Three Six Eight: Cafe

 This morning I was at a downtown coffee shop very early. I settled in at a corner table with a book or two and my Moleskine and ordered a large flat white and a croissant. 

I'd been there long enough to be on my second cup of coffee when two lovely girls came in. I do love early Sunday mornings downtown. The streets are empty, but flights of lovely girls do appear-- co-eds from the university, travelers from the downtown hotels, residents of the new condos going up as part of downtown renovation. A friend of mine calls the latter group The Gentrifiquettes; I think of them as the Mini-Sundress and Ray-Bans Brigade. 

The two girls who came in were...a delight to the eye and to my particular imagination. Both tall and very slim, streaked-blonde hair  down past their shoulder blades, long dark-tanned legs, short shorts, and cowboy boots. I hadn't seen the short shorts and cowboy boots look in a while. It's a hard look to bring off, really. These two made it work, though. Both girls were wearing boots that had seen some wear-- boots mean for actual riding, not the gaudy kind worn in country-western clubs. Their shorts were faded cut-offs, but not done for a Daisy Dukes look. The country-western cliche would've been for them to wear button-up cotton shirts in a bright plaid. These two were in gauzy ballet-neck tunics with 3/4 sleeves. That was a good fashion touch. I did like the look. Loved those long legs, too. I had to sigh over that.

I had no idea why they were dressed similarly. Roommates? Lovers? Sorority sisters? Best friends? Cyborg assassins from the future? They weren't twins, mind you. Please don't think that. That would've been just a bit de trop, I think.

In a better world, or at least a better story, they'd have ended up talking to me at my table. There's no plausible way to have the story end with them ravishing me in the back seat of their parked Range Rover, but I suppose I could make a story work where the three of us sat and flirted and drank Sunday-morning Mimosas. That would be a story I could tell myself in my head. 

In this world, of course, none of that happened. They were in line to order, and then off to a table across the coffee shop. And I, I sat in my corner and made notes in my Moleskine. I read a bit more in my book-- a biography of the Duke of Marlborough --and then made my way back to my car. Yes, beautiful legs, beautiful profiles. The shorts and boots look was something I recall from long ago, and I do love looks that emphasize long, slender legs. I've been telling myself that neither girl wore anything under those shorts-- that's always my hope, of course. It's something I'll be imagining for days. I'll be imagining them riding horses, too. Thoroughbreds, not Arabians. I have clear opinions about horses as well as fashion. My fantasy life is always very specific. It mattered to be that the two girls had 3/4 sleeves and not simply rolled-back sleeves. 

I'll note here that as a person of the male persuasion, my fantasies have to remain abstract. There are strict limits to what anyone cis-het male can do about his fantasies. The Arbitrary Social Rules are very clear about that. 

The two girls at the coffee shop reminded me of a friend from New Zealand who had an immense collection of sex toys. She was very particular about matching her fantasies to specific toys. I had to admire her obsessiveness. She was forever scrolling through websites for sites similar to Good Vibrations, looking for niche toys for niche fantasies. Again, I admire the obsessiveness, but there's no male equivalent for it. That's an odd thing, really, but there simply aren't any toys that a cis-het male can employ. It's not just that placing one's...person...inside something battery-powered is always a bad idea, it's that the Arbitrary Social Rules barely allow straight males (especially those of a certain age) to have fantasies at all, let alone do something about them with sex toys. That's simply not allowed. 

Well, I did note down the two girls in boots and short shorts there in my Moleskine. I noted those legs-- dark-tanned, long, slender, perfectly sleek --and my hope that the girls were properly underwear-averse. I noted that they'd done well with their tunics-- the look was far more Posh Hippie than Slutty Farmgirl (call it a Coachella Girl look). I'll never see the two of them again, and I know nothing about them that I didn't create out of my own imagination. Those long legs will stay in my memory, but it'll all be very abstract. 

I can file the morning's vision under Things Noted In Passing. 

Three Six Seven: Observers

 It's been a while since I've had stories to tell you here. I want you to know that I apologize for that. Stories mean a lot to me. They always have. 

Stories are histories of lives, of the other lives that I, a flaneur-at-arms, move through. They're the lives that I see but never quite belong to. Over the last few years we've had a world where the pandemic and awful politics have made stories (or at least the kinds of stories that I've recounted here) seem trivial or obsolete. Stories of sex and sexual adventures are out of fashion. More's the pity of course. Sex has lost the tang of adventure and become all about abuses of power. It's not been a good time to be a roue.

This summer has been exhaustingly hot. Here in my own lost city, we've had more than a month of blindingly white sun and no rain, of days like ovens. There's no relief to be found in swimming pools-- every pool's a hot tub this summer --and it's too hot for afternoons in bed with a lovely young companion. There are leggy co-eds on the downtown street in tiny shorts (but not miniskirts-- I wonder why not) but they all look wilted and deeply drained. My own thought is that here under the Heat Dome, we're in the Burmese version of Hell-- a place too hot even if you've been through Rangoon in the summer.

However, I do have one story. A friend and I were talking by telephone the other night, each of us in the air-conditioned dark of our respective cities, and she did tell me a story. We were talking about the idea of consent, about the idea of past experiences that came right up to the line of something awful...but didn't quite cross over into a true-crime tale.

Her story was simple enough. She was still sixteen, not quite seventeen, in the summer between Grade 11 and senior year. She was with her parents at a rented condo on the beach. She was deeply, gnawingly bored. She spent her days getting away from her family, reading, walking along the beachfront, becoming tanned in that Deepest South way, and sneaking drinks. It wasn't hard to get alcohol where she was, and she was usually pleasantly buzzed before noon. I know the place she'd been at, and she would've been one of scores of girls her age doing exactly the same thing. There hadn't been any boys she'd wanted to flirt with, and there hadn't been any summer flings. She was in fact still a bookish virgin. 

She was on a bench by the beachfront one morning very early when she was approached by what she still calls "an older gentleman". She was reading when he came up. She told me that the "older gentleman" (and here "older" seems to have meant something like sixty) was pleasant enough, and sounded shy. He called her "Miss". He was reasonably well-dressed. He told her that it was a delight to see a young lady as pretty as she was so early in the day and asked about the book she was reading. My friend just smiled politely and thanked him for the compliment. They chatted for a moment about the book and then he asked her if she'd be offended at a question. She just shrugged.

He told her, a bit apologetically, that he thought she had very lovely legs and asked if she minded if he looked at them. My friend told me that she thought that was more hilarious than creepy and told him she didn't mind. She thought about asking if he wanted her to strike modeling poses. She didn't, she told me, feel threatened as much as she just felt like she was part of a comedy bit. Why not play along? She was wearing a short sundress and sandals, so she just crossed and uncrossed her legs a few times and stretched her legs out on the bench. She asked how she was doing.

He told her that her legs were amazing, and that he appreciated what she was doing. It had been, he said, a very long time since anyone like her had let him look at her. At that point he shyly (he called her "Miss" again) asked for a favor. He told her how lonely he was, and told her that if she was willing, he'd sit on the next bench over and just...look. He wouldn't touch her, he said, and he wouldn't come any closer than the next bench. All he wanted, he said, was to look and, well, pleasure himself.

My friend said that she was well aware that she was supposed to be angry and/or horrified , and that she was supposed to run away. She didn't feel preyed upon, though. What surprised her was that she didn't feel anything at all, really. She told the man that, okay, sure, that was fine. He'd be on another bench, and she'd be reading. It wasn't, she told me, like she had to really do anything.

So she put her legs up on the beach and just...read. She could tell that he had his hand inside his shorts and that at least for a while, he was exposed. The thing was, she told me, that he wasn't really part of her day. The book meant something to her, but the older gentleman was just a figure on another bench. There was no one else around, which made it all easier. It was only later that she wondered if the man had wanted to be caught or slapped or chased away. Was he, she asked, maybe disappointed at her for not yelling at him and threatening to call the police?

He spoke to her very briefly. He asked her to pose a bit ("would you mind very much...?") and draw one knee up, and to turn a bit to the side. He apologized and asked if she was wearing anything under her sundress. She barely looked over her sunglasses and told him underwear, but no bra. He didn't ask her to open her legs, though she did laugh and tell him that what she was wearing was a cotton thong in pale peach. She could hear him, but said it wasn't moaning or gasping-- just soft sighs. Telling the story to me now, she said that if he'd asked her to pull up her dress a bit, she might have. Maybe. She wondered, too, why he hadn't asked her to kick off her sandals. Her later experiences with older men had taught her that any man over forty either had or was developing a foot fetish. 

She wasn't sure exactly when he finished, but when he did he leaned forward and took a moment to get his wind back. She didn't get to see any evidence of what he'd done. She put down her book and asked him if he was okay. He nodded and stood up and thanked her several times. She crossed her legs to let him have a memory of her legs up to her mid-thighs and told him that she hoped he'd enjoyed himself. He told her he had and this meant a lot. He reached out to shake her hand. That was the only time he touched her. They shook hands and he went off down the beachfront walk. She never saw him again.

She wanted to pull out her phone and tell...someone. But she didn't. There wasn't any way to tell the story that didn't make it seem really true-crime creepy or, worse, funny in a sad way. She felt, she said, sorry for the man. Was he really lonely and just desperate for some kind of sexual interaction or did he just ask a different girl to do this every day? She wanted to believe he was just desperately lonely-- he'd certainly seemed genuine enough in his shyness --and however pervy the whole thing had been, she didn't want to laugh at the man. She ended up not telling anyone until she was at university, and the hardest thing, she said, was making it very clear that she hadn't felt violated and that she hadn't felt angry or contemptuous. 

The whole experience, she said, was maybe ten minutes or so out of her life. She hadn't had to do anything; no one had touched her. It made her feel like she'd become someone who had a story to tell, and that was good. But she wasn't sure how to present the story, or quite what to make of it. Nothing bad, she said. All that had happened was that someone had said he liked her legs and that she'd read a book while on a park bench. A decade later, she said, and she still wasn't sure what the story should mean.

Three Six Six: Algorithm

I spent time the other night wandering through PornHub. I'm not a great fan of PornHub, and I'm not sure exactly what I was looking for. There are half a dozen actresses in porn that I have any interest in, and I'm far more familiar with them from their interviews than I am with their actual work. That's something that shouldn't surprise you. I spend more time listening to interviews with porn actresses than I ever have watching porn itself. Watching Kenzie Taylor interview Kenna James means far more to me than watching actual scenes with either. 

In any case, PornHub's algorithm  suggested various video clips to me. I noted that a number of the clips came from a studio called ATK. I'm guessing that ATK stands for "All The Kink". Or maybe "Kinks". If I'm wrong about that, please let me know. I scanned through the suggestions and did a quick tour of the clips. All I can say is that I sighed and shrugged.

Most of the "kinks" in ATK films are...well...boring. The things they're describing as out-of-the-ordinary, shocking, or transgressive really aren't.  There were MILF videos with lactating actresses having sex-- which has been done before --and lots of "stepsister" videos that lack the dialogue needed to really explore the emotional complexities and allure of pseudo-incest. No s/m, really-- that did surprise me. But I suppose that in a world terrified of any suggestion of abuse or lack of consent, s/m has fallen out of Gen Z favor. There were also a number of "hairy" videos, which I think shouldn't be read as transgressive by Gen Z viewers, since unshaven legs and underarms wouldn't be shocking in the Gen Z world. There didn't seem to be any foot fetish videos, even though girl-on-girl foot fetish was touted a couple of years ago as being the Next Big Kink.  

Strangely enough, only the lesbian piss fetish videos had any sense of transgression or erotic potential. I don't quite know what to make of that. At least the actresses in those clips were rather hot, and they did seem to have a sense of doing something that felt risky and wicked. I did stop to ponder the question of how piss-fetish actresses are hired. Are there specialist agents for kink? Are the actresses told before-hand what's expected of them? How is doing piss-fetish videos regarded in the porn world-- what's the social status attached to doing them? Do actresses negotiate before the shoot ("You can get it in my hair, but I won't swallow")?  Are there showers available on set? Do you have to bring a change of clothes? 

This of course is part of my own failure at being part of the kink world. Yes, those videos did have more erotic energy than the others, but what caught my interest was (inevitably) the backstage / backstory questions. What's the underlying history of what we're watching? And what are viewers supposed to feel while watching? Are they supposed to be excited by two hot young actresses defying social conventions? Are they supposed to be thrilled by seeing two hot young actresses do things that can be regarded as degrading to themselves and each other? Is misogyny the underlying idea here? 

Yes, I do want to see Kenzie Taylor use her podcast ("The Sauce") to interview these actresses and talk about the whole piss kink. Ms. Taylor is a good interviewer, and I'd very much like to see what she could get piss-fetish actresses to talk about in terms of what the semiotics of the videos might be.

The other thing that caught my interest during my tour of ATK videos was what are called JOI clips. I'm guessing that JOI stands for "Jerk Off Instructions", So this should be self-explanatory. A JOI clip is an actress looking into the camera and giving instructions...or commands...to the viewer. Okay, fine. But my expectation would be that the video would be done to offer enticement, to make the viewer feel like he's having a hot girl tell him that she knows he wants to masturbate and that she wants him to do it. But none of the clips offered up were like that. They were all harsh, mocking, and based on ridicule. The viewer was mocked for needing to use the video, told that he was a perv, a failure, a loser. A couple of the actresses were Eastern European, and their accents were highlighted to play on...well...some Cold War dominatrix trope. 

There was one clip where a very lovely British girl  showed off unshaven blonde underarms and went from a very polite, quiet posh-girl voice introducing herself to a snarling, taunting monologue about how disgusting all the "pit pervs" watching the video were. My question was of course...why?  Is masochism such an integral part of male masturbation?  Is male masturbation really regarded as that pathetic and disgusting? Are all male viewers supposed to be ashamed of themselves for liking what's defined as kink? Why were the JOI videos so...hostile?

I have always been attracted to the idea of kink, to the idea of ritualized, abstracted, probably transgressive sex. But the kink that the ATK algorithm offered up was either boring (no inventiveness, nothing really out of the ordinary) or based on the idea of taunting and ridiculing the viewer for being there to watch the video. I'm out of the loop on this. I continue to feel that I'm losing any grasp of what's happening the worlds of erotica.