Two Three One: Hydraulics

A lovely blonde friend down in the Land of the Long White Cloud told me once that from her teens into her later twenties, she habitually carried a flask with her. She'd have it in her backpack or her messenger bag, and it would be filled with Belvedere vodka or Maker's Mark bourbon. The flask itself was engraved, though I forget the exact motto. It may have been Ad Alta, To the Highest, the motto of her posh school, or Semper Paratus, Always Ready, which I suppose goes with the flask. I always admired her for that, and I rather envied her the flask and the party girl life it went with.

My friend told me about the flask, but I never asked her another party girl question. Did she carry condoms with her? She may not have. She once told me that she'd had so much unprotected sex in her teens and early twenties without any complications that she was afraid that she wasn't able to become pregnant at all. It is something I should ask her, though. I've known girls her age who carried a couple of condoms with them at all times--- just in case, they'd say, or you never know what you never know. I've known other girls who always regarded a condom or two as something that was an essential thing for going out. An ID card, $20 or $30 in emergency cash or taxi fare, a debit card, a lipstick, and a condom or two--- those things would be all they'd need for a night at their favourite local bar.

Condoms are something of a mystery to me. I remember the Plague Years of the Eighties. I remember when clubs were filled with PSA placards urging everyone to "cover up". I will admit that they remained something on the edges of my own experience. That's probably something like straight privilege--- the Plague was something that happened to other people, to, well, Others. It's also that my own outlook on sex was shaped before the Plague Years. I thought about contraception in some way, I suppose, but I hadn't had to consider the Plague or even the non-fatal kinds of STD. In my late teens or early twenties, I took it as a given (and this may be a generational thing) that girls all went at sixteen or seventeen to be put on the Pill, that they and their mothers connived at a belief that the girl's periods needed to be regulated, or that the Pill was good for some hypothetical acne issue. I took it for granted that when a girl arrived at university, she immediately used her student health services plan to get on the Pill. I may well have been in grad school the first time a girl handed me a condom, and I was clueless enough about how to put it on.  That's a long way from the days when student groups had bowls of free condoms at informational tables on campus.

I do want to ask my friend in New Zealand about condoms. She was born at the end of the Eighties, and I have no clue what she was taught about using protection at school. She was a posh party girl, though, and I do wonder if she kept a couple of condoms available...just in case. I wonder if she keeps one or two in her messenger bag or her bedside table even now.

This takes us to someplace else, though. Condoms are about contraception and STDs, about "protection". But there is something else I wonder if girls carry--- something I worry about for myself, too.

I'd always assumed that on any date night, or when a lover was coming by for a sleepover, that you showered and shaved and shampooed. Those things were essential and taken for granted. Right now, though, I've developed a new set of hypochondriacal fears. I've been reading question sites and blogs where girls (inevitably) complain about male behaviour. And now I have a set of hygiene fears. What if showering isn't enough? What if it isn't enough at all? The human body is an unreliable thing, and its design is haphazard at best.

A couple of years ago I discovered that porn actresses have been known to fast before certain kinds of scenes and then eat only boiled white rice. Boiled white rice serves to prevent unpleasant after-effects from scenes with sodomitical (or strap-on) practices. It seals them up against loss of control or leakage.

What I've come to worry about involves not boiled white rice but wet wipes. I've seen blog posts and AMA questions about the use of wet wipes for male hygiene. I'd always thought that a long, hot shower and body wash would be sufficient to take care of any male hygiene issue, but the things I've been reading suggest that I may be wrong. I've seen answers and blog posts that suggest that a girl should wash and/or wipe down anything she's planning to put in her mouth.  Carry a pack of wet wipes, the suggestions go--- wipe him down before you put anything in your mouth, and do it for all guys, not just the uncut. Well, now I have something new to fear.

I need to ask my friend whether she carries a wet wipe or two with her when she might meet someone while she's at a party or a club. A quick glance at the Walmart or Target websites shows that there are wet wipes (cotton, flushable, "for adults") that are marketed as "feminine hygiene" wipes. But the question here is about the male body. Should the male partner keep wet wipes in his bathroom and excuse himself to go use them before sex? There is a brand of wet wipes called Dude that very obliquely markets itself as a product males can use to do exactly that.  The brand has a competitor called Every Man Jack--- a brand I'd never be able to buy without some mixture of shame and barely-controllable laughter.  No young companion, no partner, has ever made any kind of complaint relative to hygiene. I know that. I know that I'm relentless about showers and body wash. But...what if? What if? So I do find myself staring at the Target website (or Amazon--- Amazon carries both brands) and wondering if I'll have to re-write my own history and wondering about shame, self-loathing, and how many abject apologies I might have to make. This is hypochondria, but it's paralyzing enough.

My friend in Wellington is fond of sodomitical practices and of analingus as well. An email she sent me back in late fall just noted in passing that she'd become really into eating ass and wasn't sure why. So I wonder if she keeps wet wipes in her backpack or her messenger bag to deal with any cleanliness issues either for herself or her partner.  And...would she be the only one? Are hip twenty-somethings carrying a small pack of wet wipes with them on adventures in the urban night?

I've seen a fair number of things on line about why sleeping naked is the best way to sleep...but also about recommended procedures for making sure that sleeping naked doesn't lead to stains or skid marks on the sheets. This is not something you need to read in tandem with fashion articles where lovely actresses and models enthuse about the sensations and delights of sleeping naked under expensive Egyptian cotton sheets.  Yet another thing to sit and let gnaw on your mind until you're terrified of your own body and shower habits.

In any case, I must ask my friend in Wellington (as well as various lovely young friends here) about wet wipes. Do they ever carry them? Do they ever use them on male companions--- or on themselves ---prior to sex? What are the social rules about such things these days? If you're reading this out over the aether, let me know what you think. If you're a lovely girl who may find herself meeting a potential new companion at a bar or a party--- do you carry condoms or wet wipes just in case? And do you have any problems telling a new companion what the wet wipes are for?

Two Three Zero: Shower

A Story, then. I'll sit here tonight with a bottle of sparkling lime water and add a Story. A lovely girl sent me this years ago--- almost a decade now. She always told wonderful Stories. I of course was desperately in love with her all one lost summer. We'd talk on the phone for hours--- sometimes literally all night. She broke my heart in the end, but she'll always be someone I remember.

Anyway, dear friends and readers...a Story for my archives:

I was 15 when I first showered with a boy. It was my boyfriend at the time. His name was David. He was 17. I used to sneak over to his house when his mother wasn't there. That's when we would do things like shower together. It was more fun than sexual in a way. I suppose it's always been that way for me. Even when I've had sex in the shower with men, it's always been playful rather than sensual.

We were both each other's firsts in terms of any sexual acts aside from intercourse. I think the reason that we never actually did have sex was because I was a little scared, and he was sure he was corrupting me. He would get very depressed about it. I recall him crying about it while dropping me off at my house one night. He didn't want to make me do anything too early in my life. I thought he was being completely ridiculous and told him so. But I think he always felt guilty for doing anything sexual with me.

However, he didn't refrain from hitting on me years later when he was drunk at a party. He told me that I gave much better head than his girlfriend. I didn't sleep with him that night either.

I found this, too. From earlier in that long-ago summer. She copied it from a blog she had in those days and emailed it to me. She called me "my Doctor" or "my Older Man". One of the few times in my life when my doctorate did anything positive for me.

She wrote this:

I'm loving late nights on the phone, a soft voice on the other end. My Doctor. He's inspiring and beautiful in so many ways I can't explain. When we're talking, the whole world washes away and it's just the two of us. I have major, major fantasies of running away to another country with him.

My Older Man introduced me to Neko Case:

"I can say that I've lived here in honor and danger
But I'm just an animal and cannot explain a life
Down the chain of days I wished to stay among my people
Relation now means nothing, having chosen so defined

And if death should smell my breathing
As it passes beneath my window
Let it lead me trembling, trembling
I own every bell that tolls for me."

Fucking beautiful.

Neko Case... I still love Neko Case. How many times have I listened to "Hold On, Hold On" and "Deep Red Bells"--- a couple of hundred times each?

It's a melancholy thing to not be part of story arcs. It's a melancholy thing not to be someone to whom a lovely girl will confide her dreams and her adventures.  I miss that. I miss her particular voice, of course, and I miss thinking that my own life can be shaped into stories,  or that a lovely girl might want to lead me out into adventures for the two of us.

Two Two Nine: Fingertips

There's a moment in any relationship that's delicate and vulnerable and exhilarating. It's simple enough--- the moment when you first take a lover's hand.

I do have memories of that, of how it's done. I remember sliding a hand across a table during a conversation and lifting a girl's hand up to twine my fingers around hers. The conversation carries on, and when it's all done well, neither of you even looks at your hands. The girl may spread her fingers and let yours go between them. Fingertips may tap against one another. You're still talking--- books, music, whether you prefer chocolate powder or cinnamon dusted on a cappuccino.  You're looking into one another's eyes and your fingers are learning each other's touch, learning each other's skin.

When it's done well, there's that knowing smile between the two of you--- first touch, the first statement that you're here for a ritual of flirtation and seduction. Sitting there--- coffee shop, bar, restaurant ---and touching across the table. It is an exhilarating moment. So much can be opening up here, so many possibilities are implicit in that first touch. There are other touches that offer up excitement, of course. The first time you put a hand on a lovely girl's bare leg while you drive at night, the first kiss on a bare shoulder--- those things matter. Holding hands, though... Holding hands is a ritual beginning that manages to be gentle and tentative, a ritual that allows the first touch, a ritual that makes a statement about your value.

I'm old enough to have done this a lot. Old enough to have memories of that first touch in different cities, different countries. I'm old enough to have done it in all kinds of venues. It's always meant a lot to me. But here in these latter days, I'm worried that it won't happen again.

Like so much else--- seductions, first kisses, first experiments and statements of preference or descriptions of fantasies and hopes ---it just seems increasingly difficult to do.

Once when I was very young, I went on a camping trip in the mountains. I remember hiking with friends through woods and along streams in a national park. I remember crossing streams stone to stone, doing small leaping steps from one stone to another. It was easy enough, even with a backpack.  I felt very much at ease. I was looking to the other bank, looking up at forested slopes and peaks in the distance. And then--- I looked down at the water and the stones and froze. I couldn't cross by instinct any longer. I was suddenly aware of what I was doing, aware of having to judge distance and balance. I no longer had any sense of rhythm, no ability to do this without thinking. I was no longer outside myself, and I was paralyzed with having to think.

That first touch, the first moment of sliding a had across a table to hold hands with a lovely girl--- I think I've lost the ability to do it. It no longer feels like a ritual. It feels like something I have to think about. I no longer have any sense of when and how to do this. No rhythm, no sense of flow. And I'm not sure it's something I can do if I have to think about it and use my conscious mind.

It's a bad ability to lose. I don't know how I've lost it, and I don't know how (if ever) I can get it back. That table surface is now a barrier I don't know how to cross.