I don't mean confessional like what you say to a priest, but rather the way the term is used in literary criticism -- e.g. the "confessional" poets like Sylvia Plath. One reason I'm posting this is that I embarrassed myself a little bit last night and maybe some context will help explain. I'm hoping that my stories will be entertaining and others can also spread amusement; besides, we're in a bit of a poltiical dead zone . I don't want this to be "super's confessional thread" though I acknowledge that might the result. Anyway:
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What I have wanted more than anything in my life has been to be a great lover. After decades of work and dedication, I'm there -- and it's literally the only thing in my life that I'm proud of. My academic "achievements" were not achievements at all. I was blessed with tremendous natural intelligence. That was my luck, like being born to a billionaire or with a body like Greg Oden. And just as Greg Oden feels like the biggest bust in NBA history -- which he said in an interview, and I think it's probably because he felt that being picked #1 overall was less of an accomplishment and more just a reflection of God-given talent -- I always feel that I've squandered my gifts. Greg Oden was unsuccessful because of injuries; I had my own share of "injuries" in the form of mental health. But still, he doesn't feel good about his NBA career and I feel similarly about my tremendous academic success and very modest professional success.
By contrast, I was not naturally talented at sex. That's not a statement about my endowment, which doesn't need to be discussed, but rather about my ability to use my various tools to please my partner. Two stories, taken together, perhaps explain.
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In law school, my girlfriend once confided in her friend Elinor about her frustrations with me -- that I could be smart enough to get a 180 on my LSAT but I couldn't figure out how to organize my notes and notebooks so they weren't scattered around our apartment. She knew I tried; I just couldn't do it. Part of it was that the notes were a formality. I took them because I thought I should but I never used them. Anyway, Elinor immediately blabs about this, and of course, at a top 5 law school were people live and die by their grades and scores, word got around. Back then, scores like 178 or 179 weren't super-rare at the elite schools, but not many people got 180. As if there is a significant difference between 178 and 180 but whatever.
So a friend of mine asked me about it. "What did you do to get a 180 on the LSAT?" I demurred, saying that I didn't clearly remember last fall because I was going through a tremendous amount of stress. She smelled that our for the bullshit it was, and pressed again. So I said, "The weekend before the test, I picked up the sample test they send you when sign up for the exam. I did it, and did well. So then I showed up on Saturday morning and took the real thing." Then, word started to get around (because, as any law grad will attest, law school is surprisingly like middle school, down to the lockers) that I was a big braggart and was full of myself.
A couple of weeks later, I saw my friend at the law library at midnight. It was the night before our Civ Pro midterm -- the only midterm exam I ever had that counted toward the grade -- and people were there studying. I asked her why she was calling me a braggart, given that she had asked me about it point blank and didn't accept my evasion. What was I supposed to do, lie? Yes, she said. Lie. I asked her whether she lies about her things and she said, "no. But I didn't get a 180 without studying or taking a course." Well, OK I guess. Then she said that she didn't even believe me because look at me, I was at the law library at midnight. I asked her if this was another time I was supposed to lie, and she said no, she wanted the truth. So I told her the truth, which maybe I shouldn't have but I was kind of pissed: I went to the library to play computer games, because my girlfriend didn't like it when I played computer games, and especially didn't like it when I did so before an exam that we both knew I was going to ace. My friend stormed away. She later apologized, and we were still friendly, but we weren't friends any more. She's argued about 15-20 cases in front of the Supreme Court. I've argued zero.
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After law school, I went to DC for my clerkship. My girlfriend and I had been gradually extricating ourselves from our relationship, which we decided would fully end when we were done with school (she wasn't in law school, but her program ended the same year mine did). And when I got to DC, I was really lonely and kind of desperate. I did a lot of internet dating, to very mixed results. Then I attracted the attention of the type of woman that young men dream about: an Austrian-Polish woman (she was born in Poland before her family defected) with an MD in neurology, who was in the states doing research at the NIH. Oh also she had been an Olympic athlete and represented her country in the Barcelona Games in handball, and yeah she was smoking hot. Her sister was a well-known model in Europe.
So one night we were chatting over the internet and she was impressed by my credentials. She was also particularly impressed by my knowledge of Polish movies and my insights about how Poland has always been defined by being seen as a satellite culture of two different superpowers (Russia, and Prussia/Germany). then she asked me what was my IQ. Since my experience with talking about test scores has been negative (see above), I tried to evade. But she put a number on the table and asked, "this high?" I said, truthfully, "higher." Then there was a pause and she typed, "where do you live? I want to come over." LOL. I guess this is the funny part.
When she arrived, she was hotter than her pics, and her German accent and the way she spoke German melted my heart. And yes, we had sex that night. And after we had sex, which I thought went pretty well, she immediately started talking about IQs. LOL. It turns out that what she really wanted in life, other than three BMWs and a beach house, was to pump out little geniuses. And we had a relationship for nine months: I had fallen harder for her than anyone previously, and she wanted my intelligence genes. I mean, there was more to it than that. We did have some genuinely good times together. We decided to move to New York together. I was buying the house on the basis of my Wachtell Lipton salary. And when we were in contract, this happened:
After sex one night, she asked me, "how can you be so smart but you can't figure out how to f me properly?" She said the last bit in German, perhaps knowing that I found that sexy. I was taken aback. I said, "I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were unhappy. Have you been faking?" And she said, no, but that her orgasms were pretty small and best case, they were medium. And she wanted really big ones. I asked her what she wanted me to do for her, and she said that I'm the man and so it's my job to know these things. Read a book or something, she said. A week later, she broke up with me. I cancelled the house contract and bought something else in a hurry.
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So that's when my life goals changed. I was always socially awkward and weird -- looking back, I'm now pretty sure that I've been undiagnosed mildly neurodiverse -- and nothing I ever tried really did much about that. I was easily depressed, and meds weren't working for me at the time (as it took me a long time to get a proper diagnosis). But being a good lover was something I could do. And so I bought the books that I had always thought were FOS (most were, but some were full of good ideas). I watched instructional videos on tantric and other advanced techniques. When I was first married, I paid extremely close attention to my wife's enjoyment and learned how to do better and better.
And now, with my current wife, I've achieved my goal. I'm finally proud of something I've done. The sad part is that it's not socially acceptable to talk about. I can never get the credit. Ha, that's what anonymous message boards are for, suckers. The other frustrating thing is that I don't know whether I'm really good, or if it's only with my wife because we have "chemistry." It doesn't really matter, of course, because my wife is who matters . . . but I still kind of want to try with another woman, just to know if I'm actually good in general. I guess this is the other funny part. Guys often dream of strange. I just want to run a lab experiment, so to speak.
I know, weird. This whole line of attack on the GOP is a bit unsettling for me, because the truth is that I'm weird. I'm not weird like GOP weird, and anyway it's far more important to me that we win the election than for my feelings not to be hurt, so I don't take it personally. It's just worth noting that Harris/Walz/Dems might be losing the weird person vote. That vote was probably GOP to begin with, and the weird dudes of the world are not exactly a potent voting bloc. Still, just saying.
But not only hot water.
