Episode 19: Movies Part 1

We reviewed the top movie kisses according to some website and the top movies to make out in according to nerve.com.  But before we did, we talked about whether you should make out during a movie.  The immediate answer is of course, but I think this is because making out is almost always a better activity than not making out.  So why add a movie to the mix?

When I was a kid, a lot of my making out took place in movie theaters and in cars.  I didn't grow up in the kind of suburbia with a "Make Out Point", where jocks drove their cars with their dates and made their moves.  Adults simultaneously encouraged me to find a girlfriend but never gave me the requisite privacy to do anything with these girls.

A society that understands that kids have physical urges needs to give them a safe space to explore those urges.  I understand that there are reasons not to encourage young kids to have sex, but since diseases and pregnancy will not follow first base, there needs to be a place for kids to make out.

One girl and I in particular used to make out in the playground of a nearby public school.  We were terrified of anything that remotely sounded like a cop.  After all, we were trespassing after dark.  We didn't want to be criminals, but where else could we go?  Now all of the making out I engage in feels like I'm trespassing, like I am where I shouldn't be.  And I need to remind myself that it's not so.

Movie theaters are a symbol of the lies we tell ourselves to cover up our baser desires.  They're the brown paper bag over our malt liquor.  Our society would be just a little more sane if we dropped the pretense of movies and just got down to business.



The Panel: Buffy, Dave Grabiner, Bryce, Greg

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Episode 18: Girls Making the First Move

Several times in my life, I've met the same girl.  She's very large, but fancies herself very attractive.  She's very outgoing and believes herself to be quite the goddess of sexual experience and technique.  I've never seen a guy pine for such a girl, but I've seen these girls pine for a large number of men (rarely just one for very long, they jump from crush to crush).

The men they want are sometimes older than they are, but often younger.  They are also fairly attractive and show no reciprocal interest.  But this lack of interest is interpreted by the girl as shyness.  Thus, the larger woman has given herself a mission: I'm gonna corrupt this guy, they say with an evil grin.

I know that if I were a very large woman, I'd have three basic options: despair, delusion and not caring about looks.  The third one is obviously the healthiest, but probably the most difficult because it requires ignoring the judgments people make on a regular basis.  Delusion is probably the next healthiest because it gives you confidence to get through the day and puts forward the best shot you really have of getting someone above your station.

But I feel pity for deluded people.  Sure, I recognize that I live under delusions of my own, but I know to be false something that they cling to be true.  And because deluded people aren't stupid, I assume they know it to be true too but are too afraid to see the truth.  Not only do they believe something that's not true, but they loudly insist on it, pushing these untruths on to others, trying to make their beliefs true through sheer will.

It's a fight that can't be won.  But it's an admirable one.  When girls make the first move, they have to believe that the guy is too shy or that there is some other reason why the guy isn't making the move.  And I'm sure sometimes they're right.  But often the reason is that the guy really isn't that interested, even if he goes on to kiss back.  But I admire the chutzpah that a girl goes through to make reality what she wants it to be instead of having to settle for what it is.

Don't forget, it's different for guys.  When a guy tries to kiss someone out of his league, more often than not it's not viewed as a bold struggle against fate.  It's just gross.  But guys, in their private moments, describe attempted girl kisses as gross as well.  But I wish we didn't look at either that way.

Kisses are punches against the concrete wall of reality.  Guys are at least used to punching and losing, falling down and getting up again.  But girls often don't have that same experience, so when they try, they deserve respect for daring to try for more than what life gave them.  And instead of just whining about it, doing something proactively.

The Panel: Dave Grabiner, Bryce and Buffy.

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Episode 17: Boners

When I was in college, I had a religious friend who was very successful with women.  He would often alternate between being an extreme bon vivant and a terribly depressed penitant, begging for God's forgiveness of his sins.  He wasn't abusive or misogynist, nor did he believe that premarital affection was itself sinful, so I wondered what did he need forgivness for? 


For lying, he said.  In order to be a success with women, a certain amount of lying is necessary.  At times you have to pretend you like them more than you really do.  At other times you need to pretend you don't like them as much as you really do.  And as terrible as this made my friend feel, he confided that it was a necessity.

Life experience has sadly shown this to be true to me as well.  Show too much interest, the girl goes away.  Show not enough, the girl goes away.  The right amount of interest bares very little correlation to your actual feelings.

That's what's awfully humanizing and downright humble about an erection.  It says, "Look, for all the pretending I do, there's some honesty right here."  Like a tramp stamp is for a girl, it is a clandestine part of yourself that is exposed just briefly enough to reveal that beneath a phony exterior of seriousness or supposed superiority, that we're all just human beings who want to be loved and deep down want to be loved by you.

It's sad that we have to keep those things private, but I guess that does make the few moments they are revealed more special.  But that's not why they're private.  We don't starve ourselves to make the few moments of nutrition we have that much more intense.  We hide them because we're afraid.  We're afraid of rejection and we're afraid of being judged for what we want and we're afraid to admit to ourselves what we want because of a million reasons why we shouldn't want them.

We shouldn't be afraid.  That's not to say we should hump anything that gives us a boner.  That's not to say that showing how you feel won't almost always scare someone away.  But we should know to be true that our desires and our true feelings aren't wrong and aren't filthy, but are in their own way beautiful.  Though they may have to stay secret, the reasons are misunderstandings and the flaws in other people's human nature.  And when those desires are reciprocated, instead of feeling weird ourselves, we can get that feeling when you realize you were right all along.

The Panel: Rudy Gilman, Sean, Bryce and Greg.

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Episode 16: This Kiss is Important

I grew up in a nice, boring suburb.  My life had basically no drama (partly because I had basically no friends for much of it, as I was pretty weird).  This is why any time I have an emotional impact on anybody, I am confused.  I had grown up understanding how unimportant I am.  I knew I lived in a world where people fought wars, saved lives, built monuments and wrote masterpieces.  And my "privilege" was to sit off to the side, appreciate and keep quiet.  I never really believed that I had some value to others, that my existence was more than a bother.

Further, most of my early kisses were considered ugly and gross.  It was something dirty that had to be done in private.  It wasn't considered sweet or special or happy by other people.  It was considered cheap and puerile. 

To some extent, I am still fairly unimportant.   I have friends and a job, but I lead a regular yuppie life in New York with minimal impacts on others.  But every once in awhile something I do really affects another person.  Often for the worse, I'm sure, but sometimes for the better.  And when I feel that I've made somebody happier or that I am in a real way important to them, I recognize that whatever relevance I have or impact I make isn't forever.  It's relative to the moment, incredibly temporary and likely one day forgotten.


So I try to hold on to the moment as best I can.  And a kiss does that.  By shutting off your brain for a moment and just expressing affection, in much the same way a hug does, a kiss says "Wait a moment, I want to enjoy this."

I enjoy mattering.  And when a kiss gets tied into that, it's no longer ugly and gross.  It gets filled with a meaning: a gratefulness for existing and for meaning something.

So I suggest that all people, particularly those who grew up with a boring childhood, want to mean something.  Being exposed to so much greatness in the world and so much evil, people want to be a part of that greatness, to fight some of that evil and to do anything but sit around and mean nothing until death.  And while sometimes kissing and sex can just be an unproductive way to kill time, a biological snood, when paired up with moments where we actually are important, a kiss can be a powerful statement.

After all, what does it mean to be important?  If you build a monument or discover a truth in a world with no other people, what's the point?  Importance comes only from other people.  The reason Churches were always considered sacred is because Churches were where people gathered.  What made them powerful was each other.  What made them Holy were the congregations inside.

So a kiss is a way for people to say to each other: you are important!  you have done something!  whatever images you once had of yourself that were anything less, at least for now, miss who you really are.  And I think this is the closest most people can get to redemption.

The Panel: Bryce, Lioness and Greg.

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