How to spend Friday night...
May. 9th, 2004 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arysteiaFriday night will generally find me on my couch watching dvds, or at the movies, but every month or so a group of my best friends go out for dinner. To the uninitiated observer we might look like three couples. We are, in fact, three straight women with no lives and three extremely gay men. One of whom just drunkenly promised to have my children if I'm not married by the time I'm thirty. Yay! My Alexander has a father! I didn't bother to explain that *I* would have to have *his*... He must have been pretty far gone, because he then suggested we do it the old-fashioned way *giggles uncontrollably* which he thinks he could manage if we drank enough first. Why yes, I *was* flattered. :-p
How did we get to this point? I blame Mary Renault. Yep. These evenings are always slightly fraught, because I get home from school before the others get home from work, so am inevitably a couple of drinks ahead by the time they all arrive. The future father of my children then races at light speed to catch up. He then demands I recite racy Latin and Greek poetry, the more pornographic the better, which the boys all adore. I used to find it difficult to say "I'll fuck you up the arse and force you to perform oral sex upon me!" in front of a group, but I'm pretty much over it now. Occasionally I regret ever mentioning my discovery that there was no active verb for to go down on, only passive for to be made to, but not that often.
Par for the course then, to begin with. But then FFOMC, who I may have maligned a few entries back as The Slowest Reader on Earth, suddenly interrupted with, "My god, Vic, that book you gave me is the most erotic thing I've ever read!" For the record, it was, of course, Fire from Heaven. "I can't believe you didn't warn me not to read it on a plane. I had to hold my briefcase in front of me tonight to get past the stewardesses." Rest of table's eyes glaze over as they realise an Alexander Conversation is about to start.
I wish I'd been just a fraction more sober at this point, because it was actually really interesting hearing a gay man talk about the Alexander/Hephaistion relationship in general, and MR's rendering of it in particular. I'm going to have to bring it up again. What I do remember is that FFOMC is as much of a Hephaistionista as I am, and fie to all others. Fascinatingly, however, he's been weeping for Hephaistion not because of interlopers, but because he thinks he is actually *in love* with Alexander in a more modern sense of the word, whereas Alexander loves him, adores him even, as a brother and a very best friend, and enjoys him as a sexual partner. Which isn't the same thing at all. I've given a lot of thought to the disparity in sex drive that MR portrays in the novel, but I've never considered it quite like that. Thoughts and comments welcome.
Anyway, it was a short leap from there to him reciting his favourite passages (he's memorised them already! *love*); to me complaining that I've never met a straight man who reads MR; to him saying that he'd never met a straight woman who knew what rimming was before; to one of the other guys saying he'd never met a woman who knew as much about gay sex full stop as I did; to the last guy saying he'd slept with men who knew less about it than I did. Which made me laugh hysterically, but then wonder just what I've said at various times to create this mythic persona. Ah, the benefits of slash. Good god.
I now have to try harder than I have been (read: not at all) to find someone in the next two years. Otherwise it's going to be me, FFOMC, a case of champagne, and a copy of the book with us taking turns to read our favourite passages out, all crammed into my bed. I bet MR never realised her work could be used as a seduction device, let alone as an aid to conception. Then again, there is that story about how Hephaistion's funeral monument in Hamadan became a fertility idol in later centuries. Maybe it is appropriate after all.
How did we get to this point? I blame Mary Renault. Yep. These evenings are always slightly fraught, because I get home from school before the others get home from work, so am inevitably a couple of drinks ahead by the time they all arrive. The future father of my children then races at light speed to catch up. He then demands I recite racy Latin and Greek poetry, the more pornographic the better, which the boys all adore. I used to find it difficult to say "I'll fuck you up the arse and force you to perform oral sex upon me!" in front of a group, but I'm pretty much over it now. Occasionally I regret ever mentioning my discovery that there was no active verb for to go down on, only passive for to be made to, but not that often.
Par for the course then, to begin with. But then FFOMC, who I may have maligned a few entries back as The Slowest Reader on Earth, suddenly interrupted with, "My god, Vic, that book you gave me is the most erotic thing I've ever read!" For the record, it was, of course, Fire from Heaven. "I can't believe you didn't warn me not to read it on a plane. I had to hold my briefcase in front of me tonight to get past the stewardesses." Rest of table's eyes glaze over as they realise an Alexander Conversation is about to start.
I wish I'd been just a fraction more sober at this point, because it was actually really interesting hearing a gay man talk about the Alexander/Hephaistion relationship in general, and MR's rendering of it in particular. I'm going to have to bring it up again. What I do remember is that FFOMC is as much of a Hephaistionista as I am, and fie to all others. Fascinatingly, however, he's been weeping for Hephaistion not because of interlopers, but because he thinks he is actually *in love* with Alexander in a more modern sense of the word, whereas Alexander loves him, adores him even, as a brother and a very best friend, and enjoys him as a sexual partner. Which isn't the same thing at all. I've given a lot of thought to the disparity in sex drive that MR portrays in the novel, but I've never considered it quite like that. Thoughts and comments welcome.
Anyway, it was a short leap from there to him reciting his favourite passages (he's memorised them already! *love*); to me complaining that I've never met a straight man who reads MR; to him saying that he'd never met a straight woman who knew what rimming was before; to one of the other guys saying he'd never met a woman who knew as much about gay sex full stop as I did; to the last guy saying he'd slept with men who knew less about it than I did. Which made me laugh hysterically, but then wonder just what I've said at various times to create this mythic persona. Ah, the benefits of slash. Good god.
I now have to try harder than I have been (read: not at all) to find someone in the next two years. Otherwise it's going to be me, FFOMC, a case of champagne, and a copy of the book with us taking turns to read our favourite passages out, all crammed into my bed. I bet MR never realised her work could be used as a seduction device, let alone as an aid to conception. Then again, there is that story about how Hephaistion's funeral monument in Hamadan became a fertility idol in later centuries. Maybe it is appropriate after all.
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-09 10:14 pm (UTC)by gay men!"no subject
Date: 2004-11-29 12:43 pm (UTC)I swear I'm not stalking you, just late-night journal browsing.I do actually know a straight guy who has read Renault. (well, know indirectly) He used to teach Classical Studies at my (now former) high school. Sadly he'd moved away by the time I took Classics.