Last Saturday, German friend and Geegster groupie Andreas lent me a copy of D. Savage's Skipping Towards Gomorrah. He had multiple copies and, like me, Andreas digs some Savage. I am an ardent fan of the Savage Love Podcast and am made quite gleeful when Dan starts laying into the assholes whose words and deeds his takes issue with. Dan reliably rips new assholes for men who dislike cunnilingus, fags who emotionally mess with their hags, people who do not cheat the responsible way, and other sexual transgressors who need a stern talking-to. I highly recommend it.
Tonight, I finished the book and was laughing out loud at the very end, where Dan goes to NYC and hires two escorts, a male and a female. The escorts happen to be a couple in their non-escort life, and both cater to male clientele (women just don't pay for this sort of thing). The male escort is an enormous muscular specimen of male flesh, 6'6", 240, and is paid by gay dudes to do "muscle worship," meaning he gets $250/hr to get his ripped body felt up. I guess he's got a special product that not every man can sell, being all big and buff and everything.
Dan admits that he has never dated or been sexually involved with a man with this type of physique and it really isn't his thing. Although he paid to feel this dude's muscles, he's not really into it and he feels weird about doing it. I got to thinking, yeah, big muscley dudes: not my thing, either.
My BFF Cassi just happened to accidentally marry a bodybuilder. She didn't set out to do this. This was never her taste. It just happened that way. She has admitted that at first, she was weirded out by his body, all whatever amount of rock-hard muscle he happens to have. She told me this when they started going out, about how she was sort of embarrassed by it. The first time I met her now-husband, he grabbed my hand, placed it on his rock-hard abs, and said, "everything you've heard about me is true." He was clearly proud of his assets and assumed that as an allegedly straight female, I'd love to be treated to a brief feel of everything he worked so hard for.
Chicks obviously dig this shit. So why can I take Bob's consistent panda bear shape seriously but if he were to come home all ripped and bursting with rock-hard musculature, I'd be freaked out about it? Shouldn't I be into guys with nice bodies?
Well, one answer to this is, I've never been an aesthete. It's all about the brain with me, so if you've got what I need upstairs, whatever ambulatory meat you're using to carry your brain around doesn't really matter, as long as your dick is at least average-sized. Second, since getting married, I don't really look at guys the same way. This is not to say that I don't find other men attractive. I do. I'm just not really looking to look at other guys right now.
I skew toward nerds out of solidarity, of course. Popular dudes don't have the requisite painful dating history that I require. I tried to date one of those guys once and it was all wrong. He had two dates for his high school prom and there was a fistfight over them, or so he said. I was always confused about what he liked about me (answer: my class status--he was from some hick-ass Texas town and was ashamed of it) and he always had plenty of hot babes wanting to ride his stick. So I demurred.
Although it is not out of the question that a nerdy guy could be into bodybuilding, in my experiences nerdiness will always trump the bod. For example, on a date with my former coworker at the House of Lex, I learned that underneath those impeccably tailored suits he wore, he was packing some serious guns. Of course, you wouldn't know this unless he decided to clue you in on it. He was short, bald, aged like a soap opera baby (I found a recent pic of him online and even though he's only 6 years my senior, what's left of his hair is all white and he looks like he could tell you what he was doing the day Kennedy died) and any woman with an IQ under 180 would have a tough time getting through dinner with him, but he was also kind of buff, too. I was really into him for all his braininess, but not so much the guns. I was under the impression that concealed weapons were illegal in Massachusetts.
What about the whole protector thing? Isn't that why these muscley guys are always on the cover of romance paperbacks? Women want to be protected, right? Maybe feminism ruined the enjoyment of finely chiseled male bodies for me. Muscles=dominance. Muscles=oppression. Muscles=power. Muscles=overcompensation. I also don't care for sports. I like soft, cottony things, like puppets and stuffed animals, and my beloved husband personifies the best that stuffed friends have to offer.
I feel I'm pretty safe from Bob deciding to go out and get a six-pack of anything but Firemans #4, but still, I harbor no desire to cuddle up to anything but fat and moosh. Not that I'd pay $250/hr for that, but you know...bodybuilders just weird me out. So do people who pay large sums of money to do a buff man's laundry for him.
Posted by Zerd at April 22, 2008 11:36 PMI read that whole muscley episode and also didn't get it. I have never dated anyone body buildery, mostly I've dated lean lanky types all boyish and stuff. I is not a good feminine I suppose.
Dan's so super great. The line about "cheating responsibly" caught my eye. In my mind, if it is responsible and ethical and "out" it ain't cheating, as cheating means, to me, getting something through nefarious means.
Poly, or as it is sometimes called, responsible non-monogamy, is all about keeping the relationships in the land of fidelity. Faithful, takes on a whole new meaning in that world, but focuses on being faithful to the person, the emotion, the agreements and communication.
Like if Chris used his dissertation time to go to the comic book store and spend cash we didn't have, and didn't tell me, that would be a serious fidelity infraction, moreso than going him on a date that I knew and was happy about.
But the word cheating is also a traditional shortcut word for getting the booty on the side. On the side in our culture equals cheating, I suppose, no matter how fidelitous the arrangement.
Interesting. I like words. Words are very interesting. Like booty.
Bootybootybootybooty.
Posted by: Jules at April 23, 2008 09:05 AMI actually have read that studies show, despite what romance novels, etc. would have us believe, most ladies are not really into super-duper buff guys.
Also, I must agree that nerdy/geeky men are the hotness. once Morgan and I were at his friend's parents' house and he saw this book about physics on the bookshelf. when he opened it, it was a fake book with a flask (once full of booze, now empty) inside and he was all bummed out, as he had really wanted to read about physics. how adorable is that?
Posted by: margaret at April 23, 2008 08:59 PMYeah, I like 'em lanky and harmless. Beatuppable. But actually physically strong enough to pick me up, which dudes often do because I'm exceedingly short and for some reason, this means it is ok to treat me as a child. That part I'm not so fond of. I think I'd be grossed-out by a six-pack.
Posted by: Amy! at April 25, 2008 01:52 PMHaving spent time buff (the college team of which I was a member won the national championship) and obese, I have to say that I like how people treat me now better than when I was buff. At least now people don't write me off as an idiot, and I don't have to deal with the plastic people. Some wretched souls wouldn't waste 10 words on me when we were alone, but when they wanted to impress people, you can bet they were acting real tight with me because I was an _athlete_. I know I need to be in the middle ground for health reasons, but but if I were buff those posers would be doing more damage to my soul and psychological state than any amount of rejection ever will.
Posted by: Dave at April 25, 2008 07:44 PM