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To return to the story of Poker Maven and his chest-thumping pride in being able to gain sexual access to very young and very vulnerable females by employing the simple stratagem of paying their bills and giving them a roof over their heads….

In response to Poker Maven’s expressed predilection for waifs, someone raised the question of why he wouldn’t want to consort with more intellectual women.

His answer, and I am quoting:

“Alphabetically:

Albert Einstein

Ed Miller

Arnold Snyder”*

The presumed intent of this response was to give examples of men who have been brought low by being foolish enough to involve themselves with “intellectual” women. (I used the scare quotes because the thread was rife with perplexed little emoticons, apparently expressing disbelief that there is such a thing as a female intellectual.) Another thread contributor appended his own list: Adam, Samson, and David (with the Bathsheba incident in mind). This second list was of particular interest to me because it is exactly the same list that Sir Gawain adduces in his misogynistic rant after he learns that he has been set up by Morgan le Fay and the Lady of the Castle. Someone in Poker World has been doing his reading.

I will leave Arnold Snyder out of this because I know zip about him and his wife and his ostensible “brought-lowedness,” but what about the others? Albert Einstein’s first wife was herself well educated in science, to the point that there is controversy as to whether she did or did not contribute to his scientific work, and if she did, to what extent. Now, they were ultimately divorced, so we can assume that their marriage was not unalloyed bliss, but did Mileva bring Albert low? I would say not, because his paradigm-shifting papers were written and published during his marriage. It is not as if he did great things before taking up with Mileva, and then she suddenly turned him into a stumblebum.

As for Edward, I gather that in Poker Maven’s mind, the severing of Edward’s ties with Poker World is (a) a matter of professional ruination and (b) all the fault of the intellectual woman he married. Both of these propositions are simply untrue, and Poker Maven finally had to resort to “Just kidding!” As for the other list that goes back to Gawain’s rant, it could be argued that Adam and Samson were indeed brought low by the machinations of intellectual women (Eve, for example, was specifically tempted by the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), but all Bathsheba did was take a bath in the privacy of her own home, unaware that she was seen by a Peeping David who was doing what he wasn’t supposed to do where he wasn’t supposed to be doing it.

So much for Poker Maven’s contention that brilliant men are brought down by intellectual women, an idea that, despite its lack of supporting evidence and indeed its inherent foolishness, nonetheless resonated with  a significant percentage of the denizens of Poker World.Â

When I first became involved with Poker World, I was sure that its members’ constant characterization of women as hos and bitches and skanks and sloots, totally lacking in reason and intellect, was merely the lockerroom bravado of immature male adolescents, endlessly striving to become skilled PUAs (Pick Up Artists), whose sexual experience was nonetheless primarily confined to jerking off to internet porn. They couldn’t REALLY believe their misogynistic drivel, could they?

But the more I read of what the poker dudes have to say, the more I am convinced that misogyny is a cherished part of their core beliefs, not that this is anything new under the sun (see Jankyn and his Boke of Wikked Wyves). How else to account for the venom and vitriol they are still spewing all over my daughter-in-law a good half year, an eternity in internet time, after she left Poker World? According to the poker dudes, she was a loud, confrontational troll, illogical and always running off at the mouth before she got her facts straight, in short, to use a favorite phrase, “bat-shit crazy.” Even if she were all of those things (and I am not saying she is), Poker World is full of poker dudes who run their mouths without having a clue, who are loud and confrontational, who troll and are generally obnoxious. If Poker World purged itself of all such poker dudes as it purged itself of Elaine, Poker World would be a mighty quiet place.

Now Elaine is in fact an outspoken woman who likes to stir the pot and is more than capable of being deliberately provocative. And so am I. (That’s Edward in the background whistling, “I wanna a girl just like the girl….”) But Elaine pushed all the poker dudes’ buttons, and I, saying many of the same things and explicitly expressing contempt for the misogynistic ravings of so many of the poker dudes, didn’t. Why the difference? I can only guess it’s because I am a crone, and we crones finally get to say whatever we want because no one takes anything we say seriously anyway. But Elaine is in her prime childbearing years, and that’s a different story.

My conclusion is that the poker dudes (representative perhaps of the majority of men?) are simultaneously absolutely convinced that the mere possession of penis and testicles renders them automatically superior to all who lack those anatomical features and desperately afraid that it doesn’t. Any woman who threatens this precarious balance of fear and loathing cannot be tolerated.  Thus Elaine must be burned at the stake.  Thus Poker Maven, a 58-year-old man who is fixated on the SAT score he earned when he was 18, does not dare to allow a grown, intelligent, educated woman into his life–God (or rather There-Is-No-God), what if she had better SATs than he did?–and focuses his sexual desires on very young, very vulnerable women who cannot possibly give him a run for his money.

Happily for intellectual women, there are self-confident men who enjoy women with brains, but that’s a topic for another day.

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*For those not familiar with Poker World, Arnold Snyder is a writer on gambling topics who had the chutzpah to challenge something Poker Maven wrote, and his wife had the temerity to chime in.

I have been quiet the last number of days. I’ve been doing some holiday stuff like writing notes on Christmas/New Year’s cards to all my New Orleans friends now scattered throughout the country. All the notewriting aggravated the repetitive motion problem in my hand (ouch!), and I have limited my keyboarding/mousing as a result. I am also feeling the effects of the short days leading up to the solstice. After so many years in the deep South, I find that I am really bothered by the dark afternoons.

Next week should be better. I’ll be alone until the day after Christmas (which is not my holiday anyway), but the rest of the week I will have reunions with almost all my old friends (the ones on this side of the Atlantic anyway), and I am looking forward to that. My daughter-in-law sent me an e-card today, wishing me a “Happy Challahday” to the tune of “Superstition.” LMAO

Since I don’t give a damn what Bill O’Reilly says, I will wish everyone joy on his/her preferred seasonal holiday and a good civil new year.

While to some extent the impetus for this blog derived from posting I had done (and no longer do) on a major poker site, I am doing, at my son’s suggestion, what many many friends have asked me to do over the years–write about my adventures. It is merely a coincidence that something was going on in Poker World that I wanted to comment on and relate to some of the aspects of my own life. And truth be told, I was not pleased with the crack Poker Maven took at my son, although my son can certainly take care of himself, both in words and pictures. And, yes, Majorkong at AdvantageGamblers is really my son.

While I may from time to time (or even often) respond here to subjects brought up in Poker World threads, that is not the main purpose of my blogging, nor are poker young’uns my main perceived audience. Y’all are welcome to read and comment, even toolishly as someone put it, but it’s not all about you. You are not “supposed” to read it (your professor didn’t assign it and it won’t be on the test), your sensibilities–such as they are–are not being catered for, and if you are squicked by the content, please go elsewhere. OTOH if you read it and find it of interest, feel free to chime in. I am doing this because it pleases me to write on this topic (I am famous among my acquaintance for telling these stories orally). I am indeed a verbal exhibitionist and I do get off on words–mine and other people’s.Â

There is also an underlying philosophy. To my mind exercise of one’s sexuality (in a responsible way, of course) is one of the (few) bright spots in human existence. I do not think sex should be something hole-in-a-corner, I do not think women who enjoy an active and varied sex life are sluts and hos, and I think that everyone, the old, the fat, the ugly, the disabled, the gay, the straight, the male, the female, the bi and transgendered, etc., etc., has a right to enjoy his/her life as a sexual being. If that philosophy offends you, this isn’t the place for you to hang out.

Recently a poker maven and self-labeled mathematical genius in his late 50s has created a bit of a stir by publicly crowing about his prowess in attracting the sexual attentions of very young but (barely) legal women (including a 16 year old runaway). This stir has spilled over into numerous threads, blog entries, cartoons and song parodies on several different websites.

I must admit I find myself perplexed. What is there to crow about when an older man with a very substantial income decides, by his own admission, to devote a portion of that income to supporting a down on her luck young runaway in exchange for sexual access? Truly, guys, does this constitute some kind of trophy? Are you impressed?

Why would a middle-aged man want a 16 year old sexual partner anyway? It is a well-known fact that while men’s sexual potency and performance reach their pinnacles around the age of 19 and then decline fairly steeply, typically women do not reach the peak of their sexual response until the mid-thirties and remain at or near that peak for many years. So why would a man in his 50s want a partner who is many years away from her sexual ripening? A 16 year old girl can appeal to a 16 year old boy, but what does she have to offer a man in his 50s? The typical 16 year old girl is simply just plain not all that good in bed. I never met the 16 year old runaway, but I have met Poker Maven’s current (very) young lady, and while she struck me as a perfectly decent young woman, she is not centerfold-level eye candy, just an ordinary, average, everyday kinda gal.Â

So Poker Maven opens his wallet, some more or less average young ladies open their legs, what’s there to beat chests about?

In the interest of full disclosure now that I have ragged on Poker Maven, I have to admit that my preference runs to younger men, but not THAT young. I have a rule that any man that I have sex with has to be at least several years older than my son, and in the last decade or so since I have been alone, I have actually had to enforce that rule a couple of times. Right now that would put the “young” limit at about 30-35. More usually my preferred age range is about 5-10 years younger than I am–which would put the prime age about 50-55. Now the reason for my preference is plain. Alas, the older the man the more likely he is to be a candidate for Viagra. That’s just nature.

It’s not that I discriminate completely against men my age or older. I do have one dear friend with benefits who is four and a half years older than I am. But our “beneficial” friendship goes all the way back to when I was in my freshman year and he was in his early twenties and it was way cool to be seeing an “older” man–and I am still seeing him to this very day (or at least month).Â

As much as I favor younger men now, so I preferred the older ones when I was young. When I was 13, I started a year and a half long relationship with a guy who was 22 (note: he was in his 20s, not his 50s). Yeah, we both knew I was jailbait, but today’s concern with pedophilia didn’t exist in the same way back then. Looking back, I consider this a positive aspect of my life, but then I was lucky and didn’t get pregnant or contract some loathesome disease. Being an adolescent, while I knew these problems could occur, I didn’t really believe that they would occur–and they didn’t. If they had, it would have been a disaster, but they didn’t so, oh, well. Years later when I was home from Penn for the winter holidays, I had a reunion with this fellow. We were sitting up on the mountain in the snow, and I asked him what he, a grown man, saw in a 13 year old girl. He replied, “Mimi, you were never 13″–whatever that means.Â

I should add that my positive feelings about this relationship kept me from stroking out when my 16 year old son took a “woman” ten years his senior to his high school prom. I figured it wouldn’t take him long to figure out that she was the poster child for immaturity–she wanted him to buy her acreage for a llama ranch–and it didn’t.

BTW if you have read this far and are wondering how a little old lady, more than plump and with gray hair, who never had a hot moment in her life (my beneficial friend says I was cute, but I think he’s being kind), manages to attract men 25 years her junior, well, I am not entirely sure myself, but I do have some thoughts on that topic which I will write about in my next entry in which I will also consider what it is that Poker Maven has against intellectual women.

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My dayjob, when I had one, was teaching medieval languages and literature, specializing in Old and Middle English. My favorite Middle English work and the one I emphasized in my publications was Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an alliterative Arthurian romance written in the late 14th century. Why was that my favorite? Well, it “looks” gorgeous, written by an unknown master of visual description, almost (anachronistically) cinematic in its technique, and it sounds gorgeous–the Gawain-poet has few peers when it comes to the use of meter and other aural effects. But what I really liked were the famous seduction scenes.

Among the pastimes (whether in real life or merely in literature) of the high and late medieval aristocracies was luf-talkyng (in French, daliaunce). That is to say, verbal sex. In a world where religion permeated every aspect of life and privacy was almost impossible to come by (this is before the invention of the hallway) and folks were almost never alone, the poems of the troubadours were essentially songs of sexual frustration. People were, so it seems, forced to get it on with words, not deeds.

The classical literary example of the luf-talkyng phenomenon is the three seduction scenes in SGGK. For those who missed out on the sophomore Brit lit survey, the chateleine of a mysterious magical castle thrice enters the bedroom of her guest, Sir Gawain, each time (for nefarious purposes not clarified until the end of the poem and not really clarified even then) trying to get him to have sex with her. Her husband is out hunting, she has sent the servants away, and she has bolted the door so that no one can pass through the room on the way to somewhere else. She is the aggressor–she flatly tells him that he is welcome to her body (although some modern critics can’t bear to believe she is that blunt)– and for an assortment of reasons Gawain has to refuse her overtures with courtesy. He can’t take her up on her offer, and he can’t just tell her to fuck off.  Their three “conversations” are exercises in power exchange–there are, for example, references to bondage and rape fantasies. In the real world of the Middle Ages, power rested primarily in men, but in the literary bedroom it’s woman on top, although here there is more than a little bit of bottoming from the top. As Gawain gets hornier and hornier, his syntax gets more and more convoluted, until finally the third morning when the lady enters his bedroom with her “snowy white hills” on display, Gawain’s “heart” swells and then he “melts” with joy as does she. Shows what some well-chosen words and a gander at “snowy white hills” can do for a man.

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So, about six hundred years after Sir Gawain did his swelling and melting, verbal sex is back in fashion, this time facilitated by intersection of the internet and its illusion of privacy (ask Mark Foley how private it really is) and the mobile telephone and the AIDS epidemic. Verbal sex works for me and for many others just as it worked for Gawain and the lady of the castle. (It didn’t quite work well enough for the lady, but then Gawain had the Virgin Mary on his side–only she kept him from ripping off the lady’s skimpy attire.) There truly is nothing new under the sun.

There was one non-electronic form of verbal sex I used to enjoy greatly. When I was with a (male) friend at a restaurant (preferably one outside of New Orleans where the waitstaff was not made up of my students) or at the gate lounge at an airport, I would gleefully relate stories of my sexual adventures just loud enough so that people nearby could hear me if they strained a little bit. I would get a kick out of seeing all the guys on the edge of their seats, while their wives pulled them back and gave me the hard eye. I guess that made me a verbal exhibitionist. Given the raison d’etre for this blog, I guess I am still a verbal exhibitionist….

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A bit of a postscript about SGGK–