This "Porn" Is Safe For Work (Plus: Shipwrecked!)

Nailing Your Wife Girls SPIKE.com

There used to be a dating show called Shipmates which was, essentially, Blind Date on a cruise ship.
The premise was simple: take two single people who have not previously met and put them on a cruise together and watch events unfold.
As with most dating shows, the real fun happened when the two singles proved incompatible and the audience would get a train wreck – or rather, a shipwreck – of a date to laugh at. And of course there would be more awkward and uncomfortable moments to watch because the “date” went on for multiple days and the daters were unable to simply go home, as they were out to sea.
To spice things up every so often the producers would pair an unsuspecting guy with a Penthouse Pet, and generally wackiness would ensue.
Aria Giovanni, the lonely housewife in the video clip posted above, was one such Penthouse Pet to appear on Shipmates.
The episodes featuring Pets were among the most entertaining, simply because of the way that most of the guys paired with the Pets would react.
Typically, at the start of the cruise when the introductions were made, the guy would have no idea that his date had posed for Penthouse, but eventually the Pet would reveal this information to her date.
Almost invariably after the revelation, the guy would turn into a total douchebag.
I never really understood why this was the case, though I suppose there are any number of possible reasons.
For example, maybe the guy found himself feeling threatened in some fashion. After all, I’m sure I’d feel at least a little bit awkward being on a date with a woman whose most intimate of intimates has been drooled over (or worse) by millions of other guys.
(This feeling of awkwardness, however, would not lead me to act like a douchebag.)
The “threat” aspect, I suppose, could be an assumption of sexual inadequacy (“How would I compare to other guys she’s been with who probably have monster cocks?”), or maybe a shock to some latent puritanical sensibilities.
Or maybe the fact that his date had posed nude for a magazine made the guy feel that any obligation to be nice and respectful was tossed out the window, because clearly she must be a slut, and is therefore not worthy of any sort of consideration.
(Note: this sort of thinking automatically marks you as a douchebag.)
Sometimes it seemed that the problem was one of frustration, as the Pet was not prepared to automatically get on her back, which goes back to the slut assumption (“She’ll spread her legs for anyone, but not for me?” It brings to mind an old joke: What’s the difference between a slut and a bitch? A slut will sleep with anyone; a bitch will sleep with anyone except you.).
(Again, a way of thinking that marks you as a douchebag.)
Of course, it could also be the whole “chicks dig assholes/douchebags” idea, so they assumed that the douchier they were, the better their chances of scoring with a Penthouse Pet.
And of course the question of the extent to which the “reality” of the show was scripted arises.
Whatever the cause, the effect was always the same: the guy acted like a total douche and as a result didn’t get any, which made him act like even more of a douche.
For the record, in most cases the Pets proved to be affable, friendly, and down-to-earth…until they (understandably) got disgusted with the douchiness.
Generally the douchiness took the form of digs about the Pets’ appearance, with comments like, “Wow, they must have had to do a lot of airbrushing to make you look good.”
I don’t recall the specifics of the episode featuring Aria, but I do remember that her date was of the douchey persuasion.
There were a couple of notable exceptions to this pattern. One poor bastard, who didn’t give in to douchiness, was saddled with a Pet who was, for lack of a better term, fucking goofy. And not in a cute, quirky, endearing way. Bitch was crazy.
The guy, however, remained a good sport throughout it all.
(He didn’t get any, though.)
On another occasion, the guy was a perfect gentleman throughout the cruise. Nice, respectful, courteous, and complimentary. As a result, at dinner on the second night of the cruise, the Pet he was paired with dragged him into the bathroom and fucked his brains out.
The whole thing reminds me of some words of wisdom my friend Eric once gave me for success in dealing with a particular kind of woman: Treat strippers the way you’d treat a regular woman.
In my various trips to strip clubs, I found this advice invaluable and had a lot of fun just hanging out and talking to incredibly hot naked women.
It would seem that the same idea works when applied to Penthouse Pets as well.
Of course, there was a second part to what Eric told me: Treat regular women the way you’d treat a stripper.
I’ve never been sure about that second part, even though I have seen, in life and on dating shows, the “women love assholes” effect proven true many, many times*. Hideously, soul-crushingly true.
Still, even though trying to assiduously avoid being a douchebag or an asshole, or a douchebag asshole, has yet to lead to me getting shagged rotten in a public restroom in the middle of a date, I can’t quite bring myself to give in to douchiness, or forget the lessons I’ve learned from Shipmates.
I actually found Shipmates to be a very entertaining show for the following reasons:

The dates were often catastrophically bad, and what bitter, lonely person could fail to enjoy watching people fail to connect?
The show often featured hot chicks in bikinis.
The host, Chris Hardwick, former host of MTV’s Singled Out, was a pretty funny guy.

One especially painful (and, as a result, entertaining) episode featured a couple that hit it off really well and hooked up on their first night. The next day the guy – who was several years younger than the woman – was acting like a lovesick puppy, whereas the woman had turned quite cool. During her confessional, she revealed that the previous night’s bedroom activities had not been good. She said that she didn’t want to embarrass the guy, but he was lousy in the sack and his penis was tiny. Yeah, way to not embarrass the guy by telling millions of TV viewers that he has a tiny unit. You stay classy.

*In particular, on an episode of Blind Date, the guy stated at the start that his approach to women was to be as much of an asshole as possible. On his date – with a lingerie model – it worked, as the expression goes, like a charm. He treated his date like absolute garbage, and she ate it up and asked for more, and was all over him. At the end of the date she practically begged him to come into her apartment so that she could fuck his brains out. Meanwhile, I contemplated buying a gun and blowing my brains out.