Three Six One: Clowns

I've been following along with the Trans Wars over the holidays. They're the latest round in the larger Culture Wars.  And the current campaign  seems to be built around drag queens. 

I can remember seeing drag shows back in the Long Ago, back in my clubland days. I can recall seeing an advertising poster for a drag show in Vienna and realizing that "Travesti", the local term for a drag show, was related to both "travesty" and "transvestite". No, I was not very knowledgeable at that age.  I can remember seeing drag shows, though I don't recall ever finding them very interesting. The shows were almost inevitably "tributes" to female singers or actresses who'd become gay icons. Lots and lots of drag queens on stage doing Liza Minelli or Nina Simone imitations. The music was never my style, and I was too young to have any appreciation for Joan Crawford (or even Joan Collins) impersonations. 

I might've responded better to things like Dame Edna Everage, but that kind of performance (is "panto" a correct term here?) wasn't on offer at dance clubs in my Lost Youth. 

Anyway...here we are in 2023, and Drag Queen Story Hours are a battleground. The right wing and the most strident of the GC brigade now see outright evil in drag queen performances and refer to drag queens as "groomer clowns".  I'm not sure what to say to that.

Maybe the whole idea of a drag show has changed since I was in my twenties. I remember the shows as being a mix of beauty pageants and icon tributes. They weren't for children, but that was largely because children wouldn't have had any idea who Talullah Bankhead was, let alone Jayne Mansfield. I can recall the jokes as being sly and filled with double entendres, but I don't recall the shows as being overtly sexual. I don't recall any strip shows as part of drag performances, even in largely gay clubs.

I've seen drag queen brunches where the waitstaff were in drag and did comedy bits at the tables. The humor isn't really my thing, and at brunch I usually just want to drink Mimosas and be left alone to (I hope) flirt with my lovely co-ed companion. But I have no moral objection to someone in drag bringing me eggs Benedict and hash browns. And I have no objection to someone in drag reading books to children.

I can remember a few years ago when there was a less hysterical controversy over sex workers reading books at libraries to children. The sometime porn actress Sasha Grey was attacked by the right wing for that, for being a volunteer at her local library and reading to kids. I was very sympathetic to Ms. Grey and other sex workers. Being a volunteer reader was a good deed in itself, and I understood her political point, too. Being a sex worker didn't (and doesn't) make someone a monster, and volunteering at a local library was a way to show that sex workers were part of the community. 

So I can understand why drag performers might want to do story hours. The idea is to show that they're simply entertainers and that they're part of a larger community... and that they're willing to volunteer to do constructive things-- like teaching children that reading is fun.

I'm a bit wary, mind you, of the way drag queens have been conflated with trans folk. My own understanding was that most drag queens aren't trans-- that they're gay men. My own understanding is that some might simply be transvestites and might be straight. Drag has its own history and it's not just a subset of the trans world. There's a critical argument to be made about drag as being misogynistic (the whole "woman face" argument), and whether or not you agree with it, it's at least a respectable argument. But it's poor damned history to see drag as being inherently trans. 

I'm wary, too, of the right-wing arguments that drag performers reading to children constitutes "grooming". When the right accuses drag performers of "sexualizing" children, I have to be skeptical. What they really mean is that they're angry that children are being told that some people are gay or trans, or that it's possible to be different. They don't object to stories where two hetero characters kiss or marry. What they object to is any performance or story that suggests that heterosexual monogamy isn't the only kind of acceptable romance. 

My own view of the Trans Wars leans more to the GC side. Take that as a given. There are two biological sexes for humans, and humans don't change sex. But there are multiple genders-- maybe as many as there are individuals, since each and every individual is  a different mix of socially-defined traits for men and women. 

But I have no time for people who use the Trans Wars as a way to re-fight the LGB Wars of the 1970s-90s. I have no time for people whose ultimate argument is that anything not "normal" is evil, or who use dislike of the TRA types to attack LGB people.

Three Five Two: Essentials 2

 I had posted the list of 20 Essentials my friend Natalie sent me back in 2013. I promised to post the response I sent her-- a list of Essentials every Gentleman, whether Young or Of A Certain Age, should have. I couldn't find the original of my response, so I have reconstructed it here. These are things I think every Gentleman should have. Please do let me know what you think.

20 Essential Things Every Gentleman Must Have

1. A good blazer. This is the exoskeleton of your entire wardrobe. A good, well-fitted blazer will take you everywhere. I prefer black to navy blue.

2. Good black walking shoes. Something that'll take you on long city walks and carry you from a corporate meeting to a hip bar by the university. I prefer blucher to Oxford style.

3. A signature scent. For me, that's Eau Sauvage by Dior or Eternity for Men.

4. A local bistro that's a second home. A place where you're a regular. Where they serve you off-menu items you didn't know you needed. Where they know your tastes, and where you have a group of interlocutors around whenever you're at the bar.

5. A bottle of good single-malt. You'll need it on nights when you're poring over that book you've been looking for all your life, and you'll need it when that special guest comes by. If Herr Herzog shows up unexpectedly, I'll pour him a glass of Dalmore Cigar Blend or Suntory Yamazaki.

6. A passport. Yes. It's a big world, and you need to see it. And you never know when you might have to suddenly flee the Agents of the Dawn.

7. Dude Wipes. In case a lovely Young Companion unexpectedly knocks at your door. You need to be ready for that.

8. Cigarette lighter. You may not smoke, but the lovely, mysterious girl at the next barstool just may. A gentleman is ready for that. And it is a good way to open a conversation.

9. A good, durable shoulder bag. Your laptop or iPad, a good book, sunglasses, this week's New Yorker, your charger, a couple of pens, and a Moleskine. You need this. I've been using Land's End briefcases as a shoulder bag for decades.

10. A signature dish. Well, I'm New Orleans-born. I make a very decent jambalaya. Young Companions seem intrigued.

11. A good chef's knife and a cast-iron skillet. Something any civilized person needs. Those two things will get you through a myriad of cooking moments. And they've served me through many a Friday night with a good rib-eye and a bottle of wine.

12. A Moleskine notebook. Like everyone else from my generation, it was Bruce Chatwin who told us about Moleskines. They're classic, simple, timeless. I used hardbound grid-ruled ones for years and years, but these days I'm using the softcover, lined version. I keep a supply on hand, and I wouldn't be without one.

13. Some knowledge of wine. Of course. However not? There's a world of good wine in the $20-$50 range. Try things. Read about things. My preferences these days are for New Zealand sauvignon blanc and pinot noir. But I do appreciate a good Argentine malbec. And whether you're watching a film alone in your flat or sitting out on the deck with a lovely, long-legged Comp Lit co-ed, a glass of wine is always a good idea.

14. A good fountain pen. There's something very sensual about writing with a good fountain pen. And it tempts you to write letters and actually communicate with people. Makes you develop a reasonably elegant handwriting, too. My current favourite is a classic Waterman with an XF nib. I like my inks in a bordeaux shade-- or the Birmingham Inks "Waterfront Dusk" shade.

15. A seduction playlist. The lovely N. at RadioKvetch says that every girl should have her own strip-tease song for use with a lover (hers is Kavinsky's "Nightcall"), but as a Gentleman of a Certain Age, I have a seduction playlist instead. The key songs on it are-- Cowboy Junkies, "Sweet Jane"; Beth Orton, "Anywhere"; and Duran Duran, "Come Undone". There's probably some "Gods & Monsters"-era Lana Del Rey in there, too.

16. A good face care regimen. Because the clock is ticking. Always.

17. A good book collection. Because I have lived my life through books, and books open up the world and the past. And a good book collection is indispensable for tempting leggy Comparative Lit co-eds into your lair.

18. A lovely Young Companion. Oh, yes-- long-legged, slender, sharp-cheekboned and sharp-hipboned, with lovely eyes, an aversion to underwear and sleepwear, bookish, whip-smart, wicked, and open to adventures.

19. A small stuffling friend. A stuffling is loyal, faithful, comforting, and a good listener. Dorian-- the best of all Small Mongolian Pony stufflings! --has been with me for a lifetime. He's traveled the world with me, and was there with me for my PhD viva voce.

20. A mysterious Past. Well, obviously. A Past with good stories, a Past that will hold the attention of that leggy Comp Lit co-ed. You need good Stories, and you need the ability to tell good stories. All those years lecturing to classes at least helped me with that.

If you're reading this out over the aether, you are of course invited to submit your own Lists. What Essentials should a lovely girl have in her life and shoulder bag? What Essentials should a gentleman have for structuring his own life and attracting lovely Young Companions?

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 Two Two: Celebration

 An email notice from Good Vibrations in San Francisco ("Educate, Explore, Empower") arrived this weekend. The notice informs me that May is "National Masturbation Month". What can I do but sigh in exasperation?

That notice isn't meant for me. I'm absolutely not the demographic for the ad, let alone the celebration itself. I'm male-- cishet male.  Everything that I am falls outside the target demographic. I'm a gentleman of a certain age, of course, and I'm sure that aging cishet white nominally-middle-class males aren't aren't the people Good Vibrations is targeting.

Educate, Explore, Empower... All good things, I suppose. But masturbation is not something that aging white cishet males are supposed to engage in...or even admit to. It's assumed in popular culture that males don't need any education in the activity, since it's something they've obviously been doing compulsively since something like age twelve. It's also assumed that any exploration in the activity by males, aging or otherwise, is by definition creepy and unacceptable. All male sexual fantasies these days are considered to be creepy and tantamount to sexual assault. And male participation in the activity-- in the Solitary Vice --is regarded as pathetic, creepy, and risible, and never as "empowering". 

Male participation in the Solitary Vice is regarded as a sign of sad failure, never about learning about pleasure and what to tell a partner about how your body responds. Sex toys and masturbation aids designed for women are seen as charming, sexy, something to be proud of. Women of the target demographic can talk about favourite vibrator or dildo preferences (Lelo seems to be the choice of hip, late-twenties young ladies in the know). It's impossible to imagine anyone male-- straight or gay --talking about Fleshlight or inflatable doll comparisons.

Consider the moment in "Stealing Beauty" where the young Liv Tyler is almost discovered masturbating by Jeremy Irons, who's in the next room. She's reasonably blasé about what she's doing. Her concern is about being seen three-quarters naked by a stranger, not about what she's doing. Compare that with the moment in "Pulp Fiction" when John Travolta mutters to himself that he won't risk making a pass at Uma Thurman-- his boss' wife --and that he'll just go home and jerk off. The audience is supposed to laugh at him. The very terms used for the male Solitary Vice ("jerk off" or "wank") are regarded as pathetic and open to instant mockery.

At my own advanced age, there isn't a way I could indulge in the Solitary Vice without feeling the instant lash of self-contempt. Admitting that I found physical pleasure in any activity (sexual or non-sexual) would be far too risky. I am not now and will never be in any sort of target demographic for someplace like Good Vibrations. I suppose I might be a target demographic for the Blue Pill or ED clips or penis pumps, but that's yet another reason why I'd never go into any shop that markets sex toys.

Here this May I have nothing whatsoever to celebrate about my body, or about sex, or about avenues to physical pleasure. I wish I could find a good cultural history of attitudes towards male masturbation in the last hundred or so years...or even since the 1960s. How did the male version of the Solitary Vice become so treated with contempt and derision? How did male desire itself become derided as inherently creepy? I'd read about those issues. A monograph with the full academic panoply of footnotes would mean something to me. Educate, Explore, Empower can't (by definition) mean anything to me.

Two Nine Seven: Markers

Not so very long ago--- a week or two ---there was something called International Non-Binary Day. There  were announcements on Twitter and Non-Binary flags flown in some hip neighborhoods and at the protests we're experiencing nationwide here in the summer of the Red Death.

I will have to admit that I don't understand the whole Non-Binary (NB, enbee) idea. I'll read about the concept and have trouble distinguishing "non-binary" from simply 'bisexual' or 'androgynous'.

Now I can craft an argument that divides non-binary from bisexual. Bisexual is the ability to be sexually attracted to either sex, to be sexually attracted to both (or either) male and female. That seems simple enough, though I do fear that the argument may already be outmoded. My current understanding is that sexual attraction is being downplayed these days, and that attraction must be based on gender, not sex.  "Non-binary" remains an ambiguous usage here. Is it the ability to be attracted to more than one (or two...or more) genders, to multiple social presentations? Or is it presenting oneself as performing more than one (or two...or more) genders? Does it include what we once thought of as 'androgyny' or does it go beyond that?

Non Binary seems to be linked to the idea of 'pansexual'. From what I've been reading, 'pansexual' is the new ideal, the new gold standard for sexual orientation. I've seen articles and Twitter posts that assert (sometimes violently) that 'pansexual' is the only moral or ethical sexual orientation, that any other orientation (straight, gay, lesbian, bi) is immoral--- bigoted and exclusionary. To some degree, that seems to be special pleading by trans women, who are busy building an argument that any refusal to have sex with someone on the grounds of body and anatomy is 'transphobic', reactionary, and evil. That argument seems to come down to saying both that bodies don't matter and that anyone who won't have sex with them is a Bad Person.

I've seen assertions on line that being Non-Binary is purely internal, that someone can be a 'man' or a 'woman' at any time, at will, even without social presentation. All identity, they're arguing is internal. You can change identity without having to do anything or look like anything. That's an argument I have trouble with. I can see that it's not altogether aligned with trans views of identity, since it rejects the idea of a real or authentic identity. I also take for granted that social presentation matters. An identity has to be recognized by the world around you to have any meaning at all. Saying, for example, that your inner identity is "woman" while sending out signals (dress, body language, beard) that your particular culture reads as "male" is a pointless exercise.

So there are the Non Binary flags, true...but what are the social markers for being Non Binary? There's an IG girl whose account I follow, a girl in the Pacific Northwest, who did a long series of posts about being Non Binary. Yet to my eye...I have no idea what she means. That she's bisexual is obvious and trivially easy. She's tall, lanky, lovely eyes and face, with hair shaved down to USMC boot camp length. She works as an alt-model, and her photos can be anything from haute fashion sexy to punk erotica. I read her as androgynous in a kind of Eighties art-school style--- an assumed boyishness used to enhance obvious femininity. Her social presentation remains "female" to my eye. I have no idea what she thinks when she looks in a mirror or sees herself in photos, and I do read her as  female-hot.

What are the social markers for being Non Binary? It says something about me that I assume that there must be social markers. As far as I know, every group develops its own internal symbolic language of identifiers--- whether that's late-Victorian gay men with a green carnation or Nineties lesbians in Birkenstocks. I grew up reading "The Official Preppy Handbook" and "The Sloane Ranger Handbook" and "The Official Yuppie Handbook". I take it as a given that there are social markers, whether that's finance bros wearing micro fleece vests or old-school preps wearing Nantucket Reds. After all...checklists are everything. But I don't know how Non Binary people perform an identity.

Any identity must be something the external world can read. How else can they react to you as what you assert that you "really are"? Any identity has its external symbols and poses. Nothing is more human than constructing stories to explain ourselves, whether verbally or in symbols.

Right now, though, I can't quite explain what Non Binary is, or how it's enacted in public. What does it mean? How is it announced? Who out there over the aether can tell me? Be specific, as I always told my students--- be specific and give examples.

Two Nine Two: Procedures

I was looking through Alexander Maksik's "You Deserve Nothing" yesterday evening--- a rather powerful teacher-student romance. Yes, I know, we're not supposed to read those any more, or consider teacher-student romances as anything other than nonconsensual and exploitative. I rather like the genre, or at least the possibilities in the genre. I've been fortunate, too, in knowing girls who've been attracted to the same set of fantasies and have been willing to construct scenes in the genre with me.

My lovely friend in Montreal always told me that she'd gone to McGill as an undergraduate specifically to have affairs with older and knowledgeable men. She wanted to be someone's dangerous muse. The problem, she told me, was that she didn't know the procedures involved.  If she found an older admirer, how was the affair supposed to progress? Who was supposed to make the first move? What were the recognized ways in which she could make it clear that she was available as muse and mentee and bedmate? What she needed, she said, was a checklist. Or at least access to a covey (coven?) of co-eds who shared her tastes and could impart secret knowledge to her.  She showed me her notebooks with drafts of checklists she'd assembled, largely based on novels like Maksik's "You Deserve Nothing" and lots of memoirs by young female French writers who had tales of affairs with teachers and professors. She was--- and is ---like me in some things: checklists and rituals always matter.

Levin told me that the affair with her painting instructor had opened exactly like she'd expected it to--- lots of long conversations about art, lots of tales over coffee at the student union about the man's past in the art world, eventually a flask of vodka in the painting studio one night. She said that she was used to boys at school who never knew how to ask anything directly, and when her professor looked at her that first night and casually asked, "Why aren't you naked yet?" she just laughed and pulled off her singlet.  What she liked, she said, was that he had a whole checklist of his own in his head: things to do with and to her, places to do things in, a list of things to show her. She liked it when he asked her to model for him--- that was so very clearly supposed to be a sign that he wanted her for more than just a night or two ---and she knew that it was a sign that she was doing well.

Liberty was always a direct girl, and her procedure was to just ask for whatever she wanted.  She ended up in that sleeping bag with her instructor on that kayak trip by just asking, by putting down the joint she was smoking by the campfire and asking him if he wanted her to ride him or wanted her on bottom. That's the same kind of directness she'd used at sixteen with the kayak store owner. I admired her directness--- admired her ability to just be direct. Her own set of procedures worked on me, mind you. I liked watching her take charge of starting the affair. That first night at the oyster bar when we met, we'd talked for a while and then she very casually asked if she'd be sleeping over at my flat after she got off.

Sometimes these days I think that I've lost my own ability to work through a checklist or even know where I am among the items. I miss the sense of self-confidence that Liberty had, and I miss thinking that I had the ability to craft the checklist points and guide a young companion down the list: places, positions, discussions, games. I miss the idea that a lovely girl could intuit the key checklist points and enjoy the idea of ritual and procedure.

One night during their affair, her painting instructor painted on Levin herself--- outlining her areolae and nipples in blue, tracing red along the sharp lines of her hipbones. She told me that she'd had a hard time not laughing--- that he was willing to be playful rather than simply mentor-mentee with her meant that he trusted in her not to mock him after he'd put some of his authority aside. I do like that image.

Liberty I'm sure knew that I wanted to do certain things in certain places with lovers, and she was willing to work my list with me so long as I understood that she was someone who liked simple, direct questions and straightforward answers.

I suppose I could leave examples of a checklist here, but somehow I don't feel quite comfortable or safe doing that.  Lists tell others what you want, what you desire, what you think you need. That's information that's never safe to have lying about.  It's so easy to be mocked for those things, whatever they might be.  And it's just no longer simple to ask anyone to work through a list with you, even if you're more than willing to work through hers with her.

I suppose it's harder, too, to know what you should put on the list--- harder to know what you actually do want.

Two Eight Five: Pedagogy

Someone told me once in passing that a certain kind of erotic linkage underlay all education. They were talking about Plato and the Symposium, but I understood what they meant--- that the desire for knowledge and erotic desire are often hard to separate one from the other. Falling in love with a certain kind of knowledge is easily transmuted into desire for the person with the knowledge. Having one means having the other. Or so any number of French coming-of-age novels and any number of films about teacher-student affairs tell us.

Back a while ago I wrote this about my friend in New Zealand:

My lovely, long-legged, posh blonde friend down in the Land of the Long White Cloud wrote me once upon a time to answer questions about her adventures in her teens. Her life as a posh bad girl has always fascinated me, and I did send her a master list of questions about the things she did when she was a self-described wicked schoolgirl.

I asked her the obvious question about encounters and adventures with teachers--- something that's the stuff of any number of coming-of-age films (right now I'm thinking of Mischa Barton and her teacher in "The O in Ohio" or Kat Dennings in "Daydream Nation").

This was her response to my question about whether she'd ever had sex with one of her teachers back at her posh private school in Lower Hutt:

I slept with a teacher a few times...but he was sort of a family acquaintance. But he was also my science teacher, so it totally counts! (I was sixth form, so 16 when I did it)  

She also wrote me to say that:

At 15, i sucked a maori trainee-teacher's cock behind the school gym... just sucked him that one time...i would have loved to fuck him though!


I'm wild to know all the backstory for each encounter--- how it happened, what she thought and felt during and after, if she discussed doing either thing with her circle of close female friends. I'd love to know if she was ever discovered--- by parents or staff ---doing schoolgirl-teacher things.  Those questions do matter to me. She was I think thirty or thirty-one when she answered those questions, and I do wonder how she sees her fifteen or sixteen year old self, and if she has any regrets.

I think I noted before, too, that I've come to suspect that not all the stories she's told me over the years have been true. So while I'd very much like those stories to be true, I just can't be sure. It's sad and disturbing that I can't just believe her outright these days, and all the more so since for years I've known that I'd run off and live with her or marry her for the asking.

But let's assume it's true. Let's assume that she did have sex with her science teacher. And that she gave head to a Maori teacher-trainee behind the gym. Those are great stories, and I can add them to my list of teacher-student stories from girls I've known.

Liberty of course slept with her coastal ecology instructor when she was at university. From all I understand, the environmental sciences department (regarded as a haven for hippies) was notorious for things like that happening. I do love the idea of the sleeping bag and the dock (see my earlier entry), and I'd like to know if she slept with him again after the field trip. I suppose it's possible that it was only that the rules are suspended on field trips, but it's something I wish I knew. And if she was ever jealous that the instructor (oh, obviously and inevitably) slept with other co-eds in his classes.

Levin told  me once that she'd slept with one of her art professors. In some ways the affair had been a perfect art school cliche--- she'd even modeled for him. She was rather proud that he'd painted and sketched nudes of her. She had one framed in her bedroom. She was proud of being his muse, proud of being painted. The affair (and it lasted for a while) was art school cliche and filled with art school drama. Levin discovered that the professor had also slept with a boy she'd dated her freshman year...and who was now living with a girl Levin had once had a fling with. I nearly fell off her bed laughing and applauding.  She agreed with me that it was funny, although it made her feel that  art school was far, far too claustrophobic and incestuous.  I'll note here that I found that whole round robin thing far easier to believe than some of my New Zealand friend's stories, if only because I'd spent enough time around art school undergraduates and faculty in my clubland days. Art school always seemed to me to be a mix of indie mumblecore movies and Arthur Schnitzler's Reigen.

I will say, too, that the framed nude she had in her bedroom was very, very good. Very evocative, very powerful, very alluring. I did envy her art professor's skills, and I envied him for seeing all the things in Levin that he'd put on canvas.

Marsha told me once that she'd  had a thing with someone who was almost her teacher. She was in geometry in Grade 10 and he was a student teacher doing his required couple of weeks of classroom teaching. She ran into him away from school the next semester (memory says at a pizza place) and he remembered her. All the stories I've told here about Marsha involved cars--- the vintage MG in Thessaloniki, the Triumph along the river road here, the police car on the  levee ---and so does this one. They first had sex in a parked car here, though I'm unclear whether it was around the lakes by the university or atop the levee along the river road. I do remember her telling me that the car was a battered old hatchback, and that he had an ice chest with beer (dark beer, she remembered-- Heineken Dark?)  in the back. She got her skirt up and rode him in the car, and of course there was road head.  They may have done it at his parents' house a few times, and once she made him park at night in the school parking lot and do her with the seats lowered. He'd have been maybe twenty-two. His people, she told me, were "wild Hungarians", and his name was distinctively Magyar. Memory says that he went to Colorado, and of course in some perfect world (or at least a rom-com world) she'd have met him again when she was as the Colorado School of Mines. That didn't happen, but it should have. She told me the story just before she and I went to her senior prom together, possibly to make me just jealous enough to be competitive. After all, he was older and almost her teacher.

Teacher-student affairs do intrigue me. Or maybe it's that I'm interested in how girls see them a decade on. My NZ friend, Levin, Liberty, and Marsha all seem to have taken the encounters in stride. None of them was (or thought she was) in love, none of them felt 'groomed' (or at least felt that that was a bad thing), and all of them liked having the stories to tell later. Levin and Liberty certainly saw their academic affairs as just part of their lists of adventures, and certainly not as anything traumatic. My friend in NZ saw her affairs as competitive markers amongst her friends, who were notorious posh bad girls.

If any of you out there reading this have experiences that you've turned into stories, do tell me about your own academic encounters. Tell me how they happened, and what you thought while they were happening. Tell me how the memories feel to you now, some years on.

Two Seven Seven: Threads 11

A few more stories from my archives, from memories of long ago loves...

The girl in these notes was a co-ed at McGill in those days, a fiercely bright and lovely blonde girl, Polish and French, who styled herself on line after Nabokov's Ginny McCoo. She liked the idea, of being "the alternative nymphet", the alternative story in "Lolita". We both liked that idea, mind you. I wrote her part of a short story once, about Nabokov's Ginny McCoo at nineteen, a co-ed at Barnard at the start of the 1950s, a girl with a cane and the trace of a limp, a girl studying French lit and seeking out her own older lover. Ginny--- my Ginny ---loved that and told me that we must write a novel-length version of it some day.

I don't know where she is these days, my Miss Ginny. When last I heard from her, she was preparing to defend her doctoral thesis--- on the idea of exile in the works of Nabokov and Mavis Gallant ---and thinking of running off to Vancouver or London. I miss her desperately.

I once wrote her to tell her about a girl I saw on a bus here, a girl I sighed over one summertime Saturday morning. Miss Ginny replied to say that

Darling,

I did find the description of the girl on the bus (Deepest South, tanned legs, iPod) incredibly erotic. I think I may have replaced the bus setting with a train. That's very Japanese, isn't it? The other passengers read their papers, airport fiction paperbacks etc while you seduce the Deepest South girl. I have visualized this in my head. It's unbearably erotic. The iPod figures in this as well. Why would a Deepest South girl be so alluring? It's an abstract thing I can't put into words but there is the divide between us...she's miniskirts or shorts and Baby Tees and Mall Shopping and slightly vacant. There's something about the long, slender, darkly tanned legs. Perhaps it's the carefree nature of youth. In the Deepest South, girls still prize tans. Elsewhere, this would be slightly vulgar perhaps. But these girls still cultivate tans with baby oil. I think so, anyways. It's like smoking - there's a carefree decadence about it that only the youthful can enjoy.

That next winter she sent me a wonderful email one morning:

On your recommendation, I went to class panty-free a few days ago. Not denim (too cold in the Ice Block That Is Canuckia) - I wore wool checked (boy's style) trousers... although I must  admit I was terribly worried that the zipper might come down when I was least expecting it.

And that, I assure you, was a wonderful thing to find  before I went off to my office.

I once wrote her to ask

If you and I were ever out for drinks or at a party, and I tended to address you not just as "darling" (my usual form of address to lovely companions) but as "darling incestuous sibling" in a languid 1920s voice...how would you respond? 

Her reply was simple enough:

I think that would be a fun party trick...we would certainly scandalize our fellow party goers. There's a beautiful scene in a film by Bertolucci (Novacento, I think) in which the decadent 20s socialite rides a white horse in a forest named "Cocaine" - gift from her rich and decadent uncle.

Miss Ginny loved the idea of being transformed into a beautiful boy and being swept away by a very wealthy, literate, and wicked older man. She wrote me about that one night--

I've always been boyish, darling...one evening you will have to cut off my long locks and give me an impromptu pixie cut. Turn me into a Beautiful Boy for you. I'll wear a neck tie and a school boy's shorts, if you like.

I've always liked slender, lithe, lovely girls in neckties and Borsalinos and man-tailored jackets. How could I not like playing gender games with Miss Ginny?

She used to sign her letters and emails to me as "Your Incestuous Sibling" or "Your Euro-Film Correspondent". She would lie back in my arms and watch 1960s French and East European films with me. I do hope, very much hope, that she's Dr. Ginny these days, wherever she might be.

Two Three One: Hydraulics

A lovely blonde friend down in the Land of the Long White Cloud told me once that from her teens into her later twenties, she habitually carried a flask with her. She'd have it in her backpack or her messenger bag, and it would be filled with Belvedere vodka or Maker's Mark bourbon. The flask itself was engraved, though I forget the exact motto. It may have been Ad Alta, To the Highest, the motto of her posh school, or Semper Paratus, Always Ready, which I suppose goes with the flask. I always admired her for that, and I rather envied her the flask and the party girl life it went with.

My friend told me about the flask, but I never asked her another party girl question. Did she carry condoms with her? She may not have. She once told me that she'd had so much unprotected sex in her teens and early twenties without any complications that she was afraid that she wasn't able to become pregnant at all. It is something I should ask her, though. I've known girls her age who carried a couple of condoms with them at all times--- just in case, they'd say, or you never know what you never know. I've known other girls who always regarded a condom or two as something that was an essential thing for going out. An ID card, $20 or $30 in emergency cash or taxi fare, a debit card, a lipstick, and a condom or two--- those things would be all they'd need for a night at their favourite local bar.

Condoms are something of a mystery to me. I remember the Plague Years of the Eighties. I remember when clubs were filled with PSA placards urging everyone to "cover up". I will admit that they remained something on the edges of my own experience. That's probably something like straight privilege--- the Plague was something that happened to other people, to, well, Others. It's also that my own outlook on sex was shaped before the Plague Years. I thought about contraception in some way, I suppose, but I hadn't had to consider the Plague or even the non-fatal kinds of STD. In my late teens or early twenties, I took it as a given (and this may be a generational thing) that girls all went at sixteen or seventeen to be put on the Pill, that they and their mothers connived at a belief that the girl's periods needed to be regulated, or that the Pill was good for some hypothetical acne issue. I took it for granted that when a girl arrived at university, she immediately used her student health services plan to get on the Pill. I may well have been in grad school the first time a girl handed me a condom, and I was clueless enough about how to put it on.  That's a long way from the days when student groups had bowls of free condoms at informational tables on campus.

I do want to ask my friend in New Zealand about condoms. She was born at the end of the Eighties, and I have no clue what she was taught about using protection at school. She was a posh party girl, though, and I do wonder if she kept a couple of condoms available...just in case. I wonder if she keeps one or two in her messenger bag or her bedside table even now.

This takes us to someplace else, though. Condoms are about contraception and STDs, about "protection". But there is something else I wonder if girls carry--- something I worry about for myself, too.

I'd always assumed that on any date night, or when a lover was coming by for a sleepover, that you showered and shaved and shampooed. Those things were essential and taken for granted. Right now, though, I've developed a new set of hypochondriacal fears. I've been reading question sites and blogs where girls (inevitably) complain about male behaviour. And now I have a set of hygiene fears. What if showering isn't enough? What if it isn't enough at all? The human body is an unreliable thing, and its design is haphazard at best.

A couple of years ago I discovered that porn actresses have been known to fast before certain kinds of scenes and then eat only boiled white rice. Boiled white rice serves to prevent unpleasant after-effects from scenes with sodomitical (or strap-on) practices. It seals them up against loss of control or leakage.

What I've come to worry about involves not boiled white rice but wet wipes. I've seen blog posts and AMA questions about the use of wet wipes for male hygiene. I'd always thought that a long, hot shower and body wash would be sufficient to take care of any male hygiene issue, but the things I've been reading suggest that I may be wrong. I've seen answers and blog posts that suggest that a girl should wash and/or wipe down anything she's planning to put in her mouth.  Carry a pack of wet wipes, the suggestions go--- wipe him down before you put anything in your mouth, and do it for all guys, not just the uncut. Well, now I have something new to fear.

I need to ask my friend whether she carries a wet wipe or two with her when she might meet someone while she's at a party or a club. A quick glance at the Walmart or Target websites shows that there are wet wipes (cotton, flushable, "for adults") that are marketed as "feminine hygiene" wipes. But the question here is about the male body. Should the male partner keep wet wipes in his bathroom and excuse himself to go use them before sex? There is a brand of wet wipes called Dude that very obliquely markets itself as a product males can use to do exactly that.  The brand has a competitor called Every Man Jack--- a brand I'd never be able to buy without some mixture of shame and barely-controllable laughter.  No young companion, no partner, has ever made any kind of complaint relative to hygiene. I know that. I know that I'm relentless about showers and body wash. But...what if? What if? So I do find myself staring at the Target website (or Amazon--- Amazon carries both brands) and wondering if I'll have to re-write my own history and wondering about shame, self-loathing, and how many abject apologies I might have to make. This is hypochondria, but it's paralyzing enough.

My friend in Wellington is fond of sodomitical practices and of analingus as well. An email she sent me back in late fall just noted in passing that she'd become really into eating ass and wasn't sure why. So I wonder if she keeps wet wipes in her backpack or her messenger bag to deal with any cleanliness issues either for herself or her partner.  And...would she be the only one? Are hip twenty-somethings carrying a small pack of wet wipes with them on adventures in the urban night?

I've seen a fair number of things on line about why sleeping naked is the best way to sleep...but also about recommended procedures for making sure that sleeping naked doesn't lead to stains or skid marks on the sheets. This is not something you need to read in tandem with fashion articles where lovely actresses and models enthuse about the sensations and delights of sleeping naked under expensive Egyptian cotton sheets.  Yet another thing to sit and let gnaw on your mind until you're terrified of your own body and shower habits.

In any case, I must ask my friend in Wellington (as well as various lovely young friends here) about wet wipes. Do they ever carry them? Do they ever use them on male companions--- or on themselves ---prior to sex? What are the social rules about such things these days? If you're reading this out over the aether, let me know what you think. If you're a lovely girl who may find herself meeting a potential new companion at a bar or a party--- do you carry condoms or wet wipes just in case? And do you have any problems telling a new companion what the wet wipes are for?

Two One Two: White Lines

More archive materials from the past. I am posting these as messages-in-a-bottle, as memories from other days, from times when I was regarded as a good listener, as an interlocutor for lovely, sometimes self-destructive girls.

These notes are from a girl named Alessandra, someone I knew in another world, someone I knew when the century was still young. Some of the notes are about her friend-and-lover Alys--- yes, Aless and Alys. Red Alys, if I remember, with striking red hair. I have no idea where she is now. I'd heard that she finished university, taught English for a couple of years in Japan, and went on to law school and an MBA. I have a vague sense that she's doing something corporate these days, something in a high glass tower near open water, something that sends her overseas a lot.  I have no idea what she remembers about her past. The last time we spoke, we talked about Heath Ledger's death and a film Ledger had once made about drug life in Australia, a film from an Australian novel called "Candy".

I remember these stories, though, remember them from another, better summer long ago.

Oh, I wasn't happy with where my life was taking me in 2007. I spent half my time dreading going to class when I wanted to change universities anyway, and the other half actually in class and miserable.  I was isolated and doing tremendous amounts of coke alone-- in my private dorm room, in changing rooms at boutiques, in cubicles at the school library. I was in my first serious relationship with  a girl, one who had previously mainly been my best friend, and it was long distance. She (Alys, obviously) had been in a relationship with some Russian pre-med, eight-language-speaking genius, and I broke them up/she left him for me. She had a pretty bad coke problem at the time as well, and I was entirely emotionally dependent on her-- this accounted for MONTHS of being at one another's throats. 

While physically thrilling and fascinating to many, our relationship was beyond emotionally tumultuous, whether it was our age/immaturity, the distance, or the fact that we were two people who were already prone to anxiety who were strung out on coke 24/7, I don't really know. But it was a series of mind games and changes in voice tone resulting in both intentional cruelty and despair on both sides. I remember one night when we were actually together in bed, her becoming cross with me about something and saying that she wished her Russian genius boy would love her again-- I promptly took an x-acto knife and put gashes in my inner thighs. I hadn't been a cutter before, and I haven't been one since, but it was practically an automatic form of release.

My behavior lost that bit of exhilaration at being young and pretty and turned into a very bitter, very deliberate form of destruction that took its toll quickly. One acquaintance commented that when he saw me in Toronto in December '07, I was "electric"-- I hardly weighed anything, but was mercurial and alive, my eyes were huge and always darkly lined, and I was just burning with frustration.  By the end of my freshman year in May '08, all of that had taken a toll. I no longer looked electric as much as I looked completely haggard-- completely drained. 

Also, that particular highly-charged emotional restlessness made me emotionally dependent on others in a way that I generally try very hard to avoid. I'll always be a little reckless, I'll always be a little too daring, but I find joy in the balance of being those things as well as self-contained. I prize my ability to detach and withdraw more than anything.

Alys and I are still very good friends-- best friends, actually. She has a tendency to spoil me wildly, and we only recently (well, I say recently, but within the past, I guess, 6 months) have actually begun sleeping together again. It's easy to fall back with her--- it's easy and it's not fruitless, because I care about her more than anything else, and she's bright and very powerful in her own way. We just work at keeping things separate--- and who knows how well that goes, but so far (recently) we've managed.

Those notes are almost a decade old now. I have no real idea where she is now (Toronto? Vancouver?), and only hints that she's very corporate and flying to take meetings in cities filled with silent glass towers.  I'd love to sit with her over drinks in some neutral city and listen to her tales of her life over the last dozen years.  In the last exchange of notes we had, back years ago, she noted that Alys was returning to Halifax from Bermuda aboard a racing yacht with one of her father's friends, following up on the inappropriate glances she and her father's friend had been exchanging since Red Alys was in high school. I have no idea how that played out or whether there was any truth in it. I'd like to think it was true. Sailboats and posh girls and inappropriate affairs are perfect ingredients for stories.

Two One Zero: Lookout

Something else that I need to put here to be archived, I think.  A long account of an adventure a lovely posh blonde girl in the Antipodes sent me once--- a story from her teen years, back in 2002, in an email dated 29th March 2012:

They were water polo boys... I think I was 15, they were 16 or 17. We were driving round aimlessly in a Range Rover, parked up at the waterfront for a while, then drove up to the lookout.  We passed cans of RTD bourbon around. One of them rolled a joint. I was in the front seat, bare feet up on the dash. Jake, who was in the driver's seat, started kissing me & putting his hands down my top. Hadleigh was in the back. They were both blond, swimmers' bodies-- lean & muscular. Hadleigh was just on the verge of being drunk, Jake hadn't had too much to drink. I remember Jake leading my hands down to his cock, which felt so hard through his jeans. I undid his fly and took him out of his jeans. Hadleigh was watching everything from the backseat. I leaned over and started sucking Jake. He was running his fingers through my hair, gently guiding my head. Jake came in my mouth, and as I sat up and swallowed his cum with a mouthful of bourbon, I could see Hadleigh with his cock in his hands. He was so big and so hard. He pulled my arm and I climbed over to the back seat. I sucked Hadleigh's cock and swallowed his cum as it shot down my throat. I still remember Jake watching from the front seat.

Jake rolled another joint and climbed over and joined us in the backseat. Metallica was on the radio, we had a few more bourbons. There were always a few gay rumors floating around school about Hadleigh. I sat on Jake's lap and put my bare feet on Hadleigh's lap. Then some three way kissing just...started. I was just...filled with pure delight and amazement when Jake & Hadleigh first kissed. The way they looked at each other. Jake had his fingers in my cunt at the time, but I could tell they'd never kissed before.  Things progressed, and I watched fascinated as Hadleigh sucked Jake's cock. Jake had his fingers intertwined with mine, and he squeezed my hand so hard as he moaned and thrust and came. They kissed afterwards, then there was a moment when Jake and Hadleigh were looking at me. I thought I knew what Jake wanted, so I took Hadleigh's cock out and slowly started sucking. He was already hard. I sucked him, my eyes on Jake, until after a few minutes Jake leant down and kissed me, then took Hadleigh in his mouth. I sat back and watched again, so wet. It was incredibly hot. I had never experienced this before, and it was beautiful. Hadleigh came hard. Jake didn't swallow, the cum trickled out of his mouth, then he leaned and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. 

I was like, gagging for some attention by this point. I climbed on top of Jake and rode him on the backseat (17 year old boys do have some good points...they recharge fast!) I finally got my orgasm too. They had both been fingering my cunt during the night, but I wasn't quite there quite yet. It was my first three way, and I fucking loved it. It wasn't until a few years later that I finally had two cocks in me at the same time, which was a game changer. But I will always think fondly of my night with the water polo boys.

The story isn't entirely implausible. My blonde friend went to a posh private high school that managed to be written up in her local paper on a regular basis for scandals involving sex and drugs. Not entirely implausible, though I might question the dates: I'd be readier to accept the story at face value if she'd been 16 or 17 herself. And I wonder if the boys wouldn't have been older--- getting cans of RTD bourbon at 17 shouldn't be a problem for any reasonably clever kids (it was no problem in my own school days), but American kids get driving licenses at 16 and I think where she lives, a "full" license, a license for driving at night is something that usually takes a couple of years longer to get. So I do have a few doubts. But I've had the story in my email for six years now, and it very hot. It's worth archiving here. Even if it turns out not to be literally true, I'm intrigued that she chose to use these images to make herself hot.

Any thoughts of your own?

Two Zero Nine: Rain

I'm going to be posting a few stories young ladies of my acquaintance have told me over the years.

I suppose these will be stories that I envy a bit, stories where I wish the male player could've been me. Or they may be stories I envy simply because they're hot and delightful--- stories from a world I wish I could be part of.

They're also here simply because this is an archive of sorts, because I want to be able to have records of these things, to have them saved in a place where I can read them again over the years.

This is a story from August 2012, a story told me a posh blonde girl in a distant city, and it's one of the hottest stories a girl has ever told me:

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 muddy skinny 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. 

In November 2013, the same girl sent me this intriguing note:

Last night, smashing Jack Daniels, riding a rough bogan boy so damn hard, kissing his neck tattoo & thinking  is this how I live now?

Still have morphine in my pocket, still wearing yesterday's clothes, still thinking about you.

You'll never believe me til you're on your own.

The same girl sent me this a bit later, a lovely expansion of what she'd told me about what happened:

I got dragged to drinks at an apartment in the city by a friend who wanted to score some eccies. I was seriously not in the mood, but I know how it is when you need to score, and figured I'd go along for a little bit. We got buzzed up to the apartment floor, and as soon as I walked in I got a really great vibe. This was a seriously expensive apartment, huge, with a great view over the city and waterfront. There were heaps of people there...this bogan boy from up the line was doing the rounds of the room...I think he had some other stuff besides eccies, I wasn't paying too much attention. My friend paid for her eccies and we left. We'd just gotten into the lift when he came out of the apartment and called out 'Hey darlin', come for a drink with me?' We ended up at an irish pub, doing shots of jager & jack daniels. He took me back to his hotel room, and we did a few lines. I felt really hot, so I just took my top off, kicked off my ballet flats and sat on the floor looking at him, topless, legs wide open. I can still picture the exact look in his eyes as he fell to his knees and grabbed my anlkes, lifting my skirt, then pulling my legs as far apart as they would go.  He went down on me until I came twice, hard. I took his cock out of his jeans and started sucking him there on my knees. He came hard in my mouth, I swallowed most of it but some came spilling out my mouth and running down my chin. I wiped it with my finger then licked it clean. I could tell he loved that. We had a few more JDs, sitting naked facing each other on the floor, until he said if he didn't fuck me soon he was going to explode. I pulled him onto the bed and rode him hard, my cunt almost aching from it. He came deep inside me, his teeth around my nipple. He wanted me to stay the night, said he needed more. I shook my head, pulled my top & skirt back on, kissed him on the lips & cock and went to leave. He told me to wait, and gave me a hundy bag, and $50 for a taxi. He wrote his number on my upper thigh, and told me he'd hook me up anytime he was in Wellington.

I envy her sitting at a desk in her new house in a posh hip suburb of her city, looking at the hard drive where she keeps all her memories, seventeen years worth of them, all the way back to being fourteen. And I'm always both envious and jealous, thinking of all the stories she has there on that drive. I envy her being able to sit in her outdoor living space on the deck behind her house and sip bourbon and feel the wind in from the harbor as she loses herself in memories.

One Nine Seven: Community

I was going to write tonight about a question posed by a friend on mine in Ohio. She suggested that I write about what each partner learns in age-disparate relationships, about what each takes away from the relationship. That's a topic that interests both of us, since we've each been in a number of age-disparate affairs. 

That was my plan--- to write about the Young Companions I've been with and what we've learned from each other. Then I turned on the news a day or two ago and discovered the scandal that seems to have canceled Milo Yiannopoulos' career. In case you haven't been following the news, Milo is what the press likes to call a "provocateur"--- a nasty piece of alt-right work, a gay man who devotes himself to praising the Trump regime and attacking the usual list of groups and people on the alt-right's hate lists. He was always destined to have a short career. Sooner or later his right-wing audience was going to grow bored with him and turn on him. Being the alt-right's gay court jester is far too like being one of the Jewish musicians the death camp guards briefly spared so they could have dinner music. Anyway--- Milo's ship hit the rocks over the weekend. Someone found footage of him that suggested that he approved of  sex with underage boys or at least thought that age-disparate gay relations were potentially acceptable. The right wing, as the saying goes, was okay with misogyny, racism, anti-Semitism,  and disdain for trans people, but found pederasty to be a bridge too far. 

I don't propose to comment on the scandal itself or even on Milo's pose as a defender of some version of free speech. I wonder, though, if there's something to be learned from the way he responded to accusations of being in favor of child molestation. He stumbled about trying to explain that in the gay world "boys" could be males in their twenties, that he really didn't mean that sex with thirteen year olds was acceptable, and that he regretted his own "imprecise phrasing". I wonder, though, if he'd have done better by simply saying something like When I was sixteen or seventeen, I had older lovers, some much older, and many of them are good memories. They taught me how to be a proud gay man, they taught me about the history and culture of  the gay world, they taught me how to be a lover and how to be in love. I feel gratitude and affection and respect and admiration for the men who mentored me and loved me and gave me stability and acceptance and letting it go at that: full stop.  I have no idea if he could have said something like that with honesty, but let's assume that he could. Saying something like that and nothing more, with no bitchy games of snark and no bitchy-transgressive poses--- would that have saved  his dignity and possibly his career? And how would a statement like that have been parsed out over the web?

I'm old enough to remember articles and novels about age-disparate gay relationships that argued that they were or could be a good thing. I can remember novels and articles that argued that this was how a gay culture, a gay world, was kept alive over time--- by mentoring relationships and love affairs. Again, I'm not commenting on whether those arguments are right or wrong. I'm only noting that once upon a time, back in my undergraduate days, the arguments were posed in serious journals and by serious gay advocacy groups. There are any number of strands there if you want to follow them up--- the desire to be (as Edmund White wrote) a community and not a syndrome;  the desire to preserve a separate community; a desire for the exchange of sex and knowledge; the whole idea of "recruitment". You can't make a argument these days for a sexualized mentoring relationship, whether gay of straight--- the issues of power immediately intrude. Anyone who argues for an "Athenian" kind of relationship between men and mid-teen boys is automatically seen as arguing for exploitation and violation. 

Again, I have no idea about the weight of arguments pro and con; that's not relevant to asking how the idea of a sexualized mentoring relationship was posed back in the 1960s and 1970s and how it became rejected--- or asking whether or not Milo Yiannopoulos could have salvaged something of his dignity if he'd made a very brief, cold statement saying that he didn't regret the older lovers of his past and let it go. Which of course takes us back to the idea of a lovely girl making the same basic statement about her own older lovers. Would the response to her be different to the response to the hypothetical statement Milo might've made? Would the response be more or less hostile?  Which factions would support her or condemn her?

I do hope you'll think about that. We'll come back soon enough to the issue of what each party learns in an age-disparate  relationship. That is something I want to address. And it is something I'd like to hear about from you, any of you out there reading this.

One Eight Two: Thrill Rides

The other night I went back and re-read a blog entry from three or four years ago--- an American expat girl writing about her life in London. I know the girl a bit, or knew her once, when she was shuttling between the Pacific Northwest and DC, a self-destructive, hyper-aware, ghostly-beautiful co-ed. The entry itself is an  account of her No-Names-Please encounter with an English guy she picked up at a club in Camden Town.  I can't tell you much about the setting or the club life she wrote about.  London's not my town. I'm a creature of cities out on the Donau and not the Thames. Anyway, the story did call up memories of my own.

When the expat girl took the English guy home, she shook off the warning of a girl with her at the club not to do it: I never heed warnings.  When he fingered her in the taxi (a £35 ride? Bloody hell--- a long way back to her rooms at LSE) and told her very graphically what he's going to do to her, she thought---

You're thinking this is horrible, but the horrible part is that I only smirk. I'm not offended or scared. I feel calm and cool...

In bed, he did hurt her, and when she was loud he bit her nipple hard enough to draw blood and said, Stop making noise, you fucking slag.  What she thought was---

I'm terrified but I'm enjoying this.

I'm terrified that I'm enjoying this.

Oh, the story never goes very much farther into anything dark. Don't think that. There's rough sex all night, and some fairly gentle sex and conversation the next morning, and then he charged his phone (nice touch), dressed, told her that he did have a girlfriend, and left. She wasn't even really annoyed about that; she liked being hot enough to entice a stranger to cheat on his girlfriend. The next day she was too sore to walk much, sore from no-lube anal, and her left breast was bruised and the nipple erect with a smeared ring of dried blood all around it. No regrets, though, or only the dim and tired awareness of how much she likes courting danger. It's a very hot story, and I'm...well, envious of her for having it to tell. I can't wish I'd been the guy, though. She likes her men tall and handsome and with the whole rock-hard abs thing. And she always did strike me as a girl who's harsh enough to comment on a male partner's looks and...ummm...endowment to his face. Not anything I'd risk. There's no point at all in wanting to be the guy. I meet none of her criteria, and probably never have or will.

What I am thinking about tonight is her  whole elision of arousal and terror:

I'm terrified but I'm enjoying this.

I'm terrified that I'm enjoying this.

I envy that--- I envy anyone who has that said about them, who can evoke that in an attractive girl.

I have no idea if anyone has ever thought that around me. Or thought those things in any serious way. I've always been the Theme Park Thrill Ride for a certain kind of co-ed. They can do things that they've been taught were Bad, or at least risky, and they can do them with someone like me, who really does meet all the criteria for a Lifetime Movie of the Week villain. They can do those things--- go home with the much-older man who's certainly a predator of some kind and just might be dangerous ---and still know that it's like getting aboard the much-hyped thrill ride at the theme park. Faux-danger--- you get the adrenaline rush and get to pretend to be terrified, and you know that in a few minutes you'll be able to walk away from the ride and feel like you've had an adventure, like you've done something, like you have a story to dine out on for weeks.

I've played to that image, of course, the image of being dangerous and depraved. It's all part of roué-hood, isn't it.  I used to laugh about it. Work the creepy, I'd say. Tell the girl that, yes, you are everything Lifetime Channel and her parents and Dr. Drew and Women's Studies 101 told her to be afraid of, and is she up for the risk? It works a fair amount of the time. It really does. Faux-danger is an alluring thing. Horror films and theme parks make piles of money off the idea.

And people do dine out on stories. I've done it myself for years--- sought out experiences specifically for their value as stories. I've known many a posh girl, many a girl with a professional degree and a serious career, who's deployed stories to suggest that she had a wicked, interesting, intriguing past, one that got pretty heavy, one that endows her with a hint of danger still, one where her tales of escape will leave friends and dates begging for more.

It's still a bit exhausting for me, of course--- being the dark lover. And unsettling, too. A lovely, vodka-fueled co-ed stretched out on a bed late one night, back arched, thrusting sharp hipbones up at you and begging you to hurt her raises problems. There's always the morning-after regrets issue. There is always that. And as incredible as it is to have some lovely girl yielding herself up to you and asking you to go further, to not have any limits with her, it does put you in an awkward position. You have to be pitch-perfect at things. The girl can be telling you to do all these things she's read about or fantasized about or seen in films, and you have to get them exactly right. There's no room for error. I've said no to things, which has surprised girls. I've said no to choking girls when they've asked--- that's not something where you can make a mistake. (Scarves. I might do it a bit with a scarf, if a girl asked, but never with my hands. Not that way. Never.) There was a flat no to the one seriously MDMA-dreamy girl who asked me to cut her. That I wouldn't do; that I won't do. That's not something I ever want to have to explain to anyone later. That particular girl had faded scars on her hipbones and thighs--- she'd cut herself in high school ---and she wanted to have a lover do it for her. That was her fantasy, she said. Be clear, now: I had no moral objection. It wasn't even that I distrusted myself or thought I'd turn into Patrick Bateman. But I wasn't going to become the target and the Bad Guy if she had morning-after regrets.

I do suppose there's another kind of Thrill Ride that's easier. It's one that girls I have loved wanted. I don't have to be faux-terrifying. I only have to be older and attentive and literate. There are girls who want the experience of an Older Lover, who want what an Older Lover can offer: booklists and conversations and an introduction to things they've wanted--- being part of a world that's mannered and bookish and intellectual. They want an Older Lover who can show them things, teach them things. A lovely girl at McGill in Montreal wrote me once to say that the exchange seemed perfect to her: youth and beauty and sex exchanged for knowledge and instruction. That's easier to do. I have no especial problem with the idea of whips and candle wax, of masks and silk scarves around slender wrists. I have no problem slapping a girl at the moment of orgasm. But this latter way is just...simpler. I can be the kind of Greying Lover that my Montreal friend always wrote about. I don't know that I can teach a lovely co-ed anything about Life, but I did work in a bookstore all through grad school, and I stood up in front of classes and lectured for years. I can always talk about books and ideas. That's easy to do. A different quality of Thrill Ride. I could do it for the girls I have most loved over the years. It's not something I could do with the expat girl in London, though. It's not even something she'd want.

There's a strange lull in life these days, a strange kind of exhaustion in my life. There's maybe one girl in my life right now who'd appreciate both poses--- who'd ride the thrill ride, terrified as part of being wet-and-breathless, but who'd want the long conversations later, who'd never worry about rock-hard abs and how many miles one could run. Alas, though--- she's eight thousand miles away, living on the beach at Wainui. At the moment, the best I can do is put ink to paper and offer her tales of books and ideas alternating with thrill ride scenarios. I'd like to think that she'd say what the expat girl told the English guy:

I'm terrified but I'm enjoying this.

I'm terrified that I'm enjoying this.

I want her to say other things, too--- Have you read this? What do you see out there in the dark, in the waves? Let me tell you all the things I see in my city.  That's part of being older, I suppose: fear that you can't evoke either thing in lovely girls any more.

One Five Two: Venue

There's a recent article at the Vogue website (06 August 15) by Karley Sciortino, who does the wonderful Slutever blog. It's called "Breathless: Why Can't Straight Men Talk About Sex?" It opens by posing this question:

At a recent dinner party, a guy friend of mine mentioned that he wanted to start a podcast about sex. He’s been hitting Tinder hard, and felt that he and his guy friends had enough hookup stories—ranging from sexy to awkward to horrendous—to sustain a funny and enlightening radio show. However, the immediate response at the table was, “Eww, no. You’re a creep.” The consensus was that two straight dudes can’t have a podcast about sex and dating without the whole thing coming across as... sleazy.

Ms. Sciortino is quite right, I think. If you're male and straight, you can't talk about sex--- experiences, problems, stories, fears, hopes ---without being thought of in the age of the gender wars as creepy or as a braggart. Those are regarded as the default settings for any straight-male accounts of sex. (There's also the New Age-y voice straight males might use at Good Men Project, but that's regarded as sad and easily mocked as silly--- God knows I certainly laugh at things like that) Karley Slutever writes that all the real writing about sex and sexual experience today is done by women, and that it's disheartening. Men aren't allowed to talk about sex without being seen as creepy or as PUA weasels, she says. All the real work in talking about sex is being done by women.

She's right, Ms. Sciortino is. Males--- straight males ---are no longer regarded as having any place in such discussions. Whatever problems or thoughts straight males have, whatever stories they have to tell--- hilarious, poignant, horrifying, awkward, romantic ---straight males aren't supposed to talk about them. No one wants to hear the Black Speech of Mordor, after all. 

Well, let's admit that a fair number of male sex blogs in the recent past were either frat-bro bragging or PUA propaganda. The gender warriors found ammunition left lying to hand. That's true enough.

But Ms. Slutever is right that the gender warriors see all male essays/blogs about sex as being some sort of assertion of power and aggression. There's little enough space for straight males on line to write about their own experiences or their own anxieties without being attacked as creepy or dismissed on ideological grounds. 

It's an awkward thing, though. I agree with her that there should be more male voices in conversations about sex and the labyrinths of sexual experience. Yet I have to ask myself if I'd read any blogs like that.  I read sex blogs by women as...novels. As film scripts. As sources for lists of accoutrements (fashions, wines, toys) worth having for sex and lists of  things to try and places to try them in. I read sex blogs by attractive twenty- and early thirty-something girls as novels, as travelers' tales, as Zagat guides.  I read them because I want to imagine being someone who could be part of the girls' stories. I don't want to read accounts of experiences by other males because I, well, as a straight male of a certain age, I...can't. For reasons that are obvious but probably deeply problematic. 

How very awkward, no? Yes, there should be spaces for males to be able to talk about their own stories, to open up exchanges and share advice. There are travelers' tales to be told by males that are worth reading. It's just that I wouldn't read them myself, that I can't imagine letting another male tell me about things sexual. So where does that leave me? Where does that leave the whole idea of men being able to talk about sex? 

One Four Six: Interlocutors

A friend at McGill told me once that when she was young and seeking out illicit flirtations on the net, she found herself becoming a kind of designated confessor for people. She'd gone on line to meet older, educated admirers, but somehow she ended up being a listener. Conversations became less about flirting than about men telling her their problems, especially their problems with romance. They'd pour out their hearts and then ask her advice. My friend was baffled. At sixteen or seventeen, she didn't have any real experience with complex relationships, and all she could do was respond with   "Perhaps you should communicate better...?" She told me that story a decade after the fact, and she shrugged and said that her answer hadn't changed, that it was all she could think of to say.

My friend has a point. For the last couple of generations, romantic advice has centered on the need to "communicate".  "Communication" is taken as key to any relationship--- opening up to a partner about one's needs and hopes and feelings. In the last year or so, though, I've seen a kind of backlash against that--- one more thing arising out of the gender wars.

I've seen articles that do argue against opening up to a partner or potential partner, especially about anything to do with romance or sex. To tell someone that you're interested in them, the argument goes, is a "micro-aggression", something that makes a demand on someone else, something that forces them to respond, that demands their time and attention. To ask someone out on a date, to tell someone you find them attractive,  especially if done by a male, is seen as an assertion of power.  Anything that calls for a response in social situations is seen as being about power or the dread word "privilege".

There's very much an idea out there that "communication" about one's sexual tastes or desires or fantasies is illegitimate for the same basic reasons. To tell a lover or potential lover about those things is seen as the same as forcing sex on them. Someone whose blog I read on a regular basis wrote that "opening up" to a partner about your particular tastes and needs wasn't part of romance, but rather aggression--- forcing your lover to know she was in your fantasies and therefore objectifying her, demanding that she somehow respond to you. You couldn't even argue that it was part of a negotiating process in the relationship, since that was making the relationship "transactional".

I was always slightly amused by the advice-column insistence on the need to "communicate".  The word seemed to have been emptied of meaning a long time ago. But once again, the gender warriors seem to be envisioning any kind of social interaction as inherently illegitimate. The ideal for the gender warriors seems to be a world of armoured monads--- atomized and wholly separate. Anything that calls for a response, that calls for a recognition that people do have any kind of social obligation, is seen as aggression. Anything that imagines that people are (or can be) in one another's lives is regarded as being about mere power.

So, then: "What we have here is a failure to communicate..." Do we still believe that? Perhaps there'll actually be a fear of communication. That's an easy enough thing to acquire. Expressing one's beliefs, hopes, needs, desires, thoughts--- that always leaves one open to social mockery, and all the more so  in a social media world.  And now it leaves one open to the charge of "micro-aggression" and assertions of "privilege", charges that can never be defended against.

It may be best never to speak to anyone, especially anyone to whom you might be attracted, or to have any social interactions that might involve any intimations of attraction. It's almost certainly best to avoid any discussion of what you might want out of a relationship or a romance, sexual or not. In a world of armoured monads, it's clearly best to feel no desire at all, to want nothing personal in any way from anyone else.

One Zero Two: Transactions

There's a particular writer out there in the gender wars who calls himself "Dr. NerdLove", and whose columns always leave me irritated, dejected, and angry. His tagline at his website is "Helping Nerds Get The Girl", but of course his columns do exactly the opposite. They discourage anyone male from approaching a girl, they discourage romance and flirtation and seduction, and they discourage anyone male from having particular sexual interests or needs. "Dr. NerdLove" (who isn't a PhD or an MD, by the way) claims to be "sex-positive", but of course so many of his columns are devoted to telling his readers not to have sex. His vision of a proper relationship is exactly that of some very stodgy 1950s advice columnist--- the only proper affair is one that begins with the clear intent of becoming a "committed", lifelong relationship and proceeds without involving any sort of passionate sexual interest or sexual engagement. He very much dislikes the idea that anyone--- anyone male ---might be interested in a partner in any way that involves physical desire and any kind of social play. His especial ire is reserved for the idea that sex is "transactional" in any way, or that affairs or dates are tainted with being transactions of any sort.

I've never understood the disdain for the idea that sex is "transactional". I suppose some of that must be based on the idea that sex can only be a good thing if it's based on the pure joining of souls and spirits, and some of it is based on a fear that saying something is "transactional" is yielding ground to the patriarchy and to MRA/PUA types who declare that all women are "whores".  I've never seen anything wrong with the idea that sex and romance have a transactional element; I thought those things were built in from the start.

I've always thought that any kind of social life was about transactions and strategies. Yes, I read Marcel Mauss and his followers when I was at university--- about symbolic exchanges and the role of gifting in tribal and archaic societies. But even before that, I knew that there was something called "transactional analysis" that had its moment in the sun back in the early and mid-1960s. I knew that it involved looking at human interactions in terms of games, of strategies and transactions. I hadn't read any of the works, but I knew from book reviews and review articles that it existed, and basically what it was about. And of course I'd read things like Austen and Henry James. I always thought social life--- personal interactions, romances, marriages, friendships ---were about strategies and transactions. I took that for granted.

The idea of sex and romance as transactional seems quite natural to me--- after all, I grew up in a culture that valorizes the market and the idea of exchange.  I can't see it as degrading to either party, and it seems to me that it's an efficient way to move forward in any kind of developing affair. After all, I've always preferred rituals and procedures. They have the advantage of reducing friction, of reducing the need to agonize over decisions and choices. In terms of a particular social structure, if you do A, then B will follow.  X does this, and Y knows that in terms of the structure, one responds with that.

When I was younger, the point of a date--- of an affair ---was to engage with someone attractive and bright and move towards bed: through hanging out to making out. I always expected that the girl across the table or in the passenger seat of the car knew that and was there for the same thing. We'd each go through the symbolic exchanges that underlay a seduction, and, yes, that did involve taking her to dinner or for drinks and paying. I was signaling that I valued her enough to expend resources; she responded by presenting me with her time and attention.  That seemed, and still seems, straightforward enough.  And both parties knew that we were going through ritual moves to reach a goal both of us understood.

We're social animals. We build structures and systems, and we create rituals and procedures to move through them. We deploy strategies to seek social advantage, and we participate in exchanges--- some symbolic, some concrete, often both ---as part of those strategies. I've never seen a problem with that. At the very least, looking at sex and romance as transactional forces both parties to be very clear about what they want and about what they're prepared to give up for that.  It forces us to acknowledge that there's a goal--- a physical goal ---in any affair. The soi-disant "Dr. NerdLove" is very good at chastising and browbeating his readers and anyone seeking his advice, but he's no good at all at admitting what an affair is about or that any relationship occurs within a web of social maneuvers. He doesn't really try to "help the nerd get the girl"--- he really seems to be doing quite the opposite. And he refuses to admit that sex and romance, like pretty much everything else in a social structure, proceeds by strategy and exchange.

Sixty-Four: Attention

I was brought up to an old school kind of courtesy, and I believe in social forms.  So I am amazed by certain things here in the new century.

A few weeks ago a high school boy posted a video at YouTube asking a famous model to be his date to his prom. The video became the subject of a few news stories, and there was some betting as to whether the model would be his prom date. In the end, she very politely and gently declined--- prior work obligations and travel. I suppose most people reading about the video thought it was a cute story. A silly thing to do, certainly, but faint heart ne'er won fair maiden, and there would be a certain charm if the model had actually appeared. Dancing at prom with someone beautiful and famous would be an experience  that the boy would treasure for a lifetime, and most people, I think, would cheer the boy on for having the courage to ask. Most people would cheer, too, for any goodnight kiss the model might have bestowed as she departed--- a lovely gesture.

We don't live in a world where the story could be taken as merely charming and silly, though--- or at least we don't live there any longer.

I've run across a couple of blog coulmns, each with its own long tail of comments, about the story.  The columns were angry and hostile and disturbingly aggressive. The authors kept insisting that the boy's video wasn't cute, and neither was the story. The boy was excoriated as being "creepy" and as being no better than the two football players convicted a couple of weeks ago in a very ugly rape trial in Ohio--- no better, and with no essential difference. The story was pictured as being all about patriarchy and "rape culture".   The commentariat were even more hostile, and there were calls for some kind of punishment for the boy,  for making him a kind of symbol of patriarchal evil.     

His sin, and what the authors and their sycophants saw as a besetting sin in "rape culture" society, was that the boy sought someone's attention, that he'd dared to ask someone to notice him. The attacks weren't based on a kind of laughter at some suburban teen boy thinking that a girl who'd been on the covers of various magazines might be his prom date.  They were based on the idea that he might have the evil male idea that he could ask someone out--- on the idea that if he asked politely, and showed himself as confident and brave enough to ask, the girl would respond.

One author went into a long rant about the evil of seeking someone's attention. How dare this boy--- how dare anyone male ---presume to think that they can ask for attention! The author and her commentariat were furious at the idea that saying something nice to someone, or doing something nice for someone, entitles anyone to "attention". Thinking that one can seek notice and attention, the author and her choir said, was no more than coercion.  Doing anything to get attention, doing anything and thinking that someone will pay attention or should pay attention is on a spectrum leading to rape.

Despite what the columnists were ranting about, we all do live in a web of social obligations. If someone says something nice to you, or does something nice for you, you do in fact owe them your attention. You may end up saying No to them, but you do owe them your attention. That's only very basic courtesy, and its certainly the way I was brought up. The gender warriors seem to envision a world of isolated and atomised individuals with no obligations of courtesy or kindness. Never mind that they seem to despise flirtation and seduction and equate those things with coercion and "rape culture"--- they really do seem to hate the idea of any social obligations, of any kind of rituals intended to make social contact and social interactions easier.

I could never have made a video asking a cover model out, but I do admire the boy's nerve. Faint heart ne'er won fair maiden--- that's certainly true. But the issue isn't about the boy and his video. The gender warriors envision a world where there are no rituals or obligations of courtesy, where all contact between genders is seen through a lens of power and dominance. Their world is an ugly place, and it leaves no room for  anyone like me.