Chapter 65: The Mindfuck Continues

December 22, 2002, San Francisco, California

🎤 Steve

"Red pill," Raven said when we finished our lunch at Fisherman's Wharf. "I don't really have a choice."

"We always have choices," I replied. "The goal is to always make the optimal choice."

"I meant logically. You basically backed me into a corner, and I'm positive that any counterargument I tried would fail."

"It is possible for a conclusion to be both logical and wrong. Logic is about methods and consistency, not about 'rightness' or 'wrongness'."

"You have a very strange way of seducing a girl!"

"Actually, if you think about what I've said to you, the seduction is complete, and we've already accomplished my goal."

"You mean deciding to be one of your subversives?"

"That is the true point of the 'red pill or blue pill' question. Remember the quote from The Matrix — it's absolutely about seduction, but not about sex."

Raven was quiet for a moment, then nodded.

"I'm going to ask two questions, and I'd like a plain 'yes' or 'no' answer. No caveats, no mind gam ... mindfucks."

"Go on," I replied with a smile.

"Was this morning really just about philosophy?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to go to bed with me?"

"Yes."

"Now say what you would have said if I hadn't demanded one-word answers.

"To the first, my response would have been 'you tell me'; to the second, 'you already know the answer, or you would not have asked the question'."

"Hang on! You're saying if I thought the answer was 'no', I wouldn't have asked?"

"Correct. Do you think any girl wants to hear a guy she wants to sleep with say he's not interested? It's better for your self-esteem to just not ask or to wait to see if he asks. People don't want to be shot down. Think about guys at school dances in Junior High."

Raven laughed softly, "They'd rather stand against the wall than have a girl say 'no' to them."

"Now, think about a guy proposing — don't you think he knows the answer before he asks? Or at least believes he does?"

Raven considered that for a moment, "Because if he was sure she'd say 'no' or thought there was a strong possibility she might, he wouldn't ask."

"Correct. So, you only asked because you already knew the answer. And you knew the answer to the first one, too, because I told you. You asked because you didn't believe what I said earlier."

Raven frowned, "How do you do that? I mean, read people so well?"

"My friends who lose money to me at the poker table ask that question all the time!"

"I bet you're really good!"

"I am, and I'm an excellent poker player, too!"

Raven laughed, which had been my goal after her frown.

"You probably won't give me a straight answer, but have you been with more than fifty girls?"

"Yes."

"More than a hundred?"

"Rather than play twenty questions, it's over two hundred."

"Jesus!" Raven gasped. "And you were telling the truth about not chasing?"

"Tell me what happened since we spoke on Wednesday," I said with a smile.

"All you did was ask questions and make me think. Well, and those eyes!"

"As I said earlier, the mindfuck is the most important thing, and it's entirely possible to be kindred spirits without physical joining. The physical part is simply a symbol of the intellectual and spiritual part. If you ask society, it's meaningless; if you understand it, it's the most meaningful sex you can ever have."

"Not with your spouse?"

"Think that through, please."

"You'd never marry someone, or multiple someones if you didn't have that intellectual and spiritual connection. They're subversives first, lovers second."

"You're learning."

"I'm going to guess you know I'm a virgin."

"Something which both matters and doesn't matter. Tell me why."

"To you or to me?"

"Yes."

"Whoever said you were the most frustrating man on the planet was understating things! I'd say in the entire universe!"

"I gave you the answer earlier, or at least the clues for most of it."

"You said it was largely a state of mind and that it mattered to some but not to others. If I was saving myself for marriage, then I wouldn't do it, so, in that sense, it doesn't matter. It does matter because it's ... a rite of passage from being a child to being an adult."

"Very, very good."

"For you ... I have an idea, but I have to ask a question."

"Go ahead."

"Have most of those girls been virgins?"

"A large majority, yes."

"It matters because you can teach them what you believe is the true meaning of sex; it doesn't matter because you don't feel girls who have had sex are damaged goods the way some people think."

"You made several good inferences and deductions. Remember what I said about being smart?"

"That I was uneducated and, even though you didn't say it directly, naïve."

"And, after what amounted to a four-hour mindfuck, you've now realized that things are NOT as you had perceived them before you met me, which is the entire point."

"What I said before about learning more in ten minutes than in any other ten minutes in my life is not just true, but I'd say the same about the last five hours."

"There is one potential impediment."

"OK, smart guy! Is there?"

I laughed and nodded, "You wouldn't have asked your second yes-or-no question if you hadn't met the prerequisites."

"Wouldn't that be the very definition of a 'prick tease'?"

"For most guys, probably; for me, no, because of my views about consent and any agreement to have sex."

"Before I respond, I'm guessing you need to see the test results?"

"That is the rule."

"That means driving back across the bridge, stopping at my house for a moment, then back to your hotel because I sure can't take you to my room!"

"We'd still have about five hours," I replied.

"From what I hear, five minutes is enough ... at least for the main act."

"Prepare to have your mind blown," I replied.

"I'd ask, but I think I'll wait to see."

We quickly walked back to her car and headed back for the Golden Gate Bridge.

"I don't think I can draw any conclusions about consent from anything you've said so far," Raven said once we were on the Bridge.

"Consent has to be positive, that is, you have to agree to have sex, not just 'let it happen', and consent can be withdrawn at any point, obligating the other person to stop. And nobody can ever commit irrevocably to sex."

"Married couples?"

"Anyone. And I'm not talking about what any law says or any religious leader. Every individual has the right to say 'no' in any circumstance, and nobody has the right to demand sex or use coercion to get it."

"So much for High School boys!" Raven declared.

"That was a common lament from girls I knew in High School. I made my share of errors, the most egregious being intentionally manipulating a girl into it, and another where things simply got out of control."

"I thought you said you only chased your wife ... or is that the one you manipulated? And didn't you manipulate me?"

"Let's take that last one first — did I?"

Raven thought for a moment, then said, "I think some people would say you did, but if you're telling the truth, and I think you are, the manipulation was to simply get me to think differently. Once I did, everything else followed logically. Well, no, THAT followed logically. I'm still confused about pretty much everything else."

"That's normal," I replied. "For the one that got out of hand, we were making out, and things got hot and heavy, progressed as they normally do, and afterwards she made it clear she had done something she hadn't wanted to do."

"Then why do it?"

"Hormones, and a very experienced partner who knew how to make her hot and bothered. That situation taught me to ensure I had positive consent rather than just assuming that not saying 'no' is consent. It's implied consent in that I didn't rape her, but she felt taken advantage of. That's what led to what was called 'talking girls to death' before sex, which evolved into the mindfuck.

"The other one is probably the biggest regret and reflects very poorly on me. My High School girlfriend and I set out to manipulate a girl from a rival school who had a reputation as a real bitch, into sleeping with me. It worked, but in the process, I fell in love with her and pulled back on the reins despite her demands that I have sex with her."

"And you think that wasn't chasing?"

"The origins are a bit more complicated than that, but I didn't want to detract from my admission of error or seem as if I was justifying bad behavior. Ultimately, though, she chased me for years through all manner of emotional events, both between us and in our lives, until finally, circumstances arose where we could repair the friendship. But even that is complicated because of a number of things that happened between us that my girlfriend from High School would call manipulative on the girl's part."

"Let me get this straight — your girlfriend wanted you to have sex with another girl?"

"Yes, and it's complicated, but it's also the case that other girls have encouraged me to have new partners, to the point of bringing them to me, and that includes one of my wives."

"No way!"

"It's true, to the point that she's even watched me deflower girls and gets off on it."

"This just gets crazier by the minute!"

"You chose to stay in Wonderland and have me show you how deep the rabbit- hole goes! That said, you are free to change your mind and simply take me back to the Mark Hopkins."

"You give up that easily?"

"This only works if you exercise your free will and choose to do it. Coercion of any sort is unacceptable. And I haven't given up. If you change your mind, you'll tell me why, I'll ask questions, and you'll synthesize a new philosophical position and decide what's in your best interest. Then do whatever that might be."

"You're that confident?"

"Yes. Once you made the decision to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes, there is no way your curiosity would allow you to stop at this point."

"You read people that well?"

"Tell me I'm wrong."

"I can't."

My personal phone rang, and I slipped it from my pocket. I didn't recognize the number on the screen, except that it was area code 815. That made me believe it was Nadia returning my call, and I debated if I should allow the call to go to voicemail.

"Mind if I answer this?"

"I don't mind."

I flipped open the phone and said, "Steve Adams."

"Hi, it's Nadia. I got your IM, and you weren't online, so I used the phone number you left. What happened?"

"A client crisis and my attorneys say I need to meet with the client. It's a client here in San Francisco, and because I'm here, I'm staying until tomorrow. I'm really sorry. How about the 27th? Same place, but at 5:30pm?"

"Yes, see you at the Spaghetti Factory on Ogden at 5:30pm."

"See you then."

We said 'goodbye', I closed the phone to disconnect the call and slipped it back into my pocket.

"Sorry about that."

"You obviously have a life beyond ... whatever this is."

"This is what you make it to be," I replied. "With a few limitations, you define the terms of the relationship. You need to decide what you want from it, articulate that, and then act in a way to achieve your goal."

"Don't you have a say?"

"Yes, of course, but once I agreed to accept you as a member of my subversive band, I committed to being your friend, mentor, guide, and, at least today, lover. It's what YOU do that defines your life and the terms of our relationship. You are, as they say, free in a way you never were before."

"How so?"

"You no longer see the world the way others want you to see it. Granted, you could, in the end, reject everything I've said and pretend as if you took the blue pill, but there will always be tension, and there is no way to retreat to your life before you met me."

"This is so weird," Raven said, shaking her head. "All from asking questions?"

"There's a reason troublemakers like Socrates and Jesus are executed by the authorities!"

"Wait! How can you compare those two?!"

"Same methods, same style, same results. For my purposes, I can ignore the religious component of Jesus' message because it's immaterial to my point. What happened to both of them is the same thing that happens, to varying degrees, to anyone who speaks truth to power."

"I guess I hadn't considered comparing those two because I'm Catholic."

"Me too, but I got better!" I chuckled.

"Why do I feel I should know that?"

"It's 'Monty Python' and has to do with the statement that someone had been turned into a newt."

"That's why. My dad is a huge Monty Python fan; I just never found it all that funny. When did you stop going to church?"

"Age fourteen," I replied. "I couldn't reconcile enjoying sex with the love of my life with Catholic teaching. From that, I discovered other problems with their worldview and rejected it utterly and completely."

"Fourteen?!" Raven gasped. "Holy crap! What would you say if your kids had sex at fourteen?!"

"I think you can work that out for everything I've said."

"You'd be OK with it?! Seriously?"

"Let me ask you this question — do you think parents can prevent a kid who wants to have sex from having sex?"

"You expect me to say 'no', don't you?"

"If that's what you believe or what you've concluded, then yes, I do. Otherwise, no. I want you to be honest about what you're thinking, then defend it against Socratic inquiry."

"I'll lose!"

"Which is exactly why they executed Socrates!" I chuckled. "The point being if your ideas or beliefs cannot withstand challenge, and you maintain them anyway, you're simply deluding yourself and live in a solipsistic fantasy world."

"You lost me," Raven said.

"Solipsism is the principle that nothing outside your own mind can be known to exist and that the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not even exist outside your own mind. It's a legitimate philosophical position and one I hold, but if you refuse to acknowledge criticisms of your own belief, it's a fantasy world where all that matters is how you feel about something.

"It is, in the end, narcissistic - self-centered preoccupation with yourself and your desires, at the expense of others. In other words, something is true because you want it to be true, not because it has been rigorously examined and tested. Skepticism is a defense against narcissism and prevents solipsism from creating an air of superiority.

"If you studied philosophy in High School, you'll recall that Plato wrote about wisdom. I'm paraphrasing what he attributed to Socrates here — 'I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing'. And if you think about our entire conversation, I haven't tried to convince you to believe anything specific, only to question everything and assume anything you know is questionable."

Raven was quiet for a few minutes, during which we reached her house. She parked, went inside, and returned about six minutes later.

"Third degree from my mom," she said.

"I'm curious as to what you said?"

"That I'd made a new friend, that we were going to hang out, and I wanted to get my portable music player."

"Apple iPod?" I asked.

"Yes. It was the only excuse I could think of for needing to go to my room. It's not as if I could tell her about the STD test!"

"To go back to your question earlier, my teenagers all have regular STI tests."

"Hang on! You know?!"

"As I think you can surmise, I don't control my kids. They are free to manage their lives as they see fit, which includes having sex or even having overnight stays. They have to be responsible, but we've taught them about responsibility and good decision-making from the time they were little."

"Right, because teenagers are great decision-makers!"

"Adults are no better," I replied. "They have more experience, but that doesn't prevent them from making bad, sometimes life-shattering, mistakes. But I'll happily compare my kids to any adult you can point to and show that, in general, my kids make decisions which are at least as good and, in many cases, better.

"Society has its head up its ass with regard to raising children, especially teens. And the errors of my generation are going to create kids who are unable to manage their own lives as adults, which will lead directly to authoritarianism and totalitarianism when they demand someone tell them what to do and protect them from all negative outcomes. The only way to counter that trend I've discovered is subversiveness, and it may be a lost cause."

"If you think that, then why work so hard at it?"

"The alternative is to lie down and be trampled by the mob which stampedes from one moral panic to the next and demands that their liberty be taken away for the mere promise of security, which is never delivered, and can never be delivered in the way they mean it."

"How do you win?"

"When the next republic rises from the ashes of this one. Sadly, though, as Thomas Jefferson reminds us, governments accrete power and need to be overthrown on a regular basis to prevent them from taking away our liberties. As he said — 'For what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure'."