Economics vs. apples.

A day doesn't go by I don't see an article like this one.  I'm not going to try to deconstruct it point by point, because it's the same old shit.  I'm just going to pull some quotes and talk about my weekend.  I suspect you'll get my point.

Women are jumping into the sack faster and with fewer expectations about long-term commitments than ever, effectively discounting the “price” of sex to a record low, according to social psychologists.

Rowdy and I had agreed to a date, but neither of us was feeling in the mood for a "date" date on the night.  Instead, we just got snacks and juice at the drugstore and sat together on the cover of the subway tunnel, listening to street musicians in the square, laughing at little kids playing run-in-circles-really-fast games, laying back and cuddling on the concrete.  Because of the kids around, I whispered the dirty things into his ear, very quietly, so they wouldn't know why he was laughing.

“The price of sex is about how much one party has to do in order to entice the other into being sexual,” said Kathleen Vohs, of the University of Minnesota, who has authored several papers on “sexual economics.” “It might mean buying her a drink or an engagement ring. These behaviors vary in how costly they are to the man, and that is how we quantify the price of sex.”

We split up to head back to his home; he biked and I drove.  On the way I stopped at the liquor store to surprise him with a pack of beer from his hometown.  At home we drank the beer (he dressed his in a little lederhosen first), undressed, and cuddled naked while watching porn.  It didn't turn into sex.  The porn was too ridiculous for that.  It turned into giggling--helpless, naked, wiggly giggling.

By boiling dating down to an economic model, researchers have found that men are literally getting lots of bang for their buck. Women, meanwhile, are getting very little tat for their . . . well, you get the idea.

At the end of the night, I stroked his cock, at first slowly and gently, almost comfortingly, then for real.  I kissed the tip of his cock and when he groaned appreciatively I took the whole thing in my mouth.  It was a long, sloppy blowjob, popping his cock out of my mouth and then swallowing it down again, both of us still a little giggly.

Men want sex more than women do. It’s a fact that sounds sexist and outdated. But it is a fact all the same -- one that women used for centuries to keep the price of sex high (if you liked it back in the day, you really had to put a ring on it). With gender equality, the Pill and the advent of Internet porn, women’s control of the meet market has been butchered. 

It was my turn next.  I slipped a condom on his vibrator and went to town while he held me, stroked my breasts, gently pulled my hair, and whispered fucking filthy sweet nothings in my ear.  I came and didn't want to stop.  So I didn't.  I just kept pleasuring myself over and over, Rowdy's hands on my ass and his lips on my cheek, until I was exhausted.

“Every sex act is part of a ‘pricing’ of sex for subsequent relationships,” Regnerus said. “If sex has been very easy to get for a particular young man for many years and over the course of multiple relationships, what would eventually prompt him to pay a lot for it in the future -- that is, committing to marry?”

We slept late into the morning, curled around each other.  It's been more than a year of nights like this and I'm still stupid in love--the kind of love where I think his snoring is cute, the kind where I'm charmed and a little turned on when he scratches his balls.  When he woke up he held me and kissed me and reminded me that with him I'm safe enough to be that stupid.

Did you answer, “Love”? You’re adorable. “Sexual strategies for making men ‘fall in love’ typically backfire, because men don’t often work like that,” Regnerus says.

Later in the day, Sprite came over and we went apple picking.  It really makes no sense to pick your own apples, economically; I'm sure we paid three times what it would have cost at the store.  What we were really paying for was a day in the orchard, walking through rows of trees in light misty rain, eating impossibly sweet and crisp apples right off the trees.

So, what can women do to return the balance of sexual power in their favor? Stop putting out, experts say. If women collectively decided to cross their legs, the price of sex would soar and women would regain control of the market. Like a whoopie cartel.

After we gathered our apples, we sat together at a picnic bench under a tree, drinking hot mulled apple cider, talking about our childhoods and our schoolwork and tractors (that one was mostly Rowdy) and various forms of perverted sex we were planning to have.



The point here isn't that my relationship is super special, or that my relationship represents every relationship.  But my relationship exists in the real world--the messy, complicated, wonderful real world.  It's a place that has masturbation and apples, cuddles and really bad street musicians, group sex parties and muddy shoes.

I'm sure there are relationships in this big ol' world where women coldly trade sex to men for commitment and compete joylessly to see who can get the biggest diamond for the fewest fucks.  It's just that there's a universe of other relationships out there, and they're way more fun.  I mean, shit, if the woman's withholding sex strategically or having it pried out of her economically, when does she get to enjoy feeling a man's arms tighten around her as she comes?  And if the man's only giving as much love as he needs to get sex, when does he get to enjoy sneaking kisses behind an apple tree?

So I don't just want to brag here.  I want to tell stories to show that no one has to live that way.  And oh my God is life better when you don't.

Next time we're together, we're going to bake apple crisp.

Bowling therapy.

You know what I really want to do with "Men's Rights activists," "pick-up artists," anti-feminists, "men are from Mars women are from Venus" theorists, straight-up misogynists, and other varieties of people who hate or just fundamentally misunderstand women?

I want to take them bowling.

I suck at bowling, but that's not the point; the point is to drink terrible beer and shoot the shit, cheer each other on strikes and take the piss out of each other on gutterballs, and just generally do something that's fun and sociable and low-pressure. Bowling's just a way to give the evening some structure. We could play pool or go fishing or whatever. Some recreational activity that keeps you mildly busy but gives you plenty of time to talk.

I'd invite some female friends, too, but not to launch a feminist assault on these guys. (And certainly not to date them; not only do I respect my friends more than that, I don't want this to be reduced to a pickup opportunity.) Just to talk about our lives, to joke around, and to interact with each other and the guys the way people interact on a casual night out.



Why? I'm going to answer with a confession I hope doesn't cause strife in my relationships: sometimes I get jealous of Sprite when she's not around. Not like "SHE MUST DIE" jealous, but "I worry she resents me or something" jealous. And then I spend time with her in person, and it absolutely melts away when I realize what a warm and kind person she is when she's actually there. It's only the theoretical Sprite I'm jealous of, the Sprite that I construct in my head from circumstantial evidence; the actual present Sprite is awesome.

I think women-hating types have this same problem with women--the imaginary woman in their head is strange and cruel, and they don't have enough real women to compare her to. (Some of them are burned-out divorcees, but many more seem to have never had a significant relationship with a woman.) I'm convinced a lot of these guys have no female friends and not that many male friends, so their view of humanity is largely interpretations based on media characters, glancing observations of strangers, and the limited interactions of work or school. They've developed this giant hate-on for the theoretical woman and all the evil she theoretically would do. And then they get together and tell each other about their theoretical women, and the meta-theoretical woman, a truly fearsome critter, is born.

And the only antidote for all this is real women. Not real women as dates--in some ways that just cements the concept of "woman" as a Martian with a pussy attached--but just as people. I want these guys to go bowling with women and hear about our preferences in cheap pitcher beers, our minor annoyances, our quirky interests. I want them to tell us their daily problems and funny stories and watch as we react in a sympathetic and entirely human way. I want them to get to know women who are doctors and women who work at Starbucks, women who are self-identified sluts and women who are celibate, women who are kinda annoying and women who are completely adorable.

I want them to learn that spending time with a woman isn't a laborious prerequisite to fucking her, but a pleasant thing in itself, a way to feel more alive and connected to the world.

Funny thing is, not only would this shake some of the asshole out of those guys, it'd probably get them laid. I believe that you can't really have a girlfriend until you know how to be friends with a woman, and learning how to hang out and just chill with women is excellent practice for all the hanging out/chilling that a relationship entails. Getting these dudes laid would definitely be a side effect and not a goal--I hold the radical feminist opinion that you should treat women like people even if this doesn't get you laid--but if they learn that treating women like humans leads to happy penis feelings, so much the better.



In the end, it's not argument that wins people over to your side. It's showing them the essential humanity and ordinariness of the people they were trying to hate. I have no way to make the Woman-Haters-And-Women Bowling League really happen, but it's a beautiful dream for me.

Quiet night.

Last night Sprite and Rowdy and I got together and... pretty much just stayed in. We ate some takeout, exchanged belated Christmas presents (Sprite gave me a huggy dinosaur and Rowdy gave me a subscription to MAKE magazine; I gave Sprite a flogger and Rowdy a robot kit), and then we just hung out. We fucked a little, slept in a big warm pile, fucked a little more and watched Muppet Show clips and cuddled a lot.

Sometimes happiness is just that simple.

It's not much to write about, I guess. But it's kind of... part of what I always wanted for my life. (I might not have always envisioned certain details.) Not to be boring all the time, but to be happy even when it's boring. To be able to have promiscuous public kinky sex with the people I love, and to be able to take a nap with them. And in particular, to take a nap with them and not find myself saying "bleh, you guys aren't any fun unless we're having promiscuous public kinky sex." Love is love and happy is happy, and sex is just the cherry on top. Fuckin' awesome cherry though.



Also: Sprite and I have finally, I think, settled the terminology question of what to call our relationship. We're not really girlfriends with each other. But "my boyfriend's other girlfriend" is cumbersome and indirect. Apparently common poly terminology is "metamour," but eh. Or "paramour," which is kind of clever except it's already a word.

Anyway. We are "sister girlfriends."

Weekend.

Events from this weekend:

-I went to an undisclosed location with undisclosed persons to engage in mostly undisclosed activities, and I am honestly worried that I'm saying too much by admitting it was this weekend. It does make me feel kind of cool to be engaging in dark secret underground shenanigans, but it also makes me incredibly sad that we have to. Pressure from the law and "morals" on one side, and creepy perverts-in-the-bad-way on the other, forces the Massachusetts kink community into this sketchy marginal existence.

-On the drive over, Rowdy was making out with a friend in the backseat. I couldn't look because I was driving, and asked Sprite to provide a play-by-play, which she did admirably. "Okay, they're kissing, they're kissing, there's some general petting going on... hang on, folks, he's reaching under her shirt now, and HE'S SAFE ON SECOND! THIS ONE COULD GO ALL THE WAY!"

-A fellow kinky Jew and I sang the Chanukkah blessings over a fireplay scene. Chag sameach!

-I got sealed in a vacuum cube. (Like this, but without the goofy hood.) It was... interesting. It starts out as just a cube of latex, and then as the air is pumped out it feels like six giant balloons inflating around you, so tightly that for a moment you worry they'll crush you, and then the latex seals to your body and you can't move. At all. This isn't "I can't run away" bondage, this is "I can't wiggle my toes" bondage.

It was a unique physical sensation, but ultimately it was more frightening than exciting for me. My preferred play style is intimately physical, body to body, skin and leather, so this very detached and technological restraint didn't really turn my buttons. And being stuck in total can't-wiggle immobilization is a little bit nightmarish. As I write this, I'm stretching out my limbs and taking deep breaths just thinking about it.

-I'd worked overnight and hadn't had much rest the day before, so as the night went on I got sleepy. I curled up in a dog-crate-sized steel cage and had a nice nap.

-I accidentally got a bit of flesh torn off my back. Ewwww, but not particularly painful or upsetting. What was upsetting was being stuck in a bent-over position (so as not to drip on a white carpet) while my friends made Keystone Kop efforts at first aid. At one point I came within a confusingly labeled bottle of being wiped down with kitchen cleaner.

-I got to run around all night and socialize quasi-normally with my tits out, and all on its own that's fun. Not even sexy fun. It's just freeing.

-The next day, with just Sprite and Rowdy, a discussion of phlebotomy somehow degenerated into examining Rowdy's superficial dorsal vein ("yeah, I could get blood from that, but he probably wouldn't like it"), which degenerated into a more general inspection and contemplation of the male anatomy, which of course degenerated into a double blowjob. As discussions of phleobotomy so often do.

-Oh yeah, and at one point I was getting flogged with a jingly bell clamped to my nipple and I was singing "Jingle Bells" very very enthusiastically. 'Tis the season.

In Which Scientific Curiosity Is Stifled.

Hey Sprite, do you have a tampon?"
"Oh, of course, here's one."
"Thanks!  We're doing an experiment!  We figure that alcohol can absorb in by any mucous membrane, and the vagina is a mucous membrane, so we're going to soak the tampon in rum and stick it in me and see if I get drunk!  Also we're curious if it will hurt!"
"...Give me my tampon back."

Adorkable/Safecall.

Rowdy, Sprite, and I have this word that gets a lot of use in our relationship. "Adorkable." It means pretty much exactly what you'd think.

For example, it was adorkable when Rowdy, after screwing me on the floor in front of all the Thanksgiving guests, pulled out and daintily crossed his legs for modesty.

---

Here's an issue I'm still undecided on: Rowdy has asked Sprite to safecall him (i.e., call and check in and confirm that she has not been axe-murdered) when she goes on dates with new guys.

Tonight, Rowdy has a date with a woman. He didn't even think to consider a safecall until Sprite pointed out the discrepancy.

The questions I haven't resolved is: is this sexist because it's a double standard, or practical because women are at greater risk of assault by men? (Particularly first-date assault; my knee-jerk no-research stereotype is that women may be physically abusive in relationships, but are less likely to act as predators looking for someone to assault.) Does it imply that Rowdy is somehow more "able to take care of himself" than Sprite is, or does it just reflect a sad reality in our society?

98% normal.

It's weird sometimes to think of my relationship with Rowdy and Sprite as weird. We're still alien enough to society to be worthy of detachedly anthropological, vaguely freakshowish human interest articles, to experience fear and difficulty explaining our relationship to our families and some friends, to be unable to marry even in Massachusetts, to be unable to list our relationship on Facebook, and to be generally so far removed from the public consciousness that most people who see us out in public don't even consider that we could all be together.

This weekend we went had hot three-way sex and slept three to a bed, yes, but we also went shopping for drapes and a carpet. We practiced our wild and crazy alternative lifestyle at the warehouse store, where our society expects that only one man and one woman should debate getting one large carpet versus tiling small ones. It was perverted.

And pleasant, because even when it's something mundane, I enjoy doing things with all three of us. I like the fact that we can all three get along and work together even when it's not hot sexy fun. We make each other laugh and we always have something to talk about. They're not just two people I fuck, they're two people who make me happy.

Then Sunday Sprite was busy, so Rowdy and I had to answer the question "what do two bi poly kinksters do when they have a whole day to themselves?" The answer is that they rearrange and clean the bedroom, cut and place the carpet, and install the drapes. I mean, we certainly fucked, boy did we fuck, but it's not the only way we spend our time and it's not the only thing we can do together. I feel a little ridiculous saying that--would someone in a monogamous vanilla relationship have to clarify such a thing?--but I've been asked in so many words and more than once if this stuff I do is really all about sex. It's exactly as much "about sex" as dating is. Because it is dating.

I don't mean to protest too much that I'm so super normal. I am kinda weird and I enjoy it. I don't keep a sex blog to talk about how boring and housewares-oriented I am. But I think it's important to always keep in mind that 24/7 live-in slaves still have old family recipes they treasure and latex-fetishizing ponyboys still have to go to the dentist. Even when you live a totally wacky alternative lifestyle, 98% of your life will still be... life.

rawr means i love you in dinosaur

"I'm pretending Rowdy's dick is different dinosaurs." [performs penis puppetry] "Rarrr. He's a pleisiosaur."

"He's a please-you-til-you're-sore."

"He's a lick-a-lotta-puss."

The limits of human endurance.

Four full days of touring, partying, and fucking our way through New York is an amazing yet daunting proposition.

TOO daunting, actually. Last night we got home after a lot of touristing and a visit to the Museum of Sex followed by a fetish party and the three of us got into bed and... passed out immediately. Sometimes that's all three naked perverts in a hotel room in a foreign city with no obligations can do.

Sometimes we can do more. I think they're doing it right now while I sit here hunched over my netbook like some kind of extreme megadork. Talk to you later, Internet.

KEYBOARD!

I have a keyboard I have a keyboard I have a keyboard. Oh QWERTY you feel so good under my fingers. Home row, I'm home. After more than a month of blogging on an iPod, I cracked and got a cheapie netbook, and now I'm typing in blazing Actual-Typing-O-Vision instead of painfully picking out each letter like a butterfly in some kind of goddamn diving bell.

Unfortunately, I also have to work a double-back shift in the Emergency Pit in less than an hour, so I don't have time to really explore what's possible with a blog when you can fucking type, but I'm looking forward to getting around to everything I'd backlogged, from two full Cosmockings to some more serious essay-style posts and probably some good dirty stories too.

For the moment, I leave you with this vignette:

Rowdy and Sprite are fucking while I'm ordering dinner from Foodler.
Me: Do you guys want Thai food?
Rowdy: [thrust, thrust] Yeah, get me some phad thai.
Me: With the shrimp?
Rowdy: [thrust, thrust] Uh huh.
Me: Sprite, do you want anything?
Sprite: No thanks, I'm full.
Rowdy and me: [helpless laughter]

Sleeping Alone.

I slept alone last night. I didn't have to.

Rowdy came over and we hung out and cuddled and did the monkey thing and watched "Mythbusters" and did some things monkeys never even thought of. Then he headed back to his place to meet Sprite, and invited me along. I said no. I stayed home and read "Into the Wild" (conclusion: Chris McCandless was crazypants, but I really want to go hiking) and sprawled out over the whole bed and slept well and late.

I like sleeping with people, in both senses, but I also like having my own space. I've been booking myself densely recently, with almost every night either work or a social/sexual commitment, and just quietly sitting at home feels like a luxury. Not one I'd want all the time (I've had enough of that), but one I sometimes need. Sleeping with Rowdy and Sprite is wonderful and sexy and warmfuzzy, but sleeping alone makes me feel like I've really rested.

It's possible that my philosophical solitude could be replicated via a king size bed. Three people in a full is cute and cuddly and all, but it does kinda mean you've got someone's elbow in your face all night.

Good clean fun.

When guys picture sex with two women, they probably imagine a lot of what happened last night:

-Sprite and me, lying side by side on the bed masturbating as Rowdy watched and took pictures. (You can't see, sorry. Sprite and Rowdy are not quite as freely exhibitionistic as I am.)

-Rowdy fucking Sprite while fingering me, and fucking me while fingering her, and her fingering him while he fucked me, and vice versa, and every conceivable other confguration. Including him fingering me while fucking me. That was new and sort of amazing.

-Rowdy and I making an, er, Eiffel tower over Sprite, and Spirte and me making a slightly diffrent one over him.

-Me working all five fingers into Sprite--an experience that left me amazed at the sheer strength of her vagina, which seemed more likely to hurt my hand than vice versa. Vaginas are awesome.

But I don't know if they picture all the three-way cuddling and talking and joking that goes on. Things that might not be on your Threesome Bucket List:

-An a capella rendition of Green Day's "Time Of Your Life.

-Pillsbury Doughboy impressions.

-Me, just after fucking Sprite and bending down to kiss her: "That was amazing, baby. No homo."

-Just as we were drifting of to sleep in a big pile and a warm fuzzy haze, a wayyyyy too extensive discussion of everyone's pooping habits.

-Me in the bed with Rowdy and Sprite as they fucked, about 98% asleep and feeling... okay with it. I was neither impelled to engage with them nor ignore them, but just to let it happen and feel happy and calm about it. It's a wonderful and funny thing to be 6 inches away while two people you're attracted to are having sex, and feel neither awkward nor jealous nor really aroused, but cosy.

About last night.

Last night was a five-way cuddle pile that turned into a three-way fuck pile. It was awesome. I'm going to call my partners Rowdy and Sprite, for entirely idiosyncratic reasons. I don't think I can get things in chronological order, but the pieces are delicious.

-My clothing is gone. I think someone else took my clothing (a blue cotton dress, if "someone else" is reading; my email is in the upper right so please let me know) and now I have no clothing to go home in. Fortunately I can borrow some.

-There are seriously twelve kinky people in Boston, tops. I can't take my pants off in this town without seeing someone I already know from a totally different venue. Which is sometimes disconcerting but mostly great, because when it's cool people who keep popping up, it's nice to be part of a community like that.

-You know what's awesome? Tying Sprite down, teasing her, and then fucking her boyfriend on top of her--that's kind of awesome. Then Rowdy and I both fucked her. Because we aren't inconsiderate.

-More for the "I never" list: fucking a guy while a girl fingers his ass--wow did that get a delightful reaction out of him--and fucking him while she fingered me. Like, both in my pussy at once. Like wow.

I have been writing about sex for four years. "Like wow." That's all I've got. Like WOW, y'all. But Rowdy was the guy with the Coke-can cock, so like being stretched as far as I possibly could and then being stretched that little bit and with the exquisite dexterity of a finger. Like wow.

-To be honest--maybe brutally so--this is the first time a threesome has really worked for me. I've had ones before that were fun, but this was no-reservations awesome happy fun. I think it was because it was the first time I've had good chemistry with the girl as well as the guy. Because I like Sprite, like like her, pretty much as much as I like Rowdy. When you're fucking the girl to please the guy, it's just not the same as when you're fucking them both. A triangle is so much more comfortable than a V.

And every time we had sex, it really was three ways. It wasn't "me now her" (although at one point we did rock-paper-scissors for firsties), it was "me and her and him and us in a big happy sexy tangle."

-At one point we were flipping through Cosmopolitan's list of sexual positions and reenacting them in giggling naked but non-penetrative fashion. Cosmo doesn't do threesome positions, though. There's exponentially more. At one point Sprite was in my lap getting fucked, at another I was rubbing her clit from the front while she got fucked from behind, at another I was sucking Rowdy's cock while I fingered Sprite, and all through the night we were just rolling around over each other and kissing and cuddle and oh it was awesome.

-I'm loud when I come. Like real loud and real enthusiastic and kind of... intense, so I've been told. And the amazing thing was that while I was fucking Rowdy and coming my brains out and thus moaning and screaming all over, Sprite started getting into it. Really into it. Like masturbating just watching us and talking dirty to me and moaning just about as hard as I was. It was hot as fuck.

-Total number of empty condom wrappers in the pile at the end of the night: ten. That's accounted for by just one guy. One very impressive guy. Rowdy's got some stamina. The way the ocean's got some water.

-Alright, I have clothes! They're not entirely appropriate to my gender or size, but I am not naked! Alright!