Exhortation Or Extortion

Dear Abby,

I hope you can help me. I have a pale ale riding on this. Ok - first question: why can't people ask advice columnists a question without having to offer a reason for the question? You know like -“my sister and I are betting on this. Loser donates a kidney!” Or like those magazine stories that begin with "I never thought it would happen to me" and you know it didn't actually happen to him because if it did, he wouldn't be sitting down writing expletives to a magazine. He couldn’t see to type. The smile on his face would push his cheeks up his head and make his eyes squint.

Anyway - a woman told me that women are more loyal to each other than they are to a man. You know that whole “sisterhood is powerful” thing. She said that a woman will discuss everything with her friend and doesn’t consider that breaking a confidence. Is this true and for the love of the good God - what’s she been saying about me? I have blackmail money riding on this!

Signed,

I didn't do it, it's damn lie!

Good morning!

Ok here's the deal. I have no coffee. How can that be possible? I have Coke Zero and 3 packets of soy sauce but no coffee. I don't understand that. The time I would have spent sipping coffee and waking up, I spent staring into an empty canister and looking at an emptied scoop.

I have no coffee. I just wanted to someone to get that.

thanks.

Good morning!

Moved

I don’t dance like Travolta. I did in the 70s. Although not nearly as well. Well perhaps if space aliens inhabited my body - but. And then, women loved that I danced because it was a dancing era. Any man that danced got a date.

Now, I rarely dance. Hell, I’ve got a bum foot. And the music now isn’t so much about rhythm as it is about rage. And I’m not angry. So I don’t dance as much as I used to dance. But to me, dancing isn’t athleticism. It isn’t gymnastics. And it isn’t pornographic moves to the soundtrack of some stripper flick. Dancing is my arm around her waist and her arm around my shoulder and my lips beside her ear and our gentle synchronized sway. It’s emotion in our motions. It’s being moved to move.

Sole Mate

I don’t think of sex all the time. I think about it often. But it’s not in my top 5 things. But passion is my priority. I think about passion all the time. I’m passionate about my faith. I’m passionate about my loves. I’m passionate about coffee. I’m passionate about my politics. I’m passionate about people who want to eat fiber rich cereal. (Why? Why would they? Let‘s say no to gnaw!) I’m passionate about caring. So I’m passionate about everything. I’m even passionate in my prose.

And I’m constantly sensual. I’m always concerned with my senses. I rely on my common senses. You simply cannot live an examined life and not satiate or negate your senses. And I have a satiated life. My senses have their fills. So, I care about everything. Sex without passion is mating. And I’ve evolved past that. I don’t want to mate. I don’t want a soul mate or even an intimate. I want a sole mate. I want someone who’ll walk beside me and share my passions and my path.

And I think about that woman all the time.

Sex

Sex and making love are quite different. But both are marvelous. Not each and every action needs to move the earth and move me to tears. Sometimes I just want the joy. Sometimes I just want the release. Sometimes I just want to be held. And sometimes I just want to hold. And sometimes I just want the pleasure without the price tag. And the women I know feel that way sometimes too. Sometimes we just want the sensation of the skin and not the exposure of the emotion. And if both sex and making love are with the same person - what's wrong with that?

Life is too stressful for each and every moment to matter to the maximum degree. Sometimes you have to throw up your hands and say "what the fuck!" and revel in the revelation that sex is a great FUN gift.

I think sex can be a spiritual & an emotional experience. But it can also be just literally - one hell of a good ride. And I'm flatly saying that if you don't break into one big-assed grin sometime between the foreplay and the cigarette - well I guess I just don't understand the repression of that emotion. Sex is serious, sure - but it's also a fantastic expression of joy. There's comedy in the carnal. And I'm not suggesting laughter, but I'm stating pure happiness.

Frankly the joy of the union of body & soul & mind & pleasure can slap a silly-assed grin on my face every time.

Kissed

Every great once in a while you'll meet a woman and the relationship is going well - and you’re intimate - and you’ll kiss and it’s the kind of kiss that makes you giggle with the joy of it all. It’s not just a physical sensation; it’s an emotional revelation. You reveal your vulnerabilities and you feel completely comfortable in your skin and completely comfortable sharing your skin with her. And you physically cannot deny the joy.

So you smile.

Altered Plans

A woman wrote this on an online bulletin board:

"That is why the men are looking for younger women. Women who are naive enough to be the caretaker for these overgrown adolescents. Fire away!"

And I replied:

That statement is not true.

I'm 46. I sometimes date younger women. But not because I want her to take care of me. I date younger women because of the attitude you exhibit in your statement. Because of this jaded and bitter implication that men have a hidden agenda or an innate stupidity or a weakness and feel the need to seek a woman's "magical healing" for emotional and spiritual improvement.

Many younger women still think things are fun. And they still have a sense of the amusing and an eagerness to embrace life. I date younger women because they don't exhibit the same degree of competition and aren't as caustic. I think men suffer under the same stress that women do - and as long as the fallacy of the supremacy of femininity and this fabrication of the inadequacy of masculinity - there won't be equity in a relationship. And there will be encounters and not everlastings.

The days when men allowed the perpetuation of your fallacy have come to the end. Men do not need women to make them better men. Although justly celebrated, a vagina does not have intrinsic properties that guarantee salvation or spiritual healing. Redemption is the responsibility of a Deity and not the goal of a girlfriend. Men want women in their lives - but we do not need them any more than women need us. Woman do not wish to be defined by men. Fair enough. But do you see - we don’t seek definition. We’ve passed the concept of giving our word at the foot of your altar.

A Smokin' Question

Ok - when you're with a woman who smokes, and she wants to smoke - are you required to stand outside in the autumnal chill while she smokes?

And - if you've quit smoking and your woman smokes - and you kiss her just to taste the tobacco, are you technically cheating on her? And I'm not admitting I've done that - but ok. I've done that.

Ulysses

Much of Ulysses is masturbatory. Yet when the man put down his … pride … and wrote, it wasn’t rote. It was unique. It was exquisite. It was enlightened. I feel he has moments - and they are few, you’ve got to furrow through his verbiage - that he writes sentences that are the finest words ever written. Honestly, I think Saint Augustine stands alone as the premier author. I think James Joyce is second. I feel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is so astonishing that I could vacillate between it and Ulysses and never quite discern Joyce’s best.

Prey On

I had an immensely happy childhood so each little heartbreak stands out like a droplet of red fingernail polish on a wedding dress.

I’m a Roman Catholic and a tenet of the Faith is to pray for the poor souls who’ve died. I still do that. Well, I had a hamster as a boy. My brother, Michael, had a cat. Now, cats are vile. I’m thinking cats secretly plot against mankind … but I can’t prove it without doing a study … which would require proximity. And of course, that’s just too much to give. Ok you do the math. My hamster died a senseless death at the paws of a merciless beast. And I prayed for my hamster. For a long time. Until one day my Father heard my prayer and set me straight.

Yet the memory of my hamster endures. Hello? I still hate cats. The Irish never forgive or forget …