I have this from the same girl I wrote about earlier in the month, the girl who was supposed to be going to Pitcairn Island and Patagonia and Lhasa and Victoria Falls this year.
She told me this back in June 2016--- three years ago now. She'd vanished for a while at the end of 2014 and stayed amongst the missing pretty much all through 2015. And then she messaged me one night to tell me this:
I have a few stories to tell! I decided this morning that, fuck it, it's time! I have a confession for you. I got married last year... It was such a whirlwind, running into him in Auckland when i was there for a long weekend, then spending every waking moment together, a proposal in Taupo, then married a month later!
It really was crazy... I didn't tell anybody. No one in my family knows, a couple of friends, that's all. It was never going to work long-term. and i knew that. he was a brilliant first husband though.
I was amazed at the story. She'd told me before she vanished that she'd flown north on a concert weekend and run into an old flame at a hotel bar. I'd thought she might be living with someone. But this was a confession worth following up. I did raise an eyebrow at the initial message--- a whirlwind marriage was one thing; a secret marriage was another. Just how would that work? How would she avoid telling family? How would she avoid telling HR at work? Wouldn't there be tax forms to change? How would she keep friends from spreading the story?
She told me more later--- that she'd recognized very early that the marriage wouldn't work, and they hadn't lived together for much of the time. She'd kept the house she was renting (or owned...which is another story) and went back and forth with her Golden Retriever from one house to the other. I might've have understood if she'd leased out (or sublet) her old house, but she was clear that she'd kept her house all for herself.
She never did tell me about any divorce. I looked up divorce law in the Land of the Long White Cloud, of course. It's a simple procedure, and inexpensive. You can get an order of dissolution if you've been separated for two years and apply for an order. The fee is something like $NZ 215.00. Which raises the question of whether she ever got a divorce and, if so, when? If they'd agreed to count the start of living separate and apart sometime early in 2015, one or the other of them could've applied for a dissolution order in 2017. She never mentioned it, never mentioned any divorce or any proceedings. I did think about so many questions. If he did indeed have (as she insisted) $10 million in the bank, wouldn't there inevitably have been a pre-nup? Were there community property issues? The purported husband was a successful businessman, which to my mind means that there would've been lawyers telling him that he needed to protect himself. But she never talked about any divorce or any aftermath.
So here we have another story, and one that strikes me now as deeply suspect. Moving in with someone after a whirlwind romance is one thing. A marriage where one party has ten million ($US? $NZ?) in the bank is something else altogether. And a divorce, however amicable, isn't just something one forgets. She'd have been twenty-nine or thirty when all this supposedly happened--- and a chartered accountant. She'd know how these things work, and known the legal and tax ramifications...and so would any husband's lawyers.
My blonde friend in Wellington is like me: we both grew up living inside books and stories. We've always wanted our lives to be crafted and shaped like stories. I can understand her longing for a doomed whirlwind romance and marriage. A bittersweet tale to tell later. I can understand all that. But what if she can't escape the stories she's crafted in her head? What if she made up a brief marriage just as I believe she made up trips to Buenos Aires and Mt. Fuji and Shanghai? How do I ever ask her?
I'd like to think that someone reading this out over the aether will have thoughts....
Friday, August 30, 2019
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
Two Five One: Palimpsest
I was trained to do History, and I believe in keeping archives. I have paper journals dating back twenty-odd years, and notebooks that reach back to my undergraduate days. I have correspondence, including love letters, that dates back into the Eighties. And I have chat logs that go back a decade, filled with long exchanges with lovely young companions. I've never thought of purging any of those things. They're my past, my history, and they hold memories of places I've been, adventures I've had, and girls I've loved or desired. History matters, stories matter. I've lived my life through stories, and everything that I am is built up out of stories.
And yet there's something unsettling about going back through my past. My blonde friend down in the Land of the Long White Cloud told me once that she couldn't imagine me ever being hesitant to tell a lover or potential lover about my desires and preferences. That was one of my great skills as a lover, she told me: being willing to be utterly open, being able to show girls that there were so many ways to seek out pleasure and delight. It wasn't so long ago that she told me those things, and they meant a lot. These days, though, I'm starting to feel uncomfortable about that.
My friend down in Aoteoroa exchanged years worth of emails and chats with me. We explored a great many fantasy scenarios and fantasy worlds. We told each other all about our pasts and dreams and adventures and kinks. She'd write me to say that the two of us were able to do and try everything. No shame, no limits--- she'd tell me that all the time. But these days all our exchanges are beginning to worry me.
She's not the only one. Other lovely young companions have spent hours and hours on the phone with me, spinning out worlds and scenarios. Those late nights meant the world to me. We'd be inside each other's dreams and pleasures and desires and I'd feel alive and valued and able to explore whole new sexual and romantic worlds with girls in other cities and other countries. Tonight I have to wonder if I'd do those things now.
Here in the age of the gender wars the idea of having fantasies, let alone sharing them, is increasingly dangerous. I look back on the things lovers and I shared via email or chat or letters and I feel wary and something very close to miserable. Once upon a time, I'd never have been ashamed of any of the things I said or did with young companions. These days I'm deeply worried of being judged and mocked and condemned in ways I'd never have imagined a decade ago.
I look at the chat logs from what my Wellington friend and I talked about for years and what crosses my mind isn't that she felt safe enough and thrilled enough to say No shame, no limits to me, but that someone, somewhere, someday will use them against me. I'm beginning to feel the same way about the letters and emails archived over the years.
I can't decide whether it's all the Zeitgeist or if it's that entropy is winning and that I no longer have the energy to believe in pleasure and adventures. Whichever it is, I find myself not just afraid, but ashamed. Shame, unlike guilt, is external, socially-imposed. I'm becoming ashamed of all the ways lovely young companions and I found pleasure together. I'm becoming ashamed of the things that gave me pleasure. I'm becoming ashamed of having shared those things. I know that it's that there's been some sea-change in how we view pleasure and adventure, and I look at the things lovers and I said and did and feel...empty. I feel like I'm losing my past, that the age we live in is telling me that everything I desired and felt and enjoyed was wrong, contemptible, shameful. I hate thinking that the girls I shared all those things with now despise me and reject the things we did and said. I hate that, but there's nothing I can do about it.
And yet there's something unsettling about going back through my past. My blonde friend down in the Land of the Long White Cloud told me once that she couldn't imagine me ever being hesitant to tell a lover or potential lover about my desires and preferences. That was one of my great skills as a lover, she told me: being willing to be utterly open, being able to show girls that there were so many ways to seek out pleasure and delight. It wasn't so long ago that she told me those things, and they meant a lot. These days, though, I'm starting to feel uncomfortable about that.
My friend down in Aoteoroa exchanged years worth of emails and chats with me. We explored a great many fantasy scenarios and fantasy worlds. We told each other all about our pasts and dreams and adventures and kinks. She'd write me to say that the two of us were able to do and try everything. No shame, no limits--- she'd tell me that all the time. But these days all our exchanges are beginning to worry me.
She's not the only one. Other lovely young companions have spent hours and hours on the phone with me, spinning out worlds and scenarios. Those late nights meant the world to me. We'd be inside each other's dreams and pleasures and desires and I'd feel alive and valued and able to explore whole new sexual and romantic worlds with girls in other cities and other countries. Tonight I have to wonder if I'd do those things now.
Here in the age of the gender wars the idea of having fantasies, let alone sharing them, is increasingly dangerous. I look back on the things lovers and I shared via email or chat or letters and I feel wary and something very close to miserable. Once upon a time, I'd never have been ashamed of any of the things I said or did with young companions. These days I'm deeply worried of being judged and mocked and condemned in ways I'd never have imagined a decade ago.
I look at the chat logs from what my Wellington friend and I talked about for years and what crosses my mind isn't that she felt safe enough and thrilled enough to say No shame, no limits to me, but that someone, somewhere, someday will use them against me. I'm beginning to feel the same way about the letters and emails archived over the years.
I can't decide whether it's all the Zeitgeist or if it's that entropy is winning and that I no longer have the energy to believe in pleasure and adventures. Whichever it is, I find myself not just afraid, but ashamed. Shame, unlike guilt, is external, socially-imposed. I'm becoming ashamed of all the ways lovely young companions and I found pleasure together. I'm becoming ashamed of the things that gave me pleasure. I'm becoming ashamed of having shared those things. I know that it's that there's been some sea-change in how we view pleasure and adventure, and I look at the things lovers and I said and did and feel...empty. I feel like I'm losing my past, that the age we live in is telling me that everything I desired and felt and enjoyed was wrong, contemptible, shameful. I hate thinking that the girls I shared all those things with now despise me and reject the things we did and said. I hate that, but there's nothing I can do about it.
Monday, August 19, 2019
Two Five Zero: Leather
A lovely long-legged blonde friend down in the Land of the Long White Cloud told me once that a few years ago she'd had an affair with an older, moneyed businessman who was wealthy enough to be part of an Aston-Martin Collectors' Society. I've had serious doubts about her stories in the past--- and I continue to doubt many of her stories. This one is I think more plausible. She works as a chartered accountant in some boutique firm, and it's certainly possible that she could've met him through work. In any case, she does like older men, and she likes posh adventures. According to my friend, her older man had a bank account with $10 million in it (though she never specified whether that was in $US, $NZ, or $AUS) and an obsession with Aston-Martins. Well, I don't see the whole thing as strictly impossible.
I asked her once what her favourite high-end car was, and she responded instantly: an Aston-Martin V12 Vanquish. I don't know if that's the car the businessman had ( if he existed) or if it's something she learned about from brothers who had posters of expensive cars on their walls when they were at school. A $300,000 car, mind you--- and that's in $US. She has however hinted that she's been naked in an Aston-Martin, and it is a great image to imagine her curled up naked on the passenger seat while the Vanquish speeds up the highway along the edge of the Tasman Sea north along the Kapiti coast.
Naked on expensive upholstery--- I have to love that image. I can imagine her in the car, peeling down skinny jeans and pulling off a sweater (she rarely wears anything like bras or underwear) and feeling the coolness of expensive leather against bare skin. (What was that sensation like for her?)There are questions about that that immediately arise, however: would the businessman be thrilled...or worried about passing police cars? And more to the point, would my friend keep her Ray-Bans on? That second question very much intrigues me.
Also--- sex in the Aston-Martin backseat, or did she ride him while he was in the driver's seat and the Vanquish was parked at some overlook? Which is the hotter thing? I'll have to think about that.
She did tell me that once she came up from the beach at Wainuiomata, southeast of Wellington, one night, tossed her bikini into the backseat of her car and drove naked back to her girlfriend's nearby beach house just to see if she could do it. That's plausible, I suppose. In her younger days, she sought out risk and adventure. Wainuiomata is away from the city, and she did love the scene in Steve Erickson's "The Sea Came in at Midnight" where the heroine blithely drives a stolen car naked from L.A. to Vegas one night. Memory says that in the Wainuiomata story she'd have been twenty or twenty-one, still a co-ed at VUW, driving a dark grey BMW her father bought her. I think I envied her the BMW more than I wished I'd been the one she'd been driving to visit.
And many a year ago, a very lovely girl from outside Asheville told me about deciding to prove something to herself and pulling off her sundress and driving home naked in her battered old truck to her parents' house down backroads in North Carolina. High school days, she said--- she'd have been sixteen or seventeen. Why don't lovely long-legged girls tell me these stories any more? She told me that being naked in the truck felt deliciously free on an early-autumn night. It was only being barefoot on the pedals that felt odd. I laughed at that. She'd always focus on the oddest details in telling stories about anything at all.
The stories are wonderful, and I wish I'd been the one driving my NZ friend or that the NC girl had been driving to visit me. I'll laugh though at the idea that the two stories only work if they're about lovely lithe young girls. No one male could ever do those things without being tagged as a serious pervert. For girls, though, it's all about adventures and visual beauty. It's about empowerment and courage and risk and proving something to oneself. Males have to rely on other kinds of challenge.
I do wish, though, that lovely girls were still looking to me to be the designated audience for their rites of passage.
I asked her once what her favourite high-end car was, and she responded instantly: an Aston-Martin V12 Vanquish. I don't know if that's the car the businessman had ( if he existed) or if it's something she learned about from brothers who had posters of expensive cars on their walls when they were at school. A $300,000 car, mind you--- and that's in $US. She has however hinted that she's been naked in an Aston-Martin, and it is a great image to imagine her curled up naked on the passenger seat while the Vanquish speeds up the highway along the edge of the Tasman Sea north along the Kapiti coast.
Naked on expensive upholstery--- I have to love that image. I can imagine her in the car, peeling down skinny jeans and pulling off a sweater (she rarely wears anything like bras or underwear) and feeling the coolness of expensive leather against bare skin. (What was that sensation like for her?)There are questions about that that immediately arise, however: would the businessman be thrilled...or worried about passing police cars? And more to the point, would my friend keep her Ray-Bans on? That second question very much intrigues me.
Also--- sex in the Aston-Martin backseat, or did she ride him while he was in the driver's seat and the Vanquish was parked at some overlook? Which is the hotter thing? I'll have to think about that.
She did tell me that once she came up from the beach at Wainuiomata, southeast of Wellington, one night, tossed her bikini into the backseat of her car and drove naked back to her girlfriend's nearby beach house just to see if she could do it. That's plausible, I suppose. In her younger days, she sought out risk and adventure. Wainuiomata is away from the city, and she did love the scene in Steve Erickson's "The Sea Came in at Midnight" where the heroine blithely drives a stolen car naked from L.A. to Vegas one night. Memory says that in the Wainuiomata story she'd have been twenty or twenty-one, still a co-ed at VUW, driving a dark grey BMW her father bought her. I think I envied her the BMW more than I wished I'd been the one she'd been driving to visit.
And many a year ago, a very lovely girl from outside Asheville told me about deciding to prove something to herself and pulling off her sundress and driving home naked in her battered old truck to her parents' house down backroads in North Carolina. High school days, she said--- she'd have been sixteen or seventeen. Why don't lovely long-legged girls tell me these stories any more? She told me that being naked in the truck felt deliciously free on an early-autumn night. It was only being barefoot on the pedals that felt odd. I laughed at that. She'd always focus on the oddest details in telling stories about anything at all.
The stories are wonderful, and I wish I'd been the one driving my NZ friend or that the NC girl had been driving to visit me. I'll laugh though at the idea that the two stories only work if they're about lovely lithe young girls. No one male could ever do those things without being tagged as a serious pervert. For girls, though, it's all about adventures and visual beauty. It's about empowerment and courage and risk and proving something to oneself. Males have to rely on other kinds of challenge.
I do wish, though, that lovely girls were still looking to me to be the designated audience for their rites of passage.
Saturday, August 10, 2019
Two Four Nine: Belief
I've been presenting stories here, stories by friends and young companions over the years. The stories are things I've saved in my archives, things I want to keep. The stories are things I can read more than once, things I'll want to read again or cite from. Yet there's always the question of belief, of whether others' stories and memories are real.
My friend in London Town recounted what her friend there had told her, and then, after a couple of years of believing what he'd told her, found out (but how?) that the whole secret gay life her friend had revealed was made up. She still hasn't been able to talk to him, and she doesn't know what his reasons may have been. For me, the second issue is more interesting than his life--- what made him create this fake life, and especially this particular fake autobiography?
Friends and young companions have told me things about their past Adventures, and this afternoon I've been wondering about what to believe, and what levels of belief to assign the stories. Some stories--- Marta on the cruise ship, the girl in the kayak shop, the girl at SXSW ---are ones I've known for a while, and I have some faith in the girls' truthfulness. There's at least verisimilitude there, and I can imagine each of those girls seeking out new experiences and pushing limits. It may be only that if a girl has been involved with me, I take it as a given that they're willing to break certain social norms. But I do believe them.
Now I do have a friend down in the Land of the Long White Cloud that I can't believe about things. She's told me about a new affair she's having, about being willing to follow her new man anywhere, and about how eager she is to follow him all over the Pacific on adventures. According to her, they went to Bangkok and Pattaya last October for ten days. And all over the South Island of New Zealand (Queenstown, central Otago) on hiking trips over the new year. She says that she went to Tokyo and Osaka with her brother at Easter, and will go back there with her new man at year's end to climb up Mount Fuji and ski in Hokkaido. She's supposed to have gone to Maui for a week in the spring. Her stories include going to Moorea this summer and then taking a boat to Pitcairn Island for a week. She tells me she's booked for Buenos Aires in late September, and that she's making reservations for Singapore. She says she and her man will go to Shanghai and take the high-speed train to Lhasa, then visit Everest Base Camp. She talks about making reservations to visit the Okavango River delta in Botswana and go on safari to Kilimanjaro. She assures me that she's been sitting up nights booking tickets and hotels.
I don't believe this. I don't believe it at all. Bangkok and the Tokyo visit I might believe, but not the rest. She's a successful professional, but the money does add up. More, the time adds up. Corporate life doesn't allow for random ten-day or two-week vacations, and her stories of 2019 add up to a long time away from the office. Her man is supposed to be moneyed, but is he paying for all of this? Is she a sugar baby now? Did she inherit a million or two she hasn't talked about? Even in a country that offers paid annual vacations, how does she maintain a job if she's not in her office for ten days at a time? There are no blog posts of any of her purported journeys, and no photos or postcards. That may be (at least for me) the most suspicious thing. Had I gone to some exotic locale, I'd have sent out postcards to friends and written up a travel memoir when I got back. There's no way I wouldn't have traveler's tales to tell.
Her stories from her teen and early twenties are wonderful. She has lots of Slutty Party Girl tales to tell of growing up in an upper-middle class NZ family. But she's stopped telling those, and while she tells me she's gone to Pitcairn Island and will be going to Buenos Aires and Lhasa, she's sent nothing that passes for evidence.
I was taught to do both History and Law, and looking at her emails as texts, looking with a critical eye, I can't believe her stories at all. What she's constructing it seems is a world as imaginary as the haut-gay life my London friend's acquaintance created. I do wish I knew what she was doing, and why.
My friend in London Town recounted what her friend there had told her, and then, after a couple of years of believing what he'd told her, found out (but how?) that the whole secret gay life her friend had revealed was made up. She still hasn't been able to talk to him, and she doesn't know what his reasons may have been. For me, the second issue is more interesting than his life--- what made him create this fake life, and especially this particular fake autobiography?
Friends and young companions have told me things about their past Adventures, and this afternoon I've been wondering about what to believe, and what levels of belief to assign the stories. Some stories--- Marta on the cruise ship, the girl in the kayak shop, the girl at SXSW ---are ones I've known for a while, and I have some faith in the girls' truthfulness. There's at least verisimilitude there, and I can imagine each of those girls seeking out new experiences and pushing limits. It may be only that if a girl has been involved with me, I take it as a given that they're willing to break certain social norms. But I do believe them.
Now I do have a friend down in the Land of the Long White Cloud that I can't believe about things. She's told me about a new affair she's having, about being willing to follow her new man anywhere, and about how eager she is to follow him all over the Pacific on adventures. According to her, they went to Bangkok and Pattaya last October for ten days. And all over the South Island of New Zealand (Queenstown, central Otago) on hiking trips over the new year. She says that she went to Tokyo and Osaka with her brother at Easter, and will go back there with her new man at year's end to climb up Mount Fuji and ski in Hokkaido. She's supposed to have gone to Maui for a week in the spring. Her stories include going to Moorea this summer and then taking a boat to Pitcairn Island for a week. She tells me she's booked for Buenos Aires in late September, and that she's making reservations for Singapore. She says she and her man will go to Shanghai and take the high-speed train to Lhasa, then visit Everest Base Camp. She talks about making reservations to visit the Okavango River delta in Botswana and go on safari to Kilimanjaro. She assures me that she's been sitting up nights booking tickets and hotels.
I don't believe this. I don't believe it at all. Bangkok and the Tokyo visit I might believe, but not the rest. She's a successful professional, but the money does add up. More, the time adds up. Corporate life doesn't allow for random ten-day or two-week vacations, and her stories of 2019 add up to a long time away from the office. Her man is supposed to be moneyed, but is he paying for all of this? Is she a sugar baby now? Did she inherit a million or two she hasn't talked about? Even in a country that offers paid annual vacations, how does she maintain a job if she's not in her office for ten days at a time? There are no blog posts of any of her purported journeys, and no photos or postcards. That may be (at least for me) the most suspicious thing. Had I gone to some exotic locale, I'd have sent out postcards to friends and written up a travel memoir when I got back. There's no way I wouldn't have traveler's tales to tell.
Her stories from her teen and early twenties are wonderful. She has lots of Slutty Party Girl tales to tell of growing up in an upper-middle class NZ family. But she's stopped telling those, and while she tells me she's gone to Pitcairn Island and will be going to Buenos Aires and Lhasa, she's sent nothing that passes for evidence.
I was taught to do both History and Law, and looking at her emails as texts, looking with a critical eye, I can't believe her stories at all. What she's constructing it seems is a world as imaginary as the haut-gay life my London friend's acquaintance created. I do wish I knew what she was doing, and why.
Sunday, August 4, 2019
Two Four Eight: Southwest
I was spending the summer in Mallorca, in Deya, near the monastery where George Sand and Chopin stayed...
That's how Anais Nin's "Mallorca" begins. It's a very brief story, no more than three or four pages in the 'Delta of Venus' collection. The plot of it is simple enough. A young girl, the daughter of a local fisherman, is walking by the sea one evening, and a voice calls to her to come into the water and swim. She thinks the voice belongs to a beautiful and wealthy American tourist girl, and she goes into the water, shedding her white dress. In the water, it turns out that the voice belongs not to the American girl but to the American's younger brother. They swirl around one another, naked in dark water, learning one another's bodies, and have sex there and on the beach.
It's a story that would've made a lovely Zalman King vignette. King understood about sunlight and colours and how to film summer heat. He understood about wordless desire and the beauty of yielding oneself in silence. "Mallorca" should've been made into a 'Red Shoe Diaries' episode, and I'm sure there were episodes that followed similar plots. In another world, a better world, I'd have a complete set of 'Red Shoe Diaries' episodes on DVD.
My friend did write me about her adventure in Austin at the SXSW festival a few years ago. Details matter, I'd told her, and she did offer up the sorts of details I like. She's known me for a decade; she does have a good sense of where my interests lie.
It was March, she wrote. Warm for an early spring. She was in a sundress--- blue-and-white, summery-short ---and Keds. She was in one of the town's older venues, up on the balcony level, watching the band. She'd had a few, maybe a few too many, tequila shots. The club was crowded; there'd been a long line to get in.
What happened next was simple enough. She was leaning on the rail, looking down at the band and the crowds when someone brushed against her from behind. Nothing so unusual in a crowded club, and she thought nothing of it. Then something was behind her, and she could tell it was someone standing almost against her. A finger brushed along her back and side.
There had been boys on the balcony, one or two fairly attractive. She was startled by the touch, but she hadn't been touched in a long while. It just seemed like something that never happened to her, like something in a movie. She started to turn around, but a hand stopped her. She pushed back into him a little and kept looking at the band.
The finger made its way up along her shoulders, then down her side. She flinched when it touched her nipple through her sundress, but she willed herself not to move. I asked her if she'd been scared, and she told me that no, she hadn't felt scared. She'd thought about what people might see, but she felt--- and wanted to feel ---daring. She could hear him behind her, and he pressed his face into her hair. It was very, very important to her not to look and see who he was, she said. What mattered was just the feeling. She wore her hair long that spring, she said, down to her shoulder blades, and she turned her face to hide in her hair.
He held her hips against him, then slid his hands along her thighs under her dress. He worked her underwear down slowly, close enough against her to hide what he was doing. Not a thong, she told me, just basic cotton VS bikini. Sorry to disappoint you, she wrote, but I do wear underwear most of the time. She did wonder how far he'd go in public, if she was just going to be fingered, if she was about to be thrown out of the venue. What mattered, she said, was to just let it happen, whatever it was.
A bit awkward when her underwear got past her knees, she told me. Once she realized that they were coming off, there was the awkwardness of discretion: trying to use his body for cover, trying to step out them without being obvious, trying not to catch them on her Keds. She kicked them against the base of the balcony rail and felt the flat of his hand caressing her.
She didn't hear his zipper come down, but she knew it was happening. The diving board moment, she said. Like being on a diving board at a pool: there's a last moment before you have to just stride down the board and jump. He still hadn't said anything, and she was still keeping her face hidden in the fall of her hair. He ran a finger between her legs and then kissed the side of her neck. She imagined what they looked like, imagined them both as hidden in the shadows and as obvious to anyone who gave them more than a passing glance. Her mind kept jumping to possibilities--- was she wet enough for this to be easy, was he covertly spitting in his hand to lubricate himself? She tried to bend forward just a bit and get into position, and then he was inside her.
Writing about it years later, she told me that it all felt very...easy. She'd been wet enough, and he felt good inside her. No gasps from passers-by, no security guards. He had one hand on her hip and the other around her. He wasn't moving fast or hard--- nothing obvious ---but she did move against him. Like we were dancing, you know? Again, the hard part was willing herself not to turn, not to look. When she was with boyfriends, she'd always preferred face-to-face. But this wasn't about whoever it was behind her, and it wasn't about how he was looking at her or what he thought of her. What she wanted was for this to just happen, not for it to be about him.
It didn't take long. He came inside her, and she came a few moments later. Not any world-shattering orgasm, she said. Nice, but contained. Breathing hard, not screaming. He rested against her back for a bit, and she felt his chin on her shoulder. She kept her focus on the band. In a minute or two, he kissed her shoulder and neck and then moved away, She reached back and squeezed his hand once, and he was gone.
She was twenty-two when that happened. Friends would ask her later if she'd been worried about who he was. What if he'd been ugly or gross? What if he'd been fifty or married? Those things didn't matter, she told them. There was no reason to know. If she'd met him at the bar, or while standing on line for the venue, she'd have cared about all that. But not this way. This way was about the experience, not the person.
You understand, she wrote. You know what I'm talking about. I didn't want him, I wanted to know that I'd done it, that I could do it. I wanted to know what it would be like. I know you understand.
I do understand. And I envy her not so much the sex, but the lights and details and music that made it all into a story,.
That's how Anais Nin's "Mallorca" begins. It's a very brief story, no more than three or four pages in the 'Delta of Venus' collection. The plot of it is simple enough. A young girl, the daughter of a local fisherman, is walking by the sea one evening, and a voice calls to her to come into the water and swim. She thinks the voice belongs to a beautiful and wealthy American tourist girl, and she goes into the water, shedding her white dress. In the water, it turns out that the voice belongs not to the American girl but to the American's younger brother. They swirl around one another, naked in dark water, learning one another's bodies, and have sex there and on the beach.
It's a story that would've made a lovely Zalman King vignette. King understood about sunlight and colours and how to film summer heat. He understood about wordless desire and the beauty of yielding oneself in silence. "Mallorca" should've been made into a 'Red Shoe Diaries' episode, and I'm sure there were episodes that followed similar plots. In another world, a better world, I'd have a complete set of 'Red Shoe Diaries' episodes on DVD.
My friend did write me about her adventure in Austin at the SXSW festival a few years ago. Details matter, I'd told her, and she did offer up the sorts of details I like. She's known me for a decade; she does have a good sense of where my interests lie.
It was March, she wrote. Warm for an early spring. She was in a sundress--- blue-and-white, summery-short ---and Keds. She was in one of the town's older venues, up on the balcony level, watching the band. She'd had a few, maybe a few too many, tequila shots. The club was crowded; there'd been a long line to get in.
What happened next was simple enough. She was leaning on the rail, looking down at the band and the crowds when someone brushed against her from behind. Nothing so unusual in a crowded club, and she thought nothing of it. Then something was behind her, and she could tell it was someone standing almost against her. A finger brushed along her back and side.
There had been boys on the balcony, one or two fairly attractive. She was startled by the touch, but she hadn't been touched in a long while. It just seemed like something that never happened to her, like something in a movie. She started to turn around, but a hand stopped her. She pushed back into him a little and kept looking at the band.
The finger made its way up along her shoulders, then down her side. She flinched when it touched her nipple through her sundress, but she willed herself not to move. I asked her if she'd been scared, and she told me that no, she hadn't felt scared. She'd thought about what people might see, but she felt--- and wanted to feel ---daring. She could hear him behind her, and he pressed his face into her hair. It was very, very important to her not to look and see who he was, she said. What mattered was just the feeling. She wore her hair long that spring, she said, down to her shoulder blades, and she turned her face to hide in her hair.
He held her hips against him, then slid his hands along her thighs under her dress. He worked her underwear down slowly, close enough against her to hide what he was doing. Not a thong, she told me, just basic cotton VS bikini. Sorry to disappoint you, she wrote, but I do wear underwear most of the time. She did wonder how far he'd go in public, if she was just going to be fingered, if she was about to be thrown out of the venue. What mattered, she said, was to just let it happen, whatever it was.
A bit awkward when her underwear got past her knees, she told me. Once she realized that they were coming off, there was the awkwardness of discretion: trying to use his body for cover, trying to step out them without being obvious, trying not to catch them on her Keds. She kicked them against the base of the balcony rail and felt the flat of his hand caressing her.
She didn't hear his zipper come down, but she knew it was happening. The diving board moment, she said. Like being on a diving board at a pool: there's a last moment before you have to just stride down the board and jump. He still hadn't said anything, and she was still keeping her face hidden in the fall of her hair. He ran a finger between her legs and then kissed the side of her neck. She imagined what they looked like, imagined them both as hidden in the shadows and as obvious to anyone who gave them more than a passing glance. Her mind kept jumping to possibilities--- was she wet enough for this to be easy, was he covertly spitting in his hand to lubricate himself? She tried to bend forward just a bit and get into position, and then he was inside her.
Writing about it years later, she told me that it all felt very...easy. She'd been wet enough, and he felt good inside her. No gasps from passers-by, no security guards. He had one hand on her hip and the other around her. He wasn't moving fast or hard--- nothing obvious ---but she did move against him. Like we were dancing, you know? Again, the hard part was willing herself not to turn, not to look. When she was with boyfriends, she'd always preferred face-to-face. But this wasn't about whoever it was behind her, and it wasn't about how he was looking at her or what he thought of her. What she wanted was for this to just happen, not for it to be about him.
It didn't take long. He came inside her, and she came a few moments later. Not any world-shattering orgasm, she said. Nice, but contained. Breathing hard, not screaming. He rested against her back for a bit, and she felt his chin on her shoulder. She kept her focus on the band. In a minute or two, he kissed her shoulder and neck and then moved away, She reached back and squeezed his hand once, and he was gone.
She was twenty-two when that happened. Friends would ask her later if she'd been worried about who he was. What if he'd been ugly or gross? What if he'd been fifty or married? Those things didn't matter, she told them. There was no reason to know. If she'd met him at the bar, or while standing on line for the venue, she'd have cared about all that. But not this way. This way was about the experience, not the person.
You understand, she wrote. You know what I'm talking about. I didn't want him, I wanted to know that I'd done it, that I could do it. I wanted to know what it would be like. I know you understand.
I do understand. And I envy her not so much the sex, but the lights and details and music that made it all into a story,.
Friday, August 2, 2019
Two Four Seven: Handbags
I do have that SXSW story to tell. My friend did send me her handwritten account--- good stationery, good ink. We'll think of that as a gift to me. After all, paper and fountain pen ink have always meant a lot to me. The story itself is worth saving and recounting, and she writes well. It's something I'll try to get to over the weekend. It's something I would like to find comments on, too.
Let's go back to an entry I posted here not a few months ago, and entry about what girls I've known carried in their handbags on nights when encounters and adventures were a possibility. I began with this:
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.
My friend in Wellington did get back to me to these issues. She agreed that her basic list, her basic Hook-Up Kit in her purse on a Friday night, would contain
--1 travel pk. of condoms (3)
--1 travel pk. of wet wipes
-- Small tube of lube
-- Travel toothbrush/toothpaste
That seems very minimalist but functional. I'm assuming she'd already have basic make-up (lipstick, at least) in her purse. She almost never spent the night at a hook-up's place, so minimalist would work: she'd be on her way home well before morning.
Those things would work for her on a night out downtown in Wellington. I did wonder what someone a bit more professional would carry, though. If ever you do wonder what escorts carry in their purses, well, there are lists to be found on-line.
Karley Sciortino at the Slutever website once interviewed a former high-end escort in Montreal whose carry list included:
-- 1 pr. clean underwear
-- A good book
-- Dry shampoo
-- Lube
-- Condoms (multiple sizes)
-- Phone and charger
-- Band-aids (in case you've been wearing stilettos all night)
-- Toothbrush and make-up
-- A sex toy (bullet vibrator or butt plug)
-- $US 500 cash
Other articles about escorts and their lives point out that the phone has a dual purpose--- enabling an escort to check up on her bookings and offering a way to be safe when with a new client. One article suggests chewing gum as well as a travel toothbrush; another suggests latex gloves.
Of course, escorts have to have a much more professional set of concerns than someone like my NZ friend on a night where encounters might happen. She wouldn't have the problem of using cash so as not to leave a paper trail of any locations or deposits. I can see my Wellington friend carrying a small dry shampoo, though. She has always liked the concept of dry shampoo. I know her well enough to know that of she carried a bullet vibrator, it would be a Lelo Mia. She is always brand-loyal. A Dutch website for escorts also lists something called an "action tampon"--- something I wasn't familiar with. It's basically a sponge, designed to allow a woman to have sex during her period without ruining the sheets. The website suggests it's also useful in case there's any bleeding after rough sex or a more well-endowed client. Again, the lists for professionals tend to be much longer and more problem-focused than the Hook-Up Kits I've been asking girls about.
I do have to smile, mind you, since there's no equivalent for men. I suppose a gentleman could carry a condom or two, but that does look a bit predatory. Also, there's the problem familiar to teenaged boys throughout the last sixty years or so: where to keep a condom? I've never really dealt with condoms, but be damned to keeping one in a wallet like some hopelessly optimistic Grade 10 boy. And a condom case (yes, they do come in brass or sterling silver) is far too 1970s for words.
In any case, I do want to find out more from girls I know. I love checklists and inventories. I'll always go through any list of what's in purses, wallets, backpacks, briefcases, travel bags. Details always matter, and there's nothing like looking at lists and inferring lives from them.
Let's go back to an entry I posted here not a few months ago, and entry about what girls I've known carried in their handbags on nights when encounters and adventures were a possibility. I began with this:
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.
My friend in Wellington did get back to me to these issues. She agreed that her basic list, her basic Hook-Up Kit in her purse on a Friday night, would contain
--1 travel pk. of condoms (3)
--1 travel pk. of wet wipes
-- Small tube of lube
-- Travel toothbrush/toothpaste
That seems very minimalist but functional. I'm assuming she'd already have basic make-up (lipstick, at least) in her purse. She almost never spent the night at a hook-up's place, so minimalist would work: she'd be on her way home well before morning.
Those things would work for her on a night out downtown in Wellington. I did wonder what someone a bit more professional would carry, though. If ever you do wonder what escorts carry in their purses, well, there are lists to be found on-line.
Karley Sciortino at the Slutever website once interviewed a former high-end escort in Montreal whose carry list included:
-- 1 pr. clean underwear
-- A good book
-- Dry shampoo
-- Lube
-- Condoms (multiple sizes)
-- Phone and charger
-- Band-aids (in case you've been wearing stilettos all night)
-- Toothbrush and make-up
-- A sex toy (bullet vibrator or butt plug)
-- $US 500 cash
Other articles about escorts and their lives point out that the phone has a dual purpose--- enabling an escort to check up on her bookings and offering a way to be safe when with a new client. One article suggests chewing gum as well as a travel toothbrush; another suggests latex gloves.
Of course, escorts have to have a much more professional set of concerns than someone like my NZ friend on a night where encounters might happen. She wouldn't have the problem of using cash so as not to leave a paper trail of any locations or deposits. I can see my Wellington friend carrying a small dry shampoo, though. She has always liked the concept of dry shampoo. I know her well enough to know that of she carried a bullet vibrator, it would be a Lelo Mia. She is always brand-loyal. A Dutch website for escorts also lists something called an "action tampon"--- something I wasn't familiar with. It's basically a sponge, designed to allow a woman to have sex during her period without ruining the sheets. The website suggests it's also useful in case there's any bleeding after rough sex or a more well-endowed client. Again, the lists for professionals tend to be much longer and more problem-focused than the Hook-Up Kits I've been asking girls about.
I do have to smile, mind you, since there's no equivalent for men. I suppose a gentleman could carry a condom or two, but that does look a bit predatory. Also, there's the problem familiar to teenaged boys throughout the last sixty years or so: where to keep a condom? I've never really dealt with condoms, but be damned to keeping one in a wallet like some hopelessly optimistic Grade 10 boy. And a condom case (yes, they do come in brass or sterling silver) is far too 1970s for words.
In any case, I do want to find out more from girls I know. I love checklists and inventories. I'll always go through any list of what's in purses, wallets, backpacks, briefcases, travel bags. Details always matter, and there's nothing like looking at lists and inferring lives from them.
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