Eighty-Two: Holiday

Today, I'm told is something called International Tell A Girl She's Pretty Day, or so I'm reading at various places on the web.  Well, 9. September is a good day for that. Summer is ending, the afternoon light is turning a deep gold, and lovely young girls are still in summer dresses on downtown streets and wearing liminal season wear--- tiny shorts and hoodies ---at parties on the university green.

It is a good day for the holiday, and I like the idea of it. Beauty matters, and beauty deserves some admiration. And it's a thing that should make both parties feel just a bit better. Nod, smile, and tell a pretty girl that she is lovely. Be polite, of course--- always that. But do tell someone that she is pretty. A world without beauty, a world where you don't have the slight breathless moment when you see a pretty girl in late-summer sunlight, isn't worth living in.

Needless to say, the gender warriors are out today to attack the idea of International Tell A Girl She's Pretty Day. Their lives must be unimaginably grey and dull. They dislike the idea of physical beauty, and they dislike the idea of admiring beauty or complimenting it. They dislike the idea that there might be a slight hint of flirtation or sexual tension. They dislike desire altogether. They certainly become angry at the idea of the compliment offered up to a lovely stranger.  And such people get, well, the back o' my hand. We live in very different worlds, and I don't want them in mine.

I've been fortunate enough to have known some very lovely Young Companions, and to have had moments when beauty came into my life. However manufactured the holiday might be, I want to take a moment this evening and offer up a compliment to the lovely girls who've been part of my past and my life. Beautiful eyes, beautiful legs, smiles kind or knowing or faintly ironic. Each of them gets a ghostly kiss tonight and told that they are lovely indeed.

This afternoon I did smile at a lovely girl and tell her she was pretty. She was someone I've seen briefly at a downtown bar where I go--- she tends bar there on weekend afternoons. She turned out of a shopfront just as I passed by on my way to the plaza, and I smiled at her (dark-blonde, dark tan, tiny shorts, half-zipped lightweight hoodie) and told her she was very pretty indeed. She smiled back and thanked me and chatted for a few moments in passing. A small thing, but I'm glad she smiled and I'm glad I got to offer up a compliment to a girl who is deliciously alluring and who has always been nice to me at the bar.

Smile and do that--- make the holiday worth something. Tell a girl that you do see her as pretty, and that she has brightened your day just by being there. It's a small thing, but worthwhile. Beauty matters, and we should never be afraid to say so.

Eighty-One: Advice To Young Ladies 2

If you're still reading this, and if you are a young lady who's thinking of taking an Older Lover, of being a Young Companion, then...there are things to say tonight.

Last time, I told you that you'll be out in public and sense hostile eyes on you. Being with someone much older makes you a member of what a friend at McGill calls the Secret Tribe. Think of being out with a same-sex lover a generation ago--- it's a bit like that. You're violating social rules, and you can sense the reactions. The gender warriors will look at your Older Admirer with contempt and disdain; he'll represent so much of what they hate. They'll look at you with the kind of pity that's not far from contempt. There will be more ordinary attitudes, mind you. Your attraction will be dismissed or disbelieved by many people. If your Older Admirer is at all well-dressed, or if you're in any place that might be thought of as upscale, well...you know the terms: gold-digger, sugar baby, whore. Those people will be the easy ones to ignore. They know nothing, and nothing they say or think matters. It'll be the gender warriors who'll be the worst. They'll take it for granted that you're being somehow abused and exploited, and they'll assume you were damaged as a child. Whatever affection you feel will be dismissed as the result of ignorance or coercion or some psychological failing. They'll express concern...though it'll feel like being shamed and derided. You'll need ice in your veins for them, and you'll need a cool, distant attitude. They get the back of your hand, always. They'll look at the man with you and see him as evil; they'll see you as some combination of complicit and helpless. The back of your hand, a cool gaze looking through them: that's what they get. Put your hand on your companion's. Put your head on his shoulder. Lead him to the dance floor; toast him in the single-malt Scotch he's taught you to drink. Let the hostile eyes see--- let him see ---that you've made your choice, and that you're very clear about it.

You'll be told--- you'll certainly read ---that your Older Lover is only interested in you because he sees your youth as a desperate defense against death and decay. Maybe there's some truth in that. But...why shouldn't he want to fight against mortality? Why should he just go gentle into the night? And do consider...if you are a defense against decay and entropy, that's quite a compliment, really.

Don't pass up a chance, by the way. If some hostile and moralizing observer demands of you if you know how much older your lover is than you, just put on a puzzled look and say, "You mean he isn't twenty-five?" And then give them your coolest smile and a dismissive flick of your hand. If they raise the horrified issue that he's old enough to be your father, just smile thinly and say that, well, no, he's actually...ten years older than my father. You can always hold up your iPhone with the calculator function on when you do that. A hint of a Southern drawl helps there.

Does he want you because you remind him of his own youth? Are you a symbol of what he's lost, or what he never had when he was twenty-two or twenty-five? Maybe. Maybe. Ask yourself this, though: is he a symbol of a world you want to see, to be part of? Don't be afraid to answer Yes--- not about him, not about yourself. If you care about one another, if you are well-matched, you can offer one another those symbols, you'll be those things for one another as things offered up with affection.

Every affair is an exchange. Lovers offer themselves up to one another, and they offer up worlds and symbols. The exchange with an Older Lover is just what I said last time: youth and beauty for knowledge and experience. Just be clear: there's nothing heartless about that. Each of you can--- should ---bring affection and caring to the exchange.

I did say this last time. He'll be all-too-aware of his body and its failings. Don't let him be ashamed of what he is. (Needless to say--- never, never, never let him make you feel ashamed of anything you are or do.  If he's worth your time, he'll be enchanted with what you are. Accept nothing less.) Put your hand on his chest, on his face. Twenty-five years, thirty years, thirty-five years...he knows the numbers about what time has done and about what the difference is between you. That is what it is. Don't deny it, but don't let him be ashamed. It's just...there. Touch him, look at him. See if he smiles back at you. Yes, his body may require your time and attention in ways you wouldn't need with a boy of twenty or twenty-five. The only question you have to ask yourself is if he's willing to give you back attentions and pleasure. It may be technique or stories he has to offer and not flesh. That's true.  Don't let him be ashamed of his flesh...and don't let him do anything less than offer you his full attention to your own flesh.

He's had time down the years to acquire fetishes and preferences. That happens with age, and probably all the more so if he's bookish, if he has the kind of intellectual passions you want. Again, accept that as part of a world you're visiting. If he puts a silk blindfold over your eyes or ties your wrists with silk, lie back and let experience wash over you. If he wants to cum on your pretty, pedicured feet, just lie back and watch. When he's done, kneel up on the bed and smile and kiss him and whisper "silly boy" with affection in your voice. And always remember: it's part of his role to make you feel safe with the things you decide you like, with the games and fetishes you'll want to act out. If you tell him you want to dress as a boy and go out with him as his young boyfriend, make sure he's someone who'll just hand you a necktie and his favourite fedora. He's had time to develop his own kinks; you'll be learning about yours. (Oh, you'll have them. You will. You're a bookish girl, and you've always wondered what experimenting in the dark would be like. He can see that in you; it's no small part of what attracts him. You'll have your own kinks. Accept that and smile.) Accept his kinks and preferences, make sure he's there to help you with yours. Accept one another with a kind of amazement. Cross into one another's worlds; that's what it's always been about.

You chose him because you could see things in him you wanted to know, because he offered up access to a world you wanted to see. You looked at him and saw things you valued and desired. He saw the same in you.  Treasure that--- treasure both sides of the equation.  He'll do that same. If he doesn't, then walk away. You're worth a great deal. Insist on having that acknowledged.

You're a girl who's lived inside books.  That's something he knows about you, and it's something that attracts him. He lives there, too. Part of what attracts you is that he knows about the world inside so many books.  Part of what attracts him is how much you want to explore other worlds. If he's worth your time, he'll admire you for what you want, and he'll devote himself to opening those worlds up to you.

If you're sitting there at the table tonight with him, smile at him over your drink. If he has a hand lightly on your thigh, slide your fingers across the back of his other hand and smile. The hostile eyes mean nothing to you except as a spur to showing that you chose him and that you stand by your choice.  You're his choice, too.  Be proud of your choice, and of his, too. You have things to offer one another, and, yes, the exchange comes with affection and delight.

Sit there across the table and look across with a kind of proud possessiveness. Make sure he's looking at you the same way. And share worlds with your Older Admirer.

Eighty: Advice To Young Ladies

A friend in Zurich asked that I discuss something that I've probably treated too much as a given: what a Young Companion should know about an affair with an Older Admirer. There are certainly enough cautionary tales about such things. There are gender wars rants a-plenty about the dangers of such things, and I'm told that at certain universities incoming first-year co-eds are specifically warned away from such things, especially where the Older Admirer might be an academic. There are cautionary tales all over literature, too. You can add "Lolita" to the list if you want (I wouldn't; it's something else altogether), or things like Debbie Cymbalista's short story "Choice". But my Swiss friend was looking for something else altogether. She was looking for procedures and protocols for being a Young Companion, for how to have an affair with someone much older. Well, it's a topic I need to explore, so I may be coming back to it over time. Let's see, though... Where to begin?

Let's begin with a clear statement. A classic affair with an Older Admirer is based on a straightforward exchange. We're not talking about the Sugar Baby/Sugar Daddy kind of exchange. It's not that. But it is straightforward enough. If you're honest, the exchange is one of youth and beauty for knowledge and experience. Admit that to yourself. There's nothing degrading or exploitative about it. Be honest, though. You each have something to offer, and you're each finding something valuable in the exchange.

If you have an Older Admirer with whom you want to make that exchange, remember. You are hoping to learn from him. No, he doesn't know everything; don't let him act like he does. But he'll have knowledge and experience--- about some things. Be sure those are the things you want. And open yourself to them, to learning. He'll probably over-explain some things, true. That may or may not be a male thing, but it's something I'm probably prone to doing as a part of my past as an academic. But he will have a passion for knowledge--- if you've chosen well ---and he'll be happy to share that, to pass on what he knows. And don't think it's all one-way. If he's worth your time, he'll listen as well as speak.   He'll value your thoughts. Oh, yes, he'll enjoy being looked up to; he'll enjoy being listened to. However not? But he'll listen to you, and he'll remember things he learned at your age and appreciate what you're becoming.

Another friend sent me a text message one night from a restaurant in another city telling me that the older man she was with was buying her single-malt Scotch and asking if that was what older lovers always did. The answer, by the way, is yes. He will do that, your Older Admirer--- teach you about whiskeys. It's something we do. He may have some particular fetish about martinis, though that may be as much about geography as age. It'll be the whiskeys he'll want to show you about.  And, yes, you should learn about them. They're what a girl who's a bit of a femme fatale would drink, the drink for a girl learning to strike poses in late-night bars, and choosing a good whiskey is a skill worth having.

Let's see, now... There is the issue of sex. That's always there. Remember--- he'll be far more anxious and nervous than you are. Bare, ruin'd choirs... He will be worried about that. You represent youth and beauty, and he'll be all-too-aware of his own mortality. He'll make oblique apologies for not being twenty-two and buff. He'll be very aware of the ways his body can fail.  If he's worth your time, though, he'll he open about that. He won't lie to you about it, and he'll be willing to deploy skills he's learned across a lifetime for you. He's making up for age, substituting technique for raw energy. He'll probably have a fetish or two, though he may be hesitant--- maybe even a bit afraid ---to mention them. You, though, are looking for experience, for new worlds. Tell him what you know about your own body; don't be afraid to tell him that you do want pleasure out of whatever you do with him. And then be open to experience. He will want to offer you that, and he'll appreciate the energy and hunger for experience you bring to bed.

He will be all-too-aware of his own body. He'll undress you often and just look and admire, but he may not be comfortable being naked himself. Understand that. You're not blind, and you're not a fool. You can guess at what he'll look like. But I do want you to remember this. His flesh won't crumble to the touch, and it won't smell or taste of decay and death. Your touch--- the willingness behind your touch ---will mean more to him than he'll want to say. His own touch will be delicate, though knowing. Look into his eyes, offer him kisses. He will know how to touch you, and he will want very much to offer you pleasure. A co-ed friend in New York once found herself in some unexpected tryst with an aging, elegant Eastern European emigré whose touch left her thrilled and exhausted. When she gasped out how surprised she was, he told her in precise, formal, accented English that "my dear, why wouldn't I know how to do this? I've had half a century of practice."  Bear that in mind.

You'll talk in the dark. He'll talk, too. Accept those things as a given. He'll want to lie there with you in the dark and listen to your stories. He'll want to tell you things, too.  Much of what you're doing will involve talking. Learn to love talking in the dark. Learn to love that hour when the dark starts to turn violet-grey. Be willing to listen to him; he'll need that. Be willing to talk, too. He'll be open to you. That hour when the sky is just lightening is a time when he can let go of all his fears. It should be the same for you.

It's not forever. You know that, and so does he. But if he's worth your time, he'll live up to the terms of the exchange. It's not about power, or at least not about power in the gender wars sense. He'll want you to come away with a sense of having learned things, of having had your world opened up. He'll be thrilled if you tell him that--- and tell him honestly. And he'll be clearly and honestly grateful for what you've given him. If he's worth your time, he will be.

Sit across the table, then. Be willing to be open to what he has to offer. Accept that there are disapproving eyes, and give the back of your hand to those people. You know what you have to offer, too, and you make sure that he appreciates that. It's an exchange, and the terms are reciprocal. There in his bed, there across the table--- you know what you're offering and what you're accepting. When his fingertips touch yours, or brush over your cheekbones or thigh, remember that you're learning something, and that you're offering up something just as valuable.

Seventy-Nine: Plot Device

I still imagine these things.

I imagine looking across a table at a lovely young companion on an early night in the affair and raising a glass to her as my lovely plot device. I'd tell her that, of course: that I was proud to have her as a plot device in the story I'm telling myself in my head. I'd raise a glass to her and tell her that. My hope of course is that she'd raise her own glass and offer me the same. Being her plot device, being offered that role, would be a thing I'd be proud of.

What would I tell her, there over drinks in a late-night bar? The truth, always--- that I did see her as a character in a story, as a device for moving the story along. I'd want her to feel the same, of course.

The exchange is simple enough, mind you. It's the classic exchange: youth and beauty for what I have to offer. My young companion offers up beauty and a sense of possibilities; she's a reason for me to still function as a lover. What I have to offer her is--- I hope ---the things I know, and the stories I can create for us in my head. A kind of passion, too, that I hope I can transmit--- a passion for knowledge and exploration. These are the things I can offer, and I can only hope that they mirror what she's looking for.

I want to tell her that she and I can be devices in one another's tales. I am the older admirer, the roué who can offer a lovely young girl a taste of darkness and a part in a story about seduction and exploration. That's what I have to offer. I create stories and worlds, I can offer up imagination. I can talk long into the night about new worlds and about ideas and possibilities.  My hope is that my young companion will want a guide to step into the worlds I can create, that she'll enjoy the idea of flirting with a kind of notional darkness.

I do want to touch glasses and fingertips and drink to the stories we can create and the characters we'll inhabit. She'd be looking back at me with that look that bookish girls get, a kind of erotic intensity at the thought of new stories and new ideas. Oh, yes... She is offering me youth and flesh and her energy. She'll be stretched naked on my bed talking after midnight while I kiss her hipbones and collarbones. She'll be dressed for me, though of course I'll be no less dressed for her. She'll pull me into corners and doorways outside clubs and galleries. And she'll pull me as well out into the night, out of my reclusiveness and into some kind of life.

It's an exchange. We exist for one another's stories. We exist to move one another's stories along, to be characters that begin a plot arc, that will shape a chapter. Bookish, lovely, experimental girls are a great resource, and a great treasure. My hope is that I can be the plot device that she wants, that the worlds and stories I create will give her the sense of exploration and daring that she needs. She can look at me across a table and cross long, bare legs and offer up a cool smile and know what she'll be for me. That's something that's obvious from what I am. But part of being what I am is that I'll try to be the plot device she needs, to have her know that when we touched glasses and fingertips I was offering up a pledge that I'd try to be the character she's thinking of.

Which I hope is itself part of what my character would do.

Seventy-Eight: Mise-en-scène

A friend in the Midwest asked me to write about sex and the imagination. It's easy enough to begin an essay about that.  It's imagination that brings sex to life, that gives it its energy and power and delights. I can't imagine any physical pleasure that isn't filtered through the imagination or fueled by the imagination. Whatever the body does, or wants to do, it's the imagination that shapes it and gives it meaning.

I've always lived inside my head. I grew up scrolling through scenes in books or films in my head, and whenever I walked down streets--- in the city where I was born, in small lakefront towns in my later teens ---I was always moving through some scene in a film or a book. When I was young I inevitably had a book with me, and I'd read in all sorts of unlikely places and then re-tell the stories in my head. I did the same with films, and once I learned a bit about the grammar and vocabulary of film, I'd walk down tree-lined streets or through a downtown still shaded by wrought-iron balconies and envision how to shoot film scenes there.

I live through books and films; I always have.  On any ordinary day when I'm crossing a street or standing at a window, I'm a character in a story. When I sit at a cafe table and watch people at other tables, I'm telling their stories in my head. I'm creating stories for them, and the more details I can insert, the more depth of context I can create, then the better the stories can be.

There's a new sin (or crime, possibly) that the gender warriors have created--- something called "sexualization". That seems to mean something like imagining what a lovely stranger (or anyone, really) would be like as a sexual partner, or at least imagining them in some sexual way. This is all tied up in issues of "dehumanization" and consent. It's another term that the gender warriors use as a term of abuse that I simply can't understand. I've always made the world around me into a set of stories, and I've certainly told myself stories about sex.

That's not just about looking at lovely university girls whisper past and imagining them naked--- or, better, half-undressed in stylish high-fashion outfits. It's not just about wondering what it would be like to have her legs over my shoulders, or what her sexual tastes and previous adventures might be. It's about long, intricate stories, each one filled with details and backstory. It's about what imagining that any moment, any chance meeting could turn into an episode of "Red Shoe Diaries" or some film shown late night on Cinemax. Not porn, really, since the stories I create in my head are more about settings and styles and poses than about the sex itself.  They're erotica certainly--- tales of sudden, unexpected, risky, breathless, no-names-please encounters. It's just that the look and setting matter more than just the connection of bodies.

I wrote once in a notebook that if something can't be crafted like a story, then it's not worth doing. I suppose I do expect that from romances and encounters: a certain formality, a sense of a clear story arc, the ability to turn the world around me into sets and settings, the ability to be a character in a well-designed tale, the creation of a backstory for myself, my young companion, and the encounter itself.  Sex can be deeply, overwhelmingly passionate, but I always find myself standing just a bit outside the moment, thinking about how what's happening fits into a story arc or into a kind of roman fleuve.

Over the years, I've been lucky enough to find young companions who were girls who lived inside books and films themselves, who understood about films-in-the-head and about the art of narrative. They've had their own roles in the stories they'd tell themselves, their own set of backstories for encounters. We've been able to put our separate visions together, or at least to tell stories that complement rather than compete with one another.

I've long thought that bookish girls make the best lovers because they understand the idea of imagination, of creating worlds and knowing how to furnish them and live inside them. They understand the power of narrative, and the power of realizing that there are (or at least should be) no limits to stories and scenarios. I've been lucky about that, about finding girls who were willing to construct new worlds and imagine new tales. There's always been something thrilling about looking in a young companion's eyes and trying to intuit what stories she wants to tell and how she imagines the look, the style, of what she and I are doing.

Sex is always about imagination for me. It's not an end in itself, but it is the scaffolding, the skeleton, for narratives about worlds and times and characters, about style and sets and settings.  I can't imagine any affair, any encounter, that isn't born out of imagined stories and lived out as a kind of tale. Yes, I do sexualize the girls I see on the street or in cafes or classrooms, though it's much less a matter of the flesh than it is of casting them as characters with particular styles or complex backstories in a long and ongoing narrative.  I can't imagine sex or romance that doesn't exist as part of a story, and I can't imagine not re-visioning the world around me for the stories I tell inside my head. I always whisper to lovers, No limits, and I do mean that. I want them to trust themselves to their own imaginations and just fall forward into new worlds and new adventures, to take up new identities and re-make the ordinary world into something well-crafted and visual and stylish.

Seventy-Seven: Practicalities

I found an article on line the other day that drew a distinction in male lives.

Males, the author argued, drove themselves in any relationship to be needed because they couldn't imagine ever being wanted. Males, he wrote, were unable to imagine that they could be desired--- especially for anything physical ---and could only imagine that they've have value to a lover for the practical, concrete things they could offer, whether that was financial support or fixing a mechanical problem. The argument veered off to talk about a society in which the male body is regarded as largely undesirable, in which beauty and desire are linked with the female body. It veered off to talk about how uncomfortable males feel about being thought physically, as opposed to functionally, desirable, about how men agonize over being useful.

There's something there. I'm male and hetero, and I can't imagine how a male body could excite desire. I know it must happen, but I know that in some distant, abstract way. I certainly can't think of ever being physically desired or desirable. When girls have paid me compliments or whispered endearments to me in bed, they've never said anything about my looks or body or physical accomplishments. I'm glad about that in a way. I wouldn't know how to accept a compliment like that. I wouldn't believe anything a girl said to me about that, and I'd be instantly suspicious and on guard. I'd assume it was a lie, and wonder what she was hoping to manipulate me into doing. I'd be angry, too. Not just at the lie, but at being thought naive enough to believe her.

The compliments I've received over the years were always about being useful. I've been complimented on knowing about books and films and ideas, on being able to bring my young companions into stories and other worlds, on being able to create worlds for them. If a girl tells me that I've offered up ways for her to become passionate about ideas and books, or if she says that I've been a good way to access games and dreams that she'd have been afraid to try otherwise, I'll believe her. She's paying me compliments on things I can believe about myself. And she's making me feel useful.  I can remember saying to lovers that I wanted exactly that, to be someone they thought useful. Part of that is the nature of the exchange built into the relationship: youth and beauty exchanged for knowledge and experience. There's been passion in those affairs, but the passion I've evoked in young companions has been a passion for knowledge, certainly not any kind of physical passion for me. I know that over the years, I've accepted that and encouraged it. I wouldn't know how to do things any other way.

The author of the article did get this much right. There is a deep male unease at being found physically desirable, and no clear male guidelines for knowing how to respond to being wanted. Being useful is so much easier, and has much simpler metrics. I have spent my life finding ways to be useful to lovers and young companions. I tell myself that what I have to offer a girl is conceptual, and has nothing to do with my body, or even really with my personality. I know how to offer up things to a young companion that can provide delight or experience or learning, but in the end those things have nothing to do with me. I'm the curator, not the artist. Nothing that I offer up grows out of my flesh. I wouldn't know what to say to a girl who told me she wanted something from me that was purely or even mostly physical.

Down all the years, I have understood the terms of the exchange. I can create worlds and games and scenarios, I can offer up ideas and books and visions. Whatever I do in the flesh for my lovers is only and ever subsidiary to concepts.  I'd have no idea what to do if I had to respond to physical desire or to expectations that I be something worth looking at or being seen.

This may be something that grows out of a society where beauty is defined as female and where male value is based on the ability to do concrete, often financial things. It may be an in-built danger in roué-hood, part of the risk in having young companions. It may be born out of my own personal fears. It is there, though. I know how to be useful in certain ways, and I know how to use those things in some tactical way. I can imagine and accept compliments based on things I know or do. I have no ability at all to accept being complimented on anything that I am. I certainly don't find the idea of being wanted or desired physically anything that I can deal with, and I'd have no idea how to live up to any expectations based on those things. Being a roué is about concepts and things abstract. I have no idea how to have value based on anything else.

Seventy-Six: Taking The Stage

In the last week or so I've seen a couple of essays on the idea of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and I read them with disdain. The concept itself itself has been so overused and diluted as to be meaningless. Too many of the people using the term and loading it down with significance in the gender wars seem to have no clear idea of how novels or films are different from real life. I'd think one would want to be clear about that.  Of course the MPDG character exists only to further the growth of the hero. Every character in the novel or film exists to further the hero's story. All those drowned sailors, all those dead suitors at the feast, exist only to help move Odysseus home from Troy to Ithaka and reunion with Penelope. Their stories, whatever they might be in an age of fan-fic, aren't what Homer is telling.

There was an article I found today that was written with some truly off-putting mixture of guilty bragging and self-aggrandizement lamenting how the MPDG trope had "consequences". The author told the story of going overseas in his high school years to meet family in Vienna. One distant cousin was an attractive girl maybe a year older with whom he was instantly smitten. She took him to parties, helped him with his German, smoked hash with him, talked about books and poetry and anarchism, showed him local underground bands and plays, marched with him in some demonstration. They stayed up all night talking and making out. She was--- oh, yes ---every bookish American teen boy's vision of the European girl. When he went back to the States at the end of summer, they exchanged letters for a year or two. When he went off to university, they gradually fell out of touch. A few years later, his family received a black-edged funeral announcement from Austria. The girl had killed herself after a long bout of depression. The story is sad enough, but the writer tried to use her suicide as being a consequence of how he'd seen her as a guide into new experiences. She was his MPDG, he wrote, and somehow he was responsible for her death, though he couldn't explain how that connection worked. The article didn't lament her passing, or note that the depression developed long after he was back home, or even really offer up fond memories of her, or feel grateful for what she'd given him when he was sixteen. It was all about the evil of the MPDG idea--- about specifically male evil. I've read a few of the author's pieces before, and I've disliked him--- this piece was just more evidence of my general contempt for him.

A young lady of my acquaintance wrote this evening to comment on the story. She told me that she was going to get a t-shirt that read "Proud To Be A Manic Pixie Dream Girl" and wear it. Her story, she wrote, was one where she had the skills and knowledge to open up shy, sheltered boys, to be the girl who taught them about a world of new books and stylish sex.  The boys were her supporting cast, she said, and she was glad to be the girl they'd remember as a figure in their education.

There's no positive male equivalent of the MPDG, or at least no positive term for it. I've known for a very long time that my young companions see me as a character in a story. I know that I'm expected to do certain things, to be the older admirer who can introduce them to new experiences. I'm fine with that, mind you. I spent years in front of classes or around seminar tables telling stories and talking about books and ideas, and I always wanted to impart a passion for those things. Being part of a lovely girl's sentimental education is a delight and an honour. I know that I'm not likely to be a destination, but I am there as a kind of adventure along the way. Being the roué, being the older admirer, is always like being a city a lovely girl passes through on a long caravan journey.

I understand the role. It's what I do, and it's what I am. My own story is one where the older admirer with a academic past is able to seduce youth and beauty into his bed with talk of books and ideas. My young companion's story is one where she's opening up to the world and traveling to some unknown country, where the older admirer is there to show her all the new things she can be or do. The trick is to make the two stories mesh, and to be aware that each of us is living inside a novel or a film.  It's risky, yes, but it's also and always a collaboration.

Live inside stories, be someone's story, be part of someone else's story. But do treasure the stories, and treasure the idea of stories.  Be part of a sentimental education, be part of transgressive erotica. Live inside stories, and be proud of being asked into someone else's.