Three Seven Two: Invitations

 Let's think for a minute. Let's go back to the FMTY girls. We're almost a month into the new year, and at Twitter the FMTY girls are announcing their spring touring schedules. 

I live in an older city, one that lives on its reputation for food and music and a certain louche attitude. It has its charms, and it has a fascinating history, but it's usually off the FMTY tour circuit. In some ways I suppose that's best. 

I have an idea about the fee schedules for the FMTY girls, and I have an idea about what the incidental expenses would be-- the restaurant, the wines, and the tip. But purposes of this essay, let's assume that I could pay those amounts with the snap of a finger. Let's assume that tonight I'm sitting at a good restaurant with an FMTY girl who meets all my criteria of desire. Let's go a bit farther and assume I've passed her screening procedures and that I've been dressed and groomed to be socially presentable. 

So, here we are. Dinner has been ordered, wine has been poured. I was brought up to be polite in a quietly old-school way, and her professional skills include making her clients feel at ease. So she and I are making conversation. And then...what happens?

This could become an issue-- which of us moves the conversation into the realm of seduction? Which of us gently nudges the evening toward a bedroom? I have no idea how that would work. I've read FMTY girls' Twitter posts where they've noted that it's irritating and annoying to have a client openly press for leaving the restaurant for the hotel room. The girl has been working hard to establish herself as a Companion, as someone who can create an elegant scene-- a client just saying something like, "Well, it's half past nine, let's get naked" is simply brushing off her professional skills.

But how does this work? I've had dinners with young ladies who've been seductive. I've had fingertips traced over the back of my hand while she talked. I've had a slender bare foot traced along my leg under the table. I mean, that's been a while, but it has happened. Somehow I wouldn't expect the FMTY girl to nod towards the street door and say, "Let's see your hotel room" (let alone "Come see the rooftop pool where I'm staying"). Yes, there's the issue of the ticking clock. There's always that. My fee covers her presence at dinner and in the bedroom, and the evening's clock is ticking. But reminding her of that is crass and vulgar. It sounds...entitled. This is the third decade of the new century, and entitled is just about the worst thing a person of the male persuasion can be seen as being. 

I have no idea how I'd raise the issue of going to bed. We'd both of us know that a hotel bed is supposed to be the climax of the evening. She may even have been provided with a briefing document about my interests and tastes. But I have no idea how to get from table to bed. 

Last Saturday I had my hair cut. My cutter has known me since we were both young. We even dated briefly back in the depths of the Long Ago. I trust her skills and professional knowledge absolutely. When I go to her home studio to have my hair cut, we have coffee or tea and talk books and films, then she moves me along to the various stops in the process-- shampoo, cut, a brief demonstration of her future plans for my hair style and of what I need to do to maintain the style. I make conversation; I have input into the music she has playing (last Saturday: Morcheeba). But she moves me along very efficiently, and with practiced ease. I have to admire that.

I wouldn't know what to do on an evening with an FMTY girl. I'd like to put myself completely in her hands and rely on her to guide me through what would be a learning experience. Being with an FMTY girl would be something I'd do for the experience, for the taste of a better world. It would be something that I'd do for the chance to be guided through the mazes of class and style around sex, decor, restaurants, and social presentation. I'd be terrified of showing myself to be incapable of being part of that world. I wouldn't want to be seen as failing at a sentimental education. A beautiful, skilled demimondaine is not someone I'd want to disappoint, and certainly not someone whose mockery I'd want to risk.

Right now I'm thinking of the last girl whom I walked from my sitting room into my bedroom. That wasn't hard. We'd met one summer Saturday. She'd just graduated university, and we ordered lots of classic cocktails and laughed and flirted. She came back to my flat, went out to the courtyard swimming pool with me, and drank with me in my kitchen. At some point we looked at one another and I nodded to my bedroom. It all felt effortless. She was in a mood to experiment with things, and as her first Older Gentleman I counted as that. And it was a Saturday late afternoon-- I think that mattered, too. Again-- it all felt effortless and fluid. We laughed about that, about one thing flowed into another that afternoon. But it wouldn't be like that with an FMTY girl.

Yes-- the FMTY girl would get a briefing document about my interests. And the document would note that while I always encourage young ladies to avoid underwear and to always sleep naked, she would never see me naked. That would break the spell of the evening. Whatever skills she might have, however open about bodies she might be-- she'd never see me naked. That would break the spell. Her body would be there to be admired, caressed, valued. But I'd never want her to have to tolerate my body. I'd never want her to have to grit her teeth on the walk from restaurant to bedroom.

I'd never know what to say to an FMTY girl. I'd want the evening to feel seductive, to be about mannered seduction. I'd want the sex to be stylized and its transitions to feel fluid. I'd be terrified to end up sitting there staring at my plate or at the wine bottle, frozen with fear of doing this wrong, of getting it wrong. I'd be afraid of disappointing a skilled demimondaine. I'd be terrified of not being good enough to understand the nuances of her skills. I'd be terrified of looking like a rube or a yokel. I'd be ashamed of wasting the FMTY's evening. 

Whenever I've engaged the services of a professional-- a tax accountant, a successions lawyer, a physician --I've always felt able to explain very directly what I wanted, and I've felt entitled to ask questions. But I couldn't do that with an FMTY girl. I'd feel far too judged. 

Now it's possible that I could carry on a conversation. I have stories to tell; I was trained to be a decent dinner party guest. I might even be able to discuss topics that wouldn't bore her. But I couldn't negotiate the shift from dinner to bedroom. I wouldn't even know how to bring up the topic. 

Any of you out there over the aether-- whether or not you know anything about the FMTY demimonde --if you're reading this, what do you think? If we assume that I had the money and the decent attire and that I could  pass an FMTY girl's screening protocols... If we assume those things, then-- what should I do. However do I end up able to transition back to the hotel? How would I avoid sitting there staring at an empty plate in a conversational void? How would I avoid the girl's contempt as the clock ticks down?

Three Five Four: Sundress

There's a phrase I've been hearing this summer: "getting railed in a sundress". It's something girls on social media say-- a small summertime fantasy of sex in a stylish little sundress. 

Here in this particular summer, that may not be something to aspire to. This is one of those heat-dome summers that makes you realize that Wm. Gibson is right about the Jackpot arriving. In half the country it's too hot to go outside, let alone have sex outdoors. 

Still, I like the idea of railing a girl in a sundress. There are some interesting markers encoded in the phrase. Sundresses go with a kind of J. Peterman World or an L.L. Bean catalog world-- picnic hampers, bottles of wine, pastel skies, a kind of idyllic summer afternoon. Sundresses themselves, now? They're designed to call up dreamy summer days, to make a lovely girl look like she's floating along, light as air. 

That perfect sundress is light, airy, evocative of leisure and a kind of innocence that's so deeply erotic. If the fabric is gauzy, it calls up lots of David Hamilton photographs from the late 1970s. There are often straw hats and strappy sandals involved. And of course any lovely girl knows that sundresses are worn next to the skin. As well they should be.

My friend in New Zealand wrote me once about being in the perfect sundress at some sort of cricket championship in Wellington. She wrote about walking barefoot back to her Older Admirer's Range Rover, sandals in her hand, a bit tipsy on Martinborough sauvignon blanc, feeling the summer air under her dress on waxed, bare skin, and knowing that she'd be having sex very soon on a picnic blanket somewhere in the hills above Wellington. Blue and white, the dress was, and just below her knees. And Jill never, never wore anything under a dress like that. A perfect look for being a posh Kiwi girl getting railed after a cricket match. I did sigh over her letter. I did want to be the one sliding that sundress up over her hips and feeling her legs-- long, slender, dark-tanned --over my shoulders. 

The woman I met at Peychaud's, the phone sex woman, told me that she shared fantasies like that. "Getting railed in a sundress" meant not only the idea of summertime sex and posh picnic hampers, it meant getting to buy and wear dreamy dresses as well. I do like that-- sex and romance in a J. Peterman kind of world.

I have to email the woman from Peychaud's. She did give me her email address and her personal cell phone number. She was lovely, fun, and able to be a very good interlocutrix. I have no objection to arranging telephone appointments with her. She'd be worth the fee. And she likes dreams of J. Peterman World and Breton beaches as much as I do.

Getting railed in a sundress... That's an image I do fancy. It calls up all the sorts of settings I like with beautiful young companions, and it involves fashion that I like to see on lovely girls. J. Peterman World is always about a certain class image, too: let's not forget that. 

Wm. Gibson's Jackpot may spoil summers, but we do still have the dream of cool breezes, pastel blue skies, and a view of the ocean just off the bluffs. And we have the dream of lovely girls naked under feather-light fabric, smiling at the thought of the afternoon.

 

Two Seven Three: Hearts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two Seven Zero: Threads 5

A few more adventures from my lovely blonde friend down in the Land of the Long White Cloud--- tales from her twenties in Wellington...

In March 2011 she wrote me about this. She'd have been twenty-five that spring--- or NZ autumn ---and back at university, getting an accounting degree after her English Lit degree:

i had a delicious older man's cock in my mouth this morning. i love starting the day with a mouthful of cum. i missed my first class, i was having so much fun...

She did tell me more about him. His name, she said, was Shane---


...he's around 45. he's tall and strong. he has short dark hair and a cute, stubbly face. he owns a sand blasting and spray painting business and is a client. i'm not sure if its common practice in the US, but here young lawyers and accountants have to spend quite a bit of time out on secondment, getting to know the way their clients businesses work etc. so, thats how we met a few years ago. we ended up at the same function at the marina a few nights ago and one thing led to another.

 the first time, he bent me over the bonnet of his car and fucked me from behind. it was so hot. he came in my mouth then carried me inside. he lives by the beach. his bedroom had big windows overlooking the sea. he had a beautful cock, big and thick and hard. it felt so good in my mouth and hands. he licked my cunt and i came so hard. he fucked my ass and cunt and told me i was beautiful.

i must have fallen asleep around 3, and had a terrible nightmare, because i woke up screaming and shaking. he pulled me towards him and whispered 'its ok, its ok' over and over in my ear. he ran his finger through my hair and spooned me for the rest of the night.


in the morning he was so gentle and lovely. i sucked his cock and he came in my mouth again. he made us both smoothies then fucked me in the shower and drove me to class. i'm meeting him for a drink after work tonight. he's gorgeous and funny and i want him.  

Was I jealous? Oh, certainly. He had a house on the beach in a hip suburb called Seatoun, and she more-or-less lived there during the affair. A few months only, but ones she still wrote about years later. 

There were always other older men in her life. In November 2013, she wrote to say---

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

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

Drinking bourbon feels like coming home.


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

"Drinking bourbon feels like coming home..."  That's a brilliant line, and one that I'll be passing on to lovely friends. It's one I want my friend Ash in Bo'ness and London Town to use.

A couple of nights later she wrote me to say that---

The lawyer asked me out for dinner Friday night! I am tempted to say yes, as he made me come about 5 times and had a very impressive collection of books.

I wonder if she kept up her identity as Alex the Florist when she was with him---  blonde Alex, simple and easily bedded, with no complications of intellect. That he gave her five orgasms isn't the buried lede here, of course. What matters is that she created Alex the Florist, a blonde girl I was wild to meet. I very much wanted to get to know young Alex, to see how well she brought the character to life. And of course I wanted to sample Alex's oral sex skills in some dark corner of a Wellington bar (the Bangalore Polo Club was her favourite in those days)--- in a dark corner, or in the alleyway behind the bar, where she notoriously would take handsome bouncers on midweek nights...

Two Six Seven: Numb

I saw ads at social media today about a product called Roman Swipes. I first thought the wipes were male body-cleansing wipes, much like the Every Man Jack "speed shower" cleansing wipes I've become obsessive about storing--- wipes designed to make sure that a potential Young Companion isn't sickened by the taste or scent of male flesh and male...parts.

I'll note that I have a supply of Every Man Jack and Cetaphil wipes on hand just...in case.  You did note that I've become horrified and disgusted by my own flesh, didn't you? You know the drill: shower twice a day under water as hot as I can bear, use a body wash probably originally designed for biohazard labs, and rough washcloths that will abrade away a couple of layers of skin. I'm not taking any chances.

Roman Swipes, though, aren't body cleansers. As best I can tell from the ad copy, they're  wipes saturated with a "4% Benzocaine solution" that's supposed to increase time-to-male-orgasm by 340% over several months.  The idea of course is that the Benzocaine is a numbing agent and that you apply it to...sensitive areas to reduce overstimulation-- i.e., it numbs your penis to prevent what used to be called ejaculatio praecox. It doesn't seem like you can just go into a drugstore or to Amazon and buy a pack. From what I could tell by a quick glance at their website, you sign up for a monthly or quarterly program.  Now I have nothing to say about the product or its efficacy. I was just perplexed by the idea of the product.

Ejaculatio praecox has never been my problem. Quite the contrary. I don't need the product for its intended use. When I first glanced at the advert, I hoped it was for another body cleanser. I'm always in the market for anything that can assuage body fear for a little while.

Reading the ad copy, though, it began to occur to me that I am reaching a place in life where Encounters might require pharmaceutical assistance. That hasn't happened yet, though I know it will...which itself is a fear that keeps me paralyzed and unwilling to try.

I used to tell myself that if it ever came to that, to systems failure, that I wouldn't be too proud to use the Blue Pill. My friend Katie in the Home Counties told me that she'd been with men who were a wide range of ages, and that she had no problem with the Blue Pill. She'd known boys in their twenties who used it "recreationally" and men in their late sixties who did need it to perform.  She told me that the Blue Pill existed to solve a problem, that it was nothing to be ashamed of. Sometimes, she said, she had a problem with dryness, and she'd just use a bit of "personal lubricant". Same thing, she told me--- there's a problem, and you use a tool to fix it. None of it is a judgment about your value as a person or a lover. 

When she and I talked about that, I completely agreed with her. I told myself that if ever the time came, I'd look for a simple and efficient way to fix the problem. Just a pill, I told myself. And I had confidence in my other skills. I told myself that I wasn't a one-trick pony. I knew other ways to offer pleasure to  a Young Companion, and I knew that if the moment came, I'd get through it.

None of that is likely to be true, of course. Over the last year, I've been edging closer to fear that any systems failure would in fact be a judgment on my value as a person. A year ago, I'd have brushed off any fears.  That's not the case tonight. I'm paralyzed by fear of failure, and in the best tradition of...much of my life...I'm unwilling to risk being seen to fail.  Worse, I'm unwilling to be seen at all. I'm increasingly unwilling to be touched. Tonight, even if the opportunity presented itself, I'd be unwilling to be a body with a Young Companion. I'd take it for granted that my flesh--- look, texture, taste, scent ---would disgust any girl who'd be in my presence,

So...I don't need the Roman Swipes. The Blue Pill would be pointless. I have a store of Every Man Jack wipes and I spend my time standing under scalding water and sanding away at my skin.  If I could remove any trace of texture, scent, and taste, I would.  The next stage is...what? Changing my clothes down to the skin two or three times a day? I don't think the Blue Pill can do anything about my growing inability to venture out into anything social.

Two Four Five: Sounds

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

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

Divine
Divine
Dionysia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two Four Three: Azure

I found this story in my archives. A friend from the mid-Noughts, someone who's now a successful professional in London Town, told me this story more than a dozen years ago. Worth saving, I think:

Nice 2005

I was inter-railing about Europe alone. You have to be able to travel alone before you can properly travel with anyone else. It was the summer before my A levels. I spent a day sunbathing on the beach, topless as was the custom. My breasts were milky white in comparison to the golden tan that a week in Paris had given to my limbs. 

After a while looking out to sea I noticed a man swimming who had been watching me for some time. He was blond and tanned in that European kind of way and he was 35...38 maybe. I wandered down into the water, plunging in quickly so my tits were covered in some show of false modesty but they popped up out of the water as I swam. I smiled over at him, a few metres away now.

"Anglaise?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"No no no, en francais s'il vous plait."

"No, I can't... I can, I don't want to."

"Okay."

There was instant chemistry. The kind that makes the air feel electric, you need to be grounded, you need to touch something. He asked me if I was on holiday. I affirmed and asked the same. No, he was working in the city, this was his lunch break. There was a platform in the sea a little way out where young teenagers were diving into the ocean. "Come out there and swim with me?" I asked. Strangely, he followed.

I climbed up onto the platform and he behind me. He mocked at pushing me in and when I sat on the edge he straddled my waist from behind, his legs spread around me. When I leant back I could feel his organ pushing into my back. He pushed and I laughed and he shoved and into the sea I toppled. I came up laughing but pulled him in by the legs.

He caught me in the water. "Two options..." He eyed me. "Kiss or drown."

I leant forward and kissed him then. A gentle shy kiss. He held onto the platform with one hand and pulled me up with the other, kissing me harder. Before I knew it his fingers were inside my bikini bottoms, pushing and probing. He dipped a finger into my cunt before finding my clit and rubbing me hard. My stomach was flipping and he laughed. "Come over there to those rocks, there are less people."

We swam over to a little enclave in the rocks. There were people behind us on the beach and far out to sea, but they couldn't see over the rocky ridge which surrounded us. "Your sex. Show me." It was a demand, not a question. He reached forward and pulled my bikini to one side, spreading my knees with a tap on the thigh and opening my cunt lips wide. He exposed his cock and I leaned forward and touched it. He pushed me back and rubbed my clit, not gently but harshly and roughly. In seconds I was cumming to his hand. He reached for my hand and put it on his cock. I inexpertly touched him as he made me sit with my legs spread for him looking at my dripping sex. Within a minute or two he gasped and said "Look!" as cum spurted from his cock. He kissed me then. "I must go back to work. Enjoy the beach."

I nodded, feeling nothing but post-orgasmic calm. He walked over the rocks and I hopped into the sea and swam back to where I had been sunbathing, lying on my front. A few minutes later a tap came on my shoulder. "Don't get burnt!" he said mockingly and strolled off, laughing kindly.

And that was it. I did not even know his name. 

Tell me what you really think.

Of course I wish she'd done more with him--- on those rocks, out off the platform. I wish she'd taken him into her mouth or ridden him on the platform. Nonetheless, the story is worth saving.

2005 is almost fifteen years ago now. A whole political and social world away from the grim, bleak years of the later twenty-teens. My friend should be in her early-mid thirties now. She's a successful professional in London Town these days, working at the edge of law and corporate finance with start-ups, spending half her time flying off to Singapore and Shanghai. I have no idea what she thinks of her 2005 self now.

I'm thinking, too, the A levels in 2005 would've made her...eighteen? I can never keep track of British school ages. Oh, she did well enough at her A levels to get into Cambridge, into one of the smaller, newer colleges.  But...eighteen? That her story is about a young girl inter-railing to experience Life and Sunlight makes it all the more alluring. Though I do wonder about coming-of-age stories these days. Are we still permitted to like them, to find them titillating? Looking back fifteen years, is my friend's story hot and alluring or is it a scary #MeToo moment? That's something that I think about these days, even while I'm thinking about leggy English girls and sunlight and open water.

Two Two Nine: Fingertips

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two Two Zero: Forklift

Long ago--- back in the lost springtime of 2007 ---a lovely friend wrote me an email about her rantan week in Wellington, about a week where she'd partied hard and done things she'd never done before. One of her more intriguing notes was that she remembered being with a Maori forklift operator--- her first Maori adventure, and one that gave her a decided taste for Maori one-night stands ---and riding his face while taking long swigs from a bottle of Maker's. I've been asking her for details ever since.

After all these years, she finally wrote me with the details. I'm definitely keeping this for my records. She does tell good tales of her Adventures. And as I've said these last sixteen years, Details Matter:

I met him at a dive bar. I can't remember exactly how old I was, but very early 20s I'd say. Maybe 19? His name was Tane (tar-nay). A friend was working at the bar, and she told me she liked the look of him. I remember her being pissed off at me later when she found out I fucked him. I actually can't even remember her name now. She was Australian. I went to her flat a few times to drink and smoke weed. I remember the night I first met her she was talking to my friend Fergy about how fast she used batteries in her vibrator. I was out that night with Stella and Libby and a group of their friends from the bookshop they all worked at.

Tane had just moved to Wellington from somewhere up north. He was working at a factory, operating a forklift all day. He was cute and very polite. The type of Maori boy from up north that was raised by his grandmother. Early 30s. He was solid and strong looking. He was at the pub alone. I started talking to him. After the pub closed we all went back to my house - the bookshop guys and girls, plus Tane. We had a few more drinks, the others left, he stayed. I was happy drunk, single, and he was hot. We fucked in my bed.

I don't know that I'd ever really tried face-sitting before. I remember being a bit self conscious at first. It's an intimate position, especially with a stranger. But he wanted it and was so into it that I just relaxed into it and enjoyed myself. He was so focused on making me cum. He was a good fuck, and he had a nice cock. But what I remember most was his tongue on my clit and in my cunt. I don't remember if I sucked his cock or not. He stayed the night, and I rode his face in the morning. I remember how much more confidence I had in the morning, from tentatively sitting above his face the night before, to moving and grinding, my hands on the headboard and his hands on my ass.

He texted me the next day, and a few times after that wanting to hang out. We never did. I saw him again about a year later, at the same pub. He gave me a kiss and a flower that I tucked behind my ear.

I do love keeping the stories of her Adventures and Encounters from her posh party girl Past. She's been known to tell me the stories and laugh and say that knowing I was trained as a historian and a lawyer makes it so obvious that I'd be asking for lots of stories, and that she loves being part of the histories I'm keeping.

One Seven Three: Seasonal

Saturday morning downtown by the river, at a coffeeshop that bills itself as a "European-style patisserie", I was watching the river traffic and reading.  One of those regional mornings where everything seems slow and dreamlike. A young couple came in--- early twenties, wearing some kind of conference ID tags from one of the new hotels along the riverfront ---and sat at the next table over. I could read their name tags--- he was Logan, she was Shelby. She was lovely--- tallish, slender, in black leggings and an oversized grey t-shirt with 3/4-sleeves. Light brown hair to just past her shoulders, dark nail polish. The boy was, well...perfectly attired and coiffed to be in a ska band c. 1982. If that sounds dismissive, I suppose it is. I have very little time for other, younger males. I do regard them as little more than moving objects to walk around on sidewalks. I directed my attention to Shelby, and I was busy speculating on her legs (long, slender, taut) and eyes (dark, lively) when a group of four other people with conference name-tags came in and began enthusing over Logan and Shelby: We hoped we'd find you here! How romantic! So you two hooked up last night! We all thought you would! You guys are such a cute couple! You're meant to be together!

Logan mostly looked stunned and sheepish, but Shelby was happy and gracious (I'll assume she had an old-school regional upbringing) to the new arrivals. I watched the scene over my reading glasses and smiled to myself. Well, I thought, in a better world, a perfect world, this would have played out a bit differently. In a better world, Shelby would've been alone and ended up flirting with me and taking me back to her hotel room. As things stand in this world, though, all I could do was sit and try to infer the backstory here. The two young lovers had one set of stories; their well-wishers had another. I spent a few minutes trying to infer what kind of conference it was, and whether the new arrivals had been trying to get Logan and Shelby together even before coming into the city. I wondered, too, how the process of hooking up had begun and what kind of affair each of them was expecting or experiencing. I had no idea what the conference was for or what the dynamic there was all about. For that matter, I had no idea what styles of seduction and lovemaking Shelby favored, but those things were worth a few moments of consideration.

(Oh, I'll admit, too,  that I was also mocking Logan's ridiculous ska-boy hat to myself, but that really should go without saying.)

It's hard to say precisely whether I was looking at my flat white and feeling jealousy or envy. Did I find Shelby attractive and desirable? Did I wish she could've been in bed with me the night before? Yes, certainly.  But in some ways what was just as important as the seduction itself was the social reaction. Shelby's friends were excited for the new couple. They acted thrilled that two people whom they saw as meant to be together had actually hooked up. Whatever Logan and Shelby had been feeling when they slipped out of the hotel to the coffeeshop, they were being cheered by their friends.  There was a social thing happening here--- approbation and approval.

It's springtime here, and there's a few thousand years of symbolism out there about springtime and new beginnings and new romances.  I think I envied Shelby and Logan being part of the whole idea of springtime and new beginnings, and I envied them even more the social approval granted by their friends.

It means something to be told by your social network that your choice was the right one, to be congratulated in public. Social approval means something. You can believe anything you want about your loves and your love affairs, but it means something to be granted social approval, to be told that it's easy for others to see that you're the Right Person for someone, that the two of you make a good couple. It means something to be in the kind of affair that involves Saturday-morning coffeeshops and Sunday brunches and reading the New York Times or the New York Review of Books together over flat whites on a city morning. It means something to be told you're a character--- finally a character ----in the story you always longed to inhabit.

I suspect that while Shelby herself seemed quite lovely,  what left me sighing at my table was the thought that I don't in fact have a social network that could support my choices or cheer me on. And it's not hard to work out that having a lovely young companion's social circle congratulate her for being with me is something that's not going to happen.

This morning I walked downtown in search of eggs Benedict and found myself wandering the streets by the Arts Centre.  There were two or three couples watching the fountains or drifting off to cafes. I did watch at least one well-dressed couple in their twenties embrace on the edge of the fountains. I could frame it--- the pose, the water in the background, the romantic conversation they were obviously having.  It would've made a good shot, either as a still photo or in a film. Again, I realised how left out I felt. Being part of that pose, being part of that story--- those are things worth doing. Spring is a ritually-sanctioned season for being part of stories like that: new loves, new romances.  Here in the first weeks of springtime, I am coming to realise that I'm unlikely to have again what either Shelby and Logan or the fountain couple had. I'm unlikely to be urged by social networks towards a particular partner or cheered on when the two of us do hook up.  You two are so good together! is not something I'm likely to hear again. I'm even less likely to be part of moments by fountains, to be part of moments that define the core of an affair.

One Seven Zero: Landline

I own two phones. I have an iPhone in my briefcase, and there's a small cordless landline on a table in my flat. I'll confess at the beginning that the iPhone is rarely turned on. I don't encourage calls to my mobile number. I use it for very occasionally calling out and for its web connection. I don't use the camera, and I dislike texts and texting. Texts have always seemed intrusive to me. They demand an immediate response, and I dislike that kind of demand. A text is limited to some fairly small number of characters; it's not a way to have the kinds of conversations I enjoy. Texts are for a handful of basic exchanges---- meet me at ________, call me at __________, what's the address/phone number? I don't send photos via text, and I almost never receive a photo.  I like conversations and telling stories, and texting isn't a way for me to do either.

That leaves the little landline. No one has landlines at home any more; that's just taken as a given in Millennial circles. I can't imagine not having one, though. I'm a gentleman of a certain age, and in my youth not having a phone at home was very socially suspect. Respectable people had telephones in their houses or apartments. That attitude is still with me. The mobile in my briefcase is something I'll always see as an accessory, as something just a bit secondary, something that's a bit frivolous or trivial. My real phone is there on the desk, and there should be a listing in an actual paper telephone directory.

A few years ago I read an on line article that said that landlines were making a bit of a comeback in places like Brooklyn. They were retro, yes--- having a 1950s-style desk phone or a 1960s-style Princess phone was hip. And hipster girls (and aren't attractive young girls always the arbiters of what's socially acceptable?) were starting to see a certain value in landlines. The article said that landlines were taken as a marker for stability, for saying that a boyfriend or potential boyfriend wouldn't just vanish. I like that attitude, of course. I can't escape the idea that having a landline is a social marker.

The landline will always seem like more of a connection than the mobile. It's far more an instrument for telling stories.  It's far better for flirtations and seductions as well.  I've never quite grasped the idea of sexting. I'm a painfully slow typist, and sexting doesn't allow for the things that would make the exchange work for me--- descriptions of place and time and costume, long complex accounts of what's happening or should happen. If there's going to be flirtation and seduction, it has to be structured like a novel. It can't be just blunt, direct questions in text-speak. If there's anything that kills the mood for me, it's poor grammar and text abbreviations.

I've no idea what the social status of phonesex or flirtation and seduction by phone is these days. I've noted before that any male participation in the Solitary Vice these days is regarded as pathetic or creepy, and in the age of the gender wars asking a girl to participate in phonesex is almost certainly regarded as a violation and an act of oppression. My suspicion is that even if the girl initiates the call,  the gender warriors would see it as "problematic". After all, a male is participating, and by definition he'd be pathetic and regarded as a loser. And revealing one's fantasies to a girl would be regarded as an act of aggression.

A 20th-c. poet (Muriel Rukeyser, I think) said that our lives are made up of stories, not atoms. Stories matter far more than flesh. Flesh can be turned into stories, but it's the stories themselves that last all down the years.  I can't imagine flirtation and seduction that doesn't grow out of stories told late at night over landlines. It's always a image I treasure--- voices crossing back and forth over landlines, stories told by phone in the post-midnight dark of a city bedroom, stories and exchanges that last until the dark turns dawn-blue.

I have to wonder, though, what the social valences are these days for long flirtations by phone. Does anyone stay on a mobile for hours? Are long telephone conversations still something that can be regarded as erotic? Tell me what you think--- here in the new century, is phonesex--- not sexting ---still an acceptable thing? What are its semiotics?

One Four One: Solitary

I just noticed that the on-line world is full of announcements that May is National Masturbation Month.  And 28 May, every article inevitably tells us, will be the climax of the month, National Masturbation Day. That's just something none of the authors can escape saying. The more recondite articles will cite the history of the event--- back to 1995, to a San Francisco vibrator emporium protesting the dismissal of a U.S. Surgeon General who argued that masturbation should be part of a sex-ed curriculum ---and note that the original National Masturbation Day was 7 May.  At least one or two of the better on-line articles will include photos of anti-masturbation propaganda or of the covers of medical texts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries about the diseases and disorders caused by "onanism"--- Samuel Tissot is the big name here, of course, especially if you remember Steven Marcus' "The Other Victorians".

The tone of the articles is always fairly jocular. They mock the anti-masturbation crusades and crusaders of the past (I'm sure you know the Graham cracker story) and make jokes about what you're supposed to do in the other eleven months. More political articles tend to make the (very valid) point that masturbation is a marker for a great many other things. Opposition to masturbation is a very good predictor for right-wing attitudes on lots of other things--- abortion, same-sex-marriage, contraception, sex roles, sexual autonomy, gendered work roles.

Nonetheless, there's always a comic undertone. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. One article that took it as a given that masturbation was "empowering" and should be a major part of one's sexual education and "self-care" also began with a nudge-nudge-wink-wink set of jokes about National Masturbation Month and "choking the chicken" and the horrors of being a street cleaner after National Masturbation Day parades.

National Masturbation Month, like the vibrator emporium in San Francisco (Good Vibrations) that created the idea of the celebration, is a rather gendered thing itself, mind you. The articles take it for granted that there's something celebratory and liberating in female participation, but that male participation is superfluous and...comical. Comical at best. It's also taken for granted that anyone male is such a chronic masturbator that there'd be no need to teach him anything...and that, unlike the female case, there still is something shameful or risible about male masturbation.

I've said this before, but...in a world where words like "wank" and "wanker" are in common use, or where any set of images of beautiful girls is referred to as someone's "spank bank", there's really no way anyone male could indulge in the Solitary Vice and still maintain any self-respect. You can't be male and have masturbation treated as "empowering". If you're male, the Solitary Vice is regarded as some mix of pathetic and ridiculous at best, and as probably creepy, misogynistic, and dangerous at worst.  Even at "sex-positive" playspaces or things like the Killing Kittens parties, while a masturbating female is regarded as getting into the spirit of things, a masturbating single male is regarded as repulsive and unwelcome.

Here in the age of the gender wars, male desire is taken as being inherently suspect and treated as both pathetic ("thirsty") and dangerous. Male desire is seen as threatening, and no one male who hopes to avoid being mocked or "called out" can ever admit to any particular forms of desire. Admitting to particular fantasies is a clear path to being mocked or derided in a way that girls don't have to face.  That's one thing I've taken from the articles I've found at gender wars sites--- never admit to any concrete fantasies, never admit to any particular form of desire. Never, never admit to engaging in fantasies.  Well--- never indulge in any fantasies. The Solitary Vice is not for males. We've learned that from the gender wars.  Male desire is always regarded as unwelcome, sad, and ridiculous. As being inherently violent and about aggression. And the male version of the Solitary Vice is, well, far too easily mocked and held in contempt for anyone ever to consider indulging it in.

There are arbitrary social rules out there for everything. Everything comes with its set of social rankings. It's quite clear these days that if you're male, you can't participate in National Masturbation Month except to make jokes from the sidelines. No one male could be a promoter of the event. Certainly no one male could be a spokesmodel for the event. And in the other eleven months, well, if you have any shreds of self-respect left in your life, you certainly can't surrender to the (ideologically suspect) sad habits of onanism. Pleasure is itself suspect these days; we know that. Self-pleasuring is a gendered thing now, and it's not for males.  Desire itself is suspect, but it's very clearly not for males.

But how did we get here? That's something I've puzzled over here in the new century. The male version of the Solitary Vice was never regarded as aesthetically attractive, but how did we get to "wank" and "wanker" as common terms of contempt? How did we get to something like National Masturbation Month being increasingly gendered--- empowering for females, a contemptuous joke for males? Any thoughts? If you're out there anywhere over the aether reading this, tell me your thoughts.

As for me, well...as a gentleman of a certain age, I have few enough shreds of self-respect left. But I will hang on to what's left of them. There are things one can simply never do--- more and more of such things, really.  But I won't risk mockery and contempt. I won't risk becoming a victim to the spirit of the age. There are just things one can never, never do, or even consider doing. Better avoid the risk. It's just that simple.

One Two Nine: Markets

If you haven't been reading a blog called Graphic Descriptions, you really should. It's at GraphicDescriptions.com, and it's done by Stoya, who's become the hip-lit voice of the erotic film world. She's a fine writer--- you can check her stories at Vice.com as well as her blog. I haven't seen any of her films, with the sole exception of the "Hysterical Literature" short video piece she did with Clayton Cubitt. I know her work only in print form, in essays rather than photos. I rather like her writing, mind you. She's thoughtful and has a mix of introspection and dry wit that I do like. I'll recommend her writing at Graphic Descriptions to anyone who might be reading this out over the aether. Let's begin with that.

Her latest entry at Graphic Descriptions begins:

A few weeks ago I said “There’s really no nice way to explain to a person that you just don’t care that much about the size of their penis or its turgidity.” This seemed to be largely understood as a comment on unsolicited dick pics, but I just mute or block the people who send those. On twitter, on my phone, if I don’t have a way to shut down unwanted communication I tend to avoid the technology.

What I was referring to was the shy or reluctant penis. The penis attached to a person who thinks they must provide a brick of an erection at the slightest hint of a partner’s sexual desire. Attached to those who apologize profusely for what they interpret as an insult to my physical allure, what they fear is a failure to meet basic requirements. 

I encounter the bearers of these complicated cocks fairly regularly in the wild. The thing I struggle with is how to gently communicate the fact that in a recreational setting I really don’t care. 

A hard cock is not the key to pleasant or fulfilling sexual interaction. I don’t have any cocks at all and manage to make myself feel quite good whenever I have the desire. Having a lower orifice penetrated by a cock raises the risks of sex. A condom might break, causing a flurry of unscheduled STI testing and a trip to the pharmacy for Plan B. Even if the condom stays intact, the next-day itch from vigorous abrasion by latex is one of my least favorite sensations.

When these male-bodied people begin to stress, I say “It is totally ok. If it presents itself as a viable option for vaginal penetration that might be fun but there’s a whole range of other stuff we could be doing” and they say “Thank you for being so nice.” while believing precisely none of my statement and stressing doubly. They get stuck in their heads about it. Their manhood becomes threatened by their own adherence to a paint-by-numbers conception of heterosex. 

But in my bed, the person with the semi or wholly flaccid organ is the only one focused on its absence of tumescence. And I’ve never found a nice way of stating my lack of concern in a way that will be believed.

The essay that goes on from there is really well done, and it's something any rational male reading it has to agree with. I'm a gentleman of a certain age, of course, and I have all the standard culturally-determined fears of performance failure. I suppose that I'm all the more worried because I've always linked performance not so much to physical pleasure or to manhood (whatever that may really be), but to all kinds of other things, to my ability to be inside all the stories and films in my head. I've always seen performance as a gateway to being someone else, someone in other cities, someone who lives a very different set of lives.  

I'm male, and straight, and just as prone as any other straight male of my age to disbelieve a girl who says--- in essays, at a party, on a date ---that she doesn't care about size or tumescence. Of course I agree with Stoya that there are a great many other things that two people can do in bed whilst having heterosex. I know (and never doubt) that I'm...reasonably...skilled at some of those things. Yet...whenever I've been with a girl, whenever I consider my contingency plans for what to do if certain basic systems might fail to function, I feel very much as if I'm planning for minimizing my losses in a disaster, and not as if I might be planning ways to give pleasure to someone I like.  

That's bad strategy, I know. Bad policy, too. It's hard to escape, though. I have always been someone who has to try not to take counsel of his fears. It's likely to get worse with age, too. I know I shouldn't inflict my fears on my Young Companions, and I know that Stoya is very much  right in her essay. The fears aren't going away, though. They come from someplace that's pre-rational and very deep-seated. 

Here in the second decade of the third millennium, there are ways to mechanically overcome some systems failures. We all know that. There are so many ads for the Blue Pill in all its guises, ads all over cable and print and the web. I haven't had to use the Blue Pill yet, but it's always there at the edge of my thoughts when a lovely Young Companion and I are flirting. What if this time I need it? What if this time is the beginning, if this time is the border to a period where I'll always need it? 

A friend in London--- early thirties, a part of the worlds of art and academia ---tells me she habitually carries a small tube of generic Sildenafil or Tadalafil--- generic, grey market Viagra or Cialis ---with her to assignations. There in her designer handbag she has condoms, a small travel toothbrush and toothpaste, and a morning-after shirt--- and a tube of Blue Pills as a guard against her partners' age or drinking habits.  She told me that and I found myself laughing. Yes, she prefers much older (and moneyed) admirers, and, yes, I should've been complimenting her on her precautions. I suppose in a way she's contradicting Stoya's essay, but then my friend is trying to avoid what another British friend, a Scots girl at Oxford, describes as "tears and stammered excuses".  As a gentleman of a certain age, I'd be sad-yet-grateful to know that my Young Companion had thought about these things.

And yet... I have to laugh here. What the story says about me isn't exactly what you think. When she told me about the tube of Blue Pills, she told me the pills themselves were "grey market", made in someplace like Mexico or India or Hong Kong and sold without a prescription. What fascinated me (excited me, perhaps) was the idea of having a demimondaine's kit in her handbag, the idea of being able to buy the Blue Pill as something semi-illegal. 

You do understand about me, right? You understand how much I obsess over lists and gadgetry and the idea of what Wm. Gibson calls "the street". I wanted to know all about how the pills she had were produced--- the equivalent of meth labs in Mexico or Kowloon or Bombay? How does one find them as street drugs in London or Manhattan? Is it a special-order item your coke or MDMA dealer would have? My Scots friend and I had an exchange of e-mails about what the per-pill cost would be--- she argued that £8-£10 per pill would be about right, allowing for profit margin on the street. I've no reason to doubt her, though I suppose I must ask my friend with the tube of pills to confirm that. 

I want to be very clear about this. I'm not at all sure I'd ever carry a tube of pills like that on my own. I know all-too-well about taking counsel of my fears, about being hypochondriacal. Having the precautionary tube at all would make it much more likely that I'd talk myself into needing it, into being unable to function without it. 

I also want to make it clear that while I appreciate Stoya's essay, and while I know rationally that what she says is true, on some very deep level I'll always connect systems failure with shame. (And isn't an accusation about systems failure--- about size or turgidity ---exactly something the gender warriors use to shame males they don't like?) 

I was trained for a very long time to be a historian, and I do obsess over the idea of lists and kits, over the idea of living in a neo-noir story. I can't allow myself to think about the Blue Pills in my friend's tube for their own sake. I can only think of them as markers in a tale about black or grey markets, about the idea of being part of the underground, about how the pills are made and sold and whisper-marketed rather than about what they do. Those are the only ways to keep my fears at bay.

Thirty-Five: Contact

I'm physically affectionate in some ways. I've always liked holding hands across a table, or tracing a fingertip across a young companion's cheekbone or lips. Driving with a hand on a lovely young companion's thigh has been something I've loved since my long-ago youth, and what can be more exhilarating than running through the streets of a nighttime city hand-in-hand with a lover? Yet I'm not someone who hugs. Touch as a romantic gesture is very much part of what and who I am, but I'm not from a physically demonstrative family, and I've never been one for hugs.

Having said that, though, I did discover a new reason to avoid hugs the other day. I ran into an argument on the web where the author argued that hugging was tantamount to sexual harassment. I assume that the gender-studies crowd and the so-called "social justice" crowd agree with the author's position, though that should hardly surprise me. The argument was that the person (and here the person was assigned as female) giving the hug probably intended it to be a non-sexual gesture. The person (inevitably assigned as male) who receives the hug may feel some kind of sexual frisson upon being hugged. Since that feeling was never intended, by feeling anything sexual--- even inadvertently ---the person being hugged was engaging in a kind of non-consensual sex with the person initiating the hug. And, the author noted,  neither party could ever predict whether a hug could produce those feelings in advance. The author announced at the end of the article that hugging was too dangerous a thing to do or receive, if one truly believed in issues of consent and harassment.

Now I don't like being hugged very much. I like physical gestures that are clearly part of a romance or a seduction. But I find the argument here to be...exasperating. There's a level of fear in it that baffles me. There's a fear that sex may be lurking in any gesture, and I suppose it's related to the same fear that once had teachers monitoring school dances, ruler in hand, checking to see how far apart dancers might be. I find it telling that the argument wasn't that initiating a hug as a way of touching someone--- the hug as groping ---was a kind of nonconsensual sex, but that any sexual feeling that the person being hugged might feel, even if inadvertently, was somehow an act violating the will of the hugger. It's the lurking monster that the author was afraid of, the idea that any physical gesture might somehow allow in the noonday demon.

Once upon a time, in another city and another life, I was sitting with a lovely companion at a coffeshop near a major university, and we were listening to the people at the next table discuss the evil of sexual fantasy. The girl at the next table doing most of the talking was explaining that all sexual fantasies that involve any real, living person were a kind of violation. She used the terms "abstract rape" and  "rape through the imagination". Her argument that was that any fantasy was a kind of non-consensual use of the person being imagined, and that all fantasy was about exerting the power of the "imagined gaze". She made the point that all (male) masturbation, insofar as it involved fantasies about actual people, was no better than rape, since the person being imagined had never given explicit consent. To fantasize was to violate, to be fantasized about was to be violated. My young companion just shook her head and pointed out to me that there were clear reasons why she'd chosen to attend a university just up the railway line and not the one just up the street. I had to laugh--- we both attended the better university to the north, and there was some feeling of justified superiority on our parts ---but I did feel a small touch of fear. I couldn't imagine what a world would be like where our cafe neighbors' ideas were taken as correct...and socially enforced.

There's a kind of fear out there that I don't understand: a fear of what might be lurking inside the mind, a fear that any sexual tinge added to a contact is oppressive and destructive, a fear of what might be hiding inside the imagination, a fear of what can be born from the gaze. I don't hug, but I do hold hands, and twine fingers, and construct fantasy scenarios. I can't decide what the final argument is to be--- is that contact itself is a gateway to social evil, or that the imagination itself must be dismantled?