The Girlfriend Experience, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise

December 19, 2009 Martha Thomases 13 Comments

Keeping with the spirit of the season, I’m going to offer this column as a gift to my colleague, Keu Reyes.  I don’t think we’ve ever met, but from reading his column, I feel like I know him.  It seems like he’s going through a tough time.

And his column last week would seem to indicate he has even tougher times ahead of him.  Here’s hoping that my experience and perspective helps him out.

I’ve lived a lot of my life with women.  I have sisters and girl cousins.  I went to an all-girls boarding school and lived in a dorm for my high school years.  I had women as roommates in college, and spent a few years on a commune that was 75% female.  I’ve worked with feminist groups.  I’ve written for fashion magazines.

Therefore, I think it goes without saying that I’ve heard women talk.  A lot.  About men.  About sex.  About relationships.  And about sex and relationships with men. I’ve had these conversations with all kinds of women – beautiful, smart, plain, stupid, single, coupled, with kids and without.  I’ve had these conversations with lesbians.

I don’t want to shock you, Keu, so maybe you should sit down for this.  Women like sex.  Individual women vary, but I’d be willing to bet that most women like sex more than most men.   We have a different perspective, however, because we tend to want sexual partners who know what they’re doing.

Notice I didn’t say we wanted sexual partners who are dominant.  There may be a subset of women who do (not that there’s anything wrong with that).  However, unless that’s the only kind of woman that interests you, you’re limiting your possibilities with techniques that require you to establish dominance.

I haven’t always been a married Jewish lady.  Before I met my husband, I was a wild woman.  It was that Golden Age, after the Pill and before HIV.  I was involved with a lot of men, for periods lasting from a few days to a few years.  And not one of them caught my eye because he was dominant, or because he asked me a lot of questions and directed me to talk about happy times.

Actually, I never met anyone through the stereotypical ways, like hanging out in bars – not even in my rock’n’roll days in clubs.

I met guys in classes, at work and in political groups, or through friends.

So take a class, even if you’re out of school.  Not a cooking class (unless you enjoy cooking), because that has become a cliche.  My friend, Janet,  tells me jugglers are animals in bed, so maybe a juggling class would be fun.  I know that when a man walks into a knitting store, he’s surrounded by women who want to make sure he’s comfortable and taken care of.  Maybe some of those women are too old for you (in New York, lots of young women knit, but I’m told that’s not true everywhere), but they have friends, and daughters.  And they’re good with their hands.

Get involved in your community.  Volunteer at a hospital, or plant flowers in a community garden.  Take your pet to the dog park.

The advantage to strategies like mine are that they are deniable.  If you’re flirting with a woman at a dog park, and she turns you down, you can laugh it  off as a misunderstanding.  You can say you were talking to your dog.  You can stay on good terms so she might introduce you to her friends.

You’ll notice none of these things involve going to a bar, or flashing any cash.  If that is your strategy, you will attract drunks who are after your money.  And they can be a fun time, but you shouldn’t be surprised if they turn out to be clingy and crazy and greedy.  Similarly, women who only try to attract men with their youthful good looks shouldn’t be surprised when they get dumped by these men when they age and sag.

I met my husband at press conference for Hustler magazine, when Paul Krassner was named publisher in 1977.  We talked about feminist pornography.  He recommended Anais Nin’s Delta of Venus, which I didn’t find to be a very sexy book, but I was intrigued that he had an opinion about what feminist pornography might be.

And he made me laugh.

It’s a cliche to say that women are attracted to a man with a sense of humor. Not necessarily.  But a man who can make us laugh is a man who can stimulate us to a physical reaction in response to stimulus.  And that’s promising.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, is still on good terms with most of her exes.  Most of them still make her laugh.