"Fear of Flying" and zipless fucks

[8letters]

I'm working on an I/T story. "Fear of Flying" and zipless fucks comes up, and my 21-year-old American main male character in college hasn't heard of either one. Is that realistic?

 

[MrPixel]

Considering the hit of nostalgia I'm having on your mention of both, I'd say, "Yeah, anybody born after 2000 is going to be clueless."

 

[SimonDoom]

Yes. Virtually any level of ignorance of an American male, 21 years old or older, is realistic. People are astonishingly ignorant. I'm familiar with both although I've never read that book. My kids are in their 20s and my guess is they've never heard of those things and would have no idea what one was referring to.

 

[Carnevil9]

I haven't heard that book or that term mentioned in well over twenty years. So yeah, I would not expect a 21 year old to be familiar with them.

 

[Auden James]

Quite realistic, I'd think.

 

[Voboy]

I'm a child of the '70s and fairly well-read and -educated. I'm aware that Fear of Flying is a book, but I've never read it and I have no clue what a "zipless fuck" may be.

 

[shakna]

The Salon and Women's Day articles on the term and book happened in '03, which I think you could use as an indicator for the "height" of the popularity. So it'd be realistic for anyone below the age of thirty to have missed out on learning that one. (Not guaranteed, but realistic.)

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I remember reading it in the early 90s and it was dated then. I doubt many people under 40 have heard of the book, and if they haven't read it they wouldn't know about the zipless fuck.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I'm a child of the '70s and fairly well-read and -educated. I'm aware that Fear of Flying is a book, but I've never read it and I have no clue what a "zipless fuck" may be.

Yeah, you would probably have to have read it to remember it. Also, the idea that younger people are dumber than ever now - possibly true, but also possibly the "good old days" nostalgia that every generation experiences as it gets older.

 

[Comshaw]

Yes. Virtually any level of ignorance of an American male, 21 years old or older, is realistic. People are astonishingly ignorant. I'm familiar with both although I've never read that book. My kids are in their 20s and my guess is they've never heard of those things and would have no idea what one was referring to.

Not so astonishing. I'm over 70 and never heard of the book or the term. But with the sheer amount of information available, no one can or should be expected to know all, or even a minute part of it. Ever heard of Junior Johnson? Cal Rayborn? Kenny Roberts? Ira Hayes? The Pig War? The term "54-40 or fight"? Chief Sealth? Lam Son 719? The city designated by President Lincoln as the seat of government in case D.C. fell during the Civil war? It all depends on what part of the country you're standing on, how old you are, what you've been exposed to as to how ignorant you are. Ignorance isn't something to be embarrassed about. It's only a lack of information. Stupidity on the other hand is. And to be clear I AM NOT calling you stupid, because I am not and you are not. I'm only pointing out the difference between that and ignorance. With a stiff dose of information, one is curable, the other is not.

Comshaw

 

[gunhilltrain]

Not so astonishing. I'm over 70 and never heard of the book or the term. But with the sheer amount of information available, no one can or should be expected to know all, or even a minute part of it. Ever heard of Junior Johnson? Cal Rayborn? Kenny Roberts? Ira Hayes? The Pig War? The term "54-40 or fight"? Chief Sealth? Lam Son 719? The city designated by President Lincoln as the seat of government in case D.C. fell during the Civil war? It all depends on what part of the country you're standing on, how old you are, what you've been exposed to as to how ignorant you are. Ignorance isn't something to be embarrassed about. It's only a lack of information. Stupidity on the other hand is. And to be clear I AM NOT calling you stupid, because I am not and you are not. I'm only pointing out the difference between that and ignorance. With a stiff dose of information, one is curable, the other is not.

Comshaw

I can get a few of them. Junior Johnson was a NASCAR racer, correct? Ira Hayes was one of the Marines who raised the American flag at Iwo Jima in that famous photo. He was a Native-American and eventually died of alcoholism. 54-40 or fight referred to a border dispute between the U.S. and Canada in the Pacific Northwest, 1840s or 1850s? I've heard of the Pig War but I can't recall what it was. Lam Son 719 - was that a battle during the war in Vietnam? Kenny Roberts is a country-and-western singer I think. I didn't know Lincoln had designated such a city. Philadephia?

 

[Comshaw]

I can get a few of them. Junior Johnson was a NASCAR racer, correct? Ira Hayes was one of the Marines who raised the American flag at Iwo Jima in that famous photo. He was a Native-American and eventually died of alcoholism. 54-40 or fight referred to a border dispute between the U.S. and Canada in the Pacific Northwest, 1840s or 1850s? I've heard of the Pig War but I can't recall what it was. Lam Son 719 - was that a battle during the war in Vietnam? Kenny Roberts is a country-and-western singer I think. I didn't know Lincoln had designated such a city. Philadephia?

You got a bunch of 'em. Kenny Roberts is one of the icons in motorcycle racing. He was known for riding the Yamaha TZ750, a scary, dangerous and very powerful two stroke that was banned from racing because it was so powerful and fast. Cal Rayborn was one of his competitors that rode the iconic Harley Davidson XR750.

The Pig War was an incident that happened in the San Juan islands of the northWest during the dust up over the border. 54-40 references the latitude that the U.S. believed should be the border. They finally settled on the 49th parallel. A bit of trivia: because of the 49th parallel settlement of the border, those who live on Point Roberts, a part of the U.S. can not drive to any other part of the country without first driving through Canada.

The city was Port Angeles Washington. At the time the area around PA had little more than a cooperative colony. While he never officially designated it as a second national city, Lincoln declared 1300 acres a Federal Reserve and had it platted as a township by the Army Corp of Engineers for lighthouse, naval and military purposes. There is a lot of disagreement about what was intended, but the only other city that was surveyed and platted in such a manner is Washington D.C. Hmmmm.


Comshaw

 

[8letters]

The Pig War was an incident that happened in the San Juan islands of the northWest during the dust up over the border. 54-40 references the latitude that the U.S. believed should be the border. They finally settled on the 49th parallel. A bit of trivia: because of the 49th parallel settlement of the border, those who live on Point Roberts, a part of the U.S. can not drive to any other part of the country without first driving through Canada.

A fun video on the pig war:
The Pig War - OverSimplified

 

[gunhilltrain]

With all this verbiage, no one has yet said what "zipless fuck" means. It's a fantasy idea from Erica Jong's heroine Isadora White (Weiss). Isadora is at least two-thirds or more of the real Jong. If you read Jong's later autobiography Fear of Fifty, there is a great overlap with the novel (the first husband who goes crazy, the later Chinese-American husband, her time living in Germany, and so forth).

The zipless fuck is Isadora's (and presumably Jong's) concept of a sudden, random, short-lived, but utterly satisfying sexual encounter with a total stranger. She eventually concludes (wisely) that no such thing is possible.

 

[LuckOfTheDraw]

I've actually had the "zipless fuck experience" and fictionalized it on Lit in my story "Train Journey", but kept it almost 100% true to the real-life incident!

You can read it at this link:

https://www.literotica.com/s/train-journey-1

Hope you people enjoy it! Comments are welcome and also feedback to me via email through the Contact link on my Lit page, if you could. Thanks.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I've actually had the "zipless fuck experience" and fictionalized it on Lit in my story "Train Journey", but kept it almost 100% true to the real-life incident!

You can read it at this link:

https://www.literotica.com/s/train-journey-1

Hope you people enjoy it! Comments are welcome and also feedback to me via email through the Contact link on my Lit page, if you could. Thanks.

In Jong's novel, trains appear twice in the context of zipless fucks. The first is Isadora's fantasy about it, which takes place on an Italian train but doesn't include herself as one of the protagonists. Then later she has a chance for a reak ZF on a British train. She turns it down as she realizes that it only works for her as a fantasy, not as a true experience.

 

[LuckOfTheDraw]

In Jong's novel, trains appear twice in the context of zipless fucks. The first is Isadora's fantasy about it, which takes place on an Italian train but doesn't include herself as one of the protagonists. Then later she has a chance for a reak ZF on a British train. She turns it down as she realizes that it only works for her as a fantasy, not as a true experience.

I know. Erica Jong intended it as a fantasy, not something that everyone should go running off to try out, but I chased it as reality, because it was so...compulsively fascinating. No one had ever written like that before, at least not any female author I had come across.

I was delighted to find, needless to add, that women also found it fascinating, and that one of them was willing to try it out with me. I will be forever thankful to her, because it changed me as a person.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I know. Erica Jong intended it as a fantasy, not something that everyone should go running off to try out, but I chased it as reality, because it was so...compulsively fascinating. No one had ever written like that before, at least not any female author I had come across.

I was delighted to find, needless to add, that women also found it fascinating, and that one of them was willing to try it out with me. I will be forever thankful to her, because it changed me as a person.

My own opinion - and I've never had such an experience - is that it doesn't interest me. The one time I've written about something close to that, it becomes a disaster for the male protagonist.

Shelley's Revenge.

 

[lovecraft68]

So zipless fuck is a one night stand or FWB type thing?
To the OP's point I didn't recognize the term, and if its some type of sex slang I'm usually all over it, and drew a blank.
In fact, to me, zipless fuck would sound like some type of insult? "Bill? That zipless fuck?"

 

[gunhilltrain]

So zipless fuck is a one night stand or FWB type thing?
To the OP's point I didn't recognize the term, and if its some type of sex slang I'm usually all over it, and drew a blank.
In fact, to me, zipless fuck would sound like some type of insult? "Bill? That zipless fuck?"

As far as I understand it (I have the book here somewhere) a zipless fuck is even more abrupt and has fewer emotions than a one-night stand and certainly a friends-with-benefits arrangement. The fantasy that Isadora has is that an Italian soldier is sharing a train compartment with a young widow - I think it's supposed to be during World War II. They look at each other - at least he looks at her - but they say hardly anything to each other. When the train enters a long tunnel, they grab each other and have passionate intercourse. At the next station, she gets off and he never sees her again. They don't even exchange names.

The point is that it is great sex, but it only happens once. Later, Isadora runs off with a married English psychotherapist, and that seems close to a zipless fuck to her as she'll ever get. They spend about two weeks driving around Europe, but at the end, he dumps her (in Paris) to go back to his wife while she goes back to her husband in England.

When she gets on the train in England, the sleeping car attendant makes a move on her. She realizes that could be a true zipless fuck, but she turns him down because she doesn't know a thing about him and she is not attracted to him. At least the psychotherapist (Adrian) did court her first, and a few days pass before they drive off together.

 

[Comshaw]

With all this verbiage, no one has yet said what "zipless fuck" means. It's a fantasy idea from Erica Jong's heroine Isadora White (Weiss). Isadora is at least two-thirds or more of the real Jong. If you read Jong's later autobiography Fear of Fifty, there is a great overlap with the novel (the first husband who goes crazy, the later Chinese-American husband, her time living in Germany, and so forth).

The zipless fuck is Isadora's (and presumably Jong's) concept of a sudden, random, short-lived, but utterly satisfying sexual encounter with a total stranger. She eventually concludes (wisely) that no such thing is possible.

While she and you might conclude no such thing is possible, others (me) have had just that thing. It was only once, in my youth (I was 18). I met her at a party at a friends house. We didn't talk much but when I invited her to accompany me to one of the bedrooms upstairs she agreed. We fucked like bunnies for a couple of hours, then parted. I didn't even get her name. I cussed myself for that because it was such good sex. It was very satisfying for me and her. How do I know it was good for her? She told me so with a "I haven't had that many times in a long time." She could have been lying, but if she was, I don't know why she would because there was no reason for her to. It does happen. Maybe not a lot, or to many, but it does.

There are few things in the world that are absolute. With most things there is or are exceptions, anomalies, that which some would consider impossible, but are only improbable, which means they still happen, still are, no matter how rarely.

Comshaw

 

[gunhilltrain]

While she and you might conclude no such thing is possible, others (me) have had just that thing. It was only once, in my youth (I was 18). I met her at a party at a friends house. We didn't talk much but when I invited her to accompany me to one of the bedrooms upstairs she agreed. We fucked like bunnies for a couple of hours, then parted. I didn't even get her name. I cussed myself for that because it was such good sex. It was very satisfying for me and her. How do I know it was good for her? She told me so with a "I haven't had that many times in a long time." She could have been lying, but if she was, I don't know why she would because there was no reason for her to. It does happen. Maybe not a lot, or to many, but it does.

There are few things in the world that are absolute. With most things there is or are exceptions, anomalies, that which some would consider impossible, but are only improbable, which means they still happen, still are, no matter how rarely.

Comshaw

I didn't say it was impossible. Jong (or at least her character) seemed to think it unlikely to ever happen to her, and she seemed to have lost interest in pursuing it.

Just curious: how did you let that girl get out of there without you getting her phone number? Or at least her full name, what school she went to, or whatever? I think I actually said that I wasn't interested in it, and that is the exact reason. I wanted relationships that lasted more than a few hours. I'd at least want a couple of weeks to see how things were going.

 

[Comshaw]

I didn't say it was impossible. Jong (or at least her character) seemed to think it unlikely to ever happen to her, and she seemed to have lost interest in pursuing it.

Just curious: how did you let that girl get out of there without you getting her phone number? Or at least her full name, what school she went to, or whatever? I think I actually said that I wasn't interested in it, and that is the exact reason. I wanted relationships that lasted more than a few hours. I'd at least want a couple of weeks to see how things were going.

You said, "She eventually concludes (wisely) that no such thing is possible." If a thing is not possible, it is impossible. I did conclude that your use of the word "wisely" in that sentence signaled your agreement with her that it wasn't possible and therefore impossible.

After many years of thought on it, I came to the conclusion that I let her walk away because I was afraid of her. Afraid I might (read that as probably) get emotionally attached to her. A thing that at that stage of my life and because of how my life had been up to that time I was deathly afraid of. It would take many pages and a plethora of words to explain, a thing I am not willing nor ready to do. Little did I know that the woman who would capture me and hold me for the next 50 odd years was only two years in the future. I am glad I didn't know, couldn't dodge it for it would have changed the direction (probably for worse) of my life.

Coimshaw

 

[gunhilltrain]

I'm not going to get into the semantics of what Jong meant or did not mean to say. I have the book, but I haven't read it through in years. It's simply not that interesting what she had to say on the topic.

I'm trying to remember what it was like to be eighteen, which was quite a long time ago (Nixon was still president). I thought I wanted to get emotionally involved with someone, but I didn't know how to do it. It turned out that I got engaged and married to the first girl I met (after being with her for three years) even though most of my friends were against it. (I don't think my late mother was that thrilled with it either.) Nineteen years later we separated and got divorced. She remarried and that guy passed away in 2011.

Today we have two adult children. My daughter is taking me to a late Father's Day lunch next weekend. I spoke to my ex-wife on the phone on Friday about for about an hour about the Roe v. Wade decision. (She's a lawyer now.) So life is full of unexpected turns.

 

[LuckOfTheDraw]

Clearly, it's time to educate the younger generation(s)

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/26/fear-of-flying-by-erica-jong-read-the-first-chapter

Zipless Fuck Excerpt:

--
My response to all this was not (not yet) to have an affair and not (not yet) to hit the open road, but to evolve my fantasy of the Zipless Fuck. The zipless fuck was more than a fuck. It was a platonic ideal. Zipless because when you came together zippers fell away like rose petals, underwear blew off in one breath like dandelion fluff. Tongues intertwined and turned liquid. Your whole soul flowed out through your tongue and into the mouth of your lover.

For the true, ultimate zipless A-1 fuck, it was necessary that you never get to know the man very well. I had noticed, for example, how all my infatuations dissolved as soon as I really became friends with a man, became sympathetic to his problems, listened to him kvetch about his wife, or ex-wives, his mother, his children. After that I would like him, perhaps even love him—but without passion. And it was passion that I wanted. I had also learned that a sure way to exorcise an infatuation was to write about someone, to observe his tics and twitches, to anatomize his personality in type. After that he was an insect on a pin, a newspaper clipping laminated in plastic. I might enjoy his company, even admire him at moments, but he no longer had the power to make me wake up trembling in the middle of the night. I no longer dreamed about him. He had a face.

So another condition for the zipless fuck was brevity. And anonymity made it even better.

During the time I lived in Heidelberg I commuted to Frankfurt four times a week to see my analyst. The ride took an hour each way and trains became an important part of my fantasy life. I kept meeting beautiful men on the train, men who scarcely spoke English, men whose clichés and banalities were hidden by my ignorance of French, or Italian, or even German. Much as I hate to admit it, there are some beautiful men in Germany.

One scenario of the zipless fuck was perhaps inspired by an Italian movie I saw years ago. As time went by, I embellished it to suit my head. It used to play over and over again as I shuttled back and forth from Heidelberg to Frankfurt, from Frankfurt to Heidelberg:

A grimy European train compartment (Second Class). The seats are leatherette and hard. There is a sliding door to the corridor outside. Olive trees rush by the window. Two Sicilian peasant women sit together on one side with a child between them. They appear to be mother and grandmother and granddaughter. Both women vie with each other to stuff the little girl’s mouth with food. Across the way (in the window seat) is a pretty young widow in a heavy black veil and tight black dress which reveals her voluptuous figure. She is sweating profusely and her eyes are puffy. The middle seat is empty. The corridor seat is occupied by an enormously fat woman with a mustache. Her huge haunches cause her to occupy almost half of the vacant center seat. She is reading a pulp romance in which the characters are photographed models and the dialogue appears in little puffs of smoke above their heads.


This fivesome bounces along for a while, the widow and the fat woman keeping silent, the mother and grandmother talking to the child and each other about the food. And then the train screeches to a halt in a town called (perhaps) Corleone. A tall languid-looking soldier, unshaven, but with a beautiful mop of hair, a cleft chin, and somewhat devilish, lazy eyes, enters the compartment, looks insolently around, sees the empty half-seat between the fat woman and the widow, and, with many flirtatious apologies, sits down. He is sweaty and disheveled but basically a gorgeous hunk of flesh, only slightly rancid from the heat. The train screeches out of the station.

Then we become aware only of the bouncing of the train and the rhythmic way the soldier’s thighs are rubbing against the thighs of the widow. Of course, he is also rubbing against the haunches of the fat lady—and she is trying to move away from him—which is quite unnecessary because he is unaware of her haunches. He is watching the large gold cross between the widow’s breasts swine back and forth in her deep cleavage. Bump. Pause. Bump. It hits one moist breast and then the other. It seems to hesitate in between as if paralyzed between two repelling magnets. The pit and the pendulum. He is hypnotized. She stares out the window, looking at each olive tree as if she had never seen olive trees before. He rises awkwardly, half-bows to the ladies, and struggles to open the window. When he sits down again his arm accidentally grazes the widow’s belly. She appears not to notice. He rests his left hand on the seat between his thigh and hers and begins to wind rubber fingers around and under the soft flesh of her thigh. She continues staring at each olive tree as if she were God and had just made them and were wondering what to call them.

Meanwhile the enormously fat lady is packing away her pulp romance in an iridescent green plastic string bag full of smelly cheeses and blackening bananas. And the grandmother is rolling ends of salami in greasy newspaper. The mother is putting on the little girl’s sweater and wiping her face with a handkerchief, lovingly moistened with maternal spittle. The train screeches to a stop in a town called (perhaps) prizzi, and the fat lady, the mother, the grandmother, and the little girl leave the compartment. Then the train begins to move again. The gold cross begins to bump, pause, bump between the widow’s moist breasts, the fingers begin to curl under the widow’s thighs, the widow continues to stare at the olive trees. Then the fingers are sliding between her thighs and they are parting her thighs, and they are moving upward into the fleshy gap between her heavy black stockings and her garters, and they are sliding up under her garters into the damp unpantied place between her legs.

The train enters a galleria, or tunnel, and in the semidarkness the symbolism is consummated.

There is the soldier’s boot in the air and the dark walls of the tunnel and the hypnotic rocking of the train and the long high whistle as it finally emerges.

Wordlessly, she gets off at a town called, perhaps, Bivona. She crosses the tracks, stepping carefully over them in her narrow black shoes and heavy black stockings. He stares after her as if he were Adam wondering what to name her. Then he jumps up and dashes out of the train in pursuit of her. At that very moment a long freight train pulls through the parallel track obscuring his view and blocking his way. Twenty-five freight cars later, she has vanished forever.

One scenario of the zipless fuck.

Zipless, you see, not because European men have button-flies rather than zipper-flies, and not because the participants are so devastatingly attractive, but because the incident has all the swift compression of a dream and is seemingly free of all remorse and guilt; because there is no talk of her late husband or of his fiancée; because there is no rationalizing; because there is no talk at all. The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game. The man is not ‘taking’ and the woman is not ‘giving.’ No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one. Whenever it seemed I was close, I discovered a horse with a papier-mâché horn, or two clowns in a unicorn suit. Alessandro, my Florentine friend, came close. But he was, after all, one clown in a unicorn suit.

Consider this tapestry, my life.
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