LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

the dance moves to ‘She’s Like the Wind’.

       * OK, I’ve had a one-night stand with someone in my office. How do I convey to him the next day that I soooo don’t care about what happened and yet am open to it happening again but, you know, sooooo don’t care about it? Really, I’ve actually already forgotten about it!

      You should walk past his desk as often as possible wearing as little as you can get away with while talking loudly into your mobile about all the guys who’ve asked you out recently (note: make sure you turn off your mobile when you do this. It is very embarrassing if one’s phone rings while having a fake conversation).

      Then wait for an occasion that will involve you and him and alcohol in the same room at the same time. In Britain, sexual advances can only be made under the forgiving umbrella of alcohol. That way, if rejection occurs on either side, before or after the encounter, you can both put the whole thing down to drunkenness. Christ, you didn’t think I really MEANT to sleep with you, did you? Ha ha! This is known as faux ironic seduction and it is the only form of seduction the British can understand or accept. But even under the alcohol umbrella, you absolutely must not make any overt sign or, God forbid, declaration that you like this person. Drunken passivity is the name of the game here.

      So in short, the answer is to act like a combination of Cher in Clueless when she’s trying to attract a young man (‘Sometimes you have to show a little skin. This reminds boys of being naked, and then they think of sex!’), Chandler from Friends and Hugh Grant in any movie: overly flirtatious, self-defensively ironic, unironically useless. And if that tack doesn’t work, instead of questioning the methodology of not showing someone you like them in order to get them to like you, just say to your friends that ‘it wasn’t meant to be’ and have them repeat it back to you until you almost believe it. Better that than actually being honest with someone and risking humiliation, right? You can’t fight fate!

       * Now I’ve had another one-night stand with someone in the office and I really don’t care about it. How best to proceed with maturity, dignity and professionalism?

      Never talk to them again. The end.

       * How come in sex scenes in movies the woman almost never takes off her bra? Have I been doing it wrong all this time?

      And why doesn’t she ever have her period? That’s what I’ve always wondered. Or maybe that’s why Hollywood likes its actresses to be so thin: so the women never menstruate and can provide sex on tap.

      Sex scenes are, of course, an essential part of pretty much every film, whether it’s one about such unerotic subjects as the sinking of a giant ship (Titanic) or Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in a relationship (Eyes Wide Shut). Yet once the man and this never menstruating woman do have sex, the actress – unless she’s Jamie Lee Curtis, circa 1984 – will refuse to take off her bra. So let’s get this straight: the actors need to have sex because that, apparently, turns audiences on, so obviously the female character can’t have her period or anything else that would impede the action. But actual breasts won’t be shown unless the actress gets paid an extra $10 million. Meaning that, at most, audiences will be watching people who in real life probably hate one another and are maybe married to other people dry hump one another in their underwear. I don’t know about you, but just talking about it is turning me on.

       * Speaking of the cinema, what are you supposed to do if you go to the cinema on a first date and suddenly there’s a very graphic sex scene?

      Don’t go to the cinema on your first date. Seriously, why on earth would you opt for an activity that involves the two of you sitting awkwardly next to one another in a darkened room, each afraid to laugh at the funny bits because you’re worried whether the other person will judge you, plus with added sex scene risk? And it’s not like you can pretend you need the loo during the sex scene because your date will either think you’re a massive prude or that you’ve just snuck off to, to paraphrase Zoolander again, service yourself. Neither of these are things anyone wants their date to think, mid-date or ever. So if you find yourself in this situation, watching a sex scene on a first date, you may as well just run out of the cinema screaming, spraying popcorn all around you.

       * So is it possible to give a blow job without feeling like I’m going to vom?

      Look, sometimes you’ll feel like you’re going to vom. Sometimes you’ll feel spectacularly bored. Sometimes you’ll hate it and wish you were doing literally anything else. And just occasionally, you will actually like it. Hey, it ain’t called a job for nothing.

       * Blow jobs are easy because a guy is grateful for any oral action you give him down there. But what about hand jobs – how do you do those?

      Why are you asking me? Ask the guy himself. He’s had literally decades of experience tugging at the thing. I’m sure he’d be happy to demonstrate.

       * Why are blow jobs a given but cunnilingus is a special treat?

      Because it’s harder to spell. And because you are sleeping with selfish jerks. Next!

       * Why is sex, of all physical desires and behaviours, the one freighted with so much guilt and fascination in that order?

      Yes, it is funny, that. Outside my window I can see Richard Dawkins, bless him, waggling his fists and bellowing, ‘It’s because of religion! It’s because religion freighted down sex with so much guilt and fear out of men’s paranoia about the paternity of their children and out of a way to control the populace! And they did this so effectively that even today, even people who haven’t been in a religious building since their parents made them go through the traditional infant rites to placate the grandparents feel it too! Arg! Must! Get! Angry! On! TV! Again! Soon!’

      But just before I slam down that window I lean out and shout, ‘Oi! Dawkins! You’ve only got it half right! You’ve forgotten the American Pie factor! And a man of your intelligence, too. Sheesh!’

      The American Pie factor – named in honour of the film, mind, and not the song – is the deeply embedded belief that sex proves one is a grown-up, one is desirable and one is cool. Of course, in that film the characters were eighteen whereas the large majority of the populace is not. In fact, the vast majority is older than eighteen. Nonetheless, their attitude to sex is not much more mature than that of the young chaps in that film.

      So when you find yourself stuck in the dentist’s waiting room and gazing upon the cover of another men’s magazine in which an actress promotes her latest lame movie in that time-immemorial manner – posing in a pair of bikini bottoms while twisting up her T-shirt and talking about how much she loves freaky sex and how empowered she feels – ponder upon a parallel universe in which a different physical action other than sex was fetishised. Like, oh, let’s say, defecation.

      Movies would be censored for having too many bathroom scenes (with extra parental guidance urged for actual shots of the toilet); underground orgy parties would feature laxatives and excellent plumbing, and God only knows what the fetish gear would look like. Presumably chaps would still work. And pity the Catholic priests! The terrible bowel troubles they would suffer due to their mistaken belief that God has forbidden them to defecate. Some of them, somehow, would learn to twist their internal organs into such a way so as to adhere to this inhuman commandment, but many, many others would secretly try to find outlets to relieve their urges, outlets that would offend God far more than simply using the toilet.

      The point of this little segue is not to promote coprophilia, but to point out how weird and, frankly, retrograde an obsession with sex is. To paraphrase the oracle on the subject, George Michael, yes it’s natural, yes it’s good, not everybody does it but everybody should. But, honestly, world, get over it. It’s an obsession that ultimately causes pain to millions and millions and millions of others. It feeds into religions’ cruel and weird fetishisation of it which then can damage its followers. It encourages the condescension of grown adults by pop culture. And finally, it leads inexorably, unavoidably to the Sex Therapist’s

Скачать книгу