Three Eight Zero: Conversation

 I've been thinking about the FMTY girl in Berlin who calls herself "Lucy Huxley". No-- not "thinking" in the sense of the Solitary Vice, but "thinking" in the sense of screenplays or stories.  

I've seen photos at Twitter of Ms. Huxley in lingerie, and she's quite lovely. I say that as someone who doesn't like his young companions in lingerie-- I always hope that they habitually sleep naked and wear just a man's dress shirt around their flats. Very good legs, too. Very kissable legs. And her deep-burgundy hair is done in what one of her Twitter admirers called The Short Red Bob of Hotness. Again, very lovely, very elegant.

But in some ways I'd rather see her in a black cocktail dress or a man-tailored suit. I'd rather imagine her sitting across a table from me over drinks. I don't know Berlin; it was never my city. So I can't say what neighborhood the restaurant would be in. I'll have to imagine her across from me in Vienna, at the restaurant at Albertina Passage on the Operngasse. It's all very sleek and sci-fi, and there's a very hip dance club adjoining. Ms. Huxley does write that she likes dance floor dates as part of her Girlfriend Experience services. Well...at least I know where the public transit stops are in that part of the Ring. If everything went bad, I'd least be able to get back to my hotel or my serviced flat.

It's probably far too parasocial, but I do spend time trying to imagine what Ms. H. and I would say to one another. I'm pretty sure that I'd spend a lot of time early on just...apologizing. I'd apologize for a lot of things-- my looks, my age, what I was wearing, my lack of wine knowledge, my ineptness on the dance floor. Yes, I'd try to quietly compliment her on her outfit and her looks. I'd want to acknowledge that she was very strikingly lovely, very professional, and that I was grateful to have been worked into her schedule. I'd try to do those things. But mostly I'd apologize.

There are things I can talk about. Or maybe things I used to be able to talk about. I have post-graduate degrees. I'm a voracious reader. I do know at least something about films and about some kinds of music. Vienna is always my city, and I should be able to talk about its history. These days, though, I find myself becoming increasingly inarticulate. I find myself less and less willing and/or able to actually have a conversation. I have less and less to say, and I'm more and more afraid to say anything at all. 

I have no idea what I'd say to Ms. H., and I'd be very afraid of not responding to the prompts she might offer me. She's a skilled professional, and she prides herself on her GFE skills. I know myself well enough to know that I'd probably miss her prompts. I'd sit there over my drink feeling like I wasn't good enough to be the client of a skilled professional. I'd be terrified that I was making her feel like her professional skills weren't appreciated or weren't good enough.

The actual business part of the evening-- the transfer of the fee --is probably the only thing that I wouldn't feel awkward about. I'd have Ms. Huxley's fee in crisp new bills in an envelope that was either fine Italian stationery or something Japanese and complicated. In a better world, now, I could take out a fountain pen and write a check (though I'd spell it "cheque")...though that might be a bit too niche and arcane even for me. 

Note: I'm an American citizen, which means I'd instantly present problems for any EU or UK bank if ever I tried to open an account. And these days, I think it's only the French who still write checks in Europe. Damn it, the cheque just might be a bad idea, here in the third decade of the century. 

Maybe I'd ask for a handwritten bill. There's nothing illegal about Ms. Huxley's profession in Germany, and I'd treat a handwritten bill for services (letterhead stationery, if possible) as a valued memento, as something I'd keep between the pages of my paper journal. I would enjoy the business part of things. I'd understand it, anyway...and I'd sigh over the idea of origami envelopes and fountain pens. The transfer of the fee would have cinema and literary possibilities, and I'd like those. 

The tip would have to be a separate thing, something done at the end of the evening, and I'd be less sure of handling it. I'm told that with FMTY girls, bank notes placed between the pages of an art book are always seen as well-done. I suppose I could do that. 

I still have no idea what I'd say to someone like Ms. Huxley. I'm not given to dominating conversations, and all I could do is wait for her prompts, follow her lead, and hope that my stories are good enough to make her feel like she's doing her job, and that her GFE skills are being appreciated. 

It matters to me that I don't make someone feel like her skills are wasted. It matters that I could be seen as somebody who understood the GFE idea. Of course it also matters that I don't feel like an idiot or a rube. It matters that I feel like I can be someone who fits into a world of FMTY girls with GFE skills.

Please don't let me look like a rube. I'd be praying to Athena all night over that. Please don't let me make a fool of myself. 

But I don't think I have any idea these days how to do anything social, let alone sexual. Ms. Huxley might not mind if a gentleman of my age and looks declined to be naked, and told her that he preferred just to sip his drink and listen to her tell stories or caress herself. She might not mind, since that would be easier for her. So maybe I would just be quiet and slightly withdrawn and let the music or the lighting or the architecture shape what happens. 

But I'd still miss being able to actually flirt and talk. And I'd still never figure out how to move the evening from the table in the Albertina Passage to my hotel room. Maybe I would just pay Ms. H. her fee and fade away to an S-Bahn stop. Without being able to say a word.

Three Six Six: Algorithm

I spent time the other night wandering through PornHub. I'm not a great fan of PornHub, and I'm not sure exactly what I was looking for. There are half a dozen actresses in porn that I have any interest in, and I'm far more familiar with them from their interviews than I am with their actual work. That's something that shouldn't surprise you. I spend more time listening to interviews with porn actresses than I ever have watching porn itself. Watching Kenzie Taylor interview Kenna James means far more to me than watching actual scenes with either. 

In any case, PornHub's algorithm  suggested various video clips to me. I noted that a number of the clips came from a studio called ATK. I'm guessing that ATK stands for "All The Kink". Or maybe "Kinks". If I'm wrong about that, please let me know. I scanned through the suggestions and did a quick tour of the clips. All I can say is that I sighed and shrugged.

Most of the "kinks" in ATK films are...well...boring. The things they're describing as out-of-the-ordinary, shocking, or transgressive really aren't.  There were MILF videos with lactating actresses having sex-- which has been done before --and lots of "stepsister" videos that lack the dialogue needed to really explore the emotional complexities and allure of pseudo-incest. No s/m, really-- that did surprise me. But I suppose that in a world terrified of any suggestion of abuse or lack of consent, s/m has fallen out of Gen Z favor. There were also a number of "hairy" videos, which I think shouldn't be read as transgressive by Gen Z viewers, since unshaven legs and underarms wouldn't be shocking in the Gen Z world. There didn't seem to be any foot fetish videos, even though girl-on-girl foot fetish was touted a couple of years ago as being the Next Big Kink.  

Strangely enough, only the lesbian piss fetish videos had any sense of transgression or erotic potential. I don't quite know what to make of that. At least the actresses in those clips were rather hot, and they did seem to have a sense of doing something that felt risky and wicked. I did stop to ponder the question of how piss-fetish actresses are hired. Are there specialist agents for kink? Are the actresses told before-hand what's expected of them? How is doing piss-fetish videos regarded in the porn world-- what's the social status attached to doing them? Do actresses negotiate before the shoot ("You can get it in my hair, but I won't swallow")?  Are there showers available on set? Do you have to bring a change of clothes? 

This of course is part of my own failure at being part of the kink world. Yes, those videos did have more erotic energy than the others, but what caught my interest was (inevitably) the backstage / backstory questions. What's the underlying history of what we're watching? And what are viewers supposed to feel while watching? Are they supposed to be excited by two hot young actresses defying social conventions? Are they supposed to be thrilled by seeing two hot young actresses do things that can be regarded as degrading to themselves and each other? Is misogyny the underlying idea here? 

Yes, I do want to see Kenzie Taylor use her podcast ("The Sauce") to interview these actresses and talk about the whole piss kink. Ms. Taylor is a good interviewer, and I'd very much like to see what she could get piss-fetish actresses to talk about in terms of what the semiotics of the videos might be.

The other thing that caught my interest during my tour of ATK videos was what are called JOI clips. I'm guessing that JOI stands for "Jerk Off Instructions", So this should be self-explanatory. A JOI clip is an actress looking into the camera and giving instructions...or commands...to the viewer. Okay, fine. But my expectation would be that the video would be done to offer enticement, to make the viewer feel like he's having a hot girl tell him that she knows he wants to masturbate and that she wants him to do it. But none of the clips offered up were like that. They were all harsh, mocking, and based on ridicule. The viewer was mocked for needing to use the video, told that he was a perv, a failure, a loser. A couple of the actresses were Eastern European, and their accents were highlighted to play on...well...some Cold War dominatrix trope. 

There was one clip where a very lovely British girl  showed off unshaven blonde underarms and went from a very polite, quiet posh-girl voice introducing herself to a snarling, taunting monologue about how disgusting all the "pit pervs" watching the video were. My question was of course...why?  Is masochism such an integral part of male masturbation?  Is male masturbation really regarded as that pathetic and disgusting? Are all male viewers supposed to be ashamed of themselves for liking what's defined as kink? Why were the JOI videos so...hostile?

I have always been attracted to the idea of kink, to the idea of ritualized, abstracted, probably transgressive sex. But the kink that the ATK algorithm offered up was either boring (no inventiveness, nothing really out of the ordinary) or based on the idea of taunting and ridiculing the viewer for being there to watch the video. I'm out of the loop on this. I continue to feel that I'm losing any grasp of what's happening the worlds of erotica.

Three Five Two: Essentials 2

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

20 Essential Things Every Gentleman Must Have

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Three Nine: Gates

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Three Four: Companions

 It's been a while since I've heard from my friend in London Town. So much since the spring of 2020 is just lost. I know she spent lockdown time at a friend's house near Oxford, and that she was doing virtual lectures for a university in the States.  There are so many things I'd like to talk about.

She is the closest thing I know to an actual FMTY person. She has spent time on the edges of the demimonde, and men, meaning older admirers, have flown her to hotels and villas in Europe and Asia. She understands envelopes of crisp new bills left on a bedside table, and she understands how to fly in Oligarch Class and deal with bookings at Michelin star restaurants. She is the person I should talk to about my FMTY fears.

I had lunch last weekend with a very lovely girl here. She's young, tallish, deliciously queer, bookish, and bright. We sat outside at a hipster ramen restaurant with drinks and talked and shared ramen. A very lovely autumn afternoon, crisp and sunny. I enjoyed the whole afternoon, and I never felt out of place. I'm sure a few people raised an eyebrow at the age difference, but I'm used to that and she's indifferent to it. It took me a while to process you, she said once, but I'm okay with it all.  I suppose that's all I can ask from any young companion and any affair. Sitting there with her and holding hands and talking was wonderful. More to the point, I felt very much like I belonged where we were. I felt...safe. I knew how to order drinks, I knew how to deal with the menu. I never felt like I was being judged. 

I could never do that with any of the FMTY girls whose Twitter accounts I follow. 

I scan over the FMTY girls' biographies and note the descriptions: charming dinner companion, upscale dinner date. One NYC girl's biography reads Art student, lingerie collector. Take me around the world, and let's start with dinner. Another one reads: Over-educated and under-satiated. Your next dinner companion and co-conspirator. I can read those things and feel my interest stirring...and becoming overshadowed by my fears. Discreet, seductive thrill seeker. Passionate for dining, art, music & culture, London and beyond. I would have no idea what to do or say around any of these women.

Sitting at the hipster ramen bar or at the little South American-inflected restaurant where I spend so many afternoons with starters and a drink, I feel like I fit in. Aging, genteelly-impoverished roué is a role that goes with both places. They're places where twenty-somethings and the inevitable Comp Lit co-eds go. They're places where there's no expectation of being on stage.

I have no idea how to perform at a Michelin-star restaurant. I have no idea how to deal with the menu or the waitstaff. I know how to do gallery openings; I know how to sit at a concert. But fine dining remains beyond me. I enjoy wines, but I'd never dare go through a wine list with an FMTY girl. 

I have to wonder whether part of what I'd be paying for with a high-end escort would be her skills with a menu and wine list. I'd have to hope that she'd be willing to be the guide, the psychopomp. I'd have to be able to smile and say that I was placing myself entirely in her hands. I couldn't be self-confident or be the self-assured client they'd be expecting. I'd have to be able to give up my fears that she feels her own professional status is being questioned because she's with a client as hopelessly provincial and inept as I'd be. I'd never be able to do that, though. I'd never be able to feel I was good enough to be a FMTY girl's client. 

Sex is aspirational or it's nothing. I wrote that here a long time ago. It's something I've felt since I was in my teens. A key part of sex for me is the set of class markers attached to it.  Classy international companion based in Brussels. Speaks 5 languages and loves cocktails, fine dining, dark humor and books. You see how easily I respond those a description like that-- it offers access to (or at least proximity to) the world I always wanted to live in. 

Perhaps I should re-focus. What I need might actually be a muse, someone who's using her own undoubted professional skills to show me how to handle a menu or a wine steward. What I know I need to do is to not let the world of FMTY girls become the world behind impenetrable glass that reminds me of all my failings.

Three Three Three: FMTY

I am still unsure about the social rules at Escort Twitter. I understand that "luxury companions" go on tour these days. They set up a list of cities and book appointments with clients in each. And of course there's the FMTY idea-- Fly Me To You.  I understand the basic idea, of course. Just not the attendant procedures.

The client is screened, and then he provides an airline ticket (first-class or business class, obviously) and the escort flies out to see him in his home city. The assumption is that the girl will be staying at a high-end boutique hotel to joining the client at a resort. Several of the Escort Twitter girls have posted photos of airline gift cards sent them by clients. A couple have shown photos of gift books they've been sent with $100 bills placed at random between pages. I do like that latter idea, although it's not something I'd ever be able to do. One girl did tweet: "FMTY deposits tucked inside cloth-bound art books *chef's kiss*." The idea is lovely, but forever out of reach.

Gift cards seem quite efficient, mind you. They keep the airline tickets from appearing on any married client's billing statement, and I'm assuming they can't just be cashed in.At least I'd hope they couldn't be cashed in. What could be more humiliating than waiting at the aerodrome arrival gate and slowly realizing that your Muse & Luxury Companion has flown off to Paris or Tahiti by herself...on your gift cards? 

I do wonder about the screening process. How would you as a client be vetted? What would the escort actually do about that? I'm aware that there are blogs in the escort world  where escorts talk to one another about clients both good and bad. Is there a Red Flag List for escorts-- men whom no one should meet?  Would a potential FMTY girl use a credit rating service? I have no idea if individuals can sign up to check creditworthiness with the various credit bureaus, but again...that's a scary thing: sorry, but your credit score is only a 710... Worse, would a FMTY girl insist on your real name and run a Google search? I'd like to know how the vetting works. I remember the anguish I went through the last time I purchased a car. That was only allowing a Honda dealership to examine my life and judge me. Having a lovely, high-end escort do it would be much, much more terrifying.

I've written about my hotel-room door fear-- the moment when an escort would knock at my door, then recoil in anger and derision when she saw what I looked like. That's a nightmare that always includes hearing what angry things she's telling her booker over her smartphone as she stalks away to the elevator. Wouldn't it be worse at the aerodrome arrival gate? And wouldn't it be worse still to get a text or an email from her curtly denying your FMTY or dinner date application?

I have always thought of myself as a gentleman, and as at least marginally cultured. I was brought up to the standards of a very old-guard city and educated at a university with a reputation stretching back to the early 1700s. I do know which fork to use, and for a long time I thought I was capable of making conversation with elegant and charming companions. I haven't believed that in rather a while now, mind you. A very lithe and leggy and clever escort in London Town posted a photo of where she'd gone on a dinner date and commented that: Wonderful evening with the best company, at The Wolsey. Thank you, Sparkling Heart! I of course had to look up The Wolsey. It seems like a restaurant worth trying. And yet...and yet...I wouldn't know how to order, let alone dress to London Town standards. I can't imagine what I could do at The Wolsey or its equivalents in other cities that wouldn't mark me as unfit to be seen with a high-end Escort Twitter companion. 

I have faced down my PhD exams and the Bar exam. I have walked alone at night through cities where the local werewolves are afraid to go out after dark. I have lectured to classes filled with military officers and foreign officials. I have done those things. But standing at the aerodrome waiting for a FMTY arrival is beyond me. Surviving the vetting process for an FMTY encounter is something that's very probably beyond me. 

Here in the latter part of my life, I have come to fear that certain things are beyond me. Ordering and discussing an elegant dinner, making flirtatious and intriguing conversation, knowing how to first take an FMTY girl's hand or brush a fingertip over her bare leg-- I really can't do any of that.

Three Two Nine: Status Check

 I've been watching the endless, grinding campaigns and punitive strikes in the Gender Wars-- TRA forces arrayed against the Gender Critical armies. Part of it I find almost hilarious. It is like watching 1930s intra-leftist battles ("Stalinist! Revisionist! Neo-Trotskyite!"). Endless fighting over tiny matters of nomenclature, endless attention to purity of thought, heretic hunting, a breathless and near-hysterical sense of drama. I've tried to stay away from the whole issue here. But I have noted something in the polemics that I decided to look at.

One of the accusations that some old-school Second Wave feminists throw at Gen Z gender-fluid and pansexual types is that they're only doing it for the attention. There's the ongoing idea that young people (usually described as having "blue hair") are only proclaiming themselves "queer", "gender-fluid", or "pansexual" as a way of garnering hipness points. Announcing oneself as "gender-fluid" is depicted as a way of showing that you're not...boring. In a social media world, the argument goes, there's nothing worse than being boring. Being "gender-fluid" or "pansexual" is far less boring and ordinary than saying that you're bisexual. 

I've seen some comments out there over the aether about that. Someone in a blog whose name I've since forgotten commented that one reason people (the Youth!) insist on being "queer" is that somehow we've all come to take it for granted that straight sex, cishet sex, is by definition boring and unsatisfactory. Endless blog comments and Twitter posts are  already out there with that as a given. Who, the premise runs, would choose dull, vanilla cishet sex if they had any intelligence or aesthetic sense at all?

I do remember a moment a couple of years ago when I was looking at TRA/GC polemics and felt a twinge of annoyance with trans-activists and the use of "trans". I thought about how trans is used as a prefix: transcontinental, transatlantic, transmontane. The prefix could be read as having a kind of arrogance to it. Trans is about crossing over, about going farther on-- over the mountains, over the sea. Transcending. Transubstantiating. Wasn't there something arrogant in using the prefix? We've gone beyond, gone farther, we're the future, you're left behind...  

So I did see a comment-- left, I think, by a GC or GC-adjacent type --that noted that the blue-haired Gen Z  brigade might not be so quick to define themselves as "queer" if some kinds of sex weren't defined from the outset as boring. Who, the commenter asked, had simply written off straight sex as necessarily dull, useless, Philistine...vanilla? 

I'm vaguely recalling a long-ago John Barth novel here. I can't recall which novel, though the one scene has stayed with me. A well-known academic and his equally accomplished wife have spent a couple of decades engaging in the most adventurous, arcane, experimental kinds of sex with a host of partners. And they realize that this has all been deeply exhausting and unsatisfying. They realize that what they want is to simply be with one another and have very ordinary straight sex. The realization horrifies them and drives them into near-hysteria. They're convinced that they've failed, that they are secret Philistines who can't appreciate the more intellectually adventurous kinds of sex, that they're boring people at heart. 

I do understand the feeling. I take it for granted these days that as a straight, cishet, white middle-class male of over twenty-five or thirty, any sex I have must be intrinsically flawed-- morally, politically, aesthetically. I take it for granted that as a white cishet male of over thirty, I must be incapable of pleasing a partner. Whatever kinds of sex I might like, asking for them would signal that I'm vanilla, un-hip, socially unaware. Straight sex? Always unlikely to please a cishet woman. Sex with blindfolds and riding whips and candle wax? Obviously vanilla and boring if it's in a cishet context. 

I've always been attentive to class markers, to social status. I'm well aware of all the disjoints in my own life and the cracks in my armour. So I suppose I would notice this. I've lived my life worried about my place in the status world. I won't deny that. I will just say that I find this exhausting and dispiriting. Being boring is the worst fate I can imagine that doesn't involve dying of severe burns or dying alone in a cardboard box under an overpass.  

Asking for sex, participating in sex, discussing sex with a partner or would-be partner... Those are things I find I just can't do right now. I can't risk being dismissed out of hand as vanilla, Philistine, unadventurous, unsatisfactory, inept, and...boring. I am convinced these days that I'm out of the loop, that I'm not capable of doing anything to please a partner...let alone demonstrate that I'm worth her time.

Three Two Five: Panic Mode

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two Nine Seven: Markers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two Nine Six: Poster

I've probably written about this before, but today one of my social media accounts sent me a notice that a girl I'd corresponded with for a bit back in the Long Ago was having a birthday. She must be thirty-two or thirty-three now. She's in London Town now, highly successful in her field and quite married.

What I'm remembering about her tonight is that she once had a blog where she posted a photo of a poster reading "REMEMBER: You Are Someone's Reason To Masturbate". That would've been in her early or mid twenties, when she'd just moved to London. She was a gym rat girl in those days, and a party girl with an eating disorder.  I remember seeing the photo of the poster and grimacing. Depressing thought, really.

It's not hard to intuit that she was using the poster as inspiration to hit the gym more, to run and stretch and pump weights. An inspiration to starve more, too. But it was all an attitude that was so alien to me.

I'll note that another expat girl I knew in London Town in those days laughed when I told her about the poster. She waved a hand and said blithely that Everyone is someone's Reason. Well, yes...for her, that was (and is) true. She has a long list of conquests--- always older, inevitably distinguished, often married, usually moneyed. She's been used to being in the upper demimonde since her late teens.  She can take it for granted that she's always been someone's Reason. Being part of admirers' fantasies is something she takes for granted.

Again--- that's utterly alien to me. I can't imagine ever being someone's Reason. I can't imagine that in the past, and I certainly can't imagine it now. I find it increasingly difficult and shameful to admit to having any fantasies of my own, and it seems highly, highly unlikely that I could ever be anyone's Reason.

My blonde friend down in NZ told me once that of course she'd fantasized about me. I looked at the screen and felt an odd rush of disbelief and anger. I couldn't imagine what I'd done to make her lie to me or why she'd want to tell me such an obvious lie.

I can sit and listen to lovely young companions tell me stories of their adventures and encounters. My life is constructed of stories, not atoms--- you know that saying. But I have so very little to offer them in return these days.  I'm not foolish enough to think that I have anything physical about me that would inspire fantasies, and I can't imagine having stories of any value these days.

I could never put that poster on a wall in my rooms. It's not something anyone male could do, really. Put something like that up and you'd be open to both derision and political attacks. And you'd have no defenses. None.

And...even if you were someone's Reason, you'd have no control over who that someone might be. I can't escape the belief that having someone themselves unattractive fancy you or fantasize about you means that you have done something wrong. Let's always make a note of that.

There's no chance that I can identify with either of the two girls in London Town about the thought in that poster. There's no chance that here in these latter days I could ever tell a girl that she was my Reason--- even we were in a very sexual relationship and I was offering her a compliment. There's no way to say that to a girl these days, and there's certainly no way that any girl would take me as a Reason.

I'm a very good listener, and I used to be a good storyteller. I used to be good at crafting stories and bringing lovely bookish girls into fantasies.  But I'm of no value whatsoever at being part of anyone's fantasies as a player.

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 Five: Threads 9

My friend down in the Land of the Long White Cloud has always noted off-handedly that for girls at her posh high school, adventures and encounters with Maori or Islander boys had a certain transgressive value. She's always had a taste for Maori boys and developed crushes on Maori models--- e.g., Grace Hobson, Daniela Hayes, Michaela Steenkamp...or her stories about the dog walker for her Golden Lab or the forklift operator. Golden-dark skin and light eyes leave her wet and breathless.  I asked her about that once:


--Amongst your high school friends, was fucking Maori boys/men thought to be just ordinary sex, or was it forbidden?

Definitely not forbidden, but slightly more than just ordinary sex. You were much more likely to get a knowing smile from HVHS girls than a look of disapproval.

She told me once, too, about an older Maori boy and her first experience with sodomitical practices:

I was 15, both of us drunk as fuck, we'd been at a party together, then went back to his house. he lived in a sleep-out at the back of the garden. we'd fucked a few times before this night, but never in the ass....he was big, and he just went for it, tiny bit of spit for lube...i screamed...he almost stopped, and i screamed at him to keep fucking going!...i was crying and screaming and moaning and loving it...he spit in his hand, then rubbed his dick with it... Tama-te-rangi, I still remember his full name...he was gorgeous!

That's a hot image, and a very powerful one. I like it that fifteen years later, she still remembered his name. I'd like to know the back story here--- how she met him, how old she was when they met, how they first had sex, exactly how old he was (I've always thought he was in his mid-twenties), how often they had sex, how he talked her into her first adventure in sodomy, how long the affair lasted. All the details. And of course I wondered about what her other early experiences with sodomitical practices and anal adventures were like. She was very fond of that particular sort of sex in her mid and late twenties, and I'd love to hear her full memoirs of such things. Details matter. Details always matter.

And what would she say to Tama-te-rangi if she ran into him now? Would the attraction still be there? Would they reminisce? Fall into bed for a No Strings afternoon? Would she care if he was married (she's always had a thing for married men)? I'd like to know all those things in detail.

I do like putting these memories and stories down here. I want them archived, want them to be something I can read later, something made into history as much as just stories. I do worry, though, that one day I'll run out of stories from my New Zealand friend. I have a few still collected from girls here in the States, small bits of ethnography or micro-history that I can preserve.

I suppose I should note that it's difficult for me to tell any stories of my own. There's something socially unacceptable about anyone male recounting his own adventures. It sounds like bragging, or, worse, just sounds creepy and disturbing.  And, alas, I think of my own stories of adventures and encounters and inevitably compare them to the stories girls have told me over the years. I'll never think that any stories I'd have to tell could compare to the stories my NZ friend has to tell. My own stories, I fear, could never excite a girl the way her stories would excite me.

I'll archive as many stories as I can find in my emails, letters, chat logs, notebooks. I want these things kept down the years. I only wish I had more of my own to offer.

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 Five Six: Threads

I need to find more essay topics for this blog.

When I first started writing here, I wanted to devote myself to writing about issues of sex and its social penumbra here in these latter days. I wanted to write essays about what sex, romance, and all the associated rituals were like nowadays. My idea was to write as myself, as a gentleman of a Certain Age looking at the new world. I wanted to do social commentary, or at least record my own thoughts about things. I'd hoped when I began that I might attract comments and responses and find interlocutors with whom I could have long, rambling discussions about the subjects in my posts.

I still hope for that--- for followers and civil yet in-depth discussions. But I need new essay topics. My hope is that lovely readers will offer up suggestions, that they'll suggest things I might write about. Over the last three years we've all moved away from writing about sex and romance and begun writing about the nightmare of American and global politics. I can understand that: we live in a nightmare time. Yet sex and romance do still exist, and they remain as major topics in people's lives. So I hope that my readers out over the aether will leave suggestions. What should I write about? Are there books, articles, films, events that should become the topics of essays here? I am open to suggestions.

There are still stories that I want to use here, to save here, things I want to remember. There are stories that follow a classic narrative arc--- stories whose endings I know, stories I can see as a story. And there are stories whose full arc I'll never know, whose endings remain elusive. Let's look at a couple. The first one is something a friend wrote me four or five years ago.

The guy with the yacht was Jonny. He lived on his boat at the marina. I really liked him, and wanted him to be an 'official boyfriend'. He was smart and funny and cute. He had a science degree, and had worked all over the world as a boat builder. I desperately wanted things to work out between us, and at the time really thought he would make a great partner (maybe this was just compared to the other men in my recent past). But...he did have a few issues -- alcohol abuse, depression. He drove his car into the harbour in a suicide attempt a year or so after we broke up/stopped sleeping together. He was ok, but got sent to the psych ward and charged with dangerous driving. We are still friends and catch up for coffee now and then and I only want the best for him. 

We went on a few sailing trips together - down to the Sounds, each time in the summer. The Cook Strait crossing was a bit rough for me at some parts. But it was beautiful...we saw lots of dolphins, and it was just incredible to be out on the open water. Two of the trips we booked a house to stay at, and one trip we slept on the yacht. He loved going down on me, and was fucking good at it. For years after I wished we had become something more, and I was convinced I could have helped him. But I think sometimes you just have to help yourself and let people go.

She noted that on New Year's Day of 2013 she'd woken up in bed with him on his boat, and that four months later he'd tried to kill himself. I'm trying to decide if the story is a sad one. She ran into him again last year--- discovered he was project managing the renovation of a big house in her new neighbourhood. She said hullo--- they hadn't seen each other around in a while ---and everything was cordial, but she didn't discover whether he was still boatbuilding or still owned/live aboard a boat. I suppose I felt a twinge of jealousy reading about that (did they sleep together again, even if just for old times' sake?), but the other thing I felt was a kind of emptiness. Am I someone a lovely girl would remember years later? Would she say hullo to me? Am I--- have I ever been ---someone's story? I do want to have been important enough to be remembered, but I suspect I haven't been...and won't be. And of course I'll never know the full story of her adventures at the marina or in Marlborough Sounds.

From October 2012---

 It's much less gloomy today.It has really brightened up actually! and i just had a lunch date, which was very fun.i Today I 'm wearing black tailored pants, a blue and white striped shirt, and a black cardigan...very officey. And he is a friend of a friend, up & coming young lawyer. I will probably fuck him, but i do think i like him more as a friend. Very funny and cute.


I never heard about her lunch date, never heard about the lawyer again.

She wrote me a year later about another lawyer, this one much older:

I did think of you on Friday night, drinking Makers that seemed to set my blood on fire. Lying naked in a strange bed, all I could think was this isn't really me. i'm not really here.

I stayed until the morning and walked home in the dawn light.

Drinking bourbon feels like coming home.

He was a lawyer. I was Alex the florist, sexy & simple & uncomplicated.



She saw him again a bit later:

After our wonderful wicked exchange, I ended up in town until 3am, then ended up at the apartment of the lawyer with the impressive library, got an hour of sleep then washed my face and went to work. Was asked to attend a meeting with the partners...I almost had a fucking breakdown.

I do wonder what became of him. She wrote that he'd made her reach orgasm five times one night and that his library was impressive. I have to know what "impressive" means--- if he really collected books or it that was a euphemism.

And I need to know if Alex the Florist is her usual club nights alias. I need to know how she created Alex the Florist and what personality she constructed for her alter ego.

She told me this fragment back in 2011, a story from when she was 17, back in 2002-2003:

I slept with this guy I met at a club...he was in his early 30s. He gave me E and took me back to his apartment. After we fucked and he fell asleep I stole 2 books and snuck out...


One of the two books was a Steinbeck; she remembered that. "Cannery Row", she thought, though she wasn't sure. Somehow it does matter to know what the other book was.

Stories here with loose ends, with endings that remain unclear.  I hate story arcs that go nowhere. I wish that I could sit with her and pour drinks and ask her about these things. I love her stories, and always have. I just wish I knew more about contexts and settings and the way things played out in the long run.

Two Four Zero: Median

There's a phrase that I've been noticing these last few months: "mediocre white men". I'm not sure where it began, though my own reading is that I first saw it applied to authors--- and then to figures in politics and corporate life. The initial usage, I think, was based on the idea that women writers, professionals, politicians were being ignored and overlooked in favor of less talented people whose claim to success was largely that they were male. There is also the idea that mediocre white men are likely to be angrily defensive and entitled about success. I've seen this as a mock prayer meme at Twitter and elsewhere: "Oh Lord, give me the boundless self-confidence of a mediocre white man".

I'm not commenting here on the political usage, or even on the usage inside professional life or the literary world. What I will comment on is how the term has been extended into social--- sexual ---life.   I've been seeing the term--- "mediocre white man" ---appear at Twitter in tweets where women discuss their love lives and the men they're with or have been with. It seems that most male performance is rated as "mediocre", and male attempts at introduction and seduction are laughingly dismissed as mediocre.

I'll admit that the word terrifies me. I was brought up to believe that any grade, any rating, any judgment of my own performance that was less than outstanding was a failure and was totally shameful. And I was brought up to believe that a mediocre grade was worse than a failing grade. Not that, say, a 50/100 on a math exam was ever acceptable, but a 75/100 was somehow more shameful. Being a failure was bad, but just being someone in the middle of the pack was somehow worse. Call that one of the reasons why I've always shied away from things I knew I wouldn't be good at. Success was mandatory--- that's a given. But the real fear was ending up just being one of the faceless, nameless people who were just getting by, who weren't worth noticing.

There are a lot of things in that description that I still have to unwind. Let's just say for the moment that I am terrified of being judged 'mediocre'. Failing outright seems less shameful. If I took a girl to bed and experienced systems failure, if I couldn't achieve and maintain an erection, I'd be angry at myself, certainly, and there would probably be stammered apologies. But I'd have a Plan B. I'd know that I had a chance to redeem myself. If we had sex and the girl sneered at my performance as 'mediocre', I'd flee the bedroom and maybe the city. There's no coming back from having her tell all her friends (and maybe everyone on Twitter) that I was merely 'mediocre'.

Once upon a time, in a darkened bedroom in another city, a young companion and I were talking about how we came to our particular sexual interests. I confided in her that sometimes I thought that I found S/M attractive not just for its class markers (French novels, elegant chateaux, expensive accoutrements) but because it was something where I understood the criteria for judgment. I knew how to construct narratives and scenarios, I knew how to use blindfolds and candle wax and ice cubes and riding whips. I didn't have to be judged on my body or its performance. She had the grace not to say anything one way or the other about my flesh. She did kiss me and tell me she loved the stories I told, the stories I made her part of.

These days, here in the age of the gender wars,  here as a gentleman of a certain age, I'm increasingly terrified of being dismissed as mediocre. And I'm not sure what the criteria are. I'm not rich, I'm not at the top of my profession, I'm not someone with any social presence or value. I've spent a long time thinking that I was a reasonably proficient lover. I'm good at intelligence work, at ferreting out information. So I've applied that to books and films and blog entries to find out what skills I need to hone.  I'm not sure that's good enough now, and I'm not sure that it was ever good enough. I'm finding it harder and harder to think that I wasn't lied to all these years, that I was never any good and could never be any good.

I do not know how to avoid being tagged as a "mediocre white man". I don't know what the rules are, or what the criteria for judgment are, or how to avoid judgments that would keep me from trying ever again. Not ever trying again could very well be the best course. That's certainly something to consider.

Two Three Three: Characters

A lovely friend in the Upper Midwest wrote this a few days ago:

rambling thoughts, now that I’m off vyvanse. Feel more clever, creative, but also difficult to channel this energy.

heading to Denver at the end of the month for a work conference. it’s fine.

falling hard for a boy who’s probably terrible for me- but the way he nuzzles my neck in bed, whispering how beautiful I am! the way he slings his arm around my shoulders and gazed at me with soft eyes. he’s gorgeous, can keep up with my brain, but we enable each other. “Do you want to go to the bathroom?” “I’ve already cheated at this point, so let’s just take our clothes off”. I’m riled up just thinking about his nearness.

I want to consume him, wrestle my fingers into his hair, feel his thighs intertwined with mine. it’s a lost cause, this craving. Nothing good will come of it. 

we stay up till dawn, listening to Russian synth pop, trading key bumps and tequila shots. his lips next to my ear, urging us to be better, to not keep going. But I always want to engage and go further.

this yearning is doomed: everyone tells me to be careful, to not get too close. I am willful and powerful and never say no. just try me, tempt me with a good time. I never say no to a dare.

I want a love the eats at me, a love unfurling in my lap. something dangerous to others but satisfies my wicked energy. 

I’m sitting in my office (door ajar, legs apart), thinking about him and only him. right now we could be dancing in darkened rooms, hipbones interlocked and mouths pressed firmly. I am obsessive, I’m possessive I know. but don’t I look good with my ripped fishnets and fading lipstick? Does he not want me like I need him? 

I despise the tuttering of others, their hushed judgments. Let me run wild with this boy, it’s all I’m capable of right now.

I read that and sighed. It's been a long time since a girl has written something like that about me.  I'm trying to decide whether what I feel is jealousy or envy. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to draw a distinction between those two things.

I know that I do feel empty and useless when I read her message. Girls have written things about me in the past. At least one made me a character in a short story she wrote where her surrogate has a teen affair with an older lover one Baltimore spring. I haven't been to Baltimore in a thousand years, but I was flattered, and I loved the description of the two characters sitting outside at a table by the harbor, the girl trying so hard to look sophisticated and open to seduction at sixteen or seventeen, the older man trying to introduce her to Thai food. I felt thrilled that she'd put me inside a story ,that she'd created, a story that was so obviously about things she wished she'd done.  I remember that when she read me a draft of the story we argued about whether "seducible" was a word. If it wasn't, she said, it should be. She remembered walking through Baltimore when she was sixteen or seventeen aching to be thought someone who could be, should be seduced.

One other girl wrote about me--- again, so long ago now. She quoted something I'd said to her one night, something about how her body was something I wanted to explore, about how her body was like a map to an unknown country. She quoted that at her blog and then asked, Why has no man ever said that about me before? I read that in my office the next day and I sat there at my desk, thinking that here was a beautiful girl who thought I was worth writing about, who thought what I could say had value.

Those things don't happen any more, and haven't for a long time.  Growing up, I'd always thought I'd be a character in at least a few stories or novels. That was vanity, true, but it was also something else. I think that in my younger days I took it for granted that if you knew literary people you'd end up as a character in their stories, that you'd be in at least a couple of short stories by age thirty or thirty-five.

I'd like to think that I was valuable enough--- or at least interesting enough ---for a lovely girl to write about.  It's been a long time since I could look into the mirror and imagine being someone a girl could think of as worth writing about.  It's been too long since I was able to imagine having any sort of effect on a lovely girl at all.

I'd like to inspire doomed yearnings, to inspire hunger.  Those days are likely enough gone, though. I'm not someone who'll be a character in any lovely girl's stories or fantasies. Here we are though, the hopeless and barely-reliable narrator of my own story,

Two Two One: Carousel

This is from an e-mail sent me a couple of years ago from an expat friend who now works in London Town. It does seem that her experience in the world of educated professionals is NOTHING AT ALL like mine. I'm just worried about my runner getting the daily lunch order right. As for my friend---

I've been having a bad summer.

The back story is that several years ago a gay friend of mine introduced me to his then pupilmaster (they are now both barristers at the same Chambers) on his birthday. This married barrister and I fell madly in love at first sight and had a long-term affair, obviously complicated by the whole married-with-children thing. The next year, on the very same date, the same gay friend introduced me to his friend who is a young, badly-behaved, copper-haired heiress. She and I also fell in love pretty much at first sight (my gay barrister friend is at this point getting slightly bemused). I introduced her to the married barrister and they got along fabulously. All was, if not well, broadly functional.

So you'll appreciate the soap operatic shenanigans that followed. A month ago, my lesbian lover ran off with the husband of the pregnant clerk at the Chambers where gay barrister and married barrister are both based. She is now being all housewiffley off in Zone 4, and the Chambers is in a kerfuffle coping with a pregnant, depressed, wronged woman of a clerk. (Gay barrister friend is wondering exactly how he became the one introducing all of the scarlet women into Chambers life.)

Then, married barrister, who had claimed he had basically left his wife and was merely sorting out practical details, tells me he is going on a hiking trip in the alps with his friend. I have no reason to disbelieve him.

While he's away, my landlady/flatmate tells me she wants me to move out ASAP (I only moved in May, at her insistence) so that her anorexic sister can move in so she can keep an eye on her and make sure she's eating. So I am suddenly frantic to find a new place to live. It is difficult to get in touch with married barrister who is without mobile phone access most of the time because he's hiking in the bloody alps...or so he says.

For no particular reason, I have the sudden revelation that he has lied to me and is away with his wife and kids, not hiking with his mate. I am absolutely certain of this (I do get these occasional flashes of intuition). I'm heartbroken and furious,but I decide I have to get conclusive proof that he lied before I do anything. I stalk his friend online to find his work number, ring it up and then hang up when he answers. Confirmed. I email married barrister and tell him I never want to see him again. (Turns out they're in Italy.) At this point he offers to fly back immediately and send emails to his parents/friends/everyone he knows saying that his marriage is over and he wants to be with me, but it is too late.

So things are bad.

Yesterday, I was chatting with a gay friend who is based in Delhi about the whole thing. He told me I should run away to Paris and have a threesome with our friends Albert and Olivier (both quite attractive Frenchman--Olivier I've slept with already). So I am going to Paris on Friday. We shall see.

My friend has a life that sounds exhausting yet definitely worth recording. She will not, she says, be writing her own autobiographical novel because she would like to keep her job and at least a few friends. Nonetheless, I do rather fancy having her in my archives.

Two One Nine: Kink

There is such a thing as kink-shaming.

Kink-shaming is not something I know much about, mind you. It's not something I've ever done to any of my young companions, and it's not something I can imagine doing.

The circles I moved in for most of my life took experimentation and certain recherché tastes as a given. Now I'm not naive. There were certainly social rankings and unspoken rules. It couldn't have been easy for many friends to be gay or bi back in the days of my lost youth. There was always that. But I remember being in my twenties and taking it for granted that certain things--- a taste for at least s/m fashion and poses, say ---were perfectly ordinary. I took it for granted that girls with whom I was involved were fine with blindfolds and candle wax and riding whips. I took it for granted that most of the girls I knew at university or in grad school had at least tried three-ways. I certainly took it for granted that part of sex and romance was adventure and experimentation--- risky places, new positions, new roles, new toys, new costumes. I remember that seductions and flirtations were very much about exchanging fantasies and seeing how you'd fit into one another's fantasies. There was a certain thrill in seeing what each of you might think about trying.

That feels gone these days.

In my university days and into my twenties and thirties I had no problem at all telling girls what I liked. I had no problem with that, and certainly no problem listening to a lovely young companion explain about her own tastes and interests.

Not so very long ago, a friend said off-handedly that she couldn't imagine me ever being shy about telling a lover or a potential lover what gave me pleasure. Well, not with her. That much is true. But it's harder and harder for me to admit to any particular tastes or interests.

I'm not sure what I'm afraid of. That I might horrify a young companion with the sheer depravity of it all? Probably not that. A girl with whom I'd discuss those things has already decided to be close to me, and just in being with me at all she's shown herself to be willing to defy most of the usual strictures against depravity.

Maybe I'm afraid that male desire is now regarded as shameful tout court. Maybe I'm afraid that any male sexual interests, even the most vanilla, are regarded as gross and disgusting and threatening. That's always part of it, I suppose.

Maybe it's that I'm afraid that if you say you like a particular kink, that'll define you permanently. I may be afraid that you're not allowed under the current social rules to experiment, to try things and then move on. So much nowadays has to be authentic--- interests and kinks have to speak to some underlying permanent truth or identity. You can't say you really like X on Thursday and then prefer Z on Sunday.

Maybe it's that I'm afraid that there's a social rank-ordering of kinks, that certain kinks are regarded as more pathetic or lower-class or less stylish than others. That might be it--- fear that any kinks or fetishes or preferences won't be good enough, that they'll mark you not so much as depraved but as a loser. That may be  a real fear on my part.

You'll note that I rarely talk here about the details of interests and adventures in my life. That at least in part is based on a fear of having the wrong interests, having ones that don't fit with the life and image I've constructed for myself.

If I had to guess, I'd assign most of my fears to the idea that desire, male desire, is now regarded as dangerous and gross rather than alluring or passionate. It gets harder and harder to imagine telling a young companion what I like or what gives me pleasure. I'm always willing to try whatever pleases my companions. However not? That goes with being the Older Lover, the roué. But I'm now increasingly uncomfortable with talking about my own desires and increasingly unwilling to discuss what gives me pleasure. I'm afraid of being kink-shamed on any number of fronts, and I do find myself becoming increasingly silent and withdrawn around lovers.

Two Zero Eight: Caramel

I'm leaving notes here on a springtime afternoon. I have been thinking of how disconnected I feel from everything and how empty the year has felt.

Let's begin with---

My  friend who teaches abroad was once picked up by a chic Foreign couple in London Town. Nothing so terribly out-of-the-ordinary for chic couples to do in clubs there, of course--- bring home a lovely girl to play with. What made this story different is that the couple were from the Maldives--- he was some kind of junior cabinet minister; she was an official in some NGO or other. Wealthy Muslim husbands loose in LDN have been known to sample the local versions of depravity, but having the active participation of their wives, and especially a wife who works with some Islamic women's NGO...that makes for a rather more interesting story. Well, both the minister and his wife were Oxbridge-educated, so that may explain a lot. My friend would certainly have approved of the accents and the tailoring...as well as the exotic looks ("sculpted caramel", she enthused). She didn't tell me if the minister and his wife had any particular kinks; that's something I must ask about.

No. I have no idea if they paid her. I'd like to think so, if only because I rather like the idea of my friend's services being charged to the Maldives Treasury. My  friend does identify with Riley Keough's character in "The Girlfriend Experience". That shows good taste. Ms. Keough was strikingly lovely in that.

My  friend watched "The Girlfriend Experience" and laughed. Why, she said with perfectly poised sarcasm, this show is so...unbelievable! A beautiful girl with an academic background like that becoming a highly-paid companion to wealthy Older Men! Who'd ever believe in a such a character? I mean, in someone whose life was...exactly...like mine? If I'd been across a table from her in London Town, I'd have risen to my feet and stalked out of the bar without another word. Though I couldn't have had the satisfaction of sticking her with the check. She probably has a credit card from one of her Patrons. Or an envelope of cash. Though I wonder sometimes if my friend doesn't have enough of dark side to be more like the heroine/narrator in L.S. Hilton's "Maestra"...

That story is one about wealth and class markers. This one is darker.  A friend down in the Land of the Long White Cloud wrote me in November 2012 to say---

My story probably isn't very remarkable...I was 16, drunk, high, at a party. He was someone's older brother. I didn't want him, didn't want it. He held me down and pulled my underwear down. At one point he had his hand around my throat, then in my hair. He was small, I remember that. He felt so small, and barely hard. He came on my thigh.

That's all. No description of what the party was like, no description of how he got her (presumably) alone, no description of what came after. She's never returned to the story. All my instincts argue that the context is what would make the story work--- what happened before and after. I suppose I never will know.

Yet I did ask the same girl if that was her only non-consensual experience in her teens. She wrote back (this was in May 2016) about a boy named Garrett:

he was tall, dark haired, rugby players strong build. the first time, he forced me to suck him. we were at his house, we'd been in his spa pool and watching movies when he pushed my head down and told me to suck him. I was 14, i think. he said you know you want to and that i deserved it. he came in my mouth of course. he is a big shot banker now...he emailed me a few weeks ago to help him work out a child support settlement! he never properly raped me later,  but we fucked for years after that, i wanted him so badly!

She was fourteen, she says. No idea about Garrett's age, or how often or for how long they did have sex. No idea about the key question, either--- whether they had sex again in 2016, when she was doing financial work on his child support settlement.

She always leaves mysteries, my friend does. This final one is from March 2014. Max is her golden retriever, still just a pup in those days:

did i tell you about the gorgeous maori boy i'm fucking. he's tall, with short dark hair & lovely brown eyes, light brown skin... he works at the doggy day care place max goes to, so he picks him up & drops him off every day. he was dropping max home one day and i was sitting in the garden drinking a beer. we started talking, and he showed me how he taught max to play dead. max was his last drop-off for the day, so i asked him to stay for a drink. he loved it that i don't wear underwear. his cock is beautiful.

Again, a mystery. Was it more than the one time? How did the two of them transition from the garden to the bedroom or the sofa? More mysteries. I'll have these notes, but I wish I had more context, more follow-up on the stories, and of course more detail.

Two Zero Two: Events

Now, then... my ex-Bloomsbury friend wrote me from London Town today to say that:

When I was an undergrad, I had an enormous crush on one of my classics professors. An ancient historian, he was about thirty and good-looking, as well as funny, brilliant, and charismatic. I often thought about trying to seduce him, but I was inexperienced (an 18-year-old virgin when I met him) and I wouldn't have known how to begin.

Finally slept with him--nearly two decades later. He arranged to give a talk in the UK to see me. Apparently, he had a crush on me back then as well, and he's been sexually obsessed with me ever since. He had lots of photos of me on his phone, including ones that I hadn't realized he took when I spoke at BU several years ago. How funny. Anyway, I can highly recommend decades of sexual tension as an aphrodisiac.

Spent last night in a suite at the Ritz with a different lover.  We went down to the private club and casino in the basement just to check it out, but it is horribly tacky so we left and went to Brooks's around the corner for champagne in chilled silver tankards. I have a serious thing for champagne in chilled silver tankards. We actually forgot to pay on the way out (though it's a club and they have his info so it's not really that big a deal because they can bill him later) but he popped into today to pay only to find out that some old codger had paid for our champagne on the basis that he thought we were so sweet and young and in love and it reminded him of his courtship back in the day. His eyesight must be truly terrible. If only he had known that he was watching a middle-aged married man with his mistress who is 17 years his junior. Anyway, we had a lovely four-course meal in the Ritz dining room, with a truffle course, and I picked a fantastic Amarone. Jacob Rees-Mogg was dining at the table next to us and he and his companion had crepes suzette for desert. Fun to watch.

This lover has been approached for a rather high office, which he doesn't think he wants, though he did say he would take it if I would be willing to marry him and be Lady X. I don't think I am, though.

And I didn't mention that I spent the night before that with a different lover/friend: the 76-year-old retired senior judge I've known for eight years. I tell him about all the other lovers. He actually managed to come twice in under an hour (without any pharmaceutical aid). Mind you, the Ritz man managed NINE times between 4PM and 10AM...he says it's never been like that with anyone else. I'm deeply relieved that I have two nights off before my next date on Friday, which is with a well-known architectural critic.

The retired judge approves of this one because he's not married, not especially gay, and age-appropriate and would fit in with my social circle (in fact we have quite a few friends in common). 

I'm reasonably sure she's telling the absolute truth here.

I've known her since...well...since she probably was eighteen or nineteen. I don't doubt that some older faculty person could be sexually obsessed with her for eighteen years. That seems to be something she could induce. Mind you, I'm not jealous here. No jealousy. But there's no small amount of envy regarding the social circles she moves in. I mean...I'd like to go to Brooks's (they'd never let me through the door), and I'm seriously, painfully envious of the whole chilled-silver-tankard-of-champagne thing. Though I might've used a silver tankard to bash Jacob Rees-Mogg in the head just on antifa principle. Or aesthetic principle. Jacob Rees-Mogg really is ruining all my Oxbridge fantasies. Aloysius the Bear would certainly not approve of him.