Three Eight Four: Spider Garden

 It's Halloween tonight, and I'm thinking of the fetish artist Michael Manning. He's a San Francisco/Los Angeles artist who remains one of my favorite erotic artists. He is someone whose work I'll recommend, and someone whose work does come to mind here on a rainy Halloween night.

It's hard these days to find a lot of the work Manning did in the 1990s, but in those days he was something very new and different on the fetish scene. His work was eerie and had a very hothouse, fever-dream atmosphere. He fused cyberpunk sci-fi with a set of almost Heian-era Japanese images and a taste for exoticized s/m. I've always liked an s/m aesthetic, and Manning's art did mesh with my own desire for the self-consciously exotic. 

There was a press called Amerotica that published many of his collections in the 1990s, and I miss their catalogs. I miss the visions of hidden worlds that appeared in their books. The press is long gone, but keep their name in mind when you're searching for erotica in dark nooks out there over the aether. 

I discovered Manning's "Lumenagerie" art collection not long after it first appeared in 1996, and still find it enthralling. "Lumenagerie" and its sequel "Inamorata" (2005) are worth finding, as is his 1997 anthology of short stories and art, "Cathexis".  His sci-fi "Tranceptor" series isn't bad at all, either.

His "The Spider Garden" (1995) remains my favorite among his books, along with its companion works "Hydrophidian" (1997) and "In a Metal Web" (2003). I'm sad that they all seem to be out of print, and sadder still that we live in times that are increasingly hostile to fetish art and to the idea of exoticized and ritualized sex. 

Manning's world in the "Spider Garden" books was one where gender was deeply fluid, but not in any way that either the TRA or Gender-Critical sides of the current Trans Wars would accept. In Manning's world, there were no sexual identities, only masks that could be assumed or discarded at whim. There was nothing like a fixed identity, and no one, not even the mechanical spiders in his Heian-Goth palaces, was ever really anything. 

I believe Manning may still have a gallery website out there somewhere on the web. Find it if you can. 

Read some of his graphic tales, read the short stories in "Cathexis", and tell me what you think. Tell me your own thoughts on the idea of exotica and ritual sex.  And remember what a brilliant idea Heian-Goth is.

Three Eight Three: Receptivity

I've always liked the idea of S/M. I've always liked the aesthetics of S/M. I've liked those two things much more than the praxis. I know that S/M is supposed to be "the intellectuals' kink", but I've never much gotten anything from reading manifestos or essays about the politics or theory of S/M. All those articles in the 1980s and early 1990s that tried to ground S/M in critical theory or tried to present it as something political never did anything for me. Yes, by the way, I am distinguishing idea from theory.

I've always liked S/M because it's sex that lends itself to creating stories. I've liked it because it's about role play and crafting and wearing masks. People have told me all my life that sex is something where you lose yourself (and lose your self) in what you're doing. But that's never worked for me. Sex has always been something in which I couldn't lose myself. I've always remained far too self-conscious during sex. It's hard (and just maybe impossible) to experience pleasure if you're aware of everything you're doing, or if you're busy critiquing what you're doing.

Last weekend I found a You Tube channel called Kink With Kitra. It's a very well-done channel, and I'll offer it up as a recommendation. Kitra is a professional domme. She seems to own a dungeon in L.A. or Las Vegas, and her You Tube channel is in interview/podcast format. She also films fetish videos. She has guests on-- people she's known and worked with --and they talk about the world of S/M.  

I'd like very much to say that Kitra is very articulate and thoughtful and fun. I'd like to say that, but it's a hard thing to say these days. Saying that someone in sex work is articulate is too much like saying a person of colour is articulate-- it can be taken to mean that you're surprised that anyone like that is capable of using language well. 

Nonetheless, I have enjoyed listening to what Kitra and her friends and colleagues have had to say. Her interviews have given me things to think about.

One of her guests was a fetish/kink actress called Sonny McKinley. I'd never heard of Ms. McKinley before, and I'd never seen any of her videos. She and Kitra had worked together before, and they had a lot of rapport. Good discussion and some fun stories.

One of the things they agreed on is that being a bottom allows you, whether male or female, to be receptive-- to receive sensation and experience. They both recalled hearing that from male clients who were switches-- tops who were experiencing or experimenting with being bottoms. For once, these men told them, they could just feel something. They didn't have to worry about anything other than feeling. They could experience unmediated and immediate pleasure.

There's something very arresting in that. I'm almost invariably the older partner in a relationship, and while I don't expect to have more power in the relationship, I am expected to be the one setting up stories and providing the script for what's happening. And that's fine. I'm an academic and a writer. It's expected that I can craft a storyline, and I'm glad to do it for a partner. Doing that makes me feel like I have a skill, and that I can be proud of using it to thrill my young companions. 

But I've never taken physical pleasure in it. I've almost never taken physical pleasure in anything. I have no idea what physical pleasure means, and I can't recall ever having a girl do anything for (or to) me as a gift (or grant) of pleasure. 

Kitra and Ms. McKinley talked about the idea of receptivity, and how it defies and subverts conventional gender roles. They talked about men needed to be able to receive pleasure-- to be open to sexual sensations. I understood what they were talking about, of course-- strap-ons and penetration --but the idea of receptivity goes beyond that. It goes (or, I think, should go) to being able to receive pleasure, of having sensation wash over you without self-awareness getting in the way. 

Immediate and unmediated pleasure is something that's always eluded me. I know better than to think that being a bottom for a while would help. It wouldn't. I'd end up trying to top from below in a very precise way-- meaning that I'd still be trying to craft scripts and worrying not about whether the scripted activities "worked" but rather about if they could be presented as something wicked, elegant, stylish, literary-- whether they'd be things that would make good stories. 

I don't have anything in the actual way of fetishes-- I don't have any needs or longings to which I can just surrender volition and control. I have kinks, but a kink is something crafted, something that takes conscious thought. I've never been given pleasure as a gift, and I'm very much unable to feel it on my own. I wouldn't understand pleasure  if someone did take the time to offer it to me. I have no ability to be receptive to anything. I don't experience the world like that.

Three Eight Two: BookTok

I've been thinking about erotica. I understand that the world of online self-published books is filled these days with what Book-Tok reviewers call "smut". I understand that Book-Tok itself is filled with reviews of (usually sapphic) novels that are called "adult romance" or even  "erotic romance". But what I don't see is...erotica. 

I'm old enough to remember when there was a clear category of "erotica". Yes, I know the old joke that "erotica" is just porn with literary pretensions, or maybe just porn with a better (i.e., university-educated) vocabulary. But once upon a time there were publishing houses (Eurotica, I think, and maybe something like Blue Moon) that tried to do sexually explicit books that had aspirations to some literary skill. There was an early webzine called LitErotica that tried to do the same thing. And, no, I have no idea whether it's still published. (Grove Press tried to do the same thing in the 1950s-1960s, but that's another, more complex, story.) "Erotica" existed, and so did porn.

Yes, I'm old enough to remember spinner racks filled with overpriced paperbacks in bus stations and sketchy convenience stores, books with titles like "Hot Pants Weather Girl" or "Lesbian Librarian". As best I can recall, porn novels disappeared sometime in the mid-1980s. Video killed the genre, of course, but so did changes in what you could actually display on the spinners. No more incest-themed stories ("Humping, Pumping Family" or "Daughter Without Panties" or "Mom Spreads for Her Boys"). No more stories with underage themes ("A Teasing Twelve", or "Junior High Oral Slut"). And, yes, no more animal-sex tales ("Schoolgirl and the Stallion" or "Donkey-Raped Co-Ed"). Those sub-genres vanished altogether. 

There are, I'm told, a couple of Russian websites where such 1970s and 1980s American porn novels have been scanned and posted, but the Russian web is full of scammers, hackers, and supporters of Vladimir Putin and his dictatorship. I'll be staying far away from such places.

I have no real idea here in 2024 where actual erotica is to be found. There was a website called The Kristin Archive that carried literally hundreds of pieces of amateur erotica. Most were really awful-- poorly written, poorly plotted, often painfully obvious celebrity fantasies or revenge porn. There were a few gems, though-- well-written, well-thought out, very explicit but still plausible. That site seems to have gone down a year or two ago. We are, it seems to me, on the verge of losing written erotica as a viable genre.

Now I have a list of novels that I've found erotic. I've probably mentioned those before. Obviously "Story of O". Alec Waugh's "A Spy in the Family". Emily Maguire's "Taming the Beast". Marguerite Duras' "The Lover" and "Black Hair, Blue Eyes". Georges Bataille's "Story of the Eye". Anne Rice's "Exit to Eden".  Joyce MacIver's "The Exquisite Thing". Elizabeth McNeill's "Nine and a Half Weeks". You know the list. Those are all things I've liked and found exciting. But I'm not sure we can get novels like that any longer. They're harder-core than BookTok "smut", and many of them are written to appeal to a very niche audience. And times do change. Emmanuelle Arsan's two "Emmanuelle" novels and her later "Laure" have too many issues in 2024 with topics that range from colonialism and race to age-disparate sex to Consensual Non-Consent. 

I can't think of anything new in the last few years that struck me as exciting. I tried to re-read Anne Rice's "Sleeping Beauty" books and found them far too precious and twee. I can't imagine reading any Billionaire/Alpha Male "erotic romances". I can't imagine reading any BookTok "smut", either. What passes for erotic on BookTok is very much the decaffeinated coffee (or the mocktails) of sex.

I've also begun to worry that my own tastes skew too much towards S/M and what that might say about me. There's a strain of neo-puritanism out there in the Gen Z and Millennial worlds, and it has nothing good to say about the sorts of books I've found exciting in the past. A young lady of my acquaintance told me that she's lost the ability to read scenes that excite her-- some terrorist-hostage non-consensual sex scenes in David Benedictus' "The Rabbi's Wife" and the notorious last scene in Susanna Moore's "In the Cut" --because she's afraid of being judged, something that never bothered her before. 

I can understand her concerns. She's always liked the concept of S/M, and S/M these days is increasingly treated as unacceptable. And I agree with her that it's harder and harder to talk about fantasies, let alone present them in detail to a partner-- no more reading passages from novels aloud as, well, bedtime stories to lovers. 

So...are there still ways to have fantasies? Can they be discussed? I'd ask for recommendations as to scenes in books, but that's just far too risky these days. I can't even ask for titles that I might explore for myself. I don't even know what's out there-- if the genre(s) that interest me exist any longer.

Three Eight One: Performance

 I found a disturbing article the other day. The article was positioned somewhere between sex advice and social criticism, and there was an underlying streak of derision there.

Someone had written for advice (but to where? why didn't I make notes?), asking why he felt so anxious and unhappy about telling his partners what he liked, or what his interests and kinks were. The response began by admonishing him-- by telling him that he was wrong (wrong!) even to bring up those things. The attitude in the response was very, very close to saying "How dare you!" The key moral failure was defined as "performativity". Let's think about that for a minute. 

The idea behind the answer was that any kink, any fetish, any particularized sexual interest was based on "performativity" and was by definition inauthentic. The idea seemed to be that anything that was particularized was asking someone to do something that wasn't real.

I could've understood an argument based on the idea that any kink reduced a partner to playing a role-- that this was exploitative from the beginning. I wouldn't have agreed, but I'd have understood that argument. What I couldn't accept was the idea that there is some essential, real sex that's the only sex anyone should be engaging in. There's some idea here that sex shouldn't involve stories.

I'm not going to talk about my own particular interests, but I'll note that sex for me has always been about stories-- recalling them, comparing them, reenacting them, creating them, shaping them. Our lives are made up of stories, not atoms-- that's an old saying that I've agreed with for years and years.  

Sex for me has always been about role-play. Not so much in the sense of cosplay, but in the sense that sex is a way to be other people, to exist inside stories I've created to share with a partner. Sex for me is always less about bodies than about stories. Sex for me is always about being part of something outside my quotidian self. It's about living inside something crafted. There's always the rush of sharing that crafting with a  lovely young companion-- imagining the setting, the lighting, the dialogue, the soundtrack, the backstories of our characters.

I can't imagine a sexual encounter, let alone an affair, that isn't constructed as a small film or a short story. I can't imagine not getting together with a lover to create characters and settings-- who we are, where we're from, how we got together. We both know who and what we are in quotidian life, but when we're together we're living inside something we've created, something that's...different and better.

I've always said that sex is about class as much as it is about flesh, that it's always threaded through with class signifiers: costume, setting, accessories and accoutrements.  Well-done sex is about being something other than what you've been told you are.

Performativity, yes-- performance, certainly. Sex is a chance to be and do things I can't be in this life. It's a chance to be a character in a book or a film, to be someone or something new and better and different. I may or may not be any good at the physical parts of sex, but I'm very good at creating stories and doing the world building for them. Sex is always performance, no matter how deep the emotions run between my partner and me.  And I can't give that up. 

Three Eight Zero: Conversation

 I've been thinking about the FMTY girl in Berlin who calls herself "Lucy Huxley". No-- not "thinking" in the sense of the Solitary Vice, but "thinking" in the sense of screenplays or stories.  

I've seen photos at Twitter of Ms. Huxley in lingerie, and she's quite lovely. I say that as someone who doesn't like his young companions in lingerie-- I always hope that they habitually sleep naked and wear just a man's dress shirt around their flats. Very good legs, too. Very kissable legs. And her deep-burgundy hair is done in what one of her Twitter admirers called The Short Red Bob of Hotness. Again, very lovely, very elegant.

But in some ways I'd rather see her in a black cocktail dress or a man-tailored suit. I'd rather imagine her sitting across a table from me over drinks. I don't know Berlin; it was never my city. So I can't say what neighborhood the restaurant would be in. I'll have to imagine her across from me in Vienna, at the restaurant at Albertina Passage on the Operngasse. It's all very sleek and sci-fi, and there's a very hip dance club adjoining. Ms. Huxley does write that she likes dance floor dates as part of her Girlfriend Experience services. Well...at least I know where the public transit stops are in that part of the Ring. If everything went bad, I'd least be able to get back to my hotel or my serviced flat.

It's probably far too parasocial, but I do spend time trying to imagine what Ms. H. and I would say to one another. I'm pretty sure that I'd spend a lot of time early on just...apologizing. I'd apologize for a lot of things-- my looks, my age, what I was wearing, my lack of wine knowledge, my ineptness on the dance floor. Yes, I'd try to quietly compliment her on her outfit and her looks. I'd want to acknowledge that she was very strikingly lovely, very professional, and that I was grateful to have been worked into her schedule. I'd try to do those things. But mostly I'd apologize.

There are things I can talk about. Or maybe things I used to be able to talk about. I have post-graduate degrees. I'm a voracious reader. I do know at least something about films and about some kinds of music. Vienna is always my city, and I should be able to talk about its history. These days, though, I find myself becoming increasingly inarticulate. I find myself less and less willing and/or able to actually have a conversation. I have less and less to say, and I'm more and more afraid to say anything at all. 

I have no idea what I'd say to Ms. H., and I'd be very afraid of not responding to the prompts she might offer me. She's a skilled professional, and she prides herself on her GFE skills. I know myself well enough to know that I'd probably miss her prompts. I'd sit there over my drink feeling like I wasn't good enough to be the client of a skilled professional. I'd be terrified that I was making her feel like her professional skills weren't appreciated or weren't good enough.

The actual business part of the evening-- the transfer of the fee --is probably the only thing that I wouldn't feel awkward about. I'd have Ms. Huxley's fee in crisp new bills in an envelope that was either fine Italian stationery or something Japanese and complicated. In a better world, now, I could take out a fountain pen and write a check (though I'd spell it "cheque")...though that might be a bit too niche and arcane even for me. 

Note: I'm an American citizen, which means I'd instantly present problems for any EU or UK bank if ever I tried to open an account. And these days, I think it's only the French who still write checks in Europe. Damn it, the cheque just might be a bad idea, here in the third decade of the century. 

Maybe I'd ask for a handwritten bill. There's nothing illegal about Ms. Huxley's profession in Germany, and I'd treat a handwritten bill for services (letterhead stationery, if possible) as a valued memento, as something I'd keep between the pages of my paper journal. I would enjoy the business part of things. I'd understand it, anyway...and I'd sigh over the idea of origami envelopes and fountain pens. The transfer of the fee would have cinema and literary possibilities, and I'd like those. 

The tip would have to be a separate thing, something done at the end of the evening, and I'd be less sure of handling it. I'm told that with FMTY girls, bank notes placed between the pages of an art book are always seen as well-done. I suppose I could do that. 

I still have no idea what I'd say to someone like Ms. Huxley. I'm not given to dominating conversations, and all I could do is wait for her prompts, follow her lead, and hope that my stories are good enough to make her feel like she's doing her job, and that her GFE skills are being appreciated. 

It matters to me that I don't make someone feel like her skills are wasted. It matters that I could be seen as somebody who understood the GFE idea. Of course it also matters that I don't feel like an idiot or a rube. It matters that I feel like I can be someone who fits into a world of FMTY girls with GFE skills.

Please don't let me look like a rube. I'd be praying to Athena all night over that. Please don't let me make a fool of myself. 

But I don't think I have any idea these days how to do anything social, let alone sexual. Ms. Huxley might not mind if a gentleman of my age and looks declined to be naked, and told her that he preferred just to sip his drink and listen to her tell stories or caress herself. She might not mind, since that would be easier for her. So maybe I would just be quiet and slightly withdrawn and let the music or the lighting or the architecture shape what happens. 

But I'd still miss being able to actually flirt and talk. And I'd still never figure out how to move the evening from the table in the Albertina Passage to my hotel room. Maybe I would just pay Ms. H. her fee and fade away to an S-Bahn stop. Without being able to say a word.

Three Seven Nine: Berlin

Last evening I discovered a new FMTY girl's channel at YouTube. She calls herself "Lucy Huxley" and her channel is called "The Whore's Bedroom". 

She's a Vancouver girl, an ex-ballet student who's ended up as a Berlin-based escort. Her YouTube videos all begin her sitting cross-legged on her bed in Berlin and talking about her life and career:"My name is Lucy. I'm a whore, and this is my bedroom." She talks about how she sees her job and her clients, and she tells stories from her life. 

Lovely girl-- auburn hair, maybe not quite thirty, lovely eyes, wry sense of humor. If I sound like I have a crush on her, well...of course I do. I like her voice, and I love the deadpan introduction: My name is Lucy. I'm a whore. I do like the way she makes the word sound. My own parasocial voices whisper to me that while I'd never have the money to book her, she'd be very likely to be someone I could have a conversation with. 

Huxley, she says-- she chose Aldous Huxley's name for her own work name. Well, I do like that. I like a few of Aldous Huxley's books ("Crome Yellow" and "After Many a Summer Dies the Swan" and "The Devils of Loudon") rather a lot, and for whatever it's worth, Aldous Huxley died on my birthday. How's that for a connection?

She explains in her first video that she has a firm policy-- any booking of three hours or more has to come with lunch or dinner, since she's a girl who gets hungry easily and becomes irritable when hungry. My first thought was...steak or Szechuan? It's all too easy to imagine booking her for four hours and spending half of the time talking over dinner.

She says that she prides herself on her Girlfriend Experience talents, and I have no doubt that she'd make a wonderful companion. Again, this is all very parasocial, but listening to her stories makes me believe that I'd feel secure enough with her to explain what my interests are and ask for the things that would give me pleasure. The sense of humor she has in her videos is dry as the Atacama Desert, and that's exactly to my tastes. 

I did follow the link to her Twitter feed, and she has excellent legs and a very knowing smile. That may well be all GFE marketing, but that's fine. I'd love to be able to talk with someone again, to be able to talk to a lovely girl who'd be willing to listen to me. She says that she's always liked older men-- ever since she was a budding ballerina --because, yes, they have financial security, but also because their stories are better. She says that she's never laughed at or mocked a client, and that she understands that many of her clients are just a bit afraid. Well, that's something that did make me sigh. You've read my last several entries. You'll understand that here in this grim and charmless year 2024 I am anxious and afraid of the idea of telling a lovely Young Companion anything at all about myself and my interests. 

Now one of her videos explained that she's based in Berlin and can visit clients all across the EU, and that she could certainly visit friends and family in Canada-- but that she's excluded by law from ever going to the US. Apparently, if you're a sex worker the US won't allow you entry (even though sex work is legal in Germany). I hadn't known that. Yet one more thing about US law that makes me shake my head in disbelief. It makes me very uncomfortable, too, that US Border Control monitors social media to help identify sex workers (even nude models) who might be trying to enter the US, even as nothing more than tourists. 

Well, I could never afford Ms. Huxley, but I do enjoy her YouTube videos, and I wish I could look across a table at someone like her and just say, This is what and who I am, and this is what I enjoy. Is that something you could work with? 

Here I am tonight, listening to hard rains falling over my city. In some better world Ms. Huxley and I would be talking over Campari-sodas about games and kinks and flirting shamelessly. I really would like to have a girl in my life and bed whose judgment I'm not afraid of, and whose skills and discretion I'd trust.

Three Seven Eight: Numbers

I had a long conversation with an old friend the other night. I've known him since grade school, and so we do know all about each other's lives. The other night he was talking about the incel  obsession with women's body counts. He despises incels on both aesthetic and political grounds, as do I. But he did tell me that he could understand the obsession with body counts, with how many sexual partners (or at least male sexual partners) a woman has had. 

It's not a moral thing for him. Not at all. It's fear of judgment. It's fear that a woman will immediately compare him to the male lovers in her past and that he'll be found wanting. He's competitive, and always has been. He and I have competed with one another over things like books read and films seen since ever we were schoolboys. And so he's always deeply anxious whenever he's involved with a woman who's had more than a bare handful of lovers in her life. He's terrified of being judged as incompetent or (worse) just mediocre in bed.

I can understand that. There's something soul-killing about the idea of a lovely girl in bed with you who's actually just recalling old TV shows in her head so that she won't seem too bored with you. There's something soul-killing about the idea of a girl sitting with her female friends the next day and dismissing you as mediocre.

Yes, I'm competitive. I always have been. I was brought up to believe that making a 95/100 was good, but not good enough. Even 100/100 might not be good enough. And what was worse was being seen to only get 95/100. Being seen to fail in any way would end with your social status being destroyed. 

I've been lucky. No young companion in my life has ever mocked me face to face. I've never had a girl yawn or fumble for the TV remote during sex with me.  I'm bright enough to know that it's possible that girls have been telling me soothing lies all through the years. I know that. But I haven't been mocked for failure. I haven't been mocked (so far as I know) for mediocrity.

But it does get harder to think of myself as worth anything in bed. Far too many Twitter feeds are devoted to sneering at "mediocre men" for their inability to induce pleasure in their partners. I do live in fear that somewhere girls with whom I had affairs years ago are using me as an example of an incompetent lover. 

Now there are other (if related) reasons for being concerned with body count numbers. I'll agree with Muriel Rukeyser that our lives are made up of stories, not atoms. And every affair, every encounter, spins off stories. If a girl has far more stories, or better stories than I do, then I feel my social status crumbling. If she has stories about being with a lover or a hook-up in cool places ("There was that time in the stacks at Sterling Library at Yale" or "There was that time in the back seat of the Aston-Martin") and I don't have similar tales to tell, well then-- why should she bother with me. Sex with me won't generate any stories worth telling.

There's envy here, too. There's always envy. Envy is the Deadly Sin that's always been my companion. If a girl has really good stories to tell about sex and adventures, I'll feel my old friend Envy making his appearance. I'll obsess over doing the things she's done, over having sex in the places that have enlivened her stories. We're not talking so much about the actual numbers in anyone's body count, we're talking about the stories derived from those numbers. We're talking about the fear that I won't have stories of my own that are good enough. We're talking about the fear that she'll have more and better stories than I ever will.

And we're talking about the way that I've always seen stories as social currency, as things that can be exchanged for social status. Good stories can be used to seduce, too. Good stories can build up a world that lovely young companions might want to visit with you.

I have no moral comments to make about a girl who has a high body count. But I do get anxious and envious when I'm afraid that her body count is the raw materials for stories that will only emphasize my own failures.