This is the question that is making the rounds of the gossip sites that thrive on celebrity, after a paparazzi jokingly asked Butler this question as he was getting into a car to depart a charity function the other night. The actor replied in his typical, playful fashion that it was "terrible."
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| The lovely enigma. |
The one problem with quoting Butler lies in the fact that he often answers these types of questions in an ironic fashion and too many people cannot tell when he is being ironic or not and take him at his word. As usual, it gets repeated by 50 different websites and joins the other 5,000 "not necessarily true," bits of information chronicled on this actor and becomes part of his "unofficial biography" that people spout as gospel when talking about him.
Of course this statement runs contrary to Butler's reputation as a man who will hit on or sleep with any good looking female that crosses his path and which propensity has even earned him his own little jingle courtesy of TMZ, which coined the term being "Butlered" to indicate a woman has been inducted into a certain club or group of females.
The problem with all this is that no one is really sure what "being Butlered" really means or whether it is a club that any one really wants to belong to, and therein lies the two edged sword for Gerard Butler and may put a crimp in his love life or the persona he has earned and/or created and one the press has nurtured.
There are many things that can be said about Gerry, but most that have observed him would agree that he is a theatrical person. He never does anything small...his gestures are large and his effusiveness and approach to living are equally capable of attracting attention the minute he walks into a room. It doesn't help that those qualities are contained and wrapped in a nice looking package and augmented by a loud, boyish playfulness and mischief, spiced with a certain self deprecating irony, that can sometimes be irresistible to those who lack some of these qualities and at the same time, quite open to misinterpretation by those not familiar with the dichotomy he represents.
This is borne out by the equal amount of people who think he is either a boastful simpleton or a very complicated person. Or even by the division of whether he really does have a long list of willing bed partners or it is, in fact, all an act and he is really incapable of having any kind of relationship with a female because he is either only capable of "loving himself" or a closeted gay. The gay myth is further perpetuated by the fact that he is such a player and has had few visible stable relationships...ie...therefore he must be gay.
While I won't opine on the subject because it would all simply BE speculation, it is difficult not to comment on the fact that while he may love having the reputation of being a ladies man and may merit it simply on the premise that he "loves" the ladies and naturally gravitates to them when entering any situation, there are very few women with any kind of self esteem/love of self that would want to belong to a club where it is implied that one has been charmed, bedded, and become a member in good standing of a club that
simply equals being "one more notch" in a player's belt.
While many women would be flattered to attract the attention of a man like Gerry and would love being in his orbit or have him be a part of theirs, for all the qualities that make him attractive, there are few, with any brains, who want to be known as one who simply served as a vessel for an over hyped sex drive for the night and most likely the reason we never really hear from any of his real conquests.
On the other hand, does "being Butlerd" simply mean one has been the object of his attention with little more to it than that (and that he keeps his real affections "sub rosa")? Or does it really matter if this is all it is, when, according to the gossips, the real perception will be that you somehow "hooked up" with him after falling victim to his charm?
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| Sole or soul surfer? |
Like everything in life this kind of thing carries an automatic Catch 22, where perception and reality are interchangeable and truth has little to do with either.
Again, what girl would want to be the subject of that kind of speculation? And could that kind of publicity really be the cause of a "sex" life that wasn't all that it appeared to be? Or could it be that the quality of that sex life was lacking simply because, past the one night stand, there was too little interest
from either party to further it into something a little more interesting?
Butlered? Is it only a cute little gimmick cooked up for entertainment purposes by TMZ based on Butler's attraction for the ladies who show up in droves whenever he is around. Or could it be that, though he perpetuates the myth by his actions, it becomes a case of where the perception works against him, instead of making him more desirable to the ones that would be worth a second look?
I suppose I am commenting on this because I am curious how it would feel to be the object of attention for the night from a man (any man) you really fancied and then have him move on like you were nothing more than a night's entertainment, unless that is what you fancied too! Does being forearmed with that knowledge help? Free will plays into it too and if, as a liberated female this is okay with you and the same thing you craved, then why not? At least it's honest and honesty is a good thing.
I've never been that to a man, so I don't honestly know. I have never felt "used" nor victim nor had any desire to exploit someone for the same reason. I never see myself as anyone's victim. It's just not me.
This brings to mind an incident the other night. I heard some girls talking about the men they were with in a restaurant bathroom at a trendy Hollywood steak house a few nights ago that made my toes curl. These were model types (at least one of them was) and they were talking about some high visibility athletes they dated. It wasn't pretty guys.
These girls didn't sound like victims to me. Is this turnabout fair play or did I just find them disgusting because of the language they were using to refer to the guys. They were just pieces of meat and dollar signs to these girls. There was not a note of admiration or affection to be found between them. Is this what celebs of any stripe have to contend with today? It made me wonder.
It reminded me that I was once the object of affection of a very high profile athlete years ago, but the thought of exploiting him for his fame would be the furthest thing from my mind. Besides, he was married at the time and that was a place I wouldn't even go, as flattered as I was by his attentions.
He's still around and placed up high in management in the world he inhabits. I wonder if he'd remember me if he saw me again today?
According to some of Gerard Butler's fans, NO women in her right mind would turn him down, right? That thinking always makes me laugh. I've turned down a man I fancied for exactly that reason. I need to be more than that and men instinctively know it. Only the fearless near tread that ground. I don't need commitment. I want to hold a man by his need of me, not by any man made bonds. He comes back because he simply "has to." Lucky for me, the ones that mattered did just that . Even the player. Especially the player. In the five years we were lovers, I can honestly say he never cheated on me. Hopefully he was too exhausted and too in love (like me) to do it. That he still stayed in touch for so many years after I was married (so was he) was a testament to how deep our feelings went and how much we liked each other.
Last year I met a man who was a motivator and also did astrology readings for fun and profit. He was very flirty and lavishing with his praises, saying he could read me. Then he got more serious and said to me..."I am so tempted, but I already know you would hurt me. You are too much for me and only a fool would go there knowing it." And he still asked me out.
I didn't need him to stroke my vanity. He was lovely, but you know what you like and he wasn't it....though his honesty was terribly attractive. If I think I will hurt someone, I won't go there. Again, I didn't.
Men are not stupid, except when it comes to being led around by their anatomy, as evidenced by too many in the news today.! They may be players and love too many women to settle for just one and I applaud the ones that recognize it and stay single because of it.
But most humans gravitate towards the comfort of one partner at a time and recognize the ones that can fill them up in more ways then one and keep them coming back because there is an art to love and to sex and you have to really like it and not just pretend to. And they have to know that you don't have a false sense of self worth, but that you really like yourself because you will be true to who you are and know that giving up who you are for someone or expecting them to do the same for you, is a recipe for disaster because you are giving up the very thing they like about you and you like about them in the first place.
One does not become the missing half of the other person (
like a lot of romance novelists like to say and too many people believe), but one remains the enhancing whole person (good and bad) that brings a different kind of excitement to the other person's life. That is where the "opposites" attract thing comes from in the first place. My first serious bit of writing years ago was centered around that whole premise.
I always love to say that women have never met a man they didn't want to change...and there is so much truth to that. Men do the same thing, but perhaps not to the same degree.
My niece is going away to college and my daughter wanted to give her the book "Why Men Love Bitches." I haven't read it, but after she told me the gist of it, I told her I thought the only thing wrong with that book was the title. It implies that because you are a smart woman and refuse to be anyone's doormat, that you have to automatically be "a bitch. That's fine if you like to be equated with a "dog."
On the contrary, you simply have to be happy to be female and all the things that the word
should imply...someone smart and joyous, with a career or not, but capable of intelligently rearing a child into adulthood (if that is a choice you make), and even
nurturing the child in the grown up man that you choose as a partner and helping him to grow in other ways, instead of trying to destroy that part of him that attracted you in the first place. A person that can't be himself or herself, is an unhappy person.
And that brings me back to Gerry's sex life. Is it really terrible?
Was it irony in play in the offhand comment or is there some candid truth to his answer? Is the criteria that constitutes the healthiness of his sex life determined by the quality or quantity of his partners?
If the gossips are to believed, it is the latter. Could it be that despite what he appears to be or says, he longs for the former? Or is that just wishful, female thinking again?
Or could it be he just loves the attention and the speculation that makes him mysterious enigma? After all, Hollywood and the movies is all about smoke and mirrors. Is this a case of "where there is smoke there is fire" or a case where the smoke obscures the fire?
For a fellow that shares so much of himself in candid interviews and the reason so many of his fans feel close to him, it is the reason he is just what he seems one minute and then the next minute, not what he seems at all.
For those of us following his career, for whatever reason, he remains in turn, funny, endearing, theatrical, ironic, sarcastic, a lover of women, a lover of his male buddies, a little top that just keeps on turning and turning, a curious of everything and everyone person, an addictive and addicted, successful, hardworking little boy in a grown body and, most of the time, a very sexy, sometimes clutzy, but mostly attractive person with some still untapped talent that keeps people guessing as to whether he is, in fact, what he appears to be or something altogether different...and perhaps part of the reason so many keep watching.
Now whether all those things are enough to fill him up and make him happy is another question only he can answer. For his sake, I hope the answer is yes. Or do I?
Songs out of tune, the words always a little wrong...Canzoni Stonate
*Reading this over, my pompous ability to ramble on and be enamored with my own opinion never ceases to amaze me sometimes. Perhaps I have that in common with Gerry and the reason I relate. My friends tell me I am a good listener, but you wouldn't know it by my lack of brevity.
What an ass I am...and still I ramble on. Oh well, I did warn you. "Songs out of tune...etc..." doesn't just apply to this muse.
