Dear H

Dear H,

I'm not sure I conveyed how upset I am about how things have turned out. I'm not sure exactly what I wanted, but in retrospect something casual would have probably been healthier and more appropriate to our compatibility. If a misstep on the level of seriousness was made, I suspect it was mine.

I think my impulse for pursuing things more seriously came from a recognition that I could learn things from dating you and maybe teach you a few myself-- things about ourselves and about people and our relationship with the world-- y'know, the usual.

That said, I think the biggest reason I'm upset about losing what we've had, is that for the first time in a year I'd found the trifecta-- good conversation, good sex and good cuddling (the last of those only at the end). I approach servicing those creature comforts with a degree of seriousness that others sometimes find foreign, but I'm excruciatingly aware of how fundamental they are in my life. I think we'd gotten to a point where we could actually get quality sleep together, which is also very important, and was probably a requisite for any kind of low-pressure sexual relationship.

I've been thinking about our conversation last night, and envisioning what I would want to talk about when we meet for coffee a couple of weeks from now, and I realized that at this moment it would mostly be asking you for more detail about what you said, and, tentatively, seeing if your situation had changed after midterms and your move to Oakland. That seems like kind of a shitty thing to start a friendly conversation with and, more to the point, too long a time to wait to ask that stuff, so I thought I'd broach it here, where I can lay out my thoughts without the adrenaline that has accompanied our last couple of conversations.

You said that you didn't feel like a casual relationship would be possible. Why is that? That question can be taken as an appeal, but I also hope you take it as a more basic question about what makes you tick.

If you had said that you were also interested in trying to see each other casually last night, my next question was going to be what seeing each other casually meant to you. I would have asked about your past casual relationships and how they worked. I'm still curious what you were envisioning when we talked about a casual relationship last week, though perhaps the answer to the first AND second questions of this email is that you couldn't envision it.

If I had to guess the reason you don't think something casual would work, it's that you're concerned that it would be an additional complication to your life, and add to your stress rather than relieve or provide an outlet for it. Maybe you also can't imagine back-stepping a relationship's level of seriousness-- that's an open question for me too, since I haven't tried anything like that yet. I'd guess you're also worried that even something relatively infrequent and decidedly uncommitted would distract you from your priorities, but I have difficulty relating to that. The idea of ever being in a place in my life where I didn't have time for even occasional sex is foreign to me. I tend to think of sex, at least on its own, as beneficial for focus and coping with stress.

I envisioned a friendly sort of thing where maybe once a week when there was a break in your obligations and I was free, you'd come to my house and we'd have sex and curl up together and chat and go to sleep. The idea wouldn't be to build anything, but to provide a respite from our respective lives-- your school stresses and my own stress from work or, frankly, other dating. It would be something to look forward to, and I know it would center me in regards to the aforementioned stresses. I know the way we handle our drives and responsibilities is pretty different, so I wouldn't be surprised if that paradigm wouldn't make sense in your life, but that is what I envisioned.

Anyways, I hope this email wasn't unwelcome or unpleasant, and I wish you the best with the busy life before you. I don't think I've said this to you out loud, so I will say it now: I am and have been impressed with your dedication to the pursuit of your goals. Hopefully the fact that I've only said this once will compensate for it being a cliche that I'm sure you've heard many times. Anyways, I mean it. I'd still like to meet you for coffee in a while, I'd just like to get these questions out of the way beforehand.

Sincerely,

Frank

Porn Exchange!

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I'm ok to date again, I swear

To paraphrase a conversation with my friend:
N: I feel like I'm falling into a minor depression because of this guy thing.

Me: Well, it's probably not just that guy. Long relationships have a funny way of exacting their toll after they've failed whether or not you've "moved on", will do so via the new person if there is one. You know, rebounding.

N: Yeah. Exactly. I miss intimacy and I'm frustrated he can't provide.

Me: I miss intimacy and I'm frustrated this girl I like wants to wait practically forever to have sex. The good news is she's totally into kissing and cuddling and sleeping together, but then I'm just frustrated she doesn't want to hang out every day.

and live at my house...

...

sigh

I'm ok to date again, I swear...

Romantic Calculus Part 2: The Dating Game

At least with this round of singledom, I've only had one strategy for finding a girl. I haven't hit on girls at work (to the best of my abilities) or at parties and I don't smile at girls sitting across from me on the train. I've never been much for that sort of thing because I've never had much talent for it. Also, I hate it. Also, I'm probably going to continue to run into them and be awkward forever after. As previously discussed, my tastes are pretty specific, so even when my charm is turned up to full blast my hit rate is abysmal, because either the girl isn't feeling it or two minutes into talking to them I realize there's nothing there or both, and in all cases I've made my world just a little bit colder.

So I use OKCupid, of course. It's the largest free dating site, which means that it is lighthearted, well-built and populous as fuck. It has mechanics for matching based on user-solicited questions and it has produced some fascinating blogging.

The question, of course, is how do I use it? Because I have a process, you see.

Granted, this is going to be a simplification. Granted also that such a simplification will make this sound cold because A) it systematizes romance and B) it sweeps away all the dirt and fluff that makes anyone endearing. To this, I have to say A) systematizing romance is the perverse joy of this series and B) if you want to see me all warm and fuzzy you're in the wrong place.

The first step, particularly with OKC since the questions are essentially a customizable matching algorithm, is answering some questions. Actually, quite a lot of questions, especially the ones about sex. Here's how they work: you answer the question, list what answers you would prefer a potential partner give and the rate how much you care about how they answered. Also, if you want you can explain your answer or even go off on a diatribe. Here's an example.

The special beauty of these match questions is that you can use them to ask questions you couldn't ask directly and wouldn't find out until much later. There are a number of questions I've rated "Mandatory", and the algorithm manages the balance of ignoring what I say just the right amount. Here are the questions I rated "Mandatory":

Once you're intimate, how often would you and your significant other have sex? Every day
I prefer to sleep ... Embracing / cuddling my partner
Are you either vegetarian or vegan? No
How well do you handle criticism? Really well
Do you like the taste of beer? Yes
Not as in whips and chains, but in general, do you prefer your partner to be... Balanced
Rate your self-confidence: Higher than average
How much can intelligence turn you on? A lot!
Guys/girls who are tall and lanky: Love it! (or neutral)
When it comes to art, do you prefer works that are abstract or representational? Representational (or neutral)
Do you enjoy intense intellectual conversations? Yes
Which is worse: starving children or abused animals? Starving children

Of these, I do a manual hard screen for "How often would you have sex?" since this particular issue has been thorn in my side for a long time. By that I mean that I won't consider someone who answered something other than "Every day", I won't message someone who hasn't answered the question and if someone messages me who hasn't answered the question I will ask them directly right off the bat (with apologies). I do a soft screen for sleeping style and vegetarianism. The vegetarianism thing is a litmus test for a lot of other ideological stuff, but it's also important because eating at a restaurant with a vegetarian will drive me crazy. I love to share meals. I *need* to share meals. Both directions.

Since I usually consider people with 80+% match ratings, chances are they match me on most of my mandatory questions if they answered them at all. After that, it's how pretty they are and how smart/interesting they come across in their profile. What also factors in is how much they've given me to work with when writing them a message. Many people say nothing of substance on their profile. If I wanted to message them, I'd be reduced to something like, "I see you like the Beatles too... what is your favorite album of theirs?" Definitely suboptimal. Even if everything else looks good, they've given me no basis on which to judge whether or not our personalities/intelligences will be compatible, so I likely won't get around to sending anything (unless they're REALLY pretty).

Now that I've messaged the person, the chances that they will respond are pretty low. The most relevant reason for this is that I have intentionally written my profile to screen girls. Why, you ask? Because I hate bad first dates. I have strong opinions, I'm socially ungraceful, and I am a misanthrope. I like everyone theoretically, but I respect relatively few, and I won't be able to have sex with them if I don't respect them, because it will be emblazoned across my face and they will not appreciate it. All of this said, some girls message me back. Some even message me unsolicited. And I tend to like the girls who do.

Once they've messaged back, I might poke them a little if their profile was light, but most likely I will suggest we meet for coffee. There's really no reason to spend a lot of time messaging back and forth. If I'm going to discern compatibility that wasn't evident in their profile, it will probably be in person. People often come across very differently in message anyways.

The purpose of a coffee date (beer works almost as well) is for something short and cheap that provides an opportunity to talk. If I were pro, I'd intentionally schedule coffee dates such that I had to leave after the first hour (as a friend once recommended). In practice my first dates have run two or three hours, but they are still pretty short and sweet. This is because the point of the coffee date isn't really to hear the person's life story, it's just to see if we have chemistry and if they're smart. I already know they're decently attractive and match me in a lot of personal ways. If things go well, at the end of the date I will say that I like them and am going to ask them out again. I might even set up the second date right then and there.

The second date is for real. The goal is to get to know the girl and, if we continue to click, to at very least kiss her. By the end of the second date, I have always felt like I had a good idea whether or not this was a person I could really like. Whether or not we will have a successful relationship is something that I won't be able to determine for a good bit longer, but the question of whether or not I want to have sex with them will have been conclusively answered.

This might not be the best dating strategy for everyone, but it is definitely working for me. I suspect online dating will continue to gain in popularity. I hope OKCupid will continue to be the beneficiaries of that trend.

Since I'm on the subject, I might as well link you to a friend of mine's sadistic OKC experiment.

Frank, you're just an asshole.

For reference: G is a year into the unflattering throes of getting dumped by a guy he'd gone out with for three or four months and fallen madly in love with. Also, I saw "her" from a distance for the second time since it ended about thirty minutes before this conversation took place. Other than (obviously) the anonymization, this hasn't been altered from the chat we had earlier this evening. I'm also going to include this link to a blog post by a mutual friend that we had both read before this conversation.

G: I had a conversation with T about you

  and she helped me understand why you were so mad at me.

  You and I have completely different ideas of what love is.

me: oh? which time being mad at you?

G: Most recent

  when I said you never loved her.

me: it was more silly than offensive. you couldnt know

G: Well, I don't think you loved her.

  But that's because of what I mean by love.

  I think it's unfathomable to leave someone if you love them.

  So like for comparison / my frame of reference.

  I thought I had contracted HIV and was going to die.

me: is it unfathomable to love someone who you can't be happy with?

G: My first thought was not "oh shit, my life expectancy"

  it was "oh no, I'll need to stay away from Sean forever to keep him safe."

  it turns out I didn't get HIV (most likely).

  but my thoughts were about the other person's well being

me: damned false negatives

G: above my own life

  and like

  for me

  that's a minimum requisite for love

  is that you have to care more about them than yourself

  and that doesn't seem compatible with the narrative you told me about your breakup.

    I think that loving someone (or something) in the conversational usage is different, it just means to be deeply grateful for their presence in your life

  but to be in love with someone, to love someone (romantically), means that you are completely given over to that person.

  that nothing in your life is as important as preserving their happiness

me: link

G: so that still doesn't see the semantic difference

  it says people shouldn't use it casually

  but there's a profound difference in the two meanings of love I laid out

  I don't think that post had that first meaning

  of thinking instinctively of her

  when harm was in your way

  rather than yourself

  not that you were in a life-threatening situation

  but like

  that reflex

  is a major part of love.

  as I understand it.

  and so given that, I don't understand how you could amicably end a relationship and call it love.

me: i guess this begs the question, by this definition are there people who are incapable of love?

G: yes.

me: well then it's just another kind of elitism

G: and I think that Sean, the guy I loved, is one of those people, unfortunately.

  But maybe not.

  I think it's for the best that he ended it, because now he has the chance to experience that with someone if I couldn't be the one he could experience it with.

me: that sounds like progress

G: no, I really don't think it's a superiority thing Frank

  I just think it's different.

  I think it's rare, and painful, and I basically lost the will to live (not suicidal, but lost all ability to imagine a happy future) post breakup.

me: in that blog post i linked

G: it was shattering in a way nothing else has ever been.

me: you are among the "poets, panderers and theorists"

  he forgot an additional kind of person that falls there: fools

G: You're a windblown douchebag who doesn't listen.

  I'm telling you that there's an emotional tie that I don't think you understand

  and I think you're dismissive of that.

  And you should just listen a minute reserving judgment.

me: i thank fate that T is from such an intensely monogamous culture, because in that context it wont be pathological

  you're screwed, though

G: Frank, you're just an asshole. I'm done talking to you.

Guilty as charged. I laughed my head off when he signed off.

My First Lap Dance

About a month ago I drove with B, one of my good friends from college (visiting from DC), down the California coast on the scenic highway 101 to visit our two other former roommates. When we got there and asked what the plan was, they said they were thinking we could go to a strip club. For reference, I was the only one with a girlfriend and B is still a virgin.

It turned out that none of us had been to one. We went to a chain called the Spearmint Rhino. We showed our IDs and paid our twenty dollars. With entrance we got a ticket for a free lap dance. We made some embarassing noob mistakes (not tipping when sitting in the front row of the stage, under-tipping, being generally confused about the process). One of the girls sat next to me and asked if I wanted a lap dance. I nodded to B and said "ask him first". My friend declined and I felt badly for setting her up for rejection, so I assented to a lap dance. It was very erotic. She did it topless and her perfume rubbed off on my face, so that I smelled it for the rest of the night. It was like good foreplay. It lasted the right amount of time and then it was over.

My friends were more choosy and said no to multiple girls because they "didn't find them attractive". I pondered what it must be like to work there. Degrading, but maybe you get used to it and approach it professionally-- I certainly hated waiting tables for similar (less significant) reasons. I saw one of the girls on the floor encouragingly cat call a girl on stage, which totally charmed me. They were obviously mostly students at UCSB. I took a call from L (my girlfriend) and had a conversation in the bathroom, catching up with her on my day so far.

My friends eventually got their lap dances. H came back excited and talking about how much touching she let him get away with (the policy, as stated when we entered, was strictly hands-off). B came back totally ecstatic, looking like his mind was blown (it was a similar expression to the one I must have had after my first blowjob). After taking forever to finally pick a girl, G came back looking sheepish but nonetheless enthused. He'd paid extra for more time or something, and apparently it wasn't gratifying. When he got back we promptly left, since we'd been waiting on him.

I felt a little sorry for all of them-- so starved for sexual contact that they found the experience earth shaking. I mentioned to them later that I could get that at home because I had a girlfriend. I know, kind of a dick thing to say, but I have limited sympathy for their undersexedness. They are all extremely picky. H wants to learn to pick up girls in bars (the "real" way) and refuses to use online dating. His priority is self-betterment, which I suppose is admirable. I just wish I liked his concept of "betterment" more. G spends a lot of time and energy fucking with girls' heads. B has been dating, but he has had an impulse to wait for his first time to be with the girl of his dreams. This seems to have changed recently and I think B is beginning to realize that his inexperience is causing him trouble getting laid and that getting past that first roadblock is essential. So I guess B deserves sympathy. I remember when I had to face that same catch-22. It's a frustrating place to be.

Libido Science

It's time to do science! Don't worry, this is amateur science. However, do be forewarned that it's rather explicit.

The first year that I could masturbate to completion, I conducted on myself a series of experiments. It was through these experiments that I learned how the male libido works. First, I will explain my overall findings. Then I will get into the specifics of my self-experimentation.

To understand libido we must first define some terms:
Orgasm is self-explanatory, but for the purposes of this discussion, it will often be used interchangeably with sexual satisfaction. I know you Taoists out there will grumble about this. Deal with it.

Having sex is mostly shorthand for "having sex with yourself" for the purposes of this discussion, because while masturbation and two-person sex are very similar in theory, two-person sex is harder to study because there are more variables at play.

Sexual desire/drive is a person's momentary suggestibility towards sex. It's analogous to hunger: if a person suddenly thinks about food they can determine how hungry they are by how delicious food sounds and if their stomach grumbles and their mouth salivates. Just like with hunger, sexual desire is depleted or sated by acting on your desires.

Continuing this depletion metaphor, in some ways sexual desire acts more like charge on a battery than hunger. If you fast for two months, your body will spend the next few months recouping its fat reserves, but your body won't demand you have twice the sex for two months after any amount of celibacy. The battery of sexual desire has a maximum charge that can be held and leaving a cell phone plugged in after a certain point won't make your battery last any longer.

As you can imagine, sex is more gratifying if you have a lot of pent-up sexual desire. You get turned on more easily, it feels better when you get turned on, it feels better when you're having sex and orgasms tend to be more intense. The corollary to this is the more gratifying sex is, the more it expends your sexual desire.

Sexual desire is affected and often masked by a hierarchy of needs effect. If you feel like crap, you won't want to have sex, even if as soon as you feel better you suddenly feel like a sex-crazed maniac (hence why the word is masking and not reducing). This happens to me a lot if I've been sick, but the masking effect is more obvious (if less dramatic) with shorter-term things like being cold, hungry, in pain or in a bad mood. In my self-study, I measured sexual desire based on how I felt when I was more-or-less copacetic.

Libido is sexual desire's "recharge rate". Just like with real batteries this rate isn't linear, but the longer you go without orgasm, the more you want sex. Libido is analogous to metabolism. Libido varies from person to person and in a given person varies based on long-term circumstances (like depression, constant visual stimulation or how much sex you "feed" it).

Libido is a little more complex than a simple recharge rate, because it has got some elasticity to it. It kicks up to partly compensate if you're holding down your sexual desire with oodles of self-gratification. It eases back somewhat if you stage a sex boycott. None of these effects is terribly strong, though, so that if you have lots of sex the sex will still be muted by relatively low underlying desire/drive and if you severely limit yourself you'll still be gritting your teeth when the local hottie walks by in a mini-skirt.

This is a pretty straightforward model. Libido recharges sexual desire which makes you want to have sex and is depleted by actually having sex. Unfortunately, my own post is the first time I've seen it explained online. Every time I've explained it to a girl, they seem mystified. This is for you, girls.

Now, let's get into the specifics of my experiments while also revealing the specifics of my personal physiology.

The most general fact of libido is a person's preferred rate of sex per week or as I call it, your PRSPW. You can remember that, can't you? Don't. I was kidding. That acronym is retarded. I'm never going to use it again.

When I've been on my own, I've averaged about five times my whole adult life. I've also found that the rate falls modestly when I don't use porn and that the rate can be kicked up substantially with porn or other stimuli, it is also probably depressed by the length of time I typically devote to a session, but more on that later. My preferred rate doubles when I'm in a relationship, which is a confirmation that libido is susceptible to the quality of present stimuli and, again, possibly the session length (so far girls don't seem to want to go over twenty or thirty minutes).

The first actual experiment we'll discuss is zero-to-sixty time or the time it takes to get from an untouched erection to orgasm, by hand, as quickly as possible. During that year of experiments I found that it was typically about five minutes and my early record was three minutes. Later that year, I would improve upon that zero-to-sixty time under highly irregular conditions. More on that later.

The second experiment was the experiment of celibacy. This was the most massive and demanding scientific undertaking of my sexual career. You see, quitting cold turkey would have been too simple. I decided that I would ween myself off masturbation. I started by restricted myself to masturbating once every three days. I didn't have a calendar, but something this important was easy to keep mental track of. When I decided I was almost comfortable with that rate, I'd reduce it. Over the course of a couple of painstaking months I eventually stopped masturbating entirely. I forget how long I lasted. It was between two and three weeks. On that fateful night when I decided to call an end to the experiment, I set my lifetime zero-to-sixty record of thirty seconds flat.

By then I'd learned a lot about myself from the experiment. I'd gained a suspicion that masturbating up to orgasm without actually orgasming (which I'd decided not to count) did in fact dampen my sexual drive. I learned that trading frequency for quality did not pencil out and that celibacy was incredibly hard and impressively inconvenient. I had a lot of wet dreams (which threw a wrench into the works of my scientific stoicism). When I realized that it would be normal to get a boner from merely sitting in math class thinking about math, making it very inconvenient to go up to the chalk board, I decided that nature, God, whatever, clearly had no desire for me to starve myself thusly.

The last experiment I did was the natural flip-side to zero-to-sixty time: stringing things along for as long as possible. Part of the goal was to teach myself control and partly it was in the interests of science. I quickly realized that there was no real upward bound for how long you could string yourself along, merely an upward bound for how long you'd want to, so this wasn't a matter of record-setting.

Up to a point (~20 minutes), holding yourself on that teetering ledge for awhile can dramatically increase the intensity of orgasm, but it can also do the opposite. As I've alluded to previously, sex without orgasm can potentially satisfy sexual desire, so if I held myself on that delicious precipice for long enough, all the wind would be taken out of the big finale. This emphasis on "journey over destination" has its own charm and I've spent a lot of my life enjoying it. There are other considerations, though, because this makes it much more likely you'll get blue balls, even if you do eventually orgasm. I eventually worked out that around forty-five minutes was the ideal maximum for me, as the payoff declined and the potential penalty rose rapidly around the one hour mark.

As you can probably tell from this post, I am proud of having applied the proverbial ruler to myself. This represents a case study of the properties and preferences of one person's libido. I know for a fact that things like "preferred rate" vary considerably from person to person, but I believe that the general principles I've set forth hold true for the male libido and possibly, after additional factors have been taken into account, the female libido. At the very least the principles I've outlined are useful as a model. I also have reason to believe that the numbers I've given are not unusual for my sex and age.

I would be remiss to conclude this discussion without providing this link (for those of you out there who find this enlightening, know that the characters in the clip are Jewish and consequently their anatomy has slightly different demands than, say, the children of liberally-minded gentiles). Weeds is consistently excellent, but this particular moment brought a smile to my face and got me thinking about how much easier things would have been if I'd been informed on the details. I got the core facts, but a discussion of the nuts and bolts (the other nuts and bolts) and that overt declaration that masturbating is good would have been nice.

Few of us will ever be able to pull off "the talk" with as much charm as Andy from Weeds, but the best first step towards eliminating silly ignorance is creating a dialogue. The internet is a fantastic, private resource for learning the facts of life that slipped through the cracks. It has improved by leaps and bounds since my early days of self-experimentation, but that knowledge still has gaps and room to grow. So comment, email me if you know my personal email and write your own posts. I'd love to hear how your experiences have differed or if you have alternate theories.

Romantic Calculus

I remember thinking in college, after the rare promising, mutually interested girl didn't pan out, that the odds were against me.

50% of people are male and consequently unavailable
50% of women are spoken for
40% of women are either out of my league or I'm out of their league
     (let's say 20 and 20)
50% of women are only interested in men that share their religion
     (closer to 20% in college, though)
98% of women aren't intelligent enough to interest me
     (closer to 95% of my school's undergrads, but still extremely high)
80% of people are incompatible with my rather strong personality

I calculated that I would meet one compatible woman for every 800 students. I'd have to not only meet 800 undergrads, but talk with them long enough to know whether they were a romantic possibility or not. Since I'd just met and dated somebody who fit all those qualifications, I figured I'd blown my wad for my whole college career.

By the time I graduated, I'd realized I needed to add that approximately
70% of women don't want enough sex to make me content
and
80% of women were either too old or too young for me

So out of college, the numbers were even more daunting. One in 83,000 people I met should be romantically compatible with me. I stand by these numbers.

Fortunately, sometime in college I had an important epiphany: prehistoric humans had to make due with what they had. They lived in bands of 50-150 people and at most had a dating pool of 500-2000 people (a dozen culturally similar bands might meet or interact with one another). Even worse, our ancestors 500 years ago had arranged marriages. Their partner was picked largely for economic reasons, yet divorce rates hovered around 2% and I have to assume that they grew to love each other and were more or less content with their lot. This is all to say that we can love practically anyone. Some may be easier to love than others, but humans are far more romantically flexible than modern society would suggest. This is largely because the modern concept of monogamy is more emotionally and personally intense than 500 or 10,000 years ago. We want our spouse to be our best friend, our partner, our roommate and our only lover. We are the victims of our own high expectations.

While recognizing that our society is plagued by terrifyingly high expectations didn't change those expectations, it did go a long way toward calming me down. Humans, ultimately, have a proven ability to happily settle with far less. I thought to myself, probably everybody goes through this calculus and comes up with similarly alarming numbers, yet somehow the human race continues to multiply. There was a disconnect between those numbers and reality. This was partly because I'd stated my "bare minimum" based on my concept of what I needed rather than on my experience and partly because the very environment we choose to place ourselves in drastically improves our odds.

Living in a major city? Not in a slum? The average IQ there is much higher than 100 and hardcore religiousness is much lower than 50%. Ever date friends of friends? They are far more likely to be culturally and intellectually compatible with you. Did you count other men as people you have to "search through"? How about women who are spoken for, too young, old, ugly or pretty? These things aren't hard to determine quickly. Have you ever thought about how easy it is to judge a book by its cover? On the bus do you ever find yourself categorizing people? Immigrant, punk kid, gay guy, neohippy, educated couple, not-quite-homeless bearded old guy (probably an old hippy), second gen immigrant kids in high school, well-dressed nerd who's probably a programmer, tourists, crazy cat lady, scene kid, etc, it's so easy it's practically unconscious. How they're dressed, their facial expression, how they sit... like it or not we also fit into these categories. Only rarely (and certainly more rarely than we think) do we qualify as "genuine iconoclast" and even when we do it's usually clear what sort of people we're most likely to get along with or date.

Of course, the biggest turning point in my approach to "romantic calculus" was precipitated by finding my first girlfriend. I was forced to reconcile that I had found a compatible person against the supposed odds. If life had doomed me to a life of loneliness, it certainly wasn't acting like it.

The thing is, --and I cannot stress this enough-- there is no mathematical way to predict your likelihood of finding somebody in a given year based on established preferences. Predicting your likelihood based on past experience might have some bearing on reality, but that assumes that you, your lifestyle and method of finding people remains constant. For somebody in their twenties, this is never the case. For somebody in their forties, this is only rarely the case.

None of this is to say that thinking about compatibility calculus is necessarily a bad thing. Thinking about how you are rendering candidates with perfectly-good hearts, minds or genitalia ineligible is a good way to address systematic ways you are placing yourself out in the cold. In practice, though, it is more common for such calculus to be misused. Wallowing in dooming numbers is self-defeating, childish and oh-so-common. Everybody likes a good pity party.

Then again, pity parties are unpleasant from the outside looking in, which is why I'm here to rain on all the pity parties that you, my readers, are undoubtedly indulging in at this very moment. There is hope for all of you. Actually, there was this one lady I saw on the bus the other day who was probably hopeless... but you're not her!

Eraserhead

In the spirit of October, I'd like to discuss my scary movie experience of note, namely of watching the David Lynch classic: Eraserhead. I watched it partly on the recommendation of my girlfriend, who said it scared her shitless. She had to turn on all the lights in the house and was terrified for the next two days until her roommates got back from a trip they'd been on.

So obviously I watched it alone and with all the lights off. I also watched it stoned. This made the movie make A LOT of sense. The symbolism that struck me while watching it continues to hold critical water under the pale glare of sobriety. I suggest to anyone who hasn't watched it stoned to do so at your earliest convenience. You have two weeks before the end of October, *ahem*.

Eraserhead didn't scare me shitless, but it did compel me to reconsider how soon I want to have kids. By the following day after watching the movie I'd moved that hypothetical date back three years.

Eraserhead was my introduction to David Lynch and his entrancing brand of intuitively sensical nonsense. Though I wouldn't recommend watching any or even most movies stoned, I expect that David Lynch's work generally goes pretty well with the ganja because of his peculiar sense of logic and story flow. In and of itself, that's neither a good thing nor a bad thing, but Eraserhead was definitely excellent.

Aliens in my Dreams

For reference, M is my exgirlfriend and L is my present girlfriend. I'm away from home for the summer, hence the emotional turmoil.

While I was away, L had drifted farther and farther away from me emotionally. M moved in with her, and lived on the bunk above her. My former roommate lived in a bed next to theirs, and I didn't know him at all anymore. M got into keeping aquarium fish as L got over fish-keeping. The two of them became friends. M's boyfriend moved in with her and shared her bunk, but the bed was only a couple of feet above L so when both M and her boyfriend were in bed together, there was hardly room for L, let alone me. I wanted to be upset about that, but I had no power. M would dismiss me with that knowingness that indicated she was bored of me. Meanwhile, L would listen to her. M had gotten into jewelry. She was protesting some famous jewlery designer who she thought was a hack. She'd bought a few of his pieces for one eighth of the retail price, because she'd bargained him down, and she thought that was proof that he was a hack subsisting on hype. She'd berated somebody for buying his jewlery. I said, "It's a free country, shouldn't people be allowed to buy whatever they want?" M said no. I argued with her about it for awhile. Really, she was the only person who was willing to talk to me, but she wanted to talk just to show her disdain for me and for that phase of her life. L had some new life plan that did not include me, and I couldnt convince her to run away with me. I realized that L was just as flawed as M had been and our relationship had been just as doomed. M's hostility proved how flawed that really was and would be.

I woke up feeling like the world was coming down around my ears.

After a few minutes, I calmed down, but I won't forget how doomed I felt.

A Tenuous Compromise

I'm dredging the vaults and this turned up. It's something I wrote about a year and a half ago. It was one of those moments where after nursing a horrifically bad mood for a while, I got up and the words just kind of flowed.

sometimes i feel i am falling through life
i am falling through life with the ease of a doll.

a moment of bright
tarnished by imperfection
but still beautiful.
then goodbyes
then spiral sucking swirl into blackness, screaming
blackness colored with shades of brown and flecks of white
but blackness all the same, so heavy i cant cry
blackness so heavy my head can't fit in my shoulders,
my shoulders cant fit into my knees, my knees cant fit in my shoes.
swirls of evil thoughts, pernicious, impossible thoughts
they shouldnt be allowed to exist,
much less have this free reign over me

there is a dim light on the horizon,
if it werent, my head would fit in the floor,
in negative space
the dim light keeps me here in the inky wind,
keeps me suffering,
keeps that tenuous compromise afloat, under strain.
but assuring that winds wont rip me to shreds
does nothing to assuage that they feel as bad as if they were about to
i turn to the only friend left to me,
and believe me that never have you seen him so tainted, thin and cold as he is now before me,
a cruel joke of what he once was,
but i curl up and close my eyes and try to think of nothing
as i'm buffeted by blackness,
and eventually nothing comes.

Puke Time

I've been writing quite a bit of poetry. To use the word of my friend H, I have been on a poetry writing "tear". I've decided it's time to share, even if it's nowhere near time to call any of the following poems finished or even, in most cases, "roughly complete".

I said from the start, this blog would be subject to lower quality standards than anything else I do. Part of that includes an inconsistent post rate, but it's been awhile and I'm feeling impulsive. Also, I'm becoming less apologetic about my poetry's quality or lack thereof. These were all written within the last few months and I've only revisited about half of them since puking them out.

Theoretically these will be improved upon and I will write music for them and then I'll record them and when the demo gets picked up by a label I'll be forced to start a band and become a rock star. Ha.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy.


This one is the only one hammered into verse-chorus, so far. Gold star if you correctly guess the subject (and haven't talked with me about it already).

(intro)
moving slowly, so slowly
dipping my toe
lapping at my heels
love how the breeze feels

sweet dawn
take me to the ocean

(chorus)
you go down, i get high
i'm so glad, you are mine
sweet dawn
take me to the ocean

(verse 1)
licking under my chin
licking at my ears
i'm out to far, i'm out to deep
horizon looms like death

(chorus)

caught on the inside
going for a spin
in the washing machine
but it feels alright

(chorus)

waves throwing me around
thrashed by sea
in the most loving way
and it feels alright

(chorus)

(closout)
i am adored
i am adored

Now for a couple of short ones.

face draws early lines
questions like razors
harsh laugh at odd times
he's mr. sharp


she stings like honey
she burns like electricity
there are a lot of flowers in this world
she is a honey bee

Now for a wistful one. By the way, don't read anything into the lack of capitalization. That's just my laziness.

had a dream that i'd found my place
eucalyptus in my nose and salt in my mouth
but i cant go back to the sunkissed days

did i ever tell you
you're so beautiful it makes me ache

i don't ever want to be alone
please hold me to your breast

i don't ever want to be alone
tears trickle down your chest

I'm no good at secrets
and I'm sick of playing tough
I'm so bored of the knowing wink
I'll hide everywhere that's pink
I'll go everywhere that's pink.

Now for one about new love.

it's a beautiful morning
even if the sky's still dark
walking home from her house
yeah, walking home from her house

seems a time since i have felt like this
kisses drying on my face
gliding home on clouds
the future seems so clear

the universe impelling me along my misted way
the universe is pulling me along my blissed out day
the universe is sucking me along the path of grace
and i hold within myself the beauty of the world

Now one for February.

fluffy cloud sunshine sky
damp sidewalk

yesterday i saw a mushroom standing
like he'd always owned the world

jewels hang from trees
with gilded leaves

wind smells earth and flowers
everything is green and yellow

Now one about longing.

there's dirt beneath my fingernails
there's dust coating my teeth

and i want to go home
and i know it will be soon
and i can't wait to be home

the girl who sleeps in my bed
in my home so far away
my girl keeps my bed warm while i'm away

and she is my ocean
and she's my shining sea

And lest this get too sweet.

squishing roaches underneath my feet
popping bubble wrap
ripping tendons with my teeth
i don' wanna be a veg-e-tar-i-an
i get satisfaction
it's not the best but
if you're not doing anything otherwise
its really kind of nice

And in case somebody still thought that was strangely precious.

don't call my name
don't call my name
don't touch my face
you're not welcomed
you're uninvited
you stupid bitch
you nasty witch
don't call my name

And now a celebration of blind rage!

You thought I'd take this sitting down
but i'm gonna stomp your face
and i won't be satisfied
till i've ground you to a paste

i liked you because you
held my friend's affection
but i was never blind

you liked me because
i held your friend's affection
but after you screwed her

you thought you'd do me for good measure
you don't know who you messed with
you barked up the bitter-bark tree
you cornered a mean old cat

and i won't be satisfied
till i've ground you to a paste

The Face That Glows

I'll preface this by saying I'm not sure if my poetry holds up to my prose. I hardly ever write poetry. Thank you to the person (people) who made this possible. Love deserves thanks, I think.


In a crowded room, there is a face that glows
gilded by the night
a beacon that calls to only me.
Oh for that night
Oh for that night

Her every motion in rhythm
etched, like from a tapestry
of a childhood home.
In a single smile I know her thoughts

When I hug her
the tremor of a small bird
burning hot
held in strong hands
speaks of such beauty furled

Looking makes the world rush,
Looking away makes it close in
like a pack of wolves.

Please don't smile that sad smile.
it will burst my heart

Sleeping with People

A certain friend of mine once told me that she put out as a means towards sharing a bed. At the time I thought that was absurd. Sex is way better than spooning, right?

I'm still in withdrawal from the comforts of a relationship. Funnily enough, I've come to the same conclusion about sharing a bed. I miss that more than sex.

I understand that sharing a bed can often be an inconvenience rather than a luxury. A certain mother and daughter I know only shared a bed out of fiscal necessity. Apparently the daughter was a wiggleworm, especially when she was younger. I can't really speak to that. In contrast to even the previously-mentioned friend, I've never had a moment when the inconvenience of sharing a bed outweighed the pleasure.

The problem with being such a fan of sharing a bed (as possibly illustrated by the certain friend), is that classically it requires a relationship. There are other options, though.

It would be a little too awkward to share a bed with my platonic female friends. Like it or not, there will always be some sexual tension there. The good news about being oriented more-or-less completely one direction, sexually, is that I don't have to worry about sexual tension with guys. I still have to worry about morning wood and spooning is kind of out, but I'm comfortable enough with my sexuality that it can work at least theoretically.

My friend "C" visited me for a few days last month and I lured him into sleeping with me. Partly there were some circumstances that encouraged it, like not having a couch and being unwilling to give up my bed during the workweek. Ultimately though, it was an unselfconscious, premeditated attempt to fill that hole in my life.

Of all my friends, C is easily the most okay with that sort of thing. We've both actively looked for homosexual tendencies in ourselves and come up empty, so we both have that magical combination of a complete lack of homophobia and a rather complete heterosexuality.

Sharing a bed again felt fantastic. Even without any real physical contact, his presence in my bed felt incredibly comforting. Not in a "close my eyes and pretend it's her" kind of way either, but in the same real way that I remember first enjoying. I had some intensely heterosexual dreams, though. Ones that were a tad awkward to wake up to, if you catch my drift.

So I can theoretically have most of what I miss about sleeping with someone without the uncertainty of a relationship. In practice, of course, romance is usually easier for guys. I asked a close friend who lives nearby if he'd sleep with me (he just went through a breakup too) and he politely declined. Ah well, so it goes.

For you girls out there, however, sharing each-others' beds is societally acceptable. With your anatomy, it's even cool to spoon each other to sleep. I hope you're grateful and I hope you take advantage of that fact to the extent that you are able, because I am thoroughly envious.

The other option I've heard is getting a dog. I've always thought sleeping with dogs was more trouble than it was worth. Something about physical presence meaning more from sentient life. It's still a great halfway solution, but I won't be getting a dog quite yet.

Both Eyes Open

I did it to myself. I know that sex triggers imprinting. I thought about it while I was sitting there, flush with afterglow and basking in oxytocin, staring at her, willing myself to drink every bit up, to imprint as hard as I was capable of. I was similarly cognizant of my own willful stupidity when I held her casually, excessively, even possessively. I thought about it when initiating more sex than I really needed and then while we had that sex. Overkill turned out to be fun in and of itself. This will add to my pyre. When we stared into each other's eyes, I felt like she was thinking the same thing, like she was making the same silly choice. That endeared her to me even more, though her consent was likely imagined.

I knew it would end. I knew this would come. I knew it would hurt like a bitch. Hell, I wanted it to hurt like a bitch. Did I anticipate the damage to be so perverse? Did I realize the grief would seek not to make me pay in pain, but to etch its toll upon my soul? I knew it wouldn't be so straightforward as simple, immense suffering. I knew it was likely to leave a mark, and an ugly one at that. In a way, I knew. I'd at least reconciled myself to that nature of cost. I didn't anticipate the terror it would inspire, but what's terror? Poor man's pain, that's what.

I also knew halfway wouldn't have been worth it. Halfway would have been disingenuous, not to the perfection of our pairing (though I've perpetrated plenty of self-delusion, I never deluded myself into believing in perfection), but to the moment of opportunity. Opportunity to both of us. The cost of the decision was similarly equal.

Should I feel guilty? What I engendered on myself went both ways, knowing participant or not. I'd like to think she knew. I know her values and ideology were different enough for her to disagree with the principle, but did she agree with the instance? I guess I felt like it was a good decision for me so it must be a good decision for her, even if I was making it for her. That's at least morally questionable, but I try for questionability not to give me pause. You only get so many chances to dive into experience like that. I've had far fewer chances than I have hoped. Fewer than many I idolize and envy. Damned if I won't make the most of what comes my way.

My First Mushroom Trip

I've long had an interest in psychedelic drugs. The idea of a substance that doesn't make you happy or sad, but just temporarily rearranges your thoughts and potentially gives you insight into yourself has long attracted me. It doesn't hurt that so much great music has been made on psychedelic drugs, acid being particularly prominent in that respect. Somehow, it doesn't even hurt that a couple of my favorite artists had mental breakdowns precipitated by taking (a lot of) acid.

Experienced people I've talked to have recommended climbing through the various psychedelic drugs according to strength. Start with pot, then mushrooms, then acid or more exotic psychedelics. I've smoked pot. I've ingested pot. I've ingested quite a bit of pot in one sitting, such that I was aware of how thin the line between vivid imagination and hallucination can be. It was somewhat later that I found a way to buy mushrooms. Access has always been the limiting factor in my aspirations to exploring the world of drugs. I suppose the advantage of having more brains than access is that by the time I've tried anything, I've researched it pretty thoroughly.

I planned on taking mushrooms with a friend. This friend was allergic to smoke and had yet to do anything psychedelic, so I planned on giving him a half dose. The eighth I had procured was supposed to be two doses, so I figured I could try half a dose while I was waiting for an opportunity to trip with him. I measured out roughly a quarter of the bag into a bowl and poured a can of chili over the mushrooms. I microwaved it warm, stirred, microwaved it until it was pretty hot, and ate.

I've heard that psilocybe mushrooms don't taste very good. I thought they were delicious. The chili may have helped. Considering that the psychoactive ingredient can be slowly cooked out and that raw, dry mushrooms probably never taste good, I thought the chili solution was at least as good as anything I'd heard of. The smaller bits were fully hydrated, though some of the bigger stems still had a certain cardboard texture.

I went to my room, plugged in my headphones and tried watching some porn. Nothing spectacular happened, but after ten or twenty minutes the video began to seethe with it's own life and hint at a colorfulness that I was pretty sure wasn't there. I got mentally sidetracked a lot. So while I won't rule out recreational mushroom use as a sex enhancer, it certainly won't be the first place I look, either.

After that, I got caught up looking at my computer's background picture. It was one taken by a friend that was dominated by coastal sage scrub and ocean, with a few people hiking down a trail. I began to pick out faces in the relative noise of the shrubs and sea. It was just like picking out faces from random patterns normally is, with their enigmatic features and static bizarreness, except that I kept seeing more and more faces. Pretty soon I could see faces over the entirety of my desktop background with the exception of the actual figures in the photo. After trying a couple more photos to similar but less spectacular results, I started making music up in my head.

The music was sparse, but it was as clever as I was and as real-sounding as actual sound. I rocked out to myself for awhile. I eventually decided I might as well listen to real music.

You might think that turning on music would be immediately gratifying, but the first few bands I played just grated on me. I ended up settling on The Holy Modal Rounders, part of a 60's genre known as "acid folk". Like you'd expect, the band sounds like an otherwise faithful old timey folk band on acid. This indeed sounded amazing. It had immediacy and dimension on the periphery of the realm of the imaginable. I laughed at the clever or bizarre twists the music took. I saw the music in colors, soft but vibrant. Oranges, fuchsias, peaches and acid greens shimmered across my mind's eye along with the music. I'd long ago buried my head into my pillow, the better to focus.

At some point (roughly after an hour, according to itunes) I decided to take off the headphones and just think about everything in my head. Geometry, patterns within nature and other mostly mathematical ideas passed through my head, still illustrated or wreathed in that soft-but-vibrant color palette. I must have spent a couple hours completely lost in thought, face down on my pillow and sprawled across the bed.

Eventually I got hungry. One thing I noticed quickly about mushrooms is that while they don't favor any particular emotion, they intensify everything. My hunger was a slightly terrifying looming thing that I realized I needed to appease if I wanted things to be ok. So I wandered to the kitchen and rummaged around the fridge. I pulled out some old hummus and stale corn tortillas. The hummus had sourness from active culture, but not much complexity of flavor. I made a game of eating it savagely and deliberately. Each rip of the tortilla and swoop into the hummus was a wild gesture of fearlessness and wantonness. That proceeded until I ran out of food. My hunger sated, I resumed puzzling thoughts into my pillow.

An hour or two later dusk was falling and I got up to walk around. I walked into the back yard and reveled at the warmth of the air and the beauty of everything around me. I could tell the effects were beginning to wear off. My roommate Greg came around from the side yard, bike in hand from whatever errands he'd been running since I'd finished the chili. I decided it was the perfect time to go for a bike ride as I was feeling more normal with each passing minute and the sky was beautiful. I rode out without much thought as to where I'd go. I caught sight of a distant thunderhead over the trees, lit up in brilliant colors by the setting sun. As I progressed I looked the other direction over a field at the mountains in silhouette. The clear sky had color stretched across it like a sheet.

I turned into a golf course and began to skate along the cart path around the holes. With its surreal grassy contours, the twilight and the random patches of reeds, bushes and trees sprinkled throughout it looked kind of like a moonscape. The sensation of speed is so much stronger when you're winding around a twisty path amidst things than on the shoulder of a linear highway. I spotted a bunch of burrowing owls, just perking up for the evening's hunt. I remembered then that there was a designated preserve for them along the edge of this golf course. I flushed a few from their burrows as I swished by. I rode around that twilit landscape for a long while, passing expansive, nestled ponds and looked into the houses that opened onto the course as people began to turn on their lights and cook dinner.

By the time I got home it was fully dark and I was fully sober, still giddy from the fantastic nature of my trip and bike ride. My respect for mushrooms had kicked up quite a few notches. Pot will forever be the most available and mild of psychedelic drugs, but I've long disliked the constant hilarity and false sense of comprehension associated with the drug. Furthermore, there is a positive correlation between how much pot you've taken and your level of paranoia and forgetfulness. Mushrooms didn't seem to favor any emotion, inspire false self-confidence or impair my memory. There were a few times during my trip where a sense of discomfort or paranoia popped up and seemed like it might overtake me, but with some firm self-direction they passed within a moment of their appearance.

I should note that this half-dose of mushrooms was of a similar intensity to the most intense experiences I've had on pot. Though the social and emotional peace that I enjoyed at the time I took mushrooms has passed and with it my desire to do mushrooms, I eagerly await the time when I return to a peaceful mental place so that I can finish off the eighth with my aforementioned friend.

RE: This Flesh

The following is a response to my friend Rob's similar post. While it is not sexual, it is excruciatingly explicit.


Feet - Size 9, shapely with a high arch. Light furring on top of arch and toe knuckles. Left big toe lost nail once and it's consequently smaller. Athlete's foot once in college. Toenails are thick, strongly curved and make a high angle. Pronounced sandal tan, even in winter.

Legs - The only muscular part of my body with biker's quads and taut hamstrings. Significant, light brown hair. Ghosts remain of repeated soccer-related ankle-sprains. 3/4'' crater scar from an infected spider-bite. Veininess obscured by hair.

Knees - Left knee has a blue spot from a piece of pencil graphite lodged long ago. Some scarring from scabbed knees.

Skin - Fair. Had eczema in middle school and acne from high school to present (though it's lessened somewhat).

Ass - Hair in continuation from legs. Conflicting opinions on whether it's unusually big or small for my build.

Hands - Shapely, very small hands with relatively stout fingers. Back of hand is also rather veiny and notable for fine wrinkles unusual for my age.

Penis - Average to larger-than-average size, in contradiction to common wisdom about hand and foot size. Frenulum lists to the left. Uncircumcised. Brown bush.

Torso - Slight, with a flat chest. Some hair on chest. One inch scar over hipbone. Major mole on right scapula, other minor ones. Navel is an innie.

Intestines - Conditioned on a diet of coffee, beer and cheese. Other drugs on a nonregular basis. Very, very happy.

Arms - Light-brown hair and potentially rather veiny. Left wrist is still tender from a months-old bike crash.

Skull - Narrow. Orthodontia-enhanced jaw (normal instead of a natural overbite). Slightly pronounced brow.

Eyes - Moderately nearsighted and ever-so-slightly colorblind. Hazel green. Mesmerizing to behold.

Ears - Disconnected earlobe. Genetic poor hearing in the middle ranges, which makes me say "What?" a lot and partially lip-read in noisy environments. My mom wears a hearing aid and I probably will too when I'm her age.

Teeth - Particularly prone to problems because of mouthbreathing and a high calcium concentration in my saliva. Also orthodontia-enhanced. Two cavities, one crown for a missing tooth. Back row of wisdom teeth removed.

Nose - Straightness tempered by a shallow arch. Biggish for my face.

Head Hair - Fine, light-brown and wavy. Pretty perfect in fact. Moderate unibrow (now plucked).

Brain - One minor concussion in high school knocked me unconscious and scrambled my short-term memory for the day. I don't know my IQ, but it's high. If my peers are a reasonable point of reference I'd guess in the 140's or 150's, but that's kind of a ridiculous percentile, so maybe lower. Also considered knowledgeable, but that includes a healthy dose of BS.

Overall - Majority French, a quarter German, some Welsh and Native American, maybe some Scottish. Blood type A. 5'10 and 130 pounds.

Statement of Purpose

I will first explain what this blog is not. It is not a complete blog. It does not contain material that would pass through a general filter (aka the grandmother test). Neither, however, is it a truly unfiltered blog that will fearlessly cover the most personally compromising of my thoughts.

The target audience of this blog is intimate friends, perfect strangers and friends removed enough from my life for intimate knowledge not to become a liability.

The major topics I will cover on this blog are sex, drugs and relationships. However, because of this blog's catchall nature, posts' topic, approach and level of quality can be expected to vary considerably.

It will be possible to view the blog by category. Categories will be exclusive and nonoverlapping, which means if you want to read about drugs without encountering sex posts that briefly mention drugs, the drugs category will be safe.

I want to warn my friends that the content of this blog will frequently exceed the degree of propriety and discretion I would exhibit in person. You may very well decide after a few glances at this blog that it is not for you. I won't fault anyone for making that decision.