Three Six Three: Narration

The 10 April 23 online edition of "Paris Review" has an article called "On Fantasy" by a woman who's an escort/gallery girl/ conceptual artist who calls herself Sophia Giovannitti. It's about how boring and exhausting male fantasies are, and why all fantasies are pointless and annoying. Consider this incredibly depressing passage:

This client also wanted our time together to be cinematic. I suppose all clients do. The first time we met, I was struck by his impulse to narrate what was happening, as though by speaking aloud how good something is one could will it to actually be so. It’s not that it wasn’t good, or was bad—it was just mundane, the way formulaic excess often is.

The "impulse to narrate"... Well, there goes my entire life. Narration and curation have been my life-- things written, things lived. If those things are just mundane, I have yet more reasons to stay here in the lakeside flat with my books and my DVD collection.

The author of "On Fantasy" also uses song lyrics from Cigarettes After Sex in her article. I like the band a lot, and I like their music. Now of course, having read her article, I've been looking at my iTunes and feeling a bit wary of listening to them. I hate losing bands I've liked, and Ms. Giovannitti's article has just taken away Cigarettes After Sex.

Now I do have to ask myself a couple of questions about Ms. Giovannitti. Is her disdain for male fantasies something that derives from her sex work or from her time in the art world? There are two possible kinds of disdain here, and I wish I knew the backstory.

More to the point, though-- 

In SoHo, there is a boutique hotel whose rooms are blue. Blue carpet, blue ceiling, blue-patterned sheets. I met a client there several years ago, when I still had short bangs. I wore a vintage skirt-and-top set—black, with colorful flowers—and black lingerie from l’Agent, the now-defunct, less expensive little sister brand to Agent Provocateur. My client wanted our time together to feel like a movie. He didn’t say this, but his behavior made it clear. He booked me for only an hour but wanted an experiential arc: he sat me first in the small living room area of his suite, presenting liquor he had put on ice for me. Music played softly through the room’s sound system: “Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby” by Cigarettes After Sex, a song that I’d only ever heard as the background of a bad television show. He moved me into the bedroom, bantering, as though he had to charm me. I have absolutely no recollection of what he looked like or what his name was. This isn’t because I was seeing so many clients I couldn’t keep track, but because it’s useless information to retain after the fact. I remember how he behaved—the only salient thing—which was annoying, and also standard, fine. I overstayed our appointment because the sex refused to end, as happens often with older men who want to paw at a young woman but don’t quite care whether or not they finish, and certainly not in the allotted time. “Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby” returned to the playlist; it was looping, as was the experience.

And that's deeply depressing. 

We live in an age where The Discourse tells us that male fantasies are by and large boring and that male sex is inherently mediocre. I've been writing down the fantasies I have these days and trying to analyze and critique them. I keep looking for the weak places, for any places that don't seem like they'd interest a partner. I'm inside the fantasies, though, so my views on them are flawed and suspect. But I am and remain afraid that any desires and fantasies I may have would be mediocre and boring. 

It's always possible to ask a partner what her own fantasies are. I do that, and I'll always try to act out what she likes. But I am increasingly afraid to tell anyone what I like or what I want to try.

I played the song for myself after, alone in my own room. A user called “i’m cyborg but that’s ok” had uploaded it to YouTube along with a compilation of scenes from Lost in Translation, a movie I’d never seen but that I knew was about a relationship between a washed-up older man having a midlife crisis and a beautiful young woman. The video compilation looked like an escort advertisement: in the opening scene, Scarlett Johansson sits in a hotel room window wearing only a large men’s shirt—blue—looking down at the wide expanse of Tokyo beneath her; in the next scene, she dives into an enormous, empty hotel pool, at night—the pool and the surrounding windowpanes all blue, too. The images spoke of money and alienation. The song captured the affect of a certain type of client: slightly flat; grasping toward a Daddy-esque certainty but falling short; single-mindedly offering reassurance, but of what he hardly seemed to know. I grew oddly attached to the song and to cyborg’s music video for a period. I would watch it on my way to work, flattening my own affect, compacting myself into a version of a girl aligned with the lyrics:

Whispered something in your ear

It was a perverted thing to say

But I said it anyway

Made you smile and look away

Nothing’s gonna hurt you, baby.

I have no idea what fantasies are acceptable these days, or how male sex can be anything other than mediocre. I remain convinced that the girls in my past were probably contemptuous of any sexual desires or fantasies I may have had. I have no idea what fantasies will seem well-crafted enough not to be mocked. I have no idea why I should try to develop any fantasies, let alone actual physical techniques. Rising above mediocre seems to be a fading hope.

Three Five Three: Couch

 I have been going back to FMTY Twitter. There's a sense of summer there. Some of the FMTY Girls are taking a summer hiatus and relaxing on beaches or next to rooftop pools. Some are accompanying patrons or clients to island villas. I do wish them all well.

I'll never be able to afford an FMTY Girl. Genteel poverty doesn't allow for that. But I have been thinking about what I would try very hard to afford.

Long ago, when I was first in Vienna, I lived not far from the Freud Museum. I made a point of visiting, of course. Freud has always been one of my intellectual heroes. I remember standing in the little museum at Berggasse 19 on a rainy afternoon and looking at the replica of Freud's office-- looking especially at the famous Couch. Probably not the original Couch, but something I'd waited to see for a long time. I thought about all the stories told by patients there on the couch and all the long conversations analysands would've had with Dr, Freud there at his desk. 

The FMTY Girls are beyond my reach, but there's something else I want, and it has more to do with that Couch than with Michelin-star restaurants or hotel bedrooms.

I do know someone who works for one of the few remaining phone sex services out there. Phone sex is a dying art, and the services that have survived are niche services. The woman I know is turning forty soon, and she's worked off and on for the particular service for a few years. She's smart, funny, and she's gifted with empathy. I've sat and listened to her talk about her job and just...sighed.

She does have a perfect WFH job. She has a laptop and a headset, and calls get routed to her wherever she might be. I liked that image. She takes her job seriously, she told me. She keeps notes on what clients tell her and tries to make sure she knows the details they like, or the settings they prefer...or just the things that they enjoy in their lives (a city, a restaurant, a movie, a favorite kind of decor).

She markets herself as a partner in fantasies, and she makes it clear that she believes in NSNL-- No Shame, No Limits. She tells me she's been made uncomfortable a few times by clients' fantasies, but she's never been horrified or appalled. What she's good at is building connections, at getting clients to just talk about their fantasies and about what they'd want their lives to be like. I suspect she's very much worth her fees. 

We sat over drinks and talked and I began to think about the FMTY Girls and what they offer. I told my friend about FMTY Twitter and told her that she-- my friend --would have more to offer me. They'd both be Companions, but my friend would be better at being the mix of things I'd want-- some combination of life coach, coffee shop interlocutor, and classical Freudian analyst. There might not be midnight sex in rooftop pools overlooking Dubai or Manhattan, but there would be a chance to talk to someone lovely. A chance to talk and talk and, yes, listen to what she has to say.

"Coffee shop interlocutor"... Would it be interlocutrix for the lovely girl? I do like the thing that happens in coffee shops sometimes, where strangers end up talking about their lives-- exchanging stories, analyzing one another, sharing likes and dislikes, talking about the things (books, music, experiences, places) that have meant a lot to them. I've always liked that.  And I told my friend that she could very well for herself as a life coach if ever the phone sex company failed. She laughed at that. She'd worked in banking and real estate, she said, so life coach might be a next step.

I remember that we talked about Peychaud's-- a classic New Orleans brand of bitters --and about how so many of her clients' fantasies were about going back in life and just doing the things they wished they'd done. For some it was, yes, having sex with cheerleaders or some particular long-lost girl. For some it was having the nerve to come out of the closet. Or having the nerve to admit that they liked something and didn't want to be ashamed of it. She tried, she said, not just to help them get off inside their fantasies, but to let them know that they had someone to talk to, that their fantasies and hopes weren't as awful as they feared.

Phone sex, she said, is another world. I do agree with that. It's always been something I liked because it plays to my strengths: storytelling, world-building, creating details. I'm sad that it seems to be dying away. Sexting can never replace long stories told late at night, can never replace late-night voices. Sexting can't replace conversations that loop and swerve from erotica to memories of films and places you've lived.

I would pay to have someone like her as a Companion out some night. I think I could sit and talk to her and feel like I was inside a world where fantasies could be NSNL, where conversations could go on across a table late into the night. She did very much have the gift of empathy. We exchanged business cards, mind you. She  wrote No Shame, No Limits on the back of hers. 

The conversation was one I enjoyed rather a lot. She let me walk her back to her hotel and told she that she hoped I'd call and arrange a session sometime. I think we could be creative together, she said. Her fees are nowhere near what FMTY Girls get for a dinner date, and I've certainly spent more just taking myself to dinner and wine on solitary Friday nights. Maybe I will call sometime. I suspect we'd both spend more time talking than doing phone sex itself.

Someone like her would be what I what these days. Life coach, interlocutrix, classical Freudian analyst-- someone with whom I can talk and not have to be afraid, someone who'd listen and not judge, someone who could suggest what my thoughts mean...and share her own.

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

Three Four Nine: Equipment

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

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

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

Jill's 2007 Hook-Up Kit contained:

-Travel pack of condoms (3)

-Travel pack of wet wipes

-Travel toothbrush/toothpaste

-Mini-tube of water-soluble lube

-Lipstick

-Mascara

-Concealer

-iPhone & charger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Four Four: Boxes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Three Nine: Gates

 Here in the new year, I'm still reading along with Escort Twitter. 

I'm still amazed by many of the FMTY girls, and I'm envious of some of the travel photos they post. I read their Twitter biographies and find myself thinking about what kind of evening I'd have with a "champagne bubble about town" or a girl who describes herself as "your breathtaking dinner date". These days, dinner dates are rare enough for me, even those that aren't highly-skilled and highly-compensated professional companions who'd be at home in Michelin-star restaurants. 

The question remains, of course-- even if I could afford a professional companion's fees, why would someone at their level of skill want anything to do with me? Here in the new year, I am aware of some things. It seems far too clear to me that I'd never make it through a FMTY girl's first round of screening.

Over the last few days, I've been reading Twitter threads about the screening process. I understand the need for screening. Please don't get me wrong about that. An escort, even at the level of FMTY girls, faces risks to her safety. Screening is something necessary. And I have no problem with that. I could pass a basic screening using official records. I am not, as they used to say on "Law & Order", in the system. If my fingerprints are on file anywhere, it's only because I once went through the opening rounds of applying for a State Department job. 

What I'd be afraid of, though, is that somewhere, somehow, there's a long blog post by some now-forgotten ex telling the world what an Awful Person I am. That would be exactly what an FMTY girl would find when she was vetting me. I've no doubt she'd find something like that-- something that would raise a whole Comintern annual congress worth of red flags. And somewhere out there over the aether there would be long-ago blog posts or social media threads I'd made with a train of hostile comments in response. She'd find that, too. Here in the new century, hostile social media comments would be damning. That seems to be the way it works.

We won't talk about financial vetting. I'm unclear about exactly how that would work, but the idea of it terrifies me. A year and a half ago I bought a new vehicle, and the dealership looked at my credit report and was willing to finance a respectable car. But I have no idea what a credit report would turn up now-- that's not the sort of thing I'd ever check out about myself. I might well have saved up cash for a professional companion's fees-- perhaps at least once I could leave that elegant envelope full of $100 bills on the bathroom counter in a stylish hotel, or perhaps I could slide an envelope with a $500 gift card at some high-end lingerie boutique across a table. Maybe. Maybe. But I'd never survive a credit check...or at least I tell myself that. I could never risk letting a potential companion have the information they'd need for a credit check on me. 

I tell myself that I have credentials. I do have post-graduate degrees. I am reasonably well-read. I have some-- some --social capital. I know which fork to use, and I can appreciate gallery hangings and classical music. But my credentials would never be enough. I'd never know what to say.  A high-end professional companion would feel her own talents wasted around me. 

I would not do well with a professional companion-- I'd certainly never survive even a cursory vetting. There's the soul-crushing vision where I contact an FMTY girl and then-- always after a few pleasant initial DM exchanges, or perhaps after a meeting for coffee --I'm screened out. I can't survive a critical analysis. And of course what applies to Escort Twitter applies even more rigorously in civilian life. 

Three Three Zero: Complications

We've talked about this before, but I'll just note that I've always distrusted the idea of authenticity or the idea of an essential self. One of the things that makes me distrustful of the whole current idea of being trans is the idea that there is some kind of essential self, a "real" self that can come out of hiding or finally break free of social impositions. I'm old-school postmodern, and I believe in the idea of reinvention, the idea of  transformation, the idea of becoming someone or something new. Needless to say, I'm always a fan of literary impostors and of people who've gone off to new cities and new worlds to reinvent themselves.

Right now I'm watching someone tangle himself up in that-- or watching two people tangle themselves up. I know both of them, though I know her better than I know him. They're not a couple, or not yet, though I think they'd both like to at least have an ongoing, off-and-on affair. They're both in their early thirties, educated, hip, articulate, successful. Members of the meritocratic class. 

As best I can tell, here's what's happening. He is trying desperately to tell her that he's bisexual, or gender-fluid, or whatever. Watching from the outside, I'm not altogether sure that he actually is. He may well be, although she tells me that sometimes she thinks his hints are very much like some haute-bourgeois sorority girl announcing that she's "spicy straight", whatever that is. 

She is very bisexual, and very open about it all. Let's take that part as a given. She's also very lovely and adventurous. She tells me that he's been trying to tell her that he's bi and femme at heart. He won't come out and say it, though. He hints and talks about things in the abstract and dances around actually admitting anything. What he wants, she tells me, is to have her ask the direct questions and ask for stories. He wants her to do the work. Her instinct, she says, is to tease and withdraw, to entice-- or force --him into saying the things he's trying to say, to make him admit to whatever past and preferences he has. 

I know her better than I know him, and I'm not about to just ask him what he's doing. I'm not about to ask him about his past. That's not something that I can do as a cishet male. She tells me that she's not sure he's even bi at all. She wonders if he's creating a bi persona and past  just to entice her into bed.  Which makes her consider the option of seeing how far she could push him into being a femme bottom. She'd quite like that, I think.

 She wants to encourage him to tell her stories, true or not, because they'd feed her fantasies just as much as they feed his. Last week she raised a gin & tonic at the bar and told me she'd like to take him to bed, but that it's much more fun just to see what she can get him to say or do. He might well like to go to bed with her as a femme bottom or dressed up as a girl. She'd be up for either. Or for sleeping with him as a cishet male. She's confused about what he wants. As much as she'd like listening to whatever fantasies he's creating-- or memories he wants to recount --she's unsure what role to play: confidante, domme, garçonne,  girl-boy to his boy-girl. She's unsure whether she's dealing with someone coming out or someone who's developed a really intricate seduction plot or a complex kink? Whether or not autogynephilia exists for political purposes, she has no problem with the idea of it as a kink in men with whom she has Encounters. 

The issue here is how she should handle this. She'd be okay with whatever persona he's creating or revealing. The only question is how to coax him into taking the last step, into actually saying what he wants and who he wants to be when the two of them do finally hook up.

Three One Eight: Springtime

 Here we are--- one full year into the time of the Red Death. For many of us, it's been a year of empty streets, empty storefronts, working from home, masks, and social distancing. More than half a million dead in the US this last year. Something like 530,000 lost to the Red Death as of today.

No one has been thinking much about sex this last year, or at least no one has been thinking about sex-as-pleasure. Quarantine Porn exists, but there's something so desperately forced about it. And everyone seems too tired for pleasure, let alone for flirtations and Adventures. I'd thought that the plague and the lockdowns would lead to a revival of phone sex and erotic letters, but that doesn't seem to have happened. More's the pity about phone sex, I must say. Phone sex was always something I liked--- I'd always been told I was good at telling stories and creating scenarios ---but not even lockdown boredom and frustration seems able to make people talk on the phone these days.

My friend Jill down in NZ wrote me once about her best teen memories of oral sex:

Best memories... God, so many nights...I was able to practice on boys just a few years older than me, so when I started spending time with much older men I was very good. And I like to think I returned the favour -- teaching 16 year old boys just how to eat pussy.

I do remember one night...when I sucked two boys off while the other one watched... I loved that, and so did they. After I'd sucked off both of them and we smoked a joint, they did each other, which made me so wet... We were in the back of a car, and later I did ride one of them... But I still wish I could have had them both at the same time.

Those stories-- stories like that --are still out there, but everyone seems too exhausted and depressed to tell them, let alone to create more. I have a friend-- I always call her the Other Melissa, a nickname that dates back a dozen years now --who's in Vienna tonight. Vienna was always my city, and I envy her being there. I should be back in my old flat in the IX. Bezirk, and I should be at Zum Schwarzen Kameel with her, listening to her stories of being a young professional domme in late-Noughts New York. She phoned me once from a cab going to Brooklyn to meet a client to say that it was amazing to think about how much pleasure (and money for pleasure) was being exchanged on any given night in the city. I'd so love to hear her stories, to hear about the adventures she's had since she was nineteen and at Juilliard. 

There is a compliment I received once. One gets so few in one's life that they're important to remember. A lovely five-eleven girl of twenty in Asheville wrote about me in her escort blog:

Sugaring is dangerous for obvious reasons. I was going to a top secret meeting with a person who, for all I knew, would turn out to be someone who collects human female hides and would force hydration upon me. So I texted a good friend--- the only friend to whom I could ever reveal this sort of information ---to be concerned if I didn't give him an update by morning. 

Coincidentally, the friend I texted was my first Older Man, but more of a mentor and certainly not a Sugar Daddy. If he had been such a thing, I hardly think we could've considered it sugaring. He says I'd have been his mistress, a sort of extended affair between compatible souls. We are very much alike, my first Older Man and I, and because of that, I do wish it were him instead.

That's a compliment I've treasured these last seven or eight years. Talking with her late at night, telling stories back and forth 'til dawn--- that mattered more than I can say. 

If anyone's thinking about sex at all these days, it's not about sex as pleasure. Blogs and Twitter timelines are filled with angry exchanges in the Trans Wars, and I intend to keep well away from that. The Gender Wars of the early and mid 2010s morphed from being about male-female skirmishing into being about whether gender and sex are related, or if either really exists in the ways we've believed these last few thousand years. The Gender Wars were ugly; the Trans Wars are vicious and brutal. I don't want any part of them.  

I will note that I, as an aging roué, am what one side in the Trans Wars would disdain as a "genital fetishist". I'm attracted to female bodies--- female in the older definition. I won't say that others shouldn't have the right to present themselves however they wish, but my own tastes are fixed, and have been since a long ago day when I discovered a box of high-end "glamour photography" magazines and realized that, yes, one life question had just been answered. But just as the early Gender Wars and #MeToo made it impossible to talk about male desire or present heterosex as anything but coercive, intrusive, and always both unwanted and mediocre, the current Trans Wars have made it difficult to talk about desiring bodies-- desiring what I define as beauty. So we will stay away from that.

Throughout the time of the Red Death, we've been pulling back from sex and from talking about sex as something we want or miss. The predicted lockdown baby boom hasn't happened. There doesn't seem to be a spasm of post-pandemic hedonism building up. We're all just too exhausted and glumly empty for that. 

It's springtime now, one year into the Red Death. I wear my mask almost everywhere and I have a small Plague Doctor stuffling who sits on my writing desk. But on days like today, I wish there were lovely voices on my phone or lovely Young Companions sitting across a streetside table from me and telling stories. 

I don't want it to come to a world and a time when there are no new stories to share, or (worse) no new adventures and encounters generating stories. Stories matter, and it matters that you're able to share them with lovely companions, to create narratives about adventures to share over the aether late at night. Having adventures and encounters matters, and so does being able to craft those into tales told in the dark.

Three One Three: Boxes

I've been going through boxes and looking for ghosts from my past. I found the journals Levin gave me, and I've spent nights sighing over them. It's odd--- I have so few photos of Levin. I have her pencil and pen-and-ink sketches in the Pentalic journals, and she did lovely self-portraits. What I regret, though, is not taking photos of her. 

That's always been a regret for me. There are really no photos of me, let alone any of me with lovely young companions. I've always avoided being photographed. I can think of only two that I know exist. One is of me at my brother's wedding. The other is me standing outside the house where I'd rented rooms while I finished my doctorate. One of me in a tuxedo, one of me in black blazer and black long-sleeved tee. Two existing photos in all these years. I suspect you can guess the reasons. I'm not fond of my body or my face. And to be photographed next to a lovely young companion would only emphasize how I don't belong there next to her. 

The first time I went to Europe, I flatly refused to bring a camera. A camera, I thought, would mark me as a mere tourist, a rube from the provinces. And so I have no record of my life in Vienna. A year of my life might as well not exist. I feel the same way now about photos of girls I've been with, girls I've loved. I've no clue if any of them contrived to get photos of me, or if they managed to get photos of the two of us together-- though I know that I didn't get any.  Back in the day, I'd have been terrified of being photographed, terrified that any photo of me with a lover would be a kind of mockery of the stories my young companions and I told ourselves about who and what we were. I'd have been terrified that her friends would see photos of me and feel only disdain and contempt. 

Levin and Liberty were able to be muses for older lovers. Miss Ginny in Montreal, too. They were all of them proud of being someone's muse. For Levin that was the painting professor, the man who did that nude portrait of her. For Liberty it would've been the gallery owner in Santa Fe. And for Miss Ginny, it was an aging Russian emigre who played chess with her, taught her to do vodka shots, laughed at her obsession with Swinging London and the early Sixties, and gave her a couple of cartons filled with old issues of Cahiers du Cinema. I'm sure they each had other older lovers for whom they were muses and inspirations, but I keep thinking of that portrait above Levin's bed and about Miss Ginny sitting on the floor of her rooms near McGill, going through articles about half-forgotten French and East European films. Or of Liberty in just a man's shirt, being taught how to paint desert light. 

Liberty told me about her mysterious journal with its "My Older Lovers" chapter, about the entries she'd been making since she was sixteen about the things she'd learned about older men and about how to manage older lovers. I never asked to see it, of course. I certainly never asked her what she said about me--- or if I was in her entries at all. But I do have visions of Liberty sitting cross-legged on a sofa in just a pair of faded, cut-off denim short shorts, brushing that mass of red-gold hair off her face and reading from her notebook on older lovers. I always loved her voice, and I can imagine her doing a kind of podcast, telling her stories out over the aether. Liberty was always very direct and straightforward, always very earnest. It's easy to imagine her reading out her guide to older lovers not as regrets or even as erotica, but just as a clear set of memories--- an operator's manual with clear descriptions of procedure.

Miss Ginny claimed to have something similar, by the way--- written in French, like a good Montreal girl, and bits of her father's Polish ---with lists of books and films older admirers had told her about. Miss Ginny, though, would have focused on the books and films. She wanted, she told me, to sleep with at least one famous academic and one rare book dealer. She wanted the lists, she said, wanted to have a bibliography, an annotated bibliography, to go with her life and experiences. 

There are boxes somewhere in rooms wherever Liberty and Miss Ginny and Levin are tonight. I have to believe that they still have boxes, that they've kept journals and notebooks all these years, that they treasure the stories and the lists they made.  All three girls told me that they set out very deliberately to find adventures and experiences, that they  spent their late teens and early twenties keeping notes and lists, finding raw material for the art and the books they wanted to create.

I miss them. I miss that attitude. I miss the way each of them saw my age as a positive thing, the way each of them set out to design a world for herself, the way each of them kept notebooks and lists. 

Two Nine Three: Lessons

Last night I watched "Altered States"--- a film from c.1981 that I've always rather liked.  If you haven't seen the film, I will recommend it.

There's a moment in "Altered States" where Wm. Hurt has the first physical symptoms of regressing into some kind of archaic hominid. He's in bed with one of his students at the time (she calls him "Dr. Jessup" when he leaves bed and dashes to the bathroom to look at his transformation in the mirror). The actress is named Ora Rubinstein; her character is billed only as "Young Medical Student". I like that...and wonder if you'd still still have that character if you re-did the film in the Year Twenty. Could you still have Dr. Jessup sleeping with one of his students? The film takes it for granted that he'll have affairs with students, and one of his senior med school colleagues says off-handedly earlier in the film that he has to go, that he has a date with one of his students,

Which once again takes us back to Levin and her painting professor. That affair was something that happened long ago, and certainly long before #MeToo. Levin had no objection to sleeping with her professor, and no particular thought that she was being exploited. She found some of his stories pretentious and self-involved, but that just went with being in the art world. What I'd like to know is the full backstory. At what point did she sense that his interest in her was a seduction? How did she react to the discovery--- surprise, amusement, excitement? Did she ever think she was being exploited or used (in a bad way)? Did she laugh at how cliched it all was--- art student and her professor? Did she decide to sleep with him early on, or did she make a quick decision that night in the studio when he asked why she wasn't naked yet?

I asked her once when she made that decision about me, and she shrugged and told me she'd decided early on, when I was telling her what films and books I liked. Just seemed like you'd be interesting, she said. I mean, I'll take that as a compliment and a perfectly valid reason. But I did wonder when she'd made a decision and what criteria she was using. 

Levin was a fine arts major. I do wonder how her criteria compare to Liberty's.'s criteria. Liberty was a coastal ecology major--- a science girl, albeit in what was regarded as a "hippie science". From what I could infer, all the "soft" sciences--- the ecology programs, anthropology, biology ---were very sexually active. Funny thing--- "Altered States" gives the same impression, that the physical anthropology students and faculty are more sexually active than the hard sciences or even the liberal arts. I need to look into the accepted mores of various academic departments. 

I of course was a History major--- a department not noted for carnality. Fine Arts and Comparative Lit were of course notorious for both ambisexuality and teacher-student affairs. Neither Levin nor Liberty ever seemed to find sleeping with faculty to be anything out of the ordinary, mind you. And both seemed to have accepted bisexuality as perfectly ordinary since their teens. Okay, yes, great--- I'm now thinking about a survey and analysis on sexual criteria by academic major back to the Sixties. Somebody get me a research grant and a Netflix deal.

What I'm also thinking about is what each of them--- Liberty, Levin, even the Young Medical Student in "Altered States" ---wanted from the experience. We'll learn things, Liberty said to me. When Levin first stayed over in my rooms, she spent time prowling through my bookshelves and asking about books and authors. My friend at McGill told me that she expected any older lover she took to have a bedroom full of books and a whole fund of knowledge about 1960s French and East European films. 

Though I suppose it's possible that they wanted the idea of "experience" more than any particular concrete experience. Levin was part of the art world, and there's still a strong master-pupil attitude there, the idea of learning by transmission from some older figure with talent. That may be part of it all.  Levin and Liberty (and my friend in Montreal) liked the idea of having experiences,  of collecting experiences that they could use to form themselves. I suppose I felt the same way in my own late teens and undergraduate days. The idea was to be able to say that, yes, I did this, or that I'd read that, that I had a range of experiences (all approved in novels or films) that I could use to become (or become seen as) the sort of character I wanted to portray.

Liberty told me that all through her teens and into her twenties she'd collected experiences and kept a journal about what she was learning about the world and about lovers. She claimed to have kept a separate "Older Men" chapter with notes on what men in their thirties and forties had taught her and on how to deal with them. Did she really? I'll never know, though I hope she did. I hope she'll find that notebook when she's forty herself and read it through and see if she agrees with Liberty-at-twenty's observations. 

I wish I could have both Liberty and Levin write down the things they'd learned from older lovers. My friend at McGill--- I know how she'd answer. She'd list the names of authors and directors, the titles of books and films. Reading Deleuze, she'd say: that was a big thing. Not quite the physical things Liberty claimed to have learned (light s/m, foot fetishes)...or how she learned to paint Southwest desert light. Not quite those things...but still lessons that my Montreal friend saw as crucial to her constructed self.

Now I do recognize that I've been a source of some kind of lessons and experiences for girls like Levin or Liberty. I'd like to know more about what lessons and experiences they'd been looking for, and how they did use them (whatever they were) to construct selves later. I'd like to know what counts as a lesson, too.  And I'd especially like to know how each girl sees the older men they were with all these years later.

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 Eight Two: Taxonomy

The time of the Red Death does give you space and solitude to think about things, to examine (endlessly examine, sometimes) memories from better days.

Last time I wrote here, I recalled something my friend Liberty said about the older men in her life and past:

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

She told me that when she was talking about the Santa Fe gallery owner who'd revealed his foot fetish to her. She was always quiet and a bit solemn, and always willing to listen. And she was right, mind you. By the time you reach a certain age, you'll have acquired a fetish or two--- or at least some particular obsession. And it'll be hard to talk about. By the time you reach a certain age, you'll know what you like, but somehow you'll feel less and less able to talk about it. You'll be more aware of social rules than you were at twenty, and for some complicated set of reasons far more afraid of being an outsider than you ever were in your days at uni.

I don't share the gallery owner's fetish, but I have a couple of small obsessions of my own, and I've noticed that my level of social unease has been climbing. At twenty or twenty-five I'd have talked about anything with a lover or potential lover, and I'd have been much more courageous about being open with my interests. At twenty-five--- back in another age, another world ---I had my left ear triple-pierced and paid no attention to remarks about that. These days, though, I find it hard to go swimming in the pool downstairs from my flat not because of my looks or age, but rather because I did get a couple of body piercings a few years ago. Nothing, mind you, that the current governor of New York isn't supposed to have, but I'm much more afraid of mockery or even simple questions than I ever was at twenty-five.

There are rank-hierarchies to everything, and I am far more aware of them now. I told a lovely blonde friend in an Upper Midwest city all about Liberty and the older man in Santa Fe, and she laughed and told me that Liberty was right, that older men had so many things to teach her, but that they were all afraid of girls her age mocking them. I'll trust her database on that. She'd been a gallery girl in Brooklyn and London once upon a time, and she'd been an escort and a sugar baby briefly. She and I talked the other evening about  hierarchies and fears, and she said that Liberty's partner had a point. A man, especially an older man, being into blindfolds and riding whips with girls like her at least had an air of danger and delicious wickedness about him, but a foot fetish always seemed to be silly and pathetic. She didn't mind doing either thing, she said, and she loved sex while blindfolded. And, yes, she said, she'd had older men cum on her bare feet before--- not her preference, she said, but it wasn't anything that disgusted her.  She could, she said, have told her female friends about being with an older patron who was into s/m, but she wouldn't have told anyone about a patron who liked her feet. And she couldn't have explained why.

Liberty was once in my bed with her wrists tied with silk scarves and bits of colored candle wax dripped on her. I knew you'd do this, she laughed. Never doubted it. That was early on in our acquaintance, and I was glad that she thought it was all fun. It's like being in some goth video, she said.  I felt...safe that evening. If she felt comfortable with older men because they had stories to tell her and things to teach her, I felt comfortable with her because she was open to adventures, because she saw me as someone who could create new stories with her.

Much later, on another night, after she'd told me about the gallery owner in Santa Fe, she asked if I'd do the things he did to her. I told her that, yes, certainly--- if she asked.  We had to talk about that answer. I had no objection to doing those things if she asked. So long as she asked, they'd be games, adventures, things done in play between friends and casual partners. If I asked her, though, they'd be fetish-y.  If I asked her, the things would feel shameful. We lay there in a tangle of sheets and tried to decide why I felt like that--- and why she could very clearly see my point.

There's a structure to preferences and obsessions and fetishes. Those things can be very clearly arranged in branches, lines of descent, hierarchies. Liberty was open to men teaching her things, to exploring things, and she always wanted me to feel like I could tell her things. She wanted me to give up body fear and body shame, to regard fetishes as just play, to have no social anxiety over my body piercings. I felt (and still feel) grateful for all the things she tried to teach me, and for all the stories she told me. But as much I was (and am) grateful that she let me be part of her own stories, I still have a deep reservoir of fears about telling young companions about what I like and don't like.

I do find it harder and harder to just accept what I like or don't like, harder and harder to reveal myself to someone with whom I'm trying to build a certain intimacy. My blonde, long-legged friend down in NZ told me once that she couldn't imagine that I'd ever be shy asking a lover for something that gave me pleasure, but that's no longer true. These days, alas, I'm far too anxious about identifying what I like or want or what gives me pleasure. I remain willing to do almost anything a lovely girl asks me to do for her or to her in bed. I'm always willing to try to give pleasure. But it gets harder and harder to ask someone to do anything for me.

Two Seven Eight: Boccaccio

Early spring, and the Red Death is here. The city where I live is in semi-quarantine, with empty streets and social life reduced to nothing. My understanding is that hospitals here in the city are quietly moving towards a crisis.

It's a grim season, and there's no denying that. My lovely blonde friend in the Land of the Long White Cloud has gone missing. New Zealand is under crisis rules, with its borders shut and businesses closed. I've no idea if she's well or if her employers have shut down altogether.

It's an odd thing, the plague in a social media age. I suppose people are still texting, but no one seems to be lamenting that there are no voices out there over the aether. I'm a creature of a dying generation, and telephone voices do matter to me. I suppose that FaceTime and Skype still count as interaction sites, but somehow that's not the same as long talks by phone late at night.

I've seen a few suggestions that here in the time of the Red Death, writing letters is a key skill to revive. I do agree with that, actually. There's something heartening about actual physical letters. There's something about ink and handwriting that makes you feel like you're actually part of a relationship with someone.

COVID-19 has of course destroyed not just the bar and restaurant industry, it's also ruined sex work and most sexual interactions. Sex workers in Europe and North America are trying to move online, to do webcam and cam-girl sex to stay financially afloat. There are no bars or clubs anymore, and fear has emptied out dating apps. In a world of N95 masks and using Clorox wipes on everything anyone touches, sex is fairly out of the question. Even s/m is hard to do if you're Social Distancing--- whipping a lovely young companion at a minimum distance of six feet (two meters?) is a difficult thing.

Now I will assume that the online sale of vibrators and dildos has spiked.  The Solitary Vice is the one sexual release left...so long as Amazon Prime continues to deliver. I could note that while Lelo and Hitachi are still bringing pleasure to women, there's no equivalent for men. Or at least no equivalent that anyone male can discuss. Women can tell clever, amusing stories of getting through quarantine and Social Distancing with their vibrators, but no one male can preserve any self-respect if he admits to wanking his way through the plague season. Of course, that's a story for another day.

Tonight I'm thinking about Boccaccio and the Decameron. You know the backstory for that, I'll presume. Somewhere in Italy during the Black Death, a group of wealthy and cultured refugees from the Plague assemble in a country estate and fight off boredom by telling one another stories--- usually scandalous, lascivious, and wickedly clever tales of adultery, seduction, and complicated affairs. I think that there was an updated version in the late 1960s, an Italian film called "Boccaccio '70". But in any case, I am thinking of Boccaccio's characters telling tales of lust and passion while the Plague hovers just offstage.  I'm thinking that we need a Decameron 2020. We need to tell one another tales of encounters and adventures, tales of the things we're all prevented from doing by COVID-19 right now.

My thought is that I'll spin out more threads here, that I'll tell stories from the Pasts of lovely friends, and just possibly a few tales from my own past. I hope you'll read this and respond with your own tales. If phone sex is a dying art, and no one actually writes letters any longer, then at least we can tell one another tales here.

I'm expecting that there'll be very little "normal" happening through the rest of the year. The Red Death may not be just outside the window, but it is out there.

So if you are reading this, do write. Do let me know about the stories I'll be posting...and let me know your own stories. This may be all we'll have for a while.

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 Six One: Beliefs 5

A lovely blonde girl down in the Land of the Long White Cloud wrote me about this story a few years ago.  I'll note that there are two competing versions of it. I'm having a difficult time believing in any of her stories now:

amazing weekend! the rugby sevens were in wellignton last weekend and there was a huge street party. i went in with caity and a few other friends...we drank shots all night long. i was wearing a very short black dress, jandals and my anchor necklace. we ducked into an underground bar where a bunch of kenyan players were drinking. they were very hot...we danced with them - caity got fingered on the dance floor.

you get kissing beads at the sevens, so we took theirs and ended up with quite a few more by the end of the night. they should have been re-named sucking cock beads! caity ended up back at a hotel with a kenyan. i went back to a different hotel with a manager of the scotland team. we met in the morning for coffee before heading back to bed together.

The second account is somewhat different. In this version, she and her girlfriend Caity left the club with the Kenyans and went to Oriental Beach---

we met them at a club in town and ended up taking them to oriental bay, a beach very close by. there were three, one was called daniel, not sure about the other two. we were both wearing very short skirts and singlets, no bras, no panties. caity and i were kissing in the cab...and caity was fingering my cunt. one of the kenyans was really into it...the other two were slightly shy initially. 

[When we got to the beach] caity and i started sucking one of their cocks, while the other two watched. we were topless, kneeling on the beach sucking his cock.  the kenyan kept saying 'fuck yeah, suck it bitch'. he was loving it. caity and i were fingering each other while we sucked his cock, then his friends came over and joined in. the kenyan cocks were huge and uncut and delicious. they wanted us to stand, bend over so they could both fuck our asses at the same time. we both screamed, but fucking loved it. the one fucking me was so big and was fucking me so hard i couldn't stand, he had to hold me up.  it felt amazing to just be fucked so hard by random cock. they did call us 'slut' and 'bitch', i don't recall them mentioning 'white', but we both wished they had said 'white slut' and 'white bitch'. 

i haven't told you my favourite part of the night...after caity and i had been fucked in the ass by the two quiet ones we crawled away and held hands and had to shit out all their cum. it felt amazing doing that with caity rubbing my clit. we went back over to them and they gave us one of their beers.

then daniel fucked my ass and quiet kenyan 1 fucked my cunt. i fucking love being DP'd darling. i came so hard.  quiet kenyan 2 fucked caity's cunt and came in her mouth. caity couldn't find her singlet afterwards and had to go home topless. we went home in a taxi from the beach. we were dripping with cum too. the taxi driver almost crashed because he couldn't stop watching us in his backseat. when he got home, we purged together, then drank some vodka, had a bath together then went to bed and licked each other's cunts.

The second version is basic porn, and harder to believe than the first, shorter account. I've no doubt she wrote it to impress me, or at least excite me, but I have to wonder why she chose the particular scenario. I'll also note that Sevens Week did exist in Wellington, so she may have been turning a weekend drinking bout into stories. But why those stories in particular? I'll also note that she didn't always use 'Kenyan'; for the more graphic bits she used a more racialized term. Again, is the word just less taboo in NZ, or was she hoping to excite me with another level of transgression?

I don't believe any of the second version, though I suppose that meeting a Kenyan rugby player named Daniel is at least a possibility.

I've known my blonde friend seemingly forever. I have emails from her dating back to 2006. After all these years, I do wonder if I can believe anything she's told me about anything at all.

Two Five One: Palimpsest

I was trained to do History, and I believe in keeping archives. I have paper journals dating back twenty-odd years, and notebooks that reach back to my undergraduate days. I have correspondence, including love letters, that dates back into the Eighties. And I have chat logs that go back a decade, filled with long exchanges with lovely young companions. I've never thought of purging any of those things. They're my past, my history, and they hold memories of places I've been, adventures I've had, and girls I've loved or desired. History matters, stories matter. I've lived my life through stories, and everything that I am is built up out of stories.

And yet there's something unsettling about going back through my past. My blonde friend down in the Land of the Long White Cloud told me once that she couldn't imagine me ever being hesitant to tell a lover or potential lover about my desires and preferences. That was one of my great skills as a lover, she told me: being willing to be utterly open, being able to show girls that there were so many ways to seek out pleasure and delight. It wasn't so long ago that she told me those things, and they meant a lot. These days, though, I'm starting to feel uncomfortable about that.

My friend down in Aoteoroa exchanged years worth of emails and chats with me. We explored a great many fantasy scenarios and fantasy worlds. We told each other all about our pasts and dreams and adventures and kinks. She'd write me to say that the two of us were able to do and try everything. No shame, no limits--- she'd tell me that all the time. But these days all our exchanges are beginning to worry me.

She's not the only one. Other lovely young companions have spent hours and hours on the phone with me, spinning out worlds and scenarios. Those late nights meant the world to me. We'd be inside each other's dreams and pleasures and desires and I'd feel alive and valued and able to explore whole new sexual and romantic worlds with girls in other cities and other countries. Tonight I have to wonder if I'd do those things now.

Here in the age of the gender wars the idea of having fantasies, let alone sharing them, is increasingly dangerous. I look back on the things lovers and I shared via email or chat or letters and I feel wary and something very close to miserable. Once upon a time, I'd never have been ashamed of any of the things I said or did with young companions. These days I'm deeply worried of being judged and mocked and condemned in ways I'd never have imagined a decade ago.

I look at the chat logs from what my Wellington friend and I talked about for years and what crosses my mind isn't that she felt safe enough and thrilled enough to say No shame, no limits to me, but that someone, somewhere, someday will use them against me. I'm beginning to feel the same way about the letters and emails archived over the years.

I can't decide whether it's all the Zeitgeist or if it's that entropy is winning and that I no longer have the energy to believe in pleasure and adventures. Whichever it is, I find myself not just afraid, but ashamed. Shame, unlike guilt, is external, socially-imposed. I'm becoming ashamed of all the ways lovely young companions and I found pleasure together. I'm becoming ashamed of the things that gave me pleasure. I'm becoming ashamed of having shared those things.  I know that it's that there's been some sea-change in how we view pleasure and adventure, and I look at the things lovers and I said and did and feel...empty. I feel like I'm losing my past, that the age we live in is telling me that everything I desired and felt and enjoyed was wrong, contemptible, shameful. I hate thinking that the girls I shared all those things with now despise me and reject the things we did and said.  I hate that, but there's nothing I can do about it.

Two Four Six: Readings

I may have told this story before. As a gentleman of a certain age, I have to worry about that. Memory, the old joke runs, is the second thing to go. If I've told you this before, my apologies. The issue does haunt me, though.

Now I'd want to be clear--- I'm using one experience with one person as a hook for the story, but that person, that individual, isn't herself at issue. What happened is only a point d'appui for launching off into something more abstract. I do hope you'll keep that in mind.

Some years ago I was exploring on-line erotica sites, and I found a site (stories + blog) by a writer who called herself Remittance Girl. Her site bio and some of her blog entries indicated that she was based somewhere in southeast Asia, that she worked (or had worked) as some kind of teacher. I liked that. I probably have a romanticized version of teaching English in Asia in my head, and that seemed like the sort of expat life I'd be leading in a better world.  In any case, I liked her site and her stories. The writing was very good, and the tone was dark and transgressive and had a goth-s/m kind of focus. The first story I read was about some sort of sex vampires, and the opening scene in a Moscow aerodrome was very hot. There was a serialized novel, too, a very dark thing about an American hostess in Tokyo kidnapped and used/trained as a sex slave by a Yakuza boss. Again--- excellent writing, all very hot. I thought she was a fine writer, and I enjoyed her essays on expat life, erotica, and the culture wars around sexuality in the new century.

Be clear.  I was never friends with her, nor did I try to be. I read along at her blog and left a handful of desultory comments. Again, this was never about the person.

What happened is that one day there was a discussion about the issue of product placement in novels. I forget how it all came up. I had to grin at the topic. I was remembering the so-called "sex and shopping" ("shopping and fucking") novels of the Eighties. Was the lead author of the genre Judith Krantz? The underlying appeal of the genre was that the novels were all about brand names. Not only were the male leads impossibly handsome and impossibly wealthy, the female leads all moved in a world of Rodeo Drive or Upper East Side boutiques. They wore lovingly-described designer dresses and shoes, wore specific kinds of make-up and perfume. The hotels where they conducted affairs all had specific names and well-cataloged amenities. I wasn't a fan of the genre, although the small bookstore where I worked in those days sold a lot of them. What I liked about the genre was the world-building and attention to detail. That's how things went bad,

I think that Remittance Girl was angered by the materialism in books like that. She may have disliked the late-capitalist shopping fantasy or the equation of shopping with orgasm. Anyway, I did comment that I liked details like brand names, that I liked erotica that was set in well-defined upper-class settings. Let's remember that back in the days of the Long Ago I bought copies of "The Official Preppy Handbook" and "The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook" and pored over the lists of class markers--- clothing brands, vocabulary, accessories. One of the great attractions for me in "Story of O" was that the novel required a hidden chateau as a set and moved its characters through elegant Paris townhouses. I commented that I'd always seen class as an essential part of sex. Part of the sexual allure of something like "Story of O" was the idea of life inside a better, more elegant world a few thousand miles from where I grew up. I expected sex, I wrote, to come with the chance to move into better worlds. Sex was always better if the accessories were right--- what the parties wore, what the wines and decor were like, what kinds of hotels or bars or residences were used. Sex itself might be good, I wrote, but it needed sets and settings to make it really work.

That got me blocked and banned. I was never sure why--- whether I was taken as defending late-capitalist materialism or taken as seeing my partners as no more than stage props. Well, it's been years now--- five years, I think. The event stays with me as a symbol. I'm not sure if Remittance Girl is still writing and blogging or if she's on social media--- not that those things matter, and here in 2019, erotica is the last thing people are worried about. Politics in what used to be the lands of liberal democracy has killed the idea of erotica and sex blogs.

I do see the world as made up of stories, not atoms. Details matter to me; they always have. I read to escape into other worlds, worlds that are crafted and shaped. The stories I'd like to be part of take place in a better world than the genteel poverty of my own. The idea of sex for me will always require not flesh as much as it requires sets and settings. Sex in my rooms here can never be as good as sex in stories, sex in a rooftop pool high above Shanghai or an alcove in the Great Hall at Trinity College Cambridge. Or even by a campfire on the Wainuiomata shore. I suppose I have always been attracted to s/m because it requires accessories and accoutrements.  I rank-order the places, of course, and I ache with envy when a lovely friend tells me she's had sex in some setting (a hotel pool, the front seat of an Aston-Martin, the office of a distinguished faculty member). Sets matter, settings matter, costumes matter. I want sex to be shaped into a narrative arc, into stories I can tell, into films I can replay and relive in my head.

When I do read erotica, I want details. What did the girl wear exactly? What school or regimental tie did her male partner wear? Which hotel in Melbourne or Manhattan were they at? These things matter. If there's no crafted tale that can be told or relived later, what's the point?

Two Three Eight: Coffee

I do ask myself sometimes--- what do I want in a relationship? How do I see relationships working? I suppose that comes up most often on weekend mornings. My usual weekend morning begins with walking downtown to one of the coffeeshops near the river with a book and my notebooks. I'll sit and watch couples and try to imagine their stories. I've always tried to imagine the stories of lovely girls at other tables, to ask myself who they are and what they're doing and what brought them out so early.  I do it with couples, too. Who are these people? What did they do last night? What brought them out this early? What are they talking about? How long have they been together? What's the nature of their relationship?

The ones I may envy most are what I've always called Laptop Couples. A couple in their mid or late twenties, there at a table with their laptops or tablets, talking to one another over coffee, looking up to trade stories from whatever each has on screen. Twenty years ago they might have been at the same table, but with sections of the Sunday New York Times rather than devices.  With straight couples, the guy is inevitably stubbled. The girl is in short shorts or leggings and a rumpled man's shirt. I somehow imagine both in reading glasses.

Are they married or living together? I'd like to think of them as partnered rather than married. I'm old enough to remember when living together had a certain edginess about it, and that still gives a hint of spice to relationships I imagine. Though sometimes I imagine them as simply dating for a while, and becoming used to spending weekends together while going back to their respective flats on Sunday nights.

Laptop Couples do inspire my envy. That's how I'd love to spend a weekend morning with a lover. Flat whites or chocolate cappuccino, buttered croissants or coffee cake freshly warmed. The girl in one of my dress shirts and black leggings or tiny running shorts. Each of us surfing the web or reading on our e-book apps, the two of us exchanging stories we've found or commenting on what our Twitter feeds are showing that morning. Sometimes I imagine early-morning Mimosas, too. I imagine her asking me about clues in the crosswords she's doing or telling me about a book review she's found (a new Susan Choi novel, a new Sally Rooney short story). We'd grin at each other and pass stories back and forth: have you seen this? have you read this column, this blog? We'd still be thinking of waking up together, of walking together down to a cafe.

It's a quiet image, and one that focuses on things I care about: reading, conversation, a sense of one another's presence, the soft haze of a morning-after. I've dreamed of being part of a Laptop Couple for a long time. It does sometimes leave me empty when I watch couples interacting with a quiet ease over their MacBooks.  Coffee and a book all on my own--- I am used to that. But I miss the idea of a Young Companion who'd share a morning and what's out there over the aether with me.

Two Two Two: Booth

This story comes from the days of long ago, from my friend Tara, who's now doing a performance art thing in St. Paul. The story is from 2004, when she was an undergraduate and did a study-abroad semester in...Mongolia. I've never been quite clear about that. Why Mongolia? It may be that, yes, she was a dual major in Anthropology and Art and wanted to see the culture. It may be something as simple as cost--- she wanted to go abroad for a semester, and Mongolia in those days was the cheapest program. In any case, she went to Ulan Bataar (UB, the expats say) and enjoyed the trip. Part of that was an encounter with a local, a UB policeman who'd discovered American co-eds. Tara's version of the story went like this---

Well....let's see.

The boy in question was, in addition to being an apparently well known
detective for the Mongolian police force, Mr. Mongolia 2003--a title
one earns by winning bodybuilding competitions. He was probably in his
mid to late twenties.

I mean, bodybuilding isn't hugely popular there, but still!  That was
a lot of muscle!

The clothing aspect of all of this is not particularly sexy, because
it was December in UB.  I was wearing warm hiking boots and warm wooly
socks, a pair of fleece tights (but not panties), a pair of low-rider
jeans, a fitted olive green shirt, no bra, and a green turtle neck
sweater.  (The green shirt looks fantastic without a bra underneath.)
He was also wearing warm boots and socks and a pair of warm pants
underneath his jeans.  He wore a button-up shirt with short sleeves
under his sweater and jacket.  I wish I could say I remembered the
colors but I don't.  I think they were just greys and browns and
things.  I think the button-up shirt was the same one he wore to the
club when he followed us home and I think it was a rather strange
pattern of yellow and black.

We were at the movie store and looking at videos, trying to pick
something out.  He kept trying to pick a porn flick but ultimately we
got the original Bourne Identity.  I didn't really think porn would be
necessary to set the mood.

In the room there was a bench along the wall opposite the television
and then a small cube to serve as table, foot  rest, etc.  When we got
in the room, we sat next to each other on the bench with his arm
around me.  The movie started and about 10 minutes in he was starting
to fidget quite a lot.  He started nuzzling my hair etc., so I turned
to face him and we started kissing.  He put a hand on my left breast
as we kissed...I am trying to remember the transition from making out
into fucking....I believe he put a hand against my crotch through my
pants and was making me come that way. I was wet enough through my
tights to wonder if the denim would get wet, too.

 After I came I believe I either asked him if he wanted to fuck or I
showed him the condom that I had purchased earlier.  He spoke a little
bit of English but not enough to really hold a conversation....so
probably I just showed him the condom, even though we didn't end up
using it. He pushed the cube up against the door and I took off my
sweater.  I handed him the condom and he looked at me and tossed it
away as I pulled my jeans and tights down and put my hands against the
wall behind the bench. I was actually glad about the condom, since
despite what all the girls in the program kept saying about having one
at all times, I hate condoms. I certainly never used them in high
school.

He entered me quickly and started pounding me, his hands on my hips.
He was thick, more thick than long. He was uncut, like most MongoI
men, which made it feel better. I braced myself against the wall and
occasionally put a knee up on the bench for stability.  I wasn't
particularly quiet and I think he was a little bit distracted by the
possibility that one of the (very cute) female video clerks would come
in.  I think it was pretty clear to them that we were there for the
purposes of fucking so it's unfortunate they didn't decide to
investigate.

The unfortunate part about Mongolia is that most people live with
their parents until marriage.  But this meant I got another chance to
have semi-public sex.

So...he was fucking me from behind, his pants just opened and mine
pulled down a little bit. I kept asking him to fuck me harder and he
seemed to understand that.  I also reached back and pulled my
asscheeks open.  He pulled out once and started probing my ass. He got
inside maybe an inch or two, since i was very dry. I pushed back a
little but he seemed to have chickened out because he then started
fucking my cunt again.  Part of the way through I felt the skin at the
back of the opening of my cunt (the part towards the asshole) tear a
little bit but obviously a girl doesn't stop because of that.  I think
I came at least two but probably three times.  He came after maybe 6
or 7 minutes of hard fucking.

We lounged against one another as we got our breath.  We watched maybe
another 20 or 30 minutes of the movie when he starting touching my
breasts again.  This time we made out longer....we kissed slowly for a
while, as he got touchy-feely.  He felt me breasts over my shirt and
then under my shirt...a little after he went under my shirt I started
rubbing his uncut cock through his jeans.  I lifted my shirt off and
he acted like he liked their size and that I was bra-less. American
girls were all supposed to be sluts, after all. So he started sucking
and biting my nipples.  I straddled him then, and we kissed that way
as he handled my breasts.  He was a little rough with them, and very
eager.  I pushed my cunt against his cock through our jeans, grinding
on him.  His attitude changed a lot then and he started kissing me
harder, kissing my neck and my shoulders and cupping my ass.  I asked
him if he wanted to fuck again and he nodded.  I stripped myself
completely. The floor was sharply cold once I was without boots and
socks. He took off his pants too (white briefs--that's what he was
wearing) and his underwear, and I licked his balls and he squeezed my
breasts while I knelt. He had handcuffs on the back of his belt, and I
kept wishing he'd handcuff me.

I straddled him then and he put his hands on my waist.  I pushed
myself onto his cock without kissing him. I remember smiling at him as
his eyes got a little wider.  Then I started riding him as he groped
my breasts and my ass....if only he had thought to put a finger in my
ass!  I should have learned the words for that off the bat. I rode his
uncut cock to two orgasms and I think he was just sort of surprised
about what was going on because he didn't make a noise and his hands
just shifted all over me.  I, on the other hand, was very noisy and
excited about the whole thing.  After I came twice, he pushed me off
of him and onto the bench.  I masturbated for him briefly and then he
ate me out.  Again--too bad one of the lovely attendants hadn't walked
in to see me there on my back, legs over his back as he ate me out and
finally did push two fingers in my asshole after I guided his hand.

Then he got on the bench and, with my legs over his shoulders, he
started fucking me.  He didn't bend over, but instead was mostly
upright and perpendicular to my body as he fucked me.  How gloriously
slutty! After a few years of misguided monogamy, here I was being
fucked by a cop!  I hope to fuck a cop in the States soon, to get out
of a traffic ticket or something like that.  All my American friends
knew about my boyfriend back home, they all knew that the Mongolian
had fucked a couple of the other American students and they had all
seen me getting ready for my date.  So--these things were in my mind
as he fucked me there on the bench.  He was going pretty steadily at
it and had put one hand on my clit, the other holding my right leg as
it rested on his shoulder.  I came again in this position, louder than
before, and right after I came he bent over, put his hands against the
bench and started fucking me really forcefully.  My butt was a little
bit off the bench, suspended by my legs, which were still over his
shoulders.  I couldn't really move much, as he had me pinned on both
sides by his arms and he was driving his cock into me....I love not
being able to go anywhere. I came again and then he came shortly
afterwards.  He put enough into me for it to run down my thighs.  I
don't think we even finished watching the movie, we just got dressed
again and left. When we drove up to the residence building, I opened
his pants and licked him clean there parked on the street.

When I got home, the bravest of the Americans asked, "Did you bone?"
And my answer was, "Yes, of course." Most of the room was shocked, but
I'm not sure why...It had been clear as soon as Emmy (the other
American) was done with him that it was my turn.  Emmy was into
cutting and that sort of thing in bed...so it was quite a shame that
she wasn't interested in fucking both of us.

I've loved the story since she first told me about it. I'd love to talk with Tara again and ask how she looks back on things fifteen years late. How does Tara at thirty-five regard her nineteen-year-old self and her adventures? I have follow-up questions, too. Did she ever see the detective again? Did she ever sleep with Emmy? How many of the other girls at the residence had sex with the detective? UB seems a place where expats can indulge in things that'll never follow them home, where you're far enough away from the world to just be free to both explore and (yes) relieve the boredom. I think I will ask girls I know about stories of affairs and one-night stands while abroad in exotic places. After all, Adventures are part of the point of travel. Let's see what stories I can find out amongst my friends and acquaintances and lovers.