Porn Cliches, Or, On Not Seducing the Plumber
This is a story about a porn cliché.
And it’s about the difference between what you want . . . and what you think you want.
A few years ago, when I was in my old apartment, our building had a plumber who used to come out pretty regularly. (Old building; lousy plumbing; frequent visits from the plumber.) He was kind of a dish: young, friendly, skinny but muscular, bright red hair, a sweet Irish accent like whisky in butter. I used to joke about what a babe he was, and how one of these days I might succumb to the porn cliché and seduce the plumber.
So this one time he came out to the apartment to fix the crappy plumbing . . . and he stayed to chat.
For no reason that I could figure out right away.
And the conversation kept taking these odd, non-sequitur turns. He brought up the art house movie schedule hanging on my door . . . and made a point of mentioning the porn star documentary that was coming up. He mentioned the science fiction books on my bookshelf . . . and kept talking about how he liked science fiction cover art, it was so sexy, with all those half-naked girls and guys. (Little did he know that the cover art is probably my least favorite thing about science fiction . . .)
It was a little odd. Flattering, but odd. After all, he’d never paid me anything but friendly professional interest before. I never did figure out why this visit was different. But my best guess is that he’d seen the stack of porno videos in the office next to the bathroom — I was working as a porn critic then, as I still am today — and I think he figured that, with a stack of pornos just sitting out in the open like that, I might be easy and horny and hot to trot. And maybe the porn cliché/ “visit from the plumber” connection had crossed his mind as well as mine.
But back to the story.
Like I was saying, this was an odd conversation, and it took me a while to catch on. (I can be kind of thick about it when people are hitting on me.) But it didn’t take that long. When you’re alone in the house with the plumber, and he keeps bringing up sex for no good reason, it doesn’t take a nuclear genius to figure it out. He was offering me the porn cliché, the impromptu fling with the hot young plumber.
And I was tempted to take him up on it.
For about ten seconds.
But here’s the thing. When presented with the real possibility of it, the fantasy almost immediately lost its appeal.
For one thing, I don’t actually choose my sex partners based on whether they seem like they stepped out of a porn video. I choose my sex partners based on, you know, sexual compatibility. I have somewhat particular tastes in sex — not wildly out of the ordinary tastes, but particular ones — and while it’s certainly possible that he would have loved to spank me silly or let me fuck him up the ass, the odds didn’t seem in my favor. And I didn’t feel like doing the whole sex-positive “conscientious negotiation of overlapping sexual interests” thing. It would have totally killed the spontaneous buzz of the “shtupping the plumber” fantasy. No matter how cute that plumber might be.
It’s not like cuteness is a non-issue for me. Obviously there needs to be some physical chemistry for me to have fun with someone, and it’s certainly a plus if they make my head swivel when I pass them on the street. But I’d rather play with someone who knows their way around a riding crop than with someone who looks like the Irish Brad Pitt. No contest.
Maybe more importantly, though, I didn’t actually know this guy — and I didn’t have any reason to trust him. I didn’t have any reason not to trust him . . . but I didn’t know anything about him, I didn’t know anyone who knew him, and I certainly didn’t know anyone who’d had sex with him. So I didn’t know if he respected limits, or if he cared about women’s pleasure, or even if he played safe.
Which pretty much dovetails with the “sexual compatibility” thing.
Now remember, this was a guy I’d lusted after for some time. It’s not like he took up a lot of space in my sexual imagination; but whenever he appeared on the scene, there was always a twinge of wistful lust, followed by “what might have been” fantasies that often lasted for several days. But the reality wasn’t nearly as enticing as I’d imagined it would be. I wound up the conversation, said that I had to get back to work, and politely ushered him out the door, with just a twinge of regret — not for the sex that might have been, but for how much fun I would have had telling the story.
So I think the moral of the story is this:
We don’t always want what we think we want.
I really thought I wanted to have sex with this guy. At any point before this encounter, if you had asked me, “Do you want to have sex with the dishy red-headed plumber?”, I would have answered, “Sure!” Until I was actually presented with the opportunity to do so, that is.
On a core physical level, I suppose I did want it. I thought he was cute, I lusted after him when he was around, I had occasional sex fantasies about him. If that’s what you mean by “want,” then yeah, I guess I wanted it. But in the important, actually useful sense of the word “want” — in the “Would you accept this if it were easily available?” sense — it turned out that I didn’t.
I just thought I did.
And I think this is something monogamous people need to remember. When you’re monogamous, it’s easy to get wound up over every cute person who passes your line of vision and seems like they might be available. It’s important to remember that not everyone who momentarily stirs your loins is someone you would actually have sex with if you were free and they were offering. Some cute people are crazy; some cute people are on a different sexual wavelength; some cute people just aren’t very interesting. So it’s important to remember that you don’t always want what you think you want. It’s important to remember that the green, green grass on the other side of the fence doesn’t always look so green when it shows up at your door, makes awkward sexual small talk, and offers you a chance at a silly porn cliché.
This entry was posted on Thursday, 13 March 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
on Sunday, 16 March 2008 at 5:37 pm David Harmon wrote:
I seem to recall a similar tale embedded in Erica Jong’s Fear Of Flying….