Thursday, June 21, 2012

Manly Thor's Day Special: She can't believe she did that

The Last Psychiatrist has written what may be the longest blog post ever.

I'll get to that in a moment. First I want to tell you about a walk the Serpentine One and I took the other night. We were headed along the side of the parkway and we saw a man and a woman kissing and I noticed that the woman looked a whole lot like a woman I know and the man looked a whole lot unlike her husband. After that it's a complicated story, suffice to say I ended up confirming, without wanting to, that it was her.

And it shook me. It shook me for all sorts of reasons: I expected better of her, I know and like her husband, they have children.

The Serpentine One and I discussed it a fair bit afterwards.

I've known this woman since we were children. My parents were friends of her parents and we later ended up at the same university together and now we live in the same neighbourhood. I know her really well. At one point, I thought, "This is so out of character for her." But no sooner did I have that thought did I suddenly realize that it's not out of character at all. I knew her at university and I drifted back into her ambit a few years later when she was working in a  trendy restaurant downtown. During those years she would semi-regularly do stuff like this.

Anyway, The Last Psychiatrist has this very long but interesting piece inspired by Amy Schumer, who decided to share with the entire world that she'd once gotten into a cab and, after seeing the cab driver (whom she was not attracted to) leer at her, she took his hand and put it up her skirt and ... .
The cab driver was "gross, like the cab driver on MTV."  "This was back when I used to do dangerous things, sexually," and littered throughout the story were exasperated sighs, like, "I can't believe I did those things." 
Later The Last Psychiatrist (He'll be "TLP" from here on in) comments:
I'm not judging Amy, at all, but her story is so representative of what countless women go through, the "I can't believe I did that" repeated 1000 times,  so I hope she won't mind my using her story to make a point about how we frame our experiences for the very specific purpose of NOT changing.
And I have mixed feelings because he is talking about changing or, at least, pretending to want to change and I'm not sure I want women to change. Actually, scratch that, I'm quite sure that I don't want women who have I-can't-believe-I'm-doing-this experiences to ever change.

I know, I write all this after writing about how shocked after finding out that my friend is cheating on her husband. I guess that is the mixed part of the feelings.

TLP acknowledges this. He makes the point rather crudely so  you'll have to go over there to read it. I might put it the same way myself but I won't. In any case, I-can't-believe-I'm-doing-this experiences (ICBIDT experiences from here on in) vary from woman to woman. One woman might feel that way after going out without her panties on and a another may need to do that and then pull then cab drivers hand up her skirt to get the same effect.

TLP talks ICBIDT experiences as something women want to stop and then moves onto addiction and there is something to that. But there is a flip side: you wouldn't want to be the woman who lived her entire life and never had a ICBIDT experience. Which is why, as a man, you'd never want to date or marry a woman who isn't capable of it given the right opportunity.

This is just one of those things about women you need to accommodate yourself to if you don't want to be miserable.


In the video below, you can see Madonna acting the I-can't-believe-I-did-that expression. Madonna is a lousy actor but she can do this. And it's erotic; in fact it's much more erotic than the more blatant attempts to be erotic before that moment. The crucial moment starts at 4:43. Watch it and see if you don't agree. Now imagine you are downtown and you see the woman in your life coming out of an apartment building with that I-can't-believe-I-did-that expression on her face. If you are normal you will feel a sharp pain and get an erection at the thought. 

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