Three Six Nine: Catalogs

I do receive email from a couple of high-end sex toy shops out there over the aether.  I signed up for them largely as a source for gifts to young ladies of my acquaintance. They've been useful for that, though I want to note that there is something very depressing about shopping for sex toys. 

It isn't that the recipients haven't liked them. It's not that at all. Young ladies have been amused, aroused, and often quite grateful for the gifts. After all, any educated young lady here in the third decade of the new century is likely to appreciate a Lelo vibrator or a set of masks and blindfolds. Ben-wa balls remain a classic gift as well.

But there's something depressing about it all. A high-end sex toy shop (let's say, e.g., Good Vibrations) has nothing really to offer males. Lovely and adventuresome young ladies can experiment with sex toys and feel empowered. There's no male equivalent for that. Sex toys nominally designed for males are depressing things. They lack any sort of erotic allure, and they all seem to symbolize failure.

Consider the so-called Fleshlight. There's no equivalence with a Lelo vibrator. The Lelo enhances pleasure. It teaches young ladies how to make their bodies respond. It can be used on a lovely girl by a partner. A Fleshlight, though, is a clear symbol of failure. A male user is inserting himself in a vibrating tube because he's incapable of having a partner. A girl can use a Lelo on herself while describing sensations to a partner. A male with a Fleshlight has nothing erotic to say, and almost by definition he has no one to say it to.

I cannot imagine using any of the "For Him" toys in the Good Vibrations catalog. I cannot imagine placing my person-- my ummm...parts --in some kind of battery-operated sheath. The thought of putting myself into some electrically-powered cylinder (or putting some electrical appliance into my body) is rather terrifying. And I'm certainly not about to put my parts into something powered by clockwork mechanisms. That would be...well, just no. I'm not about to risk some electrical mishap, let alone some mechanical failure, just to use an item that tells the world that I'm a social and sexual failure. 

The only sort of sex toy that I can imagine using wouldn't be a sheath or cylinder (all too reminiscent of jokes about watermelons or pies or pieces of liver). It could only be some kind of cyberpunk headset that would act directly on my brain. Something that would trigger pleasure impulses and sensations in my brain would have a sci-fi air about it. It wouldn't be about some battery-powered tube. It wouldn't touch anything near one's parts. It would be about neuroscience and maybe virtual reality. It wouldn't seem so much about physical failure. 

By the way, you get extra points if you can identify the liver and pie references. 

Male pleasure remains a source of derisive, contemptuous amusement. Males pleasuring themselves are risible. The very idea draws cruel mockery. No young lady has to face derision for using a Lelo. Male pleasure has no sense of adventure attached. 

I can give gifts designed to enhance pleasure, but there is no plausible way I could receive a gift designed to enhance my own pleasure. I can't even think of a way to discuss the topic with a young lady of my acquaintance. We really have no present set of talking points for male pleasure, and no hi-tech work being done to create male pleasure enhancers that don't make one a sad joke. 

Three Six Eight: Cafe

 This morning I was at a downtown coffee shop very early. I settled in at a corner table with a book or two and my Moleskine and ordered a large flat white and a croissant. 

I'd been there long enough to be on my second cup of coffee when two lovely girls came in. I do love early Sunday mornings downtown. The streets are empty, but flights of lovely girls do appear-- co-eds from the university, travelers from the downtown hotels, residents of the new condos going up as part of downtown renovation. A friend of mine calls the latter group The Gentrifiquettes; I think of them as the Mini-Sundress and Ray-Bans Brigade. 

The two girls who came in were...a delight to the eye and to my particular imagination. Both tall and very slim, streaked-blonde hair  down past their shoulder blades, long dark-tanned legs, short shorts, and cowboy boots. I hadn't seen the short shorts and cowboy boots look in a while. It's a hard look to bring off, really. These two made it work, though. Both girls were wearing boots that had seen some wear-- boots mean for actual riding, not the gaudy kind worn in country-western clubs. Their shorts were faded cut-offs, but not done for a Daisy Dukes look. The country-western cliche would've been for them to wear button-up cotton shirts in a bright plaid. These two were in gauzy ballet-neck tunics with 3/4 sleeves. That was a good fashion touch. I did like the look. Loved those long legs, too. I had to sigh over that.

I had no idea why they were dressed similarly. Roommates? Lovers? Sorority sisters? Best friends? Cyborg assassins from the future? They weren't twins, mind you. Please don't think that. That would've been just a bit de trop, I think.

In a better world, or at least a better story, they'd have ended up talking to me at my table. There's no plausible way to have the story end with them ravishing me in the back seat of their parked Range Rover, but I suppose I could make a story work where the three of us sat and flirted and drank Sunday-morning Mimosas. That would be a story I could tell myself in my head. 

In this world, of course, none of that happened. They were in line to order, and then off to a table across the coffee shop. And I, I sat in my corner and made notes in my Moleskine. I read a bit more in my book-- a biography of the Duke of Marlborough --and then made my way back to my car. Yes, beautiful legs, beautiful profiles. The shorts and boots look was something I recall from long ago, and I do love looks that emphasize long, slender legs. I've been telling myself that neither girl wore anything under those shorts-- that's always my hope, of course. It's something I'll be imagining for days. I'll be imagining them riding horses, too. Thoroughbreds, not Arabians. I have clear opinions about horses as well as fashion. My fantasy life is always very specific. It mattered to be that the two girls had 3/4 sleeves and not simply rolled-back sleeves. 

I'll note here that as a person of the male persuasion, my fantasies have to remain abstract. There are strict limits to what anyone cis-het male can do about his fantasies. The Arbitrary Social Rules are very clear about that. 

The two girls at the coffee shop reminded me of a friend from New Zealand who had an immense collection of sex toys. She was very particular about matching her fantasies to specific toys. I had to admire her obsessiveness. She was forever scrolling through websites for sites similar to Good Vibrations, looking for niche toys for niche fantasies. Again, I admire the obsessiveness, but there's no male equivalent for it. That's an odd thing, really, but there simply aren't any toys that a cis-het male can employ. It's not just that placing one's...person...inside something battery-powered is always a bad idea, it's that the Arbitrary Social Rules barely allow straight males (especially those of a certain age) to have fantasies at all, let alone do something about them with sex toys. That's simply not allowed. 

Well, I did note down the two girls in boots and short shorts there in my Moleskine. I noted those legs-- dark-tanned, long, slender, perfectly sleek --and my hope that the girls were properly underwear-averse. I noted that they'd done well with their tunics-- the look was far more Posh Hippie than Slutty Farmgirl (call it a Coachella Girl look). I'll never see the two of them again, and I know nothing about them that I didn't create out of my own imagination. Those long legs will stay in my memory, but it'll all be very abstract. 

I can file the morning's vision under Things Noted In Passing. 

Three Six Seven: Observers

 It's been a while since I've had stories to tell you here. I want you to know that I apologize for that. Stories mean a lot to me. They always have. 

Stories are histories of lives, of the other lives that I, a flaneur-at-arms, move through. They're the lives that I see but never quite belong to. Over the last few years we've had a world where the pandemic and awful politics have made stories (or at least the kinds of stories that I've recounted here) seem trivial or obsolete. Stories of sex and sexual adventures are out of fashion. More's the pity of course. Sex has lost the tang of adventure and become all about abuses of power. It's not been a good time to be a roue.

This summer has been exhaustingly hot. Here in my own lost city, we've had more than a month of blindingly white sun and no rain, of days like ovens. There's no relief to be found in swimming pools-- every pool's a hot tub this summer --and it's too hot for afternoons in bed with a lovely young companion. There are leggy co-eds on the downtown street in tiny shorts (but not miniskirts-- I wonder why not) but they all look wilted and deeply drained. My own thought is that here under the Heat Dome, we're in the Burmese version of Hell-- a place too hot even if you've been through Rangoon in the summer.

However, I do have one story. A friend and I were talking by telephone the other night, each of us in the air-conditioned dark of our respective cities, and she did tell me a story. We were talking about the idea of consent, about the idea of past experiences that came right up to the line of something awful...but didn't quite cross over into a true-crime tale.

Her story was simple enough. She was still sixteen, not quite seventeen, in the summer between Grade 11 and senior year. She was with her parents at a rented condo on the beach. She was deeply, gnawingly bored. She spent her days getting away from her family, reading, walking along the beachfront, becoming tanned in that Deepest South way, and sneaking drinks. It wasn't hard to get alcohol where she was, and she was usually pleasantly buzzed before noon. I know the place she'd been at, and she would've been one of scores of girls her age doing exactly the same thing. There hadn't been any boys she'd wanted to flirt with, and there hadn't been any summer flings. She was in fact still a bookish virgin. 

She was on a bench by the beachfront one morning very early when she was approached by what she still calls "an older gentleman". She was reading when he came up. She told me that the "older gentleman" (and here "older" seems to have meant something like sixty) was pleasant enough, and sounded shy. He called her "Miss". He was reasonably well-dressed. He told her that it was a delight to see a young lady as pretty as she was so early in the day and asked about the book she was reading. My friend just smiled politely and thanked him for the compliment. They chatted for a moment about the book and then he asked her if she'd be offended at a question. She just shrugged.

He told her, a bit apologetically, that he thought she had very lovely legs and asked if she minded if he looked at them. My friend told me that she thought that was more hilarious than creepy and told him she didn't mind. She thought about asking if he wanted her to strike modeling poses. She didn't, she told me, feel threatened as much as she just felt like she was part of a comedy bit. Why not play along? She was wearing a short sundress and sandals, so she just crossed and uncrossed her legs a few times and stretched her legs out on the bench. She asked how she was doing.

He told her that her legs were amazing, and that he appreciated what she was doing. It had been, he said, a very long time since anyone like her had let him look at her. At that point he shyly (he called her "Miss" again) asked for a favor. He told her how lonely he was, and told her that if she was willing, he'd sit on the next bench over and just...look. He wouldn't touch her, he said, and he wouldn't come any closer than the next bench. All he wanted, he said, was to look and, well, pleasure himself.

My friend said that she was well aware that she was supposed to be angry and/or horrified , and that she was supposed to run away. She didn't feel preyed upon, though. What surprised her was that she didn't feel anything at all, really. She told the man that, okay, sure, that was fine. He'd be on another bench, and she'd be reading. It wasn't, she told me, like she had to really do anything.

So she put her legs up on the beach and just...read. She could tell that he had his hand inside his shorts and that at least for a while, he was exposed. The thing was, she told me, that he wasn't really part of her day. The book meant something to her, but the older gentleman was just a figure on another bench. There was no one else around, which made it all easier. It was only later that she wondered if the man had wanted to be caught or slapped or chased away. Was he, she asked, maybe disappointed at her for not yelling at him and threatening to call the police?

He spoke to her very briefly. He asked her to pose a bit ("would you mind very much...?") and draw one knee up, and to turn a bit to the side. He apologized and asked if she was wearing anything under her sundress. She barely looked over her sunglasses and told him underwear, but no bra. He didn't ask her to open her legs, though she did laugh and tell him that what she was wearing was a cotton thong in pale peach. She could hear him, but said it wasn't moaning or gasping-- just soft sighs. Telling the story to me now, she said that if he'd asked her to pull up her dress a bit, she might have. Maybe. She wondered, too, why he hadn't asked her to kick off her sandals. Her later experiences with older men had taught her that any man over forty either had or was developing a foot fetish. 

She wasn't sure exactly when he finished, but when he did he leaned forward and took a moment to get his wind back. She didn't get to see any evidence of what he'd done. She put down her book and asked him if he was okay. He nodded and stood up and thanked her several times. She crossed her legs to let him have a memory of her legs up to her mid-thighs and told him that she hoped he'd enjoyed himself. He told her he had and this meant a lot. He reached out to shake her hand. That was the only time he touched her. They shook hands and he went off down the beachfront walk. She never saw him again.

She wanted to pull out her phone and tell...someone. But she didn't. There wasn't any way to tell the story that didn't make it seem really true-crime creepy or, worse, funny in a sad way. She felt, she said, sorry for the man. Was he really lonely and just desperate for some kind of sexual interaction or did he just ask a different girl to do this every day? She wanted to believe he was just desperately lonely-- he'd certainly seemed genuine enough in his shyness --and however pervy the whole thing had been, she didn't want to laugh at the man. She ended up not telling anyone until she was at university, and the hardest thing, she said, was making it very clear that she hadn't felt violated and that she hadn't felt angry or contemptuous. 

The whole experience, she said, was maybe ten minutes or so out of her life. She hadn't had to do anything; no one had touched her. It made her feel like she'd become someone who had a story to tell, and that was good. But she wasn't sure how to present the story, or quite what to make of it. Nothing bad, she said. All that had happened was that someone had said he liked her legs and that she'd read a book while on a park bench. A decade later, she said, and she still wasn't sure what the story should mean.

Three Six Six: Algorithm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Six Five: Stars

 I've been spending time at Twitter looking at the Twitter feeds by FMTY girls. That's a depressing thing, but this summer has been deeply depressing. Depressing personally, yes, and of course this is the summer of the Heat Dome. There's no reason at all to go outside, so staying the air-conditioned dark and reading FMTY Twitter feeds isn't such a bad option.

When I'm playing the flaneur at Twitter these days, I look at the Twitter accounts run by various FMTY Girls and just sigh. It's not so much that I could never afford a FMTY Girl. That goes without saying. It's also that whenever I look through the tweets of girls who advertise themselves as "dinner dates and travel companions" I realize that I'd feel ashamed to be some lovely escort's dinner date. I wouldn't be good enough to be there with her. 

Someone who's taught herself about Michelin stars and tasting menus, someone who's mastered the social graces and the arts of flirtation and seduction, someone who knows how to make charming conversation-- that would be someone whose social value far outpoints mine. I'd feel like I was wasting her time. She would be a professional providing services, but I'd feel like I was someone bringing what should be a Small Claims Court issue to a boutique high-end Manhattan law firm. I'd be wasting everyone's time, really. And she'd know that I was a waste of her talents. 

I think that I have been to a Michelin-star restaurant once or twice in my life. Memory says that I was in my undergraduate days and was willing to spend what little money I had in order to have "experiences". Maybe that was only once, and in  some long-ago iteration of Manhattan. Maybe I have been in a Michelin-star restaurant. But I'd have been twenty-one and obviously someone trying to have a learning experience. I'd have almost certainly been alone, and it's possible that I had a good experience there because I was young, painfully callow, quiet and polite, and the staff felt kindly-disposed to me some evening. Here in these latter days, I'd have no idea at all what to do if "fine dining" was involved. "Fine dining" with a companion is something that would reduce me to anxiety attacks. 

I do recall eating alone at Weibel's Wirsthaus in Vienna. Weibel's may or may not be starred. My memory isn't what it used to be. I recall Weibel's as a classic Vienna city location, but maybe I was at least in my later thirties then. Maybe I was in that zone where I was no longer a boy seeking new experiences, but still not old enough to be empty and bitter.

Never mind FMTY Girls-- right now I'd never waste anyone's time as a dinner date. I don't have anything to offer my date in terms of stories and experiences and conversation. I remain terrified, too, of ordering the wrong thing or using the wrong fork. And of how poorly dressed I'd be. 

I have no idea how I'd make conversation with an FMTY dinner date. Look-- I do not get stage fright. I've been spared that. I have walked out in front of a lecture hall filled with a hundred and twenty students and talked and told stories for an hour and a half. I did that for years. I have no problem with that. Yet sitting with an FMTY Girl at dinner would be a disaster. The idea is made all the worse in that the FMTY Girl would be someone whose professional skills were designed to put a dinner companion at ease. I'd feel like I was forcing her to try to be pleasant, forcing her to try to put me at ease and bring me into a conversation. I don't want to be someone who requires special handling and special effort to be part of an evening.

I'd suspect that being honest and just telling her that I'd have no menu suggestions and probably couldn't read the menu at a starred restaurant would send red warning lights flashing. A well-trained Companion would grit her teeth and realize that I was going to be work for her. My own response would be to begin randomly apologizing for, well, everything. So many FMTY Girls' Twitter biographies stress that they're knowledgeable about things like finance and government-- they're clearly marketing themselves as Companions who'd be able to have conversations with C-suite men, with men who have the day's ForEx results at their fingertips. I of course know nothing at all about business or finance. The things I know about aren't  likely to come up in conversations with people who have actual careers. I'd feel embarrassed at not having anything to say to a Companion who'd be educated and skilled and proud of her knowledge of the world. 

I wouldn't be embarrassed to ask about recommendations about the wine list or the menu. But I would be embarrassed that I couldn't appreciate either. I'd be embarrassed that I lack the ability to enjoy myself. These days I think of myself as far more socially awkward than Larry David ever was on "Curb Your Enthusiasm". I suspect I wouldn't even be able to appreciate any seductive wiles an FMTY Girl might deploy, I'd sit there thinking that my age, my body, and my inability to read hints or body language would make me a failure as a client. 

I'd like to be a client whose knowledge, presentation, and skills would match any Companion or Provider I might employ. That's unlikely ever to happen. I'd sit there trying desperately to be polite, but knowing that I'd have no more idea how to appreciate a Companion's skills and graces than I'd be able to appreciate the menu items or the wine list. I'd never ask an FMTY Girl to be a "travel companion", since I'd never put a lovely, bright, well-spoken FMTY girl through a week (or even a weekend) with me.

Menus, wine lists, and conversation are all beyond me these days.

Three Six Four: Ghosts

 I haven't been here in a while, and I do apologize for that. This blog is a project I do want to keep up, and I hope to write here often enough to attract comments and questions.

I'm thinking tonight about ghosts. Not the ghost girls who've been part of my life and still haunt my dreams, but about the ghosts of erotica past.

I've been saying for rather a while now that erotica seems to be fading as a genre. There seems to be less and less erotica available. Porn clips at streaming services, sure. PornHub and its fellows are readily available. But actual erotica-- written or drawn or painted, not put on video or conjured up via AI? The boundaries seem to be shrinking.

I hadn't gone to Literotica for a while-- well, yes, several years --and my thought when I did go back this week was that there seems to be a dearth of new stories. And there seems to be an utter drought of inventive stories. No one seems to be writing anything elegant, transgressive, stylish, powerful. 

The boundaries of erotica seem to be collapsing towards the ordinary. What erotica I can find is flat and dull. The link between the erotic and the darkly elegant seems to be broken. Even S/M stories are just...boring. There's no longer an association between S/M (I dislike BDSM as a term) and style and elegance. Where there is any attempt to be transgressive, it veers towards urban punk and not towards decadence. And for me, decadence-- rooted in class and style --was always key.

Tonight I'm thinking of two figures from my past-- Michael Manning and Olivia de  Berardinis. Both of them erotic artists whose work meant something to me in the days of my lost youth. Olivia began work in the l970s doing her "O Cards"-- greeting cards with wickedly clever and highly erotic art based in decadence and dark elegance. Michael Manning appeared in the mid-1990s. His work combined goth, manga, cyberpunk, and gender fluidity. I miss both artists.

Olivia's work came under attack in the early '90s, if I recall correctly. A lot of her '70s and early '80s work had references to s/m, certainly, but also clever references to drugs. By the '90s, cocaine was no longer a chic quirk or erotic accessory, but a Social Menace. She was pressured to discard much of her early work, and her work became ever less explicit throughout the '90s. Once upon a time, I'd buy several dozen O Cards at a time, some for my own collection, but most to be sent to lovely young companions during correspondence. That's all gone, now. I have no idea what happened to the O Cards I saved, and there's nothing out there today from her that has the wicked and elegant darkness that her '70s and '80s work had. I've seen interview snippets where she apologizes for the explicitness of her paintings and cards. That's deeply sad.

Michael Manning's graphic novels-- "The Spider Garden", "In a Metal Web", "Hydrophidian", "Illuminagerie", "Tranceptor", etc. --were amazingly erotic and engrossing. His heroines crossed through boundaries of gender and sensation into some very dark and elegant places. He incorporated cyberpunk and biomechanics motifs as well as lovely Oriental architecture. For a while, late in the 1990s, he was with a now-vanished publisher called Eurotica, which is where I discovered his graphic work. But in the world of the Noughts and beyond, he found it increasingly hard to market his work. 

The Culture Wars caught up with Michael Manning, I suppose. His version of gender fluidity was based on sci-fi and fetishism rather than trans ideology-- he had characters who were self-described "androgynes", fabulous creatures whose "trans" status meant "trans-human". His androgynes were languid, willowy, goth-Heian, cruel in their beauty, and eerie. That didn't help Manning in the current age. And late-capitalism caught up with him, too. It became harder and harder for him to get credit card transaction companies to process orders. In a world of on-line marketing, he was hamstrung.  I haven't seen anything new by him in years. I can look at his "Cathexis" collection and feel like I'm looking at lovely art and wicked stories from a lost age.

There's less and less erotica out there that wants to take chances. There's less and less erotica that wants to link class, style, and darkness. Experimentation is frowned upon, fetishism (either in the anthropological or the private club sense) is rejected. There's less and less out there that I find erotic. 

And so here we are, in the spring of the Year Twenty-Three, focused on politics and economics, and with no interest in the possibilities of the erotic.  

Three Six Three: Narration

The 10 April 23 online edition of "Paris Review" has an article called "On Fantasy" by a woman who's an escort/gallery girl/ conceptual artist who calls herself Sophia Giovannitti. It's about how boring and exhausting male fantasies are, and why all fantasies are pointless and annoying. Consider this incredibly depressing passage:

This client also wanted our time together to be cinematic. I suppose all clients do. The first time we met, I was struck by his impulse to narrate what was happening, as though by speaking aloud how good something is one could will it to actually be so. It’s not that it wasn’t good, or was bad—it was just mundane, the way formulaic excess often is.

The "impulse to narrate"... Well, there goes my entire life. Narration and curation have been my life-- things written, things lived. If those things are just mundane, I have yet more reasons to stay here in the lakeside flat with my books and my DVD collection.

The author of "On Fantasy" also uses song lyrics from Cigarettes After Sex in her article. I like the band a lot, and I like their music. Now of course, having read her article, I've been looking at my iTunes and feeling a bit wary of listening to them. I hate losing bands I've liked, and Ms. Giovannitti's article has just taken away Cigarettes After Sex.

Now I do have to ask myself a couple of questions about Ms. Giovannitti. Is her disdain for male fantasies something that derives from her sex work or from her time in the art world? There are two possible kinds of disdain here, and I wish I knew the backstory.

More to the point, though-- 

In SoHo, there is a boutique hotel whose rooms are blue. Blue carpet, blue ceiling, blue-patterned sheets. I met a client there several years ago, when I still had short bangs. I wore a vintage skirt-and-top set—black, with colorful flowers—and black lingerie from l’Agent, the now-defunct, less expensive little sister brand to Agent Provocateur. My client wanted our time together to feel like a movie. He didn’t say this, but his behavior made it clear. He booked me for only an hour but wanted an experiential arc: he sat me first in the small living room area of his suite, presenting liquor he had put on ice for me. Music played softly through the room’s sound system: “Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby” by Cigarettes After Sex, a song that I’d only ever heard as the background of a bad television show. He moved me into the bedroom, bantering, as though he had to charm me. I have absolutely no recollection of what he looked like or what his name was. This isn’t because I was seeing so many clients I couldn’t keep track, but because it’s useless information to retain after the fact. I remember how he behaved—the only salient thing—which was annoying, and also standard, fine. I overstayed our appointment because the sex refused to end, as happens often with older men who want to paw at a young woman but don’t quite care whether or not they finish, and certainly not in the allotted time. “Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby” returned to the playlist; it was looping, as was the experience.

And that's deeply depressing. 

We live in an age where The Discourse tells us that male fantasies are by and large boring and that male sex is inherently mediocre. I've been writing down the fantasies I have these days and trying to analyze and critique them. I keep looking for the weak places, for any places that don't seem like they'd interest a partner. I'm inside the fantasies, though, so my views on them are flawed and suspect. But I am and remain afraid that any desires and fantasies I may have would be mediocre and boring. 

It's always possible to ask a partner what her own fantasies are. I do that, and I'll always try to act out what she likes. But I am increasingly afraid to tell anyone what I like or what I want to try.

I played the song for myself after, alone in my own room. A user called “i’m cyborg but that’s ok” had uploaded it to YouTube along with a compilation of scenes from Lost in Translation, a movie I’d never seen but that I knew was about a relationship between a washed-up older man having a midlife crisis and a beautiful young woman. The video compilation looked like an escort advertisement: in the opening scene, Scarlett Johansson sits in a hotel room window wearing only a large men’s shirt—blue—looking down at the wide expanse of Tokyo beneath her; in the next scene, she dives into an enormous, empty hotel pool, at night—the pool and the surrounding windowpanes all blue, too. The images spoke of money and alienation. The song captured the affect of a certain type of client: slightly flat; grasping toward a Daddy-esque certainty but falling short; single-mindedly offering reassurance, but of what he hardly seemed to know. I grew oddly attached to the song and to cyborg’s music video for a period. I would watch it on my way to work, flattening my own affect, compacting myself into a version of a girl aligned with the lyrics:

Whispered something in your ear

It was a perverted thing to say

But I said it anyway

Made you smile and look away

Nothing’s gonna hurt you, baby.

I have no idea what fantasies are acceptable these days, or how male sex can be anything other than mediocre. I remain convinced that the girls in my past were probably contemptuous of any sexual desires or fantasies I may have had. I have no idea what fantasies will seem well-crafted enough not to be mocked. I have no idea why I should try to develop any fantasies, let alone actual physical techniques. Rising above mediocre seems to be a fading hope.