Further Enlightenment

Another day, another miracle.

I hear, readers, your (weak and pathetic) hisses of disbelief, and I sympathize. Back in the dark, dark days before Big D and I became BFF, I spent much time wandering in the wilderness, and now that I have reached the Promised Land (which you, most assuredly, have not), I can understand how others might find my exalted position hard to take.

Nonetheless, I continue to be the Chosen One. Unmistakable signs of my close, personal friendship with Big D have begun popping up at regular intervals.

Now, I realize that some folk say that there are signs of God everywhere if you only know where to look. This, of course, is utter nonsense. There are signs of Big D everywhere if I know where to look because I am among the elected. Unless you have also been chosen (and trust me, you haven't), your best bet for experiencing the unknown vast is through the repeated ingestion of hallucinogens.

Anyway, yesterday morning, I reached for my coffee mug to take it to the kitchen to clean it and then refill it with coffee. I've been using the same mug for the past 2.5 years, and I never remember to clean it until the next morning. This means that my mug almost always looks disgusting because I always take my one cup of coffee with two Splendas and a heaping teaspoon of my coffee mix (roughly equal parts unsweetened cocoa powder and nonfat dry milk, plus a healthy dose of cinnamon), which makes the coffee taste good but doesn't really dissolve. I drink the coffee in about ninety seconds, then I set the mug aside, and it looks something like this picture until the next day.

That is, until yesterday morning, when I picked up mug and saw this:

If anything confused me about my initial experience with Big D, it was his/her/its choice of symbols. The outstretched hands of blessing are universally recognizable, yes, but they are not so much in keeping with my particular religious views. I believe in a much more diffuse divinity, some sort of blend of animism and pantheism which says that god is everywhere and everything. At the same time, I only believe in god in a metaphorical sense, so I'm really more of a panatheist than a pantheist. In fact, when Big D tries to tease me about something, I sometimes resort to the retort: "Maybe, bitch, but at least I exist." He loves that.

The nearly perfect yin-yang sign that I found in my coffee mug yesterday is a symbol often associated with taoism, which is a both a diffuse faith and a faith in diffusion. Much more appropriate and comforting than the outstretched (some might go so far as to say grasping) hands of (y)our Lord.

That one example notwithstanding, Big D is not so much a hands-on divinity. Feeding the multitudes, parting the Red Sea, writing his name in the topography of Africa: all not his style. (If you catch him in an unguarded moment, he'll cop to turning water into wine, but he says that it was very much vin ordinaire. Perhaps he's just being modest, though. It's hard to tell.) He's not one to hit you (well, me, really) over the head with obvious messages; he leaves the interpretation up to the chosen.

But in this case, the interpretation is fairly obvious. The yin-yang symbol represents balance, and the slight muddiness in the symbol in the cup is a reminder that I need to restore balance, a clear reference to the fact that b&c has been getting a lot more than I have this week. In fact, on Wednesday evening, when I got home with the kids, he bragged that he hadn't negotiated the contract for his upcoming trip to Jordan because "opportunity knocked twice."

When people tell you that open relationships thrive on honesty, they're right, but only up to a point. The partners have to honestly negotiate the rules of the relationship, and if they do more than nudge the outlines of the rules, then they have to come clean about it. Much more than that can pretty quickly become TMI, unless, of course, you're a particularly gifted story teller and your partner gets excited by the details. B&c is not a gifted story teller, and his details are always much tamer than mine.

This, truly, is not about jealousy. I was above jealousy even in my pre-enlightenment days. I do not, on the other hand, ever expect to be above envy, and if I've just spent a full day at work and then spent ninety minutes negotiating traffic and the multiple pick-up points of the kids, I don't really want to hear about how you spent the whole day on your back. (Especially when you've made meatloaf for dinner.) This is almost sure to lead to (momentary) petulance of the he-got-his-candy-I-want-my-candy-too-it-isn't-faaaaaair nature.

Fortunately, we're about to enter a long weekend, and I hope to have at least some opportunity to settle the score. In reality, envy is a very short-term emotion. I was over it almost immediately, and in my more rational moments, I don't care much about the body count, but I have to pay attention to the messages the universe is sending me, don't I?

Besides, I'm kind of curious about trying out my new line: "God told me to fuck you."

But If Baby You're the Bottom

Those of you who might worry that my recent road-to-Damascus moment might result in a change in my sexual behavior or my willingness to write about it can rest easy. The divine and I had a long chat (I call him Big D: he thinks that's amusing; he's not really a he, of course, but it's just easier to refer to the divine if I personify it), and Big D said that I should have as much sex with as many different guys as I want, and that if anything, I should want more. Then he said that if I was looking to make some changes, I should consider versatility, and when I started to sputter something about how I didn't think that would work for me, he said, "Psych!" Who knew that Big D had such a playful (if predictable) sense of humor?

Anyway. I'm moving on to a completely different topic now. But I am going to talk about a terrific session I had, if you're patient.

Not long after I first told my parents that I was gay, I was over at their house, and my mother asked me, "so are you the man or the woman in your relationships?" It will probably not surprise you to learn that I found this question somewhat inappropriate. And disturbing, for a number of reasons. Primarily, it indicated that my mother was actually thinking about my sex life in some sort of specific way. I had just assumed that for her to think about her son having gay sex would be as distasteful as it is for me to think about my parents having breeder sex. (I have had breeder sex. In fact, in my misspent youth, I was married for over ten years, and during that time, I only had breeder sex. [And only with my wife.] Nowadays, though, the thought leaves me a bit queasy.)

The fear of femininity that a lot of hetero and homosexuals have is something that I don't get. On some level, I don't even know how to approach the terms to have this discussion. I mean, I know what sort of men are referred to as feminine or fem, but the terms are not clearly apposite. Maybe they're the best we have, though. B&c is decidedly masculine (by which I mean both that he has a penis and that his manner is what's traditionally seen as masculine), but I have certainly dated men who were fem (though they all had penises). I have generally found that feminine guys break down into two subtypes: sweet and bitchy. I would date a sweet fem guy any time. Bitchy men have as little interest in me as I have in them, so it's not an issue.

I'm not sure to what I attribute the visceral reaction that a lot of men (straight or gay) have to feminine men. Perhaps it's a fear of growing old and not having anyone to watch football with. Perhaps it's a fear that they'll always be the less fabulous one in the relationship. Perhaps it's some sort of insecurity in their own masculinity. It likely varies from man to man, and maybe it doesn't matter. I've often said that you can't really help wanting what you want, sexually, and if you want to ignore all the sweet feminine men so that you can hang out with smelly guys who belch, then go right ahead. More for me.

My mother's question, though, reveals more than a general distaste for muddying the traditional bright line that separates masculine and feminine. What she was really asking was "Do you fuck them or do they fuck you?" Leaving aside for the moment the question of the precise use of "fuck" and whether it's linguistically appropriate to say that you fucked someone even if you were the one being penetrated, my mother was falling back on the idea that bottoms are feminine and tops are masculine.

At this point in the discussion, there is obviously only one way to go: Ovid.

The Transformation of Tiresias

'Twas now, while these transactions past on Earth,
And Bacchus thus procur'd a second birth,
When Jove, dispos'd to lay aside the weight
Of publick empire and the cares of state,
As to his queen in nectar bowls he quaff'd,
"In troth," says he, and as he spoke he laugh'd,
"The sense of pleasure in the male is far
More dull and dead, than what you females share."
Juno the truth of what was said deny'd;
Tiresias therefore must the cause decide,
For he the pleasure of each sex had try'd.

It happen'd once, within a shady wood,
Two twisted snakes he in conjunction view'd,
When with his staff their slimy folds he broke,
And lost his manhood at the fatal stroke.
But, after seven revolving years, he view'd
The self-same serpents in the self-same wood:
"And if," says he, "such virtue in you lye,
That he who dares your slimy folds untie
Must change his kind, a second stroke I'll try."
Again he struck the snakes, and stood again
New-sex'd, and strait recover'd into man.
Him therefore both the deities create
The sov'raign umpire, in their grand debate;
And he declar'd for Jove: when Juno fir'd,
More than so trivial an affair requir'd,
Depriv'd him, in her fury, of his sight,
And left him groping round in sudden night.
But Jove (for so it is in Heav'n decreed,
That no one God repeal another's deed)
Irradiates all his soul with inward light,
And with the prophet's art relieves the want of sight.

If, as Ovid clearly means us to do, we momentarily accept the notion that bottoming is associated with the feminine and topping is associated with the masculine, we can see that this passage from Metamorphoses has a clear message: try to be versatile, and you'll end up blind.

Yes, I will have my little joke.

Very few biological phenomena are black and white, and gender certainly isn't one of them. There are, clearly, people who fall somewhere in the middle of the male-female continuum, just as there are Kinsey 3s and 4s as well as 1s and 6s. But I would posit that many more people self-identify as gay than do as bi, at least if you wait long enough. At any given moment, there are approximately four million American men who are telling themselves that they're not gay as long as they don't kiss the man whose cock they're sucking, and approximately 3.9 million of them will eventually acknowledge that they're gay. (Of that 3.9 million, only about eight will ever become good kissers, alas, but it has often been noted that we live in a highly imperfect world, and here is but another example.) So if you graph population along the sexual continuum, you see, to the left, the Himalayan peak representing the vast heterosexual hordes, then a precipitous tumble down to the valley of the shadow of bisexuality, and, finally, a steep (but graceful, naturally) climb to the promised land of queerdom.

The distribution along the bottom-to-top continuum is likely neither as skewed nor as bipolar as the distribution along the Kinsey scale, but I observe that most (clearly not all) people who identify as versatile express a clear preference. In other words, they'll top if they have to, but what they really want is to be on their backs with their ankles tucked behind their ears screaming "harder! deeper!"

I can't pretend to know all of the factors that make men gravitate towards one of the role poles, but I know some, and I can speculate about others. For bottoms, the reasons are primarily physical. For tops, the reasons are primarily macroeconomic.

As Tiresias explained to us before Juno went all drama goddess on him, bottoming is more intensely pleasurable than topping. I'm sorry if you don't like that conclusion, but don't blame me. You could blame Tiresias, but don't you think he's suffered enough? Don't get me wrong: I love topping, and it feels great, but it kind of builds and then it's over with (and maybe it builds for a long time and maybe you get the whole cycle several times), and you're left with a great feeling of satisfaction and, briefly, invincibility, sort of "my loins are now empty and all is right with the world." Contrast that reaction with the reaction of a bottom who, having gotten used to the initial penetration, almost immediately cozies up to the edge of nirvana, where he stays for as long as there is penis present. It's more "I have seen the face of God! And yet I live!"

Some men are undoubtedly tops for physical reasons: i.e., they tried bottoming, and it was too painful and/or it just never got them off. (I'm raising my hand here.) But I think that the existence of a substantial number of tops has a lot more to do with supply and demand. If you really can choose to assume either position, then you're going to have a lot more success as a top than you'd have as a bottom because there are a lot fewer tops. (And, let me just say right now, that if there is some poll somewhere in the Advocate or Ladies' Home Sexuality that shows that the statistical assumptions underlying my entire argument are crap, I don't really want to know about it.) If you combine the economic incentives with the fact that men are largely creatures of habit who don't want to be redefining their roles every fifteen minutes, you'll see why a guy who's gotten plenty of sex as a top might not have much interest in moving to a new hunting ground where the game is much more scarce just because he might have a better view of the face of God.

And there are, of course, the masculinity and control issues. Many tops (including some of my top friends, but not me) feel that they would give up a significant portion of their masculinity if they were to bottom, i.e., assume the feminine role. Others fear that bottoming would remove from them control over their own sexual experience (or perhaps control over their partners). These two issues might seem to be the same issue, but they are, in fact, very different. My Neanderthal (i.e., Republican) top friends have a certain amount of (mostly concealed, except in the company of other tops) contempt for bottoms because of their perceived femininity. And even b&c will occasionally tell me that if he doesn't top someone about once every six months, he feels like less of a man. Of course, every time he tells me that, I get a headache because my eyes are rolling so hard. When a bottom offers up his ass to me, I'm usually thinking, "Damn, that takes balls."

When a bottom is screaming uncontrollably from intense pleasure, I might be thinking, "Oooh, did I do that? Awesome!" but I'm also aware that he's reached a place that I fear to approach. I like roller coasters, but you always know that the track brings you back to where you started; if you let go sexually, who knows where you might end up? So much of life is already beyond my control that I'd like to at least pretend to direct what I can.

Sexuality is rarely simple, though, and it would be wrong to say that there's a single reason why someone becomes a top or a bottom. Sure, I don't want to give up control, but there's also the fact that years ago, when I was first out, I tried a few times, and bottoming didn't do much for me. Perhaps it if had seemed like the best thing ever, I'd have gone in that direction.

I suppose that the only people who never have to think about this sort of thing (aside from the people who just never think about anything, the lucky souls who just fuck without ever analyzing, even after the fact) are the true versatiles, the omnivores of the sexual kingdom, the exceedingly lucky people who can say "it's all good" and mean it.

Anyway, I mused most of this post over two months ago, and it just sat here because it seemed to lack immediacy and relevance. After all, it had been more than five years since I bottomed, and in that time, I hadn't even tried to take anything up my ass.

Until the weekend before last, that is.

I had scheduled a full day of giving massages, and I had the last guy on the table. He'd been supposed to arrive at 5, but he'd gotten stuck doing something for his mother (it was the day before Mother's Day) and then in traffic, and he'd called twice to see whether I could still put him on the table. I'd said yes, in part because the e-mails I'd exchanged with this guy made me think a) that he'd be a lot of fun to massage and b) that he probably wanted more. This notion was reinforced by the fact that for much of the time I was massaging him, he had his hand up the leg of my shorts.

I generally try to separate massage and hooking up (except when I don't), but when a sweet and handsome African American man who's 6'1 and built like a brick shithouse wants to play, I am neither willing nor able to say no. Especially when his hair and his beard are both clipped to the exact same level. Very, very hot.

Anyway, I had C. on the table for about an hour when I asked him whether he'd like to go upstairs. At this point, he was on his back, and we'd been kissing some, and his truly impressive cock was at attention. He said something like "I don't mind," which I thought was somewhat ambiguous, but when I asked for clarification "Huh?" it turned out that he meant "Yes! Please!"

Did I mention in the earlier post that he arrived at 6:30 and left at midnight? Even with an hour on the table and almost half an hour in the shower and getting dressed and saying goodbye, that left a good four hours in bed. God only knows where that time went, but we both loved every minute of it. I know that he was a terrific kisser and that we spent a lot of time making out. And I know that at some point he grabbed the bottle of baby oil from my bedside table and gave me a massage (much of that involved me lying on my stomach and him lying on top of me and sliding back and forth over me), and I know that he did a good job going down on me and that I made a valiant effort and was uncharacteristically skilled at going down on him, but most of the first 2.5 or so hours fade into a haze of joy. What brought things into sharper focus was his tongue on my ass.

I am unaccustomed to, and perhaps not entirely comfortable with, men appreciating my ass. I don't think there's anything wrong with my ass: it just seems kind of nondescript to me. It's more that guys are interested in what I'm doing to them, and/or they're interested in my cock. It was really surprising to hear someone telling me that I have a great ass (chacun à son goût, I reckon). And I think it was the first time that I'd been rimmed since, well, the first time I've been rimmed in the twenty-first century.

I generally don't like guys playing with my ass at all, but C. was so nice and so hot and so into me that I went with it. And it was okay, really, but it was only okay. Typically, when I start to rim a guy, he goes a little bit out of his head. I don't know how much of that is simply the nerve endings and how much is the fact that it's the start of something more. Maybe it's like you've opened a door and he's caught a glimpse of the promised land, or maybe it just feels really good. I wasn't getting either of those things, so after a while of him doing that to me, I did that to him, and then we made out some more.

But he kept wanting more of my ass, and this was not the kind of guy I could say no to. I really wanted to give him what he wanted. He was pushing all the right buttons, and when he started to slide a finger up my ass, I was thinking, "Well, maybe it's time I learned to be 3% versatile. I don't have to tell b&c or anyone else about it. I can just bottom for guys who are this hot and this willing to invest several hours. That can't be more than, oh, one guy."

My body, however, had ideas of its own. I am sure that in the long ago, I have enjoyed having a finger up my ass. And I even have a very, very thin dildo that I am sure I enjoyed having up my ass. And, yes, it might have been five years ago, but surely it's like riding a bicycle, right?

Not so much. The finger wasn't doing anything for me except making me feel tight, and not in a good way (yes, he was using plenty of lube). And I knew that if I couldn't take one of his fingers (which were not all that huge), then I certainly couldn't take his cock (which really was all that huge).

It didn't stop him from trying, though. He got himself gloved and lubed up and lay on top of me and very, very slowly tried to push in. And he did get the head in. (Does that mean I'm versatile now?) And I kept telling myself to relax. I kept trying to remember how I'd successfully bottomed in the distant past. I kept telling myself that I wanted it.

My body didn't want it, though. There was simply nothing pleasurable about the experience, and whenever he tried to push in more than the head, my ass would push back and push him all the way out. I finally had to tell him that I didn't think it would work. I asked him how long it had been since he'd bottomed, and he said three years. "Well," I said, "five years for me, so I guess I win."

And to give credit where it's due, he wasn't trying to do anything to me that he wasn't willing to have done to him. He'd mentioned early on how he shared my views that bottoms really seemed to enjoy sex more than tops, and he said that he'd never cum while being fucked and that he wanted to try.

I did open him up with my fingers, and I did fuck him a little. Once he'd decided that he was going to go for it, he seemed really hungry for it. But, here again, my body wasn't cooperating. My ass was still feeling sore and a bit resentful, and it seemed to keep me from getting more than about 80% hard. He sat on my cock, and I did get in him some, and I played with his nips and cock while he bounced up and down on me. Then he got on his back and wanted me to fuck him that way, but, again, I could only get about an inch inside him. He seemed to like that just fine, especially when I jerked his cock, but I couldn't keep it going. I'm not sure how much of that had to do with just having had something huge slightly up my ass and how much was due to having been up early and having had a session of highly athletic sex in the morning followed by a long day of massage, but it doesn't really matter. At that point we were more than three hours in, and that's about as much as I can reasonably expect out of my cock. C., on the other hand, was like a rock the whole time.

Eventually, I put my middle finger inside him and pressed it against his prostate. He said it was intense and started to jerk himself off. I nibbled on his thighs and played with his nipples, and after a few minutes, he started to make a lot of noise, and pretty soon he shot and shot hard. Then he grabbed me and kissed me while I finished myself off.

After a couple of minutes of lying there, holding each other, he went to the bathroom and I lay there, enjoying the afterglow. After a minute, he yelled through the bathroom door, "Hey, Ted, I remember!" "Remember what?" "I remember why I'm not a bottom! It feels like I've got a corncob stuck up my ass." "That can be arranged." "No, thanks!"

After a few minutes more, I joined him in the shower. I usually find showering with another guy awkward, but given that I'd tried bottoming for this guy, I certainly wasn't going to balk at showering with him, and it was a lot of fun. I can't remember when making out in the shower has been more fun. We kept at it until the hot water started to run out.

We got dressed and we chatted and kissed some more, and he left almost exactly at midnight. If you're aware of my rating system, you'll be interested to know that I got in the car and went looking for a cheeseburger (two stars) and then came home and emailed some friends to brag (three stars). I think that in this special case, I'm going to add them to give C. an unprecedented five stars.

C. wants to get together again, and I want to see him again, but I think that we're both going to have to accept the fact that if there was ever a window of opportunity for me to become versatile, it closed some time ago. This is not something that I'm especially happy about. I continue to think of total tops as boring guys with control issues, but I'm somewhat comforted by the fact that I was willing to try. Still, it seems pointless to try to force something that isn't there. We all get different things out of sex, and one of the things that I don't get out of it is the joy of bottoming. There's plenty of other joys left for me, and I'm sure that the fact that I can be the instrument that brings that particular joy to other guys is something that makes Big D happy.

The Enlightened Dude

Peace be unto you, pilgrims. Join me in celebrating this wondrous day.

No, no: you have not stumbled upon the wrong blog, though you might certainly be forgiven for thinking so. Indeed, from the lofty heights that I have very recently attained, I am prepared to forgive you for that and much, much more.

You must be wondering of what I speak. (Note how easily I now see into the innermost workings of your, alas, still-limited minds.) I will tell you.

This very day: the twenty-first of May, 2007, at 3:24 pm, I have received a visitation from the divine. At the time, I was in the kitchen at my place of employment, that location in which I, like so many others who choose to journey temporarily among the once-born, sojourn as a way to meet the exigencies of the material world and gain a greater understanding of the common folk. And I am not ashamed to admit, brothers and, well, brothers (can I get an amen?), that I was feeling the load of this mortal coil. I was meandering through the very Slough of Despond. I had assumed that I could trace this difficulty to the fact that I had not yet eaten my lunch, but I now see the error of my ways. For there I was, standing next to the microwave, waiting for my soup to defrost when I answered the Call. There was no Earthly reason, friends, for me to do what I did. I had never done it before, no not even once! But I felt the need to take from my pocket, the small LED flashlight that I keep attached to my key chain, that light that guides my path through the darkness of my bedroom when b&c goes to bed before me, that beacon that keeps me from stumbling over my own shoes. I held that small ray of hope in my hands, and I depressed the button, and what did I see?



There in front of me, on the very wall behind the microwave, I saw the shadow of the hands of the divine, outstretched in blessing. I was so moved that I immediately reached for my cell phone and took the picture that you see above, the irrefutable, visual evidence that the divine lives among us and has elected me as its messenger.

It goes without saying that I understand the ways of men. And my intimate knowledge of that subject lets me understand how difficult it is to maintain faith while living in the modern world. I realize that there will be those who cry "coincidence!" or who claim not to see the clear writing on the wall. And I pity these people, but I will not, nay cannot, allow myself to be held down by their unbelief. For I have additional proof, friends.

No sooner had I stored the visual record of this epiphany in my cell phone than I took my lunch back to my desk and began to eat while simultaneously working on an estate return that I felt was sure to be my undoing. I had thought that I had made a grave error, one that would cost our biggest client a substantial amount of interest and penalties and that would leave my bosses awash in an awful wrath. As I began to put together my workpapers and to work my way down the fiduciary tax return checklist, my error lay heavily upon my heart. But then (lo!) I reached the final item of the checklist and that last question asked me whether I had made a certain election. An election that I had not hitherto been aware of. An election, friends, that would erase my error and completely avoid the awful wrath that I had been fearing for days.

And the doubters among you (whom, again, I freely forgive) may say that this was yet another coincidence, but I beg you to consider that I should not have even been doing this return. Once I had met with the client, I should have turned the file over to a subordinate. Clearly, it was the hands of the divine that led me to prepare the return myself and who delivered me from the shadow of reprimand.

But I am, of course, a humble man. And I am, after all, the messenger and instrument of the divine. I am, in short, just like you (only better). Though most would say that I deserve your adoration and adulation, I do not wish to set myself apart from the masses. Therefore, you may continue to address me as TED, and if you are aware that it now stands for "The Enlightened Dude," you will also understand that it retains the sound of my former name and allows me to act as if I don't realize that I'm a level or six above you.

Some of you, of course, will want more. You will want to know how you can support me in the important work of the divine. And since you insist, I must inform you that you may email me, and I will work out a way for your (large) packets of small, unmarked bills to reach me and assist me in my important ministry.

IRS guidelines require that I inform you that since I am not (yet) a recognized religion or other 501(c)(3) organization, your contributions are not tax deductible, but I take that as a ridiculous formality. I'm sure that if you deduct your contributions in the name of the divine, the servants of Caesar will not be able to bring you to account. After all, if the divine has demonstrated anything, it's that it has a way with resolving tax problems.

What a Difference a Vowel Makes

We live, readers, in a universe held together by unpredictable coincidences. You may be happily hurtling sideways through life and come in contact with something new and then -- the very next day -- come in contact with the same thing in an entirely different context. Ten, twenty, thirty or more years of semi-blissful ignorance of anything interrupted by two occurrences so close together that you begin to doubt the existence of chance.

Nonetheless, Lang Lang is not a panda.

B&c returned home from his sojourn in Ethiopia yesterday. Naturally, this meant that we had tickets to see something last night. B&c is all about the work by dead white guys culture, and we have a number of subscriptions. He generally purchases the tickets during the late spring and summer for a season that runs through the following spring. He usually doesn't learn about his consulting trips, however, until a couple of months before. Thus, he often has to reschedule his tickets. So when he has three weeks in Ethiopia and four or five weeks in Jordan separated by two weeks at home, much gets compressed into those two weeks. In addition to last night's symphony tickets, I will be subjected to get to see two operas in the next two weeks. I think there may be another event or two as well, but I can only contemplate so much time in a theater seat before I get overwhelmed and have to go to my safe place (this involves me curling up in the fetal position on the bed and singing Janis Joplin's "Mercedes Benz").

Anyway, I was in Costco last weekend. I had hoped to pick up the DVD of Pan's Labyrinth," but I couldn't find it, so I got The Painted Veil instead. I started watching it late Thursday night, and during the credits I saw "Piano Solo by Lang Lang," and I thought, "Wait a minute, isn't 'Lang-Lang' hyphenated? And isn't she dead? And how would you teach a panda to play the piano anyway?" But then the movie started, and I stopped worrying about it. After all, the piano playing was pretty good, and, given some of the movie's themes, resurrecting a Nixon-in-China era panda and teaching her to play the piano seemed somehow appropriate.

So fast forward to last night when we're taking our seats at the Kennedy Center. I hadn't bothered to ask what we were going to hear, so I was surprised to see that after the intermission, Lang Lang herself (still not hyphenated) would be the soloist for Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. I was curious as to what else Lang-Lang had been doing since the people at the National Zoo stopped spending three-quarters of their annual budget trying (and failing) to make her produce viable offspring, so I turned to the "Meet the Artists" section and looked at the bios and said to b&c, "Huh. Lang Lang is a man."

B&c knows better than to ask, so he just rolled his eyes. The concert was starting anyway. It was a very nice performance of the Enescu Romanian Rhapsody No. 2 followed by Jennifer Higdon's City Scape. B&c almost fell asleep during the Higdon. He says it was because of the jet lag, but I'm pretty sure it had more to do with the fact that Jennifer Higdon is neither dead nor (unlike Lang Lang) a man. She is, as it happens, so alive that she took a bow after the performance.

After yet another whirlwind intermission (B&c contributes some small amount of money to the Kennedy Center, and this entitles him to a very small cup of coffee and a cookie or two during the intermission of every event we see there. As a rule, we have time to walk from our seats to the members' lounge, grab a [very small] cup of coffee, and head toward the cookie table before they start ringing the chimes and dimming the lights to herd people back towards their seats. This contrasts rather starkly with, say, the Metropolitan Opera, where after the first act of Turandot, you have time to walk upstairs, venture out on the balcony, thoroughly analyze both of the Chagall murals, come back inside, and have several drinks before even thinking about heading back to your seat. Really, every time I'm there, I feel like the director has decided that he doesn't like the ending and is having it rewritten during the intermissions. Someday I'm going to be there watching La Boheme, which will end with Mimi's miraculous recovery. After which, she will dump Rodolfo to concentrate on her real estate career.), we returned to our seats, and, soon enough, Lang Lang (who is not a panda) appeared. It is not unreasonable to expect a concert pianist to at least be dressed like a panda, but Lang Lang (who is not a bear of any sort) had eschewed the usual white tie and white shirt for a collarless silk shirt in one of those colors (taupe? bone? ivory? ecru?) that I can't keep straight and that mean not quite white.

In general, I am all about the Asian guys. After all, I thought that Edward Norton was moderately sexy in The Painted Veil, but I reserved my real lust for Anthony Wong Chau-Sang and whoever was playing the Chinese doctor (imdb is not being very helpful here). But Lang Lang (yes, I am aware, that a panda is not really a bear, but neither is Lang Lang) was really not all that hot. It might have been his youth (he's twenty-four), but while I do have a general preference for men who are somewhat more mature, I'm usually perfectly happy to lust over men in their twenties.

Lang Lang obviously sensed my lack of attraction: during one of the stretches where he wasn't playing, he reached up and unfastened his top button in an obvious attempt to show a little skin (Does he really think I'm that easy? Oh shut up.), and then when he resumed playing, his visage and gestures were positively coquettish. I thought that not making eye contact with me was a nice touch, but it wasn't enough. Next time, he should try wearing some pants that do something with his ass. I suppose he could try not wearing pants altogether, but, well, he's Asian, and, well, you know.

On the other hand, at the beginning of the second movement of the concerto, there was some interplay where the principal flute*, cello, and oboe players each had brief solos, and those guys were all looking pretty hot, so if Lang Lang wants to bring them along, I'll let him join the party. Alternately, he could bring the bass section, though I suspect that after the nine of us got finished with him Lang Lang (who is so not a bear) might have to cancel a few concert dates to recuperate.

(*Just in case anyone who knows the NSO is reading this, it's really the assistant principal flutist that I lust after. The principal flutist is an older Japanese woman and she's very cute but really not my type.)

One of the things I like about going to see the NSO is that we have tickets in the first row of the first tier. That's relatively high up, but I can still see the expressions on the players' faces, and, most importantly, I always have a good view of the bass section. When I really appreciate being in the front row, though, is when the concert ends and I can applaud and see the musicians without standing up. I can't remember the last time when I went to see the NSO and there wasn't a standing ovation. I'll give Lang Lang full credit for doing a terrific job on the concerto, and it is certainly pleasant to watch a musician who so thoroughly loves playing his instrument. But, really, much of the credit has to go to Tchaikovsky. In any case, what's the deal with the routine handing out of the standing O? In my book, you rise to your feet when you are so moved by the performance that you have no other choice. The standing O is more valuable if it happens only rarely.

It is certainly possible of course, that the typical Kennedy Center patron who, after all, has probably not had sex since the Eisenhower administration is swept away on a tied of emotion after every performance, but I have my doubts. Especially given that a goodly number of those people who stand to applaud are headed for the exits after the soloist takes his second set of bows. Of course, last night, those suckers missed the encore, which I have to say was pretty kick ass.

All of That Time in Hell To Spend

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Euthanizing the Barbarian

Hi, kids!

Here's a fun game to try on your next long-distance car trip. Crank up the TNWH masturbation euphemism generator!

Here's how it works. You'll need three words:

1. A present participle. ANY present participle.
2. "the"
3. A noun. Preferably a concrete noun, but an abstract noun will do in a pinch, and sometimes gives amusing results.

Put 'em all together and whadaya got? Yes: a serviceable euphemism for masturbation.

Let's try it out a few times:

Winding the salamander
Tugging the lunchbox
Cranking the trolley
Polishing the silverware
Being the Buddha
Parboiling the fettuccine
Feathering the diaspora
Articulating the stapler
Reinforcing the wristwatch
Enabling the anaconda

See how easy it is? Sure, some are better than others and some are slightly gender specific, but they all work on some level, and it's fun to compete to see who can come up with the best ones.

Not only is the TNWH masturbation euphemism generator a fun, fun, fun tool for passing some time, it gives you a great code to share with your closer friends. If your SO calls you at the office when he's out of town on business and there are perky ears in the area, you can say, "Yeah, I'm just staying in tonight. I think I'll be trimming the wildebeest before I go to bed." Your co-workers might well be confused, but they won't have any idea what you're talking about. If one of them says, "Did you say 'trimming the wildebeest'?" you can just give him a dismissive look and a condescending laugh.

Just try not to dissolve hopelessly into laughter when he tells you that he's going to be spending the evening practicing the viola.

The Opposite of Sex

I heard on NPR this morning that ABC is giving the GEICO cavemen their own series.

Meltdown over here in 5...4...3...2...

I reckon the over/under on the series is three episodes.