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 Six Six: Voix

A new year has begun. No one is quite sure whether we're in the Twenties of the new century yet. There's still that debate over whether we have to wait until 2021 to say that a new set of Roaring Twenties is here. Tonight it seems likely that "Roaring Twenties" may refer less to parties and Bright Young Things and more to a new war in the Near East, but there are still a few optimistic souls who hope that the new decade will be all Gatsby's mansion and debs in Bugattis.

I'm finding that the new year and new decade are likely to be one of silence.  New Years itself was grey and quiet here by the lake. I began 2019 with an evening of cocktails and flirtations with lovely bartender girls. This year as the numbers changed I was at home with a glass of Irish whiskey, sitting alone on the deck, looking out to lights on water. I do suspect that most of the year will be like that.

I've always prided myself on my ability to tell stories, to create a world out of words. I've always said that such luck as I've had with lovely, long-legged Young Companions has been based on words and not flesh. There's a certain kind of literary co-ed I've been able to talk into bed, and I'm all too aware that it has nothing to do with my looks or body. It's always been about the stories I tell. This year, though, this new year--- I suspect I've lost that.

2019 began with lovely girls talking with me all night and finding me to be an experiment worth trying. That seems to have evaporated.  I've lost the ability to talk, to tell stories. There are places where I spent the last half of 2018 dining, sampling wines and cocktails, and flirting with lovely girls. I can't bring myself to do that any more. I can't bring myself to have conversations in public. For reasons I can't quite articulate, I spend less and less time out. I haven't been back to any of my old haunts in six or seven months. All the doorways downtown where I used to go seem alien and depressing. I've managed to talk myself into a state where I feel unwelcome everywhere. Sitting at a barstool that may have been a favourite spot once upon a time now feels empty, uncanny, and out of place.

I no longer know what to say to lovely girls. I no longer have faith in my ability to tell stories, or to do exchanges, or to be part of a conversation. I no longer believe I have anything to say to anyone. I find it harder and harder to believe that anyone would want to be part of a conversation with me.

Part of me wonders if the social rules have changed, and whether I'm simply excluded by the new rules. No one has ever said anything like that to me, but the nagging fear is there nonetheless.

Let's also note that I'm less and less at home in my body. I've become uneasy thinking about my own flesh, and I find myself  uneasy, ashamed, and preemptively embarrassed by the thought of having my body seen or touched. It's harder and harder to imagine undressing for a lovely Young Companion, and the thought that a lover might be disgusted by my flesh haunts me in a way it never did at sixteen or twenty. I find myself scrubbing my skin 'til it's raw and showering twice a day under the hottest water I can stand. I find myself looking for OTC drugs that will shut down bodily functions lest they humiliate me. I find myself unwilling to imagine a lover's touch, or be undressed even when alone.

My suspicions are that I'm approaching some kind of depressive spasm, and that by Lent I'll have talked myself into being housebound and mute.

I do walk past downtown doors and listen to music and voices leaking out and realize that I can't speak there, that I have nothing to say, that I no longer know how to respond to voices. I can't imagine anyone wanting to hear anything I have to say.

Two Six Five: Memories

I thought today of a girl I hadn't seen in half a lifetime. The year is ending-- the decade, too. That may have put me in a sentimental mood.

I was at a small deli near my lakeside flat and the young girl behind the counter reminded me of someone from my own past. I took the sandwich I'd ordered and smiled and tipped her well on my debit card and walked home in the cold with a lost name and face in my mind.

The girl I'm thinking of was named Toni. She lived next to me for a while just after I'd finished university. She looked like...hmmm...a young Aubrey Plaza. Dark brown hair in a short bob, blue eyes, glasses. Yes, the girl at the deli today had the same look.

Toni was maybe nineteen when I first ran into her. She was a neo-hippie girl. I do remember that, and I remember that she almost always had a guitar with her. She was always very serious and solemn, and she'd sit out on her porch and play guitar or read. There were always boys over there at her house. She had, I discovered, a reputation as an easy armful, but somehow she always looked quiet and introspective. We'd run into each other walking places along my street, and we'd see one another at the tiny coffee shop on the corner.  Lovely eyes, lovely legs. The sort of girl who always had a sketch pad and a novel in her backpack.

The first time we went out was impromptu and awkward. I asked her to join me for a drink. The place was painfully hip, back in the day when date bars were transitioning from fern bars with lots of brass to a more exposed-brick look. The place was called...either the Square Peg or the Brass Button. I can't recall which, though eventually we were at both often enough. It was late spring, and she wore a longish peasant skirt I remember that. Drinks, yes, though I can't recall what we drank. Vodka, probably. We drank, talked, and flirted. I think maybe I was the one who was flirting--- she was always too serious for flirting, even when she was deciding to sleep with someone. We walked down to one of the city parks and went out by a lake. I remember undoing her skirt and kissing my way along her legs. She wasn't talkative during sex, though she liked stroking my hair while I talked and undressed her. I do remember her wearing a small ankle bracelet she'd bought in Belize, and I remember that she was bra-less that night, with a necklace of some kind that lay between her breasts. When she rode me and leaned down, the little locket on the necklace would fall into my face and I held it in my mouth. She did have underwear on, and I tossed them at the lake and told her she should never wear any when she was out with me. She came back to my house that night and stayed over. She did make a point of never wearing underwear when she and I went out.

We saw each other sporadically; we were never really a couple. Sometimes that summer she'd call and ask for a ride to places across the city--- open mic nights, poetry readings. She always made it clear that  she'd trade me sex for a ride.  She made a point of being transactional. She liked my company, I think, but she disliked emotions and expectations.

I remember a photo I took of her once. She was standing by her bed with her arms crossed. Tiny, faded denim cut-offs. A cropped blue-and-white halter tee. Deliciously barefoot. That pensive expression that I did fancy.

It's not much of a story--- an affair that lasted off and on from a May through mid-autumn. She stayed over a few nights; I stayed at her place after a few parties. Around my birthday that year she moved across town to share a house with her sister. There were highlights--- Toni bent over someone's car parked by the lighthouse park while I slid her denim mini up over her hips, Toni swimming naked at a motel pool while I handed her a bottle of vodka, Toni and I in a bathroom stall at Square Peg. Highlights, but nothing I suppose that's quite as good as any of the stories I posted here over the summer and early fall. Certainly nothing as good as anything my leggy blonde friend in New Zealand may have done in her own early twenties.

I have no idea whatever became of her. It's all half a lifetime ago. I hadn't thought of her in forever, or not until I was chatting today with the girl at the deli. I need to call up more memories. Toni isn't a bad one at all. A good mid-twenties affair, simple and uncomplicated, and one I had long before sex became something baroque and  fraught.

Two Six Four: Champagne

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two Six Three: Despair

I've made this blog about being an aging roue. I've never hidden that. Tonight I am feeling my age, and not just my age. I'm feeling a certain kind of emptiness.

Time runs out.  We all know that. And tonight I'm feeling that. I do feel as if a part of my life is closing out. There's a sense of loss here, a sense that there's less and less of a way for my life to involve either physical pleasure or any intimacy with a lover.

I have tried these last few years to avoid making this blog too personal or to use it to lament my own failings. Here in the last days of October, though,  it's hard to avoid a sense of melancholy.

I've always hoped that this blog would generate comments and discussions, that there would be lovely interlocutors with whom I could talk about the ideas behind sex and social lives. There isn't an interlocutor tonight, and I feel that lack very deeply. I've never minded writing into the void. I've spent a great many nights pacing through my rooms talking to imaginary classes and audiences, telling stories and posing hypotheticals. I was an academic for a long time, and I've never lost the style.

The other evening I noted here that I find myself unable to talk to others any longer, that it's become harder and harder to imagine opening myself up to a young companion or a potential lover. Asking about likes and dislikes, about preferences and fantasies, seems increasingly dangerous in the age of the gender wars--- and in an age of social media and public shaming. Any kind of openness about those things, any sharing of your life and what it means seems far too dangerous these days. Conversation, let alone seduction, feels too much like a trap.

Fear of opening up, fear of asking, fear of conversations and seductions. There's that. And there's also a growing fear of and disgust with my own body. I am less and less willing to allow my body to be seen. I have less and less faith in my body. It's served me reasonably well all these years, but I find myself thinking that it's now a failure.

I have purchased several packets of "speed shower" body wipes, and I find myself compulsively swabbing myself down. I would never ask anyone to touch my flesh these days, and I would be far too terrified to ask anyone to taste or accept my flesh as part of lovemaking. I live in fear of having a smell, of having a taste, of having some disgusting texture. Hot showers all through the day, repeated body scrubs, antiseptic wipes. "Speed shower" body wipes whenever I have a few moments. I do live in fear of the moment when I'd see disgust and revulsion in a lovely young companion's eyes. Flesh is a failure. At least my flesh is a failure.

It's going to be that kind of November, and it's going to be that kind of life--- one where any ability to be with a lover, a partner, a young companion has been closed off.

Two Six Two: Silence

I've written about this before, but it's something I keep thinking about. It becomes harder and harder here in the age of the gender wars to tell anyone that you feel physical desire towards them. It becomes harder and harder to express not just underlying desire, but your own preferences.

Despite however many years of popular culture talking about "communication", it seems to be increasingly difficult to tell a potential lover what it is you actually like to do. It seems to be just as difficult to ask someone what she likes.  I know that I feel far more afraid now of being mocked or attacked for my preferences than when I was, say, eighteen. I feel that telling a lovely young companion that I find her desirable or telling her what I like in bed is just a lot riskier than it was when I was an undergraduate.  Desire itself feels somehow suspect.

I'm well aware that it could just be me--- a function of age and despair. Yet my reading of comments at articles and blog posts about sex and relationships makes me think that it's something more general. There's a spirit of disdain and mockery in the culture at the moment that's depressing and disturbing.

A few years ago, I felt that I had a reasonable grasp of my own strengths and weaknesses as a lover. I was clear on what I liked, and clear on what I'd like to learn and experience. My lovely blonde friend down in the Land of the Long White Cloud told me once that she couldn't imagine me ever being too shy or scared to tell a lover what I wanted. She may have been right once upon a time, but that's no longer so. She also told me that one of the things she liked about me was that I was willing to try whatever my partner thought would give her pleasure. She was (and is) right about that. Someone else, a lovely friend in Montreal, told me that one thing she liked about me was that I was willing to discuss the things that gave pleasure, that I wasn't shy about asking whether something pleased my partner. These days, though, I stay mute. I'm not about to ask anyone anything, and I'm certainly not about to make any revelations.

Over the last few months I've been posting stories here, trying to save stories girls have told me, ones that leave me excited and intrigued.  I do wish I had newer stories to post. I sometimes fear that the days when lovely young companions and I could exchange stories and try to arouse one another are gone. Out there on the web, it seems less and less a Done Thing to tell stories.  I miss listening to a lovely friend's tales of adventures. I miss the sense of sharing lives and Pasts.

I miss the days when it seemed easier to tell someone what I enjoyed, what I'd like to try with them.  I miss the days when sex and romance involved constructing adventures and challenges, when lovers could risk being open to one another,  when silence wasn't the default state for being out with someone.

Two Six One: Beliefs 5

A lovely blonde girl down in the Land of the Long White Cloud wrote me about this story a few years ago.  I'll note that there are two competing versions of it. I'm having a difficult time believing in any of her stories now:

amazing weekend! the rugby sevens were in wellignton last weekend and there was a huge street party. i went in with caity and a few other friends...we drank shots all night long. i was wearing a very short black dress, jandals and my anchor necklace. we ducked into an underground bar where a bunch of kenyan players were drinking. they were very hot...we danced with them - caity got fingered on the dance floor.

you get kissing beads at the sevens, so we took theirs and ended up with quite a few more by the end of the night. they should have been re-named sucking cock beads! caity ended up back at a hotel with a kenyan. i went back to a different hotel with a manager of the scotland team. we met in the morning for coffee before heading back to bed together.

The second account is somewhat different. In this version, she and her girlfriend Caity left the club with the Kenyans and went to Oriental Beach---

we met them at a club in town and ended up taking them to oriental bay, a beach very close by. there were three, one was called daniel, not sure about the other two. we were both wearing very short skirts and singlets, no bras, no panties. caity and i were kissing in the cab...and caity was fingering my cunt. one of the kenyans was really into it...the other two were slightly shy initially. 

[When we got to the beach] caity and i started sucking one of their cocks, while the other two watched. we were topless, kneeling on the beach sucking his cock.  the kenyan kept saying 'fuck yeah, suck it bitch'. he was loving it. caity and i were fingering each other while we sucked his cock, then his friends came over and joined in. the kenyan cocks were huge and uncut and delicious. they wanted us to stand, bend over so they could both fuck our asses at the same time. we both screamed, but fucking loved it. the one fucking me was so big and was fucking me so hard i couldn't stand, he had to hold me up.  it felt amazing to just be fucked so hard by random cock. they did call us 'slut' and 'bitch', i don't recall them mentioning 'white', but we both wished they had said 'white slut' and 'white bitch'. 

i haven't told you my favourite part of the night...after caity and i had been fucked in the ass by the two quiet ones we crawled away and held hands and had to shit out all their cum. it felt amazing doing that with caity rubbing my clit. we went back over to them and they gave us one of their beers.

then daniel fucked my ass and quiet kenyan 1 fucked my cunt. i fucking love being DP'd darling. i came so hard.  quiet kenyan 2 fucked caity's cunt and came in her mouth. caity couldn't find her singlet afterwards and had to go home topless. we went home in a taxi from the beach. we were dripping with cum too. the taxi driver almost crashed because he couldn't stop watching us in his backseat. when he got home, we purged together, then drank some vodka, had a bath together then went to bed and licked each other's cunts.

The second version is basic porn, and harder to believe than the first, shorter account. I've no doubt she wrote it to impress me, or at least excite me, but I have to wonder why she chose the particular scenario. I'll also note that Sevens Week did exist in Wellington, so she may have been turning a weekend drinking bout into stories. But why those stories in particular? I'll also note that she didn't always use 'Kenyan'; for the more graphic bits she used a more racialized term. Again, is the word just less taboo in NZ, or was she hoping to excite me with another level of transgression?

I don't believe any of the second version, though I suppose that meeting a Kenyan rugby player named Daniel is at least a possibility.

I've known my blonde friend seemingly forever. I have emails from her dating back to 2006. After all these years, I do wonder if I can believe anything she's told me about anything at all.