Reality Check

… Good morning to all of my blind peeps; it’s post Easter, so peeps is no longer a dirty word.

When I’m 60, I expect to still be working. By then, I should be back in Colorado, my first million cooling in a bank account in the Caymans. I’ll live in a small town in the Rocky Mountains somewhere. I’ll take my self-driving car to work every day, kick my employees around all day, stab them in the back when they are not in the room, and set them against each other for my own amusement in my own little micro version of Game of Thrones. But they’ll all love me anyway because I give them incredible cash Christmas bonuses every year that they don’t have to claim on their taxes.

I’ll go home to my wife at night. She’ll be at least 30 years younger than I, but I’ll have lots of money, so no one will care. In fact, she’ll be a trophy. She’ll slip some Viagra in my beer, wait 30 minutes, then we’ll devour each other on our palacial patio in full view of the neighborhood. The hired help may be offended, but I won’t know it because they’ll all trash-talk me in Spanish. Many of my male neighbors will secretly envy the fact that I can bag a former porn star. Later, she’ll nail the gardener, but I’ll be too exhausted to care. In fact, I’ll be disappointed if she doesn’t catch at least one bone on the side.

Since polygamy will be legal by then, my other wife (the older, wiser one) will bring me a cigar and a snifter of brandy later in the evening, light it for me, and then we’ll discuss the events of the day. She’ll think she is the dominant one in the marriage because, “Girls rule, boys drool.” I’ll think I’m the dominant one because, “Men think, while women feel.” Like most typical marriages, we’ll lie to each other and ourselves, but the status quo will be so comfortable as we live behind curtains of hundred dollar bills, none of us will care.

This is pretty much what I expect my life to look like when I’m 60, which will be in 2035. So… What are y’all’s plans when Social Security becomes insolvent?

Of Men, Women, Turkey Legs and Sex

Over the years, I’ve been in a number of relationships. All of them have failed, of course. I have failed. At 43, I don’t consider my career to be a failure. I work in radio now, which is pretty much what I’ve wanted to do all of my life. I will never be a talk show host on KFAB, but I’m closer to my career goal than most other blind people I know.

No, my greatest failure in life is not having found a wife. Many people would read this and snort to themselves. “RyanO,” they might say. “It’s your own damn fault. You’ve always been a player.”

This was confirmed to me when I had dinner with a friend I’ve known for decades not long after I moved to Omaha. At one point I said, “I’m tired of people thinking I’m a womanizer.” He paused between sips of Captain and Coke, then said, “You mean you’re not?” This guy’s quip was historically ironic because, back when we were teenagers, he received far more female attention than did I.

Fine. Granted, I’ve been in a lot of relationships and none of them have worked. I will shoulder my share of the blame for that. But don’t talk to me about womanizing. I enjoy women. I like their perspective. I like the back-and-forth with women. I appreciate what many of them have to say.

I’ve also known some toxic women who are just as nasty as their male counterparts. And I also enjoy the back-and-forth with men on a different level. We used to hold monthly guys’ nights when I lived in Denver where a group of five or six of us would get together, drink beer, smoke cigars and talk about guy stuff; women, football, blind politics, women, our families, women, etc. I miss those days a lot.

My point is that, while I seem to gravitate toward women, I don’t exclude men over some long game of sexual conquest. I’ve known men who were actual womanizers. One guy was a musician and he was very clear about the fact that he wanted to plunder as much pussy as he possibly could before he died. So, so many women let him do it, even though his motives were abundantly transparent.

This leads me to the main thrust (pardon the expression) of my post. I’ve been in my fair share of relationships and I’m always amazed at how quickly women want to give up the goods. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been alone with a woman early on and I’m thinking we’re just gonna do some cuddling or heavy making out… And we end up naked. And here’s the part many of you won’t believe. More often than not, she’s the initiator.

I want to make it crystal clear that I am not pointing fingers at my exes. I’m a man and, like all other men, when I feel the firehose effect, I lose perspective. But a lot of these women didn’t just leap into bed with me due to some powerful seductive charm on my part. They did it because they felt safe with me, thus, they dropped their guard with abandon.

Now, I’ve had a lot of good and great sex over the years. I’ve also made love to a few women; the two acts are very different. Some of the sex was casual. Some of it was a friends-with-benefits type situation. But most of it was in the context of a relationship wherein both of us thought we were going to be dating long term. In those situations, the women were always far too eager to surrender their wears to me too early. And this wasn’t merely in my ‘20’s and ‘30’s. This has happened to me in my early ‘40’s as well.

This is the message I want to impart to women from a straight man’s point of view. Ladies, I know we’re living in the age of sexual liberation when the role of the woman is ever changing. But I’m telling you that, despite all of the popular assertions being made right now, men and women are wired differently. Generally, men are wired to have sex, which may or may not lead to love. Generally, women are wired to be in love, which may or may not lead to sex. One is far more fleeting and/or rewarding than the other.

If you want to have sex with a man on a recreational basis, go for it. If the two of you decide together that you have chemistry and just want to get your rocks off, more power to you. But if you meet a guy and think he might be a prime candidate for a longer term love relationship, make. Him. Wait. Make him work for it. And more importantly, make yourself wait.

A guy is always happy to pop off his cork when and where he can. If he is willing to hold off for you until you’re ready, he is worthy of you. I’m not telling you to play hard to get. I’m not into game-playing. It smacks too much of manipulation. Let him know you’re interested in him, but that he needs to work for your favors. And by work, I mean that he needs to court you. Don’t open up for him on the first, or second, or even the 10th date. Once you allow him into your inner palace of pleasure, he’s already gotten what he biologically wants. Encourage him, but watch how he behaves. If you give it up too quickly, a guy (the right kind of guy) may lose respect for you, even if he continues seeing you.

As for you men, if you’re on date number one with a lady and she’s gobbling your fleshly tool like a fried turkey leg on Thanksgiving and talking about forever, and even references the L-word, head for the nearest exit and block her on social media. The long term consequences are not worth the short term pleasure of firing off your manly magnum in her feminine forest.

I’m done now. Gonna go pet the kitty and sort out some more mistakes. Happy Bunny Day.

The Penis Always Loses

Men can never win!

I’ve been alive for 42 years and the only hard truth I’ve come to realize is that men, no matter what they do, are wrong.

Take the latest issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine, for instance. The editor of the Sex and Relationships section wrote that it’s wrong for a man to enjoy giving a woman an orgasm.

In her view, men derive masculine pleasure from the act of giving a woman a climax. She goes on to explain that the female orgasm should be womancentric and, if the man takes too much satisfaction from her satisfaction, then she is merely a vessel of his own desires reflected and projected.

I’m not making this up. Go Google it if you don’t believe me!

Ok, so for decades, much of feminism has derided men for not caring enough about their partner’s orgasm. Now, he’s selfish if he does?!

How can we ever win. If we follow this lady’s logic to its ultimate conclusion, the best thing for couples to do is to give each other battery-powered implements, or adult DVD’s once a year for their birthday, then go into separate rooms and rub one off. Then they can gather in the living room in the afterglow and compare notes. Maybe on Christmas, they can videotape the experience to give their spouse a bit of an extra thrill, but not too much of one!

Here is my question for the Cosmo editor. If a man is having trouble with erectile dysfunction and the woman blames herself for it, as many women erroneously tend to do, is she being selfish? If he takes Viagra, should she be angry, or should she be as happy as Bob Dole on New Year’s Eve?

You know… Maybe Eliot Spitzer had a point. Prostitution is a more direct means of alleviating sexual tension without worrying about your partner’s feelings. Of course, I can’t afford it, but if I ever achieve Donald Trump’s level of affluence… But never mind. I never did have a taste for Russian women. I certainly have a taste for American women… But there I go being selfish again.

Sorry, ladies.

V is For Vanilla

A few words on sex. If you’re easily offended, tough it out! A little pain is good for the soul.

“Sticks and stones may break my bones,
But whips and chains excite me.”

There was a time when the idea of BDSM made my skin crawl. I was first exposed to it in college when a co-ed who dressed all in black and sported one black fingernail asked me if I’d ever tried a nipple clamp. “Huh?” I said. The feeling in the pit of my gut was about the same as when I first cut into a cow’s eyeball in 5th grade biology.

20 years later and I am more understanding of the lifestyle, though “50 Shades,” still makes my skin crawl. Not the red room of pain, but the hideous quality of the writing. I’m convinced that, in addition to being a translucent plagiarist, E. L. James is also a sadist. Or maybe she’s into humiliation. Either way, she’s rich and I’m not, so there’s that.

Look, I understand the whole, “Different strokes for different folks,” concept. I abide by it. If reenacting scenes from Abu Ghraib gets your rocks off, more power to you. But it’s just not my thing. It is incomprehensible to me how the rendering of intense physical pain can be pleasurable to some people.

I get it on the physical level. Pain triggers adrenalin, which releases endorphins into the bloodstream. This results in a natural high. Ok, fine, but every high has a corresponding drop. What about the emotional side of it?

In my view, the world we live in is swimming in enough pain and violence as it is. Why bring it into the bedroom? We have emotional sadists, physical sadists, sexual sadists in abundance out there…and they’re just the Trump supporters. I’m convinced that all of the masochists are Hillary supporters who actually admire her wayward husband.

In my mind, pain and sex don’t go together. To me, sex is a very passionate, sensual act that is comprised of many physical sensations. Severe pain and punishment just ain’t on the menu in my restaurant. Does this mean that I’m not open-minded? Nah. I believe in giving my partner what she wants. If she wants me to run my fingernails down her back more vigorously than I otherwise might, no problem. If she wants me to deliver a sharp bite to the back of her neck, 10-4! Spanking. Moderate restraint. Enthusiastic or rough sex. I’m not opposed. I once had a partner who said I was, “Too nice,” and wanted me to express my dark side by dragging her into the bedroom by her long hair. You got it, hot mama!

But when we get to the point where she begs me to string her up from the ceiling and ash my lighted cigar on various parts of her bare anatomy, I’m gonna pass.

I am proudly vanilla. There’s nothing wrong with being vanilla. It is one of the most complex flavors in the taste spectrum. I’m convinced that most people are vanilla to a greater or lesser degree. This doesn’t mean that I’m boring. I’ve done a few things at those grand old social room parties that…well…the only reason I got away with them is because the vast majority of the party attendees were blind. It simply means that, as Dirty Harry put it, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

Besides, I’ve become desensitized to pain. Working with a bunch of Boulder nutjobs tends to dull my pain receptors after a point.

If any of you found this painful to read, leave possible safe words in the comments section. I will select one and leave it as a code in future posts of a sexual nature so you’ll know to avoid them.