February 7, 2022

 I went with a friend to the Skirball Cultural Center to see a Star Trek exhibit this weekend. They had props, wardrobe, the miniatures they used for the exteriors of the ships (that was the coolest part). I read Brent Spiner's book - his noir/memoir about the filming of TNG - recently. It's pretty incredible how much Star Trek exists. The physical objects, the digital images, the understanding and fantasies of it in the minds of its fans. It seems to have real weight even though it's all made up, and kind of rudimentary at that. It's cool. 

Blog Time! 

Clark-Flory, Tracy – WANT ME

Published: 2021

Read: 2/2022

Non-fiction, this is part memoir, part collection of essays from Clark-Flory, a sex writer for Jezebel and Salon (among other places). She starts out talking about her early impulse to be the object of male desire. She wanted to figure out exactly what men wanted and to become that, or maybe overcome that, to be aware of it at least. She watches a lot of porn. She hooks up with her favorite porn star. She goes to strip clubs. She has sex. She writes about it. She deals with hand-wringing about “girls these days.” She takes offense to Ariel Levy’s book, Female Chauvinist Pigs. She dates. She gets married. She loses her mom. She has a baby. She tries to contend with her own sexual desire. She tries to see out of her own eyes instead of through a camera lens pointed at herself and everything she’s doing. 

I resonated with that idea/fear of the singular male desire. The blonde sex kitten with the big boobs, someone they might paint on the side of a military airplane. That’s old fashioned, though, obviously. The “singular male desire” now might be Kim Kardashian? The butt the curves, the contours. It’s not, though, obviously. I almost stopped reading, but Clark-Flory does get around to the idea that there isn’t some singular desire. An interesting take away came from Clark-Flory’s conversation with actors on a porn set. They were talking about how what they were doing in the porn performances didn’t always feel good, wasn’t always fun. It’s a product of the marketplace of attention and isn’t trying to be a guidebook on how to have good sex, they insist. Talking about sexual scripts in general was interesting. 

Especially in dating, I’ve been noticing how things tend to get flattened down to men vs. women. Like the old men are from mars thing. There’s this sense – in this book at least – that feminism is devotion to the side that is female. That sexual liberation is mainly important because it scores points for the women’s side. It’s exhausting and seems counterproductive. If good sex is finding a person to have a good time with, knowing what a good time looks like, connecting with them, being present with them, being vulnerable and generous with them, what good is it to be worrying about whether you’re letting the Men pull one over on you? I was glad to read this book, but her style of writing/thinking didn’t really do anything for me. (She criticized Levy without any acknowledgement of how stunning her prose is. Makes me wonder about Clark-Flory’s taste.) Her prose is nothing special. She seems smug in the last third of the book. Look at her! She’s got a man! She’s got a baby! And she got to have lots of sex before that! She proved all her haters wrong! Like the outcome of a romantic life justifies or doesn’t justify the steps that lead up to it. Like she’s still buying into the idea that there’s some kind of calculus to living a romantically harmonious life. Like it’s that simple or that anyone has that much control. 

Rating: ★★