Commited non-monogamists tend to concur with the small-is-beautiful anarchist's romantic view of tribes. For a long time I was sceptical of how women's quality of life might have been, back in the good old pre-agricultural days. I am slowly but increasingly convinced, by writers such as Sarah Hrdy, the Ryan and Jetha team, and even Paul Shepard. So when I read this interesting article in Common Dreams, using Dunbar's number to re-examine world economic crisis and societal disfunction, I immediately thought of non-monogamists' ideas about communitarian sexual relations in the context of a tribe of 150 individuals or so. That led me to this lovely quote of Dunbar's here: "Words are slippery; a touch is worth a 1,000 words any day." This couldn't possibly resonate any stronger with this modern woman, blogging in the vast obscurity of the modern-day Internet.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Gloomiest Winter Ever
On February 28th, German newspapers were full of reports like this:
Der Winter 2012/2013 ist der sonnenscheinärmste seit Beginn der flächendeckenden Wetteraufzeichnungen im Jahr 1951. Der Deutsche Wetterdienst bezeichnete den Januar und Februar als "ungewöhnlich trüb". Seit Anfang Dezember gab es in Deutschland im Schnitt nur 96 Sonnenstunden, normal sind 154.
The winter of 2012-13 had the least hours of sunshine since comprehensive weather record-keeping began in 1951. The German Weather Service characterized January and February as unusually overcast. Since the beginning of December there were on average only 96 hours of sunshine, compared to 154 normally.
Please keep in mind that we are talking here about 96 hours in 3 months, or an average of all of one hour of sunshine per day. I have to wonder what counts as sunshine here, however, with such an anemic northern sun that barely casts a shadow from Thansgiving to well past the Berlinale. And I really don't know why they didn't include November, which to me was one of the dampest, coldest and grayest I have yet seen. Winter's gotten even more insistent, though, in March, with two significant snowfalls, one of which has actually remained on the ground for a week now (not at all common in Berlin, where everything usually melts away within a day or two). And it's been down around -10C for two different periods, several nights running.
Even I, who have become quite fond of the mental peace and quiet that months with little or no sun engender in me, am really rather sick of it all. More than anything, I'm tired of having worn the same ugly green winter coat for seven winters now, to the point that the down filling has lost its loft and is in no way sufficient for such cold. And that's not to mention months of clunking around everywhere in heavy winter boots. Spring will feel mighty good this year, if and when it finally arrives.
Der Winter 2012/2013 ist der sonnenscheinärmste seit Beginn der flächendeckenden Wetteraufzeichnungen im Jahr 1951. Der Deutsche Wetterdienst bezeichnete den Januar und Februar als "ungewöhnlich trüb". Seit Anfang Dezember gab es in Deutschland im Schnitt nur 96 Sonnenstunden, normal sind 154.
The winter of 2012-13 had the least hours of sunshine since comprehensive weather record-keeping began in 1951. The German Weather Service characterized January and February as unusually overcast. Since the beginning of December there were on average only 96 hours of sunshine, compared to 154 normally.
Please keep in mind that we are talking here about 96 hours in 3 months, or an average of all of one hour of sunshine per day. I have to wonder what counts as sunshine here, however, with such an anemic northern sun that barely casts a shadow from Thansgiving to well past the Berlinale. And I really don't know why they didn't include November, which to me was one of the dampest, coldest and grayest I have yet seen. Winter's gotten even more insistent, though, in March, with two significant snowfalls, one of which has actually remained on the ground for a week now (not at all common in Berlin, where everything usually melts away within a day or two). And it's been down around -10C for two different periods, several nights running.
Even I, who have become quite fond of the mental peace and quiet that months with little or no sun engender in me, am really rather sick of it all. More than anything, I'm tired of having worn the same ugly green winter coat for seven winters now, to the point that the down filling has lost its loft and is in no way sufficient for such cold. And that's not to mention months of clunking around everywhere in heavy winter boots. Spring will feel mighty good this year, if and when it finally arrives.
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
Fire and Brimstone Upon Them
There is nothing I can say about the Iraq war that hasn't already been said more eloquently elsewhere, by the victims and the eyewitnesses on the ground. In my case, it represented the point in time that I gave up on human nature for good. It was the ultimate triumph of the crushing know-nothingness of my country: for me, the most depressing thing of all. It was the mind-numbing banality of the U.S.'s own particular axis of evil (Cheney-Bush-Rumsfeld-Powell).
My inexpressible outrage that morphed into sheer impotent rage has since dwindled to the gut-wrenching certainty that none of them will ever be held responsible. I intend to continue to hold fast to my vow of ten years ago to never again knowingly pay another penny into the U.S. war machine. But really, who gives a damn about my simple-minded pacifist principles when so many people's lives have been destroyed?
On a more upscale note, we have a new Pope. God be praised.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Nobody Does it Better
A couple of years back (in Madrid), I had a British man with a Spanish mother who'd divided most of his adult life between those two countries and the U.S., tell me something quite edifying. As faithful readers may recall, I've written about how we from the New World have more energy, somehow, a sort of can-do/will-do attitude that contrasts with European inertia. After all, quite a number of our forebears left Europe probably for just that reason: the crushing weight of so many centuries of history. My general approach here in Europe is to raise an eyebrow in quizzical amusement when confronted with the all-too-present fatalism of this place. And then just forge on ahead in my typical American way, which endears me to some (often of the female variety) and sends others (often of the penile-bearing persuasion) running in the opposite direction.
Ah well, I was trying to tell you what this British guy said.... [drum roll] ... "when it comes to sex, Americans are the best". That caused my jaw to drop, I can tell you, when I heard it. And of course I immediately started to turn over all of the frustrations of so many past years in Berlin and Madrid. I´ve known quite a number of Latinamericans in both places, and the energy level to which I was so accustomed back in the New World is strikingly absent.
Why is this? There are a number of possible factors, of course. Latinamericans in Europe don't tend to have easy lives or much spare time. And in Berlin they are quite exotic and sought after. In Madrid, where I am theoretically exotically fair-skinned and willowy (as in Latinamerica), Latinamerican men seem adopt all too easily the extreme languor with which I would characterize the Spanish approach to sex. I don't know why this is. Maybe it's what happens when one immigrates to heartland of the former colonizer. [If I were to move to Great Britain, would I become instantly obsessed with Royal Family millinery and spend my weekends eating fish-n-chips at the local pub?]
Getting back to the question at hand, plenty of American states (14 to be exact) up until ten years ago still had bizarre laws outlawing biblical "misdeeds" that practically everyone does, like sodomy. And their right-wing wackos continue to battle a U.S. Supreme Court decision annulling those laws (see this report). Gays are still fighting for the right to legally marry in most of the U.S. In contrast, Spain, previously a Catholic dictatorship for many decades, was the third country in the world to legislate gay marriage, eight years ago, a decision that was recently upheld by its Supreme Court.
OK, then, it´s not the U.S.'s judicially backwards attitude to sex, so it must be ... [drum roll] ... the fact that nobody does porn better than the U.S., in particular, world porn headquarters: California's San Fernando Valley. Except wait, now anyone with a webcam is making porn...
Hmmm, I still can't say what it is that is special about us... And in truth, I can't really say that American men in Europe are doing all that much better than Latinos here. So perhaps it would be interesting to explicitly seek New World men who are equally unnerved by the unsexiness of the locals. But then, dear readers, I swore off Craigslist a couple of years ago. Still, I guess it's my super-charged American sex drive that can't seem to keep me peeking again every year or so.... It's incumbent on a blogger to keep current on things, after all.
Ah well, I was trying to tell you what this British guy said.... [drum roll] ... "when it comes to sex, Americans are the best". That caused my jaw to drop, I can tell you, when I heard it. And of course I immediately started to turn over all of the frustrations of so many past years in Berlin and Madrid. I´ve known quite a number of Latinamericans in both places, and the energy level to which I was so accustomed back in the New World is strikingly absent.
Why is this? There are a number of possible factors, of course. Latinamericans in Europe don't tend to have easy lives or much spare time. And in Berlin they are quite exotic and sought after. In Madrid, where I am theoretically exotically fair-skinned and willowy (as in Latinamerica), Latinamerican men seem adopt all too easily the extreme languor with which I would characterize the Spanish approach to sex. I don't know why this is. Maybe it's what happens when one immigrates to heartland of the former colonizer. [If I were to move to Great Britain, would I become instantly obsessed with Royal Family millinery and spend my weekends eating fish-n-chips at the local pub?]
Getting back to the question at hand, plenty of American states (14 to be exact) up until ten years ago still had bizarre laws outlawing biblical "misdeeds" that practically everyone does, like sodomy. And their right-wing wackos continue to battle a U.S. Supreme Court decision annulling those laws (see this report). Gays are still fighting for the right to legally marry in most of the U.S. In contrast, Spain, previously a Catholic dictatorship for many decades, was the third country in the world to legislate gay marriage, eight years ago, a decision that was recently upheld by its Supreme Court.
OK, then, it´s not the U.S.'s judicially backwards attitude to sex, so it must be ... [drum roll] ... the fact that nobody does porn better than the U.S., in particular, world porn headquarters: California's San Fernando Valley. Except wait, now anyone with a webcam is making porn...
Hmmm, I still can't say what it is that is special about us... And in truth, I can't really say that American men in Europe are doing all that much better than Latinos here. So perhaps it would be interesting to explicitly seek New World men who are equally unnerved by the unsexiness of the locals. But then, dear readers, I swore off Craigslist a couple of years ago. Still, I guess it's my super-charged American sex drive that can't seem to keep me peeking again every year or so.... It's incumbent on a blogger to keep current on things, after all.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Run, Don't Walk to See Krugovi
The amazing Serbian filmmaking team of
Srdan Golubovic,
Melina Pota Koljevic and Srdjan Koljevic, which brought us Klopka (The Trap, which I reviewed here) is back with their 3rd film, Krugovi (Circles). But I barely managed to see it, as yesterday I somehow lost 3 Berlinale tix; I'm still not sure where or how. It's the first time it's happened in 7 years now. Yesterday I'd just arrived at Zoo train station and reached for them in my special Berlinale coat pocket which was inexplicably unzipped and the three tickets I'd put there gone. ARRRGGGGHHHH. What to do, what to do?
I had the presence of mind, at least, to remember that this was a Serbian film, but I hadn't researched this particular offering. Klopka (reviewed here and here) is the film that first turned me into an avid follower of Serbian cinema, such that I now buy any Serbian film presented by the Berlinale, on the basis of its nationality alone. So I swallowed hard and bought a second nine-euro ticket (prices have risen by one euro this year) from someone selling an extra one.
The Berlinale master of ceremonies first introduced the director, from whose mouth came that magic word, Klopka, and the memory from 6 years before of its premier in that very same theater, the Delphi Filmpalast. Lo and behold, I found myself at the Berlinale premier of his third film (which has, by the way, recently also premiered at Sundance). I'm still not happy about those lost tickets, of course (it's not the 25 euros or so, but more the several hours standing in line to get them that hurts the most). But I was pretty damn pleased that despite it all, I had managed to be sitting in that theater at that very moment.
Golubovic and company have presented only 3 films, each spaced six years apart, starting with Absolute Hundred in 2001. They are all taut and smart, with similar themes of men struggling to do the right thing under tremendously difficult odds. But each film's situation is unique, with complex interwoven relationships between numerous characters that are masterfully acted. This is exactly why I go to the Berlinale -- to see film from Eastern Europe that is unlikely to be commercially released. Serbia in particular is special; there seems to be a cabal of talent that has found a way to work collaboratively, unhurriedly, for as many years as it takes to construct extremely high quality film from the bottom up.
I compare their work to the Croatian film I saw on Saturday, Obrana I Zastita (A Stranger), which I found muted and lifeless (which admittedly may have been the point). My response to the Georgian film, Chemi Sanis Naketsi (A Fold in My Blanket), that opened the Panorama section was little better. It has an interesting Picnic-at-Hanging-Rock vibe but I found it too obscure and introspective to speak to this film freak from an admitedly very different culture. I can't argue with the young director's response to my question as to whether something can be too minimalist: he sees his work primarily as a work of art, and I am one to give artists tremendous leeway.
It's an interesting debate: what makes a brilliant cinema? And if cinema is brilliant, will it definitionally appeal to a broad international audience? We can examine such questions endlessly, but what I am looking for in a film is thoughtfulness coupled with a certain energy. I find it in both feature films and documentaries. It exposes the universality of the struggle of and for humanity in its infinitely varied forms. Turtles Can Fly. Breaking the Waves. Sophie's Choice. The Last Wave. Claire Denis' Chocolat. Grizzly Man. The Times of Harvey Milk.
I had the presence of mind, at least, to remember that this was a Serbian film, but I hadn't researched this particular offering. Klopka (reviewed here and here) is the film that first turned me into an avid follower of Serbian cinema, such that I now buy any Serbian film presented by the Berlinale, on the basis of its nationality alone. So I swallowed hard and bought a second nine-euro ticket (prices have risen by one euro this year) from someone selling an extra one.
The Berlinale master of ceremonies first introduced the director, from whose mouth came that magic word, Klopka, and the memory from 6 years before of its premier in that very same theater, the Delphi Filmpalast. Lo and behold, I found myself at the Berlinale premier of his third film (which has, by the way, recently also premiered at Sundance). I'm still not happy about those lost tickets, of course (it's not the 25 euros or so, but more the several hours standing in line to get them that hurts the most). But I was pretty damn pleased that despite it all, I had managed to be sitting in that theater at that very moment.
Golubovic and company have presented only 3 films, each spaced six years apart, starting with Absolute Hundred in 2001. They are all taut and smart, with similar themes of men struggling to do the right thing under tremendously difficult odds. But each film's situation is unique, with complex interwoven relationships between numerous characters that are masterfully acted. This is exactly why I go to the Berlinale -- to see film from Eastern Europe that is unlikely to be commercially released. Serbia in particular is special; there seems to be a cabal of talent that has found a way to work collaboratively, unhurriedly, for as many years as it takes to construct extremely high quality film from the bottom up.
I compare their work to the Croatian film I saw on Saturday, Obrana I Zastita (A Stranger), which I found muted and lifeless (which admittedly may have been the point). My response to the Georgian film, Chemi Sanis Naketsi (A Fold in My Blanket), that opened the Panorama section was little better. It has an interesting Picnic-at-Hanging-Rock vibe but I found it too obscure and introspective to speak to this film freak from an admitedly very different culture. I can't argue with the young director's response to my question as to whether something can be too minimalist: he sees his work primarily as a work of art, and I am one to give artists tremendous leeway.
It's an interesting debate: what makes a brilliant cinema? And if cinema is brilliant, will it definitionally appeal to a broad international audience? We can examine such questions endlessly, but what I am looking for in a film is thoughtfulness coupled with a certain energy. I find it in both feature films and documentaries. It exposes the universality of the struggle of and for humanity in its infinitely varied forms. Turtles Can Fly. Breaking the Waves. Sophie's Choice. The Last Wave. Claire Denis' Chocolat. Grizzly Man. The Times of Harvey Milk.
It's not much of a contest, as this is definitely not one of the better Berlinale years. But I will predict that Krugovi is the best film of 2013, just as Klopka was in 2007. My lost tickets be damned: now I can close my program only 5 days into the festival and go home happy.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
The Size Post - Part III: Le Petit
I happened upon an ancient (2006) BBC report on penis size in the subcontinent here and wanted to add it to my Size Post series. It ends with typically trite penile-centric quote at the end, "It's not size, it's what you do with it that matters". Yawn (see my previous comments on the topic).
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Sex Tip #10
I understand that it's not for everyone to be a dogmatic anti-monogamist crusader. So I've been trying to think how my readers can contribute to changing the system in a modest way. My previous post ended with a gentle suggestion to my fellow females, to give These Men the benefit of the doubt. After all, we have to keep in mind that the poor dears are dealing with a stream of pornographic images (PI) pumping through their brains on something like, what do I know, a millisecond basis... [my original PI post is here]. Whereas even Katchita, who definitely rates as a red-blooded American female, doesn't experience more than half a dozen on her best days and sometimes can go for days with nary a one.
It certainly never crossed my mind when I started, but over the years I've gotten used to men seeing my blog as an open invitation to send me dirty pix of their pride and joy or their favorite Internet porn or even once a personal home video (!) It finally dawned on me that they're simply aching for the opportunity to show off their special friends. Analyzing this phenomenon in my Katchita way, I began to think of my blog as providing a certain outlet for men who have a strong need to express themselves sexually but are forbidden to do so in many ways by law, and in many more by societal censure.
I'm personally a long way from the point where a flasher, for example, could elicit more from me than a giggle and a cursory look-see (on the off chance he's packing something interesting there inside his trench coat). But I can remember a time in my life when that would have been terribly intimidating or even frightening. An extreme example perhaps, but You Men really need to remember that most women don't have the PI problem. They find it not only extremely difficult to understand how prevalent it is in your lives, but also really quite uncomfortable to even contemplate. Sort of like a flasher. Not to mention that some have suffered, sometimes terribly, at the hands of your fellow Men's Club members.
You already have a feel for this, of course, but for some reason many of you still tend to write women off as frigid bitches when we slam you for throwing your PI issues in our faces. You see, to many of us, it seems crass and Neanderthal to give us even the slightest inkling of how much you would like to drag us by the hair back to your caves and slam us with your mighty clubs till the sun comes up. We don't like it, not in the least... or, at least not until the appropriate moment!
Many of us women love innuendo and subtlety. It's a sign that there might be some depth hiding somewhere buried inside the big ape. Don't despair, though, because there often IS an appropriate moment to show your Neanderthal side, as I'm sure some of you have figured out. Try to think of it as part of the thrill of the hunt to get the timing just right.
Monday, October 22, 2012
The (Anti) Monogamy Post, Part III
It's becoming increasingly obvious where this is going. So, for those of you who are pretty much reading this blog for one thing and one thing only (and to whom I'm increasingly catering), I've added a new label, "Non-Monogamy". Now, between this and the "Sex Tips", you can quickly and easily access what may be the best of Sexless Berlin.
Non-monogamous is what I've been, I suppose, since having something akin to a coming-out experience in my late 20s. Recently, however, I've felt more and more that it's necessary to be militantly anti-monogamous, so as to continue to chip away at this monolith of monogamy constantly bearing down on us. This blog has become almost exclusively my attempt, directed at both women and men, to do just that. With sexism, misogyny, sexual harrassment, sexual abuse, rape and worst of all, pedophilia, so rampant in so many societies, I know we can do better.
As I am not in the least inclined to force my beliefs on others, it's incumbent upon me to recognize that the last thing that many of the people out there, who have suffered various traumas thanks to the monogamist monolith, would want is something that implies that they are responsible for servicing more people! It's tricky, you see. I have only two tools, it would seem: my eloquent (ahem!) writing and my ability to lead by example.
For those of you out there who've escaped serious damage and are perhaps willing to be swayed (and here I am speaking to women because most men, whether they admit it or not, would really prefer non-monogamy), how do I begin? An Email exchange with a young and beautiful friend of mine brought me back to this topic which I've been mulling over in my head. The question is: why do beautiful women so often castigate men who find them attractive? It's quite simple: in our twenties the attention can become overwhelming, as I've blogged before. And don't forget how intensely our societies trivialize women, reducing us to nothing more than our physical appearances. The whole thing becomes at best confusing and at worst damaging. Is it any wonder we get to the point where we wish we could make it all just go away?
Let's imagine instead a society where the important thing is not looks (or possessions or prestige or power), but sharing. This is the world that Sex at Dawn envisions for us, where sharing includes everything, down to our own bodies. Imagine what it might be like for you to be most valued for your desire and ability to contribute to and support the other members of your tribe or group. Now imagine all the pathologies that would do away with.
Given that we women cannot just flick a switch and enter this alternate world, how might we begin to change things, little by little? Let's start by trying to just assume innocent until proven guilty. After all, does it take a woman more than three minutes to figure out if a man, in addition to being attracted to her beauty, is interested in her mind/character/accomplishments/personal power? I think not.
As a first step then, we can give These Men a chance. After all, how easy can it be to talk to a beautiful, self-assured woman? How many times are men cruelly shot down just because they try? Shoot them down for being shallow, sexist, fascist, unintelligent, incurious, unthoughtful, etc., etc. But not for simply daring to talk to someone who appeals to them.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Best of Berlin´s Craigslist 2012
Hats off to you, Honest Man, for the most original Berlin CL personal ad of the year (reproduced in its entirety below). Just one note: girls and girlfriends are for little boys. If you want to learn to be a man, you´ll need a real woman to play this game!
Honest man seeks faithless slut - 29
Honest man seeks faithless slut - 29
Datum: 2012-09-04, 5:17PM CEST
jgnrt-3249189843@pers.craigslist.org
It occurred to me recently that I've been pretty lucky in my past
relationships -- not incredibly lucky, mind you, being 29 and single,
but lucky enough to have avoided most of the things that people call
"relationship drama": infidelity, lying, emotional manipulation,
on-again-off-again nonsense, and so on. I've never cheated, never told
someone I hate them when I really love them (or vice versa), hardly ever
even raised my voice. People who should know tell me that hate sex and
revenge sex and things like that are great, but I've never done them and
never even been motivated to try. You know, the kinds of relationships
that people have in novels and films and things. As a result I kind of
feel like I'm missing out on something.
So, if you're the type of girl who thinks escalation is a good solution
to conflict and mind games are a good way to get what you want, if you
can't resist hurting people to keep them from getting too close, if
you're familiar with using your body to get things you want, if the one
thing you want above all is attention, if you're incapable of respecting
anyone who respects you, if you still sleep with your exes even though
you can't stand them, if the path of your love life has been a trail of
broken hearts (yours and theirs)...
Be my girlfriend.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Laying it Bare
Let´s strip it down to the bone, shall we, now? Or in this case, the bare flesh. Because if we envision our premodern ancestors dutifully copulating in a cheerfully egalitarian free-for-all, a la Sex at Dawn, then eroticism, pornography, fetishism, etc. all seem rather beside the point. What I mean to say is that all of these elaborate constructs (which I´m fond of referring to as pathologies) around sex may have developed strictly because of our extensive limitations on our own sexual activity.
Now then, do men have stunted sex drives? Well, why wouldn´t they? If they really let loose [1], they´re liable to be accused of being the worst sorts of pigs. Or, what must be even worse for the poor dears, they become so anxious about the whole thing, that they´re unable to (ahem) get it up in the first place.
Do women have stunted sex drives? We certainly do. After all, we spend half of our time wondering if he´ll respect us in the morning, not to mention agonizing as to whether he´ll call us back the day after tomorrow. It makes it pretty damn hard to just let go, I can tell you that.
But I digress, as my point here is to take up the issue of eroticism, by which I imagine Fulcanelli means something like diaphanous negligées, as opposed to interracial 3-on-1´s. I hardly need point out, I´m sure, that fishnet stockings didn´t figure in the cheerful orgy to which I´m referring above, likely preceded by a successful hunt and happy bellies filled with antelope.
Let´s turn to the root of the word. Eros, the Greek god of love, has with time, commonly been understood to represent physical love. The erotic, then, rather than just relating to love in general, is thought of as that which causes sexual desire. Well, pornography certain generates plenty of that, wouldn´t you agree? Still, Fulcanelli sees porn as different from his image of a woman reclining in beautiful lingerie. Wouldn´t this, however, have been just as pornographic to our Victorian ancestors, who apparently believed a woman should submit to her husband in the dark, under the covers, while remaining clothed in white from neck to toes?
Going back to our ancestors, wasn´t sex (as I´ve argued before) just as natural as tearing into that antelope together? And if I were truly a modern liberated woman, wouldn´t I be as free to invite you into my bed as to have a coffee with you? I could put on a diaphanous negligée first... or a long white nightgown... as you like!
[1] Obviously here I am referring to consensual sexual activity among adults.
Now then, do men have stunted sex drives? Well, why wouldn´t they? If they really let loose [1], they´re liable to be accused of being the worst sorts of pigs. Or, what must be even worse for the poor dears, they become so anxious about the whole thing, that they´re unable to (ahem) get it up in the first place.
Do women have stunted sex drives? We certainly do. After all, we spend half of our time wondering if he´ll respect us in the morning, not to mention agonizing as to whether he´ll call us back the day after tomorrow. It makes it pretty damn hard to just let go, I can tell you that.
But I digress, as my point here is to take up the issue of eroticism, by which I imagine Fulcanelli means something like diaphanous negligées, as opposed to interracial 3-on-1´s. I hardly need point out, I´m sure, that fishnet stockings didn´t figure in the cheerful orgy to which I´m referring above, likely preceded by a successful hunt and happy bellies filled with antelope.
Let´s turn to the root of the word. Eros, the Greek god of love, has with time, commonly been understood to represent physical love. The erotic, then, rather than just relating to love in general, is thought of as that which causes sexual desire. Well, pornography certain generates plenty of that, wouldn´t you agree? Still, Fulcanelli sees porn as different from his image of a woman reclining in beautiful lingerie. Wouldn´t this, however, have been just as pornographic to our Victorian ancestors, who apparently believed a woman should submit to her husband in the dark, under the covers, while remaining clothed in white from neck to toes?
Going back to our ancestors, wasn´t sex (as I´ve argued before) just as natural as tearing into that antelope together? And if I were truly a modern liberated woman, wouldn´t I be as free to invite you into my bed as to have a coffee with you? I could put on a diaphanous negligée first... or a long white nightgown... as you like!
[1] Obviously here I am referring to consensual sexual activity among adults.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
The Pornography Post
Now I ask you, given the possibility of a steady supply of sex from multiple willing partners, how much time do you suppose men would spend wanking in front of their computers? Picture this scenario if you will: ¨No, Miranda and/or Mandy, I couldn´t possibly service you right here and now as I have to go and watch for the 50th time that money shot where the Italian Stallion hits the voluptuous redhead square in the eye¨. NO. WRONG. AIN´T GONNA HAPPEN.
Pornography is a perfect example of the damage caused by monogamy. With so little sex happening and with men under pain of punishment for inappropriate sexual behavior, ranging from social ostracization to prison to a lifetime on the sex-offender´s list, what are the poor creatures to do? I happen to think that them spending an hour or two a day watching flat-chested blondes ride well-hung dwarfs is a reasonable way to keep their hormones under control. I also happen to think that a lot of monogamous relationships should give grateful thanks to pornography because I can hardly imagine how they would survive without it.
What do I as a woman think of porn? I think it is horrifyingly male-centered. I think it is frequently yawningly repetitive and coldly plastic. I think there is no doubt that it commodifies women. I think it takes little account of women´s desire, sexuality and physiology, giving men next to no idea of how to interact with us, much less of our needs or how to please us.
I also on occasion enjoy it, particularly as a window into the desires of the men I´m involved with. I even believe some porn is quite good, though it´s an unfortunately small minority. Recently I´ve thought about asking for reader participation, to send me porn clips where they believe the women are actually climaxing (not the usual faking) and (even more rare) where the film-maker doesn´t immediately cut away from a woman´s climax. So what do you think, Sexless Berlin readers? Do you have some good quality porn to share with me? If so, post a comment with the link in the form of a URL. And thanks to Anonymous whose comment prompted this post.
Pornography is a perfect example of the damage caused by monogamy. With so little sex happening and with men under pain of punishment for inappropriate sexual behavior, ranging from social ostracization to prison to a lifetime on the sex-offender´s list, what are the poor creatures to do? I happen to think that them spending an hour or two a day watching flat-chested blondes ride well-hung dwarfs is a reasonable way to keep their hormones under control. I also happen to think that a lot of monogamous relationships should give grateful thanks to pornography because I can hardly imagine how they would survive without it.
What do I as a woman think of porn? I think it is horrifyingly male-centered. I think it is frequently yawningly repetitive and coldly plastic. I think there is no doubt that it commodifies women. I think it takes little account of women´s desire, sexuality and physiology, giving men next to no idea of how to interact with us, much less of our needs or how to please us.
I also on occasion enjoy it, particularly as a window into the desires of the men I´m involved with. I even believe some porn is quite good, though it´s an unfortunately small minority. Recently I´ve thought about asking for reader participation, to send me porn clips where they believe the women are actually climaxing (not the usual faking) and (even more rare) where the film-maker doesn´t immediately cut away from a woman´s climax. So what do you think, Sexless Berlin readers? Do you have some good quality porn to share with me? If so, post a comment with the link in the form of a URL. And thanks to Anonymous whose comment prompted this post.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Sex Tip #9
Here's how it works, grrls. In order to avoid having to constantly massage his ego, you need to look for a self-confident man. But keep in mind that men are self-confident for a number of reasons. They're tall. They're good-looking. They're rich. Or they're powerful. It's a safe bet that these specimens should be discarded immediately, if you, like me, want a man who's good in bed. Look for the ones who, despite having none of the above qualities, are still self-confident. It will mean they may have that special talent you're seeking; at a minimum they'll be worth trying out (refer back to Sex Tip #8 for screening techniques).
The One I Like Best isn't tall. He isn't good-looking. He isn't rich and he definitely isn't powerful. But yesterday as I was walking in Lavapiés thinking about when I'll finally get back to Berlin to see him again, some guy walking by broke out into a passionate piropo praising my looks. It must have been written all over my face: man alive does The One I Like Best keep me going back for more.
The One I Like Best isn't tall. He isn't good-looking. He isn't rich and he definitely isn't powerful. But yesterday as I was walking in Lavapiés thinking about when I'll finally get back to Berlin to see him again, some guy walking by broke out into a passionate piropo praising my looks. It must have been written all over my face: man alive does The One I Like Best keep me going back for more.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Bad Boys Ravish Our Young Girls, But Violet Gives Willingly
I'm as tired as any woman out there of being treated by men as a
sexual commodity to be begged, borrowed or stolen. I'm also tired of
giving freely to men who give nothing in return or (the worst) act as
if they've gotten away with something. But unlike most women, perhaps,
I don't blame it on their base animal natures. [I myself am hardly
immune when it comes to a base animal nature.] No, for me it became
much easier to get along in this world when I was able to ascribe the
moronic behavior of These Men to the shitty socialization to which this
society subjects us all.
Capitalism has taught us women that our sexuality is a desired commodity to be carefully rationed. In contrast, men are conditioned to try to get something (booty, in this case) for free. We all know what an extremely disagreeable tension this causes. As an extreme example, let's look at what happens in a sex club. Women get in free most places in Berlin or, in Madrid, pay at most pay 10 euros (with a cocktail typically thrown in). Men pay five or more times this price, unless accompanied by a woman, which generally at least halves the entry. It's hardly surprising when inside, many behave like animals -- after all, they've paid for the right.
What sort of attitude does this engender in women? Getting into a club for free (the eternal ladies' nights) gives us women the rather smug feeling that we're getting away with something. I'm not sure many of us stop to think how we're being sexually commodified. Well then, and the men? I imagine they're very aware of the true cost of a "lay" -- so many euros to get in, so many minutes of cheap lines and stupid small talk before a woman loosens up, so many drinks to get her well lubricated (pun unintended), and, above all, a tangible chance of failure in the end. Male readers, feel free to weigh in on this topic, but if I were you, I think I'd find it frustrating and unfair. Even so, you know those clubs, don't you, as you seem to show up as if on cue, within a half-hour of the close of ladies' night hours?
Sigh. Does it really need to be this way? The insane hormonal rollercoaster on which I currently find myself tells me clearly I am meant to get as much of that "good thang" as I possibly can before my time's up. My intellect tells me that I, and women like me, are prisoners of this system just as much as men are, and it will always be extremely difficult or impossible for us to freely and unselfconsciously act on and enjoy our own sexuality.
Given the personality with which I've been saddled, it really is so hard for me to give up without a fight. The Pirate says, "there you go, moving forward, creating new imprints and conditioning - consciously, not just the random hubris of a mechanical system of lowest common denominators". Guilty as charged! I keep thinking and puzzling and pushing the envelope pretty much just as far as I dare. And that's because there's a reason that's much, much bigger than just myself.
In this regard, the other week I consulted my dearly beloved Ex, who was visiting me in Madrid and like me seems to have spent the last few years observing first-hand some really horrendous sexual pathology. My question to him was how much pathology is due to this mentality of sexuality as some sort of precious limited resource, instead of something that should be as free and abundant as the air we breathe. Because here's the crux of the matter: if eschewing our shitty socialization would get rid of even a fraction of the sexual abuse of children and women, shouldn't we advocate it? Militantly? I really rather think the answer is yes.
Capitalism has taught us women that our sexuality is a desired commodity to be carefully rationed. In contrast, men are conditioned to try to get something (booty, in this case) for free. We all know what an extremely disagreeable tension this causes. As an extreme example, let's look at what happens in a sex club. Women get in free most places in Berlin or, in Madrid, pay at most pay 10 euros (with a cocktail typically thrown in). Men pay five or more times this price, unless accompanied by a woman, which generally at least halves the entry. It's hardly surprising when inside, many behave like animals -- after all, they've paid for the right.
What sort of attitude does this engender in women? Getting into a club for free (the eternal ladies' nights) gives us women the rather smug feeling that we're getting away with something. I'm not sure many of us stop to think how we're being sexually commodified. Well then, and the men? I imagine they're very aware of the true cost of a "lay" -- so many euros to get in, so many minutes of cheap lines and stupid small talk before a woman loosens up, so many drinks to get her well lubricated (pun unintended), and, above all, a tangible chance of failure in the end. Male readers, feel free to weigh in on this topic, but if I were you, I think I'd find it frustrating and unfair. Even so, you know those clubs, don't you, as you seem to show up as if on cue, within a half-hour of the close of ladies' night hours?
Sigh. Does it really need to be this way? The insane hormonal rollercoaster on which I currently find myself tells me clearly I am meant to get as much of that "good thang" as I possibly can before my time's up. My intellect tells me that I, and women like me, are prisoners of this system just as much as men are, and it will always be extremely difficult or impossible for us to freely and unselfconsciously act on and enjoy our own sexuality.
Given the personality with which I've been saddled, it really is so hard for me to give up without a fight. The Pirate says, "there you go, moving forward, creating new imprints and conditioning - consciously, not just the random hubris of a mechanical system of lowest common denominators". Guilty as charged! I keep thinking and puzzling and pushing the envelope pretty much just as far as I dare. And that's because there's a reason that's much, much bigger than just myself.
In this regard, the other week I consulted my dearly beloved Ex, who was visiting me in Madrid and like me seems to have spent the last few years observing first-hand some really horrendous sexual pathology. My question to him was how much pathology is due to this mentality of sexuality as some sort of precious limited resource, instead of something that should be as free and abundant as the air we breathe. Because here's the crux of the matter: if eschewing our shitty socialization would get rid of even a fraction of the sexual abuse of children and women, shouldn't we advocate it? Militantly? I really rather think the answer is yes.
Friday, May 4, 2012
Mother Nature
As Sarah Hrdy puts it in her excellent book, after which I've named this blog post (see an excerpt here), "Underlying tensions between males striving for quantity and females for quality (a simplification I will clarify later) are as old as humanity." Yeah, so, we've heard plenty of times that it's men's
evolutionary imperative to sow wild oats and women's to keep the home
fires burning. After all, this dichotomy is one strong reason for our evolutionary success. I've done enough science in my life, plus this blog is supposed to be fun... So I'll leave the long-winded arguments to people like Hrdy and Ryan and Jathá. I'm here to say that there's substantial truth in the wild oats/home fires model. But also that there's rather more similarity between the sexes than our shitty socialization has led us to believe.
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Let me turn to a little anecdote
based on my own ancient personal history. The first time I
lived in Nicaragua was at the high point of the illegal U.S. contra
war. Eugene Hassenfus, the arms-running pilot who was
free-lancing for the CIA, was shot down in November 1986, at which
time I was working on farmerworker health and safety for the
Nicaraguan Ministry of Health in León. I watched up close
and personal how that single event blew the lid off the Iran-Contra
scandal. Given my tender age at the time, I was as young as
many of the young Nicaraguan men who served in the Sandinista army army in the '80s. The consequences of that became very clear to me
during my second stint in Nicaragua, 1999-2000, when there was
clearly a shortage of men my age. Estimates of casualties
during the contra war range from 50 to 200K, in a country of 4
million (albeit with some 1 million living abroad thanks to extreme
economic desperation). The war was devastating and by and large it
was young men who died.
Now bear with me as I recount another
anecdote, about the bar on the south side of town where my lover
during my second stint in León would sometimes take me. According to
him, everyone knew about this place, where married men who take their
liaisons to lunch before packing them off to one of the sex hotels on
the bypass for a little afternoon delight. I remember once
spotting a journalist friend of mine there who I knew in his public
life (meaning I also knew his wife, father-in-law and children), with
a woman who was definitively not his wife. With both of these
men later on, after I worked out the math, I tried out my argument.
For simplicity's sake, it went roughly this way: for our generation
there was a shortage of some 100,000 men in a population of 1
million, meaning there were about 4 men to every 5 women.
Now Nicaragua tacitly accepted, or
even benignly encouraged, men's "true nature", so I spent a
fair amount of time trying to puzzle out exactly who all these women
might be, that were providing the abundant cads and bounders the
opportunity to sow all those wild oats? Because I had a hard time
coming up with more than a ratio of about 1 and a quarter women per
man. I presented the only three possible options I could
see. First, there were a handful of single women happily
servicing far more men than those men were servicing women. Second,
there were a lot of prostitutes busy servicing all those Nicaraguan
men. Or finally, those men's own wives were giving them a darn good
run for their money.
This brings me to an interesting
digression, which is that Giles Tremlett in Ghosts of Spain cites the
statistic that one of every 17 Spanish men has been to a prostitute.
And this number pales with respect to the estimate of 39% in this horrifying article my ex recently sent me. I can feel
a blog post detailing the pathology of sex in Spain coming on,
but for now I'll limit myself to saying that my current housemate,
who is a non-monogamist of the strongest sort and the first time I
have thought I could be friends, actual friends (!), with a Spanish
man, tells me, "en España, no follamos" -- in Spain we just
don't screw.
Returning to the state of affairs in Sandinista Nicaragua, I can guarantee you that men, even if they
wanted to, just didn't have the money to do much patronizing of
prostitutes. And though I'm sure there were some happy single
girls in circulation, it seemed to me always that there were more unhappy ones who
wouldn't have much of anything at all to do with these men. So you see, I always
ended up back at the conclusion that the girlfriends and wives, no matter how sedate and even virginal they seemed, had to have been up to their own tricks. Needless to say, these men
didn't care too much for my arguments!
Although I've believed since my late
20s that I myself am not monogamous, I think that gradually
throughout my 30s, it became clear to me that humans in
general probably aren't. Books like Open Marriage and The
Ethical Slut in my 20s, which seemed to imply that non-monogamy was a
lifestyle choice were replaced by The Third Chimpanzee and Mother Nature, that seemed to imply it is a biological imperative. In my circle of
intellectuals, I've initiated a debate as to whether we can separate our true
nature from our socialization. I think yes; but many of them
think no. When I asked D. if we have fatally lost our way, she said "We
have ..., indeed. And we may be very old (or dead!) when the
old order dies."
Now the problem is, I'm an American.
You know: land of the free, home of the brave. This means I'm constitutionally incapable of accepting that there's no solution to this problem. And so I'll just have to keep
chewing away at the whole puzzle of what needs to be done. Stay tuned to Sexless Berlin. Although the blog posts may seem to come far too infrequently for my biggest fans, I'd like to think I'm delivering far more quality than quantity these days.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Just In from Chocolate Guy
This link and these words from Chocolate Guy: "It's even penetrated as far as the Guardian! That must be progress, or at least a pun." It's not just the Bay Area any more...
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Sex Tip #8
Slow Poke, who's turned into my number one fan, is out there in cyberspace cracking the whip again, so let me just take the easy way out and slap up this post, which I found nearly finished in my drafts folder. It takes us back to one of my favorite topics: screening out the duds.
At a party this past New Year's, A., who'd recently rolled out a new on-line profile, was asking, "is it too much to ask that they be able to put a coherent sentence together?". I responded, "on the contrary, it's absolutely critical." Because a man who can't write at least competently is never going to have the brain power to keep sex interesting beyond the handful of times it takes for the novelty to wear off. And maybe some of you men have figured out that the converse is true, because, incredible as it may seem, some of you actually say you want to bag a thinking woman. This, then, is where on-line dating really lends itself to screening, because typically by the second or third Email, you'll know just about as much as you need to know about the brain-power involved.d
However, on occasion even Katchita, intrepid on-line maven that she is, meets men in "normal" contexts -- at gatherings of friends, film festivals, even the pool. In that case I generally prefer exchanging Email addresses instead of phone numbers, so as to get back to the cyberforum where I'm most comfortable going through the preliminaries. I then attempt to gently introduce the fact that I blog, and that my blog is not exactly the typical "look, Mom, here's what I've been doing on my European adventure". If leafing through Sexless Berlin doesn't send a man running in the opposite direction, then it's most likely his writing skills that will win him a chance at an in-person encounter.
Now, I've complained more than enough about pretty boys and the well-endowed (but still never miss a chance to link to the pertinent post here). Hopefully I've made it clear that a woman can only expect them to treat her right if they have a kink unusual enough that most of the feminine persuasion are disinclined to play along. Still, there are no guarantees, so let me introduce a further technique that serves me really quite well. And that is to make at least the first couple of meetings play sessions.
What do I mean by play sessions? I mean, if I could be so blunt, that I highly recommend avoiding what most of us understand by the F-word. The biggest mistake a woman can make on a trial run with the well-endowed is to allow him to go at her with his (ahem) battering ram. If that's the only trick in his repertoire, believe me, you might as well find out immediately, before you find yourself lying on your back stifling a yawn after a scant handful of encounters. I suggest a moratorium on penetration for at least the first couple of sessions. The other, shall we say, tools at his disposal, are more than enough, trust me, to judge both the man's inclination to please you, the level of sexual rapport between the two of you, and his inventiveness.
The less well-endowed and those who have occasional problems with, well, maintaining stiffness, are, in my opinion, not to be immediately discarded and this screening technique is designed to give them a chance. They will have learned compensatory techniques that can be very well appreciated by the experienced woman who likes her sex served up as a mixture of multiple different courses, like a fine meal. To all of my readers, male and female, I would say, think of it this way: the old in-and-out is best left as an occasional dessert.
At a party this past New Year's, A., who'd recently rolled out a new on-line profile, was asking, "is it too much to ask that they be able to put a coherent sentence together?". I responded, "on the contrary, it's absolutely critical." Because a man who can't write at least competently is never going to have the brain power to keep sex interesting beyond the handful of times it takes for the novelty to wear off. And maybe some of you men have figured out that the converse is true, because, incredible as it may seem, some of you actually say you want to bag a thinking woman. This, then, is where on-line dating really lends itself to screening, because typically by the second or third Email, you'll know just about as much as you need to know about the brain-power involved.d
However, on occasion even Katchita, intrepid on-line maven that she is, meets men in "normal" contexts -- at gatherings of friends, film festivals, even the pool. In that case I generally prefer exchanging Email addresses instead of phone numbers, so as to get back to the cyberforum where I'm most comfortable going through the preliminaries. I then attempt to gently introduce the fact that I blog, and that my blog is not exactly the typical "look, Mom, here's what I've been doing on my European adventure". If leafing through Sexless Berlin doesn't send a man running in the opposite direction, then it's most likely his writing skills that will win him a chance at an in-person encounter.
Now, I've complained more than enough about pretty boys and the well-endowed (but still never miss a chance to link to the pertinent post here). Hopefully I've made it clear that a woman can only expect them to treat her right if they have a kink unusual enough that most of the feminine persuasion are disinclined to play along. Still, there are no guarantees, so let me introduce a further technique that serves me really quite well. And that is to make at least the first couple of meetings play sessions.
What do I mean by play sessions? I mean, if I could be so blunt, that I highly recommend avoiding what most of us understand by the F-word. The biggest mistake a woman can make on a trial run with the well-endowed is to allow him to go at her with his (ahem) battering ram. If that's the only trick in his repertoire, believe me, you might as well find out immediately, before you find yourself lying on your back stifling a yawn after a scant handful of encounters. I suggest a moratorium on penetration for at least the first couple of sessions. The other, shall we say, tools at his disposal, are more than enough, trust me, to judge both the man's inclination to please you, the level of sexual rapport between the two of you, and his inventiveness.
The less well-endowed and those who have occasional problems with, well, maintaining stiffness, are, in my opinion, not to be immediately discarded and this screening technique is designed to give them a chance. They will have learned compensatory techniques that can be very well appreciated by the experienced woman who likes her sex served up as a mixture of multiple different courses, like a fine meal. To all of my readers, male and female, I would say, think of it this way: the old in-and-out is best left as an occasional dessert.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Berlinale 2012 Wrap-Up
All in all, folks, this sadly wasn't a great Berlinale year. I felt fairly ambivalent about most of what I saw; two were really pretty bad, and only two were really good. So how nice is it to be able to say that my favorite film, Unter Männer: Schwul in der DDR, was the documentary to which The Director himself invited me, along with the Pirate?! Documentaries are tricky, aren't they, because they don't have the benefit that feature films do of providing (often strictly gratuitous) entertainment. But a good documentary will take us places we can never go on our own, giving us glimpses of people we can never be. And that is, after all, one of the main reasons I'm a film addict (see here).
The material for Unter Männer came from writer and co-director Ringo Rösener. But I'm guessing it was The Director's masterful editing that gives the film its energy. It must be quite a challenge to build various disconnected interviews into a well-paced and cohesive product. This film fully captured, for me, the wistfulness of lost opportunities. It'll be opening in Berlin on April 26th and not only do I highly recommend it, but I'm really looking forward to a second viewing.
Orchim Le-rega (Off White Lies) in Generation 14+, one of my favorite Berlinale sections, was a really tough look at a vulnerable young Israeli-American girl's coming of age. Even for such a well-worked-over theme, the plot felt fresh, the pacing energetic and the acting was really top-notch. It seems to be making the festival rounds but I'm guessing that, sadly, it won't be picked up and distributed internationally.
I also quite liked Sekret, from the same Polish director who impressed me last year (see here). This is the film that couples his revolutionary ideas on shooting with good solid subject matter -- the Art Spiegelmann portrayal of Polish complicity with, even furthering, of Nazi Anti-Semetism. It's subtle and spare, ambivalent and thought-provoking (just the way I like my film). The Director, however, went to see it on my recommendation and walked out.
The top film not to see is unfortunately Kuma, the Panorama opener. Despite its promising set-up, a bigamous marriage hidden within a large Turkish family in Vienna, the plot somehow fizzled into yet another flat, unidimensional portrayal of the issue of family honor. Sigh. E. and I had managed to score tickets for the opening and it was edifying to watch the audience struggle with the question of exactly how this film went wrong. To this I'd add the muddled and unedifying Hemel [note to self for future: avoid any subject of a full-page ad in the Berlinale program].
Weirdly, this was the first year I chose two films that went on to win awards; both politically important. First was Diaz: Don't Clean Up this Blood, which, in its punishingly unceasing portrayal of violence, was just really hard to watch. I also saw Tony Gatlif's Indignados which I'm guessing will prove to be too obscure for most film goers but that resonated with me given my four years off-and-on in Spain. I'll end with reviews from fellow Berlin blogger Denise, who, writing here, also reviewed Indignados and names Call Me Kuchu her best Berlinale documentary to-date.
In addition to what I've mentioned here, several Egyptian documentaries were continually sold out, plus I ran out of time for The Summit, a documentary addressing the 2000 Genoa protests. But no matter, DocumentaMadrid will be here in less than two months!
The material for Unter Männer came from writer and co-director Ringo Rösener. But I'm guessing it was The Director's masterful editing that gives the film its energy. It must be quite a challenge to build various disconnected interviews into a well-paced and cohesive product. This film fully captured, for me, the wistfulness of lost opportunities. It'll be opening in Berlin on April 26th and not only do I highly recommend it, but I'm really looking forward to a second viewing.
Orchim Le-rega (Off White Lies) in Generation 14+, one of my favorite Berlinale sections, was a really tough look at a vulnerable young Israeli-American girl's coming of age. Even for such a well-worked-over theme, the plot felt fresh, the pacing energetic and the acting was really top-notch. It seems to be making the festival rounds but I'm guessing that, sadly, it won't be picked up and distributed internationally.
I also quite liked Sekret, from the same Polish director who impressed me last year (see here). This is the film that couples his revolutionary ideas on shooting with good solid subject matter -- the Art Spiegelmann portrayal of Polish complicity with, even furthering, of Nazi Anti-Semetism. It's subtle and spare, ambivalent and thought-provoking (just the way I like my film). The Director, however, went to see it on my recommendation and walked out.
The top film not to see is unfortunately Kuma, the Panorama opener. Despite its promising set-up, a bigamous marriage hidden within a large Turkish family in Vienna, the plot somehow fizzled into yet another flat, unidimensional portrayal of the issue of family honor. Sigh. E. and I had managed to score tickets for the opening and it was edifying to watch the audience struggle with the question of exactly how this film went wrong. To this I'd add the muddled and unedifying Hemel [note to self for future: avoid any subject of a full-page ad in the Berlinale program].
Weirdly, this was the first year I chose two films that went on to win awards; both politically important. First was Diaz: Don't Clean Up this Blood, which, in its punishingly unceasing portrayal of violence, was just really hard to watch. I also saw Tony Gatlif's Indignados which I'm guessing will prove to be too obscure for most film goers but that resonated with me given my four years off-and-on in Spain. I'll end with reviews from fellow Berlin blogger Denise, who, writing here, also reviewed Indignados and names Call Me Kuchu her best Berlinale documentary to-date.
In addition to what I've mentioned here, several Egyptian documentaries were continually sold out, plus I ran out of time for The Summit, a documentary addressing the 2000 Genoa protests. But no matter, DocumentaMadrid will be here in less than two months!
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Berlinale 2012: Hot Tip
Talented Berlin director Markus Stein, of Balkan Traffic fame (my review is here) brings us Unter Männern: Schwul in der DDR (Among Men: Gay in East Germany). This film is already getting a fair bit of attention in Germany (for example, see this review).
Run, don't walk, to your local Berlinale ticket office (at the Postdamer Platz Arkaden, Kino International or Haus der Berlinerfestspiel), to buy a ticket (offered up to three days in advance of each screening). The options are Monday the 13th @ 5 PM, Tuesday the 14th @ 12 noon and Friday the 17th @ 5 PM.
I am absolutely thrilled to report that at this, my sixth Berlinale, I will be the invited guest of said director, in his Tuesday screening. This is roughly as thrilling to me as when noted New York Times best-selling author Christopher Ryan commented on my blog back in August!
Run, don't walk, to your local Berlinale ticket office (at the Postdamer Platz Arkaden, Kino International or Haus der Berlinerfestspiel), to buy a ticket (offered up to three days in advance of each screening). The options are Monday the 13th @ 5 PM, Tuesday the 14th @ 12 noon and Friday the 17th @ 5 PM.
I am absolutely thrilled to report that at this, my sixth Berlinale, I will be the invited guest of said director, in his Tuesday screening. This is roughly as thrilling to me as when noted New York Times best-selling author Christopher Ryan commented on my blog back in August!
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Thin Ice
Last Thursday night, The Gallego invited me to his laser/synthesizer show near Potsdamer Platz in a beautiful old building with a great view overlooking a large reflecting pool. Looking out, I couldn't help notice someone playing on the ice, running and sliding, and I thought of my ice skates which are still in California, probably rusting away. I slipped out after the show during the schmoozing-with-fans routine and went to check out the ice. It was maybe a foot and a half deep and frozen completely solid, so off I went, skidding and sliding across, following the ice skate marks. What I somehow didn't notice in the cold darkness of -8 degrees Celsius was that something had changed, and suddenly I tumbled into knee-deep water. I had enough momentum that I had to put my hands down to avoid falling and ended up soaked up to my upper thighs and past my elbows.
The cold didn't hit immediately, bundled up as I was with three layers of clothes. But every American read To Build a Fire in high school, and we know that there is only one option in such cases: to keep moving, quickly, definitively. So I hustled back onto solid ice and off to the Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn, passing three second-generation teenaged boys (clearly of immigrant extraction for the liveliness with which they were laughing their heads off and calling out to me). But I had no time to interact; after the relative warmth of the S-Bahn, I would have to deal with a tram that runs only every ten minutes. As (bad) luck would have it, that tram was just pulling away as I exited the S-Bahn station, so I struck out on foot, covering 3 stations until the next one arrived.
Life, in my case, has been something like that reflecting pool -- solid ice for the first quarter century, then an ever-increasing series of cold, hard dumps into reality. Said reality has been difficult of late: my oldest friend from California murdered just a few months ago in Mexico... me turning out to be not so special to that special someone... and, unbelievably, my oldest friend in Berlin kidnapped by pirates in Somalia a couple of weeks ago.
I made it back to the Lively German's place where I was house-sitting, coat frozen into a solid sheet of ice up to my waist, boots squishing out water that hadn't frozen, solely due to the warmth robbed from my body. It was into the shower with me, feet too numb to feel the warm water for a good five minutes, thighs beet red with cold, sensation slowly returning, and with sensation, thoughts. I put my thoughts down here, on electronic paper, because they are so sad, and sad people just don't seem to move fast enough, before the ice finally closes over their heads.
The cold didn't hit immediately, bundled up as I was with three layers of clothes. But every American read To Build a Fire in high school, and we know that there is only one option in such cases: to keep moving, quickly, definitively. So I hustled back onto solid ice and off to the Potsdamer Platz S-Bahn, passing three second-generation teenaged boys (clearly of immigrant extraction for the liveliness with which they were laughing their heads off and calling out to me). But I had no time to interact; after the relative warmth of the S-Bahn, I would have to deal with a tram that runs only every ten minutes. As (bad) luck would have it, that tram was just pulling away as I exited the S-Bahn station, so I struck out on foot, covering 3 stations until the next one arrived.
Life, in my case, has been something like that reflecting pool -- solid ice for the first quarter century, then an ever-increasing series of cold, hard dumps into reality. Said reality has been difficult of late: my oldest friend from California murdered just a few months ago in Mexico... me turning out to be not so special to that special someone... and, unbelievably, my oldest friend in Berlin kidnapped by pirates in Somalia a couple of weeks ago.
I made it back to the Lively German's place where I was house-sitting, coat frozen into a solid sheet of ice up to my waist, boots squishing out water that hadn't frozen, solely due to the warmth robbed from my body. It was into the shower with me, feet too numb to feel the warm water for a good five minutes, thighs beet red with cold, sensation slowly returning, and with sensation, thoughts. I put my thoughts down here, on electronic paper, because they are so sad, and sad people just don't seem to move fast enough, before the ice finally closes over their heads.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Sex Tip #7
Now then, you men, you've heard it a million times, right? "Ladies first..." I know this is really hard to remember when you're there, all systems go, ready to fire a twenty-one-gun salute. So let me just remind you to think about it before you get anywhere close to that stage, ideally when you're feeling the first, shall we say, stirrings. Make it a little mantra that you repeat in your mind, "ladies first, ladies first". We womyn are said to be rather intuitive -- we can sense that ladies-first energy washing over us, and, trust me, it can have quite a salutary effect, making the whole experience rather memorable for all concerned. Try exercising a little bit of control, in the hopes that you will be justly rewarded. Please allow me to explain in greater detail...
My parents had a very large library, with whose contents I was intimately familiar. At some point during the liberal environment of the Sexual Revolution in the U.S. in the 1970s, my sister and I found a copy of Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex But Were Afraid to Ask, possibly strategically planted for our adolescent education. We devoured it, of course. The thing I most remember is the story of a whole group of sex researchers, all men, putting in what could be qualified as a long day at the office, with a single female subject. With more than just their clipboards at the ready, if I correctly recall, they lost count somewhere between 12 and 20. Exhausted, they decided to conclude that she, although blissfully happy, could by no means be said to have reached her limit.
I'll go a bit further by saying that although I'm only one woman, let's just say I've been in the position to make some observations of my own. As you may know as well as or better than I, there is definitely a wide range of possibilities. But I think you'll find she's interested in reaching the top end of the range! A woman can certainly do what she can (her age and experience help tremendously), but your care and attention, your passion and energy, can also greatly increase the chance of that happening. And believe me, that's when the fun begins; it's as if she has been jump-started. Time falls away and with a seemingly endless supply of endorphins pumping through her bloodstream, all you need to do is hitch a ride as she takes you to the moon....
Hmmm. Is it any wonder males are so afraid of our power, womyn? Now, now, you men, don't despair, there's a whole world out there waiting for you too, if you only you would open your minds. So I'll conclude by recommending that Extended Sexual Orgasm not only take up permanent residence on your bedside table, but that you assiduously study it from cover to cover. You'll like it, I promise.
My parents had a very large library, with whose contents I was intimately familiar. At some point during the liberal environment of the Sexual Revolution in the U.S. in the 1970s, my sister and I found a copy of Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex But Were Afraid to Ask, possibly strategically planted for our adolescent education. We devoured it, of course. The thing I most remember is the story of a whole group of sex researchers, all men, putting in what could be qualified as a long day at the office, with a single female subject. With more than just their clipboards at the ready, if I correctly recall, they lost count somewhere between 12 and 20. Exhausted, they decided to conclude that she, although blissfully happy, could by no means be said to have reached her limit.
I'll go a bit further by saying that although I'm only one woman, let's just say I've been in the position to make some observations of my own. As you may know as well as or better than I, there is definitely a wide range of possibilities. But I think you'll find she's interested in reaching the top end of the range! A woman can certainly do what she can (her age and experience help tremendously), but your care and attention, your passion and energy, can also greatly increase the chance of that happening. And believe me, that's when the fun begins; it's as if she has been jump-started. Time falls away and with a seemingly endless supply of endorphins pumping through her bloodstream, all you need to do is hitch a ride as she takes you to the moon....
Hmmm. Is it any wonder males are so afraid of our power, womyn? Now, now, you men, don't despair, there's a whole world out there waiting for you too, if you only you would open your minds. So I'll conclude by recommending that Extended Sexual Orgasm not only take up permanent residence on your bedside table, but that you assiduously study it from cover to cover. You'll like it, I promise.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Hysterical
It's always nice to be able to blog my two favorite topics in tandem (film and sex), so I'm happy to report I recently saw one of the top films of 2011: Hysteria. It's an account of the London doctor who, tiring of servicing so many Victorian matrons by hand (and I do mean hand), invented the first electrical vibrator. I saw the film at the Kino Central in Berlin, in a packed house of about three-quarters women. Of my five years on and off in Berlin, I can solemnly swear this is the very first time I've sat in the middle of German women literally screaming with laughter. I honestly can't remember the last time I enjoyed a movie-going experience as much!
Well, then, psychoanalysis in the 19th and early 20th centuries had a ball with women, didn't it? If they weren't being accused of frigidity, it would seem, they were being diagnosed with hysteria. Even now, in the 21st century, how often have you heard someone use the term "frigid" to describe a woman? Now how about "nymphomaniac"? For heaven's sake, ours is one of the few species where females are designed to desire as much or more sex than males. In stark contrast, let's review the image of the man snoring in a heap where he's fallen after finishing his business as meanwhile the woman fantasizes about crooking her finger to summon the next one...
Let me recount a second story as a counterpoint. A week or so ago I met up with a new prospect and went through the usual routine of dispensing with the preliminaries (tell me about yourself, where you're from, what you're doing in Berlin, etc.) in order to get down to the important topic at hand. I'm watching for a certain spark in a man's eyes, an indication that he "gets" that a smart-as-hell, experienced, no-nonsense woman can be sexy. My faithful readers (some of whom have experienced this first-hand) can certainly imagine that a woman like me doesn't exactly mince words on the first date. It's guaranteed that I will bring up my favorite topic if I like the man at all. This one seemed to be flying wingtip-to-wingtip with me and so I consented to continue the conversation over a second drink with him at a cool little French café in a Kreuzberg Keller. I asked him about that moment I'd observed in his eyes a short time before, the one I've come to think of as the Pornographic Images Moment, which my frankness almost invariably tends to invoke. From what I've previously deduced (see here), such images are a rather constant part of life for men [mental note to self: more detailed questioning about this is needed]. So I told him, "I could see at one point that you felt like reaching across the table, grabbing me and ripping my clothes off right there in the middle of the restaurant. What stopped you?" He smiled ruefully and said, "Training, constant training."
Later I was chatting with the man I think of as Chocolate Guy, responsible for by far the most creative Craigslist M4W personals action this previous year in Berlin. He'd describe it more as some sort of reverse Pavlovian conditioning: in his words, "the bell rings and everyone pretends it never happened." Finally, here's what a new acquaintance had to say: "Islam has something going for it with those burkas, you know, to cover up those curves."
It's depressing, isn't it? We can't blame our societal ills on another species that mercilessly whittles away at our natural habitat or shuts us up in metal cages in the interests of science. No, the concrete jungles which we inhabit, with their endless rules designed to beat us down into sedate, asexual, obedient little creatures, are entirely of our own making.
Well this wild animal, for one, doesn't take kindly to captivity. And so she's launching a new campaign, to find out what this pathetic species of ours is doing to escape from the zoo. How we post-modern humans are rediscovering our true natures. And where the unapologetically sexual are hanging out in Berlin. So, readers in the know, come on now, help me out, post a comment on how/what/where/when you get out of the zoo -- and remember, it's completely anonymous.
Well, then, psychoanalysis in the 19th and early 20th centuries had a ball with women, didn't it? If they weren't being accused of frigidity, it would seem, they were being diagnosed with hysteria. Even now, in the 21st century, how often have you heard someone use the term "frigid" to describe a woman? Now how about "nymphomaniac"? For heaven's sake, ours is one of the few species where females are designed to desire as much or more sex than males. In stark contrast, let's review the image of the man snoring in a heap where he's fallen after finishing his business as meanwhile the woman fantasizes about crooking her finger to summon the next one...
Let me recount a second story as a counterpoint. A week or so ago I met up with a new prospect and went through the usual routine of dispensing with the preliminaries (tell me about yourself, where you're from, what you're doing in Berlin, etc.) in order to get down to the important topic at hand. I'm watching for a certain spark in a man's eyes, an indication that he "gets" that a smart-as-hell, experienced, no-nonsense woman can be sexy. My faithful readers (some of whom have experienced this first-hand) can certainly imagine that a woman like me doesn't exactly mince words on the first date. It's guaranteed that I will bring up my favorite topic if I like the man at all. This one seemed to be flying wingtip-to-wingtip with me and so I consented to continue the conversation over a second drink with him at a cool little French café in a Kreuzberg Keller. I asked him about that moment I'd observed in his eyes a short time before, the one I've come to think of as the Pornographic Images Moment, which my frankness almost invariably tends to invoke. From what I've previously deduced (see here), such images are a rather constant part of life for men [mental note to self: more detailed questioning about this is needed]. So I told him, "I could see at one point that you felt like reaching across the table, grabbing me and ripping my clothes off right there in the middle of the restaurant. What stopped you?" He smiled ruefully and said, "Training, constant training."
Later I was chatting with the man I think of as Chocolate Guy, responsible for by far the most creative Craigslist M4W personals action this previous year in Berlin. He'd describe it more as some sort of reverse Pavlovian conditioning: in his words, "the bell rings and everyone pretends it never happened." Finally, here's what a new acquaintance had to say: "Islam has something going for it with those burkas, you know, to cover up those curves."
It's depressing, isn't it? We can't blame our societal ills on another species that mercilessly whittles away at our natural habitat or shuts us up in metal cages in the interests of science. No, the concrete jungles which we inhabit, with their endless rules designed to beat us down into sedate, asexual, obedient little creatures, are entirely of our own making.
Well this wild animal, for one, doesn't take kindly to captivity. And so she's launching a new campaign, to find out what this pathetic species of ours is doing to escape from the zoo. How we post-modern humans are rediscovering our true natures. And where the unapologetically sexual are hanging out in Berlin. So, readers in the know, come on now, help me out, post a comment on how/what/where/when you get out of the zoo -- and remember, it's completely anonymous.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Trivial Pursuit
A catchy headline yesterday informed me that a Glamour survey provides us with more "wisdom" in the Battle to Understand the Opposite Sex. Here are the two questions that most amused me.
Keep in mind that this is what we call close-ended questioning: the respondent can only choose from the options given. So for the first question, for example, this option was sadly missing: to go on national television to explain that men don't really mean to be pigs, it's just the testosterone. Joking aside, the fact that half the men have recognized the mystical importance of the feminine orgasm is, in my mind, a very good sign.
If you could borrow a woman's body for a day, you would most want to:
Play with your boobs all day long: 15%
Find out what a female orgasm feels like: 48%
Eat and drink for free at ladies' nights: 12%
Hang out in a women's bathroom and get every secret possible: 7%
Hang out in a women's locker room and just watch—duh!: 18%
The magazine also observed that "some things never change!" Despite ample evidence that tall men are the ones that get the girls, two-thirds of men would rather give it all away for a longer penis. Notably missing, as usual, is the issue of girth...
Which would you rather be: 5'2" tall with a seven-inch penis or 6'2" with a three-inch penis?
1995: 62% said 5'2" with a seven-inch penis.
2012: 67% said 5'2" with a seven-inch penis.
Never my go-to source for anything at all, women's magazines serve only as embarrassing evidence of how actively we trivialize ourselves. Sigh.
Keep in mind that this is what we call close-ended questioning: the respondent can only choose from the options given. So for the first question, for example, this option was sadly missing: to go on national television to explain that men don't really mean to be pigs, it's just the testosterone. Joking aside, the fact that half the men have recognized the mystical importance of the feminine orgasm is, in my mind, a very good sign.
If you could borrow a woman's body for a day, you would most want to:
Play with your boobs all day long: 15%
Find out what a female orgasm feels like: 48%
Eat and drink for free at ladies' nights: 12%
Hang out in a women's bathroom and get every secret possible: 7%
Hang out in a women's locker room and just watch—duh!: 18%
The magazine also observed that "some things never change!" Despite ample evidence that tall men are the ones that get the girls, two-thirds of men would rather give it all away for a longer penis. Notably missing, as usual, is the issue of girth...
Which would you rather be: 5'2" tall with a seven-inch penis or 6'2" with a three-inch penis?
1995: 62% said 5'2" with a seven-inch penis.
2012: 67% said 5'2" with a seven-inch penis.
Never my go-to source for anything at all, women's magazines serve only as embarrassing evidence of how actively we trivialize ourselves. Sigh.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Ship - Wrecked
Relationship, friendship, partnership... So many of the -ships can be so fraught with so many expectations and implicit (or explicit) demands, wouldn't you agree? Simple acquaintanceship is the first level for any sort of bond, and I've always been fond of playing with the idea of the point at which it becomes something more. But acquaintanceship itself is more than anything a product of modern human life and the anonymity that comes with overpopulation. When we, as early humans, were functioning at the tribal level, we would have been intimately tied to our fellow tribal members from birth.
Something a lover said recently prompted me to think about how ridiculously broad the term friendship can be. I turned to my trusty Internet search engine to see what more orderly thinkers than I might have come up with. Let's consider, then, contemporary Internet wisdom on friendship. It would seem that we are to visualize a three-point scale: something akin to casual friend followed by steady or good friend and topped by dear or best friend. I suppose a similar scale could be applied to lovers. The casual lover, the steady lover, the dear love. Shall we call these, then, sexualships? I have casual sexualships with various men, but good, steady sexualships become rather more tricky, don't they?
Sigh. What a hierarchy of -ships we've created; there seems to be no end to our scales and rules. But despite it, we're always searching for more terms. "Significant other", "longtime companion", "compañero". And then the sadly sexist terms of bygone years: "better half" or, the worst of all, "ball and chain". After all this, I think I want to forget about the term relationship entirely!
Partnership is the only -ship that is flexible and broad enough to interest me. Its root is the Latin partitio (portion), by which we are to understand a shared endeavor. It applies as well to how ancient humans functioned in tribes as it does to a business endeavor or to my relationship with the mother of my goddaughter. And what is a partner to me? That person's gender matters not, nor whether we are sleeping together, and certainly not whether one of us has said those three silly words that seem to cause so much grief in our modern world. [I'm referring to "I love you."] My dear ones are my partners. Their woes are my woes. Their joys are my joys. Their homes are my home. And my home and woes and joys are just as much, always and eternally, theirs, no matter how much time and space may separate us.
In contrast, those of you poor souls whose mothers never taught you how to share will soon enough be asked to disembark from the Good Ship Katchita. Because this skipper's seen more than enough *ship*wrecks in her career sailing the high seas.
Something a lover said recently prompted me to think about how ridiculously broad the term friendship can be. I turned to my trusty Internet search engine to see what more orderly thinkers than I might have come up with. Let's consider, then, contemporary Internet wisdom on friendship. It would seem that we are to visualize a three-point scale: something akin to casual friend followed by steady or good friend and topped by dear or best friend. I suppose a similar scale could be applied to lovers. The casual lover, the steady lover, the dear love. Shall we call these, then, sexualships? I have casual sexualships with various men, but good, steady sexualships become rather more tricky, don't they?
Sigh. What a hierarchy of -ships we've created; there seems to be no end to our scales and rules. But despite it, we're always searching for more terms. "Significant other", "longtime companion", "compañero". And then the sadly sexist terms of bygone years: "better half" or, the worst of all, "ball and chain". After all this, I think I want to forget about the term relationship entirely!
Partnership is the only -ship that is flexible and broad enough to interest me. Its root is the Latin partitio (portion), by which we are to understand a shared endeavor. It applies as well to how ancient humans functioned in tribes as it does to a business endeavor or to my relationship with the mother of my goddaughter. And what is a partner to me? That person's gender matters not, nor whether we are sleeping together, and certainly not whether one of us has said those three silly words that seem to cause so much grief in our modern world. [I'm referring to "I love you."] My dear ones are my partners. Their woes are my woes. Their joys are my joys. Their homes are my home. And my home and woes and joys are just as much, always and eternally, theirs, no matter how much time and space may separate us.
In contrast, those of you poor souls whose mothers never taught you how to share will soon enough be asked to disembark from the Good Ship Katchita. Because this skipper's seen more than enough *ship*wrecks in her career sailing the high seas.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Sex Tip #6
Having been chastised by the same fan for the second time in a year regarding my appallingly low productivity, I really have to get back to Sexless Berlin. With the New Year, I resolve to start with tying up some loose ends. First is my promise two years ago (here) to provide screening tools for the overly well-endowed, whose attributes are sadly, in our society, constantly cloaked. I discovered a couple of years ago that, for the ballsy (pun intended) woman, this is extremely easy.
It turns out that men see their special friends as the center of the universe, and it's the easiest thing in the world to get them started on the subject. A woman need only ask, "Could I, ahem, ask you a delicate/sensitive/personal question? What can you tell me about your endowment?" They will light up with joy, as you will likely be the first person to have ever asked them this enchanting question. And womyn, remember, they are all comparing themselves to porn stars so any description you are given will almost assuredly be a significant underestimation. That's why it's especially important to steer completely clear of any man who, despite porn-related skewing, still, God save us, considers himself large.
Now that we've covered verbal descriptions, I simply have to take up men's peculiar love affair with cock shots. They are just itching to send them out and seem not to have the least idea when, or if, that is appropriate. As an extreme, I've even recently had a man send unsolicited videos (could it be the latest trend?)! I have, of course, investigated this peculiar behavior by asking various lovers about it. Their answer makes sense; they would like their center of the universe, their special endowment, to be admired, ideally as much as they themselves admire it.
Now then, you men, let me tell you, heterosexual women who love sex also love what penile-bearing creatures are packing, in all their varied shapes and sizes. So a cock-shot is not the worst thing in the world to pop out at us when opening an Email. But as men so often subject us to sexual energy which at times can be quite off-putting, timing is all-important. Surely your mothers taught you that asking is the polite thing to do? As with everything to do with sex, ask Ask ASK. [This brings me to another loose end which I'll have to take up later -- the issue of when it's alright to not ask.]
When exchanging Emails with a new prospect, then, ask her if she would like pictures. Be flirty about it -- tell her you are have some pictures to share with her, some of which are "special", but only if she says the word. She may not want them at all, because don't forget, pictures take away that agreeable anticipation that comes with finally unwrapping that special package. Some of us prefer the build-up to premature tell-all exposés. To head off a blizzard of pornographic images in my inbox, then, I sometimes instead opt to ask men to write me about their special friend. It's fun to throw it wide open by saying, "telling me all about it [him?] and what it [he?] means to you". The replies I get can range from shy [so cute!] to bold and sexy.
Now then, womyn readers, if you've established that the member in question is rather on the unwieldy side, it's up to you to decide whether you wish to follow my all-important advice on the well-endowed (carefully review point two/rule two again here). But whatever you do, when you find one of those big ones out there who thinks he's just average (per comparisons with the porn star du jour), do the rest of us a favor. PLEASE DON'T edify him. The smaller they think they are, grrrrls, the better they tend to treat us. Take it from me: I could plot it on a curve.
It turns out that men see their special friends as the center of the universe, and it's the easiest thing in the world to get them started on the subject. A woman need only ask, "Could I, ahem, ask you a delicate/sensitive/personal question? What can you tell me about your endowment?" They will light up with joy, as you will likely be the first person to have ever asked them this enchanting question. And womyn, remember, they are all comparing themselves to porn stars so any description you are given will almost assuredly be a significant underestimation. That's why it's especially important to steer completely clear of any man who, despite porn-related skewing, still, God save us, considers himself large.
Now that we've covered verbal descriptions, I simply have to take up men's peculiar love affair with cock shots. They are just itching to send them out and seem not to have the least idea when, or if, that is appropriate. As an extreme, I've even recently had a man send unsolicited videos (could it be the latest trend?)! I have, of course, investigated this peculiar behavior by asking various lovers about it. Their answer makes sense; they would like their center of the universe, their special endowment, to be admired, ideally as much as they themselves admire it.
Now then, you men, let me tell you, heterosexual women who love sex also love what penile-bearing creatures are packing, in all their varied shapes and sizes. So a cock-shot is not the worst thing in the world to pop out at us when opening an Email. But as men so often subject us to sexual energy which at times can be quite off-putting, timing is all-important. Surely your mothers taught you that asking is the polite thing to do? As with everything to do with sex, ask Ask ASK. [This brings me to another loose end which I'll have to take up later -- the issue of when it's alright to not ask.]
When exchanging Emails with a new prospect, then, ask her if she would like pictures. Be flirty about it -- tell her you are have some pictures to share with her, some of which are "special", but only if she says the word. She may not want them at all, because don't forget, pictures take away that agreeable anticipation that comes with finally unwrapping that special package. Some of us prefer the build-up to premature tell-all exposés. To head off a blizzard of pornographic images in my inbox, then, I sometimes instead opt to ask men to write me about their special friend. It's fun to throw it wide open by saying, "telling me all about it [him?] and what it [he?] means to you". The replies I get can range from shy [so cute!] to bold and sexy.
Now then, womyn readers, if you've established that the member in question is rather on the unwieldy side, it's up to you to decide whether you wish to follow my all-important advice on the well-endowed (carefully review point two/rule two again here). But whatever you do, when you find one of those big ones out there who thinks he's just average (per comparisons with the porn star du jour), do the rest of us a favor. PLEASE DON'T edify him. The smaller they think they are, grrrrls, the better they tend to treat us. Take it from me: I could plot it on a curve.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Who ARE You People Anyway?
Blogspot now collects all sorts of interesting statistics for its bloggers. On Christmas Eve, Sexless Berlin reached exactly ten thousand hits since the count began.
That's an average of some 500 to 600 hits per month! Germany and Spain each account for 24%; the U.S. for only 15%. The top post by far is Live Sex at Berghain with 17%; the next, Wooing by SMS and Penis Envy, don't even come close, at 5% each. What do we think this might be? Penis Envy is probably a pretty common search term, but Wooing by SMS? It can only be that I refer to my bra size as being the same as Demi Moore's, am I right?
Over the past year or two, feeling that it's time for a change after so many years, I've contemplated closing this blog entirely and starting a new one. But the thought of losing all my readership is a serious deterrent. I've also thought of making Sexless Berlin more explicit, which gets me into all sorts of possible issues regarding adult content.
So I've decided to open it up to you, my readers. There are many more of you than I ever imagined. Why do you read Sexless Berlin? Is it to find good restaurants here? For the in-the-streets (and the ticket lines) coverage of the Berlinale? For the wry analysis of where we've gone wrong as men and women? For the sarcastic Sex Tips?
What would you like to see on Sexless Berlin in the next year or two? Would you like it to continue as the eclectic but sexually inexplicit mix that it is? Or would you like something completely new where I am more open about the meaning and mechanics of human sex? The thought running through my head at this time is a chronicle of my own journey, taking Sex at Dawn to a logical second step. Sex at High Noon, if you will.
I invite you all to comment; if you haven't ever filled in a comment form on Blogspot, now's the time. You can do so completely anonymously. I have no ability to see anything about where you have commented from, nor your Email address or ISP. But if you're so inclined, it would be nice to know if you're reading from Istanbul or St. Peterburg (yes I have readers in Turkey and Russia) as well as what your interest might be: Berlin culture, film, or sex, Sex, SEX!
Over the past year or two, feeling that it's time for a change after so many years, I've contemplated closing this blog entirely and starting a new one. But the thought of losing all my readership is a serious deterrent. I've also thought of making Sexless Berlin more explicit, which gets me into all sorts of possible issues regarding adult content.
So I've decided to open it up to you, my readers. There are many more of you than I ever imagined. Why do you read Sexless Berlin? Is it to find good restaurants here? For the in-the-streets (and the ticket lines) coverage of the Berlinale? For the wry analysis of where we've gone wrong as men and women? For the sarcastic Sex Tips?
What would you like to see on Sexless Berlin in the next year or two? Would you like it to continue as the eclectic but sexually inexplicit mix that it is? Or would you like something completely new where I am more open about the meaning and mechanics of human sex? The thought running through my head at this time is a chronicle of my own journey, taking Sex at Dawn to a logical second step. Sex at High Noon, if you will.
I invite you all to comment; if you haven't ever filled in a comment form on Blogspot, now's the time. You can do so completely anonymously. I have no ability to see anything about where you have commented from, nor your Email address or ISP. But if you're so inclined, it would be nice to know if you're reading from Istanbul or St. Peterburg (yes I have readers in Turkey and Russia) as well as what your interest might be: Berlin culture, film, or sex, Sex, SEX!
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