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.

Two Nine Two: Procedures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two Eight Zero: Wires

Here during the time of the Red Death, here in the plague lockdown, there's been remarkably little written and posted about sex.

I've seen a few on line posts about how couples who first thought that quarantine sex would be a hot thing are now suffering from cabin fever and too much proximity.  I'm waiting for those entries to turn into a Coen Bros. scenario.

A friend in Scotland wrote last night to say that she and so many of her female friends are burning through packs of batteries for their vibrators and that her male friends had been telling her that their "wanking frequency" was now "off the charts".  My leggy blonde friend down in Wellington NZ tells me that while she swears by her Lelo vibrator, she's always found the Corona beer bottle to be a perfect dildo...but can't use one now. She has bottles, yes, but because the plague is the Coronavirus, she just can't bring herself to use her carefully washed and stored Corona bottle.

I'll note that as a male of a certain age, talking about my own experiences with the Solitary Vice is just not something I can do. The Solitary Vice is something that's aesthetically attractive and "empowering" only for lovely girls. Girls can buy, use, and discuss vibrators and sex toys--- but it's all something that males can't discuss. Girls can self-pleasure, but men...wank. What men do is regarded as inherently pathetic and/or disgusting. So take it as a given that I'd be utterly ashamed to talk about the Solitary Vice in my own life.

That's sad in a way, and all the more so in that I was always a major fan of phone sex. Phone sex was something that played to my strengths--- being verbal, being able to construct stories, being able to make girls feel like they were part of a story.  Phone sex was something I discovered late in high school and remained devoted to for years and years. It was always something I enjoyed teaching my young companions to do and enjoy.

I'm sure that phone sex is regarded as some archaic thing in a world of sexting and webcams, but I miss the nights when lovely young companions would call me late at night and talk and exchange fantasies until dawn. I miss looking at my phone (yes, a landline by the bed) and seeing the area codes for distant cities. I miss the time when girls called me from the other side of the continent or (yes) from overseas. Girls have phoned me from London, Melbourne, Wellington, Montreal, St. Petersburg, and Belgrade to do phone sex. I was always amazed and thrilled by those calls.

Here in the time of the Red Death, though, my phone remains silent. I'm not sure whether phone sex has simply become obsolete and unfashionable, or whether plague quarantine depletes the energy levels needed for phone sex.  My fear these days is that I've lost my ability to do phone sex, lost the ability to construct new fantasy scenarios, lost the ability to tell stories. Are my fantasies ones that mean anything when everyone is suffering from cabin fever? In a world of frayed tempers and gnawing boredom, do I have anything to say that would excite girls?

I can't sext. You know that. I type far too slowly, and the character limits make it impossible to construct complex stories with details and dialogue. I certainly can't do webcam or FaceTime.  My face and body are guaranteed to drive lovely young companions away. My face and body aren't designed for visual presentation.

My own cabin fever is destroying any thoughts of being with a lover by phone. I'd never risk having my body seen, but in a better world my stories would be valuable--- and, yes, they were valuable and valued once upon a time.  I can't believe in my value or my skills any longer.

If any of you out there over the aether are still doing phone sex, let me know what it means to you these days. Let me know whether it feels awkward and unfashionable. Let me know if your own interest in the Solitary Vice has waned during quarantine or whether you're feeling desperate for physical release.

Two Six Four: Champagne

A lovely blonde friend once made a list of champagnes for me, a list of champagnes that had meant something to her in her life, champagnes that had played parts in her adventures with various lovers. Champagne came to mind today because I was at brunch and had a couple of Mimosas made with fresh-squeezed satsuma juice.

If I had to list champagnes from my own life and past, I suppose they'd be:

- Veuve Clicquot
- Moët et Chandon
- Piper Hiedsieck
- Bollinger
- Taittinger

Nothing too out of the ordinary there, of course. My blonde friend added something called Daniel Le Brun, which seems to be a New Zealand local brand that she keeps on hand in Wellington as a champagne for "ordinary" drinking. I'll note that I never became enamored of either Cristal or Dom Perignon. Krug remains a mystery to me, as does Pol Roger, which I believe was Churchill's preferred brand.

Champagne for me was always associated with ritual. It was not so much the old, apocryphal quote (Buonaparte or Churchill, take your pick) about champagne--- "in victory we deserve it, in defeat we require it" ---as it was the idea that here was a drink that lent itself to ritual and symbolism. Absinthe does that, too, I suppose, but it lacks a certain clarity of meaning.

Champagne was and is something you open as part of the rituals of seduction. Champagne is what you kiss off a lovely young companion's lips--- or nipples. It's something for licking off bare hipbones. A drink for rooftop bars overlooking Manhattan or Shanghai or Paris. A drink for ritual nights, for birthdays and New Years Eve. A drink for celebrations, and for first nights together.

I've always believed that we need things like that. We need markers and symbols for things. Opening a bottle of Veuve for a young companion is a way of marking the transition from companion to lover, from balcony to bedroom. We need rituals for moving through the steps of relationship, we need symbols that establish what's happening between two people.

I believe in ritual; I've said that before. Ritual makes so much of life and love, of sex and romance easier. Begin the ritual and move through it. I keep comparing that to the Mass, or to a graduation ceremony, both things I know something about. And I do miss rituals, and it saddens me that we seem to be losing them.

There in my fridge tonight are two bottles of Piper. There's a bottle of Veuve and a bottle of Bollinger on my liquor shelf. The year is winding down, and what's left of it will pass through my birthday, through Christmas and New Years Eve. I do wish that I could open those bottles with someone elegant and clever, someone lovely and long-legged. Champagne calls for ritual, and I miss being abe to enact those rituals.

Two Four Seven: Handbags

I do have that SXSW story to tell. My friend did send me her handwritten account--- good stationery, good ink. We'll think of that as a gift to me. After all, paper and fountain pen ink have always meant a lot to me. The story itself is worth saving and recounting, and she writes well. It's something I'll try to get to over the weekend. It's something I would like to find comments on, too.

Let's go back to an entry I posted here not a few months ago, and entry about what girls I've known carried in their handbags on nights when encounters and adventures were a possibility. I began with this:

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

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

My friend in Wellington did get back to me to these issues. She agreed that her basic list, her basic Hook-Up Kit in her purse on a Friday night, would contain

--1 travel pk. of condoms (3)
--1 travel pk. of wet wipes
-- Small tube of lube
-- Travel toothbrush/toothpaste

That seems very minimalist but functional.  I'm assuming she'd already have basic make-up (lipstick, at least) in her purse. She almost never spent the night at a hook-up's place, so minimalist would work: she'd be on her way home well before morning.

Those things would work for her on a night out downtown in Wellington. I did wonder what someone a bit more professional would carry, though. If ever you do wonder what escorts carry in their purses, well, there are lists to be found on-line.

Karley Sciortino at the Slutever website once interviewed a former high-end escort  in Montreal whose carry list included:

-- 1 pr. clean underwear 
-- A good book
-- Dry shampoo
-- Lube
-- Condoms (multiple sizes)
-- Phone and charger
-- Band-aids (in case you've been wearing stilettos all night)
-- Toothbrush and make-up
-- A sex toy (bullet vibrator or butt plug)
-- $US 500 cash

Other articles about escorts and their lives point out that the phone has a dual purpose--- enabling an escort to check up on her bookings  and offering a way to be safe when with a new client. One article suggests chewing gum as well as a travel toothbrush; another suggests latex gloves.

Of course, escorts have to have a much more professional set of concerns than someone like my NZ friend on a night where encounters might happen. She wouldn't have the problem of using cash so as not to leave a paper trail of any locations or deposits. I can see my Wellington friend carrying a small dry shampoo, though. She has always liked the concept of dry shampoo. I know her well enough to know that of she carried a bullet vibrator, it would be a Lelo Mia. She is always brand-loyal. A Dutch website for escorts also lists something called an "action tampon"--- something I wasn't familiar with. It's basically a sponge, designed to allow a woman to have sex during her period without ruining the sheets. The website suggests it's also useful in case there's any bleeding after rough sex or a more well-endowed client. Again, the lists for professionals tend to be much longer and more problem-focused than the Hook-Up Kits I've been asking girls about.

I do have to smile, mind you, since there's no equivalent for men. I suppose a gentleman could carry a condom or two, but that does look a bit predatory. Also, there's the problem familiar to teenaged boys throughout the last sixty years or so: where to keep a condom? I've never really dealt with condoms, but be damned to keeping one in a wallet like some hopelessly optimistic Grade 10 boy. And a condom case (yes, they do come in brass or sterling silver) is far too 1970s for words.

In any case, I do want to find out more from girls I know. I love checklists and inventories. I'll always go through any list of what's in purses, wallets, backpacks, briefcases, travel bags. Details always matter, and there's nothing like looking at lists and inferring lives from them.

Two Four Five: Sounds

So, in late May a dozen years ago a lovely girl at Cambridge was doing this:

This afternoon I lay on the floor of my room and touched myself as the notes of "Salvete Virgenes" moaned at me from across the room and the rain clouded my windows. What is it about sex and religion that really gets me going?

Divine
Divine
Dionysia.

It took me a while to discover that 'Salvete Virgenes' wasn't a piece of ecclesiastical ritual chant but rather a piece done by Hans Zimmer and Richard Harvey for the soundtrack of "The Da Vinci Code".  Well, it is an eerie and lovely song--- haunting. I've never seen the film, and I have no particular interest in it. But the song itself has gone into my laptop iTunes.  Very much the sort of night music I do like.

The image of a lovely, long-legged girl at Cambridge caressing herself in her college rooms while 'Salvete Virgenes' plays will stay with me today. It's an image that manages to trigger so many things for me, so many of the things that always form the scaffolding of my own fantasies. Once again, I wish I could hear her voice telling me all of her own memories of the afternoon.

She wrote this, too--- wrote it that same spring a dozen years ago:

I've been listening to that old Bright Eyes song, 'The Calendar Hung Itself'. I haven't done so in ages. It always brings out the worst (best?) recklessly passionate side of me no matter how sensible I might have been feeling just beforehand.

I think I'd like to dance with her to that song. I'd like to play it while we did vodka shots and she told me of all the recklessly passionate things the song had inspired her to do back in her days as a posh schoolgirl and an Oxbridge undergraduate.

She's quite tall and long-legged, my friend is. Dancing with her would be a lovely thing, and all the more so because of how painfully long it's been since I was on a dance floor. Too long as well since I've had a leggy posh girl explain--- and demonstrate ---what passionate and reckless mean to her.

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 Three Two: Checkboxes

I realize that by writing here at all, I run the risk of being thought obsessed with sex. I find sex and courtship fascinating, but what I'm obsessed with seems to be something else. I'm much less obsessed with sex than with the accessories and accoutrements of sex.

I'm obsessed less with sex itself than with how sex fits into stories. I see sex and courtship as based on stories, on narrative arcs. I look less at the act than at how and where it all happens. Sex in one's own bed in one's own house may be wonderful, passionate, intimate, athletic. But it's not as good as sex in a parked Aston-Martin or on a sailboat moored in Milford Sound or atop a rooftop bar in Manhattan. Location matters, just as all the sets and props around you matter. Sex matters less for the physical sensation or emotional exchange than for the stories constructed around what you've done. I've believed that all my life. Part of roué-hood is telling stories, after all. All the things I've ever done in my various careers have been about telling stories. And every story requires a setting and props. Every story requires accessories.

I've written here about Morning After Kits, and I have been obsessing over those for a couple of weeks. I want to know what lovely girls take with them to assignations. I want to go over their Morning After Kit inventories and see what exactly they're preparing for. I want to know how often they carry their Kit items--- whether they're carried only on some designated nights or whether the girl is always ready for some random coup de foudre moment.

Let's be clear here. There is envy involved. Not so much envy of the sex, or of their ability to have random encounters, but envy of the Kit itself, envy of having a list of items. A lovely girl will send me her list of Morning After Kit items, and I'll go through it to see which of those things (or their male equivalents) I either have or can acquire. A travel toothbrush and a travel-size tube of toothpaste? Check. A travel-size anti-perspirant container? Check. A body wipe or two? Check.  A sign of my own obsessions is that the first time a girl sent me a Morning After Kit list, I instantly dashed to my laptop to find and purchase a travel toothbrush. In the end, I bought a dozen or so. I knew that I was unlikely ever to need them--- if nothing else, I prefer to bring Young Companions back here to my own rooms ---but I wanted to have them because they made me feel as if I could have the same kinds of accessories and accoutrements as the young ladies of my acquaintance. That new box of body wipes on my bathroom shelf is there for the same reason: Look, it says, I can have a  Kit, too! I can be ready in hotel rooms with a lovely stranger! I'm going to take as a given that this is something that could be described as pathetic.

This happens to me. I end up obsessing over lists and checklists. I want to check whatever boxes so that my own story arcs will be as good as those of my Young Companions.  I check off accessories--- cleansers, moisturizers, hair masques, wet wipes ---and I also check off locations (parked cars, rooftop bars, sailboats, offices, bullet trains). Again, this may in fact be sad, but presentation is everything. And I do long for story arcs as good as those of my Young Companions.

Two Three One: Hydraulics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two Two Nine: Fingertips

There's a moment in any relationship that's delicate and vulnerable and exhilarating. It's simple enough--- the moment when you first take a lover's hand.

I do have memories of that, of how it's done. I remember sliding a hand across a table during a conversation and lifting a girl's hand up to twine my fingers around hers. The conversation carries on, and when it's all done well, neither of you even looks at your hands. The girl may spread her fingers and let yours go between them. Fingertips may tap against one another. You're still talking--- books, music, whether you prefer chocolate powder or cinnamon dusted on a cappuccino.  You're looking into one another's eyes and your fingers are learning each other's touch, learning each other's skin.

When it's done well, there's that knowing smile between the two of you--- first touch, the first statement that you're here for a ritual of flirtation and seduction. Sitting there--- coffee shop, bar, restaurant ---and touching across the table. It is an exhilarating moment. So much can be opening up here, so many possibilities are implicit in that first touch. There are other touches that offer up excitement, of course. The first time you put a hand on a lovely girl's bare leg while you drive at night, the first kiss on a bare shoulder--- those things matter. Holding hands, though... Holding hands is a ritual beginning that manages to be gentle and tentative, a ritual that allows the first touch, a ritual that makes a statement about your value.

I'm old enough to have done this a lot. Old enough to have memories of that first touch in different cities, different countries. I'm old enough to have done it in all kinds of venues. It's always meant a lot to me. But here in these latter days, I'm worried that it won't happen again.

Like so much else--- seductions, first kisses, first experiments and statements of preference or descriptions of fantasies and hopes ---it just seems increasingly difficult to do.

Once when I was very young, I went on a camping trip in the mountains. I remember hiking with friends through woods and along streams in a national park. I remember crossing streams stone to stone, doing small leaping steps from one stone to another. It was easy enough, even with a backpack.  I felt very much at ease. I was looking to the other bank, looking up at forested slopes and peaks in the distance. And then--- I looked down at the water and the stones and froze. I couldn't cross by instinct any longer. I was suddenly aware of what I was doing, aware of having to judge distance and balance. I no longer had any sense of rhythm, no ability to do this without thinking. I was no longer outside myself, and I was paralyzed with having to think.

That first touch, the first moment of sliding a had across a table to hold hands with a lovely girl--- I think I've lost the ability to do it. It no longer feels like a ritual. It feels like something I have to think about. I no longer have any sense of when and how to do this. No rhythm, no sense of flow. And I'm not sure it's something I can do if I have to think about it and use my conscious mind.

It's a bad ability to lose. I don't know how I've lost it, and I don't know how (if ever) I can get it back. That table surface is now a barrier I don't know how to cross.

Two Two Seven: Ink

I have been trying to imagine writing a love letter again. It's not an easy thing. I've always had a good eye for ritual, and I've always been able to lose myself in rituals. It's hard tonight, though, trying to imagine writing a love letter.

I've told you how it should be done. On good paper, always. At the very least, you should use hotel stationery, preferably a good hotel in some city far away overseas. Good paper, though, is always best. Something purpose-made for serious correspondence.  Heavy envelopes, too. And a wax seal.  There are people who'd tell you that a wax seal is pretentious, but I think they're wrong. The seal is archaic, but deliberately so. It says that something is personal and private, that whatever's in the envelope is private and valuable. There should be something satisfying for the recipient, too. When she breaks that seal, she knows that she's seeing something that was for her and her alone.  You should always use good ink. That's a given. A fountain pen and good ink. It should be a pen you have to think about, a high-end tool for something important. You need to feel the pen when you write, to feel a sense of doing something that matters. The ink itself should be, well, not just black or blue. I do mix my own--- blend inks to get a colour that means something to me, a colour that reminds a lovely girl of me and what I am.

I can imagine those things. I can imagine laying it all out--- paper, pen, ink. You can write a love letter at a cafe, or in the reading room of a good library. Home is best, though. Easier to have the right music when you're at home. Easier to feel a sense of intimacy, too.

I'm not sure that I could do it tonight, even if I had someone to send a love letter to. I'm not sure what I'd say. I'd be afraid that any statement of feelings would be considered manipulative or coercive. Something simple--- I want to take you in my arms and kiss you. I want to feel you next to me in the morning. Something simple and basic and ordinary. But here in the age of the gender wars, couldn't it be made to sound coercive or threatening, even if the recipient was someone who'd shared your bed and who'd told you that she felt desire and affection for you? If you tell a lover (or a hoped-for lover) that you'd like to go places with her, do things with her, see the world with her, aren't you demanding her time? I read a piece online not long ago where the author was horrified at the idea of asking someone out. You were asking for someone's time,  he said, and for his generation, nothing was more carefully-hoarded or valuable than time. Asking someone to make time for you, to do something they weren't work-obligated to do, to do something they hadn't thought of themselves...wasn't that coercive and "entitled"? More--- asking someone to do something, asking at any time, was saying that you didn't think their own lives were already filled with important things. It was asking someone to expend time and emotional energy in reading your letter and in having to actually go out and deal with people.

There are other fears, too. A really passionate love letter could seem emotionally overwhelming. And the recipient could all-too-easily read it aloud to her female friends and mock you. I think--- or I'd like to think ---that no well-brought-up young lady would've done that in Jane Austen's day. I'm not sure I'd trust a lovely recipient not to mock me to her friends now, and that fear leaves me empty and sad on two levels--- that someone might do it, and that I'd be the sort of person to imagine her doing it.

In all honesty, I can't sext. The format is just wrong--- it's not a format I'd be any good at.  Texts are too short, my typing too inept. I don't have the room to craft fantasies. And, yes, I think of texts as too easy to spread out to people who'd laugh or be disgusted at what I'd sext to someone. I've always had an imaginary audience judging me, I've always tried to avoid the derision of the imaginary judges in the audience.

Tonight I'm looking at my collection of fountain pens and bottles of ink and wondering how you go about telling a lover (or hoped-for lover) about what you like, or what you want, or what your feelings for her are.  What ways do we still have, here in the age of social media and the gender wars, to do any of those things?

Two Two Five: Paper

I've been thinking about love letters.

In the past few years, I've received a handful of emails that were romantic enough, and a few that were deeply passionate or erotic. I can't recall when I last received an actual love letter.

I do want to say that I miss love letters. I miss receiving them, and of course I miss writing them. I miss ink on paper, and I miss opening a letter from a lover. I miss the days when young companions wrote me and used wax seals on the envelopes.

I may still have one or two of the emails lovers have sent me since the early or mid-2000s. Twenty years ago I probably would've printed them off and saved them, but these days there's something suspicious about anyone who'd do that. Most of the email exchanges I've had with lovers are long gone, though. It's far easier to delete emails when an affair ends than it is to throw out (or ritually burn) letters from an ex-lover.  It's painful to go back and read over letters from lost loves, but destroying the letters or deleting the emails leaves a gap in your life and history.

Love letters were a kind of proof, a kind of archivable evidence that I had value to someone. I did archive any that I received, and one of my regrets is that over all these years and so many moves, the boxes with letters from girls who did once desire me have gone missing.

I know that I wrote letters to girls with whom I was involved, and I can still remember some of the more intense or passionate ones. I can remember choosing the right stationery and sitting up late at night with a fountain pen and hand-mixed inks to write a lover. These days, though, I'm not sure I'd do that. I think that these days I'd be hesitant to risk writing a love letter. These days--- in the days of the gender wars ---I'd be afraid that love letters would be used against me.

When I was twenty or thirty I would never have been afraid of that. That I loved someone, that I felt desire for her, that I imagined ways that the two of us could make love--- I'd have owned those things in a heartbeat.  I couldn't have imagined being ashamed of those things. If a lovely girl and I were involved, I'd have been proud of that, proud of being with someone like her. Even if the affair ended, even if it ended badly, I'd have remembered the good parts.

These days, though, love letters--- even those sent to someone with whom you were deeply, mutually involved ---could be spun to seem disturbing. Love letters could so easily be made to seem stalkerish and demanding and "entitled".  Any declarations of passion could be made to seem disturbing and threatening. Any statement of romantic or sexual interests or preferences could be made to seem pathetic or coercive.  Here in these days of the gender wars, love letters can far too easily become evidence against you--- literally so. At the very least, love letters can be used to show how inept and hopeless you are at writing anything romantic or sexual, or that your sexual tastes are stunted, sad, contemptible.

No one uses telephones for long conversations any longer. Phone sex is a dying art. More's the pity about that, since phone sex allows you to construct long, complex fantasies and adapt to a lover's responses. Phone sex is far more intimate than sexting could ever be. And it has this advantage--- unless someone is actually taping you, it's much harder to use against you than a love letter would be.

It's sad enough that I'm thinking about this.  I miss love letters, miss being able to look through my archives years afterward and remember someone I loved, remember that once upon a time someone felt passion and love and desire for me,  remember that once upon a time I was worth the time it took to write me letters. I'd wanted to talk about how much love letters meant to me back in the days of long ago. I'd wanted to talk about how love letters were archived, and how much they meant to me as part of my history.

Right now, though, I can only talk about how much of a risk love letters seem to be, and how I'd be afraid to send anything that might be taken as a love letter (let alone anything about sexual tastes and hopes) to a girl with whom I was having an affair. Right now, no matter how much, how passionately someone and I were in love, I couldn't risk leaving a paper trail. I couldn't risk the ways love letters could be spun to make everything I like, or want, or feel seem contemptible.

Two One Eight: Overtures

When the #MeToo movement broke, there were lots and lots of articles by male writers  demanding to know how they could approach women without being immediately tagged as harassers, predators, or creepy pervs. How, they asked, could they talk to women?

I would've thought that by a certain age, any male would've seen that the obvious answer was...politeness and courtesy. Not so very hard a thing, is it? I understand that the point of these essays was to pretend to naivety, to pretend to a kind of haplessness and terrified cluelessness.

Now I will note that there are changes in the social air. Still...if you're, say, forty-five years old and writing  of those essays, how did you manage to carry on flirtations and seductions for the last thirty years? You made it through the Eighties, the Nineties, and the Noughts. Didn't you adapt to changes over all that time? I have a hard time imagining anyone still sidling up to a lovely girl in a bar and asking what her sign is. Or ordering her a Harvey Wallbanger.

Learning new rituals is always hard. That much is true. But, again--- if you're forty or forty-five now, you've gone through shifts in wardrobe and looks, you've gone through shifts in what counts in assigning social value.  Grunge to metrosexual to lumbersexual and beyond--- you made it through that.  Surely you can do a bit of research in the right magazines and master new habits. It can't be that hard.

My own thought is that where the post-#MeToo essays weren't being deliberately disingenuous,  they did have a small bit of actual unease. My own thought is that the writers were feeling guilt not so much for any actual moments of manipulation or coercion in their pasts, but rather for the fact that what they were trying to do in talking to women was initiate a seduction. They were feeling guilt over male desire.

Many of the responses by female writers were quite clear. Women, they responded, weren't demanding that interactions with men be totally sexless. Women, they wrote, liked sex too. In the right setting and at the right moment, they'd be as interested in initiating a flirtation or seduction as a man. What they wanted, the response essays argued, was honesty and recognition that women were people with rights, value, agency. All of which is very true. And perfectly obvious.

And yet...and yet...as a gentleman of a certain age, I can sympathize with that. Male desire as such is suspect these days, and no matter how polite and courteous an approach is, there's something like guilt. I don't know how to articulate it exactly, but there's a certain amount of guilt attached these days to making an approach at all. Be very clear here--- there's a clear set of social obligations about behavior.  Respect for the person you're approaching--- always and ever that.

I'm not sure at all where the guilt comes from. Is it guilt that I see every social interaction with an attractive woman as having some subtext of at least pro forma flirtation? Is it guilt that I'd be...imposing...sex by someone who looks like me on an attractive woman? Is it that in some way I feel guilty for wanting sex at all? Is it that I've accepted some social idea that all male desire is wrong?

This is all something to consider. I'll continue to believe that basic courtesy and respect are requirements for being out in society at all, let alone for trying to spark a flirtation. But I will have to think about my own feelings of guilt and what prompts them.

One Nine Nine: Default Mode

It's been months since I was here, and I do apologise. This has been a bad year. It's been a bad year for what used to be the American republic, and it's been a bad year for me here in my own life. I haven't had the energy to write here, and somehow nothing personal, nothing individual or sexual, seems important these days.

Nonetheless, let's consider the current versions of certain Arbitrary Social Rules.

We live in the age of what a friend of mine in Los Angeles calls "the triumph of the autistic". What he means by that is that the social world is increasingly coming to accept "no social interaction" as the default mode. You can see that in things like the replacement of phone calls by texting or even the replacement of email by apps like Slack. The default mode increasing involves doing everything possible to lessen any need for long conversations or contacts that require any ability to read and interpret social nuance.  Social rituals are increasingly seen as too exhausting, as demands and impositions, as aggressions.  Hell is other people: that's the new default belief.

My friend in Los Angeles calls this "the triumph of the autistic". He relates it to an age where tech sociopaths are regarded as culture heroes, where writers like Nick Land tell us that in the era of tech and Singularity dreams, only the autistic can cut free of human messiness and grasp the new world of tech.  My own preference is to call this the Age of the Armoured Monad. I've been using that term for a while, largely to refer to the Gender Wars--- though I think it does have a wider application. The era is one where the world is made up of individuals with no real social links or obligations, where friendship and romance are seen as proletarianization, as being forced to "perform emotional labour", as being imposed on. Even speaking to someone can be instantly construed as a "demand for time and attention" that's illegitimate. There's an app of some kind that's being marketed now that provides an immediate cash value for each and every act of "emotional labour" one might perform. Listening to a friend's troubles? Well, here's a dollar value taken from the hourly rates of therapists.  Meeting a lonely friend for coffee? Well, here's a dollar value based on...what? Value of foregone time? Rates for "girlfriend experience" level escorts? Offering reassurance and verbal support? Well, that can be calculated, too.  I expect the same app also provides dollar values for things like cooking dinner for a friend/lover. All I can see it that the app is a weapon in a knife-fight for moral advantage in a relationship, and a good reason never to ask anyone for anything.

Remember: the default choice is always no contact, no interaction.

Let's think for a minute about the new social rules, shall we?

If you're out with someone---- well, you shouldn't be. Being out with someone, asking someone out, is an imposition on their time and energy. It's a demand, and you shouldn't be making it. Even if the other person willingly goes with you, it was an aggressive thing even to ask.

If you are out with someone, well... do not walk alongside them. That can be construed as expecting them to pay attention to you or, worse, expecting them to hold hands or allow an arm to be put round them. Do not walk behind them. That's lurking and menacing. Walk ahead of them. Walk ahead of the, and don't look back--- that's a demand for attention and feeling "entitled" to look back and find them still there.  Walk ahead, and keep walking. Say nothing. That's key--- say nothing.

Needless to say, never suggest a destination. Never suggest a route. That's assuming that you can take charge. Never stop to look at anything--- you're imposing your likes and interests on someone else. Certainly make no suggestions for drinks or menu items--- that's only an attempt to flaunt your dominance and your allegedly superior knowledge.

Undertake no acts of social courtesy. Open no doors, carry no bags or packages, take no coats. That can be construed as a ploy for later repayment in one form or another.

If you are at, say, a cafe or a bar, always sit so that you're against the wall and the other person has a clear path to the door, a clear path away from you. Never, ever get between them and an exit. Never sit directly across from them.  Never put your hands on the table. That can be construed as a demand to hold hands.  Never look directly at them. Eye contact is aggressive, a challenge. At the very least, eye contact is a demand for attention, and asking for attention is always and ever forbidden.

When possible, always sit at right angles to the person you're with. Look off into the middle distance. Do nothing that can be taken as an expectation that they'll pay attention to you.

In conversation, well... Some rules are very clear.  Never be the one who introduces a topic. Never, ever change the topic. Never initiate a conversation, never close out a conversation--- who are you to do those things? Never, never disagree with someone's opinion on anything. Never state your own opinion in any positive way. Both things are aggressive, acts of attempted domination. Never contradict anyone, never say that the other person is wrong. That's always and ever "gaslighting", and  doing that shows that you're a dangerous psychopath.

Never call. That's absolutely forbidden. A phone call imposes not just on someone else's time,  it also forces them to deal with someone else's nuances and emotional meanings both spoken and unspoken. Never text. Texts are intrusive and demand a response. Texting someone more than once a day is a clear sign of dangerous tendencies regarding obsession and control. Asking someone to make and keep an appointment is always a demand for control over their time.

Remember--- do nothing that can be construed as a demand for time or attention. Ask for nothing that can be called "emotional labour". Do nothing that can be construed as an attempt to direct, shape, or guide a conversation or an evening--- that's asserting an entitlement to control. Ditto for asserting an opinion or raising a topic.

Remember--- you shouldn't be there. That's key. You shouldn't be there. That you're there with someone else at all is a clear imposition on their time and energy. Social interaction is always and ever a kind of exploitation. Any social exchange is an act of reducing someone to proletarian status. Any social contact requires others to read your emotional state and unspoken meanings and cues--- in other words, to expend time and energy on you. You, quite simply, are making illegitimate demands just by being there.

The default mode is always no contact, no interaction. Remember that. This is an age of armoured monads. Social interaction depletes your stock of time, energy, and attention.  Any contact is, at root, illegitimate. Accept that and stay well inside your own armour.

One Eight Four: Unsolicited

My friend and correspondent Ms. Flox--- the sex blogger A.V. Flox ---wrote elsewhere not so long ago about a problem of the current dating scene: the flood of unsolicited penis photos being texted to hapless young women. She posted a meme that's been going around the web--- a "prospectus" for a service that promises to show men why dick pics are a poor idea, and, for a nominal fee, to teach men that genitals are not an acceptable conversational opener.

My own response to her was:

I really, really can't imagine ever sending a lovely girl a dick pic. I mean, I don't send pics at all. Reading lists, yes. Hints that I could be dangerous in the theme-park thrill-ride way, yes. I'd consider sending her the heads of her enemies as an introductory gift. But dick pics lack any kind of imagination...and they leave anyone male open to easy ripostes and mockery. Too banal, too cliche, too risky.

I stand by that. In all the time I've flirted with lovely girls on-line--- back to the end of the last century  ---I've sent very, very few girls a photo of myself at all. And never, never a penis pic. A girl that I trust  may get an "official" photo--- something taken for corporate purposes, something with jacket and tie. It takes a lot for me to trust a girl enough to let her see me. In jacket and tie, I can look reasonably serious  and darkly intense. There are bright and lovely girls who can look at my official photos and see more than my age and my appearance. There are a few of them, and deeply treasured they are. But they're a very small niche population. For the most part, I sent reading lists.

I'm male, and all-too-aware that the male body is open to easy mockery.  There are risks that I won't take, risks that a gentleman of a certain age can't afford. Penis pics are one of them. The risks are too high, especially in an age of social media.  Let's be very clear about how the system works. It doesn't matter if you're in the worldwide top 1% for penis length, thickness, and rigidity. If a girl mocks your penis on social media, you've just been effectively re-assigned to micro-penis status. If you're male, you can't win that battle.  Ever. It's not a risk worth taking. Be clear about that.

The whole situation with dick pics may be very different for gay males. Unsolicited penis pics may be the coin of the realm there. I really don't know. But I do know that in my own social world, there's nothing to be gained from dick pics. They're what I was taught to regard as tacky--- never socially appropriate, very much something done by people who lack breeding and social grace.

Reading lists. I stand by that. I would never use an actual photo of myself on a dating site, and I would never send a penis pic. Reading lists are much more about what I'm offering. I'm a creature who's part of a niche experience--- being part of a literary scenario, being a character in a film or novel, exploring things that have the air of the forbidden. I'm sold myself as that much of my life. When I do offer sex, it's far more as a scenario than as flesh. The girls who respond to me want to do things in bed, yes. But they want something else, too--- and the stories being generated outweigh the flesh.

One Eight One: Seating Arrangement

I've said before that I have my dislikes among the sex bloggers. I'm fine with Karley Sciortino at Slutever and Vogue, who's lovely and a delight.  But the two writers I'm currently regarding as my leading candidates for an enemies list are the blogger who calls himself "Dr. Nerdlove" and the woman who calls herself Arden Leigh.

I'm sure they're both well-meaning. I'll give them that. But reading either of them leaves me depressed and angry. There's nothing in either writer's archives to make me feel the least shred of hope, and both seem to take a positive delight in belittling, haranguing, and mocking hapless male readers. The so-called Dr. Nerdlove enjoys using "tough love" slogans to humiliate and bludgeon male readers. He enjoys mocking any male with limited social skills or who's the least bit shy. Arden Leigh uses New Age and psycho-babble terminology to the same end. Leigh sets herself out as a female PUA, as someone who's studied the skills of seduction...and then lashes out at any idea of romance, or fun, or actual flirtation.

And what have I learned from them recently? Well, I've learned this:

If you're sitting at dinner or drinks with a girl (but should you be? after all, asking anyone out is a show of "entitlement", isn't it?), be sure never to sit directly across from her. Always sit on the diagonal. Make sure you're the one sitting close to the wall and that she's always close to an exit/escape. Never, ever meet her eyes. Never under any circumstances hold her hand. Never touch. Never introduce any topic of conversation. Never attempt to add any information to a topic, never attempt to explain anything no matter what you may know about a topic. Reply only in monosyllables. Never show any emotion in your voice, and of course never raise your voice. Never ask a question, never ask for any information, never ask about anything personal. Never disagree; never defend a viewpoint. Offer nothing. Keep looking away, head down.

If you're on the street with a girl, it goes without saying that you never hold a date's hand or put an arm around her. Always walk just a bit ahead of her so that you're never behind her, where you might seem to be a looming threat. Never stop--- keep walking no matter what. Never give directions. Do not speak while walking--- certainly never speak first. Do not suggest destinations or routes. Call attention to nothing around you. Make no comments on anything. Again--- never meet her eyes, never look directly at her. Keep your body language close, keep your own social space to the barest possible minimum. At a bar, on a subway, on a bus--- keep at least one empty seat between the two of you. There at the bar, sit half turned away. Draw in on yourself. Never allow yourself to seem like a physical presence.

And never, never, never ask for anything, especially not any kind of show of attention or support or affection. Offer none, lest that be taken as being "entitled" to a response, or as a kind of manipulation.

Do all these things. I'm sure "Dr. Nerdlove" and Arden Leigh would approve. This is how we live now.

This is what I've learned.

Though the question remains open: how exactly does one make a dignified withdrawal from the emotional post-apocalyptic hellscape of romantic and sexual interaction?

One Seven Nine: Towers

Geoff Dyer wrote an essay some years ago called "Sex and Hotels". I know that it was posted at Nerve.com once upon a time, and it was probably in one of his earlier collections of essays. I saw it referenced not long ago, and I'll be having the local library find me a Dyer collection with the essay. I usually like Geoff Dyer, and "Sex and Hotels" is something I do need to read--- or re-read.

Not long ago I wrote about Karley Sciortino's little essay on hotel sex, and I'd like to pair that with Geoff Dyer's essay. Hotel sex has always had a special valence for me, and I always love hearing girls' stories about the hotels where they've gone with lovers or beautiful strangers.

Location has always been an important part of sex for me. Backseats, desktops, library stacks, wagons-lits...  Location matters. It matters for establishing a mood, for establishing literary or film tradition. A lovely friend in New Zealand messaged me the other night to say that she wanted the measurements of my office desk, just in case she ever found herself spread out atop it.  Wellington NZ is something like eight thousand miles from where I'm sitting, but it never hurts to be prepared.

Hotel sex, now--- hotel sex comes with so many literary and film connections. Each hotel tells a different story about a city and about a particular affair. Each different hotel puts you in a different story.

I have my favourite hotels in Manhattan--- the Royalton, the Parker Meridien, the midtown Pod Hotel, the Night Hotel. Different lovers in each, different kinds of stories being told. My New Zealand friend told me once that she kept a log of every hotel pool where she's swum naked late at night, and that she has a list of Auckland hotels divided up into those where she's been with married men and those where she's just been with boyfriends or girlfriends. I admire a girl who keep lists of things, of course. I admire a girl who keeps score.

Karley Sciortino noted that hotel sex is about temporarily leisured, about being able to pretend for a few days that you're accustomed to luxury. Maid service, room service, the decor--- sex in hotels always feeds on class markers. Though there's something to be said for the stories you can create in decayed roadside motels or faded railway hotels in provincial towns. Both the four-star hotel and the places that probably house people who have "suspected" in front of their names promise anonymity, whether from the paparazzi or the FBI.

Hotel sex for me has always been about early mornings, too, about leaving a sleeping companion and looking out at cities just as the sky lightens. I don't smoke, but it would almost be worth starting just to stand with a cigarette and look out the window while the city began to stir. There are memories there, of course: kissing a companion's bare shoulder and slipping out of bed to watch the day begin.

If you're reading this, and if you're one of the quiet, literary girls I picture as my Imaginary Readers, I suppose you could tell me about your own favourite hotels and hotel sex memories. You could tell me about whether you see the hotel as an adventure in luxury, or an adventure in transgression (a married lover, say, or an alluring stranger), or as away to have anonymity and freedom.

Hotel rooms are for adultery,  as both Ms. Sciortino and Geoff Dyer tell us. They're for being sealed off in a room or a suite and not having to follow the rules of the outside world. Hotel sex is for call girls and clients, for escorts sent up after a discreet call to the concierge desk. Hotel sex can be about all the activities and positions and games you'd never feel comfortable trying at home. Hotel sex is about escape--- and all the best things in life are about escape from the quotidian.

If you're reading this, tell me about the hotels in your past. Tell me what desires you've been able to live out in hotels, and what you think about when the door closes behind you and you toss a carry-on bag onto a hotel bed.

One Seven Four: Holiday

Well, it's 14.  March. One month after Valentine's. And while I know that it's Pi Day, it's also Steak & BJ Day.

I'm assuming that the gender warriors are angry about the concept of Steak & BJ Day, and while in and of itself makes it a holiday worth celebrating, I do see a few problems myself.

Now I'll admit that when I think about Steak & BJ Day, the first thing that goes through my mind isn't a list of long-legged, sharp-hipboned  supermodels. My first thought is...a 1.5-lb. porterhouse, medium-rare, from my favourite steakhouse here. I'm not sure what to make of that. I suppose it could simply be age, though it could also be my own obsessiveness. As I've told Ms. Flox many times in our discussions of such matters, I do obsess over presentation and formal style. I can't begin to enjoy the story if the props and the setting aren't right.  While I could obsess over lovely co-eds or my personal list of fashion models (Ms. Rubik, Ms. Kloss, Mlle. Valade), the porterhouse matters. Formality always matters, though I hope not to the complete exclusion of all else.

 I suppose I do feel a certain amount of psychological exhaustion here on the holiday. I like the idea of  Steak & BJ Day, and I like the idea of a ritualized day for sexual gifts to males. Yet I do think I'd be exhausted tonight if I had to take part in a Steak & BJ Day ritual. It's not just the performance anxiety a gentleman of a certain age might feel (imagine being the one who drops the chalice at the Mass!), or not merely that. It's also the fear that on the one day in a year when sex and a romantic dinner might be offered to me as a gift, when I'd be the one receiving rather than giving, everything would turn bad or disappoint.  After all--- it's not the sex itself that's the key here. It's the formal ritual, it's the walk though the measured, formalized steps of the scripted performance.

I suppose I should note that it's Pi Day as well, and that I had no pie. I suppose I could've bought something at lunch, but even Key Lime pie is merely flavor and texture. It's not a ritual.

Ritual is about socially-ascribed value, but it's also something that's safe from mere individual feeling.

14 March is a night when one considers that there are neither steaks nor wet-lipped girls in one's life. I suppose I can have a porterhouse this weekend. The restaurant will still be there. It's possible that a Young Companion might join me. But there's something exhausting and depressing about the two things (or either thing) not occurring on a ritually-designated night.

One Six Seven: Hostesses

The other morning I ran across an on-line article at the Observer.com website for 13 October 2014, a piece called "NYC's Latest Slew Of Underground Sex Parties Have Nothing To Do With Good Sex". The article focused on how the "latest slew" of sex parties was as much about status and performance art as about sex--- more about status than anything else, really. Well, I can't be averse to that, of course. As I've said so often before, sex for me is class-aspirational or its nothing. I don't take--- have never taken ---unmediated physical pleasure in, well...anything. I experience everything in my life as a scene in a novel or a film, and I judge all experiences against how they'd look in a novel or a film. I'd have a certain interest in seeing this "latest slew" of parties (the cited examples in the article include Behind Closed Doors, Chemistry, and Lip Service; I've no idea if those are still being held), but I'm quite clear that I'd have problems with hosted sex parties.

The woman who runs Behind Closed Doors explained to the author of the Observer article that, "We’re not fascists, but the whole point is to be surrounded by other members who are sexy and turn you on,” they continued. “For those who are morbidly obese, hideously ugly, or likely to turn up in a track suit, there are plenty of other parties out there for you." The criteria don't seem very different from those at some of the London parties I've read about, though the Manhattan standards about looks are more stringent and the London hosts are more open about setting financial criteria. I'm quite certain that I'd never get past the interview process in either London or Manhattan. I don't wear track suits, since I'm neither a chav nor a Russian oligarch, but it's simply a fact that I wouldn't pass the criteria for looks, age, or finances. The Observer writer sniffed that the New York hosts seemed to be selecting for "artistes" and "pseudo-intellectuals", but I doubt that my academic background would get me past the velvet ropes.

I passed the article along to a friend in London who's both attended sex parties there and worked as staff. I am hoping for her comments and thoughts. I passed it on, too, to an acquaintance--- Ms. Flox ---who's been a long-time on-line writer about sex. I'd like her comments, too. I will have to rely on third-party experiences here, since I'm unlikely to be allowed into any hosted sex parties, and I'm certainly unlikely to have the social skills to function in any sex party settings.

Once upon a time, back in the far-distant past, I was at a party that tried to become a sex party. I remember it as being extraordinarily awkward. I recall people trying to be naked, or near-naked--- almost all of them girls, who seemed to be self-consciously un-self-conscious topless or just in expensive thongs. A couple of them had toys--- soft floggers, dildos ---that they were showing off. There may have been one or two males near-naked--- I think boxer briefs had just happened, and they were showing off...packages...against thin fabric. I do remember that one boy had pretty much a line of co-eds waiting to be shown that he was uncircumcised--- something Deepest South upper-middle class girls in those days hadn't usually seen, and something they associated with boys who were "European" or exotic. I think rumors of his size may have been involved, too.

As for me...well...I think my shirt may have been unbuttoned. That's likely to have been s far as being undressed went. Oxford-cloth button-down shirt worn over a black cotton t-shirt--- on any day or any night all the way back deep into the last century, that's what I'd have been wearing. At some point, the shirt may have been black instead of French blue. (Is it only waiters in hip restaurants who wear black shirts these days?) Unbuttoned shirt--- I might've done that, but no more.

(A very tall and lovely young girl was once with me in a parked car, topless. I know I'd been kissing something off her bare nipples when she stopped me and noted that while she was topless and I got to kiss whatever we were drinking off her, all she could get from trying to do the same thing to me was a mouthful of black cotton. But I'm never, never without a t-shirt. Can't even imagine not wearing one.)

The party back in those lost days... It needed more bedrooms, certainly.  And it needed a theme. It needed some kind of order of ceremonies. It needed a director (directrix?) of activities, a master/maitresse of ceremonies. A sex party, like a dinner party or even a good garden party, needs someone to take charge, make introductions, move events along, keep conversations flowing. A good sex party needs...an old school Southern (or Parisian?) hostess. I think Ms. Flox agrees with me on that. My friend in the London demimonde may agree as well.

As for me...well, I remember walking around with a drink, staying on the edge of things, doing my best polite smile at co-eds in lace thongs, making a point of not staring. At one point I was in the kitchen looking for ice cubes and a very dejected young guy was standing downcast by the sink. His problem, he told me, was that there was no one else gay there, and his ride home was straight and off somewhere with a girl. Well, I was better off than he was. I at least wasn't stuck at the party. I had my own car; I'd done that much right. I wondered at the time if that made things better or worse. If I was still there, and was still not part of things, wasn't that my own fault? I could've just driven off to do something useful--- donuts possibly, or late-night chili dogs. Hoping against hope is always a painful thing, especially in a townhouse filled with blonde co-eds.

Tonight, here at my writing desk, I recall my shirt, and I recall drinking vodka. I don't recall kissing any girls, though I must've been doing that at some point, since my shirt did end up unbuttoned. But whatever happened, I've lost that memory altogether.

That's my only sex party story. As usual, I got to check off that I'd been there without actually being part of anything. My resume has always been like that--- great on paper, a disaster in actual quotidian life.

And as for the current wave of expensive, upmarket sex parties of the sort mentioned in the Observer article...well, I lack the money, looks, wardrobe, and chiseled abs to attend. I don't think there would ever be a small line of girls waiting to look at my size (fashion note: I've never understood boxer briefs nor have I ever owned any), and I wouldn't risk even the slightest chance of having my size or turgidity judged and found wanting. If for some unknown, mistaken reason I was allowed past the door, I'd still be the guy with the drink at the edge of things, mostly nodding politely and using my drink ("Sorry--- I need ice and a refill, nice to have met you") as a prop to keep a certain distance between myself and others.

I'm not good at parties of any kind, and I suspect that I'd be no good at all at any kind of hosted sex party (again, always assuming arguendo that I'd be allowed in). The Observer article did at least make the claim that there were parties out there that were designed to be performance art, designed around aesthetics and style rather than merely physical interaction, and I'm certainly attracted to that idea. Yet any party I'd be at would require a hostess or director to keep everyone in line for an order of ceremonies, to keep everyone moving toward fixed goals, to keep the performance moving along. I might be good at that sort of party. If nothing else, it would remind me of the Mass or a well-done stage presentation.

Sex must be class-aspirational or it's nothing. I've always believed that. All my sexual interests come down to style and a dream of decadence and dark elegance. I'm afraid that physical pleasure plays only a secondary part in things. You'd think that hosted sex parties would be something I'd like, something I'd do well at. I'm not likely ever to be let past the interview process, let alone the velvet ropes. Despite the Observer article, the parties out there that do claim to be a kind of structured performance seem to lack clear focus and clear scripts. I'd still be the outsider with the drink, fully-clothed, sitting off at the edge of things, nodding politely and leaving early.

One Five Seven: Lacunae

There are gaps in my education. Even at my age, there are things I haven't done and things I know nothing at all about. That frustrates and irritates me, which I suppose is something you might expect. I've always obsessed over learning new things, or least learning about new things. I spent a great deal of my life in universities--- undergraduate, grad school, professional school. I still live inside books, and I still make the local library use its interlibrary loan services on my behalf on a frequent basis. So I do hate not knowing about things.

Tonight, mind you, what I don't know about is...rice. I don't know about the role of rice in the porn industry. Let's consider--- I saw an article on line about backstage life on porn video sets. The author noted off-handedly that it was important to take care of certain issues before being on camera. Not just make-up and a fresh Brazilian wax, but things that could make a scene seriously unpleasant for all concerned.  One needed, she said, to take...certain measures prior to some scenes. Well, fine. I can see the need. I can see why those measures would be necessary and what equipment might be needed. Or, she said, you could starve yourself for a week or two...or eat nothing but plain, boiled white rice for a few days before the scene. 

You can probably infer what she was talking about. The equipment would be for what the fetish world delicately calls lavage--- a somewhat antique medical term, though better than its period contemporary clyster. And starving a bit, well...yes, that makes sense.

But the suggestion about rice leaves me blank. I understand what a rice diet is supposed to do, or at least what the author says it's used for in the porn world. What I don't understand is how it's supposed to work. What's the actual mechanism here? The article didn't explain. Is the mechanism something I'm supposed already to know? Also...exactly how effective is this advice? How often is this a chosen method in the porn world?

I don't look to the porn world for sets and settings for sex. I look to obscure novels and films for that, or at least to fashion, design, and architecture magazines. But I would think that porn performers know about mechanical things, about techniques for controlling and mastering the body. I have my own fear and phobias, of course. So performers' knowledge would be something I'd look to.  Yet I would like to know why know just what works, but why and how. I'd like to have a set of user's checklists for these things.

It says something about me, though, that I'm more comfortable looking to advice about what we can call damage control or prevention than I am with taking advice about actual techniques of lovemaking. The consequences of mediocre technique seem far less risky than the consequences of not having control of the body and its mechanisms.

Well, here's a research question: would a dietician know at least as much as a porn performer about the plain, boiled white rice issue?