The time of the Red Death does give you space and solitude to think about things, to examine (endlessly examine, sometimes) memories from better days.
Last time I wrote here, I recalled something my friend Liberty said about the older men in her life and past:
Liberty told me that what she liked about affairs with Older Men was that they all had kinks and obsessions that they'd rarely (if ever) been able to talk about with anyone. She was always willing to listen and learn...and not mock them.
She told me that when she was talking about the Santa Fe gallery owner who'd revealed his foot fetish to her. She was always quiet and a bit solemn, and always willing to listen. And she was right, mind you. By the time you reach a certain age, you'll have acquired a fetish or two--- or at least some particular obsession. And it'll be hard to talk about. By the time you reach a certain age, you'll know what you like, but somehow you'll feel less and less able to talk about it. You'll be more aware of social rules than you were at twenty, and for some complicated set of reasons far more afraid of being an outsider than you ever were in your days at uni.
I don't share the gallery owner's fetish, but I have a couple of small obsessions of my own, and I've noticed that my level of social unease has been climbing. At twenty or twenty-five I'd have talked about anything with a lover or potential lover, and I'd have been much more courageous about being open with my interests. At twenty-five--- back in another age, another world ---I had my left ear triple-pierced and paid no attention to remarks about that. These days, though, I find it hard to go swimming in the pool downstairs from my flat not because of my looks or age, but rather because I did get a couple of body piercings a few years ago. Nothing, mind you, that the current governor of New York isn't supposed to have, but I'm much more afraid of mockery or even simple questions than I ever was at twenty-five.
There are rank-hierarchies to everything, and I am far more aware of them now. I told a lovely blonde friend in an Upper Midwest city all about Liberty and the older man in Santa Fe, and she laughed and told me that Liberty was right, that older men had so many things to teach her, but that they were all afraid of girls her age mocking them. I'll trust her database on that. She'd been a gallery girl in Brooklyn and London once upon a time, and she'd been an escort and a sugar baby briefly. She and I talked the other evening about hierarchies and fears, and she said that Liberty's partner had a point. A man, especially an older man, being into blindfolds and riding whips with girls like her at least had an air of danger and delicious wickedness about him, but a foot fetish always seemed to be silly and pathetic. She didn't mind doing either thing, she said, and she loved sex while blindfolded. And, yes, she said, she'd had older men cum on her bare feet before--- not her preference, she said, but it wasn't anything that disgusted her. She could, she said, have told her female friends about being with an older patron who was into s/m, but she wouldn't have told anyone about a patron who liked her feet. And she couldn't have explained why.
Liberty was once in my bed with her wrists tied with silk scarves and bits of colored candle wax dripped on her. I knew you'd do this, she laughed. Never doubted it. That was early on in our acquaintance, and I was glad that she thought it was all fun. It's like being in some goth video, she said. I felt...safe that evening. If she felt comfortable with older men because they had stories to tell her and things to teach her, I felt comfortable with her because she was open to adventures, because she saw me as someone who could create new stories with her.
Much later, on another night, after she'd told me about the gallery owner in Santa Fe, she asked if I'd do the things he did to her. I told her that, yes, certainly--- if she asked. We had to talk about that answer. I had no objection to doing those things if she asked. So long as she asked, they'd be games, adventures, things done in play between friends and casual partners. If I asked her, though, they'd be fetish-y. If I asked her, the things would feel shameful. We lay there in a tangle of sheets and tried to decide why I felt like that--- and why she could very clearly see my point.
There's a structure to preferences and obsessions and fetishes. Those things can be very clearly arranged in branches, lines of descent, hierarchies. Liberty was open to men teaching her things, to exploring things, and she always wanted me to feel like I could tell her things. She wanted me to give up body fear and body shame, to regard fetishes as just play, to have no social anxiety over my body piercings. I felt (and still feel) grateful for all the things she tried to teach me, and for all the stories she told me. But as much I was (and am) grateful that she let me be part of her own stories, I still have a deep reservoir of fears about telling young companions about what I like and don't like.
I do find it harder and harder to just accept what I like or don't like, harder and harder to reveal myself to someone with whom I'm trying to build a certain intimacy. My blonde, long-legged friend down in NZ told me once that she couldn't imagine that I'd ever be shy asking a lover for something that gave me pleasure, but that's no longer true. These days, alas, I'm far too anxious about identifying what I like or want or what gives me pleasure. I remain willing to do almost anything a lovely girl asks me to do for her or to her in bed. I'm always willing to try to give pleasure. But it gets harder and harder to ask someone to do anything for me.
Monday, April 27, 2020
Sunday, April 19, 2020
Two Eight One: Comfort
A year or so ago I wrote here about a girl I'll be calling Liberty, a lovely strawberry-blonde bartendrix girl with whom I had a casual affair all through much of 2018. I wrote here about her first encounter with an Older Man--- in her case, she was sixteen and he was in his early thirties, the owner of a kayak shop in the Pacific Northwest.
Liberty told me this about Older Men:
[S]he decided she liked Older Men, or at least was comfortable with them. That made it easy when she and I first started talking a couple of years ago, when she was at the oyster bar. She thought I was interesting and the age thing meant pretty much zero to her. When I told her my age--- she just shrugged. What mattered, she said, was that I was interesting. We'll use each other for the stories, she said. We'll trade stories and we'll learn things.
I liked the word she used-- comfortable. I'd heard that before from girls when they were talking about affairs with Older Men. Comfortable. A friend who now divides her time between Edinburgh and London told me that having affairs at uni (yes, Oxford) with much older men felt so much simpler than dealing with boys her own age. She understood the terms of the exchange, and so did they. She could explore things with them and then lie back in bed and question them about so many topics. The whole Oxbridge vision of mentoring-plus-sex seemed perfect to her, and being someone's muse and pupil was a role she understood.
Another friend-- this one now in south Florida, but who'd been at USC for grad school --used the same word: comfortable. For her, that meant feeling free from drama and demands. She did laugh once and say that from sixteen on, she'd tried to avoid becoming involved with anyone who wasn't twenty years older than she was. It was never, she told me, about Older Men taking advantage of her. Older Men, she said, had always been willing to show her things, to talk with her about the world, to let her climb out of bed and go through their bookshelves.
Liberty said the same-- We'll trade stories and we'll learn things. That I could understand. I felt the same way about her, in a way. A neo-hippie girl with long legs and an aversion to wearing underwear who'd tell me about life in Santa Fe and about growing up in the Pacific Northwest...and, yes, teach me kayaking and all about estuary and gulf systems.
Liberty told me that what she liked about affairs with Older Men was that they all had kinks and obsessions that they'd rarely (if ever) been able to talk about with anyone. She was always willing to listen and learn...and not mock them. In Santa Fe there'd been the owner of some little Southwest Modern gallery who was very much a hidden foot fetishist, He'd been terrified to tell anyone about that. Liberty at eighteen had just laughed and asked him why he'd think she'd be disgusted by that. She remembered sitting on the back of his sofa, barefoot in tiny denim shorts while he used wet wipes to go over her feet and then licked her ankles and arches and sucked her toes. She told me that he was amazed that she'd run her fingers through his hair and tell him it felt good. She had no problems, either, giving him foot jobs or letting him cum on her bare feet. She liked the idea of foot jobs--- she always liked learning skills ---and she liked making him feel good. They'd have more standard kinds of sex, too, and she'd curl up next to him in bed or on his sofa and tell him (truthfully) that it was all fun.
When they weren't in bed, he'd show her about sketches and watercolors and how to paint and sketch. He was probably forty, she said, and all she felt about the age difference was that he had more stories to tell her and more things to teach her. I know how to paint desert light, she said, and I give great foot jobs. I expect to have my toes sucked, too.
When she was at uni, taking environmental science classes, she went on a field trip with one of her classes--- and at one point the class (eight students?) camped at a former state park, an 1812-vintage fort. There was a fair amount of weed smoked and bourbon consumed, and a lot of pairing off. Liberty spent the night in a sleeping bag with the class instructor. She remembered riding him while he told her about the fort and about the way the coastline had changed. At one point that night she was standing naked on a dock, wrapped in just the sleeping bag while he pointed out boats moving in the distance and told her about the early days of settlement on the coast. She took me kayaking there once upon a time, and she walked me around the fort and told me what she'd learned from those nights paired off with the instructor. I'm always the one who can talk about history and odd bits of the past, and it was wonderful to have Liberty being my tour guide, having a lovely girl be the one to tell me about things.
She told me that I was easy to talk to, that she liked that part of my being older. And she liked my stories. Maybe I'll make you a character in a novel one day, Liberty said. And I know this'll disappoint you, but you won't be the villain.
She is I think back in the Pacific Northwest these days. I saw a mutual friend who told me Liberty had sent her a postcard from Vancouver Island. That would've been just before the Red Death closed down travel. I hope she'll come back down here to my city. I would love to know more of her stories.
Liberty told me this about Older Men:
[S]he decided she liked Older Men, or at least was comfortable with them. That made it easy when she and I first started talking a couple of years ago, when she was at the oyster bar. She thought I was interesting and the age thing meant pretty much zero to her. When I told her my age--- she just shrugged. What mattered, she said, was that I was interesting. We'll use each other for the stories, she said. We'll trade stories and we'll learn things.
I liked the word she used-- comfortable. I'd heard that before from girls when they were talking about affairs with Older Men. Comfortable. A friend who now divides her time between Edinburgh and London told me that having affairs at uni (yes, Oxford) with much older men felt so much simpler than dealing with boys her own age. She understood the terms of the exchange, and so did they. She could explore things with them and then lie back in bed and question them about so many topics. The whole Oxbridge vision of mentoring-plus-sex seemed perfect to her, and being someone's muse and pupil was a role she understood.
Another friend-- this one now in south Florida, but who'd been at USC for grad school --used the same word: comfortable. For her, that meant feeling free from drama and demands. She did laugh once and say that from sixteen on, she'd tried to avoid becoming involved with anyone who wasn't twenty years older than she was. It was never, she told me, about Older Men taking advantage of her. Older Men, she said, had always been willing to show her things, to talk with her about the world, to let her climb out of bed and go through their bookshelves.
Liberty said the same-- We'll trade stories and we'll learn things. That I could understand. I felt the same way about her, in a way. A neo-hippie girl with long legs and an aversion to wearing underwear who'd tell me about life in Santa Fe and about growing up in the Pacific Northwest...and, yes, teach me kayaking and all about estuary and gulf systems.
Liberty told me that what she liked about affairs with Older Men was that they all had kinks and obsessions that they'd rarely (if ever) been able to talk about with anyone. She was always willing to listen and learn...and not mock them. In Santa Fe there'd been the owner of some little Southwest Modern gallery who was very much a hidden foot fetishist, He'd been terrified to tell anyone about that. Liberty at eighteen had just laughed and asked him why he'd think she'd be disgusted by that. She remembered sitting on the back of his sofa, barefoot in tiny denim shorts while he used wet wipes to go over her feet and then licked her ankles and arches and sucked her toes. She told me that he was amazed that she'd run her fingers through his hair and tell him it felt good. She had no problems, either, giving him foot jobs or letting him cum on her bare feet. She liked the idea of foot jobs--- she always liked learning skills ---and she liked making him feel good. They'd have more standard kinds of sex, too, and she'd curl up next to him in bed or on his sofa and tell him (truthfully) that it was all fun.
When they weren't in bed, he'd show her about sketches and watercolors and how to paint and sketch. He was probably forty, she said, and all she felt about the age difference was that he had more stories to tell her and more things to teach her. I know how to paint desert light, she said, and I give great foot jobs. I expect to have my toes sucked, too.
When she was at uni, taking environmental science classes, she went on a field trip with one of her classes--- and at one point the class (eight students?) camped at a former state park, an 1812-vintage fort. There was a fair amount of weed smoked and bourbon consumed, and a lot of pairing off. Liberty spent the night in a sleeping bag with the class instructor. She remembered riding him while he told her about the fort and about the way the coastline had changed. At one point that night she was standing naked on a dock, wrapped in just the sleeping bag while he pointed out boats moving in the distance and told her about the early days of settlement on the coast. She took me kayaking there once upon a time, and she walked me around the fort and told me what she'd learned from those nights paired off with the instructor. I'm always the one who can talk about history and odd bits of the past, and it was wonderful to have Liberty being my tour guide, having a lovely girl be the one to tell me about things.
She told me that I was easy to talk to, that she liked that part of my being older. And she liked my stories. Maybe I'll make you a character in a novel one day, Liberty said. And I know this'll disappoint you, but you won't be the villain.
She is I think back in the Pacific Northwest these days. I saw a mutual friend who told me Liberty had sent her a postcard from Vancouver Island. That would've been just before the Red Death closed down travel. I hope she'll come back down here to my city. I would love to know more of her stories.
Saturday, April 18, 2020
Two Eight Zero: Wires
Here during the time of the Red Death, here in the plague lockdown, there's been remarkably little written and posted about sex.
I've seen a few on line posts about how couples who first thought that quarantine sex would be a hot thing are now suffering from cabin fever and too much proximity. I'm waiting for those entries to turn into a Coen Bros. scenario.
A friend in Scotland wrote last night to say that she and so many of her female friends are burning through packs of batteries for their vibrators and that her male friends had been telling her that their "wanking frequency" was now "off the charts". My leggy blonde friend down in Wellington NZ tells me that while she swears by her Lelo vibrator, she's always found the Corona beer bottle to be a perfect dildo...but can't use one now. She has bottles, yes, but because the plague is the Coronavirus, she just can't bring herself to use her carefully washed and stored Corona bottle.
I'll note that as a male of a certain age, talking about my own experiences with the Solitary Vice is just not something I can do. The Solitary Vice is something that's aesthetically attractive and "empowering" only for lovely girls. Girls can buy, use, and discuss vibrators and sex toys--- but it's all something that males can't discuss. Girls can self-pleasure, but men...wank. What men do is regarded as inherently pathetic and/or disgusting. So take it as a given that I'd be utterly ashamed to talk about the Solitary Vice in my own life.
That's sad in a way, and all the more so in that I was always a major fan of phone sex. Phone sex was something that played to my strengths--- being verbal, being able to construct stories, being able to make girls feel like they were part of a story. Phone sex was something I discovered late in high school and remained devoted to for years and years. It was always something I enjoyed teaching my young companions to do and enjoy.
I'm sure that phone sex is regarded as some archaic thing in a world of sexting and webcams, but I miss the nights when lovely young companions would call me late at night and talk and exchange fantasies until dawn. I miss looking at my phone (yes, a landline by the bed) and seeing the area codes for distant cities. I miss the time when girls called me from the other side of the continent or (yes) from overseas. Girls have phoned me from London, Melbourne, Wellington, Montreal, St. Petersburg, and Belgrade to do phone sex. I was always amazed and thrilled by those calls.
Here in the time of the Red Death, though, my phone remains silent. I'm not sure whether phone sex has simply become obsolete and unfashionable, or whether plague quarantine depletes the energy levels needed for phone sex. My fear these days is that I've lost my ability to do phone sex, lost the ability to construct new fantasy scenarios, lost the ability to tell stories. Are my fantasies ones that mean anything when everyone is suffering from cabin fever? In a world of frayed tempers and gnawing boredom, do I have anything to say that would excite girls?
I can't sext. You know that. I type far too slowly, and the character limits make it impossible to construct complex stories with details and dialogue. I certainly can't do webcam or FaceTime. My face and body are guaranteed to drive lovely young companions away. My face and body aren't designed for visual presentation.
My own cabin fever is destroying any thoughts of being with a lover by phone. I'd never risk having my body seen, but in a better world my stories would be valuable--- and, yes, they were valuable and valued once upon a time. I can't believe in my value or my skills any longer.
If any of you out there over the aether are still doing phone sex, let me know what it means to you these days. Let me know whether it feels awkward and unfashionable. Let me know if your own interest in the Solitary Vice has waned during quarantine or whether you're feeling desperate for physical release.
I've seen a few on line posts about how couples who first thought that quarantine sex would be a hot thing are now suffering from cabin fever and too much proximity. I'm waiting for those entries to turn into a Coen Bros. scenario.
A friend in Scotland wrote last night to say that she and so many of her female friends are burning through packs of batteries for their vibrators and that her male friends had been telling her that their "wanking frequency" was now "off the charts". My leggy blonde friend down in Wellington NZ tells me that while she swears by her Lelo vibrator, she's always found the Corona beer bottle to be a perfect dildo...but can't use one now. She has bottles, yes, but because the plague is the Coronavirus, she just can't bring herself to use her carefully washed and stored Corona bottle.
I'll note that as a male of a certain age, talking about my own experiences with the Solitary Vice is just not something I can do. The Solitary Vice is something that's aesthetically attractive and "empowering" only for lovely girls. Girls can buy, use, and discuss vibrators and sex toys--- but it's all something that males can't discuss. Girls can self-pleasure, but men...wank. What men do is regarded as inherently pathetic and/or disgusting. So take it as a given that I'd be utterly ashamed to talk about the Solitary Vice in my own life.
That's sad in a way, and all the more so in that I was always a major fan of phone sex. Phone sex was something that played to my strengths--- being verbal, being able to construct stories, being able to make girls feel like they were part of a story. Phone sex was something I discovered late in high school and remained devoted to for years and years. It was always something I enjoyed teaching my young companions to do and enjoy.
I'm sure that phone sex is regarded as some archaic thing in a world of sexting and webcams, but I miss the nights when lovely young companions would call me late at night and talk and exchange fantasies until dawn. I miss looking at my phone (yes, a landline by the bed) and seeing the area codes for distant cities. I miss the time when girls called me from the other side of the continent or (yes) from overseas. Girls have phoned me from London, Melbourne, Wellington, Montreal, St. Petersburg, and Belgrade to do phone sex. I was always amazed and thrilled by those calls.
Here in the time of the Red Death, though, my phone remains silent. I'm not sure whether phone sex has simply become obsolete and unfashionable, or whether plague quarantine depletes the energy levels needed for phone sex. My fear these days is that I've lost my ability to do phone sex, lost the ability to construct new fantasy scenarios, lost the ability to tell stories. Are my fantasies ones that mean anything when everyone is suffering from cabin fever? In a world of frayed tempers and gnawing boredom, do I have anything to say that would excite girls?
I can't sext. You know that. I type far too slowly, and the character limits make it impossible to construct complex stories with details and dialogue. I certainly can't do webcam or FaceTime. My face and body are guaranteed to drive lovely young companions away. My face and body aren't designed for visual presentation.
My own cabin fever is destroying any thoughts of being with a lover by phone. I'd never risk having my body seen, but in a better world my stories would be valuable--- and, yes, they were valuable and valued once upon a time. I can't believe in my value or my skills any longer.
If any of you out there over the aether are still doing phone sex, let me know what it means to you these days. Let me know whether it feels awkward and unfashionable. Let me know if your own interest in the Solitary Vice has waned during quarantine or whether you're feeling desperate for physical release.
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