Four Zero One: Accounts

 I've been away from this blog for far too long, and I apologize for that. The Year Twenty-Six has begun, and it's likely to be just as blighted as the Year Twenty-Five. 

I began this blog so that I could have a place to discuss issues around sex, romance, gender, and courtship. I hoped in those days to be find interlocutors and correspondents with whom I could talk about things like the evolution of erotica as a genre, or the tales we tell each other about sex, or about the social structures of sex. I do remember a time a dozen or so years ago when there were sex blogs and blogs about the semiotics of sex, a time when there were first-person essays out there on the web where people wrote about their own lives and adventures. That all seems very long ago and far away now. 

Now I can understand why no one seems to feel optimistic about sex. It seems that most people are just burnt out these days. Politics has become exhausting, the economy is precarious, and tonight we're keeping one eye on the newsfeeds in preparation for a new war in the Persian Gulf. Sex seems to have devolved into polemics, and seduction and flirtation have been replaced with misogyny and rage-fueled puritanism. 

I have no idea what happened to the idea that sex could be about adventure and fun. I have no idea why and how stories-- telling stories, living lives designed to produce good stories --fell out of fashion. I have very few ideas as to how it's become so dangerous to talk about sex or romance. I do miss the days of the early Noughts and the early 2010s when pleasure and adventure could still be valuable and valued.

It's been a very long time since any lovely young companion has sat with me over drinks and laughed and told me about her adventures. It's been a long time since flirtation has been regarded as a charming social game, and an even longer time since seduction has been regarded as a kind of art form and a game both parties could play and enjoy. It seems that all seduction and flirtation had been reduced to a glum (and grim) set of late-capitalist maneuvers. Crypto scammers posing as "dating coaches" tell us to do "negging" as a way to humiliate women and bully them into joyless sex. There's less and less sense of play, delight, ritual, and fun out there.

I don't want to leave this site, and I do want to be able to talk about sex in its social and aesthetic and literary forms. I keep hoping that I'll be able to exchange thoughts here with a gently raised eyebrow or a knowing smile or a sense of puzzled yet amused irony.

I hope that we're not all so burnt out that we fall into bitter and exhausted puritansm.