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.
Showing posts with label time. Show all posts
Showing posts with label time. Show all posts
Friday, May 22, 2020
Thursday, May 7, 2020
Two Eight Four: Lithography
I'm thinking tonight of a girl from my past, from far back in the last age. She and I knew knew each other casually when I was at grad school, and there was a brief affair back in my clubland days.
Her name was Levin, and I did like that name. I can't recall how she ended up with the name. I've known posh families who gave daughters first names that were family names--- a girl might end up with her mother's maiden name. That explained the Schuylers and Mackenzies and Hunters that I knew at university. Levin's name may have come from that. But there's also "Anna Karenina", isn't there? Remember that Kitty and Levin were the other couple, the couple of whom Tolstoy approved. I suppose that back in those days I'd have hoped she was named after a character in "Anna Karenina", even if the name came from a male character. I'll note that I've always liked androgynous names on lovely girls. You're free to make of that what you will.
Levin was doing fine arts at the university here--- lithography. She was five-four or five-five, I think. Pixie-cut blonde hair, very slender, tanned. I can't recall the colour of her eyes, though I want to say blue or green. Soft voice, I recall. She'd learned Portuguese at uni and spent a year studying there. She had a signature look, I remember: white singlet, skinny jeans, ankle bracelet, espadrilles. Sometimes cotton drawstring trousers. She bought the singlets in packs of three, sized for young boys. Always worn next to the skin, of course. I laughed with her about air-conditioning and how she was always the girl with erect nipples. She had a barbell piercing in her right nipple--- the first girl I'd ever seen with one.
I remember her rooms at university--- sketches and lithographs tacked to the wall, the smell of chemicals from the lithography process. No idea whatever happened to her, though I think she wanted to go out West. I do remember sitting on her sofa and watching her work on her sketch journals (was the brand Pentalic?) and drinking vodka-limes with her. I wish I'd kept some of the sketches she gave me.
Levin always told me that she liked my bookshelves and liked it that I'd listen to her talk about art. She had good tastes in music, I thought. We both liked New Wave and synth-driven dance music, and we spent more than a few nights dancing at the local clubs near the university. I can remember standing behind her on the balcony at a place called Options on spring and summer nights, arms around her, kissing her shoulders, feeling her press back into me, knowing that she was all bare flesh under charcoal linen drawstring trousers.
It was a brief affair, and casual. There was a time back in the last age when it was still possible to have casual affairs. I'm not sure that people-- at least people under thirty --have affairs any longer. And from what I'm reading in late-Millennial and Gen-Z literature, sex in these later days seems to be more about apologies than passion. Anyway--- Levin and I had a few months together off-and-on and parted friends. We even had goodbye drinks when she went off to do an MFA on the other side of the continent. We spent a last night together in her empty rooms on a tree-lined street, her art supplies all in boxes. I remember that her wardrobe all fitted into a couple of duffel bags. She'd be leaving the next day with her whole life in the backseat of a compact car. I did give her a couple of my shirts as a goodbye gift, along with a couple of sketch journals (if not Pentalic, what was the brand?). That wasn't a bad way to part. I kept the sketches she'd done for me for rather a while; I think I had a favourite framed. The sketch was one of a bedroom with light coming in through French windows. The room was one we'd rented one weekend in a city known for wrought iron balconies and genteel decay. I always told her that the city outside those windows could've been Alexandria or Charleston or Lisbon. There was a hint of someone on the bed, and she told me to imagine it was her, face down over the bed, looking out to the city while I took her from behind. I did like that, liked the idea that she'd turned that hint of shadow on the bed into something I'd remember.
Levin is easy to remember tonight--- kisses on her ankle bracelet, kisses on that nipple piercing (still shocking in those days), Pet Shop Boys playing and her hands always smelling of lithography chemicals. I've reached the time in my life when I spend time remembering girls from the last age, when melancholy becomes the dominant mode in my thoughts. Easy enough to remember Levin's hipbones and ankles and the pale gold fuzz on her upper thighs. Easy enough to remember a time when art and desire and the taste of vodka-lime all went together.
So let's think of that tonight, and a couple of lines from Cavafy:
These things are all so very old---
the sketch, and the ship, and the afternoon.
Her name was Levin, and I did like that name. I can't recall how she ended up with the name. I've known posh families who gave daughters first names that were family names--- a girl might end up with her mother's maiden name. That explained the Schuylers and Mackenzies and Hunters that I knew at university. Levin's name may have come from that. But there's also "Anna Karenina", isn't there? Remember that Kitty and Levin were the other couple, the couple of whom Tolstoy approved. I suppose that back in those days I'd have hoped she was named after a character in "Anna Karenina", even if the name came from a male character. I'll note that I've always liked androgynous names on lovely girls. You're free to make of that what you will.
Levin was doing fine arts at the university here--- lithography. She was five-four or five-five, I think. Pixie-cut blonde hair, very slender, tanned. I can't recall the colour of her eyes, though I want to say blue or green. Soft voice, I recall. She'd learned Portuguese at uni and spent a year studying there. She had a signature look, I remember: white singlet, skinny jeans, ankle bracelet, espadrilles. Sometimes cotton drawstring trousers. She bought the singlets in packs of three, sized for young boys. Always worn next to the skin, of course. I laughed with her about air-conditioning and how she was always the girl with erect nipples. She had a barbell piercing in her right nipple--- the first girl I'd ever seen with one.
I remember her rooms at university--- sketches and lithographs tacked to the wall, the smell of chemicals from the lithography process. No idea whatever happened to her, though I think she wanted to go out West. I do remember sitting on her sofa and watching her work on her sketch journals (was the brand Pentalic?) and drinking vodka-limes with her. I wish I'd kept some of the sketches she gave me.
Levin always told me that she liked my bookshelves and liked it that I'd listen to her talk about art. She had good tastes in music, I thought. We both liked New Wave and synth-driven dance music, and we spent more than a few nights dancing at the local clubs near the university. I can remember standing behind her on the balcony at a place called Options on spring and summer nights, arms around her, kissing her shoulders, feeling her press back into me, knowing that she was all bare flesh under charcoal linen drawstring trousers.
It was a brief affair, and casual. There was a time back in the last age when it was still possible to have casual affairs. I'm not sure that people-- at least people under thirty --have affairs any longer. And from what I'm reading in late-Millennial and Gen-Z literature, sex in these later days seems to be more about apologies than passion. Anyway--- Levin and I had a few months together off-and-on and parted friends. We even had goodbye drinks when she went off to do an MFA on the other side of the continent. We spent a last night together in her empty rooms on a tree-lined street, her art supplies all in boxes. I remember that her wardrobe all fitted into a couple of duffel bags. She'd be leaving the next day with her whole life in the backseat of a compact car. I did give her a couple of my shirts as a goodbye gift, along with a couple of sketch journals (if not Pentalic, what was the brand?). That wasn't a bad way to part. I kept the sketches she'd done for me for rather a while; I think I had a favourite framed. The sketch was one of a bedroom with light coming in through French windows. The room was one we'd rented one weekend in a city known for wrought iron balconies and genteel decay. I always told her that the city outside those windows could've been Alexandria or Charleston or Lisbon. There was a hint of someone on the bed, and she told me to imagine it was her, face down over the bed, looking out to the city while I took her from behind. I did like that, liked the idea that she'd turned that hint of shadow on the bed into something I'd remember.
Levin is easy to remember tonight--- kisses on her ankle bracelet, kisses on that nipple piercing (still shocking in those days), Pet Shop Boys playing and her hands always smelling of lithography chemicals. I've reached the time in my life when I spend time remembering girls from the last age, when melancholy becomes the dominant mode in my thoughts. Easy enough to remember Levin's hipbones and ankles and the pale gold fuzz on her upper thighs. Easy enough to remember a time when art and desire and the taste of vodka-lime all went together.
So let's think of that tonight, and a couple of lines from Cavafy:
These things are all so very old---
the sketch, and the ship, and the afternoon.
Saturday, February 15, 2020
Two Seven Two: Threads 7
This passage came to me in April of 2018. My friend in the Land of the Long White Cloud sent it to me with neither backstory nor context. She told me that it was something she'd found on her XHD where she keeps all the secret memories of her past. There's no date on it, and no names. I wish she'd told me more, and of course I wish I could see more things that she has hidden away on that XHD:
Back then I wasn't good at asking for what I wanted. I wanted to ask him to make just a little bit of room in his life for me. His wasn't a life you could slide into without thought or care. His kid was very sick. I didn't want much. I wanted us to walk our dogs together and go for drives up the coast. We fucked for a while and he just made me feel so good. I lived alone then, and he would turn up at random times. I would cook us dinner and we would watch TV, my head in his lap.
And now...his boy is all grown up and cancer free. His wife left him. He isn't too subtle about looking at my tits. Maybe he is remembering the nights he came on them and the mornings he squeezed my nipples while he fucked me from behind. He is still loud, and funny, and a bit of a goof brain. He wears glasses now. I never thought we were going to end up together; it was a moment in time. But I remember how good he could make me feel and how hungry I always was for him.
It's a melancholy story, isn't it? A married man (her weakness, back in her early and mid-twenties), the sick child, the knowledge that it was all hopeless from the start. I do wish I knew more about it all. She says that even post-affair, he's someplace where he can see her. Did they try to rekindle the affair? Did they sleep together again? Whatever was the conclusion to all this? I hate it when there are stories that I see that have no context and no conclusion. That's the quondam academic in me.
In September of 2018 I asked her about the life she imagined for herself. She wrote me this about the daydreams she had for her imagined life:
i work at the local arthouse cinema. it's generally pretty quiet. between selling tickets and making coffee and showing people to their seats, i do crossword puzzles and read. i watch a film everyday. i walk to work. i wear skinny jeans and graphic tees, and a cardigan in the winter. i have an older lover who takes me out for dinner and is fond of me. i live with a grumpy old cat called tom. i never really made friends in the city, and i spend most nights with my books. i am content.
I replied to her that same evening, with my own daydream:
I love this idea. I can imagine being in a small town on the coast near a little liberal arts school. I work at a small bookstore, selling books to students and sitting by the coffee machine and reading. Once in a while I teach a History course at the little uni. On weekends I kayak around little coastal inlets and picnic with you on the beach. We have a garden and a small verandah where we read. Our little beagle Frederick sits with us, happy to be loved. We listen to Cigarettes After Sex. I wear slim jeans and oxford-cloth button-downs and black tees. We cook for each other and sit in the evenings and watch the sky and sea darken. Our lives are quiet and simple.
I miss sharing daydreams with her, and I miss the lives for the two of us that we constructed in our heads. I miss the idea that one could be content.
Back then I wasn't good at asking for what I wanted. I wanted to ask him to make just a little bit of room in his life for me. His wasn't a life you could slide into without thought or care. His kid was very sick. I didn't want much. I wanted us to walk our dogs together and go for drives up the coast. We fucked for a while and he just made me feel so good. I lived alone then, and he would turn up at random times. I would cook us dinner and we would watch TV, my head in his lap.
And now...his boy is all grown up and cancer free. His wife left him. He isn't too subtle about looking at my tits. Maybe he is remembering the nights he came on them and the mornings he squeezed my nipples while he fucked me from behind. He is still loud, and funny, and a bit of a goof brain. He wears glasses now. I never thought we were going to end up together; it was a moment in time. But I remember how good he could make me feel and how hungry I always was for him.
It's a melancholy story, isn't it? A married man (her weakness, back in her early and mid-twenties), the sick child, the knowledge that it was all hopeless from the start. I do wish I knew more about it all. She says that even post-affair, he's someplace where he can see her. Did they try to rekindle the affair? Did they sleep together again? Whatever was the conclusion to all this? I hate it when there are stories that I see that have no context and no conclusion. That's the quondam academic in me.
In September of 2018 I asked her about the life she imagined for herself. She wrote me this about the daydreams she had for her imagined life:
i work at the local arthouse cinema. it's generally pretty quiet. between selling tickets and making coffee and showing people to their seats, i do crossword puzzles and read. i watch a film everyday. i walk to work. i wear skinny jeans and graphic tees, and a cardigan in the winter. i have an older lover who takes me out for dinner and is fond of me. i live with a grumpy old cat called tom. i never really made friends in the city, and i spend most nights with my books. i am content.
I replied to her that same evening, with my own daydream:
I love this idea. I can imagine being in a small town on the coast near a little liberal arts school. I work at a small bookstore, selling books to students and sitting by the coffee machine and reading. Once in a while I teach a History course at the little uni. On weekends I kayak around little coastal inlets and picnic with you on the beach. We have a garden and a small verandah where we read. Our little beagle Frederick sits with us, happy to be loved. We listen to Cigarettes After Sex. I wear slim jeans and oxford-cloth button-downs and black tees. We cook for each other and sit in the evenings and watch the sky and sea darken. Our lives are quiet and simple.
I miss sharing daydreams with her, and I miss the lives for the two of us that we constructed in our heads. I miss the idea that one could be content.
Saturday, February 1, 2020
Two Six Nine: Levee
Let's call this a second story about the girl in my last entry, the girl at the Electra Palace in Thessaloniki. I have a few stories acquired from her back long ago, and I do want to archive them here. In the end, we're only the stories we tell. I've believed that for a lifetime.
This story isn't from very long after the summer she had the fling with the Greek boy with the vintage MG. If my memory holds, it happened during spring break the following year, when she was back in the city from Colorado School of Mines. I only heard it later, and I was never quite clear on the details. Marsha was never like the girl from New Zealand whose stories I've recounted here--- she wasn't someone who wrote everything into a journal, someone who thought her life was something to structure into a narrative. The story itself is a scary one, and very much a #MeToo tale, if not something a bit worse. I offer that as a warning.
From what I was able to gather, she was back home on spring break. She'd driven out of the city to visit a friend at a college maybe an hour's drive west over the river, and was coming back that evening. She took the older state highway and not the interstate highway. That led over a bridge and through the edge of a small town that had two points of notoriety. There was a restaurant-bar on the highway that had once been the center of a scandal involving illegal gambling, bribery, and half a dozen state legislators. And the town was a major speed trap. You'd come down from a bridge over a small local river and the speed limit suddenly went down to 30 mph. The town made a fortune in traffic fines.
In short, Marsha was stopped and ticketed for speeding coming off the bridge. The local fines were painfully high, and all the more so if you were doing 20 mph or more over the limit. Marsha was terrified of having to tell her parents she'd been ticketed...and at having to ask for a couple of hundred dollars for the enhanced fine. She told no one about the ticket and then drove back over a couple of days later to see if there was anything that could be done to reduce the fine or take driving courses or whatever. That strikes me as painfully naive now, but she was only eighteen, and as a posh girl she might've been sexually experienced since fifteen or sixteen, but nonetheless sheltered from a great many things.
The arc of the story is crushingly obvious. She went to the police station in the small town late one afternoon and talked to one of the deputies about her ticket. He assured her that while the town court was very, very serious about speeders, she had no previous tickets and maybe something could be done. He then invited her for coffee at the little diner down the street so they could talk about what she could tell the court. She got into the police car, and the deputy drove up onto the nearby levee and tried exactly the obvious thing--- grabbing her, kissing her, and getting a hand up under her shirt. She was braless, as she usually was, and that encouraged him to grope her more. She did tell me that her nipples hurt for the next couple of days, and that he'd left bruises on one breast.
I always obsess about details, but she didn't give me many. I'm still not clear on what she was wearing--- a long-sleeved tee or a polo shirt? Jeans or shorts? I knew her tastes enough to know that she loved polo shirts and had a thing for long-sleeved tees with college logos. When I've played the story in my head, I do imagine her in either a Colorado School of Mines tee or a band tee from whatever she was listening to that spring. Yes, I do understand that worrying about the details of wardrobe isn't a good thing on my part.
In any event, he groped her breasts and tried to kiss her...and tried to go further, to pull open the shorts or jeans she had on and get them down. I'm not sure what happened next. Marsha always said that she'd panicked and begun to cry and hyperventilate and the deputy panicked, drove her back to her car, and more or less shoved her out of the patrol car. She never said anything about what happened with the ticket itself, and for all I know the panicked deputy made it vanish. I certainly don't know what else happened in the patrol car. Did she kiss him? Did he make her give him head? Did any of it go further? Did her jeans or shorts come off? Had she offered him a blowjob to get the ticket fixed? I only had hints from her, and a couple of very brief mentions from the one local friend she told about it all. My own reading of the hints is that something happened, but after all these years, I'll never know what.
Now it probably says a lot about me (and says nothing good) that when I first heard about what happened, what went through my mind was that it was a scary-yet-hot story and that I wanted the story fleshed out. That might be understandable at eighteen, but...now? It is almost a porn video plot, though I'm sure that things like this do happen to young, terrified, vulnerable girls and that it's all a gross abuse of power and, yes, a crime. Nonetheless, even decades later, I do want the details and want to craft it all into a story. Needless to say, while I might've asked her about the details when we were both twenty or so and having a drunken reunion while home from our schools, I'd never be able to ask her now, even if I knew where she was. But the events are still there in my head, and I still see what happened as a film-in-the-head.
This story isn't from very long after the summer she had the fling with the Greek boy with the vintage MG. If my memory holds, it happened during spring break the following year, when she was back in the city from Colorado School of Mines. I only heard it later, and I was never quite clear on the details. Marsha was never like the girl from New Zealand whose stories I've recounted here--- she wasn't someone who wrote everything into a journal, someone who thought her life was something to structure into a narrative. The story itself is a scary one, and very much a #MeToo tale, if not something a bit worse. I offer that as a warning.
From what I was able to gather, she was back home on spring break. She'd driven out of the city to visit a friend at a college maybe an hour's drive west over the river, and was coming back that evening. She took the older state highway and not the interstate highway. That led over a bridge and through the edge of a small town that had two points of notoriety. There was a restaurant-bar on the highway that had once been the center of a scandal involving illegal gambling, bribery, and half a dozen state legislators. And the town was a major speed trap. You'd come down from a bridge over a small local river and the speed limit suddenly went down to 30 mph. The town made a fortune in traffic fines.
In short, Marsha was stopped and ticketed for speeding coming off the bridge. The local fines were painfully high, and all the more so if you were doing 20 mph or more over the limit. Marsha was terrified of having to tell her parents she'd been ticketed...and at having to ask for a couple of hundred dollars for the enhanced fine. She told no one about the ticket and then drove back over a couple of days later to see if there was anything that could be done to reduce the fine or take driving courses or whatever. That strikes me as painfully naive now, but she was only eighteen, and as a posh girl she might've been sexually experienced since fifteen or sixteen, but nonetheless sheltered from a great many things.
The arc of the story is crushingly obvious. She went to the police station in the small town late one afternoon and talked to one of the deputies about her ticket. He assured her that while the town court was very, very serious about speeders, she had no previous tickets and maybe something could be done. He then invited her for coffee at the little diner down the street so they could talk about what she could tell the court. She got into the police car, and the deputy drove up onto the nearby levee and tried exactly the obvious thing--- grabbing her, kissing her, and getting a hand up under her shirt. She was braless, as she usually was, and that encouraged him to grope her more. She did tell me that her nipples hurt for the next couple of days, and that he'd left bruises on one breast.
I always obsess about details, but she didn't give me many. I'm still not clear on what she was wearing--- a long-sleeved tee or a polo shirt? Jeans or shorts? I knew her tastes enough to know that she loved polo shirts and had a thing for long-sleeved tees with college logos. When I've played the story in my head, I do imagine her in either a Colorado School of Mines tee or a band tee from whatever she was listening to that spring. Yes, I do understand that worrying about the details of wardrobe isn't a good thing on my part.
In any event, he groped her breasts and tried to kiss her...and tried to go further, to pull open the shorts or jeans she had on and get them down. I'm not sure what happened next. Marsha always said that she'd panicked and begun to cry and hyperventilate and the deputy panicked, drove her back to her car, and more or less shoved her out of the patrol car. She never said anything about what happened with the ticket itself, and for all I know the panicked deputy made it vanish. I certainly don't know what else happened in the patrol car. Did she kiss him? Did he make her give him head? Did any of it go further? Did her jeans or shorts come off? Had she offered him a blowjob to get the ticket fixed? I only had hints from her, and a couple of very brief mentions from the one local friend she told about it all. My own reading of the hints is that something happened, but after all these years, I'll never know what.
Now it probably says a lot about me (and says nothing good) that when I first heard about what happened, what went through my mind was that it was a scary-yet-hot story and that I wanted the story fleshed out. That might be understandable at eighteen, but...now? It is almost a porn video plot, though I'm sure that things like this do happen to young, terrified, vulnerable girls and that it's all a gross abuse of power and, yes, a crime. Nonetheless, even decades later, I do want the details and want to craft it all into a story. Needless to say, while I might've asked her about the details when we were both twenty or so and having a drunken reunion while home from our schools, I'd never be able to ask her now, even if I knew where she was. But the events are still there in my head, and I still see what happened as a film-in-the-head.
Thursday, December 19, 2019
Two Six Five: Memories
I thought today of a girl I hadn't seen in half a lifetime. The year is ending-- the decade, too. That may have put me in a sentimental mood.
I was at a small deli near my lakeside flat and the young girl behind the counter reminded me of someone from my own past. I took the sandwich I'd ordered and smiled and tipped her well on my debit card and walked home in the cold with a lost name and face in my mind.
The girl I'm thinking of was named Toni. She lived next to me for a while just after I'd finished university. She looked like...hmmm...a young Aubrey Plaza. Dark brown hair in a short bob, blue eyes, glasses. Yes, the girl at the deli today had the same look.
Toni was maybe nineteen when I first ran into her. She was a neo-hippie girl. I do remember that, and I remember that she almost always had a guitar with her. She was always very serious and solemn, and she'd sit out on her porch and play guitar or read. There were always boys over there at her house. She had, I discovered, a reputation as an easy armful, but somehow she always looked quiet and introspective. We'd run into each other walking places along my street, and we'd see one another at the tiny coffee shop on the corner. Lovely eyes, lovely legs. The sort of girl who always had a sketch pad and a novel in her backpack.
The first time we went out was impromptu and awkward. I asked her to join me for a drink. The place was painfully hip, back in the day when date bars were transitioning from fern bars with lots of brass to a more exposed-brick look. The place was called...either the Square Peg or the Brass Button. I can't recall which, though eventually we were at both often enough. It was late spring, and she wore a longish peasant skirt I remember that. Drinks, yes, though I can't recall what we drank. Vodka, probably. We drank, talked, and flirted. I think maybe I was the one who was flirting--- she was always too serious for flirting, even when she was deciding to sleep with someone. We walked down to one of the city parks and went out by a lake. I remember undoing her skirt and kissing my way along her legs. She wasn't talkative during sex, though she liked stroking my hair while I talked and undressed her. I do remember her wearing a small ankle bracelet she'd bought in Belize, and I remember that she was bra-less that night, with a necklace of some kind that lay between her breasts. When she rode me and leaned down, the little locket on the necklace would fall into my face and I held it in my mouth. She did have underwear on, and I tossed them at the lake and told her she should never wear any when she was out with me. She came back to my house that night and stayed over. She did make a point of never wearing underwear when she and I went out.
We saw each other sporadically; we were never really a couple. Sometimes that summer she'd call and ask for a ride to places across the city--- open mic nights, poetry readings. She always made it clear that she'd trade me sex for a ride. She made a point of being transactional. She liked my company, I think, but she disliked emotions and expectations.
I remember a photo I took of her once. She was standing by her bed with her arms crossed. Tiny, faded denim cut-offs. A cropped blue-and-white halter tee. Deliciously barefoot. That pensive expression that I did fancy.
It's not much of a story--- an affair that lasted off and on from a May through mid-autumn. She stayed over a few nights; I stayed at her place after a few parties. Around my birthday that year she moved across town to share a house with her sister. There were highlights--- Toni bent over someone's car parked by the lighthouse park while I slid her denim mini up over her hips, Toni swimming naked at a motel pool while I handed her a bottle of vodka, Toni and I in a bathroom stall at Square Peg. Highlights, but nothing I suppose that's quite as good as any of the stories I posted here over the summer and early fall. Certainly nothing as good as anything my leggy blonde friend in New Zealand may have done in her own early twenties.
I have no idea whatever became of her. It's all half a lifetime ago. I hadn't thought of her in forever, or not until I was chatting today with the girl at the deli. I need to call up more memories. Toni isn't a bad one at all. A good mid-twenties affair, simple and uncomplicated, and one I had long before sex became something baroque and fraught.
I was at a small deli near my lakeside flat and the young girl behind the counter reminded me of someone from my own past. I took the sandwich I'd ordered and smiled and tipped her well on my debit card and walked home in the cold with a lost name and face in my mind.
The girl I'm thinking of was named Toni. She lived next to me for a while just after I'd finished university. She looked like...hmmm...a young Aubrey Plaza. Dark brown hair in a short bob, blue eyes, glasses. Yes, the girl at the deli today had the same look.
Toni was maybe nineteen when I first ran into her. She was a neo-hippie girl. I do remember that, and I remember that she almost always had a guitar with her. She was always very serious and solemn, and she'd sit out on her porch and play guitar or read. There were always boys over there at her house. She had, I discovered, a reputation as an easy armful, but somehow she always looked quiet and introspective. We'd run into each other walking places along my street, and we'd see one another at the tiny coffee shop on the corner. Lovely eyes, lovely legs. The sort of girl who always had a sketch pad and a novel in her backpack.
The first time we went out was impromptu and awkward. I asked her to join me for a drink. The place was painfully hip, back in the day when date bars were transitioning from fern bars with lots of brass to a more exposed-brick look. The place was called...either the Square Peg or the Brass Button. I can't recall which, though eventually we were at both often enough. It was late spring, and she wore a longish peasant skirt I remember that. Drinks, yes, though I can't recall what we drank. Vodka, probably. We drank, talked, and flirted. I think maybe I was the one who was flirting--- she was always too serious for flirting, even when she was deciding to sleep with someone. We walked down to one of the city parks and went out by a lake. I remember undoing her skirt and kissing my way along her legs. She wasn't talkative during sex, though she liked stroking my hair while I talked and undressed her. I do remember her wearing a small ankle bracelet she'd bought in Belize, and I remember that she was bra-less that night, with a necklace of some kind that lay between her breasts. When she rode me and leaned down, the little locket on the necklace would fall into my face and I held it in my mouth. She did have underwear on, and I tossed them at the lake and told her she should never wear any when she was out with me. She came back to my house that night and stayed over. She did make a point of never wearing underwear when she and I went out.
We saw each other sporadically; we were never really a couple. Sometimes that summer she'd call and ask for a ride to places across the city--- open mic nights, poetry readings. She always made it clear that she'd trade me sex for a ride. She made a point of being transactional. She liked my company, I think, but she disliked emotions and expectations.
I remember a photo I took of her once. She was standing by her bed with her arms crossed. Tiny, faded denim cut-offs. A cropped blue-and-white halter tee. Deliciously barefoot. That pensive expression that I did fancy.
It's not much of a story--- an affair that lasted off and on from a May through mid-autumn. She stayed over a few nights; I stayed at her place after a few parties. Around my birthday that year she moved across town to share a house with her sister. There were highlights--- Toni bent over someone's car parked by the lighthouse park while I slid her denim mini up over her hips, Toni swimming naked at a motel pool while I handed her a bottle of vodka, Toni and I in a bathroom stall at Square Peg. Highlights, but nothing I suppose that's quite as good as any of the stories I posted here over the summer and early fall. Certainly nothing as good as anything my leggy blonde friend in New Zealand may have done in her own early twenties.
I have no idea whatever became of her. It's all half a lifetime ago. I hadn't thought of her in forever, or not until I was chatting today with the girl at the deli. I need to call up more memories. Toni isn't a bad one at all. A good mid-twenties affair, simple and uncomplicated, and one I had long before sex became something baroque and fraught.
Saturday, April 27, 2019
Two Three Four: Nerve
I remember a film from long ago, a film whose name and actors I can't recall at all. I might have been in my first year at university when I saw it--- it was as long ago as that. Last night I remembered one scene, and it's stayed with me.
There was a scene where one of the main characters was exposed to nerve gas. I can't recall why, whether it was a lab accident, a military training accident, or something deliberate. I can't recall, and in the end it doesn't matter. What I do remember is the character sprawled on a floor somewhere, his body spasming and twitching as the nerve gas took effect. A scary enough scene, disturbing and grim. What came to me last night, though, was not a character dying in the story, but how his body jerking helplessly was far too like what you might look like in the throes of having sex or, maybe more to the point, in the midst of indulging in the Solitary Vice.
Sex is almost always about loss of control. That's coded as good in a great many scenes: giving up control in order to find pleasure, to be able to receive pleasure. Yet while the film scene did make me think of how I (or anyone) might look during sex, thinking that also made me ashamed and depressed.
I've seen a fair number of lovely young companions indulge in the Solitary Vice over the years. That's been something I've asked them to do for me. Some, yes, have offered to do that all on their own. I've had young companions tell me that they wanted to show me what pleasure looked like. Some I know enjoyed the performance itself, enjoyed the idea of performing. And, yes---- I watched and thought they were beautiful. I admired the way they gave themselves up to pleasure. I envied them the ability to lose themselves in what they were doing, the ability to hold my eye and bring me into their own sensations.
Do I have to say that I've always and ever been hesitant to do the same thing for them, even when they've specifically asked? The reason why is and always has been body dysphoria, I suppose--- or at least a distrust of my body. That film scene with the nerve gas victim haunts me right now--- the jerking limbs, the aimless kicking, the head helplessly shaking. I'd imagine myself looking like that, and I'd know at some very basic, foundational level that there was nothing attractive in the way I'd look, that whatever happened with my body, the young companion watching it would either laugh or be disgusted and contemptuous.
I am not at home in my body and never have been. I have good eyes. I have long, slender hands. These days (and years too late) I have good cheekbones. But there's nothing in the way I hold myself, nothing in the way I move, nothing in the way I look undressed that's sexually alluring. There's nothing about my body these days that doesn't represent decay and failure to me. I find it harder and harder to imagine taking any pleasure in my body or taking any pleasure from it. I find it impossible here this afternoon to imagine my body giving any pleasure.
I've always thought of sex as something crafted into story arcs, and I can't imagine a story these days where my body doesn't look like that dying nerve gas victim. I'm certainly nothing to watch, and anything physical I might offer to do with or for a young companion would look like that spasming, helplessly twitching body in the film scene. That character dies a horrible and hopeless death. Anything I'd do with my body, anything I'd try to do with a lover, would be what was happening there in that long ago film.
There was a scene where one of the main characters was exposed to nerve gas. I can't recall why, whether it was a lab accident, a military training accident, or something deliberate. I can't recall, and in the end it doesn't matter. What I do remember is the character sprawled on a floor somewhere, his body spasming and twitching as the nerve gas took effect. A scary enough scene, disturbing and grim. What came to me last night, though, was not a character dying in the story, but how his body jerking helplessly was far too like what you might look like in the throes of having sex or, maybe more to the point, in the midst of indulging in the Solitary Vice.
Sex is almost always about loss of control. That's coded as good in a great many scenes: giving up control in order to find pleasure, to be able to receive pleasure. Yet while the film scene did make me think of how I (or anyone) might look during sex, thinking that also made me ashamed and depressed.
I've seen a fair number of lovely young companions indulge in the Solitary Vice over the years. That's been something I've asked them to do for me. Some, yes, have offered to do that all on their own. I've had young companions tell me that they wanted to show me what pleasure looked like. Some I know enjoyed the performance itself, enjoyed the idea of performing. And, yes---- I watched and thought they were beautiful. I admired the way they gave themselves up to pleasure. I envied them the ability to lose themselves in what they were doing, the ability to hold my eye and bring me into their own sensations.
Do I have to say that I've always and ever been hesitant to do the same thing for them, even when they've specifically asked? The reason why is and always has been body dysphoria, I suppose--- or at least a distrust of my body. That film scene with the nerve gas victim haunts me right now--- the jerking limbs, the aimless kicking, the head helplessly shaking. I'd imagine myself looking like that, and I'd know at some very basic, foundational level that there was nothing attractive in the way I'd look, that whatever happened with my body, the young companion watching it would either laugh or be disgusted and contemptuous.
I am not at home in my body and never have been. I have good eyes. I have long, slender hands. These days (and years too late) I have good cheekbones. But there's nothing in the way I hold myself, nothing in the way I move, nothing in the way I look undressed that's sexually alluring. There's nothing about my body these days that doesn't represent decay and failure to me. I find it harder and harder to imagine taking any pleasure in my body or taking any pleasure from it. I find it impossible here this afternoon to imagine my body giving any pleasure.
I've always thought of sex as something crafted into story arcs, and I can't imagine a story these days where my body doesn't look like that dying nerve gas victim. I'm certainly nothing to watch, and anything physical I might offer to do with or for a young companion would look like that spasming, helplessly twitching body in the film scene. That character dies a horrible and hopeless death. Anything I'd do with my body, anything I'd try to do with a lover, would be what was happening there in that long ago film.
Monday, March 18, 2019
Two Three Zero: Shower
A Story, then. I'll sit here tonight with a bottle of sparkling lime water and add a Story. A lovely girl sent me this years ago--- almost a decade now. She always told wonderful Stories. I of course was desperately in love with her all one lost summer. We'd talk on the phone for hours--- sometimes literally all night. She broke my heart in the end, but she'll always be someone I remember.
Anyway, dear friends and readers...a Story for my archives:
I was 15 when I first showered with a boy. It was my boyfriend at the time. His name was David. He was 17. I used to sneak over to his house when his mother wasn't there. That's when we would do things like shower together. It was more fun than sexual in a way. I suppose it's always been that way for me. Even when I've had sex in the shower with men, it's always been playful rather than sensual.
We were both each other's firsts in terms of any sexual acts aside from intercourse. I think the reason that we never actually did have sex was because I was a little scared, and he was sure he was corrupting me. He would get very depressed about it. I recall him crying about it while dropping me off at my house one night. He didn't want to make me do anything too early in my life. I thought he was being completely ridiculous and told him so. But I think he always felt guilty for doing anything sexual with me.
However, he didn't refrain from hitting on me years later when he was drunk at a party. He told me that I gave much better head than his girlfriend. I didn't sleep with him that night either.
I found this, too. From earlier in that long-ago summer. She copied it from a blog she had in those days and emailed it to me. She called me "my Doctor" or "my Older Man". One of the few times in my life when my doctorate did anything positive for me.
She wrote this:
I'm loving late nights on the phone, a soft voice on the other end. My Doctor. He's inspiring and beautiful in so many ways I can't explain. When we're talking, the whole world washes away and it's just the two of us. I have major, major fantasies of running away to another country with him.
My Older Man introduced me to Neko Case:
"I can say that I've lived here in honor and danger
But I'm just an animal and cannot explain a life
Down the chain of days I wished to stay among my people
Relation now means nothing, having chosen so defined
And if death should smell my breathing
As it passes beneath my window
Let it lead me trembling, trembling
I own every bell that tolls for me."
Fucking beautiful.
Neko Case... I still love Neko Case. How many times have I listened to "Hold On, Hold On" and "Deep Red Bells"--- a couple of hundred times each?
It's a melancholy thing to not be part of story arcs. It's a melancholy thing not to be someone to whom a lovely girl will confide her dreams and her adventures. I miss that. I miss her particular voice, of course, and I miss thinking that my own life can be shaped into stories, or that a lovely girl might want to lead me out into adventures for the two of us.
Anyway, dear friends and readers...a Story for my archives:
I was 15 when I first showered with a boy. It was my boyfriend at the time. His name was David. He was 17. I used to sneak over to his house when his mother wasn't there. That's when we would do things like shower together. It was more fun than sexual in a way. I suppose it's always been that way for me. Even when I've had sex in the shower with men, it's always been playful rather than sensual.
We were both each other's firsts in terms of any sexual acts aside from intercourse. I think the reason that we never actually did have sex was because I was a little scared, and he was sure he was corrupting me. He would get very depressed about it. I recall him crying about it while dropping me off at my house one night. He didn't want to make me do anything too early in my life. I thought he was being completely ridiculous and told him so. But I think he always felt guilty for doing anything sexual with me.
However, he didn't refrain from hitting on me years later when he was drunk at a party. He told me that I gave much better head than his girlfriend. I didn't sleep with him that night either.
I found this, too. From earlier in that long-ago summer. She copied it from a blog she had in those days and emailed it to me. She called me "my Doctor" or "my Older Man". One of the few times in my life when my doctorate did anything positive for me.
She wrote this:
I'm loving late nights on the phone, a soft voice on the other end. My Doctor. He's inspiring and beautiful in so many ways I can't explain. When we're talking, the whole world washes away and it's just the two of us. I have major, major fantasies of running away to another country with him.
My Older Man introduced me to Neko Case:
"I can say that I've lived here in honor and danger
But I'm just an animal and cannot explain a life
Down the chain of days I wished to stay among my people
Relation now means nothing, having chosen so defined
And if death should smell my breathing
As it passes beneath my window
Let it lead me trembling, trembling
I own every bell that tolls for me."
Fucking beautiful.
Neko Case... I still love Neko Case. How many times have I listened to "Hold On, Hold On" and "Deep Red Bells"--- a couple of hundred times each?
It's a melancholy thing to not be part of story arcs. It's a melancholy thing not to be someone to whom a lovely girl will confide her dreams and her adventures. I miss that. I miss her particular voice, of course, and I miss thinking that my own life can be shaped into stories, or that a lovely girl might want to lead me out into adventures for the two of us.
Monday, February 25, 2019
Two Two Eight: Kiss
Rainy nights in late winter are a time for watching ghosts in the mirror. On rainy nights here I can look out to the river and feel melancholy wash over me.
I was thinking about kisses today. A kiss is a simple thing, and sharing kisses is how most of us first began to learn to be a lover. A kiss is a first step in the dance, a first touch of flesh and breath. It's easy to think about kisses tonight, to think about places where I've kissed lovers for the first time. A parked car, the terrace of a bar, the rooftop of a residence hall at university. Walking hand-in-hand through a street of small, hip shops. In the doorway of a Long Island Railroad car. At an arrivals gate at an aerodrome. Each kiss is a gateway to stories, to pieces of my life, to the faces of lost loves in the mirror.
I remember a girl turning to me in that train car doorway and kissing me hard and saying, I love you...or something.
I remember a rooftop bar on a late-September night, with Talking Heads' "The Lady Don't Mind" playing on the sound system--- looking out at the city lights and then half-turning to kiss the girl who was pressed against me.
I can remember those things tonight. But tonight I am feeling my age, and I'm feeling aware of how time runs out. I'd love to hear that Talking Heads song again. The rains are coming in from the north and west and it does occur to me how long it's been since I kissed anyone. What's going through my mind is that I've forgotten how to kiss.
Once upon a time, a Young Companion kissed me for a while in a doorway and told me that she'd never been kissed like that, and that she understood why girls liked older men, why girls she knew liked kissing me. That was a long time ago now, and I lived off that one compliment for years and years.
I may just talk about kisses for a bit. There are ways to talk about kisses without feeling ghosts in the air, and I have to find those ways.
Let's just admit that I've always liked kisses hard and deep. I've liked sharing breath and wetness in a kiss. I've loved the games of passing an ice cube back and forth in a kiss 'til it melts. I've liked sharing a mouthful of champagne in a kiss.
Long, long ago, far back in another century, I first read about sharing wetness in a kiss. I didn't hear the old term "swapping spit" until I went off to university. But I do recall reading about characters in novels sharing saliva in a kiss. I know that a couple of years ago there was a whole thing in porn videos of characters spitting in one another's faces or into each other's open mouths. That's a more deliberate thing, and it traffics in the idea of humiliation more than domination. But what I was thinking of tonight was a particular book, a novelization of an Italo-French erotic film from the early 1970s, something not-quite-hardcore called "Female Animal". I can't recall where I found the novel, though it was almost certainly in some used-paperback store, the kind of place that had its shelves and tables stuffed with yellowing mass-market paperbacks for twenty-five cents each. I don't recall if ever I saw the film version of "Female Animal", though I may have. I remember the "novelization", though. The cover was white--- I remember that ---with the image of a topless girl, her breasts hidden by long, straight hair. She was holding a large cat to herself and trying to look sultry. The cover was taken from the poster from the film. I have no clue at all who the actress was. I suppose she'd be in her sixties now--- a memento mori thing to realize.
The plot of the film (and its novelization) was simple enough. It was set on the Italian Riviera, and the heroine was a village girl of seventeen or eighteen who was desperate to leave poverty and boredom behind and go off to the bright lights and high life. I suspect that it was called "Female Animal" because there was a fairly brief passage where she's alone in bed and unable to bring herself to orgasm and coaxes her cat into licking her. I have no idea how that was handled in the film. What I do recall is that the author always describes her sharing saliva when she kisses anyone.
I read that, read about the character's kisses, and resolved to try that with someone very soon. The first girl I did do that with squirmed and made a face when I passed saliva into her mouth, then passed her own back to me very deliberately and intensely. I remember how it felt, and how amazing it was when I was young.
These days, though, I find myself freezing up with worry that I've forgotten how to kiss, that I've lost whatever sense of timing, pressure, rhythm, use of lips and tongue I may ever have known. It's Carnevale season here in my city, and it's a time for masks and kissing strangers on parade-filled streets, and I can't imagine kissing anyone this season. I really do think I'd be afraid to kiss anyone, afraid to try, afraid of not being able to kiss to any effect, afraid of no longer what to do.
I suppose it's the rain that makes me think of these things.
I was thinking about kisses today. A kiss is a simple thing, and sharing kisses is how most of us first began to learn to be a lover. A kiss is a first step in the dance, a first touch of flesh and breath. It's easy to think about kisses tonight, to think about places where I've kissed lovers for the first time. A parked car, the terrace of a bar, the rooftop of a residence hall at university. Walking hand-in-hand through a street of small, hip shops. In the doorway of a Long Island Railroad car. At an arrivals gate at an aerodrome. Each kiss is a gateway to stories, to pieces of my life, to the faces of lost loves in the mirror.
I remember a girl turning to me in that train car doorway and kissing me hard and saying, I love you...or something.
I remember a rooftop bar on a late-September night, with Talking Heads' "The Lady Don't Mind" playing on the sound system--- looking out at the city lights and then half-turning to kiss the girl who was pressed against me.
I can remember those things tonight. But tonight I am feeling my age, and I'm feeling aware of how time runs out. I'd love to hear that Talking Heads song again. The rains are coming in from the north and west and it does occur to me how long it's been since I kissed anyone. What's going through my mind is that I've forgotten how to kiss.
Once upon a time, a Young Companion kissed me for a while in a doorway and told me that she'd never been kissed like that, and that she understood why girls liked older men, why girls she knew liked kissing me. That was a long time ago now, and I lived off that one compliment for years and years.
I may just talk about kisses for a bit. There are ways to talk about kisses without feeling ghosts in the air, and I have to find those ways.
Let's just admit that I've always liked kisses hard and deep. I've liked sharing breath and wetness in a kiss. I've loved the games of passing an ice cube back and forth in a kiss 'til it melts. I've liked sharing a mouthful of champagne in a kiss.
Long, long ago, far back in another century, I first read about sharing wetness in a kiss. I didn't hear the old term "swapping spit" until I went off to university. But I do recall reading about characters in novels sharing saliva in a kiss. I know that a couple of years ago there was a whole thing in porn videos of characters spitting in one another's faces or into each other's open mouths. That's a more deliberate thing, and it traffics in the idea of humiliation more than domination. But what I was thinking of tonight was a particular book, a novelization of an Italo-French erotic film from the early 1970s, something not-quite-hardcore called "Female Animal". I can't recall where I found the novel, though it was almost certainly in some used-paperback store, the kind of place that had its shelves and tables stuffed with yellowing mass-market paperbacks for twenty-five cents each. I don't recall if ever I saw the film version of "Female Animal", though I may have. I remember the "novelization", though. The cover was white--- I remember that ---with the image of a topless girl, her breasts hidden by long, straight hair. She was holding a large cat to herself and trying to look sultry. The cover was taken from the poster from the film. I have no clue at all who the actress was. I suppose she'd be in her sixties now--- a memento mori thing to realize.
The plot of the film (and its novelization) was simple enough. It was set on the Italian Riviera, and the heroine was a village girl of seventeen or eighteen who was desperate to leave poverty and boredom behind and go off to the bright lights and high life. I suspect that it was called "Female Animal" because there was a fairly brief passage where she's alone in bed and unable to bring herself to orgasm and coaxes her cat into licking her. I have no idea how that was handled in the film. What I do recall is that the author always describes her sharing saliva when she kisses anyone.
I read that, read about the character's kisses, and resolved to try that with someone very soon. The first girl I did do that with squirmed and made a face when I passed saliva into her mouth, then passed her own back to me very deliberately and intensely. I remember how it felt, and how amazing it was when I was young.
These days, though, I find myself freezing up with worry that I've forgotten how to kiss, that I've lost whatever sense of timing, pressure, rhythm, use of lips and tongue I may ever have known. It's Carnevale season here in my city, and it's a time for masks and kissing strangers on parade-filled streets, and I can't imagine kissing anyone this season. I really do think I'd be afraid to kiss anyone, afraid to try, afraid of not being able to kiss to any effect, afraid of no longer what to do.
I suppose it's the rain that makes me think of these things.
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Two Two Six: Cold
There's some kind of Arctic weather phenomenon happening this week: sharp winds in from the north, temperatures falling into danger zones. I can sit in my window seat and see the winds whip the water in the courtyard swimming pool. Oh, I have some expensive artisanal hot chocolate with a heavy shot of dark rum, and I'm wrapped up in black merino wool. But I still feel deeply empty.
This afternoon I discovered that several websites for fetish enthusiasts have agreed that the actresses Emma Stone and Emma Watson were tied for the honour of being the most sought-after foot fetish photo girls on the web. I wonder of course how the two Emmas are taking the award. I hesitate to speculate on the trophies.
I'll admit that I've always found Emma Stone attractive, all the way back to a film she did called "Easy A". Very lovely, very good comedy actress. Yes, excellent eyes and excellent legs. And it does occur to me that I might--- albeit shyly, politely ---pay her either compliment in person. But even if I were a foot fetish person, I'd never, never say anything like, "Congratulations on your foot fetish award." I'd certainly never say, "Pretty feet!" I've no idea why there's an absolute line between complimenting her on her eyes and complimenting her on her arches, but there it is. Some compliments are beyond the pale. Lovely collarbones, lovely legs---- those things are acceptable. Cute toes--- no.
All fetishes, all sexual preferences, all sexual interests come with a set of social rankings attached. I think that's just a given. Some kinks are socially acceptable, some are instantly dismissed as lower down the rank-order. Your fetishes define you--- isn't that just something Edmund White said thirty years ago? They define you not just in terms of what your desires are, but in terms of where your desires fit in a social hierarchy. Desires can evoke all sorts of responses--- disgust, amusement, fascination, arousal ---but they always make a statement about where you fit in a rank-ordering. BDSM is the intellectuals' kink, thanks to French erotica. It's a bougie kink, too--- equipment and accessories are expensive. Role-play outranks cos-play. (Query: does voyeurism outrank exhibitionism, or is it the other way round?) Age-play is no longer acceptable. Gender play was briefly edgy and cool, but nowadays it's lost itself in the hellscape of the Trans Wars.
There's a always a rank ordering, though. Telling a girl you want to blindfold her with silk and whip her with a riding crop can be spun as sexy and stylish. Telling her you want to suck her toes will never be read as stylish; you'll get no social points for dark elegance.
It's cold tonight and I'm thinking of how I've lost the ability to tell a girl about any desires I might feel. I'd certainly never ask for anything these days. I'd certainly never tell a young companion that I had any preferences or interests, and I'd never tell a girl that something in particular gave me pleasure. There's always the risk of being laughed at--- at, not with. There's the even greater risk that you'll be regarded as pathetic or low-status.
The risks seem all the more daunting these days. Pleasure and the things that give lovers pleasure are too fraught these days. Revealing oneself to a lover--- and very possibly to her social media circles ---is too risky.
Once upon a time, I had no problem talking about desires and hopes and kinks and pleasure with young companions as part of the process of seduction, as part of the process of opening oneself up to a new lover. Not any more. On a cold night with hard winds outside, all I can say is that there's no way these days that I'd tell a lover about anything I liked about them--- let alone anything that might give me pleasure, or be something for the two of us to share.
This afternoon I discovered that several websites for fetish enthusiasts have agreed that the actresses Emma Stone and Emma Watson were tied for the honour of being the most sought-after foot fetish photo girls on the web. I wonder of course how the two Emmas are taking the award. I hesitate to speculate on the trophies.
I'll admit that I've always found Emma Stone attractive, all the way back to a film she did called "Easy A". Very lovely, very good comedy actress. Yes, excellent eyes and excellent legs. And it does occur to me that I might--- albeit shyly, politely ---pay her either compliment in person. But even if I were a foot fetish person, I'd never, never say anything like, "Congratulations on your foot fetish award." I'd certainly never say, "Pretty feet!" I've no idea why there's an absolute line between complimenting her on her eyes and complimenting her on her arches, but there it is. Some compliments are beyond the pale. Lovely collarbones, lovely legs---- those things are acceptable. Cute toes--- no.
All fetishes, all sexual preferences, all sexual interests come with a set of social rankings attached. I think that's just a given. Some kinks are socially acceptable, some are instantly dismissed as lower down the rank-order. Your fetishes define you--- isn't that just something Edmund White said thirty years ago? They define you not just in terms of what your desires are, but in terms of where your desires fit in a social hierarchy. Desires can evoke all sorts of responses--- disgust, amusement, fascination, arousal ---but they always make a statement about where you fit in a rank-ordering. BDSM is the intellectuals' kink, thanks to French erotica. It's a bougie kink, too--- equipment and accessories are expensive. Role-play outranks cos-play. (Query: does voyeurism outrank exhibitionism, or is it the other way round?) Age-play is no longer acceptable. Gender play was briefly edgy and cool, but nowadays it's lost itself in the hellscape of the Trans Wars.
There's a always a rank ordering, though. Telling a girl you want to blindfold her with silk and whip her with a riding crop can be spun as sexy and stylish. Telling her you want to suck her toes will never be read as stylish; you'll get no social points for dark elegance.
It's cold tonight and I'm thinking of how I've lost the ability to tell a girl about any desires I might feel. I'd certainly never ask for anything these days. I'd certainly never tell a young companion that I had any preferences or interests, and I'd never tell a girl that something in particular gave me pleasure. There's always the risk of being laughed at--- at, not with. There's the even greater risk that you'll be regarded as pathetic or low-status.
The risks seem all the more daunting these days. Pleasure and the things that give lovers pleasure are too fraught these days. Revealing oneself to a lover--- and very possibly to her social media circles ---is too risky.
Once upon a time, I had no problem talking about desires and hopes and kinks and pleasure with young companions as part of the process of seduction, as part of the process of opening oneself up to a new lover. Not any more. On a cold night with hard winds outside, all I can say is that there's no way these days that I'd tell a lover about anything I liked about them--- let alone anything that might give me pleasure, or be something for the two of us to share.
Saturday, June 30, 2018
Two One Four: Formation
I've very probably written about this before, but since I am posting archived tales, I'll post this again as one of the best memories a lovely girl has ever shared with me. It's certainly a story that leaves me jealous, envious, and depressed. I do wish I could mean this much to the lovely girl in question, and I wish my own life could yield up stories with this much power. This story makes me all-too-aware that there isn't likely to be anything in my own life to ever match her story--- and certainly not in what's left of my future.
My lovely friend sent me these stories--- her darkest secret, she averred ---a few years ago. She told me that she's tried to cut clear of the man in the stories, but somehow she ends up on the phone or on web chat with him far too often. I don't know if she's seen him in the flesh these last three or four years, though it's possible. She calls him B. That could be anything--- Brian, Bob, Bill. The name doesn't matter, of course. It's the power in the obsession and the stories that matters.
Her first discussion of him, in an autumn a few years back---
I can't stop fantasising about my uncle (for clarification - he's my mothers cousin, but I shall refer to his as my uncle for convenience). He must be...62ish now. He's tall and tan and solid. He owns a pub in the outback in Australia. I first met him when I was in my mid teens, he taught me how to blow smoke rings, we drank sambuca and we fucked. Now I can't stop thinking about the last time I saw him...it must have been 2008? Or 2009? It was at a family funeral. When I saw him after the funeral I went up to him and hugged him. Brushing my hands around his waist, I felt something like an electric shock. 'Hey there, beautiful' he whispered in my ear, then kissed my cheek. An hour or so later I noticed him watching me, and nodding his head towards the bathroom. I swallowed the rest of my gin & tonic and walked ahead of him. I was wearing black heels and a black skirt. After he shut the door, he ran his fingers up my thigh, lifted my skirt and kissed my bare cunt.
I need him again.
And again, the next April---
it has been years. but there will never be anyone else. i met him when i was 17. not so young, i suppose. but give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life. cards on the table, right from the beginning. first cousin once removed is the technical term. and thirty-odd years between us. our first night together i was drunk. sambuca flowed through my veins. but it was electric. i knew at the time it was different to anything i'd ever felt before. i didn't know that i'd never feel anything like it since. it was a cheap motel room. we fucked countless times that night, then the next day he flew back to australia. a month later he flew me to his pub in the outback. we had a whole month together. to date, that was the longest time we ever spent together. i started to understand that it was love. we'd pour drinks at his bar all night, then take a bottle upstairs with us. we would drink and talk until dawn. the sex was amazing. he went down on me for hours. i'd had men before...but not like this. i felt so powerful, so needed, and so loved.
we've been together all over the place. vancouver, tokyo, auckland, sydney, the outback, fiji, wellington. we steal long weekends. we fly each other wherever, whenever we have the chance. for a long time i wouldn't let him cum in my cunt. my mouth was fine, preferred. i got over that though. its been ten years now. and nobody touches me like he does. nobody looks at me like he does. he is the only man i want, and i can never have him.
“The only obsession everyone wants: ‘love.’ People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you’re whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You’re whole, and then you’re cracked open.”
and i have tried to not let it consume me. i slept with men his age. boys my own age. girls. there is only him. i've had long-term boyfriends, who thought nothing when i flew to fiji for a 'girls weekend' and spent four blissful days with his tongue in my cunt and his arms around my waist. when i flew to vancouver with friends he arranged to be there for a weekend too...i told them i was catching up with my uncle, and had his hand in my cunt in the lift up to his hotel room. another time we were together for four nights in auckland. we stayed at a house in devonport, and it was like this 'what we could have been' experience. we cooked for each other, and read aloud to each other. we played cards, and mixed each other drinks. we walked around naked. we bathed together. we came together all week. it was agony to catch the plane home after that.
he is my addiction. we're a chemical reaction.
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
some nights i stay up late, drinking straight bourbon and smoking. habits i learnt from him, of course. they aren't my only bad habits. on those same nights i might cut and purge. i didn't pick up those habits from him, but i'd say he inspired them. it would kill him to hear me say that. what we have together chokes me. it annihalates me. it is everything, yet it can never be anything. how did it end up like this? i was young and drunk, our first night together should have been just that, a drunken regret. not the start of an affair which would come to both doom and define me.
and a few weeks ago i got a text. i will see him soon.
this is my secret.
I feel deeply jealous, of course. Always that. I want her drinking Sambuca in my bed; I want her flying to spend weekends in rented beach cottages with me. I want to mean that much to someone, to have that kind of obsessive value to someone.
I will archive stories here, though I suppose that's a painful thing. Still, I was trained to create and maintain archives. There's always the chance that in a few years I'll read these again. I wonder what I might make of them then. There's always the chance, too, that some unknown reader will find this--- a ghost blog, abandoned on the aether ---and read this and tell herself stories in her head about the tales I'm saving here.
My lovely friend sent me these stories--- her darkest secret, she averred ---a few years ago. She told me that she's tried to cut clear of the man in the stories, but somehow she ends up on the phone or on web chat with him far too often. I don't know if she's seen him in the flesh these last three or four years, though it's possible. She calls him B. That could be anything--- Brian, Bob, Bill. The name doesn't matter, of course. It's the power in the obsession and the stories that matters.
Her first discussion of him, in an autumn a few years back---
I can't stop fantasising about my uncle (for clarification - he's my mothers cousin, but I shall refer to his as my uncle for convenience). He must be...62ish now. He's tall and tan and solid. He owns a pub in the outback in Australia. I first met him when I was in my mid teens, he taught me how to blow smoke rings, we drank sambuca and we fucked. Now I can't stop thinking about the last time I saw him...it must have been 2008? Or 2009? It was at a family funeral. When I saw him after the funeral I went up to him and hugged him. Brushing my hands around his waist, I felt something like an electric shock. 'Hey there, beautiful' he whispered in my ear, then kissed my cheek. An hour or so later I noticed him watching me, and nodding his head towards the bathroom. I swallowed the rest of my gin & tonic and walked ahead of him. I was wearing black heels and a black skirt. After he shut the door, he ran his fingers up my thigh, lifted my skirt and kissed my bare cunt.
I need him again.
And again, the next April---
it has been years. but there will never be anyone else. i met him when i was 17. not so young, i suppose. but give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life. cards on the table, right from the beginning. first cousin once removed is the technical term. and thirty-odd years between us. our first night together i was drunk. sambuca flowed through my veins. but it was electric. i knew at the time it was different to anything i'd ever felt before. i didn't know that i'd never feel anything like it since. it was a cheap motel room. we fucked countless times that night, then the next day he flew back to australia. a month later he flew me to his pub in the outback. we had a whole month together. to date, that was the longest time we ever spent together. i started to understand that it was love. we'd pour drinks at his bar all night, then take a bottle upstairs with us. we would drink and talk until dawn. the sex was amazing. he went down on me for hours. i'd had men before...but not like this. i felt so powerful, so needed, and so loved.
we've been together all over the place. vancouver, tokyo, auckland, sydney, the outback, fiji, wellington. we steal long weekends. we fly each other wherever, whenever we have the chance. for a long time i wouldn't let him cum in my cunt. my mouth was fine, preferred. i got over that though. its been ten years now. and nobody touches me like he does. nobody looks at me like he does. he is the only man i want, and i can never have him.
“The only obsession everyone wants: ‘love.’ People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you’re whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You’re whole, and then you’re cracked open.”
and i have tried to not let it consume me. i slept with men his age. boys my own age. girls. there is only him. i've had long-term boyfriends, who thought nothing when i flew to fiji for a 'girls weekend' and spent four blissful days with his tongue in my cunt and his arms around my waist. when i flew to vancouver with friends he arranged to be there for a weekend too...i told them i was catching up with my uncle, and had his hand in my cunt in the lift up to his hotel room. another time we were together for four nights in auckland. we stayed at a house in devonport, and it was like this 'what we could have been' experience. we cooked for each other, and read aloud to each other. we played cards, and mixed each other drinks. we walked around naked. we bathed together. we came together all week. it was agony to catch the plane home after that.
he is my addiction. we're a chemical reaction.
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
some nights i stay up late, drinking straight bourbon and smoking. habits i learnt from him, of course. they aren't my only bad habits. on those same nights i might cut and purge. i didn't pick up those habits from him, but i'd say he inspired them. it would kill him to hear me say that. what we have together chokes me. it annihalates me. it is everything, yet it can never be anything. how did it end up like this? i was young and drunk, our first night together should have been just that, a drunken regret. not the start of an affair which would come to both doom and define me.
and a few weeks ago i got a text. i will see him soon.
this is my secret.
I feel deeply jealous, of course. Always that. I want her drinking Sambuca in my bed; I want her flying to spend weekends in rented beach cottages with me. I want to mean that much to someone, to have that kind of obsessive value to someone.
I will archive stories here, though I suppose that's a painful thing. Still, I was trained to create and maintain archives. There's always the chance that in a few years I'll read these again. I wonder what I might make of them then. There's always the chance, too, that some unknown reader will find this--- a ghost blog, abandoned on the aether ---and read this and tell herself stories in her head about the tales I'm saving here.
Friday, August 26, 2016
One Nine Zero: Pasts
A lovely friend who lives in New Zealand hinted for years that she had a dark secret that she'd been keeping. I'd make guesses, of course. Most of my guesses were very dark, which says more about me than about her. When she was maybe twenty-eight (she turns thirty-one in December), she did share this, about the older lover who's haunted her life:
I can't stop fantasising about my uncle (for clarification--- he's my mothers cousin, but I shall refer to his as my uncle for convenience). He must be...62-ish now. He's tall and tan and solid. He owns a pub in the outback in Australia. I first met him when I was in my mid teens, he taught me how to blow smoke rings, we drank sambuca and we fucked. Now I can't stop thinking about the last time I saw him...it must have been 2008? Or 2009? It was at a family funeral. When I saw him after the funeral I went up to him and hugged him. Brushing my hands around his waist, I felt something like an electric shock. 'Hey there, beautiful' he whispered in my ear, then kissed my cheek. An hour or so later I noticed him watching me, and nodding his head towards the bathroom. I swallowed the rest of my gin & tonic and walked ahead of him. I was wearing black heels and a black skirt. After he shut the door, he ran his fingers up my thigh, lifted my skirt and kissed my bare cunt.
I need him again.
She expanded on that a few nights later:
it has been years. but there will never be anyone else. i met him when i was 17. not so young, i suppose. but give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life. cards on the table, right from the beginning. first cousin once removed is the technical term. and thirty years between us. our first night together i was drunk. sambuca flowed through my veins. but it was electric. i knew at the time it was different to anything i'd ever felt before. i didn't know that i'd never feel anything like it since. it was a cheap motel room. we fucked countless times that night, then the next day he flew back to australia. a month later he flew me to his pub in the outback. we had a whole month together. to date, that was the longest time we ever spent together. i started to understand that it was love. we'd pour drinks at his bar all night, then take a bottle upstairs with us. we would drink and talk until dawn. the sex was amazing. he went down on me for hours. i'd had men before...but not like this. i felt so powerful, so needed, and so loved.
we've been together all over the place. vancouver, tokyo, auckland, sydney, the outback, fiji, wellington. we steal long weekends. we fly each other wherever, whenever we have the chance. for a long time i wouldn't let him cum in my cunt. my mouth was fine, preferred. i got over that though. its been ten years now. and nobody touches me like he does. nobody looks at me like he does. he is the only man i want, and i can never have him.
“The only obsession everyone wants: ‘love.’ People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you’re whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You’re whole, and then you’re cracked open.”
and i have tried to not let it consume me. i slept with men his age. boys my own age. girls. there is only him. i've had long-term boyfriends, who thought nothing when i flew to fiji for a 'girls weekend' and spent four blissful days with his tongue in my cunt and his arms around my waist. when i flew to vancouver with friends he arranged to be there for a weekend too...i told them i was catching up with my uncle, and had his hand in my cunt in the lift up to his hotel room. another time we were together for four nights in auckland. we stayed at a house in devonport, and it was like this 'what we could have been' experience. we cooked for each other, and read aloud to each other. we played cards, and mixed each other drinks. we walked around naked. we bathed together. we came together all week. it was agony to catch the plane home after that.
he is my addiction. we're a chemical reaction.
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
some nights i stay up late, drinking straight bourbon and smoking. habits i learnt from him, of course. they aren't my only bad habits. on those same nights i might cut and purge. i didn't pick up those habits from him, but i'd say he inspired them. it would kill him to hear me say that. what we have together chokes me. it annihilates me. it is everything, yet it can never be anything. how did it end up like this? i was young and drunk, our first night together should have been just that, a drunken regret. not the start of an affair which would come to both doom and define me.
and a few weeks ago i got a text. i will see him soon.
this is my secret.
I read those two e-mails and sat back with a drink and tried to decide how to react to her story. I don't find the travel implausible. She's from a posh family, and she grew up taking travel for granted. I know her family's place in Wellington society; I know the firm where she works. I know her tastes in older men--- I'm one, after all. I had no way of knowing how true it all was, but it was all quite plausible. Accept it as true--- I decided that she wasn't making it all up after a few bourbons. What I felt was...well, jealousy of course. Obviously jealousy. She's haunted my thoughts for years, and I can only wish that I could evoke that kind of romantic obsession in her. I wish I could mean that much, for good or bad. So of course I felt jealous.
It says a great deal about me that I read "Sambuca" and let my mind go to the last time I'd had Sambuca. Years and years ago, in an Italian seafood restaurant in Vienna of all places. I thought about her description of Sambuca flowing like electricity through her veins. I tried to recall the girl I was with in Vienna and what the sex had been like for us that nightWhat. It says a great deal, too, that I was a bit disappointed about her clarification of who her older lover had been. "Uncle" is simply far hotter in this context than "first cousin once removed"--- a status I couldn't begin to define or diagram. If she had to be with him, he should've been her mother's biological brother. The vision of an incestuous affair is hotter than simply a years-long affair with a much older man--- even if the older man happened to be, well, me.
What I felt was a mix of jealousy, envy, and depression--- a toxic enough cocktail. Jealousy that I wasn't the older lover she could obsess over. Envy that she got to fly to distant cities and carry on an affair in elegant hotels and exotic settings. Depression that I wasn't likely to have that kind of amazingly literary obsessive romance in my life ever again. Jealousy, envy, depression--- I used to note that mixture as JED in my paper journals, and note that it never ended well, that it was always associated with self-destructive time in my life.
It's certain that the thing that makes her stories most painful for me to read is that I don't have stories of my own right now to match hers. Her past is full of stories, and this season I can't imagine that any of my own are as good as hers, or ever will be again.
I've spent my lifetime living through stories, living inside stories, aspiring to be part of stories. JED is the dangerous and corrosive feeling I get when it strikes me that my days of having worthwhile stories to tell may be over. I always see sex and romance as being about the stories one gets to inhabit, the stories one gets to trade with lovers, the stories that one uses in seductions.
I love the stories my NZ friend tells. But I do sit alone and recognise that I'm not likely ever to have stories worth telling a lover again.
I can't stop fantasising about my uncle (for clarification--- he's my mothers cousin, but I shall refer to his as my uncle for convenience). He must be...62-ish now. He's tall and tan and solid. He owns a pub in the outback in Australia. I first met him when I was in my mid teens, he taught me how to blow smoke rings, we drank sambuca and we fucked. Now I can't stop thinking about the last time I saw him...it must have been 2008? Or 2009? It was at a family funeral. When I saw him after the funeral I went up to him and hugged him. Brushing my hands around his waist, I felt something like an electric shock. 'Hey there, beautiful' he whispered in my ear, then kissed my cheek. An hour or so later I noticed him watching me, and nodding his head towards the bathroom. I swallowed the rest of my gin & tonic and walked ahead of him. I was wearing black heels and a black skirt. After he shut the door, he ran his fingers up my thigh, lifted my skirt and kissed my bare cunt.
I need him again.
She expanded on that a few nights later:
it has been years. but there will never be anyone else. i met him when i was 17. not so young, i suppose. but give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life. cards on the table, right from the beginning. first cousin once removed is the technical term. and thirty years between us. our first night together i was drunk. sambuca flowed through my veins. but it was electric. i knew at the time it was different to anything i'd ever felt before. i didn't know that i'd never feel anything like it since. it was a cheap motel room. we fucked countless times that night, then the next day he flew back to australia. a month later he flew me to his pub in the outback. we had a whole month together. to date, that was the longest time we ever spent together. i started to understand that it was love. we'd pour drinks at his bar all night, then take a bottle upstairs with us. we would drink and talk until dawn. the sex was amazing. he went down on me for hours. i'd had men before...but not like this. i felt so powerful, so needed, and so loved.
we've been together all over the place. vancouver, tokyo, auckland, sydney, the outback, fiji, wellington. we steal long weekends. we fly each other wherever, whenever we have the chance. for a long time i wouldn't let him cum in my cunt. my mouth was fine, preferred. i got over that though. its been ten years now. and nobody touches me like he does. nobody looks at me like he does. he is the only man i want, and i can never have him.
“The only obsession everyone wants: ‘love.’ People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you’re whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You’re whole, and then you’re cracked open.”
and i have tried to not let it consume me. i slept with men his age. boys my own age. girls. there is only him. i've had long-term boyfriends, who thought nothing when i flew to fiji for a 'girls weekend' and spent four blissful days with his tongue in my cunt and his arms around my waist. when i flew to vancouver with friends he arranged to be there for a weekend too...i told them i was catching up with my uncle, and had his hand in my cunt in the lift up to his hotel room. another time we were together for four nights in auckland. we stayed at a house in devonport, and it was like this 'what we could have been' experience. we cooked for each other, and read aloud to each other. we played cards, and mixed each other drinks. we walked around naked. we bathed together. we came together all week. it was agony to catch the plane home after that.
he is my addiction. we're a chemical reaction.
“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”
some nights i stay up late, drinking straight bourbon and smoking. habits i learnt from him, of course. they aren't my only bad habits. on those same nights i might cut and purge. i didn't pick up those habits from him, but i'd say he inspired them. it would kill him to hear me say that. what we have together chokes me. it annihilates me. it is everything, yet it can never be anything. how did it end up like this? i was young and drunk, our first night together should have been just that, a drunken regret. not the start of an affair which would come to both doom and define me.
and a few weeks ago i got a text. i will see him soon.
this is my secret.
I read those two e-mails and sat back with a drink and tried to decide how to react to her story. I don't find the travel implausible. She's from a posh family, and she grew up taking travel for granted. I know her family's place in Wellington society; I know the firm where she works. I know her tastes in older men--- I'm one, after all. I had no way of knowing how true it all was, but it was all quite plausible. Accept it as true--- I decided that she wasn't making it all up after a few bourbons. What I felt was...well, jealousy of course. Obviously jealousy. She's haunted my thoughts for years, and I can only wish that I could evoke that kind of romantic obsession in her. I wish I could mean that much, for good or bad. So of course I felt jealous.
It says a great deal about me that I read "Sambuca" and let my mind go to the last time I'd had Sambuca. Years and years ago, in an Italian seafood restaurant in Vienna of all places. I thought about her description of Sambuca flowing like electricity through her veins. I tried to recall the girl I was with in Vienna and what the sex had been like for us that nightWhat. It says a great deal, too, that I was a bit disappointed about her clarification of who her older lover had been. "Uncle" is simply far hotter in this context than "first cousin once removed"--- a status I couldn't begin to define or diagram. If she had to be with him, he should've been her mother's biological brother. The vision of an incestuous affair is hotter than simply a years-long affair with a much older man--- even if the older man happened to be, well, me.
What I felt was a mix of jealousy, envy, and depression--- a toxic enough cocktail. Jealousy that I wasn't the older lover she could obsess over. Envy that she got to fly to distant cities and carry on an affair in elegant hotels and exotic settings. Depression that I wasn't likely to have that kind of amazingly literary obsessive romance in my life ever again. Jealousy, envy, depression--- I used to note that mixture as JED in my paper journals, and note that it never ended well, that it was always associated with self-destructive time in my life.
It's certain that the thing that makes her stories most painful for me to read is that I don't have stories of my own right now to match hers. Her past is full of stories, and this season I can't imagine that any of my own are as good as hers, or ever will be again.
I've spent my lifetime living through stories, living inside stories, aspiring to be part of stories. JED is the dangerous and corrosive feeling I get when it strikes me that my days of having worthwhile stories to tell may be over. I always see sex and romance as being about the stories one gets to inhabit, the stories one gets to trade with lovers, the stories that one uses in seductions.
I love the stories my NZ friend tells. But I do sit alone and recognise that I'm not likely ever to have stories worth telling a lover again.
Monday, May 2, 2016
One Seven Eight: Stones
I remember being once upon a time at a huge state park somewhere in the Smoky Mountains. I forget why I was there--- a vacation with my parents, maybe ---and I recall hiking down through hills and thick woods. I remember that there was a stream, and that you had to cross it by going from rock to rock in the stream. It was easy enough to do. You just sprang from one rock to the next without a thought. But then, halfway over the stream, I stopped and looked around and then discovered that I'd lost my rhythm. I'd started to think about what I was doing, about how to make the jumps, about how much I didn't want to end up in knee-deep, chilly water. Once I did that, I just couldn't make the leaps--- however small, however simple ---any more.
The same is true of sex these days. I've become afraid that I've lost my ability to just act. I'm afraid that I've begun to overthink that needs to be done.
Some of that may be age, or fear of age. I'm at a place in my life where I'm worried that some things will just be beyond me---- more precisely, worried that I'll make that discovery at some moment that will leave me open to derision and humiliation. I seem to spend too much time worrying over whether the last time for doing one thing or another has already happened. Haruki Murakami wrote in "I.Q. 84" that everyone secretly longs for some version of the end of the world. I have to hope that's not true. Or at least hope that I haven't made the transition from abstract speculation to actual longing.
It's not all age, though. Some of it is overthinking, taking counsel of my fears. There is a Zen kind of moral here: the conscious mind becomes a hindrance to true understanding. I look at a lovely girl and know what I should do with her while we make love. I know the things I'd like to do, the things my history and body say to do, and then I find myself paralyzed. Too much thinking, too much analysis of what it all means, of what could go wrong, of why whatever it is unlikely to be as good in the flesh as it is in my thoughts and hopes, of why fleshly bodies are untrustworthy and aesthetically flawed. A Zen moral, yes. The conscious mind gets in between things and trips up all your hopes and desires.
Maybe it's only that all desire is suffering, but I think that it's more. It is the Zen thing, the overthinking thing. I can't let a kiss or a touch or a taste be satisfying on its own, and once I stop to think about it, then my fears reduce it to being no good at all. Needless to say, I also assign my own fears to whomever I'm with. I assume that she'll recoil in disgust at touches, tastes, sights.
I did once talk myself into being unable to board an aircraft for some years--- for almost a decade. Now I've talked myself into being afraid to touch or taste or caress or discuss any needs or hopes. Too much thinking. Too much taking counsel of my fears. Too much sense of all the things that are encoded into anything that involves the flesh.
The same is true of sex these days. I've become afraid that I've lost my ability to just act. I'm afraid that I've begun to overthink that needs to be done.
Some of that may be age, or fear of age. I'm at a place in my life where I'm worried that some things will just be beyond me---- more precisely, worried that I'll make that discovery at some moment that will leave me open to derision and humiliation. I seem to spend too much time worrying over whether the last time for doing one thing or another has already happened. Haruki Murakami wrote in "I.Q. 84" that everyone secretly longs for some version of the end of the world. I have to hope that's not true. Or at least hope that I haven't made the transition from abstract speculation to actual longing.
It's not all age, though. Some of it is overthinking, taking counsel of my fears. There is a Zen kind of moral here: the conscious mind becomes a hindrance to true understanding. I look at a lovely girl and know what I should do with her while we make love. I know the things I'd like to do, the things my history and body say to do, and then I find myself paralyzed. Too much thinking, too much analysis of what it all means, of what could go wrong, of why whatever it is unlikely to be as good in the flesh as it is in my thoughts and hopes, of why fleshly bodies are untrustworthy and aesthetically flawed. A Zen moral, yes. The conscious mind gets in between things and trips up all your hopes and desires.
Maybe it's only that all desire is suffering, but I think that it's more. It is the Zen thing, the overthinking thing. I can't let a kiss or a touch or a taste be satisfying on its own, and once I stop to think about it, then my fears reduce it to being no good at all. Needless to say, I also assign my own fears to whomever I'm with. I assume that she'll recoil in disgust at touches, tastes, sights.
I did once talk myself into being unable to board an aircraft for some years--- for almost a decade. Now I've talked myself into being afraid to touch or taste or caress or discuss any needs or hopes. Too much thinking. Too much taking counsel of my fears. Too much sense of all the things that are encoded into anything that involves the flesh.
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
One Six Three: Brown Leaves
There's a blogger at Wordpress who calls himself Romantic Dominant, and who calls his blog A Faded Romantic. I rather enjoy reading him, and I do follow him on social media. He's a fine writer, and I suspect that he and I are much of an age, although I'll add that I'm sure he's been far more successful in life than I've been. I enjoy reading his thoughts on age and loss and his valedictories to those who've been his friends and mentors down the years. Here on a night in a month of fallen leaves, I will recommend him to you.
November is a birthday month for me. I'm far past the stage in life where I could conceivably look forward to birthdays, mind you. November is a time for reflecting on losses and how faces and names recede into the mists. November is a time for walking down city streets at night and looking at empty shop windows and hoping that you won't see your own reflection, and that ghost girls won't appear in the glass and fade away again.
Novembers so late in one's life make you all-too-aware of loss and decay. A lovely young friend wrote me from somewhere in Great Britain the other night to tell me she'd dreamed of dancing with me on a hotel roof looking down on city lights. She wanted, she said, to wake up in my arms in beach house somewhere on the coast of Portugal. Lovely thoughts, and I do treasure her. But in November such things make me look in the mirror and realize that I've lost the ability--- or at least the will ---to do those things.
I no longer trust my body. I no longer have faith in it. I no longer think I can be touched, or allow myself to be touched or seen. I've never thought of myself as handsome or physically attractive, but I have thought I could make myself seem at least acceptable. Or that I could employ enough distraction to have my physical self go unnoticed. Tonight, here in what may be a bleak November, I can look in windows as I pass and think that I'll never feel safe again in any situation where flesh and touch are required, or where I have to believe that the fleshly me isn't open to derision.
Kissing ghost girls, or offering caresses: those things I'd do. But I can't allow my flesh to be seen, touched, tasted. I can't allow anyone close to unclothed flesh. I can't allow it; I can't risk it. Flesh, or at least the flesh I'm inside, would be repulsive and unclean.
Here in this November, so close to my birthday, I can't risk being touched or seen. Standing on city streets, looking into windows, all I can hope is that the ghost girls won't appear, that the creature in the glass will be able to hide away from his own flesh and all things fleshly.
November is a birthday month for me. I'm far past the stage in life where I could conceivably look forward to birthdays, mind you. November is a time for reflecting on losses and how faces and names recede into the mists. November is a time for walking down city streets at night and looking at empty shop windows and hoping that you won't see your own reflection, and that ghost girls won't appear in the glass and fade away again.
Novembers so late in one's life make you all-too-aware of loss and decay. A lovely young friend wrote me from somewhere in Great Britain the other night to tell me she'd dreamed of dancing with me on a hotel roof looking down on city lights. She wanted, she said, to wake up in my arms in beach house somewhere on the coast of Portugal. Lovely thoughts, and I do treasure her. But in November such things make me look in the mirror and realize that I've lost the ability--- or at least the will ---to do those things.
I no longer trust my body. I no longer have faith in it. I no longer think I can be touched, or allow myself to be touched or seen. I've never thought of myself as handsome or physically attractive, but I have thought I could make myself seem at least acceptable. Or that I could employ enough distraction to have my physical self go unnoticed. Tonight, here in what may be a bleak November, I can look in windows as I pass and think that I'll never feel safe again in any situation where flesh and touch are required, or where I have to believe that the fleshly me isn't open to derision.
Kissing ghost girls, or offering caresses: those things I'd do. But I can't allow my flesh to be seen, touched, tasted. I can't allow anyone close to unclothed flesh. I can't allow it; I can't risk it. Flesh, or at least the flesh I'm inside, would be repulsive and unclean.
Here in this November, so close to my birthday, I can't risk being touched or seen. Standing on city streets, looking into windows, all I can hope is that the ghost girls won't appear, that the creature in the glass will be able to hide away from his own flesh and all things fleshly.
Friday, January 2, 2015
One Two Eight: Reactions
Long ago, a girl told me that everyone wants to be found attractive, but only by people who are themselves attractive. If someone unattractive finds you attractive, she said, you feel like you've done something wrong.
I've thought about what she said over the years, and she's always had a point. Fame, Freud wrote, was "the love of many anonymous people". But fame (or even celebrity) is different from individual desire. And my friend was right. We want to be desired, but only by people we'd desire in return, or at least by people whose desire raises our own social status. There's always the thought that if someone unattractive, someone much less attractive than you, desires you, then it means that your own value is lessened. If they think they can have you, then it means that they can see flaws. They can see something that means you're not out of their league, and your own social status is lessened.
All of which raises the question of how to respond to desire, of how others' desire is supposed to make one feel. The gender warriors of course disapprove of desire altogether. Desire, they argue, is always an act of aggression, a demand. The gender warriors see desire as a claim on someone else's body and time. Desire is seen as something that always lessens or cheapens the desired, since it reduces them to being seen as merely sexual. They seem to think that the only response to desire is righteous anger.
I've never understand why being desired is considered reductive. We're each of us a whole complicated collection of things, but a sexual being is one of them. There's the whole question there of how we see ourselves--- what we are versus what we've done ---and the question of differentiating desire from admiration. Both involve having status ascribed from others, but which is...better? Which is more "true"? Does being desired as a sexual being, as a physical body, touch on something deeper or more 'authentic' than being desired as someone successful or stylish or intelligent?
I have to say that sometimes there is a feeling that being told that you're smart or fun or charming feels vaguely derogatory. There are times when one wants very much to be desired as a body, as a sexual creature. Desire speaks to something deeper and more personal than social graces or knowledge, and being desired as a body can mean something more personal, more intense, than being seen as bright or charming or good at social graces. I'm used to young companions telling me that what brought them to my bed was all the things I know, all the stories I can tell. I'm not used to being told that I'm simply wanted, or that I invoke any physical desire.
Well, wanting what you've never had, always believing the grass is greener over the hill. I'm used to those things.
The question remains, though. How do you respond to desire? How does desire make you feel? What does being desired tell you about yourself and your social status? If you're reading this, write and tell me. Tell me about desire and what it means to you to desire and be desired.
I've thought about what she said over the years, and she's always had a point. Fame, Freud wrote, was "the love of many anonymous people". But fame (or even celebrity) is different from individual desire. And my friend was right. We want to be desired, but only by people we'd desire in return, or at least by people whose desire raises our own social status. There's always the thought that if someone unattractive, someone much less attractive than you, desires you, then it means that your own value is lessened. If they think they can have you, then it means that they can see flaws. They can see something that means you're not out of their league, and your own social status is lessened.
All of which raises the question of how to respond to desire, of how others' desire is supposed to make one feel. The gender warriors of course disapprove of desire altogether. Desire, they argue, is always an act of aggression, a demand. The gender warriors see desire as a claim on someone else's body and time. Desire is seen as something that always lessens or cheapens the desired, since it reduces them to being seen as merely sexual. They seem to think that the only response to desire is righteous anger.
I've never understand why being desired is considered reductive. We're each of us a whole complicated collection of things, but a sexual being is one of them. There's the whole question there of how we see ourselves--- what we are versus what we've done ---and the question of differentiating desire from admiration. Both involve having status ascribed from others, but which is...better? Which is more "true"? Does being desired as a sexual being, as a physical body, touch on something deeper or more 'authentic' than being desired as someone successful or stylish or intelligent?
I have to say that sometimes there is a feeling that being told that you're smart or fun or charming feels vaguely derogatory. There are times when one wants very much to be desired as a body, as a sexual creature. Desire speaks to something deeper and more personal than social graces or knowledge, and being desired as a body can mean something more personal, more intense, than being seen as bright or charming or good at social graces. I'm used to young companions telling me that what brought them to my bed was all the things I know, all the stories I can tell. I'm not used to being told that I'm simply wanted, or that I invoke any physical desire.
Well, wanting what you've never had, always believing the grass is greener over the hill. I'm used to those things.
The question remains, though. How do you respond to desire? How does desire make you feel? What does being desired tell you about yourself and your social status? If you're reading this, write and tell me. Tell me about desire and what it means to you to desire and be desired.
Friday, November 28, 2014
One Two Five: Learning Curve
There's a blog called A Faded Romantic at Wordpress that I find myself reading on autumn nights. The author there introduces himself this way:
About and Explanation
Sunday, July 20, 2014
One Zero Eight: Eidolon
It's an awkward thing to be male and receive physical compliments. Not a problem I have so very often, I should say. I've never been admired for any looks or physical graces. I can recall girls saying that I have good eyes, but I think that's been the extent of it. Nonetheless, there is a whole complicated set of things about physical compliments.
It's awkward enough these days to offer up physical compliments to girls, since there's a strain of thought out there that holds that any physical compliment, any sexualized compliment, necessarily diminishes the recipient--- that complimenting any girl on her physical beauty is a way of implying that she has no value outside of her body and looks.
It's more awkward, though, to be male and receive compliments. If you're male, you're not socialized to receive compliments about your looks or body. If you're male, you're not trained up to think of your body as something that can be desired for its own sake. You're trained to be useful, to think that your value lies in being useful--- whether that means skilled with tools or financially successful. Even in the gay world, where there is a sense that male beauty exists, it's still an awkward thing, I understand, to tell someone he's beautiful. If you've been socialized to be male, it's disconcerting to receive that kind of compliment--- gay or straight.
Oh, be very clear. I don't get compliments from girls about my looks or body. My bookshelves draw compliments, and girls have sighed over my book collection the way I sigh over a girl's long, slender legs. In some abstract way, I"d love to get compliments, to be told I was handsome or had a body that provoked thoughts of sex and made girls soak through their skinny jeans. But that's something I can feel only in a very abstract, distanced way. I'm clear enough about my own looks and age to know that I'm not likely to ever have a girl offer up compliments about my body. But I'd like to receive a few; I'd like to believe that a lovely girl could look at me and feel desire. That's not likely ever to happen, and it is depressing enough.
Nonetheless, I'd have no idea what to think if a lovely girl did offer me that kind of compliment. In all honesty, it would ruin any romance. I wouldn't believe her, and I'd assume that there was some kind of nefarious motive behind her words. I'd instantly assume I was being set up for some kind of scam, some kind of ploy.
I know that male beauty exists in some abstract way, but I can't imagine what that means in any concrete form. It means nothing to me in terms of anything I'd look at, and I know the concept would never apply to me. I can't imagine how a girl can find a male body attractive even though at the same time I berate myself for not being something that inspires sexual desire. I'm not sure what I'd want a girl to say about my body, or what I'd ever be prepared to believe.
I've spent a large part of my life entranced by female beauty--- or at least by stylized, formalized female beauty. I've paid girls compliments about legs and eyes, about hipbones and cheekbones, about bare backs and shoulders. I can't believe that a girl will ever pay me a compliment, and I wouldn't know how to accept one if it came. Wanting something I can't believe I can ever have, wanting something I'd always think was a lie and a snare. I suppose that does say a great deal about my life.
It's awkward enough these days to offer up physical compliments to girls, since there's a strain of thought out there that holds that any physical compliment, any sexualized compliment, necessarily diminishes the recipient--- that complimenting any girl on her physical beauty is a way of implying that she has no value outside of her body and looks.
It's more awkward, though, to be male and receive compliments. If you're male, you're not socialized to receive compliments about your looks or body. If you're male, you're not trained up to think of your body as something that can be desired for its own sake. You're trained to be useful, to think that your value lies in being useful--- whether that means skilled with tools or financially successful. Even in the gay world, where there is a sense that male beauty exists, it's still an awkward thing, I understand, to tell someone he's beautiful. If you've been socialized to be male, it's disconcerting to receive that kind of compliment--- gay or straight.
Oh, be very clear. I don't get compliments from girls about my looks or body. My bookshelves draw compliments, and girls have sighed over my book collection the way I sigh over a girl's long, slender legs. In some abstract way, I"d love to get compliments, to be told I was handsome or had a body that provoked thoughts of sex and made girls soak through their skinny jeans. But that's something I can feel only in a very abstract, distanced way. I'm clear enough about my own looks and age to know that I'm not likely to ever have a girl offer up compliments about my body. But I'd like to receive a few; I'd like to believe that a lovely girl could look at me and feel desire. That's not likely ever to happen, and it is depressing enough.
Nonetheless, I'd have no idea what to think if a lovely girl did offer me that kind of compliment. In all honesty, it would ruin any romance. I wouldn't believe her, and I'd assume that there was some kind of nefarious motive behind her words. I'd instantly assume I was being set up for some kind of scam, some kind of ploy.
I know that male beauty exists in some abstract way, but I can't imagine what that means in any concrete form. It means nothing to me in terms of anything I'd look at, and I know the concept would never apply to me. I can't imagine how a girl can find a male body attractive even though at the same time I berate myself for not being something that inspires sexual desire. I'm not sure what I'd want a girl to say about my body, or what I'd ever be prepared to believe.
I've spent a large part of my life entranced by female beauty--- or at least by stylized, formalized female beauty. I've paid girls compliments about legs and eyes, about hipbones and cheekbones, about bare backs and shoulders. I can't believe that a girl will ever pay me a compliment, and I wouldn't know how to accept one if it came. Wanting something I can't believe I can ever have, wanting something I'd always think was a lie and a snare. I suppose that does say a great deal about my life.
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Ninety-Four: Blue Pill, Black Draught
I'm a gentleman of a certain age. There's no denying that, and I've learned not to try. Nonetheless, certain birthdays do serve as markers, and there are certain mileposts that are reminders of mortality. My next birthday will be one of those, and I'll admit to a certain sense of unease. I brought the issue up with two different young ladies of my acquaintance this week--- both in England, oddly enough ---and in both conversations I found myself afraid to talk about the specific number. They've both known me for a while--- a dozen or so years in one case, something like three years in the other ---and they both know the number I'm worried about. Yet I am afraid to say it aloud, even with girls who know my biography and have been okay with me. This is a sad thing, though exactly in line with my personality. If I say it aloud, it'll have power over me, power to harm. Magical thinking at its finest, I think.
My fears do come down to a belief that the number is magic dark enough to mark the end of my ability to interest lovely Young Companions, magic that will bar me from any ability to be with a companion. I have all the usual male fears--- hair falling out, losing the ability to achieve an erection. Greying hair I can deal with--- I know how to do the "distinguished" thing. There's always dye, if it comes to that. Bald spots...I don't know. If that happens, I'll feel instantly hideous, though girls tell me that in an era where shaven heads aren't uncommon, a bald spot wouldn't be a major issue. Whether or not I believe them, they've at least made the effort to reassure me. I suppose it's the other thing that frightens me. Systems failure is a something that does leave me terrified for the future. Winter is coming, after all.
I talked with one of my friends in London about her own experiences. Her latest lover--- mid-40s, moneyed, an academic with transatlantic connections, athletic ---hadn't been able to get it up all week, and she was baffled. She tells me she's been with men into their 70s, and this has never happened to her, ever. She's 32 now, so that's...in eighteen years of sexual adventures, no man has ever failed to be hard with her. The current lover did everything else with her, but couldn't do basic PIV sex. She was...concerned. Or at least concerned that something physical (blood pressure, undiagnosed diabetes, depression) might be wrong. She has, she says, a cache of generic, probably illegal, Indian black-market Viagra and wonders if she should give him a few.
I told her about Caverject. Caverject is what male porn stars use. It's...injectable. Which would be...very, very painful, I'd think. But as soon as I said that, I thought about aging seducers in films or novels carrying three or four Caverject syrettes in a chic, stainless-steel Art Deco cigarette case. There it would be in the inside jacket pocket of your suit jacket, and you'd take one out and just...use it. It's probably a very sad thing that I'm far more intrigued by the idea of having the elegant case than I am by whether Caverject works as advertised.
Oh--- if you didn't have syrettes, the Caverject comes more often in a case with two vials and a couple of disposable syringes. That would look and feel just a bit too much like shooting heroin for me. Using it like that just seems...like something that would look too wrong. The syrettes would be hideously painful, but the more ordinary injection system has all the wrong visual symbolism.
Anyway--- I've never used Viagra or its relatives, and so far I haven't needed it. Systems failure is as yet only a shadow out there on the horizon. But...having talked to my friend, I'm now afraid that it'll happen any time. Yes, I'm probably hypochondriac--- talking myself into being so afraid of this that it will happen. This is my usual "taking counsel of my fears" procedure. I'm even afraid to say the word Viagra aloud. Somehow the power of dark magic doesn't apply if you say Sildenafil instead. The same applies to saying Tadalafil rather than Cialis. The generic names aren't as frightening.
I can say "the Blue Pill" and be okay with that, by the way. There's no dark magic there, no hovering Delators. I can even laugh about the usage. Patrick O'Brian's novels, of course. Dr. Maturin prescribes "blue pill and black draught" to seamen. The blue pill he uses is a mercury-based remedy for "the venereals", but I'll overlook that part. Saying "the Blue Pill" brings up HMS Surprise and its adventures, and that's quite comforting.
My other, younger, friend in London tells me that she's been with various older men who needed it and with a fair number of 20 or 30-somethings who used the Blue Pill recreationally, and that it never made any difference to her. Some girls need extra lube, she writes, and some don't. Using a pill is no different from that. I'd like to have that attitude--- that it's only a tool for solving a problem, not a judgment about personal value. Of course, I regard everything in my life and world as a (usually negative) judgment about my personal value. My younger friend takes a very pragmatic view of dealing with male fears and male bodies. I have some experience in these matters, she said about dealing with much older lovers. There are problems, she says, and if there's a simple tool for solving them, you use it. The Blue Pill, she told me, is no different than lube for girls--- or reading glasses, for that matter. I do need her attitude. She's a very lovely, bright girl and of an age to be a perfect Young Companion. If she says that it's not shameful for men to need the Blue Pill and that she would never look at a man with contempt for needing it, I should listen to her. I'm very much aware of that.
I'm a gentleman of a certain age and a certain genteel poverty, and there's some doubt that I could ever afford Viagra, even something generic and black-market smuggled in from Mexico or India. I almost certainly couldn't afford that elegant, custom-crafted silver cigarette case for holding Caverject syrettes. It says so much about me that I'm more concerned about not having the case than I would be about not having a cache of Blue Pills.
I'll worried that I'll talk myself into being scared. I once talked myself into being afraid to fly, and that lasted for, well, much longer than I care to admit. Nothing has happened yet, and nothing may happen at all. If there is a problem, then solve it with the tools available. What matters is the result, after all. There's a lovely young companion that you don't want to fail, and you want to stave off decay and mortality as long as you can.
Nonetheless--- I will offer this up to you, if you're reading. What is the proper attitude toward the Blue Pill and its relatives? Is it just a tool, or does needing it serve as a judgment and condemnation, a statement about personal value? Is it something that you should be ashamed of using...or needing? What are your thoughts?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)