They made some bold choices with the graphics there. By which I mean, I couldn't read it easily.
Anyway, my name did not appear except in shortened forms.
I'm sorry, heebie, but how did you resist Kurtis - Charmaine - Maribel - Mitzi - Adele - Mindy?
I would not have guessed any of these, I don't think. I'm looking to see if I know anyone who fits any of them. I do like the differences between certain sport player and certain sport coach. Gee, I wonder what the demographic differences might be there!
I would not have guessed any of these
heebie should have gone with "Judah, Shlomo, Chaim, Moshe, Yosef, Meir" to give guessers an easy one.
Real estate agents, professors, human resources workers?
I'm a venture capitalist! (I think, very hard to read.)
How racist is this thread going to get?
a. Severely.
b. Extraordinarily.
c. Predominantly.
d. Moby.
Kind of funny that Hanna, Hannah, and Johanna all show up in different places.
8: Sorry.
I do think we should rename all the people whose real names are on the list (so Spike is obviously a Luigi and Stormcrow a Guy*) whereas our resident historian could be Herbert next time he needs a pseud change.
*Oh, which shows me that Joanna's on the list too. Huh.
A lot of it is trends based on age, gender, and nicknames, of course. Not necessarily racist.
Not necessarily racist.
You don't need to be racist to vote here, but it helps.
These are fun! Kinda surprised that librarian doesn't include the prominent female names of the 60s/70s - Linda, Diane, Christine. Funny to see the pink-collar jobs, too.
On one of my visits to see my grandfather, I was helping him prepare to move. I found a box of cards from his fraternity's final pledge class. Frats were banned on the campus in the early 1970s, and this box was found decades later. Someone phoned him asking what to do with the records, and he responsibly decided to pick them up and send them to the national HQ for the frat (because he loved bureaucracy and navigated it like a pro). The cards listed parents' name and occupation. The top card read, "Father's Name: Bobby Jones Occupation: Race Car Driver (deceased)." Apparently, Bobby still is overrepresented as a race car driver name.
If he went by 'Bob', he could have a university named after him.
What's with Sanford? (Lawyers and surgeons.) I don't even have a stereotype for Sanford. Southern old money, maybe? WASPy? But I really don't know.
10 is ideal. Especially since, more or less, it would lead to one of our regular commenters becoming ettenaN nattarGcM.
18: I'm just not even sure which of the SW names Smearcase has already used in a drag persona, so I couldn't begin to assume there.
Bobby Jones is also a famous golfer, a former major league pitcher and a Christian university founder.
20: Other disproportionately common names include Harold and Albert.
The "soldier" one is sad but unsurprising because it basically translates as "I am a 20-year-old male with a race-crossing name."
What's with Sanford? (Lawyers and surgeons.)
Every Sanford I've ever known has been Jewish: doctors, lawyers, professors.
This "disproportionately common" kind of analysis has gotten popular lately, but I feel like it's obscuring a lot - you get the idea that something mentioned is actually common, rather than being 1% compared to the 0.5% normally.
It seems on par with (or a bit worse than) graphs whose Y-axis doesn't go to zero - possibly informative to someone with the appropriate background, but misleading to the casual reader.
Where exactly is the data coming from? The infographic cites the FEC, the SSA and Wikipedia (!), but not which datasets are referenced. It seems to be the dataset used in the company's app, but again no sourcing information I can see. I know the SSA does baby name data, but that's no use for this, and the FEC dataset is presumably restricted to political donors, which is going to be skewed. Also, a post on their blog has different categories for "bassist" and "guitarist" - surely the government data isn't that granular. Or are these self-reported job titles, which introduces a whole host of issues?
25: Yes, I've wondered if there are other ways of measuring that would be better. I don't actually know what they are doing in fact. Two simple methods which would yield quite different results with respect to the degree to which baseline common/uncommon items would should up be ratio versus difference between observed and expected results.
This "disproportionately common" kind of analysis has gotten popular lately, but I feel like it's obscuring a lot - you get the idea that something mentioned is actually common, rather than being 1% compared to the 0.5% normally.
Yeah, I don't trust this stuff at all. You start out with an analysis that says the most common name for all 2500 professions is "John". And the most popular beer in all 50 states is Bud Lite. Then you change the algorithm a hundred times to ignore almost all the data until it finally gives you a list that looks interesting.
Also, how can someone for a single second think that "Edwin", "Alfred", "Bernard" and "Harvey" are all actually MORE COMMON in any group than "Thomas", "John", "Robert", "David", etc? Let along the Washington Post's style section editors.
I'd bet "Michael" is more common than "John" still. Anyway, there are only two men on my floor and both are named Michael. So, everybody at work know my name and I can't remember any of their names.
I'm typing one-handed
People get off on the weirdest things.
Everybody at work know my name
And they always glad you came.
It was I who plucked the low-hanging fruit in 30.
The company's products are (a) some kind of "innovative" "baby naming" app and (b) lyric lists for lullabys. I guess the actual business idea is that they've come up with some kind of proprietary way of slicing data about people's names which they then can sell to advertisers/marketers for targeted advertising, and that the release of this chart is in service of that.
So, basically, either (a) their data contains meaningful information but will be used for evil purposes, to allow advertisers to target you to intrusively sell you things you don't need; (b) it doesn't contain useful information but will be used to scam a few marketing/advertising execs, hurting the overall economy pointlessly by a small bit while making its worthless owners rich; or (c) the data is worthless and won't even be sold to the advertisers and marketers, which means that all of us (and some news outlets) have wasted yet more time on another stupid corporate-driven story that provides no information but fodder for yet meaningless uniformed chatter. Happy new year!
They prefer to be called "attorneys".
Ripper is right, perhaps we should discuss something like this: "Ferguson Grand Juror Sues Prosecutor Over Michael Brown Case."
Would any of the lawyers care to comment on the legal issues involved? From a complete outsider's perspective, it seems a non-starter, especially given the general immunity given to prosecutors. But I really have no idea what the law around grand juries is.
I don't know what immunity given to prosecutors would have to do with it since this has nothing to do with charging a prosecutor. My suspicion is that the plaintiff got sick of being used as political cover for by the prosecutor and sees this as the safest way to fight back.
40 -- There's a decent First Amendment case that the grand juror should be able to talk given everything else that's been revealed about the proceedings, and that seems to be what the lawsuit is actually asking for. In principle and without looking at actual law in detail, I'm inclined to agree with the plaintiff -- there can't be much legitimate state interest in grand jury secrecy given everything that we've already seen. So the grand jurors should be able to talk and we should get full details of the proceeding. Personally, I doubt that revealing yet more information about the proceedings would actually reveal anything other than (a) McCulloch is kind of an ass but (b) the process was fundamentally fair and seems to have reached the right result based on an extraordinarily fully-disclosed record (and the lawsuit doesn't really seem to actually suggest otherwise) but at this point this guy and the other grand jurors should be allowed to talk if the want to so we can learn more.
The bit where the lawsuit reads "with heavy redactions and the absence of context, those records do not fully portray the proceedings before the grand jury" does seem to fit nicely with 41. Whatever they're talking about specifically I'm guessing it was redacted for a reason and they're either trying to get that out there for personal reasons, or at least working under the assumption that it would be embarrassing enough that they'll get a nice settlement out of the thing in order to prevent it from becoming public knowledge.
McCulloch isn't a defendant because he cooked the grand jury proceeding and subsequently misled the public about it, but because he's the official charged with enforcing secrecy:
Defendant is the Prosecuting Attorney for St. Louis County, Missouri. As Prosecuting Attorney, Defendant is charged with enforcement of the statutes challenged here, as-applied, and is the individual responsible for initiating prosecutions for any violation of those statutes. He is named as a defendant in his official capacity only.
Other than personally-identifying information about some grand jurors and parties, I don't recall the transcripts (which I've read) being particularly heavily redacted, though perhaps there are some things that are significant in there or other documents that don't show up as redactions. The core claim is that one grand juror wants to be able to describe publicly his perception of the proceedings, and at this point it seems to me (again without doing actual legal research on the issue) that he should be able to.
I need to hand in my cougar card. 18 yo invites me out for dinner and drinks. Insists on paying. We spend the whole dinner talking sociologically about sex (e.g. the sexual mores of where we live, which I know a bit about). We go back to my place, and he successfully sneaks into my room to show me some photos he took of a recent trip. We spend an hour and a half looking at photos. Then we look at a book. Then he leaves. Nothing untoward happens at all.
Oh, Mrs. Robinson! How many more days? At least you've got the mechanics for the first part worked out.
Eh. Seriously, if you guys managed to get into a bedroom together after a couple of drinks, and neither of you sealed the deal, I think there's a good shot he didn't actually want to and you should pat yourself on the back for not molesting the poor ambivalent dear.
At least somebody is making an off-topic divergence that works with the thread title.
(48 only applies if literally nothing untoward happened. If we're talking lingering touches and meaningful eye contact, then you're just both really bad (in a way I completely and absolutely empathize with) at making the first unambiguous move.)
48
Yes, this is definitely a possibility. Though, I can't decide if he doesn't want to, or if that he doesn't want to be responsible for me cheating. I haven't gotten to telling him about my open relationship, which is mostly because I'm awkward and surprisingly shy about things. It was weird because I felt like he was looking for reasons to stay, which I was encouraging of (oh? more pictures? yes lets! oh, what's that book about?) but no signs of escalation at all.
48 is the most wrong comment since mankind developed speech. As the old lady seductress with a reasonably shy 18 year old man, it is incumbent on you to make an aggressive first move, otherwise the poor kid is just back to more dorm room awkwardness but with no clear social signals whatsoever giving him license to make the first move. I mean if he resists that aggressive first move then stop, but if you want this to happen for real* you need to make it happen and take full responsibility for making it so.
* not totally clear that this is the case, and I'm not at all clear that it's a good idea to begin with.
It was weird because I felt like he was looking for reasons to stay,
Oh, good lord, kiss the poor boy.
50
There was some meaningful gazing, and for me somewhat more than casual body contact, but nothing outside of potential cultural norms for 18 yo. He also had tons of photos he's taken of me in the past few weeks on his computer. We started spending more time together after he asked to accompany me on my job, which is in a field he finds interesting. He comes along and photographs me/the surroundings, something which is actually really helpful for my work as he takes fantastic photos. Since he's interested in my work it's not necessarily the case he likes me, but the number of photos of me may indicate more than standard platonic interest.
26: Job titles in FEC data are self-appointed; actually so are names. This once led to a student of mine spending months on the record linkage problem of deciding whether "Billy Bob Scrogs, Lawyer" was or was not the same donor as "William Robert Scrogs, Attorney" (to say nothing of "Mrs. William Robert Scrogs", and "Billy Bob Scrogs Jr."). I am still not sure whether our results weren't pure artifacts of the record linkage.
I'd like OGLKTPB to be the new DTMA.
The name issue was a huge pain when I was looking at arrest records. I figured the po-po would have a cleaned list by a some unique identifier but I was wrong. Or at least I was wrong for North Carolina fifteen years ago.
If he's a decent person, which he probably is given that you're into him, he's not going to make the first move unless you tell him you're in an open relationship. So if you want something to happen you either have to tell him that or kiss him yourself. (There's a difference between trying to seduce a person in a serious relationship, and letting them seduce you. Both are usually wrong, but not doing the former is something I'd expect from decent people, while the latter is something I'd expect most decent people to succumb to.) It'd be kinder to tell him, so he doesn't feel bad.
There was some meaningful gazing, and for me somewhat more than casual body contact, but nothing outside of potential cultural norms for 18 yo.
Now you're just being obtuse. He invited you out for dinner and drinks, sneaked into your bedroom, gazed meaningfully and made more than casual body contact, and he's got no unambiguous information that you're available. Nothing's a certainty in this world, only yes means yes, obviously you should be prepared to back off with good humor if what we're all telling you is wrong, but I don't care what his cultural background is, that's an eighteen-year-old who's hoping to get laid.
Like Ripper said, only do it if you want to, but if you do want to, repeat the previous evening, except actually make a move yourself this time.
Make a move, Mrs. Robinson. Do it for the blog.
He also had tons of photos he's taken of me in the past few weeks..
Oh good grief. You really will need to make the first move, though. I mean, who knows how exactly he interprets (even slightly) ambiguous signals but he's 18 so there's a solid chance he discounts them or doesn't have a firm enough confidence in his sense of actual norms to recognize clear-but-ambiguous signals.* And if he doesn't know that your marriage is open then that's going to affect his sense of how to respond to them.
I don't know what immunity given to prosecutors would have to do with it since this has nothing to do with charging a prosecutor.
Oh sure, I wasn't suggesting he'd be immune in that sense, just that there's an enormous latitude given to prosecutions in general (at least in terms of meaningful sanction when they fuck up or deliberately pervert the course justice). So it seemed unlikely to me that the circumstances here would override the usual secrecy rules around grand juries, which presumably are fairly settled law and hence not subject to a general first amendment challenge, but like I say I know nothing about the specifics of the law. Do first amendment challenges to grand jury secrecy often (ever?) succeed? On what grounds? Is there a specific test for the threshold (a la Lemon)?
I'd like to think that I wouldn't make a pass at a married woman even if she was giving me clear-but-ambiguous signals. If you're in a closed married and not wanting actually have an affair, it's still really fun to know you could sleep with a particular person if you wanted to, but if that person is a good person they won't push the issue because they don't want to screw up your marriage. So I don't think just giving completely clear hints is enough, unless he's also got pretty weak morals.
Now I'm lying in bed texting back and forth with him.
When you all wanted live blogging, you probably wanted something a bit more lascivious, no?
But yes, you all are right that if I want this to happen, I need to communicate to him that I'm in an open relationship. I also agree that the signs overwhelming point to his interest in me, but in the off chance I make a move and I'm really wrong, I've just sexually assaulted a teenager.
"I may enjoy gazing at you, making casual physical contact with you, and taking tons of pictures of you, older female lifeform, but I have no sexual interest in you whatsoever despite my close proximity to puberty. Let us touch noses."
If you don't want to make a physical move, then say or write something that's an unambiguous first move so you can talk about it before anything physical happens. No chance of assault that way.
Wait, you're texting him (in bed, no less!), and you're trying to figure out how to communicate that you're in an open relationship? Copy and paste this next bit:
"BTW, you should know that I'm in an open relationship."
Maybe a really direct text, along the lines of "I'm in an open relationship so it's fine as far as that goes if we have sex. Also I'd like to, would you"? If he does have to go through a brief "Whatwhowaitletmethink" phase after things become unambiguous, which from what I can recall of being a dumb teenager isn't outside the realm of possibility no matter how pretty-clear-but-technically-plausibly-deniable things have been beforehand, doing it when you aren't actually there and he has a chance to think things over might be easier on him.
70: Too direct. How about, "My relationship with my spouse is so strong that having sex with you is not a threat to it unless you're really, really good at sex."
in the off chance I make a move and I'm really wrong, I've just sexually assaulted a teenager
You see what you people have done, with your incessant discussions of verbal consent?
67: Letting the guy know you are in an open relationship without straight-up making a pass might be difficult. Maybe tell him a bit about your hubby and how much you love him and one of the reasons you love him is he gives the occasional hall pass.
Also, in situations where I'm not sure about making a move something that has worked well in the past is to say "I'd like to kiss you" -blunt and to the point but it retains a shred of deniability, and the other person's response tells you all you need to know.
72: "I have a signed, notarized affidavit from my partner that he's totally okay with this happening."
"I also have an affidavit stating that you and I would also like this to happen. If you agree, please meet me at the bank so we can sign it and get it notarized."
It was weird because I felt like he was looking for reasons to stay, which I was encouraging of (oh? more pictures? yes lets! oh, what's that book about?) but no signs of escalation at all.
On my first date with my last girlfriend, we went to a movie, then to dinner, and then to her home to eat raw rhubarb, because I'd mentioned that I knew someone who did or used to eat raw rhubarb and she seemed intrigued. I stayed there for HOURS without making a single move, because I wasn't sure how to/if it would be welcome. This nearly repeated itself on our second date until she finally said something like "so, what can I do for you?".
Not really on topic, but I'd like to write an erotica series titled "The Sensual Notary."
So, what can I notarize for you?
until she finally said something like "so, what can I do for you?"
"Depends. Are you a notary public?"
"so, what can I do for you?"
"Could I use your bathroom?"
Stamp me harder!
but in the off chance I make a move and I'm really wrong, I've just sexually assaulted a teenager.
See, see! Way back when you first started talking about this, I suggested being awkwardly verbally explicit, and Ripper and Heebie made fun of me. Awkwardly verbally explicit consent-seekers don't need to worry about sexually assaulting teenagers.
I'm right about everything and everyone else is wrong, even if they probably all had an easier time getting laid than I did when I was single.
74.last would have been my advice too.
"so, what can I do for you?"
"I've used improper hyphenation and need punished for it."
and need punished for it
You really are envisioning him begging for it.
Don't blame Mobes for having gone native.
My inclination would be to take awkwardly verbally explicit and turn it up to 11. "I hadn't told you yet, but I'm in an open relationship. I've been wanting to sleep with you all week, but I'm scared to make the first move because you're young and I would feel like a bad person if I was misreading the signs and you weren't interested. So if you're interested, please let me know, and if not please forgive me for overstepping my boundaries."
Challenge him to a typing contest.
If this doesn't happen we risk a future "I totally could have had sex with an older woman when I was 18 but didn't because feminism."
94: Ha, I just retweeted that. God bless the Internet.
Though I think I could only really do that in writing. IM forever!
Oh, awkward explicitness requires a lot of bravery. It's not the easy way out.
96: Oops, I see that that is where I got it. I usually try to avoid posting things tweeted by commenters here, but did not notice this time.
102: What the hell are you apologizing for? Someone reads my tweets!
101.last: Well that's certainly awkward enough, but not so sure on explicitness.
I usually try to avoid posting things tweeted by commenters here
Can't cross the streams.
I don;t know, it's close to posting a link that someone had already posted in another thread.
101: The first bit is what I meant.
105: Or the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man will come and take away the internet for good.
So how much older than him are you, Mrs. Robinson? Does it violate the 1/2+7 rule?
So I just went to typera.net and did the 2-minute English sentences test and got:
Your score: 507 keys per minute ~ 101 words per minute
Admittedly, I don't know if I could have kept that up for, say, twenty minutes, but I am very skeptical that 100wpm is nearly as remarkable as this guy seems to think it is.
110: IIRC it does, but that "rule" is bogus anyway.
111: Yeah, I think 80 wpm is ordinary professional, and 100 is quite fast but nothing to write the papers about.
I'm still catching up but already amused that Raymond is overrepresented both among cops and hairdressers. My new sitcom is called Raymond & Raymond.
A bit under 100 was I believe the super bleeding edge of typing speed on a manual typewriter.
I tried it and for some reason it lost a word so I mistyped everything after that point as it was comparing to the previous word.
I tried it and got 127 wpm, but with maybe a dozen typos over the two-minute test; not sure how that affects score.
111: would put you 15th on today's high score list.
That's pretty fast, but I'm not trying to date you so I guess I'll believe it.
I endorse the advice to make everything verbally explicit. There is nothing more infuriating than the endless manner of waving flags in semaphore patterns that some straight men seem to think of as flirtation. It doesn't matter whether they're 18 or 45. It's all about plausible deniability.
The danger is that they're just counting coup. They want you to make an unambiguous move so they can verify to themselves that they *could* fuck you, but not actually fuck you. (I am told straight women often do the same thing, so it's not necessarily gendered, I guess. It used to be called coquetry.) If you enjoy the "who knows?" tension, by all means, don't ask the question. But be prepared that for a not-insignificant percentage of people, a sexual fantasy is very different from what they can actually do in real life, and they aren't aware of that difference while fantasizing.
Maybe the reason every third YouTube comment is "this is fake" is because this approach leads to dates, a form of internet "negging".
If I actually tried to correct those typos, it would have been much slower (probably closer to 80), so it's not at all a useful measure. But maybe I'll register and try again after work--when I try to type quickly, I press very hard and it's annoyingly loud.
The last sentence of 124 bears repeating. I've been unpleasantly surprised by that dynamic.
115 needs more details. Will they be job-switching identical twins? Unlikely friends? Roommates?
Why would you even bother to have a sexual fantasy about what you can actually do in real life?
Because there are things you can do in real life you can't do on public transportation?
I thought we'd already confirmed that Moby has a medical condition, right?
I think it's especially common for femdom fantasies. As a teacher of classes filled with starry-eyed young men and women, I've gotten used to recognizing the look of "I fantasize about you" and also used to ignoring it as a common side effect of higher education. When I was a young teacher in my mid-20s, it was really scary because I could sort of envision it happening. But now it's obvious that the fantasy is just part of the educational process of projection.
But what's weird is that it also pretty much happens the same way with men my age. They fantasize about being the sort of man who would be in a relationship with a professional peer, someone they respect and admire, so they flirt mercilessly until I call the question, we fool around a bit, and then they start fucking a 25-year-old waitress or yoga instructor, and look deeply relieved.
So "femdom" now means "my female partner is comparably educated"?
Feminism! Thou shouldst be living at this hour: sexual fantasies have need of thee.
Doesn't the yoga instructor mind you watching?
Why would you even bother to have a sexual fantasy about what you can actually do in real life?
Just because you can do something in real life doesn't mean you have the opportunity to do it as often as you might want to.
Why would you even bother to have a sexual fantasy about what you can actually do in real life?
You might fantasize about something and then when the time comes to actually do it find that the reality diverges from the fantasy.
One might fantasize about things one is terrified of because fear is erotic in fantasy. But in actual doings of sex, fear is usually a turn-off.
That could be the case, but only once since after that you'd know you can't actually do it in real life.
139: Right, but that's fantasizing about something you can't do. Or probabilistically have determined that you can't do.
140: This is why I've decided to give up on fixing home appliances and just watch YouTube videos about it.
140: You might think so, but that's because your thinking is psychologically crude.
Hitting the pin with a hammer is something best left to professionals.
I think I'm trying to make a distinction between "fantasies" and "plans."
A particularly important distinction when you're, say, constructing a cob house.
"The Cob Boudoir: An Erotic Tale"
I think I'm trying to make a distinction between "fantasies" and "plans."
The bulk of my mental life lives in the gray area between these two categories.
Plans are subject to the norm of agglutination, or whatever it's called.
Why would you even bother to have a sexual fantasy about what you can actually do in real life?
I'm getting stuck on this. I mean, are you looking for an answer more complicated than "On some level, [whatever it is] would be a fun thing to do, but also almost certainly a bad idea"? Fantasies don't have real world consequences.
151: It's possible that that's what it's called, but googling "norm of agglutination" suggests that whatever it is, it's not called exactly that.
Maybe if I started fantasizing about getting this brief written, it would help.
152: I don't think Mobes is confused about why one would keep e.g. an affair with a (willing) coworker to the realm of the fantastic; it's more why someone in the position of Mrs. Robinson's paramour would fantasize about being with her without wanting to take the opportunity to do so.
Just imagine the real world consequences of having the thing finished. The smiles of admiring peers, the downcast look of a disappointed enemy.
As a bonus, you can wear whatever clothes you like in the imagination.
Or maybe a less personal version of imagined success is better-- the document/decision leaves lasting traces that make the world a better place. One of the bricks of the great pyramid carries the marks of your own personal tools.
There's a fair amount of good poetry written against both of these imagined versions of a successful self.
We all miss Anne Bancroft but collectively composing slash fiction is a bridge too far.
That would be Robert Redford slashfic, no?
Your crazy Barefoot in the Park fantasy recastings are nobody's business but yours.
155: I think the answer is some version of the same belief: sounds fun in the abstract, but could turn out unpleasantly somehow in practice. Someone might prefer fantasy to an available reality because they were wildly overestimating the chances of a bad outcome rather than rationally expecting one, but fear of a bad outcome probably what's going on in general.
152: I'd argue that if you won't do something because you expect negative consequences, then you "can't" for these purposes.
Another kind of explanation is that there are things that one might enjoy as a fantasy but would be physically awkward, possibly gross, or hard to take seriously in real life.
My ability to get up in the morning day after fucking day falsifies 161.
Insensitive and grim works well for Hollywood idols, so a similar attitude should also apply to "romance."
Fantasizing about the triumph of having fucked someone is almost always way, way more satisfying than having fucked someone IRL. Or maybe I'm just too good at fantasizing. IRL you're thinking about whether to preserve any dignity, or if it's OK to text them afterward, or wondering who else they're sleeping with, or if maybe you were too eager with the blowjob, etc.
Also, in fantasy, playing with power dynamics is all theatrical and fun and as-if. IRL, I find the intrusion of actual non-theatrical power dynamics deeply unsexy.
Wait, are we really defining "fantasy" exclusively as something that will never happen in real life?
If so, that's pretty depressing.
165: "Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess."
Well, if it's going to happen, then it's anticipation (or planning), and if it's already happened, then it's reminiscence. If it's happening right now, then you might want to get out of your head for ten minutesan hour or two.
160 to 161. Attempting to empathize with the possibly fantasizing but not going to do anything about it 18-year-old Mrs. R. has on her hands (or, doesn't have on her hands if AWB's warning turns out to be the case), a thought process along the lines of "Oh, look, an attractive older woman. I'd really like to have sex with her, and she seems to like me. On the other hand, if I ever actually get naked in front of her, odds are she will [see that I have weird body hair/strange genitals/no sexual experience] and point and laugh at me, leaving me fleeing her room naked in front of a jeering mob. Better keep this one in the realm of fantasy," seems very plausible.
168 shortens the conversation to the opposite of the NMM rule, interesting.
169: That makes no sense to me.
For one thing a man with imagination would be able to imagine that he is with a duchess when he was with a chambermaid.
For another thing what is the man with the duchess imagining? Telling Boswell at the Club, "I fucked a duchess!"?
If it's happening right now,
Liveblog it!
168: I hope not because that would be very stupid.
174: If you make so much sense, how come Boswell isn't following you around?
171 : There is a special Providence in the deflowering of a virgin 18-year old.
177: I ask myself that question every fucking day.
172: I don't necessarily feel that it must be a warning. I feel like I can enjoy the sexual tension with someone who is just fantasizing about me for a while, and then it gets tiresome or stressful and I need to know whether it's an actual thing or not. With my most recent person, I finally said, "I see that you're flirting with me, and it's fun, but it's starting to make me feel anxious around you, and I need you to be explicit with me about what's happening." With someone you're genuinely friends with, I think the relationship can survive that conversation. It's only a warning, really, if the sexual tension is the only reason you're talking to that person at all, because the relationship won't survive puncturing.
Well, if it's going to happen, then it's anticipation (or planning)
But what if you don't know whether it's going to happen or not?
Another kind of explanation is that there are things that one might enjoy as a fantasy but would be physically awkward, possibly gross, or hard to take seriously in real life.
Like fantasizing about telling one's colleagues what one really thinks of them?
I guess that's the main question about Mrs. Robinson's situation. Would you be having dinner with this boy if you didn't want to have sex with him? Would you be having dinner with him if he didn't want to have sex with you? It doesn't mean you have to have sex--maybe you both like the flirtation enough on its own--but the larger question is whether you'd lose something important to you by asking a question whose answer might be no.
Like my colleague whose grant is somewhere between 10% and 30% larger than mine who is currently asking me to contribute 3 times as much toward hiring postdocs for the group.
"I see that you're flirting with me, and it's fun, but it's starting to make me feel anxious around you, and I need you to be explicit with me about what's happening."
I can't help but envision this as a pop-up notification, in the style of "It looks like you're writing a letter . . ."
185: In Mrs. R.'s specific case, I think she's said that she'd expect to never see him again after the end of this week. So, probably not a relationship she's worrying about damaging long-term.
Following an unbearably awkward moment of nonphysical near-intimacy X begins planning an elaborate scheme, some might call it a fantasy, of what to do in that situation the next time. X practices various gestures and touches, anticipates conversational turns and subtle ways to turn the implicit explicit.
Finally, the next opportunity arises. After some skillful maneuvering to get them alone with some privacy, X leans forward and says, smoothly: "Fuck me, clown."
Going back over times when either friends or colleagues communicated interest and I wasn't interested I can't think of a single instance when a clarifying conversation would have been preferable to my usual response - persistently but gently convey by gesture, tone, many myriad cues that I'm flattered but uninterested in anything further. But then I've never felt particularly stressed by this kind of situation, we're all just messy humans trying to get by so if I can cut someone some slack who I like anyways, why potentially make things awkward for him/her?
Telling Boswell at the Club, "I fucked a duchess!"?
HEY WALTER [MATTHAU]! I FUCKED YVONNE DECARLO!
I only feel stressed about flirtation if I am interested in having sex with that person, because I don't know how to get from persistent coy glances and suggestive comments to getting busy. Like, if the other person is initiating a bunch of flirtation, why is it my job to get the sex started? It makes me nervous because, too often, when I have touched the person who has been heavily flirting with me, they do the big dramatic denial that anything was going on. This might be a problem not everyone shares. But it's made me much more likely to ask for an explicit conversation rather than kissing or touching people.
Oh that's much cleaner, makes sense although don't recall myself being unduly stressed by that uncertainty back in the day, that could just be softened memories though.
I just finished The Teleportation Accident* which plays with that theme in a variety of ways. In particular there is a character with an extreme form of visual agnosia in which he confuses symbolic representations with real ones. He has a great pornography collection.
*Which I can recommend with qualifications.
At some point I tested at 99 wpm and felt that special pang of "I do a thing that is neither difficult nor interesting better than most people but not as well as plenty of people." I trust I am not alone in having experienced this sensation plenty of times!
Hey now, sex is totally interesting.
You can always spot the unmarried ones...
They're chastely sitting in Mrs. Robinson's room.
192: First you're just another sloe-eyed vamp...
Actually I am kind of curious who typed 192.
200: We think she might be trying to seduce us.
Boswell was quite interested in the comings and goings of a certain Mister's Johnson.
The "Louisa" parts of Boswell's London Journal are extremely good evidence for my comments in this thread about fantasy, desire, and the results of satisfaction.
201: I did! I love that story, shamefully.
The suggestion in 198 that sex is difficult is an interesting one.
For some people it's quite hard.
209: as with so many things, the getting and the having are to be distinguished sharply.
204: I followed that link and started reading it and it seemed very familiar. Then I realized I had read the Klassic Komix version illustrated by R. Crumb.
