Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas

by Chuck Klosterman

In 2002, I interviewed Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler about drugs and groupies, and he said something along the lines of, “Having sex with the same woman a thousand times is way more interesting than having a thousand one-night stands with a thousand different women, because those one-night stands are all the same.” This is the kind of platitude rock stars say all the time; in fact, I am forced to paraphrase it from memory, because that sentiment was too clichéd to include in the article. Every aging rock god (except maybe Gene Simmons) eventually comes to this same conclusion; in fact, anyone (famous or not) who decides to get married is unknowingly agreeing with Steven Tyler. At some point, most people decide that sleeping with the same person improves the quality of their life, even though it eliminates romantic choice. We all unconsciously understand this. However, nobody consciously believes this is true until after the fact. If you ask any single man if he’d prefer to (a) have sex with a thousand different women or (b) have sex with one woman a thousand times, he will always take option “a,” even though he knows this decision is virtually guaranteed to make him feel awkward and alone. In the present tense, we always want as much individual choice as possible; once that present has passed, we’re happier if we’ve experienced the same limited options as everyone else.