06 Aug 2009, Posted by jay rusovich , 1 Comments

The Blessings of Feminism

Here at ground zero of jayrusovichlive.com we talk about things: life, therapy, drug addiction; there’s quite a bit of analysis that goes on. The cost/benefit analysis with regard to, say, a hooker versus a stripper, or a wife versus a hooker, or whether or not it’s just better to get a “Fleshlight” and call it day.

I’ve heard this device will be available on Amazon soon, so be on the look out for it. It serves its purpose and does so in disguise, which makes it a prime candidate for the JRL stamp of approval…but I digress.

Today my office counterpart, Yvonne, was taking a walk in Memorial Park with a friend, and like all you women, they were discussing men. Women are ALWAYS discussing men. We’re fascinating creatures, after all. As predictable as we are obnoxious.

So the girls are chatting away about a man’s concept of the future, and how it plays into whether or not women should date them. My personal opinion is that she just needs to put on some muscle, keep her regular appointments at the Steven Merrill Salon, and learn the fine art of submission.

I also think I may be threatening my own existence and will soon be forced into hiding when she reads this. Of course, I’m going to post it anyway, if, for no other reason, than self- preservation has become an abstraction…thanks to my arrested development, which has rendered me immortal.

Yvonne’s stance is that you can ask a man a few specific questions and get a pretty picture of how he sees his life. If that picture looks relationship-friendly then maybe he’s worth dating, or at least considering in the context of commitment.

However, if the guy can’t come up with anything, you really have to consider the possibility that he doesn’t really want anything more than a piece of ass, which he’ll never admit anyway.

Crass, yes. Male, yes. Relationship-friendly, no.

Maybe you’re different. You could be the one who changes his mind and helps him see there is life beyond the kill-zone; that blessed gift to men underwritten by feminism. I’m a pro-feminist, by the way. Let me grab my JRL approval stamp and smack the great ass of feminism. But again, I digress.

Anyway, while Yvonne was doing her cardio, which is her obligation to men if she wants men in her life, a woman chimed in, “You know it doesn’t change, no matter how old they get.”

Yvonne and her friend turned to see a slender, older woman making her way around the 3-mile track.

“Even when they’re 50 they act the same way. You have to know where you stand with men. If they can’t come up with a decent vision of the future that resembles something you’re interested in, take them at their word – because that is their word [as opposed to women, where there might also be several other words they withhold for various reasons], and walk.”

There’s a reason you don’t have a minimum wage job, honey.”

03 Aug 2009, Posted by jay rusovich , 2 Comments

Is There No End to This Vitamin Insanity??? [never mind everything else we pile on as we age...]

When I was 18 I didn’t know what a vitamin was. Now they tell me if I don’t take them I’ll suffer everything from Alzheimer’s to Psychosis. It’s too late to do anything about the later, but the Alzheimer’s thing really bothers me as it may have an adverse effect on my ability to fully enjoy the other one.

When I was 18 the only things you could find in my kitchen cabinet were Fritos and Alka-Seltzer.

Now I can’t count the vitamins, whole grain cereals, protein supplements and array of pharmaceuticals that line up like survival essentials for soldiers in a foreign war.

I have something for everything.

Unfortunately, the only ones that I know actually work are Tylenol…and sometimes, Thorazine.

As for the rest of them, I’m clueless. People say they can’t hurt, so I take them. Tell this to an 18 year old and he’ll just stare into space like everyone else his age, jacked up on Ritalin.

At 18, none of this mattered, and I was fine even when I wasn’t. This is principally because I was immortal, like everyone else I knew. Death was an abstraction.

If I had the flu, I got out of class. I didn’t die. It was kind of a positive thing. I had no idea what I was supposed to eat because it didn’t matter what I ate as long as I did, occasionally, eat.

At the age of 20, I experienced symptoms of heat stroke [stars, little green men] while biking in the Arizona desert. Of course, I was dehydrated, and for all intents and purposes, dying. But I didn’t freak out about it. I just set out to find water, which I did, and then everything was fine. Later that night I went to a keg party and got laid.

Fast-forward to 50 and put me in the same situation, only this time I’d have a full-blown panic attack and die of heart failure before the dehydration has a shot at me.

So all this raises the question, should I be dead?

And is the fact that I’m not somehow tied to all these pills? Or is it my attitude towards pills and life in general?

If I feel fine, am I fine? Or is the fact that my body is older, thus my susceptibility to death and dying greater?

If the later is true, then why take the vitamins at all?

Maybe I just know too much. This is why people flock to Yoga where they can learn to unlearn everything and become nothing all over again.

Back to the vitamins, why do a quarter of magnesium supplements fail quality tests, with some providing less than half the promised amount?

If supplements reduce the risk of cancer, then why do 40% of green teas and selenium pills fail labeling tests?

In my view they don’t actually fail. See, you still buy the products, so they succeed. Fail is a relative term that’s kind of a buzz kill on the whole concept of eternal life, which keeps slipping as we age, and keeps us strung out on the products.

Just for the fun of it, here are some recent headlines about vitamins:

“50-Fold Dosage Range Found Across Vitamin D Supplements.
Pick the Right Dose and Form. Avoid Defects.”

What do they mean by, “defects?”

“Be Aware of K1 and K2 Potency Differences!”

What’s K1 and K2? Should I know this? Will it have some impact on my sex life?

“What Dose of CoQ10 to Take? What Form to Use?
New Report Gives Guidance — 39 CoQ10 and Ubiquinol Supplements Tested.”

Ubiquinol?

“How Does Your Nutrition Bar Stack Up? Tests and Comparisons of Bars for Energy, Fiber, Protein, Meal-Replacement, and Snacks…”

I thought they were nutrition bars?

“Major Differences Found in Cholesterol-Lowering Red Yeast Rice Supplements. Statin Levels Vary 100-Fold; Contamination in 4 of 10 Products.”

I don’t think I know a soul who knows what the hell Red Yeast is.

“Adulteration Suspected with Some Memory Supplements
Ginkgo, Huperzine A, and Acetyl-L-Carnitine Supplements Tested.”

The term, “adulteration,” seem bad in this context.

“Trouble Sleeping? Melatonin May Help
See Which Melatonin Supplements Passed CL’s Tests!”

What’s “CL’s” test? Craigslist?

“Many Probiotics Lack Expected “Helpful” Bacteria.”

I though bacteria was a bad thing.

“Vitamin C Supplement Found With Less Than Half of Claimed Amount; Some Exceed Tolerable Levels.”

Tolerable levels? Since when can you overdose on Vitamin C?

“Problems Reported with Generic Antidepressant. Tests Show Generic Bupropion Behaves Differently Than Original Wellbutrin XL.”

So now the drugs themselves have differing behaviors? Am I reading this wrong?

……………………

So why am I talking about this instead of all the other things I get myself into?

Because I’m not 18, and don’t do yoga.

22 May 2009, Posted by jay rusovich , 18 Comments

Is ‘Lust-to-Love’ Ass Backwards?

No. It’s not ass-backwards. It is what psychiatrists generally insist upon. It is what most textbooks suggest. And prevailing wisdom seems to be that waiting is better than not.

But who’s foisting this crap?

Men are opportunistic. And this includes their relationships. If they happen to sleep with a woman within the first hour of meeting her, and there’s a genuine connection, he’s not going anywhere.

Definition of “connection” [from the perspective of a man]: “a woman he still loves to look at after he orgasms, and then wants to take out in public in spite of the fact that it’s 2 o’clock in the morning.”

Men want to know what sex will be like before they invest a lot of time and money in someone. They’re practical in this regard. They want to know, for example, if their bodies fit well together? How passionate they are as a couple, not as individuals? How open-minded she is in spite of the fact that she’s Catholic? Does she release the thing inside of him that he doesn’t want to talk about but needs in order to get the fix I mentioned? If the answers are yes, he will not only call her back, but he’ll also do everything else she wants him to do and more, including cuddle with her after intercourse…even if it does mean doing so with CSI Miami running in the background.

Anyway, there’s a limited window of opportunity here.

So men won’t wait indefinitely for the sex, mostly because they can’t. They just can’t. They’ll burn out before they get started if this window exceeds their thresholds. And don’t suggest that he has intimacy issues or that he isn’t good for the long haul, because you don’t even know that about yourself.

The last thing a woman needs is for him to start treating her like a coworker, instead of the lover he’s supposed to be. The guy will eventually walk out using some emotional issue as a pretense. The flame died. That’s what happened. The glue never solidified because it was never released in the first place. You have to light the god-damned fire first and then jump off the cliff. If you don’t, he’s out the door before you ever know what you had.

Men are not interested in being your friend. They are interested in being your lover, then your friend…but with exceptions. If you become too chummy, he’ll stop thinking of you as a girlfriend. One manifestation of this is that he’ll stop staring at your ass, not because you don’t have a nice ass, but because it now reminds him of his sister and he doesn’t want to sleep with her no matter what she looks like. Believe me when I tell you, you do not want your man to fall into this vortex, because getting him out of it can be a perilous undertaking.

Remember, men are quite simple. They want to be fucked, fed and respected. They also have a pathological aversion to being hassled, by the way. So if you can get past this you have a shot at a sustainable relationship. Understand that, eventually, men become just as vulnerable [if not more so], so be patient.

I realize this answer isn’t elaborate, or in some minds, sufficient. But men are very simple, and generally ruled by primitive instincts that are too complicated to fathom in spite of their simplicity.

This isn’t a cop out. It’s the truth, even if it is a cop out.

Men are basically little boys who require nurturing they don’t get anywhere else. So in this sense they need a mother who doesn’t remind them of one.

They like to objectify the women they’re with. This keeps her a safe distance from the incest thing. She’s just an object and then a girlfriend, and not the other way around. He may not admit this, but it’s true.

In a sense they’re fulfilling a primitive role. Women cannot withhold this instinct from them for more than a short period of time or they’ll risk becoming something other than what they want to be.

There are two different paths to the same objective. Women want the emotional connection but they have to be willing to allow a man to get there in his own way. The fact that she’s afraid that he’ll leave her after he’s slept with her is a chance she must take. It’s the way of things. The longer she withholds, the less interested he becomes. Men like the idea of communicating with a woman on an intellectual level, but crossing the line into the realm of friendship can have an adverse effect on the stability of the template that he needs in order to build a healthy relationship. If he doesn’t feel like the man from the start, she can’t construct that person down the line.

Some women empower men to be men. Others stifle it by trying to control them. Some women make better lovers than friends. Sometimes it’s the other way around. Therapists are always trying to get their patients to merge Madonna and Whore into one super-being, but I’m not sure it’s possible. If women understood this they would allow men unfettered access and then counterattack when they’re more vulnerable.

You didn’t hear this from me, by the way.

So if you want to win, you have to allow a man to objectify you. It would be preferable if you appreciated his perception of things, because eventually you’ll get busted for your obfuscation. So be on board with who he is and don’t even think about being passive-aggressive with him when he misbehaves. This who he is, and if you don’t like it, find a girlfriend and a dog.

Okay, so first he’s in love with your ass or your legs or the way you smile at him. This is where it all begins for a man, in some rainforest without boundaries. You’re just the other animal in a mating dance. You’re shadow-boxing in the dark. Feeling one another out. Not intellectualizing. Feeling. Groping in most cases. But it’s about the emotional, the sensual and the primal. This is life on the loose. Where two people blindly walk through the door for the dopamine mines that transform what they once were into something entirely different. What happens next is anyone’s guess, but that isn’t the point. The point is to get through the fucking door.

See, when you sleep with a man he wants to believe you’re doing it because you can’t not do it. Of course, some men also like hookers who do what they’re told, knowing that they couldn’t care less, but this essay isn’t about sociopaths or teenagers.

It’s about men like myself who want some connection to a woman beyond penetration. So let me repeat: The woman must first embrace his primitive instincts, and then accept the fact that he is not a woman, not her best friend [the way her girlfriends are best friends], and not interested in comingling vulnerability with what happens in the bedroom, unless it involves some form of bondage wherein he’s just as disconnected.

In summation, Whore and Madonna are two separate beings. If they do happen to merge, his concept of Madonna better look a hell of a lot more like the one that makes records than the archetype.

23 Feb 2009, Posted by jay rusovich , 4 Comments

The Yoga-fication of Older Men

Disclaimer: I have nothing against yoga. In fact I see it as an effective way to strengthen and tone the body, improve flexibility and reduce stress. I also like Yoga chicks because they tend to be very sexy, open-minded and smart.

Have you ever noticed what happens to otherwise normal, middle-age men after they start attending a regular yoga class?

First, there’s the submission thing, which nobody talks about. This is where a man subconsciously agrees to surrender his masculinity to the woman he really wants to be.

This is not a criticism, mind you.

For him yoga is more about community; a place of shared ideals, values and core beliefs, which may include cross-dressing, for example.

Yoga is a very effective way to feminize men, and yoga women relish this opportunity. They congratulate him. Pat him on the back. And make him feel like one of the girls. They tell him how brave he is to face down the world of conformists and meat eaters. How he has taken a giant step forward in his personal evolution.

Over time he befriends these women, who he allows to divide him from a world in which he never felt accepted and/or embraced; an ignorant, harsh and unenlightened world of wars, brutality and injustice.

The initial sign of his dissension into madness is a precipitous loss of weight coupled with a make-over.

His once muscular features have softened into something more undulating and worm-like. One can’t help but think of reptiles that shed their skin in order to regenerate.

In his case, he’s degenerating, but shedding anyway.

He no longer wears his Nike cross-trainers, preferring instead to drift around silently in high, white socks as though he’s in some sort of secluded spa where it’s part of the dress code.

Eventually, he ditches the socks in favor of actual feet, which help get him more in touch with the earth; a place he seems to be destined to go back to way ahead of schedule.

In six short months, the man’ clothing has gone from shorts and a t-shirt to black cotton leggings and a mid-rift.

Now this new world man wanders around like a psychiatric patient in what appears to be a permanent hallucinatory state with some antisocial disorder thrown in. His dreamy demeanor gives the impression that he doesn’t exist at all, which is the point.

Like the millions and millions of regenerated souls that came before him; souls  that have tried and failed to achieve nothingness, he will succeed this time around…hopefully without getting thrown out of the club for not using his pass key, which he now considers meaningless, but which the club disagrees and then charges his Visa anyway.

So there you have it.

In the absence of introspection, older men become emotionally vulnerable. They’re sick of everything, and pissed off that their lives have been lived for people other than themselves, whoever that is. So now is the time to take back what’s rightfully theirs, which is where I was going with the cotton leggings and mid-rift thing.

06 Aug 2008, Posted by jay rusovich , 0 Comments

Why Women Accessorize: The Existential Connection between Fashion and Love

Because the subject of women’s accessories came up in conversation last night, I thought I’d shed some light on it now that the wine has run its course:

The set-up:

A girlfriend of mine [yoga instructor] became indignant when I suggested that women cannot ignore their style of dress if they want to attract a certain caliber of man.

She countered that superficial accoutrements like handbags, watches and shoes should have no place in the arena of love; and that valuing such things in this context is superficial.
 
Of course, in the abstract, she is correct. But life isn’t an abstraction, and its rules tend to meander according to circumstance.

Note: Yoginis, in particular, should understand this given their predilection for bending and shaping reality like a garden hose.

When someone shows up for a job interview, their appearance tells a story about who they are and what they value. So if the visual cues don’t jive with the values of the employer, the applicant is turned away.

This is what I mean by meandering circumstances.
 
See, the same employer might entertain the notion of sleeping with the applicant, but not hire her to sell life insurance. To get that job she’d have to blow-torch the rhinestone nail polish…and drop the latex altogether.

So appearance doesn’t denote outright dismissal, but it does frame the debate.
 
In short, the way a woman accessorizes speaks volumes about who she is and how she wants people to perceive her.

If she doesn’t give a shit, and still expects people to perceive her as “Miranda Priestley,” she’s suffering from psychotic delusion.
 
I could also make the argument that her appearance is a reflection of the man she’s with. If she is stylish, sophisticated and trim, people tend to attach [project] similar attributes to him…even if he doesn’t necessarily deserve all of them. Remember, women are always held to higher visual standards.

So a woman’s appearance is, arguably, also a compliment to him.

This doesn’t mean that she has to carry a $10,000 Hermes handbag, but an awareness of fashion and style works wonders on the male psyche…even if it comes across as blatant pandering [some say, “baiting”]. 
 
Once you get past the “superficial” crap, you can then enter the blessed realm of feelings and ideas, which is what my friend had in mind in the first place.

By the way, I bought her a Dolce&Gabbana tote for her birthday, which she didn’t seem to find superficial in the least.