The day had been going fine, until Lori started checking out my ass in a really intense way. Which was odd, because I have an okay ass. Nothing to write home about. I guess it was an ass you could settle for. Of course, when pressed, I can shake my booty as well as anybody else. Still, it was somewhat disheartening to have someone checking out my ass without even having the courtesy to introduce herself.

“Excuse me,” said Lori. “Are you married?”

“What? Why, no,” I said.

“Do you shout ‘Bravo!’ in movie theaters?”

“Sometimes. When it’s an action movie.”

She introduced herself. She then asked if she could smell my breath. I told her that I needed one minute to suck on a breath mint. She told me that breath mints weren’t necessary. I informed her that her request was quite unusual. And she then grabbed the roll of BreathSavers out of my hand and stomped my mints into chalky powder. She insisted that I had halitosis. This was not true.

“Hey, you owe me a buck for those BreathSavers!”

“I want a husband,” she said.

“What for? What do you really long for?”

“An angle for this Atlantic article I’m writing. Well, actually, a husband. I’m very worried about that. Every single woman I know feels panic about this. I need to marry and reproduce.”

I then noticed that she was taking notes.

“You know, you don’t need a husband to be happy,” I said. “Mr. Right often comes along when you least expect it.”

“I need a husband now.”

Lori didn’t blink as she said this. I was starting to get an Ira Levin vibe.

“Yeah, and I’d love to write for The New Yorker. It’ll probably never happen. But that doesn’t stop me from writing or living.”

“You don’t understand. I need a husband now.”

“Well, if that’s the case, go get one.”

I started to walk away. I considered calling 911. Lori was starting to give me the creeps. There was a wild look in her eyes.

“Will you be my husband?”

I was unnerved by Lori. I knew many well-adjusted single women in their thirties and forties who were living fantastic lives. And they were doing this entirely without partners.

“Are you The One?”

“No!” I shouted.

She then consulted a complicated Powerpoint presentation on her laptop. There was a red text box with the words MUST MARRY MAN NOW! flashing in bright white text.

“Are you my soul mate?”

“Look, Lori, I don’t know you, but I think you need help.”

“I need to marry somebody. Someone who can help me pop out 1.2 children from my uterus. Will you marry me and help me pop out 1.2 children? I have one son. I need 1.2 more so that I can live the perfect dream. Are you Mr. Good Enough?”

“I’m Mr. Champion.”

Lori then complained to her friend Caitlin that I wasn’t cooperating. Caitlin suggested that they should go home and watch the final episode of Friends to get some additional ideas for Lori’s article. And that was the last I saw of them.

I didn’t understand Lori’s problem. If only she would stop with the whole “I need a husband” nonsense and accept that life happens when you make other plans, maybe she might get her wish.

But it was good to meet someone who wrote for The Atlantic. I was pretty sure that Lori would read a few books on the subject, talk to some noted experts on relationships and human behavior, cite a few studies, and write a very thoughtful article without a single generalization about gender. After all, The Atlantic was a respected magazine that attracted only the best writers.

I swallow hard.

Three quarters of the way through Amateur Bondage Video, I abort my research efforts. A few minutes after that, my jeans are a jumble on the floor and I am smoky-eyed on my own bed, basking in the aftermath.

The perfect pornographic experience? Not entirely. Sure, the end result was enthusiastic enough, but I had to swim through a dangerous ocean of flesh to get here, proving that nothing is easy.

People often assume that women dislike pornography or that they don’t like it as much as men. That’s an oversimplification. I want to like porn. But professional videos are less concerned with what feels good for a woman and more hard pressed on what is visually arousing for men — fellatio for instance. I’m not knocking it. It’s a wonderful erotic act that men love to watch, but that only gets me so far. On the flip side, pro porn constantly depicts cunnilingus as if it were a lollipop-licking contest with a misplaced emphasis on the visual. I always roll my eyes at that and think: Too bad. If he were doing it right most of the pink stuff wouldn’t be viewable.

And the subtleties: barely audible breathing escalating to a wide-eyed moan, finger strokes that tighten into a desperate clutch, the widening eyes of climax. Ideal porn would show all of this without the ridiculous staging, faux boobs and silly plots involving pool boys and “nurses.” But the professional efforts are all about those things, which is why I gave up on them years ago. One could argue that the actors love the work and the camera, but I doubt Jenna Jameson ever works for free. Pro porn stems from the exchange of money. Successful sex is about the exchange of desire.

So when XTube.com went live nearly two years ago with the option of user-generated adult content, it was a revelation–a naked YouTube, without the snarky comments. The idea seemed flawless: finally, a free-of-charge amateur alternative to the Internet’s bogus claims of 100 percent free XXX! The parade of copycat sites followed — PornoTube, YouPorn, Megarotic. The list gets longer every day. There’s a healthy dose of desire splattered on these sites. The Web 2.0 actors and directors are doing this because they want to and they want me to watch. I’m not paying to attend this soiree. I’ve been invited.

The initial orgy was a blast. The woman sashaying nude down a busy street with a cigarette in one hand and a swinging purse in the other was so funny that I posted the clip on my blog and titled the entry “Confidence.” I assigned pithy quips to my discoveries and emailed the links. I asked, “Got vichyssoise?” of a huge leek being used as a dildo. “Her lips are sealed” was my commentary on the woman matter-of-factly tying her labia into a knot. These weren’t about arousal, but fun. If the people posting them were doing it to bolster their self-esteems, judging by the hit counts, they had to puff up like peacocks. I might have watched on with bewilderment, but why shouldn’t Super KnotGirl be proud of herself?

Things got cagier when I searched for something to arouse me. I passed over the male-concentric thumbnails that dominate these sites and clicked on images or titles that might have something for 42-year-old housewife and mother in Cleveland, Ohio. My five foot one stature earned Petite Amateur Keeps Fucking a click. It featured the reverse cowgirl position, which showcased the woman’s body beautifully, but her clitoris was a mile away from the action. Even 38 seconds of that was too long — I was out in 10. The thumbnail for Mature Wife And Her Special Friend looked promising with a lush sex toy and lacy stockings, but it went south when a loud radio jock’s voice suddenly plugged an event “sponsored by new Heineken Premium Light, the first light beer worth the name Heineken!”

Ugh.

I hated it when that deer-in-the-headlights thing overcame me during mediocre or bad footage. I’d push the fast forward bar along and think: will he ever take that thing out of her mouth? If he did, but only in order to ejaculate all over her face, it was an emotional pinch for me. Amateur porn is real sex, not someone’s job. I don’t want to be treated that way. How did the woman on the screen feel? I’m not judging her sexual experience, but when it comes to watching sex, I’m selfish. I can’t help but project what I see on the screen onto my own paradigm. Someone else might be doing it, but it’s still all about me. Hence, I quickly found that no matter how graphic and banal the footage, it was almost always complex.

A click here, another over there. My eyes frenetically scanned screen after screen of thumbnails. The search, with all its primal stimuli, became tiresome, even annoying. There was very little that was sexy to me. The endless surfing was the zenith of frustration particularly when I was unsuccessful. Who wants to waste an hour looking at porn that doesn’t turn them on?

I admit there are gems and high-riding waves among the online porn like Amateur Bondage Video. And I love it that 47-year-old Doris from accounting, brought up on the mantra Good Girls Don’t Do Certain Things, can slip into the den and furiously rub off while watching Lonely Housewife Fucking Her Vacuum after a lifetime of guilty curiosity. One big surprise was the relief I felt at finally seeing what other women’s genitals look like and how women touch themselves. Men have been comparison checking ever since the locker room. Board members often have nowhere to hide. Vaginas are different. Unless you’re a gynecologist or a gay woman, you don’t see them. The pink panther stays under wraps until we open it up. Even to view my own, I have to fold up like a pretzel on the bathroom floor with all the lights on and get tricky with a mirror. Playboy is no help. Hefner’s minions either Photoshop out any indication of an orifice or leave a tiny hairless line that peeps, “I’m a very well-behaved little muff.”

Double ugh.

But the online amateurs are fleshy beauties, lush with folds and colors from pink to brown to dusky rose. These are the childbearing workhorses of human sexuality, unapologetic and closed five days a month, thank you very much. They roar, “I am pussy!” and get my unconditional support.

Then there was this: the image of a man buried between a woman’s thighs moved me to click through to Female POV 3. The man was handsome and muscled. The woman was filming the action. “It’s taking too long,” he said as he looked up and revealed his flaccid penis. Next was a failed attempt at intercourse. Then the woman bent over and fingered herself to provide a visual. The man stared into her, his face vulnerable and desperate, his right hand furiously stroking. “The camera and stuff just makes me a little bit nervous,” he said. She urged him to ignore it. Nothing worked. The man collected his clothes from the floor and left. “Hey,” said the woman, whose face remained hidden, “Close the door, please.”

I blinked back tears. I was furious over the woman’s indifference. But at the same time, I waxed protective — even feeling maternal — for the man. Women complain about sexual objectivity all the time. This was the same sort of sexual abuse made worse by the unavoidable evidence, all of which was recorded by that obnoxious little broad’s camera. I wanted to reach into the screen and grab her by the neck, plop her down and say, “Think you’re such hot shit? Don’t forget that all your shaved sweetness did nothing for that man. Everything here failed, including you.”

And that is how XTube, self-billed as “the greatest thing since the orgasm,” managed a total eclipse of my arousal for the rest of the day.

I later realized that the clip was not a failure, but the most evocative footage I’d seen, hands down. It had every right to be online and then some. So it goes when you sail the sea of free online sex. Every adjective applies. It’s funny and sad and sexy and messy and arousing and painful and infuriating and, well, a lot like real sex.

But we’ve been recording real sex forever. What’s different about Porn 2.0? This new porn frontier is thriving because the logistics that heretofore governed adult content are stripped away. To procure the new sex, all I have to do is step into my home office and fire up the Mac, which is miles away from the seedy “Adult” stores on the other side of town. Once online, I’ll find all the amateur footage I want compliments of high-speed Internet and inexpensive digital cameras. The broadcasts come from across the globe.

It can be overwhelming.

The sheer volume and range of content makes me feel as though I am standing with my nose one inch away from a fifty-foot billboard that is glaring and blaring a million different sexual messages. Thus far, Web 2.0′s John Q. Public editor might be dealing aces over at Wikipedia, but not here. In fact, the more he gets his paws into online sex, the more raucous it becomes. After all, honest sex doesn’t come with six-pack abs and good lighting. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the public editors of Wiki have spent the past two years making that world look like a real reference site and making XTube look like real sex.

But do I really want Editor 2.0 to clean this sex up?

I don’t think so. Despite my quibbles, I’m rooting for all this diverse new unbridled sex with all of its imperfect beauty. And even though I don’t drop in that often, I’ll be checking in once in a while to see how things are (ahem) coming along.

Visit the 1/11/08 entry of O’Brien’s blog for pertinent links.

Pictures of flight attendants from the past. I’m particularly taken with the matador uniform for some reason. But another part of me is amazed that women had to dress this way. (via MeFi)

 no, Japan boy, no!

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/6656417.stm

 very ugly dog (now deceased): 

I’m a stranger here, I think.

Here’s an interview with me that was posted on Michelle Lin’s blog today.

In the interview I talk about my book and about how my dog attacked me when I was five. We put the dog “to sleep.” That’s a phrase I like.

Here’s my book, which is called Fires.

Another novel you might like is The Magus by John Fowles. It’s very good.

I’m tired. I ate many oysters tonight, as well as some mango sorbet.

Here’s the beginning of a new novel, which I may never finish:

passing through

Strangelets pass through the planet at 900,000 miles per hour. Space is a great river, the earth is a porous cloth, and in the water are strangelets. (Or you might say they’re a part of it, actually.) Other things in, or of, the water: neutrinos on their way from the sun in the trillions of trillions, muons careening out of deep space, and perhaps even the ghostly and sluggish Weakly Interacting Massive Particle, which no one is sure exists. Those things are all passing through the planet—easily, in numbers beyond comprehension. They are passing through your face now—your eyes and teeth and hair.

Here’s a post on my blog about accidentally going to a gay pool party this weekend.

Many years ago, only a few months after I had obtained a driver’s license, I worked behind the register at a burger joint. I got into trouble because I thought a girl who came in had a “cute nose.” My co-workers had observations comparable to the following equations:

girl = a01 + a02z + a03z₂ + a04z₃

girl = f (x, z)

However, they expressed these thoughts less mathematically, using phrases like “I’d like to nail her” and “What a piece of ass.” Even more strangely, they never revealed the precise vertices they had observed. They kept these to themselves. And they certainly had no intention of plotting these points on paper.

Anyway, when they heard that I had thought the girl had a “cute nose,” using my alternative mathematical criteria*, precisely because the nose was a tad overhooked by my co-workers’ estimation and because, well, they kind of wanted me to get laid so that I’d be a bit more relaxed, they then told this girl what I had said. And the girl came back through the drive-thru. And I felt ashamed. And I ran to the walk-in locker and stayed there freezing until she went away.

But I eventually learned to accept these strange impulses and began to see how women in magazines and films clearly didn’t reflect the lovely and flawed world I saw in front of me. Even the porn I downloaded in my twenties became more amateurish in nature. The Tommy Lee-Pam Anderson video wasn’t really all that interesting, and I had seen it in its entirety. I never thought much of breast implants.

So here we have Jenna Fischer, a comparatively “normal”-looking woman, whose normalcy is hidden behind endless Photoshop layers and who probably has features comparable to this girl’s “cute nose.” I don’t find this alluring at all. I find it extremely sad.

* — And I should point out that it’s disingenuous to portray all this through equations, for there are also feelings here that cause certain variables to be wildly exaggerated or underestimated. So this is an inaccurate science.

Sexism is the fact that there aren’t nearly as many restrooms for women as there are for men. Sexism is any number of architectural sleights that don’t take into account a woman’s physiology.

Sexism is any government that would exert control over a woman’s uterus. Sexism is our society not providing for the realities of sexual intercourse, of letting a man walk away while a woman must scrape together hard-earned dollars to either raise or not have the kid. Sexism is a conservative family that will not support a pregnant teenager facing such a predicament.

Sexism is Frank Capra showing Donna Reed to be a freakish old maid in the Pottersville parallel universe. Or Sharon Stone getting $15 million for Basic Instinct 2 to take off her clothes and simulate sex and $2.5 million for Casino to deliver a performance. Or the fact that most film directors are male.

Sexism is a woman being unable to fuck whoever she wants and however she wants without being called a slut, while a man can be polymorphously perverse without reproach. Sexism is also the idea that an older woman can’t be sexy, while such dinosaurs as Jack Nicholson (and even Woody Allen) are given carte blanche. Sexism is the denied orgasm, or a woman going down on a man, but a man too lazy for cunnilingus. Sexism is a woman being considered unattractive for being at least ten pounds overweight, while a man’s prominent paunch goes unremarked upon. Sexism is a man being able to wear the same suit to two different social affairs, where a woman who wears the same dress or the same shoes is considered cheap or a tramp.

Sexism sometimes comes down to a gender chasm of maintenance. The billion-dollar makeup industry, the pressure to squeeze into a tight skirt, the unseen efforts to hide wrinkles or crow’s feet or sagging breasts.

We know all these things. Or we should know them. And yet all of the silent heartbreak that have resulted because of these mentalities could have been avoided with consideration or a few simple choices. If not through a piece of legislation like the Equal Rights Amendment, which has been in limbo now for over eighty years, then perhaps through a wholesale rejection of the consumerist and cultural forces that continue to tell women that they are second-class citizens. Those who would dismiss a women’s-centric film, even a skillfully made one, as a “chick flick” or a book “chick lit.” Those who would declare a particular talking point “too girly.” Those who would declare a reactionary like Caitlin Flanagan as the major female voice in one of our most distinguished weekly magazines or who would keep a major Sunday book review section almost the exclusive territory of white males.

It is now the 21st century. Women, in fact, outnumber male college graduates. And yet where is their presence? According to the American Association of University Professors, in 2003-2004, 38% of all faculity are women and women professors earn 80% of their male counterparts. There has never been a woman presiding over the White House, unless you count Geena Davis. Only 14 out of 100 U.S. Senators are women. Only 59 (a mere 11%) of 435 Representatives are women.

One doesn’t even have to be a feminist to pay attention to these things. And yet we allow these discrepancies to linger, hoping that some elusive force will figure this all out. But as long as we remain silent and as long as we look the other way hoping that the problem will rectify itself, we contribute to the horrible divide. We become sexists, men and women, in our own quiet and comfortable way. And isn’t that a pity. Because we can do so much better.

Here’s one thought from BF that nobody bothered to proffer: “But why shouldn’t the female representative in the political blogosphere engage earnestly with issues like health care and national security rather than packaging them like a pink puffy confection on acid? Since leaving Wonkette, Cox has joined the rank of post-blogger novelists with her new book, Dog Days, described as ‘a light comedy of Washington power, halfway between Primary Colors and Sex and the City,’ and filled with zingers like ‘their bodies were both campaign-white and campaign-soft. . . . During an election year D.C.’s standards of attractiveness — already graded on a generous curve — tracked to availability. . . .’ Sorry for the bad feminist moment, but I can’t help but feel that Cox was anointed as the token woman for the same reason so many are: she looks pretty sitting on that pundit’s couch.”