The sexual revolution will not be televised. After years of being unattached, desperate and slighted, I have finally been sucked into that fringed hole of charming, superficial bonds and free sex.
So, for now, no more blind dates, no more going to bed with a book, no more doomed nights of self-catering — known as masturbation to the uninitiated.
Such is the folly of being unattached as singledom prescribes that the ”uninvited” obey two cardinal rules: if you need affection, get a dog; and if you need sex, pay for it or do it yourself. However, it is an ineluctable fact that our society takes a dim view of those who soldier on without partners. Actually, being single is considered a sign of something more dreadful than just emotional inadequacy.
Incidentally, spinsters, no matter how successful, are seen as frigid women who fill the void of their barren existence by casting (jealous) spells or practising immorality. Confirmed bachelors are perceived as restless perverts who must partly bear the brunt for prostitution and child molestation in the world.
Thus, unless one wears a monastic robe or a nun’s habit, being single is considered a ”sin”. In fact, the ignominy of being unattached made a financially independent woman friend of mine return to a lover who had a penchant for rearranging her face after a drinking binge.
In my case, when people found out that I did not have a girlfriend the rejoinder was either ”what’s wrong?” or ”are you gay?”. And asking for a table for one usually elicited that ”ag shame” look — a look usually reserved for lepers — from waitrons and fellow patrons.
And at the risk of stating the obvious, unattached women generally do better than unattached men. I say this because, for some inexplicable reason, they can temper their carnal desires and appetites.
Moreover, as a result of an unfortunate primal expectation for men to do something about their unattached status we have to polish our act and make the first move. All women have to do is be pretty and wait to be approached.
Strangely, despite our cultural progression into the realms of equality between the sexes, women who have the gumption to defy this traditional custom are still perceived as either butch or very loose.
Yet, courage aside, finding someone companionable for the long-term can be a difficult task because the mating dance is as nefarious as politics: the constituents have to be conned into buying pieces of a dream that was hatched in desperation and loneliness.
I realised this similarity between the two when I found myself laughing at a not-so-funny, bland joke just to humour my date. On another date, I found myself swallowing corny ”wisdom” from a nymph who thought denial was a river in Egypt.
Alas, these deceitful confidence tricks — to appear hip, cool or agreeable — are imperative during these dating encounters because personality is important for copulation to happen.
Also, finding a suitable partner proves an onerous task as people generally seek partners with the same upbringing (values and morals) and education as themselves. Our partners must conform to a certain standards or idiosyncratic formulas.
My therapist, the nebbish Woody Allen, calls this tendency ”to look for ourselves in the guise of the opposite sex” an exercise in narcissism.
For me, an impeding factor during the mating dance was the element of economics. I found out to my horror that no self-respecting woman can look herself in the eye if she dated a guy with no ”disposable cash”.
Apparently a man’s manhood and attractiveness is judged by how much he can perpetually pay for nights out and spend on gifts of flowers and sexy lingerie or airtime vouchers. Perhaps this is a sign of feminist maturity, but this aspect irks my chauvinistic heart because my sex has dated, courted and married their poor, uneducated, unemployable lot since time immemorial.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating a world of house-husbands and Mr Moms (though it sounds novel and exciting), but what is immoral about falling in love with a brother who has only a bus ticket?
Anyway, you can imagine my relief to find a woman willing to overlook my ”non-disposable cash” element. The band of reprobates I hang out with suggest that a woman who is not fazed by the idea of receiving only gifts of mushy, maudlin verse from dead poets must either be desperate or prosaically dense.
Perhaps desperate, but not dense. She is smart enough to know there is a classic difference between sex, a fuck and making love; cynical about that ”wretched cant of sentimental posturings” known as love; and worldly enough to know that all men — barring her father — are dogs. And who said the Almighty doesn’t perform miracles anymore?
With regard to the latter, even the great Mark Twain conceded in his Notebook (1906) that ”of all the delights of this world man cares most for sexual intercourse”. And didn’t he add, for good measure, that man will go to any lengths — risk fortune, character, reputation and life itself — to get laid? Hence, in the final analysis, romantic relationships are no different to administering a laugh to a comic, or awards to actors, in that they serve to satisfy a need, nay, craving for sexual validation.
And my attached status may well last, because like other classic relationships, my partner and I stay within the bounds of superficiality in the sense that she overlooks my ”cashless” element while I act as if I do not notice the excess rolls around her waist.