Sometimes, perhaps often, I get a little tired of the slutty, skankiness of our “girls gone wild” culture.  I love a woman with class, grace, style, dignity, refinement.  These are a few of the things I look for in the women I love. And yes, I love intelligence, a girl who is well read, who can talk about more than just how much she dislikes her friends, or whatever. Give me something to work for. Give me a challenge. Don’t talk or act like a guy, don’t belch, swear, drink, fight, spit, it is disgusting. It is not attractive. Give me girly girls, give me femininity, give me softness. No, we really do not want porn actresses as girlfriends. Ok. Yes, sensuality, sexuality, hot and intense sexuality, but veiled beneath the cloak of your alluring powers. If you let it all hang out, if you give it away easily after one night or show the whole world how outrageous and cool you are sexually after a few drinks, where is the specialness?

Sex should be mysterious, enticing, something worth waiting for, something to wonder about for a while, something special between two people. Despite the thrills of cheap, illicit, transitory sex, the girls  I slept with right away often meant nothing afterwards; the ones who made me wait, who made me fight for it, who made me want to spend time and money on them, who made me prove my desire and feelings for them, they were the ones who mattered, even if it did not work out in the end. The intensity of that sex is beyond description. The cheap one night stands were nothing more than scratching an itch and about as memorable.

We live in an age of neo-barbarism in many ways. I for one would like to see a return to some civilization, even when it comes to sex. I love Ingird Bergman as an example of gracious feminine charm, alluring sexuality and sensuality, of desire to be sought after.

I know there are decent women out there, women who feel compelled to go along with the general skankiness of our culture but who would rather prefer something else than to be hit on in a bar. Then again, I never much liked bars or night clubs, with their hoards of desperate wanna-be alpha studs, dressed in their designer jeans and expensive t-shirts, salivating over the prospect of getting lucky with one of the many attention seeking whores prancing around the dance floor. I know there are people who at least long for the veneer of civilization over our unbridled sexual passions. The “in your face” variety of all this gets depressing after a while, old and tired. I think there is a difference between “seduction” and the PUA philosophy. Now certainly there is some overlapping, but seduction seems to me to be more the province of an older culture, the result of a slow and simmering sexuality that lurks beneath the surface of so much of life. It is both mental, physical, and emotional. It is part of world where there is still some mystery to life, where everything is not advertised for a quick and easy sexual consumption, where we have to work a bit for the reward of sexual pleasures. Men and women became lovers, had love affairs, were entangled in ways physically and emotionally that went far beyond what is too often today nothing more than a  quick conquest for men, and validation seeking for women. In many ways they were braver they we are, because they dared to love, to be involved and risk the pains of loss.

Today’s sexual market place often reminds me more of  gang of rodents ransacking a dumpster in downtown Manhattan for whatever greasy and half eaten left overs lie hidden within than anything refined or civilized. Give me the restraint, refinement and hidden yet palpable sexuality of the Bogart and Bergman in Casablanca over that any day. It is just a movie, but as I said in the last post about Cary Grant, it does reflect the culture and world of its time, a world much different than ours in its sexual dynamics. I think most women crave this also, which is why a show like “Mad Men” is so popular among them. It reflects that earlier world of a more restrained, although not less powerful, eroticism and sexuality.

In today’s culture, banging excessive numbers of women is not that hard to do. Women are told being unrestrained sexually is a mark of liberation. It is relatively easy, and always has been, for any woman to get laid if she wants. Many guys are now studious practitioners of game. So sexual conquest is not that hard. Nor is getting an STD, a girl pregnant, having an unwanted child or participating in an abortion.  As a spiritual person I think often on religious matters, and despite some of my meanderings on sexuality, I do agree with time honored religious notions on the mystery of sex, that sex is mysterious, powerful, something to be respected, even feared at times because of the power it holds over us. We have lost so much of that now. Perhaps there are few people out there who still feel at least something similar to me.

People often talk about the greatness of picking up women, strangers, people we hardly know. I have done this, often, in my past. I write about it here, but often in a half serious way, and often with some personal caveat on the consequences of such behaviors. My own sex drive is powerful, more so than most, and I am intoxicated by eroticism and sexuality. If I could I probably would have sex with thousands of women, enjoying an endless harem of sexual thrills and delights. I have my dark sides too. And I love writing about sex, erotica, and the pleasure I enjoy giving women. But the reality of life is often far different than these fantasies. What I often found with random encounters, or cheap thrills, was not mind blowing sex, but rather great vulnerability in the woman, sadness, despair, desperation for attention and validation, loathing self hatred and a bottomless pit of low self esteem. Yes, I got off, and there was mutual pleasure, but that was it. Nothing more. The weird sexual vibes that occur with random sex is rarely talked about. You wonder, “Is this person healthy? Who are they? They are naked in front of me, yet I hardly know them. Will they like this or that? I want them to leave once we are finished.  How sad this all really is.” In the end those experiences left me with nothing but a few cheap memories and much emptiness.

What I found when found love was something far, far different. It is rare, but like a precious jewel, is something to be cherished and guarded.

Give me grace, class, culture, refinement, real passion, sensuality and love over the coarseness and crassness that surrounds me on a daily basis.