Four Zero Six: Meta

We're coming to the end of September, and while I've always been a fan of autumn and autumn light and weather, I just can't look at this year and feel anything other than exhaustion and something that's uncomfortably close to despair. Some of that is (of course) the political and economic world around me. But some of it is a sense that everything I wanted to write about here has been blighted over the last decade and a half. 

A friend told me that he was going to buy some high-end version of Meta glasses. He sees them as a self-defense measure. My understanding is that the glasses feature a blinking LED light that lets people know that you're recording, and that the feature was built in to prevent covert recording by sex pests. My friend is fine with people-- meaning desirable young women --knowing that he'd be recording, and he sees that as a measure for his own safety. 

He's afraid that women will falsely accuse him of harassment or attempted sexual assault. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever accused him of any such thing. I've known him since grade school, and to the best of my knowledge, he's never tried to coerce anyone into sex or override consent. But as of this week, he's told me that he will not be alone with a woman unless he can record her actions and she's clearly aware that she's being recorded. He wants, he tells me, to put any woman he's alone with on notice that he's protecting his own interests.

I have pointed out to him that there are women who might-- very plausibly --regard the glasses themselves as harassment. I've pointed out that telling a potential partner why he's wearing the glasses isn't likely to make her feel like going to bed with him. But...for whatever reason, he's terrified that women are dangerous and likely to make false accusations just to show straight males how much they despise both straight men and straight cis male sexual skills and desires. I'm at least clear on that much-- he doesn't believe that women would make false accusations for any sort of financial payout, and he's not in any career-rivalry situation. He believes they'll do it for...sport, really. He believes they'd do it just to show how much they despise men. 

Again, I've been his confidant and best friend since we were both six years old. He's probably quite mad, but he's not stupid and he is well-educated and remarkably well-read. He has a post-graduate degree in English Lit, and he's done graduate work in critical theory and psychoanalytic thought. He's quite capable of explaining his fears in long, well-constructed essays. Yes, written essays. I have a stack of letters from him about these things. Yes, he's quite mad, but my own particular fear is how rational he can sometimes sound.

Please do note that he's not always...grounded. He did go through a phase of telling me about the Lesbian Vampires were stalking him. It took me a while and several long phone conversations to realize that "Lesbian Vampires" wasn't some kind of metaphor. When he says Lesbian Vampires were stalking him, he means it very literally: actual lesbians who are actual vampires. Which is a pity, since when I thought he was being metaphorical, it was all a lot more amusing. 

However crazy he may be, he can sometimes come near to a point. He doesn't actually get to a point, but sometimes you can see it in the far distance. I am afraid that he may be partially right-- partially --about how women despise male sexuality and male sexual skills. I can at least point to online essays and tweets and videos where women say those things. I'm not disposed to giving 100% credence to someone who makes Tik-Tok reels, but I'll grant that at least some women, somewhere, feel a deep, cold hostility towards male sexuality. And it is disturbing to think that you don't know where and how and when you might run into someone like that, even if the odds are very much against that. 

I'm not about to buy Meta glasses and film anyone I'm on a date with so I could defend myself in court or in front of an HR review board. But I would like to think that there are ways to either avoid that kind of hostility or at least understand what I, as a mere cis straight male of the Paler Persuasion and a Certain Age, could do to avoid being judged by the standards of social media in the blighted year 2026. 

Four Zero Five: Tabletop

 My friend Jill in New Zealand told me once that she couldn't imagine that I'd ever be too anxious or shy to tell a potential Young Companion exactly what it is I liked sexually or what I wanted. That was a long time ago, and back in, say, 2011 or 2012 it may well have been true. It's certainly not true now-- not in the blighted year 2026. 

These days, I can't imagine bringing up either of those things with a Young Companion. We live now in a world (see the latest Booktok scandal) where any hint of "spice" or "smut" or sexual attraction is considered unacceptable and probably criminal from the start. 

We now live in a world where people-- Gen Z, not even aging Boomers --demand that "spice" or "smut" be removed from romance novels. We live in a world where Zalman King would never be allowed to make films that merged romance, sex, and dreamy elegance. We live in a world where actresses are routinely derided (e.g., Margaret Qualley) for appearing naked in "erotic thrillers" (e.g., "The Stars at Noon"). It's impossible that a film like "9 Songs" could be made in the Year Twenty-Six, and it's unthinkable that "9 Songs" (or "Henry & June", or "A Woman, Her Men, and Her Futon") could be seen as a template for sex and romance. 

Right now I have no idea whatsoever how I'd tell a Young Companion that I was attracted to her. I cannot imagine ever, ever telling the girl sitting there with me in my flat about any things (sexual, romantic) that interested me, or that I'd like to try with her. We can take it as a given that I'd never offer any sort of physical compliments. The very idea that I might lean in to kiss someone-- let alone cross the distance between my chair and her place on the couch --is very much unthinkable. I'd be convinced that what I'd instantly see on her face would be a mixture of cold disdain and violent anger. I'd assume that I was seconds away from being struck with a wine bottle-- or threatened with an immediate phone call to 911 and/or her lawyer.

Right now I'm remembering nights-- first date nights, yes --where I'd reach across a café table and take a girl's hand for the first time. I do remember doing that-- brushing fingertips, then sliding my fingers between hers. I remember girls looking into my eyes and smiling when I did that. I remember girls who initiated that first touch themselves, who reached out and traced a long finger over the back of my hand. This is the Year Twenty-Six now, and girls don't do that. It would never occur to a Gen Z girl or even an older Millennial to do that. Myself, I have zero idea these days how to hold a girl's hand-- how to take hold of her hand, how to walk together with fingers interlinked. I won't say that such things don't happen anywhere in 2026, but I do say that they don't (and won't) happen in my world, or in my city. 

Let's go back to what I said a bit earlier. I would very much be too afraid to kiss a Young Companion for the first time. I'd never be able these days to tell a potential bedmate what I like or would like to explore with her. My mind's eye would be showing me her face set in contempt and hatred. I'm serious about that, mind you. I cannot imagine how I'd ask for (let alone initiate) a first kiss. 

This is a year and a decade where that few feet between where the girl and I are sitting can't be crossed without calling up anger and all sorts of dark possibilities. I really would be asking myself whether she was about to hit me or have me arrested. I don't want ever to become someone who assumes that all women are plotting evil; I don't want to be that kind of person. But I am terrified of showing any romantic or sexual interest. I'm terrified of being taken as the Bad Guy. I'm terrified of being told that I'm contemptible or predatory or just disgusting. 

I don't know how to phrase this, but...I've become physically afraid to be around any Young Companion to whom I'm attracted. It all seems too risky, too dangerous. I won't even make conversation that's any deeper than glancing exchanges of the names of films we've each seen or what we each thought about dinner. There's no way I can see to make a transition to flirtation or kissing. 

I do imagine something like the shields in "Dune"-- a pale blue flicker --forming between us. I know better than to try to cross that barrier. What's going on in my mind is the certainty that my date is looking for an opportunity to lash out at me. There is no possibility here in the Year Twenty-Six that any lovely, intelligent girl will be interested in romance or sex. Pleasure, adventure, exploration-- all those things are being rejected. 

Now I have no idea what the diameter of a standard café table is. But I do know that it's much, much further than I can reach my hand. The days when I could hold a Young Companion's hand while we waited for our drinks to arrive-- those days are gone. And that flickering blue shield really is impenetrable.

Four Zero Four: Archaeology

[This is something I wrote more than a decade ago. I do stand by what I wrote then.]

Once upon a time, back in the Long Ago, when I was a newly-created PhD, I walked into a lecture hall at a southern university one morning at 08h00 and looked up into the banked seats at 120 faces staring back at me. I rapped on the lectern, stepped out to give myself room to pace, and said, "Let's begin." 

That was my first day teaching. I'd never felt so alive. I knew exactly what I was doing, and I felt absolutely in control.

A few years later, at 07h30 on a cold January morning, I walked into a conference room with thirty US Army captains and majors and lieutenant colonels looking at me. I nodded and put my lecture notes down, then looked up at the maps on the wall.  And I started lecturing. Again--- I was alive and knew exactly what I was doing. 

There's a big jump from lecturing to talking about one's fears of phone sex, but I of course can see the connection. Both things are about being coolly professional, about knowing that you have something worthwhile to say and knowing exactly how to say it. 

There was never a day in my life in front of a class when I didn't think I was good at what I was doing. Not for a moment. Undergraduates, grad students, Army officers, Turkish security police---- I lectured to all of them and knew that I knew what I was doing. 

Another time (yes, I'd gone back to school for an additional, and very different, degree) when I felt like I knew anything at all was a class where the instructor had each of us stand up and speak on an assigned line of cases for an hour. I got up on the podium and began talking. After about ten minutes, one of the other students-- like me, an older student ---shook his head and grinned and said, "Not your first rodeo, is it?" 

How is that like doing phonesex with a lovely girl late at night? Well, for much of my life--- at least since my own undergraduate days, I'd always thought of phonesex as the same kind of thing: something where I knew what I was doing, where I was good at presentation, at bringing my listeners into the world I was creating.  As something where I felt in control--- I knew what I was doing, I had something to say, and my listeners knew that I knew what I was doing.  Whatever my social failings may have been, my students knew that I had a skill---- and the same was true with lovely interlocutors late at night on the phone. 

I knew how to tell stories, create worlds, convey information. I knew how to do those things. My lectures, I knew, were good. No question. If you were ever here watching like a ghost in my flat on Friday nights, you'd see that. Yes--- a few drinks, then prowling my rooms or the upper deck outside, lecturing to invisible audiences. Okay, yes, sometimes with my Japanese sword in hand; everyone needs a prop. But lecturing--- this is how national identities form, this is the way Homer developed the Greek idea of heroism, this is how the July Crisis of 1914 played out, this is how Russian literature dealt with the wars in the Caucasus in the 1840s... I can talk about those things and know--- know ---that I have a clear idea of what I'm saying and why.  We live in a world where Kylie Jenner can nominally author novels and I can't get a full-time teaching job, but...still. I know what I'm doing--- I still know what I'm doing. 

But for the other thing, for phonesex... I've lost that. My fantasies aren't good enough, or they can be mocked as problematic. Or I'm not good enough--- not ranked high enough in the social hierarchy ---to have or present good fantasies. One of the things that stopped me from publishing was that I knew that my idea were good, but that I personally wasn't good enough to publish--- didn't own a suit, didn't come from a cool place, wasn't handsome, didn't own a house or have a wife, wasn't in any sense a Grown-Up, a serious person. That's spilled over into phonesex now. I can't do it any more. I can't imagine that I'm good enough to do it.

Four Zero Three: Return

It's been three months since I've posted here, and I do apologize for that. I want very much to keep this blog alive, especially here in a blighted year. The 2020s began with the pandemic-- what I've always called the Red Death --and things haven't gotten any better. 

I'd thought that the pandemic would lead to more people blogging, and that we'd see the return or revival of blogs that talked about sex in its various forms. That of course didn't happen. Gen Z and its successor seem to be alarmingly sex-negative and viciously moralizing. The only new thing happening on the sexuality front seems to be the ongoing Trans Wars, and my own views on that are both Old School Postmodern and probably regarded as dangerously reactionary. 

Yes, I'll explain what Old School Postmodern is some day. Let's just say that I spent the later Eighties and much of the Nineties reading critical theory in its various forms, and that I favor the idea of bricolage and dislike the idea of essentialism. I believe that social life is in fact all about cosplay, and I believe that architecture and plumbing do in fact matter. Aesthetics matter, too. They matter very much. I believe that there are almost as many genders as there are people on the planet, but that there are only two human sexes. 

I do find it just a bit boring when people exalt the idea of being pansexual and insist that being "pan" is the only moral and progressive form of sexual attraction. 

I can only note one good thing happening on the sexuality front this year. Karley Sciortino, who did the "Slutever" sex blog back in the 2010s, has returned with a new Substack. I always liked Ms. Sciortino's columns and her attitude. She was more playful than Stoya and much less crazy and self-destructive than Cat Marnell. I'm glad that she's back, and I'll be reading along with her. Ms. Sciortino was always fun to read.

Still, I wish that there were more personal sex blogs (and escort blogs) that offered up good stories and thoughtful, sex-positive (but non-New Age) advice. I wish there were still Young Companions in my life who had stories to tell. I do miss Jill in NZ, whose stories were always seriously erotic. I miss the long-vanished Debauchette, too.

This morning I was at my favourite coffee shop and saw a very lovely twenty-something girl working at her laptop. She was in a very short red mini-dress and did have excellent legs. I could only look down at my own laptop and sigh.

Yes, her legs were worth looking at-- long, slender, tanned, smooth, taut --but I did feel distanced. Once upon a time I'd have thought about what it would be like to have those long legs over my shoulders or what it would be like to kiss them from ankles to knees to thighs. I couldn't do that any more. The young lady was very beautiful, but I just felt like I was watching her through thick glass, or watching her via video feed on another world. The visions in my head of flirtation, seduction, and sex that I'd have had at any point since my mid-teens just weren't there any longer. 

I couldn't imagine myself being able to have sex at all-- not for any reasons of possible systems failure, but because sex in 2026 seems to be far too exhausting and risky. I'd assume ab initio that I was too inept and boring to have sex. After all, as a cis- and cis-presenting straight white male of a certain age in the year 2026, I would be "mediocre" by definition. Having any sexual desires would be tagged as "creepy". Sex no longer seems like something either aspirational or fun. Sex has always had its social risks, but these days it just seems too risky to pursue.

Maybe-- maybe --I'll learn something from Ms.Sciortino's new Substack. Maybe there will be new blogs where lovely young ladies discuss their Adventures. Maybe pleasure will stop being suspect. I don't believe any of that will come to pass, but...I need some kind of belief in the future to stay alive. 

 

Four Zero Two: Spring

I've been away far too long. The world outside my rooms has been unrelentingly awful for so long that I've forgotten what it's like to want to go out into the world. I'm still here, mind you. I'm the aging figure who's sitting here on a spring morning listening to Rihanna do "Disturbia" and trying to think of reasons to do anything at all.

The one thing that I've found intriguing at all here in the blighted year 2026 is that when the fighting began in the Persian Gulf, some of the best news coming out of Dubai was in Twitter postings from FMTY girls. The high-end escorts in luxury hotels managed to post accounts of what was happening-- missile strikes, exploding drones, panic among the tax exiles --that was more informative and more clear-eyed than anything the newsfeeds were carrying. I had to nod my head at that. Of course the FMTY girls knew more than the talking heads on al-Jazeera or the Western press. Of course they did. I did admire that, and I was glad to see them finally getting some respect for their knowledge of the world. 

I've never met an FMTY girl, and there's no way that I could ever afford to see one professionally. I'd be terrified even to try. I'd never be good enough a potential client to make an FMTY girl feel like I was worth her professional time. But I do admire them as a class.

My understanding is that most of the FMTY girls at Twitter are slightly older than the usual sort of escort. They seem mostly to be just over thirty, and they seem to have a disproportionate number of graduate degrees-- M.A. degrees in Finance, Sociology, or Psychology are fairly common, though I've noted a couple in the sciences as well. At least one-- someone whose Twitter and occasional newsletter I do follow --is a serious devotee of History.  They also seem to take their role as a companion seriously. Many seem to pride themselves on having a high level of conversational skills and on having spent time learning about a range of conversational topics. Well, those have been the skills high-end geishas in Kyoto have learned for centuries, and I admire them just as much as I admire the FMTY girls at Michelin-star restaurants in Manhattan or London Town. 

Companion seems to be rather a niche thing these days. I could never afford a Michelin-star restaurant, and I lack any of the social markers that would make me welcome in one. A lovely, well-dressed, elegant young woman with an M.A. in Comparative Lit. or French lit., someone who enjoys conversation and is skilled at it-- I have no idea where I'd take someone like that these days. And I have no idea what I'd say to someone like that in any case. I used to say that if a girl was going to go to bed with me, it would be because I'd talked her into it. My sole real social (or sexual) skill was conversation-- being able to tell stories. That was my key asset-- telling stories. These days I wouldn't know where to begin or what to say. I'd be very sure that I'd have nothing at all to say to either a high-end escort or a civilian girl who was knowledgeable and good at conversation. I'd feel like a stammering idiot (or worse, a rube) every time I opened my mouth. 

I don't have anything to say to lovely girls these days, and I'm no longer clear on what I'm socially allowed to say. I'm terrified (and exhausted) by the thought that any well-educated girl or any skilled professional would see me as a waste of her time. She'd think that she'd spent time and effort learning a whole list of things, and here she was was with someone who was obviously a rube and an idiot, who could never appreciate her skills. Yes, I'd be thinking, I'd love to hear you talk about, e.g., neurobiology or evolutionary psychology or Persian architecture. I'd really love that. But I can't say anything at all that won't mark me as a waste of your time and skills. 

I can hold the attention of a classroom or a lecture hall filled with students. I've done that. I know that I can do that. I'm good at that. But I have nothing to say to anyone across a table, let alone across a hotel bed. I'm not someone who can attract a companion in either sense of the word. 

Spring is an empty time this year. The world outside my rooms is bleak enough, and there's no one reaching out from there. My phone doesn't ring, and lovely girls aren't sending clever or flirtatious emails. Phone sex is no longer a thing in the post-pandemic world. There's less and less incentive to go anywhere. I have nothing to say to a lovely girl on the next barstool or cafe table. Even if a girl-- a civilian, a non-professional --was enthusiastically willing to take me to bed, I wouldn't risk it. I wouldn't risk her disdain. I wouldn't risk becoming a stammering idiot. 

In other news, I don't have any stories right now for those of you out over the aether. I wish I did. Karley Sciortino seems to have revived her Slutever blog (or at least created a new version of it on Substack), so maybe she'll have stories of her own to tell. Since the legendary Debauchette has long since vanished, Karley Sciortino is the only person writing about sex in any sort of digestible way. I suppose I can read her revived blog and see what she has to say, but...here in April of a blighted year, there's no one else out there to read, and I lack any and all ability to experience things that would make stories of my own.

Four Zero One: Accounts

 I've been away from this blog for far too long, and I apologize for that. The Year Twenty-Six has begun, and it's likely to be just as blighted as the Year Twenty-Five. 

I began this blog so that I could have a place to discuss issues around sex, romance, gender, and courtship. I hoped in those days to be find interlocutors and correspondents with whom I could talk about things like the evolution of erotica as a genre, or the tales we tell each other about sex, or about the social structures of sex. I do remember a time a dozen or so years ago when there were sex blogs and blogs about the semiotics of sex, a time when there were first-person essays out there on the web where people wrote about their own lives and adventures. That all seems very long ago and far away now. 

Now I can understand why no one seems to feel optimistic about sex. It seems that most people are just burnt out these days. Politics has become exhausting, the economy is precarious, and tonight we're keeping one eye on the newsfeeds in preparation for a new war in the Persian Gulf. Sex seems to have devolved into polemics, and seduction and flirtation have been replaced with misogyny and rage-fueled puritanism. 

I have no idea what happened to the idea that sex could be about adventure and fun. I have no idea why and how stories-- telling stories, living lives designed to produce good stories --fell out of fashion. I have very few ideas as to how it's become so dangerous to talk about sex or romance. I do miss the days of the early Noughts and the early 2010s when pleasure and adventure could still be valuable and valued.

It's been a very long time since any lovely young companion has sat with me over drinks and laughed and told me about her adventures. It's been a long time since flirtation has been regarded as a charming social game, and an even longer time since seduction has been regarded as a kind of art form and a game both parties could play and enjoy. It seems that all seduction and flirtation had been reduced to a glum (and grim) set of late-capitalist maneuvers. Crypto scammers posing as "dating coaches" tell us to do "negging" as a way to humiliate women and bully them into joyless sex. There's less and less sense of play, delight, ritual, and fun out there.

I don't want to leave this site, and I do want to be able to talk about sex in its social and aesthetic and literary forms. I keep hoping that I'll be able to exchange thoughts here with a gently raised eyebrow or a knowing smile or a sense of puzzled yet amused irony.

I hope that we're not all so burnt out that we fall into bitter and exhausted puritansm. 

Four Zero Zero: Dining

I don't know why I do this to myself, but I do. 

I've been at Twitter looking at posts by lovely FMTY girls. I'll never be able to afford a companion at FMTY level, but I will look through companion / escort Twitter sites and sigh over what I might be missing. Yes, yes, I know that I'll only end up feeling alone and depressed, but there's something in me that enjoys pressing my face to the window of the expensive restaurant or the high-end shop. 

I have followed links to several FMTY girls' websites, and the finances of having a companion are far beyond me. One very lovely girl in Toronto listed her rate for a basic dinner date as $CD 1850, which is about $US 1300. That doesn't include the dinner itself or the hotel room or a tip. It also doesn't include an introductory gift-- say, a gift card for maybe $US 250 at a high-end spa. The cost of the rendezvous would be far beyond me. I don't begrudge the Toronto girl her fee or the auxiliary costs-- a skilled professional is worth her fee, and what used to be called Girlfriend Experience calls for a great deal of skill. I don't begrudge the FMTY girls their fees, but I am very aware that they inhabit a world beyond my reach.

What have I learned from the FMTY sites? I've learned that there are restaurants-- e.g., Aulis in London, Octavia in San Francisco --that are suitable for an evening with a skilled companion, and I like knowing small things like that.

One of the FMTY summed her perfect life in a Twitter post: Small circle, overdressed, living privately, handwritten letters, intentional purchases, coastal walks & ritualized routines. 

I love that vision of life. I could so easily imagine offering up her fee plus tip and gift for access to a life-- to the vision of a life --styled like that. 

FMTY girls pride themselves of being "companions", as being able to offer a client a vision of a life where the client is valued: It rules getting to explain to a silver daddy who’s been in boss/dad mode for the last 30 years that’s he’s actually really, really hot now. I love being the bearer of glad tidings.  

An FMTY girl posted this: “I think we were rival Samurai in a past life” is my new favorite pick-up line. Yes, I'd pay to have someone say that to me. 

I look through the FMTY sites and sigh over photos of dinners and spas. I sigh over witty lines. I sigh over the idea that I would be worth a professional deploying her skills. I sigh over the hope that I'd ever be someone who could appreciate a professional's skills. I sigh over the hope that a skilled professional wouldn't mind teaching me about the tasting menu in a star restaurant. 

I do this to myself, you know. I keep my face pressed to the glass far too long on empty nights.

Three Nine Nine: Jouissance

 I'm still thinking about fantasies. We're living in a time where sexual fantasies have been pushed aside as a topic of any importance. The world seems to be burning down around us, and sex is the last thing on anyone's mind. I haven't found any new active blogs devoted to fantasies or sexual memoirs in, well, easily a year. 

People are presumably still having sex, but no one is discussing it. Even the FMTY Girl websites are now largely devoted to travel and restaurant critiques. Blogs devoted to sexual adventures seem to have gone silent. Erotica sites seem to have vanished one by one. What are people actually doing? What sorts of adventures are now on aspirational lists? Is anyone writing about fantasies and dreams?  My God, there are even reviewers of "romantasy" books at BookTube complaining about anything "spicy" in novels. If anyone wants to talk about sex on a tropical island, they're not talking about sex on the beach or on a moored sailboat-- they're talking about the Epstein scandal and prosecutions.

It's become harder and harder to even construct fantasies in my head. I have no idea what fantasies-- what genres of fantasy --are still acceptable. I have a glum suspicion that the age of seeking adventures with lovely partners has passed.

Let's think about erotica in the here-and-now. Let's think about fantasies. How does one go about constructing fantasies these days? Is transgression still considered exciting, or are transgressive fantasies regarded as a sign of not so much "depravity" in the older, exciting sense as they are a sign of criminal predisposition? 

I'm male, and I'm both cis-het and no longer young. I have no idea what fantasies I'm allowed to have. According to The Discourse online, am I allowed to have fantasies at all? Male fantasies and any male indulgence in the Solitary Vice have been regarded as pathetic and contemptible for a long time now. Is there any way for a cis-het male to admit that he has any sexual fantasies? If so, what raw materials is he allowed to use?

Sexual fantasies are I suppose like any other sort of story-- they need to be crafted, polished, thought out, and reviewed. I've written academic papers for publication, and each one of those has been carefully outlined and crafted. Why would erotica be any different? But in the here-and-now, how does one admit to using any specific sorts of source material? Wouldn't citing one's sources mark one as a target for derision and moral outrage these days? The question remains: what are we allowed to desire, or even imagine desiring? 

If you're reading this out over the aether, tell me if you think sexual fantasies are still...doable. Tell me what you think we're allowed even to imagine desiring. Tell me if sexual fantasies are still worth having here as the republic decays and late-stage capitalism burns the world down. 

Three Nine Eight: Social Construction

 I've been thinking about fantasies lately. I'm not actually having fantasies, mind you. What I've been doing is thinking about the concept of sexual fantasy. Here in the blighted year Twenty-Five, there are questions worth exploring. What does The Discourse tell us about--

1. Who gets to have fantasies? Are some of us-- male, cis-het, white, over 30 --allowed to have sexual fantasies any longer? 

2. What fantasies are acceptable these days? Who sets the terms for judgment? 

3. Is it only cis-het male fantasies that are seen as problematic in The Discourse? Do women despise cis-het males for having fantasies?

4. What is it that conjures up particular fantasies? How do we choose (do we choose?) the fantasies we do have? 

5. Can we ever admit to having sexual fantasies, let alone try to enact them with a partner? 

6. Can you still discuss your fantasies, even with a partner? Is the answer different for women? 

7. Why does it seem that any fantasies and/or kinks are nowadays regarded as acts of aggression or as an admission of being a pathetic loser? 

I'm an aging Pale Person of Penis. I recognize that in the lands of The Discourse, my sexual performance is instantly seen as inevitably (or inherently) "mediocre". I recognize that any fantasies whatsoever that I might have will be instantly categorized as misogynist. There's no away around that.

When I was at university, the key word was supposed to be communication. You were encouraged to tell your partner what it is that you liked or hoped to try, and you were encouraged as well to ask your partner about her own fantasies, kinks, and interests. You were encouraged to explore new avenues of pleasure. Those things are long gone, of course. I'm not about to admit to a partner/companion that these days I do still have fantasies. I'm certainly not going to tell her what my fantasies are about. I'm not about to admit to fantasies that might be found either "problematic" or (worse) boring.

You'll need to understand that in the realm of The Discourse, all sex involving cis-het white males is defined as boring. As a white, cis-het male over thirty, I'm well aware that any fantasies I create must be boring. I've spent my entire life trying not to be boring, but it seems that my efforts must, by definition, be futile. 

Now I'm not going to discuss any of my kinks or fantasies. I won't take that risk. Lovely girls can discuss those things, but not anyone cis-het male. 

I wonder whether kinks and fantasies are nowadays supposed to fit into the Born That Way category. We're rather disapproving of the idea of choice these days. The idea of experimenting with things-- genders, sexual orientations, fantasies, kinks, social presentation --has been largely rejected. Only the authentic counts. Only innate qualities and interests count. Experimentation is regarded as...what? Poaching on the territory of the Born That Way? Lying to oneself and one's partner? 

A friend once told me that she couldn't imagine me ever being too shy or too ashamed to tell a partner what I wanted. She might've been right about that when I was twenty-five, but these days...no. There's no way I would tell anyone-- even a skilled professional companion --what my interests and fantasies might be. 

Next time...next time maybe I'll try to talk about how fantasies are created. Maybe that's an easier topic.

Three Nine Seven: Curriculum

 Yes, I know. I spend too much time reading tweets at Twitter/X by high-end ("FMTY") escorts and trying to imagine myself as one of their clients...or at least imagine myself as someone who could be one of their clients. 

When I read tweets by Fly Me To You girls I do feel a sense of...well...not quite despair, but maybe a sense of anger at myself. Those tweets offer up thanks to some "Mr. B." or "Mr. C." for lovely dinners or exciting weekend escapes, and while I understand that it's politic of the FMTY girls to thank their long-term clients, I keep thinking that I'd never be a client who'd be found worth thanking.

The FMTY girls all agree that the best thing they can hear on a date or a trip is, "Don't worry, it's all taken care of." I can't imagine a girl-- professional or not --ever thinking I'd be able to say that to them. I lack the skills or the knowledge to arrange things myself, and I lack the skills and knowledge to have hotel or restaurant staff say that on my behalf. 

Please note that this is not about money. I understand the power of cash and the (greater) power of the black AmEx card. I understand all that. What I'm talking about is my own lack of any social skills that would cover a date with a high-end escort.

I've written about this before, but it still gnaws at me. What are the skills needed to be a good client? What are the social rules for an evening or a weekend with an FMTY girl? What skills would I need to make her feel that I was worth her professional skills?

Let's not just say "money". I'll agree with Bryan Ferry on that-- "money talks, it never lies". I've said all down the years that I've written at this site that I'm "genteely impoverished". That's still true. I have a flat, and I have the money to buy books and the occasional dinner out. But there's no black AmEx in my life. I don't own a suit, let alone a bespoke one. I have no knowledge of finance or business, and it's been a while since there was a new stamp in my passport. 

Let's not just talk about money. Let's talk about social rules. Every social transaction has its matrix of rules. Every social transaction has its class markers. I'd have no idea what items are on the checklist or how I'd be expected to behave with an FMTY girl.

If you're reading this, if you're out there over the aether, I hope you'll offer some suggestions. FMTY are skilled professionals, and at the high end of their profession. They pride themselves on that, and on their knowledge of the world. Many of them have post-graduate degrees that are at least as good as mine. They have a knowledge of restaurants and food and wines that I'll never have. Several of the FMTY girls whose tweets I follow have multiple languages and know about which spas and resorts are worth visiting. I of course am too afraid ever to go to a spa. When I'm alone, I'm never intimidated by menus and wine lists-- but with a date, let alone an FMTY girl, I'd be utterly paralyzed when the time came to order dinner.

I'd want to be someone whose own skills and knowledge would be good enough to make an FMTY girl feel as if it would be worth it for her to be there with me. I'd want to be someone she'd think could appreciate her skills. I would not want to be someone who'd make her feel...bored. Or contemptuous.

If I were young enough to be callow, if I were even thirty or thirty-five, I could offer my lack of knowledge up as part of the evening-- having an FMTY girl teach me things could be the evening's kink. I'm too old for that now. I'd never be able to ask an FMTY girl to teach me things about the social world. I'd never be able to admit that I don't know...anything. 

If you're reading this, I hope you'll offer me list items. What are the social rules with an FMTY girl? What would I be expected to know and do? I know that I'd always be de bas en haut around her, but I'd at least like to be someone who wouldn't make her feel as if she was wasting her skills-- or worse, that being seen with me would cost her social points with colleagues and/or potential clients. I wouldn't want to be the reason that hotel or restaurant staff didn't give her the service she deserves.

Anyone out there-- what should I learn? What skills should I try to be proficient in? All suggestions are appreciated. 

Three Nine Six: Vibrations

 I've been looking at emails sent to me from one of the higher-end sex toy boutiques. It's midsummer, and they're having a sale. They're offering their products specifically for summertime, with all the romantic and alluring touches they can add. It's odd, of course, or at least odd for me. I can look at their products and feel nothing at all. Everything they make is alien to me.

I'm a mere cis-het male of a certain age. Toys from Good Vibrations or Lelo mean nothing to me. I understand that their products are mean for pleasure, but self-pleasure isn't for cis-het males. There's nothing there that might be pleasure, let alone empowerment. 

There are always arbitrary social rules, and those rules are rarely if ever successfully defied. Males aren't meant to receive pleasure. Cis-het males aren't meant to give pleasure. The male body has no aesthetic potential and isn't designed for pleasure either given or received. That's what the rules tell us, and I've internalized those rules.

Here in the age of The Discourse, there are clear social punishments for any male who believes himself capable of either giving or receiving pleasure. I've spent time these last few years wondering what sort of sex I'm permitted to have as a cis-het male. The word to focus on there is "permitted". To whom do I have to look for permission? The answer is...The Discourse. There are whispered voices out over the aether that let me-- that let us all --know what's acceptable.

We know from The Discourse that cis-het sex is boring by definition, that any sort of cis-het sex is boring and retrograde, and that the sexual performance of any cis-het male is by definition "mediocre". We know that. The whispered voices tell us that. 

I suppose it's not only cis-het sex. I'm hearing over the aether that gay male sex is no less boring these days, and that male performance, either straight or gay, must be disappointing to all parties. 

The Discourse also tells us that there's no escape from that. Learning techniques won't help. Having any of a wide range of fetishes won't help. Fetishes themselves are being re-branded as retrograde and boring. We live now in an attention economy, and what can be worse nowadays than "boring"?

If you scroll through the posts and videos that make up The Discourse, you won't find anything that cis-het males might do or enjoy that can ever be worth a partner's interest, or that might be regarded by the whispered voices as acceptable...or permissible. Nothing new can be learned, and any efforts to play with transgression or exploration are pathetic at best and some cocktail of disgusting and ridiculous at worst. 

Make a list. Make a list, if you can. What kinds of sex are still treated as exciting or worthwhile? What fantasies are you allowed to have that won't mark you as mediocre, unimaginative, un-hip, retrograde, boring?

I've spent a lifetime trying to acquire the skills to please a partner. I've spent a lifetime learning to construct fantasies and scenarios for myself and my partners. I've spent a lifetime exploring kinks and persuading partners to join me. All those things have been cancelled and erased. I no longer believe that anyone experienced any pleasure with me or while experiencing any of the things I had to offer. I no longer believe that I can (or should) have any sexual interests. 

Sex toys aren't for cis-het males. Fantasies and kinks aren't for cis-het males. Sexual skills are beyond the reach of cis-het males. The Arbitrary Social Rules have no patience for ordinary cis-het male sex, and less and less patience for the idea of fantasies and kinks altogether.

There's nothing on the aether or in the quotidian world this summer that says that people like me have social permission to have sex or seek pleasure. There's nothing that makes me think that in all the years I've been with lovers I ever gave or received any pleasure, whether via the flesh or via what goes on behind my eyes. All those things, all those beliefs, have been erased. 

Three Nine Five: Hierarchy

 A young lady of my acquaintance called me up late the other afternoon and asked me to meet her for drinks at a place by the river. What she wanted was advice, or at least a listener. So we sat and ordered up Aperol-and-orange juice and she told me that her latest Gentleman Admirer had fled her apartment an evening or two before, and she was perplexed by it all.

Okay, fine. I'm her designated interlocutor-- the Older Gentleman who'll listen to her stories and offer up comments without judgment. She knows me well enough to know that I have very, very little room to be judgmental, and that the judgments I do make are aesthetic rather than moral. 

She explained to me that her Gentleman Admirer (himself a gentleman of a Certain Age) had taken her for dinner, and drinks, come home with her, and then left suddenly. She was unclear as to whether he planned to see her again. He hadn't called, and she was worried that she'd been ghosted.

They'd gone out several times, and she liked him. She thought he was fun and bright, the sex had been good, and she enjoyed his company. She'd spent some time trying to read his tastes in bed, and that, she said was where she'd gone wrong. 

I've known her long enough to know that she has very, very good gaydar and kink-reading skills. She's good, from what I can tell, at intuiting what a partner wants or needs or likes. I think what happened was that she was just a bit too good at reading her Admirer-- great intuition, but no sense of context.

She told me that she'd watched her Admirer and paid attention to how he looked at her. And, well...her intuition told her he was into her feet. Okay, then-- her first foot fetish guy. She told me that she was fine with the kink. She thought it might be fun to try. She already knew that she liked having the small hollows behind her ankles kissed and caressed, and having her toes sucked sounded like it might feel really good. I'm also reasonably sure that she was looking forward to him paying for lots of expensive pedicures. But when she did stretch out on her sofa and showed off her legs and pointed her toes and told him that she'd be very much into whatever he'd like to try and that if he was into foot fetish games, all he had to do was ask...he went white, grabbed his jacket and tie, and stammered out that he had to leave. She hadn't heard from him since.

What, she wanted to know, was going on? She didn't think there was any way he could've thought she was somehow kink-shaming him. She looked at me and told me that this guy was about my age-- so was this some weird generational thing? She was annoyed about losing the chance for all those free pedicures (and the inevitable free spa days that would go along with them), but more annoyed that her kink-reading had gone wrong.

I just shrugged. I told her that she was probably right about his interests. The problem, though, was that he didn't want her to know about his kink. He would've been fine with doing something-- sucking her toes, licking her ankles --so long as it was just part of "having wild sex". But once it was named, once it was categorized as a kink, he couldn't face it. She'd told me once that a certain person we both knew was "so far in the closet that he could see Narnia"-- the same, I said, applied here. 

Moreover, she'd made him aware that his kink could be read. It was something a very attractive late-twenties girl could just read about him. She had, I told her, picked a kink he was ashamed of.  If she'd read him and intuited that he liked, say, BDSM, he'd probably have been fine, no matter if she'd told him she could see that he was either a top or a bottom. He probably wouldn't have fled her apartment if she'd told him her gaydar read him as bi. Those things are ordinary enough-- maybe even fashionable enough --in the here-and-now to barely be treated as out of the mainstream.

What she'd intuited, though, was a kink that might have been pleasurable for them both, but was nonetheless a kink that's regarded as very, very...what? Declassé? Contemptible? Laughable? Pathetic? Something like that, anyway. Pathetic may be what I'm looking for here. What she'd done hadn't been taken as an offer to experiment or an invitation. She'd made him feel unmasked-- had left him feeling that someone he was attracted to knew that something he liked or needed was regarded as pathetic and contemptible.

There are hierarchies in kink, of course. There are social rankings attached to everything. Always. Wanting to tie my friend up and whip her-- or wanting her to tie him up and whip him --is something that films and music videos and novels have taught us to see as stylish (and involving lots of cool outfits). A foot fetish...isn't. My friend is someone who's very open about being experimental and adventurous with her lovers. Her focus was on the shared thrill and the pleasure. Her beau, on the other hand, assumed that he'd been revealed as someone pathetic, someone who did things that only sad and pathetic men did. He fled her apartment because he thought she'd look down on him-- and was probably terrified that she'd tell people that he was into something sad and pathetic. He'd lost his class status in the eyes of a beautiful younger girl.

My friend ordered more drinks for both of us and shook her head. This, she said, was the thing about men she'd never understand. So much insecurity, she said, so much fear that invisible strangers will laugh at them, so much energy wasted on arranging rank-ordering. So much male fear of ever being seen as less.

What could I say? She's right about all that. She's known me long enough to know that one reason I'm usually available for drinks or coffee or long telephone conversations is that I'm afraid to go anywhere that would involve being judged socially and rank-ordered. I could see her looking at me across the table and reading my own social fears about age, looks, and status. The joke here is that I would never have fled her apartment because I was ashamed of being judged for my kinks-- those are very, very carefully curated and crafted --but I would've fled at the first sign that she (or any other girl) was judging me as a body. At the first hint that a potential partner saw me as a "mediocre white male" or as someone who could only (at best) have "mediocre sex" I'd have dived out the window. I'd even have left my necktie on the floor. 

 

Three Nine Four: Opus Dei

 I've written about phone sex before, and it's a topic I want to re-visit. 

Phone sex was always something I found to be far better than any sort of sexting or email exchanges. I have no idea if people still sext, by the way. I haven't encountered sexting jokes online in a long time, and it's possible that sexting has fallen out of favor. I'd thought it would've been rejuvenated by the pandemic, but then I thought the pandemic would've revived phone sex, too. It seems that I was wrong on both counts. 

Phone sex is about storytelling in a way that sexting can never be. I'm a storyteller myself, and I agree absolutely with the well-known lines from Joan Didion and Muriel Rukeyser. We tell ourselves stories in order to live, and our lives are made of stories rather than atoms. But it seems that we aren't telling stories any longer. Well, nothing that's happened since the end of 2016 has made anyone want to tell stories. I think we're back to the age of windowless monads. We no longer live in an age where sexual adventures are worth pursuing. Survival seems to have replaced pleasure as the key thing in our lives. 

Once upon a time, I did receive phone sex calls from Australia. It would've been in wintertime here, and in the austral summer. Two different girls called from Melbourne to entice me into creating stories for them. I was flattered by that, of course, and there was the thrill of doing something that was not just transgressive but done across multiple time zones, the equator, and a couple of oceans. 

There were other overseas phone sex calls in those days-- the later Noughts. Melbourne, Wellington, London, Edinburgh, Bruges, The Hague...lovely girls made calls to me from all those places. I can't imagine that happening again.

There are stories left over from those days, and I wish the girls were still out there over the aether, or that I at least knew the backstory of the things they told me. I once asked a girl who'd been a co-ed at St. John's College in Annapolis via email where she'd first had sex outdoors. She emailed from London to say that--

Outside Christ Church College at the University of Oxford.  I was on a school trip and certainly was not supposed to be fraternizing with the locals - inside or outside - so there was plenty of risk.  The campus itself was imposing and lent the whole situation a gravity and drama that I have rarely felt since.  I didn't get completely naked, as I was wearing a short white skirt with no underwear, which could easily be thrown up (though it did take some athleticism and flexibility to avoid getting grass stains on that skirt).

That's the sort of story that I liked. So much backstory implicit in what she told me! So many follow-up questions to ask! If nothing else, an account of the positions required would be good.

The same girl answered my question about the riskiest place she'd ever had sex this way--

The European headquarters of Opus Dei.  I've always been privately smug about this one and wish I could tell more people because it delights me in so many ways.  It was in the evening, and we were walking back from a movie.  I had been teasing him throughout the movie and on the trip back, and I guess he just couldn't restrain himself anymore.  We jumped over the fence for what I thought might be a quick blow job, but he threw me on the ground.  It was very passionate and rough, naughty and forbidden.  We were collapsed on the grass when someone caught us and we had to run, me carrying my bra and my jeans half on, cum smeared all over my shirt and jeans.  The man was shouting at us, and he said something about our souls being cursed or perhaps he cursed our souls - something rather violent anyway.

The European headquarters of Opus Dei is the Villa Tevere in Rome. I knew it had to be in Rome, but I had to look up the Villa Tevere. It's a house that was once the home of the Hungarian Legation to the Holy See. I love the story, and all the more so since Opus Dei began appearing in thriler novels as some shadowy conspiratorial group. I still have questions, of course. How naked did she get before she and her male companion had to flee? What had they managed to get accomplished? Carrying her bra? She almost never wore underwear, so why did she have a bra? What imprecations did the person who caught them use? And in what language? (Latin, please let it be Latin)

These are great stories, and I wish she and I had been able to talk more by phone and go through all the details. I still have the emails, and a few postcards she sent from overseas, but I do miss her voice. I have no idea whatsoever about what her life has been like these last fifteen years or so. I did tell her that it would've made a better story if she'd gotten pregnant during the Opus Dei encounter, since aborting a fetus conceived on Opus Dei property would've been a brilliant thing. She laughed across the aether for five minutes straight over that idea.

Still...no phone calls these days. No stories to share, no fantasies to construct together. I hate the silence at night when lovely young companions and I should be telling stories to one another. If you're reading this-- is the aether silent for you as well? Are there stories still being exchanged? Do people still know how to create mutual fantasies? Are we allowed to have fantasies at all these days?

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.