Ask A Dude: Episode 1, Part 3

Continuation of Episode 1, Part 3:

What are men really saying when they talk about sexual exploits? Give us specifics!
Nick elaborates on the themes regarding this behavior.

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Part 3: Ask a Dude

Welcome to Episode 1, Part 3: Ask A Dude - three women, one guy – where we get real answers on subjects most men aren’t willing to talk about. This is Sacred Truths with Emmy Graham.

Heather: So this question has like the potential to sound a little bit cute or funny or have that undertone but I’m not coming from that place at all, it’s like in the spirit of in the heavy darkness that you were just channeling. 

Nick: Sure. 
 
 Heather: So there are like these stories and “facts” that the things we hear about sex and then it’s not till much later, that we learn, men learn that ‘oh my god’ that it wasn’t actually true. What are those things? Like, what are specifically, like, what do boys say, what are they saying like, concretely. I’ve never been there to listen, you know?

Nick: Right. Right. Great question. I can’t really speak to what boys are talking about today. I’m not really involved in those conversations. But I can speak to experiences I’ve had as an adult and conversations I’ve had as an adult. Someone I was talking to about this. We were talking about it, he was struggling with a lot of these questions, and we thought about, “Why don’t you write out the manual?” It’s not really ever spoken, no one ever sat me down and said, “Blah, blah, blah.” These are just things I picked up. 

And so he: “What is a real man?” And it was, it was 85 items of just mandates: like do this, do this, do this, it was just incredible pages and I was like, wow! So, mixed in there were these things so I’ll try to remember them, and really, it’s better to talk about the themes. 

Heather: Is it? 
 
 Nick: Yep. I’ll try that and see if it’s a satisfying answer. See if the themes work. 

Since you were in this space for 9 months, you heard it too, I mean, this, this, whatever the gut check, whatever we’re calling it, whatever we’re describing this dynamic.

So, numbers. Just number of the cultural attitude that sex is conquest. So that’s the theme. And that theme: it’s gut check. It’s not about heart, it’s not about being vulnerable, it’s not about having a powerful experience, it’s not about connection, it’s about conquest. 

It’s about: ‘How did I do it? What was my smooth-talking angle? What lies did I tell,’ that’s a big one. ‘How big and how serious were the lies that I told to succeed in this situation.’ That’s a big theme.

And then, just what are the numbers? What are your weekly numbers here? Just talk to me like a real matter of fact report. That invulnerability piece: not vulnerable! (imitating men) “No, no, no, no, no” just like a shallow conquest thing.

 Prowess, which is just (This is hard to talk about) so we’ll just do the best we can.

Heather: I want to say one thing from where my question is coming from. I feel like it’s a power move to keep it secret, not on your part, but collectively for women, for it not to be public what beliefs and myths men are holding, boys and men are holding and passing it on to each other and like what they actually say. There’s something about the secretiveness: Like, oh, it’s about us, but we don’t know what it is.  

So that’s kind of where I’m coming from with the question, it’s not just for like, solicitous details or anything.

Nick: No, of course not. 

Heather: But it just feels really important to me whatever truths can be spoken about this specifically would be powerful. 

Nick: I can work with the themes pretty well because my experience of that is it was so tangible. Check. Check, gut check thing, that’s really vivid for me.

Just overhearing conversations and talking to men about their experience, about how much pressure they felt to stay with it, to kind of went along with it because they didn’t know what else to do and ahhh! That experience, I can speak to that for sure.

Heather: Do, they say, “I had sex, I had 4 blowjobs today, every day this week.” Do they say, “I had sex with my girlfriend once a month!” I have no sense of like what these rules of mythology around sex are that teenage boys are creating. I just don’t have any idea what they are? I mean are they talking about body parts, are they talking about what they do to body parts? What are they talking about? I have no idea, like zero idea, what are they saying. I feel like it would be nice to know. When men do this kind of talking that Emmy was talking: you know their sharing about their sexual experiences, or when boys are doing it in their fake way. Either one, it’s just like what? I don’t really hear it? What are we talking about? What specifically is the words and stuff that people are saying. I get the themes, but like, how do they say it?

Nick: Okay. We’ll see what we get. We’re going there. 

Heather: (laughs) Do you guys know? I don’t know, maybe you hear it more. I just don’t hear it.  

Emmy: I don’t know. 

Nick: In my experience in high school: three years of hearing conversations in my locker room. Let me just review the tape here of cringe worthy, like oh God, stop please. So, if they had a girlfriend, they were having sex every day of the week or a lot. And then maybe more than that over the weekend. So, a lot. 

Heather: That’s what they’re reporting. 

Nick: That’s what they’re reporting. This is overhearing, this is the finer details, Not the theme, just the numbers. But you’re saying, ‘What numbers?’

Heather: What are we talking about?

Nick: What are we even talking about. So, that would be that and they were really good at it and their girlfriend loved it. 

If they didn’t have a girlfriend, they could talk anybody into it, like they were just smooth, they were just amazing, and they could come up with a bunch of lies and a bunch of bullshit and all based on lies; they could just get it if they wanted it. They could go into a room, pick someone out and just have them as just a thing.

And so now, these days, in the Tinder scene, in an urban area, the way Tinder works, people are saying three times a day, with different people. That’s kind of the range of that. But if we’re talking about high school, that’s one of the things. That’s one of the things. 

Also in high school, it was saying that you had had sex at all, that was a thing. I didn’t even know who had it and who hadn’t. It could easily be someone who had zero experience with this who was talking about this in this kind of way.

So beyond that, whenever you would talk about whatever experience that you had, you would put somewhere in the story in a detail or a comment that it didn’t matter, that you weren’t touched by that. You weren’t vulnerable to that experience, so for sure that. Those are the key… those are the key themes. And that’s kind of more detailed about that. I don’t know, I want to think about that question more.

Heather: Yeah, I’m really curious, and as I listen, I’m realizing one of the things I’m wondering about as a woman is how degrading is it? How objectifying is it? Because my mind can go all sorts of ways about what boys are saying to each other.
 So I’m wondering how degrading and objectifying it is. 

Nick: Wow.

Emmy: Well, I can speak to the waiters in Hawaii, it was pretty damn disgusting, it was awful. And these were grown men.

Deborah: I was going to go a different way altogether. I had brothers; I went to a school that had more boys than girls. So, I was around adolescent boys a lot. They blathered all day long. And to me, it was…I never felt like I cared. I didn’t pause with degraded or debased, I just thought, “You are stupid people.” 

I see the danger that Emmy is talking about, absolutely. But I never felt it my own self. And my unfortunate junior high date with some 9th grader. To call it a date was not right. We hung out at the carnival, and then we necked behind the bleachers. I wouldn’t call that a date. I don’t even remember his name. Apparently, the next day it was all over school that little…that person, me, was not a prude, but a slut. And I thought, “Well, that’s not true.” I went on with my life.

I don’t why I was not unscathed. I felt really lucky that I was.

My brothers would go on and on and I would go, “You guys are noodleheads! What the heck!” And I’d go to something valuable to me. And my one day of…I’m trying to say infamousness (but I’m not doing a very good job) at junior high. 

First, some part of my brain said, “It’s junior high!” in the grand schemes of things, does this matter: No, not for second. Which is a different way of looking at it and maybe not helpful for this particular conversation, but, I was sort of taught: the boys only get you if you let them.  

Emmy: I just wanted to add although Deborah did hear what was going on in her school, Heather and I have not heard these conversations among 13 and 14-year-olds, not much anyway and or among men, really. I feel like my experience in the restaurant was kind of bizarre and unusual. I think it’s a secret because they know they’re full of bullshit.

And if a woman gets wind of what they’re saying, it’s so obvious. (Woman’s response) “No, you didn’t. No, that didn’t happen, what are you talking about?” It’s crucial that it’s secret because it’s so idiotic.

Deborah: I don’t know that I even consider it secret. I don’t think this is deliberately being kept from women. I don’t think it occurs to men, at all, that it needs to be shared with anybody, and because it’s this check in of: are you a man? Are you in the group? We don’t want to be banish-ed. There’s that sort of tacit understanding that what happens here, stays here. So I don’t think it’s a deliberate secret keeping. I think it’s just part of the rules. I think you’re right, just listening to those boys and just rolling my eyes and saying, “Yeah, Sure, you did!” 

They didn’t necessarily know I was listening, but I wasn’t listening so I could glean, ‘what’s going on with the boys?’

Sometimes there was no escape. So, I don’t know if it’s a conspiracy, I think it just happens to be internal to that group if that makes a difference. 

 Nick: Yeah. There’s a couple of things flowing around here. I think basically you’re all right. There isn’t any context where this would ever get shared explicitly with women. 

If someone happens to overhear, it doesn’t really matter. There aren’t like security measures, those guys wouldn’t say, “dah,,,dah, dah,”.

 I definitely worked with groups of men and I figured out that they were editing when I was around because they knew, they knew for whatever reason that they didn’t want to be doing that when I was around. Although I don’t remember saying anything or doing anything, somehow something happened, and then I’d walk in, or overhear or they thought I wasn’t there, or they thought I couldn’t hear. And I would just go, “WHAT is happening!” Just completely shocked…even though..

Heather: But what were they saying?? (laughs)
 
 Nick: I think it’s really hard to talk about it, I don’t know if I can. 

 Heather: Ok. You don’t have to talk about it, but do you remember? In this case? 

Nick: Yeah.

 Heather: You do? Okay. I can totally respect that. 

Nick: Yes, we talk about, even saying, oh, it’s really bad, yes, but still that isn’t details.

Emmy: I can give you a detail. Like I said every day there were so many occurrences, because they’d come to the bar and get their drinks, and I was the cashier, and they were away from the customers. And they’d, in those two seconds of waiting for their margarita, (imitates chatter), Boom! and it always had to do with sex. So I heard so much.

But, one thing I remember, for example, it was a really busy restaurant, somebody comes up to the other waiter and says, (imitates ‘dude’) “Did you screw that girl last night?” or whatever, Bang? I don’t know what the verb was, “Did you bang that girl last night?”

(Waiter #2) “Yes, but she was so drunk, yeah, I got her good and drunk.” (Something like that). Yeah, I got her good and drunk and I think she was unconscious, and I don’t think she even knew what happened.” 

(Waiter #1): “You slimy bastard! Ha! Ha! Ha!” and off they’d go.

Split, split, split, split, (snap snap) boom. That kind of stuff happened all the time, and whether it was a girlfriend or just some girl last night, yeah. 

Heather: Just a little bit more on this. I do feel, like there is…but it is kind of a conspiracy, like, it’s very hidden. Right, like, if my boyfriend is talking like that about me anywhere, he’s hiding that from me. 

Nick: Right. For sure. 

Heather: Their intention… I’ve never heard this. I’m sure I could remember something, somewhere, but in general, I’m like, what is it? Apparently, it’s going on all the time. Clearly, they’re hiding it. It’s not because I’m not just….I think there’s some way that it’s being contained in spaces that are safe, that is, it’s being hidden. 

Deborah: Again, I don’t know if I would characterize that as deliberately hidden. But I’m thinking as we’re talking the things boys talk about amongst themselves. And I’m thinking about all that things that women talk about amongst ourselves that men don’t know about at all. And I’m realizing that even at my current age, there are things that I am uncomfortable mentioning or revealing to a male person because there is a strong voice in my head saying, ‘You don’t say that to the boys, you don’t talk about that with the boys, you don’t talk about that.’ The current thing in grade 6 was “Who started her period?” and I’m sure people lied about that.

“Ah, months ago!” and the other people, who perhaps, you know, the later bloomers amongst us just got quiet and grim. And I’m thinking about those..  they were secrets but not necessarily from the boys, they were just secrets within the girls. It’s a subtle difference. So I think, maybe, that for boys, there are conversations you have with boys which are not the conversations you have with girls.

Just like, I know that’s true for me. There are things I could say to Emmy all day long, that I might really struggle to say to a male person.

Nick: So I want to work on the subtlety of this because it doesn’t feel like a conspiracy to me because there’s not a sense of intention in keeping it secret. That seems important to me.

Where to really be the word ‘conspiracy’ it has to be something that’s intentionally being kept secret. That isn’t the feeling I get from this.

But, unfortunately, it is a betrayal, for sure that. 

It’s a betrayal of the experience. So that has the energy for me that someone can be having one experience here, and…I want to use the right words, I don’t want to use any ‘excuse’ words here, but betraying that experience in a very profound way in another environment, in a way that this person has no idea of what is going on here.

That’s not so much, that’s distinct for me from a conspiracy, because if somehow that information gets out, they didn’t necessarily care. The people I’ve been …

If I’m in a working environment where there’s a possibility someone might overhear what these conversations are. You know, men are having these conversations, there’s not this concern, “Oh, I hope a woman isn’t listening.” There’s no sense of that. Those conversations aren’t for women and they’re not going to go out and talk in any way like that to a woman. But there’s not a lot of concern that they’re going to be overheard somehow, that’s not really a problem. It doesn’t have a conspiracy vibe.

But betrayal? Yep, for sure. Yeah, maybe that’s where the energy is coming from. 

Heather; Yeah, it might just be that I haven’t been, you know, overhearing what everyone else overhears. But, yeah, I do find it suspicious… that I’ve heard men talk about a lot of things. Right, they talk about even like the hypermasculine, I hear them talk about politics, I hear them talk about cars, I hear them talk about sports. I hear them talk about their jobs; I’ve overheard lots of things. 

But I don’t routinely overhear these routine conversations and so, to me that seems like why, you know. And I also wonder, the clarifying question I want to ask. The word ‘conspiracy’ I kind of picked up from Deborah, it’s kind of like, is that the right word in a weird way? 

But, okay, if there’s like, five guys, and their girlfriends and wives or whatever all know each other and they like, go out in the garage and start having these conversations, because I’ve never been in a place where they start having it with the women there. But then they go out in the garage and start doing it. 

And then they come in 30 minutes later and one of them is like, “Mark was just telling me how great he thinks, like, Bill’s wife’s ass is!” Is that not a violation of that expectation? The understanding that everybody had in the garage that what we say in the garage we’re not going go repeat around the women a few minutes when we go back in there?

Deborah: Every once in a while, in the newspaper, you read in “Dear Abby”, where something like that has happened, and a neighbor says ‘the thing’ I don’t know, it seems to involve alcohol and the violation of the rules. Definitely, it’s my understanding that, again, what happens in the garage, is supposed to stay in garage. And, obviously, Rupert got so drunk, he blabbed and so Rupert is going to have a hard time, I think, to get back in with his cronies. 

He might not get a beer. 

Nick: I think we’re in rich material here. I’m still hung up on the word, ‘conspiracy’. And that’s subjective. I think it’s part of the…there’s a shared agreement, for sure, that’s unspoken. And a lot of this stuff is unspoken also: the gut check, the content of this gut check things. No one’s sitting there going, 

“I must confirm, must confirm my participation in the toxic masculine paradigm so that I’m not absolved from the group.” That’s not going on there, no, there’s just this AHHH! In the moment. I must do this or I’ll die. 

But for sure, it’s a shared agreement that this is the only place where these kinds of things happen: is this context, away, alone, just the dudes. For sure that as a shared understanding, and a part of the cultural contract that they’re participating in, is this is what we’re doing here and this is for us only, for sure that.

 Deborah: That interests me a lot just with people. You listed your friend’s 85 entries on what makes a man and most of all those are unspoken rules. And we also have the rules of what are we supposed to be as women. I think we have a lot more flexibility.

I don’t think that’s true in every culture and every region. I think in some communities, the rules are it’s really, really tight on how you be as either a man or a woman.

And I’m watching this explosion of fluidity in our students: where some are neither, some are both. It’s so intriguing to me that these kids have no rules on how to be themselves. And so they, they never for a moment memorized the rule book that I did by the time I was seven. And I think we all did each to ourselves. They’re flying without rules, which is on the one hand, glorious, and on the other hand, terrifying. I’m quite intrigued by the idea of unspoken rules that everybody understands, agrees to, and believes mostly, that we have to follow. 

Emmy: This is Sacred Truths with Emmy Graham with music by Lemon Music Studio at Pixabay, and with special thanks to our ‘dude’, Nick Oredson. 

This concludes Part 3 of Episode 1 of “Ask a Dude”.

Please join us for Part 4.

Please visit our website at www.sacred-truths.com.

Thank you for listening.