FunctionalAmbivalent

Anticlimactic

Deep Throat ends up being an FBI agent.  Damn.  I thought it would be someone cool, like Al Haig.

Sex Day: Got MILF?

WARNING: The following posting contains information about sex.  Lots of information about lots of sex, I think, though I can't be sure because I'm justing starting to write it.  Anyway, one can hope.  People who aren't interested in reading about sex can go here, where -- trust me on this -- sex is something that will remain far from your mind.  The rest of you, keep your hands off those remote controls because sex is coming your way, at least verbally speaking.  Because it's Sex Day here at Functional Ambivalent, and on Sex Days, though not as frequent as they were when we were young, there's nothing to read about but sex sex sex no matter where you look.  So look wherever you like, and if you get caught looking, tell them I gave you permission.

When I was younger, I had a real thing about older women.  There was something about them...their sophistication...their confidence...the fact that they knew how to have sex...

I remember a few specific older women to this day.  Some I met in passing; some I knew well -- though not, to be perfectly honest, well enough.

Sometimes, every couple of months when I'm bored with golf and feeling romantic, I tell my wife that she is becoming the older woman I've always fantasized about.  I intend this as a compliment, but have scar tissue to prove that it is not always received that way.  I get my voice all gooey and low and say honey, you're becoming the older woman I've always dreamed of...and then I slink out to do yard work and sleep in the garden shed. 

But it is a compliment, and men -- at least the men I know -- are finally building up an appreciation for the sexiness of "women of a certain age."  As a culture, we may still flock to behold the latest sweet young thing to bare her tits on screen as an integral part of her character's development, but in conversations among men, women who once were thought sexless and over-the-hill are enjoying something of a revival.

First of all, we need to establish what, exactly, an older woman is.  "Older" is, in itself, a relative word.  To a 4 year old, a kindergartner is an older woman.  To a geriatric codger, a woman of 70 might be a sweet young thing.

For the sake of argument, I'm going to divide older women into three categories:

1. Younger-Older Women
Younger-older women are women that, by any sane standard, are not older women at all.  The're only older because their admirers are so young.  For example: The first "older woman" I fell in love with was a high school girl. Because of her, I spent the entire summer after 7th grade carrying a beach towel around, covering up my boner.  Fortunately, I was at a beach most of the time, so the beach towel didn't -- so to speak -- stand out. 

She wore a little red-and-white bikini and had a frosted, blond Petula Clark haircut.  My best friend, Kyle, and I called her "Number One" because we had rated every girl on the beach and she was the most beautiful.  Kyle also walked around with a beach towel in front of himself, though we never acknowledged to each other why.  One day, Kyle said to me, "She does It.  I know she does.  I saw her at the movies with a football player."

I looked across the sand at her.  She seemed impossibly worldly to me.  I tried to imagine her "doing It," even though I had only a vague idea of what "It" was.  I tired to picture what she would do with her legs...her arms...her breasts, and when I ran out of ideas I remember thinking: She knows.  She could teach me.

I yearned for her as no man had ever yearned for anything before.  I watched her walk, and sleep, and -- on days when I was really, really lucky -- I watched her slip out of her cutoffs.  She wore a bikini bottom underneath, of course, but I imagined her slipping into nakedness, and I imagined it was just for me.  I yearned, sometimes, from a distance of three feet, pretending to be looking for something lost in the sand, holding my towel close and praying that she would see me and smile.  One day she did.  My older woman wore a retainer.

2. Old Women
There were old women on that beach, too.  They wore bathing caps with rubber flowers on the sides.  They wore bathing suits with little skirts that managed to remove any hint of sexuality without actually covering anything that really, really needed to be covered.  They walked slowly on the sand, as if every step mattered.

As young men, we were afraid of these old women.  As a middle-aged man, I still am.

3. Hot Moms
The final class of older women did not have, in my youth, a designation.  They were there, but we didn't acknowledge them.  They were attractive, secure, and carried with them irrefutable evidence of sexual activity: They had children. 

It was not permissible, at that time, for young men to fantasize openly about moms.  Those were the days when insulting someone's mother was an actionable offense.  Hinting, for example, that someone's mom had sex was to invite a punch in the nose.  The idea that a mom might be a sexual being was beyond our comprehension. 

In our never-ending conversation about women on the beach, Kyle and I didn't once brooch the subject of a mom.  We would no more admit to ogling a mom toting a couple of toddlers around than we would admit to dreaming of wearing our sisters' prom dresses.  Mom's were sacred, moms were taboo, and we were too young to understand the excitement that comes with violating sacred taboos.

My, my how things have changed.  Noted philosopher and cultural observer Uma Thurman has declared "Motherhood is sexy," apparently not while actually engaged in the process of given birth. While it is easy for Uma and her three nannies to think motherhood sexy, that unlikely point of view is gaining popularity among normal people and even -- wonder of wonders -- men.  There is now a term for moms who are sexy: MILFs.  What "MILF" stands for varies, but it is roughly: Moms I'd Like Fucking. 

MILFs, if you read the literature, are the older women that fascinate men in the 21st Century. 

...combining sexiness and motherhood can be a tricky equation in a decency-obsessed society with strong feelings on what constitutes a good mother, said Sharon Hays, a sociologist at the University of Virginia and author of "The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood."

"Of course, these hot moms have this sexy and alluring side, and with that comes a darker side, which is cunning, manipulative, catty and even deadly," said Hays, noting that we have been here many times before.

Think Mrs. Robinson in the 1967 film "The Graduate." Think 1978's "Harper Valley PTA." Think 2000's "Erin Brockovich." Think 2002's "White Oleander." All depict sensual women who drew well outside the traditional G-rated maternal lines of dress and behavior.

Given the age I am today, I am surrounded by MILFs.  I see MILFs at the office and MILFs at parties and MILFs at the mall.  I'm married to a MILF.  I love MILFs.  I can't figure out why, back in my perpetual boner days, I didn't understand just how sexy mothers could be.

Number One, my dream girl on the beach those many years ago, has no doubt aged into a MILF.  She's probably a little wrinkled from all that time in the sun, her butt and breasts flattened slightly by gravity and childbirth and the passage of time.  She's got kids in college and a husband -- maybe even  a second husband.  I know women now who remind me of what she must look like, and I know this for sure: Now a MILF, she is still an older woman some man is dreaming of, even if that man is older than she is.

MILFs, it's fair to say, are attractive to most men.  As a rule, most women are attactive to most men because most men are pigs.  Who among us doesn't take notice of an attractive woman in a grocery store, even if she does have a couple of kids crammed into the cart with the chocolate frosted Pop Tarts?

That said, when dirty-minded people like me think of sexually adventurous middle-aged women, we think of the younger man/older woman paradigm.  Think: Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore.  And somewhere in the background of this paradigm, there's a sexually disinterested Bruce Willis. 

I call this person a DWLSWTGGIC, a Dad Who Likes Sex When the Golf Game is Canceled.

For younger men, where there's a DWLSWTGGIC, there's opportunity. This is recurring theme in the sweatier  branches of literature, as this excerpt from a condensed online version of Tess of the d'Urbervilles illustrates:

Alec appears again, saying that he is no longer a preacher and beseeching Tess to come away with him. He says his love for her has strengthened, and he is upset that her husband neglects her. Tess slaps his face with a leather glove. He becomes angry, but calms himself, asserting his desire to be her master and telling her that he is her true husband. He says he will be back in the afternoon to collect her.

And there we have it: Young, sexually vital man...neglected, desperate housewife...Pow!

Here is a panting, contemporary story that is in many way the same.  See if you can discern the way in which it is different:

Sophia had a very sensual, yet classy look, something that most younger women seem to lack these days. It was her stunning resemblance to Ines Sastre that captured my attention, but it was her shiny black hair and beautiful warm brown eyes that raised my soul...dier to a whole new level.

Get it?  Soul-dier?  Soldier?  Penis?  Clearly, depth and charm are not the currency of exchange here.  Let's continue:

Why would an older woman -- especially one as beautiful as Sophia -- want to be seduced by a younger man? Well for starters, she wouldn't have to worry about me using her. Quite the contrary, I think I should have been worried about her using me for my body.

I would also be quite a catch; the equivalent of a trophy on her arm, which she can claim rights to. I'm quite good looking, have a chiseled physique, a sophisticated style, and a vibrant personality filled with virility.

Leaving aside, for the moment, the idea that anyone can "fill" their personality with something, this is a perfect example of the modern older woman/younger man partnering: The older woman provides grace, experience, and sophistication.  The younger man provides a hard-on that comes when it's called, without a lot of whistling and hunting around in the bushes.  To take it even further: The woman has the power, the man is the sex object.

Perhaps I'm oversimplifying.  Certainly, the denizens of Ageless Love, which describes itself as the Internet's most popular "age gap" relationship forum, deny that it's about sex.  In fact, when one young man posted in Ageless Love's Sex Forum offering his youthful studliness in exchange for womanly experience, Ageless Love's readers savaged him:

What does however offend me is the idea that some YM (younger man) seems to think our lives are so hollow that they can offer up a youthful body and a high sex drive and expect us to respond with what .... gratitude? As if those things were simply by existence something that would entice and intrigue us?

OK, and I believe you, really.  The same way I believe older men who divorce their zaftig wives and marry strippers are doing it because the strippers are brilliant conversationalists, like Jean Kirkpatrick in pasties.  I believe it's not about the sex.  Really.  It's about the deep emotional bond between a man and a woman.  It's about youth and energy and feeling alive and blah blah blah.  Men have been saying that to their wives for centuries, and now women are saying it right back at them, usually while whatever sporting event we're watching is on a commercial break.

HER: Honey, we need to talk.
HIM: Go ahead.  It's a commercial.
HER: I need more.
HIM: More what?
HER: More everything.
HIM: I'll be damned.  Game's starting back up.  Can we talk about this later?

And then she formulates a plan.  The plan is: Find a younger guy.  And out there are perhaps millions of younger guys who think a lot like Phisher5, a recent guest at the Ageless Love bulletin boards:

When I was younger, my best friends mom took us swimming. she was beautiful, long legs, fit body, and large perfect brests. When she jumped into the pool...ahh I will never forget. Her green one piece suddenly became transparent. This reavealing to me for the first time a real womans breast and nipple. my first reason for self pleasure. I am now 22 and still hold a strong infatuation for older women. Someday I will make love to one and it will be the most passionate sex of my life.

I think most of us men have memories like that, and most of us don't freely admit it, at least until we're old enough that it doesn't seem uncomfortably Freudian.

Take for example, an acquaintance of mine I'll call Eduardo.  Eduarado is a year-round hockey player.  He's bright-eyed and well muscled and a little rough around the edges.  Women love him.  One night he and a group of friends wandered into a bar that is a known haunt for middle-aged divorced people who are looking for sex.  My friend didn't know that; he thought they were just stopping off at a place that always looked busy but that they had never been into. 

They stood at the bar and innocently ordered whatever fashionable bottled beer they had recently seen on Comedy Central.  Then they looked around.

He was almost instantly approached by a stylishly dressed, older woman who asked if he wanted to dance.  He declined, thinking -- he said later -- that it would have been like dancing with his mother.

A few minutes later, another woman approached, offering to buy him a drink.  He thought that maybe his friends were playing a joke on him, but looked around to see that they, too, were engaged in conversation with attractive older women.

Finally, while the woman who'd bought him a drink was in the bathroom, another older woman approached him.  She was dressed in an expensive business suit, wearing a white silk blouse unbuttoned to her breastbone.  She walked right up to him, looked him in the eye and said:

My pussy's so tight it'll rip your dick off.

Now, speaking as a man, I'm not sure getting my dick ripped off -- whether by a tight pussy or some kind of horrible sea monster -- is all that attractive a marketing appeal.  But this woman, finding herself next to a buff hockey player with a 29-inch waist, simply could not hold back.  She didn't play games; she just came right out and expressed her desires, albeit a tad crudely.

My friend ran out to his car at a dead sprint, abandoning his buddies to predatory crowd  in the bar.  He was, he said, "totally freaked."

And then, after I had expressed proper horror, he casually mentioned that he and his friends were going back to the same bar the next weekend.

"I thought about it," he said. "Some of those older women were pretty hot."

Yes, Eduarado, they were.  They were MILFs.

And so the game begins, the same game older men and younger women have been playing for eons.  Sex, as it always is, is an exchange.  The exchange can be love for security, pleasure for pleasure, desperation for pleasure, or even neurotic self loathing for the satisfaction of inflicted pain.  It can be healthy or unhealthy, productive or unproductive or reproductive.

In the case of my hockey-playing friend, the exchange he's making peace with is this: Self-knowledge and understanding for mutual pleasure.  He's getting in touch with his inner middle aged man, preparing for the part of life when the women around him aren't young and perky and fresh.  And he's accepting that, and in his acceptance acknowledging that there is more to being sexy than having nipples that point skyward and an ass you could serve tea on. There's confidence, knowledge and enthusiasm.

He'll be a better man for it, assuming he doesn't get his dick ripped off in the process.

Michael Jackson Bankruptcy Watch: There's a Lovely Villa Available Down By the Polanski Place

Gossip columnists report that Michael Jackson is planning to move to Europe.  There, he will atempt to rehabilitate his career. Perhaps coincidentally, the European Union is discussing the need to loosen traditionally difficulty bankruptcy laws so that the financially disabled can get a "fresh start."

Burger Kink

Burger King does dominance and submission.  Seriously.

Someone Remind Me Again Why the Voting Public Believes a Key Attribute of the Bush Administration is Honesty

The parents of the heroic and self-sacrificing Pat Tilman reveals how the Pentagon lied to them about their son's death in order to help the Army maintain recruiting momentum. The Army's appology took on that weird passive voice people use when they're not really taking responsibility for their actions:

"In the case of the death of Corporal Patrick Tillman, the Army made mistakes in reporting the circumstances of his death to the family," Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks told the Post. "For these, we apologize. We cannot undo those early mistakes."

The mistakes, of course, were what normal people call "lies."  That is: People in the Army who knew the truth gave out false information so that they could gain advantage.  When you and I do that, it's lying.

In a seemingly unrelated story, in the estimation of the Pentagon the best way to facilitate the withdrawal of American forces in Iraq is to build four brand-new, permanent bases there.  This to go along with the new U.S. embassy in Baghdad, which is going to be the biggest U.S. embassy in the world. 

But we're not planning for a long-term occupation.  Really.

First of All: What's Wrong With You People

I'm getting requests for Sex Day.  My email box this lovely Monday morning is filled with what must be three demands that Sex Day return, and now.  A number of writers -- you know who you are -- expressed disbelief that I had actually suffered a computer "disappointment" while nearing the end of the "MILF" posting promised a couple of weeks ago. 

That posting was, in fact, almost finished when a big chunk of it diappeared owing to Tyepad's dependence on java and my own computer's inability to not crash.  Really.  And I haven't gone back to re-do it because of an episode of The Waltons I saw.  Things were not happy on Walton's Mountain.  The Walton homestead had burned to the ground, taking with it all of teen-aged Johnboy's precious papers. 

While Pa Walton struggled to rebuild the house, which he loved, Johnboy struggled with the loss of his short stories.  Pa grew frustrated trying to build the house exactly as it had been.  Johnboy came to doubt his own literary gift when he failed to rewrite the stories exactly as they had been.  They both learned that what was gone was gone, and that what was gone couldn't be re-reated just as it had been because it was gone.  Gone gone gone. 

I empathize with Johnboy, though he wrote sentimental drivel about a big, loving hillbilly family and I write about tits.  (Oh, yeah, like hillbillies don't have tits.  You ever seen Andy Griffith without his shirt on?)   So, when disaster befalls my literary output, I don't immediately try to recreate it.  I let it sit for a while so I forget what I was working on, and hten I start fresh. 

I will do that this week so that you will have a sex posting over which you may snicker and drool this coming Memorial Day weekend.  It will be about MILFs.  It will include Johnboy-esque remembrances of my idylic youth, an excerpt of which appears below just to whet your appetites.

I yearned for her as no man had ever yearned for anything before.  I watched her walk, and sleep, and -- on days when I was really, really lucky -- I watched her slip out of her cutoffs.  She wore a bikini bottom underneath, of course, but I imagined her slipping into nakedness, and I imagined it was just for me.  I yearned, sometimes, from a distance of three feet, pretending to be looking for something lost in the sand, holding my towel close and praying that she would see me and smile.  One day she did.  My older woman wore a retainer.

Dying to read more, aren't you?  Well, you're just going to have to wait.  I've got payin' work to do.

Tightie Whities

I always pictured Saddam as more of a satin bikini briefs kind of guy.

UPDATE: I don't mean to imply that I sit around thinking about Saddam in underwear.

UPDATE: Really, it's a figure of speech.  I didn't always picture Saddam doing anything, particularly not in his underwear.

UPDATE: That's not to imply that when I do picture Saddam he's naked.

UPDATE: Leave me alone.

Horse Racing Horses Race to the Next Horse Race

Still not entirely recovered from the Kentucky Derby, the world of wealthy, hard-gambling drunks in expensive footwear turns its wandering wallet to Pimlico -- a track a friend of mine refers to as "The Dump" due to management's laissez faire attitude toward maintenance. 

At Pimlico, this Saturday, The Preakness will be run. Being in Maryland, The Preakness' pretensions of southern charm are even more ridiculous than Louisville's, the latter being across the Ohio Rriver from Indiana, which is neither southern nor charming, and the former being almost in New England, which is charming but not the least bit southern.  Unless, of course, you're Canadian, which if you have any sense you're not.  Also, the Maryland Julep is made with rye whisky, not bourbon, which is why everyone in Maryland is going to go to hell with a hangover when they die.

The best way to tell the esteem in which the Derby winner is held is to count the number of horses in The Preakness.  This year, there are 14 thoroughbreds signed up to race, the maximum allowable since Pimlico has no barns and is forced to board horses at a 14-unit motor lodge  across the street from the track's clubhouse.  The Preakness hasn't filled up since 1992, when Lil. E. Tee paid $35.60 to win at Churchill before coming in fifth behind Pine Bluff in the Preakness.

Fourteen is a big number because, like John Kerry, high-level thoroughbreds make most of their money not on the track but in the breeding barn. Respected Derby winners drive away competition, because losing to the Derby champ again would lower the value of the other horses even more.   

All those horses are a vote of no confidence that ought give Giacomo bettors pause.  My own guess is that Giacomo had a once-in-a-lifetime run at exactly the right time, and that in the longer Preakness he will disappear into the pack and never be heard from again.  (You would be wise to ignore my advice if you're actually betting on the race, since I haven't picked a winner since Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford, who was badly hobbled by a sore fetlock.)  How bad do the other trainers think Giacomo is?  High Limit, my personal pick to win The Derby, is entered in The Preakness.  High Lmit finished 20th in The Derby, a nose ahead of slow, agonizing death.

Nick Zito, who has been training horses for 300 years and got his start managing George Washington's stable at Mount Vernon (an estate that is, if you think about it, a complete sentence) does not enter races for the novelty of it.  He has three horses running.  Clearly, Mr. Zito thinks he can reclaim some of his savaged pride in the Run for the Black-Eyed Susans, which is a kind of flower, not a group of hauntingly beautiful prostitutes.

All of which begs the question: How do horses get from one race to another?

I had always imagined that they trotted or, perhaps, hitch-hiked.  In fact, they fly in little private boxes aboard opulent charter aircraft, with grooms and trainers fussing all around them to make sure they're comfortable and slightly drunk even before the plane leaves the ground.

And then, when they retire, they get paid to have sex.

This makes horses remarkably like Warren Beatty, come to think of it.

When I Was In School, They Only Offered This Course Independent Study

My alma mater, The University of Iowa, is offering an undergraduate course in pornography. 

There are 20 "slots" in the course, and all are filled.  There's a waiting list, which no doubt consists of a line of nervous undergrads snaking down the hall toward the keg.

But here's the best part: The Republican state Speaker of the House who is utterly predictable in his objection to the course without knowing anything about it...his name is a complete sentence that describes perfectly his whole purpose in politics: Chris Rants.

Go Hawks!

Cleanup On Aisle Four

If you're like me, you love stories about women who publicly collapse in orgasmic ecstacy.   It seems, according to this article in the no-doubt-highly-reliable Online Sun, that just such a thing happened at a grocery store in England or someplace like that.

The thrill-seeking shopper was wearing a pair of Ann Summers battery-operated Passion Pants to spice up her sex life.  But as she pushed her trolley she got so aroused by the 2½-inch vibrating bullet inside that she fainted.  The 33-year-old fell against shelves and banged her head in the crowded store at Swansea, South Wales.

Talk about shopping until you drop.

The problem was exacerbated by the unfamiliarity of English people with sex and the feelings sex can cause. 

To order a pair of Passion Pants for yourself or someone you love or maybe for my wife, click here.