tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35608496448158126172024-02-19T21:24:42.730-08:00A Rebours: Notes of an Aging RouéExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.comBlogger375125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-7793141978935159512024-02-18T10:24:00.000-08:002024-02-19T21:20:53.404-08:00Three Seven Four: Notes<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> Once upon a time Liberty and I were sitting on the porch steps of a weekend cottage we'd rented by a river in the hills. It was an autumn morning, and we were drinking coffee while there still mist outside. She was wearing nothing but one of my pullover sweaters-- I remember that -- and leaning back with her legs stretched out. I traced a finger along her leg and she laughed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Her last older man, she said, had always liked her in anything that showed off her legs. A beautiful young girl, he'd told her, should always sit in one of two ways in a skirt-- legs crossed to show off how long they were, or else slightly parted so that she'd be a bit on display, so she'd be aware that strangers could tell she wasn't wearing underwear. I remember kissing her knee and telling her that I agreed with that. She sat up and kept her legs apart. No problem, she told me. She disliked ever wearing underwear anyway, and she liked having me look at her. What she wondered, she said, was about why her last older man had wanted her on display for strangers. It wasn't that she minded that so much, but she questioned whether he'd wanted others to see her to show them that she was there as his sex toy or that he wanted her to be aware of and excited by being on display. Older men, she grinned, all had very precise interests. She raised an eyebrow and looked at me for comments.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I told her that I understood. I liked being able to look at her, and I liked knowing that she was available to be seen and touched. And if she was sitting there, legs a bit parted, she'd be aware of her vulnerable she was. She nodded-- older men liked her to seem vulnerable. She was twenty-three that autumn, and she laughed about that. Maybe two or three more years, she said, maybe two or three more years when she could still be a young girl who could be corrupted and violated. After that, she said, she'd have to act like a grown-up woman, and she had no idea how sex and sex play went with adulting.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Older men, she said, had always been something she'd liked, all the way back to the kayak shop owner when she was a teen in the Pacific Northwest. Older men were something she could learn from, and she liked that-- learning things, having someone teach her things. Kayaking, rock climbing, art, books-- she wanted to learn about things and try being something or someone new all the time. That went for sex, too. Older men were the sounding boards who showed all kinds of pleasures and games and things to explore. <i>That,</i> she told me, was what I was there for. I had to be flattered by the vote of confidence. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The older man before that, before the one who'd taught her to sit open-thighed, was a foot fetish devotee. She grinned and told me that she pretty much believed that older men were always into feet. Not that she minded, she said. It was an easy fetish for her, since she'd grown up barefoot half the time anyway. Her foot fetish man had paid for lots of expensive pedicures for her, too. And having her toes sucked and her feet and ankles licked felt nice. Foot jobs were fun to do, she told me, especially with uncircumcised men. The only thing she didn't understand, she said, was why a lot of foot fetish play that she found at places like PornHub seemed to be about submission and domination. She didn't think her older man was creepy about the fetish, and she didn't feel like she needed to play the domme and order him around. He enjoyed it, she liked the way what he did for her felt, and just asking for something was always better than ordering someone around. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I remember her looking at me with a raised eyebrow then. She told me that when I wanted to blindfold her or tie her wrists, or play with a riding whip, I'd just ask. Or she could ask me to do it to her. Neither of us needed to play at domination, let alone humiliation. She was much more submissive than dominant by nature, but while she liked being a bottom, she never understood humiliation as sex.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">She asked me if I ever wanted to suck her toes or lick her feet, and I just shrugged. If she asked, I told her, I'd do it. I was, after all, her current official evil older predator, and I was open to whatever she wanted to try. <i>Good</i>, Liberty said. She expected her older men to teach her things and she expected them never to be afraid or ashamed to explore things with her. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">She opened her legs a bit more and grinned at me. What she liked, she said, was that attitude. I'd been good at creating scenarios for us, and she liked that. I'd been good at playing faux-nonconsensual games, too. She liked that about older men-- the being able to understand about faux-nonconsensual sex. Boys her own age, she said, knew nothing about games and irony. Sex, she said, was about pleasure and having fun. She didn't need people who were grindingly earnest about sex, or about anything else, in her life. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i>I make notes about you</i>, Liberty told me. <i>You're in my journal</i>.<i> I expect you to show me things</i>. I remember that, and I was proud of it. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i>Keep sitting like that</i>, I told her. <i>Especially in public</i>. <i>Keep avoiding underwear. And I'll think of things</i>. <i>I will work at that</i>. <i>I know my role.</i> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Liberty is someone I do still think about. I remember the stories she told me and the things she and I explored. I do have to write about her more.</span></p><p><br /></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-27135344817941617762024-02-07T18:41:00.000-08:002024-02-19T21:24:11.676-08:00Three Seven Three: Guidelines<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Last time, I wrote about my anxieties over the idea of FMTY Girls. Please be very certain that I'm talking here about hypothetical situations. I'll never be in a financial position where I could afford the services of one of the FMTY Girls on Twitter. I'll never really be in the geographical position to access the services of an FMTY Girl. My city is off the tour circuit for FMTY Girls, and I'd never be able to afford the fees necessary to persuade an FMTY Girl that I'm <i>vaut un detour</i>. This essay recognizes those facts very clearly. This is about a hypothetical world, not about this one.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Please don't think that I spend my evenings obsessing over the Twitter feeds of FMTY Girls. My Twitter reading is largely about history, architecture, and literature. But I do see feeds by lovely passport-ready escorts and I recognize my own failings. I might-- <i>might</i> --be able to afford the professional services of a local escort, but I wouldn't know where to begin. And, yes, I'd feel many of the same anxieties.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Last weekend I did what everyone does about needed information these days-- I went to YouTube and looked for information on how to seek out paid companionship and how to behave on a date with a companion. In case you're wondering, there are videos devoted to exactly those issues. I'm rather impressed with that. YouTube videos have taught me how to open an Opinel knife (i.e., how to do the <i>coup de Savoyard</i>), how to properly cook a veal chop, and how to reset the oil warning light on my vehicle. And now I could, at least in theory, learn how to behave with a high-end escort.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>Companion</i>. My apologies-- the preferred term is <i>companion</i>. I understand that. It's the same usage as the ancient Greek <i>hetaira</i>-- which is <i>companion</i> also. I like <i>companion</i> as a term, and it certainly catches a very large part of what I'm looking for. And I have to laugh here. What I'm hearing in my head is a moment in "The Rings of Power" where Adar corrects Galadriel when she calls him an orc: "<i>Uruk</i>. <i>We prefer <u>uruk</u>." </i>(Oh, yes, I liked "The Rings of Power; Adar was my favourite character) </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">There was one video that I liked a lot. It was by a woman with certification as a sex therapist and a graduate degree in psychology. She talked about how paid companionship could have positive effects for some male patients, and she gave very good, very practical advice about being with a Companion. Let's be clear that I have no problems with her video. Be polite, be respectful, pay your fee up front, be honest about what you're looking for, treat a Companion just as you'd treat any skilled professional. Simple things, and practical. But again, not something that addresses my anxieties.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">There was still no advice as to what to do about Impostor Syndrome, about the feeling that you're not good enough for an FMTY Girl, even if you could afford the fees without blinking. I keep looking at my wardrobe and thinking that any FMTY Girl would be ashamed to be seen with me. My thought is that being seen in public with me would lower her reputation in her own profession and might put off potential clients. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Videos put up at YouTube by working Companions are all designed to allay male fears. The male viewer is assured that with a Companion he won't be judged or mocked for his performance or his body. The Companion is there, the male viewer is assured, to provide services. She doesn't judge, and her skills include making the client feel like he's appreciated. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">That may or may not be true. But while I'd certainly meet certain requirements for behavior-- personal hygiene, of course, and treating my provider with respect --I'd never be able to move from dinner table to bedroom. And I'm not sure I'd know what to do at dinner. I know which fork to use, but I'm not a gourmand and I'd panic at the wine list. I'd be terrified that my provider would instantly assume that if I didn't know what I was doing at dinner, I wouldn't know what to do in bed. I'd assume that she was sighing to herself and lamenting that I was going to require <i>effort</i> on her part.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>Be honest with your provider; tell your provider exactly what you're looking for</i>. That's excellent advice. But I'd be too afraid to take it. Any fantasies or tastes I might have would be either too boringly vanilla or too annoyingly strange. In any case, my provider would have to expend thought and effort on me. I'd be desperately ashamed to be thought either too boring or too pervy. I'd never be the kind of challenge that might make her want to deploy all her skills. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Yes, I know. I'd be a paying client; it would be her job to provide services. But any skilled professional, from accountant to zither-player, wants to know that her skills are properly appreciated. I wouldn't be someone who could do that. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I suppose that it might never get to the dinner date, let alone the bedroom. Even if I had the money for her fee, dinner, hotel room, and tip there's still the "screening" hurdle. I'd never make that. I'm not even sure what "screening" would entail. Whatever it is, it wouldn't be good. It would be too revealing in too many ways. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The days of CraigsList are long gone, as the days of Nerve.com personals. The same anxieties would apply there, too, mind you. Let's be clear on that. I'd never pass the screening. And I'd feel like the girl across the table had sought an Adventure and had only found...me. Well, at least a girl from a personals ad would feel to just walk away. Painful and humiliating for me, yes, but at least it would be done quickly. A Companion, a provider, might feel that since she'd accepted the fee, she was obligated to grit her teeth and go through with the contract. I'd probably be able to tell, and I'd feel both humiliated and ashamed to have ruined the working evening for her.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I do have copies of my briefing document. Yes, I did draft one. And of course the preference points all come with inbuilt apologies. I'd never have the courage to ask for what I'd want, even if I were paying for it. I'd never know how to behave with a Companion, never know how to behave so as to help her keep up the experience of the evening. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The YouTube videos were all very practical, very useful. But they don't address my fears. I have no idea how I'd be able to get through an evening with a Companion without disappointing or annoying her, and I'd never be able to ask for the things that might give me pleasure.</span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-46524263965828219842024-01-22T19:53:00.000-08:002024-01-22T19:53:30.321-08:00Three Seven Two: Invitations<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Let's think for a minute. Let's go back to the FMTY girls. We're almost a month into the new year, and at Twitter the FMTY girls are announcing their spring touring schedules. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I live in an older city, one that lives on its reputation for food and music and a certain louche attitude. It has its charms, and it has a fascinating history, but it's usually off the FMTY tour circuit. In some ways I suppose that's best. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I have an idea about the fee schedules for the FMTY girls, and I have an idea about what the incidental expenses would be-- the restaurant, the wines, and the tip. But purposes of this essay, let's assume that I could pay those amounts with the snap of a finger. Let's assume that tonight I'm sitting at a good restaurant with an FMTY girl who meets all my criteria of desire. Let's go a bit farther and assume I've passed her screening procedures and that I've been dressed and groomed to be socially presentable. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">So, here we are. Dinner has been ordered, wine has been poured. I was brought up to be polite in a quietly old-school way, and her professional skills include making her clients feel at ease. So she and I are making conversation. And then...what happens?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">This could become an issue-- which of us moves the conversation into the realm of seduction? Which of us gently nudges the evening toward a bedroom? I have no idea how that would work. I've read FMTY girls' Twitter posts where they've noted that it's irritating and annoying to have a client openly press for leaving the restaurant for the hotel room. The girl has been working hard to establish herself as a Companion, as someone who can create an elegant scene-- a client just saying something like, "Well, it's half past nine, let's get naked" is simply brushing off her professional skills.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">But how does this work? I've had dinners with young ladies who've been seductive. I've had fingertips traced over the back of my hand while he talked. I've had a slender bare foot traced along my leg under the table. I mean, that's been a while, but it has happened. Somehow I wouldn't expect the FMTY girl to nod towards the street door and say, "Let's see your hotel room" (let alone "Come see the rooftop pool where I'm staying"). Yes, there's the issue of the ticking clock. There's always that. My fee covers her presence at dinner and in the bedroom, and the evening's clock is ticking. But reminding her of that is crass and vulgar. It sounds...<i>entitled. </i>This is the third decade of the new century, and <i>entitled</i> is just about the worst thing a person of the male persuasion can be seen as being. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I have no idea how I'd raise the issue of going to bed. We'd both of us know that a hotel bed is supposed to be the climax of the evening. She may even have been provided with a briefing document about my interests and tastes. But I have no idea how to get from table to bed. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Last Saturday I had my hair cut. My cutter has known me since we were both young. We even dated briefly back in the depths of the Long Ago. I trust her skills and professional knowledge absolutely. When I go to her home studio to have my hair cut, we have coffee or tea and talk books and films, then she moves me along to the various stops in the process-- shampoo, cut, a brief demonstration of her future plans for my hair style and of what I need to do to maintain the style. I make conversation; I have input into the music she has playing (last Saturday: Morcheeba). But she moves me along very efficiently, and with practiced ease. I have to admire that.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I wouldn't know what to do on an evening with an FMTY girl. I'd like to put myself completely in her hands and rely on her to guide me through what would be a learning experience. Being with an FMTY girl would be something I'd do for the experience, for the taste of a better world. It would be something that I'd do for the chance to be guided through the mazes of class and style around sex, decor, restaurants, and social presentation. I'd be terrified of showing myself to be incapable of being part of that world. I wouldn't want to be seen as failing at a sentimental education. A beautiful, skilled demimondaine is not someone I'd want to disappoint, and certainly not someone whose mockery I'd want to risk.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Right now I'm thinking of the last girl whom I walked from my sitting room into my bedroom. That wasn't hard. We'd met one summer Saturday. She'd just graduated university, and we ordered lots of classic cocktails and laughed and flirted. She came back to my flat, went out to the courtyard swimming pool with me, and drank with me in my kitchen. At some point we looked at one another and I nodded to my bedroom. It all felt effortless. She was in a mood to experiment with things, and as her first Older Gentleman I counted as that. And it was a Saturday late afternoon-- I think that mattered, too. Again-- it all felt effortless and fluid. We laughed about that, about one thing flowed into another that afternoon. But it wouldn't be like that with an FMTY girl.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Yes-- the FMTY girl would get a briefing document about my interests. And the document would note that while I always encourage young ladies to avoid underwear and to always sleep naked, she would never see me naked. That would break the spell of the evening. Whatever skills she might have, however open about bodies she might be-- she'd never see me naked. That would break the spell. Her body would be there to be admired, caressed, valued. But I'd never want her to have to <i>tolerate </i>my body. I'd never want her to have to grit her teeth on the walk from restaurant to bedroom.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I'd never know what to say to an FMTY girl. I'd want the evening to feel seductive, to be about mannered seduction. I'd want the sex to be stylized and its transitions to feel fluid. I'd be terrified to end up sitting there staring at my plate or at the wine bottle, frozen with fear of doing this wrong, of getting it wrong. I'd be afraid of disappointing a skilled demimondaine. I'd be terrified of not being good enough to understand the nuances of her skills. I'd be terrified of looking like a rube or a yokel. I'd be ashamed of wasting the FMTY's evening. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Whenever I've engaged the services of a professional-- a tax accountant, a successions lawyer, a physician --I've always felt able to explain very directly what I wanted, and I've felt entitled to ask questions. But I couldn't do that with an FMTY girl. I'd feel far too judged. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Now it's possible that I could carry on a conversation. I have stories to tell; I was trained to be a decent dinner party guest. I might even be able to discuss topics that wouldn't bore her. But I couldn't negotiate the shift from dinner to bedroom. I wouldn't even know how to bring up the topic. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Any of you out there over the aether-- whether or not you know anything about the FMTY demimonde --if you're reading this, what do <i>you</i> think? If we assume that I had the money and the decent attire and that I could pass an FMTY girl's screening protocols... If we assume those things, then-- what should I do. However do I end up able to transition back to the hotel? How would I avoid sitting there staring at an empty plate in a conversational void? How would I avoid the girl's contempt as the clock ticks down?</span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-14609637130428615472024-01-02T17:26:00.000-08:002024-01-02T17:26:56.896-08:00Three Seven One: Library<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Here we are at the very beginning of the year 2024.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I haven't been here in too long, and I apologize for that. I have no idea who if anyone reads this out over the aether, but if you're reading this, you do have my apologies. I've been away from this blog for too long, and I want to make 2024 a year where I spend more time here.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I'd like to spend some time this year focusing on fantasies-- what they are, how they evolve, how they're used. I'd like to focus, too, on what they mean. Note that I'm not using "mean" in any Freudian sense. I'd like to focus on what it means that we need fantasies, and on how (if at all) they relate to individual lives. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Consider the sentence beginning <i>"I am not my</i>..." Consider all the things that can complete the sentence. Well, <i>fantasies</i> is one possible word. So I'd like to spend some time examining that version of the sentence. Are we our fantasies? Should we be "accountable" (a word I really hate) for our fantasies? How much are we defined by our fantasies? I want to think about those things and write about them during the year. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">But in the meantime, let's start the year with a few books that I'll recommend. Some are older, yes, but there are libraries and interlibrary loan systems. If you read any of them, please do tell me what you think.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">1. Robert Hellenga, "The Sixteen Pleasures". A very clever and often very hot literary mystery set in Florence in the mid-1960s. The McGuffin here is a 16th-c. book of erotica with engravings of the sixteen sexual positions supposedly most likely to give pleasure to women. Late Renaissance Italian history, erotica, and antique books-- how could I <i>not</i> like this book?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">2. Georges Bataille, "The Story of the Eye". Okay, now-- a work of French surrealist s/m erotica. It's considered one of the most bizarre novels of the last century. It has madness, s/m, slapstick comedy, and lots of sex involving eggs. I don't know enough about it (or about Bataille) to say whether it's supposed to be a parody of French s/m. It is funny in a perverse way, mind you. And there's a film version from the very early Noughts that I do hope to see one day. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">3. Alec Waugh, "A Spy in the Family". Alec Waugh was the older brother of Evelyn Waugh, and "Spy" is at least as funny as some of the younger Waugh's early comedies. The plot is simple. A late-1960s upper-middle-class young London wife discovers that her boringly vanilla civil servant husband is actually a spy working for MI.6. Somehow she becomes a lesbian dominatrix working for Her Majesty's Secret Service...and really, <i>really </i>likes her job. Some very, very hot moments, some very witty dialogue. This does need to be a film.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">4. Joyce MacIver, "The Exquisite Thing". A largely forgotten s/m coming-of-age novel from c. 1970. There are some very hot sequences, including a stunning scene in a Spanish s/m performance club. MacIver did at least one other book that's worth reading-- a kind of autobiographical novel called "The Frog Pond" that's also an s/m coming-of-age story. I haven't read "The Exquisite Thing" in decades, but the scene in Madrid still haunts me. There's a third book, too, called "Mercy"...which seems to be a Southern gothic Lolita tale. About MacIver herself I know nothing. But do read "The Exquisite Thing" and let me know what you think. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">So...four books for you here at the start of the year. I do hope you'll make a point of reading at least a couple of them. I'd like to be able to discuss them with some lovely young literary girl. And I'd like to know if these four books do anything for your fantasy lives.</span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-68202711711204268842023-12-04T19:40:00.000-08:002024-01-10T19:45:25.357-08:00Three Seven Zero: Domme<p> <span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I've been spending a great deal of time at YouTube, and the other night The Algorithm delivered a recommendation that I needed to see a particular video. Well, fine. The video was an hour-long interview with a woman who calls herself Eva Oh, and I was intrigued.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Eva Oh is a very high-end domme. She seems to be based mostly in Australia, though in the interview she mentioned moving to Britain. She claims very straightforwardly to charge $10,000 a day for her services and to have a very exclusive (if not "closed") book of clients. She also does online classes teaching both potential dommes and potential clients about the procedures and etiquette of the high-end BDSM world. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I have to say that I quickly developed a crush on her. She's Eurasian-- she describes herself as Anglo-Burmese-Chinese-Irish --and she's very lovely. She seems to have moved around a lot as a girl, and her accent is a delight. It sounds like American English overlaying Australian English with dashes of British Received Pronunciation and what I think of as Singapore English. She has an amazing voice-- smoky, alluring, throaty, precise, measured, confident. It's a voice with command presence-- very much so. It's a voice that would never need to be raised to seem powerful. I immediately thought of it as a voice Tywin Lannister would've appreciated. Eva Oh was in a very elegant , body-conscious silk slip dress and heels, and she has long, amazing legs...but it's her voice that caught my fancy. She's very coolly distanced, very precise, very elegant, very aware of irony. I like all those things, but...ah, that voice!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I'll note that she's also starred in a film called "Grief Encounter", about an enigmatic woman who attends strangers' funerals in order to seduce grieving men. I like that as a premise, and I like what the trailers show about the psychological dynamics of what her character does.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Eva Oh's biography online says that she worked as a researcher for a couple of human rights organizations in Asia. I'd probably end up letting my academic side take over and spending much of my $10,000 a day asking about where she went and what her research was about and how it was conducted. I've never been able to get away from being an academic. Even trying to discover if she wore anything at all under that silk slip dress (God, I hope not) would take second place to asking about her methodology in research. That's the way my mind works, alas.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I've always been attracted to BDSM, all the way back to reading "Story of O." when I was far too young. S/M for me has always come with a whole set of class markers, and it's always been what Andrew Holleran called "the intellectuals' fetish". It's a fetish that requires literary references and expensive accoutrements. It's a fetish that requires the ability to create and tell stories. What's S/M without a script, without a set of character backstories? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">My relationships have usually involved S/M overtones. I'm older than my young companions, and I was the eldest sibling in my family...so I'm used to having my way. I spent much of my life as an academic, so I'm used to crafting and telling stories. My young ladies are often comparative lit or French lit majors, and they're used to seeing the world as a set of stories...and used to being mentored by older admirers. So affairs for me have always been very much a sort of creative writing seminar. And Eva Oh seems to be someone who has the ability to do be part of stories and scenarios and character play. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I've never had any particular interest in being submissive, and I'm not someone who feels the need to be "broken down" or punished. So I'm not sure that Eva Oh-- who seems to enjoy psychological games and shaping psychological dynamics --would be a good real-world choice for me, even if I were some tech billionaire or forex trader who could regard $10,000 a day as just a rounding error. Though let's say that I did admire her own accounts of scenarios she's created with her clients, and I am fascinated with her ideas about how to create "headspaces" for clients. My own wish (not quite a fantasy) would be to sit with Eva Oh in some elegant, tiny bar in Melbourne or Singapore and work with her on creating scenarios.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Though let's be honest. I'd probably have the same fear I had about the FMTY girls at Twitter. Would my particular interests seem good enough to her? Would I be good enough to be her client-- to be worth her time and effort, even if I paid in advance? Would I be a project worth her time?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The scenarios wouldn't involve the usual BDSM things, but they would involve complicated scenarios and a fluidity of control. In my own life, as I've said before, my pleasures happen behind my eyes. It's always been very difficult for me to pass control over from my thoughts to my body. It's never been easy to release myself and just experience sensations. I always have to have a script (or at least an outline), and I always have to have a very literary ambience. I could never afford Eva Oh, and I could likely never explain myself properly even if did have the ability to move funds over the aether to her offshore accounts. But the idea is there. Maybe a domme has the auxiliary skills to let me finally feel something outside my own head-- the necessary skills at character creation, scriptwriting, and finding out what's actually going on behind my eyes.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I also found a platform called Soft White Underbelly that had an interview with a young (twenty-five or twenty-six) domme who called herself Monique. She's not anywhere near Eva Oh's price-point, and she's very...American: Los Angeles by way of Minnesota. Very tall (six foot two), very slender, very pretty in a kind of angular way. I liked her interview a lot, liked her attitude and laugh. Monique is very like many of the girls I've sat with at off-campus or hipster-enclave bars down the years, and of course I loved the idea of how long her legs were, and I loved the way you see her hipbones just above her low-rise jeans. Very, very kissable legs, and the sort of dry humor I like. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">She did talk about how it mattered to her that her clients were able to feel a sense of freedom around her and how she was open to adventures and experiments. I could imagine her as someone I could talk to about my needs and hopes and interests and not feel that I might be...boring. I'd have a drink with Monique and simply...discuss prices and services without feeling like someone trying to hire a top-end DC or Manhattan lawyer to represent him in a minor car crash. Monique might be someone I could talk to and feel like I might be an adventure rather than a psychological experiment or corporate project for her. No wire transfers to banks overseas, but I would be happy to bring cash. I suspect she wouldn't be as coolly precise about things as Eva Oh, but she might be less likely to judge the decor in my flat. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">And I suspect Monique might be someone with whom I could be more open. She'd be easier to just look at at say, "Well, I've always wanted to be able to just feel something, or just lose myself in something other than books and movies." Maybe. Maybe.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Well, these days I lack the money and the ability to do anything FMTY...or to be on an aeroplane to anywhere. And I'm really not sure just what I'd say to either Monique or Eva Oh. Monique, though...I'd love to hear that laugh while I was kissing her hipbones and thighs. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-79182447880527883842023-09-30T16:42:00.003-07:002023-09-30T16:42:28.383-07:00Three Six Nine: Catalogs<p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I do receive email from a couple of high-end sex toy shops out there over the aether. </span> <span style="font-family: verdana;">I signed up for them </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">largely as a source for gifts to young ladies of my acquaintance. They've been useful for that, though I want to note that there is something very depressing about shopping for sex toys. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It isn't that the recipients haven't liked them. It's not that at all. Young ladies have been amused, aroused, and often quite grateful for the gifts. After all, any educated young lady here in the third decade of the new century is likely to appreciate a Lelo vibrator or a set of masks and blindfolds. Ben-wa balls remain a classic gift as well.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">But there's something depressing about it all. A high-end sex toy shop (let's say, e.g., Good Vibrations) has nothing really to offer males. Lovely and adventuresome young ladies can experiment with sex toys and feel empowered. There's no male equivalent for that. Sex toys nominally designed for males are depressing things. They lack any sort of erotic allure, and they all seem to symbolize failure.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Consider the so-called Fleshlight. There's no equivalence with a Lelo vibrator. The Lelo enhances pleasure. It teaches young ladies how to make their bodies respond. It can be used on a lovely girl by a partner. A Fleshlight, though, is a clear symbol of failure. A male user is inserting himself in a vibrating tube because he's incapable of having a partner. A girl can use a Lelo on herself while describing sensations to a partner. A male with a Fleshlight has nothing erotic to say, and almost by definition he has no one to say it to.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I cannot imagine using any of the "For Him" toys in the Good Vibrations catalog. I cannot imagine placing my person-- my ummm...<i>parts</i> --in some kind of battery-operated sheath. The thought of putting myself into some electrically-powered cylinder (or putting some electrical appliance <i>into</i> my body) is rather terrifying. And I'm certainly not about to put my <i>parts </i>into something powered by clockwork mechanisms. That would be...well, just <i>no</i>. I'm not about to risk some electrical mishap, let alone some mechanical failure, just to use an item that tells the world that I'm a social and sexual failure. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The only sort of sex toy that I can imagine using wouldn't be a sheath or cylinder (all too reminiscent of jokes about watermelons or pies or pieces of liver). It could only be some kind of cyberpunk headset that would act directly on my brain. Something that would trigger pleasure impulses and sensations in my brain would have a sci-fi air about it. It wouldn't be about some battery-powered tube. It wouldn't touch anything near one's <i>parts</i>. It would be about neuroscience and maybe virtual reality. It wouldn't seem so much about physical failure. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">By the way, you get extra points if you can identify the liver and pie references. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Male pleasure remains a source of derisive, contemptuous amusement. Males pleasuring themselves are risible. The very idea draws cruel mockery. No young lady has to face derision for using a Lelo. Male pleasure has no sense of adventure attached. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I can give gifts designed to enhance pleasure, but there is no plausible way I could receive a gift designed to enhance my own pleasure. I can't even think of a way to discuss the topic with a young lady of my acquaintance. We really have no present set of talking points for male pleasure, and no hi-tech work being done to create male pleasure enhancers that don't make one a sad joke. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-62144009192355608062023-08-27T18:20:00.003-07:002023-08-27T18:20:42.376-07:00Three Six Eight: Cafe<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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 <u><i>not</i></u> 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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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 <i>de trop</i>, I think.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I can file the morning's vision under Things Noted In Passing. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-56773839289081381842023-08-26T14:48:00.003-07:002024-01-10T19:53:58.288-08:00Three Six Seven: Observers<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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 <u><i>quite</i></u> cross over into a true-crime tale.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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 <i><u>do</u></i> anything.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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 <i>wanted</i> 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?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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.</span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-61839854638716465712023-08-06T20:26:00.001-07:002024-01-13T20:25:23.182-08:00Three Six Six: Algorithm<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">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...<i>why</i>? 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?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I have always been attracted to the<i> idea</i> 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.</span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-81522323257081238472023-07-25T20:42:00.004-07:002023-10-07T06:27:55.967-07:00Three Six Five: Stars<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> <span>I've been spending time at Twitter looking at the Twitter feeds by FMTY girls. That's a depressing thing, but this summer has been deeply depressing. Depressing personally, yes, and of course this is the summer of the Heat Dome. There's no reason at all to go outside, so staying the air-conditioned dark and reading FMTY Twitter feeds isn't such a bad option.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">When I'm playing the flaneur at Twitter these days, I look at the Twitter accounts run by various FMTY Girls and just sigh. It's not so much that I could never afford a FMTY Girl. That goes without saying. It's also that whenever I look through the tweets of girls who advertise themselves as "dinner dates and travel companions" I realize that I'd feel ashamed to be some lovely escort's dinner date. I wouldn't be good enough to be there with her. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Someone who's taught herself about Michelin stars and tasting menus, someone who's mastered the social graces and the arts of flirtation and seduction, someone who knows how to make charming conversation-- that would be someone whose social value far outpoints mine. I'd feel like I was wasting her time. She would be a professional providing services, but I'd feel like I was someone bringing what should be a Small Claims Court issue to a boutique high-end Manhattan law firm. I'd be wasting everyone's time, really. And she'd know that I was a waste of her talents. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>I think that I have been to a Michelin-star restaurant once or twice in my life. Memory says that I was in my undergraduate days and was willing to spend what little money I had in order to have "experiences". Maybe that was only once, and in some </span><span>long-ago iteration of Manhattan. Maybe I have been in a Michelin-star restaurant. But I'd have been twenty-one and obviously someone trying to have a learning experience. I'd have almost certainly been alone, and it's possible that I had a good experience there because I was young, painfully callow, quiet and polite, and the staff felt kindly-disposed to me some evening. Here in these latter days, I'd have no idea at all what to do if "fine dining" was involved. "Fine dining" with a companion is something that would reduce me to anxiety attacks. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I do recall eating alone at Weibel's Wirsthaus in Vienna. Weibel's may or may not be starred. My memory isn't what it used to be. I recall Weibel's as a classic Vienna city location, but maybe I was at least in my later thirties then. Maybe I was in that zone where I was no longer a boy seeking new experiences, but still not old enough to be empty and bitter.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Never mind FMTY Girls-- right now I'd never waste anyone's time as a dinner date. I don't have anything to offer my date in terms of stories and experiences and conversation. I remain terrified, too, of ordering the wrong thing or using the wrong fork. And of how poorly dressed I'd be. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><span>I have no idea how I'd make conversation with an FMTY dinner date. Look-- I do not get stage fright. I've been spared that. I have walked out in front of a lecture hall filled with a hundred and twenty students and talked and told stories for an hour and a half. I did that for </span><span>years. I have no problem with that. Yet sitting with an FMTY Girl at dinner would be a disaster. The idea is made all the worse in that the FMTY Girl would be someone whose professional skills were designed to put a dinner companion at ease. I'd feel like I was forcing her to <i>try</i> to be pleasant, forcing her to <i>try </i>to put me at ease and bring me into a conversation. I don't want to be someone who requires special handling and special effort to be part of an evening.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I'd suspect that being honest and just telling her that I'd have no menu suggestions and probably couldn't read the menu at a starred restaurant would send red warning lights flashing. A well-trained Companion would grit her teeth and realize that I was going to be <i>work</i> for her. My own response would be to begin randomly apologizing for, well, <i>everything</i>. So many FMTY Girls' Twitter biographies stress that they're knowledgeable about things like finance and government-- they're clearly marketing themselves as Companions who'd be able to have conversations with C-suite men, with men who have the day's ForEx results at their fingertips. I of course know nothing at all about business or finance. The things I know about aren't likely to come up in conversations with people who have actual careers. I'd feel embarrassed at not having anything to say to a Companion who'd be educated and skilled and proud of her knowledge of the world. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I wouldn't be embarrassed to ask about recommendations about the wine list or the menu. But I would be embarrassed that I couldn't appreciate either. I'd be embarrassed that I lack the ability to enjoy myself. These days I think of myself as far more socially awkward than Larry David ever was on "Curb Your Enthusiasm". I suspect I wouldn't even be able to appreciate any seductive wiles an FMTY Girl might deploy, I'd sit there thinking that my age, my body, and my inability to read hints or body language would make me a failure as a client. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I'd like to be a client whose knowledge, presentation, and skills would match any Companion or Provider I might employ. That's unlikely ever to happen. I'd sit there trying desperately to be polite, but knowing that I'd have no more idea how to appreciate a Companion's skills and graces than I'd be able to appreciate the menu items or the wine list. I'd never ask an FMTY Girl to be a "travel companion", since I'd never put a lovely, bright, well-spoken FMTY girl through a week (or even a weekend) with me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Menus, wine lists, and conversation are all beyond me these days.</span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-6882805914714253272023-05-28T18:34:00.003-07:002023-06-02T05:18:47.108-07:00Three Six Four: Ghosts<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I haven't been here in a while, and I do apologize for that. This blog is a project I do want to keep up, and I hope to write here often enough to attract comments and questions.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I'm thinking tonight about ghosts. Not the ghost girls who've been part of my life and still haunt my dreams, but about the ghosts of erotica past.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I've been saying for rather a while now that erotica seems to be fading as a genre. There seems to be less and less erotica available. Porn clips at streaming services, sure. PornHub and its fellows are readily available. But actual erotica-- written or drawn or painted, not put on video or conjured up via AI? The boundaries seem to be shrinking.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I hadn't gone to Literotica for a while-- well, yes, several years --and my thought when I did go back this week was that there seems to be a dearth of new stories. And there seems to be an utter drought of inventive stories. No one seems to be writing anything elegant, transgressive, stylish, powerful. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The boundaries of erotica seem to be collapsing towards the ordinary. What erotica I can find is flat and dull. The link between the erotic and the darkly elegant seems to be broken. Even S/M stories are just...boring. There's no longer an association between S/M (I dislike BDSM as a term) and style and elegance. Where there is any attempt to be transgressive, it veers towards urban punk and not towards decadence. And for me, decadence-- rooted in class and style --was always key.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Tonight I'm thinking of two figures from my past-- Michael Manning and Olivia de Berardinis. Both of them erotic artists whose work meant something to me in the days of my lost youth. Olivia began work in the l970s doing her "O Cards"-- greeting cards with wickedly clever and highly erotic art based in decadence and dark elegance. Michael Manning appeared in the mid-1990s. His work combined goth, manga, cyberpunk, and gender fluidity. I miss both artists.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Olivia's work came under attack in the early '90s, if I recall correctly. A lot of her '70s and early '80s work had references to s/m, certainly, but also clever references to drugs. By the '90s, cocaine was no longer a chic quirk or erotic accessory, but a Social Menace. She was pressured to discard much of her early work, and her work became ever less explicit throughout the '90s. Once upon a time, I'd buy several dozen O Cards at a time, some for my own collection, but most to be sent to lovely young companions during correspondence. That's all gone, now. I have no idea what happened to the O Cards I saved, and there's nothing out there today from her that has the wicked and elegant darkness that her '70s and '80s work had. I've seen interview snippets where she apologizes for the explicitness of her paintings and cards. That's deeply sad.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Michael Manning's graphic novels-- "The Spider Garden", "In a Metal Web", "Hydrophidian", "Illuminagerie", "Tranceptor", etc. --were amazingly erotic and engrossing. His heroines crossed through boundaries of gender and sensation into some very dark and elegant places. He incorporated cyberpunk and biomechanics motifs as well as lovely Oriental architecture. For a while, late in the 1990s, he was with a now-vanished publisher called Eurotica, which is where I discovered his graphic work. But in the world of the Noughts and beyond, he found it increasingly hard to market his work. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The Culture Wars caught up with Michael Manning, I suppose. His version of gender fluidity was based on sci-fi and fetishism rather than trans ideology-- he had characters who were self-described "androgynes", fabulous creatures whose "trans" status meant "trans-human". His androgynes were languid, willowy, goth-Heian, cruel in their beauty, and eerie. That didn't help Manning in the current age. And late-capitalism caught up with him, too. It became harder and harder for him to get credit card transaction companies to process orders. In a world of on-line marketing, he was hamstrung. I haven't seen anything new by him in years. I can look at his "Cathexis" collection and feel like I'm looking at lovely art and wicked stories from a lost age.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">There's less and less erotica out there that wants to take chances. There's less and less erotica that wants to link class, style, and darkness. Experimentation is frowned upon, fetishism (either in the anthropological or the private club sense) is rejected. There's less and less out there that I find erotic. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And so here we are, in the spring of the Year Twenty-Three, focused on politics and economics, and with no interest in the possibilities of the erotic. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-52235348436798620272023-04-15T14:29:00.001-07:002023-04-15T14:29:05.830-07:00Three Six Three: Narration<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The 10 April 23 online edition of "Paris Review" has an article called "On Fantasy" by a woman who's an escort/gallery girl/ conceptual artist who calls herself Sophia Giovannitti. It's about how boring and exhausting male fantasies are, and why all fantasies are pointless and annoying. Consider this incredibly depressing passage:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;"><i>This client also wanted our time together to be cinematic. I suppose all clients do. The first time we met, I was struck by his impulse to narrate what was happening, as though by speaking aloud how good something is one could will it to actually be so. It’s not that it wasn’t good, or was bad—it was just mundane, the way formulaic excess often is</i>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The "impulse to narrate"... Well, there goes my entire life. Narration and curation have been my life-- things written, things lived. If those things are just mundane, I have yet more reasons to stay here in the lakeside flat with my books and my DVD collection.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">The author of "On Fantasy" also uses song lyrics from Cigarettes After Sex in her article. I like the band a lot, and I like their music. Now of course, having read her article, I've been looking at my iTunes and feeling a bit wary of listening to them. I hate losing bands I've liked, and Ms. Giovannitti's article has just taken away Cigarettes After Sex.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Now I do have to ask myself a couple of questions about Ms. Giovannitti. Is her disdain for male fantasies something that derives from her sex work or from her time in the art world? There are two possible kinds of disdain here, and I wish I knew the backstory.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">More to the point, though-- </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>In SoHo, there is a boutique hotel whose rooms are blue. Blue carpet, blue ceiling, blue-patterned sheets. I met a client there several years ago, when I still had short bangs. I wore a vintage skirt-and-top set—black, with colorful flowers—and black lingerie from l’Agent, the now-defunct, less expensive little sister brand to Agent Provocateur. My client wanted our time together to feel like a movie. He didn’t say this, but his behavior made it clear. He booked me for only an hour but wanted an experiential arc: he sat me first in the small living room area of his suite, presenting liquor he had put on ice for me. Music played softly through the room’s sound system: “Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby” by Cigarettes After Sex, a song that I’d only ever heard as the background of a bad television show. He moved me into the bedroom, bantering, as though he had to charm me. I have absolutely no recollection of what he looked like or what his name was. This isn’t because I was seeing so many clients I couldn’t keep track, but because it’s useless information to retain after the fact. I remember how he behaved—the only salient thing—which was annoying, and also standard, fine. I overstayed our appointment because the sex refused to end, as happens often with older men who want to paw at a young woman but don’t quite care whether or not they finish, and certainly not in the allotted time. “Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby” returned to the playlist; it was looping, as was the experience.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And that's deeply depressing. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">We live in an age where The Discourse tells us that male fantasies are by and large boring and that male sex is inherently mediocre. I've been writing down the fantasies I have these days and trying to analyze and critique them. I keep looking for the weak places, for any places that don't seem like they'd interest a partner. I'm inside the fantasies, though, so my views on them are flawed and suspect. But I am and remain afraid that any desires and fantasies I may have would be mediocre and boring. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It's always possible to ask a partner what her own fantasies are. I do that, and I'll always try to act out what she likes. But I am increasingly afraid to tell anyone what I like or what I want to try.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>I played the song for myself after, alone in my own room. A user called “i’m cyborg but that’s ok” had uploaded it to YouTube along with a compilation of scenes from Lost in Translation, a movie I’d never seen but that I knew was about a relationship between a washed-up older man having a midlife crisis and a beautiful young woman. The video compilation looked like an escort advertisement: in the opening scene, Scarlett Johansson sits in a hotel room window wearing only a large men’s shirt—blue—looking down at the wide expanse of Tokyo beneath her; in the next scene, she dives into an enormous, empty hotel pool, at night—the pool and the surrounding windowpanes all blue, too. The images spoke of money and alienation. The song captured the affect of a certain type of client: slightly flat; grasping toward a Daddy-esque certainty but falling short; single-mindedly offering reassurance, but of what he hardly seemed to know. I grew oddly attached to the song and to cyborg’s music video for a period. I would watch it on my way to work, flattening my own affect, compacting myself into a version of a girl aligned with the lyrics:</i></span></p><p><i style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Whispered something in your ear</span></i></p><p><i style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It was a perverted thing to say</span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>But I said it anyway</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>Made you smile and look away</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>Nothing’s gonna hurt you, baby.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I have no idea what fantasies are acceptable these days, or how male sex can be anything other than mediocre. I remain convinced that the girls in my past were probably contemptuous of any sexual desires or fantasies I may have had. I have no idea what fantasies will seem well-crafted enough not to be mocked. I have no idea why I should try to develop any fantasies, let alone actual physical techniques. Rising above mediocre seems to be a fading hope.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></p><p><br /></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-330982352327668152023-01-30T18:49:00.001-08:002023-01-30T18:49:09.335-08:00Three Six Two: Regimentals<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I haven't yet seen "Tár", though I very much want to. It's the sort of film that does intrigue me-- the Creative Genius under stress, a world with its own arcane skills and rituals. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And of course there are film stills of Cate Blanchett in black tie and severely tailored suit. That's a look that's held my attention for years. I'm rather an admirer of <i>garconne </i>style, all the way back to my lost youth. I remember sighing over photos in old magazines of Swinging London models in man-tailored suits, and I recall being at university and seeing some of the more daring girls going to parties and proms in severe suits and expensive neckties. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I would've given a lot to have been able to take the young Jane Birkin or the young Marisa Berenson dancing in Sixties London or Paris while they were dressed in <i>garconne</i> look. And tonight I'm thinking of a Sixties actress/model named Merle Lynn Browne, who wrote a comic "expose" of "jet set" sexual adventures called "The Ravishers". The paperback edition of the novel showed a lovely photo of her in a tailored suit, light brown hair in some Sixties style falling over her shoulders. I saw her once on (I think) the old "Tonight" show in the days of Johnny Carson. She was there to talk about her novels ("The Ravishers" and its sequel, "The Arousers"), and she was in pin-striped suit and tie. That's a memory that's stayed with me since boyhood. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">These days, now...are we allowed to find lovely long-legged <i>garconne</i> girls attractive? Are we still allowed to...<i>gender-bend</i>? What are the semiotics of girls in man-tailored suits these days? I suspect that the image of a girl in a man-tailored suit is regarded these days as being about anything <i>except</i> sex.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Some months ago, I read about a literary-world scandal involving Donna Tartt. I've been a fan of Ms. Tartt since ever I read "The Secret History" when it first appeared. It seems that some podcast or other had interviewed some of Tartt's Bennington classmates about her life as an undergraduate, and somehow the podcast had become part of the gender wars. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">There were ex-classmates who argued that Ms. Tartt's signature elegant suits and ties were part of her whole design to "have sex like a young boy", and that (shock! horror!) her love life at Bennington was all about boys who were gay or gay-adjacent. I wasn't sure why any of that was supposed to be shocking...or the least surprising. From the first magazine photos of Ms. Tartt I saw, I'd taken it as a given that her boyfriends would be at least gay-adjacent. And I assumed that her own social pose would be "handsome gay boy at Oxford 1925". I did laugh at one of the shock-horror types who went into gender wars mode and sniffed that there was no such thing as "having sex like a young boy"-- showing that here was someone who either being deliberately obtuse or had zero imagination.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I'd known girls all through my undergraduate days who desperately pursued arts-and-literature gay-adjacent boys, and who loved pretending to be pretty gay boys in some "Brideshead Revisited" fantasy world. I looked at the photos of Ms. Tartt in her suits and ties and knew exactly what was going on. It wasn't about the Trans Wars at all. It was about sex and class, or at least sex and aesthetics. After all...the whole "Dark Academia" thing always incorporated lots of sexual role-play and visions of academia as a setting for gay aesthetics. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Whether it's Lydia Tár or Donna Tartt or the young Jane Birkin, the <i>garconne</i> look attracts me. It's sleekly elegant, which I always love, and it's very deliberately artificial. It's role-play, and that's always better than the current obsession with "authenticity". </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Even here, in the autumn of my days, I like the idea of a leggy co-ed in a tailored suit, and I like the idea of sharing my necktie collection with her.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-78191966958174632362023-01-02T16:52:00.002-08:002023-01-02T16:56:07.226-08:00Three Six One: Clowns<p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I've been following along with the Trans Wars over the holidays. They're the latest round in the larger Culture Wars. And the current campaign seems to be built around drag queens. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I can remember seeing drag shows back in the Long Ago, back in my clubland days. I can recall seeing an advertising poster for a drag show in Vienna and realizing that "Travesti", the local term for a drag show, was related to both "travesty" and "transvestite". No, I was not very knowledgeable at that age. I can remember seeing drag shows, though I don't recall ever finding them very interesting. The shows were almost inevitably "tributes" to female singers or actresses who'd become gay icons. Lots and lots of drag queens on stage doing Liza Minelli or Nina Simone imitations. The music was never my style, and I was too young to have any appreciation for Joan Crawford (or even Joan Collins) impersonations. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I might've responded better to things like Dame Edna Everage, but that kind of performance (is "panto" a correct term here?) wasn't on offer at dance clubs in my Lost Youth. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Anyway...here we are in 2023, and Drag Queen Story Hours are a battleground. The right wing and the most strident of the GC brigade now see outright evil in drag queen performances and refer to drag queens as "groomer clowns". I'm not sure what to say to that.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Maybe the whole idea of a drag show has changed since I was in my twenties. I remember the shows as being a mix of beauty pageants and icon tributes. They weren't for children, but that was largely because children wouldn't have had any idea who Talullah Bankhead was, let alone Jayne Mansfield. I can recall the jokes as being sly and filled with double entendres, but I don't recall the shows as being overtly sexual. I don't recall any strip shows as part of drag performances, even in largely gay clubs.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I've seen drag queen brunches where the waitstaff were in drag and did comedy bits at the tables. The humor isn't really my thing, and at brunch I usually just want to drink Mimosas and be left alone to (I hope) flirt with my lovely co-ed companion. But I have no moral objection to someone in drag bringing me eggs Benedict and hash browns. And I have no objection to someone in drag reading books to children.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I can remember a few years ago when there was a less hysterical controversy over sex workers reading books at libraries to children. The sometime porn actress Sasha Grey was attacked by the right wing for that, for being a volunteer at her local library and reading to kids. I was very sympathetic to Ms. Grey and other sex workers. Being a volunteer reader was a good deed in itself, and I understood her political point, too. Being a sex worker didn't (and doesn't) make someone a monster, and volunteering at a local library was a way to show that sex workers were part of the community. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">So I can understand why drag performers might want to do story hours. The idea is to show that they're simply entertainers and that they're part of a larger community... and that they're willing to volunteer to do constructive things-- like teaching children that reading is fun.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I'm a bit wary, mind you, of the way drag queens have been conflated with trans folk. My own understanding was that most drag queens aren't trans-- that they're gay men. My own understanding is that some might simply be transvestites and might be straight. Drag has its own history and it's not just a subset of the trans world. There's a critical argument to be made about drag as being misogynistic (the whole "woman face" argument), and whether or not you agree with it, it's at least a respectable argument. But it's poor damned history to see drag as being inherently trans. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">I'm wary, too, of the right-wing arguments that drag performers reading to children constitutes "grooming". When the right accuses drag performers of "sexualizing" children, I have to be skeptical. What they really mean is that they're angry that children are being told that some people are gay or trans, or that it's possible to be <i>different</i>. They don't object to stories where two hetero characters kiss or marry. What they object to is any performance or story that suggests that heterosexual monogamy isn't the only kind of acceptable romance. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">My own view of the Trans Wars leans more to the GC side. Take that as a given. There are two biological sexes for humans, and humans don't change sex. But there are multiple genders-- maybe as many as there are individuals, since each and every individual is a different mix of socially-defined traits for men and women. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">But I have no time for people who use the Trans Wars as a way to re-fight the LGB Wars of the 1970s-90s. I have no time for people whose ultimate argument is that anything not "normal" is evil, or who use dislike of the TRA types to attack LGB people.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br /></span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-46961874383137177772022-11-27T21:33:00.000-08:002022-11-27T21:33:05.585-08:00Three Six Zero: Brushstrokes<p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">There's a story I've told my friends for years.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Once upon a time, I was talking to a lovely, long-legged co-ed at the bar of a favourite pub. We'd been enjoying the conversation, and we'd been flirting shamelessly. She arched an eyebrow, looked at me over her wineglass, and asked, "So...are you <i>grooming</i> me?" I looked back at her and said, "Like a show pony." She burst into laughter and shook her head. "Oh my God," she said, "now I pretty much <i>have</i> to sleep with you, just for that line."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">It's good story, and one I like. The girl herself is still a dear friend, and we do have dinner or drinks once in a while. I know that she tells people that story, too.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The once-upon-a-time in the story wasn't that long ago-- five or six years, maybe. But I think it would be an awkward thing to have it happen today. There are far too many people out there who wouldn't take "like a show pony" as a fun line. The word "grooming" itself has been twisted into other, and (I think) grotesque political definitions.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">As an aging roue, I've always had long talks with Young Companions about the word. We've sat at the bar or at coffee house tables and discussed the word endlessly. I've been known to argue that since my Young Companions are of legal age, the word means nothing more than "seduction". Let's quote one Young Companion: "Does this mean that you'll be buying me lots of French s/m novels and showing me films about French girls and older lovers?" Well, yes, it did mean exactly that.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The word itself was once a term of art. It meant the ways sexual predators or neighborhood pimps slowly enticed underaged girls into sex or sex work. It means other things now, and I don't understand some of the newer usages.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The new meanings seem to have come from the Trans Wars-- specifically, from the right-wing opponents of the TRAs, though I've been seeing the word used more and more by the GC side as well. There's a group called "Gays Against Grooming" that seems committed to stopping things like Drag Queen Story Hours. For the Gays Against Grooming group, having children around drag queens at all is regarded as "grooming". </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The group-- and others like it --seem to think that any exposure of children to the presence of people in drag, or any lessons indicating that some people are trans and that it's okay to be trans is "sexualizing" or "grooming" the children. Those attitudes set my caution lights flashing. It's a very, very short step from there to the right-wing / Evangelical goal of saying that children should not be told that gay and lesbian people exist or that it's perfectly fine to be gay, lesbian, bi.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">That's all a part of the Trans Wars that I don't understand. I've no problem with drag queens reading children's books to young children. (I had no problem at all with porn stars like Sasha Grey doing reading outreach with kids, either). Small children will think the drag queens are cool or funny, since to them it'll all be dress-up. And I think that Miss Penis Colada won't be doing the same bit she does at the club on Saturday nights. And it's bad tactics for the GC types, many of whom are themselves LGB, to stand next to right-wingers who'll use "protecting the children" or "safeguarding" as a way to attack LGB people next. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I should note that the right is upset that children are "sexualized" (whatever that means in this context) by being taught that gay couples exist when so many ordinary children's books center on the standard heterosexual family. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Be clear here. I do not believe that trans women are women, nor do I believe that trans men are men. I believe that they're <i>trans</i>, and that they deserve full civic and employment rights and the full and equal protection of the law, including protection from violence. But I believe women have a right to sex-based protections and single-sex spaces. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I also don't believe that sex and gender are the same thing. One is about plumbing and architecture, the other is about social presentation. I saw a post at Twitter once that showed someone holding a sign that read "Gender Is A Performance". Well, yes, of course it is. Culture <i>is</i> a performance. All culture is a performance. What we do in society is cosplay. We act out our assigned roles-- class, gender, nationality, ethnicity. There will always be people who are gender non-conforming or trans (and those are very different things), people who fill the role of trickster and fill a niche for people who can bend the rules about social presentation. Yes, being GNC is an assigned role, too. Someone is Odin, someone is Loki. There's a niche role for everyone. All social life is cosplay, for better or worse.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">And I'll reiterate something I've said before. There's nothing wrong with cosplay. If a male wants to wear a dress and make-up in public, fine. But he's not a woman. Biology matters, architecture matters.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I lean towards the GC side in the Trans Wars, and I refuse to accept the TRA assertion that anyone who doesn't instantly accept "self-ID" as the way to designate sex is guilty of attempted genocide. But I find the whole "grooming" panic dangerous. It's far too easy to manipulate "safeguarding" into an excuse for despising anyone who doesn't fit some right-wing myth. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The Trans Wars have to be hard for transvestites (remember them?). Anyone who gets some psychological or sexual satisfaction from knowing, avowed cosplay is regarded as a traitor by TRAs and as some AGP perv by the GCs. Too many GC writers seem to be rejecting sexual pleasure and sexual experimentation; too many TRA types seem to be rejecting the idea that someone can be lesbian or gay at all. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I've snarked here before that we're all at the mercy of what I call Authenticity Fetish. We can't enjoy cosplay or experimentation. Any social presentation has to be real, permanent, and reflect some inner true identity. It's no longer possible to simply act out a role for a day, or act it out in certain spaces. Identity can't be provisional, and it can't be tried on, worn, and taken off. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I miss the days when "grooming" could be taken to mean "seduction", and I miss the days when there were daylight identities and night identities, when life could be about social cosplay. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-75019428312086943242022-11-05T09:20:00.003-07:002022-11-05T09:21:52.618-07:00Three Five Nine: Repetition<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">There's a question that's been haunting me lately. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">In its simplest form, it's this: <i>how do you acquire fantasies?</i> How do you create new fantasies? How do you re-program your dreams and desires?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">There's the old Freudian term <i>repetition compulsion</i>, and it bothers me. What do you do when you realize that your fantasies never really change, that you play out the same scenes over and over?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">There may be some minor changes, some tweaks-- slightly different furniture, slightly different clothes, slightly different time of day. But that's all minor editing, no more than tweaks. I was brought up to be an academic, and I'm used to going back and polishing things I've written. A slight change in adjectives, a slight rearrangement of paragraphs, streamlining a sentence. But that's all minor, all in the service of telling a given story. The underlying story itself never changes.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">These days there are a couple of ongoing fantasies that play out in my head. The basic plots are the same-- the couple that should have no chance of meeting or interacting happen to end up encountering one another and talking themselves into bed. Lots of dialogue, of course. Always lots of dialogue. Talking is always a key part of sex for me. And the dialogue is always polished up, always tweaked. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">In the ongoing films-in-my-head there's always a speech delivered by a particular, very tall, fashion model. She's explaining what's about to happen, explaining it to my character.<i> Look</i>, she says, <i>this is a big city. Every night lots of people who are just totally random, who you'd never think could even be in the same places, happen to meet and end up going home together. It's just odds. Sometimes the odds fall out one way</i>. I've worked on that speech a long time. Some things matter to me. That explanation for a meeting matters to me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">My mind works like that. I need explanations. I need to know <i>how </i>and <i>why</i>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I also need to be able to find new fantasies. New things need to happen, characters need to change, characters need to dive into new experiences. I'm given to watching the same films or reading the same books over and over. I'll watch the same film scene over and over just for a particular moment, a particular emotional response. I need to try new things, even if only inside my head. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">This goes to the issue of how people acquire kinks and fetishes, of how people acquire new desires. Not just new human objects-of-desire, but new stories and new story arcs and plots. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I like the current films-in-my-head, I like the point of the story, and I like the fantasy girl rather a lot. But I don't want to be stuck forever in a loop. I want there to be new stories. I want there to be new avenues for adventure, excitement, pleasure.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">What I don't how is how to leverage that. I can list things-- activities, places, partners, games --I'm interested in, but those lists don't translate into scripts and scenes in my head. I'm not sure how to look at a description of a kink and then make it something of my own. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">What I need is some incentive to make changes, to try out new adventures.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-368124187631935532022-10-28T18:38:00.002-07:002022-10-28T18:38:44.398-07:00Three Five Eight: Wars<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It's a strange time to be writing about sex and erotica.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I'd thought that the pandemic would generate a new batch of sex blogs and would see a revitalization of phone sex and erotic exchanges via email. I'd hoped that the pandemic might even lead to people sending love letters and erotic missives. After all, there must be some people who'd prefer to lie awake in bed and read over handwritten fantasies from a lover (or even an alluring stranger) than scroll through their texts. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I know that I for one would rather read a handwritten erotic letter or even an email than scroll through sexts. I've never been able to sext. Text-speak isn't a way I can construct any fantasies that interest me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Somehow, though, the Red Death did nothing to put new life into sex. If anything, the world after 2020 seems more sex-negative. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I remember adding "Gender Wars" as a content label here back when I first started writing here. In those days, "gender wars" meant male-female hostilities. It meant things like the Dublin Elevator Encounter and #MeToo. Now it means the Trans Wars, the GCs versus the TRAs. And there's been a spillover from the Trans Wars into disdain for sex-- both the activity and the biological idea.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Look, I do agree with the GC side that humans come in two sexes only, and that one's sex is fixed at birth. That shouldn't be taken to mean that trans people need to be "erased" or that they shouldn't have full civil rights and access to medical treatment. It does mean that socially presenting as another sex doesn't make you a member of that sex and that there should still be single-sex spaces. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">What bothers me about the GC side is that they've gone from arguing something simple-- two biological sexes, no changing biological sex, gender as socially constructed --to becoming increasingly anti sex-as-activity. There's far too much Second Wave prudery on the GC side these days. They don't like the idea of Pride being a kind of Carnevale, they don't like kink, and they don't like fetishes. And you might guess that I've been fascinated with kink all my life. I like the idea of sexual adventuring and exploration. Reading GC advocates attack kink and fetishes makes my teeth grind. I also dislike the way they create an image of the "woke" enemy as university girls with blue hair. My clubland days were back in the lost land of the Eighties, and I always liked girls who ran through hair colours every few weeks. I had a white slash dyed through my hair for a couple of years in those days, and I did like that. I hate it that the GC side, much of whose thought I agree with, sounds increasingly prudish.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Now the trans side draws my disdain for other reasons. Look, I do not believe that TWAW. I do believe that socially presenting as the other sex is LARPing. There's nothing wrong with LARPing, by the way. If a certain social presentation feels more natural, then present yourself that way. Wear a dress if you want. Call yourself by whatever name you prefer. Your life may be better that way, and that's all to the good. But you haven't changed biological sex, and the search for "authenticity" will always end badly. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I do not believe TRA assertions that pansexuality is the only moral or ethical kind of sex. I dislike the way that the TRAs are trying to destroy the idea of being gay, lesbian, or bi--- I dislike that more than I dislike the GC hostility to the idea of "queer" as a category that includes things like S/M or role-playing. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I dislike the way that both sides are against the idea of sex as adventure and pleasure rather than some sort of moral-political statement. I dislike the way that both sides are so ready to mock cis-het preferences and cis-het sex as either boring or morally bankrupt. Though at least the GC side believes that cis-het does exist, whereas the TRA side believes that it doesn't (or shouldn't) really exist.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">2022 is winding down, and there are so many economic and political nightmares hovering just at the edge of our vision. I had hoped that this year there would be new sex blogs with clever tales of adventure. I'd thought that after two years of dealing with the pandemic and its one million dead we'd be ready to explore the possibilities of pleasure. That hasn't happened, though.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">It's hard for me to imagine a world without desire and kink and a sense of aesthetic play. But we seem to be coming to that.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-70063400231999993792022-09-17T19:52:00.001-07:002024-01-13T20:47:16.615-08:00Three Five Seven: Walls<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I'd written here about the woman I met this summer-- the high-end phone sex worker. She and I had been speaking-- <i><b>not </b></i>in any way involving her profession --for a while. We'd exchanged emails and had FaceTime conversations. She is, as I've noted before, bright and fun and kind. I've enjoyed all our conversations. Again, this was <i><u>not</u></i> a phone sex set of conversations. This was two people who'd met, shared drinks, and stayed in touch to talk about our lives and thoughts. Call it a friendship, or the beginnings of one.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">And suddenly I've become too afraid to talk with her. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I have no idea why that's happened. Or at least I haven't any coherent set of ideas about what's happened. I know rationally that she and I have enjoyed one another's conversation and presence. What's happened feels like a sudden rush of fear and anxiety.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Call it an upwelling of self-loathing. That would be about right. I don't feel good enough to be talking to her. Social anxiety has always been a problem for me. I've been able to stand in front of classes and teach with no problem at all. Yet talking to a specific person or being in smaller social settings leaves me right on the edge of panic.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I've become too afraid to talk with or email my friend. I've somehow convinced myself that I'm not someone who should be-- at least according to the Arbitrary Social Rules --talking to her. I look at myself and see only decay and failure. I may be able to make conversation. I may have a bank of decent stories and memories to recount. But I just can't imagine that I have any social value. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I have not asked my friend to deploy her professional skills with me. I would not do that. That's not what knowing her is about. Yet I have a still, small voice in my head telling me that I'd never be good enough to be her client in any case. Too old, too poor, too underemployed, too socially inept-- I'd never be good enough to be a client, and I'd never be good enough to be a friend or even an interlocutor. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">This has happened to me before. I have given up going back to bars or pubs where I've flirted with or even made out with lovely girls. I've walked away from places I liked because I'd become someone who wasn't anonymous-- where I'd become someone who could be looked at and judged. I suppose my NZ friend falls into the category of people I pushed away because I knew I wasn't good enough for them and didn't want to be there when they noticed that. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Tonight I do feel empty. I miss the conversations I've been having. I miss having an interlocutrix. But I just can't bring myself to contact her. I can't believe that I'm good enough to be speaking to anyone, let alone someone like her.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-27978199813975919402022-09-04T07:25:00.000-07:002022-09-04T07:25:10.355-07:00Three Five Six: Damals und Heute<p> <span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I've been watching David Cronenberg's new film "Crimes of the Future", and I'm deeply impressed, It's an alluring and disturbing film, and I will be acquiring my own DVD of it. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">There's a moment in the film where Kristen Stewart's character says that <i>"surgery is the New Sex"</i>. That's a lovely line, and as good as <i>"long live the New Flesh!"</i> from Cronenberg's "Videodrome". That of course is the basic element of the film-- that body modification is the New Sex, and its results are as powerful and unsettling as anything sexual can be.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I'll note that Viggo Mortenson's character responds to Ms.Stewart at one point by saying that she might be right, but that in any case he was never very good at the Old Sex. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I once read a horror thriller where the heroine has a nipple cut off during sex and I remember sitting there with the book feeling disturbed, appalled, and yet thrilled at the scene. Yes, fine, that's a tribute to the author's skill, and it means that the author did succeed at the 1990s game of transgression. But creating something alluring and disturbing at the same time is a dangerous move. "Crimes of the Future" left me with that same uncanny feeling. The surgical scenes are graphic, oddly distanced, powerful, and highly erotic. There's a moment where Lea Seydoux drops to her knees not to give head to Viggo Mortenson, but to slide her tongue into and along the open surgical cut he has across his stomach. It's a stunning scene, and her face is as beatific as any blowjob scene in a porn film. I don't know what to make of the scene, and I don't know how to analyze my own response to the scene and to the film as a whole.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Odd thing. I know what my response to Mlle. Seydoux is, of course. In the film, she's had her hair cut to a short pixie cut, and she (like Ms. Stewart) dresses in tailored slacks and tops-- a very alluring <i>garconne</i> look. She's naked a fair bit in the film-- maybe more so than in "The French Dispatch" --and while Google tells me that her bra size is a 32B, she has very large ("Oreo-sized") areolae and nipples. Large areolae have always been a particular favourite of mine, but I've never known how to just say that, or (again) how to analyze that. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I've stayed away here from discussing my personal preferences. In 2022, and if you're a straight, cis, white, over-thirty male, discussing your personal sexual tastes and interests simply isn't done. No cis-het male in 2022 could write a sex blog or do a sex podcast where his own personal experiences are part of the conversation. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">If I say anything, I'll note that my tastes run to the tall and slender-- lithe, lanky, lissome, long-legged. Always long-legged. And underwear-averse. Yes, sharp hipbones and collarbones. Yes, a dark tan-- something that Gulf Coast co-eds still favor. I do <i>not</i> like the current fashion for tiny waists and big hips. I do <i>not</i> like the idea of Big Butts. I do like short haircuts-- see Mlle. Seydoux in "Crimes of the Future"; see Ms. Stewart in several earlier films. Big areolae, yes. But that's as much as I'll say. I'm sure I can be attacked just for having preferences at all.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">"Crimes of the Future" is stunning. David Cronenberg's body horror films have always been stunning and stunningly erotic, all the way back to "They Came from Within", down through "Naked Lunch" and "ExistenZ". I've just had the local library get me a copy of Cronenberg's novel "Consumed". I read it once long ago, but after seeing "Crimes of the Future", I need to read it again. I need to see if Mr. Cronenberg did make cannibalism and underground surgery sexualized. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I do note that Ms. Stewart is described in the film as "sexy...in a bureaucratic way". There's very little of her flesh on view-- her tailored blouses are buttoned to the neck, and she's clearly wearing a bra. But she has a very thrilling look-- messy hair, a look of starved obsession and compelling desire. That look of inner compulsion is very sexy. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I do need someone with whom I can discuss the film, and all the lovely Young Companions I've relied on seem to have vanished over the past few years. If you're reading this from out over the aether, do comment. I'd like to hear what my Imaginary Reader-- a young, over-educated comparative lit major with concealed dreams of transgression --has to say about David Cronenberg. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-66283518007631545162022-07-30T16:46:00.000-07:002022-07-30T16:46:40.703-07:00Three Five Five: Interlocutrix<p> <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">The phone sex worker I met last month and I have been exchanging emails and texts. I'll note right at the outset that I haven't engaged her professional services, and that I don't intend to raise that subject. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">She is a professional, and apparently a highly regarded one in her field-- the equivalent of an FMTY Girl. It would be disrespectful to ask for freebies. I don't ask friends who are chartered accountants to do my taxes for free, and I don't ask doctor friends to treat me for free. Professionals are paid for their skills, and to ask them for freebies is a sign of disrespect. I know her per hour rate, and she'd certainly be worth it. I know that she treats her regular clients well and does empathize with them, but there's always (as there should be) a certain professional distance with clients. I'd much rather be a friend.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">She asked if I have either Zoom or Face Time, so I expect we'll be talking via our laptops. It's easy to sit up late at night and just exchange emails. We've talked about our lives and about films and music and places we've been. It's easy to tell her things, and I have missed the idea of email as a way to actually correspond. I've been saying here that I miss things like letters and long telephone conversations in my life, and talking to her has been a throwback to the days when people did exchange information and stories. That's the part of friendships and relationships I've missed most in the social media world. I'm a long-form sort of person, and I can't tell anyone anything important in 280 characters or whatever the text/Twitter limit is.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I can see why her clients-- mostly older, mostly monied --are willing to pay her rates. She is an excellent interlocutrix. That's her key skill. She can make a client feel <i>safe</i>. She listens, asks questions, is sympathetic. Phone sex, she told me the night we met is another world, and a fantasy world should not only have No Shame, No Limits, it should be...comfortable. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Being good at phone sex is a rare thing. Being good at ordinary sex-in-the-flesh is probably a rare thing. It takes thought. Passion, yes, but it also takes thought. Anyone good at phone sex has to make his/her partner feel not just desired, but comfortable inside that desire. I've always been someone who talks during sex. I want to exchange information with a partner-- about how each of us is feeling, about what each of us is thinking, about what the physical moment reminds us of. One lovely young co-ed in my past laughed and said that what it all made her think of was a space mission and Mission Control. Yes...we may have done NASA voices the rest of the evening. Voices are lifelines, even during sex (or maybe especially during sex).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Phone sex isn't just two people masturbating while holding their iPhones. It's about world-building, about building worlds the partners feel comfortable inside. It's about creating and sharing fantasies and knowing that you're able to be safe and still explore No Shame, No Limits. My friend has those skills, and she's made a very successful career out of them.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I don't expect I'll ever find out about her skills first-hand, but I love the stories she tells (names and identifying details all omitted, of course) about fantasies she's been part of. And I do very much enjoy being able to talk with her about our lives. Voices matter, details matter, being valuable enough to be someone's interlocutor matters. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-32347938900843138312022-07-19T19:46:00.004-07:002023-01-02T17:01:02.517-08:00Three Five Four: Sundress <p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">There's a phrase I've been hearing this summer: "getting railed in a sundress". It's something girls on social media say-- a small summertime fantasy of sex in a stylish little sundress. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Here in this particular summer, that may not be something to aspire to. This is one of those heat-dome summers that makes you realize that Wm. Gibson is right about the Jackpot arriving. In half the country it's too hot to go outside, let alone have sex outdoors. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Still, I like the idea of railing a girl in a sundress. There are some interesting markers encoded in the phrase. Sundresses go with a kind of J. Peterman World or an L.L. Bean catalog world-- picnic hampers, bottles of wine, pastel skies, a kind of idyllic summer afternoon. Sundresses themselves, now? They're designed to call up dreamy summer days, to make a lovely girl look like she's floating along, light as air. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">That perfect sundress is light, airy, evocative of leisure and a kind of innocence that's so deeply erotic. If the fabric is gauzy, it calls up lots of David Hamilton photographs from the late 1970s. There are often straw hats and strappy sandals involved. And of course any lovely girl knows that sundresses are worn next to the skin. As well they should be.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">My friend in New Zealand wrote me once about being in the perfect sundress at some sort of cricket championship in Wellington. She wrote about walking barefoot back to her Older Admirer's Range Rover, sandals in her hand, a bit tipsy on Martinborough sauvignon blanc, feeling the summer air under her dress on waxed, bare skin, and knowing that she'd be having sex very soon on a picnic blanket somewhere in the hills above Wellington. Blue and white, the dress was, and just below her knees. And Jill never, never wore anything under a dress like that. A perfect look for being a posh Kiwi girl getting railed after a cricket match. I did sigh over her letter. I did want to be the one sliding that sundress up over her hips and feeling her legs-- long, slender, dark-tanned --over my shoulders. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">The woman I met at Peychaud's, the phone sex woman, told me that she shared fantasies like that. "Getting railed in a sundress" meant not only the idea of summertime sex and posh picnic hampers, it meant getting to buy and wear dreamy dresses as well. I do like that-- sex and romance in a J. Peterman kind of world.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">I have to email the woman from Peychaud's. She did give me her email address and her personal cell phone number. She was lovely, fun, and able to be a very good interlocutrix. I have no objection to arranging telephone appointments with her. She'd be worth the fee. And she likes dreams of J. Peterman World and Breton beaches as much as I do.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"><i>Getting railed in a sundress</i>... That's an image I do fancy. It calls up all the sorts of settings I like with beautiful young companions, and it involves fashion that I like to see on lovely girls. J. Peterman World is always about a certain class image, too: let's not forget that. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;">Wm. Gibson's Jackpot may spoil summers, but we do still have the dream of cool breezes, pastel blue skies, and a view of the ocean just off the bluffs. And we have the dream of lovely girls naked under feather-light fabric, smiling at the thought of the afternoon.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: medium;"> </span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-61901763387623023912022-06-15T19:26:00.000-07:002022-06-15T19:26:08.035-07:00Three Five Three: Couch<p> <span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I have been going back to FMTY Twitter. There's a sense of summer there. Some of the FMTY Girls are taking a summer hiatus and relaxing on beaches or next to rooftop pools. Some are accompanying patrons or clients to island villas. I do wish them all well.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I'll never be able to afford an FMTY Girl. Genteel poverty doesn't allow for that. But I have been thinking about what I would try very hard to afford.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Long ago, when I was first in Vienna, I lived not far from the Freud Museum. I made a point of visiting, of course. Freud has always been one of my intellectual heroes. I remember standing in the little museum at Berggasse 19 on a rainy afternoon and looking at the replica of Freud's office-- looking especially at the famous Couch. Probably not the original Couch, but something I'd waited to see for a long time. I thought about all the stories told by patients there on the couch and all the long conversations analysands would've had with Dr, Freud there at his desk. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The FMTY Girls are beyond my reach, but there's something else I want, and it has more to do with that Couch than with Michelin-star restaurants or hotel bedrooms.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I do know someone who works for one of the few remaining phone sex services out there. Phone sex is a dying art, and the services that have survived are niche services. The woman I know is turning forty soon, and she's worked off and on for the particular service for a few years. She's smart, funny, and she's gifted with empathy. I've sat and listened to her talk about her job and just...sighed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">She does have a perfect WFH job. She has a laptop and a headset, and calls get routed to her wherever she might be. I liked that image. She takes her job seriously, she told me. She keeps notes on what clients tell her and tries to make sure she knows the details they like, or the settings they prefer...or just the things that they enjoy in their lives (a city, a restaurant, a movie, a favorite kind of decor).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">She markets herself as a partner in fantasies, and she makes it clear that she believes in NSNL-- <i>No Shame, No Limits</i>. She tells me she's been made uncomfortable a few times by clients' fantasies, but she's never been horrified or appalled. What she's good at is building connections, at getting clients to just talk about their fantasies and about what they'd want their lives to be like. I suspect she's very much worth her fees. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">We sat over drinks and talked and I began to think about the FMTY Girls and what they offer. I told my friend about FMTY Twitter and told her that she-- my friend --would have more to offer me. They'd both be Companions, but my friend would be better at being the mix of things I'd want-- some combination of life coach, coffee shop interlocutor, and classical Freudian analyst. There might not be midnight sex in rooftop pools overlooking Dubai or Manhattan, but there would be a chance to talk to someone lovely. A chance to talk and talk and, yes, listen to what she has to say.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">"Coffee shop interlocutor"... Would it be <i>interlocutrix</i> for the lovely girl? I do like the thing that happens in coffee shops sometimes, where strangers end up talking about their lives-- exchanging stories, analyzing one another, sharing likes and dislikes, talking about the things (books, music, experiences, places) that have meant a lot to them. I've always liked that. And I told my friend that she could very well for herself as a life coach if ever the phone sex company failed. She laughed at that. She'd worked in banking and real estate, she said, so life coach might be a next step.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I remember that we talked about Peychaud's-- a classic New Orleans brand of bitters --and about how so many of her clients' fantasies were about going back in life and just doing the things they wished they'd done. For some it was, yes, having sex with cheerleaders or some particular long-lost girl. For some it was having the nerve to come out of the closet. Or having the nerve to admit that they liked something and didn't want to be ashamed of it. She tried, she said, not just to help them get off inside their fantasies, but to let them know that they had someone to talk to, that their fantasies and hopes weren't as awful as they feared.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><i>Phone sex,</i> she said, <i>is another world</i>. I do agree with that. It's always been something I liked because it plays to my strengths: storytelling, world-building, creating details. I'm sad that it seems to be dying away. Sexting can never replace long stories told late at night, can never replace late-night voices. Sexting can't replace conversations that loop and swerve from erotica to memories of films and places you've lived.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">I would pay to have someone like her as a Companion out some night. I think I could sit and talk to her and feel like I was inside a world where fantasies could be NSNL, where conversations could go on across a table late into the night. She did very much have the gift of empathy. We exchanged business cards, mind you. She wrote<i> No Shame, No Limits </i>on the back of hers. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">The conversation was one I enjoyed rather a lot. She let me walk her back to her hotel and told she that she hoped I'd call and arrange a session sometime. <i>I think we could be creative together</i>, she said. Her fees are nowhere near what FMTY Girls get for a dinner date, and I've certainly spent more just taking myself to dinner and wine on solitary Friday nights. Maybe I will call sometime. I suspect we'd both spend more time talking than doing phone sex itself.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Someone like her would be what I what these days. Life coach, interlocutrix, classical Freudian analyst-- someone with whom I can talk and not have to be afraid, someone who'd listen and not judge, someone who could suggest what my thoughts mean...and share her own.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;">Surely, now...there must already be services like that already in Japan, right?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-61180914892871913902022-05-30T16:46:00.001-07:002022-05-30T16:46:06.937-07:00Three Five Two: Essentials 2<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> I had posted the list of 20 Essentials my friend Natalie sent me back in 2013. I promised to post the response I sent her-- a list of Essentials every Gentleman, whether Young or Of A Certain Age, should have. I couldn't find the original of my response, so I have reconstructed it here. These are things I think every Gentleman should have. Please do let me know what you think.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><u><br /></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><u>20 Essential Things Every Gentleman Must Have</u></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">1. <i>A good blazer</i>. This is the exoskeleton of your entire wardrobe. A good, well-fitted blazer will take you everywhere. I prefer black to navy blue.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">2. <i>Good black walking shoes</i>. Something that'll take you on long city walks and carry you from a corporate meeting to a hip bar by the university. I prefer blucher to Oxford style.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">3. <i>A signature scent.</i> For me, that's Eau Sauvage by Dior or Eternity for Men.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">4. <i>A local bistro that's a second home</i>. A place where you're a regular. Where they serve you off-menu items you didn't know you needed. Where they know your tastes, and where you have a group of interlocutors around whenever you're at the bar.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">5. <i>A bottle of good single-malt</i>. You'll need it on nights when you're poring over that book you've been looking for all your life, and you'll need it when that special guest comes by. If Herr Herzog shows up unexpectedly, I'll pour him a glass of Dalmore Cigar Blend or Suntory Yamazaki.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">6. </span><i style="font-family: verdana;">A passport</i><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">. Yes. It's a big world, and you need to see it. And you never know when you might have to suddenly flee the Agents of the Dawn.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">7. <i>Dude Wipes</i>. In case a lovely Young Companion unexpectedly knocks at your door. You need to be ready for that.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">8. <i>Cigarette lighter</i>. You may not smoke, but the lovely, mysterious girl at the next barstool just may. A gentleman is ready for that. And it is a good way to open a conversation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">9. <i>A good, durable shoulder bag</i>. Your laptop or iPad, a good book, sunglasses, this week's New Yorker, your charger, a couple of pens, and a Moleskine. You need this. I've been using Land's End briefcases as a shoulder bag for decades.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">10. <i>A signature dish</i>. Well, I'm New Orleans-born. I make a very decent jambalaya. Young Companions seem intrigued.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">11. <i>A good chef's knife and a cast-iron skillet</i>. Something any civilized person needs. Those two things will get you through a myriad of cooking moments. And they've served me through many a Friday night with a good rib-eye and a bottle of wine.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">12. <i>A Moleskine notebook</i>. Like everyone else from my generation, it was Bruce Chatwin who told us about Moleskines. They're classic, simple, timeless. I used hardbound grid-ruled ones for years and years, but these days I'm using the softcover, lined version. I keep a supply on hand, and I wouldn't be without one.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">13. <i>Some knowledge of wine</i>. Of course. However not? There's a world of good wine in the $20-$50 range. Try things. Read about things. My preferences these days are for New Zealand sauvignon blanc and pinot noir. But I do appreciate a good Argentine malbec. And whether you're watching a film alone in your flat or sitting out on the deck with a lovely, long-legged Comp Lit co-ed, a glass of wine is always a good idea.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">14. <i>A good fountain pen.</i> There's something very sensual about writing with a good fountain pen. And it tempts you to write letters and actually communicate with people. Makes you develop a reasonably elegant handwriting, too. My current favourite is a classic Waterman with an XF nib. I like my inks in a bordeaux shade-- or the Birmingham Inks "Waterfront Dusk" shade.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">15. <i>A seduction playlist</i>. The lovely N. at RadioKvetch says that every girl should have her own strip-tease song for use with a lover (hers is Kavinsky's "Nightcall"), but as a Gentleman of a Certain Age, I have a seduction playlist instead. The key songs on it are-- Cowboy Junkies, "Sweet Jane"; Beth Orton, "Anywhere"; and Duran Duran, "Come Undone". There's probably some "Gods & Monsters"-era Lana Del Rey in there, too.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">16.<i> A good face care regimen</i>. Because the clock is ticking. Always.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">17. </span><i style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">A good book collection</i><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">. Because I have lived my life through books, and books open up the world and the past. And a good book collection is indispensable for tempting leggy Comparative Lit co-eds into your lair.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">18. <i>A lovely Young Companion.</i> Oh, yes-- long-legged, slender, sharp-cheekboned and sharp-hipboned, with lovely eyes, an aversion to underwear and sleepwear, bookish, whip-smart, wicked, and open to adventures.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">19. <i>A small stuffling friend</i>. A stuffling is loyal, faithful, comforting, and a good listener. Dorian-- the best of all Small Mongolian Pony stufflings! --has been with me for a lifetime. He's traveled the world with me, and was there with me for my PhD <i>viva voce</i>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: large;">20.<i> A mysterious Past</i>. Well, obviously. A Past with good stories, a Past that will hold the attention of that leggy Comp Lit co-ed. You need good Stories, and you need the ability to tell good stories. All those years lecturing to classes at least helped me with that.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">If you're reading this out over the aether, you are of course invited to submit your own Lists. What Essentials should a lovely girl have in her life and shoulder bag? What Essentials should a gentleman have for structuring his own life and attracting lovely Young Companions?</span></p><p><br /></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-24248625740448052382022-05-27T18:10:00.001-07:002022-05-27T18:10:22.936-07:00Three Five One: Flavors<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> Jill in Wellington wrote me once upon a time with a story from her teen years, a story about Julia, the first girl she had sex with. I miss Jill's stories, and miss the spirit of adventure she brought to her stories:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>I have quite a bad memory in general, but especially when i've been enjoying drinks & drugs. but i remember one night with julia, an old friend from school. i was about 15 and staying at her apartment in town while her mum & her mum's lesbian lover were away. we raided the liquor cabinet and were really drunk. we were out on the balcony and i was licking her clit and had my fingers in her cunt. she came and pissed at the same time, and a bit got in my mouth. i was not into it at all, i grabbed our bottle of tequila and had a few big gulps. Julia apologised several times...but also said how good it felt to cum and piss at the same time. i'm always very open to new experiences so i gave it a try...and it felt amazing. it made my orgasm so much more intense. Julia loved it too...</i></span></p><p><i><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"></span></i></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>Later i discovered pissing while purging which is also amazing. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I do feel sad that she abandoned her past. It's always sad when a beautiful girl who has a Slutty Party Girl past filled with wicked stories decides in her early thirties to pretend those experiences never happened. It's always sad when a beautiful, wicked girl decides that she now needs to be a Grown-Up and put sexual adventures aside. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Jill told me once that Julia left school a year or so later and now lives in a council flat with two half-Maori children by different (and unknown) fathers. That could be (and probably is) a sad story-- all the more so since Jill hasn't seen Julia in years. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Nonetheless, Jill has a good fifteen or twenty years worth of stories in her diaries and memories. It's sad that she's tried to erase them.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3560849644815812617.post-80209965798501211502022-05-21T09:07:00.002-07:002022-05-28T08:58:22.651-07:00Three Five Zero: Essentials<p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">A lovely friend wrote this back in 2013, in response to a List I created for her-- a List of 20 Essential Things Every Gentleman Should Have. You'll have to tell me what you think of her List...</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"> <u>I've been inspired to write a short list of things every girl needs to have. So, here it goes</u>:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>1. Black skinnies. Goes with everything and can be dressed up or down; I like Gap as their sizing is the most consistent and the prices are reasonable.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>2. Black flats. Same as above, APC makes a delightful pair, as does Bloch.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>3. A strip-tease song. Mine is "Nightcall" by Kavinsky from the Drive soundtrack- wonderfully sultry and slow enough keep a sensual and fluid rhythm.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>4. At least one foreign language. How else will a Ghostgirl communicate in the Far Foreign? French is a must (obviously) and another should be unique, specific to your interests. I love Russian and Korean, however Arabic or Japanese are perfect as well.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>5. A small book to carry around in one's purse. Perfect for reading on the quad or at a cafe and is a great conversation starter. Mine lately have been "Invisible Cities", "Discipline and Punish", and a copies of n+1.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>6. A good vibrator. Need a girl say more?</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>7. A lighter. For the impromptu post-sex cigarette or lighting a stranger's--- a great way to get to know someone.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>8. A brand of cigarettes. This becomes your signature and reveals a lot about your personality. I smoke organic American Spirits (liberal arts, humanities educated, "concerned about the environment", and upper-middle class). Please don't be a Parliaments or Menthol girl. Just no.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>9. Some knowledge of wine. Being an oenophile is sexy and can really impress a date. Choose one that fits most dishes and is in the $15-30 range. You never want to be cheap when it comes to wine--- girls who buy $8 bottles of Moscato are almost always virgins. My favorites: Garnachas, Tempranillos, Sangioveses, Cabernets from Napa.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>10. An animal friend. An animal companion can instantly lift one's mood; my Dmitri is my everything.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>11. A troubled past. Provides for great stories and a better understanding of the human condition (at least in my experience).</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>12. A passport filled with visas and stamped to oblivion.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>13. A few favorite artists, poets, directors, etc. that one can discuss in-depth. A few of mine: Mikhail Vrubel, Neruda, Almodovar.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>14. Red lipstick. I wear YSL Rouge Volupte (so creamy and it smells like mangoes!). Classically sexy and an easy way to vamp up any look.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>15. A signature perfume. YSL Opium for going out and Viktor & Rolf Flowerbomb for the day for me. Always be careful when applying: you want someone to only smell your perfume when they lean in close for transgressive suggestions.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>16. Some ability to sing or play an instrument. I did choir for 5 years and have a fairly good voice and played piano for 9 years. Also, have a favorite composer. I love playing Chopin and Rachmaninoff.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>17. A reliable pen for writing down potential lovers' contact info, random thoughts, and Lists (in a Moleskine, of course). I prefer Pilot G-2's.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>18. A cast iron skillet and good chef's knife. That being said, know how to cook. Nothing is sadder than a girl who lives on takeout and can't chiffonade for shit.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>19. A moneyed lover. Naturally.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;"><i>20. Sharp cheekbones, jutting hipbones, and long legs.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">I'll note that she listed black skinny jeans but didn't list any lingerie. That's a good thing. Beautiful young girls should habitually be panty-free. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: medium;">Tell me what you think of her List. I may have to find my own original List for Gentlemen, or at least attempt to reconstruct it. I'll post here if I do, of course.</span></p><div><br /></div>ExilesCityhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815700682147374846noreply@blogger.com0