Three Nine Zero: Blue

 A young friend in the English Home Counties told me once upon a time that she had no problem with men using what we call the Blue Pill. The Blue Pill, she said, was a tool, a solution to a physical problem. In the course of her life, she'd been with boys and men from sixteen to their sixties, and many had used the Blue Pill either "recreationally" or to solve a problem. The Blue Pill for men, she said, was no different than a girl needing extra lube. 

I can't disagree with her on that. If there's a problem, you look for a way to solve it. And yet...I'd be too afraid to use Viagra or any of its sister drugs. Today I read that Viagra had a number of off-label uses that men needed to consider. It's a vasodilator, and it's supposedly good for heart health and longevity. I have no idea if that's true or not, or what the medical research actually says. It doesn't seem implausible, at least on the  face of things. The idea was advanced that men, and especially males over forty, should take one or two Blue Pills a week as a medical thing, a health thing. Again, I have no idea what the research says on any of this.

I've never taken the Blue Pill or any other Sildenafil-based drugs. I could say that I've never needed it, but that does sound too much like bragging. My luck has been good-- that's all I'll say. My body hasn't betrayed me...yet. I've always told myself that if I had systems failure, I'd remember that I'm not a one-trick pony and that I've had years of expensive post-graduate education. I could figure out a back-up plan. I told my friend in the Home Counties about that, and she just laughed. She pointed out that I had fingers and a tongue and that she expected that I knew how to use toys-- from Corona bottles to high-end Lelo vibrators --on a partner. 

I do trust her on these things, and I know that I'm not a one-trick pony. And as I get older, I remind myself that one of the good things about BDSM play is that there are ways to give pleasure that don't require that all male systems be operating the way they did at twenty. Nonetheless, any intimations of mortality and decay do leave me depressed and unwilling to do anything that reminds me of my clock ticking down to zero.

These days, I'm far more anxious about things physical than I was even ten years ago. I've never been really afraid of systems failure before, and I've dealt moderately well with poor body image. Nowadays, though, I'd be terrified of a young companion feeling insulted if I needed the Blue Pill. I'd be terrified of her seeing me take the Blue Pill and having it remind her of my age and the idea of decay. Remember, I'm the one who read a novel where the ingenue suddenly thinks that her older lover "smells old" and leaps out of bed. That led to months and months of showering and using two or three applications of the strongest and most severe body wash I could buy before ever coming to bed with a partner...even if she already knew my age to the day. 

I can't decide what I'd be more afraid of-- systems failure (I'm far too anxious not to use some euphemism for "impotence"-- here we are with magical thinking) making a partner feel unwanted or not desirable or systems failure highlighting all my other failures (age, looks, social status, wealth). 

In my life, I've been with girls who took MDMA before sex as a "recreational" thing. But I can't quite believe that taking a Blue Pill before sex would make my partner think that I was doing something to make things better for her. These days, I'm far too anxious and afraid to do anything "recreational"-- anything that's about giving and receiving pleasure. I'm far too anxious and afraid of disappointing whoever I'd be with...and, yes, afraid of being seen as an object of mockery. 

And...yes. I still use a severe body wash whenever I might be anywhere near (and not just in bed with) a lovely young companion. My life these days is about masking decay in so, so many ways.

Three Eight Nine: Smut

 There's a 1993 book by a Valerie Kelly called "How to Write Erotica". I recall having a copy of it back in the Nineties. The book itself was well-done, and it had a lot of advice about the craft of writing that was very well-taken. Very good advice, really. 

The book had lots of suggestions about writing erotica and had a long list of places where aspiring authors could submit manuscripts. All those little magazines are gone now, replaced for a while by websites, and nowadays simply...gone. Erotica isn't in favor these days.

Some 1993 suggestions-- writing copy for the boxes of VHS porn cassettes (and DVDs?) --are almost funny now. I don't even know that 2025 porn is put on DVD at all. And even in 1993, the publishers of paperback porn novels were mostly gone. Literary porn? Where would you go for that these days? There are no more sites like Nerve.com or Filthy Gorgeous Things.

On Booktok people have taken to unironically referring to any book with sex scenes as "smut". Maybe that's just a way of dismissing what's called "romantasy" out of hand, or maybe Gen Z really doesn't have any use for sex and erotica. I really dislike that use of "smut". "Smut" back in the 1950s-1990s had a connotation not just of graphic sex, but of self-conscious irony and amused transgression. The Gen Z types don't seem to have any sense of humor about sex and don't like irony and especially don't like transgressive fiction. My God, there are twenty-somethings on Booktok and YouTube that are terrified that sometimes characters in YA novels actually have sex. I just want to facepalm about that. They're actually afraid that high schoolers will be corrupted by knowing that people do have sex.

I'd still like to write erotica, but I don't think that what excites or arouses me would be commercially viable. As I've always said, any erotica that I'd write would probably have footnotes and a bibliography. (Please note that I mean "footnotes" in the academic way, not in any fetish sense) And my characters would...talk. They'd talk a lot. They'd talk before, during, and after sex. 

I mean...that's always been my own experience of sex. Lots of talking, and very much lots of talking during the sex itself. The girls and women who've been with me down all the years have been adventurous and experimental and willing to try lots of transgressive things...and we've always talked while doing things. My young companions and I have always narrated what's happening and done lots of serve-and-return badinage during sex. I suspect that most audiences wouldn't get that.

I also suspect that most audiences wouldn't see s/m as an occasion for social climbing and/or irony. They wouldn't get the idea of the two very different people (yes, sometimes age-disparate, too) talking themselves into bed or into new and untried experiences not so much out of lust as out of a sense of the excitement and sheer fun of trying something outrageous. I think, too, that Gen Z would dislike the idea of pushing past limits just to see what's out there. 

One day, maybe. Maybe one day I will write something that would've gone on a slightly louche erotica website back in the Noughts. All I have to worry about is that the sort of people who become self-righteous about "smut" on Booktok aren't going to like stories about exploration.

Three Eight Seven: Gifts

 Today is the day after Christmas, and here we are in the last week of the year. The last week of December is always a dead, empty week-- a time for watching the last embers of the year fade to ash. It's a week for pessimism and a sense of loss. There seems to be no way of escaping that.

Christmas gifts are rare at my age, but this year I did receive one gift worth noting. Someone with the best intentions in the world gave me the gift of a spa day. I have a lovely and expensively-produced gift card for a day at a hip local spa.  I was duly appreciative. The gift was unexpected, and it was given in friendship. So please be very aware that I'm not saying anything bad about the person who gave me the gift card. I was thrilled to be remembered at all. But the gift will never be used, and there's no way it can be.

This is the second time in my life I've been given a spa day, a "self-care" day. The first time was years ago-- back in the last age, back in the last millennium. Again, it was intended to be something enjoyable. I didn't use that first gift certificate, either. There was no way I could use it. I did tell the person who gave that first spa day to me that I loved the gift, and I did tell her that I'd used it and had a wonderful time at the spa. There was no way to tell her the truth-- that I'd put the gift envelope in a desk drawer where it would be forgotten forever.

No one like me can ever have a "self-care" day. No one like me can ever use a spa day. There are always social rules-- yes, arbitrary rules, but rules nonetheless. I'm a straight, cis, white, middle-class male of a certain age. Spa days aren't for people like me. Any day involving care of the self-- care of the body --isn't for people like me.

I've been in saunas before, and sitting naked in a steam room isn't something I can do. I found myself barely able to breathe in a sauna once, and I knew why. I knew that it was about anxiety rather than any physical issue. I'd seen horror films and thrillers where someone gets trapped in a sauna...so that was certainly on my mind. But most of the anxiety was that I had to be unclothed. The sauna towel around my waist did nothing to make me feel secure. I was aware of my body, and that's never  a good thing. 

I've never seen any reason for the male body to be exposed. I've never seen anything attractive or aesthetically pleasing in the male body. I've certainly never seen anything attractive in my own body...let alone when covered in sweat and gasping for breath. I didn't want to suffocate in the sauna, but what I was most afraid of was being seen by anyone else. I remember being desperately afraid of anyone else using the sauna while I was there. I was terrified of being seen-- terrified of having anyone else see what my body was really like. 

Now, I'm a  trained historian. I know that in Classical Greece, upper-class men exercised naked and took pride in making their bodies fit to be seen. That Greek attitude is utterly alien to me. I can read about Japanese or Korean spas-- elegant, hi-tech, sleek, with robot-serviced cold and hot baths and future-coded steam rooms --or watch videos demonstrating their technical wonders. I can do those things and marvel at the facilities...but there's no way here under God's green sky that I could go to one.  For all that I've obsessed over cyberpunk visions of Japanese style, I couldn't go to a Japanese or Korean spa. Not even the idea of having a Wm. Gibson experience could get me there.

I've spent my life suggesting to young ladies of my acquaintance that all beautiful girls should sleep naked. I'll stand by that position, but I've never been able to sleep naked on my own. It seems wrong for someone like me.  If I can't be naked in my own bedroom, I certainly can't do that at a spa.

The spa day I was gifted included a full-body massage. I almost grimaced at that. I've never actually had  a massage, and there's no way it can happen. There's no scenario for me in which  getting a massage ends well.

If the person doing the massage is female, there's nothing but shame awaiting me. I understand that a trained masseuse sees human bodies as a set of muscles and nerves, that she'll have been trained to be a professional. But I'll still be utterly ashamed to have anyone female (and presumptively attractive) see my flesh. And in a post-#MeToo world, other, horrible things can happen. I'd be on the massage table and there'd be a touch on my back and shoulders and...well...what if my body began to respond? What if I did start to become, you know, aroused?  I could stay face-down to try to hide what was happening and try to get away from any touch. It wouldn't do me any good, though. 

One of two things would happen. The masseuse would be disgusted or enraged. Not all the apologies in the world for the involuntary physical response would be enough. She might recoil in disgust and/or point and laugh with contempt. That would be bad enough. But she'd be even more likely to immediately for the manager...or call for the security guards. I can so easily imagine myself being shoved out of the spa and told never to return-- and I can imagine the police being called. I can always imagine that-- the police coming and me ending up in handcuffs. No matter how professional and clinical the setting was, I couldn't risk having a masseuse touch me-- or even see me.

And having a masseur instead? That can't be allowed to happen. I know how that would play out. I'd be Geo. Costanza from "Seinfeld", fleeing a massage in self-loathing horror because he thought that "it moved!" when a male massage therapist touched him. I know that we're supposed to laugh at Geo. Costanza and his fears, but I nonetheless have the same fears. That knowledge does me no good at all-- if anything, it makes me feel worse. That I could have homophobic fears makes the whole self-loathing thing worse. Being afraid of being touched at all by anyone male is the kind of fear that should leave you angry at yourself. Homophobia and low-key gay panic aren't socially or politically acceptable, and I agree that they shouldn't be acceptable. Discovering my own fears is disturbing and calls up waves of self-loathing. 

But here we are. I can't be anyplace where I'm outside my armour-- i.e., anyplace where I'm a body, where I'm flesh rather than a set of constructed masks and costumes. I certainly can't be touched. I very much like holding hands with a lovely companion, and I love tracing a fingertip over a beautiful girl's thigh or collarbone. But I dislike being touched myself. Being flesh is unsettling and far too risky. Physical pleasure is far, far  too risky these days.

The old year is ending, and I've taken no pleasure in 2024. I don't expect to feel anything pleasurable in 2025. I have a gift card for an expensive spa day that I can never use. The gift card itself I can't even re-gift. I don't want to giver to know that I  couldn't use her gift, or that I gave it to someone else. The card will end up in my desk, buried under old bank statements. 

I appreciate the thought behind the gift, and I very much like the giver. But anything that involves the self as a body-- I can't use that. I can be a lot of things, but I can't be a body. I can never accept pleasure as a gift.    

Three Seven Nine: Berlin

Last evening I discovered a new FMTY girl's channel at YouTube. She calls herself "Lucy Huxley" and her channel is called "The Whore's Bedroom". 

She's a Vancouver girl, an ex-ballet student who's ended up as a Berlin-based escort. Her YouTube videos all begin her sitting cross-legged on her bed in Berlin and talking about her life and career:"My name is Lucy. I'm a whore, and this is my bedroom." She talks about how she sees her job and her clients, and she tells stories from her life. 

Lovely girl-- auburn hair, maybe not quite thirty, lovely eyes, wry sense of humor. If I sound like I have a crush on her, well...of course I do. I like her voice, and I love the deadpan introduction: My name is Lucy. I'm a whore. I do like the way she makes the word sound. My own parasocial voices whisper to me that while I'd never have the money to book her, she'd be very likely to be someone I could have a conversation with. 

Huxley, she says-- she chose Aldous Huxley's name for her own work name. Well, I do like that. I like a few of Aldous Huxley's books ("Crome Yellow" and "After Many a Summer Dies the Swan" and "The Devils of Loudon") rather a lot, and for whatever it's worth, Aldous Huxley died on my birthday. How's that for a connection?

She explains in her first video that she has a firm policy-- any booking of three hours or more has to come with lunch or dinner, since she's a girl who gets hungry easily and becomes irritable when hungry. My first thought was...steak or Szechuan? It's all too easy to imagine booking her for four hours and spending half of the time talking over dinner.

She says that she prides herself on her Girlfriend Experience talents, and I have no doubt that she'd make a wonderful companion. Again, this is all very parasocial, but listening to her stories makes me believe that I'd feel secure enough with her to explain what my interests are and ask for the things that would give me pleasure. The sense of humor she has in her videos is dry as the Atacama Desert, and that's exactly to my tastes. 

I did follow the link to her Twitter feed, and she has excellent legs and a very knowing smile. That may well be all GFE marketing, but that's fine. I'd love to be able to talk with someone again, to be able to talk to a lovely girl who'd be willing to listen to me. She says that she's always liked older men-- ever since she was a budding ballerina --because, yes, they have financial security, but also because their stories are better. She says that she's never laughed at or mocked a client, and that she understands that many of her clients are just a bit afraid. Well, that's something that did make me sigh. You've read my last several entries. You'll understand that here in this grim and charmless year 2024 I am anxious and afraid of the idea of telling a lovely Young Companion anything at all about myself and my interests. 

Now one of her videos explained that she's based in Berlin and can visit clients all across the EU, and that she could certainly visit friends and family in Canada-- but that she's excluded by law from ever going to the US. Apparently, if you're a sex worker the US won't allow you entry (even though sex work is legal in Germany). I hadn't known that. Yet one more thing about US law that makes me shake my head in disbelief. It makes me very uncomfortable, too, that US Border Control monitors social media to help identify sex workers (even nude models) who might be trying to enter the US, even as nothing more than tourists. 

Well, I could never afford Ms. Huxley, but I do enjoy her YouTube videos, and I wish I could look across a table at someone like her and just say, This is what and who I am, and this is what I enjoy. Is that something you could work with? 

Here I am tonight, listening to hard rains falling over my city. In some better world Ms. Huxley and I would be talking over Campari-sodas about games and kinks and flirting shamelessly. I really would like to have a girl in my life and bed whose judgment I'm not afraid of, and whose skills and discretion I'd trust.

Three Seven Eight: Numbers

I had a long conversation with an old friend the other night. I've known him since grade school, and so we do know all about each other's lives. The other night he was talking about the incel  obsession with women's body counts. He despises incels on both aesthetic and political grounds, as do I. But he did tell me that he could understand the obsession with body counts, with how many sexual partners (or at least male sexual partners) a woman has had. 

It's not a moral thing for him. Not at all. It's fear of judgment. It's fear that a woman will immediately compare him to the male lovers in her past and that he'll be found wanting. He's competitive, and always has been. He and I have competed with one another over things like books read and films seen since ever we were schoolboys. And so he's always deeply anxious whenever he's involved with a woman who's had more than a bare handful of lovers in her life. He's terrified of being judged as incompetent or (worse) just mediocre in bed.

I can understand that. There's something soul-killing about the idea of a lovely girl in bed with you who's actually just recalling old TV shows in her head so that she won't seem too bored with you. There's something soul-killing about the idea of a girl sitting with her female friends the next day and dismissing you as mediocre.

Yes, I'm competitive. I always have been. I was brought up to believe that making a 95/100 was good, but not good enough. Even 100/100 might not be good enough. And what was worse was being seen to only get 95/100. Being seen to fail in any way would end with your social status being destroyed. 

I've been lucky. No young companion in my life has ever mocked me face to face. I've never had a girl yawn or fumble for the TV remote during sex with me.  I'm bright enough to know that it's possible that girls have been telling me soothing lies all through the years. I know that. But I haven't been mocked for failure. I haven't been mocked (so far as I know) for mediocrity.

But it does get harder to think of myself as worth anything in bed. Far too many Twitter feeds are devoted to sneering at "mediocre men" for their inability to induce pleasure in their partners. I do live in fear that somewhere girls with whom I had affairs years ago are using me as an example of an incompetent lover. 

Now there are other (if related) reasons for being concerned with body count numbers. I'll agree with Muriel Rukeyser that our lives are made up of stories, not atoms. And every affair, every encounter, spins off stories. If a girl has far more stories, or better stories than I do, then I feel my social status crumbling. If she has stories about being with a lover or a hook-up in cool places ("There was that time in the stacks at Sterling Library at Yale" or "There was that time in the back seat of the Aston-Martin") and I don't have similar tales to tell, well then-- why should she bother with me. Sex with me won't generate any stories worth telling.

There's envy here, too. There's always envy. Envy is the Deadly Sin that's always been my companion. If a girl has really good stories to tell about sex and adventures, I'll feel my old friend Envy making his appearance. I'll obsess over doing the things she's done, over having sex in the places that have enlivened her stories. We're not talking so much about the actual numbers in anyone's body count, we're talking about the stories derived from those numbers. We're talking about the fear that I won't have stories of my own that are good enough. We're talking about the fear that she'll have more and better stories than I ever will.

And we're talking about the way that I've always seen stories as social currency, as things that can be exchanged for social status. Good stories can be used to seduce, too. Good stories can build up a world that lovely young companions might want to visit with you.

I have no moral comments to make about a girl who has a high body count. But I do get anxious and envious when I'm afraid that her body count is the raw materials for stories that will only emphasize my own failures.

Three Seven Seven: Positivity

 I haven't been here in two months, and I'm sorry about that. This year hasn't been one where there's a lot to say about sex and romance. Everything this year has been about politics-- the war in Gaza, the upcoming election here. No one has time to think about sex and pleasure.

If there's been anything to say about sex, it's all been about the Trans Wars. That's not something I want to get involved with. After all, I still struggle to define "non-binary". And as someone who's boringly vanilla and cis-het, I have nothing to say about the Trans Wars. Well...I might have something to say about why "cis-het" is regarded as "boring". I might have something to say about why "boring" is the worst possible thing to be in an information economy. But we'll get to that later.

Tonight I'm thinking about why there's so little room for males to think about their bodies or explore their bodies. There's no social room at all for males to be "positive" about their bodies. There's really no way for males to think about their bodies outside of the gym, let alone to see their bodies as instruments for feeling pleasure. 

I can remember being very young and seeing photos from various James Bond films that showed one Bond Girl or another naked in a bed, partially covered by a sheet. I thought that was incredibly hot and alluring, but it never occurred to me that I or any other male could ever sleep naked. It just didn't seem like something anyone male did, and even at eleven or twelve I couldn't imagine why anyone male would ever sleep naked. 

I've always encouraged beautiful girls to sleep naked. That's one of those things-- like lovely Young Companions avoiding all underwear --that's a particular kink (or fetish) of mine. But it's not something I could ever do myself unless I was actually sleeping next to a Young Companion...and even then I'd have an urge to pull on gym shorts and a t-shirt. 

Girls I've spoken to have almost all told me that sleeping naked is one of the most freeing and delicious things they've done, especially with a breeze through a bedroom window. Girls tell me that there's a sense of empowerment (that word!) in being naked under crisp, fresh sheets, that there's a delight in feeling sensation from their bodies. Well, they trust their bodies, and that's not something I can do.

One girl spoke of never wearing underwear in a dress or skirt as feeling like "glory". "Glory" was actually her word.  It made her feel brave and made her feel at home in her body, she said. As a male, I can't feel anything about not wearing underwear except fear at the possibility of an impromptu and/or accidental circumcision. I also have a deep, deep fear based on the possibility of any...ahem...gastric upsets. 

But then...I can't even imagine being comfortable being shirtless. It took years for me to be able to wear shorts or go into a swimming pool. The male body seems to me designed to be something kept well-concealed. I can't imagine anything attractive about a male body, mine or anyone else's. That's just a blank space for me. I have good eyes (dark, brooding) and long, slender hands. Girls have paid me compliments on both. But I would assume that any compliment about my body was meant either in sarcasm or as a way to manipulate me. Worse, it might be a soothing lie. 

I can't think of anything that would be "empowering" about my body, or any male body. Male bodies are too vulnerable to mockery. If a woman tells you that your penis is tiny, it doesn't matter that you might actually be in the global top 1% for penis size-- if a woman says it's tiny, it's tiny. Any mockery of anything about a male body by a woman is alway, always true.  

Tonight I'm thinking that it's not possible to be male and do anything to derive pleasure from your body. There are no male equivalents of sex toys that aren't the stuff of mockery. Any male actions to make oneself feel at home inside one's body are risible.  Even caring about your body-- even being a gym rat --is regarded as suspect. 

Sexual pleasure is not something that society allows males to feel-- or at least not any physical pleasure, There's no male equivalent of the vast array of how-to books and videos about the female orgasm. The male body is regarded as something that allows you to walk, see, eat, sleep. It isn't supposed to be a sexual or sexualized object. 

I can't imagine doing anything to feel pleasure from my body. I can feel a kind of intellectual pleasure about sex-- doing things in a well-crafted story arc, doing things that create a story. But I can't feel anything like physical pleasure. I'll never be at home in my body, and I'll never feel anything like "empowered" by my body.

Three Six Nine: Catalogs

I do receive email from a couple of high-end sex toy shops out there over the aether.  I signed up for them 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. 

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.

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.

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.

I cannot imagine using any of the "For Him" toys in the Good Vibrations catalog. I cannot imagine placing my person-- my ummm...parts --in some kind of battery-operated sheath. The thought of putting myself into some electrically-powered cylinder (or putting some electrical appliance into my body) is rather terrifying. And I'm certainly not about to put my parts into something powered by clockwork mechanisms. That would be...well, just no. 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. 

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 parts. It would be about neuroscience and maybe virtual reality. It wouldn't seem so much about physical failure. 

By the way, you get extra points if you can identify the liver and pie references. 

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. 

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. 

Three Six Five: Stars

 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.

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. 

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. 

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 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. 

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.

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. 

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 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 try to be pleasant, forcing her to try 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.

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 work for her. My own response would be to begin randomly apologizing for, well, everything. 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. 

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. 

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.

Menus, wine lists, and conversation are all beyond me these days.

Three Five Seven: Walls

 I'd written here about the woman I met this summer-- the high-end phone sex worker. She and I had been speaking-- not 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 not 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.

And suddenly I've become too afraid to talk with her. 

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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 Four Four: Boxes

I have been going through Escort Twitter these days. It's springtime, and the FMTY Girls are going on spring/summer tours. I do envy them: a working vacation in a posh resort or a four-star hotel is still not a bad thing. I suppose I do wonder, though-- is it hard to enjoy yourself when part of your job is enjoying yourself-- being seen to enjoy yourself  --in a swank setting? 

These things are beyond me. I take no pleasure in travel, since I'm likely to be traveling alone these days and of course since I'm a gentleman of very limited means.  I have to wonder if I'm even capable of pleasure when traveling with a lovely young companion. I'd probably spend my time being far too anxious to experience pleasure. If I were with a lovely, long-legged, panty-free young companion, I'd compulsively worry about all the things that could go wrong while traveling. I'd worry about whether she was having anything approaching a good time, about whether I'd reveal myself as a provincial-- a rube --in my choices for a hotel, for dinner, for wine. I'd be far too likely to paralyze myself with those anxieties. 

The FMTY girls post photos of gifts clients and patrons have given them. So many of the photos show the gift boxes as well as the gift. I can recognize some of the brands-- usually expensive lingerie. I understand that Agent Provocateur is an expensive line of slinky lingerie, although lingerie is never a gift I'd choose. I'm not fond of girls in lingerie. I prefer girls panty-free, after all. The stockings-and-garters look hasn't appealed to me since the start of the Nineties. Long, sleek, taut, tanned bare legs attract me more than silk stockings. I'm far more attracted to a girl in just a man's dress shirt than in lingerie, and of course I prefer my young companions to sleep naked. All I can do is look at the boxes and try to gauge what the price might be and what statement each gift-giver is trying to make. 

I'll admit that I do like some of the boxes-- elegant things. 

I have limited resources, so I'm not likely to give Agent Provocateur lingerie or jewelry. Books-- I do give books. And I have been known to buy my young ladies men's shirts or pullover sweaters. My gifts have been hand-delivered in New Yorker tote bags, but never in boxes from exclusive boutiques in NYC or London Town.

One of the FMTY girls did hint at her fee schedule. A gentleman admirer, she noted, was flying her somewhere for a long weekend. The fee, she noted, would pay her rent for two months. Based on rents for the city where she makes her home, that's probably half again my salary for that same period. Far and away out of my league. 

Well, I wouldn't know what to say to a high-end escort anyway. I know nothing about business-- and so many girls at Escort Twitter do say that they love talking about "entrepreneurship". Many are basketball fans, too. I know nothing whatsoever about sports. And I'd be far too scared to attempt anything with a menu or a wine list. 

These days, I'd feel the same about some young companion here. I'd be too anxious to go anywhere outside of a few small, hip places. I'm not even sure I'd risk a good sushi bar. I'd certainly never risk anything with a wine list. Doing anything where I can be seen to fail in public, where I could be seen to fail at being the person I used to believe I was, is far too much of a risk these days.

Three Two Eight: Embarrassment

This afternoon I drove past a restaurant where I used to spend almost every Friday and Saturday night at the bar. I spent six years doing that. I always refer to the place as "the steakhouse bar" and yes, they did the best Porterhouse and the best martini in the city. I miss being there.

I haven't been there since September 2017-- almost four years now. As much as I love the food, I haven't used a delivery service to order anything, and I haven't sent anyone from the office staff to pick up any of their signature tamales. There's no way I'll ever go back there. 

The reasons are simple enough. In September 2017 I hooked up with one of the bartendrix girls there. We were outside in the parking lot making out in her car and someone complained to management that we were doing that. I stress that she was not on the clock and that we weren't doing anything too terribly (or at least visibly)  advanced. However...the unknown person did complain and, yes, the girl was in fact married.  So I can't ever go back there. I don't know that I was officially banned, temporarily or permanently, but when I heard that there had been  a complaint made and that the manager (whom I knew) wanted to speak to me, I just never went back. I have no plans ever to go back. I was far too embarrassed for that.

The same is true about the hipster cafe downtown where I met the girl who came back to my flat to swim this June. The two of us had a fun time that afternoon at the bar, ordering cocktails and flirting shamelessly. Some dancing together at our bar stools may have been involved. But we did tell stories to one another about our lives, and I don't know who may have heard those things. I'm foggy on what exactly I told her. I'm foggy on what people who work at the cafe may now know or think they know about me.

So of course I can't go back. I have no idea whether I'm welcome there or whether the bar staff are laughing at me. I have no idea whether anything I may have told the girl will come back to haunt me or was overheard by random other customers. So that's one more place I can't go.

Embarrassment is like some razor-edged coral reef shaping all the travels of my life. I won't go back to any place that I associate with embarrassment or humiliation. 

Now-- embarrassment is always there for me-- embarrassment and fear of embarrassment in public. I wrote someone this morning to say that one way in which courtship rituals in 2021 have become far scarier and more exhausting than they were in, say, 2011,  is the enhanced potential for both embarrassment and public shaming. Ten years ago, I'd have had no problem saying to a Young Companion that, "These are the [insert list of things] I like. Do you like any of them? Would you be interested in any of them?" 

At any point since my undergraduate days, I'd have just said that-- please see list, shall we negotiate? I could never do that now. I'd be far too afraid of being mocked and treated with derision-- or worse, treated as some sort of aggressor. I don't think I could ask for a Young Companion's own list at all. I mean, I'd probably be open to most things, even to wearing plastic reindeer antlers in bed. But I'd never ask. Asking-- offering to negotiate her list --would almost certainly be taken as something Bad on my part. 

I can no longer risk being seen or heard to flirt with anyone. And in the current sexual climate, courtship rituals are dangerous. I can't deal with the risk of being seen to want someone or some particular thing. I certainly can't ask for anything any longer. 

I'm not talking here about rejection. I'm talking about embarrassment and humiliation-- something that has to do with shame, with failing to do the correct thing socially. I won't go back to any place, or speak with any person, that was part of social humiliation for me.

 

Three Two Six: Vintage

Erotica ages badly. 

I think we can agree on that. 

Erotica from past decades has bad fashion, bad music, and body choices that feel...somehow wrong in the present. 

Last night I watched a c.1978 French-Italian film called "Laure", supposedly written as a novel and then adapted for the screen by Emmanuelle Arsan, the nominal author of the "Emmanuelle" novels. The lead actress was called Annie Belle-- a French actress with platinum-dyed hair cropped as short as my own Russian-gangster haircut. She'd have been twenty-two when the film was shot. A rather pretty girl, but my tastes have been shaped by fashion and bodies from later days. My thought was immediately was that she should've been taller and more aerobicized. Waxed, too. Beautiful blue eyes, and I do like girls with garçonne hairstyles, but while she managed to be suitably panty-free during the entire film, she was just a bit off from what popular culture in the last twenty or twenty-five years has favored. 

Odd note-- Annie Belle does remind me of the 2021 porn star Skye Blue. Same platinum-dyed 1922 boy's haircut, same lovely eyes, same large areolae. Though Skye Blue is taller, with good abs and a sense that sex is based on irony and transgression.

I think-- think --that I did once own a copy of the Arsan novel Laure, or at least a German translation of it. Something purchased at an "alternative" bookshop in Vienna, back in the days when porn, Marxism, and New Age books were all thrown together. I bought it only because it was by Emmanuelle Arsan, and the two novels (Emmanuelle-- L' anti-vierge and Emmanuelle-- La leçon d'homme) attributed to her had been the sources for the classic Just Jaeckin films with Sylvia Kristel. So I bought Laure and...puzzled my way through the German before giving the book to some long-forgotten girl in my past. 

Laure and the two Just Jaeckin films still have hot scenes, true. But the horrid, syrupy French soundtrack music kills anything approaching arousal. So of course do the hairstyles and the costumes. All the films are set in a quasi-imaginary Asia (Manila, Bangkok, Hong Kong), and while there are some elegant white-linen colonial looks, the women's outfits are so painfully 1970s-- bad platform sandals, lots of patterned Qiana blouses, hiphugger bell-bottom slacks --that you break into laughter even when the actress is busily shedding the Anne Klein knock-offs she's wearing. We won't talk about the male looks and costumes. Let's just say that both things are...tragic. Or tragicomic. 

The films were all shot in the Orient-- not Asia, mind you, but an imaginary Orient filled with languidly decadent expats and willing natives. Pretty much everything that has any trace of political, social, or ethnic/racial issues will set your teeth on edge in the year 2021. 

Underlying the storylines of all three films is the belief in some kind of Free Love. Not the grindingly earnest polyamory of our own day, but a belief that sex is something beautiful people do when they're bored, or when they've just found someone interesting. Jealousy exists just as a plot device to give characters an excuse to have sex with the partners of people who've been having sex with the main characters' husbands or wives. Older, wiser expats give long lectures about how "monogamy is dying" and how sex is an avenue to a higher state of consciousness, or at least to higher aesthetics. It's taken for granted that all lovely teens will acquire older lovers, and that while bisexuality is taken as a given for all expat females from fifteen into old age, male bisexuality is solely between fey young native men, never for any expat who isn't rich and sixty...and who prefers gazelle-like native boys. 

Everyone of course speaks in long, complex sentences filled with justifications for giving up monogamy and for membership in relationships that are as complex as DNA chains. Lots of theory, but...nothing taken from Foucault. There are no earnest and moralizing looks at power dynamics, no sense of self-righteous political analysis. Well, everyone Laure or Emmanuelle meets is rich, at least by 1970s Manila or rural Thai standards-- so politics never has to intrude into the Arsan world. 

I may watch the two Sylvia Kristel films again, though. Not for the plots, of course. Just for a couple of Ms. Kristel's scenes with lovely girls, or in unexpected settings. There is a scene in Emmanuelle 2 where Ms. Kristel reaches orgasm via acupuncture needles that I've found hot for years and years. But it's too hard to avoid laughter when considering the plots.

Erotica is built what we find arousing in the here-and-now, in the present moment. Watching Laure in the Land of Bush A-Plenty (as a friend calls the 1970s) sets off so many aesthetic and fashion warning signs that it's barely possible to see the film as sexy at all. And whenever the characters talk, they pontificate about beliefs we all find ludicrous if not sinister here in the age of Default Friend and other neo-Victorian blogs.

Maybe porn clips are the only way one can approach visual stimuli these days.

 

Three Two Five: Panic Mode

No, I never did go back to the hipster cafe. 

The lovely girl I met there ghosted me. She still has my shirt and my necktie.

Being ghosted happens. It's part of life, I suppose. 

But I still can't go back to the hipster cafe. I'm still afraid of being laughed at, or held in derision, or told that I'm not welcome there. I'm afraid that the wrong people, or too many people, heard the stories the girl and I were telling one another. I'm not going back there.

Now I may have mentioned a policy decision I made long ago. The policy is simple enough. I do not meet the families or friends of girls I'm involved with. That's simple enough. 

I do not ask girls to give up friends or family for me. I'm not interested in controlling their lives like that. I only ask that I be kept apart from their friends and family. I ask that I not be placed in proximity to people who'll be horrified by me. Any time a girl's friends see me, I know what they're thinking. They're listing all the things wrong with me-- age, looks, finances, social status, career, lack of any skills. I know full well that a girlfriend's friends will mock me and treat me with derision and pressure the girl to drop me immediately. It's  a lot easier to just avoid them. I'm not bad one-on-one. I'm polite, courteous, reasonably good at conversation, a good listener, and I have reasonably good stories to tell. One-on-one, I'm not a bad companion. But nothing that I am, nothing that I do or can do will survive hostile scrutiny by a girl's friends or family.

It's better to just stay away. That's the only way I can retain any sense of value in a young companion's eyes.

Once upon a time, some years ago, I was at a girl's flat for dinner and drinks. We'd ordered food to be delivered, and I was expecting an evening of Szechuan food, wine, and flirtation. And then her phone rang-- four of her friends were on their way over with bottles of wine. They wanted, my young companion said, to finally meet me. I went into panic mode. 

Just before the friends arrived, I dashed off to the bedroom and-- quite literally --climbed out a window and went down the outside stairs to the street. Four floors, I think. I ran out into the night and hid. Again, I mean hid literally. I kept my phone off for days, avoided my usual haunts, and kept lights off at my apartment so that no one would think I was home. 

The girl herself had been lovely and kind and charming. She was someone I did like. But I panicked. I didn't know what else to do. I didn't want her friends to see me. I didn't want to see the girl's face when she realized that her friends could all see that I had no value. I didn't want to face derision and angry contempt from the friends-- why was someone like me taking up the girl's time? How dare someone like me be sleeping with their friend?

That's how things work. I very literally ran down four flights of stairs to avoid meeting a lover's friends...to avoid meeting people I knew would instantly despise me. I do recall the sheer panic of it all, the feeling that my life was disintegrating around me, the way I knew all the way down to the street that I was never coming back there. I knew that I had to leave, though. No one's friends or family will ever have any use for me or think that I have any value.

No friends, no family. That's a policy, however self-destructive, that I'm very, very serious about. 

Three Two Four: Fears

 Sometimes I do take counsel of my fears.  

Right now there's one more place downtown where I'm afraid to go.

One recent Saturday, on a bright summery afternoon I went to the hipster cafe downtown for a drink, and I met a lovely co-ed, a girl of twenty-two who'd just graduated university here, We chatted, flirted a bit, ordered cocktails. Towards dusk she walked home with me-- yes, holding my hand --and went swimming with me. We swam, kissed, went back upstairs to my flat. The next morning I drove her back to her car.  All well and good.  She had lovely legs, amazing blue eyes, and a mass of chestnut hair. 

I gave her my number, and while she was attentive and flirty and talked about borrowing books, I haven't heard from her in two weeks. So she ghosted me. Well, it happens. I'm supposing that I was an experiment, something out of the ordinary, something outrageous, that she was doing in that strange liminal space between graduation and going into the corporate world. Okay, it does leave me a bit melancholy. She was very bright and fun and adventurous, and I was hoping for a small summertime affair.  Well...alas.

But now I am afraid to go back to the hipster cafe. I'm not sure which word to use-- afraid or ashamed. The girl and I flirted shamelessly at the bar, and we told each other stories. Going back with her on my arm would be one thing, but going back alone is another. The flirtation, the semi-dancing up against one another--- it's not so much that.  But it is the stories. The girl-- Avery was her name --was very open about her tastes and fluid gender preferences and her adventures. But she's a beautiful girl. She can get away with those stories.

I of course am male and of a Certain Age. I'm of a different generation, and I am embarrassed and anxious about the stories I told her. Who heard them? What effect might they have had on how the bar staff regard me?  Did the bar staff believe the stories? Is it worse if they thought I was making some of it up? If they thought all of it was true, would they look down on me? What exactly am I afraid of-- reputation? Being told I'm not welcome at the bar? Did random customers complain about the stories Avery and I told? 

There are things I've done in my life that do make for good stories, but I've suddenly become anxious about my reputation and how I'm regarded downtown. I want to be the flaneur, the quiet figure who sits and has a drink or two and occasionally has a conversation. The stories I'd tell a lovely girl as part of a seduction or a flirtation-- those seem increasingly likely to marginalize me. 

I  spent a lot of weekend mornings at the hipster cafe. Very good fresh croissants, very good flat whites, very skilled bar staff. But I can't go back now. I'm afraid of what the staff might think of me. And, no, this is not about any age difference. Avery asked my age early on and thought the number was irrelevant, or at least amusing. It's not about that at all.

I will miss the hipster cafe. Just as I miss the oyster bar on the plaza. But right now I can't face what the staff might think of me. 

Three Two Three: Mediation

 I have noted this before, but I take very little direct physical pleasure in...well...anything.

That's not just a statement about sex. It applies across my life, to pleasures both sensuous and sensual. It applies to food and wine and travel as well as to sex. 

I do not experience direct pleasure. I have never really have, or at least not since early childhood. Everything I do is mediated.

I had a new single-malt whiskey at lunch today. The whiskey itself was a recommendation, and one that was much appreciated. It's not that I didn't like the whiskey-- it's not that at all. It was everything I could've hoped: deliciously peaty, with just a hint of something like sea salt.  I sat at the bar and sipped at my drink and realized that I was abstractly aware of the taste and the scent, but that what I was focused on wasn't the whiskey in my glass. What I was thinking of, what meant something to me was the idea of what I was drinking. I was imagining being inside a novel or a film, imagining where and how and with whom my character would be having a drink. What mattered wasn't the drink. What mattered was the story I was living inside.

It's been like that with sex, too. It's been like that with sex all my life. Sex is only good for me when I can turn it into a scene in a novel or a film. Whatever it feels like in the here-and-now, whatever physical sensations I'm experiencing--- those things aren't important. I want to please my partner, yes. But I can't say that I feel very much-- if anything --physical myself. What I'm focused on is the setting and the symbols. Where we are, how the girl I'm with has been dressed... I'm focused on how my character in a novel or a film would be having sex, on what the backstory would be.

Sex for me has been something that matters in terms of social validation, in terms of being part of the kind of story I'd want for my character in a film or novel. The setting matters, and costumes matter, because those things help shape the story. They help define the class and social markers for what I'm doing. 

I have never been able to just be a body experiencing pleasure. Is this part of a good story? Is this a story that puts me into a better world, into a better social and class and style milieu? Those things matter. Touches on skin matter only insofar as they're part of a story, part of something happening in a better world, to the better character I want to be. Sex has always been a way of getting outside my body and into a different, better world and life.

I suppose I should note that I don't have sex in pursuit of orgasms. I very rarely have them-- almost never. Now I've told myself that not having orgasms can be a useful thing. No girl can accuse me of being one of those men who's over-and-done in two minutes. They may be able to accuse me of seeming distracted or distanced, but never of finishing too early. I'll also note that men can in fact fake orgasms. It's not difficult to do if you're inside a girl.  I'd never want my partner to think that she couldn't make me reach orgasm. (What does it say about me that I couldn't write "...that she couldn't make me cum"? I have never liked "cum" as a word; I can only write "reach orgasm".) I can fake orgasm to show that I'm enjoying myself with my partner, but I'm far too busy thinking about what I'm doing as a scene in a novel to feel anything physical.

This is true about having sex or drinking good wine-- everything is mediated through the prism of what kind of story it would make. It's true about travel, too. A new city or a new experience in a city or place can only mean something to me if I imagine it as a chapter in someone's travel memoir. Walking through a new city isn't about the city or about what I'm seeing, hearing,  experiencing. It's about whether this is the kind of experience a favourite travel writer might have. The same is true about sex. If I'm sliding a hand along a girl's bare thigh while we drive,  what matters isn't the warmth and sleekness of tanned, silken-smooth flesh, it's comparing this to a scene in something like "Story of O" or the two "Emmanuelle" novels and trying to make sure that what I'm doing and feeling is as good as a scene in the book. 

It gets harder and harder to experience anything directly with a partner, and it gets harder to feel anything that isn't a reflection of a book or a film. I don't have orgasms with a partner, and I'm not about to risk the Solitary Vice in a world where male sexual fantasies are regarded as pathetic and/or creepy. 

I can live inside my head-- that's something I've done most of my life.  But it is a melancholy thing that no matter much I like a whiskey or a lovely, long-legged Comparative Lit co-ed  I can't feel anything like pleasure. Pleasure for me exists only as a symbol. 

Three One Zero: Escorts

 I've never used an escort service. Writing that down tonight, I'm not sure how to feel about it. The simplest thing to say is that I could never afford it. I'd be hard-pressed to pay for even a street girl, and using an escort service to find a sex worker would be (and has been) far beyond my means.

I remember a decade ago, when escort blogs and sex bloggers talked about the idea of sex workers who could provide a GFE, a Girlfriend Experience. I saw the film with Sasha Grey and the cable series with Riley Keough. Fell a bit in love with Riley, too, but you'd expect that, wouldn't you? Twitter still has accounts run by women who market the GFE idea--- that they're socially presentable, knowledgeable about wines and food and current events, well-bred, stylishly dressed, and serve as "companions" as much as they provide sex. I would like very much to believe in them, even if only from a distance. 

The GFE idea will always attract me. What I'd be looking for is a companion who'd have the professional skills to shape an experience for me. I like the idea of negotiating with a high-end escort over creating--- if only for a night and a morning ---a world where I'd feel at home, a world that would be like the films I create in my head.

I like the idea of having someone who'd have the skills and intuition to perform with me in films-in-the-head. I like the idea of negotiating or specifying a wardrobe for her (yes, leggy, yes, all worn next to the skin), of providing her with a basic sketch of my interests and likes and dislikes, and then putting myself into her hands for the evening. 

It's catalog shopping, yes--- select a girl from a set of photos and a biography, then brief her on my tastes. And I'd be under no illusions about actual romance or intimacy. But at least I'd feel...safe. I'd know how to be a character in the films-in-my-head. I'd know how to do my own performance. I'd be able to be what I've wanted to be.  At least for a night and a morning.

We've come to this. Hiring a GFE escort and meeting her after a briefing session is the only way I can think of to feel like I could get through an evening of flirtation, an evening that ends in a sexual encounter, without feeling like I was at clear risk of humiliation and disgrace. I have no ability left to believe in my own body or my own ability to hold a conversation, to flirt, to feel like I could be desired. I think that a high-end GFE escort might-- might ---not laugh at me. I have to believe that professionalism would hold her back from that.  That's all I can really hope for.

Needless to say, this is all speculative.  The sort of high-end escort service I'd need is beyond my reach. I've known a few girls in my life who worked as escorts for a while. We were friends, but I never trespassed into thinking they'd take me to bed. I knew their fee schedule, and I knew they were beyond me. Asking for anything--- a reduced rate, let alone a free night ---would've been disrespectful. I wasn't going to do that. 

Well, I will continue to believe that high-end escort services exist. I will continue to believe that such a thing as GFE-skilled lovely escorts exist. Those beliefs are my only way to believe that I could have sex again where I wouldn't be ashamed or afraid.

Three Zero Nine: Catalog

 I'm on the mailing list at several high-end sex toy boutiques. I've used their catalogs to buy gifts and accessories for young companions. Well, I use a couple of old-school equestrian shops to buy riding whips, but I suppose many such shops stay in business because of s/m far more than dressage. 

I'm had young companions thank me for the gifts I've bought them. And I've had FaceTime conversations with lovely young companions who were shopping in high-end sex toy boutiques in distant cities. I'm glad that the gifts were appreciated (and, yes, sometimes used together), but I remain out of the loop when girls tell me that they've been online shopping for sex toys or that they have a whole drawer in a bedroom dresser devoted to vibrators and dildos. I like the idea of accompanying a lovely girl while she shops for dildos, but there's something very alien about that. It's not something I could ever do on my own. I've seen lovely twenty-somethings earnestly consulting with sex boutique clerks over designs, colours, brand names. I can't imagine asking a clerk for advice in even the most gentrified sex boutique. That's not something straight males can do. My leggy posh blonde friend Jill in New Zealand lives in Wellington, where there's a rather famous sex toy boutique that delivers--- that has its own cadre of uniformed young women who deliver elegantly-wrapped sex toys to posh customers late into the night. I'd be far too afraid to open the door.

Over last weekend I found all the catalogs I had from sex toy suppliers and threw them away. They somehow seemed...pointless. I won't be ordering on line any longer. That really does seem pointless. There's no one in my life currently to buy bedroom gifts for, and I'm...worried that someone might find the catalogs and think that I used them to shop for myself. 

A male buying sex toys is seen as pathetic at best, creepy and disgusting at worst. And always a figure of mockery. I have no problem using toys on young companions, but I can't imagine using any myself. Girls in the past--- Levin, Liberty, my NZ friend, a certain lovely girl in the Home Counties, a Juilliard girl who was once a pro domme and who's now with the Vienna Philharmonic ---have asked to use toys on me. I've always refused--- gently, firmly, clearly. But you'd love it, they've told me. Just give yourself over to the sensations, give yourself to pleasure. No. No. That's not something I can do. There's always the fear that I'd be hearing the derisive laughter of the invisible audience in my head.

Sex toys are for lovely girls. Sex toys are ways they can find  pleasure or amplify it. I can't do that. Pleasure isn't something for straight males, and certainly not straight males of a certain age. Pleasure isn't something I can understand, and it's certainly not something I deserve.  Asking for pleasure, and especially asking for aids to pleasure, is a terrifying thing. I hate my own fears, but they're there.  Levin called across the boutique to the girl at the counter: do you have this in other colours? do you have ones that are shaped like uncut cock? uncut and with balls?  I of course froze and tried to will myself into invisibility. 

I can imagine talking about blindfolds and riding whips; I can imagine talking about candle wax and nipple clamps. I cannot imagine talking about any of the sex toys "for him" in the catalogs or at the upscale websites. Any sex aids for men seem designed to humiliate, to make the male user into an object of derision. And yet I feel envious of lovely young companions who can blithely buy toys to help them with orgasm. I've seen a girl look at a half-empty Corona bottle and suddenly laugh. This! she said. I so have to try this!  There's no male equivalent of that laugh. There's no male equivalent of the look that says that something is worth trying for fun. 

Well, the new year, the Year Twenty-One, is almost here. I won't be getting the sex boutique catalogs any more. No one to buy gifts for, of course. And it's impossible to think that I could ever be part of a world where using sex toys--- even with a lover I trusted ---would be safe. Pleasure isn't something that I can ask for, let alone seek on my own. There's nothing in the marketing plans of sex toy manufacturers for someone like me. Not this year, and not any other.

Three Zero Eight: Lessons

 I'd thought that I might be writing tonight about sex in hotels, but I decided in the end to write about what I'd learned in my life from porn. I suppose we can include written erotica in that.

I've been reading things on line about people's sexual problems, and one of the recurring themes in the comments is that people--- meaning of course cis straight white males ---have to stop learning about sex from porn. That immediately sent me to PornHub to do a random tour of categories. I spent a while looking through PornHub clips and trying to recall what I'd learned from porn.

I know that I learned some things. Though in my long-ago youth, it was harder to do. That was before the web, of course, long before there was anything like PornHub or its sister sites. To see porn in my youth I had to sneak into actual backstreet cinemas to watch movies. I was probably in my twenties before I saw porn on satellite channels, and I never had much of a porn collection on either videotape or DVD.  But I did learn things from porn. 

That makes sense for me, of course. I learned about so much in my life from books and films.  Novels and films shaped who I am. I read books to learn about what to wear, which wines to drink, how to behave at dinner parties. So why not porn?

I learned from porn (yes, from a book first, from "Story of O") that there were beautiful girls who didn't wear underwear. I learned that there were girls there in the ordinary world who were deliciously bare under skirts or shorts. I learned that I could suggest to lovers that they be panty-free. I learned that I could whisper to a lovely girl and tell her to wear nothing at all beneath a sundress while she walked with me down a beach or a city street--- learned that this could be an adventure. And it has become a signature thing for me--- asking girls with whom I'm involved to give up underwear, at least while out with me.

I learned that there were beautiful girls who slept naked.  I may--- may ---have learned that first from the early James Bond films, but certainly it was porn where I found that sleeping naked was something beautiful girls seemed to do everywhere. I watched that and knew--- even in my early teens ---that this was something I'd be asking lovers to do lifelong. 

Porn showed me new positions to try. Porn showed me new places for risky and thrilling encounters. Porn showed me that, yes, oral and anal did happen...and showed me how to do both. And the same is true for various kinds of s/m. Until I read about something, until I see it on a screen, it isn't real. 

Porn gave me an incentive to try things, to think that certain kinds of adventures were possible. It gave me the courage to offer up ideas and suggestions to lovers. Were the things that I asked about or found fascinating "unrealistic"?  Maybe. Or even probably. But "realistic" has never been what I was after. 

Porn offered me raw material that I could shape into things I could share, things that I use as guides to adventures and to creating stories for myself and a lover. Porn showed me what I could like, showed me things that I didn't know I'd like. 

I never thought that porn was a guide to what a girl looked or sounded like while having orgasms. I never thought that porn showed how large or how hard a male was supposed to be, or how often a male could perform. But then I wasn't interested in those things anyway.  I did think that porn showed me how sex should be lit, and how bodies can be posed for maximum visual effect. Porn taught me how sex could look. And I'll always be grateful to certain porn directors (e.g., Andrew Blake) for that.

Three Zero Six: Requests

Once upon a time, I recalled something my friend Liberty said about the older men in her life and past:

Liberty told me that what she liked about affairs with Older Men was that they all had kinks and obsessions that they'd rarely (if ever) been able to talk about with anyone. She was always willing to listen and learn...and not mock them. 

That meant a lot to me once upon a time, hearing a lovely strawberry-blonde girl say that she wouldn't mock the things I like. That's something I've been agonizing over.

Back in another age, I had no problem asking girls for the things I liked in bed. I had no problem telling someone what gave me pleasure...and asking what they liked. Even ten years ago--- maybe even five ---I had no problem with just asking for things. I took it as a given that that was what an affair was about. You told a lover or potential lover about the things that gave you pleasure, and the two of you shared that knowledge. In all the years since I was fifteen or sixteen I'd felt perfectly safe doing that. An affair, a relationship, was about learning what obsessions and kinks a lover had...and learning something from trying them out. Back a dozen years, and I had no problem just saying, This is something I like. Have you ever tried it? I'd had girls laugh with me about those things--- the bright laughter of someone thrilled or intrigued or amused ---but no one had ever laughed at me about the things I liked. No one had ever recoiled in horror or disgust. But here in the third decade of the not-quite-so-new century, I don't feel safe any more. Not at all. 

Last evening I watched a brief video clip of a rather lovely porn actress who calls herself Ashley Lane. She's apparently a fairly well-known bondage and fetish model, and she does more standard porn as well. Lovely girl, by the way. Long light brown hair, high cheekbones, that lithe and slender look I like. Anyway...the clip was simple enough. She was sitting naked on a countertop, giving a foot job to some random male scene partner. She was smirking a bit, and obviously confident in her skills. I watched the clip and sighed. Ms. Lane herself was very attractive, and what she was doing looked fun and just wicked enough to seem worth trying in some risky place. And...it's not something I would ever ask a girl to do. I'd be far too afraid to ask.

If the girl offered, of course I'd accept. But I could never ask. Asking for that would be too close to the foot fetish world, and that world is always considered pathetic and risible these days. As a male of a certain age, I certainly couldn't ask for anything either specific or non-vanilla. To be a male of a certain age here in the brave new world is to be regarded as inherently creepy and disgusting. You're not allowed by the Arbitrary Social Rules to admit to anything non-vanilla...or to admit to any sexual preferences at all. 

There was a time when I had no problem looking at a girl across a table and telling her that I'd love to do the blindfold and candle wax thing with her, or to introduce her to a riding crop. Nowadays I won't even hold someone's hand.I'd never spend an evening talking about films or books while running a finger along a long, slender bare leg. If a girl asked me what I like, or what turns me on, I'll never tell her. I"ll respond to a direct offer, but I will never admit to having any preferences. I will never ask if someone might be interested in something. That's not mine to do. 

Nothing I might like, nothing that gives me pleasure, is anything I can admit to, no matter what it is. And I'm equally forbidden to offer some way to give a lovely partner pleasure.  In any case, it would be taken as a given that I'm incapable of giving pleasure--- or at least I'd take it as a given. Anything I might want to do or try is inherently pathetic or creepy. Any skill I might offer up is insufficient, and my thought that I might have a skill is a sign of toxic narcissism. 

We've reached a place where lust, adventure, and exploration are all regarded as sad and pathetic, if not abusive. The Age of the Windowless Monads, I suppose we can call it. Communication used to be the panacea for all things--- communicate with your partner! Not these days, mind you, Opening up to a partner is as unwelcome as an actual phone call.