Sex Secrets of an American Geisha (20 page)

Don’t Sweat the Smaller Stuff

Please listen to your American Geisha Older Sister’s story of her search for a Good Man as a cautionary tale. I had just finished my five-year relation ship with Neil and was determined not to make so many mistakes as I be gan anew my quest for a Good Man (although at that time I had not yet conceived of the specific qualities that made a Good Man, nor had I even figured out exactly what I needed from a man). I did know that I didn’t want a long-distance relationship, and I knew that I wanted someone to marry, an intimate life partner. I wanted someone to have dinner with, to see a movie with, to have sex with; I wanted someone to be nice to me.

I wrote down the following list of what I wanted from the next man I got involved with:

I need a man who . . .

• makes me feel bigger than I am (I’m small)
  
• tells me that I am pretty
  
• is in my future plans
  
• appreciates me, even my small gestures
  
• wants me more than I want him
  
• has a hot body temperature in cold weather
  
• sees my new red nail polish and says, “That’s sexy”
  
• makes me laugh
  
• understands my good intentions
  
• sees my fat body as having a basically good underlying shape
  
• helps me to wake up at five in the morning to exercise
  
• supports my different fad diets without any criticism
  
• is supportive of my writing
  
• helps my digestion when we’re dining together
  
• sees me as a nice woman
  
• will be my child’s father
  

As I look at my list eight years later, I am glad that I didn’t miss out on the relationship with my husband just because he didn’t have a hot body temperature or a sexy response to my nail polish. Nor is he too enthusiastic about 5:00 A.M. workouts or sitting quietly as I jump from one diet to an other. I’m not sure if he even understands how he could help my digestion at dinner. I’m glad that when I met my husband I didn’t sweat the small stuff.

Now I realize that I should not have defined the Good Man I sought with these less important personality traits. I should have stuck to the basic elements that make a Good Man good, as I’m asking you to do. From there I should have been ready to accept a man (as I did ultimately) who had traits that differed from those of my Perfect Man. I eventually figured out that these differences are not terribly important to a happy marriage. So, please, dear Younger Sister, don’t sweat the smaller stuff when it comes to selecting an otherwise Good Man for you.

At the same time, however, as an American Geisha you almost certainly have basic requirements of a relationship, what I call Your Four Fundamen tal Needs. I will discuss them in the next chapter. Although it is important not to sweat the smaller stuff when it comes to the personality traits of a potential Good Man, it is equally important to be clear about and focused on getting your basic relationship needs met. Just as you want to avoid spending time with a Wrong Man or Bad Man, you also want to avoid wast ing time with a man, even a Good Man, who doesn’t have essentially the same relationship goals as you do. We’ll talk about all of this in more detail in the next chapter, dear Younger Sister, when we develop your love and marriage plan.

You Get to Do the Choosing

Let’s talk a little more about choosing your Good Man. So far, I have spo ken more about attracting men to you, not so much about your choosing a Good Man to whom you are attracted. It may seem that attracting a man places you in a passive role, because he is the one who chooses whether or not to approach the healthy, slim, and beautiful you. The attitude of the smart, hot, sexy Asian Geisha—and this should be your attitude, too—is that
she
has the final choice to make. She is so beautiful, sexy, feminine, and classy that many men will be attracted to her and she will have the option of choosing among them. You, too, dear American Geisha, should have the confidence that your beauty, femininity, and presence will allow you to choose from among those attracted to you. You can choose one or more Good Men to date who seem to be just right (but probably not perfect) for you, and ultimately you can make the final choice about your one Good Man to marry.

By being a feminine-ist—by operating out of your receptive, feminine self—you happily allow a Good Man to engage in the masculine behaviors of searching and hunting. Though superficially the man seems in control because he is taking the action of approaching you, truly it is you who, knowing the powerful secret of receptive femininity, control the ultimate outcome of the man’s behavior.

In Chapter 3, I said that when you increase your options, you are mak ing progress. Think about it. If your femininity and beauty attract men to you in large numbers, this increases your options as you try to assess whether this or that man might be your Good Man. The more options you have in terms of potential Good Men who approach you, the more oppor tunities you have to find and choose the right Good Man for you. You are definitely making progress toward soon being happily married if you have twenty-six Good Men to choose from rather than only three or one. In creasing your options certainly is progress toward your ultimate goal of marriage to the right man, your Good Man. (Finding your husband is a “numbers game,” and if you define for yourself what a Good Man is, the game you play will involve a number of Good Men, not Wrong Men who waste your precious time.)

You Are a Good Woman

We have worked in this chapter to define a Good Man. But we now need to take a moment to look in our mirrors, at ourselves. If we want and expect to attract and to marry Good Men, then we need to be Good Women. Oth erwise the Good Man we wish to marry will marry someone else who is a Good Woman.

To know what makes a Good Woman takes no further information than we have already covered. The same Four Core Characteristics of a Good Man are the Four Core Characteristics of a Good Woman. We can simplify the Four Core Characteristics by reducing each to a single word.

A Good Woman is

. . . 1. honest

. . . 2. aware

. . . 3. nice

. . . 4. happy

In order to attract a Good Man who has these Four Core Characteris tics, you must be a Good Woman who also exhibits these Four Core Char acteristics. Measure yourself against this list, and move toward being more and more honest, aware, nice, and happy.

A Good Man may fuck many beautiful women but marry none of them. The beautiful woman he does marry will also be a nice woman. Be that nice woman. Of course, “nice” for you as a Good Woman and for him as a Good Man does not mean that either of you is unassertive about your own needs and wants in the relationship. It means that each of you has a caring, compassionate way of interacting with one another and the rest of the world.

I want you to use your refrigerator to help you stay conscious and aware of what a Good Man is for you. High up on the fridge, please post the Four Core Characteristics of a Good Man. Photocopy the list from these pages or handwrite your own version. Later I’ll ask you to post additional items on your fridge, so clear some space for me, will you please? As your fridge fills up and you become more aware of what you want in your Good Man, you are becoming more and more of an American Geisha.

I said in the Introduction that this book would be a practical guide that would help you to be married to your Good Man within twelve to eighteen months. I promised that I would suggest specific actions you could take to get you closer to that goal. Now, in this chapter, I need for you to become actively involved in the process so that I may keep my promise. It is time to develop your American Geisha Love and Marriage Plan. Actually expending the effort to create a plan is the most proactive step you can take; then you must put your plan in writing to give it a reality it lacks if it remains only in your head.

Your Four Fundamental Needs

Your Older Sister wants you to start your planning by defining your most important, basic needs in a relationship. You must be clear about these needs, both for yourself and so you can communicate them to men who are possible candidates for your future Good Man husband. Think about what your most fundamental needs are, write them down, and stay aware and conscious of them. Although your basic needs are certainly for you alone to determine, I believe I can help. If you bought this book, I believe I know enough about you to guess what your essential relationship needs are. See if I’m right. Here are Your Four Fundamental Needs:

1. You need to be married (if true) and to have kids (you decide).
   
2. You need a strong love relationship (of course).
   
3. You need a passionate sexual relationship (of course).
   
4. You need a Good Man, and no other kind, to date and marry (absolutely).
   

I suggest to you that these four needs are reasonable, achievable, and essential to a happy life with your chosen man. (And a wonderful Good Woman like you deserves a happy life!) You may have other important desires (such as where to live, family income goals, compatible religion, travel, time for friends and family, time alone). However, the needs that I call Your Four Fundamental Needs are the absolutes that you require from a relationship. And you must internalize them and communicate them, over time, to any Good Man whom you are considering dating or marrying. If any man, even a Good Man, chooses not to accommodate Your Four Fundamental Needs, you should not begin to date him or you should stop dating him, whether or not you have had sex with him. And, of course, you should not marry him.

Remember, not all Good Men want to marry or have children. Not all need a strong love connection, nor a sexy relationship. Just because a man you are dating is a Good Man, that is not necessarily enough. He must also be willing and enthusiastic about meeting Your Four Fundamental Needs.

There will be some of you dear Younger Sisters who do not desire marriage or children, perhaps being fully happy with a committed, monogamous, live-in relationship that even in the long term will not involve either marriage or children. Some couples choose to have a commitment ceremony in lieu of a conventional wedding. Some couples will be made up of two women, rather than a man and a woman. Any such arrangement that pleases the two of you is totally supported by your Older Sister. You will simply adapt my suggestions to your particular situation. For instance, the first of Your Four Fundamental Needs may read like this:

1. You need to be in a permanent, committed, monogamous relation ship, without children.

Furthermore, as you grow older and reach different life stages, Your Four Fundamental Needs may change, perhaps from the need for a com mitted relationship at age twenty-three to the need for marriage (and children?) at age thirty-one. These are Your Four Fundamental Needs. Adapt my suggestions to the desires and goals that you have at any particular point in your life.

I now realize how important mutual love is to me in a relationship. Over a total of eight years, neither Scott nor Neil (I am so embarrassed to admit) ever said he wanted a future with me. Never. (Neil the brave, at the L.A. airport on his way to Korea, turned to me after he’d walked into the area reserved for ticketed passengers, and, for the first time in three years, said, “I love you.” How could I have been so foolish—desperate—as to stay for so long with a man who didn’t love me?)