My Degree Gets Me Not Laid

(Note: Eeg. Sorry for the following. Sometimes I just feel experimental. This post also makes use of the phrase 'cock-whip'. I apologize in advance).

I have a degree in French Lit, and I wear glasses. I am supposed to read Foucault and Proust, and if I’m feeling in step with the proletariat, maybe I can lower my standards to Philip Roth.

That according to my old college professor. But I can’t lie. I don’t read that sh*t, anymore. I do understand it to be intellectually deep, but I have to be honest, as I was wading through Du Cote de Chez Swann in college, I very nearly removed my eyes for they had offended me by page 1200.

Here is what Proust says about lust:

“She found, to tackle them in the required tone, the warmth of feeling which pre-existed and dictated them, but which is not to be found in the words themselves, and by this means, she smoothed away, as she read, any harshness or discordance in the tenses of verbs, endowing the imperfect and the preterite with all the sweetness to be found in generosity, all the melancholy to be found in love, guiding the sentence that was drawing to a close towards the one that was about to begin, now hastening, now slackening the pace of the syllables so as to bring them, despite their differences of quantity, into a uniform of rhythm, and breathing into this ordinary prose a kind of emotional life and continuity. ” p. 57, Swann’s Way, In Search of Lost Time, Volume I.

A few comments to Proust. You know how Microsoft Word underlines everything in green when you have a long sentence? Well then you should know that you can ‘right-click’ said sentence and in the ensuing dialogue box click ‘ignore sentence.’ Well, with the sentence above it wouldn’t let me. When I tried, my computer crashed. That’s right. That’s not just a long sentence, it’s a virus. Oh, and I totally get you man, how you try to describe the sex act by slipping in a few phrases like ‘guiding the sentence’, ‘drawing to a close’ and ‘bring them…into a uniform rhythm.’

I was nearly orgasmic.

Riiiight.

But I did laugh out loud when you referred to this as ‘ordinary prose.’ You’re funny. Really.

But still, I tried this line out on my wife. I wanted to seduce her with a little high-brow lit.

Do you want to know what she did when I repeated this to her?

Swoon?

No.

Close, my friend.

She actually went into the garage. She returned with a shovel. She hit me with it. She said if I ever tried to fuck with her mind again she’d cock-whip me.

Okay, so now let’s try a little Nora Roberts. No! Wait, how about Jennifer Crusie? Rowwrrrr. Here’s how Jennifer discusses the same topic, Marcel:

She glared at him: “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

“I think I’m the fuck you want,” Nick said, and when she swung on him, he ducked under her arm and caught her to him, taking her mouth to his so completely that she stopped swinging to enjoy the heat and shudder he kissed into her, so relieved to finally have his arms around her now. p. 182, Crazy for You

You know what happened to my wife when I read this to her?

Her nipples hardened.

True, she still swung a shovel at me, and still threatened to cock-whip me, but the context was totally different, man.