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Had lunch with a mate earlier. We're both confident, strong presences; both of us are reasonably progressive and open-minded, and while we're not exactly players we both appreciate women and could be described as interested parties.
So to start we're sitting there over a coffee and we're talking about sex. I mentioned to him a very tall girl I had run into and how she had me curious. "What's the tallest girl you've been with?" I ask him. About 6'1" he tells me. Mine is about 6'3" and built to match. The conversation goes around like this for a bit. Fact is these days I've been there so often that something different appeals if only for the novelty. By point of contrast I mention dwarves and he says hey, I'm interested. It doesn't do anything for me, but I understand where he's coming from. We agree that anyone listening in would commonly think we're a couple of perverts, but we're not. We just like girls and a little bored.
He tells me a story then about a guy who knows who attended an organised gang-bang. About half a dozen naked dudes there plus the husband filming while the guys take turns at his wife. Both of us agree that it's ultra weird, though we know it happens. It's strange to think it does happen; odd to believe that people go in search of those experiences. As they say, I don't like to judge, but it's way outside my understanding. I'm not like that and glad I'm not.
Then he tells me about a kid he sees at the gym. The kid's about 20 and has become friendly with an older guy there. One day this kid mentions to my mate that he just had a blow job. Really? Where? my mate asks. So and so's wife blew me, he says. What! says my mate. It's ok the kid says, he was there.
By now we're both sitting in the cafe shaking our heads. The conversation has turned. It's not really about sex, but about the times we live in. Neither of us can begin to understand a lifestyle where a partner is so casually shared. It's wrong, we know that, but it feels incongruous thinking it. We're out there, but abruptly we're old school. And that becomes the conversation.
I feel out of step with much of society these days. It's hard not to believe that I am of another time, another breed almost. I'm happy to be different because I don't want to be the same, but I wish I didn't need to feel different. I hate so much about what passes for popular culture these days.
I fear sometimes that I sound like an old fogy saying such things, but the fact is I'm a very robust male still and am no prude. My mate is younger than me, good looking enough that he has women sitting in his lap unprompted, smart, cool, built and a jiu jitsu champion and he thinks exactly the same.
In fact I listened as he launched in on his diatribe. When he was a kid, he said, he played soccer. He looked at girls, but he pretty well behaved himself, and when he didn't his dad would pull him into line. He was glad of that. These days sex is everywhere, porn all over the internet, values cheapened, parents are weak and so many kids in the hardened eyes of our generation, very soft.
Times have changed and some things are never going back to where they were. That's progress, that's life. Sad in a way though. I think kids today miss out on some of the simple pleasures we enjoyed playing up: riding a bike, playing street cricket or soccer, getting oput and about. Kids today are spoilt and pandered too. They're less active than we were, not as social because they're indoors more, they're less innocent and more exposed because of the internet and so on, and the boundaries have either shifted or disappeared altogether.
What does it mean when a 20 year old kid will so willingly allow himself be sucked off by his mate's wife? What sort of relationship does that make? What will that kid grow up to expect and want? What values will he learn, what does he bring to a relationship of his own?
Look, I don't care what people say about me. I think we've made it too easy. The value of principles, hard work, and common decency have become diminished because we have made it too easy, have given too much rope, have tried to be friend more than parent. I hate seeing and hearing tales like I've told, but the much broader fear is of what it means for the future of our society.
Without values, without understanding of the hard road, we make a generation who don't know how to fight and graft. By pre-digesting information and dispensing it 140 character chunks we are robbing our children of the ability to think and reason properly for themselves. Our culture might be full on for sensations, but it's losing much of the essential vitality that drives it forward.
So it is and maybe I'm wrong. I know now there are many who think the same though. We have become decadent just as the Roman did, and we all know what happened to them.
