I’m not expressing a fondness for pretty women, mind you. A class of people that usually doesn’t have to work for things, grows to expect the world to hand them things they haven’t merited or earned, and has grown used to the dumbest fucking comments, attitudes, and habits being given special treatment, ends up being a lousy fuck. Seriously, you want to get laid, really laid? Stay away from the barbie dolls – they break easily, and they tend to have a deficiency of identity (no one is really there) – they’re lousy fucks, except to guys who think any fuck is a good one, and those guys just don’t have broad enough experience. That’s OK, they’re picking off the trophy babes, and leaving a more fascinating market for the rest of us. The car thing is just a symbol of the barbie girls, because it represents being taken care of – by a man – a Daddie. Yeah, they’ll throw a tantrum and pout if you apply a man’s standards to them, and they’ll whimper that they’re “equal” (whatever that means), but they aren’t equal, and they aren’t up to a man’s standards. The blonde in the red car – good stereotype to draw on, because it’s so prevalent – dollars to donuts, you pull them over and a man contributed to that purchase somewhere along the lines, or is subsidizing the barbie, which allows that purchase to be made. Pretty women driver nicer cars – you were OK with that weren’t you – until we pointed out that the reason is the same as the reason they go to bars without taking more money than it takes to buy the first drink. You know, and I know, and they know, so let’s stop futzing around about it and be honest. Daddy’s little girl, even if her Daddy is not her Daddy, drives a nicer car than the chick working in the independent bookstore, with the pierced forehead, the cropped black hair, the unshaved legs, the organic cotton skirt from a tribe in South America, and the “Say No to Starbucks” button. And it’s not just because she’s on financial aid at the community college. It’s because girls who look like the one in the red car don’t usually go to community college, and certainly don’t have to work in a bookstore. Daddy provides. You might think this is bitterness. Nope – I just don’t like bullshit. Part of wanting to see the truth behind everything, is having to cut away the illusions that large segments of society have placed there. Turn the TV to any sitcom. You think they can afford a house that size? A garbage man in Queens with a two story mansion? Fuck no. This is like that, if you think about it. Still, it’s fun. One of my versions of eye-spy is to count blondes in red cars (or any convertible), and guess whether it’s a dye job – she’s earning her keep, you know. What, you thought it wasn’t sexual with Daddy? Oh yes, it’s all bound up in Daddy’s sexual attitudes too, even if he’s not specifically attracted to her in particular. In fairness, it’s not only girls who make good eye-spy: I like to gauge the midget-like character of all those Midwestern guys in baseball caps driving the enormous pickups with no passengers and nothing in the back. How many of them need it for work, and how many are in a running dick-size contest with the other yahoo on their block? You probably have your own games.

This is Asher’s primary attitude toward everything he does. He doesn’t have hobbies, he doesn’t take “time off” – unless it’s time away from one kind of work in order to engage in another. He rests, but he works even when he rests (for example, he’s always reading). People shake their heads with mock sadness and say, “That’s too bad. You should get some rest.” or “You need play in your life.” They just aren’t listening. When Asher works, he *is* playing. Another way of stating this maxim is simply: If it’s worth your time and attention, it’s worth taking seriously enough to respect it. And respecting it is actually giving it your time and attention, not dicking around about it. Whether it’s lovemaking, house cleaning, writing, or whatever, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing as work. And lastly, that implies that if you can find a way to make it the stuff  you get paid for in life, then joy is in that. Well, maybe not the lovemaking, but it all works into the equation – here’s a maxim: save money, make love at home!

Asher calls them vices, not because they are immoral, but because they do not submit to moral judgement. He calls them twins, because they always struggle, like twins (even if they’re not moving), to be the version of a self that you have in focus. There can be only one, but there are two.

It’s lovely to think that way. Looking around, thinking of the world… like so many things, it depends on simply allowing for the possibility, and then one discovers the truth of it – like superpowers or finding one’s vocation.

Making love is the ultimate metaphor. But that’s not really the whole story. Everything is sexual because we, the perceivers of it, are sexual, and can’t help it, from the celibate in the desert to the maimed veteran to the impotent husband or wife. And because we perceive things in accordance with our nature, we cannot help but impute to them the characteristics of nature – that all our species possesses. I’m not saying that we impute our personalities (what is utterly unique about each individual) – I think objectivity is possible in that regard – we can look around ourselves, if we’re clever, but we cannot help but impute our nature (what is absolutely shared by each individual) to the things we think about in the world. I’m not saying, with the coffee shop philosophers “you see the world as you are”, I’m saying “we all see the world in accordance with what we all are”. Is everything really sexual? I don’t know and, practically speaking, it doesn’t matter. The sophomores in any given college town like asking trick questions, like “is there anything in an apple that makes it inherently red” and, if you answer “yes, of course”, they tell you that you don’t understand science, perception, and subjectivity. No, they’re missing the point – there is something, objectively, in the apple that reflects light in just the right way that we see red – it’s not random, it’s objectively different than an orange or banana. The point is that such questions presume you can think outside of your nature, which includes the ability to see and, unless afflicted with color blindness, to see color. Sure, the sophomores are observing that the colorblind person doesn’t see color, so they say it’s subjective – nothing brilliant there – but they have failed to realize that the colorblind person doesn’t change the apple in any way – it is still pigmented exactly as it was, so yeah, there’s still something in the apple that makes it red. My inability to see the red, doesn’t change that. That’s basic Artistotelian logic: x=x, the law of identity – a thing is what it is, regardless of whether I know about it, have seen it, etc. Erroneously, despite it still being taught in those universities, but still usefully, developmental psychologists say that one sign of cognitive development is transcending the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ phenomenon – the idea that toddlers supposedly have, that because they haven’t seen a thing, or haven’t seen it in a certain way, it doesn’t exist or isn’t that way. They’re right that that failure, common to sophomores and coffee house philosophers, isn’t very sophisticated. They’re simply incorrect that toddlers can’t imagine what they can’t see – lots of good tests show the stuff in your Ed Psych textbooks is crap, as it always was. The seniors would prefer I say “lots of good tests *now* show”, but that’s the same mistake – just because you didn’t know a thing was true 10 years ago, doesn’t mean it wasn’t true all along. So I’m not going to pander to the proclamations from the ivory towers as though it was or is ever acceptable to talk that way (“We know the following:”) with insufficient and non-comprehensive evidence. Lots of mothers could have told them that what financial aid put in their heads was stupid and wrong, but they only considered objective what their teachers told them, and of course that was always dumbass thinking, whether right or wrong. So yeah, it was dumbass thinking whether or not they knew it, and the apple is red whether or not you can see it at all, let alone see the red. Oh, and everything’s sexual, at least as far as we know.

It’s really that simple. People hurl that epithet a lot: “You think you’re right! You always think you’re right!” Well yeah, if I thought I was wrong, I’d change my mind wouldn’t I? See, that comes from people who wouldn’t, which is why they struggle so much epistemologically, and why they live bewildered lives of quiet chaos. If you want truth, if you want it more than you want pride, if you want it even if it means you’ve been wrong all along with all that might cost you, if you want it at the expense of everything, then the moment you discover you’re wrong, the moment your argument is defeated, the moment you detect a failure to correspond to reality, change your mind. Even if it means you “wasted” years. Start now. And change your life accordingly. The other option is more years of being wrong, coupled with knowing that you know better. You see, that fear, along with pride, is why people cling to things they know don’t really hold up. You may think I’m arrogant for referring to bewildered lives of quiet chaos, but it’s what psychologists call cognitive dissonance – living as though something were true, when you know deep down, that it’s been shown to be otherwise, or that it doesn’t hold water, or that it doesn’t correspond in some way with reality. Everybody does it – well, except Asher, which is one of the things that makes him such a freak in people’s eyes. This is Asher’s First Maxim, and it hangs over the entrance to the Arena. It is also why friendship with Asher mostly centers around a mutual commitment toward truth.