8:50 PM: I am officially on Screwdriver Five (I think). I am also colliding iinto walls and it is heinously arduous for me to type in a fucking post. I hope for B's sake that this isn't considered "moderate." It sure as hell doesn't feel that way. My head is beginning to throb. In my defense, I should say that drinking copious amounts of alochol is no longer a reality for me. At least, it hasn't been the case since my mid-twenties. So I've had to force the stuff down my gullet, with the caveat that I should last to some degree. I'm a man of my word, as some folks here know.
Anyway, fair is fair. And I'm happy to address Lauren's point concerning "the end of the relationship." From my standpoint, at least, the female anatomy has been of more pressing interest since the end of the relationship. The value of a relationship involves rampant sex and intimacy that stymies the male resolve to some degree. But when it boils down to a solitary existence, the male is prone to download porn and to drift his eyes towards the fantastic tits bundled beneath a tight and revealing upper garment. This is comparatively normal, I'd say, as males go. We really can't help ourselves. It's biological. But in our defense (or at least my defense), we are also interested in the brains behind the machine. Except that this concern is revealed later in the game. Surely, my explicitly stipulated "putty" clause from the post in question was clear enough. But if it wasn't, let me be the first (if not the umpteenth) to suggest that males are inherently visual and that, ostensibly, there is nothing wrong with this. We love your anatomy. We love to take it home with us. But, as was the case with this afternoon's "let's swap the material objects we left in each other's apartments" meetings with my ex-gf, we males, I suspect, take the end of a relationship harder than the female hoping to become steadfast friends at the drop of a hat. It bothers us to enter some domicile in which we were previously intimate, precisely because we are inherently visual procrastinators.
Does this sort of answer your question, Lauren? If not, please advise and, as the drinks continue to pour down my larynx, I'd be happy to clarify. Kiss kiss.
Posted by DrMabuse at November 6, 2004 09:00 PMRevitalizing swilly beer. It's called a michelada, and I like to imagine the homonymic proximity to Robert Mitchum [yes, this is how I talk when drunk] is no mistake. Burn down the forests and sing Thunder Road if you must.
Anyhow, salt the rim of your frosty pint glass [we keep 'em in the freezer]. Throw a few dashes of Tabasco in there, pour in said swilly beer [PBR here], squeeze in some citrus [lemon or lime] and enjoy the burn of being alive as the hot sauce follows the salt into your lips.
It hurts, but so does being alive.
Posted by: cinetrix at November 6, 2004 09:18 PMWas the cinetrix's mouth always this sassy or is it the commie influence?
It seems to me that guys do tend to take breakups a bit harder (and I believe there scientific or, as I'd say this now, "shentific" studies to support this)... but do guys do the uber-pining thing for people they would probably hate if they ever actually spent time with and found out anything about? The silent Jordan Catalono-esque crush? I suppose they most, but I've never been sure.
Posted by: gwenda at November 6, 2004 09:23 PMDrinking when your head hurts doesn't sound good. I hope you're drinking lots of water!
Anyway...to me, or rather for me, since I can't speak for anyone else, the whole girl-watching thing is sort of infantile, in the sense that it's a purely selfish, self-centered act that has nothing to do with reason or the real world. If I look at a naked girl in some movie or photograph, it's not like I want to take her out for coffee and find out where she stands on the films of John Sayles. I don't even really want to actually have sex with her. The image simply gets processed in whatever crazy machinery I have up there in my head that operates my sexual identity and coordinates all the weird issues and traumas that connect into it.
It's a completely different experience from being with an actual, real live girl that you want to have experiences and conversations and intimacy with in addition to smooches and boinking. It seems like a lot of women see a relationship between one and the other, that my looking at a naked picture of a girl somehow informs my view of actual women. Which it doesn't. But I wonder if it's not that way for women, and that's why they make that assumption about men? I don't know!
Posted by: B² at November 6, 2004 09:25 PMShit--who told you I'm a commie pinko? Pesky informing cracker neighbors.
Oh, I am a terror when drunk. I just throw down more and more hifaultin' talk as folks fall away in disgust. And I'm mean mean mean--to anyone I suspect can't keep up.
But, I would also like Ed or B or one of the other gents in the ether to opine about the pining crush. Or, perhaps worse, the one you're glad got away [aka, totally would have mindfucked you X years ago had someone else not gotten there first and larn'd you but good].
To rephrase Gwenda's question, do you fellas love the way someone leans?
Posted by: cinetrix at November 6, 2004 09:30 PMA girl after my own beratingly drunk heart.
Yes, yes, comment on obsession? I think I have to go to sleep now because my understanding s.o. just came out and frowned sleepily... so hard to explain what one is doing to someone in a fugue state.
Hey Ed - sorry this is sorta an off-topic post but it's sort of an off-topic...or off, anyway, night it seems like. I usually read your site on the LiveJournal feed, so I just saw now that you have been christened "often bitterly funny". Congrats!
Also, I'm sorry to learn of the break-up. That is always a load of suck. Hope you find another tasty fish in the sea.
Posted by: Susan at November 6, 2004 09:49 PMMy pet theory about obsession is that men (and women, too?) possess a strong death wish that manifests in different ways depending on your personality and upbringing. Your more sensitive/emotional types channel that drive towards death into self-destructive, even masochistic obsessions (the pining crush). You want to feel the kind of longing that threatens to destroy you utterly. This might also explain the whole stalker phenomenon.
One movie that comes to mind when I think about this is Cinema Paradiso, the part where Toto stands in front of the girl's house night after night, through pouring rain, to demonstrate his devotion. That really appeals to the male romantic idealist. Or the poor kid in Joyce's "The Dead" who caught sick and died in the pursuit of his crush. Or Cyrano de Bergerac. It's all about the passionate death.
Posted by: B² at November 6, 2004 10:04 PMLook, there is nothing wrong with a naked girl. I cannot stress this enough. On a short-term basis, a naked girl offers that pivotal contextual frame of reference between a spoiled relationship and the next one. Provided that neither party is deceiving each other, I see nothing wrong with it. It is a boost to one's short-term and long-term goals, and I cannot reccomend a naked girl enough on that score.
However, I suspect that B and I are of the same mind on the John Sayles question. If a real man deigns something serious, then it probably does not involve just a naked girl. But provided that one knows what he (or she) wants, let it be known that we get through this universe the best way we can. The naked girl (if we may classify her as a temporary crush or otherwise) certainly does wonders for the short-term. And I highly encourage it, if only because it carries over into fantastic goals of the truly devoted.
The risk, of course, lies with those who would saunter from naked girl to naked girl, and fall within that oh-so-easy trap. While I would advise that every man needs to learn on way or another, the clear path is, of course, with the girl who is sometimes naked (although not exclusively so) and frequently special -- the soulmate, so to speak. And if a naked girl can help a man reach such a magnanimous state of nonexclusive coexistence, then I see no problem -- provided, of course, that the man understands the full ramifications, et al.
Posted by: ed at November 6, 2004 10:14 PMSo to simplify: pre-breakup porn is less satisfying, or possibly tertiary to sex, while post-breakup everything looks good?
Does it answer my question? I don't know - that was three drinks ago.
But hell, thanks for entertaining me. Whee.
(this comment was heavily edited for signs of drunkenness)
Posted by: Lauren at November 6, 2004 10:37 PMUnsuccessfully.
Posted by: Lauren at November 6, 2004 10:38 PM