Posts by Max Rose
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All this talk of flirtation ... god, I love it! I have to wonder sometimes whether I like it more than the act itself. I mean, anyone who knows me knows that I'm not exactly Mr Commitment, but I'm not really that great at really unadorned casual sex.
For instance, there was this recent incident when I was with a group of people, and had a brief chat with a couple of women I found reasonably attractive, though without any noticeable flirtation. They went off somewhere else, I ended up catching up with others, then I was wandering home through the city at 11ish and I saw the two of them waving at me from a café. "Come and have some cake!" they said ... and who was I to say no?
After only a couple of minutes, despite what I thought was very bland, flirtation-free conversation, I noticed that one of them had her hand on my leg. The waiters were putting chairs up, so she wondered out loud where she could get a whisky at that time of night. I coughed, and suggested that I had some good Scotch at my place, just a block away. Before I knew it, we were outside, the other woman was saying goodnight, and two of us were heading back to mine.
Through all of this, I was actually rather disengaged and not feeling anything beyond disbelief. Just outside my place, she asked me if I remembered her name. I had to admit that I'd been introduced to the two of them, but couldn't remember which was which. She told me who she was, corrected my pronunciation, and added "I thought it would be good if you woke up tomorrow knowing the name of the person you'd just had sex with."
Long story short: things got awesome, weird, delightful, and difficult, before ending ambiguously. Part of me loves uncomplicated sexuality, directness and the promise of no-strings-attached physical love. But without a certain warm-up of flirtation and anticipation, I'd felt like I was on the back foot the whole time, and while I sure as hell wasn't going to say no, it lacked a certain something.
Compare that to other situations, completely hypothetical of course, which are completely unsuitable and far too complicated. They should be a Really Bad Idea, yet we can't keep our hands off each other. Rather than no strings attached, there are far too many strings in all the wrong places (plus a few ropes and chains in all the right places), but there's an intensity that resists control. Flirtation is not only present, but spills over into utterly inappropriate channels. Such flirtation would be delightful even if each of us knew that it couldn't go any further, but the expectation of more imbues each word, each keystroke, with an ache.
So, unromantic antimonogamous polyamorist that I am, there's an extent to which I can see that really casual sex is unfulfilling. Not because it lacks love or commitment, but because it shortcircuits the fierce energy of flirtation.
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I've found James Blake's music attractive too, and those Alex Clare and Jamie Woon tracks sound good at first listen too. But I guess I've been confused by their characterisation as "post-dubstep". I know that dubstep is more than just wub-wub basslines and angry, spotty young men in hoodies who spend far too much time playing first-person shooters, but I struggle to connect these quieter tracks (along with a lot of tracks from other artists such as Burial) with the supposedly characteristic griminess, fiddly triplets and half-time snares of dubstep.
I imagine that someone with a longer and less superficial aquaintance with the genre would see them as part of a continuous and broad tradition, but for me coming in relatively cold they seem to share more with 90s/00s trip-hop, ambient and downbeat. If that Jamie Woon "Night Air" track is post-anything, it sounds post-house to me.
Which sounds all very nitpicky, and I'm not trying to put anything in a box, but I'm just a bit confused and intrigued about the musical strands that led to these new trends.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Thomas Johnson,
If I hadn't seen your earlier posts, in the context of this thread I would have guessed that "Thomas Johnson" was a pseudonym.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Lilith __,
I was about to say I look forward to meeting a lot more of you in the flesh but on second thoughts I will avoid that phrase.
Yes, it pays to be careful about that.
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All Willy, no Wonka.
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Well, it didn't take long for some people to suspect who I am behind this pseudonym, but I'm not so much after absolute privacy as plausible deniability and ungooglability. There are things I'm happy to say under my real name, and some that I'd rather not have attached to my name if a prospective employer, ex-partner or general nosey parker Googles me. I have other handles that I use on other threads and in other forums, since I want to be able to candidly discuss things in my professional field without risking a breach of my code of conduct. Anonymity can indeed lead to douchiness, but sometimes it's necessary for candid discussions.
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Continuing the sex = music theme, the standard socially-acceptable model of human sexuality might be a bit like this.
You start with the standard hits that everyone knows about, and while you're young it's normal to be excited by new bands. You have intense obsessions, breathtaking epiphanies and brief flirtations with obscure genres that don't really go anywhere. But sooner or later all of that seems a bit undignified, and music isn't supposed to arouse the same sort of passions that it did when you're a teenager. Society puts pressure on you to find a nice, reliable, inoffensive band, one which is not so much about excitement as comfort and familiarity, and you never stray from that band or get tempted by new music. In the end, it's so bland that it's not really music at all, and if it all goes silent then, so what? Music's not all it's cracked up to be.
Imagine how ridiculous it would be if music really were like that! ... though come to think of it, it explains Coldplay.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Deborah,
Well, I haven't looked at any surveys, but I wouldn't think it's a great stretch to say that for more than 50% of the adult population, sex is something that they do or could enjoy.
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Sorry Deborah, I really wasn't trying to erase the experience of anyone who is asexual or has a fundamentally low sex drive. That part of it was more a response to a certain sort of babyboomer feminist columnist who boldly claims that "women don't really like sex": I can't point to specific examples right now, but there were some being discussed online not long before I wrote that column.
Sure, the trials and tiredness of family life can make the whole thing seem like too much to be bothered with. But I have to wonder whether for some of these people it might be at least as much to do with the possibility that the sexual spark has gone out of that particular relationship, or in some (perhaps many) cases that one's partner is just plain crap in bed. And people who didn't have much sexual experience before "settling down" might judge all sex on the basis of a few terrible lovers.
I know it can sound patronising to suggest to people that all they need is a hot new lover and they could (re)discover the delights of sex. But I know from personal experience how it's possible to convince oneself of a low interest in sex. At a certain stage in a long relationship I found myself telling my partner, when she asked me about our decreasing frequency, that "I'm really not that much of a sexual person. I'm just happy with snuggles really". And I actually found myself believing that, despite the fact that I was rampantly fantasising about my colleagues, finding excuses to go to strip clubs and furtively seeking out porn. I just had too much invested, emotionally and socially, in the relationship, and besides, I didn't feel attractive.
Then I met someone who helped me rediscover my sexual nature. I'd just bought into the narrative that it's normal for the passion to fade, and you're supposed to live with that because there's something wrong with you if you can't sustain a long-term monogamous relationship. I had ceased to be attracted to my partner, so of course sex wasn't particularly great. Finding someone new changed my entire attitude to sex, and since then I've been much more aware of and honest about the importance of sexuality in my life.
So, while I can't extrapolate my experience to everyone, I'd be extremely surprised if there weren't a lot of people out there who think on one level that sex isn't all it's cracked up to be, but just aren't having the right sort of sex (for them) with the right sort of people (for them). I certainly don't mean to deny the existence of asexuality, or to lecture people by standing up with a megaphone and shouting "Hey! You there! Have more sex and enjoy it!" I'm just saying that sex is awesome, and for most people it is or could be the source of great happiness, so for some people who think it's all a bit meh they could benefit from thinking more broadly and adventurously about what sex can be and what it can mean to them.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Islander,
Well, at least one of our ape relations finds evident intense pleasure in sex of all kinds...Pan paniscus, the bonobo (aka gracile or pygmy chimpanzee.
One of the arguments in Sex at Dawn is that humans are much more similar to the free-bonking bonobos than to other great apes, and together with other evidence the authors reach the conclusion that for most of human history monogamy has been far from the norm. I have my reservations about some aspects of the book, but overall it's a really intriguing (and potentially transformative) read.