A wrap-up observation from the “nice guys / assholes” conversation. Lots of people opined that confidence is the key, and that assholes are attractive because they have a lot more of it than your average nice guy. The self-deprecating ways of your average nice guy? Sooo not sexy. Dammit.

Entirely by coincidence, I stumbled over these thoughts by Lance Arthur in a bit where he explains why he hates gay bars. Lance speaks very much to the point, both in explaining why confidence can be elusive, and in suggesting how to find it anyway:

I am learning that most of this garbage I carry with me is “myth,” not “truth.” Myth is the stuff you (I) create to make it easier for your(my)self to fail, and it’s designed to make you (me) fail. It allows you (me) to go into any situation and avoid rejection because you’ve (I’ve) already rejected your(my)self. “I am unworthy. I am stupid. I am ugly. I am too shy to talk to you. I cannot approach anyone.” Blah blah blah.

Truth is the stuff about you that’s real — that you aren’t ugly or stupid or awkward, that you can carry on a conversation, that you’re no better or worse than any other guy there, you’re just you. That comes from, you know, living. Taking chances, accepting what happens, moving on. So you can either accept the myths and build them into a semblance of truth, or reject the myths and, you know, live for a change.

Thanks, that’ll be $130 please. See you next week.

Cheap at twice the price. Thanks, Lance!

I just found this amidst my spam. I think it’s an unintentional poem:

i am really really dirty
i love banging
i love taking my cloth off
i love meeting the memebers of my site and banging then

my site is new
my site has everything you want
and it will never cost you a thing

This looks like a bridal shower scene, probably the result of a bunch of ladies having a little naughty fun:

But it’s also an example of how ancient pagan habits die really hard. Don’t tell me that oh-so-virile jutting phallus is not also the centerpiece in a fertility ritual, however unconscious.

Here’s a funny site called Bible Sex Stories. The dirty bits of the Bible are repackaged as badly written erotic stories:

Hagar reached down under Abraham’s tunic and felt the hardness. “What is that, a stone idol under there?” She asked, as she slid down and fellated Abraham’s obelisk. He enjoyed her expert tongue, but soon he couldn’t bear it. He lifted her up and placed her on top of him.

As he entered Hagar’s supple moistness, Abraham flashed back to how his wife Sarah’s dry gullet reminded him of the hot desert sand, and he shuddered. Hagar grabbed onto his collar and rode him like a camel, bouncing up and down, drilling him deeper into her with each movement.

From Abraham Visits The Maid.

I really appreciate all the comments and responses I’ve gotten to the thread about nice guys, assholes, and female preference. The Boss over at The Collar Purple had a bit to say on the subject, and I’ve received numerous thoughtful emails on the subject as well. For instance, Sharon wrote that I got it wrong:

No, no, no, “doormat” is not the same as “attentive, considerate, emotionally involved, willing to
talk about feelings”.

They *are* different things. It is perfectly possible to be all those latter things (which women generally DO want) and NOT a doormat. I know many examples.

The big problem is: most men who do do the attentive, considerate, etc. thing are ALSO doormats. The challenge for a man is to be that stuff whilst also NOT being a doormat. I won’t say that it isn’t difficult, but it is possible.

It’s finding the difference between “attentive”, and “always pays more attention to her than to himself”. We don’t want the latter, which is doormatty. We want someone who can stick up for himself. We don’t want someone who always pays more attention to himself than to her, either. There is a middle ground!

Perhaps there is, but I’d have to say it sounds like a very narrow middle. In any case, the “we want someone who can stick up for himself” meme appears to have legs. Amber suggests:

Girls don’t like nice guys because they are almost always self-deprecating. That’s the crux of their “niceness,” they’re modest. Understand, that societal pressure lead most women to believe that they need to be protected, or at least have to marry someone who COULD protect them if necessary. When a guy puts himself down, a girl generally thinks “he’s nice, but if I were in a vulnerable position, would he stick up for me?” The answer is invariably no, because it’s obvious that the man will not even stick up for himself. While nice guys will argue that they WOULD stick up for the woman, she has no proof that this is fact. So she dates an asshole, feeling that if worse comes to worse, he’ll go to bat for her. This isn’t true, but there is more evidence to support that than the nice guy doing it.

Which sounds like a plausible theory. At least, it explains why those guys who are always picking fights in bars never lack for dates.

The Vanilla Sex Goddess weighs in on the question of women and their too-common fondness for assholes. Her post serves, perhaps, as anecdotal evidence for something I’ve suspected as a complicating factor in all this: namely, that whatever causes this asshole-seeking behavior may have something to do with a target identification malfunction.

First VSG says:

And I have to say, I have dated assholes, but I didn’t know they were assholes until later and at which point I dumped them.

Look, nobody’s saying women do this deliberately. But I’ll betcha VSG had men in her life who could have told her right up front those guys were assholes, if she had but asked. I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that some of those men even tried to tell her when she didn’t ask – although most of us have learned better by now. It takes a true friend to stick his dick in that particular blender.

VSG goes on:

The men who describe themselves as being “nice guys” are rarely nice. They certainly aren’t any nicer than any other man. Instead they are doormats. And as I don’t much like doormats except to walk on, it’s not suprising that I don’t want to date them, nor any other woman.

By the time I hit 25 these men were no longer doormats. They were instead, manipulative, passive aggressive, whiney, or too demanding of my time for my taste. They love to tell stories of how this woman or that woman did them wrong, and what manipulative bitches they were. (This is bad fodder for a first date) and I am still turned off.

No nice guy (the old fashioned word for the man I am talking about used to be “gentleman”) uses a word like “bitch” to describe a woman. Period. End of sentence. Move on to next paragraph. These are not the droids you were looking for.

Having said that, I’ll confess to having spent some time in my twenties in doormat mode. Young men are raised these days, the ones who are raised at all, to be attentive, considerate, emotionally involved, willing to talk about their feelings, and above all, cooperative with the whims of the fairer sex. Which is a very nice way of describing the “door mat” in the above quote.

It turns out that our Betty-Friedan-reading mothers weren’t reliable, when they told us this is what the young ladies would be looking for. I cannot tell a lie — some of us have briefly whined (er, make that, “shared our feelings openly”) about this discovery. But the smarter among us are working on getting over it.

I’m sure women everywhere will understand if cookie deliveries decline as a consequence.

Cat Nastey (and where has her link been all this time? I’ll have to spank my webmaster. No, wait, that’s me, what a terrible idea.)

Start over. Cat Nastey writes in reference to this post that she doesn’t date assholes, that she only dates nice guys, and that she has a good one who brings her cookies, thank-you-very-much. And that’s good to hear. I didn’t mean to suggest (and I don’t think TheYeti or his pie suppliers were suggesting) that the female preference for assholes is universal, even if it’s common enough to be worth thinking about.

However, I do want to point out that I’ve heard Cat’s song before. Happy girls in good relationships often say this. Usually to your face. “Gee, you’re such a nice guy, if I wasn’t taken I’d snatch you up in a heartbeat.” It’s intended as, and is, a supportive gesture. But I’ve found it’s not a reliable indicator of what single girls actually do. Face it, a lot of asshole-seekers say they want a nice guy. Too often, they say it to their nice male friends while complaining about the misdeeds of their latest asshole.

But none of this diminishes Cat’s point. Cookie deliverers of the world, stay the course, take heart, and be of good cheer. Time is on your side.