Login HereI know that others have already covered this, but I'm not going to let that stop me. This is David Gelernter
David Gelertner is a computer nerd, and by computer nerd, I mean a real gets paid to teach rich kids at a smartypants university kind of computer nerd. So computer nerdy that Theodore Kaczynski tried to unabomb him to unadeath. He's like nerdy³.
Which is why the Weekly Standard (who hire people like Dean Barnett and Matthew Continetti who don't know jack about shit) let David write an article on premarital sex. I guess Fred Barnes had first dibs on the "Growing Up Poor and Black In Alabama" assignment.
I'm going to generous and assume that someone at the Weekly Standard stumbled across an old copy of Paper Lion and admired the concept. Unfortunately concepts gang aft agley and then you end up with stuff like this:
Instant sex and romantic love can't coexist any more than hurricanes and forest fires. One drives out the other. ("Romantic love" meaning the act of falling in love and the consequent state of mind.)
Why can't they coexist? Because, just as green leaves transform sunlight to useful energy in a process called photosynthesis, human beings transform longing for an adored object into a heightened state of consciousness in a process called falling in love. Thwarted sexual desire is nearly as necessary to young people as food and shelter. Premarital, premature sex drains the power reserve that would have propelled them into emotional (versus mere physical) adulthood.
Nowadays many of us naively believe that falling in love and jumping into bed are independent events. You sleep with people you don't love, and admire people you don't sleep with; but certainly if you do happen to fall in love, sex ought to follow as promptly as dental work follows a toothache.
But this innocent, ignorant view defies a fundamental law of human nature: Keeping steady company with a person you adore plus not sleeping with her (or him) yields "being in love," which is a new state of mind that is more than the sum of its parts.
Disclaimer time and yes, I realize that my daughter reads this:
The foxy and often supine mrs tbogg and I had premarital sex. Yes, it's true. We did it. We. Did. It. And we were only about five hours into our first date (Meet at apartment...movie [Ragtime] ...return to apartment... sex. I blame it on a topless Elizabeth McGovern). Twenty seven odd years ago we went at it like mayflies on Viagra and we weren't even married. We didn't 'photosynthesize' unless, of course, it happens to be a position that we inadvertently stumbled upon, in which case: good for us! There were no "hurricanes and forest fires" although I seem to remember an enormous wave building and building, an unstoppable force of nature reaching its peak and then crashing down dragging us under, the whole world turning upside down, leaving my head spinning and making me wonder if I was going to die...
No wait. That was The Poseidon Adventure.
Okay, it was like galloping stallions pounding across the desert floor, unbridled and untamed, their powerful withers glistening in the noon day sun, free as the western wind and only a little bit saddle sore...
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“…And then….”
I may have inadvertently stumbled across a Barbara Cartland fansite. Please don’t tell me da boyz have been replaced by pink-haired poodles!
David Gelertner: Exhibit A to my theory that everything that is wrong with these people (and the list is endless) can be traced back to the fact never, never, never, never………(infinity -1)………………..never in their lives has anyone ever looked at them and thought, “Oh yeah, I want to fuck that guy.”
It really is that simple.
“sex ought to follow as promptly as dental work follows a toothache.”
Cahmahhhhnnn … that’s a nerdy-nutter invite to haiku! (or whatever approximates a haiku after enduring the Poseidon adventure …)
I’ve had sex
I’ve had a toothache
Supine both times
Are you sure that’s not The Black Stallion, tbogg?
You know, an awful lot of people don’t have dental insurance and can’t afford dental work to follow toothache. I’m probably not going anywhere useful with this, but oddly enough they’re probably the same sort of people (not to put too fine a point on it but, poor) who guys like this feel shouldn’t be having sex anyway since they can’t afford kids, which probably in his mind follow sex like dental work follows toothache if you’re insured.
Dude, your daughter is gonna read this?
I offer her my condolences for the trauma you have just thrust upon her.
Oh, Lordy. Thirty one years ago I, too, had glorious sweaty heart-stopping sex on a first date. We celebrate our 29th wedding anniversary soon. I’m a little disappointed to find out at this late date that our love is not mature.
And, Tbogg, the lovely and talented Casey already knows to steer clear of any guy that nerdy. He’s downright creepy.
So getting laid is like pulling teeth?
One look at that mug and no wonder.
Keeping steady company with a person you adore plus not sleeping with her (or him) yields “being in love,”
Back in my day it was called blue balls.
Only an aphasic, antisocial, physically repellent numerophile who never experienced an emotion deeper than “Need more Cheetos” could possibly reduce something as mysterious and wonderful as human love to an equation.
Even if it were mathematically possible, I think the arithmetic involved with being in love is far more complex than “steady company plus not sleeping with.”
“Going Wild In The VIP” must also have been a topic previously covered or he may have come to a slightly different conclusion about casual sex.
Or so I’m told.
That noise you hear from the west is the L&TC going ewwww…
Give the guy a break. He’s obviously working through a mild case of chronic manuphobia, or “why I can’t love my hand” syndrome.
Hmmm. I’d been living with the Spousal Unit for a year before we started, uh, dating. (Okay, it was the 70s and a communal boarding house. But I enjoy telling innocents we were roommates before we started Doing That.) Even then, I only planned a ‘weekend fling’ because we’d both broken up with our latest separate individual friends-with-benefits and all our other friends were away on holiday. If the sex hadn’t been so mutually & surprisingly fantastic, we’d never have been more to each other than casual friends, but having a hobby in common gradually developed into a deeper In Love relationship strong enough to overcome the mutual gunshy-ness of two people who grew up in deeply dysfunctional families. Since we’ve been happy together for almost as long as you & the Lovely Mrs. TBogg, I’m going to have to cast another vote in favor of Recreational Sex as a form of pair-bonding.
Seriously, though, what rides up the Conservatards’ shorts when they think about INSTANT SEX is that it’s inimicable to INSTANT MONEY. Teenagers, and even grown-ups, who are allowed to screw anybody they can persuade are not going to be spending nearly as many of their valuable consumer dollars on pr0n, video games, expensive techno-toys, mind-altering substances both licit & illegal, pr)n, iPhones, state-of-the-art streaming wireless to enable them to access more porn, widescreen movies full of CGI explosions, and Cheetos & Mountain Dew. Sex is always marketable, but it’s much more marketable to the sexually frustrated and misinformed.
Yes, I remember those difficult teenage days: “Power. . . reserve. . .draining. Must. . . propel. . . into. . . emotional. . . adulthood.”
an enormous wave building and building, an unstoppable force of nature reaching its peak and then crashing down dragging us under, the whole world turning upside down
Attention! Calling James Lee Burke! Some of your prose is missing!
That caught my eye as well.
Gelertner has experienced many things in life, but I think we can reasonably conclude that “Premarital, premature sex” is not one of them.
Neither, sadly, is “emotional adulthood”.
But AnnLaurie, the hardcore rightards don’t want anyone to have any sex at all if it can be avoided; certainly no prOn allowed on their watch, even if makes them richer. According to the Huckaboner School of Getting it on, even married people should preferably conceive their children without obtaining too much enjoyment from the actual process (just like watching Fox News to see what Anne Coulter’s doing these days to cover up her man hands).
As others have pointed out: the fact that their own sexlives are some sitcom-worthy cocktail of viagra, toe-tapping and repression leaves the unfucked on the far right too bitter and hateful to let anyone else have any fun.
Yes, 31 years ago I had sex on the first date, just hours into it, and now…. I cannot remember her name. Where was I going with this? I don’t know.
Anyway, I doubt handsome up there has ever picked a girl up, put her on the kitchen counter, ripped her underwear off, lifted up a skirt (hers, not his), undid a zipper and just mashed the potatoes, broke a few eggs, ground the coffee, or whatever the youngsters are calling it now. If he had… well, be serious, we can’t even pretend “if he had.” I mean, look at the picture. Looks aren’t everything, but butt ugly is just not working for anybody.
You know he only wants to marry a virgin to avoid comparison!
So it’s kind of like a video game, then? I guess that’s why it’s always nice to have an extra man.
I have a feeling that tbogg’s daughter will manage to use this to embarrass him many, many times in the future. You might offer tbogg some condolences as well.
It kind of recharges my batteries.
drains the power reserve of…PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS. Quick, get Col. BatGuano on the phone.
Aesop covered this a couple of millenia ago, with “The Fox and the Grapes”. The only guys I see spouting the purity line are deeply closeted gays married to women they will screw only to beget heirs or straight men who are so unappealing they couldn’t get laid if they walked around Vegas with fifties hanging out of their pockets.
I can’t believe it took this crowd over 8 hours to get to that point. Obviously, we need to stock up on rain water and grain alcohol.
And then there’s this:
…so, “being in love” = constant masturbation?
Who the hell uses phrases like “keeping steady company” in this day and age? That’s a line my long dead grandmother used, and I’m thinking that her distaste of this whole sex business was on par with ol’ never been rightiously laid up there in the photo.
As usual, the rethug culturemeisters are pissed because of their deeply held suspicion that other much less uptighty-whitey types are having a better time in the sack (or kitchen counter, as pointed out above) than they are. We are having a better time; count on it.
Oooh, Elizabeth McGovern. There should’ve been an Oscar in 1981 for Best Eyebrows in a Nude Scene. I remember every second of that brilliant scene. I assume another date with Mrs. T was to see ‘Racing with the Moon’?
And they said the trolls would go away…
David Gelernter has a Ph.D. in computer science because he needed to learn a trade. Among his other skills is composing music. Also remember that he does A.I., which is the computer field which should be of the most general interest since it could lead to the ”Singularity”. (Thought: could we use Dust to see if our computers have succeeded in thinking or not?) His faculty page says only that he has a B.A. from Yale. This was in 1976 so a) women were attending the college and b) he has lived through a period of ”instant sex” not comparable to today. Remember that this is the same guy who believes in a measure of separation between men and women, and between manliness and womanliness, whenever he gets the chance to talk about it. That’s more important than nerdiness, as anyone here who has been to a science fiction convention probably knows. Given a sample of my husband, guys like that are very loyal to their wives, although I think David Gelernter is divorced. They can also be counted on to have non-materialistic interests.
Robertson Davies loved quoting ”Chastity is having the body in the soul’s keeping”, and I like that. In rare occasions, everything comes together. But because of my own neurosis I found that the expectation to have sex can bring you down. It’s better to concentrate on knowing someone rather than thinking about the extraneous matter of whether you are ready to have sex.
(People go on dates because it gives a structure to getting to know somebody.)
Dude has all the qualifications for a veteran panty sniffer.
Another example might be Mr. Bitch Ph.D.
Hi, EW. 16-0?
Keeping steady company with a person you adore plus not sleeping with her (or him) yields “being in love,”
That’s what his wife keeps telling him, anyway.
What’s with this outpouring of “our first times”?
Dude.
Seriously.
Dude.
Looks aren’t everything, but butt ugly is just not working for anybody.
Butt Ugly does take some making-up for. I had a college buddy who was no better-looking than Gelertner here, and only slightly better dressed, but he had no shortage of teh hawt secks. His secret was being unbelievably charismatic and fun to be around.
Butt Ugly and Tightly Wound I’m not sure there’s any hope for.
You want an outpouring of most recent times?
Okay, okay, okay; it took only 3 dates until waves crashed upon the shore, but 17 years later and love the hubby even more. teh hawt sex is still there too. Fun, fun, fun.
I think the Paper Lion comparison fails: after all Plimpton, suited up and played the game. Not sure I can say that for the Prof above. It’s a shame these folks continue to demonstrate that their beliefs are founded on the idea that someone, somewhere, is having more fun than they are.
And the hand-love jokes are a little harsh: he lost the use of his right hand when the Unabomber sent him a package.
In my youth I was fortunate enough to have a few good-looking girls come on to me. What was I supposed to do? Say “get lost”? Had that ever happened to Prof. Gelernter, he might be singing a different tune.
A female friend once sent me 50 reasons why it’s better to be a guy. Two I remember:
Your best friend will never try to talk you out of having sex with someone.
You don’t have to actually like someone to have really good sex.
I’m a total slut (well, former slut) who uses phrases like “keeping steady company”, but admittedly I do it mostly for ironic effect.
And I’ll say this again: the sex to which I consented, and there was a great deal of it, never affected me badly. Ever. To the folks who argue that sex will fuck you up good, I have to wonder if the sex is really their problem. It’s like a recovering alcoholic demanding we ban alcohol because it got her fired and ruined her marriage and she wants to save everyone else from this fate. The alcohol is not the problem, and nor is the sex. The solution is not to ban alcohol or sex. You are the problem, and the solution is for you to avoid alcohol or sex unless you can ever get your relationship to it straightened out, which in many cases may not even be possible.
Does that describe Gelertner? On a scale of 1 to 10 he might need to be a 11,000 to compensate for his personality. I will rephrase, however, “Butt ugly does not work for many people.”
What’s with this outpouring of “our first times”?
Jeeze, nobody said it was our first times. Often, lots of hot nasty premarital sex with people that didn’t lead to a lasting life-long relationship is why we were able to recognize the right stuff when it came along. Is that what disturbs you?
Isn’t this guy “Flounder?” Flounder could never get laid.
Huh uh. But he did barf on the dean.
Fascinating point of view from a guy who named a computer language after the star of “Deep Throat”…