year or less to live, and another biggie was meningitis, which would have potentially been much quicker.
Turned out to be completely wrong, but instead a case of several overlapping things hitting simultaneously, including a kidney infection, a lung infection, an ear infection, and some massively powerful virus that lasts for months; not mono, but more powerful, they said.
But I couldn't work, and I had to return to NYC where friends took me in. Then I was all busy working 18 hours a day as a junior publishing body (the disasterous classic result of a co-worker friend getting drunk out of her mind at the office Christmas Party, and her then throwing me down on the stairs to my apartment and attempting to rape me, which I managed to hold off until we could make it my kitchen, was all I got to for a year or so; then, a couple of serious relationships over a couple of years, and a few other... whatever the right noun is here.
Then my crazy father died the same week my role model/friend/father figure Terry Carr died, and I went to pieces. It's not been an entirely pretty picture since then, although it's had its periods and moments.
I'm likely to sign off for the night, myself -- shortly, of course. (And if anyone read my drunken depressed posts, and comments on my own posts, on my own blog of last week, I'm considerably cheerier again, although within limits therein described, keeping in mind that what I said was written in a pit of depression, and thus simplified in the way depression wil narrow one's focus, and distort it somewhat.)
"Happy December 30, Gary."
It's my fourth blogiversary! Hurray for me! (It took me a week or two to figure out a coherent format; still I think I found good links PDQ, if I do say so mysel; and my style seems fairly set from the get-go, although that's hardly surprising, given my long practice at blogging-before-I-was-blogging; comments welcome!)
Happy December 30 to you to, teofilo and all!
SCMT, I'm no longer awake enough to discuss The Meaning Of True Love; short version: I think it's dreadfully misused, misunderstood, and leads to endless heartbreak in those cases, but that it can also hold all sorts of useful meaning that we bring to it; like most words, it's a container, not a fixed object, in my view. I'm probably not making sense any more, though. Tired. Must fall down. (If the dread insomnia doesn't rear its hyra-head.)
Night-night.
Re my comment at 43: Just now, I discussed this thread with my wife prior to cunnilingus/intercourse. She says her number might be in the high two figures, not three figures as I had asserted. She emphasized that she's been monogamous most of her sexually active life.
Oh yeah, virgins. No way I'd do a virgin.
My now-wife was delighted when I told her, before the first time we had sex, that I was a virgin. Cutting the risk of her getting STD's down to zero was a real plus. Go figure.
B, I'm confused by your comment at 139 in relation to your other comments: those who were in it [the "free love" movement at the turn of the 19th century] just to score some pussy, I have no praise for. Elsewhere, e.g. at 218, you indicate that casual sex is OK, and at 188 you say: It does surprise me that folks are skeeved, even only theoretically, by casual sex. So what's wrong with people who were in the free love movement just to score some pussy?
"my role model/friend/father figure Terry Carr"
Wow. I shouldn't go all fan-boy, but yeah, there is "You knew Terry Carr" kinda thing. As someone who just read the stuff 65-75, I know he was on some ways almost more responsible for a lot of the SF I loved than the guys who wrote it. A good editor is important in a small field. And I still have my copy of "Cirque".
"Turned out to be completely wrong"
And I feel a strange need to mention that I've manged to never get an STD in my life; the only scare was the one long-time friend (who has now had several novels published, which gives away nothing, since that describes literally a couple of hundred of my past friends) whom I had a one-night stand with, and she didn't bother to tell me until the next day "because I was afraid you might not sleep with me then."
We had a long talk in which I patiently explained why she must never do this again. Interesting, I just found out this week from another (male) friend of equally long standing, that she did the exact same thing to him a year later.
Have to say it lowers my opinion of her as she was then a notch or two, but that was far away, and in another century.
228: I appreciate what you say, Ogged, and I'm too tired to explain why I think there's a perfectly easy Right Way to do that, and a Wrong Way, which crops up here, as in most places on Earth an the internets, a lot.
I've manged to never get an STD in my life
Same here, though that ain't nothing but luck, looking back.
"I shouldn't go all fan-boy, but yeah, there is "You knew Terry Carr" kinda thing."
I wouldn't say we were super-duper-close, but we hung out dozens and dozens and dozens of times over the years; I was always, once we got to know each other, invited to his smallish private parties when we were at the same convention, or I was in town (usually fewer than 30 people or so). He sent me his private fanzines that went to about the same number of folks. We had mutual lovers (several, actually; we were all very busy in the Seventies and early Eighties), and innumerable close mutual friends.
We were definitely good friends. We were in the same small circle of friends, gossiping, and sleeping with each other, and hanging out, and having all our own in-jokes and influences.
And he was my role model. He went from being a smart, literate, fanzine fan, to being a respected skiffy editor ("skiffy" being the name us in-group used back in the day to make fun of the people who used "sci-fi" seriously). (And, come to think of it, Terry got himself fired by Don Wollheim from Ace, so he was a role model for me in ways I hadn't considered at the time, not knowing the future.)
My father's death crushed me because of all our unresolved issues, and what he'd done to me by being a deeply crazy (overwhelmingly bipolar) father, and then when Terry, the guy who was a role model to me in all the ways my own father never was, died three or so days later, I completely melted down into paralyzing depression (not bipolar, fortunately; just depression, which I'd already started experiencing crises of by my teen years).
Which after a few months led to my getting fired by Avon Books (there were other complications, such as letting myself get caught in an office politics war between the old Editor-In-Chief, and the recently installed-over-her-head Editorial Director, but if I'd been myself, I could likely have gotten out from under that; they'd all loved me up to then, more than not; at the least, I could have found another job before I got fired -- I was told to -- if I'd not had trouble working up interest in staring into space, instead).
So that's the start of the story as to why I no longer work in publishing, although I did do tons of freelancing for years to come, and apathetically failed to follow up various job offers and many opportunities, that folks wonder about, and I'm not exactly thrilled to tell. (There's more buried in comments I've made on my own posts on me own blog in the past week.)
Terry was a great guy. Somewhat self-destructive, in knowing he had a bad heart and other ailments, but being completely unwilling to give up substantial drinking, dope smoking, and coke use -- this was a subject he freely debated with his friends, and which drove some crazy. But a great guy. And a great editor, and a fine writer. There's no editor I admire more, although there are others in my pantheon ind different ways, from Ed Ferman to John W. Campbell to Gardner Dozois, just to name three. The Ace Specials alone: I trust I need say no more.
And he never gave up being one of the great fans of all time, too (I mean by that, in doing fanzines, and fan writing that created an original style long imitated, and other such activities).
Of the couple or so other bloggers I could name whom you, and many, have heard of, Bob, who were also part of our small circles of friends, you could ask Avedon Carol for Terry stories. Though she still might either cry, or talk about how angry she is with him for choosing not to die when he did (in essence, by choosing to live his life on his terms, rather than what was medically advisable).
A lot of people still miss Terry.
precisely because we all know that we all know that all our definitive pronouncements on matters of taste and personal conduct should be caveated with "YMMV," we all enjoy never saying "YMMV," and just making definitive pronouncements.
Maybe I'm just in a generalized bad mood, but this strikes me as a bit overweening.
231: "So what's wrong with people who were in the free love movement just to score some pussy?"
Not speaking for B, but you can be quite interested in casual sex with people, rather than pussies (or dicks).
235: definitely a fair amount of luck on my side, as well, although I give the major credit to the fact that, in, er, fact, little or none of the sex was particularly "casual." It wasn't with strangers. There were just a lot of us friends doing it with each other, although from time to time a new friend would enter the picture, to be sure, and some occasional exceptions happened with some.
234: "...whom I had a one-night stand with, and she didn't bother to tell me until the next day "because I was afraid you might not sleep with me then.""
That she had herpes. Sorry. Why I shouldn't be writing when this tired (and now, yes, having some trouble falling asleep, as per norm).
Similarly, 237: "for choosing not to die when he did"
"For choosing to die when he did," of course.
this strikes me as a bit overweening
Yeah, guilty as charged; but it was that or club Gary over the head. In hindsight, I don't see why I felt the need to choose.
As for the definitions: when I was a young virginal Mormon, just setting out into the world of sex, I knew damned well that anyone who claimed that getting it on and/or getting naked wasn't really sex was being silly. After a certain point, it's just semantics and logistics to go all the way.
As for Ogged's question: I think it can become a problem in some kinds of relationships. And not always in the ways one would think! I have been in the slightly awkward position of having more sexual experience than a partner I was pretty into, and then realizing, some time into the relationship, that I had made him so much more sexually confident that he wanted to go forth and experiment. And I had done all that (or at least some of it) earlier and no longer really wanted that sort of thing. It was, let's say, disconcerting.
"The Ace Specials alone: I trust I need say no more."
Ace Specials Set 1 Science fiction as freaking literature;trust me, not anything here is not at least interesting if you don't recognize the names.
Ace Specials Set 2 a little weaker, but the Gotschalk is very good and I have always had a soft spot for the pastoralist Thomas Burnett Swann
Ace Specials Set 3 Very strong again, and as in the first set, the encouragement of young talent
Another response to 231, which seems apposite:
To these vanguard feminists, suffrage, independent careers and birth control were givens. More radical still was the goal of sexual equality, giving women the freedoms of men, including the freedom to love. In theory, the men of the Village agreed. Feminism would free men as well -- or so the story went. However, the lived experience of sexual equality fell short of expectations. Stansell subjects several notable couples to close analysis, skewering their hypocrisies. Reconciling the demands of love and work proved hard, especially for women. Household servants were no longer ubiquitous in the middle class; cooperative housekeeping arrangements worked only sporadically.
And in matters of the heart, free love was rarely free. When practiced by husbands, it often had the look and feel of 19th-century male privilege -- or worse, given the new expectation of honesty. Stansell is biting about one husband's well-meaning confessions: ''It was a complex balancing act turning adultery into a feminist gesture, love triangles into political solidarities.'' Plainly, jealousy and hurt had not been banished to the bourgeois past.There are sorts of ways, good and bad, to be non-mogamous. (Which is why the modern polyamory crowd is driven mad when they're confused with "swingers," since they're entirely different things.)
in all honesty, I take sex seriously and have a hard time with the concept of intimacy with people one isn't pretty serious about
Would it make sense for one to say, not as a universal rule, that one was uncomfortable, perhaps only theoretically, with the idea of casual sex with someone one knew only casually because even if one did not believe that sex should always be part of a serious commitment neither should it have no meaning at all?
#231: Gary already answered this question, but there is a substantive difference between a principled stand accompanied by the courage to act on it, and the pretense of a principled stand affected in order to pursue selfish ends.
SCMT (sorry, have lost track of the comment #s): What I'm saying is that I don't think that O's view and my own differ that much.
BP's insistence that her kid won't be a jerk in HS is ominous. She's depriving him of an essential developmental stage.
And of course, we kindly older gentlemen who want to save the high school girls from the jerks are never thanked. Instead, we're called pervs, sent to jail for several years, and required to talk therapy-talk ffour three hours a week for life, and report to the authorities every time we change address.
I just found out that my Hawaiian ex brother-in-law, back when the Hawaian age of consent was 12, screwed his eighth grade teacher. His entirely family is still very proud of that 35 years later, and no, I'm not making that up.
My other sister's first husband spent a month in jail for screwing a 17-year old, even though he was 2 months younger than the girl. My family should never get married,
Disclaimer: yes, I talk about this stuff a lot, and no, I don't do it at all. If I did that kind of thing I'd join a church, the Moral Majority, and the Republican Party. I'm smart enough to figure that out.
#245: It might be okay if one were to amend "no meaning at all" to "no meaning at all for me." Casual sex engaged in casually isn't meaningless.
Then again, nothing is, really.
#247: Maybe it's b/c I'm working on almost no sleep, but I have to admit that I do hate it when people try to tell me that they know how my kid will develop better than I do, or that my parenting (praxis or theory) is intrinsically flawed. I didn't go through a lot of the stereotypical adolescent bullshit; I see no reason why my son should.
Having said that, John, I'm up early b/c I'm catching a plane to Minneapolis. Drop me an email with your phone # and let's see if we can't get together. Chopper too, if he's lurking about. I'll be there until the 8th.
Come on, B, I was kidding. I don't believe in essential developmental stages.
Actually, B., if you're going to be in Mpls. today and tomorrow I doubt I can make it. I'm pretty sure my host down there is occupied (he might even be up here). Next time.
Well, I did say I'm functioning on not much sleep, so I missed the joke. My bad.
I'll be in Mpls until the 8th. That is, from tonight through *next* Sunday.
I should be able to figure that one out.
For me, email is almost always better than phone.
I also feel the need to clarify: I'm not saying PK won't have some kind of assolish stage. Hell, he's already assholish in some ways ("Mama! Kiss my penis!") (let the ribbing begin), and I'm sure that at some point I'll end up apologizing to some girlfriend or other because I laughed when, at two, he batted his eyes at me to escape getting in trouble, thereby teaching him forever that cuteness is a way of evading responsibility. I just deny that the "boys will be boys" belief that young men are inevitably assholes about "deserving" sex for x, y, or z is something that we should accept as a given. Also not a fan of adolescents griping about the lack of skill of their partners.
'Course, if he feels aggrieved that two hours of well-executed cunnilingus (as opposed to clumsy pawing and hicky-giving) = one reluctant and disinterested handjob, then he'll have a point.
Also not a fan of adolescents griping about the lack of skill of their partners.
Does this happen? My adolescence was a long time ago, but if I remember correctly, just the mere presence of a partner was cause for shouts of joy.
While I take your point, B, there's still something amusing about a person using the handle Bitch declaring her son will not be an Asshole.
On the original topic; being somewhat prudish myself, I have no idea what counts as a normal number, especially if we're counting anything that one's signigicant other wouldn't like. But personally, I think it's not so much about the number as about the seriousness of it.
There's a difference between, 'You're my fifth.' and 'You're my fifth. This week.'
On the original topic; being somewhat prudish myself, I have no idea what counts as a normal number, especially if we're counting anything that one's signigicant other wouldn't like. But personally, I think it's not so much about the number as about the seriousness of it.
There's a difference between, 'You're my fifth.' and 'You're my fifth. This week.'
"Mama! Kiss My Penis!" needs to be The Weblog's new tagline.
a person goes to bed in another time zone and the comment thread explodes!
i am also of the school that never asks or answers this question anymore, having done that with bad results in the past - and realizing it's knowledge i'd also often really not have.
am considering becoming of the school that doesn't reveal the ratio of men to women in the past, either -- or waits at least a year. That causes problems as well - especially for men, interestingly enough - who knew!! it took me quite a while to realize this. since the majority of female friends i have who are over 25 have had both, quite happily (serially, we're all serial monogamists). all but two consider themselves absolutely straight, too.
and i am talking about medium-term relationships, not stupid sorority girl kissing. there's a lot to be said for not attaching labels to oneself or one's private life.
"Mama! Kiss My Penis!"--How to Have It All by Ken Lay.
"Mama! Kiss My Penis!"--And Other True Tales of The Brain Damaged by Oliver Sachs
"Mama! Kiss My Penis!"--43 Is Bigger Than 41 by Anonymous
"All but two consider themselves absolutely straight, too."
Label-wise, "relatively straight" seems more accurate. Or "mostly straight". Or, as you suggested, no label at all.
263: yes, you're right, "relatively," or no label.
i think these are the things many people do and few use words about.
for a while, "queer" looked like it was going to become the word that meant "no label, straight gay or otherwise," but that redefinition movement seems to have died in the mid90s. i don't know why.
("Mama! Kiss my penis!")
The lad does make some unusual demands on his parents:
Pseudonymous Kid: Spank me!
Mr. B.: What? You want me to spank you?
Pseudonymous Kid: Yes! Hard!
Mr. B.: How hard?
Pseudonymous Kid: As hard as you can!
(Mr. B. grabs Pseudonymous Kid and spanks him a few times)
Me: Um,I really don't think that's appropriate....
http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2005/06/thank-god-this-blog-is-anonymous.html
I just found out that my Hawaiian ex brother-in-law, back when the Hawaian age of consent was 12, screwed his eighth grade teacher. His entirely family is still very proud of that 35 years later, and no, I'm not making that up.
My other sister's first husband spent a month in jail for screwing a 17-year old, even though he was 2 months younger than the girl.
There is definitely a double standard when it comes to older women/boys and older men/girls -- although I doubt many families these days would be happy about their son's 8th-grade teacher screwing him. Ask Mary Beth Letourneau. I'm not sure what the standard should be, and whether it should be the same/different in the two situations.
Getting imprisoned for consensual sex with someone older than one is really fucked up (so to speak). IIRC, California had (has?) a law like that, which makes sex between minors below the age of consent a crime for the guy, but not the girl. The Supreme Court actually upheld the constitutionality of it about 25 years ago, IIRC. To make things even more fucked up, if the guy came (can't avoid these double entendres, it seems) to Illinois, he'd have to register as a sex offender, and have that status known to anyone who cares to look it up on the Internet. Insane.
Perhaps we need more labeling, not less, in order to pluralize the zone. each form of masturbation and fetishism could have it's own lable, for example. Henry Miller was a hepaphile, for example.
266: and then you would just switch labels through the years as you pleased, or when necessary? oy.
what was anais nin?
Here's the thing I'm wrestling with. In our culture, with all the social weight given to sex, and our freakish bipolar attitude to it, I think that it's not unreasonable to presume that anyone, male or female, who has had sexual partners in the 3-digit range before age 30 likely has either intimacy issues, self-esteem issues, sexual compulsion issues and/or all of the above. Society attaches great importance to questions like, am I hot, am I a slut, am I a prude, am I good in bed, am I a stud with the laydeez, etc. Our culture is literally obsessed with it. Growing up in this culture, it's nearly impossible not to be at least somewhat conflicted on the is-too-much-sex-just-plain-deviant question. Most people who have racked up all these numbers have done it in this context, and it's not unreasonable to presume that so many partners, in such a sexually freaked-out society, might have taken a toll on a presumptive mate.
Therefore. In starting a new relationship, it's not out of bounds, I think, to perceive a number of sexual partners that's clearly an outlier as something to at least pay attention to, such a number at least being possibly indicative of another issue which may prevent a healthy relationship. Not a dealbreaker at all, but merely a piece of the larger picture of a person that may tell you more about the person than just "I'll bet she sure knows how to suck dick".
The wisest course, as mentioned above, is to just not ask.
* There is an important exception to this worth noting, and that is the gay culture, at least in New York. Hundreds of partners is literally the norm, especially in the age of easy internet hookups, and high numbers have a whole other social meaning in the gay community.
I'm waiting for the coffee to kick in (I have coffee again! And milk! w00t!), and the gout throb, which woke me up, to subside after administering the indomethecin, which thankfully I was able to acquire again a couple of days ago -- fortunately, while I've been getting minor twinges, increasingly so over the past two months, of which the throbs this morning were the most serious, it's still at a relatively low, non-crippling, level, and I'm making an appointment with the clinic next week, but I digress, because the coffee has not yet kicked in.
"'Course, if he feels aggrieved that two hours of well-executed cunnilingus (as opposed to clumsy pawing and hicky-giving) = one reluctant and disinterested handjob, then he'll have a point."
One of my slightly odder early sexual experiences, circa age 17 was the time one of my odder female friends (not girlfriend, just friend) put up myself and two other friends (boy/girl, also up to then just friends) in her tiny shack, while we were traveling cross-country. All she had by way of non-floor -- and this was an almost unheated shed, literally, in the midwest in the dead of winter, admidst a massive snowstorm -- was two tiny cots, so we had to go two to a cot.
And shortly after we went to bed, to my surprise, my friend took my hand, guided it down to where you'd expect, and started me off on, ah, properly stimulating her. I'd already mastered that technique (insofar as one can generically, people being fairly non-generic), so she fairly quickly climaxed. And then she went to sleep.
Which was, you know, fine, no objection on my part, and then we never said a word about it, and all was copacetic (meanwhile, the other two humped like rabbits about ten feet away, albeit as quietly as they could manage) the next day.
Still, it might have been thoughtful of her to in some way help me get to sleep a bit quicker. That's about as close as I can recall to getting near "complaint" territory.
It was always clear to me from the get-go that sex involved the need for patience, and generosity, and lack of demands for precise reciprocity, overwhelmingly close attention to what's going on with your partner, and various other things I'm not awake enough to go into.
Besides, now I'm suddenlygetting that sporadic blurred vision thing in the left eye. Joy. No proofing or rewriting this, therefore.
Everyone repeat: "One standard deviation up or down from me is a little odd. Two standard deviations is sick."
In my case, two standard deviations down would be getting into the negative numbers.
242: "I knew damned well that anyone who claimed that getting it on and/or getting naked wasn't really sex was being silly."
My only two experiences with a virgin were #1, when we were both equally clueless 15-year-olds (I had a lot of book knowledge; typical; my excellent instincts clicked in with #2, but that's another story), but valiantly interested, and did everything up to intercourse (which we later tried, but were interupted, which is a really funny story I won't tell here), highly clumsily (from my POV it didn't help that although she'd verbally update how she felt and what was working and not, using her words, she gave no sign whatever via any of the usual markers, beyond some fast breathing, of how she felt; she'd tell me that she was getting excited, more so, more so, she'd come, and I'd just have to take it all on faith; a bit unsatisfying, that; feedback in sex is a key virtue); and #4 (as I said, I was 17, she was 16), who the first time we went at it, she was eager, but full of rules (the door must stay open a crack; one of us must keep one foot on the floor; pants can be undone, and slid down, but not off; etc). Since I'd been living with my 23-year-old girlfriend for two years, and had lots of screwing time with my other girlfriend, I did eventually suggest that this was, possibly a bit silly and here's why ("ludicrous" was among the words in my head, but I didn't verbalize it; also "grow up!").
About 45 minutes later, she decided to forget about all the rules. And the next time she just got naked immediately, and handed me a condom.
Sex is, as I've said, a learning process, and one that tends to involve, over the years, learning to deal with one's fears, anxieties, and inhibitions (as well as spiced with making use of the excitment of transgressing the previously unthinkable ["spiced with" being quantitatively different than "turning it into a lifestyle/obsession"]). But, on the flip side, for many people, if it's not what they did in their first years, anything else is wrong and disgusting and terrifying, and never ever mention it. Imprinting is always involved.
Long-winded way of saying "I agree," JK.
Vision unblurred -- that was quick, which is good; coffee very slowly starting to work.
I can't wait for some future prospective employer to google all this. But I knew what I was doing from day one of putting myself out there.
Not that anyone else cares, but Bob's 243 is spot-on. Of course. And there's considerable variance in quality, of course. The whole point of the series of series was to give the writers freedom to experiment, which meant some books were failures, or semi-failures. Which is great, because otherwise you don't get the successess.
The first Series, which stood alone for nearly a decade, kinda blows away the others, at least in its top books, but the third did bring us Lucius Shepard, Kim Stanley Robinson, Howard Waldrop, Michael Swanwick, Jack McDevitt, and Bill Gibson. (Click on the link to the left of each entry to see the author and pub details.)
And the first series: Lafferty, Le Guin, the essential first novels of Joanna Russ (any feminist or queer theorist should read them), Avram Davidson, Keith Roberts, John Sladek, Suzette Haden Elgin, Roger Zelazny, good John Brunner (who also wrote a lot of crap earlier in his career). There were also a number of dogs and interesting also-rans. And the earlier selections had some more traditional works and tropes; as I said, the quality wasn't universal.
The Left Hand of Darkness, for god's sake's, people. (And it had spaceships on the cover! Clearly crap!)
These are the folks who write teh good science fiction: not David Eddings or Piers Anthony or name your crap. And the field, at the high end, has only grown vastly more serious over the decades since. Jonathan Lethem, Maureen McHugh, oh, it's a very long list.
But if you read these folks, and tell me sf is all crap, fine, you've done your job, you have a basis for saying so, and I have no complaint at all. Sf is not your cup of tea. Absolutely fine.
It's standing from a position of complete ignorance, and generalizing from only the crap and from book covers and Star Wars novelizations: that is... not a highly advanced form of informative criticism.
Okay, done now. Here endth this installment of The Rant. Sorry.
'Course, if he feels aggrieved that two hours of well-executed cunnilingus (as opposed to clumsy pawing and hicky-giving) = one reluctant and disinterested handjob, then he'll have a point.
But the path to well-executed cunnilingus runs through poorly-executed cunnilingus and, indeed, clumsy pawing and hicky-giving. Also I think we can draw a distinction between a sense of "'deserving' sex for x, y, or z" and a simple sense of frustration with the reality that a course of action undertaken in the hopes of procuring sex failed to lead sex and, instead, resulted in a reluctant and disinterested handjob.
Cut me some slack, Wehttam. I was tired and still had to drive all the way back to Durham.
Age issues: one past sweetie started at 12, consensually -- her initiation, actually. A couple of others at 14, consensually. More at 15, and so on, as one would expect.
This is not to minimize any of the many complications involved and possible, nor to generalize in any way about what people should do. When one is ready to have sex is utterly on the individual -- little is more so -- and there's, of course, all the pressure in the world to start before you're ready, and more often than not it's a mistake for so many, and they're not ready, and it all goes Pete Tong, often resulting in psychic scars for life, or at least for many years. That is, as we say, "bad." Sometimes awful.
But it's also true that sexuality, and awareness of it in one's self, which is slightly different, doesn't start at 18 or 17, for most people (though others don't start until years, perhaps many years, and sometimes even decades, later); one has to have the self-knowledge and maturity to deal with these strange and overpowering forces involved with sex, to make the right decision for yourself. The forces are so strong, that can be very difficult (I won't say "hard," ahahaha.)
(We won't go into the complex issues of pre-adolescent sexuality, since it's taboo and I have no desire to be a lightning rod, thankyewverymuch. But it does exist.)
Bottom line: when it's okay to start is wildly different for each of us; generalized rules screw a lot of people over, but not in the fun way.
Following on Wehttam, you don't want PK to think he has a moral right to sex for having done X, but you do want him to learn the mechanisms for optimizing his sex chances, and to know that his failure after such efforts may not lie entirely with him. There are things he could do to optimize that chance that would be clearly creepy, but there are some that are not so clear. He's going to have to learn through trial and error, just like everyone else, and he's going to regret some of the things he did (and some he didn't do) just like everyone else.
"...and then you would just switch labels through the years as you pleased, or when necessary? oy."
And thus the Number Of The Beast arrives with the bar-codes, and the subcutaneous RFID chips.
276: "(And it had spaceships on the cover! Clearly crap!)"
No, the first series all had those gorgeous Leo & Diane Dillon covers, of course, you ass, of which the whole point was to signal "this is not Buck Rogers."
But I wasn't awake when I wrote that. God, the Dillon's are good. But also Richard Powers. But I digress.
"But the path to well-executed cunnilingus runs through poorly-executed cunnilingus and, indeed, clumsy pawing and hicky-giving. "
Keywords: rhythm, attention to feedback, and knowing when to switch movements/approach and when to not stop. Somehow I had great instincts for this from #2 on; on of my more, um, satisfying virtues. (Girls and womyn, I do have a few things to offer; and I have references.) Brag, brag, brag, but I do have to compensate for my whining about my failings somehow.
"Also I think we can draw a distinction...."
I can live with that. Key here, I think, is how one deals with the physical frustration. Whining and pressuring, and worse: bad. Patience and graciousness and generosity and understanding and the knowledge that there will be another time: good. Knowing this before my first is why things went extremely well for me, mostly, thereafter. (Not to say I'm a perfect lover; I've been impatient at times, and there are a few episodes I'd like a do-over on, but they are quite the exceptions; I only claim I have Basic Sex down; not necessarily all that much more.)
Having sex with a bored partner is distinctally minimally fun, anyway, although on occasion, if they're doing it out of generosity, without actually feeling icky, and it's quick, it's understandable. Best not to make a habit of it, sez me; if you do, it's possible that the cluestick should be administered to help you consider that You May Be Being A Selfish Jerk. Ha, I said "jerk."
But the path to well-executed cunnilingus runs through poorly-executed cunnilingus and, indeed, clumsy pawing and hicky-giving.
Not to brag (that would be kind of odd, given my previous posts starting with 43), but somehow I managed to make my now-wife come the first time I went down on her (which was basically the first time she'd let me get further than kissing). Didn't have the faintest idea what I was doing, but one can respond to feedback (if she moans and says "oh, yes," keep doing whatever you're doing). I might need an oxygen tank after the two hours alluded to by B, however. I always wondered if asthmatics had a hard time with cunnilingus (tried a Google search once, which was unavailing). Fortunately, I've held my breath for as long as 3 minutes and 15 seconds, so I guess my lungs are well-adapted to the task.
Haven't we established that science fiction is crap and that everyone who reads it is an idiot?
Hey, no impersonating one another! 283 isn't me.
I keep fearing I'll leave my actual name on one of these posts, which would make suicide pretty much obligatory. Gotta hope no one does a Paul Deignan-type number on my IP address.
I confess. The devil made me do it.
Nevertheless, 283 is exactly the kind of thing you'd say, ogged, so it doesn't really matter.
As long as your impersonators are consistently accurate, no harm done.
283: "...that everyone who reads it is an idiot?"
No, just that I am.
282: "I might need an oxygen tank after the two hours alluded to by B,"
Tongue exercises: the male equivalent of Kegeling. (I slightly kid; I can only go in one direction without stopping for so long, sure, but one integrates switching back and forth with this; also, proper use of fingers as a back-up, even though otherwise using them in proper places simultaneously, is not-quite-mandatory, but a damn qood idea.)
Would I up my blog hits if I posted all this shit to my own blog? I'm sure it works differently for men and women. And I'm skeptical the sort of attention it might get would be the sort that would please me. But I really have no idea. New department: Dr. Amygdala's Silly-Ass Sex Tips. Probably not. As it is, I'm shy of even putting a pointer in my comments to these comments.
282: "Not to brag"
Figuring out what I was doing from #2 on (my first intercourse; I made her come easily via oral, right immediately, er, off the bat, and was comfortable that I absolutely knew what I was doing from the first minute on, and she'd had great trouble coming with all six of her previous lovers, who were all a decade older than me; and she came for the first time ever via intercourse when we moved onto that a bit later), and thereafter with almost every subsequent lover, was a boost to my self-esteem that has lasted all my life.
Although it was odd when I was 16, during my brief time in college, and something like a dozen floor-mates were coming to me for sex advice, and confessing their woes to me as if I were a priest who had lots of sex, particularly since they were all older than me, of course. And other friends in my peer age were doing the same thing for the next couple of years. Particularly those figuring out they were teh gay ("I don't come with her, although she thinks that's great; what should I do?").
"As it is, I'm shy of even putting a pointer in my comments to these comments."
For one thing, the odds are vastly higher that an ex-sweetie will read such material there than here. At least one one-time sweetie and well-known blogger reads my blog. No, then there's the other, little-known blogger, also. Probably none of the others, but Google is there. Thus another reason it's probably a pretty bad idea (although, sure, they could always find this with a bit more trying, but what's done is done).
I should probably stop talking so much, and hogging threadwidth. Besides, it's not as if anyone has much to say in return. Probably a lot of embarassment for me and my TMI, I expect.
278 to 277: Who wouldn't vote for Unfogged
even though otherwise using them in proper places simultaneously, is not-quite-mandatory, but a damn qood idea.)
Mrs. Anonymous demands simultaneous finger stimulation of her nipples. Since she's my only sex partner ever, I have no idea how common/uncommon this is.
No one else ever does that; your wife is a freak. Sorry.
Your wife has nipples?! Has she seen a doctor about it?
"Since she's my only sex partner ever, I have no idea how common/uncommon this is."
Not uncommon in my highly limited, anecdotal, survey. Though I also know a woman for whom breast stimulation of any sort does nothing. And another woman for whom kissing is the same. Both extremely interested in other forms of sexual stimulation. And more than a couple of lovers could come just from kissing and breast stimulation, at least when excited enough, with no touching Down There whatsoever.
A terrible mistake inexperienced people make when going to a new lover is assuming that they work just like, or even similarly to, a past lover or their set of lovers (although they might). People are wildly variable in their sexual takes. That's why I keep slapping my head when I read absolutist assertions. There's nothing one can say about sex that isn't correctly descriptive of many people, and wildly wrong about many people.
But stimulation of as many sensually aroused areas as possible, in various orders and with varying amounts of emphasis (or constantly the same thing all the time, or whatever) is not unusual, it seems to me (I'm sure there are studies).
Is everyone taking notes? This will be on the quiz!
294-95: LOL!
296: So Gary, when are you going to write Dr. Farber's Guide to Great Sex? Maybe B could help you on the sections on fisting and some other exotica (my wife blanched last night at my mention of that activitiy).
"Dr. Farber's Guide to Great Sex?"
I suppose it might help me meet women. But I'm so very out of practice. I'll just have to recruit some practice helpers, purely for research purposes. I'm sure that all I have to do is explain that it's for The Book, and many will be eager to volunteer.
And, really, I've never gone very far from the mainstream, myself; a bit of extremely light BDSM and roleplaying is about as exotic as I've tended to go (okay, I suppose the threesomes, and the one foursome count), so it's not as if I have much, no, any, qualification to write about the more out there stuff. And, for that matter, while there are a few research topics I wouldn't mind investigating a bit further, there are whole nations of sexual practices that I'd never want to venture near the borders of. Some squick me just to read a line or three about, let alone, jeebus, see pictures. (But if you have the internets, you, the generic you, probably have some awareness, unless you are completely and utterly vanilla and non-perverted.)
See the list in the left sidebar here. I'm failing to remember just now which is the fetish for having sex with a hole in someone's head. I Am Not Making This Up.
Taking the idea too seriously, I don't have the chutzphah. Although I do have more than enough chutzphah to accept volunteers I find interesting and (I find) attractive who can converse.
I do have an essay in the back of my head on "What's Wrong With Most Porn," but it's an entirely subjective critique.
299: It ought to be "activité." Does anyone remember the TV show, Good Times?
Aha! My entries keep disappearing from the ID fields has some relationship to my attempts to again make "set comments options" to work, since they don't for me. Fascinating, I know, but perhaps Ogged would like to know.
By the way, Ogged, did you kill Unf and Bob and bury the bodies in your basement? (I recognize that this is merely a Sekrit Outlet for Alameida, and she's busy not posting elsewhere, anyway.)
IIRC, California had (has?) a law like that, which makes sex between minors below the age of consent a crime for the guy, but not the girl. The Supreme Court actually upheld the constitutionality of it about 25 years ago, IIRC.
The case I referred to above is Michael M. v. Superior Court of Sonoma County. (It was decided about 24 years and 9 months ago, not 25 years ago. OK, I suck.) A (not that illuminating, alas) abstract of my law professor aunt's law review article on the case is here.
Though the law was/is bullshit, Michael M. doesn't necessarily deserve sympathy. According to the Court's plurality opinion, the evidence adduced at a preliminary hearing was that Michael, 17.5, had met Sharon, 16.5, at a bus stop; both had been drinking; they kissed; she rebuffed his initial advances; he hit her in the face; and she then submitted to intercourse. If that's true, it sounds like simply rape, not statutory rape.
In my brother-in-law's case, the problem is that the girl's mother came home unexpectedly and caught them in the act. I think that the local consensus was that he must be guilty of something. They shopped around for a charge, but it wasn't statutory rape.
302: "Does anyone remember the TV show, Good Times?"
What'chu talkin' 'bout Willis?
Never really watched it, myself. But remember, yes. Pop cultural icons tend to stick in my head, even those I don't particularly care for. (Does anyone here need an explanation of what YKIOK means?)
Good Times was set in the projects, not on Park Avenue. The theme song was "Good Times, Easy credit ripoff.."
Yup, that's the one. I spent far too much of my childhood watching reruns of those shows.
They shopped around for a charge, but it wasn't statutory rape.
Oh, what was it then (if you know)?
I can't remember, but I think it was something like trespass or disorderly conduct. It was a small-town plea-bargain type of thing. Outraging the mother was the crime, but apparently that one isn't on the statute books.
Well, even though I'm at a relatively chaste nine, I wouldn't be bothered by a lot of sexual partners. If it did get into the triple digits, I wouldn't be bothered, exactly, but I would want the guy to talk about it. I don't necessarily expect someone to sit there and count, but I do like to hear a lot about their former sex life, because it's part of their history. I am similarly forthcoming. It's never caused problems.
What does, well, not bother me, but give me a little twinge of jealously, is when I hear about x freaky and amazing thing done with another sex partner that I know I'm just never going to see my way to doing (and I think I would do pretty well in a freaky-things-done contest, though none, as my # would indicate, that involve multiple partners). I want to want to do x freaky and amazing thing so I can share it with my partner, but I just don't.
some notes on some impugned sexual practices in this thread:
Fisting: not cruel if the woman is turned on enough.
tittyfucking: can be nice, for the woman as well
peeing: there are other purposes than humiliation, especially with one or more people who are into excrescence for its own sake
oh, ten, there's this one guy I always forget. I knew something seemed fishy about that number.
"even though I'm at a relatively chaste nine"
It's helpful, but neither mandatory nor a violation of the rules to not give, a vague sense of one's age for others to put the number in context. As I said, not mandatory. (Repeating for emphasis and clarity.) (9 at age 50 is different than 9 at age 20.)
"...but I do like to hear a lot about their former sex life, because it's part of their history. I am similarly forthcoming. It's never caused problems."
Ditto. In every single remotely serious relationship I've ever had, we've compared notes. Why not? Never had a single problem. Can't see why we would. (Well, I can, but for me it would be a Bad Indicator.)
And I can't begin to imagine, for me, a serious relationship where we didn't trust each other, and had to keep such a huge and important part of our lives as our past lovers secret from each other. To me, this would clearly indicate, at the least, some issues that need to be dealt with, sooner or later, and an indication of other potential problems erupting, or b) that this relationship will never go anywhere, because the other person has such trust issues. (I'm not saying this is first, or second, or third, date material; but if you're getting serious.)
Moreover, there's great insight to learn about the other from such tales. Further, great entertainment value. And often, educational value. There are emotional issues, of course, but those, too, are best turned into mutual educational issues about what matters to each other.
"...I think I would do pretty well in a freaky-things-done contest...."
Purity test thread! Purity test thread!
"...I want to want to do x freaky and amazing thing so I can share it with my partner, but I just don't."
That made me smile. Almost giggle, but not literally.
Without commenting on the appeal of any specific practice, but, um, stimulated by Tia's notes on three practices, I'll note again that what we find sexually arousing is associative (I probably need to unpack that, but it starts to get wordy, even for me, when I try).
But there are all sorts of things going on in people's heads as regards sex and what excites them. Sometimes it's just pure affection, or pure love, or pure intimacy. That's very wonderful. But sometimes it's also, or instead, other stuff. Enjoying a sense of power over the other. Enjoying the other's enjoyment of a sense of power over you;. (These are the roots of BDSM, but even the most vanilla relations often tend to have a faint whisper of that at root, at least at times.) The enjoyment of doing something that is engrained in us as forbidden, i.e., being transgressive. That's the root of an awful lot of fetishes -- violating the taboos that somehow most infected our psyche's when our sexuality was in an early formative stage. And that sense of the thrill of the forbidden can be focused on, as I've said, anything whatever.
Or we may want to re-enact past discovered thrills, or try new, um, twists on them, or see what they're like with a different person. Then there's the wonder of what it's like with a person you can't have; thus, much fantasy. Sometimes some folks deal, whether rarely or frequently, with these urges with a cooperative partner who isn't threatened or bored by role-playing (threatened or bored or repulsed are, I'm guessing, the three top reasons for someone to reject such a proposal).
I got more on this, naturally, but that's enough for one comment; too much, as usual.
oh, ten, there's this one guy I always forget.
Just...ouch.
peeing: there are other purposes than humiliation, especially with one or more people who are into excrescence for its own sake
"Sex and the City" fans may recall an episode in which Carrie had a politician boyfriend who wanted her to pee on him in the shower. (IIRC, he didn't want to be seen in public with her, which, um, pissed her off, so she retaliated by writing a column about him entitled "To Pee or Not to Pee" -- which presumably did nothing good for his political career. Not cool.) I can't imagine getting turned on by "golden showers" myself, but if my partner got turned on by me peeing on her in the shower, that seems a harmless enough kink to indulge. If she wanted me to be the pee-ee in that situation, I suppose that would be OK, too, as long as it wasn't part of a comprehensive humiliation theme, and she wasn't peeing on my face or anything. (Those limitations would also apply if I were the pee-er.) It just washes down the drain, after all.
So, Gary, you used to have a roommate who edited all your stuff, and suddenly this roommate died, right?
So, Gary, you used to have a roommate who edited all your stuff, and suddenly this roommate died, right?
ROTFLMAO!
Another: some people associate sex with humiliation, or shame, so, naturally, one way that can be coped with -- both healtily and unhealthily, depending on how one goes about it, I'd say -- by looking for some humiliation to be thrown in.
Others, or sometimes the same people, enjoy feeling powerful and dominant, at least sometimes, so they're happy to cooperate. That may have something to do with peeing and coprophilia, although there's often sometime tied up with the connection between sexual pleasure, and the fact that our nerve endings have evolved to cause us to want to shit and pee, and there's relief and stimulation involved. (As I said, this is definitely not my thing, so I'm pretty much, um, talking out of my ass here.)
Other times one simply is delighted to deeply please, thrill, and excite one's partner, even if said activity otherwise does nothing whatever for one's self. But for many people, pleasing one's partner greatly is exciting and joyful and arousing all in its self. (That's one of my things, although also vice versa, to be sure.)
Which, if nothing else, is one explanation for a woman enjoying titfucking; it's not as if, in general, using one's hand on a woman's clit and genitals per se gets off most men or women via the erotic stimulation coming through their hand, after all; helping a woman one loves, or even just likes, have an orgasm, on the, er, other hand: priceless. (Same reason a woman might enjoy giving a handjob; it's not because of the thrill coming from the hand.)
"So, Gary, you used to have a roommate who edited all your stuff, and suddenly this roommate died, right?"
I said the other day that I was thinking obsessively about sex. Lack of it does that, eventually. To me, anyway.
And I'm compensating for lack of it by remembering past glories, bragging, and spilling my guts. Of course, my primary reason is purely altruistic: education is my life.
Probably no good will come of it, and it will all end in tears.
Just as soon not talk at all about former roommates who died, though, if you don't mind. Pushes very bad buttons that I'm fighting like hell to pull up. Kinda wish you'd thought of that. (Assuming you still read my blog, let alone comments there.)
Dealing with that is another issue at root here. We all have our own strange way of coping.
Hey, an awkward moment! If we're thinking of the same thing, I didn't have it classified under "roommate." In any case, apologies. Also, one more comment about your sex life and I'll strangle you myself.
Which, if nothing else, is one explanation for a woman enjoying titfucking
Of course, giving pleasure to someone one loves or at least likes is enjoyable. But I can see that being the tit-fuckee might be less enjoyable than orally or manually stimulating one's lover, since in the latter situations one is in actively using one's skills to get the other person off, rather than just keeping one's breasts mashed into a vagina-like structure while the guy thrusts away and eventually comes.
In light of 321, I retract my ROTFLMAO in 319. Sorry.
325!! The sum of two perfect squares in three different ways!! (1+324; 36+289; 100+225.)
Here's what I've heard from scat lovers:
There may be some psychological relationship with early resentment at a loved other's desire for privacy. Once you have the impulse, since it is so awfully taboo, it becomes stronger, and it is very, very powerful to be able to tell it to your partner, to be accepted, and then to have your partner be willing and able to do scat stuff with you. Having access to various scatty products feels like the deepest kind of access to your partner's body. That your partner is forgoing all privacy feels like they are giving themself to you fully. If it's really, really hard to produce a particular scatty product, you feel like your partner loves you so much they will endure hardship for you. The process of producing the scatty product is vital, engaged, intensely physical, vulnerable, out of control--like orgasm.
Thus concludes my disquisition on the appeal of scat.
Also, for the record, I have nothing against humiliation.
Also, one more comment about your sex life and I'll strangle you myself.
Are you into erotic asphyxiation, Gary?
Maybe Tia can write the really kinky parts of Gary's sex treatise. I draw the line at shit. The thought of santorum is disgusting enough.
While it doesn't float my personal boat, I do have an odd kind of respect for people into the truly kinky. It's at least an improvement over listening to people brag about how outrageous their sex lives are because they did something like lick chocolate syrup off their partner.
While we're on the subject of peeing, the BPhD household's newly acquired mice are really into it:
And what about this peeing in the nest thing, especially given that they haul their food in there and it gets all soggy and dissolves with pee?
I suppose some would conclude from this merely that mice are even dumber than the President of the United States, not that they're really kinky.
Normal urine is sterile, BTW, whereas the inside of your mouth is crawling with buggies. Golden showers are kinky, but relatively healthful.
Emerson - you have achieved Lewd Uncle status! Golden showers are past the "cock in every orifice" line for me; hard to imagine a LTR after knowing about prior practice.
Maybe the B family's mice are peeing on their food to keep it nice and sterile, rather than contaminating it by putting it in their germy little mouths?
Maybe those people really don't like chocolate, Becks.
I always wonder what the kinky element of this movie was supposed to be. The act that drew them together (through a personal ad) is never named.
Speaking of things that are kinky, has anyone ever watched Svankmajer's Conspirators of Pleasure? Sitting through that in class may have been one of the more uncomfortable moments I've experienced.
Parts of it are. Parts are stop-motion, too. It's pretty wild.
Oh wait, 14. Let's just say 15ish, and call it done.
Not very impressive, BPhD. If you ask me, Flea should strip you of your Biggest (Straight) Slut in the Upper Midwest title.
