quizzical pussy

Of all the rottenly rotten positions I’ve experienced in my life, stagnation is among my least favorite. Maybe because I have a low tolerance for boredom, or maybe because I resent being in a situation where I’m not learning anything. Not that change is always for the better, but so often it at least holds the opportunity of better. We all deserve at least the opportunity of better.

Especially when we’re not getting nearly laid enough.

Boyfriend says he’s attracted to me but hardly touches me below the waist. I don’t believe him. Do you?

There are different kinds of attraction. It’s possible to be romantically attracted to someone but not sexually attracted. But on an emotional level? If I were in your position I probably wouldn’t believe him for a second. In fact, I’ve been in a similar position a few times, and it’s damnably hard to see past the pain of continuous sexual rejection.

And I’m only going to say this because I wish I had heard and accepted this myself: Maybe you’re just not compatible.

My partner is on psych meds. Sometimes he takes them; sometimes he doesn’t.

I don’t know a polite, kind, non-ableist way of saying ”when you don’t take your pills you’re impossible to be around.”

But he really is. I love my partner when he’s medicated. He’s a different person when he’s not. (He’s not violent or hostile, but he’s hyper, incoherent, and has terrible judgment.) Sometimes I fret about whether that means I don’t love “the real him” but mostly I fret about how I can get him to take his goddamn pills.

I don’t believe that preferring him unmedicated and struggling would amount to loving “the real him”. If he feels like the medication is somehow crossing his own purposes and wishes to stop taking it, that’s a different conversation. If you both agree he is better off taking it regularly, I, stranger who writes shit on the internet, think you’re in your rights as an interested party to communicate your concern when he skips.

I find it rather difficult to have an orgasm – I have almost never had one with my partner present (maybe once or twice with a lot of concentrated self-touching) and even with my own fingers (or a VIBRATOR for godssake) it takes a very long time to get off.

You didn’t ask for advice, which is good because I really don’t have any advice on this topic. I dearly wish I did. I would love to read more experiences and perhaps tips from people who don’t orgasm easily.

So I’m married – happily, monogamously, for two years. My husband rocks.
I am also attracted to other people because, y’know, ain’t dead. One of them has become my cuddle buddy some time ago: this is known and consented to by all involved parties, including cuddle buddy’s girlfriend.
I am kinda high-libido, and my husband can’t keep up with me. I don’t think anyone could, really, given that I need to have a job and shit and occasionally leave the bed, but something in addition would be awesome.
I’d never cheat on my husband, but I daydream in hope that we might form an Arrangement with my cuddle buddy and his GF – possibly a swinging-ish thing.
I think it’s plausible GF is attracted to my husband, I know cuddle buddy is attracted to me and he knows I am to him. I’d also gladly make out with the GF, with or without my husband or the cuddle buddy watching. Discussion with cuddle buddy has revealed that his GF might not be averse to some less-than-monogamous forays.
Have no idea if husband is attracted to GF, though, and terrified of asking because I tend to spend long hours with cuddle buddy while my husband waits for me at home; I know he trusts me, but I’m worried it might upset him to know I’m interested in such a thing even if I’d never do it without his consent.
(Husband is fine with me having sex with other women, but men are upsetting to him.)

You may identify as monogamous, which is awesome, but I feel like if your husband is okay with you having sex with other women there’s some non-monogamy thrown into the mix here. If it were me I’d probably talk about the details of that openness as a conceptual, hypothetical thing (e.g. “Would you ever want to try swinging with a couple we were both attracted to?”), provided I hadn’t already gotten around to that, before bringing up specific people.

The only thing that has convinced me to go back on my anxiety medication is that my panic attacks are interfering with my sex life.

Hope things are going better for you in much more than just your sex life.

Today at noon, my best friend/the girl I love told me that she isn’t comfortable with hanging out with me after 4 years of friendship/occasional dating, because two weeks ago I told her I loved her (did a whole “John-Cusack-boombox thing”).
She told me right before I had to go to lecture, during which I felt sick. She was so far the only one I had true feelings for (and the only one who got me the closest to ejaculation).

But now I’m ready to hit the town again, after having stupid, teenager-y woes for a year with and about this girl. I’m ready to end my involuntary 7-month celibacy. So yay for me.

Although I did tell her I still wanted to be her friend, which is true, but I forgot to add that I would need about a year of not thinking nor talking to her just to get myself ready to be just her friend. So that’s that.
Sorry about not really having a sexual confession.

This confession totally counts! I hope you’ve ended your celibacy in the hottest, most joyful way possible. And I hope you can eventually find a way to rebuild the friendship you lost, or at least find that your life is better without it.

I have no trouble getting laid. I know that men find me sexy and I have great sexual relationships with some. But no matter how hard I try I never meet anyone who wants to commit to me. I always get the ”I just don’t want a girlfriend right now” speech.
Some of my friends think I need to stop having sex right away and wait it out to see if they really like me or whatever but then what do I do about sex?!?!? I love sex! And I love casual sex! The excitement of experiencing someone new for the first time, discovering their body and in so many cases learning new things about sex and about your own body! It just gets really lonely sometimes.

I feel like the whole idea that having sex quickly after meeting automatically nixes the potential for a relationship is fairly busted. I know that some people have that mentality, but not everyone does. My question is, would you be happy with someone who was willing to write you off just because you didn’t want to wait until the third date or whatever to have orgasms?

You’re not just asking to be loved; you’re also offering to give love as your amazing, unique, and irreplaceable self. You deserve to be picky too.

Sex Confessional

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“Polyamory is a relationship orientation that rejects the assumption that love is a finite resource…” -From The Rhetoric and Composition of Polyamory, an awesome new blog that now appears on my blogroll

For years I maintained that polyamory was synonymous with drama. With slogging through relationship issues twice as much as doing actual relationship stuff. With inexhaustible neediness. Otherwise, I liked it in theory. I agreed with the overall idea that a person could be in love with more than one person at once. But in practice– every time I’d seen it– its implementation was irredeemably messy and awful, and I made assumptions based on that. Which, as you have likely concluded yourself, was dickish and logically unsound.

I mean, I could have stopped for a moment to consider the fact that most human relationships stoop to varying degrees of messy and awful at some point.

I wasn’t actively shunning and judging poly people, mind, but my main reasons for not choosing it for myself were the potential for drama and my smug estimation that it just didn’t work. There were other factors that made me cling to monogamy and then open-not-poly for a while. I had partners who didn’t identify as poly. I had trouble believing anyone wanted to date me, let alone multiple people, so the whole thing just seemed fantastical. Then there was my rich and storied history of trading my freedom for love. The prospect of a relationship that wasn’t limiting in fundamental ways confused me.

Really, this is just more support for my growing suspicion that when person A waxes critical of the concept of person B’s perfectly harmless, minding-their-own business lifestyle, it really just means person A has some related shit to work out on their end.

Then I met more poly people, some of whom executed their multiple relationships in ways that made more sense to me than what I’d previously witnessed. I even met people who did it more or less the way my open relationship functioned, but called it poly, and that made the word less scary. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, polyamory kind of started seeming like an increasingly attractive idea for me. Well, let’s be frank: I probably never wasn’t attracted to the idea. I harbor no doubt that person A is actually often just a mite envious of person B.

I realize I’m single and in zero relationships now, so it may not be the optimal time to declare myself poly (fun fact: most people call the multiple partners thing that single people do “dating”). And it’s certainly hard for me to conclude that it’s my orientation without actively trying it. But I have come to the decision that I prefer not to be entirely monogamous in the long-run, and that I am entirely open to polyamory, inclusive of casual as well as more serious multiple relationships.

In short, I think I might be poly. I’m going to try to check that out.

(image source)

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I joined OKCupid recently, as one is supposed to after getting dumped. They actually have a recruiter come to your house, pound on your door, tell you to stop watching Dawson’s Creek, and ask you what you want your username to be.

True story.

It feels too early to jump into another serious relationship. It feels like a good time to develop a crush or six, though, or to start the vetting process that will eventually, possibly lead to making out and orgasms and stuff. I’m ignoring the fact that those things are how serious relationships usually start; I’ll cross those legs when I come to them.

I like OKC so far, I do. Mostly. I like taking the wacky tests. I like answering match questions. It feels like placing an order for the perfect lover, even though you know it could turn out more like a botched pizza delivery and you may end up trying to choke down a pie topped with legos and felt. I love the fact that it tells you your match percentage with people. I’m in the 90%s with many of my friends who happen to be on the site, and I find myself idly wondering about all the others. And various exes. And my dog, but not in a weird way.

All this before I have any actual experience proving that a high match percentage means anything, really. The very savvy Viola Sharqtipus once told me, however, that she really does get along better with exceptionally high OKC matches. So because of that and the clinical comfort of numbers, I’m paying attention to my percentages with people.

But on the other hand, the whole dating site thing is proving kind of annoying. I could spend stupid amounts of time just answering messages, which are mostly inane. I want to understand how I’m supposed to respond to a message that says “You seem interesting,” which is more or less what half of them say¹. I’m assuming here that people are not actually intending to have a conversation about how interesting I am, but rather saying “You’re interesting; I, not so much. Say something interesting to me now so we can talk about that!” This comes off as lazy and impolite, contacting me first only to put the burden of starting any actual conversation on me.

I realize it’s not always easy to start a conversation, and maybe it’s not worth the effort if you’re opting to use the shotgun approach to contacting broads on the internet, but do you know what kind of people I want to talk to online and date and be interesting with? People who are a) interesting themselves and actually interested in me, and b) can have conversations.

I had no idea I’d feel so strongly about this, but it seems I do. In fairness, I’m more misanthropic than usual lately. It took me very little time to earn OKC’s “replies very selectively” warning label, and it doesn’t look like it’s going away any time soon.

But I have found a few gripping new people to talk to, and perhaps someday meet. I even met one already, and we got along so well we’ll likely get really wacky and out there and do it again. Of course, because one of my rules for myself on the site is not to initiate contact with anyone over 25 miles away because right now I’m a little burned out on the “driving hours every week to see my paramour” relationship model, all these people live over an hour away so far. But they messaged me first and actually said stuff and asked questions and shit, and you can’t put a number on that².

(image source)

1. Along with an astonishingly not-infrequent “I didn’t understand half of ur profile lol.” [↩]
2. Although technically I think they all happen to be high percentage matches. Score one for Viola. [↩]

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Thank you for trusting me with your confessions. Especially the really bizarre ones. But also the sweet ones, the wistful ones, the confessions from crisis and the lurid missives of lust. All of them, really.

I have no idea who you are, but your minds are delicious.

My boyfriend and I are doing some anal play, with an eventual goal of anal sex. Unfortunately he’s a rather girthy guy and the pretty little butt plug I bought simply doesn’t come close to approximating him. Yesterday we went to the toy shop and did some looking for an intermediate step, or something slightly larger than he is, to keep working toward our goal.

All I could think was how intimidating the buttplugs look! The ones with gradual girth increases are all slim enough to not be useful and the rest either get fat really fast or incorporate some shape that frankly looks scary as hell.

We wound up getting a silicone dong that starts about where the plug leaves off and has a very gentle girth increase until it qualifies me for his lovely cock, and then some.

Plus, it was way cheaper than the ” anal trainer ” toys.

Am I the only woman out there who doesn’t really care about the toys (although I thoroughly enjoy myself when we use them) except as a means to an end? I don’t want it to vibrate or oscillate or be beaded or engraved or whatever else those things were. I just want it to be what I need, a way to allow my body to adjust to the point where I can give my love something he really likes.

This is the most romantic thing I’ve ever read that incorporates the word “dong”. I hope your system is paying off in anal orgasms and a sex life that gets better by the day.

I’ve found myself in a crisis situation. I have to have strong vibrations to get off, and my vibrator just broke. I go to school in a tiny, rural town without a sex-toy shop. My credit card is still under my parent’s account, so I can’t use it to order a new one off the internet. And I won’t be in a big city again until Christmas break.

Hopefully you already found a replacement, but if this happens again, remember that Amazon has sex toys. Who would question an innocent bookstore charge on a credit card statement? All you ordered was a package of AA batteries to go with your, uh, kitten calendar. Yeah.

I have fancied a guy for a while now and when we see each other we tend to flirt a bit / a lot depending on the occasion. Last night I revved myself up for a good night out with him present and hoped I could take things a little further. Unfortunately, he couldn’t stay long and I ended up flirting with another guy I barely knew before.

Now I can’t decide what I want.

Well, I actually do know what I want. I want to keep flirting and kissing and snogging and possibly more both of them. At least for a little while. Because in the end, I still think I’m monogamous. But a girl’s gotta have some fun. With a little luck, they’ll both be up for some non-exclusive fun.

I have never been able to wrap my mind around people who expect exclusivity while casually dating, before making an explicit agreement to be exclusive.

Whenever I read confessions from married/attached people about having very infequent sex I think ”I can sympathize. I know exactly where you’re coming from” and then, invariably, they complain because they’re only having sex like once a week. OH the HORROR. You poor thing. What I wouldn’t give to have sex once a week. In the last 7 weeks I can count, on one hand, how many times we’ve had sex. In fact, I can count the number of times on one hand, that had a freak farming accident, and had 4 fingers amputated. So, quit bitching about your once a week sex life and consider yourself lucky. (but I’m not bitter).

I feel your pain. Intensely. In another week I’ll be able to count the sex I’ve had in the last seven weeks on zero hands. Which is good, I guess, because those hands are occupied with furiously fapping and flipping off my life.

Of course, if I ever get married or have a live-in partner again, I do hope it will be with someone who wants to bone more than once a week. I really and truly do.

I have developed a huge crush on a co-worker. She’s pretty much amazing, as far as I’m concerned. I sat in my meeting today imagining all things I want to do to her and all the hot girl sex we could be having. Her style is super edgy and I don’t know if I’m judging her personal sense of style (which is incredibly ”non-normative”) and applying that to other aspects of her personality or if I might be pegging her as possibly queer because I want her to be queer as a consequence of my super big crush. A part of me feels like a judgmental jerk. The other part is still super turned on. I’ve decided not to press the issue and actually find out her orientation. I think the fantasy would be ruined should I discover she’s super super straight.

Wait, let me get this straight: you feel like a judgmental jerk for having had your gaydar tripped?

You know what is a good remedy for guilt? Hot girl sex.

Hey, guys! Visit the Sex Confessional!

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So, I’ve been thinking. ConTuesday has, to my knowledge, never posted a confession featuring ghosts, werewolves, or Indiana Jones. Am I to suppose, then, that these things don’t exist?

We’ve had one or two about unicorns, though. That’s reassuring.

This week’s confessions:

I had an affair with a married man on a business trip. Emotionally he was just a friend with benefits (I don’t miss him or want more than friendship), but the sex was some of the best I ever had, and I can never tell anyone about how good it was, how sexy he was, how incredible that two-month affair was. God, it was good. I still see him at work, but we mutually agreed it was over and never to be spoken of again.

The most ironic part? He introduced me to his wife after the fact. She’s my best friend. Some days this bugs the shit out of me.

All that guilt, (possibly one-sided) awkwardness, potential drama, and no more best sex ever? Ethics aside, this is why cheating sucks.

So there’s this guy I met online– he lives about half the country away from me, but we really hit it off. We’ve been talking a lot– most of the day– and he’s been really nice, flirtatious, talking about sex, telling me I’m pretty and there aren’t a lot of girls like me. But he’s more experienced than the type of guy I usually go for (i.e. he’s hit on girls before) so I think if he REALLY liked me he would make some kind of move, and maybe he thinks the distance or the fact that we met on the Internet or my polyamory is a dealbreaker. Or maybe he’s this flirtatious with everyone and I’m building it up to be a big deal because I have a crush on him.

I know, I know, just fucking say it, what’s the worst that could happen, right?

He also mentioned a while ago that playing hard-to-get gets one more dates. Is this some kind of hint or something that he wants to chase me? Or is he just making conversation? I suck at hints, why can’t people just talk to each other?

I’m also stymied by the proper asking-someone-out method via the Internet. Do you send an email? Do you do it in chat? Maybe over Skype? (Does he even have Skype?)

Sorry for the marathon confession…

I bet I have a reader or six who have been in this situation, more or less, and perhaps they’ll have suggestions for you.

But really, email, chat, or Skype seems fine for confessing a crush. If I were into you too, I’d get all melty inside no matter which one you used. I doubt I’m alone in that.

So far the only thing I dislike about Roller Derby is that after practice my muscles hurt so much I can’t masturbate properly.

The sacrifices you make for being one of my fetishes! Thank you. A thousand times thank you.

I was watching a documentary featuring animator Nick Park creating a Wallace and Gromit film. It shows him working wtih the clay figures for the stop-motion animation and one little blob of clay was not quite doing what he wanted it to do. He sort of growled at it to ”do as you’re told” and I was instantly *wet*. ”Ooh, make me, Mr. Park. Pretty please?”

I like the way your mind works. That is all.

Have a confession, secret, boast, or lamentation? Give it to me.

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The other key, of course, is Pong.

If someone with a not too terribly impressive amount of judgment were to come to me and ask, face so straight and tone so earnest: “Quizzical Pussy, what’s the key to a good relationship?” my first priority would be to not snort while I was doing all the laughing. Really, the “I Make Wonderful Romantic Decisions, And In Case You Were Wondering, Yes, That’s Sarcasm” sash I was awarded in 2004 didn’t win itself.

And then I’d be tempted to say “blind luck” because that’s certainly how I’ve landed in the one I’m in. But then I’d give my real answer.

Inside jokes.

Yes, love and trust and patience. Absolutely. And fabulous sex usually doesn’t hurt either. But it’s harder to quantify those first three things, and sometimes even tricky to detect when they’re fading away. And the sex? It’s possible to have fabulous sex with someone you actively dislike.

But if you’re always laughing together at things that would elicit shrugs and eyebrow twitches from all the rest of humanity, you have this secret language. You’re each choosing to be in closed, joyous company, which in my experience is the last thing you want when you’re fundamentally unhappy with each other. In essence, inside jokes are an old magic that transports you to the island nation of Us, a place of moderate climate and ruthless border control. You are never dragged to Us, although you can often convince the other person you’re already there just by smiling and nodding politely. But there will still be an ocean between you.

And this isn’t just romantic relationships. Not at all. I never feel like I’m fully friends with someone until we have at least one inside joke together. We’re just on the shore, friendly together but sharing no homeland.

Maybe this is just me. I could be biased by the amazing sex Laramy and I had yesterday between spates of laughing at things that are sheer nonsense to everyone else. I could be placing too much value on laughter for this to apply to anyone but me. But that would be my answer anyway.

(image source)

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You know how sometimes ConTuesday has a theme? Well, maybe this one does. If you can guess what it is, then you are probably right!

I used a vibrator for the first time this weekend. (I’m 22, female) I’m sure it’s related to the circumstances (college dorm with thin walls, minimal time due to roommate return, lack of practice/playing around, etc), but really? I wasn’t impressed. Any thoughts/advice?

Experiment! Preferably when you have a bit of privacy. Use it on your clit, use it for penetration (either penetrating yourself with it if it’s an insertable, or poising it against something you’re inserting), tease your labia with it, use it on your nipples, your perineum or ass. Use it while reading dirty stories; use it while watching porn. Use it while fantasizing about Wil Wheaton (maaaaybe). If nothing you try with it thrills you, maybe that’s not the toy for you. Maybe toys in general aren’t for you, in which case it’s a bummer that you wasted your money, but there are thousands of other ways to have fun with a pussy!

I’m going through a sexual crisis. I keep getting crushes on men. I THINK I’M TURNING HETEROSEXUAL.

…One’s straight friends are deeply unsympathetic when one starts freaking out about this.

Noooooooooooo Ladies are so fun do not forsake them!

While I was growing up, I genuinely thought I wasn’t having orgasms when I masturbated. Not that I wasn’t enjoying the end result, but it was around then that I had started reading about sex and orgasms online and based on what everyone was saying, I couldn’t possibly. It felt certainly like the end of things (or at least that round) but it felt way too short. Everyone was talking about 30 second orgasms or extending their orgasms by minutes. I can’t even imagine that! Now that I’m an adult, I know that they _are_ orgasms, and I enjoy them every bit as much (more, really). And everyone I’ve been with doesn’t really have orgasms longer than mine. So how do people come that long! I’ve tried the tricks suggested and it either ruins the moment or does nothing. I think I’ll just stay satisfied but always curious.

Once there was an H.B.O. Real Sex episode where they interviewed a couple about their workshop that taught men to give their female partners hour-long orgasms. It seemed like the process involved the lighting of many candles and meticulous grooming of fingernails. What else involves candles and fingernail clippings? Witchcraft, that’s what.

I’m not monogamous. I’m just temporarily not sleeping with other people.

I suppose I would fall into this category at the moment as well. Huh. Anyone wanna do it? No? Didn’t think so.

Whenever I date someone, we stop being able to talk about anything but sex. Should I stop fucking on the first date maybe, so we develop a firm nonsexual basis? But I don’t WANT to. I don’t want to deny myself pleasure. I just want my boyfriends to be able to talk about something other than how hot I am and how much they want to eat my pussy. Like movies or something! Movies are cool.

Date smarter people, I think. Smarter people with whom you have things in common. I’m guessing that if the conversation can peter out that easily it probably wasn’t a strong point to the relationship in the first place.

I’ve never been able to have healthy romantic sexual relationships. Either I’m terrified of being simply used or terrified that the person I love will tire of using me if I get too complicated.

I think everyone is afraid of this. I, at least, can relate to it. I always think that everyone’s either tired of me, in the process of getting tired of me, or at risk of starting to tire of me if I make one wrong move. So I don’t have any advice, except maybe to date smarter people. Smarter people with whom you have things in common. Smarter people who are smart enough to realize what you’re worth, and don’t need you to be uncomplicated because they aren’t so simple themselves.

Now you! You send me a sex secret!

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A couple winters ago I was on a notdate (you know, that social expedition that no one has defined as a date, but it’s pretty clear that at least one of you wouldn’t mind it going in that general direction) with a guy whom, I was certain by the end, I definitely wanted to not date. He wasn’t good-looking (in a general consensus sense), but, though I wasn’t blind to that, it also didn’t particularly bother me. He also seemed to have a lot of mental health issues. It happens. The real problem was, the more we hung out together, the more a striking resemblance developed in his features and expressions to a chick I often, to this day, have trouble standing. There’s no harm in her, and I’m disposed to be civil toward her because she’s married to a friend, but hers isn’t the face I want to see poised on the prow of a guy who wants to do me. It surprised me how deeply and utterly this resemblance bothered me.

Our conversation quality was fair; I usually have no trouble talking at length to anyone who can even pretend to comprehend English, and I think that put him at ease. I felt that we could easily be friends as long as a) he didn’t mind that idea and b) things didn’t get tragically awkward. The face thing that would murder my peace in a paramour I could easily deal with in a platonic way.

After a movie and some wandering while talking, we ended up in my car in the mall parking lot. I was going to drive him to his car since I have V.I.P. cripple parking. Snow drifts rose up where swaths of parking spaces should’ve been, and it was snowing gently, and he kissed me.

And it was awful.

I try to be accommodating, so I went with it, although at the beginning my involvement was no better than half-hearted (and actually a good deal less). There was absolutely no firmness or pressure in his lips or tongue, no apparent rhyme or reason to what those parts were doing, and his breath lingered on the unfortunate side of middling. Every second of horrible making out that ensued made me more and more miserable, and less and less sure of how to stop it without hurting his feelings. Just then, Untrust Us by Crystal Castles started playing, and it struck me all of a sudden what a terrible waste all this was. The veil of falling snow, the dark sky against the white hills, the warmth of my car’s heater in that ocean of cold, and that lovely, delicate song all conspired to create such an amazing atmosphere for those first fragile touches that, when they’re good, are so very, very good. It could’ve been so sweet, so… not awful, such a pretty memory. As it was, not so much. Maybe someday my mind will erase annoying-friend-faced-bad-kisser guy and slot someone more eligible into that recollection.

I still like that song anyway, though.

(image source)

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Recently one of my Facebook friends posted the following status update: “Smile, it makes people wonder what you’re thinking.” It’s another quote in a long line of hackneyed “folksy wisdom” gems he’s read or heard somewhere, and just had to share. But even as folksy wisdom goes, this advice is really atrocious.

I can think of countless reasons to smile: a friend’s face, the sun on your skin, the elation of running and jumping and climbing trees, remembering that puppies exist, or getting a new sex toy in the mail, just to name a few. But just to get a reaction from people, to seem more intriguing? Booooooooooring. I can get behind smiling out of friendliness, or to put people at ease, but this stupid cliche goes a step too far. It’s “I want people to think of me in a certain way, so I’ll disingenuously alter my behavior.”

This, gentle reader, is why we can’t have nice things.

Cilfton Overmangle texted me out of the blue recently to ask if three days was still the customary amount of time to wait to call a girl after getting her number (I don’t know why I’m the person he asks, but whatever. I’m here to help, I guess…) I wasn’t trying to be glib in the least when I responded that he should simply call her when it was convenient for him to talk and he would care to have a conversation with her. Has anyone not heard of the “three day” rule? And doesn’t it seem contrived and a touch desperate-not-to-seem-desperate when you can tell someone has purposely waited exactly three days to call? I’m not the mayor of dating or anything, but even my commitment-phobic ass couldn’t muster up a speck of contempt for someone calling me on days one, two, or four, especially if a decent conversation arose from it.

It strikes me that conventional wisdom encourages us too much to fake things, to play games with each other for social rewards. The fact that there’s a “rule” of how many days to wait before calling an individual with a pulse and a mother and unique thoughts and experiences betrays such cynacism. And you know if Quizzical Pussy is calling you on your cynicism you’ve gone too far.

That’s my major issue with Pick Up Artistry: it couldn’t be less like art. Art is human, individualistic, all about sharing a unique and fallible perspective. It’s against homogeneous rules; it runs counter to a jaded, cookie-cutter approach to people and the world. Hell, even if an artist is expressing a misanthropic point of view, the act of creation itself is the opposite of cynical.

In fact, the “art” referred to in PUA is more just at odds with being “artless”, in the sense that has positive connotations of sincerity and being unaffected.

Instead of embracing the natural, PUAs (and girls that follow The Rules or whatever the kids are calling it these days, or other con artists) devote themselves to running through life like it’s a role-playing game. And the person you’re trying to date isn’t even the princess you need to save or a member of your party. Your “target” is just another monster to vanquish on your way to your goal. So if you don’t get results with one chick, you just need to beef up your stats, or else you threw the dice wrong and luck just wasn’t on your side. Either way, you’ll encounter lots of HB9s on this level, so you’re cool… you’ll get the next one. How is it a good idea to treat a potential partner like a non-player character? Like ultimately, they don’t matter.

There has to be a better way to deal with rejection than dehumanizing people. Can’t a person not want to fuck you, yet remain fully human? Can’t social interactions be more about discovery and less about achievements? Can’t you just relax and see where and with whom you fit naturally, without trying to force perceptions and opinions you can’t control? Can’t you just smile because you feel like it, call when you want to, and acknowledge that if you’re playing a game, we’re all in it together and probably actually all on the same team?

(image source)


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