Une petite gâterie

(10 November 2003)

I’ve made the decision to just go after sex several times, but remain ambivalent, I really wanted more.  The fact is that I don’t know what I want, so naturally I won’t find it until I know what I’m looking for.  While in theory I’ve learned my lesson about not going to bed on the first date, I still need a more practice.  I really need to learn to play the waiting game, which is an especially slow game in France.  Lots of Frenchmen have told me they hate the dating game: “You want it; you know she wants it, but you have to wait forever, and it’s really stupid.”  Although they say they don’t like the game, if you don’t play it, they disappear into thin air.  Several men have asked if all Anglo-Saxon women are that easy, and casually mention that they should travel abroad.  You’d think I’d learn my lesson.

There was another lesson, that I learned just the other evening, after years of living in France.  I was at a dinner party where everyone was asking about my dating life, which has become The topic of conversation since I began online dating.  The subject of blow jobs came up.  Americans are known here for blow jobs.  Someone said that they’d heard that in the US women give blow jobs in return for being taken out to dinner, and that it was more acceptable to give blow jobs than to have sex with a man.  It’s amazing the things you hear.  I was even more amazed to find out that in France “une petite gâterie,” is something you only do when you already know someone quite well.  And the French are always going on about how Americans are such puritans!  Nobody could tell me when you know you’ve known someone long enough to have oral sex.  “You just know.”  No, actually I don’t.  No matter how many years I’ve lived here, there are some things which may never know.

I’ve decided upon a new strategy: put men into two categories, the ones I have sex with because I feel like it, and I don’t care if they stick around; and don’t have sex with the ones that I’m interested in.  A French girlfriend warned me that this is a dangerous strategy: “You can’t always know if you’ll want them to stick around or not.”  So you should always play hard to get.  So you should string them out until their nervous system is a wreck, “give in” to making love after you’re sure they could really be the one, only to find out that they’re lousy in bed and or have tiny cocks.  Personally, if a man doesn’t pass the road test, I’d rather know before spending months of wining and dining.  I can’t imagine putting a man through all of that only to tell him that he doesn’t pass the road test.

(15 December 2003)

So back to what I’m looking for: I’m halfway through my life, and I’ve never had an ongoing relationship which was emotionally, intellectually, and physically gratifying.  There were long periods where I was alone, or in a long distance relationship, or else with someone with whom I didn’t have a great, or even any, physical relationship.  I’ve become convinced that I’ll never find a relationship which is both emotionally and physically satisfying.  With Hervé I’ve at last discovered a gratifying long term physical relationship.  I imagine I could have both with Pygmalion if he was available--he’s the only man I’ve met on the net that I’d like to be with, what a shame he’s happily married.  Sure, sure, people tell me that there’s a man out there for me.  I think they’ve been watching too many Hollywood movies.