Three Eight Seven: Gifts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Zero One: Kits

 Once upon a time, back in the later Noughts, I went mad one summer. That's easy enough to say now, and it would make a good opening for a story or a Spalding Gray kind of performance monologue. I wish I could be telling a lovely young companion about the story tonight, but this is the best I can do.

I went mad that summer--- a small bit of high drama. And what it was about was simple enough. It started off with travel toothbrushes.  Girls had written me about their Morning-After Kits, about the things they put in their purses before going out on Friday or Saturday nights, about the things they took with them just in case, just in case they ended up sleeping over with a handsome stranger. A travel toothbrush was key to everyone's list. Girls sent lists of items, but not one of them wrote to say that she'd bring a toothbrush or a change of clothes on a date with me just in case. None of them indicated at all that I was worth bringing a toothbrush for--- which may have been the one thing I think I wanted or needed. Make a list of cities--- NYC, Atlanta, SE Texas, Oregon, Baltimore, Montreal, Seattle: no one thought to say that to me. Not any of the girls I have longed for and cared about. Which told me all I needed to know. 

That summer I wrote that:

I will be checking purses in the doorway. If there's no toothbrush, no little vial of deodorant, no change of clothes...she doesn't get in the doorway. I will toss the purse or backpack onto the upper walkway and slam the door in her face. No toothbrush, no Mornings-After Kit, and I don't want her around me.

Be clear--- I don't necessarily expect her to use the toothbrush or the change of clothes. I don't necessarily expect her to stay over. That isn't the point. Not at all. The point is that she'd have the toothbrush with her--- just in case. Whether or not she stayed over, I'd want her to have the kit with her. Just in case. If she didn't toss the toothbrush into her purse, it means that I'm not Valuable enough even for the possibility of a first-date morning-after. It means that she'd already decided that I wasn't fuckable. So I will check for a toothbrush and slam the door in her face if it isn't there. 

It was that kind of summer. And that summer I bought two small travel toothbrushes and kept them on my work desk as magical items. I believed that if just had the two toothbrushes--- the kind that lovely co-eds would keep in a Morning-After kit,  then somehow, magically, girls would want to take Morning-After supplies with them when were with me. 

I still have travel toothbrushes with me-- I think that now I have a total of eleven travel toothbrushes, pristine and unopened. They have multiplied over the years. They're still here as magical items. Each of them is a talisman of some kind, a small futile frozen invocation of hope. Girls still haven't brought Morning-After Kits with them when they've gone out with me. 

Again, it's not the idea of the girl staying over and needing the Kit. It's the idea that she'd bring the Kit just in case,  bring it because I was Valuable enough to be someone she might need it for. The toothbrushes mean a lot--- they're still here as magical items, as ways to pray to be just-in-case Valuable.  I wish now, a dozen or so years later, that I'd never asked anyone about Morning-After Kits and what lovely twenty-something girls brought with them in case they hooked up with someone.

Two Eight Seven: Dance Floors

I always loved being on a dance floor. But I think we've reached the stage where I won't risk that here. I'm not about to risk the mockery that's reserved for anyone past his early thirties who takes the dance floor. Oddly, I'd still dance all night in Europe (excluding Britain). That may be because standards for dance floor skill are much lower in France and Germany than in. say, NYC or LA. Or because one assumes that Euro club culture is less appalled by age-disparate couples. Or just because I might not be able to understand the mockery when it's in the local dialect of Foreign. Nonetheless, as much as I miss dancing, I think that stage of my life is done.

I will miss it. I think of girls like Liberty or Levin or Jill in New Zealand and think of dancing at rooftop bars in distant cities. But that won't happen again. To be seen on a dance floor at my age--- even dancing to music I love, even (or especially) dancing with a young companion, leaves me open to mockery. I'm not at a stage in my life where I can deal with that.

If there's anything positive to be said about my life this spring, it's this. 

Someone left me this message:

"I just want it noted (preferably in the preface to your book, when it's published) that i thought your posts should be a novel before it was cool to do that (scroll down your comments). an epistolary novel about an aging roue with a wasted phd, stuck (for hinted at but never fully explained reasons) in the deepest south, stewing in the heat, spinning and re-spinning his stories out over the aether and late into the night about a debauched but well-traveled past ... until one night a voice answers back, a sharp hip-boned girl of inappropriate age from an impossibly hip city on a different continent. they go back and forth, flirting, testing each other, telling their stories, but there are cracks and neither he nor she (nor the reader) know if they are what they present themselves to be. she says she's bored and wants danger, real danger, but is afraid she doesn't have what it takes to go all the way. he wants to be dangerous again, really dangerous, but is afraid of the same thing. they talk themselves into an assignation, he forces himself out of his southern lair to make the trip to new york (montreal? prague?), and texts her the room number at a boutique hotel ... he's pacing the room, waiting, drinking ... she's hours late, will she show? is she real? or (a cold, sinking feeling) could it it be someone from the past, from the time of those unfortunate misunderstandings? and then there's a knock on the door ... i'd read it, is all i'm saying. "

I'll be living on the energy in this for a long while. It's like survival food to a lost Antarctic traveler.

Two Seven Three: Hearts

The weekend began with Valentine's Day. In other circumstances, in other worlds, that might've been a good thing.

Of course, for those of us who were solitary at Valentine's, there was that nagging sense of social failure--- failing at one of those arbitrary but nonetheless important social expectations. Being solitary on Valentine's leaves a dull, heavy sense of failure around one's neck. However manufactured the holiday itself is,  the sense of failure remains. No partner, no one taking part with you in the rituals of romance, no formalized and formal kisses.

Throughout Valentine's Day, there were social media posts by women announcing that, for them, V-Day stood for Vibrator Day and not Valentine's Day. Girls I knew via social media posted entries saying that their vibrators were fully-charged and ready, and that they would be their own lovers that night, that Lelo had given them the ability to find pleasure alone--- pleasure that was certain, authentic, and probably more intense than they could find with a date. Vibrator Day as a meme was passed along from girl to girl, and they cheered each other along.

Needless to say, that's not an attitude anyone male can have. Any male announcing that he would be celebrating Solitary Vice Day in lieu of a partner would've been mocked mercilessly as pathetic or creepy. It's simply a social fact. No one male can indulge in the Solitary Vice and be regarded as doing anything positive. The Solitary Vice, for males, is always a sign of failure and lack of social value. Only sad losers or creepy perverts indulge in the Solitary Vice, and anyone male doing that deserves shame and mockery.

The girls whose social media posts I was reading chatted back and forth about their favourite vibrators and discussed their performance stats--- USB chargeable! longer battery life! perfect texture! choice of colours! Most, just as a note seemed to favour models by Lelo--- apparently the brand of choice for hip, educated twenty-something girls all over North America and the Anglosphere. There's no male equivalent for that, of course. No males at social media were discussing the relative merits of different artificial vaginas. No males at social media were discussing which make or model of inflatable doll was best. No one was saying that he had photographs of favourite actresses or models to tape onto his choice of doll--- at least no one not at some dark web site for wannabe serial killers was saying that. (See how easy it is to instantly assign mockery and contempt to any male admissions concerning the Solitary Vice?)

Years and years ago, I did see a Seventies horror film where the creepy male main character had some kind of doll that he'd fill with water. He'd tape photographs of girls he'd stalked onto the doll's face and have sex with it. At the climactic moment he'd inject a syringe full of blood (his own? some hapless victim's?) into the doll, and he'd have some version of orgasm while the blood swirled through the water in the doll. The film was, I think, from sometime in the early 1970s; it may have been called "Private Parts". In any case, the film was a perfect depiction of social attitudes regarding any male who indulges in the Solitary Vice. The film was disturbing enough when I watched it a lifetime ago, and the memory of it still leaves me deeply uncomfortable and shamed.

Socially, males can't admit to any need for solitary pleasure, and the act itself is regarded as shameful and some mix of sad, disgusting, and risible. This is something one simply has to accept. Even phone sex or chat sex with a lover is regarded as pathetic and shameful, and webcam sex is regarded as obviously shameful and easily-mocked, at least for any male participant. On a day devoted to the social rituals of romance--- or on any other day of the year ---you are socially policed against admitting that you need to give yourself pleasure. Pleasure for anyone male must come from external validation--- being seen in public with a lover, having a lover make time for you in her life and bed. There's no male equivalent for "empowerment" by solitary pleasure, and there's certainly no acceptable way for anyone male to pursue pleasure for its own sake rather than pleasure that's set by arbitrary social rules.

Two Six Three: Despair

I've made this blog about being an aging roue. I've never hidden that. Tonight I am feeling my age, and not just my age. I'm feeling a certain kind of emptiness.

Time runs out.  We all know that. And tonight I'm feeling that. I do feel as if a part of my life is closing out. There's a sense of loss here, a sense that there's less and less of a way for my life to involve either physical pleasure or any intimacy with a lover.

I have tried these last few years to avoid making this blog too personal or to use it to lament my own failings. Here in the last days of October, though,  it's hard to avoid a sense of melancholy.

I've always hoped that this blog would generate comments and discussions, that there would be lovely interlocutors with whom I could talk about the ideas behind sex and social lives. There isn't an interlocutor tonight, and I feel that lack very deeply. I've never minded writing into the void. I've spent a great many nights pacing through my rooms talking to imaginary classes and audiences, telling stories and posing hypotheticals. I was an academic for a long time, and I've never lost the style.

The other evening I noted here that I find myself unable to talk to others any longer, that it's become harder and harder to imagine opening myself up to a young companion or a potential lover. Asking about likes and dislikes, about preferences and fantasies, seems increasingly dangerous in the age of the gender wars--- and in an age of social media and public shaming. Any kind of openness about those things, any sharing of your life and what it means seems far too dangerous these days. Conversation, let alone seduction, feels too much like a trap.

Fear of opening up, fear of asking, fear of conversations and seductions. There's that. And there's also a growing fear of and disgust with my own body. I am less and less willing to allow my body to be seen. I have less and less faith in my body. It's served me reasonably well all these years, but I find myself thinking that it's now a failure.

I have purchased several packets of "speed shower" body wipes, and I find myself compulsively swabbing myself down. I would never ask anyone to touch my flesh these days, and I would be far too terrified to ask anyone to taste or accept my flesh as part of lovemaking. I live in fear of having a smell, of having a taste, of having some disgusting texture. Hot showers all through the day, repeated body scrubs, antiseptic wipes. "Speed shower" body wipes whenever I have a few moments. I do live in fear of the moment when I'd see disgust and revulsion in a lovely young companion's eyes. Flesh is a failure. At least my flesh is a failure.

It's going to be that kind of November, and it's going to be that kind of life--- one where any ability to be with a lover, a partner, a young companion has been closed off.

Two Two Six: Cold

There's some kind of Arctic weather phenomenon happening this week: sharp winds in from the north, temperatures falling into danger zones. I can sit in my window seat and see the winds whip the water in the courtyard swimming pool. Oh, I have some expensive artisanal hot chocolate with a heavy shot of dark rum, and I'm wrapped up in black merino wool. But I still feel deeply empty.

This afternoon I discovered that several websites for fetish enthusiasts have agreed that the actresses Emma Stone and Emma Watson were tied for the honour of being the most sought-after foot fetish photo girls on the web. I wonder of course how the two Emmas are taking the award. I hesitate to speculate on the trophies.

I'll admit that I've always found Emma Stone attractive, all the way back to a film she did called "Easy A". Very lovely, very good comedy actress. Yes, excellent eyes and excellent legs. And it does occur to me that I might--- albeit shyly, politely ---pay her either compliment in person. But even if I were a foot fetish person, I'd never, never say anything like, "Congratulations on your foot fetish award." I'd certainly never say, "Pretty feet!" I've no idea why there's an absolute line between complimenting her on her eyes and complimenting her on her arches, but there it is. Some compliments are beyond the pale.  Lovely collarbones, lovely legs---- those things are acceptable. Cute toes--- no.

All fetishes, all sexual preferences, all sexual interests come with a set of social rankings attached. I think that's just a given. Some kinks are socially acceptable, some are instantly dismissed as lower down the rank-order. Your fetishes define you--- isn't that just something Edmund White said thirty years ago? They define you not just in terms of what your desires are, but in terms of where your desires fit in a social hierarchy. Desires can evoke all sorts of responses--- disgust, amusement, fascination, arousal ---but they always make a statement about where you fit in a rank-ordering. BDSM is the intellectuals' kink, thanks to French erotica. It's a bougie kink, too--- equipment and accessories are expensive. Role-play outranks cos-play. (Query: does voyeurism outrank exhibitionism, or is it the other way round?) Age-play is no longer acceptable. Gender play was briefly edgy and cool, but nowadays it's lost itself in the hellscape of the Trans Wars.

There's a always a rank ordering, though. Telling a girl you want to blindfold her with silk and whip her with a riding crop can be spun as sexy and stylish. Telling her you want to suck her toes will never be read as stylish; you'll get no social points for dark elegance.

It's cold tonight and I'm thinking of how I've lost the ability to tell a girl about any desires I might feel. I'd certainly never ask for anything these days. I'd certainly never tell a young companion that I had any preferences or interests, and I'd never tell a girl that something in particular gave me pleasure. There's always the risk of being laughed at--- at, not with. There's the even greater risk that you'll be regarded as pathetic or low-status.

The risks seem all the more daunting these days. Pleasure and the things that give lovers pleasure are too fraught these days. Revealing oneself to a lover---  and very possibly to her social media circles ---is too risky.

Once upon a time, I had no problem talking about desires and hopes and kinks and pleasure with young companions as part of the process of seduction,  as part of the process of opening oneself up to a new lover. Not any more. On a cold night with hard winds outside, all I can say is that there's no way these days that I'd tell a lover about anything I liked about them--- let alone anything that might give me pleasure, or be something for the two of us to share.

One Nine Four: Performance

One of the big issues I'm noting out amongst the devotees of the Social Justice Cult is something called "performing emotional labour". This I suppose replaces "micro-aggression" as the latest example of Evil in social relations. It seems to mean the work women--- and it's always used as being something women do ---are expected to do in providing emotional support to male partners. It's used to mean work women have to do in a relationship to keep their male partners on an even emotional keel--- listening, offering support and solace, being there in moments of crisis or despair.

Now, no one likes an emotional leech. And some people really are emotional vampires in a relationship. But "performing emotional labour" seems to imply that any emotional support offered to a partner in a relationship is somehow illegitimate, that any expectation that one be a listener and emotionally supportive of a partner is inherently exploitative.

That seems to go along with with the general attitude in the Social Justice Cult that any social or interpersonal expectations or obligations are suspect at best, and very likely oppressive or exploitative  tout court.  We've come to a place where social and personal obligations aren't seen as holding societies together, but as ways of grinding others down.

In any of my romantic relationships, I want two things---- sex/romance (obviously) and a haven. I very much want and need out of a relationship what Lasch called "haven in a heartless world", a place to go for safety, respite, and refuge. A place to go for support.

That isn't, or shouldn't be, a gendered thing. You offer up the same support to your partner as they do for you: Ride or Die.  You listen, you support them against the outside world, you offer loyalty and a willingness to be there for them.  You offer solace and encouragement and comfort. You're on their side; they're on yours. Listening to their problems, taking their part against others, having their back. This is what makes it a relationship. Will it mean investing time and emotional resources? Absolutely. But that's what you do. And it's always reciprocal--- must always be reciprocal. Ride or Die.

If you feel oppressed because someone with whom you're partnered needs solace or encouragement, why are you bothering to pretend to be a partner? The idea that any personal obligations should exist in a relationship has become suspect...why? How did this happen? Is this related to the same attitude that makes actual telephone conversations an emotional ordeal? Is this related to the same attitude that makes it a grave sin to speak to strangers? Is this related to the same attitude that wants society made up of armoured monads who interact only at arm's-length?

Any thoughts on this?

One Four Seven: Hypochondria

There are fears that I've been developing. I'm not sure where they've come from, really, but they're there.

This is a summer when I wish there were new and intriguing things in the realms of romance and sex to write about. I haven't found any new issues to consider, and that does bother me. Am I running out of energy and interest in sex and romance, or is it just that this summer is a lull? In a better world, there would be lovely young girls asking me questions or suggesting topics for me to write about. In this world, though, I seem to be left on my own.

I seem to be developing fears I haven't experienced before, and they are paralyzing. I've been afraid of things before. That much is true. I went through a phase of being afraid to fly that kept me trapped in a single city for a long time.  I got over that, of course.  I overcame that fear the simplest way in the world--- a lovely young girl summoned me to another city, and she told me we had a room booked in a hip hotel. What else could I do but pack a weekend bag and drive to the airport?

The new fears are as paralyzing as my old fear of flying, though. I'm now deeply, deeply afraid of my own body. I'm afraid of my body betraying me, of the flesh itself betraying me and leaving me open to derision and revulsion.

I'm afraid to go out to dinner. Let's start there. I won't go out with a girl if dinner is involved. I'm terrified that I'll be stricken with some kind of gastric upset--- the most humiliating and disgusting of all fleshly failures. I'm afraid of all the things that my body can do to drive away a girl I might be with.

There are failures that the Blue Pill might overcome. I recognize those, and I recognize my age.  But those aren't the failures that leave me paralyzed.

I'm afraid of flesh right now. I'm afraid of all the gastric problems and upsets that would leave me no choice but to flee any girl I might be with. I'm afraid of anything that symbolizes bodily decay, that symbolizes the failures of the body. I can imagine myself before a rendezvous--- scrubbing my skin over and over, using any chemical means I could find to make sure that my internal processes are tamed, controlled, silenced, halted.

I remain terrified of what my body could do to humiliate me in front of a lovely girl. If I had a date tonight, I'd be taking pills to put it back under my control. No, again, not the Blue Pill. Other things, other issues. The things the Blue Pill is designed to correct don't leave me that afraid, really. I have other skills that could make up for that--- I do tell myself that.

I can see myself scrubbing my skin 'til it bleeds. I can see myself taking pills and using chemical treatments to keep my body from betraying me. But I can't see those things working. I can't see those things making my body anything I'd trust to be seen or touched by a lovely girl. I could never ask a lovely girl to touch anything as contemptible as my flesh.

This is hypochondria; I know that. But that knowledge doesn't stop me from wanting to scrub and cleanse and use whatever chemicals I can find to make sure that my body isn't something that will betray me, that will make girls turn away in disgust.

So--- let's say that we're trapped inside by fear of gastric upset and decaying, putrefying flesh, by fear of being found...unclean. Let's say that we can't go out, that we can't risk being seen or touched. Let's say that these are fears that aren't going away.

One Four Three: Empty Rooms

I'll pose a simple enough question tonight. If you're reading this, I do hope you'll take the time to respond.

It's been a hope of mine since I started writing here that I'd be able to open up exchanges and conversations, that I'd be able to talk about some of the issues I raise here with others.

Let's try a very basic question tonight.

What if the last person you had in your arms or in your bed was the last person who'd ever be there?

What if you knew to a clear certainty that you'd never be touched again in any romantic or sexual way?

What if you knew to a moral certainty that you'd never have sex with anyone else ever again?

If you knew those things, what would you do?

I've seen columns written by the gender warriors where any sense of dismay or loss about such things is dismissed with contempt. Not having sex ever again, they say, is no loss at all, and to feel fear or dismay or loss is a sign of...what? "Privilege", of course, and misogyny.  To be dismayed over never having sex again is regarded as being complicit in "rape culture".

But amongst those who aren't ranting cultists of the Social Justice Cult---- how would knowing that make you feel?

It'll happen with everyone, sooner or later. Some kiss, some night in bed with a lover, will be a last time for you. Do you see that as too far in the future to make the question worth considering? Have you ever wondered what it would be like on the morning after you realized it was true? What would you see when you look into the mirror after such a realization?

It'll happen with everyone, sooner or later. But tell me--- tell me what it would mean to you to know you'd never be touched again, that you'd never have sex again. What would you do? What would you think about yourself and your future.

Do think about it and get back to me.

One Three Eight: Fears

I'll put this out to you, wherever you are. If you're reading this, take a moment and leave a comment with your answer.

I'm interested--- I really am.

Tell me what you're afraid of.

No--- not spiders or clowns or mysterious robot insects writhing under your skin.

Not those things at all.

I've been writing here for the last few years about things sexual--- sex itself, sex as a concept, sex as a battleground in the gender wars, sex as aesthetics. But always about sex and its derivatives and social grounding. So that much should be obvious. Tell me about sex--- sex and what you're afraid of.

I'm a gentleman of a certain age. I do define myself as an aging roué.  My own fears begin with those things. I'll certainly admit that. Age and entropy and decay. I live with all the fears of anyone male of a certain age. Hair falling out, eyes and teeth going bad,  my body--- my companion in so many campaigns ---turning on me. It's not all about performance failure, though that is a key fear.  I'm afraid of my body these days--- not just of performance failure, but afraid of being inside it, and certainly afraid of letting anyone see it or be near it. Sometimes it is hard to see even a glimpse of myself in a mirror. Sometimes I think I smell of death, or of something worse. I'm afraid these days of what a young companion would discover if she touched my flesh with fingers or lips.

Those are my fears these days.

Tell me about yours. What terrifies you more--- death or the mirror? What leaves you more paralyzed with shame and fear---- what you might see in a potential lover's eyes or what you might see if you examined your body all on your own? What fears do you have when you think of love and romance or of being next to someone else in bed?

Tell me what goes through your mind on nights like this.

One Three Four: Cocktails

If you have time, you might go to a blog at Blogspot called The French Exit and look at an essay called "Some Notes Toward A Theory of Male Jealousy" posted on 6. March 2015.  It's an interesting piece by a thoughtful writer, although I disagree with her conclusions.

She does, by the way, quote me in her article. I'd sent her a message once upon a time during a discussion of male jealousy: Jealousy is the gin; envy is the vermouth. She said that she loved the line but didn't know what it meant: I love that, but what could it mean? Wanting what others have makes their wanting what you have more delicious? No--- not that. My line there is incomplete: Jealousy is the gin; envy is the vermouth. But there's more to it. The complete line is Jealousy is the gin, envy is the vermouth, and depression is the olive in the Cocktail of Bitterness. I believe that holds true for both shaken and stirred.

I used to write about the atmosphere of what gets called Forever Alone. JED, I called it: Jealousy Envy Depression.

The writer at The French Exit was clear that women could tell the difference between jealousy and envy, but let's make it clear. Jealousy means Why is she with him instead of me? Envy is Why can't I have what he has? Different things. Jealousy, in the end, is directed at her--- or at her choices. Envy is directed at him--- at his fortune.  Depression, of course, flavors either---- depression usually contains something like I'll never have anyone ever again.  The three things go perfectly together. And of course I love the cocktail metaphor, if only because I see the bartender's pale, slender hands and a very Art Deco cocktail shaker in motion. I have no idea what the Cocktail of Bitterness looks like when poured through a strainer into a chilled glass.

I haven't seen very much written on jealousy in the age of the gender wars. I'll take as a given that if it is written about at all, it's tied to male evil and oppression rather than be taken as part of the human condition. It's one of the oldest of human questions: Why not me? Why wasn't I the chosen one? What's wrong with me? Why did she choose him? Jealousy comes down both to rage at oneself and at the person who didn't choose you. Always both--- always. You fear that you're not good enough, and you hate yourself for that. You hate her for seeing it and for making you see it. You're angry at her for not choosing you, but even more for making you see yourself as not good enough.

Envy of course is the most singular of the Deadly Sins--- the one Deadly Sin that gives no pleasure at all to the sinner. Envy eats away at the self, at any sense of being in the right place in the world. Maybe that's why I call it the vermouth--- just the hint of it to flavour the drink.

Depression of course is the garnish, the olive that you toy with while you sit at the bar, the olive you draw off the toothpick, the olive you crunch on while the drink sits there, perfectly chilled.

Males aren't allowed to feel jealousy in the age of the gender wars. Take that as a given. We're not allowed to even admit to jealousy. But it won't go away. It hasn't gone away in the last few thousand years, and it's there in every human life, waiting. So's envy, but for some reason we're not told that envy is a moral and political failing in the way jealousy is.

JED--- Jealousy Envy Depression. Those things blend so well together, mixed in the proper proportions. The Cocktail of Bitterness, yes. It'll be on the bar menu for a very, very long time.

Fifty-Nine: Anno Domini

I realize that I've been writing a lot about life in the age of the gender wars, but these are wartime nights. We live in an age when male-female interactions are being re-defined as a kind of cold war, when flirtation and seduction are being re-defined as tools of oppression and as some kind of low-level coercion. We no longer expect sex to be about pleasure or play, and even those feminist writers who still call themselves "sex-positive" spend the great bulk of their time writing about reasons not to have sex and about reasons to distrust and despise males.  I read accounts of how even "sex-positive" writers portray flirtation and seduction and I picture something very like the negotiations that sporadically take place in that temporary building that's been in the border zone between the two Koreas for sixty years--- hostile, futile, agonizing, exhausting.

We no longer accept pleasure as a reason for things. We no longer believe that something is worth doing simply because it offers up delight. We make it harder and harder to trust one another in any kind of romantic or sexual sense, harder to simply play.

We seem to be moving toward a world of armoured monads, a world where all interactions are mediated through ideological hostility and a large measure of fear.

I style myself as a roué, with all that that word carries along as baggage. I am a gentleman of a certain age, and I believe in flirtations and seductions. I believe in a certain kind of ritualized and stylized sex. I believe that flirtation is valuable for its own sake, and that it's a key form of social interaction.  I certainly prefer it to the alternative, to the image of sullen negotiators across a table, each too wary and disdainful to care about reaching agreement or, worse, to the image of all male-female contact rendered into a kind of  didactic ideological drama, the kind of thing traveling propaganda troupes did during Mao's years.

A male friend was recently subjected to public abuse at a sushi bar near here. He and I are of the same age, and we're both genteelly-impoverished and overeducated. He was having a drink at the sushi bar when a very drunken woman in her forties suddenly began loudly upbraiding him down the bar. His sin was simple enough: he'd smiled and nodded at a group of undergraduate girls walking past. Did he know them? He may well have, but that of course isn't pertinent to the tale, nor was it something the drunken woman could've known. She yelled at him for looking at the girls, and for finding them attractive "at his age". She concluded by telling him that if he wanted girls that age, he must be...well, gay. I needn't go into her exact phrasing; I'm sure you can guess. My friend was brought up to strict standards of behaviour, and he refused to engage or argue. The drunken woman left, still pointing at him and calling him names. The bartender passed my friend down a free drink and told him that he was sorry he'd had to endure that. My friend thanked him for the drink and pointed out that the bartender was a lucky man. If my friend hadn't been the target of her abuse, the next visible male person would've been the bartender. True enough, the bartender said, and made him another free drink.

I do sympathise with my friend. I've been through the same thing, been subject to public abuse for the same sins. I've always said that I prefer my Scotch older and my companions younger, and I've been very lucky at finding companions and lovers who either don't care about my age or are intrigued by it. I hope that I've been good to them, and it means rather a lot to me to think that over the years many of them have remained close friends. I suppose, though, that my companions and I are all regarded as targets of abuse these days.

A girl with an older lover is regarded these days as certainly psychologically flawed and quite probably an ideological traitor. And as for me, well...we know the words that are used. To be a roué, to be an older lover, becomes not just suspect but something clearly evil.

The world that the gender warriors want is one of atomized individuals, armoured and without any necessary social connections. For all that a number of more prominent gender warriors claim that they are somehow "sex-positive", they really have no use for seduction or flirtation. And they do imagine that the world must be carved up into a host of watertight compartments, where any kind of communication between them is discouraged on grounds of "privilege" or age or any number of other things.

It's an odd thing, being designated as evil.  It's an odd thing to watch the propaganda troupe do their performance and know that you're the villain in the play.

Twenty: Elegy

This is Theodore Roethke's poem "To Jane: My Student Thrown by a Horse”: something sad and lovely. A student of his had been killed in a riding accident, a student whom he loved--- from a distance, without touching, as someone with whom he shared a love of literature. The last lines of the poem are heartbreaking in an unexpected way. They're about the anguish of not having the standing to express grief, of not being in a role where one is allowed to express grief where someone the poet has loved has died. English has words for love in its varied forms, but we use them so awkwardly, so uncertainly. And here in the new century, we're so afraid and so suspicious of love. We place far too many limits on who can speak of love or loss, on who we're allowed to love. As open as we are about so many things, we use the words for love with less and less assurance and--- increasingly ---with a hint of shame and suspicion...

I remember the neckcurls, limp and damp as tendrils;
And her quick look, a sidelong pickerel smile;
And how, once startled into talk, the light syllables leaped for her,
And she balanced in the delight of her thought,

A wren, happy, tail into the wind,
Her song trembling the twigs and small branches.
The shade sang with her;
The leaves, their whispers turned to kissing,
And the mould sang in the bleached valleys under the rose.

O, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth,
Even a father could not find her:
Scraping her cheek against straw,
Stirring the clearest water.

My sparrow, you are not here,
Waiting like a fern, making a spiney shadow.
The sides of wet stones cannot console me,
Nor the moss, wound with the last light.

If only I could nudge you from this sleep,
My maimed darling, my skittery pigeon.
Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love:
I, with no rights in this matter,
Neither father nor lover.