Sunday, February 18, 2024

Three Seven Four: Notes

 Once upon a time Liberty and I were sitting on the porch steps of a weekend cottage we'd rented by a river in the hills. It was an autumn morning, and we were drinking coffee while there still mist outside. She was wearing nothing but one of my pullover sweaters-- I remember that -- and leaning back with her legs stretched out. I traced a finger along her leg and she laughed.

Her last older man, she said, had always liked her in anything that showed off her legs. A beautiful young girl, he'd told her, should always sit in one of two ways in a skirt-- legs crossed to show off how long they were, or else slightly parted so that she'd be a bit on display, so she'd be aware that strangers could tell she wasn't wearing underwear. I remember kissing her knee and telling her that I agreed with that. She sat up and kept her legs apart. No problem, she told me. She disliked ever wearing underwear anyway, and she liked having me look at her. What she wondered, she said, was about why her last older man had wanted her on display for strangers. It wasn't that she minded that so much, but she questioned whether he'd wanted others to see her to show them that she was there as his sex toy or that he wanted her to be aware of and excited by being on display. Older men, she grinned, all had very precise interests. She raised an eyebrow and looked at me for comments.

I told her that I understood. I liked being able to look at her, and I liked knowing that she was available to be seen and touched. And if she was sitting there, legs a bit parted, she'd be aware of her vulnerable she was. She nodded-- older men liked her to seem vulnerable. She was twenty-three that autumn, and she laughed about that. Maybe two or three more years, she said, maybe two or three more years when she could still be a young girl who could be corrupted and violated. After that, she said, she'd have to act like a grown-up woman, and she had no idea how sex and sex play went with adulting.

Older men, she said, had always been something she'd liked, all the way back to the kayak shop owner when she was a teen in the Pacific Northwest. Older men were something she could learn from, and she liked that-- learning things, having someone teach her things. Kayaking, rock climbing, art, books-- she wanted to learn about things and try being something or someone new all the time. That went for sex, too. Older men were the sounding boards who showed all kinds of pleasures and games and things to explore. That, she told me, was what I was there for.  I had to be flattered by the vote of confidence. 

The older man before that, before the one who'd taught her to sit open-thighed, was a foot fetish devotee. She grinned and told me that she pretty much believed that older men were always into feet. Not that she minded, she said. It was an easy fetish for her, since she'd grown up barefoot half the time anyway. Her foot fetish man had paid for lots of expensive pedicures for her, too. And having her toes sucked and her feet and ankles licked felt nice. Foot jobs were fun to do, she told me, especially with uncircumcised men. The only thing she didn't understand, she said, was why a lot of foot fetish play that she found at places like PornHub seemed to be about submission and domination. She didn't think her older man was creepy about the fetish, and she didn't feel like she needed to play the domme and order him around. He enjoyed it, she liked the way what he did for her felt, and just asking for something was always better than ordering someone around. 

I remember her looking at me with a raised eyebrow then. She told me that when I wanted to blindfold her or tie her wrists, or play with a riding whip, I'd just ask. Or she could ask me to do it to her. Neither of us needed to play at domination, let alone humiliation. She was much more submissive than dominant by nature, but while she liked being a bottom, she never understood humiliation as sex.

She asked me if I ever wanted to suck her toes or lick her feet, and I just shrugged. If she asked, I told her, I'd do it. I was, after all, her current official evil older predator, and I was open to whatever she wanted to try. Good, Liberty said. She expected her older men to teach her things and she expected them never to be afraid or ashamed to explore things with her. 

She opened her legs a bit more and grinned at me. What she liked, she said, was that attitude. I'd been good at creating scenarios for us, and she liked that. I'd been good at playing faux-nonconsensual games, too. She liked that about older men-- the being able to understand about faux-nonconsensual sex. Boys her own age, she said, knew nothing about games and irony. Sex, she said, was about pleasure and having fun. She didn't need people who were grindingly earnest about sex, or about anything else, in her life. 

I make notes about you, Liberty told me. You're in my journal. I expect you to show me things.  I remember that, and I was proud of it.  

Keep sitting like that, I told her. Especially in publicKeep avoiding underwear. And I'll think of things. I will work at that. I know my role. 

Liberty is someone I do still think about. I remember the stories she told me and the things she and I explored. I do have to write about her more.


Wednesday, February 7, 2024

Three Seven Three: Guidelines

 Last time, I wrote about my anxieties over the idea of FMTY Girls. Please be very certain that I'm talking here about hypothetical situations. I'll never be in a financial position where I could afford the services of one of the FMTY Girls on Twitter. I'll never really be in the geographical position to access the services of an FMTY Girl. My city is off the tour circuit for FMTY Girls, and I'd never be able to afford the fees necessary to persuade an FMTY Girl that I'm vaut un detour. This essay recognizes those facts very clearly. This is about a hypothetical world, not about this one.

Please don't think that I spend my evenings obsessing over the Twitter feeds of FMTY Girls. My Twitter reading is largely about history, architecture, and literature. But I do see feeds by lovely passport-ready escorts and I recognize my own failings. I might-- might --be able to afford the professional services of a local escort, but I wouldn't know where to begin. And, yes, I'd feel many of the same anxieties.

Last weekend I did what everyone does about needed information these days-- I went to YouTube and looked for information on how to seek out paid companionship and how to behave on a date with a companion. In case you're wondering, there are videos devoted to exactly those issues. I'm rather impressed with that. YouTube videos have taught me how to open an Opinel knife (i.e., how to do the coup de Savoyard), how to properly cook a veal chop, and how to reset the oil warning light on my vehicle. And now I could, at least in theory, learn how to behave with a high-end escort.

Companion. My apologies-- the preferred term is companion. I understand that. It's the same usage as the ancient Greek hetaira-- which is companion also. I like companion as a term, and it certainly catches a very large part of what I'm looking for. And I have to laugh here. What I'm hearing in my head is a moment in "The Rings of Power" where Adar corrects Galadriel when she calls him an orc: "Uruk. We prefer uruk." (Oh, yes, I liked "The Rings of Power; Adar was my favourite character) 

There was one video that I liked a lot. It was by a woman with certification as a sex therapist and a graduate degree in psychology. She talked about how paid companionship could have positive effects for some male patients, and she gave very good, very practical advice about being with a Companion. Let's be clear that I have no problems with her video. Be polite, be respectful, pay your fee up front, be honest about what you're looking for, treat a Companion just as you'd treat any skilled professional. Simple things, and practical. But again, not something that addresses my anxieties.

There was still no advice as to what to do about Impostor Syndrome, about the feeling that you're not good enough for an FMTY Girl, even if you could afford the fees without blinking. I keep looking at my wardrobe and thinking that any FMTY Girl would be ashamed to be seen with me. My thought is that being seen in public with me would lower her reputation in her own profession and might put off potential clients. 

Videos put up at YouTube by working Companions are all designed to allay male fears. The male viewer is assured that with a Companion he won't be judged or mocked for his performance or his body. The Companion is there, the male viewer is assured, to provide services. She doesn't judge, and her skills include making the client feel like he's appreciated. 

That may or may not be true. But while I'd certainly meet certain requirements for behavior-- personal hygiene, of course, and treating my provider with respect --I'd never be able to move from dinner table to bedroom. And I'm not sure I'd know what to do at dinner. I know which fork to use, but I'm not a gourmand and I'd panic at the wine list. I'd be terrified that my provider would instantly assume that if I didn't know what I was doing at dinner, I wouldn't know what to do in bed. I'd assume that she was sighing to herself and lamenting that I was going to  require effort on her part.

Be honest with your provider; tell your provider exactly what you're looking for.  That's excellent advice. But I'd be too afraid to take it. Any fantasies or tastes I might have would be either too boringly vanilla or too annoyingly strange. In any case, my provider would have to expend thought and effort on me. I'd be desperately ashamed to be thought either too boring or too pervy. I'd never be the kind of challenge that might make her want to deploy all her skills. 

Yes, I know. I'd be a paying client; it would be her job to provide services. But any skilled professional, from accountant to zither-player, wants to know that her skills are properly appreciated. I wouldn't be someone who could do that. 

I suppose that it might never get to the dinner date, let alone the bedroom. Even if I had the money for her fee, dinner, hotel room, and tip there's still the "screening" hurdle. I'd never make that. I'm not even sure what "screening" would entail. Whatever it is, it wouldn't be good. It would be too revealing in too many ways. 

The days of CraigsList are long gone, as the days of Nerve.com personals. The same anxieties would apply there, too, mind you. Let's be clear on that. I'd never pass the screening. And I'd feel like the girl across the table had sought an Adventure and had only found...me. Well, at least a girl from a personals ad would feel to just walk away. Painful and humiliating for me, yes, but at least it would be done quickly. A Companion, a provider, might feel that since she'd accepted the fee, she was obligated to grit her teeth and go through with the contract. I'd probably be able to tell, and I'd feel both humiliated and ashamed to have ruined the working evening for her.

I do have copies of my briefing document. Yes, I did draft one. And of course the preference points all come with inbuilt apologies. I'd never have the courage to ask for what I'd want, even if I were paying for it. I'd never know how to behave with a Companion, never know how to behave so as to help her keep up the experience of the evening. 

The YouTube videos were all very practical, very useful. But they don't address my fears. I have no idea how I'd be able to get through an evening with a Companion without disappointing or annoying her, and I'd never be able to ask for the things that might give me pleasure.

Monday, January 22, 2024

Three Seven Two: Invitations

 Let's think for a minute. Let's go back to the FMTY girls. We're almost a month into the new year, and at Twitter the FMTY girls are announcing their spring touring schedules. 

I live in an older city, one that lives on its reputation for food and music and a certain louche attitude. It has its charms, and it has a fascinating history, but it's usually off the FMTY tour circuit. In some ways I suppose that's best. 

I have an idea about the fee schedules for the FMTY girls, and I have an idea about what the incidental expenses would be-- the restaurant, the wines, and the tip. But purposes of this essay, let's assume that I could pay those amounts with the snap of a finger. Let's assume that tonight I'm sitting at a good restaurant with an FMTY girl who meets all my criteria of desire. Let's go a bit farther and assume I've passed her screening procedures and that I've been dressed and groomed to be socially presentable. 

So, here we are. Dinner has been ordered, wine has been poured. I was brought up to be polite in a quietly old-school way, and her professional skills include making her clients feel at ease. So she and I are making conversation. And then...what happens?

This could become an issue-- which of us moves the conversation into the realm of seduction? Which of us gently nudges the evening toward a bedroom? I have no idea how that would work. I've read FMTY girls' Twitter posts where they've noted that it's irritating and annoying to have a client openly press for leaving the restaurant for the hotel room. The girl has been working hard to establish herself as a Companion, as someone who can create an elegant scene-- a client just saying something like, "Well, it's half past nine, let's get naked" is simply brushing off her professional skills.

But how does this work? I've had dinners with young ladies who've been seductive. I've had fingertips traced over the back of my hand while he talked. I've had a slender bare foot traced along my leg under the table. I mean, that's been a while, but it has happened. Somehow I wouldn't expect the FMTY girl to nod towards the street door and say, "Let's see your hotel room" (let alone "Come see the rooftop pool where I'm staying"). Yes, there's the issue of the ticking clock. There's always that. My fee covers her presence at dinner and in the bedroom, and the evening's clock is ticking. But reminding her of that is crass and vulgar. It sounds...entitled. This is the third decade of the new century, and entitled is just about the worst thing a person of the male persuasion can be seen as being. 

I have no idea how I'd raise the issue of going to bed. We'd both of us know that a hotel bed is supposed to be the climax of the evening. She may even have been provided with a briefing document about my interests and tastes. But I have no idea how to get from table to bed. 

Last Saturday I had my hair cut. My cutter has known me since we were both young. We even dated briefly back in the depths of the Long Ago. I trust her skills and professional knowledge absolutely. When I go to her home studio to have my hair cut, we have coffee or tea and talk books and films, then she moves me along to the various stops in the process-- shampoo, cut, a brief demonstration of her future plans for my hair style and of what I need to do to maintain the style. I make conversation; I have input into the music she has playing (last Saturday: Morcheeba). But she moves me along very efficiently, and with practiced ease. I have to admire that.

I wouldn't know what to do on an evening with an FMTY girl. I'd like to put myself completely in her hands and rely on her to guide me through what would be a learning experience. Being with an FMTY girl would be something I'd do for the experience, for the taste of a better world. It would be something that I'd do for the chance to be guided through the mazes of class and style around sex, decor, restaurants, and social presentation. I'd be terrified of showing myself to be incapable of being part of that world. I wouldn't want to be seen as failing at a sentimental education. A beautiful, skilled demimondaine is not someone I'd want to disappoint, and certainly not someone whose mockery I'd want to risk.

Right now I'm thinking of the last girl whom I walked from my sitting room into my bedroom. That wasn't hard. We'd met one summer Saturday. She'd just graduated university, and we ordered lots of classic cocktails and laughed and flirted. She came back to my flat, went out to the courtyard swimming pool with me, and drank with me in my kitchen. At some point we looked at one another and I nodded to my bedroom. It all felt effortless. She was in a mood to experiment with things, and as her first Older Gentleman I counted as that. And it was a Saturday late afternoon-- I think that mattered, too. Again-- it all felt effortless and fluid. We laughed about that, about one thing flowed into another that afternoon. But it wouldn't be like that with an FMTY girl.

Yes-- the FMTY girl would get a briefing document about my interests. And the document would note that while I always encourage young ladies to avoid underwear and to always sleep naked, she would never see me naked. That would break the spell of the evening. Whatever skills she might have, however open about bodies she might be-- she'd never see me naked. That would break the spell. Her body would be there to be admired, caressed, valued. But I'd never want her to have to tolerate my body. I'd never want her to have to grit her teeth on the walk from restaurant to bedroom.

I'd never know what to say to an FMTY girl. I'd want the evening to feel seductive, to be about mannered seduction. I'd want the sex to be stylized and its transitions to feel fluid. I'd be terrified to end up sitting there staring at my plate or at the wine bottle, frozen with fear of doing this wrong, of getting it wrong. I'd be afraid of disappointing a skilled demimondaine. I'd be terrified of not being good enough to understand the nuances of her skills. I'd be terrified of looking like a rube or a yokel. I'd be ashamed of wasting the FMTY's evening. 

Whenever I've engaged the services of a professional-- a tax accountant, a successions lawyer, a physician --I've always felt able to explain very directly what I wanted, and I've felt entitled to ask questions. But I couldn't do that with an FMTY girl. I'd feel far too judged. 

Now it's possible that I could carry on a conversation. I have stories to tell; I was trained to be a decent dinner party guest. I might even be able to discuss topics that wouldn't bore her. But I couldn't negotiate the shift from dinner to bedroom. I wouldn't even know how to bring up the topic. 

Any of you out there over the aether-- whether or not you know anything about the FMTY demimonde --if you're reading this, what do you think? If we assume that I had the money and the decent attire and that I could  pass an FMTY girl's screening protocols... If we assume those things, then-- what should I do. However do I end up able to transition back to the hotel? How would I avoid sitting there staring at an empty plate in a conversational void? How would I avoid the girl's contempt as the clock ticks down?

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

Three Seven One: Library

 Here we are at the very beginning of the year 2024.

I haven't been here in too long, and I apologize for that. I have no idea who if anyone reads this out over the aether, but if you're reading this, you do have my apologies. I've been away from this blog for too long, and I want to make 2024 a year where I spend more time here.

I'd like to spend some time this year focusing on fantasies-- what they are, how they evolve, how they're used. I'd like to focus, too, on what they mean. Note that I'm not using "mean" in any Freudian sense. I'd like to focus on what it means that we need fantasies, and on how (if at all) they relate to individual lives.  

Consider the sentence beginning "I am not my..." Consider all the things that can complete the sentence. Well, fantasies is one possible word. So I'd like to spend some time examining that version of the sentence. Are we our fantasies? Should we be "accountable" (a word I really hate) for our fantasies? How much are we defined by our fantasies? I want to think about those things and write about them during the year. 

But in the meantime, let's start the year with a few books that I'll recommend. Some are older, yes, but there are libraries and interlibrary loan systems. If you read any of them, please do tell me what you think.

1. Robert Hellenga, "The Sixteen Pleasures". A very clever and often very hot  literary mystery set in Florence in the mid-1960s. The McGuffin here is a 16th-c. book of erotica with engravings of the sixteen sexual positions supposedly most likely to give pleasure to women. Late Renaissance Italian history, erotica, and antique books-- how could I not like this book?

2. Georges Bataille, "The Story of the Eye". Okay, now-- a work of French surrealist s/m erotica. It's considered one of the most bizarre novels of the last century. It has madness, s/m, slapstick comedy, and lots of sex involving eggs. I don't know enough about it (or about Bataille) to say whether it's supposed to be a parody of French s/m. It is funny in a perverse way, mind you. And there's a film version from the very early Noughts that I do hope to see one day. 

3. Alec Waugh, "A Spy in the Family". Alec Waugh was the older brother of Evelyn Waugh, and "Spy" is at least as funny as some of the younger Waugh's early comedies. The plot is simple. A late-1960s upper-middle-class young London wife discovers that her boringly vanilla civil servant husband is actually a spy working for MI.6. Somehow she becomes a lesbian dominatrix working for Her Majesty's Secret Service...and really, really likes her job. Some very, very hot moments, some very witty dialogue. This does need to be a film.

4. Joyce MacIver, "The Exquisite Thing". A largely forgotten s/m coming-of-age novel from c. 1970. There are some very hot sequences, including a stunning scene in a Spanish s/m performance club. MacIver did at least one other book that's worth reading-- a kind of autobiographical novel called "The Frog Pond" that's also an s/m coming-of-age story. I haven't read "The Exquisite Thing" in decades, but the scene in Madrid still haunts me. There's a third book, too, called "Mercy"...which seems to be a Southern gothic Lolita tale. About MacIver herself I know nothing. But do read "The Exquisite Thing" and let me know what you think. 

So...four books for you here at the start of the year. I do hope you'll make a point of reading at least a couple of them. I'd like to be able to discuss them with some lovely young literary girl. And I'd like to know if these four books do anything for your fantasy lives.

Monday, December 4, 2023

Three Seven Zero: Domme

 I've been spending a great deal of time at YouTube, and the other night The Algorithm delivered a recommendation that I needed to see a particular video. Well, fine. The video was an hour-long interview with a woman who calls herself Eva Oh, and I was intrigued.

Eva Oh is a very high-end domme. She seems to be based mostly in Australia, though in the interview she mentioned moving to Britain. She claims very straightforwardly to charge $10,000 a day for her services and to have a very exclusive (if not "closed") book of clients. She also does online classes teaching both potential dommes and potential clients about the procedures and etiquette of the high-end BDSM world. 

I have to say that I quickly developed a crush on her. She's Eurasian-- she describes herself as Anglo-Burmese-Chinese-Irish --and she's very lovely. She seems to have moved around a lot as a girl, and her accent is a delight. It sounds like American English overlaying Australian English with dashes of British Received Pronunciation and what I think of as Singapore English. She has an amazing voice-- smoky, alluring, throaty, precise, measured, confident. It's a voice with command presence-- very much so. It's a voice that would never need to be raised to seem powerful. I immediately thought of it as a voice Tywin Lannister would've appreciated. Eva Oh  was in a very elegant , body-conscious silk slip dress and heels, and she has long, amazing legs...but it's her voice that caught my fancy. She's very coolly distanced, very precise, very elegant, very aware of irony. I like all those things, but...ah, that voice!

I'll note that she's also starred in a film called "Grief Encounter", about an enigmatic woman who attends strangers' funerals in order to seduce grieving men. I like that as a premise, and I like what the trailers show about the psychological dynamics of what her character does.

Eva Oh's biography online says that she worked as a researcher for a couple of human rights organizations in Asia. I'd probably end up letting my academic side take over and spending much of my $10,000 a day asking about where she went and what her research was about and how it was conducted. I've never been able to get away from being an academic. Even trying to discover if she wore anything at all under that silk slip dress (God, I hope not) would take second place to asking about her methodology in research. That's the way my mind works, alas.

I've always been attracted to BDSM, all the way back to reading "Story of O." when I was far too young. S/M for me has always come with a whole set of class markers, and it's always been what Andrew Holleran called "the intellectuals' fetish". It's a fetish that requires literary references and expensive accoutrements. It's a fetish that requires the ability to create and tell stories. What's S/M without a script, without a set of character backstories? 

My relationships have usually involved S/M overtones. I'm older than my young companions, and I was the eldest sibling in my family...so I'm used to having my way. I spent much of my life as an academic, so I'm used to crafting and telling stories. My young ladies are often comparative lit or French lit majors, and they're used to seeing the world as a set of stories...and used to being mentored by older admirers. So affairs for me have always been very much a sort of creative writing seminar. And Eva Oh seems to be someone who has the ability to do be part of stories and scenarios and character play. 

I've never had any particular interest in being submissive, and I'm not someone who feels the need to be "broken down" or punished. So I'm not sure that Eva Oh-- who seems to enjoy psychological games and shaping psychological dynamics --would be a good real-world choice for me, even if I were some tech billionaire or forex trader who could regard $10,000 a day as just a rounding error. Though let's say that I did admire her own accounts of scenarios she's created with her clients, and I am fascinated with her ideas about how to create "headspaces" for clients. My own wish (not quite a fantasy) would be to sit with Eva Oh in some elegant, tiny bar in Melbourne or Singapore and work with her on creating scenarios.

Though let's be honest. I'd probably have the same fear I had about the FMTY girls at Twitter. Would my particular interests seem good enough to her? Would I be good enough to be her client-- to be worth her time and effort, even if I paid in advance? Would I be a project worth her time?

The scenarios wouldn't involve the usual BDSM things, but they would involve complicated scenarios and a fluidity of control. In my own life, as I've said before, my pleasures happen behind my eyes. It's always been very difficult for me to pass control over from my thoughts to my body. It's never been easy to release myself and just experience sensations. I always have to have a script (or at least an outline), and I always have to have a very literary ambience. I could never afford Eva Oh, and I could likely never explain myself properly even if did have the ability to move funds over the aether to her offshore accounts. But the idea is there. Maybe a domme has the auxiliary skills to let me finally feel something outside my own head-- the necessary skills at character creation, scriptwriting, and finding out what's actually going on behind my eyes.

I also found a platform called Soft White Underbelly that had an interview with a young (twenty-five or twenty-six) domme who called herself Monique. She's not anywhere near Eva Oh's price-point, and she's very...American: Los Angeles by way of Minnesota. Very tall (six foot two), very slender, very pretty in a kind of angular way. I liked her interview a lot, liked her attitude and laugh. Monique is very like many of the girls I've sat with at off-campus or hipster-enclave bars down the years, and of course I loved the idea of how long her legs were, and I loved the way you see her hipbones just above her low-rise jeans. Very, very kissable legs, and the sort of dry humor I like. 

She did talk about how it mattered to her that her clients were able to feel a sense of freedom around her and how she was open to adventures and experiments. I could imagine her as someone I could talk to about my needs and hopes and interests and not feel that I might be...boring. I'd have a drink with Monique and simply...discuss prices and services without feeling like someone trying to hire a top-end DC or Manhattan lawyer to represent him in a minor car crash. Monique might be someone I could talk to and feel like I might be an adventure rather than a psychological experiment or corporate project for her. No wire transfers to banks overseas, but I would be happy to bring cash.  I suspect she wouldn't be as coolly precise about things as Eva Oh, but she might be less likely to judge the decor in my flat. 

And I suspect Monique might be someone with whom I could be more open. She'd be easier to just look at at say, "Well, I've always wanted to be able to just feel something, or just lose myself in something other than books and movies." Maybe. Maybe.

Well, these days I lack the money and the ability to do anything FMTY...or to be on an aeroplane to anywhere. And I'm really not sure just what I'd say to either Monique or Eva Oh. Monique, though...I'd love to hear that laugh while I was kissing her hipbones and thighs. 

 



Saturday, September 30, 2023

Three Six Nine: Catalogs

I do receive email from a couple of high-end sex toy shops out there over the aether.  I signed up for them largely as a source for gifts to young ladies of my acquaintance. They've been useful for that, though I want to note that there is something very depressing about shopping for sex toys. 

It isn't that the recipients haven't liked them. It's not that at all. Young ladies have been amused, aroused, and often quite grateful for the gifts. After all, any educated young lady here in the third decade of the new century is likely to appreciate a Lelo vibrator or a set of masks and blindfolds. Ben-wa balls remain a classic gift as well.

But there's something depressing about it all. A high-end sex toy shop (let's say, e.g., Good Vibrations) has nothing really to offer males. Lovely and adventuresome young ladies can experiment with sex toys and feel empowered. There's no male equivalent for that. Sex toys nominally designed for males are depressing things. They lack any sort of erotic allure, and they all seem to symbolize failure.

Consider the so-called Fleshlight. There's no equivalence with a Lelo vibrator. The Lelo enhances pleasure. It teaches young ladies how to make their bodies respond. It can be used on a lovely girl by a partner. A Fleshlight, though, is a clear symbol of failure. A male user is inserting himself in a vibrating tube because he's incapable of having a partner. A girl can use a Lelo on herself while describing sensations to a partner. A male with a Fleshlight has nothing erotic to say, and almost by definition he has no one to say it to.

I cannot imagine using any of the "For Him" toys in the Good Vibrations catalog. I cannot imagine placing my person-- my ummm...parts --in some kind of battery-operated sheath. The thought of putting myself into some electrically-powered cylinder (or putting some electrical appliance into my body) is rather terrifying. And I'm certainly not about to put my parts into something powered by clockwork mechanisms. That would be...well, just no. I'm not about to risk some electrical mishap, let alone some mechanical failure, just to use an item that tells the world that I'm a social and sexual failure. 

The only sort of sex toy that I can imagine using wouldn't be a sheath or cylinder (all too reminiscent of jokes about watermelons or pies or pieces of liver). It could only be some kind of cyberpunk headset that would act directly on my brain. Something that would trigger pleasure impulses and sensations in my brain would have a sci-fi air about it. It wouldn't be about some battery-powered tube. It wouldn't touch anything near one's parts. It would be about neuroscience and maybe virtual reality. It wouldn't seem so much about physical failure. 

By the way, you get extra points if you can identify the liver and pie references. 

Male pleasure remains a source of derisive, contemptuous amusement. Males pleasuring themselves are risible. The very idea draws cruel mockery. No young lady has to face derision for using a Lelo. Male pleasure has no sense of adventure attached. 

I can give gifts designed to enhance pleasure, but there is no plausible way I could receive a gift designed to enhance my own pleasure. I can't even think of a way to discuss the topic with a young lady of my acquaintance. We really have no present set of talking points for male pleasure, and no hi-tech work being done to create male pleasure enhancers that don't make one a sad joke. 



Sunday, August 27, 2023

Three Six Eight: Cafe

 This morning I was at a downtown coffee shop very early. I settled in at a corner table with a book or two and my Moleskine and ordered a large flat white and a croissant. 

I'd been there long enough to be on my second cup of coffee when two lovely girls came in. I do love early Sunday mornings downtown. The streets are empty, but flights of lovely girls do appear-- co-eds from the university, travelers from the downtown hotels, residents of the new condos going up as part of downtown renovation. A friend of mine calls the latter group The Gentrifiquettes; I think of them as the Mini-Sundress and Ray-Bans Brigade. 

The two girls who came in were...a delight to the eye and to my particular imagination. Both tall and very slim, streaked-blonde hair  down past their shoulder blades, long dark-tanned legs, short shorts, and cowboy boots. I hadn't seen the short shorts and cowboy boots look in a while. It's a hard look to bring off, really. These two made it work, though. Both girls were wearing boots that had seen some wear-- boots mean for actual riding, not the gaudy kind worn in country-western clubs. Their shorts were faded cut-offs, but not done for a Daisy Dukes look. The country-western cliche would've been for them to wear button-up cotton shirts in a bright plaid. These two were in gauzy ballet-neck tunics with 3/4 sleeves. That was a good fashion touch. I did like the look. Loved those long legs, too. I had to sigh over that.

I had no idea why they were dressed similarly. Roommates? Lovers? Sorority sisters? Best friends? Cyborg assassins from the future? They weren't twins, mind you. Please don't think that. That would've been just a bit de trop, I think.

In a better world, or at least a better story, they'd have ended up talking to me at my table. There's no plausible way to have the story end with them ravishing me in the back seat of their parked Range Rover, but I suppose I could make a story work where the three of us sat and flirted and drank Sunday-morning Mimosas. That would be a story I could tell myself in my head. 

In this world, of course, none of that happened. They were in line to order, and then off to a table across the coffee shop. And I, I sat in my corner and made notes in my Moleskine. I read a bit more in my book-- a biography of the Duke of Marlborough --and then made my way back to my car. Yes, beautiful legs, beautiful profiles. The shorts and boots look was something I recall from long ago, and I do love looks that emphasize long, slender legs. I've been telling myself that neither girl wore anything under those shorts-- that's always my hope, of course. It's something I'll be imagining for days. I'll be imagining them riding horses, too. Thoroughbreds, not Arabians. I have clear opinions about horses as well as fashion. My fantasy life is always very specific. It mattered to be that the two girls had 3/4 sleeves and not simply rolled-back sleeves. 

I'll note here that as a person of the male persuasion, my fantasies have to remain abstract. There are strict limits to what anyone cis-het male can do about his fantasies. The Arbitrary Social Rules are very clear about that. 

The two girls at the coffee shop reminded me of a friend from New Zealand who had an immense collection of sex toys. She was very particular about matching her fantasies to specific toys. I had to admire her obsessiveness. She was forever scrolling through websites for sites similar to Good Vibrations, looking for niche toys for niche fantasies. Again, I admire the obsessiveness, but there's no male equivalent for it. That's an odd thing, really, but there simply aren't any toys that a cis-het male can employ. It's not just that placing one's...person...inside something battery-powered is always a bad idea, it's that the Arbitrary Social Rules barely allow straight males (especially those of a certain age) to have fantasies at all, let alone do something about them with sex toys. That's simply not allowed. 

Well, I did note down the two girls in boots and short shorts there in my Moleskine. I noted those legs-- dark-tanned, long, slender, perfectly sleek --and my hope that the girls were properly underwear-averse. I noted that they'd done well with their tunics-- the look was far more Posh Hippie than Slutty Farmgirl (call it a Coachella Girl look). I'll never see the two of them again, and I know nothing about them that I didn't create out of my own imagination. Those long legs will stay in my memory, but it'll all be very abstract. 

I can file the morning's vision under Things Noted In Passing.