I'm going to see Laura Sessions Stepp give a book talk tonight, I expect it will be entertaining. I need to come up with a good question to ask, though.

"Why do you hate sex? Is it because you're old?"

Yeah, something like that, except worded so they won't have me escorted from the building.

"Do you have any evidence that these college girls are headed for relationship trouble? Because, like, statistics show that college-educated women are more likely to marry and less likely to divorce than non-college-educated women. So, your doom-n-gloom predictions seem to be pulled out of your moralising ass...would you care to respond?"

"Some say you hate sex because you're old. Is that true?"

I read the title to this post and my first thought was "why does Mookie Wilson need defending?"

your doom-n-gloom predictions seem to be pulled out of your moralising, old, sex-hating ass

I think I've got it.

So she enjoys a little doom-n-gloom in the ass. Who's moralising whom?

Favorite part: "They're not confusing sex with love, they're confusing sex with work."

BTW I have a cute online dating story in which I made a girl from the computer appear in real life. So someone post another online dating post or so help me, I'll comment OT.

Don't talk the talk if you can't walk the walk.

Go ahead, wrongshore, I just wanted to let people know about the article.

For the record, I think casual sex is bad for everybody, but let's not keep discussing that.

You're the one who keeps bringing it up.

So true.

People always underestimate the power of envy. I think that if the pretty young things of today would deign to hook up with some of us older guys, we might be willing to give them a pass on the rest of their lewd and horrifying behavior. If meaningless sex were spread around a little more, people might come to understand that it's truly meaningful if you look at it right.

Does all sex have to be considered casual even when it is somewhat casual? Like between good and trusting friends who sometimes feel that way? But forget it, Ogg doesn't want to talk about it or he might kill me again.

Swampcrack, I've decided that for every time you call me Ogg, I'm going to kill a bird.

14 Wasn't it Plato who suggested that the beautiful young men and women must service the crones and old men before turning their lust upon themselves, just to be fair and all.

I have no problems with casual sex. I'm quite informal about that. But causal sex can lead to unpleasant results.

"Ogg" makes me think of Ugg boots, perhaps the most hideous fashion trend of the last ten years. Please, swampcracker, please don't make me think of those damned boots.

Maybe we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss Ms. Sessions Stepp:

Stepp argues that college aged women "should...stay home to 'bake cookies, brownies, muffins'--after all, guys, she confides, will do 'anything" for homemade treats.'"

I think Ogged's objection is partly because "ogg" was used as a synonym for something of which he disapproves for a while.

21: Ogged doesn't approve of executing kamikaze attacks against troop carriers?

But dem boots were made for walking ...

20.--Perhaps Matt F should ask Ms. Sessions Stepp whether she has brought baked goods to her talk.

21.
Then I shall certainly be more respectful next time ... thanks for the heads up.

"It seems to be true that most young women who hook up, contrary to your assertions, do end up finding someone to marry. Are your assertions based in anything approaching reality, or just sheer jealousy that all of the single girls who went out and had dates in college haven't suffered horribly and died alone?"

Here's a interesting comment on that O'Rourke article by Ross Douthat.

BTW I have a cute online dating story in which I made a girl from the computer appear in real life

That was not your story; it was the film "Weird Science".

I am going to start calling him "Oggers" in a sort of PG Wodehouse style.

This whole debate seems to be of limited importance. I've never known very many people who hooked up (whatever definition you want to use) with more than maybe four people a year; and those who did hook up relatively indiscriminately were almost all the narcissistic/short-sighted/immature/irresponsible types. But that doesn't mean they were bad people or will grow up to be bad people.

Here's Meghan's response to Ross: "I'll do anything for love, but I won't Douthat."

The debate has the purpose of making girls feel bad about themselves and marginalising as "narcissistic/short-sighted/immature/irresponsible" those girls who are going through a more sexual phase.

Not just the girls, the boys too.

On that note, I think Catherine Sessions Steeppe would like boys to feel bad about themselves too, but feels that she couldn't sell as many books that way. A good question to her would have to do with how which of her theories apply only to girls and not to boys, and which of her theories apply to both. (since I have no interest in actually reading anything she wrote I cannot make it more specific than that)

Catherine? What the hell am I talking about. I suppose I called her "Catherine" because it seems more appropriate for a scold than "Laura". Okay, back to work.

I don't think Douthat's response works, baa. O'Rourke doesn't believe, and nothing she writes requires her to believe, that hookup culture as such will be bad for young women. Where Stepps seems to think that hookups are for guys, and that women are better suited to baking, O'Rourke is arguing that the women just aren't approaching hookups properly.

they frame their seemingly explorative sex lives in rigid, instrumental terms

Presumably, framing their seemingly explorative sex lives in explorative terms would be a-ok in O'Rourke's book (and "explorative" is just as consistent with "relationships that can hurt them [and]...fleeting obsessions that can knock them off balance" as Love is).

oh stop overanalysing, Oggers.

casual sex is bad for everybody

But what's worse, casual sex or no sex?

I think the people who can afford to have easy, casual sex are relatively rare. I have no evidence to back up that claim at this moment, but in my experience I've met a lot of people who are neither in a monogamous sexual relationship nor find it easy to hook up on Saturday night. It may be because they aren't very attractive or very outgoing. Sometime I don't even know why. More often than not these people appear quite miserable.

"Oggers" sounds kind of affectionate, Daniel. I think I like it.

Ooooooh Oggums! What a cute little thing you are!

stay home to 'bake cookies, brownies, muffins'--after all, guys, she confides, will do 'anything" for homemade treats.'"

This is a common strategy for chicks at BYU, especially among the chubby girls.

I just find this whole Generation Awesome is Hook-Up Culture thing pretty stupid. I mean, I went to a small liberal arts college (really more of a conservative arts college...thank you, I'll be here all week) where I hated almost everybody, and it was back in the early-mid nineties, and I was all funny-looking, and I managed to have, you know, hook-ups. And I wasn't even trying. As for my best friend, the overweight, plainly-dressed, witty, dashing boy-magnet--"hook-ups" barely even encompasses her first couple years of college. And she's turned out just fine, and I'm about what you'd expect.

The thing is, if casual sex really were more casual, like it was genuinely for fun and not for status competition and there wasn't this constant pressure on women to worry about their looks all the time--why, it would be a very utopia. Indeed, there would be more sex for all--even that sex with the much younger women that you fellows like so much--because I strongly suspect that there'd be a lot more women sleeping around.

Anyhow, so I crossed a personal Rubicon: I finally used Friendster to try to date online. You know how it works (or how it worked in 2002 and not really since): it spits up random "local singles" when you log on. I clicked on one, and she had strangely compelling lips, and I read her profile and saw her photos, and some photos of the art she makes, and hey! why not?

So I sent her a note with a clever reference to one of her clever references, and grew a little internet crush, and I saw that she'd viewed me a few days later.

And I went out with a friend for the evening to look at another friend's art opening, and I said to her, "Wouldn't it be funny if [in our major metropolitan area of millions and millions of people] the cute girl from the Internet was here?" (For the thinkier among you, nothing in our Friendster-generated three degrees of separation suggested that she would be there.)

Lo and freakin' behold, I was in one of the galleries, and there's this pair of compelling lips walking around. I stood on the other side of the room and said her name, and she turned around. It was her.

"Do I know you?" she said.

"Not exactly," I said. I giggled a little. "I sent you a note on Friendster."

"That's right," she said. "I haven't written you back."

We established that we both knew the same artist, which I hope made me seem less stalkerific.

"Are you going to write me back?" I said.

"Yes," she said. "I will."

Overcome with the smallworldiness of it all, I gathered my friends and as we walked away I told them the story. I stopped, gesturing with my head that she was right behind.

"IS THAT HER?" they shouted in unison.

~fin~

28: I was not wearing a bra on my head for the whole story. Maybe for some of it.

Congrats on getting up the nerve to ask, but yeah, and? Did she write you back?

Frowner, did we go to the same college? Maybe not. Hook-ups at my alma mater were still very reliant on male sexual agency, not female, and assumptions about What Women Want. When I finally got up the booze-fueled nerve to unabashedly seduce the young hottie who had just started at my workplace, he called me about eight times the next day. And then he assumed I wanted a relationship. I only realized recently that the initial flurry of calls might have been because he was worried that I was drunker than I really was and I'd claim date rape and get him fired and expelled.

Oh, right. She wrote back that she'd just started seeing someone and so it wouldn't be cool to go on any dates just then. My take on it is that the conjuring into the real world was better than any relationship could have been.

My take on it is that the conjuring into the real world was better than any relationship could have been.

Of course.

The thing is, many of my actual hook-ups were kind of unhappy, either because I wanted an actual relationship and didn't articulate that, or because I felt that I ought to want a relationship and did not. I wish I'd felt more secure about a little idle making out and/or sex...I would have done more of it while I was young and less picky. Now I wouldn't mind the casualness of it all, but I have less tolerance for annoying people.

My college sexual experience was mainly pretty unhappy, mostly because I couldn't distinguish between what I'd been told ("You, Frowner, are chubby and plain, so you will never be wanted by anyone, and if you do meet a guy, you will need to get into a relationship because there aren't that many out there for you") and my actual experience, which was that there were more people available to sleep with than I actually even wanted to sleep with.

I am offended by calling sex with strangers or near strangers "casual sex". That kind of sex requres getting dressed up, leaving the house, working up some lines, drinking, and all sorts of planning. Genuinely casual sex is most common in years two through five of permanent cohabitation, much of which is typically after marriage. This is the kind of sex where you don't initiate until you see if the local news has any interesting stories; no one bothers to dress up or undress up for the occasion; you may avoid full facial contact because you're not confident everyone has brushed their teeth; and you go right to sleep afterwards because it's a work night. Really casual sex is a Good Thing.

O'Rourke writes:

"I went to college in the early days of the "hookup" culture, as it is now called, and my recollection, through the haze of years,"

Okay, I have to ask -- when did this hookup culture begin, allegedly? I really don't quite know.

And am I to understand that hooking up is roughly like having either one- or a few-night-stands, friends with benefits, or a fuck-buddy? Because I and my friends did these things in college and grad school, from the early 80s through the mid-90s, and I'm thinking this is before the advent of this hookup culture you speak of.

Is the operative factor in hooking up an absence of any interest in seeing what might develop?

O'Rourke graduated college in the late nineties, IIRC.

Well then, he was in college an awful long time, since he was born in 1947 and I read a book of his when I was fifteen.

Megan O'Rourke.

Differen O'Rourke. A woman, I think.

Boy, I wasn't paying aaaannnnyyy attention, was I? I just figured PJ O'Rourke would have something asinine to say about today's youth, as he has about so much else.

You should give PJ O'Rourke more credit; he's not Tom Wolfe yet.

Now that I think about it, Wolfe started turning his gripes about our terrible cultural decline into novels when he was about the same age O'Rourke is now. O'Rourke will probably write a novel soon.

I think the operative factor in the discovery of "hooking up" is sex panic on the part of a certain kind of conservative. I mean, yeah, things are different now with the cell phones and blah blah, but they're not really that different. Our culture is more explicit, meaner, and more right-wing than when I was growing up, but it's not some kind of total, incomprehensible change--and certainly people having relatively casual sex isn't new.

I need to go back to college and do it right this time.

I hate PJ O'Rourke with a special hatey passion because people read his books of lies and satire and think they know something about the left. The left has plenty of flaws, but PJ O'Rourke has far more.

Tom Wolfe--Tom Wolfe is just boring. And even his sixties/seventies stuff is so laden with contempt that it's a chore to read.

56: You have gone back to college. Are you doing it right?

and certainly people having relatively casual sex isn't new.

I don't think the casual sex is new; I think the relative weakness of the "slut" card is new.

56: If you're in grad school in the humanities and you're not drinking too much, partaking of substances, and having ill-thought-out sexual relationships with inappropriate people it sounds more like you need to start doing graduate school right. On the other hand, at least it's not too late.

I've gone back to grad school, and no, I'm not.

Huh. You Unfoggers don't live up to your press, do you? Ogged isn't ruthless, you aren't living a life of cynically intellectual wild abandon--what's next? The discovery that John Emerson is really a happily married polygamist living in Utah with three kids and a gaggle of cute fluffy kittens?

I had a very lively conversation with two early-thirties college professors about whether the kids were all right. I felt that if we could get through the sex panic, there were two interesting questions: 1. Are the girls more likely to have fun? 2. Are the girls less likely to be raped?

There may be a third question about whether both the girls and boys are turning into empty shells who can no longer love and for whom porn becomes a substitute for companionship, but I think you have to peel away a lot of sex panic to turn that into a real question.

I hope Matt F really does ask some of our questions--and that he comes back and tells us all about how the talk went.

While waiting for that to reload, I found the mouseover text on the unfogged graphic. That was kinda weird. How long has it been that way?

If I'm not living up to my press in this regard, it's because my primary press is the fever-dream ravings of SCMT, who has decided, on what evidence I know not, that I'm a lothario who can't be restrained.

A couple of weeks or so. It's due for a change.

66: "I'm not a wolf(son); I'm your Grandmother."

66: We were going to call it Generation w-lfs-n.

I tend to think that long-term romantic love is over-emphasized and over-valued in our culture, so I would reverse the question and ask whether there isn't this expectation that young people should be falling truly madly deeply in love and that therefore something is wrong when they don't. (I don't say this, by the way from a dateless/loveless perspective.)

Kid's Korner Kipnis!

whether there isn't this expectation that young people should be falling truly madly deeply in love

That expectation is mostly operative for young women, I would think.

20 -- isn't that awesome? Make pastries, not love!

72: Really? I've always found that it's guys who have problems wandering back to reality on that one.

If you're in grad school in the humanities and you're not drinking too much, partaking of substances, and having ill-thought-out sexual relationships with inappropriate people it sounds more like you need to start doing graduate school right.

I think you can find plenty of grad students having healthy sexual relationships with perfectly appropriate people in between working their fucking asses off.

Is the operative factor in hooking up an absence of any interest in seeing what might develop?

Not really. I know a couple couples whose long-term relationships began with a random drunken hookup, including one who recently got married. It's more if something develops, cool, if not, it was a fun drunken evening. In my experience, it's a hookup if it develops out of a party or group or clubbing scene, as opposed to a date.

This status competition O'Rourke alludes to seems to me completely foreign.

75: Well, yes. But I know some hard-living grad students and I like to pretend that they're all like that.

49 through 53 are hilarious.

75: Yes, but are they really fulfilled or are they just putting up a facade of fun when they're really sad on the inside? And are they getting enough baked goods?

See, there was some stupid, competitive stuff amongst some of the hookers-up while I was in college,but I think that there would have been stupid competitive stuff if they'd just been trying to get a date to the sock-hop and a circle pin. The fact that there is stupid, competitive stuff in our often stupid, competitive society does not mean anything about the merits of casual sex.

78, I was posting while cooking tamarind rice, and the excitement kept me from thinking straight.

Frowner, did you attend college in the Twin Cities?

It is possible to be sad on the inside in the absence of any sex at all!

Just curious. Not stalking or anything.

No, I attended glorious St. Olaf College in scenic Northfield Minnesota. I was going to go to Carleton, but when I went to tour the tour guide was unbelievably snooty to my poly-cotten-blend-dressed parents, and that put me right off. I suppose that anyone who went to school with me could identify me right there from these details, but I choose to believe that they've all gone on to get MBAs and have better things to do with their time.

47 is awesome.

Along with moral panic, the "you could get raped!" reaction seems a big part of the Outrage. God forbid that girls go out, get drunk, and get laid rather than cowering at home.

83 gets it exactly right.

But, you know, baked goods. Do they really think young men marry women because they have nice cookies?

84: There are so many people more or less like me in Minneapolis, anyway...not only would it be hard to pick me out from all the restive, underemployed Scando-German liberals of a certain age, but there are so many of us that there'd be no neccessity to pick just one of us for any purpose, whether benign or sinister.

85, is that Garrison Keillor's alma mater?

I've been propositioned for my ramen-blending skills...so I'm not sure what would happen if I baked anyone cookies. Marriage, at least, I should think. I would hope for large monetary presents and a condo, but that might require cake.

I lured in shivbunny with an excellent lasagna, but it was a mere lure.

Nope, I'm pretty sure he went to UMN. St Olaf was in my day a weird, insular little school with a good Asian Studies program and an interesting tutorial-based major adapted from the Oxford system. In theory, it should have been a much more fun place than it was.

Shortly after I left, St. Olaf accepted twenty-some million from the CEO of Waste Management, build the ugliest student center you've ever seen in your life, scrapped many humanities programs and the tutorial model and re-visioned itself as a school that prepares you for professional degree programs. They even changed the motto. It was pretty gross, but not totally unsurprising.

Good looks don't last, good cookin' do.

92: I always think that savory dishes are a better foundation for a relationship, anyway.

No, I did used to lure people in by cooking for them back in my early twenties when I was the only one in my circle who could cook--but that was more about showing off than about cooking itself, since showing off is part of almost all my strategies.

I got a marriage proposal once from my turkish coffee mud pie.

Also: engagement chicken. Someone out there believes this stuff.

92 suggests to me that the lasagna Cala used to attract Shivbunny was, like a fishing lure, ersatz -- not edible but barbed.

85: I went to Mac. Of all my PF experiences, St. Olaf definitely showed me the best time. There was a watermelon spiked with vodka and soccer in the dorm hallways until 3 a.m. I actually woke up in a lounge someplace.

(And did the pie follow through with a rock? Hell no!)

I got a marriage proposal once from my turkish coffee mud pie.

Did the mud pie get down on one knee?

97: Well, in a good lasagna, the cheese on the top does get toasty and crinkly, but not really barbed. But the lasagna lulls him into happy satiety.

95: Aha, so the status-seeking IS part of the game.

It's more if something develops, cool, if not, it was a fun drunken evening. In my experience, it's a hookup if it develops out of a party or group or clubbing scene, as opposed to a date.

The term "hookup" hereby officially strikes me, as some others have suggested, as identifying nothing remotely new. Perhaps it's more prevalent, but for some weird reason, I doubt it.

100 before 99. I PWNED J00! EAT IT.

99 was before 100! Learn how to read timestamps, foo.

f00b.

ABD, stands for All But Dissipation, you know.

foobar.

Oh, pwn and f00b all you like. Will I be making you some of that sweet, sweet turkish coffee mud pie when you come to town? No, I will not.

,

'sif. no pie. CAKE.

ABD stands for Ann B. Davis.

Striking through a comma makes for a very cool visual.

Striking through an 's' isn't obvious at all.

But it's not just pie, it's MUD PIE.

(April meetup at Citizen Cake?)

So, yeah, it turns out that Stepp is simply a crazy old woman who hates the idea of people having sex. And it's really awkward to listen to her discuss "teabagging" and "going down". It also turns out that an old white woman reciting rap lyrics deadpan sounds exactly as you'd expect.

I was the first to ask a question, I asked whether she followed the girls profiled in the book for any extended length of time, and whether she had real evidence for any of the conclusions she draws. She of course didn't, and her reply was to say "this is not a scientific book". I claim success on that front.

She lamented that "colleges have abandoned their role as arbiters of good behavior", which for her seems to mean teaching women to keep their legs closed. She doesn't really talk about men at all, and when asked about it by another questioner said that "men are of course also responsible", but indicated that she doesn't think they themselves suffer from all this, as women do.

95: Well, yes, casual sex is part of the game. But that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with status-seeking. Showing off is a harmless, healthy pleasure.

98: I (later) did part of my thus far unused teaching certificate at Mac, also worked in the cafeteria and learned to clean the yogurt machine.

St. Olaf students could certainly drink. My friends and I were disaffected and avoided drinking for that reason. What is PF? Something incredibly obvious? Playing football? That must be why it was such a good time--children wearing blindfolds could have beaten our football team.

Jesus. Thanks for the report.

PF = "pre-frosh" for HS students visiting campuses.

115 -- did she mention the Dirty Sanchez at all?

118: Ah, memories, memories. We did have some nice lounges. And I liked the library a lot. And Darwin the chef, now long gone since the school went over to Bon Appetit. And traying down the hill.

No, though she does have something in her book about "eating a roast beef sandwich", a euphemism I had never encountered before.

121 -- What is being euphemized?

(And whatever it is, a "Reuben" has got to be dirtier.)

How old is she?

Roast beef sandwich.

And traying down the hill.

People do that here too.

She looks to be in her late 50s or early 60s.

St. Olaf is built on a ridiculously high, steep hill...there are two slopes, one shallow and one steep. For some reason, most folks of the traying kind didn't live in the artsy weirdo dorm, but rather in the jock and student government dorm, happily located by the shallower slope. So we nearly always trayed alone. I also remember watching the night sky from up there when one half of the sky was a lighting storm and the other half was a clear sunset sky with a few stars beginning to show.

116: My wife got her teaching certificate at Mac.

Oh, awesome. I just realized that Stepp was responsible for the whole rainbow parties report. I realize that there's no reason not to reinvent the snarkwheel, but there is no shortage of available internet derision should folks need a breather.

116: And now, the chilling question that nonetheless must be asked: when was your wife there?

"Arbiters of good behavior"? What does she expect colleges to do, lock the women up?

...Er, that too is not a stalkerish question...or maybe it is, in which case never mind.

But it was a pretty good teacher-training program. I'm sorry it's gone.

133 tabout 131, actually.

She did it as part of her BA, and she graduated in 97.

Well, that's good--then she doesn't remember my breakdown in our weekly class when I was teaching in the South High students-who've-been-kicked-out-of-everywhere-else class in the windowless basement, and the supervising teacher wouldn't let me turn on the lights. I was allowed one row of lights, but too many, he said, made the students restless.

He also expected me to prep a semester's worth of classes with no pre-existing syllabus and no help from him, plus take over the teaching pretty much instantly.

Oh, what I was trying to convey was that I did my certificated from 1999-2000, post-BA.

136: Wow. Some teachers really suck.

137: Oh well.

Rats, I was hoping for it to somehow emerge that Frowner is actually married to Chopper.

140: I'm just waiting to discover that I'm really Ogged's estranged, amnesiac wife.

Actually, I had this tiny twinge of fear that Chopper might be someone with whom I had feuded irretrievably over a very tasty risotto and an ill-advised chocolate pudding at a dinner party I gave back in 2003.

138: Yeah, it was epic. First, some teacher in the suburbs called me to ask whether I'd student teach with him, since he taught only honors history and he thought I'd be a great fit. I was thrilled. Then my supervising teacher at Mac said that I couldn't have that placement (I think he felt I needed to be toughened up.) I didn't get a placement until the day before classes started, and it was this unbearable one in the bowels of South. (The kids were nice enough for the most part, actually, but tricky to discipline) Honestly, I was pretty much suicidal for that whole term, it was so awful. I felt like such a failure; the teacher at South wouldn't help me, and he kept going on about some previous student teacher who was now teaching at St. Grottlesex or somewhere. If I were talking to a young person in such a situation today, I'd advise her to quit the program and get her money back.

140: And then it turns out that they have never actually frowned or chopped in each other's presence, hence the confusion.

Y'know, it was much easier in my youth, when crazy ladies didn't obsess about sex and the younger generation. Of course, we were hippie freaks who called it "free love", not "casual sex". And we didn't worry about love being put on hold, as everyone loved everyone. [Except our parents, the pigs and the National Guard, but what are a few baton blows or bullets between friends?] Hell, it's not as if "hooking up" is a new thing; it's just more publicised, what with the intertubes and text-messaging and blogs and new slang. There was plenty of free love back in the stone age when one could run into a classmate in the coffee house and wander off to kick someone's roommate out to the lounge so we could fuck our brains out. And occasionally check each other's class notes, as there was a lot of competition for grades and grad school and, for the boys, draft deferments.

Most of us grew up to be horribly "normal". We cut our hair, pair-bonded, had kids, got jobs, became spongy muddy-mottled tyrants went into politics. [Or, in the case of Jann Wenner, sold out.] Acid-painted nights afroth in lubricious lechery didn't preclude a more sedate future.

36: I think the people who can afford to have easy, casual sex are relatively rare.

No, no, it's the people who can afford high-end, professional sex who are rare.

47: I agree, vis-à-vis the idea that "casual sex" is a misnomer. Anything I have that involves stockings with seams is "formal sex" [anything that requires ripped tights is just kinky sex]. "Casual sex" would be, oh, fuzzy socks or flip-flops, depending on the season.

Elder-envy was also a factor in primordial public discussions of hippie free love (the Hippie Archaic version of "hooking up"). Back then a 26-year-old friend of mine was hit upon by a 60-y.o. churchgoing farmer neighbor, who later turned her in to the police (for relatively minor charges).

I think that male elder-envy is not just the desire to hit on younger women. It's mostly the wish to be young and carefree again. Lack of cheerfulness is the main thing stopping me from screwing around.

I would think of elder-envy as envying the elderhood of others.

Elder-envy was summed up by John Betjeman in one of his last interviews, when he was asked if he had any regrets in his long life:

"Yes, I haven't had enough sex."

145: I suppose morphologically it could, but who envies the old? Perhaps a new phrase should be coined.

You Unfoggers

It amused me immoderately to read this, as just the other day I'd considered writing a comment hailing the new Frowner-era Unfogged. The window for othering is oh so closed.

148: Well, I like referring to people as "you Limiting Category", purely for my own amusement value..."You kids today", "You researchers", "You activists"...it's not really because I believe that there's a great gulf between us; it's just that I think it's funny. "You Americans", "you hippie-dippie co-op frequenters", etc. It's even better if you can say "You [category] are all ALIKE!"

Sometimes I'm deadpan but it doesn't come across...like when I told my fellow fast-food-workers that they shouldn't cuss in front of me because I was going to be a nun, or the time that I convinced someone that I was the heir to a castle in Scotland.

Also, in the place where I live we sometimes discuss Unfogged, as in "You'll never guess what the Unfoggers said today! And Ogged is trying to get a date!" You are my soap opera, o non-Frowner Unfoggers.

You Frowners and your deadpan and your nun-lies.

The other day, while typing about my sense of failure-as-a-Frowner, I thought, "Wouldn't it be great if there were an organization or social-grouping-that-wasn't-too-pathetic of Frowners?" That would solve so many of my problems...and we could have little conventions or maybe bean suppers.

A member of my family once sexed a guy from work who was maybe forty years older. All performance aspects satisfactory, in fact outstanding, but he apparently several times mentioned his amazement at the age gap. I don't think she was annoyed, just amused, but it's good to know not to do that. I heard it said approvingly of a running back who blithely handed the ball to the ref after scoring a touchdown, rather than dancing a jig, "He acted like he'd been there before." We should all act like we've been there before, however thrilled—as if that weren't going to be obvious anyway.

When my 25-y.-o. niece came visiting once she was hit on by a 70-y.o. man who was suspected of also having hit on my mom 40 or 50 years earlier. That's what makes Lake Wobegon great, the rich continuity of tradition. (My niece at that age was very far from innocent, but she kept her family life and her sex life completely segragated.)

Many years ago a 30-y.o. friend was hit on by a 80-y.o. man in her low rent complex. She went for it out of curiosity. I remember her saying that it was OK, nothing special.

One should add that there's hitting on and then there's hitting on, and the distinction (to be elaborated below) is important. For example, I don't mind that the fifty-ish guy who runs the convenience store calls me "Baby" and is sort of heavily flirty. If he were, based on our minor daily interaction, to assume that he was entitled to proposition me or tell me that I had a nice rack or whatever, yuck! It's weird to me that some fellows don't get this distinction.

I remember her saying that it was OK, nothing special.

Do you think this ought to be considered good, as a sort of weighted score, or should we apply strict standards applicable to all participants?

154: Nice frown, baby.

If he were, based on our minor daily interaction, to assume that he was entitled to proposition me or tell me that I had a nice rack or whatever, yuck!

Right, because he would have skipped steps that permit you to discourage pleasantly and within social bounds. I'm presuming "fifty-ish" is just scene-setting here, and not intended to imply that that by itself should be end of story.

I once got basically molested by an eighty year-old Italian gentleman in the back of a taxicab. We had chatted of Umberto Eco on the plane, and when he offered to share a cab, I really hadn't thought he was much of a danger. It was pretty gross.

157: Well, "fifty-ish" because people had been talking about age and hitting on younger women, and my point was that my objections to being hit on were based on content.

Although I would add that when people are substantially older than the people they'd like to hit on, those first people should probably be extra-attuned to the tenor of the interaction. There's always other stuff that may be at play: I was brought up to be extra-polite to people outside my age-cohort, for example, and also there tend to be different uses of flirting language and different standards of propriety adhered to by different generations.

The guy who hit on my mom and niece was "Deliverance"-scuzzy. No ambiguity or nuance in that case.

My foot surgeon called me "Baby" this morning. [Usually, he calls me "Princess"] This is amusing for two reasons: One, he's 17 years younger than I am; two, he's gay. Then he went on to tell me I have a hairline fracture of my ankle, bone bruises, a torn ligament, tendinopathy in my Achilles tendon and a variety of other problems. And that's in the good foot, not the one he fixed a year ago. I think the "Baby" was more of a "Poor Baby".

I think the biggest age spread I've had in a lover was 30 years or so. I didn't think about it at the time, as we'd been friends for a while, and were part of an extended social group that tended to ignore age differences. It freaked me utterly when I read his obit in the Times, because I just didn't think of him as that much older.

There's also the thing that elderly men should not try to regain their youth by acting like dorky frat boys. We are expected to act like suave men of the world. To me that kind of stereotyping is unfair to dorky 60-year-olds.

158: When I was 17 and visiting Florence, I had an old Italian guy actually offer to buy me ice cream. Guess he was out of candy.

I hear you John, but I think some approximation of suave man of the world is about the only viable option I can think of for this relation. Both might get past it to the real persons but I think it's a necessary stance.

No, I think that affirmative action should require all sexually-active young women to screw dorky old men mourning their lost youth.

But not scuzzy old men like the one who hit on my niece.

It isn't either a fine line.

She can't suave you, John.

Well, what are they teaching them in the schools, anyway?