Preview of the week ahead

I was on the phone for over three hours tonight with this young woman in her twenties. Wow, either (a) I'm a really interesting person to talk to; or (b) she's weird; or (c) she's really desperate. I hope that answer (a) turns out to be the case.

I will be seeing her later this week, along with two other dates, so there will be plenty to write about!

Annie Hall

I watched the movie Annie Hall today (only $9.47 from Amazon.com). In case you're not familiar with it, Annie Hall is a Woody Allen movie from 1977. People must have liked it back then because it won four Academy Awards: Best Picture (beating out Star Wars), Director (Woody Allen), Actress (Diane Keaton) and Original Screenplay.

Woody Allen plays a neurotic Jewish guy (basically the same character he plays in all of his movies), and Diane Keaton plays Annie Hall. The movie is about their relationship.

The movie begins with an opening monlogue in which Woody Allen makes two observations that I agree with 100%:

1. "[Life is] full of loneliness and misery and suffering and unahappiness, and it's all over much to quickly."

2. "I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member."

More than one commenter to my blog has mentioned observation #2.

I think the funniest scene in the movie is when Annie Hall orders pastrami on white bread with mayonnaise, tomatoes, and lettuce. And she did it without any hint of irony; it's no wonder why she won an Academy Award.

A guy like Woody Allen, short, balding, nerdy and with an incredibly annoying personality, would never even be able to get even a single date with a woman as cute as Diane Keaton in 2006. This either means that (a) women were different back in 1977; or (b) this is just Woody Allen's fantasy and in no way reflects reality.

I leave it to my always knowledgeable readers to suggest which of these two interpretations is correct.

Women are spendthrifts

Here's an article that says something that men know but women don't seem to realize: women are spendthrifts.

Hayden says the shop-'til-you-drop syndrome is more than a harmless female pastime; it also deprives woman of the opportunity to grow money through investing. In their 20s and 30s, when their male counterparts are buying homes and investing in mutual funds, many women are spending on clothes, cars and decorating the apartment.

Unfortunately, the article also contains a lot of psychobabble.

IN THE UK, WOMEN PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE

Here's an excerpt from an email I received from a British woman. I hope she won't mind me sharing it.

What is with paying for all the dates? Is this a NYC thing or an American thing? I live in the UK and across here it works the other way round - you each pay for yourself the first few dates. If it goes further and you start dating properly, then he might treat you to a few drinks or dinner,but it seems crazy for one member of the couple to have to pay for everything at the start when you don't know if you're ever going to get a return on your investment!

NYC women seem greedier than then in the rest of the country, but all over the U.S. women expect men to pay. Also, as women get older, the expectation of getting free stuff from men increases.

Outside of NYC women usually offer to pay (but if the man accepts the offer he's considered a cheapskate), however in NYC women rarely offer, and often they don't even say "thank you."

MISCELLANEOUS BLOG UPDATE

Someone speculated in a comment that I was no longer a virgin. Unfortunately I'm still a virgin. I haven't had anything write about, and the be honest, I'm mentally tired from being insulted (almost entirely by female commenters) with every post I write, so I was taking a break.

Too personal?

In response to my last post about my investments increasing in value by $38,800, sugarpunk wrote:

to me that is a HUGELY personal question and/or answer to put on a blog..

I wrote about being a virgin and masturbating and sexual dysfunction, and that's not too personal, but somehow this is?

The blog is anonymous and I can write about whatever I want. How much money I made in the market is probably the least personal thing I've written here. It's the only thing in this blog I wouldn't be ashamed to tell my mother.

RETURN TO INTERNET DATING

The girls I met though non-internet sources, Carr, Shannon and Alicia, aren't panning out. Shannon didn't return my phone call, and I tried again, but that's it. She knows how to use a telephone and if she doesn't want to call me back after two dialing attempts, then she's not worth the trouble.

One commenter said that the more dates I go on the better off I am, and although it's hard to tell the good advice from all the crap advice I get, this sort of sounds reasonable.

$38,800

That's how much my investments are up since the beginning of the year. This probably sounds like a lot of money to some people, but not to NYC people who make more money than this each month as salary. You need a lot more money than I have to attract hot gold digger babes.

Carr bought some stock that I recommended to her, which is sort of flattering because not many people actually listen to my advice. Luckily the stock price already went up since she bought it; I'd hate it if she lost money on my account.

Lust for money same as lust for sex

People have complained that I write too much about money when the blog is supposed to be about me not having sex.

However, researchers at Stanford University have discovered that lust for money is the same as lust for sex:

Late at night, in a basement laboratory at Stanford University, Brian Knutson made a startling discovery: our brains lust after money with the same neurons that they crave sex.

It was May 2004 and Knutson, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the Californian university, was sending student volunteers through a high-power imaging machine called an fMRI.

Deep inside each subject's head, electrical currents danced through a bundle of neurons about the size and shape of a peanut. Blood was rushing to the brain's pleasure centre as students executed mock stock-and-bond trades. On Knutson's screen, this region of the brain, the core of human desire, flashed canary yellow.

Knutson, 38, concluded that the pleasure of orgasm, the high from cocaine, the rush of buying Google at US$450 a share - the same neural network governs all three. What's more, our primal pleasure circuits can, and often do, override our seat of reason, the brain's frontal cortex, the professor says. In other words, stocks, like sex, sometimes drive us crazy.

Alicia, first and last date

Girls with wealthy dads come in two types. The materialistic princess type is most common, and then there's the rebellious "I don't care about money" type which I especially dislike because their lack of concern about money is backed up by the knowledge that there's a Rich Daddy to fall back on. Alicia is the latter type of rich girl. She shares a one bathroom apartment with two other roommates. That's quite a commitment to being poor. Most of the girls in NYC have their own apartment on their parents.

Unfortunately for me, I got absolutely zero vibes that Alicia was in any way interested in me, so I guess she's not. No point calling her again, I guess. Too bad, because she looks pretty nice.

And not to dissappoint the people who hate me because I always mention how much money it costs to date, Alicia did not offer to pay for her drink.

CARR

She wants to meet me for a workday lunch. At least I don't have to worry about having to perform sexually, because we will both have to go back to our respective jobs at the end of the date.

Unlike Alicia, Carr does have her own apartment and I strongly suspect that her parents are helping her pay for it.

SHANNON

I called and left a message but she didn't call back yet. I think she's the type of girl who likes to play games like that.

Shannon probably pays for her own apartment with her salary. Between her, Carr and Alicia, Shannon has what I presume to be the highest paying job.

After the traffic spike

I took down the post about Princess Alicia, not because there was a satellite photo of her dad's house (probably even if her dad looked at it he wouldn't recognize his own house from the air--and sorry, the view of your house from the air is no longer secret info, most of the U.S. is visible at maps.google.com), but because there was too much other specific information about her.

This was done in response to the big traffic spike, which I'm not sure I'm happy about for several reasons.

With the spike has come a surge in obnoxious comments in the nature of "you're a virgin because you're an asshole," which is ridiculous because we all know that men with much more serious personality flaws than myself (excepting my phobia of sexual intimacy and possible sexual dysfunction issues) have sex, and sometimes lots of it. Most men rightly suspect that being too nice results in less sex, not more.

Many of the comments are ridiculous. Some are pissed because my standards are too high and others are pissed because my standards are too low. Comments like these can't possibly be reconciled.

A lot of people are pissed because I notice how women look, as if 99% of men don't notice this. An innoccuous description of Shannon as "slightly heavyset" has some woman pissed at me because she thinks it means that any woman who isn't model skinny isn't good enough for me. And some guy wrote that she's too obese for me to have sex with.

Slightly heavyset means slightly heavier than the typical woman of her height, that's all it means. It was an observation and I never even said that I disliked her weight. I specifically wrote that she was "cute."

Someone was pissed because I observed that Jane had her teeth bleached. I don't get why that pisses someone off. Why would she go to the effort of bleaching them if she didn't want people to notice her perfectly white teeth?

Obviously the blog that some people want me to write would be totally devoid of anything interesting to read. If this blog pisses you off so much, then please do me a favor and stop reading it. But as I've previously observed, some people enjoy getting pissed off, and they surf the web with the intent of finding something to get pissed about. And then, ironically, these people say that *I* have a bad attitude. Ha ha.

What do I want? I just want to have a girlfriend, that's all, and I don't think that makes me a bad person for wanting that. Maybe it's simply not possible for someone who has been a virgin for nearly 40 years to achieve that. Once upon a time I had a problem with only wanting a super-hot girlfriend, and I think have gotten over that, but on the other hand my experience with Rana taught me that maybe I need to be a little more attracted to a girl than I was to Rana. I'm having trouble reconciling this myself.

I stand my by last post, I think it would be good for me to try to move foward with Shannon. If you really want to help me out with a comment, suggest a course of action for the next date with her that will put me in the right direction. I am also still in email contact with Carr and will probably see her again because she said she wants to and I like talking to her, and she also wants to go Dutch.

My new goal: have sex with Shannon

Gender Immigrant said in a comment:

The more I read of your blog the more I think you just need to figure out how to lower your standards, for just a short time, from the lofty goals that you seem to have and just have sex with any woman that will have you.

I agree with this good advice. So therefore, my goal is to have sex with Shannon.

My second goal, in case the first goal doesn't pan out, is to stop evaluating women for their worth in a long term relationship. The only thing important is to just have sex so that, in the future when I meet someone I want to have a long term relationship with or even marry, I won't screw things up because of my virginity.

Shannon, first date

Shannon is one of those IJC girls that the IJC Blogger writes about. She's short (I said she sounded short!) and slightly on the heavyset side, and she chose an expensive place to eat and happily accepted a free $70 evening with no offer to chip in. (And I'm still hungry, I might have to go eat a snack after I finish this post.) I was disappointed to find out that she had medium brown hair and not reddish colored hair as I imagined.

Shannon is kind of cute, and she said I should call her after this weekend. A clear indication that she's interested in a second date. I hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. No lip to lip contact.

MY LAST POST

None of my posts have garnered as many comments. Many of them angry. I attribute the angry comments to people having a big stick up their ass and looking to get pissed off about something.

It was a blind date I had a few years ago who taught me to Google my dates. When I met her she asked me, "is [name of website] your website?" She used Google to find my website. After that lesson I often would use the power of Google, as well as a few other useful websites, to research my dates.

And don't worry, I may be a virgin but I'm not stupid. I'm not going to tell Princess Alicia, "hey, I looked at a satellite photo of Rich Daddy's house."

Googling my dates is not preventing my from losing my virginity, but the two things may be related because not having a girlfriend gives me more time to surf the web and hone my web searching skills.

The other criticism has to do with me making fun of rich people. Hey, if you can't make fun of rich people, who can you make fun of? And really, it does annoy me that there are all these Princesses living in New York City who don't have to pay any rent because they have a Rich Daddy.

This also has nothing to do with me being a virgin. If anything, having too much respect for my date seems to lessen my success. I respected Kelly a lot because she came to this country at the age of fifteen barely knowing any English, and she obtained two graduate degrees and now has a great job. What good did respecting her do for me? It did crap. She said we have no chemistry.

I'M DOOMED

This post at the Nice Guys Finish Last blog explains why I'm doomed never to to have a successful relationship or get married. He writes about his female friend's problem:

She met this "great guy" one of the first guys she's ever met that treats her with respect, kindness and the whole thing. They laugh all the time, have the same interests..they're perfect together (her words). There's just one problem. ...

The problem is that her great guy has a small penis and he sucks at sex, and because of that she's going to dump him. My penis is small and I will always suck at sex even if I lose my virginity. No one will ever want to be in a relationship with me. This whole dating thing is a big waste of time. I'm going to end up like Bob.

Preview of the week ahead

CARR

I'm meeting her after work on Monday. She wants to buy me a drink to reciprocate for buying her dinner the last time. I like Carr, she's fun, she's not like those stuck up "spend money on me" IJC girls that the IJC blogger writes about. This will be the third time I've seen her, not including the night I met her at the club. Too bad she's such a religious fanatic. I hope she doesn't try to take me back to her apartment in the Village to have sex. On the other hand, maybe she'll take me back to her apartment to smoke pot. I wonder if that stuff relaxes you and makes sex easier?

SHANNON

She's the daughter of someone my mom is acquainted with. I'm seeing her Wednesday. She suggested a brand new trendy looking restuarant in our neighborhood. She's in her mid thirties. I have no idea what she looks like, but on the phone she sounds like a short redhead.

KELLY

I have to call her ASAP, but not tonight. I was hoping that she might send me an email offering me encouragement, because I sent her an email on Friday that she never responded to. No such luck. Kelly's the one I really like.

COMMENTS

Thank you Cameron for your good advice.

THE ROLLING STONES

No, I don't have a date with them. But they sure did suck at the halftime show. Paul McCartney was ten times better last year.

Responses to the comments

I said that I would respond to the first five non-anonymous comments left to my post soliciting comments. However, there were only four non-anonymous comments, so I will respond to those four plus the first anonymous comment. It's interesting that not a single comment was left by a male reader. Those comments tend to be more helpful because, as much as men say they don't understand women, I get the impression that women understand themselves even less well than men.

COMMENT BY DENÉ

It's a shame to waste your first response on someone who hasn't fully read your complete blog yet... but here I am. Life is all about timing, isn't it.

:)

If you don't like kissing you're doing it wrong.

It's not a waste, thanks for your comment.

I think that swapping saliva is gross unless you lust after the person you are doing it with. I think that I didn't lust after Rana because she wasn't very attractive and because my sex drive decreases as I get older.

I don't think this had anything to do with doing it wrong, although I'm sure I could have done it better.

COMMENT BY ELLIE

I don't agree with a lot of the things you write, but I do wish you the best of luck. At the end of the day, it is your life and you're free to do whatever you like with it!! :) There will always be supporters and haters...

Thanks.

COMMENT BY A

Hello, Virg.. Please don't take my comments here the wrong way, because they are not intented to flame or hurt your feelings. I wanted to offer my opinions and observations, but I'm very blunt, so I apologize if anything I say comes off as hurtful or harsh.

Your perspective is interesting, which is why I continue reading, but I have to say that there is something about your attitude that really bothers me. I haven't been able to put my finger on it exactly, but it has to do with the way you discuss women, and to a lesser extent, yourself.

It seems to me that you have yourself painted into a corner, where your feelings and thoughts on the situation are clouded by the belief that you are stuck where you are. However, no matter how it seems to you, you are not irreversibly stuck and I truly believe that with enough consideration and effort, you could get yourself out of the corner.

However, as I read, I find it harder and harder to feel sorry for you. There is a lot of "I'm a loser, look at how I suck" here on this blog and while I myself enjoy self-deprecation as a pasttime, it very much sets the tone for the site. Initially, I absolutely empathized with your situation; as I said in my post about your blog, I also have some deep social anxieties that prevent me from meeting people and behaving 'normally' in unfamiliar social settings. The issue I have now is that, all snarky anonymous comments aside, you have a loyal reader base of intelligent people wanting to help you. They ask questions to find out more, they offer some really spot-on suggestions and things to think about.. but so far it seems as if these go mostly ignored. This bothers me, and perhaps the others that pointed this out, that half the time you talk about how you want to keep trying to be with a woman, and the other half engaged in behavior that would indicate otherwise.

Also, I guess maybe I feel that you really objectify women, and usually in an unflattering way. Unflattering to them, and to you. I understand honesty and wanting to describe people as you perceive them, but unflattering opinions, particularly when it comes to 'superficial' traits, are often poorly received by others, especially when doled out in such high quantities. I try not to judge people, and certainly I have my own physical tastes, but as the bulk of what you discuss seems to have to do with looks rather than personality, I have to wonder if the women you've dated aren't picking up on the same signals I am.

I think part of what bothers me is that your posts tend to have a very negative tone to them. Other posts are highly judgemental, not just of the women you've had experiences with, but of all women. Are you this negative all the time? If so, that may be part of the problem.

Also, you have to decide what the purpose of this blog is. Is it a place to vent and bitch about things, or is it a record of your journey to 'solve the problem'? If it is the former, there is nothing wrong with that, but I personally tire of hearing someone complain about something they refuse to put any effort into changing.

If it is the latter, does the solving include changing your behavior patterns, or do you intend to keep doing things as you usually do in hopes that it will happen anyway? I would love to read about you trying something different, stepping outside yourself a little, taking suggestions, and really mulling over everything. If I were you, I would be looking at this from all angles, trying to figure out doable ways of overcoming your fears and inhibitions. I would also probably be in therapy for the emotional issues, and to find out more about how to overcome the distaste for intimacy. In no way do I assume that any of this will be quick and easy, but if something isn't working for you and you want to change it, it is necessary to start taking small steps.

I think the frustration I feel is that I simply want to see you succeed. I personally would love to hear that you met a great girl, she turned you on, and you two got it on. I would be happy and relieved for you. :)

I think you would benefit greatly from trying to open your mind a little bit. Trust that not all women are like the ones you've dated. Trust that all women are not clones of each other. Trust that there will be a girl who likes you just the way you are (hell, if there are girls who like me, there are definitely girls who will like you). I know it's hard when you believe otherwise, but this many people telling you so can't be wrong, can they? Shift your focus away from money and looks, unless you want someone superficial. Allow your preconceptions and stereotypes to be challenged.. you'll find there's a lot of grey area in there. Also, do consider therapy. Not all therapists are awful, and it can be immensely helpful to get an objective, professional opinion on something that's troubling you.

Lastly, the girls I know and have known would think your virginity is so much less of a big deal than you do. There are plenty of women out there who would be understanding and kind about it. There is a definite chance that your virginity won't matter much at all.

Anyway, sorry this is so long, but I do hope you understand where it's coming from and that I mean it constructively. I think you're in a rut, and I'm hoping to see you jump out of it. Keep writing and exploring! :)

Whoa! That's a novel, not a comment.

A begins her novel by explaning that she doesn't like my attitude. Because this is an anonymous blog, I am free to have any attitude I want without worrying about alienating people I know in real life. That's the beauty of anonymous blogging.

Then she says that I ignore all the comments, but this is why I am doing this experiment, to show that this is not true. And I read all the comments even if I can't respond to every one. It's true that I like to respond to the unique comments, because I think that many of the most common points have been addressed previously in my blog.

I have taken advice from several comments. For example, people told me to stop seeing Yoko, and I did, and I have to agree that this was great advice. Kelly is ten times better than Yoko. I was also advised to stop masturbating, and today I am now eleven days the master of my domain. This is working out very well.

Then she says my posts are negative. You'd be negative too if, after almost 40 years, the world just threw rotten lemons at you the whole time.

Then she says the blog has no purpose. I started the blog with a clear purpose, as self-therapy, and I definitely think it helped. As I've stated before, more than once, since starting this blog I came very close to actually losing my virginity, and I would never have dreamed that would ever be possible. Is it still helping? I can't say for sure, but to be honest here, I'm kind of flattered that people want to read what I write, even if it's only because they get a voyeuristic look at my weird sexual problems. I've tried blogging before on topics like the economy and politics, and no one wanted to read anything I wrote.

Then she says I need therapy, which is a very annoying comment. It's not annoying because of the implication that I have problems I have been unable to overcome on my own. That part is true. It's annoying because there's no rational reason to think that this would be anything but a waste of money. I saw therapists when I was in my twenties, and they were of absolutely no help. I wrote about the 49-year-old virgin who was in therapy for 18 years. Obviously his therapy was a complete waste. This blog has been much better therapy, only two months after I started it I came very close to losing my virginity. Why do peope think that therapists have some magic power to heal people? It's obvious that they don't. Other virgins have reported bad experiences with therapists.

Then she gives me a little lecture about stereotyping. "Trust that not all women are like the ones you've dated. Trust that all women are not clones of each other." First of all, I don't think I've ever said in my blog that I believe that all womens are clones, are that there aren't plenty of exceptions to generalizations. But this doesn't mean that generalizations aren't for the most part true. It's impossible to get through life without generalizing people that you don't know. You don't have time to get to know every single person. Occasionally I put in language to indicate that I understand that I'm not talking about every single woman on planet Earth. Recently I used a phrase like"the typical woman," and I was blasted for what I said about the typical woman because not all women were like that. Using the word "typical" implies that it's understood that some women are atypical. Geez.

OK, that's enough of that comment.

COMMENT BY BAMA GIRL

I can't believe that people have that much to say about your blog! I mean I read it all the time, but there is no way I could write five paragraphs in an attempt to comment.

I agree that was an extremely long comment--it was actually 12 paragraphs, but who's counting?

Thank you for your support.

COMMENT BY ANONYMOUS

I don't have a blog address, but I'll put my name at the end here. (Note that you yourself are anonymous, so it's only fair that I don't want my family to see things I comment on blogs either.)

My question: What did you mean when you said that it's better to meet a woman in person than some "woman" who advertises on the "internet"? Why did you put those things in quotes?

Also, why can't you believe that there are women who are shy and late bloomers and nervous about sex, just like there are guys (something that would seem even rarer?)

Marla C.

You don't need a blog address to register with Blogger. I'm not asking people to leave their name, address, phone, and credit card number with their comments. But it would be a lot easier if people just used the feature to use some sort of pseudonym so I can follow the comments better.

"Woman" was in quotes because there is contoversy over whether I should use the term "girl" or "woman." In my mind, when I think of a "woman" I think of some old person that I wouldn't want to date.

As far as posting personal ads on internet dating sites, it seems logical that people who had no problems getting dates wouldn't bother to post an ad. There still seems to be some sort of stigma associated with it. Carr says she met some people from an online dating service that's popular with people of her religion who live in New York City, and they were all losers and one guy stalked her.

I very much wish I was the guy who could go to a bar and pick up a "girl" without resorting to the internet.

And finally to answer the quesiton about not believing that "there are women who are shy and late bloomers and nervous about sex, just like there are guys," it's not that I don't believe it, it's just that it's extremely rare, much rarer than it is for men. If you don't understand why it's rarer for women then you just don't get the dynamics of male/female relations. Men have to pursue and make first moves, women get to just let the men come after them. A woman who is reasonably desirable will have men pursue her and make first moves and all she has to do is go along with them. This is not the same for men. A man who would have some success (if not alpha-male type success) with women if he was agressive and extroverted like he's supposed to be will have absolutely zero success if he's too shy to do what he's supposed to do.

So actually, I really do find it very hard to imagine that a woman who would be the kind of woman that I'd find attractive would be an inexperienced virgin. When I tried to have sex with Rana who I didn't find attractive, I wasn't able to get it up.