Oddities of the maturation process

[demiurgent]

Somewhere along the line, I started to become a prude.

I don't know when it happened, and it doesn't apply to other people. I'm a huge proponent of 'live your life as you choose.' I think sexual self-expression is something each person decides for themselves, and unless said people show up on your doorstep in saran wrap carrying a whip and asking to use your candles, it's crass and mean to inflict your views of what's appropriate on them. I think the idea that the FCC took Janet Jackson's enpierced breast as a call to arms while cheerfully accepting the greatest consolidation and attempted deregulation of media oversight in history is the saddest media story of the last year.

But for me, personally, somewhere along the line I became a prude.

There's a time in your life when sex is its own justification. It's exciting. You yearn for it. When you get it, you strut a little. You get smug with it, you get forlorn without it. It defines your view of the world.

I don't know, maybe it's after a one night stand where you feel vaguely... stupid the next day. Or maybe it comes from body modesty issues. Or maybe it's because as you get older, you get stupider. I don't know.

Over the weekend, at the con, I had a couple of... well, let's call them opportunities. There was a girl I met at a party. She was absolutely beautiful, and I hugely enjoyed talking with her, and she seemed to enjoy talking to me. She wasn't a current reader of Websnark or the like -- it was literally just this woman. And while she might or might not have actually been interested, the potential was there.

At 21... well, at 21 I was involved, so I would have flirted without intent, but I would definitely have flirted. At 27, I would have made overtures for negotiation. This time, I kept myself to 'friendly conversation.' And worked very very hard at keeping my eyes on her eyes. Not the easiest thing, given the costuming one comes to expect at SF convention.

Not too long ago, an intelligent, friendly, cheerful, and (yes) sexy woman I know teased me in electronic communication by saying "don't you wish you'd hit on me when you had the chance?" We bantered a bit after that -- friendly, you know?

But when I was in my twenties, I would have hit on her. Hopefully not too clumsily. I used to be relatively good at romantic flirtation, or so I've been told. (How can you ever know?) This time, though...

I don't know. There was no chance for a relationship -- just like a relationship was darned unlikely with the girl I met at said party over the weekend -- so the opening negotiation didn't even get started.

(Please note -- I'm seriously not saying either of these women would have actually been interested. I'm arrogant, but not deluded. They might have been or they might not have been. This is about me, not them. Which is a terribly male thing to say, isn't it?)

It just seems odd to me. About the only time I really get flirtatious these days are with women who I've either known for a long time (and who generally aren't available in the first place, which makes it a game instead of a negotiation) or responding to banter opened on their side, generally at a low level.

It's not that I've lost interest. I certainly haven't. But it's like...

I don't know. It's like I became a prude somewhere along the line. And I'm not entirely sure how that happened.

Comments

[freakfest.livejournal.com]

Listen to MISter Bankert - he's right, you know.