October 12, 2016 · 6:53 am

Monogamy May Be Going Extinct (Too Soon)

A big part of being a romance/erotica writer is finding new ways to explore romantic and sexual love in novel ways. Let’s face it. There are only stories you can tell about love at first sight. Those themes are as old as Shakespeare and it’s hard to make those stories interesting these days.

There’s still a place for these kinds of bland, basic love stories and there always will be. I’ve certainly used those elements in my own books. We’re an affectionate species. We love to love every bit as much as we love to hump. However, the ways in which loving and humping manifest will change with time, culture, biology, economics, and whatever happens to be a popular internet meme at the time.

There are already some ongoing trends that are making religious zealots, registered republicans, and anyone overly fond of the 1950s very nervous. According to the Centers for Disease Control, marriage rates are declining. Divorce is declining as well, but that’s to be expected when people aren’t getting married in the first place.

If that weren’t horrifying enough to the “Father Knows Best” crowd, the average number of sexual partners isn’t one. According to the CDC, men average approximately 6.7 sexual partners over the course of their lifetime while women average around 4.3. Seeing as how men tend to exaggerate the amount of panties they’ve moistened and women underestimate how often their panties get moist, let’s just call it an even 5.0 for both genders.

For some people, these numbers are truly terrifying. It means people are daring to love more than one person over the course of their lifetime. It means they’re daring to have sex for reasons that don’t involve consummating a marriage, making a baby, or showing homosexuals on how it should be done. The horror.

I hope everyone can appreciate the sarcasm in that last paragraph because this really shouldn’t be terrifying. People have sex. People love more than one person. It happens because people are complicated creatures. We can’t even agree over pizza toppings and ice cream flavors. How can we possibly agree on the right way to love and make love to one another?

I say this as someone who comes from a family that has a fair number of divorces and a fair number of marriages that’ll probably last until the sun explodes. I know how erratic and fickle our passions can be. It makes sense that our eyes, as well as other parts of our bodies, would wander.

I’ve talked about it before on this blog. Our bodies and our biology don’t know that we live in an era of Tinder, internet porn, and no fault divorce. As far as our brains are concerned, we’re still hunting and gathering in close-knit tribes on the plains of the African savanna.

Within those tribes, monogamy can happen, but it’s not the only way our passions manifest. In some cases, like when women die in childbirth or men die hunting sabretooth tigers, we need to be able to share our passions with others.

Loving more than one person doesn’t just make sense from a biological perspective. It makes sense in that it ties us together closer as a tribe. If we love each other and want to have sex with each other, we’ll be that much more dedicated to protecting and supporting each other. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s also a sexy thing. Even the most ardent clergyman or nun can’t deny that.

So when I hear stories about how monogamy is in decline or that family institutions are decaying, I want to roll my eyes and bash my head into a brick wall. This sentiment gives the false impression that monogamy has always been the end all/be all of sex, love, and relationships. That’s just not how the world works. It’s not how we’re wired as humans. It’s not even the theme of most sitcoms anymore, as “Modern Family” can attest.

So who is claiming that monogamy is in decline? It isn’t just the usual cast of clowns from the overly religious types who think their particular deity wants them to micromanage every aspect of our personal lives. Even more liberal types, like the Young Turks, are proclaiming loudly that monogamy and family life is going the way of disco, bell-bottom pants, and the Macarana.

Now I can understand the doom-saying from both sides. They’re looking at the same data and noticing the same trends. People just aren’t getting married, having children, and living around a white picket fence for the rest of their lives anymore. For some strange reason, this life doesn’t appeal to every member of the human species. Go figure.

That’s more sarcasm by the way. Sarcasm is necessary when addressing any form of doom-saying, be it from wide-eyed hippie liberals or fire and brimstone loving religious nuts. However, this sentiment that monogamy is in serious decline is worth taking seriously, if only because it means I may have to tweak the themes of my books.

As I’ve noted before, the current economics for marriage and monogamy are shit. The legal framework in which love and marriage operate are woefully unequal. In some ways, men get screwed over. In some ways, women get screwed over. It is a horribly unequal, inefficient institution that may as well have been crafted by divorce lawyers getting paid by the hour.

Since I’ve beat that dead horse more than it needs to be beaten, I won’t go off on another rant about why divorce sucks and why expectations of monogamy are unrealistic. I don’t think I need to belabor those points than I already have. However, there is one element to this sentiment that I think is worth pointing out and it’s something the Young Turks even discussed to a certain extent.

While it may be true that marriage and monogamy are in decline, it’s not necessarily declining in an equitable manner. What do I mean by that? Well, in the same way that divorce and marriage laws are woefully unbalanced, our cultural concepts of sex, romance, and gender relations are just as out of whack.

It isn’t because of the rise of feminism or radical feminism. It isn’t because of men losing their edge or fearfully protecting their male privilege either. In many respects, the problem has to do with the lingering impact that our uptight, puritanical, monogamy-loving culture still has.

Keep in mind, we still live in a culture where women can’t agree on whether Kim Kardashian showing her naked body on the internet counts as empowering or shameful. We live in a culture where a man can’t just walk up to a woman, say she has nice breasts, and not dread being sued for sexual harassment. We live in an environment where false accusations of sexual assault can ruin lives.

In other words, our current culture isn’t ready to let go of monogamy. We’re still kind of stuck on it. We still have these strange, skewed expectations about how men and women relate to one another, both romantically and sexually.

We expect women to be reserved and prudish, never freely engaging in sex with as many men as she wants. If she does, we as a society just assume there’s something wrong with her and go out of our way to shame her. It can’t possibly be that she just enjoys having sex and all the toe-curling pleasure it gives her.

We also expect men to be aggressive, pig-headed brutes who would gladly hump a dead cow if it looked enough like Jennifer Lawrence’s ass. If a man goes out and humps every woman within his area code, then he’s just being a man. If he actually goes out of his way to love and be faithful to one woman, then he must be a total pussy.

You see the problem with these expectations? Now try to imagine a society functioning without monogamy. It just can’t work. Our collective heads will explode from all the double standards, hypocrisy, and conflicting biological imperatives.

The fact remains that gender relations in our current society are just too fucked up right now. They’re too unequal. They’re too imbalanced for monogamy to decline to the extent that doomsayers fear. I’ll let the immortal Eric Duckman sum it up in the most crude, offensive way possible.

It’s unavoidable. Men and women today aren’t ready for a post-monogamous society. Too many of us still cling to the “Father Knows Best” principles of how love, relationships, and sex should manifest. Almost as many cling to the politically correct sentiment that one gender must be guilted and shamed to no end for past injustices. It seems like there’s no way for society to achieve a healthy balance.

I try to be more optimistic than that. Our society always has room for improvement. Trends change. Cultural attitudes change. We, as a species, are great at adapting to new conditions. It’s part of what makes us the dominant species on this planet.

We tend to be slow, clumsy, and inept as hell when adapting our culture to new conditions, but we do get around to it. I believe that at some point, the incentives for a truly balanced understanding of love, relationships, and sex will be greater than the forces driving us apart.

It may take a long time, but it’s one of those goals that is worth the wait and the effort. It’s a goal I hope to explore in my books in various ways. I might not be able to speed up the process, but I can at least make the wait entertaining and sexy as hell.

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October 11, 2016 · 6:00 am

Takeaways From The “You Fight Like A Girl!” Panel At New York Comic Con

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Are you tired of hearing me talk about how awesome the New York Comic Con was this year? Well too bad! I’m still going to talk about it because there are issues and experiences worth discussing. Some of those issues apply to my work as a romance/erotica writer, both directly and indirectly. Some of them even manifested in strange, but fitting ways.

There was a lot to see at the New York Comic Con. I was only there for a day so I had to make everything I saw and experienced count. This includes being very selective with the panels I attended. Make no mistake. There were so many panels at this thing that it would take a week and a fuckton of coffee to attend every one of them. That said, I felt I selected the right panels in the end.

One of the first panels I attended turned out to be the most informative, at least as it applied to my romance/erotica endeavors. It was a panel entitled “You Fight Like A Girl!” and was meant to discuss trends in female superheroes and female characters in general. Seeing as how the kind of romance/erotica I write tends to involve multi-layered female characters, often out of necessity, it was a worthwhile discussion to have.

At this panel were some notable female writers, some of which I knew more than others. They included Tami Stronach, Amy Chu, Heidi Maconald, Dr. Katie Monnin, and Gina Gagliano, although one of them could not attend due to illness. A man named Michael Gianfrancesco moderated the panel, but he didn’t do much talking. The women here had plenty to say.

They discussed a great many topics. At first, they just shared some of the challenges they faced as women trying to break into comics, a traditionally male medium. They never gave the impression that they had to punch someone in the dick to get their foot in the door, but they definitely had to put in more effort compared to their male counterparts.

This led to some pretty entertaining stories that drew a few laughs, but one story in particular really stood out to me. It came courtesy of Amy Chu, an accomplished female comic book writer who has a unique talent for making female characters more interesting. She’s basically the kind of woman who I’d have sent wildly inappropriate love letters to if she went to my high school.

She told a brief story about her work on the title, “Poison Ivy.” For those of you who don’t know, Poison Ivy is a major Batman villain who sets herself apart in two major ways. First and foremost, she’s less a criminal and more a radical eco-terroists that even PETA would deem unhinged. Second, and perhaps more importantly for the subject of this discussion, she looks like this.

She looks like the embodiment of a lurid fantasy from a radical male vegan. Naturally, she’s one of those female characters that is frequently subjected to excessive sexualization. How could she not be? She wears only leaves for clothes for crying out loud. The imagination of horny men doesn’t have to be that elaborate.

This presents a challenge for Amy Chu. How does a female writer handle a character whose sex appeal is at a level that’ll likely guide many teenage boys through puberty? How does she make this character more than the sexy, villainous vixen that shows up in every bad porn parody ever made?

It is a challenge, but one that Amy Chu took on and subsequently kicked its ass. She then told a story about how she discussed her plan for this character with DC’s main editor, Dan Dido. The nature of this discussion definitely resonated with me for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who has ever heard someone whine about female superheroes showing too much super-cleavage.

During this discussion, Dan Dido brought up Poison Ivy’s uniform with Ms. Chu. He favored giving her more clothing, making it slightly less easy for men to masturbate to. For a character like Poison Ivy, that’s asking a lot. However, what was really remarkable about this discussion was how Ms. Chu opposed it.

She said outright that she didn’t want to “de-sexualize” Poison Ivy. She wanted to keep that aspect of her character while exploring other parts of it. She said that a female character doesn’t need to be a goddamn nun in order to explore other parts of her personality. This may sound like the most logical concept in the world, but in this insanely politically correct culture of ours, it may as well be on par with quantum mechanics.

Needless to say, my respect for Amy Chu went way up when she told this story. It also revealed something telling/troubling about the male side of the discussion. From the perspective of her editor, Poison Ivy had to put on more clothes in order to become more complex. She had to be less sexual for those complexities to reveal themselves.

As a man, I can understand this to some extent. If a topless woman walked up to me and began telling me all about her charity work in South Sudan, I’d be distracted. Heterosexual men are biologically wired to stare at boobs. It’s a bug in the system, but it’s not a bug that needs to crash the whole system.

This is where I think Amy Chu earned her credibility as a skilled writer. She shows that she willing to embrace every trait of a female character and not just ignore those that may be distractions. She’s willing to work with and/or around those distractions, but she’s not going to ignore them. Sure, she’s making it harder on herself, but the end result is a more balanced female character who also isn’t afraid to show cleavage. As a man and a comic book fan, I can only praise Ms. Chu for such dedication.

There were many fun and entertaining panels at the New York Comic Con this year, but this one was definitely the most revealing. It highlights that popular culture, despite the progress we’ve made since the days of shitty slasher movies, still has issues with what constitutes a strong female character.

Thanks to women like Amy Chu though, we’re making progress. I hope I can be part of that progress with my own work as a romance/erotica writer.

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October 10, 2016 · 7:47 am

Happy Columbus Day (Minus The Implied Racism)!

We all heard the annoying mnemonic in grade school. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. It’s a simple fact we don’t give much thought, like the porn collection of our grandparents or brand of anal lube our parents prefer. Some things are worth not not thinking about. Some things, however, are worth some extra scrutiny.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind Columbus Day. Who doesn’t enjoy yet another excuse for sales at the mall or a day off work? I’m an American. I’ll use any excuse to celebrate something.

That said, it helps if that something is worth celebrating. For Columbus Day, unfortunately, that worth is questionable at best. It’s supposed to commemorate Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America. However, that little factoid is dubious at best and outdated at worst.

Never mind the fact that Native Americans have been roaming the Americas since 12,000 BC. Never mind the fact that Vikings established temporary settlements on America nearly 500 years before Columbus. Never mind the fact that Christopher Columbus was an outright racist who exploited the shit out of the Native Americans he encountered, on top of spreading disease no less. Never mind that…

Actually, I should probably just quit while I’m behind. Let’s face it. History tends to be much less romantic. When we’re kids, it’s kind of hard to discuss things like genocide, slavery, and racism. That just makes kids cry and we don’t need that. They cry enough with Pixar movies.

So what do we do with Columbus Day? Well, it’s another day off and another excuse for sales. That’s pretty much it. Does that vindicate the asshole it’s named after? I don’t think so. We’re Americans. We’re really good at turning a blind eye to horrible shit in our history, especially in certain parts of the deep south. It doesn’t change or undo any of the shit that history does. So what’s the big deal?

I’ll still wish everyone a happy Columbus Day for what it’s worth, but I’ll still question just how much it’s worth celebrating. It’s a question that John Oliver already answered on his HBO show last year so I’ll leave you with that before exploiting the shit out of some sales. It’s still a holiday though. In this hectic world of ours, I think we need to as many as we can get away with.

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October 9, 2016 · 9:12 am

Top 10 Wonder Woman Facts From WatchMojo

Not going to lie. I’m still buzzing from all the festivities at New York Comic Con. There’s just something about seeing so many comic book fans, comic book merchandise, and beautiful women dressed as comic book characters that gets me excited. Does that make me weird? I don’t know and I don’t care.

Still, the biggest thrill for me at New York Comic Con this year definitely came from all the big Wonder Woman displays. It’s not just that she has her first solo movie coming out next year. This year also marks her 75th anniversary as a character and an icon to men, women, and everyone in between.

She’s an inspiration, a source of strength, and a paragon of justice. Those are all things society needs. There are plenty of powerful men fighting for those things, but there’s only one true Wonder Woman who embodies them.

Sure, she has some BDSM elements in her history that got censored and nullified. Sure, her creator had some very radical ideas for his time. This doesn’t make her any less an icon. It does, however, create some interesting opportunities to explore the kinkier sides of her brand of feminism. I don’t know if or when DC or Warner Brothers will ever take advantage of those opportunities, but it’s nice to know they’re there.

So in the spirit of celebrating all things Wonder Woman, I found this video from WatchMojo that highlights some major facts about Wonder Woman. Yes, one of them involves BDSM, but others are a bit less kinky. I’ll let you decide whether or not that’s a bad thing. Enjoy!

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October 8, 2016 · 5:13 pm

My Biggest Prize From New York Comic Con 2016

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When I first started talking about Wonder Woman and her BDSM origins, I noted the lengths DC Comics and their Warner Brother corporate overlords went to in order to mitigate some of those BDSM elements. Considering that Wonder Woman has been incorporated into numerous cartoons aimed at kids, this is not surprising.

However, recent trends in the acceptance of BDSM, thanks in large part to the success of “50 Shades of Grey,” has created an opportunity for some of those elements to find their way back into Wonder Woman’s mythos. While it’s going to be a long time before we see that in a movie or cartoon, there are some efforts underway. I still remember the days when Superfriends was a regular among Saturday morning cartoons.

One of them involves Wonder Woman: Earth One, a modern-retelling of Wonder Woman’s origins through famed comic book writer, Grant Morrison. In this story, Morrison actually went out of his way to revisit some of those BDSM elements in William Marston’s original works and it definitely shows in the story. It doesn’t become outright pornographic, but it certainly has that potential. Christian Grey himself would read this with great approval.

I know this because I bought the book and I’ve read it multiple times. It has a very special place in my vast comic book collection and it is vast on a level I don’t feel comfortable admitting to on the internet. For that very reason, it was a big deal for me that I was able to get this book signed at the New York Comic Con this year.

Sadly, Grant Morrison did not attend. He rarely attends comic book conventions. However, I was able to get the autograph of the artist who drew this wonderful book, Yanick Paquette. He was very nice and he even told me that Volume 2 is in the works. I look forward to reading it and discussing whatever BDSM elements find their way into the story.

For now, coming back from NYCC with an autographed book is good enough for me.

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October 8, 2016 · 9:17 am

The Wonderful Sights From New York Comic Con


Just thought I’d share some of the stuff I saw and experienced at New York Comic Con this year. It was a wonderful experience. I really enjoyed myself. As was the case last year, it was very well-attended. Getting tickets to this thing, especially for Saturday and Sunday, is not easy. It’s worth the wait though.

Naturally, Wonder Woman was well-represented. This year marks her 75th anniversary event. On top of that, she has a movie coming out in early 2017. One of the biggest items on display was the costume that actress, Gal Gadot, wore in the movie. It was quite a site and drew quite a bit of attention, as it should have.

There was also an entire area dedicated to Wonder Woman artwork. This included early, modern, and original pieces of the chracter going all the way back to World War II. Again, her BDSM origins are censored. Anyone seeing these displaces would never know that her creator incorporated BDSM concepts into her history. It’s kind of sad, but not unexpected, given the lengths Warner Brothers and DC Comics have gone to in order to keep Wonder Woman’s character PG-13 at most.


In addition, there were a great many women (and even a few men, I’m not kidding) dressed up as Wonder Woman. She’s always a popular costume, but this year felt more meaningful. It’s not just that she’s approaching a big milestone in her history. She’s going to finally get her own solo movie, something fans have been waiting on for a long time, myself included.

It’s doubtful that this movie will highlight some of the subtle BDSM elements that were so prominent during Wonder Woman’s early years under William Marston, but I think it may be a little too early to explore those elements. First, let’s see that DC Comics and Warner Brothers can tell a decent Wonder Woman movie. Then, and only then, we can worry about whether they can adequately capture the subtle BDSM undertones of Wonder Woman’s persona.

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October 7, 2016 · 5:51 am

On My Way To New York Comic Con!

Just want to make a quick announcement to anyone curious about where I venture when I’m not writing about overtly sexy topics or writing books about said topics. Today is a very special day for guys like me and by guys like me, I mean comic book fans.

I love talking about comics on this blog, including the subtle connections to BDSM, sex-positive superheros, and their ability to depict a balanced romance. So it should come as no surprise to anybody that I make a big fucking deal about the New York Comic Con. It’s taking place this year at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City, a city I spent some time in earlier this year. Well, I’m going back to attend this most holy of festivals to comic fans everywhere!

I only have a day pass, which is all I could get, but I intend to make the most of it. New York Comic Con brings out so many colorful characters and so many passionate fans. I look forward to sharing that passion today and hope it inspires me for more sexy discussions/novels for the coming year. As we comic nerds love to say, excelsior!

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October 6, 2016 · 8:17 am

Fixing The Flawed Wiring Of The Human Brain

I talk a lot about the flaws, failures, and absurdities of the human species on this blog. It’s not by accident, I assure you. It’s not entirely by choice either. I’d love to be able to attribute shortcomings in the human condition to evil spirits, curses, and watered down beer. It’s just a matter of inescapable pragmatism that I constantly circle back to the flaws in our collective human brains.

These flaws extend to issues like unhealthy attitudes towards sexuality, religiously-motivated self-torture, and irrational understandings of gender differences. There’s no escaping it. We, as a species, are a buggy beta version at best and a 10-year-old, malware infested laptop running Windows Vista at worst. The fact we’ve been able to survive this long is a testament to our adaptability and/or dumb luck.

There are a lot of complexities and intricacies to these flaws in the human condition. I’ve touched on many to date on this blog and I intend to explore many more, both here and within my own books. Some may argue that these flaws are part of what make us human. That may be true to some extent, but I also believe that we’re way overdue for an upgrade.

The problem with these upgrades is that the flaws in the human condition are closely tied to the flaws of nature as a whole. Nature, by its own overly-pragmatic accord, is a blunt instrument that is stuck using painfully slow processes to fix and tweak its creations.

Natural selection, adaptation, genetic variation are all painfully slow. They’re akin to bunch of blind rats trying to direct traffic down a busy city street during rush hour. This means they can’t be precise, calculated, or measured. They basically have to build a house using nothing but a baseball bat and globs of wet cement. It is possible, but it’s not going to be very refined.

This clunky, crude process is a big reason why humans are at the mercy of the caveman logic that’s hardwired into our brains. Human civilization progresses quickly and chaotically, but our collective brains are still stuck on the same settings they were when we were hunting sabretooth tigers in the African savanna and shitting in gopher holes.

These are some pretty serious flaws, but the human species, like other species that manage to survive this long, can still adapt because of and/or in spite of these flaws. The human brain itself can do this to a significant degree thanks to brain plasticity, the wonderfully complex process that allows the brain to adapt and tweak its wiring in accord with new experiences.

While this plasticity is somewhat limited, it does provide a mechanism for tweaking our faulty wiring when it gets too faulty. This mechanism can be used to treat issues like addiction, depression, or learning disabilities like dyslexia. There’s a whole cottage industry of sorts, complete with accomplished experts and outright frauds, for rewiring the brain in this way.

About a year ago, Big Think did an article that focused on methods for rewiring the brain to improve performance in their careers. They cited a study where people who actively practiced a particular skill on a piano affected their brains in a similar way as people who just thought about practicing that same skill.

It once again reveals the crudeness of our biology. Our brains don’t always know the difference between action and thought. Both will help tweak the wiring to some degree. Crude or not, it does show the power of this mechanism. It’s easy to exploit if you understand and appreciate the clunky processes it uses.

We can use these new findings about the brain to help us become better performers at work, more successful in our business dealings, and more fulfilled professionally. By consistently training our thoughts, like those imaginary piano players, we can expand the number of branches and synaptic connections in our hippocampus, potentially leading to an increased ability to retain new information and adapt to new situations.

This alone should give some people hope that they can wire themselves to be more efficient in their jobs, their personal lives, and everything in between. Just understand that thoughts and actions can have a similar impact. Thoughts will inspire your actions and vice versa.

So when a parent tells their kid, “If you think it’s going to be awful, then it will be!” they’re not bullshitting them. They are actually telling the truth and they have scientific studies to back it up. That’ll be handy to have for when I have kids one day.

It’s even possible to push this process even further. In his book, “How To Fail At Everything And Still Win Big,” Scott Adams talks about using self-hypnosis to re-wire your thoughts into a more successful framework. He even provides actual instructions for those seeking to get in shape, eat a healthier diet, and deal with idiots at work. It’s a great book that I highly recommend. Given the amount of idiots in this world, this kind of advice is invaluable.

While having a faulty brain that can be hacked is nice to some degree, there are limits. Human beings are complex creatures who are at the mercy of equally complex and exceedingly clunky natural processes. Sure, we have Einstein, Mozart, and Shakespeare, but we also have Stalin, Dahlmer, and Bieber as well. The sheer range and breadth of that margin of error is a tad disconcerting.

This is the point where I close my eyes, ignore the doomsayers, and speculate on the progress mankind will make with its technology one day. We have a distinct advantage compared to the gorillas, elephants, and raccoons of this world. We can do more than just gather food from trees and trash cans. We can build shit. We can build some pretty amazing shit. Hell, we built this.

Our ability to build awesome shit gives me some hope that one day mankind will find a more comprehensive way to fixing the egregious flaws of our biology. It’s not enough to just train our minds and bodies to be better. We need to build shit that’ll make us better beyond anything that biology will allow.

Nature can create the grand canyon. We can make Mount Rushmore, the Hoover Dam, and spray cheese in a can. These are things that can’t happen naturally and, in some cases, are impossible even in ideal conditions. At a certain level of complexity, there needs to be an intelligence force armed with more than a blunt instrument to shape the world around it.

When it comes to the wiring of the human brain, the biggest promise at the moment is nanobots. These are little tiny robots that we can put in our bodies or in anything else and have them perform processes that are impossible to achieve with blunt natural forces.

These processes include going into our brains and physically rewiring the parts that are making us dumb, dispassionate, and depressed. Since these things would have a measure of intelligence, they could do more than just slap duct tape on the structure. They could break it down and rebuild it with shiny new fixtures, polished marble, un-rusted nails.

What does that mean for us? What does that mean for society? How will men and women function in a society where our brains are not at the mercy of the cavemen logic that has guided, for better and for worse, since our hunter/gatherer days?

It’s very difficult to say since I, like the rest of the human race, am limited by my caveman brain. However, it is an idea that I’ve toyed with to some extent in my books. One of my first novels, “Skin Deep,” explored the idea of using technology to reconfigure the human body, which vastly changed how certain characters interacted with one another.

I’ve been contemplating ways to explore this idea in other books. I find myself imaging a future where the brains of men and women are bereft of the flaws and limitations of our current condition. I don’t see us all being these mindless drones in such a future. I actually see us becoming more emotional, more connected, and more passionate than we would be otherwise.

Since this is the internet and pretty much any bit of technology will be applied to sex, I also find myself thinking about how this would affect intimacy. What would it be like for two people, be they gay or straight, to have sex when their brains have been enhanced to such a degree that they don’t have any biological limitations?

What sort of emotions would we feel? What sort of thoughts would we think? What sort of orgasms would we have? These are the kinds of kinky ideas that keep me up at night, among other things. They’re ideas worth contemplating because this future may manifest in some form or another down the line.

According to futurist, Ray Kurzweil, nanorobotic technology will advance to a point where it can re-wire our brains at some time in the 2030s. He claims:

We’re going to expand the brain’s neocortex and become more godlike.

That’s a pretty bold claim, but one that only seems bold from our limited, caveman brains. I’m sure a mouse looks at a hot pocket or a cup of Ramen noodles and struggles to comprehend that as well.

Unlike a rat, we can speculate and tell stories about the lives of those who live in a world where their brains are functioning beyond that of mere cavemen. Will these brains be absent of the flaws, taboos, and hindrances that hinder our ability to be intimate with one another? It’s amazing to contemplate and could make for a damn good, damn sexy story.

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October 5, 2016 · 6:54 am

I Wish Ads Were THIS Honest

I saw this ad on a message board today and just had to share it. It’s a wonderfully relevant summation of the issues I discussed last week on radical feminism and sexual objectification. I know I said I didn’t want to keep talking about those issues. Believe me, I’d rather get a prostate exam from a lobster than talk more about these issues. Sometimes though, you just have to make an exception when it’s warranted.

When I saw this ad, I knew it was warranted and I’ll gladly make an exception because it reflects a point I didn’t get a chance to make in my previous posts. In our overly politically correct culture, we tend to get so emotionally worked up about overly specific shit that we can’t see the forest from the trees. If we’re not careful, we end up burning the whole goddamn forest down.

This particular tree already has wilting branches and dead leaves. It’s the tree of sex in advertising. Like peanut butter and jelly, Jack and Coke, or ketchup and damn near everything, it’s the go-to target for the politically correct crowd that loves to complain about objectification of women. To be fair, it’s hard to blame them when the target it this big.

However, this whining (like pretty much all forms of whining) doesn’t fix anything, nor does it acknowledge the actual context of the situation. It’s the other C-word that offends so many people without realizing it. That word, context, is the key to making sense of so many politically correct absurdities.

In the case of this ad, it basically says what shouldn’t need to be said to a reasonable mind, male or female. The fact we have to actually remind ourselves these days is deeply troubling for both genders. I guess some things just need to be belabored.

With that in mind, I’ll belabor the same point that this ad belabors so retreat to your safe space if you have to:

It’s okay for a heterosexual man to find a beautiful woman attractive.

I’ll give everybody a moment to stop gasping. I know. Shocking, isn’t it? Are we really at the point in our culture where we have to remind ourselves of shit like this? Do we really have to explain slowly and carefully to people that there is a context to all this sexy advertising? I’m usually pretty good at resisting the urge to punch my computer screen, but some days are harder than others.

There’s this disturbing trend in our culture where we’re shaming heterosexual men for finding women beautiful. We may as well shame them for breathing, farting, and coughing as well because this isn’t some elaborate patriarchal conspiracy. This is human biology 101. Heterosexual men find beautiful women attractive. Why does that have to be controversial?

Beyond the controversy, there’s another important point in the ad that’s worth belaboring. Again, retreat to your safe spaces because this may get heavy.

You’re not obligated to look at this ad and it’s perfectly okay to ignore it

This is where I feel like people give way too much credit to the human attention span. We live in a world where everyone cares about a dentist killing a lion one day and Kim Kardashian’s ass the next. We, as a species, are not good at paying attention for long periods of time. Anyone who fell asleep at an economics lecture understands this.

This is where my old friend, caveman logic, comes into play again. We have to have a finite attention span. Pay attention to one thing for too long and either a lion eats us or we forget to procreate. Our brains are wired in a way to help us forget trivial shit and what’s more trivial than an ad?

That’s not to say an ad can’t be offensive. An add that uses the Nazi holocaust to cell an oven is a bit harder to ignore because it exploits an egregious tragedy that actually killed people. A beautiful woman is not on that same level. It’s not even in that same time zone.

I get that some people find things more offensive than others. I get that some people are offended by next to nothing while others are offended by damn near everything. That makes ignoring trivial shit like ads all the more important. It serves everybody better.

Now, there’s one more point in the ad I’d like to make and this is probably something else that requires certain people to hide in their safe space.

Ads that involve beautiful women are targeted towards heterosexual men

I know it’s obvious. I know it’s downright inane, but it still needs to be said because it’s a context that some politically correct types just refuse to see. These ads aren’t just thrown out into the world to piss people off. There is another reason for it and, shockingly enough, it involves selling shit to a specific market.

Like it or not (and some do hate it), heterosexual men make up a good chunk of the market. They are a sizable chunk of the human population and, as I’ve pointed out before, tend to be much more visual compared to women.

They also make a lot of money. Heterosexual men don’t have babies and, historically speaking, have made up a larger chunk of the workforce. It wasn’t really until the 20th century that women, thanks to the development of birth control, were able to join the workforce in larger numbers.

Heterosexual men have money. Advertisers want them to buy their products so they can get some of that money. They make money by getting the attention of customers and what’s the easiest way to get the attention of a heterosexual man? Use a beautiful woman. It’s not just pragmatic. It’s basic biology. I’ll even argue there’s beauty in that biology.

Are you back from your safe space? Have you avoided any possible trigger warnings? Good. I’m glad I could share this ad and this insight.

As an aspiring romance/erotica writer, I want to appeal to everybody, be they heterosexual male, transsexual female, or something in between that I’m not equipped to define. As such, it doesn’t make sense and is kind of a dick move to single out one chunk of that population for shaming.

It’s okay for men to find beautiful women attractive. It’s okay for women to find handsome men attractive. It’s okay for gay men and women to find their own gender attractive. It’s also okay for ads to use this imagery. It’s not going to change our biological wiring. No amount of shame is going to change that. It’s better for everyone if we just accept it, hug each other, and move on with our lives.

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October 4, 2016 · 6:26 am

A Little Story About My First Trip To Las Vegas

Every now and then, I feel inclined to get a little personal on this blog. I don’t know where that inclination comes from. I know it’s dangerous to share some of your personal secrets on the internet, especially if you want a career in politics or try to argue with the wrong people on a message board. It’s a risk, I know, but it’s a risk I feel is worth taking in order to make this blog more entertaining.

I don’t feel like I’ve gotten overly personal on this blog thus far. I’ve talked about little things I find sexy. I’ve confessed to sleeping naked and loving it. I’ve even shared a story about my own circumcision. These stories may be personal to some extent, but they’re not stories that would get you kicked out of a bar if you told them out loud.

We all have stories like that. We all live crazy lives to some degree, some being crazier than most. I like to think I’ve had a healthy amount of crazy in my life. Some of that crazy has found its way into my personal life and my novels. However, there are some stories that stand out more than others and I’d like to share one.

Now don’t worry. This story isn’t so personal that you’ll need a rubber glove and some industrial strength lubricant. It’s just a little experience that stands out at a time in my life when my overall experiences were limited for reasons that are too convoluted to explain. It’s also an experience that influenced one of my novels in a very particular way for reasons that should be laughably obvious.

So what is this experience and how did it affect me so much? Well, in order to explain it, I need to establish the setting and context. This took place during my first trip to Las Vegas, Nevada. That alone should give you a hint of where this story is going.

Keep your panties on. It’s not going to be that kind of story. I save those stories for my books. This one is a different kind of story, one that requires a bit more imagination than we can afford in the era of internet porn.

It starts out with a younger, inexperienced, socially awkward version of Jack Fisher. At the time, I was 21-years-old. For some, that’s a magical age, one where fake IDs become useless and opportunities to fuck up grow exponentially. For me, it was just a number.

I did not take advantage of these opportunities. Like I said, I was socially awkward and exceedingly self-conscious. This was before I started working out, before I got my eyes fixed, and before I fully recovered from my terrible teenage acne problem. All-in-all, I was a pretty boring guy to be around.

I finally kicked my ass into taking advantage of an opportunity when a relative of mine offered to take me to Las Vegas. They had a business trip that came with a free hotel. I could tag along and all I’d have to pay for was the plane ticket. It was as sweet a deal as I could’ve hoped for and since economics tends to trump social awkwardness, I went through with it.

I didn’t know what to expect. I’m 21-years-old and still in college too so I didn’t have a lot of money to spend, but I did have a decent summer job so that helped. I ended up being overwhelmed in the best possible way when I first saw the flashy sights and spectacles of Las Vegas. It was like walking into a fantasy world where the hold boot of reality didn’t kick my ass nearly as hard as it usually did.

On my first day there, I just took in all the sights. I come from a town where a Holiday Inn is considered the fanciest hotel in town. Las Vegas made that look like a third world shit-hole by comparison. It was pretty damn amazing.

Once I started exploring the casino floors, I had to get used to the idea of people offering free drinks every couple of minutes. I’m normally not one to turn down free drinks of any kind, but the sheer volume of free drinks they offered at this place was overwhelming. I’m pretty sure I could’ve permanently scarred my liver if I were so inclined.

I managed to resist the urge to get plastered on free booze. For the rest of my first day there, I hung out with relatives and friends. We ate this awesome Italian restaurant where the waiters actually spoke real Italian. We walked the old parts of Las Vegas and met real Elvis impersonators. We even caught a concert in the middle of the street. It’s as much fun as it sounds.

Needless to say, I was pretty damn excited from all this. By the time it got late, I was too giddy to sleep. I had never been this restless before in my life. I had to see more of Las Vegas.

While everyone else in my party slept, I just walked the halls of the casino at my hotel/resort. I played some games, listened to some music, and yes, I helped myself to more free drinks. There’s only so much free alcohol I can turn down. Then, at around two in the morning, something happened that still sticks with me to this day.

As I’m walking through the casino floor, I pass by the main bar. There aren’t many people there at this hour, but one figure stands out more than most. There’s a beautiful woman just sitting at the bar alone, wearing this perfectly fitted blue dress. I swear this dress was like a second skin on her. It fit her so beautifully that I have to assume it cost at least half my tuition from last year.

Keep in mind, I’m still wearing clean jeans and the nice dress shirt that I wore to the restaurant that evening. So when she looks at me, she doesn’t see some dorky college boy whose several grades behind on his social skills. She sees a well-dressed young man wandering the floors of a casino alone, looking for new experiences.

At that moment as I’m walking by, she looks at me. Then, she smiles and lightly parts her silky blonde hair behind her ear. I may have the social skills of a brain-damaged monkey at the time, but I get the message loud and clear.

Clear or not, my brain struggled to process it. I swear, my heart jumped right up into my throat and I almost spit up all the free drinks I had over the course of that night. I manage to keep my composure and my dignity. I keep walking, but I make it clear to her I’ve noticed her glance. I acknowledge that message.

After this, things get a little blurry. My brain is struggling to process everything, but my body keeps moving. I keep on walking, although I’m not entirely sure where I’m going. I barely remember how I ended up in the men’s room next to the bar. I just remember looking at myself in the mirror, blinking a few times, and convincing myself that what I just saw wasn’t a trick or a product of sleep-deprivation.

My mind is going a million miles a minute. Should I go back to the bar and talk to this woman? Should I buy her a drink? What the fuck do I do? I’m a socially inept 21-year-old dork for crying out loud! I’m not equipped to handle this.

However, I remind myself that this is Las Vegas. This is an opportunity that I won’t get back home. So, with way more courage than I’ve dared to grasp to this point in my life, I decide I’m going to buy this woman a drink. What happens after that may or may not determine whether I die happy.

After I fix myself up and try not to look like someone still healing from the scars of high school, I leave the bathroom and make my way back to the bar. Then, in what I’m sure is karma’s way of kicking me in the balls, the woman is gone.

I walked up and down the bar for a good 10 minutes or so, looking for this woman. I never found her. For all I know, she wasn’t even real. She was just a figment of the fantasy world that is Las Vegas, a manifestation of a socially awkward young man who had yet to fully connect with the adult world.

Even so, I often find myself wondering what would’ve happened had I not hesitated the way I did. What would’ve happened if I just walked up to the bar, offered to buy the woman a drink, and go from there? Would I have ended up in bed naked with a beautiful woman? Would I have gotten a firm slap across the face for assuming way too much? Would I have accidentally flirted with an undercover cop?

I don’t know. I’ll never know. It’s one of those experiences that will always haunt me to some extent. It’s also an experience that highlighted a certain part of my life when I was woefully inept at connecting with people. While I have made progress in improving those social skills, I still have a long way to go. However, I think back to this memory and see it as a clear sign of where I was and how far I’ve come.

In case you haven’t figured it out, this experience did serve as the primary inspiration for my book, “Jackpot.” This book is not quite an accurate telling of that night. It is embellished to say the least, even by Las Vegas standards. However, it’s one of the few books I’ve written that has a genuine personal element to it.

I haven’t been back to Las Vegas since that fateful trip. I do plan to go again one day, hopefully while celebrating my success as an erotica/romance writer. When I do, I wonder if I’ll have another opportunity like the one I had all those years ago. I hope so because this time, I know I’ll be ready for it.

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