Tomen and his big ideas

I met Tomen when I was in Toronto, a few weeks ago, doing another stint for Rogers TV for the weekend. He appears to be softspoken and seemingly very meek, but actually he’s scathingly acerbic. He’s traveled everywhere, lived abroad for 13 years but he comes from Winnepeg, originally. I think I’ve met enough people from that frozen prairie to know that the place seems to pressure-produce some rare human beings. He and I clicked immediately when we caught each other being sneaky about eying a tall, blonde, chiseled- featured man, about our age, with green eyes. Tomen said nothing, just lifted an eyebrow at me and mouthed an “o”. I responded with a, “What? He’s fabulous.” Tomen remarked unnecessarily that Mr. Fabulous was not the kind of “fabulous” which looks twice at ladies. (But Mr. Fabulous did meet my eye and smile in a sweet, friendly way. And that was very nice, as devoid of electrical current as it was).

Tomen has his own blog, a place where he just kind of writes and doodles away with images and photoshop. He’s opinionated, which is fine with me–and he’s someone who makes a nice gay boyfriend. So lately we’ve been writing back and forth to each other, to see if we can’t encourage each other to keep writing.

Sunday’s topic comes from Tomen’s idea that men equate sex with love, and this starting point is the cause of all unhappiness in their relationships (all their relationships–significant others, and all others in the larger social group as well, since they all contend with the fall out). He claims they’re likely to have sex almost immediately if there’s an attraction, and then they’re shacked up together, as he puts it, “the next gay day”, where they find out just like women do that you can’t expect your lover/husband/partner to be your everything-else-as-well. He’s noticed this set up produces one dominant central person, and another who is forever making the concessions. Campy and bitchy, as he puts it. Tremendously unhappy in the set up, as I put it.

This is not something I’ve observed in men very often (but, wait a minute, he may have a point there, considering how little time it took for my husband to get us moved in together after we started sleeping with each other, years ago; and considering how quickly he had to be disabused of the “I’m your sole source of infotainment” notion he clung to. And how quickly I came to learn of the construct’s very solid limitations, bitchy and campy indeed). My observation of most men is that, for them, sex can take place casually, people can enjoy each other all kinds of ways and the entire issue of emotional entanglement is likely never to arise beyond the observation that the whole activity spectrum can be a lot more pleasurable if you actually find your partner entertaining and likable, too. It’s an extra option they’ve come equipped with, with that Y chromosome (well, not as a direct result, maybe as just an indirect, social conditioning, result). The idea of love getting in there at all is optional.

I’ve always thought that’s where we’ve differed–and the difference has been complicated by things like the way the world views a woman who can entertain a man like that, social strictures and conventions that are still quite liberally applied to us ladies, about which far too many of us continue to be too often aware. For those of us still in that mental bind, sex must still equal love, it’s something many of us wouldn’t contemplate without looking for some evidence of emotional attachment beyond “yeah, you’re fun, let’s do this again Thursday”. It seems to me that women are taught from word one that a man’s love is his approval, his assurance that you’re “good” enough. “Good enough to marry, as well as to fuck,” as the old saying seems to drone, long into the twenty-first century. To be good enough for that, you’ve got to be good enough to know that you don’t fuck unless love’s involved, or else people will know–he’s going to know–you’re a slut.

And then it becomes something a lot of us grow out of, when we’ve decided that whatever people decide to think of us just doesn’t matter all that much, especially where sex and sexual relationships are concerned. The negative consequences we’ve all been warned about don’t necessarily materialize. The defamatory words thrown at women can actually become erotically charged, a means by which you can escape all their negative encumbrances (if you can find the right partner to help provide you with this experience–which often means you have to go looking, for specific characteristics and abilities, and not so much “love” as we think of it, here in the emotional suburbs).

I’m turning 45 this week, for me that’s a shock. But even more shocking is the fact that sexually, I’ve the (well, figurative equivalent, let’s just say) testosterone levels of a nineteen year old man. That’s been happening for a number of months now, and it doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon. No one tells you about this in sex ed classes when you’re young, you go about your life thinking you’ll never get old because you’d rather die first…but people never tell you you acquire a few gifts to go along with aging. A little more backbone, a little less concern about pleasing everyone else around you, or making sure they like you so much. You become able to understand that disapproval might not necessarily mean personal disaster or extinction. More truthfully, if you’re me, you realize a lot of people haven’t approved of you for a very, very long time: and yet you’ve survived, kept breathing, managed. And that makes you much more determined about making things as close to what you’d like them to be as you can.

A lot more determined to demand things, enjoy things, like sex, from whomever you might want. Without having to hand over your life, too.

Maybe all this really signifies is that the notion we have of love–the thing shared only by two people, excluding all others (and all other kinds of “love”–sexual, amicable, social–as well) is the problem here. I think we’re all on the verge of finding out that this clean, Christian ideal of marital sexuality, unity, and contentiously defined “bliss” is really just another example of truly bad design, when applied to the human reality.