Here's a reason that I would have been nervous about going to Vermont. You wrote about that first date with her: "I despised her. She made me sick to my stomach. I literally wanted to vomit. Choke her to death and smash her dead head in with a rock and then vomit onto her deadness."
Isn't that clear that going so over the top shines a light on the absurdity and therefore renders it less angry? I think it would have been scarier to say, "I wanted to slit her throat."
I'm actually going to say they're equally scary. But I was also struck by the rant about your frustration about having to ask women out, where you write, "the hatred that comes your way sometimes is the understandable collective pent-up rage, fear, hurt and anguish of thousands of years of our burden." Do you feel angry at women?
Women tend to do this thing -- white women, not black women. But white women do this thing where they'll clearly be sending all these vibes and then when you approach them they'll look at you like they never fucking heard of you. That's frustrating and makes me feel like an asshole. Because I'm not wrong. They weren't looking at the clock over my head. They were sending vibes. I'm not angry. I was trying to illustrate how hard it is to be a boy. That's all.
Do you worry that that kind of sweet, issue-free woman you're looking for might not be interested in a guy who writes on his blog about patronizing hookers and hiring dominatrixes to stick metal rods in his penis?
If somebody's going to be scared by that, then I don't want them. My point is that I like to make love gently and sweetly and intimately as much as I like to have rough sex. I submit that I'm no different from 99 percent of everybody. The only difference is that I acknowledge that I have these feelings. I [want] someone who is unconditionally supportive of me in my me-ness. If they don't know that we're all complex people ... Nothing in my life sexually in any way rises to the level of fetish.
Do you think that your habit of having sex with women for money...
I've done it eight times in 35 years, so "habit" would not be an accurate word. What would you call eight times in 35 years? That's the opposite of habit.
OK, and your desire to be dominated -- peed on and asphyxiated -- all of which I understand are not uncommon sexual proclivities. But do they reflect any unresesolved sexual issues?
Absolutely not. I've had 10 dominatrix experiences in my lifetime. In 30 years, I've had 10 dominatrixes.
I thought you said eight.
Whatever. Eight prostitutes, 10 dominatrixes. Eighteen sex workers. Not including special massage women of which I've had maybe 10. I don't think we should lump them together since they are extremely different experiences.
One of the things women wrote about dating you was that you often ask for a blow job right off the bat, and one claimed that on a first date you were doing a Master Cleanse and didn't have energy to get off the couch but still expected a blow job.
Here's the deal. Like my profile says on Nerve and like I write in the blog, my intention is to find a woman to marry and have babies with through an organic process.
I have tremendous ambivalence about having sex with people I'm not in love with, but once in a while I do it. Being a man, being a healthy hot-blooded American male, who really loves sexual contact, going months and months without that can become lonely to me. Sometimes, if I'm in a strictly sexual mood -- again, it's rare -- either I can be contacted by them or I will contact somebody on the Internet and we will set up a contract, via e-mail, to get together and have some kind of sex.
So it's explicitly prearranged.
Absolutely. "I will meet you at this table [points to table] and then we will go to the park and I will blow you in the fucking hippo park." Or the woman I met at a gym, that someone told me about [who wrote in on Gawker claiming that on their first date Schaeffer suggested they "fuck in the second floor bathroom"]. She had listed "play" [on her Nerve profile]. I don't list "play" because it's not what I'm after, but if it comes up, and I'm in the mood, I might dabble. Same way a lot of people go on a first date and there is a contract, spoken or unspoken, and they go home and they have sex.
A first date is actually not a contract to have sex.
No. I don't feel that it is. But some people, men and women, feel that it is. I never would assume that. I don't want to spend five minutes with a woman unless I think you're gonna be my wife or unless I think we're going to fuck.
I don't remember the Master Cleanse time. But if we talk on a Web site in a sexual conversation and I invite you to come over to my house, it's usually post-midnight, and there's only one reason that that's happening. But I've never even had a girl by the back of the head and then pushed her down. At most it's been an energy. I usually even ask a woman if I can kiss her first; I think it's sexy. A lot of women actually think it's wimpy.
Another armchair diagnosis might be that you are gay and not out of the closet. Are you gay or bisexual?
Definitely not gay and not out of the closet. I would never want to have an emotional relationship with a man. If I weren't a hypochondriac and terrified of HIV I certainly would have tried being with a man at this point in my life, but I want an emotional relationship and marriage and babies with a woman.
To me the fantasy is about the phallus and domination. My fantasy would really be to have a woman with a phallus. A pussy and a dick. That would be some crazy cool thing to try. If it is a man that turns me on in occasional fantasies, and again none of this is pervasive, [it's about] being dominated and subjugated and ridiculed.
What about the theory that you're a narcissist?
A narcissist is a person with an out-of-control ego with an inferiority complex. I'm certainly not the first -- only self-regard at the expense of everyone else. I don't know what your experience of me for the last few hours is, but ... do I seem like that? Like I'm just trying to blow smoke up your ass because you're writing an article about me? "Self-absorbed" might be the term, though I don't like it, that I'm more willing to claim.
Self-absorbed is a lot closer to how I think of a narcissist -- someone for whom everything is in some way a reflection of themselves, the kind of person whose every act of kindness is actually a moment at which to think of themselves in a good light.
I don't think anyone else in the world thinks that's what narcissism is. When I give an extra $50 tip to a cab driver because he's going to Atlantic City and he's a cute kid and he reminds me of me when I drove a cab for eight years, I give him money I don't have because I believe if you give money away you get it back. Is there a moment where I have a snapshot of thinking, "Here is Eric being great in the world?" Yes, I think that. I do feel a lovely sense that it's about giving a gift to this kid. But, yes, my brain does go, "Oh, there's a snapshot of Eric doing a mitzvah." But I don't actually think that's a definition of narcissism, and I don't think that's a bad thing.
I have to constantly force myself to act out of generosity, not selfishness. So I may feel I want to push the old lady who's walking slow out of the way so I can race home and look at the blinking-light barometer of my self-esteem -- all the great women and jobs that are calling. But instead I stop and help her with her bags. So now the world only sees me, hopefully most of the time, as a healthy, generous soul. Rather than a selfish asshole.
About the writer
Rebecca Traister is a staff writer for Salon Life.
Related Stories
Attack of the listless lads
Passionless and confused, they swim torpidly about in the dating pool, driving me and my single girlfriends to despair. I asked Benjamin Kunkel, author of the hit novel "Indecision," to explain to me what's wrong with young American men.
09/20/05
Wife shop!
They're the men who ask about your family's disease history, whether you'd live on the Upper West Side and if you'd be willing to convert -- on the first date. Did their biological clocks all go off at once?
03/18/05
Story finder (3 ways to search Salon)
Salon Directory (browse by topic)
