Not Cool: The Hipster Elite and Their War on You (24 page)

Lolo is an example of what I call a “super-fact” (i.e., a really great fact): Delayed gratification
never
leads to failure in life … ever. Ask yourself this: Has anything ever gone wrong in your life if you put something off? I’m talking about a drink, or a drug, a cheeseburger, a random sex act. Every time I’m about to order something from Taco Bell, I think to myself, “If I’m around tomorrow, I’ll do it then.” And I never do. It’s how I’ve kept my girlish figure for the last four years. I’ve also avoided a lot of explosive diarrhea.

And what happens when you resist?

Does your life collapse? Or do you actually get something done? Chances are you
always
do something that makes you feel better than whatever temptation you were about to succumb to. I call this the Power of Procrastination. I sense a
Dr. Phil
segment in my future.

The forgotten art of delayed gratification became forgotten because the culture of the 1960s and 1970s transmitted the message, through TV, movies, and music, that it was cool to satisfy your every whim whenever it struck your fancy. “If it feels good, do it” were six words that defined the downward slide of a culture. To test yourself against the rigors of discipline, to gain whatever prize might be waiting for you at the end, was a waste of your time.
One would be hard-pressed to find a more nihilistic, destructive philosophy. What used to be cool (and rather smart)—working, or waiting—fell under the heading of “why bother?” Anyone who, as a kid, was walking to band or soccer practice, only to be stopped by a friend wishing to do otherwise (break into a house and steal underwear), knows what I mean. “Tune in, turn on, drop out” didn’t produce a nation of enlightened beings. It produced a nation that can barely read and write.

Feminists tricked women into thinking that wanting the same things as cool and careless men do, and throwing caution (and bras) to the wind, would put you in a better place. It might give you some better memories, at first, but the place you end up is never the place you expected. It’s never with
that
guy. He gets what he wants and moves on. (Yes, I’m sounding like a grandmother, but maybe I am one. I do smell an awful lot like lavender, but that’s a medical disorder.)

No one wants to hear it, but the studies find what I’m getting at: Delayed gratification works. The younger you have sex, the sooner you “peak,” in just about everything. You grow old too fast, and nothing seems that great as life goes on. Lolo shows you what you can do if you forget “just say no” and embrace “just not now.” It allows you to get more crap done, and that allows for more freedom—freedom most feminists can never dream of. Lolo’s flown all over the world because she worked hard; most feminist bloggers don’t get past Penn Station when they’re taking the train back home to their parents to do their laundry. Lolo’s resistance to what other people define as cool has allowed her options many feminists will never, ever have. No wonder they hate her.

Sex isn’t supposed to be boring. But amateurs have made it so. They’ve turned Chris Isaak into Chris Hayes.

In March 2013 a
Guardian
article detailed a controversy that erupted at the University of Tennessee surrounding a student-led Sex Week on the campus. According to the
Guardian
—which has become the world’s college newspaper—the campus extravaganza is “aimed at promoting sexual health and awareness,” which, for anyone experienced in the lexicon of “awareness,” is always code for frumpy, tattooed experts brandishing edible condoms and adjustable-speed vibrating dildos. The paper notes that it “had its funding slashed after Republican lawmakers launched a campaign against the event.” Boo hoo, you evil Republicans, always out to squash a screw. You’re like, so 1950s and repressed!

And there you have the cool/uncool narrative blossoming, in the comfortable confines of a sympathetic media that instinctively follows the scent of repression by the hands of Republicans. They can’t get enough of it. To them, it’s always
Footloose
—the young kids rebelling against the rigid minister who hates fun,
hates kids, hates everything. He’s probably closeted and sleeps with lemurs (male ones!).

The best part of this article, however, is the accompanying picture. It features two extremely solemn students (Jacob Clark and Brianna Rader) flanking a chalkboard. Both students are looking dead serious at you, as though they’re staring down the tanks of Tiananmen Square. On the chalkboard between them, the word
SEX
is written. The board could have been the Berlin Wall, November 1989. I look at it and I hear “Heroes” playing in my brain. They really are America’s brave warriors, withstanding the onslaught of … nothing really. What totally wasted energy. Agoraphobics take greater risks.

Yes, they were making a stand. For sex. For awareness. On … a college campus. Yep, a campus, where I guess no one has ever heard of sex. Where no one has ever seen a condom. Where no one has ever had sex on the floor of a sorority, and then lost their underwear while climbing out a window. (What can I say, it was past curfew.)

These are today’s modern revolutionaries. While students are dying all over the world fighting for freedom, these brave souls are fighting for seminars titled “Getting Laid,” “Loud and Queer,” “Bow Chicka Bow Wow,” and a treatise on oral sex called “How Many Licks Does It Take?” (Tip: Not many.)

Now, I’d get the coolness of this heroic stance, if it were, say, happening in Iran. You risk castration. Or you might lose a hand, which kills all chances of getting to second base and eliminates most men’s most amenable partner. But in the United States, taking a stand for sexual awareness is like taking a stand for more fleas at the dog pound. They’re advocating for something we’ve already got. I mean, really: You think our culture is undersexualized?
Did you watch last year’s MTV Video Music Awards? This cause is about as genuine as an Obama apology.

The eighteen grand of funding for the week was supposed to come from the school but was withdrawn after an evil Republican state senator (of course) named Stacey Campfield raised a puritanical, uncool stink. I happen to think it was pretty cool that Campfield said something (for different reasons), but I’ll get to that later.

Faced with the prospect of no Sex Week, some outraged students ran to Facebook and Twitter, spreading the panic that the event was in peril. This was their Arab Spring, if by Arab you mean “hand” and by Spring, you mean “job.”

The activists got the hashtag #Iwantsexweek trending on Twitter, which led to worldwide attention, including from the
Guardian
, and also from my own network (the predictable evil Dean Wormer, from
Animal House
, in this equation). This emboldened the activists, who announced their success on their website, and also encouraged idiots, sorry—people—to continue forking out dough to fund next year’s Sex Week. I might offer, humbly, that perhaps this money could have gone to something more worthwhile (victims of Hurricane Sandy, the Salvation Army, my own private “Buy Greg a Robot Geisha” fund), but why rain on their self-congratulatory parade? Someone, somewhere might get an edible condom. I prefer pineapple.

The event didn’t get all the money it needed. Faced with a revolt, the school capitulated and allowed up to seven grand of the student fees to pay for the fun. So, in effect, in this thoughtful sex-fest, it’s the students’ parents who are getting screwed first, and before it even starts. They should at least get some pictures from it. Or why not participate? Bring a blanket, Dad! Bring the dog! Bow chicka bow wow, indeed.

In the world of cool, the antisex Republican is uncool, and the pro-sex students are renegades. But here is why this is bull. Sex, as a topic for seminars on awareness or entertainment, is welcomed on campus with open arms. Sex Week is meant to “blow your mind,” but this whole escapade is as shocking as Christmas.

Please, kids. Although I find the idea of seeing these organizers copulating nauseating (and I have a pretty high threshold). Rubbing a balloon on my head is more electrifying. And erotic. These students want to really shock America? Say something nice about America.

This brave stand for boning is really a way to make the organizers look cool. You are, in effect, creating a facade of cool rebellion where there is none available. This is college. What can you possibly rebel against, except leftist professors with halitosis? Now, that would be fighting the man. Because you’d be battling a real army.

When it comes to sex—and this comes from decades of horrible experience—the people who always flaunt their sexual activities are always the worst at it. Trust me, I wish I didn’t know this, but I do. Meanwhile the silent types—the people who never
ever
talk about sex—those are the types who take the behavior most seriously. They are, without question, the true professionals. (I use this theory not just with sex, but with cooking, writing, stand-up comedy, guitar playing, Trivial Pursuit, singing, household repairs, murder.) The best metaphor for this is
American Idol
. Everyone who shows up there thinks they can sing. Almost all of them can’t. Yet you know they told everyone they could. And then it’s the quiet kid, or the homely lady, who gets onstage and knocks the song out of the park. And that song never includes “bow chicka bow wow.”

And more important, anyone who actually believes that having
sex is an achievement must be easily impressed by rabbits, cats, dogs, and the squirrels rutting around campus. Which is why they’re almost—without question—lousy at it.

But I guess given the curriculum students are choosing from these days, sex education might be the least harmful. At least when you’re learning about blow jobs, you aren’t reading Karl Marx (much the same, really). The more time spent discussing anal, the less time there is for lionizing Noam Chomsky. Still, wouldn’t it be slightly better if the school sponsored seminars that focused on stuff that helped you get a job not prefaced by the word “blow”? You have to have an awfully healthy trust fund for this sort of behavior not to backfire on you later.

Wouldn’t it be great if the seminars were called “How to Pay Off Your Student Debt” or “Make Sure You Don’t Move Back Home” or “An Apartment, a Car, a Life—In One Year.” Shit, how about “How to Join a Bar Band So You Can Pay for Beer”? That is far more practical. And better for your sex life. I wish I had done that. Of course, I have no musical talent. But that didn’t stop Adam Levine.

But maybe “work”
is
the goal of Sex Week. If you look at the unemployment numbers in early 2013, it’s pretty scary—hovering around 25 percent for boys and girls in their early twenties. So perhaps these classes are honest-to-God job preparation. The way it looks these days, the only option most of these kids have will be on their backs. Hooking might be the new IT. It’s like that scene in
The Graduate
. Forget “plastics.” Maybe the old guy at the party is telling the new graduates, “sodomy.” Yep, when the evil Republican state senator said, “We should be teaching these children what is important to learn so they can get jobs,” he was wrong. Sorry, Senator, the way things are headed, maybe the school sees the future—and it’s lubricated.

I do realize that by devoting time to Sex Week, I become, once again, the symbol of uncool: a white middle-aged guy railing against filthy kids. But I argue it’s the opposite. Every professor behind this is probably my age, and totally for it. If anything, rebellion against this silliness
is
cool. Case in point, the week was supposed to feature a poetry-reading lesbian bondage expert (which is a longer way of saying “bullshit artist”). And it’s akin to having ants at a picnic. Totally expected. It’s about as rebellious as breaking wind in a bathtub—another thing I have experience in but keep to myself. (Well, mostly. It’s amazing what goes viral on German YouTube.)

Sex Week is really part of a bigger idea, a larger damaging, stupid trend that seeks to obliterate perhaps the greatest thing about sex: mystery. Mystery is the best part about sexual attraction, and it’s responsible for the greatest joy in life: chemistry. Chemistry between people is more about the unspoken than the spoken. The more you talk about it (whatever “it” is), the less interesting you become. (My friends remind me of this all the time.) If you don’t know this, it’s because you haven’t shut up long enough to appreciate silence and all it brings. And guess what: Not acting on chemistry is pretty awesome. For one, you avoid pregnancy, divorce, STDs, and lawyers who garnish your wages.

Me, I am a huge fan of sexual repression, although my definition might be different. To me, not talking about sex is just doing a favor to the people who would have to listen to you. Plus, you can never do the act justice. For me, a person who talks incessantly about their sexual exploits is no different from a guy who brags about his partying. In his head, he surely is having the time of his life. But everyone else around him wants to punch him in the face. Including his partners. It’s all generally BS anyway. A waste of oxygen and energy. Sex Week personified.

We need to abandon the idea that expressing your sexuality is brave, in-your-face, or even interesting. And so my last example hails from Pittsburgh, where during an annual art school parade at Carnegie Mellon (it’s always colleges), a female student dressed up as the pope, minus pants … or anything, for that matter, down below. She had shaved her pubic hair in the shape of a cross, and passed out condoms. The Catholic diocese asked for the college to do something, in perhaps the nicest way possible. Bishop David Zubik put it politely: “I think we all know that when we’re growing up we do stupid things, but to cross over the line in this instance shouldn’t happen with anybody.” The college said it would review the incident, but some students didn’t seem to mind, of course. “It’s all in good fun and it’s not meant to harm anyone,” Ivy Kristov told the local station, KDKA.

Of course it is, you moron. Nothing is brave if no one seems to mind. But you know who would mind? Try pulling that in a mosque and see how far your edgy, in-your-face expressionism takes you. Shave your pubic hair into a red crescent and advocate against the hijab someplace in Lahore. Good luck with that. We’ll send flowers.