Guide to Boners.

Boners have an interesting journey in the timeline of a man’s life. At first they are curiosities, then they are an exciting discovery, then a constant menace, then a constant confirmation of primacy, then a fun treat, then a cause for celebration, then a totally ignorable non-event.

I say this as a person in the “fun treat” phase. I don’t know what happens later. I don’t know if I have boner pills in my future. I kind of don’t ever want to deal with boner pills. Chronic impotence would be a problem, but so would having your head crushed by suddenly collapsed scaffolding, and there aren’t drugs for that. Not technically. Oh, I’m sorry, “Erectile Dysfunction.” The term “impotence” implies that the lack of a boner makes one an ineffective person, when in fact a man and his flaccid dong can still water ski and kick your ass at tennis and even make million dollar deals before breakfast from the comfort of his custom Bentley with “RNMAKER” license plate, and don’t you forget it, you little pissant. Anyway, I figure sporadic impotence could be a pleasant escape from responsibility. Kind of a, “Sorry babe, it looks like you have no choice but to leave me alone for once.” Maybe I’m less horny than most guys, though.

I’ve always suspected this to be the case, but maybe that’s for cultural, social, and psychological reasons. I don’t want to trumpet myself as some sort of harbinger of a new age of male sexuality, but it seems like the old straw is that dudes are supposed to feel like they’re the horniest guy on the planet, and that they, surely, are the only one on Earth with these shameful urges of fornication and occasional butt fornication. And among male company one is supposed to assert one’s sexuality as proof of one’s status and ability. At least that’s how it goes in 80’s movies with peering over sunglasses and “hotchie mama” jazz hands.

I’ve been all jumbled up recently after a trip to a strip club in which I was mostly very bored, although I was also titillated, horrified, amused, and depressed. Aside from the obvious plusses (i.e. I am looking at boobs right now) and obvious minuses (i.e. I’m not sure who is doing it to whom, but somebody is being exploited here) they’re rarely the type of place you’d want to hang out in. There are never any windows. Every person there either wants your money or wants to spend their money, all while talking to you as little and as disingenuously as possible. The whole goal of the place is for reasonably attractive and apparently sexually aggressive naked simulacra women to take as much of your money as possible without technically fucking you, under the assumption that you would pay money for somebody to simulate conditions under which that you’re so extremely fuckable that writhing around naked in front of you is an appropriate response to your presence. Which is really not such a bad impulse to act on, it’s just a little indulgent and willfully ignorant. Again, there are obvious benefits to these places that amount to “I am looking at boobs right now and having fun,” but for a guy like me, it takes a lot of booze to ignore all the more navel-gazey aspects of it, especially as time progresses and you realize that boobs are monotonously booblike. Still, a lot of booze is doable. I like booze.

Side note: those all-nude clubs that have no booze are a terrible idea. A strip club is no place to sober up.

So I’m generally very anti-strip club, although they do have a certain go-for-broke charm where if you can wrangle up some cocaine and get yourself revved up to 100% party hedonist mode, they become one in a pastiche of logical settings for a blurry night. The ideal context for a strip club is “let’s get totally fucked up and see what happens and whoops we’re at a strip club on our way to get pancakes” more than “let’s get totally fucked up and go to a strip club and see what happens.” What happens at a strip club is you see boobs but you don’t have sex and you end up spending all of your pancake money.

Anyhow, I got a boner or two at this strip club, and they were weird boners. Boners of defeat, let’s say. I wanted to think I was stronger than that. But at this point in my life even a boner of defeat is still kind of a fun treat, because I can tell it to go away and it will listen. I’m just like “noted” and then move on with my life. Which I’m glad I can do, because if I just did what my boner thought was right, I’d have stripper AIDS. Maybe not. The point is this: boners are tasteless. If that stripper at that strip club that made me have a boner was a real person from real life, I would think “man, this person has a ton of tattoos and a tongue piercing and is so shamelessly aggressive I have an urge to call her mom and ask what happened; maybe the potential for a disease-ridden blowjob in the parking lot is not worth allowing this person into my life” and I would be one hundred percent right because at a certain point crazy overtakes sexy.

That’s extremely unfair and I know that. This is a person I’m talking about, and a person is more than just a set of professional, aesthetic, and psychological stereotypes. In a perfect world, this person who gave me a boner would be an immersionist sociologist in the new feminist mold who is out to test the limits of feminine sexual identity in the new millennium, and that potential disease-ridden parking lot blowjob would not exist except as a depraved thought experiment, and also it would not be disease-ridden, and also it would exist, and also it would happen only because she could tell I’m (specifically: me) smart enough to handle it as a social commentary rather than some crazy slut going down on me. See? This is what my fantasies look like, and that’s also what strippers do for a living: make fantasies seem possible. The problem is it’s pretty reductive, no matter which way you slice it.

Anyhow: the phrase “crazy overtakes sexy” says more about me in the above scenario, because I’m putting all of my shit on this poor person who probably just wants to get home in time to make lunch for her kid to take to school. I don’t know her side of the story. She has no side. Her side is my side. I’m making it up. In a way, I gave myself a boner. Which is totally weird and I don’t want to think about it, fun treat or not. Right now I’m giving myself an innie boner from thinking about all of this shit. I can’t tell if innie boners are cause for celebration or not. Maybe a little.