All-male brothels for women

I was reading a commentary by Ariel Leve from the Times earlier, on the subject of Heidi Fleiss' new venture in the Nevada desert - a brothel for women. Her column, although amusing, missed pressing most of my recognition buttons. Perhaps its because she's from New York. Apparently, she can't sleep with someone without wanting to talk on the phone afterwards. Talk? To someone you've just slept with?? Christ alive, we're British, don't you know. We don't talk - we go to the pub, we get pissed, we pull, we sleep with someone, we bump into them again, stuff is repeated and sometimes shuffles in embarrassed fashion into something resembling a relationship. Certainly no talking involved though.

There again, women from across the pond seem rather hung up on "dating", whatever the hell that is. Some Canadian bint was slagging off British men as "too polite, too repressed and too misogynistic" and has written an article called "The Tragic Ineptitude of the English Male" implying that British men are drunken women haters. Despite not actually ending up in bed with one the whole time she lived here (surely frigid?), she is cashing in on her lack of first-hand knowledge, xenophobic misandry (yeah the irony completely passed her by, but then Alanis Morrisette highlighted that Canadians never really had a firm grip on the concept) and general cultural missing-the-point to turn this drivel into a TV series. I'm sure the Canadians will lap it up.

Personally I know nothing about this dating malarkey; my history is all around long-term serial relationships. They all started with a shag, because then you both know where you are, and assuming neither of you actually blow your nose on the curtains, it then morphs into a relationship, (because you didn't chose a flaky feckwit to start with) and its just less trouble to carry on with the one that's there & willing, rather than cast about for someone new. Its not clever, its not exciting, there's a high percentage of danger of ending up spending your Sundays in B&Q, but hey, at least you get laid and the opportunity to go halves on a curry on a Saturday night. Perhaps I settle for too little, but many of my friends seem jealous of what I had. 1 marriage, 2 long-term relationships, 1 one-night stand that dragged on for a week (damn I'm good!) and the current entanglement. And not a single date.

But one thing she said did pull me up: "If I announced I’d like to have sex with no expectations, demands or agenda - I’d have to turn men away." That I suppose is exactly what I am doing currently - I have no expectations, demands or agenda in this fling with D. Why would I? He's married and staying that way, with my blessing. But according to her I should be beating them off with a shitty stick, as the saying goes. And I guess if I advertised the fact that I was that accommodating, I would be. Somehow though, it is a bit sad though that I have given up articulating even to myself what an expectation, demand or agenda might look like. It seems so fantastically pointless including someone else in your plans, even a hypothetical person. Is that just giving up?