Woke Women Don't Go On Blind Dates - Sex Is To Be Adjudicated

Janey Parsons had been brought up to believe that a Mr. Right was in her future - a man if not of her dreams, then of the reality of honesty, truth, respect, and earning ability.  Her mother, an early feminist whose moniker was 'The Phantom' in recognition of her anonymous zingers to the New York Times and Washington Post objecting to the journals' misogyny and blatant disrespect for women, hadn't changed an iota.  Even though women of her daughter's age found, thanks to her, the stairway to stardom easy to climb, they must still demand compliance with the new code of female virtue.  

She signed her letters to the editor 'Anonymous' because in those early, heady days of the revolution, only a few dared to be outspoken about women's rights, and if and when they were, censure was sure to follow.  'Bitch, cunt, mind your own fucking business' was what was to be expected for outing female integrity; and this hardened her against male retrogressive patriarchy.  If it hadn't been for this...scurrility...she might not have been so insistent on her daughter's sexual choices, but she couldn't help herself. 

Men are pricks, she said, are and always will be, so finding Mr. Right may be a rocky road - or words to that effect which rolled off Janey's back because, Mom, things have changed.  Men are different.  You did your job.  Of course she was only thinking of Boiler Room Doug, the engineering student who backed off when he saw women coming and waited for their signal to approach - a train lineman's idea as to when to let the locomotive into the yard - but with any luck other men might be not so 'diffident'?

She hit post-feminist wokeness in full stride on her first foray into sexual womanhood, the MeToo, 'No Means No' generation of the newly-sensitized and aware female. When Dave, a chemistry major (shades of Boiler Room Doug) asked her up, she quickly found out that he had not been versed in the appropriate steps to sexual completion.  He never once asked a 'May I?' or 'Should I?' but slammed ahead like a rutting pig until she had to shout, 'Get off me, you jerk'. 

Then there was Armand, ah oo-la-la Frenchman with Gallic charm and a pompadour who seemed to know the ropes but, like Dave, plowed ahead like a farmer behind a mule; but hers was not a furrow to be hoed, and she shouted the same refrain, 'For the love of Mike, get off me'.  

Now, to be fair, Dave and Armand were pickups in a bar, not exactly the place to find Mr. Right - too random, too sketchy, and God knows what detritus you might end up with; so why not try the new high-tech AI-enabled online dating algorithms.  

'Harvard graduate, law school bound seeks lover of Kant and de Saint-Exupery in mutually respectful relationship. Non-smokers preferred'; and for this as an opener filled in the blanks to describe herself perfectly - an intellectual with a sensual side, a lover of the devil-may-care but within the bounds of propriety, a giver, and an upholder of honesty.  Of course there were all the boilerplate items that these dating agencies required, but she got her point across and included a reasonably honest photograph of her on the beach at Southampton, wind in her hair. 

 

'I should have signed up for speed-dating', she thought after a month of tedious, presumptuous, idiotically sex-consumed men who should have been able to find Miss Right without such fol-de-rol; but of course she was in the same boat. 

She tried a few out - Percy from Staten Island who was a perfect gentleman but who never once mentioned the water sports in his sexual closet; or Brad from Shaker Heights who couldn't come 'to closure' with the lights on. 

Each one of these jerks had done the right thing - 'Is it OK if I move my hand here...and how about here...and what about here?' but were so sexually pedantic that she wanted to puke.  Where were Don Juan, Lothario, and Valmont? There would be no 'liaisons dangereuses' here or any time soon.  What I wanted is to be fucked royally, she admitted, with all due respect to her mother. 

Perhaps I need to tweak my resume, she thought.  The original was too tootie-fruity, too Harvard, too academic, too goddamn Upper West Side when all she wanted was to be screwed with no fanfare, no abuse, and a modicum of thanks. 

'Sexy Manhattan bitch', she drafted 'anxious for a good time, no ties that bind', but that would bring out all the serial killers from Queens. 

'Sex must be adjudicated', she said, referring to the Harper & Collins' Handbook for the Modern Woman; and so it must, in person, without the flimflam and posturing of online dating; so it was back to the drawing board, or more accurately to the hot pickup spots in the neighborhood - the National Gallery of Art, the Met, the Whitney where likeminded people could met; but after five Saturdays of trolling in these airless, crushingly dull places, she went back to McSorley's for a shot of Wild Turkey and a chaser, and lo and behold, there was Mr. Right with bedroom eyes nursing a Chardonnay. 

Could it be? Could he be the one? Disgusted at herself for these Barbie fantasies, these troglodyte desires, this Fifties romantic  bullshit, she smiled and said, swallowing every bid of feminist pride, 'Do you live around here?'. 

Adjudicating, vetting, and sussing completed, Janey went up to his Broadway loft and lo and behold, here was a man who didn't ask but knew, and the deal was closed.  He was the one for her, a man.  Her mother never told her about the likes of him, that such specimens were even out there, so she was quick to tell her about her discovery.   

 

Her mother, tethered despite her feminism to a dullard, a good man with good intentions but no free will to speak of and no penetrating sexual intent whatsoever, could only say, 'Good for you', a nice closure to the mother-daughter thing.