Three Nine Four: Opus Dei

 I've written about phone sex before, and it's a topic I want to re-visit. 

Phone sex was always something I found to be far better than any sort of sexting or email exchanges. I have no idea if people still sext, by the way. I haven't encountered sexting jokes online in a long time, and it's possible that sexting has fallen out of favor. I'd thought it would've been rejuvenated by the pandemic, but then I thought the pandemic would've revived phone sex, too. It seems that I was wrong on both counts. 

Phone sex is about storytelling in a way that sexting can never be. I'm a storyteller myself, and I agree absolutely with the well-known lines from Joan Didion and Muriel Rukeyser. We tell ourselves stories in order to live, and our lives are made of stories rather than atoms. But it seems that we aren't telling stories any longer. Well, nothing that's happened since the end of 2016 has made anyone want to tell stories. I think we're back to the age of windowless monads. We no longer live in an age where sexual adventures are worth pursuing. Survival seems to have replaced pleasure as the key thing in our lives. 

Once upon a time, I did receive phone sex calls from Australia. It would've been in wintertime here, and in the austral summer. Two different girls called from Melbourne to entice me into creating stories for them. I was flattered by that, of course, and there was the thrill of doing something that was not just transgressive but done across multiple time zones, the equator, and a couple of oceans. 

There were other overseas phone sex calls in those days-- the later Noughts. Melbourne, Wellington, London, Edinburgh, Bruges, The Hague...lovely girls made calls to me from all those places. I can't imagine that happening again.

There are stories left over from those days, and I wish the girls were still out there over the aether, or that I at least knew the backstory of the things they told me. I once asked a girl who'd been a co-ed at St. John's College in Annapolis via email where she'd first had sex outdoors. She emailed from London to say that--

Outside Christ Church College at the University of Oxford.  I was on a school trip and certainly was not supposed to be fraternizing with the locals - inside or outside - so there was plenty of risk.  The campus itself was imposing and lent the whole situation a gravity and drama that I have rarely felt since.  I didn't get completely naked, as I was wearing a short white skirt with no underwear, which could easily be thrown up (though it did take some athleticism and flexibility to avoid getting grass stains on that skirt).

That's the sort of story that I liked. So much backstory implicit in what she told me! So many follow-up questions to ask! If nothing else, an account of the positions required would be good.

The same girl answered my question about the riskiest place she'd ever had sex this way--

The European headquarters of Opus Dei.  I've always been privately smug about this one and wish I could tell more people because it delights me in so many ways.  It was in the evening, and we were walking back from a movie.  I had been teasing him throughout the movie and on the trip back, and I guess he just couldn't restrain himself anymore.  We jumped over the fence for what I thought might be a quick blow job, but he threw me on the ground.  It was very passionate and rough, naughty and forbidden.  We were collapsed on the grass when someone caught us and we had to run, me carrying my bra and my jeans half on, cum smeared all over my shirt and jeans.  The man was shouting at us, and he said something about our souls being cursed or perhaps he cursed our souls - something rather violent anyway.

The European headquarters of Opus Dei is the Villa Tevere in Rome. I knew it had to be in Rome, but I had to look up the Villa Tevere. It's a house that was once the home of the Hungarian Legation to the Holy See. I love the story, and all the more so since Opus Dei began appearing in thriler novels as some shadowy conspiratorial group. I still have questions, of course. How naked did she get before she and her male companion had to flee? What had they managed to get accomplished? Carrying her bra? She almost never wore underwear, so why did she have a bra? What imprecations did the person who caught them use? And in what language? (Latin, please let it be Latin)

These are great stories, and I wish she and I had been able to talk more by phone and go through all the details. I still have the emails, and a few postcards she sent from overseas, but I do miss her voice. I have no idea whatsoever about what her life has been like these last fifteen years or so. I did tell her that it would've made a better story if she'd gotten pregnant during the Opus Dei encounter, since aborting a fetus conceived on Opus Dei property would've been a brilliant thing. She laughed across the aether for five minutes straight over that idea.

Still...no phone calls these days. No stories to share, no fantasies to construct together. I hate the silence at night when lovely young companions and I should be telling stories to one another. If you're reading this-- is the aether silent for you as well? Are there stories still being exchanged? Do people still know how to create mutual fantasies? Are we allowed to have fantasies at all these days?

Three Eight Six: Wellington, Rain

 You must've read this before. This is a story the leggy Jill in NZ sent me long ago-- maybe as long as a dozen years ago. I may have posted this before, but I'll post it again. 

As stories go, this is wonderful. Very powerful, very erotic, very shattering. It's a story that evokes jealousy and envy both. I'm hard-pressed to find stories in my own life that can match Jill's adventures in her mid-twenties.

I have no idea where Jill is now, but let's go to a rainy night in Wellington NZ back in the 20-teens--

rain was pelting on the windows. i woke up on the floor, naked under a kid's toy story blanket. dry mouth, pounding headache, very shaky. i sat up, and looked around for my clothes. an asian girl was snoring quietly on the couch. there were bottles strewn everywhere. i felt sick and dizzy. my black jeans were in the corner of the room, covered in mud. my keys and $650 were scrunched into my pocket. weird, i never carried that much cash. i pulled them on, no underwear, then vomited into a pot plant.

i couldn't see the top i thought i'd been wearing, so i grabbed a men's shirt that was hanging on the back of a chair and buttoned it up. i had no idea where i was or what i'd been doing. i wandered through the small apartment. there were three men asleep in one of the bedrooms. in another bedroom was a few weed plants. i looked in the fridge and took out a beer. one of the men woke up and asked me if i wanted a smoke. 

we stood on the balcony, under the eaves, and smoked in silence. i have no idea who you are, he said. i just shrugged. you're wearing my shirt, he said. i just looked at him. i was feeling too dazed to put a sentence together. you can keep it, he said. 

he flicked his butt off the balcony, and offered me another. he lit it for me. can i see your tits? he asked. i nodded, and he undid the buttons on his shirt. can i take a photo? he asked. i nodded. he took out a battered iphone and took a few pictures, then started slowly sucking my nipples. he was tall, and dark haired. he had a beard and green eyes. i fucking love your tits, he said. do you want to suck my cock? he asked. i undid his jeans and took out his cock. i got on my knees and took him in my mouth. i was still feeling sick and almost vomited once or twice, but i loved the feeling of him in my mouth. 

do you want me to fuck you? he asked. i nodded, with his cock still in my mouth. i stood up and he bent me over the balcony and slowly peeled down my skinny, muddy jeans. he kissed my neck and fucked me in the rain. the motion of it made me vomit over the balcony. i moaned at him not to stop. it felt so fucking good. his hand was rubbing my clit and his cock was deep in my cunt. i had purged and felt light and pure as air. he came, and rested his body against mine. he pulled my jeans back up, and buttoned my shirt. he put another cigarette in my mouth and lit it for me.

 i walked to caitie's apartment in the rain barefoot. i wasn't so far from there, 4 or 5 blocks. 

Caitie, just as a note, was the girl Jill was dating in those days.

I really do love the story. I wish there were still lovely, wicked girls out there over the aether who wanted to tell stories about their Adventures. I don't even know if there are still girls out there who want to have Adventures, let alone craft them into stories to excite future lovers. 

If you're reading this, what are the Adventures you'd like to have? What are the Stories you'd like to be able to tell? I know that 2024 is very different from 2012-- in this time of holy war and holy dread --but why do you think we seem nowadays to avoid adventures and transgressions and experiences?

Three Eight One: Performance

 I found a disturbing article the other day. The article was positioned somewhere between sex advice and social criticism, and there was an underlying streak of derision there.

Someone had written for advice (but to where? why didn't I make notes?), asking why he felt so anxious and unhappy about telling his partners what he liked, or what his interests and kinks were. The response began by admonishing him-- by telling him that he was wrong (wrong!) even to bring up those things. The attitude in the response was very, very close to saying "How dare you!" The key moral failure was defined as "performativity". Let's think about that for a minute. 

The idea behind the answer was that any kink, any fetish, any particularized sexual interest was based on "performativity" and was by definition inauthentic. The idea seemed to be that anything that was particularized was asking someone to do something that wasn't real.

I could've understood an argument based on the idea that any kink reduced a partner to playing a role-- that this was exploitative from the beginning. I wouldn't have agreed, but I'd have understood that argument. What I couldn't accept was the idea that there is some essential, real sex that's the only sex anyone should be engaging in. There's some idea here that sex shouldn't involve stories.

I'm not going to talk about my own particular interests, but I'll note that sex for me has always been about stories-- recalling them, comparing them, reenacting them, creating them, shaping them. Our lives are made up of stories, not atoms-- that's an old saying that I've agreed with for years and years.  

Sex for me has always been about role-play. Not so much in the sense of cosplay, but in the sense that sex is a way to be other people, to exist inside stories I've created to share with a partner. Sex for me is always less about bodies than about stories. Sex for me is always about being part of something outside my quotidian self. It's about living inside something crafted. There's always the rush of sharing that crafting with a  lovely young companion-- imagining the setting, the lighting, the dialogue, the soundtrack, the backstories of our characters.

I can't imagine a sexual encounter, let alone an affair, that isn't constructed as a small film or a short story. I can't imagine not getting together with a lover to create characters and settings-- who we are, where we're from, how we got together. We both know who and what we are in quotidian life, but when we're together we're living inside something we've created, something that's...different and better.

I've always said that sex is about class as much as it is about flesh, that it's always threaded through with class signifiers: costume, setting, accessories and accoutrements.  Well-done sex is about being something other than what you've been told you are.

Performativity, yes-- performance, certainly. Sex is a chance to be and do things I can't be in this life. It's a chance to be a character in a book or a film, to be someone or something new and better and different. I may or may not be any good at the physical parts of sex, but I'm very good at creating stories and doing the world building for them. Sex is always performance, no matter how deep the emotions run between my partner and me.  And I can't give that up. 

Three Eight Zero: Conversation

 I've been thinking about the FMTY girl in Berlin who calls herself "Lucy Huxley". No-- not "thinking" in the sense of the Solitary Vice, but "thinking" in the sense of screenplays or stories.  

I've seen photos at Twitter of Ms. Huxley in lingerie, and she's quite lovely. I say that as someone who doesn't like his young companions in lingerie-- I always hope that they habitually sleep naked and wear just a man's dress shirt around their flats. Very good legs, too. Very kissable legs. And her deep-burgundy hair is done in what one of her Twitter admirers called The Short Red Bob of Hotness. Again, very lovely, very elegant.

But in some ways I'd rather see her in a black cocktail dress or a man-tailored suit. I'd rather imagine her sitting across a table from me over drinks. I don't know Berlin; it was never my city. So I can't say what neighborhood the restaurant would be in. I'll have to imagine her across from me in Vienna, at the restaurant at Albertina Passage on the Operngasse. It's all very sleek and sci-fi, and there's a very hip dance club adjoining. Ms. Huxley does write that she likes dance floor dates as part of her Girlfriend Experience services. Well...at least I know where the public transit stops are in that part of the Ring. If everything went bad, I'd least be able to get back to my hotel or my serviced flat.

It's probably far too parasocial, but I do spend time trying to imagine what Ms. H. and I would say to one another. I'm pretty sure that I'd spend a lot of time early on just...apologizing. I'd apologize for a lot of things-- my looks, my age, what I was wearing, my lack of wine knowledge, my ineptness on the dance floor. Yes, I'd try to quietly compliment her on her outfit and her looks. I'd want to acknowledge that she was very strikingly lovely, very professional, and that I was grateful to have been worked into her schedule. I'd try to do those things. But mostly I'd apologize.

There are things I can talk about. Or maybe things I used to be able to talk about. I have post-graduate degrees. I'm a voracious reader. I do know at least something about films and about some kinds of music. Vienna is always my city, and I should be able to talk about its history. These days, though, I find myself becoming increasingly inarticulate. I find myself less and less willing and/or able to actually have a conversation. I have less and less to say, and I'm more and more afraid to say anything at all. 

I have no idea what I'd say to Ms. H., and I'd be very afraid of not responding to the prompts she might offer me. She's a skilled professional, and she prides herself on her GFE skills. I know myself well enough to know that I'd probably miss her prompts. I'd sit there over my drink feeling like I wasn't good enough to be the client of a skilled professional. I'd be terrified that I was making her feel like her professional skills weren't appreciated or weren't good enough.

The actual business part of the evening-- the transfer of the fee --is probably the only thing that I wouldn't feel awkward about. I'd have Ms. Huxley's fee in crisp new bills in an envelope that was either fine Italian stationery or something Japanese and complicated. In a better world, now, I could take out a fountain pen and write a check (though I'd spell it "cheque")...though that might be a bit too niche and arcane even for me. 

Note: I'm an American citizen, which means I'd instantly present problems for any EU or UK bank if ever I tried to open an account. And these days, I think it's only the French who still write checks in Europe. Damn it, the cheque just might be a bad idea, here in the third decade of the century. 

Maybe I'd ask for a handwritten bill. There's nothing illegal about Ms. Huxley's profession in Germany, and I'd treat a handwritten bill for services (letterhead stationery, if possible) as a valued memento, as something I'd keep between the pages of my paper journal. I would enjoy the business part of things. I'd understand it, anyway...and I'd sigh over the idea of origami envelopes and fountain pens. The transfer of the fee would have cinema and literary possibilities, and I'd like those. 

The tip would have to be a separate thing, something done at the end of the evening, and I'd be less sure of handling it. I'm told that with FMTY girls, bank notes placed between the pages of an art book are always seen as well-done. I suppose I could do that. 

I still have no idea what I'd say to someone like Ms. Huxley. I'm not given to dominating conversations, and all I could do is wait for her prompts, follow her lead, and hope that my stories are good enough to make her feel like she's doing her job, and that her GFE skills are being appreciated. 

It matters to me that I don't make someone feel like her skills are wasted. It matters that I could be seen as somebody who understood the GFE idea. Of course it also matters that I don't feel like an idiot or a rube. It matters that I feel like I can be someone who fits into a world of FMTY girls with GFE skills.

Please don't let me look like a rube. I'd be praying to Athena all night over that. Please don't let me make a fool of myself. 

But I don't think I have any idea these days how to do anything social, let alone sexual. Ms. Huxley might not mind if a gentleman of my age and looks declined to be naked, and told her that he preferred just to sip his drink and listen to her tell stories or caress herself. She might not mind, since that would be easier for her. So maybe I would just be quiet and slightly withdrawn and let the music or the lighting or the architecture shape what happens. 

But I'd still miss being able to actually flirt and talk. And I'd still never figure out how to move the evening from the table in the Albertina Passage to my hotel room. Maybe I would just pay Ms. H. her fee and fade away to an S-Bahn stop. Without being able to say a word.

Three Seven Two: Invitations

 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. 

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. 

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. 

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?

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.

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 she 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...entitled. This is the third decade of the new century, and entitled is just about the worst thing a person of the male persuasion can be seen as being. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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 tolerate my body. I'd never want her to have to grit her teeth on the walk from restaurant to bedroom.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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 you 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?

Three Five Five: Interlocutrix

 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. 

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.

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.

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 safe. 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. 

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).

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.

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. 

Three Five Three: Couch

 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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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).

She markets herself as a partner in fantasies, and she makes it clear that she believes in NSNL-- No Shame, No Limits. 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. 

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.

"Coffee shop interlocutor"... Would it be interlocutrix 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.

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.

Phone sex, she said, is another world. 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.

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 No Shame, No Limits on the back of hers. 

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 think we could be creative together, 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.

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.

Surely, now...there must already be services like that already in Japan, right?

Three Five One: Flavors

 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:

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...

Later i discovered pissing while purging which is also amazing. 

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. 

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. 

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.

Three Four Nine: Equipment

Back in 2007 my lovely, long-legged blonde friend Jill in NZ sent me a List-- and inventory list for her Hook-Up kit. These were the things she'd take in her bag when she went out into the Wellington night in party girl mode. After all, she said, when you went out to the clubs on Friday night, you never knew where you might be waking up on Saturday morning. 

I liked it that she was a girl who believed in being prepared. I liked it that she kept a checklist in her Moleskine. I've always obsessed over things like Kits and Lists. I'm not sure what than says about me, but I do like having checklists at hand in my life. I'm rather a fan of EDC ("Everyday Carry") lists and packing lists, and I love the idea of having the correct gear for adventures or travel. That's something that sounds very, very male, doesn't it? There may be a kind of magical thinking there, of course. If I have the equipment, maybe I'll magically have the life or the adventures the equipment is meant for. If I have a proper Hook-Up Kit or Morning-After Kit (and there must be male versions!) then the universe may generate lovely young partners for me. Why not?

Jill in Wellington told me once that from sixteen until she turned thirty, she never went out to parties without an engraved hip flask in her bag. Either vodka (often Belvedere) or Maker's Mark bourbon. Bourbon, she always said, feels like coming home. Her flask was engraved with Semper Paratus-- a bit obvious, but she was still in high school when she bought the flask. I like it that she did keep the flask for so many years. She liked having it to have a drink on a friend's porch in the evenings, and I know she made a few after-hours drinks in her office. At thirty, she told me, having it didn't seem professional. Too bad, really. The idea of the flask attracts me. I have a couple of nice flasks, but here in the risk-averse and moralizing world we live in, I couldn't keep them in my office desk.

Jill's 2007 Hook-Up Kit contained:

-Travel pack of condoms (3)

-Travel pack of wet wipes

-Travel toothbrush/toothpaste

-Mini-tube of water-soluble lube

-Lipstick

-Mascara

-Concealer

-iPhone & charger

-$NZ 300 (which is about $US 200)

She also noted that if she was sure there was an overnight stay happening, she'd bring a small spray can of dry shampoo. 

I like the idea of the wet wipes, too. I usually have some in my desk in case I'm doing a quick make-myself-look-presentable thing before going out after work. If there were such a thing as a male hook-up kit, I'd also have a travel-size anti-perspirant in it. The wet wipes  I have are unfortunately called "Dude Wipes"-- there's gendered marketing! Jill told me that she used wet wipes both for cleaning her face and for wiping down strangers' cocks before giving them blowjobs. That seems all very sensible. The Dude Wipes have packaging copy that archly hints at using the wipes to make sure that one's...Parts...are clean and scent-free for romantic encounters, but Jill is a Kiwi girl, and NZ girls are known for being blunt about these things.

I like it that she brought her own lube, too. I like it that "personal lube" can be purchased in a "mini-tube" for one-night encounters.

I've heard girls say that they'd bring along a fresh pair of underwear if they thought they might be spending a night in a stranger's bed-- something to wear home in the morning light. Jill of course rarely wore any, so that was never a morning-after item for her. 

Once upon a time, I showed Levin Jill's list, and Levin laughed and told me that she usually had a small vibrator in her backpack if she was out on a Friday or Saturday night. She never knew ahead of time, she said, whether the stranger whose bed she'd be sharing would be male or female. Once in a while, she said, she'd bring her glass butt plug in its velvet bag-- in case she was with a male partner who needed to have his horizons broadened. Like Jill, Levin always soaked the glass butt plug in ice water before using it on herself or on others. Fifteen minutes, she'd say. Fifteen minutes nestled in a bowl of ice cubes and chilled water was optimum for...effects. And, yes, I liked the image of Levin as a kind of sexual missionary. Back in the day, I may have laughed when she told me about the glass butt plug and called her an Agent of Chaos. 

A male Hook-Up Kit, now...what should be in it? That's a question worth considering. Though the Arbitrary Social Rules seem to favor a male bringing a beautiful stranger back to his own lair.  Girls seem-- maybe counterintuitively --that it's safer or more secure to go back to a male partner's flat than to allow a male into her own space. If you're reading this out over the aether, I hope you'll comment on that issue.

If you're reading this out over the aether, comment and tell me if you had a Party Girl time in your life when you brought a Hook-Up Kit with you to clubs or parties...just in case. Jill in Wellington always called that time in her life her JSA years: Jill's Slutty Adventures. Her JSA tales from her teens up into being thirty are always deliciously wicked, often funny, and always thrilling. 

So do send me Lists. Tell me about what your checklist would be for a Hook-Up Kit.

Three Four Seven: Morning, Rain

 I've posted this before. It is one of my very favourite stories from Jill in Wellington. It's been eight years or so since she first wrote me about all this, and the story is still amazing and shattering. It's been a major fantasy image for me ever since. I want it saved, and I only wish Jill could be here to tell me more.

Rain was pelting on the windows. i woke up on the floor, naked under a kid's Toy Story blanket. dry mouth, pounding headache, very shakey. i sat up, and looked around for my clothes. an asian girl was snoring quietly on the couch. there were bottles strewn everywhere. i felt sick and dizzy. my black jeans were in the corner of the room, covered in mud. my keys and $650 were scrunched into my pocket. weird, i never carried that much cash. i pulled them on, then vomited into a pot plant. i couldn't see the top i thought i'd been wearing, so i grabbed a men's shirt that was hanging on the back of a chair and buttoned it up. i had no idea where i was or what i'd been doing. 

i wandered through the small apartment. there were three men asleep in one of the bedrooms. in another bedroom was a few weed plants. i looked in the fridge and took out a beer. one of the men woke up and asked me if i wanted a smoke. we stood on the balcony, under the eaves, and smoked in silence. i have no idea who you are, he said. i just shrugged. you're wearing my shirt, he said. i just looked at him. i was feeling too dazed to put a sentence together. you can keep it, he said. he flicked his butt off the balcony, and offered me another. he lit it for me. 

can i see your tits, he asked. i nodded, and he undid the buttons on his shirt. can i take a photo, he asked. i nodded. he took out a battered iphone and took a few pictures, then started slowly sucking my nipples. he was tall, and dark haired. he had a beard and green eyes. i fucking love your tits, he said. 

do you want to suck my cock, he asked. i undid his jeans and took out his cock. i got on my knees and took him in my mouth. i was still feeling sick and almost vomited once or twice, but i loved the feeling of him in my mouth. 

do you want me to fuck you, he asked. i nodded, with his cock still in my mouth. i stood up and he bent me over the balcony and slowly peeled down my skinny, muddy jeans. he kissed my neck and fucked me in the rain. the motion of it made me vomit over the balcony. i moaned at him not to stop. it felt so fucking good. his hand was rubbing my clit and his cock was deep in my cunt. i had purged and felt light and pure as air. he came, and rested his body against mine. he pulled my jeans back up, and buttoned my shirt. he put another cigarette in my mouth and lit it for me. i walked to caitie's apartment in the rain barefoot. i wasn't so far from there, 4 or 5 blocks. 

Amazing story. I fell in love with it as soon as she sent it to me via email. I always loved stories from Jill's Slutty Party Girl past. Caitie, by the way, was Caitlin, the girl Jill was dating at the time.

It floored me a couple of years ago when she started backing away from stories of her past. It wasn't that she was rejecting having had promiscuous, often random, sex with strangers and Older Men in her teens and twenties, it was rejecting the stories themselves. She was crossing the bar into her early thirties, and she saw herself as a serious professional, as a chartered accountant at a high-powered boutique firm in Wellington-- and someone like that wouldn't have stories like that. Stories about sexual adventures and encounters, however powerful, however hot, weren't something she should be telling people. She didn't want to be tagged as a Posh Slutty Party Girl now that she owned a house and was trying to be made a partner in her firm. 

I live through stories-- my own and others'. Stories are the way we present ourselves to the world. I liked Slutty Party Jill, Jill who could sit at a Wellington bar or lie next to you in a hotel bed and tell stories of adventures and encounters. I could understand her not devoting her nights to drinking bourbon and sleeping around now that she had a professional life to build, but I couldn't (and still can't) understand her redacting her past. 

I do miss her, and I miss her stories. I miss her telling me stories that would become shared fantasies for us. I miss the sound of her voice taking me into her memories. Right now, here in my flat, I miss the days when lovely, long-legged, underwear-averse girls would share stories and lives with me.

Three Four Six: Menu

One of the FMTY Girls at Escort Twitter posted a partial list of her fees. I'd known that the world of FMTY Girls was far beyond me, but I hadn't known any of the numbers. The girl in question is Toronto-based, and she posted a list in both $US and $CDN. I'd never seen anyone on Escort Twitter cite their prices before-- for obvious reasons --and so this did catch my eye.

I'm thinking that she posted a price guide because she was trying to move towards fewer but longer dates. Which is fine-- that seems very efficient. What I noticed was that a dinner date (specified as 4 hours) was...$US 1200. That brought me up short. That's a much higher hourly rate than I get in corporate life. And it's not all-inclusive by any means. The $US 1200 is just the provider's fee. Dinner at an appropriate venue is the client's separate responsibility. And of course there's a customary gift (lingerie, wine, gift cards, art books) when the client meets the provider. Of course there's the inevitable tip as well-- several hundred dollars at least. So the entire experience is likely to cost more than two thousand dollars.

And because I'm naive, provincial, and unlettered-- a rube --I have no idea  how the mechanics of the evening would work. A 4 hour dinner breaks down...how? Say, two hours at dinner and then two hours at the hotel? If so, you're adding the cost of the hotel room to the cost. I'd be afraid that the provider would tag me immediately as a clock watcher, and I'd be too ashamed of that to enjoy either dinner or time at the hotel.

Another FMTY girl at least offered in-call dinner dates. You appeared at her flat or hotel room and there was a catered dinner delivered. I'm assuming that the dinner and catering fees would be added to the provider's fee up front. But that would at least help defuse my fear of making a fool of myself at the restaurant. An in-call dinner also seems more intimate, and I'd hope that I could trust the provider to handle the wine list. 

On a 4 hour dinner date, I'd never be able to suggest that we move from restaurant to hotel room. I'd be too paralyzed to make that suggestion. I'd never be able to escape the feeling that any illusion of intimacy we'd created at dinner would evaporate during the walk/ride to the hotel. 

Two thousand dollars for a dinner date, even with a sexual encounter built in, is a daunting prospect. I could I suppose save up money to have one provider encounter a year-- spending two thousand dollars on an annual vacation isn't outlandish at all --but I'd never get over the feeling that I was wasting the provider's time. She'd see that I didn't know how to appreciate what I was paying for, and so much of what I would be paying for is the illusion that I did know, that I was the sort of person who could appreciate the world she'd be serving up.  As I've said before, I'd be hiring an "independent companion" to be a life coach as much as a sexual partner.

Escort Twitter is something I can appreciate as a kind of art exhibit. It's not a world I could ever be part of. If ever I needed a provider (or, yes, okay, a provider/life coach) I'd be better off finding the inevitable co-ed or grad student in Comparative Lit or French Lit who'd charge a fraction of an FMTY Girl's fee. I'd be better off with a hip girl whose performative role would be to talk obscure bands or films at a small bistro. She could make me feel like I still had some connections to academia and hip culture. I suppose that's my world, anyway. Expensive lingerie and Michelin stars aren't my world-- I'd never fit in there, even as part of an arranged performance.

Three Four Five: Senses

Tonight I'm thinking of Jill in Wellington. I'm thinking of the stories she'd tell and the long conversations she and I would have about our Pasts and our experiences. I do miss those, and I do miss her.

I told her once that I was a creature often beset with what I call JED-- Jealousy Envy Depression. That's a cocktail of things that aren't good at all. I've noted before that Envy is the sole Deadly Sin that gives no pleasure while you're indulging in it. And tonight I am thinking of things she told me that leave me envious and dejected.

Envy is my own Deadly Sin, the fault that I've never been able to escape. I'm not sure what exactly I want from it. The ability to tell good stories, certainly. The ability to amass stories that are as good as those other people have to tell. The belief that I'm as good as others. I certainly want those things, and Envy haunts me every day.

Let's consider a small story Jill told me back a couple of years ago. This is Jill discussing self-pleasure:

If i wait til late in the night, i get lazy and just use a Lelo on my clit...if i have more time then yes - fingers in my ass, too...  

honestly...i was so fucking drunk, i didn't know what i was doing. i just needed to feel so full, i had a Corona bottle in my cunt and fingers in my ass, i was alone and drunk and high and i came so hard, over and over. my sheets were a mess in the morning. but at the time, i needed it. i think i needed to prove i was all i needed, i could make myself feel everything i needed...

i filled up the Corona bottle with water from the bathroom and sat drinking it, tasting my own cunt and rubbing my clit, even though i had just cum.

i remember that night so well...

I do envy her that story. It's powerful enough, and it makes a lovely fantasy vision. And there's no equivalent for anyone male. She has her selection of Lelo vibrators--- charges them via USB port on her iPad 2 ---and her Corona bottle, carefully cleaned and wrapped in silk in her bedroom dresser. There's no male equivalent for that. She's able to have powerful and shattering moments all on her own. There's no male way to experience anything like that, no male way to be able to give oneself the belief that you could make yourself "feel everything I needed". 

There's certainly no way for me to feel sexually self-sufficient--- or sexually equal to someone like her either in terms of sensations or experiences that can be the raw material for stories. 

She writes that  I have quite a few Lelo toys - and these come in nice, plain black boxes -- so i usually keep my toys in the little bags they come in, in the original boxes -- stacked at the back of my bedside drawer. I'm male, and a gentleman of a certain age and background. I can't say anything equivalent or have any of the same kinds of experiences. 

And I'm eaten up with Envy that my experiences will never be as good as anyone else's.

Jill and her Corona bottle, Jill and her Lelo. One key part of what I envy her is just the ability to experience pleasure. I've said her before that I don't experience unmediated pleasure, that anything I feel is filtered through books and films...or filtered through all those years of academic analysis. Jill can listen directly to her body. She can let her body give her pleasure. She can be all she needs for pleasure.

I never feel any of that, mind you. I never feel anything that's directly physical, or that isn't filtered through a lifetime of reading. I know about pleasure from descriptions in books. I just never feel any of it myself.

I know about the accoutrements of pleasure. I know about crafting tales and scenarios to give pleasure. I know about critical theory and pleasure. What I don't know is how to feel pleasure, or how not to believe that nothing I feel is as good as what others feel. At my own advanced age, I have no idea whatsoever what pleasure feels like.

Three Three Eight: Borderlands

 This is how it is. The girl talks and I sit across the table with my drink and listen. She's lovely, bright, bookish, and twenty-three. She tells me that she's non-binary, and we talk about how that's different (or if it is different) from her being bi. Her first and middle names are androgynous enough, and she likes that.

She's in skinny jeans and deck shoes, a mostly-unbuttoned men's dress shirt, a silver necklace with a pendant. Her hair is messy and looks like a pixie cut that's gotten away from her. She's strikingly lovely, yes, and I'm fortunate that she's there with me. She likes "androgynous" as a word. She asks if I think she'd make a beautiful gay boy, and I tell her yes. 

The way she's dressed at the bar is...what? Eve Babitz died a few days ago, and I'm thinking the girl could pass as a California gay boy in the mid-1960s...or at least as the film version of one. I can place her in my head as a boy in a gay bar in some imaginary movie from the 1960s or early 1970s, as a gay boy on some black-and-white late-night-cable rerun of an episode of "77 Sunset Strip". That would make her a memory of a memory, wouldn't it? She's not dressed in 1920s gay Oxbridge undergraduate drag-- like Donna Tartt at Bennington c. 1980.  She has a period California look, an air of effortless hedonism. 

What she's telling me is that she likes having boys in her bed that will role-play with her. She can't decide what makes her more hot-- being with a gay boy who'll treat her as a boy to be topped, or being with a straight boy she can persuade to act as her gay boyfriend or-- better --her girlfriend. She enjoys being topped like a boy, but she likes dressing straight boys up and making them beg to be topped and taken, too. She probably likes that more. 

Non-binary, she says, but she doesn't know how to get outside the terms of binary sex. Being with another girl is wonderful,  she tells me, but dressing up and using strap-ons with another girl is just...Lesbian Classic. What she likes, she says, is making boys, gay or straight, lose any sense of their own boundaries. 

She asks me if I know the word autogynephilia. I do know it-- it's a word used as an accusation in the Trans Wars. The angriest of the GC brigade use it against trans women. It's used to mean that trans women don't really see themselves as wholly or "actually" women, that they're simply fetishists excited by the idea of sex as a woman. The trans brigade reject the word absolutely. I've read some of the arguments around the word and don't know what to make of them. If you see yourself as a woman-- as "really" a woman --wouldn't you by definition be excited by the idea of having sex as a woman? And both GC  and TRA types reject and despise anything that might be "just" a fetish. 

The girl across the table tells me that she likes the idea of fetishes. She likes exploring fetishes, of focusing desire on things that have a kind of magic to them, of turning partners into someone and something new. Nair and make-up, she says. Depilate a  boy, do his make-up, teach him to "rock a miniskirt" and beg to be fucked-- there's nothing like that, she says. Make him into a hot teen girl, she says, then be inside him while he begs to be your rag doll, to have his holes stretched-- there's nothing like that. Make him love the look and feel of dressing up, teach him that it's magic. And the same thing works the other way, too, she says: wear a suit and tie, have a gay boy top her while he tells her what he'd tell a straight boy he was teaching to be a gay bottom. 

I  raise my drink and grin at her and ask if what she wants isn't a kind of meta-autogynephilia. I know that there's a "forced feminization" thing that some dommes do, and there's something of that in what she wants to do with boys. I'm just not sure whether she sees the "humiliation" part of that as actual degradation for the boy or just as pedagogy. Does she want to teach straight boys that they can be excited and aroused by what it must feel like to have sex as a girl? Does she want a waxed, mascara'd boy in a miniskirt to fuck her not as a trans woman with a cock or a "trans-lesbian", but as a boy who's learning to derive pleasure from pretending (or being made to pretend) that he's a girl? When she gets topped herself, she says, she loves it that the boy thinks she's good enough at pretending to be a gay boy for him to fuck.  I'd love to be a boy, she says, and have an older man make me dress up and be his girl. 

She can tell me these things because...? Because I'm older and could never be the beautiful boy her fantasies require? Because I'm someone who looks like he can talk about these things with her and not be shocked or appalled? Because I'm quiet and I'm doing my own Freudian Analyst fantasy-- letting her pour herself into my silence?

I do like listening to her. I like it that she says she sees herself as "non-binary", but that she wants to live on the border of binaries. She doesn't really want to be someone/something who's neither male nor female. What she wants is to turn from one to the other and back at will, to have the sensations of sex as each...and to take others into a land of sex in funhouse mirrors.  I like listening to her, and I want to hear more of her stories.

Three Three Seven: Learning Curve

I saw today that the singer Billie Eilish told an interviewer that she deeply dislikes porn because she blames porn for the bad, or at least deeply unsatisfying, sex she had as a teen. 

She's a fine singer, mind you. I quite like Billie Eilish's music, and she's an attractive girl. But...I will have to disagree with her on this. 

Teens have been having bad sex-- or just unsatisfying --sex since, well, forever. There's no way around that. Sex is like any other learned skill. There's a learning curve involved. Short of classes that actually teach sexual technique, sex is a learn-by-doing skill. When you start having sex-- or move on from the Solitary Vice to sex with a partner --you're starting with no experience and very little knowledge. I'll also note here that even the most thorough sex-ed class at school won't be able to give you more than academic knowledge of what you're doing. There's no way around the idea of a learning curve.

No one expects that you'll be a good driver or a good writer or a good pianist the first time you take up any of those things. I'm sure Ms. Eilish spent years working at becoming a musician. If you want to be good at sex, you need to do exactly what you'd do to be a writer or a chess player. You practice. You learn. You get better over time. 

We expect something-- romantic love, maybe --to magically make you able to enjoy sex, to please a partner, to feel pleasure. But there's no magic available. At sixteen you just stumble through a learning process-- all the physical awkwardness and bad timing and awkward conversations. You learn to get over being uncomfortable with bodies. You gradually acquire a sense of what your own body wants, of how to use your body to give pleasure to a partner. There's no way to get around the awkwardness and clumsiness of being new to sex. 

I completely fail to understand Ms. Eilish's dislike for porn. She seems surprised that "real people" don't look like they do in porn and that "real people" don't reach orgasm the way they do in porn. All I can say is that using porn to teach yourself about "real sex" is pointless. It's probably more pointless than using noir detective novels to teach you about criminal procedure. 

What did I learn from porn? I remember being in my teens and reading porn novels (oh, yes, I go back to a time before porn video and anything like PornHub) and...making notes. I do mean that literally-- making notes about things I wanted to try. I didn't expect that things in my own life would ever go exactly like they did in porn novels, but I knew that I was writing down things that I could try-- places and positions. I knew that one day I'd ask a partner about those things. They wouldn't work exactly like they did on the printed page, but they were things I could experiment with. Porn gave me things to try, things that might-- might --be useful as I acquired partners and lovers.

The same was true when I finally did see porn on video. I knew I wouldn't likely be with girls who looked like porn actresses, and in truth my own aesthetic preferences weren't for the porn actresses of the day. But I knew that what I was looking for was a set of possibilities. I wanted to see what was possible during sex. What were the positions that looked useful? What was there that you could try? I didn't expect to learn much more than that-- a range of possibilities, a list of things to experiment with. And of course I wanted to get a sense of what I'd be expected to know about if more experienced lovers questioned me. 

Porn let me know that certain activities were available to try. Porn gave me ideas about places where I could have sex, about places that I could turn into the settings for stories, about what things ( library stacks! a graveyard! an office desk!) could go on my checklist and could become part of stories shared with lovers. I didn't expect porn to be didactic, or even to be "true". I did expect it to serve as raw material that I could re-vamp and re-work and use. 

I've always been suspicious of any advice about bringing a partner to orgasm. I'm not sure that any advice really works. Or more exactly-- there's advice to be had about not being completely awful, but all the relevant advice is just defensive: not being awful at things. Being good at sex, though...that's something else altogether. I've taught myself over the years to assume that any signs of orgasm by a girl I'm with are polite social fictions. I will always try to give pleasure to a partner; I will always ask what pleases a partner. But I will also take as a given that any results I see or hear about are simply courtesy...or a way to provide closure to what we're doing.  Which is fine. I'll do what I can do, and I'll take any individual advice or suggestions a lover offers. But I don't expect-- I've never expected --orgasm in "real life" to look like it does on video. 

Everything has a learning curve. Ms. Eilish seems to assume that practice isn't needed, or that artifice isn't just as much a part of sex as it is of any other social interaction. Porn is useful as a source of raw material: ah, yes-- her legs over my shoulders! Ah, yes-- sex in the rooftop infinity pool! We should try that!  Porn isn't there as a textbook. It's there as bricolage, as a set of things to pull out and try in new configurations. 

Porn was good for me, back in the way. It did give me ways to enhance the learning curve. It gave me things to try, some of which turned out very well indeed. It helped me believe that so many things were possible. 

There's always a learning curve. Whatever talents you possess on your own, you'll need to practice, to work through all the awkwardness of the new. If you're having sex, if you're starting out on your sexual history, the first year or two will be awkward and not particularly about massive pleasure. But you learn. And porn? Porn can help. It can at least suggest things that are worth trying and show you that people can do...those things.  

And that's important.

Three Three Six: Carpet

 I've brought the story up here before.

My friend Jill in NZ told me once that she'd once been naked in the passenger seat of an Aston-Martin Vanquish going at speed up the coast highway along the Tasman Sea. I don't find that wholly implausible. She grew up in a moneyed family, she works with successful businessmen and wealthy shareholders in her corporate life, and she tends to sleep with men who are substantially older and wealthy. So I can see her in that Aston-Martin, bare feet on the dashboard, stretched out naked and tanned while her older lover tested how fast his car could go. Or see her curled up naked next to him while the sea is there on one side and she bends to take him in her mouth.

That's not implausible. How likely is it? That I can't say. But it is plausible.

When I told a certain friend in London Town about that, she countered with her own tale of having been naked in the cabin of a (married) lover's private jet, bound for somewhere in the Mysterious East. Nothing, she said, could quite top being naked and drinking champagne in a private jet. 

Plausible? Maybe...just. She has entree to the worlds of art, law, and Oxbridge academia in Britain. She also has a history ("has form", British detectives say on TV) of older, married lovers who pay her rent and fly her places. One of her lovers, she told me, was one of the leading global figures in international arbitration law; another was a notorious and famous art auctioneer. Private jets aren't out of the question. Though I'm not sure how one handles the logistics of having a mistress naked in the cabin while remaining undisturbed. Would there have been an aide or two to dismiss to...somewhere? Would you get on the intercom to the crew and tell them not to leave the cockpit? So-- just plausible, but much less likely than Jill's Aston-Martin adventure. 

You'll note that I'm not assigning percentages here. As someone who's never seen an Aston-Martin in real life, let alone been a passenger on a private jet, all of that is as alien to me as the FMTY world I've been writing about.

I conveyed the story of the private jet back to Jill, and she snarked that being naked thirty thousand feet up on the way to Dubai or Singapore was all well and good, but what about the cabin decor? What if you had to walk barefoot or kneel to give head on...shag carpet? How...Seventies! How...bad Shopping & Fucking Novel! How, Jill asked, could any girl maintain her self-respect if there was shag carpet there?

Now I do love the idea of a response born from envy, and maybe she has a point. Though I can't recall what airliner floors are covered with. Not something I ever paid attention to. I can call up the visuals of Jill in the car seat fairly well, but the private jet cabin remains just out of imaginary reach. I can't even imagine what kind of plane a private jet would be. I'm sure that Lear Jets are passé; I don't even know if they're still made. The same is true for Gulfstreams. In my head, I take it for granted that the window shields would be raised. What would be the point of covering a window at thirty thousand feet? But imagining the cabin, let alone the carpet, is beyond me.

It is Christmas season, and the FMTY girls at Twitter are posting photos of the gifts their clients/patrons have given them. Lots of elegant gift boxes. Lots of gift cards to very high-end shops in London or Paris or NYC. Lots of photos of hotel lobbies and elegant dinners. The photos of gift-boxed lingerie do nothing for me, of course. I've never been a fan of girls in lingerie. I prefer girls to sleep naked and to wear nothing at all under dresses or tailored trousers when out with me. I understand lingerie as a class marker and as a symbol for high-end sex, but it does nothing for me as an erotic lure. A girl in just one of my dress shirts is far sexier than one in the most expensive Agent Provocateur or designer lingerie. 

The Aston-Martin, the private jet-- those things do belong in some "erotic thriller" on late-night cable or a Shopping & Fucking novel bought in (of course) an airport bookshop. Question-- here in a time of global pandemic, global economic uncertainty, and a new, critical attitude towards late capitalism, are there still Shopping & Fucking novels? We're a long way from the days of Judith Krantz or "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" here in 2021. "Champagne wishes and caviar dreams" doesn't sit quite so well when you live in a country that survived an abortive armed coup not even a year ago, a country where the pandemic has killed something like eight hundred thousand people since early 2020.  It's possible that, as a good leftist, I can't see the erotic possibilities of an Aston-Martin or a private jet any more.

I can still see the erotic possibilities in places, mind you. Being naked in an office after hours. Being naked in a classroom after all the teachers and students have gone home. Being naked in a university library. Or (like Liberty and Levin) in galleries and studios. Those are all things I can imagine having a beautiful girl do. Some of them I have done with lovers in the past. 

Places still have their own rank-ordering. A beautiful young companion being naked for you in a hotel pool is good, but only really counts if it's a rooftop pool. Extra points if it's an infinity pool cantilevered out over the city. Sailboats and private pools? No real points. Girls skinny-dipping off sailboats or in backyard pools is something very ordinary. Ditto girls like Liberty being naked while camping. Though I suppose a girl standing naked at sunrise (or just in hiking/climbing boots) on the slopes of some famous mountain would have some point value. Jill in Wellington hinted once that an older, moneyed lover wanted to take her to Everest Base Camp and have sex there. Some hip magazine-- Outdoor? Wired? --noted once that Everest Base Camp had become "a real sausage-fest" as soon as it became a tourist draw, with tech bros bringing their latest model/actresses there. But in general...the outdoors isn't really a place for nakedness, or for beautiful girls to have sex. Nature, at least in my mind, has never been erotic.

Though I will note that I've seen a couple of very, very alluring fashion nudes shot in the desert. I haven't quite figured out why deserts are sexy and forests or hillsides aren't. That bears thinking about.

I try to think about the sound of the Aston-Martin going north along the eastern shore of the Tasman Sea and I can't. I can't imagine the cabin-- let alone the carpet --of a private jet. I haven't even seen porn with a private jet cabin as a setting. I certainly can't imagine what champagne my friend claimed to be drinking.

Trains, now. Just as a passing thought, there's always point value in sex aboard trains. That at least has been proven in both porn and film noir.

 

Three Three Three: FMTY

I am still unsure about the social rules at Escort Twitter. I understand that "luxury companions" go on tour these days. They set up a list of cities and book appointments with clients in each. And of course there's the FMTY idea-- Fly Me To You.  I understand the basic idea, of course. Just not the attendant procedures.

The client is screened, and then he provides an airline ticket (first-class or business class, obviously) and the escort flies out to see him in his home city. The assumption is that the girl will be staying at a high-end boutique hotel to joining the client at a resort. Several of the Escort Twitter girls have posted photos of airline gift cards sent them by clients. A couple have shown photos of gift books they've been sent with $100 bills placed at random between pages. I do like that latter idea, although it's not something I'd ever be able to do. One girl did tweet: "FMTY deposits tucked inside cloth-bound art books *chef's kiss*." The idea is lovely, but forever out of reach.

Gift cards seem quite efficient, mind you. They keep the airline tickets from appearing on any married client's billing statement, and I'm assuming they can't just be cashed in.At least I'd hope they couldn't be cashed in. What could be more humiliating than waiting at the aerodrome arrival gate and slowly realizing that your Muse & Luxury Companion has flown off to Paris or Tahiti by herself...on your gift cards? 

I do wonder about the screening process. How would you as a client be vetted? What would the escort actually do about that? I'm aware that there are blogs in the escort world  where escorts talk to one another about clients both good and bad. Is there a Red Flag List for escorts-- men whom no one should meet?  Would a potential FMTY girl use a credit rating service? I have no idea if individuals can sign up to check creditworthiness with the various credit bureaus, but again...that's a scary thing: sorry, but your credit score is only a 710... Worse, would a FMTY girl insist on your real name and run a Google search? I'd like to know how the vetting works. I remember the anguish I went through the last time I purchased a car. That was only allowing a Honda dealership to examine my life and judge me. Having a lovely, high-end escort do it would be much, much more terrifying.

I've written about my hotel-room door fear-- the moment when an escort would knock at my door, then recoil in anger and derision when she saw what I looked like. That's a nightmare that always includes hearing what angry things she's telling her booker over her smartphone as she stalks away to the elevator. Wouldn't it be worse at the aerodrome arrival gate? And wouldn't it be worse still to get a text or an email from her curtly denying your FMTY or dinner date application?

I have always thought of myself as a gentleman, and as at least marginally cultured. I was brought up to the standards of a very old-guard city and educated at a university with a reputation stretching back to the early 1700s. I do know which fork to use, and for a long time I thought I was capable of making conversation with elegant and charming companions. I haven't believed that in rather a while now, mind you. A very lithe and leggy and clever escort in London Town posted a photo of where she'd gone on a dinner date and commented that: Wonderful evening with the best company, at The Wolsey. Thank you, Sparkling Heart! I of course had to look up The Wolsey. It seems like a restaurant worth trying. And yet...and yet...I wouldn't know how to order, let alone dress to London Town standards. I can't imagine what I could do at The Wolsey or its equivalents in other cities that wouldn't mark me as unfit to be seen with a high-end Escort Twitter companion. 

I have faced down my PhD exams and the Bar exam. I have walked alone at night through cities where the local werewolves are afraid to go out after dark. I have lectured to classes filled with military officers and foreign officials. I have done those things. But standing at the aerodrome waiting for a FMTY arrival is beyond me. Surviving the vetting process for an FMTY encounter is something that's very probably beyond me. 

Here in the latter part of my life, I have come to fear that certain things are beyond me. Ordering and discussing an elegant dinner, making flirtatious and intriguing conversation, knowing how to first take an FMTY girl's hand or brush a fingertip over her bare leg-- I really can't do any of that.

Three Three Two: Muse

 Just as a follow-on to last night's entry, I'll say that I do love the idea of a Muse. There's something deeply attractive about it. Having a Muse would mean that a lovely young companion would be in my life as an inspiration, as a confidante and advisor, as an aspirational symbol. A Muse would be someone I could write for or about, someone who'd urge me to actually accomplish things.

And yet...I have no idea what I'd do if I found myself with a Muse. I'd have no idea what the rules of the relationship would be like. I'd have no idea how to behave around her-- no idea how to show her that she was appreciated in her role, no idea how to demonstrate that I'd be worth her time. 

I feel the same way around the various Escort Twitter sites I visit as a flaneur. I would have no idea how to play the role of the gentleman client. Professionals provide services, yes. But any professional that deals with clients one on one-- and I'm thinking about accountants and lawyers and psychoanalysts as well as escorts --has expectations of the client.  Anyone can pay an escort and offer up periodic gifts of expensive lingerie and gift cards for high-end shopping, but there's also an expectation that the client will know how to behave and how to present himself. And I'm convinced that I couldn't do that. 

One of the girls at Escort Twitter wrote today about someone she described as an ex rather than a client. She wrote that he was older, alone, and somewhat lonely, and that she'd suggested to him that he consider "some form of paid companionship". He was, she wrote, somewhat hesitant to try that, since he had no idea what the rules were, no idea how to behave. I do sympathize with that. 

I'll note again that I lack the finances to utilize the services of a paid companion from Escort Twitter. That's a limitation that isn't going away. I am polite, courteous, and can make decent conversation within certain areas. But I'd have no idea how to present myself to a paid companion. One of the high-end girls at Escort Twitter might be like a $500 bottle of wine. I can tell the difference between a $15 pinot noir and a $50 pinot noir, but I lack the knowledge to fully appreciate a $100 bottle, let alone a $500 one. Her talents would likely be wasted on me, and as a professional, she'd have to know that-- know that I couldn't properly appreciate her. I of course would feel deeply guilty about that. 

The same is true of someone who'd be styled as a Muse-- paid or unpaid. She could offer encouragement or inspiration, but my fear would be that she'd feel wasted. One Escort Twitter biography offers this: business, stilettos, laughter, witty banter, sensual exploration, exquisite wine, culinary intrigue, spirited company as the girl's "great loves". Business, of course, means nothing to me. I know nothing about the worlds of business and finance. The other things, yes, certainly. But I'd still feel unable to appreciate what I was being offered. And no one professional likes feeling as if their skills are being wasted.

I would be as uncomfortable talking with an Escort Twitter girl and trying to explain my interests and wishes as I would be talking to a $1000/hour lawyer and asking him to handle a traffic citation. Even asking for the things that appeal to me would likely leave a GFE Escort bored to tears. I wouldn't fit. I wouldn't know how to behave, wouldn't know my part of the script. 

That's perhaps the worst of it for me: I wouldn't know my part of the script. I wouldn't know how to enact the proper rituals of appreciation and I wouldn't be able to fully appreciate what I was being offered. 

A lovely Muse would be a brilliant thing to have in my life, as would an elegant paid companion. I'm just afraid that I could never appreciate either.