Three Four Eight: Signposts

I have been back at Escort Twitter, looking through feeds by FMTY Girls.

One thing I've found to think about is this. I've never liked lingerie. I understand, or at least think I understand, the semiotics of lingerie. When I look at the FMTY Girls' feeds, I understand what they're trying to say with photos of themselves in expensive lingerie or photos of the gift boxes expensive lingerie came in. 

Part of it is very simple, of course. Gifts of expensive lingerie symbolize luxury. They're a marker for the client "spoiling" the girl. Things like Agent Provocateur symbolize both luxury and "decadence"-- they symbolize upper-class lifestyles and what is always taken for "decadence": champagne for breakfast, willowy girls in nothing but lingerie at noon. High-end lingerie stands for a certain kind of sex, and it also stands for a life where the girl has nothing to do on any ordinary day but wear silk thongs and garter belts and be ready for sex in an elegant setting.

And yet...lingerie never meant anything to me. I am old enough to remember Helmut Newton's photos from the later 1970s and early 1980s, with all the models in black silk stockings and lace bustiers or bras. I thought of those things even then as a kind of obsession not with sex itself but the idea of "European" sex-- chateaux and castles, four and five-star hotels in Paris or London. Of course I'm attracted to the idea of decadence, but stockings and garters never seemed to be the markers to attract me.

You know this part. I prefer my girls to avoid lingerie. I prefer them to avoid undergarments altogether. I prefer girls who'll sleep naked-- or just in one of my shirts --to ones in silk teddies or camisoles. I have no idea what I'd say to a girl who wanted to wear a nightgown in my bed...except to explain that there's nothing sexy about sleepwear for beautiful girls. I'd offer her one of my dress shirts, but I'd hope that she'd sleep naked. 

I remember the early '90s and lots of Prince videos-- girls in very short skirts that left their stocking tops and garter belts clearly on display. That was a brief fashion moment, and my young ladies of the day were encouraged to forego stockings altogether. I'd much rather caress or kiss tanned, taut, sleek bare flesh than be kissing fabric. And I suppose, too, that stockings do run. Active sex is hard on stockings, and you'd have to replace them far too often.  Bare legs are always best. 

I'm fine with slender, toned girls in black leggings, but it's dark-tanned bare legs in short skirts that I prefer on my dates. In the Southern summertime, sundresses should never be worn with stockings or lingerie. Sundresses go next to the skin. If a girl tells me that she has summertime fantasies of "getting railed in a sundress", I always point out that there should be nothing at all under that sundress to get in the way. 

I'm not sure where I want to go with this. What I'm thinking is that I'm not sure what signs and symbols appeal to me. Lingerie, even the most expensive and most well-designed or made, isn't a symbol for sex-- at least to me. In the FMTY world, expensive lingerie has its own ritual justifications, both for companion and client. But those things don't speak to me.

The girl in a man's dress shirt. The girl in a very tailored, half-unbuttoned white blouse. The expensive sweater worn next to the skin with a pair of very short cut-off shorts. The girl in a man-tailored blazer next to the skin. Those things all appeal to me. Collarbones, hipbones, long bare backs, long slender legs-- those things excite me in ways that girls in Agent Provocateur or La Perla never can. 

I'm not sure what the social messages in my preferences are. They're more...what? Model Off Duty looks? And things that suggest Comparative Lit co-eds who are living out fantasies of being a Muse or Learning About The World from an Older Lover. 

But I just don't fit into the FMTY world. I can't afford its rituals, and I have far, far too little of the particular kind of social capital I'd need to ever have a dinner date with an FMTY Girl.