Posted by Lex Konrad in Relationships | Oct 28, 2005
The bar is noisy but if I lean in I can discern her Scottish accent, a subtle inflection that creeps in now and again, turning her “oughts” into “oats.” She is getting her doctorate in psychology. I don’t flinch when she mentions Jungian analysis. She doesn’t flinch when I talk about species being.
“Do you think it’s possible that a society as a whole can be clinically dysfunctional even though the individuals within it are more or less sane?” I ask. These are the sorts of things you think about when you live in the America of the new millennium. Our conversation continues in this vein. Her mind is sexy.
Still, I don’t get too excited. I remind myself that this International Woman of Mystery isn’t a candidate for admission to the Les and Lex Institute for the Advanced Study of Non-Monogamous Relationships, or LLIASNMR for short. It’s not that she struggles with the theory involved; it’s that her impression of the entire field has been diminished by distressing experiences in a non-accredited program.
“The girl kept trying to push her boyfriend on me,” she explains, “and he was always leering at us, telling us what to do.” She scrunches her eyebrows. “Finally I went ahead and did it. He had a tiny penis. It was awful.”
So I don’t try to recruit her. I do, however, describe the sort of work we do at the Institute: a mixture of theoretical study, classroom discussion and, naturally, lots of practical assignments in the field.
Emma arrives. After introductions are made I explain that Emma’s been enrolled at the LLIASNMR for over two years now. You could say she’s our star student. She even brought me a gift—not a shiny red apple but Zadie Smith’s latest masterwork. This earns her not a gold star but a soft kiss.
The psychologist is intrigued, so much so that she disappears into the bathroom with Leslie—evidently to get a better handle on what we mean by “hands-on instruction.”
The next day she sends Les a note explaining that we’d helped her see things in a new light; that she’d already started on the required reading and might even be persuaded to tour our conveniently-located Manhattan campus.
And so tonight we’re seeing the psychologist again. If I’ve learned anything in my years as Dean of Recruitment and Campus Diversity, it’s that showing up with freshly-shaven balls is a must.
Posted by Lex Konrad in Dispatches | Oct 25, 2005
“I feel like I’ve lost my mojo,” I tell my girlfriend as we cab downtown.
“You’re not the only one,” she says.
The girl with a flower in her hair. Evil witch done put a hex on me. Maybe on both of us. The trouble started at the first installment of the After Hours Social Club, the Club being an informal almost-weekly gathering of our fellow late-night wanderers. We’d sit and drink and talk, maybe listen to music or watch a video, smoke weed, eat some breakfast and then the gathering would dissolve as effortlessly as it had come together. Not unpleasant really. But it takes a certain kind of easy-going, good-natured person to appreciate the After Hours Social Club.
The girl with a flower in her hair was not one of those people. Oh, she’d been pleasant enough early in the evening, when we’d discussed sex and literature, but in the wee hours she began to complain about the smoke and the drinking and the rough language. As much as she tried to brush them off, the artifacts of her cultish upbringing became apparent. She said things that sounded innocuous enough at the time but, upon later review, I found offensive. You know, that delayed reaction: Wait, that was fucked up.
Eventually I’d had enough. “Perhaps it would be best if you left,” I said. She looked surprised and hesitated as if to call my bluff.
Except I wasn’t bluffing. I held my gaze and motioned toward her shoes. She didn’t have money for a cab so I escorted her to the subway station. Even under duress I try to maintain a modicum of gentlemanly decency.
And then the girl with a flower in her hair muttered something under her breath. I could’ve sworn it was a hex. That was the moment I lost my mojo, I’m sure.
Tribe is nearly empty when we arrive—eerily so, as if the place had been prepped for our arrival. A young man with a head of thick curly hair sits hunched over the bar, deep in conversation with the bartender. “That him?” Les asks.
“Yeah,” I respond, “that’s the Bad Man.”
He’s not so bad anymore, the Bad Man ain’t. He’s a reformed pickup artist, or PUA, in the parlance of the self-styled masters of seduction he used to hang out with. He used to have a sex blog—one that mysteriously disappeared many months ago. Maybe his girlfriend made an honest man out of him. Maybe not. I want to know.
“Yeah, there was drama,” he tells me. “My girlfriend didn’t appreciate the blog at all, of course, and a few of the women I’d been involved with didn’t take the news of my new relationship too well.” He goes on to relate the whole sordid story of how he was run out of the blogosphere.
“And I thought we’d known some crazy chicks.” I shake my head. “So that’s it? No more adventures for you?”
“My girlfriend and I still have fun,” he says, although he’s vague on what this actually entails. “No more random encounters for me.” He grins, then joins his index fingers and thumbs together, lifting them over his head like a halo. I ask the Bad Man what he thinks of the seduction community. “Computer nerds mostly: the guys who sort of missed out during high school and college. Some of the leaders are genuinely skilled though. I had some people looking to me for leadership but I didn’t want to be anyone’s guru.”
“People ask me for advice all the time and I get a certain amount of attention from pickup artists,” I say. “I’m just not cynical enough to prey upon people’s insecurities like that.” I contemplate my present lack of mojo. “There really isn’t a formula, you know.”
“Here, I’ll show you my formula.” He turns away from me and slouches over his mixed drink. He’s right in a way, but this isn’t the whole story. I go to the bathroom and return to find the Bad Man’s engaged my girlfriend in conversation. She hadn’t been terribly excited about coming out with me but she seems happy enough now. I see now that he, at the very least, knows how to keep a woman entertained. I stand back for a bit and observe. I enjoy watching my girlfriend flirt.
The place has filled up in the time we’ve been chatting. Bad Man and I both instinctively, reflexively scan our surroundings for attractive women. A girl in a yellow turtleneck returns my eye contact. “Some pretty ones here tonight,” I announce. Bad Man makes his halo again. I scowl.
Les and I head out for a smoke. A group of yuppie gentlemen are sharing a joint. One of them passes it to us. “You can have the rest,” he says. Reason #179 why I love this town.
When we return Bad Man is a little miffed we indulged without him. “I didn’t know you smoked,” I say. Eventually, he and Les step outside to see if they can scare up any more bud. I lean sideways over the bar and sip my usual gin and tonic. I decide I’m not terribly distressed over my lack of mojo, which is of course yet another facet of the mojo curse: the initial alarm gives way to waning interest. The dark-haired salsa dancer who beat a hasty retreat when she saw me kissing Les, the tall girl whose eyes glazed over when I referenced the Algonquin Round Table, the numerous women I’d barely had any words with at all—they simply furnished proof of what I already knew. My usual moves, if you could call them moves, fell flat. I accepted this the way one might accept the loss of a kidney.
The Bad Man and my Bad Girl have been gone for awhile. I order another drink, aware that my limit for a school night is fast approaching. A tall woman materializes by my side. She looks like that chick from 3rd Rock from the Sun. “Do you have a girlfriend?” she asks.
“Yes, but—”
She cocks her head toward the crowd. “My friend’s interested in you. She’s the one in the yellow turtleneck. She said, ‘Who’s that tall guy over there?’ Just letting you know.”
“Oh really.”
“Yes really.”
“I’ll come over and say hello when my friends get back.”
“Don’t bother.” The girl in the yellow turtleneck has already sidled up to us. She takes the Bad Man’s seat opposite me and she’s all smiles. We make mouth noises at each other and she laughs. I learn she’s a copy editor for a highly-regarded New York publication. I mention a recent article I’d enjoyed. “I didn’t edit that one,” she sez.
The Bad Man and my Bad Girl return from their adventure. He shoots me a sly grin and stands back analyzing my technique, I presume. To the girl in the yellow turtleneck I’m saying, “Oh we see other people, selectively.” Her eyes grow wide. “Look, if you don’t believe me you can ask her yourself,” I add, putting my arm around my girlfriend’s waist.
“Oh I believe you.”
“It’s just that I want you to know what you’re getting into. People have said I’m a bad influence.”
Later on I offer my seat to Les and let the girls talk. “I didn’t expect to be on a date tonight,” I tell the Bad Man. “It’s a school night and I have to be a good boy. Plus, I didn’t come here to pick up chicks.”
“It always happens when you’re not looking for it. Anyway, I’ll be impressed if you can pull this off,” he sez.
“Heh. What about you? I get the feeling you’re holding back on me.” Once again he makes his halo. I laugh. “I swear, if you do that again I’m gonna punch you in the gut.” Leslie’s already gotten the woman’s number and soon enough they’re kissing. “See?” I tell the Bad Man. “She’s always stealing my thunder.” The Bad Man shrugs.
The girl in the yellow turtleneck won’t kiss Leslie again because she’s worried about what her friends will think. I whip out my phone and begin to mash the buttons with clumsy fingers. “Here, gimme that,” the girl says, punching in her digits with blazing speed. “I used to own this same model,” she explains.
The Bad Man invites me and Les back to his place for a bowl. He lives in a large studio, one wall of which is made of exposed brick. The place is littered with electronic gadgets. “So this is where it all went down,” I mumble. I feel like I’m touring a porn set. We lounge on his bed in a druggy haze and watch anime. Otaku, I think. Figures. There’s something nerdy, after all, about trying to hack the female mind. When the bowl is finished we thank him for his hospitality and gather our things. “We’ll have to do this again,” I say.
In the cab I turn to Les and stroke her cheek. “You know, I can’t even remember what her face looked like—the girl with a flower in her hair.”
“Mmm…”
“So I guess we have our mojo back now, huh?”
“Yes we do.”
Posted by Lex Konrad in Opinions | Oct 13, 2005
Yesterday I stated that the real target of American fundamentalists is not the porn industry but the mainstream media:
American fundamentalists are hoping to lay the legislative and judicial groundwork for a sweeping assault upon liberties most of us take for granted. Like, say, watching a racy television series or listening to music that contains offensive lyrics. Their vision of a child-safe world is, ironically, quite dangerous to adults.
As if to prove my point, yesterday the House passed yet another amendment to Regulation 2257, tucked away within the innocuous-sounding Children’s Safety Act, expanding Federal record-keeping requirements to include simulated sexual conduct of the sort you’ll find in many movies and television programs.
No big deal though, right? All the studios have to do is file the necessary paperwork. Not so fast:
The provision, written by Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., could have ramifications beyond simply requiring someone to ensure that the names and ages of actors who partake in pretend lovemaking as compliance with Section 2257 in effect defines a movie or TV show as a pornographic work under federal law.
...
The 2257 provision also has ramifications beyond the artistic as a federal tax provision designed to stem runaway production is unavailable to anyone required to register a 2257. Many state incentives designed to entice filmmakers to shoot on location also contain similar language.
This presents the studios with rather unappealing options: 1) file the paperwork and risk losing federal and state incentives, 2) eliminate simulated sexual conduct entirely, 3) relocate to countries with more favorable laws. In any case, such a law will exact a heavy toll upon the American film industry.
I don’t know about the rest of you adults, but I certainly didn’t wait 21 years to have the full rights and privileges of adulthood—among them making my own decisions about what media to consume—only to have those rights and privileges taken away by the nanny state. Laws like these don’t protect the children (given the laws already on the books, child pornographers must by definition operate underground), they prevent us all from ever growing up.
If there’s a silver lining to this, it may be that people will finally wake up when the government comes for their Desperate Housewives or Sopranos. Even Red State America is going to have difficulty swallowing this Soviet-style media suppression.
There’s plenty of hand-wringing going on right now among sex-bloggers, writers, artists and people involved in the sex industry. People have begun censoring themselves or else pulling up stakes altogether. In the past I stated that I have no intention of becoming another Larry Flynt. If this keeps up, however, it looks like I’ll have no choice. As someone with a mother who grew up in Nazi Germany, a father who grew up in the segregated South and an uncle who spent most of his life behind the Iron Curtain, I know all too well how these kinds of moral crusades turn out.
It’s funny how they always start with the artists, the intellectuals, the “deviants.”
So to hell with all the yellow-bellied moderates out there in consumer-land, all the vacillating, equivocating technocrats; I’m sounding the alarm. Threat level Red. The Republic is in jeopardy, for this and many other reasons. I’ll be damned if I’m going to back down in the face of tyranny—that would be downright un-American.
The American Taliban’s primary tactic here is intimidation. If we collectively flinch things will only get worse. They’ve overreached and it’s time to force their hand.
I just hope that if the Feds come a knockin’ the rest of you will pony up a few bucks for my legal defense fund.
Posted by Lex Konrad in Opinions | Oct 12, 2005
First the Justice Department amended Regulation 2257 in a not-so-subtle attempt to bury legitimate sexual expression under a mountain of paperwork. Then, no longer content to focus on actual criminal conduct such as the production and distribution of child pornography, the FBI began staffing up its so-called Porn Squad to pursue purveyors of “obscene” content. Raids soon followed against Max Hardcore and an amateur porn site operator who dared highlight the carnage in Iraq. As I mentioned last year, this sort of mission creep is to be expected of the administration and its fundamentalist allies:
... Just remember that this time the Supreme Court hangs in the balance, and the current administration would like nothing more than to crack down on sites like this and the individual freedoms associated with it.
At the time some people didn’t believe me:
I really don’t think that President Bush even knows or cares about this website. There is still the first amendment that protects what you say. I just think that the President has better (and harder) thing to take care of, like terrorism, the economy, the environment, and social security.
In my response, I predicted exactly what would happen:
I’ve done my homework. The first amendment does not protect obscenity, as defined by nebulous community standards. The justice department has been staffing up to go after all manner of “obscene†content. Then there’s legislation like COPA, which is more likely to survive challenges under a more conservative supreme court.
What we’re witnessing here are the opening skirmishes in a war on something much larger than pornography. By going after speech very few will openly defend, American fundamentalists are hoping to lay the legislative and judicial groundwork for a sweeping assault upon liberties most of us take for granted. Like, say, watching a racy television series or listening to music that contains offensive lyrics. Their vision of a child-safe world is, ironically, quite dangerous to adults.
Even assuming these indictments don’t survive judicial scrutiny, the simple threat of prosecution has a chilling effect upon free expression. The fundamentalists merely have to make enough noise to intimidate ISPs, web service providers, movie studios, cable networks, publishers, music labels and video game developers into backing away from controversial content. They only have to win a few small battles; to chip away, bit by bit, at the margins of protected speech. By the time the extremists come for the things you like the machinery of oppression will already be in place.
Although reasonable people, including those charged with enforcing the law, might balk at this waste of law enforcement resources, precious few organizations are gearing up for a fight. Regulation 2257 went relatively unnoticed. Porn prosecutions fall within the realm of obscure industry news. Apparently liberty does not in fact die to the sound of thunderous applause. No, when liberty dies you can hear a pin drop.
Now, alas, the written word is enough to earn you a visit from the G-Men. When they finally get around to raiding NLP headquarters I’ll simply direct them toward my bookshelf, where they’ll find tales of incest, sadism, rape, molestation, multi-partnered sex, pederasty, bestiality and coprophilia, among other depravities—and that only covers the great classics of Western literature.
At least I’m in good company.
