I may have told this story before. As a gentleman of a certain age, I have to worry about that. Memory, the old joke runs, is the second thing to go. If I've told you this before, my apologies. The issue does haunt me, though.
Now I'd want to be clear--- I'm using one experience with one person as a hook for the story, but that person, that individual, isn't herself at issue. What happened is only a point d'appui for launching off into something more abstract. I do hope you'll keep that in mind.
Some years ago I was exploring on-line erotica sites, and I found a site (stories + blog) by a writer who called herself Remittance Girl. Her site bio and some of her blog entries indicated that she was based somewhere in southeast Asia, that she worked (or had worked) as some kind of teacher. I liked that. I probably have a romanticized version of teaching English in Asia in my head, and that seemed like the sort of expat life I'd be leading in a better world. In any case, I liked her site and her stories. The writing was very good, and the tone was dark and transgressive and had a goth-s/m kind of focus. The first story I read was about some sort of sex vampires, and the opening scene in a Moscow aerodrome was very hot. There was a serialized novel, too, a very dark thing about an American hostess in Tokyo kidnapped and used/trained as a sex slave by a Yakuza boss. Again--- excellent writing, all very hot. I thought she was a fine writer, and I enjoyed her essays on expat life, erotica, and the culture wars around sexuality in the new century.
Be clear. I was never friends with her, nor did I try to be. I read along at her blog and left a handful of desultory comments. Again, this was never about the person.
What happened is that one day there was a discussion about the issue of product placement in novels. I forget how it all came up. I had to grin at the topic. I was remembering the so-called "sex and shopping" ("shopping and fucking") novels of the Eighties. Was the lead author of the genre Judith Krantz? The underlying appeal of the genre was that the novels were all about brand names. Not only were the male leads impossibly handsome and impossibly wealthy, the female leads all moved in a world of Rodeo Drive or Upper East Side boutiques. They wore lovingly-described designer dresses and shoes, wore specific kinds of make-up and perfume. The hotels where they conducted affairs all had specific names and well-cataloged amenities. I wasn't a fan of the genre, although the small bookstore where I worked in those days sold a lot of them. What I liked about the genre was the world-building and attention to detail. That's how things went bad,
I think that Remittance Girl was angered by the materialism in books like that. She may have disliked the late-capitalist shopping fantasy or the equation of shopping with orgasm. Anyway, I did comment that I liked details like brand names, that I liked erotica that was set in well-defined upper-class settings. Let's remember that back in the days of the Long Ago I bought copies of "The Official Preppy Handbook" and "The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook" and pored over the lists of class markers--- clothing brands, vocabulary, accessories. One of the great attractions for me in "Story of O" was that the novel required a hidden chateau as a set and moved its characters through elegant Paris townhouses. I commented that I'd always seen class as an essential part of sex. Part of the sexual allure of something like "Story of O" was the idea of life inside a better, more elegant world a few thousand miles from where I grew up. I expected sex, I wrote, to come with the chance to move into better worlds. Sex was always better if the accessories were right--- what the parties wore, what the wines and decor were like, what kinds of hotels or bars or residences were used. Sex itself might be good, I wrote, but it needed sets and settings to make it really work.
That got me blocked and banned. I was never sure why--- whether I was taken as defending late-capitalist materialism or taken as seeing my partners as no more than stage props. Well, it's been years now--- five years, I think. The event stays with me as a symbol. I'm not sure if Remittance Girl is still writing and blogging or if she's on social media--- not that those things matter, and here in 2019, erotica is the last thing people are worried about. Politics in what used to be the lands of liberal democracy has killed the idea of erotica and sex blogs.
I do see the world as made up of stories, not atoms. Details matter to me; they always have. I read to escape into other worlds, worlds that are crafted and shaped. The stories I'd like to be part of take place in a better world than the genteel poverty of my own. The idea of sex for me will always require not flesh as much as it requires sets and settings. Sex in my rooms here can never be as good as sex in stories, sex in a rooftop pool high above Shanghai or an alcove in the Great Hall at Trinity College Cambridge. Or even by a campfire on the Wainuiomata shore. I suppose I have always been attracted to s/m because it requires accessories and accoutrements. I rank-order the places, of course, and I ache with envy when a lovely friend tells me she's had sex in some setting (a hotel pool, the front seat of an Aston-Martin, the office of a distinguished faculty member). Sets matter, settings matter, costumes matter. I want sex to be shaped into a narrative arc, into stories I can tell, into films I can replay and relive in my head.
When I do read erotica, I want details. What did the girl wear exactly? What school or regimental tie did her male partner wear? Which hotel in Melbourne or Manhattan were they at? These things matter. If there's no crafted tale that can be told or relived later, what's the point?
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Saturday, July 27, 2019
Two Four Five: Sounds
So, in late May a dozen years ago a lovely girl at Cambridge was doing this:
This afternoon I lay on the floor of my room and touched myself as the notes of "Salvete Virgenes" moaned at me from across the room and the rain clouded my windows. What is it about sex and religion that really gets me going?
Divine
Divine
Dionysia.
It took me a while to discover that 'Salvete Virgenes' wasn't a piece of ecclesiastical ritual chant but rather a piece done by Hans Zimmer and Richard Harvey for the soundtrack of "The Da Vinci Code". Well, it is an eerie and lovely song--- haunting. I've never seen the film, and I have no particular interest in it. But the song itself has gone into my laptop iTunes. Very much the sort of night music I do like.
The image of a lovely, long-legged girl at Cambridge caressing herself in her college rooms while 'Salvete Virgenes' plays will stay with me today. It's an image that manages to trigger so many things for me, so many of the things that always form the scaffolding of my own fantasies. Once again, I wish I could hear her voice telling me all of her own memories of the afternoon.
She wrote this, too--- wrote it that same spring a dozen years ago:
I've been listening to that old Bright Eyes song, 'The Calendar Hung Itself'. I haven't done so in ages. It always brings out the worst (best?) recklessly passionate side of me no matter how sensible I might have been feeling just beforehand.
I think I'd like to dance with her to that song. I'd like to play it while we did vodka shots and she told me of all the recklessly passionate things the song had inspired her to do back in her days as a posh schoolgirl and an Oxbridge undergraduate.
She's quite tall and long-legged, my friend is. Dancing with her would be a lovely thing, and all the more so because of how painfully long it's been since I was on a dance floor. Too long as well since I've had a leggy posh girl explain--- and demonstrate ---what passionate and reckless mean to her.
This afternoon I lay on the floor of my room and touched myself as the notes of "Salvete Virgenes" moaned at me from across the room and the rain clouded my windows. What is it about sex and religion that really gets me going?
Divine
Divine
Dionysia.
It took me a while to discover that 'Salvete Virgenes' wasn't a piece of ecclesiastical ritual chant but rather a piece done by Hans Zimmer and Richard Harvey for the soundtrack of "The Da Vinci Code". Well, it is an eerie and lovely song--- haunting. I've never seen the film, and I have no particular interest in it. But the song itself has gone into my laptop iTunes. Very much the sort of night music I do like.
The image of a lovely, long-legged girl at Cambridge caressing herself in her college rooms while 'Salvete Virgenes' plays will stay with me today. It's an image that manages to trigger so many things for me, so many of the things that always form the scaffolding of my own fantasies. Once again, I wish I could hear her voice telling me all of her own memories of the afternoon.
She wrote this, too--- wrote it that same spring a dozen years ago:
I've been listening to that old Bright Eyes song, 'The Calendar Hung Itself'. I haven't done so in ages. It always brings out the worst (best?) recklessly passionate side of me no matter how sensible I might have been feeling just beforehand.
I think I'd like to dance with her to that song. I'd like to play it while we did vodka shots and she told me of all the recklessly passionate things the song had inspired her to do back in her days as a posh schoolgirl and an Oxbridge undergraduate.
She's quite tall and long-legged, my friend is. Dancing with her would be a lovely thing, and all the more so because of how painfully long it's been since I was on a dance floor. Too long as well since I've had a leggy posh girl explain--- and demonstrate ---what passionate and reckless mean to her.
Two Four Four: Alcoves
A girl now in London Town wrote this to me once long ago, about her days at Cambridge back in the mid-Noughts:
And after Formal Hall in Michaelmas, we snuck into the alcoves of Great Court, Trinity College Cambridge. Sex was made, not love, for surely we were fighting then. All around, scholars moved and drank and laughed, and below in the court boisterous Blues yelled to one another.
But we, alone, in the alcove...
That's a lovely image, a lovely fragment. So many things implicit there, so much hidden backstory.
I know the college she was at--- the newest full college at Cambridge, though it dates its own history to 1768. So I am wondering--- was her lover at Trinity, or did they just sneak in to use the shadows?
If you're a creature of the present year, you'll ask if the lover was male or female, though I'm fairly sure that in this case the lover was male (I almost qualified the word with poshly or boringly).
I wish I knew more of her story here. What did the stars look like above the Great Court, what songs did they hear from the festivities below? How high up in the building was she? What wines could she taste on her lover's lips?
More to the point, what was she wearing? What was she wearing under her dress? I always ask whether a lovely girl is properly panty-fee for adventures and encounters; that's very much my particular interest.
For surely we were fighting then... What does that mean? Was this purely hate sex--- something I've never understood? What were she and her lover fighting about? What became of the affair, and of her lover?
So much to know here, so many pieces to fit together to make a complete story, to be able to see her story as a film in my head.
She's in London Town now, successful in her career, quite the young professional. I just wonder how she'd tell the story herself, almost a dozen years on.
And after Formal Hall in Michaelmas, we snuck into the alcoves of Great Court, Trinity College Cambridge. Sex was made, not love, for surely we were fighting then. All around, scholars moved and drank and laughed, and below in the court boisterous Blues yelled to one another.
But we, alone, in the alcove...
That's a lovely image, a lovely fragment. So many things implicit there, so much hidden backstory.
I know the college she was at--- the newest full college at Cambridge, though it dates its own history to 1768. So I am wondering--- was her lover at Trinity, or did they just sneak in to use the shadows?
If you're a creature of the present year, you'll ask if the lover was male or female, though I'm fairly sure that in this case the lover was male (I almost qualified the word with poshly or boringly).
I wish I knew more of her story here. What did the stars look like above the Great Court, what songs did they hear from the festivities below? How high up in the building was she? What wines could she taste on her lover's lips?
More to the point, what was she wearing? What was she wearing under her dress? I always ask whether a lovely girl is properly panty-fee for adventures and encounters; that's very much my particular interest.
For surely we were fighting then... What does that mean? Was this purely hate sex--- something I've never understood? What were she and her lover fighting about? What became of the affair, and of her lover?
So much to know here, so many pieces to fit together to make a complete story, to be able to see her story as a film in my head.
She's in London Town now, successful in her career, quite the young professional. I just wonder how she'd tell the story herself, almost a dozen years on.
Thursday, July 18, 2019
Two Four Three: Azure
I found this story in my archives. A friend from the mid-Noughts, someone who's now a successful professional in London Town, told me this story more than a dozen years ago. Worth saving, I think:
Nice 2005
I was inter-railing about Europe alone. You have to be able to travel alone before you can properly travel with anyone else. It was the summer before my A levels. I spent a day sunbathing on the beach, topless as was the custom. My breasts were milky white in comparison to the golden tan that a week in Paris had given to my limbs.
After a while looking out to sea I noticed a man swimming who had been watching me for some time. He was blond and tanned in that European kind of way and he was 35...38 maybe. I wandered down into the water, plunging in quickly so my tits were covered in some show of false modesty but they popped up out of the water as I swam. I smiled over at him, a few metres away now.
"Anglaise?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"No no no, en francais s'il vous plait."
"No, I can't... I can, I don't want to."
"Okay."
There was instant chemistry. The kind that makes the air feel electric, you need to be grounded, you need to touch something. He asked me if I was on holiday. I affirmed and asked the same. No, he was working in the city, this was his lunch break. There was a platform in the sea a little way out where young teenagers were diving into the ocean. "Come out there and swim with me?" I asked. Strangely, he followed.
I climbed up onto the platform and he behind me. He mocked at pushing me in and when I sat on the edge he straddled my waist from behind, his legs spread around me. When I leant back I could feel his organ pushing into my back. He pushed and I laughed and he shoved and into the sea I toppled. I came up laughing but pulled him in by the legs.
He caught me in the water. "Two options..." He eyed me. "Kiss or drown."
I leant forward and kissed him then. A gentle shy kiss. He held onto the platform with one hand and pulled me up with the other, kissing me harder. Before I knew it his fingers were inside my bikini bottoms, pushing and probing. He dipped a finger into my cunt before finding my clit and rubbing me hard. My stomach was flipping and he laughed. "Come over there to those rocks, there are less people."
We swam over to a little enclave in the rocks. There were people behind us on the beach and far out to sea, but they couldn't see over the rocky ridge which surrounded us. "Your sex. Show me." It was a demand, not a question. He reached forward and pulled my bikini to one side, spreading my knees with a tap on the thigh and opening my cunt lips wide. He exposed his cock and I leaned forward and touched it. He pushed me back and rubbed my clit, not gently but harshly and roughly. In seconds I was cumming to his hand. He reached for my hand and put it on his cock. I inexpertly touched him as he made me sit with my legs spread for him looking at my dripping sex. Within a minute or two he gasped and said "Look!" as cum spurted from his cock. He kissed me then. "I must go back to work. Enjoy the beach."
I nodded, feeling nothing but post-orgasmic calm. He walked over the rocks and I hopped into the sea and swam back to where I had been sunbathing, lying on my front. A few minutes later a tap came on my shoulder. "Don't get burnt!" he said mockingly and strolled off, laughing kindly.
And that was it. I did not even know his name.
Tell me what you really think.
Of course I wish she'd done more with him--- on those rocks, out off the platform. I wish she'd taken him into her mouth or ridden him on the platform. Nonetheless, the story is worth saving.
2005 is almost fifteen years ago now. A whole political and social world away from the grim, bleak years of the later twenty-teens. My friend should be in her early-mid thirties now. She's a successful professional in London Town these days, working at the edge of law and corporate finance with start-ups, spending half her time flying off to Singapore and Shanghai. I have no idea what she thinks of her 2005 self now.
I'm thinking, too, the A levels in 2005 would've made her...eighteen? I can never keep track of British school ages. Oh, she did well enough at her A levels to get into Cambridge, into one of the smaller, newer colleges. But...eighteen? That her story is about a young girl inter-railing to experience Life and Sunlight makes it all the more alluring. Though I do wonder about coming-of-age stories these days. Are we still permitted to like them, to find them titillating? Looking back fifteen years, is my friend's story hot and alluring or is it a scary #MeToo moment? That's something that I think about these days, even while I'm thinking about leggy English girls and sunlight and open water.
Nice 2005
I was inter-railing about Europe alone. You have to be able to travel alone before you can properly travel with anyone else. It was the summer before my A levels. I spent a day sunbathing on the beach, topless as was the custom. My breasts were milky white in comparison to the golden tan that a week in Paris had given to my limbs.
After a while looking out to sea I noticed a man swimming who had been watching me for some time. He was blond and tanned in that European kind of way and he was 35...38 maybe. I wandered down into the water, plunging in quickly so my tits were covered in some show of false modesty but they popped up out of the water as I swam. I smiled over at him, a few metres away now.
"Anglaise?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"No no no, en francais s'il vous plait."
"No, I can't... I can, I don't want to."
"Okay."
There was instant chemistry. The kind that makes the air feel electric, you need to be grounded, you need to touch something. He asked me if I was on holiday. I affirmed and asked the same. No, he was working in the city, this was his lunch break. There was a platform in the sea a little way out where young teenagers were diving into the ocean. "Come out there and swim with me?" I asked. Strangely, he followed.
I climbed up onto the platform and he behind me. He mocked at pushing me in and when I sat on the edge he straddled my waist from behind, his legs spread around me. When I leant back I could feel his organ pushing into my back. He pushed and I laughed and he shoved and into the sea I toppled. I came up laughing but pulled him in by the legs.
He caught me in the water. "Two options..." He eyed me. "Kiss or drown."
I leant forward and kissed him then. A gentle shy kiss. He held onto the platform with one hand and pulled me up with the other, kissing me harder. Before I knew it his fingers were inside my bikini bottoms, pushing and probing. He dipped a finger into my cunt before finding my clit and rubbing me hard. My stomach was flipping and he laughed. "Come over there to those rocks, there are less people."
We swam over to a little enclave in the rocks. There were people behind us on the beach and far out to sea, but they couldn't see over the rocky ridge which surrounded us. "Your sex. Show me." It was a demand, not a question. He reached forward and pulled my bikini to one side, spreading my knees with a tap on the thigh and opening my cunt lips wide. He exposed his cock and I leaned forward and touched it. He pushed me back and rubbed my clit, not gently but harshly and roughly. In seconds I was cumming to his hand. He reached for my hand and put it on his cock. I inexpertly touched him as he made me sit with my legs spread for him looking at my dripping sex. Within a minute or two he gasped and said "Look!" as cum spurted from his cock. He kissed me then. "I must go back to work. Enjoy the beach."
I nodded, feeling nothing but post-orgasmic calm. He walked over the rocks and I hopped into the sea and swam back to where I had been sunbathing, lying on my front. A few minutes later a tap came on my shoulder. "Don't get burnt!" he said mockingly and strolled off, laughing kindly.
And that was it. I did not even know his name.
Tell me what you really think.
Of course I wish she'd done more with him--- on those rocks, out off the platform. I wish she'd taken him into her mouth or ridden him on the platform. Nonetheless, the story is worth saving.
2005 is almost fifteen years ago now. A whole political and social world away from the grim, bleak years of the later twenty-teens. My friend should be in her early-mid thirties now. She's a successful professional in London Town these days, working at the edge of law and corporate finance with start-ups, spending half her time flying off to Singapore and Shanghai. I have no idea what she thinks of her 2005 self now.
I'm thinking, too, the A levels in 2005 would've made her...eighteen? I can never keep track of British school ages. Oh, she did well enough at her A levels to get into Cambridge, into one of the smaller, newer colleges. But...eighteen? That her story is about a young girl inter-railing to experience Life and Sunlight makes it all the more alluring. Though I do wonder about coming-of-age stories these days. Are we still permitted to like them, to find them titillating? Looking back fifteen years, is my friend's story hot and alluring or is it a scary #MeToo moment? That's something that I think about these days, even while I'm thinking about leggy English girls and sunlight and open water.
Saturday, July 13, 2019
Two Four Two: Table
There's a small strip of shopfronts being rebuilt down by the riverfront. One lawyer's office, one hipster whiskey bar, a florist, and a massage studio. I've been in the whiskey bar before. It wasn't a bad place--- overpriced but pleasant enough. I've never been in any of the other places. Looking at the empty fronts, it occurred to me that going in the whiskey bar was just a matter of paying fifteen dollars for a Sazerac with some artisanal rye. Going into the massage studio would've been beyond me.
There was nothing particularly off-putting about the massage studio, It was very much a GOOP-lite sort of place, a place that had New Age overtones rather than any hint of a Happy Endings place. Brooklyn, not Bangkok. The chalkboard signs the studio would have out on the sidewalk were done in colored chalk by someone who'd been to design school, and made cheery jokes and used all the right New Age versions of Sanskrit terms. The patrons and staff all seemed to be in their late twenties or early thirties, women in expensive yoga pants or gymwear; the smell of essential oils drifted out to the street. I knew for years that there was no way that I could ever go inside. I was far too afraid for that.
I had a chance to go inside once. I was given a gift certificate for a spa afternoon there--- a birthday gift from a lovely young friend. I thanked her very sincerely for the gift and for remembering my birthday. She meant well, and I had to remember that. I never used the gift, though. That was something I could never have done. I'd have been far too afraid to go through the doors.
I've never had a massage. At my own advanced age, I'm not at all sure how I missed having it happen even once, but I've never had a massage. No young companion has ever given me a massage on her own, and I've certainly never had a professional massage. It's possible that I'd have been fine with a lover doing a massage for me--- she'd have already seen my body, after all. But a professional? That would've been far too risky, far too much an occasion for humiliation.
If I have to admit to more than one embarrassing thing, it would be that I completely understood the 'Seinfeld' episode where Geo. Costanza was terrified at having a masseur rather than a masseuse appear at a massage studio. I understood that, and at some instinctive level accepted his reasoning. I refused to go to any hamam in Istanbul or Izmir because I was horrified at the idea of a masseur. I'll just admit that.
My fears here, though, aren't about that particular fear. My fears about the massage studio here have to do with being male in a rather charming massage establishment. I'd know from the moment that I opened the front door that I didn't belong there. A place like that isn't for anyone male, let alone anyone like me.
To put it simply, I'd have been ashamed to be imposing on anyone's time there. No one who looks like me belonged at a place like that. I'd have been terrified to be on a massage table there. There are standards of class and aesthetics that I can never meet, and all those standards would be applied to a hip, GOOP-lite kind of massage studio. I've rarely been ashamed being seen undressed by lovers. The girls I've been to bed with have accepted me on other grounds, for other reasons. But I'd have been ashamed to be seen at a hip massage studio. I'd be ashamed to be seen by a masseuse who'd see my body as a failure.
More to the point, I'd be ashamed to be male there. I'd think that the masseuse was looking at me with derision and contempt no matter how professional and pleasant a face she wore. And I'd be terrified of being male there. I'd be terrified of my body betraying me. What if there was some...inadvertent...physical response? I'd take it as a given that the masseuse would explode in anger and stalk out, that I'd be 86'd instantly, that any completely inadvertent sign of an erection would lead to me out on the street feeling lucky that I wasn't being arrested, that my face wouldn't be all over social media as the pervert villain of the week.
I understand that the reverse of that could happen, too--- that I might have no indications of any response at all to being touched by a lovely masseuse and that I'd spend the next six months agonizing over whether my body had lost its capacity for any response, over whether age had finally won. I understand that that could've happened, too...but that's a very different kind of fear. That wouldn't have social consequences.
The massage table would be one more place where my fears would set in: the certainty that the masseuse would be disgusted by my body, that even being there as a male would be seen as a violation of hip standards, that any inadvertent physical response would be seen as horrific and threatening. All those things mean that I'd never have been able to set foot through the door.
So the gift certificate remained unused. The massage studio will be torn down and rebuilt into something even more upscale. I have nothing against the people who owned or worked there--- please be sure of that. But I've never had a massage, and I never will. There's too much risk involved, too much potential humiliation. Flesh has never been anything I was good at, and a massage table is too much a place where all my failures and fears can be exposed.
There was nothing particularly off-putting about the massage studio, It was very much a GOOP-lite sort of place, a place that had New Age overtones rather than any hint of a Happy Endings place. Brooklyn, not Bangkok. The chalkboard signs the studio would have out on the sidewalk were done in colored chalk by someone who'd been to design school, and made cheery jokes and used all the right New Age versions of Sanskrit terms. The patrons and staff all seemed to be in their late twenties or early thirties, women in expensive yoga pants or gymwear; the smell of essential oils drifted out to the street. I knew for years that there was no way that I could ever go inside. I was far too afraid for that.
I had a chance to go inside once. I was given a gift certificate for a spa afternoon there--- a birthday gift from a lovely young friend. I thanked her very sincerely for the gift and for remembering my birthday. She meant well, and I had to remember that. I never used the gift, though. That was something I could never have done. I'd have been far too afraid to go through the doors.
I've never had a massage. At my own advanced age, I'm not at all sure how I missed having it happen even once, but I've never had a massage. No young companion has ever given me a massage on her own, and I've certainly never had a professional massage. It's possible that I'd have been fine with a lover doing a massage for me--- she'd have already seen my body, after all. But a professional? That would've been far too risky, far too much an occasion for humiliation.
If I have to admit to more than one embarrassing thing, it would be that I completely understood the 'Seinfeld' episode where Geo. Costanza was terrified at having a masseur rather than a masseuse appear at a massage studio. I understood that, and at some instinctive level accepted his reasoning. I refused to go to any hamam in Istanbul or Izmir because I was horrified at the idea of a masseur. I'll just admit that.
My fears here, though, aren't about that particular fear. My fears about the massage studio here have to do with being male in a rather charming massage establishment. I'd know from the moment that I opened the front door that I didn't belong there. A place like that isn't for anyone male, let alone anyone like me.
To put it simply, I'd have been ashamed to be imposing on anyone's time there. No one who looks like me belonged at a place like that. I'd have been terrified to be on a massage table there. There are standards of class and aesthetics that I can never meet, and all those standards would be applied to a hip, GOOP-lite kind of massage studio. I've rarely been ashamed being seen undressed by lovers. The girls I've been to bed with have accepted me on other grounds, for other reasons. But I'd have been ashamed to be seen at a hip massage studio. I'd be ashamed to be seen by a masseuse who'd see my body as a failure.
More to the point, I'd be ashamed to be male there. I'd think that the masseuse was looking at me with derision and contempt no matter how professional and pleasant a face she wore. And I'd be terrified of being male there. I'd be terrified of my body betraying me. What if there was some...inadvertent...physical response? I'd take it as a given that the masseuse would explode in anger and stalk out, that I'd be 86'd instantly, that any completely inadvertent sign of an erection would lead to me out on the street feeling lucky that I wasn't being arrested, that my face wouldn't be all over social media as the pervert villain of the week.
I understand that the reverse of that could happen, too--- that I might have no indications of any response at all to being touched by a lovely masseuse and that I'd spend the next six months agonizing over whether my body had lost its capacity for any response, over whether age had finally won. I understand that that could've happened, too...but that's a very different kind of fear. That wouldn't have social consequences.
The massage table would be one more place where my fears would set in: the certainty that the masseuse would be disgusted by my body, that even being there as a male would be seen as a violation of hip standards, that any inadvertent physical response would be seen as horrific and threatening. All those things mean that I'd never have been able to set foot through the door.
So the gift certificate remained unused. The massage studio will be torn down and rebuilt into something even more upscale. I have nothing against the people who owned or worked there--- please be sure of that. But I've never had a massage, and I never will. There's too much risk involved, too much potential humiliation. Flesh has never been anything I was good at, and a massage table is too much a place where all my failures and fears can be exposed.
Tuesday, July 2, 2019
Two Four One: Gallery
There is a question that occurs to me tonight: what are we permitted to desire?
Of course, asking that question immediately leads back to another, more basic one: permitted by whom?
I think the answer is, simply enough, social media. Social media has become the gallery of hooded figures passing judgment on us all. Cancel culture, call-out culture--- whatever the term, social media has become an externalized superego, the external voice of social shame. Twenty years ago, what you did in public could be judged by your friends, certainly, and by the relatively few people who physically saw you. You weren't yet judged by an audience of potentially scores of thousands.
It's possible that a generation ago, guilt meant more than shame. How you judged yourself meant more than what strangers thought--- if only because there were so few strangers who were aware of you or who were physically close enough to see anything you did. And now we've displaced the right to issue judgments to the people who view your social media.
Right now, most of us have some kind of social media presence. Not so much here, mind you, but at places like Twitter or FB, places designed for interaction. Judgment has become much more externalized. Social disapproval, social exclusion--- all that has become much more weighty. There are more voices in your ears telling you that what you think, what you desire, what you do and are is unacceptable and shameful.
Tonight's question is simple: what are we permitted to desire? And more--- how are we allowed to articulate that desire?
When you look at a potential partner, a potential lover, what are you allowed to want? Here in the age of the gender wars, can you say that you want anything specific? Can you say that you like a particular set of physical or social qualities? Age, height, weight, eye colour, hair colour--- are you allowed to have preferences? Are you required to justify your preferences? Are you even allowed to justify your tastes? Can you even express desire without being told by angry, unknown voices that you have no right to feel anything at all?
I've said this before, but it feels much harder now than it did twenty years ago to even talk about desire. Once upon a time, discussing fantasies and sharing memories of past adventures would have been part of any enjoyable date, of any courtship ritual. Who can do that now? The ghosts in the gallery are there waiting to call you out, to cancel you--- and they needn't actually be lurking on your smartphone or your laptop. They're on the devices of everyone around you. They're sitting invisibly at your shoulder, waiting for you to make that first mistake.
The ghosts in the gallery have no clear set of standards for judging you. Their point is that doing anything at all is wrong. Being there is wrong. Any choice excludes and marginalizes, they'll say. Any courtship is coercive. Any social time spent together is an imposition on someone's time. Any sexual preference--- positions, places, fetishes ---is wrong. Physical desire itself is wrong, and certainly coercive to discuss. Pleasure is not just seen as a zero-sum thing demanded of someone else, pleasure is regarded as suspect all on its own, as a concept.
To write about sex and pleasure, to write about courtships and explorations--- that's no longer acceptable. The voices in the gallery can tell you with derision and vitriol that talking about those things makes you complicit in oppression. Feeling desire is something that must be suppressed, and discussing it must be cancelled. So the gallery voices say.
And right now no one is defending the idea of desire.
Of course, asking that question immediately leads back to another, more basic one: permitted by whom?
I think the answer is, simply enough, social media. Social media has become the gallery of hooded figures passing judgment on us all. Cancel culture, call-out culture--- whatever the term, social media has become an externalized superego, the external voice of social shame. Twenty years ago, what you did in public could be judged by your friends, certainly, and by the relatively few people who physically saw you. You weren't yet judged by an audience of potentially scores of thousands.
It's possible that a generation ago, guilt meant more than shame. How you judged yourself meant more than what strangers thought--- if only because there were so few strangers who were aware of you or who were physically close enough to see anything you did. And now we've displaced the right to issue judgments to the people who view your social media.
Right now, most of us have some kind of social media presence. Not so much here, mind you, but at places like Twitter or FB, places designed for interaction. Judgment has become much more externalized. Social disapproval, social exclusion--- all that has become much more weighty. There are more voices in your ears telling you that what you think, what you desire, what you do and are is unacceptable and shameful.
Tonight's question is simple: what are we permitted to desire? And more--- how are we allowed to articulate that desire?
When you look at a potential partner, a potential lover, what are you allowed to want? Here in the age of the gender wars, can you say that you want anything specific? Can you say that you like a particular set of physical or social qualities? Age, height, weight, eye colour, hair colour--- are you allowed to have preferences? Are you required to justify your preferences? Are you even allowed to justify your tastes? Can you even express desire without being told by angry, unknown voices that you have no right to feel anything at all?
I've said this before, but it feels much harder now than it did twenty years ago to even talk about desire. Once upon a time, discussing fantasies and sharing memories of past adventures would have been part of any enjoyable date, of any courtship ritual. Who can do that now? The ghosts in the gallery are there waiting to call you out, to cancel you--- and they needn't actually be lurking on your smartphone or your laptop. They're on the devices of everyone around you. They're sitting invisibly at your shoulder, waiting for you to make that first mistake.
The ghosts in the gallery have no clear set of standards for judging you. Their point is that doing anything at all is wrong. Being there is wrong. Any choice excludes and marginalizes, they'll say. Any courtship is coercive. Any social time spent together is an imposition on someone's time. Any sexual preference--- positions, places, fetishes ---is wrong. Physical desire itself is wrong, and certainly coercive to discuss. Pleasure is not just seen as a zero-sum thing demanded of someone else, pleasure is regarded as suspect all on its own, as a concept.
To write about sex and pleasure, to write about courtships and explorations--- that's no longer acceptable. The voices in the gallery can tell you with derision and vitriol that talking about those things makes you complicit in oppression. Feeling desire is something that must be suppressed, and discussing it must be cancelled. So the gallery voices say.
And right now no one is defending the idea of desire.
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