Three Nine Three: Swans

 There's a novel I read some years ago-- Elizabeth Kostova's "The Swan Thieves" (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2010) that I picked up again the other day. I'd read her "The Historian" when it first appeared, and I was looking forward to her second novel.

The novel itself is about the art world, psychiatry, and what constitutes beauty. It's also about age, desire, and loss. I hadn't thought about "The Swan Thieves" in years, but I half-remembered one particular passage and wanted to find it again.

The setting is simple. The hero, a fifty-something psychiatrist who's also a failed painter, goes to the National Gallery to look at a particular painting, one that's prompted one of his patients to try and deface the canvas. He's talking to one of the workers at the information desk when he notices a twenty-ish young girl who works there as well. The girl, he notes, has dyed-obsidian hair and green eyes...and then he's launched off into fantasy:

I found myself staring at her, unexpectedly stirred. Her gaze was knowing as she stood there behind the counter, her body lean and flexible under a tight-zipped jacket, the smallest curve of hip showing between that and the top of a short black skirt-- that would be the maximum glimpse of abdominal skin permitted in this gallery full of nudes, I speculated. She might be an art student, working here in her spare time to get through school, a gifted printmaker or fashioner of  jewelry, with those long, pale hands. I pictured her up against the counter, after hours, no underwear under that too-short skirt. She was just a kid; I looked away. She was a kid, and I was no catch, I knew...

I do love that brief glimpse of the girl. Well, of course I do. Short skirt, no underwear, emplaced in the worlds of art and academia, in her early twenties-- those things are all on my list of criteria for a perfect fantasy girl. Especially the idea of her up against the counter after hours, skirt up around her waist, one leg hooked around me. How could I not like that? The paragraph might've been written specifically for me.

I recall that when the novel came out, Ms. Kostova was attacked online and in reviews for that paragraph. Far too many self-described feminist reviewers were appalled that she gave her male main character such thoughts. How dare a character have such thoughts in a novel, especially a character in his fifties?  

I was annoyed and amused at the attacks. Once again, here we are-- assigning real-world blame to an author for the thoughts of a fictional character. I was amused, too, since I'd have had the exact same thoughts there at the gallery information desk. The issue of age would never have occurred to me, not then and not now. 

We're not supposed to have fantasies these days. We're not supposed to feel, let alone admit to feeling, physical desire. Sexual fantasies aren't for anyone male these days, let alone males of a certain age. I'm not sure what the Arbitrary Social Rules say about female desire and female fantasies these days, but I do suspect that the Purity Culture of the Year Twenty-Five opposes such things.

Let's be clear. I'd certainly have the same thoughts the character in the novel had. I wouldn't act on them, of course, and these days I'd never admit to anyone that I was having such thoughts. I'd certainly never admit to anyone female that I had sexual thoughts about anyone, ever-- not even if I was talking to a lover.

I'm a person of the male persuasion and of a certain age. I know better than to have fantasies. Fantasies are thoughtcrime. We know this in the Year Twenty-Five. To have fantasies as a male, let alone fantasies about anyone younger, only enhances the thoughtcrime. Male sex is itself suspect, since all male sex is "mediocre" by definition. To be male and feel desire is to be actively harming the object of desire, even if that person never knows she's being desired. 

It's better to do and feel...nothing. To do anything else is to be open to both anger and mockery. To have thoughts about beauty and desire is to show oneself as pathetic, ridiculous, and dangerous. Better to avoid all crimethink, to do and feel nothing at all, lest you be held in contempt for your irrefutable failings. 

Three Nine Two: Hands

 I'm still on the mailing list for several high-end sex toy boutiques. I've written about that before. There was a time when I might have used their catalogs to buy gifts for lovely Young Companions, but at the moment I have no one for whom I could buy such things. 

That makes me by definition an incel, and I'm not happy with that. I have no lovely Young Companion in my life, and there's no one with whom I could be involved in what seems to be called a "situationship". I'm currently celibate, and I don't want to be. This makes me an incel by definition, and I hate that word. I dislike the aesthetics and politics of the so-called incel community, and I refuse to be part of that.

Nonetheless, seeing the email adverts from places like Good Vibrations makes me all too aware of my current status. Now I have nothing against Good Vibrations or the wares the company sells. Their sex toys are elegant enough, and girls I know give them high marks. I've bought vibrators and dildos from them as gifts, and my young ladies have been pleased.  My unhappiness is based on how pointless and uncomfortable it is for anyone of the male persuasion  (me, that means me) to look at their online catalogs.

Their latest ad campaign was "Give Your Hand A Hand", and they were marketing sex toys and sexual aids for men. I can't deal with that.

Self-pleasuring is just not something men can do and retain any sense of self-respect. I looked at the Good Vibrations catalog and could hear derisive laughter in my head. Being male cuts you off from any ability to find pleasure on your own. To be male and "give your hand a hand" makes you pathetic and contemptible. It marks you out as a pathetic failure who's engaging in something creepy and shameful.

Think about a high-end Lelo vibrator or one of the classic "rabbit" vibrators. Young ladies have been using those for the last twenty years and more to discover their bodies and discover pleasure on their own. No one male can do that. No one male can risk being known to do that. Having sexual fantasies at all (especially about an actual individual) is a red flag if you're male. It's a marker for being sad and disgusting and probably threatening all at once.

My friend Jill in NZ, or any of the girls I've written about here-- Liberty, Levin, my vanished ghostgirl here --can use a high-end Lelo and be proud of it. They can discuss self-pleasure with other girls as something that's a Good Thing in their lives. They believe that they have a right to seek pleasure, and that there are tool that are useful and acceptable for doing that. Their bodies can serve them. I can't imagine applying any of that to myself.

I'm male, and the male body is an object of contempt to begin with. Even a gym-toned male body is regarded as contemptible. The act of male self-pleasuring is seen as laughable, sad, and disgusting. I would be almost breathlessly proud to have a lovely Young Companion tell me that I was a fantasy image she used while pleasuring herself. At the same time, I'd never under any circumstances tell a lover or potential lover that she was my fantasy image. I'd rather take a bullet to the knee than tell a lover that I fantasized about her. I know deep in my bones that she'd be disgusted and appalled and would stalk out of my life in a cold rage. No lovely girl would ever be thrilled or pleased that she was someone's fantasy. 

Long ago, the vanished Ketzie wrote in her blog that she kept a note on her bathroom mirror as an incentive to go to the gym: "Remember-- You Are Someone's Reason To Masturbate". There is no way that anyone male could ever put up a note like that. There is no way in hell, no way here under God's green sky, that I could imagine doing that or even thinking it.

I will not allow myself to have fantasies, let alone engage in the Solitary Vice. I will not allow myself to do something that would mark me out as risible, contemptible, disgusting. 

If you're male, the Arbitrary Social Rules say that self-pleasure isn't for you. The male body isn't for pleasure. Male sexuality, and especially straight male sexuality, is something that's snickered at these days as mediocre and vaguely sad at best, and as disgusting and threatening at worst. 

I'd rather just withdraw from the whole thing. I will not do something that's so widely mocked these days. I will not be judged as a disgusting failure for pleasuring myself, and I will not engage in the Solitary Vice when I'm well aware that lovers or potential lovers would shudder in derision at what I'd be doing. I've read many an article or blog post these last few years pointing out that all straight male sex is mediocre at best and that anything anyone male might do with his body is both repulsive and an admission of failure. 

At my age, it's better just to walk away from things. It's better to do nothing and think of nothing that would mark you out as a failure. I cannot imagine buying (let alone using) a male sex toy. I'd rather give up the idea of pleasure altogether. In this life and this world, a lovely girl pleasuring herself is regarded as a thing of empowerment and aesthetic beauty. No one male can be seen the same way.

It's better to just keep your hands away from yourself. It's better not to think of pleasure and sex at all. It's better to just be invisible. Always. 

Three Nine One: Housewives

 I've mentioned erotic art before-- specifically, the graphic novels of Michael Manning, which began to appear in the 1990s. Manning's stories (e.g., Tranceptor, The Spider Garden, Hydrophidian, Cathexis) are...gender-fluid cyberpunk goth erotica. Something like that, in any case. The artwork itself is excellent, and it does remind me a bit of Matt Howarth's sci-fi work. 

Manning's work is hard to get these days. There aren't very many publishers of erotic graphic novels left, and credit card processors are refusing to process payments these days for erotica of any kind. The new century is a place where Gen Z "influencers" look with puritanical disdain on erotica, a place where sex scenes in novels (especially in "romantasy") are (non-ironically) called "smut" and dismissed as politically suspect. 

It's really very hard to find good erotica these days. I've been told that there's at least some new trans and queer erotica being written or drawn, but those are alien genres for me. And even in those genres, visual erotica seems to be suspect-- if only because beauty itself is now suspect, and no one wants to be accused of "fetishizing" bodies or preferences. 

Having said that, I'll note that I found a series of rather good erotic graphic novels from the early Noughts. The series is called "Housewives at Play", and it seems to have appeared from c.2000 through c. 2008. I've found a website (joinforjoy.com) that has several issues posted, and they're worth looking at. As best I can tell, the issues form a more or less ongoing story. The posted issues begin with Nr. 4 in the series, and form a (largely) connected story up through Nr. 18. I haven't been able to find the first three issues, and the story wasn't complete by Nr. 18. The website has most, but not all, of the issues between Nr. 4 and Nr. 18. I can infer how the storyline began, but I have no idea how (or if) it ended. I do wish it was still around.

The artist and creator of "Housewives at Play" is supposed to be "Rebecca". I have zero idea if "Rebecca" was actually female, and I know nothing at all about the person behind the name. The series was published by Eros Comix in Seattle, and I don't know whether the publisher is still in business. If anyone out there over the aether knows anything about the publisher, please do pass it along.

What is there to say about "Housewives at Play"? Well, the art is much better than usual. "Rebecca" did have an eye for lovely women, and her "My Girls" special issue does some excellent pen-and-ink portraits of her main characters. The body types are very much to my taste-- tall, toned, slender, and leggy. The characters don't wax, but they do neatly trim their pubic hair, so we're not stuck with a 1970s Land of Bush O'Plenty look.  The stories began in black and white, but seem to have transitioned to colour at some point. Rebecca's art is at least as good as anything in mainstream comics art.

The stories? Well, semi-comic suburban/pop culture lesbian BDSM is probably the best description. (I couldn't bring myself to use "tongue-in-cheek" here. I just couldn't.) The main character is a bored, 40-year old suburban housewife named Catherine Mitchell. One day, out of nowhere, Catherine is violated by her best friend Patty and turned into a lesbian sex slave for Patty and Patty's newlywed neighbor Beth. Catherine then acquires her teen daughter's best friend Jennifer as her own sex slave, although Jennifer and Catherine's beautiful daughter Melissa (both carefully and repeatedly described as eighteen) are themselves secretly a couple. Hilarity ensues, as does lots of transgressive sex. 

At some point, Catherine, Melissa, and Catherine's incestuous younger sister Lynn are kidnapped by the staff at a local Victoria's (errr..."Veronica's") Secret and sold to teen pop princess Bratty Sneers (Brittany Spears, obviously), teen idol Kandy Korn (Mandy Moore?) and country music idol Fate Will (Faith Hill, I assume). There's also Catherine's ex-lover Stephanie, a Native American stripper/escort who dances under the name Princess Poke-My-Hiney...plus random beautiful guest stars of 18-21 who are all seriously sapphic, blithely promiscuous, and open to trying pretty much anything involving lesbian BDSM. Males rarely appear, although there is a subplot where Fate Will orders a dozen of her ranch hands to impregnate Melissa so that Fate's husband Grim (Tim McGraw) will return from touring and think Fate's given him a child...and Fate won't have to risk her looks and figure with a pregnancy or allow anyone male to have sex with her. 

The stories are hot, yes. They're also fairly funny, and all parties, top and bottom, enjoy the BDSM. Even the subplot where Melissa is being bred by the cowboys is only an excuse for Princess Poke-My-Hiney to rescue her and have hot sex with Melissa ("Gosh, her taste reminds me of Catherine...I wonder where Cathy is these days!"). Everyone loves (extremely) large plastic strap-on dildos, and all actual males are mocked for having tiny penises. All the girls have foot fetishes, too-- which may or not say something about "Rebecca", or at least say something about fashionable fetishes in the Noughts. 

If I have any real criticism it's that the various girls who are topping Catherine or Melissa or Lynn or Jennifer do a lot of sexual humiliation based on slurs ("Get over here, you cunt-loving little lezzie slut pig"). That part seems...unnecessary and mean-spirited. I wanted Melissa and/or Jennifer to tell the older characters that they were all "lezzie sluts" and that there was nothing at all wrong with that...and that they were proud bottoms, but not "pigs". I also had to wince a bit when Fate Will hires Princess Poke-My-Hiney as an escort and makes her talk in 1930s cowboy movie-stereotypical "redskin" dialect. Beyond that, "Housewives at Play" is fun.

Amazon does have some collected editions of "Housewives at Play", but they're asking something like $140 for a collection of issues Nr. 1-4. I like the series, but I'm not going to pay that kind of money for a paperbound graphic novel that's nearly twenty years old. 

If any of you out there over the aether know anything about the publishing history of "Housewives at Play" or about its author/artist, I hope you'll let me know. I'd like to know if "Rebecca" ever finished the story, and I'd like to see more of her art.

Next time I post here, I want to do a bit of a deep dive into why it's no longer possible to have any sexual preferences and why kink-shaming is now seen as perfectly okay. I want to write about why I can't imagine ever asking a partner to do anything specific or ever telling a partner about any particular interests I might have. I once heard a gay acquaintance described as "so far deep in the closet he can see Narnia", and I want to write about how that phrase can be applied across the gender-orientation spectrum these days...and about how we seem to be losing any sense that sex is worth doing, let alone exploring.

Three Nine Zero: Blue

 A young friend in the English Home Counties told me once upon a time that she had no problem with men using what we call the Blue Pill. The Blue Pill, she said, was a tool, a solution to a physical problem. In the course of her life, she'd been with boys and men from sixteen to their sixties, and many had used the Blue Pill either "recreationally" or to solve a problem. The Blue Pill for men, she said, was no different than a girl needing extra lube. 

I can't disagree with her on that. If there's a problem, you look for a way to solve it. And yet...I'd be too afraid to use Viagra or any of its sister drugs. Today I read that Viagra had a number of off-label uses that men needed to consider. It's a vasodilator, and it's supposedly good for heart health and longevity. I have no idea if that's true or not, or what the medical research actually says. It doesn't seem implausible, at least on the  face of things. The idea was advanced that men, and especially males over forty, should take one or two Blue Pills a week as a medical thing, a health thing. Again, I have no idea what the research says on any of this.

I've never taken the Blue Pill or any other Sildenafil-based drugs. I could say that I've never needed it, but that does sound too much like bragging. My luck has been good-- that's all I'll say. My body hasn't betrayed me...yet. I've always told myself that if I had systems failure, I'd remember that I'm not a one-trick pony and that I've had years of expensive post-graduate education. I could figure out a back-up plan. I told my friend in the Home Counties about that, and she just laughed. She pointed out that I had fingers and a tongue and that she expected that I knew how to use toys-- from Corona bottles to high-end Lelo vibrators --on a partner. 

I do trust her on these things, and I know that I'm not a one-trick pony. And as I get older, I remind myself that one of the good things about BDSM play is that there are ways to give pleasure that don't require that all male systems be operating the way they did at twenty. Nonetheless, any intimations of mortality and decay do leave me depressed and unwilling to do anything that reminds me of my clock ticking down to zero.

These days, I'm far more anxious about things physical than I was even ten years ago. I've never been really afraid of systems failure before, and I've dealt moderately well with poor body image. Nowadays, though, I'd be terrified of a young companion feeling insulted if I needed the Blue Pill. I'd be terrified of her seeing me take the Blue Pill and having it remind her of my age and the idea of decay. Remember, I'm the one who read a novel where the ingenue suddenly thinks that her older lover "smells old" and leaps out of bed. That led to months and months of showering and using two or three applications of the strongest and most severe body wash I could buy before ever coming to bed with a partner...even if she already knew my age to the day. 

I can't decide what I'd be more afraid of-- systems failure (I'm far too anxious not to use some euphemism for "impotence"-- here we are with magical thinking) making a partner feel unwanted or not desirable or systems failure highlighting all my other failures (age, looks, social status, wealth). 

In my life, I've been with girls who took MDMA before sex as a "recreational" thing. But I can't quite believe that taking a Blue Pill before sex would make my partner think that I was doing something to make things better for her. These days, I'm far too anxious and afraid to do anything "recreational"-- anything that's about giving and receiving pleasure. I'm far too anxious and afraid of disappointing whoever I'd be with...and, yes, afraid of being seen as an object of mockery. 

And...yes. I still use a severe body wash whenever I might be anywhere near (and not just in bed with) a lovely young companion. My life these days is about masking decay in so, so many ways.

Three Eight Nine: Smut

 There's a 1993 book by a Valerie Kelly called "How to Write Erotica". I recall having a copy of it back in the Nineties. The book itself was well-done, and it had a lot of advice about the craft of writing that was very well-taken. Very good advice, really. 

The book had lots of suggestions about writing erotica and had a long list of places where aspiring authors could submit manuscripts. All those little magazines are gone now, replaced for a while by websites, and nowadays simply...gone. Erotica isn't in favor these days.

Some 1993 suggestions-- writing copy for the boxes of VHS porn cassettes (and DVDs?) --are almost funny now. I don't even know that 2025 porn is put on DVD at all. And even in 1993, the publishers of paperback porn novels were mostly gone. Literary porn? Where would you go for that these days? There are no more sites like Nerve.com or Filthy Gorgeous Things.

On Booktok people have taken to unironically referring to any book with sex scenes as "smut". Maybe that's just a way of dismissing what's called "romantasy" out of hand, or maybe Gen Z really doesn't have any use for sex and erotica. I really dislike that use of "smut". "Smut" back in the 1950s-1990s had a connotation not just of graphic sex, but of self-conscious irony and amused transgression. The Gen Z types don't seem to have any sense of humor about sex and don't like irony and especially don't like transgressive fiction. My God, there are twenty-somethings on Booktok and YouTube that are terrified that sometimes characters in YA novels actually have sex. I just want to facepalm about that. They're actually afraid that high schoolers will be corrupted by knowing that people do have sex.

I'd still like to write erotica, but I don't think that what excites or arouses me would be commercially viable. As I've always said, any erotica that I'd write would probably have footnotes and a bibliography. (Please note that I mean "footnotes" in the academic way, not in any fetish sense) And my characters would...talk. They'd talk a lot. They'd talk before, during, and after sex. 

I mean...that's always been my own experience of sex. Lots of talking, and very much lots of talking during the sex itself. The girls and women who've been with me down all the years have been adventurous and experimental and willing to try lots of transgressive things...and we've always talked while doing things. My young companions and I have always narrated what's happening and done lots of serve-and-return badinage during sex. I suspect that most audiences wouldn't get that.

I also suspect that most audiences wouldn't see s/m as an occasion for social climbing and/or irony. They wouldn't get the idea of the two very different people (yes, sometimes age-disparate, too) talking themselves into bed or into new and untried experiences not so much out of lust as out of a sense of the excitement and sheer fun of trying something outrageous. I think, too, that Gen Z would dislike the idea of pushing past limits just to see what's out there. 

One day, maybe. Maybe one day I will write something that would've gone on a slightly louche erotica website back in the Noughts. All I have to worry about is that the sort of people who become self-righteous about "smut" on Booktok aren't going to like stories about exploration.

Three Eight Eight: Tales

 Here we are at the end of January in the blighted Year Twenty-Five. There's so very little to write about these days. The world is an increasingly grim and brutal place. There's little enough place right now for tales of elegant sex or speculations on the meaning of erotica.

I did find something, though-- tales from the Long Ago, tales from letters sent me by lovely Young Companions back in the days when actual letters meant something, when lovely, long-legged, underwear-averse girls did flirt with me by mail.

These are things sent me by a girl who saw me as mentor and confessor, a girl who wanted to be a muse, a demimondaine, and an adventurer. She wrote me back in the mid-Noughts, back in better days--

Fantasizing about fucking some tan surfer-girl who moved to Florida to wake up to the sound of the waves. She lives in a bright cottage full of tropical flowers and hanging lanterns, and when I say, shyly, that I haven't been with many girls, she says she could teach me a few things.

I can't imagine living in Florida these days-- hurricanes and Republicans make it no country for me and mine, but my Young Companion back in the day had other visions as well:

Fantasizing about fucking a freelance-writer Brooklyn girl. She rolled her eyes at me along with the rest of the city last year when my poetry was published, but recently she's been crushing on my Twitter. After we break up, neither of us talk about it much, but it was the most powerful orgasms we ever had.

I wish I knew more girls these days who spend their afternoons and late nights constructing fantasies. I wish I knew more girls who'd phone me late at night to whisper their fantasies to me.

Muse, demimondaine, adventuress....I need someone like that again. I need someone to be a Voice for me.

Three Eight Seven: Gifts

 Today is the day after Christmas, and here we are in the last week of the year. The last week of December is always a dead, empty week-- a time for watching the last embers of the year fade to ash. It's a week for pessimism and a sense of loss. There seems to be no way of escaping that.

Christmas gifts are rare at my age, but this year I did receive one gift worth noting. Someone with the best intentions in the world gave me the gift of a spa day. I have a lovely and expensively-produced gift card for a day at a hip local spa.  I was duly appreciative. The gift was unexpected, and it was given in friendship. So please be very aware that I'm not saying anything bad about the person who gave me the gift card. I was thrilled to be remembered at all. But the gift will never be used, and there's no way it can be.

This is the second time in my life I've been given a spa day, a "self-care" day. The first time was years ago-- back in the last age, back in the last millennium. Again, it was intended to be something enjoyable. I didn't use that first gift certificate, either. There was no way I could use it. I did tell the person who gave that first spa day to me that I loved the gift, and I did tell her that I'd used it and had a wonderful time at the spa. There was no way to tell her the truth-- that I'd put the gift envelope in a desk drawer where it would be forgotten forever.

No one like me can ever have a "self-care" day. No one like me can ever use a spa day. There are always social rules-- yes, arbitrary rules, but rules nonetheless. I'm a straight, cis, white, middle-class male of a certain age. Spa days aren't for people like me. Any day involving care of the self-- care of the body --isn't for people like me.

I've been in saunas before, and sitting naked in a steam room isn't something I can do. I found myself barely able to breathe in a sauna once, and I knew why. I knew that it was about anxiety rather than any physical issue. I'd seen horror films and thrillers where someone gets trapped in a sauna...so that was certainly on my mind. But most of the anxiety was that I had to be unclothed. The sauna towel around my waist did nothing to make me feel secure. I was aware of my body, and that's never  a good thing. 

I've never seen any reason for the male body to be exposed. I've never seen anything attractive or aesthetically pleasing in the male body. I've certainly never seen anything attractive in my own body...let alone when covered in sweat and gasping for breath. I didn't want to suffocate in the sauna, but what I was most afraid of was being seen by anyone else. I remember being desperately afraid of anyone else using the sauna while I was there. I was terrified of being seen-- terrified of having anyone else see what my body was really like. 

Now, I'm a  trained historian. I know that in Classical Greece, upper-class men exercised naked and took pride in making their bodies fit to be seen. That Greek attitude is utterly alien to me. I can read about Japanese or Korean spas-- elegant, hi-tech, sleek, with robot-serviced cold and hot baths and future-coded steam rooms --or watch videos demonstrating their technical wonders. I can do those things and marvel at the facilities...but there's no way here under God's green sky that I could go to one.  For all that I've obsessed over cyberpunk visions of Japanese style, I couldn't go to a Japanese or Korean spa. Not even the idea of having a Wm. Gibson experience could get me there.

I've spent my life suggesting to young ladies of my acquaintance that all beautiful girls should sleep naked. I'll stand by that position, but I've never been able to sleep naked on my own. It seems wrong for someone like me.  If I can't be naked in my own bedroom, I certainly can't do that at a spa.

The spa day I was gifted included a full-body massage. I almost grimaced at that. I've never actually had  a massage, and there's no way it can happen. There's no scenario for me in which  getting a massage ends well.

If the person doing the massage is female, there's nothing but shame awaiting me. I understand that a trained masseuse sees human bodies as a set of muscles and nerves, that she'll have been trained to be a professional. But I'll still be utterly ashamed to have anyone female (and presumptively attractive) see my flesh. And in a post-#MeToo world, other, horrible things can happen. I'd be on the massage table and there'd be a touch on my back and shoulders and...well...what if my body began to respond? What if I did start to become, you know, aroused?  I could stay face-down to try to hide what was happening and try to get away from any touch. It wouldn't do me any good, though. 

One of two things would happen. The masseuse would be disgusted or enraged. Not all the apologies in the world for the involuntary physical response would be enough. She might recoil in disgust and/or point and laugh with contempt. That would be bad enough. But she'd be even more likely to immediately for the manager...or call for the security guards. I can so easily imagine myself being shoved out of the spa and told never to return-- and I can imagine the police being called. I can always imagine that-- the police coming and me ending up in handcuffs. No matter how professional and clinical the setting was, I couldn't risk having a masseuse touch me-- or even see me.

And having a masseur instead? That can't be allowed to happen. I know how that would play out. I'd be Geo. Costanza from "Seinfeld", fleeing a massage in self-loathing horror because he thought that "it moved!" when a male massage therapist touched him. I know that we're supposed to laugh at Geo. Costanza and his fears, but I nonetheless have the same fears. That knowledge does me no good at all-- if anything, it makes me feel worse. That I could have homophobic fears makes the whole self-loathing thing worse. Being afraid of being touched at all by anyone male is the kind of fear that should leave you angry at yourself. Homophobia and low-key gay panic aren't socially or politically acceptable, and I agree that they shouldn't be acceptable. Discovering my own fears is disturbing and calls up waves of self-loathing. 

But here we are. I can't be anyplace where I'm outside my armour-- i.e., anyplace where I'm a body, where I'm flesh rather than a set of constructed masks and costumes. I certainly can't be touched. I very much like holding hands with a lovely companion, and I love tracing a fingertip over a beautiful girl's thigh or collarbone. But I dislike being touched myself. Being flesh is unsettling and far too risky. Physical pleasure is far, far  too risky these days.

The old year is ending, and I've taken no pleasure in 2024. I don't expect to feel anything pleasurable in 2025. I have a gift card for an expensive spa day that I can never use. The gift card itself I can't even re-gift. I don't want to giver to know that I  couldn't use her gift, or that I gave it to someone else. The card will end up in my desk, buried under old bank statements. 

I appreciate the thought behind the gift, and I very much like the giver. But anything that involves the self as a body-- I can't use that. I can be a lot of things, but I can't be a body. I can never accept pleasure as a gift.