Too many mental tabs open today.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Keep it in your pants.


I have no idea who Ann Landi is but I stumbled onto a blog post of hers today and it made me laugh. She writes about the uselessness of the dick pic and how women and men are not turned on by the same things. Receiving an email from a guy she didn't know holding "a kielbasa-sized erection" did not have the effect it's sender desired. I'm glad I didn't date in the age of camera phones, I can only imagine the collection of crotch shots I would have amassed. Do all men carry pictures of their junk on their phones? That's not sexy, it's sad. Although if it's all you've got you have to work with it right?

I'll say a little prayer tonight to thank the lord for giving me and D the strength to work through our problems. Dating in the Twitter Age would be torture for me.

Enjoy:

Dating After Divorce: Nix Dick Pix
Ann Landi

Of all the courtship rituals indulged in by the male of the species, sending photos of your penis, whether lightly draped or proudly unsheathed, has to rank among the most bizarre and, as far as I know, unprecedented in the whole of human history.

I can't think of a single notable heterosexual lover, from Adonis to Tiger Woods, who wooed with the kind of visuals intended to demonstrate "Hey, baby, I got a great big package for ya!"

Isn't this more of a gay thing?

Or so I would have thought until recently. Representative Anthony Weiner's antics only made blatantly evident what appears to be a trend in Internet "dating" (I use quotes here because it seems there was not so much as a cup of coffee or a martini involved....just a solicitation to online hanky panky).

And the behavior is not limited to teenage boys with locker-room fixations about dick size, but afflicts even males of a certain age, who have been married and divorced (maybe even more than once), and who are back in the arena, looking for action again.

A case in point: I recently received an email from someone totally unknown to me. Part of her handle read "beyondlove," and the subject line was "thank you." It didn't look like spam, so I opened it. My correspondent informed me that she was distressed that her boyfriend of eight months had been writing to me over Christmas of last year. "He carelessly left open an email on my computer," she informed me (I guess to let me know that she hadn't taken the initiative and broken into his account). She told me she'd discovered that "David" had sent me photos of his dog and his house at the shore. Now I'm not really an email slut--I don't maintain multiple correspondences and then forget the names of my prospects--but I could not for the life of me remember this guy.

So I asked for more details and "beyondlove" sent a few. The dog was a golden retriever, and the house was a beautiful shingled Cape with a pretty front porch. And then it all came tumbling back to me. Yes, we were flirting online around Christmas time. Because I was dateless over the holidays, I had posted an ad on Craigslist looking for a yuletide companion. Nothing too naughty, at least for starters: hot chocolate and tree trimming would have been just fine.

"David" seemed like a good possibility, even if he was many miles away. We'd gone to the same college; he sounded smart and savvy and directed me to the website for his law firm, where his official corporate portrait showed a man I would definitely trust to defend my interests in court. He also sounded a bit full of himself (women, he wrote, would get in line for his favors), but I played along and sent a couple of photos. Then came his of the house and the dog. And a short time later, he emailed me himself in the altogether, his face cut from the photo, holding a kielbasa-sized erection.

And now I was really turned off. Not at the size or heft of his member--which were both indeed impressive--and not because this was the first dick pix to come my way. Many times I have posted ads on CL looking for a "mature relationship" or something resembling a reasonable first date, and the response has been, in at least a dozen instances, a photo of the respondent's pride and glory. Sometimes with a line or two of text. Sometimes without. (This is one of many reasons I've decided to forgo Craigslist forever, even if the spontaneity and no-fee advertising make this site so appealing.)

What is wrong with these guys? An informal poll of my women friends reveals that they find this tactic extremely puzzling, if not downright vulgar. I can only assume that since men get the hots for all sorts of revealing photos of the female anatomy, they assume the ladies will have the same reaction. And drop everything to run down to Starbucks for a coffee date.

Wrong-o, boys. The reverse ploy to arouse interest with what is known in the porn trade as the money shot simply doesn't work on women. Whenever I received one of these, I giggled or gulped and then passed it on to my best gay male friend, who has more of an appreciation for these come-ons.

"Beyondlove" and I had a few more exchanges. My advice was to dump him: if he "cheats" online, how far would he go outside cyberspace? I never brought up the subject of his cock shot....the woman was in enough pain without further details. But I realize, post Weiner's weiner, that I now hold in my saved mail the evidence to seriously mess up "David's" career, if I chose to go in that direction. Or if he chooses to go into politics.

Let's keep it classy, guys, and remember Robert Herrick's advice to women. Simply translate the duds into tight jeans and a shirt unbuttoned just so:

A sweet disorder in the dress
Kindles in clothes a wantonness:
A lawn about the shoulders thrown
Into a fine distraction:
An erring lace, which here and there
Enthrals the crimson stomacher:
A cuff neglectful, and thereby
Ribbands to flow confusedly:
A winning wave, deserving note,
In the tempestuous petticoat:
A careless shoe-string, in whose tie
I see a wild civility:
Do more bewitch me, than when art
Is too precise in every part.

Or just send the poem. She'll be at Starbucks in no time flat.

1 comment:

  1. Think Ann Landers has been dead for years and someone uses the name. She was originally like a Dear Abbey and stuff like that in the day. However, the funny thing is that I worked with a girl that went to work for the Weinermobile and there are tons of funny stories connected with that. But, it's really no Big thing.

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