Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Prude
I just woke up from a dream about my first girlfriend, back from in the fifth and sixth grades. Apparently, in the dream, I was like a 20-something and I was going over to her house to bring her some cereal in the mornings. But this time it was night, and I came to the door and her mother was there. She was older now, but cheerful, and explained that my ex was in the back. So I started to wait patiently. And then I woke up.
That first GF is a heady thing. She sat next to me in fifth grade. She was personable, had a great laugh, was very popular. She had red hair, freckles, an uplifting smile. I really liked her, had my first kiss with her. I got in over my head, though, having a gf and all, and backed away, breaking her heart. But I kept hearing how she still liked me through the summer, and eventually in sixth grade we got back together.
It didn't last. This time she broke up with me, breaking my heart. I still liked her, but this time she wasn't looking back. She moved on to a guy a year older who lived in my neighborhood. I was devestated.
The reason we broke up, though, is kind of funny, kind of sad now. It was because I wouldn't feel her up. She was short, but she was like the first girl in our class to get her boobs, and I was embarrassed even to acknowledge that, even when she tried to prompt me. What's more, they became a set of really, really big boobs, the kind any straight guy would want to get a handle on.
One day at her house, she told me how she wanted me to. She told me she had been saving herself for me, which sounds distinctly like a line a girl might use on a guy for, ummm, a little more adult activity. But I turned her down flat. It got animated. She didn't like the answer; I tried to argue something about "maturity." As if a mature person wouldn't do that. Uhhhh, yeah, whatever.
So within a few days, I was history.
I was a prude. I hated that term then, and now. I wouldn't qualify as one now. I finally matured for real. But I have to acknowledge it, even if I denied it then: I was a prude.
No wonder I didn't get laid till I was 20.
That first GF is a heady thing. She sat next to me in fifth grade. She was personable, had a great laugh, was very popular. She had red hair, freckles, an uplifting smile. I really liked her, had my first kiss with her. I got in over my head, though, having a gf and all, and backed away, breaking her heart. But I kept hearing how she still liked me through the summer, and eventually in sixth grade we got back together.
It didn't last. This time she broke up with me, breaking my heart. I still liked her, but this time she wasn't looking back. She moved on to a guy a year older who lived in my neighborhood. I was devestated.
The reason we broke up, though, is kind of funny, kind of sad now. It was because I wouldn't feel her up. She was short, but she was like the first girl in our class to get her boobs, and I was embarrassed even to acknowledge that, even when she tried to prompt me. What's more, they became a set of really, really big boobs, the kind any straight guy would want to get a handle on.
One day at her house, she told me how she wanted me to. She told me she had been saving herself for me, which sounds distinctly like a line a girl might use on a guy for, ummm, a little more adult activity. But I turned her down flat. It got animated. She didn't like the answer; I tried to argue something about "maturity." As if a mature person wouldn't do that. Uhhhh, yeah, whatever.
So within a few days, I was history.
I was a prude. I hated that term then, and now. I wouldn't qualify as one now. I finally matured for real. But I have to acknowledge it, even if I denied it then: I was a prude.
No wonder I didn't get laid till I was 20.
Labels: boobs, breakups, breasts, girlfriends
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Having a look
While looking for reading material at our rental house on vacation, I came across an article about how men really feel about "fake" breasts. In it, the author writes:
"In point of fact you're supposed to look. For men, that's the best part. ... You don't have to be an evolutionary biologist to know that men are visually stimulated. So the tacit invitatation to have a look at a woman's breasts is, in itself, a wonderful thing."
Now, I 've lived my life thinking I wasn't supposed to look at a woman's breasts, though we certainly all do. It would violate them or at least dehumanize them or some such thing.
This lesson was painfully driven home in the seventh grade when I was, in fact, completely innocent. I was in front of a student desk with a girl on the other side. She was busy stacking papers or something, standing on the other side but looking down, perhaps even leaning down. However, she was in a striped collared shirt, as I recall, and she didn't have much of a chest or any chest at all at this point in her life. I was there to tell her something, something of a message or an instruction, because I rarely talked to this girl. She was neither friend nor enemy, just someone I didn't interact with much.
"Why don't you tell it to my face instead of my tits," she said pointedly.
I may have physically reeled. I certainly did mentally. I wasn't, I hadn't, I was certain. But I was speechless. It was an attack from left field. I stammered that I hadn't and somehow slinked away.
Now women have always claimed with absolute certainty that they know when a man is talking to their breasts instead of them or having a look, in any case. But this experience has made me doubt their claims.
But it also made me learn that I should not, not in any way, ever be caught having a look.
The author's suggestion then that fake ones actually carry with them the invitation to have a look is a different take, and it goes with something else I overheard recently. One woman was saying to another, "Can we talk about how big your boobs are looking?" and the other responded, "Yes, please." They were a point of pride, not just a fact of life or some kind of embarrassment. That shouldn't be too much of a surprise, seeing how revealing clothes are very much the order of the day. Still, it sometimes doesn't compute for me, like female desire, be it from my past experience or something else.
I look. I don't consider myself that much of a breast man, and I think they can be too big, but I do look. It's kind of funny really, when you think about how they can reduce men to a puddle of drool and yet they're really pretty simply shaped, objectively not much to look at in the end. But they are inexplicably wonderful, fun to see from top down or the curve-revealing side, at the cleavage or straight on, with no pretenses.
I suppose there are still rules for this sort of thing. Yes, I want you to look but I expect not to notice when you do. It certainly can't be overt or clumsily lewd. It's supposed to be surreptitious, a game of cat and mouse.
But it's a great game to play.
"In point of fact you're supposed to look. For men, that's the best part. ... You don't have to be an evolutionary biologist to know that men are visually stimulated. So the tacit invitatation to have a look at a woman's breasts is, in itself, a wonderful thing."
Now, I 've lived my life thinking I wasn't supposed to look at a woman's breasts, though we certainly all do. It would violate them or at least dehumanize them or some such thing.
This lesson was painfully driven home in the seventh grade when I was, in fact, completely innocent. I was in front of a student desk with a girl on the other side. She was busy stacking papers or something, standing on the other side but looking down, perhaps even leaning down. However, she was in a striped collared shirt, as I recall, and she didn't have much of a chest or any chest at all at this point in her life. I was there to tell her something, something of a message or an instruction, because I rarely talked to this girl. She was neither friend nor enemy, just someone I didn't interact with much.
"Why don't you tell it to my face instead of my tits," she said pointedly.
I may have physically reeled. I certainly did mentally. I wasn't, I hadn't, I was certain. But I was speechless. It was an attack from left field. I stammered that I hadn't and somehow slinked away.
Now women have always claimed with absolute certainty that they know when a man is talking to their breasts instead of them or having a look, in any case. But this experience has made me doubt their claims.
But it also made me learn that I should not, not in any way, ever be caught having a look.
The author's suggestion then that fake ones actually carry with them the invitation to have a look is a different take, and it goes with something else I overheard recently. One woman was saying to another, "Can we talk about how big your boobs are looking?" and the other responded, "Yes, please." They were a point of pride, not just a fact of life or some kind of embarrassment. That shouldn't be too much of a surprise, seeing how revealing clothes are very much the order of the day. Still, it sometimes doesn't compute for me, like female desire, be it from my past experience or something else.
I look. I don't consider myself that much of a breast man, and I think they can be too big, but I do look. It's kind of funny really, when you think about how they can reduce men to a puddle of drool and yet they're really pretty simply shaped, objectively not much to look at in the end. But they are inexplicably wonderful, fun to see from top down or the curve-revealing side, at the cleavage or straight on, with no pretenses.
I suppose there are still rules for this sort of thing. Yes, I want you to look but I expect not to notice when you do. It certainly can't be overt or clumsily lewd. It's supposed to be surreptitious, a game of cat and mouse.
But it's a great game to play.
