ERICA: A SHORT TREATISE ON THE USEFULNESS OF MIRROR NEURONS AND HUMAN COMPETITIVENESS
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
Chapter 1 — MONK'S MITZVAH
Erica took another deep puff on the joint, then asked, "Monk, you were happily married, right?"
We were in the parking lot outside a jazz club getting high in my car. Like a lot of urban millennials, Erica doesn't own one.
She had recently moved to town and wandered into the local bar where I hang out. She wasn't a ten —maybe a seven or eight — (I'll stop using the numerical rating system when all of my female friends have abandoned it too) — but she definitely had the young thing going for her — exotic, semitic good looks; thick, dark wavy shoulder length hair; nice legs. Her breasts were small but perky, B cup I'm guessing, though I never saw her wear a bra. The most striking thing about her was her ruby red lipstick. Her mouth was a red gash. I wondered if she was advertising her specialty. As it turned out, nothing could've been farther from the truth. I struck up a conversation with her in the bar, and got her to try my key lime pie cocktail. She liked it so I ordered her one. They're very potent.
At the time, I wasn't really interested in her, but I was working on my picking-up-women-in-bars muscles and she seemed like a good test. I'm sure I wasn't what she was looking for, but I'm the one with whom she ended up engaging. I told her I was heading off to another bar to see a Balkan horn band, and after I explained what a Balkan horn band was, she wanted to come with me. They were good. We stood in the back of the room listening for a few minutes, then Erica grabbed my hand and made me go up by the stage to dance with her. The band was playing a polka so I gave her a quick polka lesson (LEFT RIGHT LEFT, RIGHT LEFT RIGHT). We danced and laughed and had a thoroughly enjoyable night. Most girls really do just want to have fun. Here's a tip guys. Want girls? Be fun.
During the course of the evening, we discovered that we both loved listening to jazz —particularly free jazz, which sounds like noise to a lot of people. I've got friends to do stuff with, but none of them like jazz at all, no matter what kind. Since she also had no one with whom to attend jazz concerts, I suggested that we let each other know when there was something coming up that we'd like to see. We'd been accompanying each other to shows for the past few months, and had grown fairly close. She felt free to talk about intimate subjects with me since I'd told her flat out that her age precluded her from being a romantic interest. She's 27, but she looks younger. An abundance of youthful enthusiasm makes her seem even younger than that. At the same time, she knows a lot of things that many people will never know about: Terry Riley, John Zorn, Judy Chicago, Robert Guston, Florence Knoll, Zora Neale Hurston,
Gaudeamus Igitur
for chrissake. She was a voracious reader. She got it when I threw the occasional Yiddish or Hebrew word or phrase into our conversations. I'm not Jewish, I just lived on New York City for a couple of decades and had many Jewish friends and co-workers. She also possessed a level of humorous sarcasm that most women in their twenties don't. I love that. Oh, by the way, I'm 64, a widower, and retired. I tell people I'm "independently comfortable."
"Incredibly happily married."
"So how do you do that? My parent's marriage only lasted until I was 6."
I try not to act like I'm bestowing pearls of wisdom on the young, but since she was asking, I figured why not?
"Secrets to a happy relationship. Let's see. Don't go into any relationship with preconceived notions of how relationships are supposed to be. A relationship is whatever two people mutually decide it is, and every relationship is different. And by the way, none of them are "as seen on TV". Thinking that there's a standard that relationships need to adhere to can actually be the thing that ends relationships. That includes sexual relationships. I repeat. No two are the same."
She passed me the joint and after a deep hit. I continued, "Don't go into a relationship, thinking the other person will change, or thinking that you won't. Being in a relationship changes everything for both parties over time, and it's good to accept that rather than fight it. Embrace change."
I passed the joint back to Erica.
"Ummmm. Keep as many individual friends as you can, and make new friends as a couple. Take an interest in your partner's stuff: hobbies, work life, interests. If you get past thinking that your "stuff" is better, you'd be surprised how interesting someone else's stuff can be. Sense of humor
always
helps. Be as honest as you can about how you feel without causing your partner pain. Say 'I love you.' every day, even on the days when you love them slightly less. Try very hard to not go to bed mad. That's about it I guess."
She pursed her lips while she absorbed this information. Then turned to me and asked, "What about sex."
"Yes, definitely sex."
She laughed and replied, "No, I mean, did you and your wife have good sex the whole time you were married?"
"Less as the years went by, but it was definitely regular and it was definitely good. That's another thing you have to work at sometimes, but it's not really too onerous a task."
"Ha, I guess it shouldn't be."
"Since you brought it up, I've got one more secret to a happy marriage."
"And that would be?"
We were already too high and she was lighting up yet another joint. We had the windows cracked and smoke must have been billowing out of them like an old Cheech and Chong movie. People were walking by my car, and we got the occasional thumbs up.
"Permission to speak freely, sir!"
She smiled and said, "Permission granted."
"Learn to love giving oral sex and learn to get very good at it. Learn to enjoy receiving it too if you don't now. It can be the lubricant that keeps relationships alive. When other types of sex are problematic, there's always oral. It can be transactional too."
"Transactional?"
"I once heard a dominatrix say, 'A man will agree to anything if his dick's in your mouth.' It's the same for women. I've noticed that once they've had a bunch of orgasms they're much more . . . accommodating. You get to win arguments sometimes, even when you're wrong."
"Great. So, is that advice for me?"
"It's for everybody, men and women. If a man loves getting head and doesn't reciprocate, it probably means that he's a narcissistic fuck who feels superior to you, either that or he just lacks the empathy necessary for a healthy relationship. Either way, kick him to the curb. I've met very few women who dislike receiving head."
"Tell me about it. What is it with guys wanting to get their dicks sucked anyhow?"
Now it was my turn to laugh. "Yeah, that's pretty much a universal with guys. Like Henry Ford said, 'You can have any color you want, as long as it's black.' It's something that almost all heterosexual women have to deal with, and let's face it, sucking a dick is much more difficult than eating a pussy."
Another pause while she handed me the j, then, "Preaching to the choir mister. Was your wife good at it?"
I took a hit and replied, "She was excellent at it, good at first, and she continued to improve as the years went by. I got better at pleasing her too."
"Was it just practice that made her improve?"
I wasn't too high to miss noticing that she was focused on my late wife's oral skills rather than mine.
"A lot of practice and constant encouragement. Plus letting her know what felt good without implying that she was doing something wrong. Most of the time I made sure that she got off too. Like I said, transactional. You want to do favors for people who do you favors."
"I'm kind of afraid of doing it, but it's because guys always want to shove their cocks into my stomach and it's a lot more that I can handle. I'm always afraid I'm going to puke. Sometimes I actually do."
"I know what you mean. Just between us, if you throw up while some dude is trying to get his dick down your throat as deep as your spleen, that's on him. I think maybe porn is to blame. Guys who don't have much experience think porn is the benchmark for how sex should be. Search on 'throatfucking' and see how rough boys can play. What's sad is how porn raises the bar for women. One month's filthy porn video becomes the next month's benchmark . . . and don't be fooled, most porn is for men. A woman's pleasure isn't usually very high on the priority list. Women's porn is a niche market."
"I've seen throatfucking videos on XHamster, and they can be pretty rough."
