Virtue & Stripteases
bare with me
Category: inner work, virtue, sex party-related
This Saturday, I did a striptease in front of 3 women. I focused utterly on the sensation of cloth against my skin, the music,1 and my movements. I danced and playfully removed pieces of clothing while enjoying the sensations.
Once the song was up, I looked up and was met with a wave of approval. They all found it very hot.2 This surprised me on some level. For a long time, I’ve avoided trying to charm/seduce others, fearing being judged as silly.
Why do I fear this judgement? I think this is because I’ve treated it as evidence of me not being hot. This is absurd. There is no such thing as “being hot”. When people say “you are hot”, they mean “I find you hot” or “a lot of people find you hot”.3
The thought “Maybe I’m just not sexy” is scary. It’s very hard to do something about, akin to reaching the high shelves if you’re 1,40.4 Thinking about it as a relational thing, as in “some people don’t find me sexy”, makes it way less scary.
The tricky thing here is that it’s only half relational. It is possible to work to improve the likelihood that people will judge me as sexy. Doing this work will require some skill. I see a potential problem where I fixate on the outcome and start fearing judgement again.
I will approach it as most things I do: by focusing on myself and what’s up to me. Right now, I think the main hurdle to overcome is my own avoidance, and my tendency to over-focus on the judgements of the other person. I can combat these hurdles by focusing on my own pleasure; charming others because I find it enjoyable.
Once I start flirting on a more regular basis, I will most likely learn how to do it with more finesse.5 Until then I wish myself happy stumbling :)
P.S: I’ve been inspired to try to reduce the level of technicalities in my posts after multiple people have told me that the text is sometimes hard to understand. We’ll see if I stick to it, given that it’s a bit of a work.
This tune (which seems to have a rather sad text now that I read the translation) :
They mentioned it enthusiastically later during the weekend.
I was originally going to write “unskillful reification” instead of this paragraph, but I’m trying to be more inclusive with my blog. I need to practice touch typing anyway.
It’s possible to get a stepping stool or extend one’s legs through painful surgery. Or live in a place with lover shelves. But that’s not really relevant to the metaphor, which is about illustrating the difference between actual attributes of a person vs relational characteristics.
I have a hunch that it’s very easy to get to the 5th percentile here, given that most Swedish men get shitfaced drunk to loosen inhibitions. Being able to loosen inhibitions without alcohol should be an easy ticket to success.