Three Zero Zero: Debriefing

 I wrote here earlier in the summer that:

Liberty told me that all through her teens and into her twenties she'd collected experiences and kept a journal about what she was learning about the world and about lovers. She claimed to have kept a separate "Older Men" chapter with notes on what men in their thirties and forties had taught her and on how to deal with them. Did she really? I'll never know, though I hope she did. I hope she'll find that notebook when she's forty herself and read it through and see if she agrees with Liberty-at-twenty's observations. 

I wish I could have both Liberty and Levin write down the things they'd learned from older lovers. My friend at McGill--- I know how she'd answer. She'd list the names of authors and directors, the titles of books and films. Reading Deleuze, she'd say: that was a big thing. Not quite the physical things Liberty claimed to have learned (light s/m, foot fetishes)... or how she learned to paint Southwest desert light. Not quite those things... but still lessons that my Montreal friend saw as crucial to her constructed self.

Now I do recognize that I've been a source of some kind of lessons and experiences for girls like Levin or Liberty. I'd like to know more about what lessons and experiences they'd been looking for, and how they did use them (whatever they were) to construct selves later. I'd like to know what counts as a lesson, too.  And I'd especially like to know how each girl sees the older men they were with all these years later.

I'd love to see Liberty's journal and its "Older Men" chapter. She always saw affairs as learning experiences, and she was very earnest about that. It mattered to her that each lover, male or female, left her with more knowledge about the world. And, yes, I'd love to know what all those things were. I'd love to know what categories she put experiences into. I think I'd especially like to read the very early entries, to read the entries were Liberty was deciding what she wanted to learn and what avenues she wanted to explore.

I wrote this, too--

What I'm also thinking about is what each of them--- Liberty, Levin, even the Young Medical Student in "Altered States" ---wanted from the experience. We'll learn things, Liberty said to me. When Levin first stayed over in my rooms, she spent time prowling through my bookshelves and asking about books and authors. My friend at McGill told me that she expected any older lover she took to have a bedroom full of books and a whole fund of knowledge about 1960s French and East European films. 

I do wish I knew how each of them defined "experience". The stories Levin and Liberty and my NZ friend Jill told me were often extremely hot, but what I'd like to do is get at the underlying structures, to get at the decisions each of them made to seek out and be open to experiences. Why this particular lover, this particular thing? I'd very much like to know what Liberty's chapter on Older Men says--- what makes someone worth/not worth being a learning experience. I'd like to go through her checklist of things she did to manage Older Lovers, to properly utilize them. 

Backstories matter, just as details matter. The why of something is as important as the thing itself. 

I'd also like to read the letters another friend has been sending out during the season of the Red Death. You know the backstory:

A friend in Scotland wrote to tell me that she is appalled at the way The Discourse seems to be turning age-disparate affairs into signs of evil and exploitation. She's always preferred her lovers to be older and experienced--- "worldly", she says ---and has acted on that for half her life. She feels awkward and apologetic not for having the affairs she's had since she was sixteen, but for putting men who taught her so much and meant so much to her into the role of the villain. She tells me that she's called and written lovers from her past  from her quarantine house near Edinburgh to reassure them that she cared about them, learned from them, and will treasure them in her memories. Do not, she told them, ever be ashamed of being with her. I do admire her for that. I really do. 

I'd love to read those letters, to read what she thanked them for teaching her. One of the letters I know would be to the much older man who told her when she was sixteen that she needed to stop being afraid and actually make the effort to be admitted to Oxford. That affair re-shaped her life, and I'm taking it for granted that she wrote to tell him that. She told me once that what she has now--- a business of her own, a resume that includes political consultancy, a couple of terms as a town councilor ---owes so much to the older lovers who told her that she was capable of doing anything, who took her to bed and talked about the world. I'd very much love to read those letters with her memories. Yes...I wish I was a recipient of one of those letters. I do envy anyone who was worldly and knowledgeable enough to be chosen as one of her mentors. 

Bildungsroman, Erziehungsroman... and whatever those things are called in French. I'd like to know how Levin and Liberty and Jill constructed the tales of their lives--- my friends in Montreal and Edinburgh, too. How have they structured what Older Lovers taught them? What things in particular did they want to learn, what things did they learn, what checklists and outlines have they drafted...? 

Experiences have to be crafted into stories, into essays, That's always key for me: taking experience and trying to make it mean something. Liberty's journal, maybe whatever was in Levin's Pentalic sketchbooks and notebooks--- those are all things I'd love to know.

Two Nine Nine: Tasks

 Tonight is a midsummer night where I feel a sense of foreboding and a sense of exhaustion and hopelessness. There are things in my daily life that are going very badly this summer--- even beyond this endless Red Death season of quarantines and limbo ---and there's also a sense of impending mortality. 

Last time I wrote here, I wrote about preludes, about wondering how affairs and encounters and adventures begin. Those things have always intrigued me--- how and when people make the decision to have sex, or to have a particular kind of sex, or to have sex with a particular person. I've lost any real sense of those things. I've no sense any longer of how these things happen, and it gets harder and harder to imagine being part of those decisions.

I can't recall tonight whether it was Sophocles or Aeschylus who gave thanks to the gods for freeing him from desire--- a cruel taskmaster ---in old age. Sophocles, I think. You're free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I do think it was Sophocles.  I'm not sure tonight what to make of the saying. Desire can be a cruel master, no question about that. And it's ever more cruel as one grows older and watches desire fade.

At some point, desire becomes a mockery. You know that you're no longer thought of as entitled to feel desire, let alone find any satisfaction. At some point, acting on desire, even feeling desire, makes you an object of derision. 

It's easy tonight to think that I've run out of time for desire, run out of time to have desires. 

A friend in Scotland wrote to tell me that she is appalled at the way The Discourse seems to be turning age-disparate affairs into signs of evil and exploitation. She's always preferred her lovers to be older and experienced--- "worldly", she says ---and has acted on that for half her life. She feels awkward and apologetic not for having the affairs she's had since she was sixteen, but for putting men who taught her so much and meant so much to her into the role of the villain. She tells me that she's called and written lovers from her past  from her quarantine house near Edinburgh to reassure them that she cared about them, learned from them, and will treasure them in her memories. Do not, she told them, ever be ashamed of being with her. I do admire her for that. I really do.

I keep thinking that my usual haunts have less and less appeal for me. There seems to be less and less reason to be out. Certainly flirting with lovely girls at small bistros seems to be something I have less and less social standing to do. And I can't really decide whether that's based on fear of being mocked or treated with derision or on fear of being seen to fail at desire. 

I do walk through downtown on summer evening--- properly masked, mind you, here in the time of the Red Death ---and think of myself as a ghost. I will not, now or ever after, look at myself in a mirror or allow myself to be photographed. I certainly won't look any photos of myself.  I walk along not looking into shop windows, not going in to any of the few places open, and knowing that I'm less and less likely to be speaking to anyone again. I've spent my life telling stories, flirting, trying to be an interesting figure there on the edge of things. Those parts of the story seem to have come to an end.

Desire drives, desire obsesses. We know that. But seeing desire fade away is a cruel set of moments.

Two Nine Eight: Preludes

My friend in NZ sent me this back in the spring of 2012--- a memory of an adventure she had in 2002 with two slightly older boys. The full story is in a May 2018 post here, a post called "Two One Zero: Lookout". I printed off her original email and had it bound into a collection of emails and blog posts I'd assembled. It's something I want to keep, something I want to remember.

It says something about me that what fascinates here is the Range Rover. It matters to me that this all happened in a Range Rover, in a particular kind of vehicle. It matters, too, that it happened at a lookout up above the city.  Posh teens in a posh car, looking down on one of the wealthier suburbs--- the stage set mattered:

They were water polo boys... I think I was 15, they were 16 or 17. We were driving round aimlessly in a Range Rover, parked up at the waterfront for a while, then drove up to the lookout.  We passed cans of RTD bourbon around. One of them rolled a joint. I was in the front seat, bare feet up on the dash. Jake, who was in the driver's seat, started kissing me & putting his hands down my top. Hadleigh was in the back. They were both blond, swimmers' bodies-- lean & muscular. Hadleigh was just on the verge of being drunk, Jake hadn't had too much to drink. I remember Jake leading my hands down to his cock, which felt so hard through his jeans. I undid his fly and took him out of his jeans. Hadleigh was watching everything from the backseat. I leaned over and started sucking Jake. He was running his fingers through my hair, gently guiding my head. Jake came in my mouth, and as I sat up and swallowed his cum with a mouthful of bourbon, I could see Hadleigh with his cock in his hands. He was so big and so hard. He pulled my arm and I climbed over to the back seat. I sucked Hadleigh's cock and swallowed his cum as it shot down my throat. I still remember Jake watching from the front seat.

Jake rolled another joint and climbed over and joined us in the backseat. Metallica was on the radio, we had a few more bourbons. There were always a few gay rumors floating around school about Hadleigh. I sat on Jake's lap and put my bare feet on Hadleigh's lap. Then some three way kissing just...started. I was just...filled with pure delight and amazement when Jake & Hadleigh first kissed. The way they looked at each other. Jake had his fingers in my cunt at the time, but I could tell they'd never kissed before.  Things progressed, and I watched fascinated as Hadleigh sucked Jake's cock. Jake had his fingers intertwined with mine, and he squeezed my hand so hard as he moaned and thrust and came. They kissed afterwards, then there was a moment when Jake and Hadleigh were looking at me. I thought I knew what Jake wanted, so I took Hadleigh's cock out and slowly started sucking. He was already hard. I sucked him, my eyes on Jake, until after a few minutes Jake leant down and kissed me, then took Hadleigh in his mouth. I sat back and watched again, so wet. It was incredibly hot. I had never experienced this before, and it was beautiful. Hadleigh came hard. Jake didn't swallow, the cum trickled out of his mouth, then he leaned and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. 

I was like, gagging for some attention by this point. I climbed on top of Jake and rode him on the backseat (17 year old boys do have some good points...they recharge fast!) I finally got my orgasm too. They had both been fingering my cunt during the night, but I wasn't quite there quite yet. It was my first three way, and I fucking loved it. It wasn't until a few years later that I finally had two cocks in me at the same time, which was a game changer. But I will always think fondly of my night with the water polo boys.

Reading the story now, thinking of it as a story, I wouldn't have had Metallica playing. I'm no fan of heavy metal. There is that. But I do love it that it all happened in a Range Rover. And I love the image of Jill in the front seat, inevitably in tiny cut-off denim shorts, bare feet on the dash. There's something so deliciously alluring about that. Tanned legs, bare feet, tiny faded shorts... I have to wonder what she was thinking. She was in the front seat with Jake, so she would've counted as his date. Did she want a three-way to develop? Was she wondering why Jake had brought another boy along? Was she just indifferent to having Hadleigh watch her with Jake? In their circle, when kids made out or hooked up at parties, did anyone worry (on beaches, in spa pools, on sailboat decks) about being seen?

Did she know that he was driving her up to the lookout to have sex with? Was it a decision that she made before or after they parked and the RTD bourbons went round? When she climbed into the Range Rover that evening, was she expecting that at least one of the boys would fuck her? That does matter to me--- knowing when the decisions were made, knowing whether she'd done any planning, knowing whether she'd done anything with either of them before. Jill at fifteen or sixteen still (sometimes) wore underwear but rarely bothered with birth control until she was at university. What planning was she doing? Or was she just utterly passive, and waiting for bourbon and a joint to make the decision for her. Bare feet on the dash--- was she flexing cute, dark-tanned toes with impatience during the drive, or just as a distraction to the boys? How did Hadleigh in the backseat decide to take the risk and stroke himself while watching Jill with Jake? Had he wanted Jill before?

The story itself isn't entirely implausible. I'd be suspicious of how easily the two boys experimented with each other--- even in NZ, even in a city that prides itself on being a hippie town, even years and years after my own teens, that's hard for me to imagine. I did find a website for her school and scrolled back through their years of sports teams to find that there was a water polo boy named Hadleigh who graduated the year before Jill--- a boy who went on to be some sort of developer in the city. So at least that one point has some plausibility

No...not entirely implausible with rich, bored, drunk kids. But what does interest me is the prelude to it all. Or preludes. What interests me is what each person in the Range Rover was thinking, and what each person thought would happen. The actual events are hot, yes. But what I'd like to know is whether it just happened or whether any or all of them planned it.

Any thoughts out there over the aether?

Two Nine Seven: Markers

Not so very long ago--- a week or two ---there was something called International Non-Binary Day. There  were announcements on Twitter and Non-Binary flags flown in some hip neighborhoods and at the protests we're experiencing nationwide here in the summer of the Red Death.

I will have to admit that I don't understand the whole Non-Binary (NB, enbee) idea. I'll read about the concept and have trouble distinguishing "non-binary" from simply 'bisexual' or 'androgynous'.

Now I can craft an argument that divides non-binary from bisexual. Bisexual is the ability to be sexually attracted to either sex, to be sexually attracted to both (or either) male and female. That seems simple enough, though I do fear that the argument may already be outmoded. My current understanding is that sexual attraction is being downplayed these days, and that attraction must be based on gender, not sex.  "Non-binary" remains an ambiguous usage here. Is it the ability to be attracted to more than one (or two...or more) genders, to multiple social presentations? Or is it presenting oneself as performing more than one (or two...or more) genders? Does it include what we once thought of as 'androgyny' or does it go beyond that?

Non Binary seems to be linked to the idea of 'pansexual'. From what I've been reading, 'pansexual' is the new ideal, the new gold standard for sexual orientation. I've seen articles and Twitter posts that assert (sometimes violently) that 'pansexual' is the only moral or ethical sexual orientation, that any other orientation (straight, gay, lesbian, bi) is immoral--- bigoted and exclusionary. To some degree, that seems to be special pleading by trans women, who are busy building an argument that any refusal to have sex with someone on the grounds of body and anatomy is 'transphobic', reactionary, and evil. That argument seems to come down to saying both that bodies don't matter and that anyone who won't have sex with them is a Bad Person.

I've seen assertions on line that being Non-Binary is purely internal, that someone can be a 'man' or a 'woman' at any time, at will, even without social presentation. All identity, they're arguing is internal. You can change identity without having to do anything or look like anything. That's an argument I have trouble with. I can see that it's not altogether aligned with trans views of identity, since it rejects the idea of a real or authentic identity. I also take for granted that social presentation matters. An identity has to be recognized by the world around you to have any meaning at all. Saying, for example, that your inner identity is "woman" while sending out signals (dress, body language, beard) that your particular culture reads as "male" is a pointless exercise.

So there are the Non Binary flags, true...but what are the social markers for being Non Binary? There's an IG girl whose account I follow, a girl in the Pacific Northwest, who did a long series of posts about being Non Binary. Yet to my eye...I have no idea what she means. That she's bisexual is obvious and trivially easy. She's tall, lanky, lovely eyes and face, with hair shaved down to USMC boot camp length. She works as an alt-model, and her photos can be anything from haute fashion sexy to punk erotica. I read her as androgynous in a kind of Eighties art-school style--- an assumed boyishness used to enhance obvious femininity. Her social presentation remains "female" to my eye. I have no idea what she thinks when she looks in a mirror or sees herself in photos, and I do read her as  female-hot.

What are the social markers for being Non Binary? It says something about me that I assume that there must be social markers. As far as I know, every group develops its own internal symbolic language of identifiers--- whether that's late-Victorian gay men with a green carnation or Nineties lesbians in Birkenstocks. I grew up reading "The Official Preppy Handbook" and "The Sloane Ranger Handbook" and "The Official Yuppie Handbook". I take it as a given that there are social markers, whether that's finance bros wearing micro fleece vests or old-school preps wearing Nantucket Reds. After all...checklists are everything. But I don't know how Non Binary people perform an identity.

Any identity must be something the external world can read. How else can they react to you as what you assert that you "really are"? Any identity has its external symbols and poses. Nothing is more human than constructing stories to explain ourselves, whether verbally or in symbols.

Right now, though, I can't quite explain what Non Binary is, or how it's enacted in public. What does it mean? How is it announced? Who out there over the aether can tell me? Be specific, as I always told my students--- be specific and give examples.

Two Nine Six: Poster

I've probably written about this before, but today one of my social media accounts sent me a notice that a girl I'd corresponded with for a bit back in the Long Ago was having a birthday. She must be thirty-two or thirty-three now. She's in London Town now, highly successful in her field and quite married.

What I'm remembering about her tonight is that she once had a blog where she posted a photo of a poster reading "REMEMBER: You Are Someone's Reason To Masturbate". That would've been in her early or mid twenties, when she'd just moved to London. She was a gym rat girl in those days, and a party girl with an eating disorder.  I remember seeing the photo of the poster and grimacing. Depressing thought, really.

It's not hard to intuit that she was using the poster as inspiration to hit the gym more, to run and stretch and pump weights. An inspiration to starve more, too. But it was all an attitude that was so alien to me.

I'll note that another expat girl I knew in London Town in those days laughed when I told her about the poster. She waved a hand and said blithely that Everyone is someone's Reason. Well, yes...for her, that was (and is) true. She has a long list of conquests--- always older, inevitably distinguished, often married, usually moneyed. She's been used to being in the upper demimonde since her late teens.  She can take it for granted that she's always been someone's Reason. Being part of admirers' fantasies is something she takes for granted.

Again--- that's utterly alien to me. I can't imagine ever being someone's Reason. I can't imagine that in the past, and I certainly can't imagine it now. I find it increasingly difficult and shameful to admit to having any fantasies of my own, and it seems highly, highly unlikely that I could ever be anyone's Reason.

My blonde friend down in NZ told me once that of course she'd fantasized about me. I looked at the screen and felt an odd rush of disbelief and anger. I couldn't imagine what I'd done to make her lie to me or why she'd want to tell me such an obvious lie.

I can sit and listen to lovely young companions tell me stories of their adventures and encounters. My life is constructed of stories, not atoms--- you know that saying. But I have so very little to offer them in return these days.  I'm not foolish enough to think that I have anything physical about me that would inspire fantasies, and I can't imagine having stories of any value these days.

I could never put that poster on a wall in my rooms. It's not something anyone male could do, really. Put something like that up and you'd be open to both derision and political attacks. And you'd have no defenses. None.

And...even if you were someone's Reason, you'd have no control over who that someone might be. I can't escape the belief that having someone themselves unattractive fancy you or fantasize about you means that you have done something wrong. Let's always make a note of that.

There's no chance that I can identify with either of the two girls in London Town about the thought in that poster. There's no chance that here in these latter days I could ever tell a girl that she was my Reason--- even we were in a very sexual relationship and I was offering her a compliment. There's no way to say that to a girl these days, and there's certainly no way that any girl would take me as a Reason.

I'm a very good listener, and I used to be a good storyteller. I used to be good at crafting stories and bringing lovely bookish girls into fantasies.  But I'm of no value whatsoever at being part of anyone's fantasies as a player.

Two Nine Five: Leather

Tonight I'm thinking again about my posh blonde friend down in the Land of the Long White Cloud, about Jill down in NZ.

I'm thinking about the stories she told me about the rich older man she fancied back maybe five or six years ago. She may have known him longer than that, but memory says that it was in 2015 and early 2016 that she was last involved with him. I know very little about the older man himself--- in his mid or late fifties, I think. Maybe sixty now. Jill always did have a taste for older men, a taste I have to approve of. She always called him "the businessman" and hinted that he spent his time "owning companies". That could mean all sorts of things, really. She never did tell me how she met him, or how old she was when she did, or what their early encounters were like. She hadn't seen him for a while when they ran into each other by accident in an Auckland bar in 2015. They had a drink and (of course) ended up in bed in his hotel suite.

She did tell me that he was rich even by her family's standards. Once, later, she wrote me to say that she felt guilty and ashamed because  one night off Cuba St. in Wellington she'd given a blowjob in a parked pickup truck to someone she described as a "bankrupt builder". Pickup truck in Kiwi is ute...a ute. For utility truck, I guess. She was ashamed that she'd given a drunken blowjob to the Bankrupt Builder and was cheating on The Businessman. How could she do that, she asked, how could she cheat on someone who had ten million dollars?  (My question-- $10 million NZ or in USD?)

What Jill loved best about being with The Businessman was that he collected expensive cars. He collected Aston-Martins and was a member of the NZ Aston-Martin Owners Club. He'd take her to meets and road rallies. I don't know how many of the cars he's owned over the years, or exactly what he owned when she was sleeping with him. She enthused once about having been in a V12 Vanquish, so that may have been his ride when she was with him in 2015/16.  I did Google the car, and I'd like to know if she'd been in one with him.

I think you know where this is going. Jill always hinted that she'd had sex in an Aston-Martin...maybe in more than one. She laughed about the make of the car, since she had been a major fan of the early 007 movies. Easy enough to imagine her in a parked Aston-Martin Vantage outside some posh restaurant like The Grove off St. Patricks Square, short cocktail dress up around her hips, straddling The Businessman. Let's note how my mind works here. I can see her in detail, tell you what colour and fabric her dress is, tell you that she's dark-tanned and obviously not wearing underwear (she rarely does). I can see the expression on her face as she rides him. I can't tell you a thing about him, though. Not looks, not expression, not suit. He's irrelevant as a person. It's Jill and the car that matter.

A V12 Vanquish would be a perfect stage set for a posh blonde party girl like Jill. I'm not especially interested in fast cars or sports cars, but an Aston-Martin is a stage set that I can see.

I can't get past the vision of Jill naked in an Aston-Martin. I can imagine her in her classic Ray-Bans, pulling off her cashmere pullover and cut-off denim shorts and leaning back naked while her Older Admirer drives through Grey Lynn in Auckland. I can imagine her laugh as she puts her bare feet up on the dash and turns up the music.

I can imagine her naked on open highway as well, the car at speed, Jill's sundress tossed into the back. If I had her here tonight, I ask all the questions that would help me turn the image into a story. How hard was it to get a sundress off in the passenger seat of the Vanquish? Harder than peeling off skinny jeans or leggings? Windows up or down? Wind in her hair or not? Would she curl up in the seat or lean back and put her feet up? Would she caress herself while the car accelerated or lean across to give the driver road head? Were the windows and windscreen dark-tinted or was she thrilled by the thought of performing for passing truckers and teen boys? What did it feel like, being naked at speed? What did the leather of the seats feel like against bare skin? That's something I do think about: Jill's hair in the wind, sunlight on her freckles, nipples hard, the North Island landscape rushing past.

Now of course she's been naked in parked cars since her early teens; let's take that as a given. But being naked in a Vantage V12--- a car that costs something above $US 175,000 ---or a $US 300,000 Vanquish V12...that has a very special erotic energy. I can't imagine her not always feeling obligated to sit in one of those with the back of her skirt flipped up so that she'd always have bare flesh on the leather seat.

In some better world, she'd call me late at night and tell me about textures and sensations, about the sound of the V12 engine while she gave head or fingered herself at high speed down a coastal highway. These days, my own selection of stage sets is deeply limited, and I'm unlikely ever to have new ones. But beautiful, leggy, posh girls in expensive sports cars--- there's an image I can like. I just wish I had more details and more accounts of adventures from young ladies with a taste for speed and transgression.

Two Nine Four: Masks

I've been thinking about desire and enticements, about what we see in what we desire.

I've been reading about the Los Angeles club scene in the 1960s, reading books by Eve Babitz, who was the chronicler of that world. I've liked Babitz's stories and memoirs for a long time. Her "Slow Days, Fast Company", "L.A. Woman", and "Sex & Rage" have been favorites of mine since my days in grad school. She was always a better It Girl than any of the Manhattan scenesters. The Warhol girls may have been cool, but none of them got naked to play chess with Marcel Duchamp.

I suppose it was a combination of things that made me want to re-read Babitz. I'd seen the new documentary about Joan Didion and I'd just read Taylor Jenkins Reid's "Daisy Jones and the Six". And I'd seen "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood". All of that made me want to go back and re-read Eve Babitz, especially "Slow Days, Fast Company". Lovely short pieces, a lovely invocation of a Los Angeles I'll never see. Please call this a recommendation. Let me know what you think of Ms. Babitz.

A couple of weeks ago, I was fantasizing about the young Jane Birkin and the young Francoise Hardy-- two of my key Sixties Girls. I suppose reading "Slow Days, Fast Company" and "Daisy Jones and the Six" has made me fantasize about mid-Sixties California girls. I don't know what that means, and of course I haven't given up my dreams of being in Paris and London 1965 with Ms. Birkin and Mlle. Hardy. But I am going through a phase of L.A. girls in miniskirts and big sunglasses as images for desire.

How do desires and fetishes change? There are underlying points in all my fantasies; that much is always true. A certain age, long legs, a disdain for underwear, dark tans. a certain height and angular slender build. Those things are part of the definition of desire for me. But if some things are necessary for me to feel desire, periods and costumes and styles do change. Ms. Birkin and Mlle. Hardy are leggy Sixties girls, but they're not quite girls you can imagine partying with Eve Babitz at a party in Malibu. The trick, I suppose, is to find out what's behind the shifts in the precise forms of desire. And let's be  clear--- it's all as much about sets and settings as it is about the girls themselves.

Yesterday I walked from my office to a small burger joint to lunch. While I was waiting for my order I noticed a girl standing on line to pick up a take-away. I was struck very much coup de foudre with her.

Probably nineteen or twenty, tallish, slender. Streaked light-brown hair to her shoulders, light eyes, a seriously dark tan, perfect legs. A very tiny khaki miniskirt--- a look I haven't seen much of this spring and summer ---and cute sandals. And...a mask. She had on a black face mask. Somehow the mask made it all work. Somehow the mask made her desperately desirable. It is the season of the Red Death, and we're still in the midst of the pandemic. The mask may be the new normal for the rest of the year. After all, I was wearing one myself. But the mask and the miniskirt were a trigger for serious desire. I may have imagined her in the mask, those long legs over my shoulders. I may have imagined her gasping in orgasm through the mask.  I may have imagined those things, but I have no idea why they came to mind.  I'll certainly never know who she was, but it was the combination of mask and miniskirt that instantly made her a fantasy girl. So I suppose that Red Death face masks will become a fetish for me, the same way that ankle bracelets on lovely girls once did.

I've always needed the idea of sets and settings--- places, architecture, lighting, fashion ---for any fantasies to work. Right now it seems that I need the image of a certain kind of Sixties scene...and I may need lovely girls to wear face masks and tiny skirts. Or just the face mask.

But in any case, I have no idea where these images and fetishes come from.  I have no idea when and how they'll mutate or shift.  I'd still love to take the girl in the mask to a party at Ms. Babitz's house in the Canyons in some imaginary 1967, though.