Three Three Four: Companions

 It's been a while since I've heard from my friend in London Town. So much since the spring of 2020 is just lost. I know she spent lockdown time at a friend's house near Oxford, and that she was doing virtual lectures for a university in the States.  There are so many things I'd like to talk about.

She is the closest thing I know to an actual FMTY person. She has spent time on the edges of the demimonde, and men, meaning older admirers, have flown her to hotels and villas in Europe and Asia. She understands envelopes of crisp new bills left on a bedside table, and she understands how to fly in Oligarch Class and deal with bookings at Michelin star restaurants. She is the person I should talk to about my FMTY fears.

I had lunch last weekend with a very lovely girl here. She's young, tallish, deliciously queer, bookish, and bright. We sat outside at a hipster ramen restaurant with drinks and talked and shared ramen. A very lovely autumn afternoon, crisp and sunny. I enjoyed the whole afternoon, and I never felt out of place. I'm sure a few people raised an eyebrow at the age difference, but I'm used to that and she's indifferent to it. It took me a while to process you, she said once, but I'm okay with it all.  I suppose that's all I can ask from any young companion and any affair. Sitting there with her and holding hands and talking was wonderful. More to the point, I felt very much like I belonged where we were. I felt...safe. I knew how to order drinks, I knew how to deal with the menu. I never felt like I was being judged. 

I could never do that with any of the FMTY girls whose Twitter accounts I follow. 

I scan over the FMTY girls' biographies and note the descriptions: charming dinner companion, upscale dinner date. One NYC girl's biography reads Art student, lingerie collector. Take me around the world, and let's start with dinner. Another one reads: Over-educated and under-satiated. Your next dinner companion and co-conspirator. I can read those things and feel my interest stirring...and becoming overshadowed by my fears. Discreet, seductive thrill seeker. Passionate for dining, art, music & culture, London and beyond. I would have no idea what to do or say around any of these women.

Sitting at the hipster ramen bar or at the little South American-inflected restaurant where I spend so many afternoons with starters and a drink, I feel like I fit in. Aging, genteelly-impoverished roué is a role that goes with both places. They're places where twenty-somethings and the inevitable Comp Lit co-eds go. They're places where there's no expectation of being on stage.

I have no idea how to perform at a Michelin-star restaurant. I have no idea how to deal with the menu or the waitstaff. I know how to do gallery openings; I know how to sit at a concert. But fine dining remains beyond me. I enjoy wines, but I'd never dare go through a wine list with an FMTY girl. 

I have to wonder whether part of what I'd be paying for with a high-end escort would be her skills with a menu and wine list. I'd have to hope that she'd be willing to be the guide, the psychopomp. I'd have to be able to smile and say that I was placing myself entirely in her hands. I couldn't be self-confident or be the self-assured client they'd be expecting. I'd have to be able to give up my fears that she feels her own professional status is being questioned because she's with a client as hopelessly provincial and inept as I'd be. I'd never be able to do that, though. I'd never be able to feel I was good enough to be a FMTY girl's client. 

Sex is aspirational or it's nothing. I wrote that here a long time ago. It's something I've felt since I was in my teens. A key part of sex for me is the set of class markers attached to it.  Classy international companion based in Brussels. Speaks 5 languages and loves cocktails, fine dining, dark humor and books. You see how easily I respond those a description like that-- it offers access to (or at least proximity to) the world I always wanted to live in. 

Perhaps I should re-focus. What I need might actually be a muse, someone who's using her own undoubted professional skills to show me how to handle a menu or a wine steward. What I know I need to do is to not let the world of FMTY girls become the world behind impenetrable glass that reminds me of all my failings.