Ein Vorspiel: By Way of Introduction

These entries are the notes of an aging roué: dry thoughts in a dry season.

I am a gentleman of a certain age. I live in an urban downtown, on the edge of a park with a lake.

I was born in one of the older cities of this country. I was educated at good universities, though I did not attend Trinity Hall, Cambridge, nor the College of Charleston. I have traveled, though I have never lived in Knightsbridge nor the 7e or 16e Arrondissements of Paris. I have never served in combat nor hunted big game. Politically, I am rather on the Left, though not invariably so.

I am not and never have been a religious believer, though I appreciate religious ritual and art. Seneca's description of religion ("wisdom by the commons, false by the wise, useful by the State") seems both perfectly apt and good policy.

I am a roué. There are other, less pleasant words for that now, but that's something we'll discuss later. I have been known to describe myself as "libertine, but never libertarian".

I prefer my Scotch single-malt and my companions younger. We'll discuss that later, too.

I play chess, though I prefer backgammon. I do not play bridge or poker.

I have never been married; I have no children. I live in what my counterparts in mid-Georgian London might think of as genteel poverty. I do live amidst books.

My attitudes are (I hope) more eighteenth-century than Victorian. My beliefs are shaped by postmodernism and post-structuralism.

I intend to write about a number of issues, though sex and its social and cultural aspects will be key to these entries. This is not however a sex blog. It is not a place to brag about conquests. That is unseemly for anyone male (e.g., various dude-bro/frat-boy blogs), though memoirs of adventures and encounters by lovely young women are quite engaging. As a gentleman of a certain age, my entries will be fairly abstract. I am often fascinated more by the ideas of things than by the things themselves. I will be writing here as an observer, and if I sometimes play the raconteur, I hope never to play the braggart.

I appreciate civil conversations and exchanges. I stress the word "civil", and discretion is both expected and given. If you'd like to read along, or to engage in discussions about my entries, you are invited. Here in the early days of this blog, suggestions about topics are welcome from lovely readers.

Every writer has an imaginary reader in mind. It shouldn't be hard to guess the attributes of the readers I hope are out there, though wit and intelligence are chief amongst the things I'm hoping for.

Please--- read along.