More thoughts on sex by surprise
A disclaimer: I’m not a sexpert. This is just one perspective on the wide and contentious topic of the way of a man with a maid.
What is it like from the man’s side? When it’s good, it’s how Forrest Gump described it. But many men have no partner, or must endure long separation from her.
Particularly when the man is young, his sexual response to various triggers can be intense and to a considerable extent involuntary. Sometimes this is merely amusing:
Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
Sometimes, it is genuinely embarrassing. Sometimes it can get him in real trouble. This side of being a man is something a man must fear, and take precautions to avoid situations that will put him in danger of opprobrium or punishment.
Some men take things in stride pretty well. They have the knack of defusing a situation. They can roll with the punches and accept with equanimity that there’s a side of being a man that’s a bit ridiculous. But there’s another possible reaction to having one’s chain jerked…resentment.
Women don’t always understand the power they wield. What’s recreational flirting in one mind may set spinning some visceral churning in the other. Women are mostly pretty sweet about it, but some do understand quite well and make a game out of their mastery of this power to command attention and longing.
What about the entertainment industry? (We’ll include the better looking news announcers in that category, particularly if they dress to maximum advantage.) The effect of the display, somewhat naughty but not outright pornographic, of sexual assets, in connection with announcing the news, or hawking a product, varies wildly among men. It varies considerably from day to day, holding the man “constant”. On the one side, we have the older men, those with partners, those without but who take it all in stride. For us, these women brighten the day a tad, or at the other extreme, they’re a nuisance, a minor distraction.
If we mind, we don’t mind much. But then there are others, or there are other days…days when we’re extremely vulnerable to triggering, to put it carefully. It can come as a shock to discover that the rational mind has such limited sway. Women who’ve been on a diet and find themselves scarfing a half-gallon of ice cream in minutes may understand. Who could have imagined they’d be overwhelmed like that? And whose fault is it, mine or the ice cream?
I’m not talking about men in intimate settings. This isn’t about what goes on in the bedroom. It’s about what goes on in the man’s mind as he sees something one part of him wants and the other doesn’t.
The conscious mind has strategies that may prevail. Throw away the ice cream. Convince yourself that it’s contaminated. Your rational mind knows better: it is of course perfectly good, rich, creamy, nutritious, wholesome ice cream. But that way lies the unwanted response.
This is where these words of hatred for women who push mens’ buttons come from. They serve as tags for coping strategies. When applied in the real world, say in the case of a woman who wants an affair that a married man knows will sink his marriage, they can carry the day. They are effective and adaptive. The man who convinces himself that the woman who presents a temptation is not just a danger, but has “cooties”, has a better chance of dodging the bullet.
But most of the time, they’re not fair. They’re not the right words; they don’t accurately describe what is involved, or who is at fault.
The TV announcer isn’t actually trying to tempt the man. She certainly has no clue what she’s talking about. [Nor do the men. See Dan Rather for proof.] She has no idea she’s mashed his buttons so hard. She just has a job and it involves grabbing attention, and she’s got a good way to grab attention. All in good not-so-clean fun, gentlemen.
The fault for forging and disseminating false news lies upstairs. Graying, paunchy men, or lean and hungry men, and no doubt, lean and hungry women, orchestrate these episodes and campaigns.