Posts Tagged ‘intimacy’

38-42 is a dangerous time frame for single women in big cities, particularly without dermatologists, plastic surgeons, psychiatrists, yoga … and vodka spiked with a few Seconals left over from the 80′s.

Let me put it to you like this: If you think your house mortgage and property taxes are a handful, you don’t even want to see a well-coiffed woman’s maintenance bills.

But just for the hell of it, place a photograph of a 42-year-old socialite next to a 42-year–old Costco cashier and prepare to be stunned.

So maybe the bills don’t look so bad after all.

Of course, a man could just pick a 28-32-year-old and cut the bills in half for the next ten years, which is what most men do and another reason why 38-42 can be such a bitch.

People have many identities; including job titles, marital status and reputation.

But there are often many more we don’t know about, including job titles, marital status and reputation.

Allow me…

We are so tangled up.

You meet someone and the first thing you do is run a background check.

Got it.

Then you check logins and usernames and whatever fragments of Internet data you can skim off the top just to get through the first layer of revelation.

Check that.

So what kind of world is this?

It’s a hit and run kind of world where people are very loosely connected by everything except DNA, which still surprises me.

Your Match date could be a federal agent running surveillance on a neighbor; or a scam artist after your social security numbers and banking information under the pretense of a hook-up turned set-up.

Months and years can pass without so much as an inkling of anything amiss. And then, BANG! It blindsides you.

A shocking revelation.

Something completely unforeseen.

Of course, we’re all guilty of some form of “treason,” even if it’s withholding information other people don’t need to know, like the fact that you’re not a federal agent on assignment, or fresh out of prison because you just broke out of one.

With the explosion of keyboard access to potential deception, blind inhibition – and sooner or later – delusion [particularly for you narcissists with an affinity for Adobe Photoshop], our world has skewed even the most endangered among us – the “normal, well-adjusted” demographic.

No wonder I don’t know any.

I’m not sure things were much different when I was a kid, because therapy wasn’t as common as grapefruit juice, and we didn’t walk around with Iphones recording every square inch of a world that today is nothing more than a handful of undocumented memories and scattered photographs we should really do something with.

So hell if I know what it was really like.

These days, people know exactly what’s happening everywhere at any given moment, including blow-by-blows on why it’s happening, but are we any closer to the truth?

In 50 years, when all is said and done, will we really know anymore about the world – or the people in it – then we did back when Led Zeppelin released its 3rd album?

By the way, I have no still or video proof that I actually saw Led Zeppelin perform.

So did I see them perform?

I mean if you can’t validate my past through Internet searches, then maybe I’m the federal agent…or just another ex-con living under an alias.

So we’re back to square one, as usual.

After 55 years of serial monogamy, which was far more serial than the other one, I finally decided to step out of the shadows and surrender, albeit with one foot dragging the dark pavement from what I have always felt was the outer edges of the human soul.

I was a hard kill.

Refused to lie down.

Wouldn’t be conned into believing things I knew didn’t exist outside of fairy tales.

But I also realized that the only way out of this mindset of resistance was risk. So risk I did. I surrendered — this time without the words, images, or intellectual abstraction that stood between it and me.

[Warning: spoiler ahead, scroll down...]

 

 

 

 

I’m still here…

………….

The concept of “nesting” is anathema to most perennial bachelors, unless the woman is hot enough, and, for reasons unknown, doesn’t age.

She must also be interesting – and sane – but not sane in the bedroom, in which case she’s no longer interesting.

Nonetheless, after a certain age, the number of women who fit this description fall into the lower single digits, which leaves older, single men in a quandary because there are only so many wine bars, coffee shops and upscale hotel bars in the right parts of town.

Thus, with so much competition in such a limited range, they find themselves tangling with the flotsam and jetsam that call these places home.

They are the sub-species of darkness; the fragments of fantasy that spun off into the great beyond because there was nowhere else to land.

Here are a few of them:

1] Psychiatric outpatients.

2] Divorcees with kids, unpaid bills, and toxic dispositions.

3] Middle age narcissists who still cling to the belief that they can have it all because they deserve it all, which they validate through fleeting sexual liaisons with young men who can never keep their names straight, which is why they end up back at the same bars with the same delusions, night after night.

4] Rogue drunks from nice families with education, culture and sophistication who feel more secure in the company of an older, affluent demographic with too much to lose to spike their drinks and take them to a Motel 6, unbeknownst to them.

And finally…

5] Groups of normal, well-adjusted women out for a drink with friends, who have no interest whatsoever in men twice their age because it reminds them of their father’s girlfriends.

Note: This group is particularly difficult for older men to understand because the women seem so perfect for them. This is where their own narcissistic delusion creeps up after a few glasses of wine.

Remember, you’re outside the standard two deviations, and it’s not lost on the aforementioned women…who aren’t.

………………

This was once my world, this carnival of nightmares.

I was a junkie for the not knowing what would happen, where I would end up, who I would meet, what we would do…and so on.

I could have two, three, or more separate and distinct identities; not unlike many married people I know who have honed the art of functioning under multiple personalities.

Anyway, this bullshit went on for a long, long, long time.

And after enough years pass, the freedom gets in the blood. But it always courses with a tinge of loneliness that the commotion never fills up.

So unconsciously, you end up like everyone else who lives through the fantasy that redemption is just a glass of wine away, which is why I’ve always said that wine bars are where older men go to die.

…………….

“The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future too.”

EUGENE O’NEILL, Long Day’s Journey Into Night

I’m still here.

Up Next!

 

Relationships are often like drugs, sensual and comforting, but with their own set of side-effects and contraindications.

Needless to say, the Grail constitutes a contraindication.

The older you get the less you experience romantic love because pathology only thrives in the absence of therapy, which most kids can’t afford.

So now you get the jist of the battle.

There ain’t enough Fool’s Gold in Hell to buy a dime’s worth of romance…jbr

………….

Many people like to think of romantic relationships as celestial appointments — deals mapped out in the Heavens designed to play out like romantic comedies on earth.

No wonder we write our own screenplays.

This aside, anyone who has ever been in a relationship knows that everything hinges on the stability of the initial acquisition.

More specifically, if you buy a car you expect it to run the same way it did the day you bought it. But over time, things tend to break down, which means you have to send it back to the shop.

In humans, this is known as psychotherapy.

Following this line of logic, when the car breaks down more often than you’re willing to tolerate, you trade it in for something better.

In humans, this is known as divorce. Others call it, trading- up, as it’s more to the point.

Nonetheless, an old car can be made to look and perform the way it did when it wasn’t an antique, in spite of the fact that it’s still is.

And while this is great for antique car enthusiasts, they still buy a new one, and use the old one to showcase around town on Sundays.

In humans, this is known as acquiring a mistress, while giving the impression that you’re aging gracefully.

The same can be said of professional relationships, where people are simply less open about their sleeping arrangements.

It’s all a balancing act, which everyone who’s ever had a successful marriage will tell you.

“Character–the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life–is the source from which self-respect springs.” Joan Didion

“Character — the willingness to acceptance responsibility for someone else’s nightmares — is pushing it, but still in the ballpark.” Jay Rusovich

…………………

There are things I just don’t want to believe about people I love – or loved – which is pretty much the same thing since I never really stop loving any of them. A call from any of them at 3 o’clock in the morning would still get me out of bed, period.

I can’t just turn the feeling it on and off. This doesn’t denote masochism, though I hate to admit it sometimes feels like it.

My therapist tells me the pain is a good thing, an indication that I have the capacity for intimacy and attachment. I say its mixed blessings, because it’s a hell of a lot to carry around, particularly without forking over $195 an hour to help with the emotional load.

I can rationalize the issues that led to the demise of a given relationship all I want and it won’t change anything, one iota. You can repackage a Tyrannosaur to resemble a large penguin, but just get near the fucking thing and see what happens.

Sometimes you just love the wrong person. It happens. It’s not your fault. It’s your ignorance, yes, but not your fault. Some people have psychiatric problems so deep and obscure that care for them falls more under the purview of zookeeper than a psychiatrist.

Imagine a sociopath winning a job interview and maintaining professional poise until the weekend comes around, at which time they go back to serial killing or something.

And by this I don’t mean that all children of, say, narcissistically abusive families turn out to be serial killers, but going back to the zookeeper metaphor, just substitute a trail broken hearts for the body count.

It all gets down to the margins, as in how broad or narrow they are in the context of sanity.

And since sanity in the world of an artist tends to be relative, you get my point.

“The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned.” William Somerset Maugham

[dream]

There is a massive warehouse loft with broken panes of glass numbering into the thousands. It allows unfettered access to the sun, which reveals a twisted array of rusted support beams and broken concrete, reducing everything to a monochromatic version of sand.

Strewn about the ruins is furniture, clothing [still on hangars], miles of wiring, and shattered computer monitors.

I drag things out as quickly as I possibly can, when I suddenly realize it will never end, because the more I grab the more I see.

Complicating matters is the appearance of a neighbor who complains about the noise, which I understand, but can do nothing about.

Then I’m in a larger area, not unlike the one I was just in. But this time there are lots of people running around, dilettantes in cocktail attire snorting lines of cocaine off some twisted wrought iron banisters and drinking champagne.

It’s a Manhattan industrial site converted to living space.

The people in it seem to know their way around, as though they’ve been here for a thousand years. Interesting to me is the fact that there isn’t a shred of dust on their Black Chanel cocktail dresses with dust hovering like mustard gas, reducing everything to translucence.

I ask someone for directions back to my loft, but they can’t seem to see or hear me, as they go about their business of drinking and snorting.

So I stumble around on my own for a while observing the activity, when finally, I find it. But this time around the configuration has changed. It’s more cramped and angular. Dark like a crypt. In the doorway is the building’s owner. He is with two other men, all dressed in black suits and matching ties.

He tells me how important it is to leave things the way the way they were before I moved in, as he inspects some holes in the concrete.

Concerned that he might take exception to the minor damage, I am relieve to hear him say that “things look okay,” as I assess the surrounding environment, which resembles Berlin immediately after World War II.

Irony overfloweth.

Anyway, he turns back to the people at the door and suggests lunch “on him.”

“Let’s catch the bus to a place up the street,” he says, which surprises me, given his apparent affluence.

Why not a cab? Or a private car?

He then turns back to me and promises to have movers retrieve my belongings “within the hour” before disappearing out the door and leaving me in the room wondering if I’ll ever see him again, much less the movers.

I look around at everything and decide I have no place in this world and that all I want is some of the wiring so I can connect the dots to a life fragmented by broken promises and broken love.

But I can’t pulls the wiring out of the walls because it was never mine to begin with, and thus, won’t budge…

[I wake up...in a manner of speaking]

Will he wait?

If not, is he worth it?

And if you both wait, but it turns out to be horrible, you’ve lost a lot of time that could have been better spent in front of a television…

……………

How soon you sleep with a man hinges on your ability to read him.

This, of course, implies that you can read yourself, which is a bigger problem than I’m prepared to tackle in this article.

Nonetheless, if you feel an immediate connection with a man you’re positive he shares, throw the dice.

But you might want to first consider the following:

If he’s the kind of man that attracts a lot of female attention, you better make damn sure you look as good in your clothes as you do out of them, because he’s thinking in terms of entitlement, and any weird scars [like one down the middle of your face, for example], obvious stretch marks, sagging, cellulite, scents, or related oddities will be his last living memories of you.

This doesn’t mean he won’t go in for another round, though…just not on your terms, so be careful.

Rule Number 1: Never misconstrue a man’s desire for sex as anything remotely resembling love. Its just love in the context of sex.

There’s a difference.

But while this sounds a little bleak, the opposite can – and does – happen.

He may actually invite you to a movie or dinner for later that evening. This is a very positive sign, but you’re still not out of the woods, because he has to keep doing this for more than, say, a week. See, this is what men do when they want something badly enough, so let him do his man thing and enjoy the ride.

If he’s still pursuing you through the second week, you’re probably in a relationship.

So as you can see, the timing of sex has no bearing whatsoever on the outcome.

Withholding sex from a man is only acceptable for a couple of weeks, because if he’s driven the way you’ll want him to be when you do sleep with him, he’s going to look for other outlets while you’re “dating” him.

There are exceptions to this rule, but not many.

So women who play this game [and it is a game] have to know their exact value –think bullion or pork bellies.  See, he’ll wait a lot longer for a woman everyone else wants, until he does sleep with you. At this point, all bets are off because the quality of the sex will determine the destiny of the relationship. And while some couples are often a little uncomfortable the first time around, by the second time around it better make the first one disappear.

If it doesn’t he heads for the nearest strumpet who makes him feel like the man he considers himself to be.

Rule number 2:  No matter what you look like, if the sex isn’t hot [i.e., the woman is not enthusiastic and/or proficient], it’s generally over — unless her body is so hot he’s willing to give it a second run, which will yield a similar result if there’s no immediate improvement.

But there is still hope.

He may choose to marry the woman because he wants a family and the status that goes with it – particularly in the corporate world – and get his sexual needs on the side.

The irony here being that beauty has its rewards even if sex isn’t one of them.

Of course, it cuts both ways.

All of this is rote, frankly, but it always seems much worse in black and white.

Anyway, another problem with waiting too long for sex is that at some point, the relationship may morph into a friendship, which often renders sex something akin to incest.

I know that women will kick and scream about this one, but men are predators, and if there’s nothing to hunt they lie down. You’ll see this behavior in action on the African plains.

The level of comfort many women seek does not come from withholding sex, where she discovers whether or not he’s capable of friendship, but from precisely the opposite. Men copulate repeatedly and only then decide whether or not they can still hold a conversation.

Rule number 3: Men do not want to be your friend, unless they’ve already had sex with you and are ready to meet other women through you, with whom they can do the same thing. Men and women who do share a sexual and an emotional connection are still in a struggle for balance, which always seems more interesting when its out of whack.

In the end, great people don’t come along every day. So when one does it’s not a bad idea to drop the games and go for it. The man is generally less likely to run if the sex is good, and the same applies to you, so shut the hell up.

Xo…

“When women go wrong, men go right after them.” Mae West

“When men go wrong, women check their bank accounts and then base their final judgment on the findings, so it’s often a wash.” Jay Rusovich

To men, sex is an activity, not unlike, say, tennis…or motor cross.

Historically, stone agers needed as many kids as possible to help with the hunting, domestic chores, and work in brothels, so men were wired to impregnate and/or copulate compulsively, a behavior some cultures frown upon to this very day, in spite of the fact that they continue the practice, unabated.

Through adaptation, many women have adopted this same compulsivity, which is why birth control is considered by most men to be a social service as much as anything else.

But the problem is women aren’t wired for this behavior. They have a tendency to remember first and last names, for example, which is something men only learn over time, primarily through repeated, middle-of-the-night speed-dialing assaults launched from their cell phones.

And while women claim sexual freedom a birthright, they only decided this quite recently, which hasn’t given them enough time to adjust to the complete absence of feelings so common to the well-adjusted male.

Some women combat this problem through complex rationalization, but the fact remains, they have a lot of catching up to do if they want to use sex and motor cross in the same sentence.

I personally use popcorn and Martin Scorsese in the same sentence all the time, which is pretty much the same thing.