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garoteTime to write down some stuff so I can forget about it.
On the way up to Dad's place in Sacramento, I turned on the radio while parked at a gas station and heard the preacher at the beginning of that Meat Beat song: "I know the ... the EVIL feeling that you feel when you sing it, I know the ... the lost position that you get into with the BEAT ... Well, uh,... If you ask the teenager of today what it is they like the most about rock music, they'll say the beat, the beat."
I went "Whoah, creepy."
Then a narrator broke in and clarified that this preacher had spoken about rock music in protest to Elvis Presley's growing fame, some thirty years ago.
The show cut to Elvis himself, saying "The parent groups down there, they really thought I was ... well, something. (laughter) The police came to film the concert, and when I went up on that stage I couldn't move at all. All I could do was wiggle my little finger a bit like this, (laughter) nothing else was allowed."
I also learned that one of Elvis' singles, I think it was "Are You Lonesome Tonight", sold over a million copies in it's first week of release. Think of the distribution channels back then - that's one HELL of a sale! Good lord!
Let's see, what else to say...
Last week or so I was sitting in the Cabrillo cafeteria failing to do math homework (as always), when a girl I'd seen in my Physics class over a year ago walked in. Short, about 5'4", with angular Irish features, wearing tight blue jeans and a thin white blouse. Through the blouse you could see the areole of her breasts, darting about like eyes. She was walking fast on uncomfortable shoes, in a hurry, and without a bra, so quite a bit of darting was going on.
Now this is all pretty typical, at least up to my reaction - I became angry!
I knew from working with her in Physics class that she had a very steady boyfriend, and they were practically engaged. She certainly didn't need to walk around jiggling to attract anyone, so she must have been doing it for her boyfriend, or perhaps just because it felt nice to go braless with a thin blouse. As she passed by I saw her eyes moving around the room, and her expression grew hard. Clearly I wasn't the only one looking -- and clearly we were all, in her assessment, bad people for doing so.
What made me angry was that I perceived her as being insensitive... Insensitive to the sexual frustration she inspired.
I've heard of this thing called the "male gaze". I think it's a combination of men's tendency to look at women's bodies, women's conflicting responses to it, and attention from men being potentially dangerous. It's very confusing because it's very subjective. It seems to me that women are in some kind of endless battle with each other, trying to dress just well enough to get attention and appear desirable, but only to the men they want, and not so over-the-top that they get ostracized by other women for ruining the competition. There's a similar game for men, less about being sexy and more about threat management. After a while it becomes so natural you forget you're doing it, but nevertheless, whenever you enter a room and see a man you don't know, you always, always, do the threat-assessment dance. Some men are big and they can't help be imposing, and you make allowance for that, but a man wearing a muscle shirt and giving you the Hard Stare in the middle of a PTA meeting clearly wants to be everyone's problem. Same deal, in the other game, with a woman dressing way too slutty at an office party. Context matters, clothing matters, your physical template matters... It's a mess with too many players and it never gets sorted out completely.
Anyway, about this girl in the cafeteria. She must have known how eye-catching she was, but what frustrated me was that it was socially unacceptable for me to gawk. Sexual freak with a mind in the gutter, I'd be, if I were to watch her boobs dance through her shirt, and watching me do it, she'd stare daggers at me. "Quit looking; I'm not wearing this for YOU!"
Now let me contrast this with what happened later that same day.
I went to UCSC, walked up on a hill with a bunch of other people in the middle of the night, took my shirt off, and played the drums and danced for hours. Four or five girls, mostly better endowed than the little Irish flower in the cafeteria, took their shirts and bras entirely off and danced topless to the rhythm. And how did I feel? Happy! Joyous! I could look at them all I wanted, but I didn't really need to or care to, because hey - it DIDN'T MATTER. I was having more fun drumming.
Why did I feel angry in one context and not the other?
Looking deeper, I see it is tied up in my sense of the kind of person the Irish girl is. Not the kind of person who would go to a drum circle and dance topless. In fact, I can compare her to someone I saw at the drum circle... Another young girl, probably a freshman, who wandered up later after the circle had already grown to a crowd. All the topless girls were certainly nice looking, but this girl was obviously even higher on the physical shape chart, and wearing leather ankle boots, black lycra pants, and a midriff-baring buttoned shirt with a collar and cuffs just a little too tight for her chest.
Perhaps she couldn't take anything off for fear of the dry-cleaning bill, but I think closer to the truth was that she was disoriented. She certainly looked confused, almost shocked, by the casual way everyone else was grooving. I imagine she was especially shocked by the topless girls. I fancy she was thinking, "I'll lose face, I'll lose respect, if I shed my shirt and dance. I'm certainly losing respect for these people. I'm not engaging in some wanton debauchery. I am more mature by keeping my clothes on. I have more power than these people when I'm covered. And in the end, why would I want to get naked anyway? Just a bunch of loose hippies with no sense of modesty, all these people, probably high on something, not role models in any way!"
It's almost hilarious how context-sensitive and subjective it all is. Or it would be hilarious, if it wasn't based on the often debilitating surges of hormonal lust, fear, envy, and rage in young people like me and everyone around me at this college. At least it isn't high school any more.
Perhaps the lesson for me right now is, if you think a certain group of people is scary, you no doubt scare them too. If you think people dancing naked are scary, think of how scary you are, hiding forever behind your clothes, nursing superiority. You could be hiding a gun in there.
And in closing I can say thank Bob for the topless girls of UCSC. They make me feel at home.
Then, elsewhere in my life, there is simply looking for the sake of looking. Like sitting here at Brent's computer in the Ocean Echo Motel, I can look outside and see Heather watering the flowers. Always its the white tank-top, and always it's the black bra, when she leans towards me to get the pots wired to the eaves. Two tasty round snacks. Not just one, oh no; nature blesses us with one, and then adds another just like it! It's the best deal in the universe.
What was I thinking about??
On the way up to Dad's place in Sacramento, I turned on the radio while parked at a gas station and heard the preacher at the beginning of that Meat Beat song: "I know the ... the EVIL feeling that you feel when you sing it, I know the ... the lost position that you get into with the BEAT ... Well, uh,... If you ask the teenager of today what it is they like the most about rock music, they'll say the beat, the beat."
I went "Whoah, creepy."
Then a narrator broke in and clarified that this preacher had spoken about rock music in protest to Elvis Presley's growing fame, some thirty years ago.
The show cut to Elvis himself, saying "The parent groups down there, they really thought I was ... well, something. (laughter) The police came to film the concert, and when I went up on that stage I couldn't move at all. All I could do was wiggle my little finger a bit like this, (laughter) nothing else was allowed."
I also learned that one of Elvis' singles, I think it was "Are You Lonesome Tonight", sold over a million copies in it's first week of release. Think of the distribution channels back then - that's one HELL of a sale! Good lord!
Let's see, what else to say...
Last week or so I was sitting in the Cabrillo cafeteria failing to do math homework (as always), when a girl I'd seen in my Physics class over a year ago walked in. Short, about 5'4", with angular Irish features, wearing tight blue jeans and a thin white blouse. Through the blouse you could see the areole of her breasts, darting about like eyes. She was walking fast on uncomfortable shoes, in a hurry, and without a bra, so quite a bit of darting was going on.
Now this is all pretty typical, at least up to my reaction - I became angry!
I knew from working with her in Physics class that she had a very steady boyfriend, and they were practically engaged. She certainly didn't need to walk around jiggling to attract anyone, so she must have been doing it for her boyfriend, or perhaps just because it felt nice to go braless with a thin blouse. As she passed by I saw her eyes moving around the room, and her expression grew hard. Clearly I wasn't the only one looking -- and clearly we were all, in her assessment, bad people for doing so.
What made me angry was that I perceived her as being insensitive... Insensitive to the sexual frustration she inspired.
I've heard of this thing called the "male gaze". I think it's a combination of men's tendency to look at women's bodies, women's conflicting responses to it, and attention from men being potentially dangerous. It's very confusing because it's very subjective. It seems to me that women are in some kind of endless battle with each other, trying to dress just well enough to get attention and appear desirable, but only to the men they want, and not so over-the-top that they get ostracized by other women for ruining the competition. There's a similar game for men, less about being sexy and more about threat management. After a while it becomes so natural you forget you're doing it, but nevertheless, whenever you enter a room and see a man you don't know, you always, always, do the threat-assessment dance. Some men are big and they can't help be imposing, and you make allowance for that, but a man wearing a muscle shirt and giving you the Hard Stare in the middle of a PTA meeting clearly wants to be everyone's problem. Same deal, in the other game, with a woman dressing way too slutty at an office party. Context matters, clothing matters, your physical template matters... It's a mess with too many players and it never gets sorted out completely.
Anyway, about this girl in the cafeteria. She must have known how eye-catching she was, but what frustrated me was that it was socially unacceptable for me to gawk. Sexual freak with a mind in the gutter, I'd be, if I were to watch her boobs dance through her shirt, and watching me do it, she'd stare daggers at me. "Quit looking; I'm not wearing this for YOU!"
Now let me contrast this with what happened later that same day.
I went to UCSC, walked up on a hill with a bunch of other people in the middle of the night, took my shirt off, and played the drums and danced for hours. Four or five girls, mostly better endowed than the little Irish flower in the cafeteria, took their shirts and bras entirely off and danced topless to the rhythm. And how did I feel? Happy! Joyous! I could look at them all I wanted, but I didn't really need to or care to, because hey - it DIDN'T MATTER. I was having more fun drumming.
Why did I feel angry in one context and not the other?
Looking deeper, I see it is tied up in my sense of the kind of person the Irish girl is. Not the kind of person who would go to a drum circle and dance topless. In fact, I can compare her to someone I saw at the drum circle... Another young girl, probably a freshman, who wandered up later after the circle had already grown to a crowd. All the topless girls were certainly nice looking, but this girl was obviously even higher on the physical shape chart, and wearing leather ankle boots, black lycra pants, and a midriff-baring buttoned shirt with a collar and cuffs just a little too tight for her chest.
Perhaps she couldn't take anything off for fear of the dry-cleaning bill, but I think closer to the truth was that she was disoriented. She certainly looked confused, almost shocked, by the casual way everyone else was grooving. I imagine she was especially shocked by the topless girls. I fancy she was thinking, "I'll lose face, I'll lose respect, if I shed my shirt and dance. I'm certainly losing respect for these people. I'm not engaging in some wanton debauchery. I am more mature by keeping my clothes on. I have more power than these people when I'm covered. And in the end, why would I want to get naked anyway? Just a bunch of loose hippies with no sense of modesty, all these people, probably high on something, not role models in any way!"
It's almost hilarious how context-sensitive and subjective it all is. Or it would be hilarious, if it wasn't based on the often debilitating surges of hormonal lust, fear, envy, and rage in young people like me and everyone around me at this college. At least it isn't high school any more.
Perhaps the lesson for me right now is, if you think a certain group of people is scary, you no doubt scare them too. If you think people dancing naked are scary, think of how scary you are, hiding forever behind your clothes, nursing superiority. You could be hiding a gun in there.
And in closing I can say thank Bob for the topless girls of UCSC. They make me feel at home.
Then, elsewhere in my life, there is simply looking for the sake of looking. Like sitting here at Brent's computer in the Ocean Echo Motel, I can look outside and see Heather watering the flowers. Always its the white tank-top, and always it's the black bra, when she leans towards me to get the pots wired to the eaves. Two tasty round snacks. Not just one, oh no; nature blesses us with one, and then adds another just like it! It's the best deal in the universe.
What was I thinking about??
no subject
Date: 2017-07-28 11:56 pm (UTC)One thing I am very glad for at the age of 40, is the way my libido has changed over the past 20 years. My interest in sex, and in looking at fair ladies, is about as strong as ever. But thankfully the intense *need* I used to have around it is gone, and when it comes to distractingly sexy girls out in public, I'm able to acknowledge their presence, orient my view in the opposite direction, and forget about them almost immediately. That would have felt like a superhuman act of willpower when I was 21; now I just don't care all that much. I think it's partly that I have had enough sex with enough women in the meantime that I feel basically satisfied with my experience and I don't need any more of it quite the way I once did. And partly that I know there is no need for me to be creepy and stare at some hot girl in the vicinity, since it's so trivial to find about one million photos of similar beauties to stare at instead. (And they'll even be naked!) Or even how easy and pleasant it is simply to fantasize later, for which I now know only a glance or two gives you all the fodder you need.
Every now and again I do still encounter some woman in public who is so inexplicably attractive to me that I have a hard time not looking in her direction, but it's pretty rare. That's when I choose to avoid that location for a while given that I'm not interested in managing those feelings.