Two Six Eight: Electra

A memory from long ago, here on a rainy January night.

I was thinking today about Salonika, in northeastern Greece. It's Thessaloniki now, but I still think of it as Salonika, the name it bore in Ottoman times and during the Great War. No particular reason for thinking of it; I may have been idly looking at things from forgotten fronts of the 1914-1918 war. I was trained once upon a time to do History, and I still find odd corners of the world fascinating.

Thessaloniki, though... It's a word and a place that calls up a story from my teens.

In my final year at high school I dated a girl named Marsha. Lovely girl--- long, dark brown hair down past the middle of her back, eyes almost as dark as mine. Five foot six, I recall, with excellent legs. We weren't a serious couple, but we dated throughout the year; I even attended her prom. Her father was an executive with a shipping corporation, and he was always away on trips overseas. I did envy that rather a lot--- a life with travel, a life in aerodromes.

The summer after high school, the summer before I left home to go off to university, her father took his wife and daughter  with him on one of his trips. She wrote me from hotels in London and Rome and Athens.  She even wrote me on TWA and Lufthansa "in flight" stationery--- in those days, airlines still had things like stationery that passengers could use. She brought stationery back for me, too. Hotel stationery is a small fetish of mine. Some of it I kept for years. I loved getting letters from overseas, loved feeling even second-hand cosmopolitan.

Her father had to spend a few days in Thessaloniki. They stayed at a hotel called the Electra Palace. I looked it up on line, and it's still there. It seems to have been reno'd a few times since Marsha and her parents would've stayed there; I've no idea how it looked then. It's rated as a five-star hotel, though the website seems to suggest that its prices are substantially less than a five-star hotel would be in Manhattan or London. She sent me a postcard from Thessaloniki; I don't recall what was on it.

The story I learned later was that she'd been introduced to the son of one of her father's business contacts. He was a perfect cliche for the son of a wealthy Greek businessman of the day. Twenty-five or twenty-six, Mediterranean-handsome, an expensive smile, and a restored classic sports car--- a vintage MG, possibly. Marsha became his project.  He drove her through the city, drove her along the coastal roads, drove her up into the hills above the city. I've always imagined that he drove with his hand on her bare thigh from their first moments in the car. I can even imagine what she might've worn on a summer's day--- she had a khaki miniskirt that she liked a lot, and of course girls from where she  grew up lived in cut-off denim short shorts in summertime.

Hand on her thigh, obviously. And very soon, there was a fair amount of road head. There were parked-car encounters up in the hills overlooking the city. There may have been a shadowy figure sneaking out of her hotel room at the Electra Palace before dawn on a couple of nights. The road head would've been something she loved. She always did. They did go dancing at some expensive discos, too. It's still easy for me to imagine her in her favourite dance-floor look--- white silk blouse unbuttoned almost to the waist and worn next to the skin, black velvet short shorts, dress sandals. Easy, too, to imagine parked car encounters. Pulling up that khaki mini and straddling the Greek boy or stepping out of the parked MG to pull down her cut-off short shorts before climbing back in--- I can imagine either. I'd spent time persuading her to avoid underwear, but she may or may not have been following my suggestions in Greece. An MG cockpit was a tiny thing, and Marsha would've had to work to get herself into a driver's seat with him. She was flexible, though. I do recall that.

I remember that she bought a faded-pastel pink denim jacket in Athens. I do imagine her wearing that just over her shoulders with nothing underneath, smoking a joint with the Greek boy while they leaned on the hood of the parked MG.

The boy was seven or eight years older than she was, but I don't know if she ever thought about the idea of an older lover. She and I never talked about age. She and I were effectively the same age, which no girl in my life has been for years and years. Marsha was actually older than I was by four months--- a major thing in the days when the drinking age was eighteen rather than twenty-one.

I found out the details of what had happened in Thessaloniki later. She and I saw each other a few times when she got back to the States, but we were both planning to go off to university. I was going off to New England and she was bound for the Colorado School of Mines. It was only on Christmas break when we got drunk together and she told me the Thessaloniki story in detail. I couldn't be jealous. She and I had enjoyed being with one another and having our own encounters, but we weren't a serious couple. In any case, I was deeply involved with a girl in Connecticut, a girl who'd be in and out of my life with high drama for the next four or five years. So I couldn't really be jealous. I was envious, though, envious of the vintage MG and of her spending a month in Europe. Envious, too, of expensive hotel sex. She always liked men with sports cars; that was her particular kink. I do wish I knew more stories about that from her younger days.

I didn't keep a diary in those days, or at least not a formal one. I probably wouldn't have made notes about her encounter in Thessaloniki, though these days I would. My memory is still reasonably good, though I do run the risk of all older roues--- losing all the best stories here in the autumn of my years. I only regret that when she drunkenly told me about what she'd done I didn't pull her close across the bed and have her tell me all the details. I'd like to be able to savor her stories here when I can imagine them as happening in a distant world.

Two Six Seven: Numb

I saw ads at social media today about a product called Roman Swipes. I first thought the wipes were male body-cleansing wipes, much like the Every Man Jack "speed shower" cleansing wipes I've become obsessive about storing--- wipes designed to make sure that a potential Young Companion isn't sickened by the taste or scent of male flesh and male...parts.

I'll note that I have a supply of Every Man Jack and Cetaphil wipes on hand just...in case.  You did note that I've become horrified and disgusted by my own flesh, didn't you? You know the drill: shower twice a day under water as hot as I can bear, use a body wash probably originally designed for biohazard labs, and rough washcloths that will abrade away a couple of layers of skin. I'm not taking any chances.

Roman Swipes, though, aren't body cleansers. As best I can tell from the ad copy, they're  wipes saturated with a "4% Benzocaine solution" that's supposed to increase time-to-male-orgasm by 340% over several months.  The idea of course is that the Benzocaine is a numbing agent and that you apply it to...sensitive areas to reduce overstimulation-- i.e., it numbs your penis to prevent what used to be called ejaculatio praecox. It doesn't seem like you can just go into a drugstore or to Amazon and buy a pack. From what I could tell by a quick glance at their website, you sign up for a monthly or quarterly program.  Now I have nothing to say about the product or its efficacy. I was just perplexed by the idea of the product.

Ejaculatio praecox has never been my problem. Quite the contrary. I don't need the product for its intended use. When I first glanced at the advert, I hoped it was for another body cleanser. I'm always in the market for anything that can assuage body fear for a little while.

Reading the ad copy, though, it began to occur to me that I am reaching a place in life where Encounters might require pharmaceutical assistance. That hasn't happened yet, though I know it will...which itself is a fear that keeps me paralyzed and unwilling to try.

I used to tell myself that if it ever came to that, to systems failure, that I wouldn't be too proud to use the Blue Pill. My friend Katie in the Home Counties told me that she'd been with men who were a wide range of ages, and that she had no problem with the Blue Pill. She'd known boys in their twenties who used it "recreationally" and men in their late sixties who did need it to perform.  She told me that the Blue Pill existed to solve a problem, that it was nothing to be ashamed of. Sometimes, she said, she had a problem with dryness, and she'd just use a bit of "personal lubricant". Same thing, she told me--- there's a problem, and you use a tool to fix it. None of it is a judgment about your value as a person or a lover. 

When she and I talked about that, I completely agreed with her. I told myself that if ever the time came, I'd look for a simple and efficient way to fix the problem. Just a pill, I told myself. And I had confidence in my other skills. I told myself that I wasn't a one-trick pony. I knew other ways to offer pleasure to  a Young Companion, and I knew that if the moment came, I'd get through it.

None of that is likely to be true, of course. Over the last year, I've been edging closer to fear that any systems failure would in fact be a judgment on my value as a person. A year ago, I'd have brushed off any fears.  That's not the case tonight. I'm paralyzed by fear of failure, and in the best tradition of...much of my life...I'm unwilling to risk being seen to fail.  Worse, I'm unwilling to be seen at all. I'm increasingly unwilling to be touched. Tonight, even if the opportunity presented itself, I'd be unwilling to be a body with a Young Companion. I'd take it for granted that my flesh--- look, texture, taste, scent ---would disgust any girl who'd be in my presence,

So...I don't need the Roman Swipes. The Blue Pill would be pointless. I have a store of Every Man Jack wipes and I spend my time standing under scalding water and sanding away at my skin.  If I could remove any trace of texture, scent, and taste, I would.  The next stage is...what? Changing my clothes down to the skin two or three times a day? I don't think the Blue Pill can do anything about my growing inability to venture out into anything social.

Two Six Six: Voix

A new year has begun. No one is quite sure whether we're in the Twenties of the new century yet. There's still that debate over whether we have to wait until 2021 to say that a new set of Roaring Twenties is here. Tonight it seems likely that "Roaring Twenties" may refer less to parties and Bright Young Things and more to a new war in the Near East, but there are still a few optimistic souls who hope that the new decade will be all Gatsby's mansion and debs in Bugattis.

I'm finding that the new year and new decade are likely to be one of silence.  New Years itself was grey and quiet here by the lake. I began 2019 with an evening of cocktails and flirtations with lovely bartender girls. This year as the numbers changed I was at home with a glass of Irish whiskey, sitting alone on the deck, looking out to lights on water. I do suspect that most of the year will be like that.

I've always prided myself on my ability to tell stories, to create a world out of words. I've always said that such luck as I've had with lovely, long-legged Young Companions has been based on words and not flesh. There's a certain kind of literary co-ed I've been able to talk into bed, and I'm all too aware that it has nothing to do with my looks or body. It's always been about the stories I tell. This year, though, this new year--- I suspect I've lost that.

2019 began with lovely girls talking with me all night and finding me to be an experiment worth trying. That seems to have evaporated.  I've lost the ability to talk, to tell stories. There are places where I spent the last half of 2018 dining, sampling wines and cocktails, and flirting with lovely girls. I can't bring myself to do that any more. I can't bring myself to have conversations in public. For reasons I can't quite articulate, I spend less and less time out. I haven't been back to any of my old haunts in six or seven months. All the doorways downtown where I used to go seem alien and depressing. I've managed to talk myself into a state where I feel unwelcome everywhere. Sitting at a barstool that may have been a favourite spot once upon a time now feels empty, uncanny, and out of place.

I no longer know what to say to lovely girls. I no longer have faith in my ability to tell stories, or to do exchanges, or to be part of a conversation. I no longer believe I have anything to say to anyone. I find it harder and harder to believe that anyone would want to be part of a conversation with me.

Part of me wonders if the social rules have changed, and whether I'm simply excluded by the new rules. No one has ever said anything like that to me, but the nagging fear is there nonetheless.

Let's also note that I'm less and less at home in my body. I've become uneasy thinking about my own flesh, and I find myself  uneasy, ashamed, and preemptively embarrassed by the thought of having my body seen or touched. It's harder and harder to imagine undressing for a lovely Young Companion, and the thought that a lover might be disgusted by my flesh haunts me in a way it never did at sixteen or twenty. I find myself scrubbing my skin 'til it's raw and showering twice a day under the hottest water I can stand. I find myself looking for OTC drugs that will shut down bodily functions lest they humiliate me. I find myself unwilling to imagine a lover's touch, or be undressed even when alone.

My suspicions are that I'm approaching some kind of depressive spasm, and that by Lent I'll have talked myself into being housebound and mute.

I do walk past downtown doors and listen to music and voices leaking out and realize that I can't speak there, that I have nothing to say, that I no longer know how to respond to voices. I can't imagine anyone wanting to hear anything I have to say.