Strong women are attractive women, and that’s why we love Elle Sunkara. We recently say down with Elle and talked about strong men, white tiger tantra, lingerie and the art of tasting good.  Enjoy, gentlemen…

I’m a transplant from the south, I grew up in Atlanta, and I always knew I didn’t fit in there. I finally found a way out to the west coast and fell in love with yoga, art, acting and visual arts. I’m finally home. 

I’m the perfect age, and that’s a secret. Let us just say I’m no longer a stupid little girl, but I’m still young enough to have plenty of moments of foolishness and forgive myself for them. (laughs) 

I toyed around with the idea of an open relationship for a few years and, I think in the end, what I learned was we all need and want very similar things. It’s just about whose neuroses match up with yours. (smiles) Men want to be turned on and worshipped, and women want support and communication… And of course amazing sex, laughter, and great times, if we are stating the obvious.

At the risk of sounding super traditional (because I am by no means traditional), I think as soon as women and men try to swap out roles, trouble starts brewing. I love supporting a man in so many aspects outside of work and having dinner ready when someone comes home.

I like a strong man, who knows himself. Someone who walks in to the coffee shop and kind of just physically claims you. I think it takes a while for a man to reach that level of comfort with himself. A man needs to know what he has to offer and needs to know he doesn’t need to sell himself. He just is… And when you get that sense from a man you can feel it, and it’s sexy as hell. 

Here is a little tip that your readers may benefit from. Gentlemen look up white tiger tantra. That’s a nice little tool for the toolbox.

Women move to their hearts, we can’t help it. What are the common guy complaints about women? sometimes it seems like we cause drama or nag – but it’s what also makes us so passionate. I can promise you this: If you give a woman the things she needs or wants from you, and i’m talking about reasonable needs and wants – she will chill out and maintain instead of freaking out. In other words: The best way to “shut a girl up” is to ask her what she needs and give it to her in earnest, because you want to, not because you have to.

In terms of sexual etiquette, I know when to drink my coconut water/kiwi/pineapple/celery smoothie. Do your partner a favor and just taste good, for goodness sake.

I am obsessed with great lingerie and I cannot leave the house in mismatching bra and panties sets. That drives me up the wall. A great set of lingerie makes me feel invincible, it’s just the hottest thing. I could care less if a man wears nothing under his jeans, but I’ll be in something cute no matter what. And while we are on the subject of sex… I would say I’m a firecracker, showoff, exhibitionist, strangely submissive, eager to please and be pleased. (laughs) I guess you can say I’m a huge fan of amazing sex.

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The Old Fashioned Mens Grooming Aid is a petroleum based pomade designed to keep your hair under control for that neat freshly combed look. Although not water soluble, a few good washes and you’ll be ready for a fresh layer. Each jar of pomade is handmade right here at The Iron Society so there’s no question of quality or craftsmanship. // Available: theironsociety.com // Price: $15.00

We live in an age of noise. The trick to living in this age of noise is to amplify the noise you like and block the noise you don’t. So here you go… The Ferrari T350 by Logic3. The T350 are active noise canceling headphones and they take their inspiration from the GT Car’s careful craftsmanship, sumptuous leather and beautifully honed metal surfaces. The ear cups and headband are trimmed in the finest leather to ensure ultimate comfort and are supported by robust machine crafted metal arms and housing to ensure durability and quality. The T350 features ultra-soft ear pads constructed from enhanced breathable materials for maximum comfort and come complete with a carry case for additional protection. // Available: ferrari-by-logic3.com // Price: $399.00

Every once in awhile all you can do to make your day better is to check in with a woman from Brazil. Enter former Dignified Woman from last August Miss Woortman, rolling around her home barely clothed. Enjoy the pictures gentlemen!

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Every man should have a home office and now, thanks to the Newgate Wall Clock, he can breath a little history and some dignification into that space. Available in two colors (black or white) the Newgate Bubble adds just the right touch of retro swagger to your favorite four walls and a door. // Available: westelm.com // Price: $85.00

Summer’s coming on, the ideal season for a road trip—which Jack Kerouac did not invent, by the way. Pausanias, Genghis Khan, and the Buddhist monk Xuanzang all have him beat. He wasn’t even the first American to embark on a road trip—that distinction  jointly goes to Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, leaders of the Corps of Discovery (better known as the Lewis and Clark Expedition), which started up the Missouri River on this date 209 years ago.

Like most products of the American education system, I had of course cursorily learned about Lewis and Clark in school. I knew they had been sent by then-president Thomas Jefferson to explore the land he had recently bought from Napoleon Bonaparte. I also learned that an Indian woman named Sacagawea had somehow helped them. That was about it.

Little did I know that the Lewis and Clark Expedition was a genuinely vivid adventure involving over thirty people, not just two—and that the journals Lewis and Clark kept are a fascinating record of not only an epic journey, but an America before it was America. Before the interstates, before the fast food chains, before the strip malls, before the suburbs, there was this.

In short, the journals of Lewis and Clark are our American Odyssey

They start out most unpropitiously, however. The first entry is in fact from August 30, 1803, when the expedition was still getting prepared and members were still being recruited. Meriwether Lewis writes:

…went on shore and being invited on by some of the gentlemen present to try my airgun… Mr. Blaze Cenas being unacquainted with the management of the gun suffered her to discharge herself accedentaly the ball passed through the hat of a woman… shee fell instantly and the blood gusing from her temple we were all in the greatest consternation supposed she was dead [but] in a minute she revived to our enespressable satisfaction, and by examination we found the wound by no means mortal or even dangerous.

The superstitious among us, had they been a member of the expedition, might have shuddered at this foreboding beginning. But, amazingly, after two and a half long years and over four thousand miles by boat, canoe, horse, and foot, the Lewis and Clark Expedition only lost one man—and that was through a then-incurable case of appendicitis. His name was Sergeant Floyd—you can still visit his memorial just outside Sioux City, Iowa.

The Corps of Discovery’s route led up the Missouri River through the Great Plains, across the Rocky Mountains, and down the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean—and back again. Their mission was part imperialistic, part scientific, part commercial, part political, part anthropological. They were looking for the Northwest Passage, they were trying to create trade relations with the various native peoples, and they were recording and collecting the flora and fauna they met along the way.

Their expedition was the brainchild of Thomas Jefferson, the most intellectual of our presidents. Meriwether Lewis was Jefferson’s personal aide, and his experience as a soldier and backwoodsman made him the ideal choice as leader of the Corps of Discovery. Lewis chose William Clark as his second-in-command, but the two men were really co-leaders.

Lewis, with his Enlightenment-tinged Romanticism, and Clark, with his more basic, salt-of-the-earthness, were a kind of exploratory yin-yang: perfectly complementing each other to achieve the rather tricky feat of transporting thirty men across half of a still-very-much-wild continent.

Lewis’s journal entries tend to be more wordy and sometimes they delve into philosophic, flowery language, as evidenced in his journal entry from August 18, 1805:

This day I completed my thirty first year, and conceived that I had in all human probability now existed about half the period which I am to remain in this Sublunary world. I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little indeed, to further the hapiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended. but since they are past and cannot be recalled, I dash from me the gloomy thought and resolved in future, to redouble my exertions and at least indeavour to promote those two primary objects of human existence, by giving them the aid of that portion of talents which nature and fortune have bestoed on me; or in future, to live for mankind, as I have heretofore lived for myself.—

It would be hard to come across a more apt, pithy, moving expression of human regret and aspiration. Sadly, Lewis had just four more years to live.

William Clark’s entries, on the other hand, are somewhat less fun to read—but yet he’s not without his charms, as evidenced in his description from August 24 and 25, 1804 of a hill reputed by the local Sioux to be inhabited by malevolent spirits:

…this hill… is Supposed to be a place of Deavels or that they are in human form with remarkable large heads and about 18 inches high; that they are very watchfull and ar armed with Sharp arrows with which they can kill at a great distance; they are said to kill all persons who are so hardy as to attemp to approach the hill… we rose the hill Some time before we got to the hill we obsevd. great numbers of Birds hovering about the top of this Mound when I got on the top those Birds flw off. I discovered that they wer Cetechig [catching] a kind of flying ant which were in great numbers abought the top of this hill, those insects lit on our hats & necks, Several of them bit me verry Shart [sharp?] on the neck…

You may have noted the highly irregular spelling and capitalization and punctuation in the above passages. For me, such irregularities make reading a richer, more interactive experience. It was from the journals of Lewis and Clark that I first learned to love the lackadaisicality of people long ago when it came to matters of language, and it set me on the road to not becoming a Grammar Scold.

In addition to the above account of visiting the hill of evil spirits, there are numerous other anecdotes in the journals sure to delight, like the expedition’s frequent run-ins with Grizzly bears, the men’s contraction of STDs, a violent encounter with and breathless escape from a group of Blackfeet, the Corps’ desperate search for horses to cross the Rockies, and Lewis getting shot in the ass by one of his own men.

And there are other characters besides Lewis and Clark which appear in the journals who still intrigue today. The first, of course, is Sacagawea (probably pronounced Sah-kah-guh-wee-uh—which, in Hidatsa, means “Bird Woman”). Kidnapped by an opposing tribe and sold to a Frenchman, she was the ripe old age of fifteen when she and her husband accompanied the Corps of Discovery to the Pacific. Amazingly, she carried her newborn baby, Jean-Baptist Charbonneau (nicknamed “Pompey” by William Clark), across thousands of miles of wilderness and through numberless hardships.

Although her role in the expedition has been somewhat over-romanticized, she played a crucial part in the expedition’s securing of horses to cross the Rockies. But the instance I always think about in connection with her is this very real glimpse of inquisitive, impatient youth from January 6th, 1806. The expedition had reached the western ocean and heard word about a whale being washed up on the beach:

Capt Clark set out after an early breakfast with the party in two canoes as had been concerted the last evening; Charbono and his Indian woman were also of the party; the Indian woman was very impotunate to be permited to go, and was therefore indulged; she observed that she had traveled a long way with us to see the great waters, and that now that monstrous fish was also to be seen, she thought it very hard she could not be permitted to see either (she had never yet been to the Ocean).

Another haunting figure is York, Clark’s slave, who accompanied him on the expedition. The Mandans, an Indian nation living in modern-day North Dakota, made much of him. From Clark’s entry from October 10, 1804:

Those Indians wer much astonished at my Servent, They never Saw a black man before, all flocked around him & examind. him from top to toe, he Carried on the joke and made himself more turibal than we wished him to doe.

And from January 1, 1805:

I found them much pleased at the Danceing of our men, I ordered my black Servent to Dance which amused the Croud verry much, and Some what astonished them, that So large a man Should be active &c. &.

And from December 8, 1804:

This day being Cold Several men returned a little frost bit; one of men with his feet badly frost bit my Servents feet also frosted & his P—s a little.

It’s difficult to know what exactly became of York after the expedition’s return to “civilization.” Some say he was freed by Clark, some say he instead escaped, some say he returned to the West and lived amongst the Crows in Wyoming.

As for Sacagawea, she let William Clark raise her son Pompey and she reportedly died of an unknown illness at a fort in Nebraska at the age of twenty-four.

Meriwether Lewis went on to become Governor of the territory of Louisiana, but ran into debt and faced corruption charges and developed an alcohol and drug addiction. Just three years after the expedition’s safe return to St. Louis, on his way to Washington to clear his name, he mostly likely committed suicide—although some conspiracy theorists say it was murder. He was thirty-five.

Clark, on the other hand, lived to the age of sixty-eight, outliving two wives and siring eight children.

Several years ago, I took a road trip following the path of Lewis and Clark. It took over a month. One of the best things I ever did. I drank from the very same spring that a sick Sacagawea drank from (see the June 16, 1805 journal entry), I straddled the beginnings of the Missouri River, one foot on each side, just like Corps member Hugh McNeal (August 12, 1805), I stood face-to-face with the graffiti Clark made on Pompey’s Pillar (July 25, 1806), and I ascended the haunted hill described above on one rainy, wind-swept day—and lived to tell the tale.

If you’ve got the time, money, and inclination for a road trip this summer, let me recommend following the path of the Corps of Discovery. The Great Age of Exploration may be long over, but you can still pick over its ghostly remnants. Best get going before they’re all gone.

As an enthusiast of whiskey since my early years, it’s my pleasure to watch the world celebrate my favorite poison in the spotlight of mass popularity. But it’s important to remember that a dignified man’s drink should always be simple, bold, and romantic. Much like The Barrel Aged Manhattan.

The Barrel Aged Manhattan proudly embodies the following: bourbon, sweet vermouth and bitters aged in a charred oak barrel for 4-6 months and served in a tumbler over an oversized ice-cube with an orange peel. So beautifully American, it may as well be a pair of Wayfarers. The velvety spice and mellow sweetness make the caramel colored cocktail devilishly good without pulling a punch.

The Recipe:

2 Liter Oak Barrel
750ML Blanton’s Single Barrel Whiskey
7 oz. Martini & Rossi Sweet Vermouth
2 oz. Angostura Bitters.

As the modern man is always on the move, here are some fine establishments who get this drink right.

Girl & The Goat – Chicago, IL
High West Distillery & Saloon – Park City, UT
370 Common – Laguna Beach, CA

Be well gentlemen & always drink as you act: Dignified.

As an airplane is about to crash, a female passenger jumps up frantically and announces, “If I’m going to die, I want to die feeling like a woman.”

She removes all her clothing and asks, “Is there someone on this plane who is man enough to make me feel like a woman?”

A man stands up, removes his shirt and says, “Here, iron this!”.

For more Dirty Minds click here.

People learn in different ways. For you visual learners out there, we have Dignified vs. Undignified: A Visual Guide. Compare, contrast, decide which one you want to be.

For more Dignified vs. Undignified click here.

Summer is great and all, but heat is the natural enemy to cold and when it comes to your favorite beer that’s a problem. Enter the Chillsner, a one of a kind in-bottle beer chiller. It keeps your beer cold from the first sip to the last. Just freeze, insert into any bottled beer and drink right through the Chillsner. Easy. // Available: amazon.com // Price: $29.95