Costume dramas turn me on. I can’t help myself. Every year, some new genre show pops up on television and I find my sexual fantasies turning to a different period in history.
Downton Abbey resulted in months of elaborate upstairs/downstairs scenarios set in a stately English manor. In one of my more memorable daydreams, I featured as Roginald the kitchen boy, chastised by the hot second footman for misplacing a candlestick. (Eventually we found said candlestick in the most unlikely spot, downstairs.)
I’m feeling particularly overwhelmed at the moment given that Mad Men and Game of Thrones have both come back on at the same time. Given the very different roles they play in my fantasy life, usually I would prefer to give my mind the space to parse these two fantasy worlds.
Mad Men inspires thoughts of late nights in Don Draper’s office, where I (as the eager but promising new creative talent) am helping him brainstorm ideas for a new advertising campaign. I ply him with enough whiskey that talk begins to shift from the professional to the personal, and it turns out he used to experiment with guys back when he was a teenager. Then he says I remind him of one young man he knew when… well, I’m sure you get the picture.
It’s a little more straightforward in Game of Thrones’ Westeros, where all I want is a burly man to play dashing knight to my vulnerable squire. I’m no expert on pseudo-medieval battle gear, but I’m pretty sure you’d need some custom-forged plate mail to pull off the kind of shit I have in mind. Let’s just say the handsome Sir Thrustington is in desperate need of somewhere to sheathe his sword.
Now with both shows airing at the same time I don’t know how to keep one spank bank separate from the other. My Mad Men-derived intellectual fantasies are colliding with my straight up Game of Thrones power fantasies, leaving me with a weird, sexual collage of dinner suits and decapitations.
Then again, maybe I should see this as a nice change of pace, a good way to shake things up where my libido is concerned. After all, going back to the same fantasy world over and over again is sure to leave me bored and unsatisfied. In fact, this might pave the way for a whole daydreaming subgenre: sexual mash-ups.
The possibilities are endless. Kevin Sorbo from Hercules in the operating tent from M*A*S*H. Ocean Girl in the house from The Wonder Years. Michael J. Fox’s character from Family Ties while the characters from Fraggle Rock watch from the corner.
You know what? I think this is going to be a good year for television.
