ManFAQ Friday: Ready, Normal People?
It’s Friday, and that means answer time! For those of you who have commented with questions from previous ManFAQs, thank you. I’m adding yours to the list of questions women have asked about men over the years, and I will answer them all in turn – to continue to demystify the more malodorous gender for those of the gentler. Actual questions, posed by real women, and answered by a REAL man. What could go wrong?
Question: Why porn? Honestly, what on earth is the attraction? And then, why are your attempts to “hide it” so pathetic and ill conceived?
Answer: Ah, a tough question, and by tough I mean dangerous to the one answering it, since responses to the topic tend to be polarized. First, and I want to be perfectly clear on this – the attraction is you. The female form has long been considered beautiful, and the opportunity to see said forms without their clothes on doesn’t come up much in our daily life outside of museums. And those women are less approachable – the whole “made out of stone” thing and the “museum guards with guns” part puts them in a class with 17-yr-old heiresses – Paris Hilton notwithstanding.
I’m given to understand that many women feel the same way about some men. I’ll take it on faith, but most of us would rather see naked women. Ya’ll just nicer to look at. We like fire, we like beer, we like naked women. We’re looking for some titillation that you can’t find at the MOMA. (Jeff Foxworthy may have said this pretty well: “I’d like a beer and I’d like to see something naked.”)
And I’m going to stop here and say this: porn that depicts hurtful, degrading things – perhaps it has its place in the pantheon of free speech, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Porn with happy consenting adults doing things they enjoy, is what we’re talking about. Note that I don’t exclude things that are painful, or the full range of BDSM – everything has its place in the pantheon of free speech between happy consenting adults.
The Internet is a great learning tool. I used to think that I was a pervert. Then I found the Internet, and I learned that not only am I normal, I’m actually pretty boring. This was quite a revelation for me. I’d never thought of myself as boring in anything, and suddenly I found that what I thought was “pushing the envelope” was, in fact, not even pushing the postage stamp.
So having defined our terms, what is the attraction? Let’s take a short quiz. When you’re in the mood for a little Hey Hey, do you have to do more than take off your clothes and say “Come here?” No, I didn’t think so. (Granted, I’m generalizing from one example, but everyone does that. At least, I do.) You don’t have to wait, or wonder what kind of mood we’re in, or buy us dinner. We, on the other hand, think about sex around 800 times a week, and we don’t have that kind of control over when the Hey Hey magic happens. Here’s an experiment. Right now, look at the guy nearest you (over 18, please). Has he made eye contact with you? He’s thinking about sex. Unless you’re *really* ugly, he’s probably thinking about his chances with you. In fact, he’s thinking about his chances with you anyway, regardless of what you look like – we’re like that.
So, if he’s thinking about it too often and it’s late and you’re already sleeping and he’s on line, his mind wanders, and he looks. Maybe he’s only looking at soft core stuff, maybe he’s searching for something new to try with you next time you shoot him that “come hither” look. Maybe he likes really hard-core porn, like Canadian women modeling latex outfits. But he’s looking because you’re not there right then, and he’s afraid to wake you because you’ll kick his ass for waking you up to talk about Hey Hey at 0100 o’clock in the morning, and he’s not going to get to sleep otherwise. Like the song says, at this point there’s nothing to do but grab your dick and double-click. And pretty soon he’s double clicking like crazy.
And then you wake up.
And he hears your feet.
And he can’t close the browser window AND let go of the mouse AND pull his pants up at the same time, and he panics, because he’s embarrassed. Remember, he started doing this in his teens, and the urge to hide what he’s doing is ingrained in him so that his mother won’t find out. (I’m generalizing again here, Mom. I was just washing my hands in there. Broaaaad generalizations here.) So you’ve got a naked man – and we know they do VERY little thinking – and he’s trying to process how to deal with the computer and get his skivvies back over his raging Johnson and talk to you as though he was working on a spreadsheet and was just about to come to bed, and at the same time he’s suddenly realizing that the simple fact that you’re awake anyhow means that maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance that if he plays it right he can hook that carabineer to the Hey Hey zipline tonight after all – and you’re wondering why he seems pathetic? It’s a wonder he can form a sentence.
My advice? Be kind. Ask him to show you what he was looking at, and talk about what he likes – or didn’t like. No one expects you to “measure up” to some overpainted pipe cleaner with $10K boobs, any more than we’re going to measure up to John Holmes. He’s not looking because you’re not pretty enough – he’s looking because you’re asleep and he’s not. Treat it as a learning opportunity. As Robert Heinlein said, “Masturbation is cheap, clean, convenient, and free of any possibility of wrongdoing – and you don’t have to go home in the cold. But it’s lonely.”
Now you know. Please, feel free to comment! Also, forward any questions you’d like answered to BUMD – at – biguglymandoll.com!