The following conversation with The Zola (slightly edited) initially appeared as a guest post on his blog The Zola System. Some women are FURIOUS with him. Their anger is understandable. Having your sexual proclivities described for the amusement of others is a far worse betrayal than his masturbating to hard core porn. Tell me what you think. I want to hear from alpha females and beta males on this subject.
Photo Credit: "Lips" by Dave Sewell
Does the loyalty Zola proclaims he has to friends not extend to former, and sometimes current, lovers? Will he descrbe any intimate situation to get attention or a laugh?
Here is the bottom line question: Is Alex so willing to lay out these women naked in their sexual needs for our amusement because they’re alpha babes and he’s a beta male—and is this his way of leveling that playing field?
We are sitting in a Third Avenue pub that when I ask him,
“Alex, tell me a sex story about one of your girls, one that I haven’t heard.” (I've heard many, many of them.)
Grinning, Alex rises to the bait.
“I was dating Jenna, the hot brunette who also went out with older guys. In fact, she preferred older guys in a relationship context, but she was happy to play with me. One day she came into my bar, wearing a tight, short dress. I leaned over to kiss her and she said, ‘Not on the mouth. I just had a date.’
“The ‘date’ was riding in a car to the airport with a corporate lover headed to London on business. She gave him a blow job in the car.
“She tells me this and says, ‘I’m so horny. Would you take me into the bathroom and fuck me?’
“Did you?” I ask.
He didn’t because the bar was way too small and too crowded for discretion. Plus, the owner was on premise that night.
“So, no. I sent her to my apartment, told her to cuff herself to the bed post and sealed the deal later on.”
Alex, I ask, why do you tell me all these sex stories? I was really surprised at what he divulged over dinner with our friend Jessica last week. He promises women nondisclosure; and then he discloses. Where is the gallantry, the chivalry in a man who thinks of hiimself as a gentleman?
‘You’ve often told me that you won’t spill the secrets of patrons in your bars. They come in with mistresses; you act like you haven’t seen them lately when the return with the wives. They tell you stories but you keep their confidence. You are loyal to drinkers.”
Is there no loyalty to lovers?
“Part of my business as a bartender is discretion,” he says as if that explains this.
“You know how to be discreet. Why not apply it to your sex life?”
“I don’t tell everything, just the more interesting details.”
Sometimes I want to thump him on the head. Yeah, he tells exactly the details the girls would rather keep private--like the one about his lover who likes to be choked.
“Women talk all the time,” he says defensively.
Post "Sex and the City", men know that, Yes, women talk.
“Women share stories for validation, information, emotional support—sometimes to laugh at an adventure in bad sex,” I say. “If a woman is really into a guy, she doesn’t tell those kinds of details--and if she does, only to BFFs. She might talk disparagingly about his sexual skillis if she’s not going to sleep with again or sex trash her ex—but if she’s crazy about her lover, she’s not putting all his little proclivities out there on the table for analysis and grins.”
“You tell the most intimate details for attention and laughs,” I say. “You have told me a lot of stories about women when you were still with them, like the girl you thought you might marry. You made fun of her sexual technique! I don’t think you’d find women making fun of the guy they plan to marry.
“Girl sex talk can be hard on men, but not The Man.”
“It goes like this,” he says, his face closing up as his defenses harden. “I’m a raconteur. I can’t resist a good story. It’s a personal failing.”
“You can resist a good story if it’s telling on your bar buddies or yourself,” I tease.
“Not recently.”
True. Under my questioning, he's told more on himself recently than most people do in a lifetime. I suddenly realize that my work here is nearly done. For two years I’ve been beating him up. Why? I knew that he could really write if he started being honest with himself—and got out of The Loser Bar where he was spending three or four hours a night downing shots and beers with with snarky under achievers.
“With the help of Jessica’s breasts [which mesmerized him], I’ve broken you down,” I say. “You can no longer tell a lie to yourself.”
Once again, I ask the question, albeit in a slightly different way: “Don’t you value your lovers?”
“Some, yes.”
“Some. I see a pattern. You betray the alpha females in your life, don’t you?”
“Some. Yes, maybe. In a way, I would say Yes. Specifically the ones who attempted to exert the most control outside the bedroom. Telling their sex secrets is purely reactive. But I like the raconteur explanation better.”
“Oh, no! No easy out. You’re on to something here.”
He looks pained.
“You let them lead in many ways, but you get back at them for having so much power. Most women would consider your describing in detail how they like to be fucked as the ultimate betrayal.”
Still pained, but not enitrely conceding, he doesn’t look me in the eye.
“Let’s turn it around: She’s telling her friends what you like and how you do it, but with a comedic spin. How do you feel?”
“It’s the only way you can tell my sex life. With a comedic spin.”
Drum roll, please.
“Nice joke, Zola, but really. She’s entertaing friends at brunch right now with your sex story. Your dick comes off shrunken and shriveled.”
“She’s got that right…”
“Truly, how do you feel?”
As I watch him squirm on his bar stool before downing a shot, I know I am seeing open heart surgery of the emotional kind. The heart of the alpha woman/ beta man is a secret sexual equation. This is where he can get back, like Jon, the presumably cheating spouse of the reality show “Jon and Kate Plus Eight.” Jon lost job; Kate wrote successful books and traveled to promote them, leaving Jon home and in charge of the twins and sextuplets. How did they think revenge adultery would not follow? Alex is pulling apart the bones of his chest and exposing the weak heart of his loves inside.
Alex says, “Keep in mind, this is a frat boy context, locker room talk….”
“Aging guylander, Gen X-er having trouble growing up, beta male?”
“Basically, I would agree to all that.”
“So, you’re telling me that the answer to the question, why aren’t you loyal to your lovers is–”
“It’s a problem with the repressed jock culture. If we’re not snapping each other with towels, we’re bragging about our conquests.”
“Oh, no, you haven’t been a jock in years. And it’s meaner than that.”
“It’s an anger at the position of the beta male, the way the culture has changed…”
He stares into his beer.
“We’re trying to play Ms Pac-Man forever and everybody has moved on to the X Box.”
Okay. Lame. But he gets it now. He knows what he’s doing and it goes beyod equalizing the balance of power by playing The Spanking Man in the bedroom. She participates willingly in that power exchange. He really beats her down, gets her back when he tells her erotic story the way he tells bar jokes.
Alex knows why he tells. Knowing yourself is a tough and dangerous business. You can’t be a really good writer if you don’t. But why do women ever trust him?
After posting this piece on The Zola System, I asked a dozen guys, beta males, who they tell and what they tell. The answers were shocking: When it comes to talking about their lovers, they are clones of Zola. They tell. They tell all. While a woman might tell all only to her BFFs, these guys are putting it out there for public consumption.
Explain yourselves, Beta Boys.
