Feministe is having a (very heteronormative) discussion about what it means to be a feminist boyfriend. Now, I’m not saying that there isn’t some useful work being done in the comments there – the most important suggestions seem to be about recognizing privilege, deferring, and standing up for feminism to other guys, oh, and not making jokes about PMS (whatever!).

It occurs to me that the way to get anyone concerned with any issue is to demonstrate to them the impact that it directly has on their life. Now, certainly injustices done to a woman in his life would make many feminist boyfriends care deeply about feminist causes. But, I would argue that this is going to elicit a very particular, personal, and only partially useful response – the desire to protect his partner. Now, I think that everyone in life can use a cheering section but a protection response sort of buys into a whole ‘nother set of gender stereotypes, those surrounding masculinity.

But guess what? The word “masculinity” only came up once in 75 comments. So, here is where I think that the Feministe discussion falls flat – it assumes that men need to respond to feminism and support it in some intrinsically male way. Well fuck that, in my book a feminist boyfriend is one that recognizes the gender wankery all around us and understands what it is doing to both of us. He sees that masculinity (as an institution) is just as insidious as femininity and that they depend on each other to survive. My feminist boyfriend knows that sexual violence against men isn’t an anomaly and bravely shares his experiences with it to give other men the courage. My feminist boyfriend cross dresses if he feels like it. Has a beard if he feels like it. Lets me fuck him in the ass if he feels like it. My feminist boyfriend sees the things he is coded by society to be and makes his own fucking decisions about that – just like his feminist girlfriend.

[via BeingAmberRhea]

Alright, anyone that has talked to me in the last week knows that I’m pretty damn excited about Sex 2.0. First of all, I get to finally meet people that I’ve talked to online/admired from afar for ages. I also get to share some tips on phone sex and being an online sex worker. And, I get to have an action-packed sort of weekend that should include such events as pole dancing, strip clubs, a swingers/fetish ball, and cupcake bingo. Sleep is really over-rated.

Because this event is oh so 2.0 I have succumbed to Twitter (look to your right) and I will also be liveblogging the conference itself. Basically, you’ll know more than you need to know about what is going on with me for the next few days.

Oh, and here is the description for my session on Saturday afternoon in case you were wondering about it:

Becoming a Sex Worker Without Leaving Your House: How the Internet Has Brought Phone Sex to the 21st Century

Think that phone sex went out of style with hair metal? Well all things old are new again on the internet and this session will discuss the nuts and bolts of the phone sex world both professional and recreational. We’ll discuss:

* How to land a job as a phone sex operator or start marketing your own phone sex business.
* Where phone sex operators fit in among the world of sex bloggers, educators, and workers.
* And, most importantly, how to give good phone sex and be a considerate phone sex partner – for fun and profit!

Sometimes when everything is perfect, sex can become transcendent. In my case this causes me to scream my fucking head off and feel like I am about to die. In a good way.

Over the past several months, Jay and I have noticed that when I am being fucked very hard, I lose some of my capabilities and seem to sink into a pre-verbal, primal moment. The first time it happened, I didn’t even recognize what had occurred, I just had the idea that I had been noisy. When I asked Jay what had happened, he told me that I had been screaming my head off for several minutes. That explained why my voice was so raw.

This sort of thing happened again on the phone a few nights ago. I was taking a call on my line where the caller listens to me get fucked by Jay. I always enjoy myself, naturally, and this caller had listened to us before. Something clicked this time and I lost myself again. I can’t say exactly what circumstances lead to it. Clearly the persistence of Jay’s thrusts deep into me were the primary factor. But the encouraging voice on the other end of the line – a New Yorker hitting every button as he told me what a dirty slut I am. The moment took me away. When it was finally over, there was stunned silence on the other end of the line and I tried to regain my composure. Again, I didn’t really know what had occurred or how long it had gone on for.

In a conversation later, our caller told me that he was stunned and had never heard anything like it. He also remarked that I was saying something between the screams from time to time but that he couldn’t make it out. Could I have been speaking in tongues? We consulted with Jay since he would have been the most likely to know what I had been saying. Apparently it was “I’m dying” or “I’m going to die.”

On face level this seems pretty creepy, but I immediately started thinking of it a little differently. The French have a euphemism for orgasm, “la petite mort”, which means “the little death.” How is orgasm like death? Well, Jacques Lacan said that it is part of our death drive (i the Freudian sense). The jouissance of orgasm is a manifestation of this. Not all orgasm reaches this level, though. For Lacan, jouissance is moving beyond the limits of pleasure that we place on ourselves. And therefore jouissance is suffering – pleasure that has gone too far.

So, my trance-like state and screaming as if I were being killed makes some sense in the scheme of things. I don’t think that I’ve actually achieved jouissance because nothing about that moment was suffering. But, perhaps I was on the edge of achieving too much of a good thing. Being fucked so hard that I couldn’t handle the pleasure.

During a lecture today on phonation, my hot linguistics professor described a murmur as “that raspy, sexy voice”.

Oh, that one, I thought, as a conspiratorial smile spread across my face. Finally a concept I can fully grasp in this course.

Our textbook describes four basic types of phonation: voiced, voiceless, whisper, and murmur. When I read the text before class I didn’t imagine that it was *that* sort of murmur. Technically, a murmur is a combination of the vibration of a voiced sound and the voicelessness of a whisper. Place your fingers on your throat and say the sound /f/ and then the sound /v/ – you should feel a vibration on the /v/ because it is voiced. When we murmur (sweet nothings preferably) our vocal cords do not close along their entire length and the air that flows through adds whisper to our voiced sounds.

At first it seemed a bit antiseptic to turn something that, for me, was almost second nature into something scientific and classifiable. Then I thought of the bodily nature of this thing, the murmur. The movement of the tongue in the mouth and across pearly teeth. The breath sent through pursed lips to caress any vulnerable and exposed bit of a lover. The vibrations of the vocal chords that carry through our entire bodies. Perhaps understanding this little bit of biology, anatomy, and the marvel of the human capacity to communicate draws me closer to understanding the communication between bodies and minds during lovemaking.

This little lesson in the phonation is part of the science of arousal and seduction. Especially vocally. That murmur that we love to hear, the breathiness and raspiness of it, signals something in our psyche, an utterance between voice and whisper that points to a similar longing.

I guess I always knew that my voice was an instrument but I never quite knew how it was tuned. And now, with this awareness, I’m ready to stretch the vocal chords again.

Character
by Taslima Nasrin

You’re a girl
and you’d better not forget
that when you step over the threshold of your house
men will look askance at you.
When you keep walking down the lane
men will follow you and whistle.
When you cross the lane and step onto the main road
men will revile you and call you a loose woman.

If you’ve got no character
you’ll turn back,
and if not
you’ll keep on going,
as you’re going now.

I read this poem with my students today and asked them to think about the phrase “loose woman”. They brainstormed synonyms on the board – promiscuous, slut. I asked them if it was a positive or negative phrase – negative, definitely. I asked them to read the poem again and imagine that “loose woman” was neutral and without any particularly loaded connotation.

They looked at me blankly.

I read it aloud another time.

“How did that feel? How is it different?”

More blank stares.

“What if a woman called herself ‘loose’? Does the phrase lose any power then?”

They would think that she was a slut and wonder about her character.

“What if all women looked at this phrase as neutral, then what?”

The promising one raises her hand and volunteers that the poem is irrelevant without that phrase being negative. That it defines the experience of the poem and the message.

I ask her what it would say about one’s character to not just ignore the insult but to refuse to see it as one? “What happens,” I ask, “to the second stanza when being a loose woman is neutral?”

But it isn’t neutral and my moment of instruction failed.

Why? Because I am a coward. The woman I reference, who doesn’t pass judgment on this term, who embraces it or at least tolerates it is only an abstraction to them. I deftly avoided the opportunity to out myself, and for that reason my question must have seemed nonsensical and without grounding.

Now, all I feel is a sense of mild shame. Here I have judged this room full of 18-year-olds as being prudish and judgemental when I, too, conform to this standard. Indeed, I am not the mythical loose woman. It is not neutral. But I’ve called myself out and I will keep walking so perhaps I’ve at least maintained my character.

It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in fits and starts. It breathes, it heats, it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said the id. – Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus

This semester I will take a seminar on Gilles Deleuze it is being taught by two of my favorite professors, Thomas and Jack. These are also professors that I have no small level of longing for. Afterall, how could I resist them, I am young and impressionable, eager to please and desiring to be intellectually sexy to my idols. They are freshly minted PhDs with good looks, charisma, and a laid-back approach to instruction. They intentionally blur the line between teacher and student. They cultivate casual relationships with students, curse in class, and teach incredibly sexy theory. In the bar a few nights ago, I ran into Thomas and my friends and I sat down with him for a drink.

One drink became several, the conversation got intense and personal, and everyone I had come there with trickled away to go home. Thomas and I were alone at the bar now and continued to talk. Then Thomas made a remark that changed everything.

I wish I remember the exact thing that I said directly beforehand but I can’t. It was hopefully insightful and sexy. Perhaps it was relatively mundane but regardless it elicited a significant response.

Thomas shrugged his shoulders forward, resting his head in his hands with his elbows on the bar and said, “I have to keep reminding myself that you are my student.”

I look away, facing forward, bars are good for diverting a gaze in that way. “So that’s where we are,” I reply.

We said some more things in the following minutes, they were pithy and flirtatious and in the spirit of negotiation. I knew I wanted him but I also knew it would put both of us in a peculiar position starting on Monday.

In a moment of courage and brilliance, I look up from my drink, gesture to the bartender and say, “Hey Paul, can I borrow a pen?”

Paul used to fuck a roommate of mine, they aren’t dating anymore and she doesn’t live with me but I still feel guilty when I see him since I was the one that convinced her to break up with him. Paul delivers the pen and I murmur my thanks.

I take two cocktail napkins from the stack in front of us and put one in front of Thomas and one in front of myself. I write down the URL for this website, fold the napkin in half and pass it to him along with the pen, “Your turn.”

He writes something and passes it back to me.

I look in his eyes and desperately want him to kiss me but I gather the resolve to say, “That is all I can give you tonight.”

But by way of consolation (and perhaps to convince myself as well) I continue, “The best stories like this climax at the moment of desire being expressed, I always end up writing them that way.”

He nods, seemingly unconvinced.

I know that there are other possible endings to this story: outright rejection, a torrid affair, kinky sex that is never repeated, a teary regretful morning after, he has done this with half a dozen students before, I am not special, someone falls in love, everything is peachy, or many hot encounters. They flare out before my mind as possibilities that are entwined and intersecting, weaving their way through the landscape of my sexual consciousness. I feel a surge of warmth like the first sip of a coctail but I know I’m on my fifth.

I know that I’ll see him on Monday, that this is far from over, that my resolve might not be sustained through another night of coctails. But for that evening, the story is over and I stand up and say, “Goodnight.”

I mentioned this paper several months ago when I wrote it. I’m working on it again and decided to publish it here in its present form. I’ve noticed a lot of great discussions on interracial porn appearing around the blogs (Audacia and Laughing Man, I’m looking at you) and thought I would jump into the fray.

***

For many open-minded Westerners, the fear of racial mixing was dismissed long ago. Still, it remains a spectre on race relations and the associated taboos constitute a frightening series of questions and problems. Liberal beliefs in equality and color-blindness often fall by the wayside at the moment that the question of erotic desire and racial mixing is introduced into the equation. In this way, deeply seated anxieties about racial contamination and power remain an element of sexuality around the world, making work on colonial sexuality continually vital. Frantz Fanon dedicates a significant portion of Black Skin, White Masks to describing interracial sexual relationships between the colonizer and the colonized. His chapters on the woman of color and the white man and the man of color and the white woman present two sides of the same coin; sexual power dynamics that fluctuate based upon sex, race, and political position.

In both situations the woman in question is the site of colonization – in the case of the woman of color, she is rendered as a symbol of the colonization of her nation. Fanon also expresses some clear resentment towards women of color as he describes their desire to always pursue the lightest men possible, to deny their nationality via their chosen sexual partners. Clearly, though, they are often the chosen. The conquest of these women by white men is an additional manifestation of the conquest of their nation. However, in the example of Mayotte, Fanon demonstrates a woman of Martinique that is bent on class ascension via racial means, “every woman in the Antilles, whether in a casual flirtation or in a serious affair, is determined to select the least black of the men.” (47) Fanon predicts that this racial self-loathing is re-projected onto the the youths of the next generation, either through the family structure or through the classroom or other social institutions. The message that will be passed on is of presumed inadequacy, one is only as “white as one is rich, as one is beautiful, as one is intelligent.” (51-52) These desired characteristics are ingrained as markers of whiteness. However, while attaining whiteness means attaining these characteristics, it is not clear that the converse is true. The colored person of the Antilles, in Fanon’s description, simply does not have true access to wealth, beauty, and intelligence because even having these qualities in abundance does not make them more white.

Fanon opens his chapter on the man of color and the white woman with the following confession:

Out of the blackest part of my soul, across the zebra striping of my mind, surges this desire to be suddenly white.
I wish to be acknowledged not as black but as white.
Now – and this is a form of recognition that Hegel had not envisaged – who but a white woman can do this for me? By loving me she proves that I am worthy of white love. I am loved like a white man.
I am a white man.
Her love takes me into the noble road that leads to total realization. . .
I marry white culture, white beauty, white whiteness.
When my restless hands caress those white breasts, they grasp white civilization and dignity and make them mine. (63)

Fanon’s rhetoric in this poetic moment emphasizes the interaction between desire and identification. He desires a white woman because he desires to be a white man and if not a white man, then just like a white man. The white woman’s body, her breasts are the symbol of dignities that are refused Fanon as a black man. This mythical white woman is deeply objectified, a mere marker for her race and civilization. A less than human symbol and battleground for resistance. Jonathan Dollimore, in a chapter on bisexuality, writes, “Do we ever simply desire the person we love, or is our desire not also partly an identification with him or her? Simply put, the ‘I want you’ of desire is complicated by the ‘I want to be you’ of identification.” (27) While Dollimore refers to gender difference, the argument is clearly manifested in Fanon’s desire for racial difference and identification. Fanon describes these urges as coming from the “darkest part” of his soul but from the “zebra stripping” of his mind. The desire to be white comes from the part of him that is fully and darkly black, the soul and only “across” the part of him that is already conspicuously colonized by whiteness, his mind. In this way, Fanon seems to imply that the desire for whiteness or more generally the desire for identification and assimilation is intrinsic to him, separate from his experience with colonization. More importantly, this experience of identification may be just as commonly experienced by a white person as it is by him.

Can Fanon’s troubling portrayal of racial mixing be used to describe the impetus behind contemporary examples of miscegenation? Certainly, a change in setting effects the validity of this claim. Furthermore, Fanon does not regularly acknowledge the actual human relationships and emotions that are in play as the result of a given marriage. His psycholanalysis is societal instead of individuated and therefore makes sweeping generalizations about the motivations of all interracial relationships. It discounts any instances of true cross-racial compatibility or couplings that are motivated by non-political factors (love or passion spring to mind although neither are fully outside of politics.) For this reason, his work is inadequate to explain actual interracial relationships. At the very least it must be acknowledged that his condemnation or critical approach to them is over-arching.

However, there is something very useful about Fanon’s theories as they can be received by a contemporary, multi-racial American audience. It is clear that they can go a long way to explain the production and broad appeal of interracial pornography. The epidermalization of desire is reflected in contemporary interracial pornography. We need to look at not just how but also why interracial pornography portrays its characters in this way.

As an opening caveat, it should be clear that I approach this question by considering these erotic materials as texts. While much ink has been shed by anti-pornography feminists, I do not wish to enter the fray on the question of censorship. Therefore, I have refrained from making normative claims about the existence of such work or its legitimacy in the community. While it is easy to see why many find it distasteful, my purpose is to interrogate the psychology behind its creation and message, not the psychological effects of its existence or consumption.

Of course it is never fully possible to bracket this question and I hope to dismantle one particular underpinning of the anti-pornography argument. Most of the arguments to censor pornography rest on Catherine MacKinnon’s position that pornography is a form of harmful hate speech, the speech is an action in itself and has harmful effects. The effects described usually are in the form of unrealistic attitudes towards women and sexuality. However, I will argue that the adult industry does not create these myths as an invidious attempt to corrupt the psychic and sexual health of the pornography consumer. Rather, the pornography industry (perhaps more than any other group of businesses I can imagine) creates their product based upon demand. Being affiliated with “the oldest profession” means that pornography makes a business of selling sex, one of the most basic of human drives. While a gadget manufacturer is also in the business of manufacturing desire for their product (humans are not born with a drive to own a mandolin slicer) the adult industry caters to a market that is always already there. Their productions do not exist in a social vacuum, rather they are based upon the desires and fantasies of their audience. This is not to say that pornographers cannot be exploitative. But it is to say that their marketing techniques and product development are almost necessarily some of the least invasive of any type of business that exists. This is not because of particular benevolence but because of the nature of the product, they sell something that is built into humans to want and desire. They also sell the manifestations of often unspoken fantasies.

Another important caveat is regarding the appropriateness of comparing contemporary racism in the United States with the post-colonial condition of racism. Certainly the diaspora of Africans has unique impact based upon their geographical location. My argument is that these representations in pornography constitute a colonizing mindset that has never fully diminished in the American psyche. This helps one to get away from the argument that particular pornography producers are racist and hateful (although some certainly might be) and allows for the more fruitful line of thinking that the demand for this sort of material makes a very real statement about the society that produces it. The presence of this fantasy of colonization and subordination blur erotic lines to make a political statement.

It is appropriate to begin with a description of the state of contemporary interracial pornography. What happens in these films? How are they marketed? And what are the racial tropes circulating within them? One popular weblogger and adult industry insider, Sam Sugar, described interracial pornography in the following way:

I am a black man
Your name: People will want to name you something that get’s across that you have a big, black cock. The porn industry knows that black guys with small dicks do not exist. They know you have a cock like a cruise missile covered in radar absorbing paint. [...]
Your movies: You will be offered roles in movies with the words black, gang, ballin’, ass, jungle, and chocolate in the title. When you are asked to perform with white women they will be referred to using the words little, tiny, innocent, stretched and meat. E.g. “Big Black Beef Stretches Little Pink Meat”. I’m sad to say that’s a real movie.
Your press: Every mention of your name will be followed by the imagined length of your cock in inches. People will refer to the ’soul’ you put into your performances and the ‘rhythm’ of your love tenderizing.

I’m a black woman
Your name: Anything you like – bonus points for making it extra ghetto. Shaniqwa Debonair is an excellent choice.
Your movies: It’s all about being a chocolate sister. People will be unable to look at you without wanting to put your ‘phat ghetto booty’ in a video with some guys from The Digital Underground. The people doing this will be white. Regardless of the size of your butt it will be referred to as ‘two fine hams’. Expect to get spanked a lot.
Your press: The world needs to know that you have a lot of junk in the trunk. Your ass will get more coverage than your medical degree. If you ever get upset about anything you will be called an uppity high maintenance bitch.

While meant to elicit a laugh, his analysis is a grippingly honest description of the racialized discourse of sex and pornography. He makes few apologies for these realities and instead describes them plainly. These descriptions are difficult to stomach at times and seem as if they must be exaggerations. They are not, and while graphic, the honesty of these complaints is compelling. It is probably not shocking to know that Sugar’s descriptions of the treatment of black men and women is sandwiched among other groups of people that are fetishized in pornography including Latinos, Asians, and physically different people. Especially useful is description of how these films are marketed. The titles that are chosen and the words and descriptions that appear on box covers are the essence of the pornography producer’s pitch to their client. They are meant to appeal to their audience instantly and stand out amongst a plethora of other options. Why do these titles have such a broad appeal? The easy answer is that only racists buy such materials but the broad demand and the mainstream nature of them seems to undermine that option.

At face value, it is simple to dismiss these representations as repugnant, however there is a deeper ambivalence to this genre. Some argue that by depicting interracial sex, a traditionally taboo subject in American culture, that this pornography can lead to breaking the taboos that exist and allow for greater acceptance of interracial relationships.(Williams, 274) The counterpoint, of course, exists that the extreme caricatures are more damaging than they can ever be fruitful. Because the focus of these films is on the interracial aspect, the performers are distilled to cultural and sexual stereotypes and are not individuated outside of that. Pornography is rarely interracial in an incidental way. The question of race is constantly brought to the fore in the titles of pieces as well as the dialogue that occurs between characters.

The market for these films is varied. Some are meant to appeal to white men while others
are intended to have a broader appeal. This begs the question, if the audience of interracial pornography is, itself, interracial what is the message of it? Clearly, the message is different for each individual viewer just as their motivations for watching may be individual. The BDSM fetish community has a motto: Safe, Sane, Consensual. Practitioners of bondage, domination, and sadism maintain that as long as an activity between two adults meets that three-pronged test, it is acceptable. While not all people within the community may find it arousing and some may even find it repugnant, if it passes this test BDSM practitioners will not practice judgment. “Safe, Sane, and Consensual” is used to eroticize and create safe spaces for acceptance of many fringe forms of sexual play and the role playing of extreme situations such as rape, bestiality, and incest. If these acts are accepted by a sexual community can educated people make the same allowances for what we find distasteful in interracial pornography? One thing that BDSM play and pornography clearly have in common is the element of performance and the desire to segment desires in such a way that they have multiple interpretations. If pornography is nothing else, it is rhetorical, and its reception is entirely dependent upon the desires of the viewing audience.

Interracial pornography requires a performance of race by the actors involved. The dialog in these films is always self-aware and referential to the racial difference between the actors. The contrast between their bodies is emphasized continually. A black actress is playing a different role in an interracial film than she might be in a film that emphasizes the size of her breasts or a particular sexual act. She is always a black actress but her blackness becomes the commodity that is traded. While it may be hard to believe, it is plausible that the actress in question derives just as much sexual satisfaction from racialized sexual play as the white male that may be watching her performance. Likewise, a submissive in a BDSM context is just as sexually invested in their own humiliation as the person that does the humiliating. It is easy to revert to the argument that such sexual desires stem from some manifestation of self-loathing or insecurity but that explanation is dangerously paternalistic. Acceptance of such lifestyle choices does not necessarily imply advocacy of them or agreement with them. However, exiting personal preferences for a moment in order to fathom difference is a crucial step in the obliteration of oppressive taboos, including those against racial mixing.

Just as Fanon interprets negrophobia as a form of white sexual anxiety, the politically
fearful dismissal of interracial pornography stems from deeply held taboos about race. The performance of stereotypes, while distasteful can have a positive effect,

Stereotypes are important objects of study not because we can better learn to eliminate them from our thinking, but because they cannot be eliminated. Stereotypes persist, and perhaps even thrive on, the protestations against them; the louder the protest, the more they thrive. [...] To forbid all utterance or depiction of the stereotype of the originally phobic image of the large black penis is to grant it a timelessness and immortality that it does not really possess. (Williams, 284)

So, it is because of the fetishistic nature of the stereotypes, as they are already uttered, that the compulsion to repeat their utterance can actually have a positive effect. This is not a blanket suggestion to toss around slurs and half-truths but instead a way to implore people to see them for what they are – archaic but deeply held beliefs to be questions. The sooner a move is made away from holding them as sacred, the sooner we can mock and demystify these stereotypes, the more likely it is that interracial sexual relationships will lose their stigma. However, I want to be perfectly clear that these arguments are merely a way to accept and interpret interracial pornography in a useful way – to find a space where these celebrations of difference can be transmuted into an understanding of the powerful erotic desires that ground contemporary race relations. Are the stereotypes exploited in interracial pornography liberatory in and of themselves? Are the actors involved always intentionally problematizing race or experiencing sexual satisfaction from their performances of racial stereotypes? Of course not, the producer’s only intrinsic intention is to make money on their product, making it neutral at best. Many actors are exploited or at least not particularly invested in the racial tone of the product they are producing. But recognizing the adult choices that go into the production of such material and accepting fantasies without judgments can contribute greatly in stripping the stigma from interracial sexuality.

Works Referenced

Dollimore, Jonathan. Sex, Literature, and Censorship. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001.

Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press, 1967.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality Volume 1. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

MacKinnon, Catharine A. Only Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Penley, Constance. “Crackers and Whackers: The White Trashing of Porn.” Porn Studies. Ed. Linda Williams. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004.
Sugar, Sam. “Porn and Prejudice.” Sugarbank. 23 June 2005. 14 Nov. 2005 .

Williams, Linda. “Skin Flicks on the Racial Border: Pornography, Exploitation, and Interracial Lust.” Porn Studies. Ed. Linda Williams. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004.

I’m sure you’ve all been waiting eagerly to find out about my coffee date with The Prof. Well, I was waiting eagerly at least.

Let me set the scene. We met at a nearby coffeeshop that I frequent regularly. Occupants included a former DJ at the radio station and a current grad student in English. I quickly ignored my concerns – it is just coffee, right?

The first hour or so we talked about mutual interests (literature, music, teaching). I found him funny, engaging and attractive. Then the conversation turned to me and I feared that I would shock him with my sexual lifestyle and proclivities as I described this blog, my podcast, phone sex work, my relationship, and my preferences. I talked a lot, perhaps too much.

Finally, the conversation turned to the situation at hand. And the ethics and emotions surrounding it. I was somewhat amazed by his level of consideration and thought in the decision he was making. No apologies or excuses. Perhaps I’ll write an entry soon on the ethics of adultery because it is something I have been thinking about a lot. I left the coffeeshop knowing that the Professor was about to embark on a very personal and life-affirming journey. Like many risks, it is not one without selfishness. But, I was convinced of the purity of his motivations and the desire that lay behind them.

When I got home, J and I had a long conversation about my coffee date and continued to hash out and digest what I had witnessed and learned. I realized that the reason I date other people is just what the Professor described: excitement, trepidation, flirting, desire. I went to bed with a hopeful heart (not to mention some very dirty thoughts) after sending him an email letting him know I’d love to see him again.

This afternoon (when I was nearly done writing this entry) I received a reply. The Professor thanked me for my time and conversation, he shared that he had a lot of thinking to do. He also wrote that he suspected I was ambivilent and didn’t think we should see each other again.

I wish I could say I was shocked, but I’m not. I guess the awkward moments that I found to be pregnant with sexual tension were just awkward, afterall. Sometimes you jump in with two feet and get what you want, but sometimes those moments of hesitation and second-guessing can shipwreck our intentions. I’m not the type of woman who looks a man in the eyes and says, “I think I’d like to make love to you.” I also don’t think that this experience will make me become one. However, I suppose I’ve learned my lesson that candor and resolve can make all the difference. That lack seems to be the crux of my present disappointment.