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 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 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 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 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.    

Three Eight Five: Fears

 This isn't a podcast, and so I don't have guests to interview. That may or may not be a good thing. I'm not sure how I'd go about acquiring guests for a podcast, and I'm too far away from any major metropolis to have a deep pool of potential guests in any case. I can't think that any FMTY girls would be willing to be an interview subject, and of course the same holds true for any authors or scholars.

I have however been having long conversations with an old (and older) friend. We've known each other for decades now, and I've come to be the person he goes to when he needs a listener. What he's really longing for is the chance to be a classical Freudian analysand, but that's too expensive a thing, and these days classical Freudian analysts are hard to come by. He would, he says, settle for a Lacanian analyst, but those are only found in Paris and Buenos Aires, and he hates to travel.

My friend signs all his letters (and he is a devotee of the dying art of letter writing) as "Sir Francis Meerkat"-- a wonderful name, but one whose semiotics I haven't unpacked. I'll call him "Sir Francis", though. I sign my own letters with my actual name, by the way...though these days the closing of my letters is always the Targaryen "Fire and Blood". And why not? 

In any case, Sir Francis has had a recent birthday, and he's been agonizing over it for months. It was a zero-year birthday, and Sir Francis is terrified. He doesn't, he says, know how to be a septuagenarian. There's no checklist, no set of rules for him to follow. I can understand that. Life is always better with a checklist. I've stood in front of classes and improvised ninety-minute lectures, but I'm a post-modernist of the old school, and having a list (no matter how random the bullet points seem) is a key part of life. So I can understand Sir Francis' fear about that...and, yes, about age and mortality as well. That's all understandable.

He's afraid of women, mind you, and he's become something of a misogynist over the years, even though he despises incels on aesthetic and political grounds. Years of reading semi-scholarly books on evolutionary psychology and anthropology have given him distinctly misogynist tendencies. I've told him that he's walking disproof of the old saying that no one was ever ruined by a book. He loves classical Freudianism for its Oedipal structures and he wants to do a Freudian analysis, but he reads lots and lots of Jung (and far too much Lacan), and reading Jung is as dangerous for someone like Sir Francis as reading Nietzsche is for undergraduate males.

He and I have long phone conversations where he calls to tell me that his flat is in an area populated by what he always calls "beautiful lesbian vampires" who are waiting to tear out his soul...and this has nothing to do with either writing a screenplay or creating awkward metaphors. It's a literal belief and a literal fear.

He does tell me over and over about how bitter he is over his lack of sexual success when he was in high school...which must be fifty-odd years ago now. Sexual success in high school would've meant that he had some social status. It would've meant that even if he wasn't given status for anything academic, he'd still have had status among his male peers. 

I'm never quite sure how to take that. My own high school years weren't pleasant, and I didn't have a great deal of sexual success-- there was some, but not a lot. Status among other males might've been useful, but I spent four years in high school planning and striving to go to university far, far away from my hometown. Whatever I was looking for would be found a thousand miles away, and I knew that. Where I grew up meant very, very little to me. That suburb still means very, very little to me. I'm not about to agonize over things that happened long ago and far away.

Sir Francis Meerkat also tells me that he's given up on any physical contact with women. He's terrified of being seen naked, and he's terrified of, well, gastric upsets. He's utterly terrified of being with a woman and realizing while undressing that he's had...problems. Does he have something like Crohn's Disease? No-- not to my knowledge. But he says he won't go to dinner with a date in case-- just in case--he has to dash to the bathroom. He obsesses over eating cartons of steamed white rice in an effort to seal such problems away.  

I can understand body fear. I'm not especially comfortable having my body seen by a lover. There are easy and obvious things I can be judged on. But I tell myself that by the time we've reached the point where we're undressing, a young companion knows what I'm like and what I very probably look like under my clothes. No girl in all these years has ever pointed and laughed or made a face in disgust. That does mean something. I tell myself that, and it does provide comfort. Sir Francis, though...Sir Francis tells me that he'd rather stay home in the dark than have a woman see him and judge him. It's all, he says, about assortative mating and sexual hierarchy. I'm becoming very, very tired of the term "assortative mating". 

He hasn't reached the Red Pill level yet. Even if his disdain for incels and Manosphere types is based purely on aesthetics, that has at least kept him from doing Red Pill things. 

Nonetheless, I can sympathize with his fears. They do derive from fear of age and mortality, and we all fear those things.  Of course...sympathy isn't agreement, and I do find his constant agonizing and bitterness exhausting. 

If I did have a podcast, I'd be telling lots of stories about Sir Francis. I'd probably read out passages from Jung or Lacan or some evo-psych monograph (maybe even from "The Red Lamp of Incest", one of his longstanding favorites) and ask him to comment and just let him go. He'd spin out hours of tales and rants. Hours, yes. Many hours.

I do have my own fears, but I tell myself that at least I'm not Sir Francis. Which is rather comforting to know.

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 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.

Three Seven Seven: Positivity

 I haven't been here in two months, and I'm sorry about that. This year hasn't been one where there's a lot to say about sex and romance. Everything this year has been about politics-- the war in Gaza, the upcoming election here. No one has time to think about sex and pleasure.

If there's been anything to say about sex, it's all been about the Trans Wars. That's not something I want to get involved with. After all, I still struggle to define "non-binary". And as someone who's boringly vanilla and cis-het, I have nothing to say about the Trans Wars. Well...I might have something to say about why "cis-het" is regarded as "boring". I might have something to say about why "boring" is the worst possible thing to be in an information economy. But we'll get to that later.

Tonight I'm thinking about why there's so little room for males to think about their bodies or explore their bodies. There's no social room at all for males to be "positive" about their bodies. There's really no way for males to think about their bodies outside of the gym, let alone to see their bodies as instruments for feeling pleasure. 

I can remember being very young and seeing photos from various James Bond films that showed one Bond Girl or another naked in a bed, partially covered by a sheet. I thought that was incredibly hot and alluring, but it never occurred to me that I or any other male could ever sleep naked. It just didn't seem like something anyone male did, and even at eleven or twelve I couldn't imagine why anyone male would ever sleep naked. 

I've always encouraged beautiful girls to sleep naked. That's one of those things-- like lovely Young Companions avoiding all underwear --that's a particular kink (or fetish) of mine. But it's not something I could ever do myself unless I was actually sleeping next to a Young Companion...and even then I'd have an urge to pull on gym shorts and a t-shirt. 

Girls I've spoken to have almost all told me that sleeping naked is one of the most freeing and delicious things they've done, especially with a breeze through a bedroom window. Girls tell me that there's a sense of empowerment (that word!) in being naked under crisp, fresh sheets, that there's a delight in feeling sensation from their bodies. Well, they trust their bodies, and that's not something I can do.

One girl spoke of never wearing underwear in a dress or skirt as feeling like "glory". "Glory" was actually her word.  It made her feel brave and made her feel at home in her body, she said. As a male, I can't feel anything about not wearing underwear except fear at the possibility of an impromptu and/or accidental circumcision. I also have a deep, deep fear based on the possibility of any...ahem...gastric upsets. 

But then...I can't even imagine being comfortable being shirtless. It took years for me to be able to wear shorts or go into a swimming pool. The male body seems to me designed to be something kept well-concealed. I can't imagine anything attractive about a male body, mine or anyone else's. That's just a blank space for me. I have good eyes (dark, brooding) and long, slender hands. Girls have paid me compliments on both. But I would assume that any compliment about my body was meant either in sarcasm or as a way to manipulate me. Worse, it might be a soothing lie. 

I can't think of anything that would be "empowering" about my body, or any male body. Male bodies are too vulnerable to mockery. If a woman tells you that your penis is tiny, it doesn't matter that you might actually be in the global top 1% for penis size-- if a woman says it's tiny, it's tiny. Any mockery of anything about a male body by a woman is alway, always true.  

Tonight I'm thinking that it's not possible to be male and do anything to derive pleasure from your body. There are no male equivalents of sex toys that aren't the stuff of mockery. Any male actions to make oneself feel at home inside one's body are risible.  Even caring about your body-- even being a gym rat --is regarded as suspect. 

Sexual pleasure is not something that society allows males to feel-- or at least not any physical pleasure, There's no male equivalent of the vast array of how-to books and videos about the female orgasm. The male body is regarded as something that allows you to walk, see, eat, sleep. It isn't supposed to be a sexual or sexualized object. 

I can't imagine doing anything to feel pleasure from my body. I can feel a kind of intellectual pleasure about sex-- doing things in a well-crafted story arc, doing things that create a story. But I can't feel anything like physical pleasure. I'll never be at home in my body, and I'll never feel anything like "empowered" by my body.

Three Seven Two: Invitations

 Let's think for a minute. Let's go back to the FMTY girls. We're almost a month into the new year, and at Twitter the FMTY girls are announcing their spring touring schedules. 

I live in an older city, one that lives on its reputation for food and music and a certain louche attitude. It has its charms, and it has a fascinating history, but it's usually off the FMTY tour circuit. In some ways I suppose that's best. 

I have an idea about the fee schedules for the FMTY girls, and I have an idea about what the incidental expenses would be-- the restaurant, the wines, and the tip. But purposes of this essay, let's assume that I could pay those amounts with the snap of a finger. Let's assume that tonight I'm sitting at a good restaurant with an FMTY girl who meets all my criteria of desire. Let's go a bit farther and assume I've passed her screening procedures and that I've been dressed and groomed to be socially presentable. 

So, here we are. Dinner has been ordered, wine has been poured. I was brought up to be polite in a quietly old-school way, and her professional skills include making her clients feel at ease. So she and I are making conversation. And then...what happens?

This could become an issue-- which of us moves the conversation into the realm of seduction? Which of us gently nudges the evening toward a bedroom? I have no idea how that would work. I've read FMTY girls' Twitter posts where they've noted that it's irritating and annoying to have a client openly press for leaving the restaurant for the hotel room. The girl has been working hard to establish herself as a Companion, as someone who can create an elegant scene-- a client just saying something like, "Well, it's half past nine, let's get naked" is simply brushing off her professional skills.

But how does this work? I've had dinners with young ladies who've been seductive. I've had fingertips traced over the back of my hand while she talked. I've had a slender bare foot traced along my leg under the table. I mean, that's been a while, but it has happened. Somehow I wouldn't expect the FMTY girl to nod towards the street door and say, "Let's see your hotel room" (let alone "Come see the rooftop pool where I'm staying"). Yes, there's the issue of the ticking clock. There's always that. My fee covers her presence at dinner and in the bedroom, and the evening's clock is ticking. But reminding her of that is crass and vulgar. It sounds...entitled. This is the third decade of the new century, and entitled is just about the worst thing a person of the male persuasion can be seen as being. 

I have no idea how I'd raise the issue of going to bed. We'd both of us know that a hotel bed is supposed to be the climax of the evening. She may even have been provided with a briefing document about my interests and tastes. But I have no idea how to get from table to bed. 

Last Saturday I had my hair cut. My cutter has known me since we were both young. We even dated briefly back in the depths of the Long Ago. I trust her skills and professional knowledge absolutely. When I go to her home studio to have my hair cut, we have coffee or tea and talk books and films, then she moves me along to the various stops in the process-- shampoo, cut, a brief demonstration of her future plans for my hair style and of what I need to do to maintain the style. I make conversation; I have input into the music she has playing (last Saturday: Morcheeba). But she moves me along very efficiently, and with practiced ease. I have to admire that.

I wouldn't know what to do on an evening with an FMTY girl. I'd like to put myself completely in her hands and rely on her to guide me through what would be a learning experience. Being with an FMTY girl would be something I'd do for the experience, for the taste of a better world. It would be something that I'd do for the chance to be guided through the mazes of class and style around sex, decor, restaurants, and social presentation. I'd be terrified of showing myself to be incapable of being part of that world. I wouldn't want to be seen as failing at a sentimental education. A beautiful, skilled demimondaine is not someone I'd want to disappoint, and certainly not someone whose mockery I'd want to risk.

Right now I'm thinking of the last girl whom I walked from my sitting room into my bedroom. That wasn't hard. We'd met one summer Saturday. She'd just graduated university, and we ordered lots of classic cocktails and laughed and flirted. She came back to my flat, went out to the courtyard swimming pool with me, and drank with me in my kitchen. At some point we looked at one another and I nodded to my bedroom. It all felt effortless. She was in a mood to experiment with things, and as her first Older Gentleman I counted as that. And it was a Saturday late afternoon-- I think that mattered, too. Again-- it all felt effortless and fluid. We laughed about that, about one thing flowed into another that afternoon. But it wouldn't be like that with an FMTY girl.

Yes-- the FMTY girl would get a briefing document about my interests. And the document would note that while I always encourage young ladies to avoid underwear and to always sleep naked, she would never see me naked. That would break the spell of the evening. Whatever skills she might have, however open about bodies she might be-- she'd never see me naked. That would break the spell. Her body would be there to be admired, caressed, valued. But I'd never want her to have to tolerate my body. I'd never want her to have to grit her teeth on the walk from restaurant to bedroom.

I'd never know what to say to an FMTY girl. I'd want the evening to feel seductive, to be about mannered seduction. I'd want the sex to be stylized and its transitions to feel fluid. I'd be terrified to end up sitting there staring at my plate or at the wine bottle, frozen with fear of doing this wrong, of getting it wrong. I'd be afraid of disappointing a skilled demimondaine. I'd be terrified of not being good enough to understand the nuances of her skills. I'd be terrified of looking like a rube or a yokel. I'd be ashamed of wasting the FMTY's evening. 

Whenever I've engaged the services of a professional-- a tax accountant, a successions lawyer, a physician --I've always felt able to explain very directly what I wanted, and I've felt entitled to ask questions. But I couldn't do that with an FMTY girl. I'd feel far too judged. 

Now it's possible that I could carry on a conversation. I have stories to tell; I was trained to be a decent dinner party guest. I might even be able to discuss topics that wouldn't bore her. But I couldn't negotiate the shift from dinner to bedroom. I wouldn't even know how to bring up the topic. 

Any of you out there over the aether-- whether or not you know anything about the FMTY demimonde --if you're reading this, what do you think? If we assume that I had the money and the decent attire and that I could  pass an FMTY girl's screening protocols... If we assume those things, then-- what should I do. However do I end up able to transition back to the hotel? How would I avoid sitting there staring at an empty plate in a conversational void? How would I avoid the girl's contempt as the clock ticks down?

Three Seven Zero: Domme

 I've been spending a great deal of time at YouTube, and the other night The Algorithm delivered a recommendation that I needed to see a particular video. Well, fine. The video was an hour-long interview with a woman who calls herself Eva Oh, and I was intrigued.

Eva Oh is a very high-end domme. She seems to be based mostly in Australia, though in the interview she mentioned moving to Britain. She claims very straightforwardly to charge $10,000 a day for her services and to have a very exclusive (if not "closed") book of clients. She also does online classes teaching both potential dommes and potential clients about the procedures and etiquette of the high-end BDSM world. 

I have to say that I quickly developed a crush on her. She's Eurasian-- she describes herself as Anglo-Burmese-Chinese-Irish --and she's very lovely. She seems to have moved around a lot as a girl, and her accent is a delight. It sounds like American English overlaying Australian English with dashes of British Received Pronunciation and what I think of as Singapore English. She has an amazing voice-- smoky, alluring, throaty, precise, measured, confident. It's a voice with command presence-- very much so. It's a voice that would never need to be raised to seem powerful. I immediately thought of it as a voice Tywin Lannister would've appreciated. Eva Oh  was in a very elegant , body-conscious silk slip dress and heels, and she has long, amazing legs...but it's her voice that caught my fancy. She's very coolly distanced, very precise, very elegant, very aware of irony. I like all those things, but...ah, that voice!

I'll note that she's also starred in a film called "Grief Encounter", about an enigmatic woman who attends strangers' funerals in order to seduce grieving men. I like that as a premise, and I like what the trailers show about the psychological dynamics of what her character does.

Eva Oh's biography online says that she worked as a researcher for a couple of human rights organizations in Asia. I'd probably end up letting my academic side take over and spending much of my $10,000 a day asking about where she went and what her research was about and how it was conducted. I've never been able to get away from being an academic. Even trying to discover if she wore anything at all under that silk slip dress (God, I hope not) would take second place to asking about her methodology in research. That's the way my mind works, alas.

I've always been attracted to BDSM, all the way back to reading "Story of O." when I was far too young. S/M for me has always come with a whole set of class markers, and it's always been what Andrew Holleran called "the intellectuals' fetish". It's a fetish that requires literary references and expensive accoutrements. It's a fetish that requires the ability to create and tell stories. What's S/M without a script, without a set of character backstories? 

My relationships have usually involved S/M overtones. I'm older than my young companions, and I was the eldest sibling in my family...so I'm used to having my way. I spent much of my life as an academic, so I'm used to crafting and telling stories. My young ladies are often comparative lit or French lit majors, and they're used to seeing the world as a set of stories...and used to being mentored by older admirers. So affairs for me have always been very much a sort of creative writing seminar. And Eva Oh seems to be someone who has the ability to do be part of stories and scenarios and character play. 

I've never had any particular interest in being submissive, and I'm not someone who feels the need to be "broken down" or punished. So I'm not sure that Eva Oh-- who seems to enjoy psychological games and shaping psychological dynamics --would be a good real-world choice for me, even if I were some tech billionaire or forex trader who could regard $10,000 a day as just a rounding error. Though let's say that I did admire her own accounts of scenarios she's created with her clients, and I am fascinated with her ideas about how to create "headspaces" for clients. My own wish (not quite a fantasy) would be to sit with Eva Oh in some elegant, tiny bar in Melbourne or Singapore and work with her on creating scenarios.

Though let's be honest. I'd probably have the same fear I had about the FMTY girls at Twitter. Would my particular interests seem good enough to her? Would I be good enough to be her client-- to be worth her time and effort, even if I paid in advance? Would I be a project worth her time?

The scenarios wouldn't involve the usual BDSM things, but they would involve complicated scenarios and a fluidity of control. In my own life, as I've said before, my pleasures happen behind my eyes. It's always been very difficult for me to pass control over from my thoughts to my body. It's never been easy to release myself and just experience sensations. I always have to have a script (or at least an outline), and I always have to have a very literary ambience. I could never afford Eva Oh, and I could likely never explain myself properly even if did have the ability to move funds over the aether to her offshore accounts. But the idea is there. Maybe a domme has the auxiliary skills to let me finally feel something outside my own head-- the necessary skills at character creation, scriptwriting, and finding out what's actually going on behind my eyes.

I also found a platform called Soft White Underbelly that had an interview with a young (twenty-five or twenty-six) domme who called herself Monique. She's not anywhere near Eva Oh's price-point, and she's very...American: Los Angeles by way of Minnesota. Very tall (six foot two), very slender, very pretty in a kind of angular way. I liked her interview a lot, liked her attitude and laugh. Monique is very like many of the girls I've sat with at off-campus or hipster-enclave bars down the years, and of course I loved the idea of how long her legs were, and I loved the way you see her hipbones just above her low-rise jeans. Very, very kissable legs, and the sort of dry humor I like. 

She did talk about how it mattered to her that her clients were able to feel a sense of freedom around her and how she was open to adventures and experiments. I could imagine her as someone I could talk to about my needs and hopes and interests and not feel that I might be...boring. I'd have a drink with Monique and simply...discuss prices and services without feeling like someone trying to hire a top-end DC or Manhattan lawyer to represent him in a minor car crash. Monique might be someone I could talk to and feel like I might be an adventure rather than a psychological experiment or corporate project for her. No wire transfers to banks overseas, but I would be happy to bring cash.  I suspect she wouldn't be as coolly precise about things as Eva Oh, but she might be less likely to judge the decor in my flat. 

And I suspect Monique might be someone with whom I could be more open. She'd be easier to just look at at say, "Well, I've always wanted to be able to just feel something, or just lose myself in something other than books and movies." Maybe. Maybe.

Well, these days I lack the money and the ability to do anything FMTY...or to be on an aeroplane to anywhere. And I'm really not sure just what I'd say to either Monique or Eva Oh. Monique, though...I'd love to hear that laugh while I was kissing her hipbones and thighs. 

 

Three Six Five: Stars

 I've been spending time at Twitter looking at the Twitter feeds by FMTY girls. That's a depressing thing, but this summer has been deeply depressing. Depressing personally, yes, and of course this is the summer of the Heat Dome. There's no reason at all to go outside, so staying the air-conditioned dark and reading FMTY Twitter feeds isn't such a bad option.

When I'm playing the flaneur at Twitter these days, I look at the Twitter accounts run by various FMTY Girls and just sigh. It's not so much that I could never afford a FMTY Girl. That goes without saying. It's also that whenever I look through the tweets of girls who advertise themselves as "dinner dates and travel companions" I realize that I'd feel ashamed to be some lovely escort's dinner date. I wouldn't be good enough to be there with her. 

Someone who's taught herself about Michelin stars and tasting menus, someone who's mastered the social graces and the arts of flirtation and seduction, someone who knows how to make charming conversation-- that would be someone whose social value far outpoints mine. I'd feel like I was wasting her time. She would be a professional providing services, but I'd feel like I was someone bringing what should be a Small Claims Court issue to a boutique high-end Manhattan law firm. I'd be wasting everyone's time, really. And she'd know that I was a waste of her talents. 

I think that I have been to a Michelin-star restaurant once or twice in my life. Memory says that I was in my undergraduate days and was willing to spend what little money I had in order to have "experiences". Maybe that was only once, and in  some long-ago iteration of Manhattan. Maybe I have been in a Michelin-star restaurant. But I'd have been twenty-one and obviously someone trying to have a learning experience. I'd have almost certainly been alone, and it's possible that I had a good experience there because I was young, painfully callow, quiet and polite, and the staff felt kindly-disposed to me some evening. Here in these latter days, I'd have no idea at all what to do if "fine dining" was involved. "Fine dining" with a companion is something that would reduce me to anxiety attacks. 

I do recall eating alone at Weibel's Wirsthaus in Vienna. Weibel's may or may not be starred. My memory isn't what it used to be. I recall Weibel's as a classic Vienna city location, but maybe I was at least in my later thirties then. Maybe I was in that zone where I was no longer a boy seeking new experiences, but still not old enough to be empty and bitter.

Never mind FMTY Girls-- right now I'd never waste anyone's time as a dinner date. I don't have anything to offer my date in terms of stories and experiences and conversation. I remain terrified, too, of ordering the wrong thing or using the wrong fork. And of how poorly dressed I'd be. 

I have no idea how I'd make conversation with an FMTY dinner date. Look-- I do not get stage fright. I've been spared that. I have walked out in front of a lecture hall filled with a hundred and twenty students and talked and told stories for an hour and a half. I did that for years. I have no problem with that. Yet sitting with an FMTY Girl at dinner would be a disaster. The idea is made all the worse in that the FMTY Girl would be someone whose professional skills were designed to put a dinner companion at ease. I'd feel like I was forcing her to try to be pleasant, forcing her to try to put me at ease and bring me into a conversation. I don't want to be someone who requires special handling and special effort to be part of an evening.

I'd suspect that being honest and just telling her that I'd have no menu suggestions and probably couldn't read the menu at a starred restaurant would send red warning lights flashing. A well-trained Companion would grit her teeth and realize that I was going to be work for her. My own response would be to begin randomly apologizing for, well, everything. So many FMTY Girls' Twitter biographies stress that they're knowledgeable about things like finance and government-- they're clearly marketing themselves as Companions who'd be able to have conversations with C-suite men, with men who have the day's ForEx results at their fingertips. I of course know nothing at all about business or finance. The things I know about aren't  likely to come up in conversations with people who have actual careers. I'd feel embarrassed at not having anything to say to a Companion who'd be educated and skilled and proud of her knowledge of the world. 

I wouldn't be embarrassed to ask about recommendations about the wine list or the menu. But I would be embarrassed that I couldn't appreciate either. I'd be embarrassed that I lack the ability to enjoy myself. These days I think of myself as far more socially awkward than Larry David ever was on "Curb Your Enthusiasm". I suspect I wouldn't even be able to appreciate any seductive wiles an FMTY Girl might deploy, I'd sit there thinking that my age, my body, and my inability to read hints or body language would make me a failure as a client. 

I'd like to be a client whose knowledge, presentation, and skills would match any Companion or Provider I might employ. That's unlikely ever to happen. I'd sit there trying desperately to be polite, but knowing that I'd have no more idea how to appreciate a Companion's skills and graces than I'd be able to appreciate the menu items or the wine list. I'd never ask an FMTY Girl to be a "travel companion", since I'd never put a lovely, bright, well-spoken FMTY girl through a week (or even a weekend) with me.

Menus, wine lists, and conversation are all beyond me these days.

Three Five Seven: Walls

 I'd written here about the woman I met this summer-- the high-end phone sex worker. She and I had been speaking-- not in any way involving her profession --for a while. We'd exchanged emails and had FaceTime conversations. She is, as I've noted before, bright and fun and kind. I've enjoyed all our conversations. Again, this was not a phone sex set of conversations. This was two people who'd met, shared drinks, and stayed in touch to talk about our lives and thoughts. Call it a friendship, or the beginnings of one.

And suddenly I've become too afraid to talk with her. 

I have no idea why that's happened. Or at least I haven't any coherent set of ideas about what's happened. I know rationally that she and I have enjoyed one another's conversation and presence. What's happened feels like a sudden rush of fear and anxiety.

Call it an upwelling of self-loathing. That would be about right. I don't feel good enough to be talking to her. Social anxiety has always been a problem for me. I've been able to stand in front of classes and teach with no problem at all. Yet talking to a specific person or being in smaller social settings leaves me right on the edge of panic.

I've become too afraid to talk with or email my friend. I've somehow convinced myself that I'm not someone who should be-- at least according to the Arbitrary Social Rules --talking to her. I look at myself and see only decay and failure. I may be able to make conversation. I may have a bank of decent stories and memories to recount. But I just can't imagine that I have any social value. 

I have not asked my friend to deploy her professional skills with me. I would not do that. That's not what knowing her is about. Yet I have a still, small voice in my head telling me that I'd never be good enough to be her client in any case. Too old, too poor, too underemployed, too socially inept-- I'd never be good enough to be a client, and I'd never be good enough to be a friend or even an interlocutor. 

This has happened to me before. I have given up going back to bars or pubs where I've flirted with or even made out with lovely girls. I've walked away from places I liked because I'd become someone who wasn't anonymous-- where I'd become someone who could be looked at and judged. I suppose my NZ friend falls into the category of people I pushed away because I knew I wasn't good enough for them and didn't want to be there when they noticed that. 

Tonight I do feel empty. I miss the conversations I've been having. I miss having an interlocutrix. But I just can't bring myself to contact her. I can't believe that I'm good enough to be speaking to anyone, let alone someone like her.

Three Five Six: Damals und Heute

 I've been watching David Cronenberg's new film "Crimes of the Future", and I'm deeply impressed, It's an alluring and disturbing film, and I will be acquiring my own DVD of it. 

There's a moment in the film where Kristen Stewart's character says that "surgery is the New Sex". That's a lovely line, and as good as "long live the New Flesh!" from Cronenberg's "Videodrome". That of course is the basic element of the film-- that body modification is the New Sex, and its results are as powerful and unsettling as anything sexual can be.

I'll note that Viggo Mortenson's character responds to Ms.Stewart at one point by saying that she might be right, but that in any case he was never very good at the Old Sex. 

I once read a horror thriller where the heroine has a nipple cut off during sex and I remember sitting there with the book feeling disturbed, appalled, and yet thrilled at the scene. Yes, fine, that's a tribute to the author's skill, and it means that the author did succeed at the 1990s game of transgression. But creating something alluring and disturbing at the same time is a dangerous move. "Crimes of the Future" left me with that same uncanny feeling. The surgical scenes are graphic, oddly distanced, powerful, and highly erotic. There's a moment where Lea Seydoux drops to her knees not to give head to Viggo Mortenson, but to slide her tongue into and along the open surgical cut he has across his stomach. It's a stunning scene, and her face is as beatific as any blowjob scene in a porn film. I don't know what to make of the scene, and I don't know how to analyze my own response to the scene and to the film as a whole.

Odd thing. I know what my response to Mlle. Seydoux is, of course. In the film, she's had her hair cut to a short pixie cut, and she (like Ms. Stewart) dresses in tailored slacks and tops-- a very alluring garconne look. She's naked a fair bit in the film-- maybe more so than in "The French Dispatch" --and while Google tells me that her bra size is a 32B, she has very large ("Oreo-sized") areolae and nipples. Large areolae have always been a particular favourite of mine, but I've never known how to just say that, or (again) how to analyze that. 

I've stayed away here from discussing my personal preferences. In 2022, and if you're a straight, cis, white, over-thirty male, discussing your personal sexual tastes and interests simply isn't done. No cis-het male in 2022 could write a sex blog or do a sex podcast where his own personal experiences are part of the conversation. 

If I say anything, I'll note that my tastes run to the tall and slender-- lithe, lanky, lissome, long-legged. Always long-legged. And underwear-averse. Yes, sharp hipbones and collarbones. Yes, a dark tan-- something that Gulf Coast co-eds still favor. I do not like the current fashion for tiny waists and big hips. I do not like the idea of Big Butts. I do like short haircuts-- see Mlle. Seydoux in "Crimes of the Future"; see Ms. Stewart in several earlier films. Big areolae, yes. But that's as much as I'll say. I'm sure I can be attacked just for having preferences at all.

"Crimes of the Future" is stunning. David Cronenberg's body horror films have always been stunning and stunningly erotic, all the way back to "They Came from Within", down through "Naked Lunch" and "ExistenZ". I've just  had the local library get me a copy of Cronenberg's novel "Consumed". I read it once long ago, but after seeing "Crimes of the Future", I need to read it again. I need to see if Mr. Cronenberg did make cannibalism and underground surgery sexualized. 

I do note that Ms. Stewart is described in the film as "sexy...in a bureaucratic way". There's very little of her flesh on view-- her tailored blouses are buttoned to the neck, and she's clearly wearing a bra. But she has a very thrilling look-- messy hair, a look of starved obsession and compelling desire. That look of inner compulsion is very sexy. 

I do need someone with whom I can discuss the film, and all the lovely Young Companions I've relied on seem to have vanished over the past few years. If you're reading this from out over the aether, do comment. I'd like to hear what my Imaginary Reader-- a young, over-educated comparative lit major with concealed dreams of transgression --has to say about David Cronenberg. 

Three Five Three: Couch

 I have been going back to FMTY Twitter. There's a sense of summer there. Some of the FMTY Girls are taking a summer hiatus and relaxing on beaches or next to rooftop pools. Some are accompanying patrons or clients to island villas. I do wish them all well.

I'll never be able to afford an FMTY Girl. Genteel poverty doesn't allow for that. But I have been thinking about what I would try very hard to afford.

Long ago, when I was first in Vienna, I lived not far from the Freud Museum. I made a point of visiting, of course. Freud has always been one of my intellectual heroes. I remember standing in the little museum at Berggasse 19 on a rainy afternoon and looking at the replica of Freud's office-- looking especially at the famous Couch. Probably not the original Couch, but something I'd waited to see for a long time. I thought about all the stories told by patients there on the couch and all the long conversations analysands would've had with Dr, Freud there at his desk. 

The FMTY Girls are beyond my reach, but there's something else I want, and it has more to do with that Couch than with Michelin-star restaurants or hotel bedrooms.

I do know someone who works for one of the few remaining phone sex services out there. Phone sex is a dying art, and the services that have survived are niche services. The woman I know is turning forty soon, and she's worked off and on for the particular service for a few years. She's smart, funny, and she's gifted with empathy. I've sat and listened to her talk about her job and just...sighed.

She does have a perfect WFH job. She has a laptop and a headset, and calls get routed to her wherever she might be. I liked that image. She takes her job seriously, she told me. She keeps notes on what clients tell her and tries to make sure she knows the details they like, or the settings they prefer...or just the things that they enjoy in their lives (a city, a restaurant, a movie, a favorite kind of decor).

She markets herself as a partner in fantasies, and she makes it clear that she believes in NSNL-- No Shame, No Limits. She tells me she's been made uncomfortable a few times by clients' fantasies, but she's never been horrified or appalled. What she's good at is building connections, at getting clients to just talk about their fantasies and about what they'd want their lives to be like. I suspect she's very much worth her fees. 

We sat over drinks and talked and I began to think about the FMTY Girls and what they offer. I told my friend about FMTY Twitter and told her that she-- my friend --would have more to offer me. They'd both be Companions, but my friend would be better at being the mix of things I'd want-- some combination of life coach, coffee shop interlocutor, and classical Freudian analyst. There might not be midnight sex in rooftop pools overlooking Dubai or Manhattan, but there would be a chance to talk to someone lovely. A chance to talk and talk and, yes, listen to what she has to say.

"Coffee shop interlocutor"... Would it be interlocutrix for the lovely girl? I do like the thing that happens in coffee shops sometimes, where strangers end up talking about their lives-- exchanging stories, analyzing one another, sharing likes and dislikes, talking about the things (books, music, experiences, places) that have meant a lot to them. I've always liked that.  And I told my friend that she could very well for herself as a life coach if ever the phone sex company failed. She laughed at that. She'd worked in banking and real estate, she said, so life coach might be a next step.

I remember that we talked about Peychaud's-- a classic New Orleans brand of bitters --and about how so many of her clients' fantasies were about going back in life and just doing the things they wished they'd done. For some it was, yes, having sex with cheerleaders or some particular long-lost girl. For some it was having the nerve to come out of the closet. Or having the nerve to admit that they liked something and didn't want to be ashamed of it. She tried, she said, not just to help them get off inside their fantasies, but to let them know that they had someone to talk to, that their fantasies and hopes weren't as awful as they feared.

Phone sex, she said, is another world. I do agree with that. It's always been something I liked because it plays to my strengths: storytelling, world-building, creating details. I'm sad that it seems to be dying away. Sexting can never replace long stories told late at night, can never replace late-night voices. Sexting can't replace conversations that loop and swerve from erotica to memories of films and places you've lived.

I would pay to have someone like her as a Companion out some night. I think I could sit and talk to her and feel like I was inside a world where fantasies could be NSNL, where conversations could go on across a table late into the night. She did very much have the gift of empathy. We exchanged business cards, mind you. She  wrote No Shame, No Limits on the back of hers. 

The conversation was one I enjoyed rather a lot. She let me walk her back to her hotel and told she that she hoped I'd call and arrange a session sometime. I think we could be creative together, she said. Her fees are nowhere near what FMTY Girls get for a dinner date, and I've certainly spent more just taking myself to dinner and wine on solitary Friday nights. Maybe I will call sometime. I suspect we'd both spend more time talking than doing phone sex itself.

Someone like her would be what I what these days. Life coach, interlocutrix, classical Freudian analyst-- someone with whom I can talk and not have to be afraid, someone who'd listen and not judge, someone who could suggest what my thoughts mean...and share her own.

Surely, now...there must already be services like that already in Japan, right?

Three Four Four: Boxes

I have been going through Escort Twitter these days. It's springtime, and the FMTY Girls are going on spring/summer tours. I do envy them: a working vacation in a posh resort or a four-star hotel is still not a bad thing. I suppose I do wonder, though-- is it hard to enjoy yourself when part of your job is enjoying yourself-- being seen to enjoy yourself  --in a swank setting? 

These things are beyond me. I take no pleasure in travel, since I'm likely to be traveling alone these days and of course since I'm a gentleman of very limited means.  I have to wonder if I'm even capable of pleasure when traveling with a lovely young companion. I'd probably spend my time being far too anxious to experience pleasure. If I were with a lovely, long-legged, panty-free young companion, I'd compulsively worry about all the things that could go wrong while traveling. I'd worry about whether she was having anything approaching a good time, about whether I'd reveal myself as a provincial-- a rube --in my choices for a hotel, for dinner, for wine. I'd be far too likely to paralyze myself with those anxieties. 

The FMTY girls post photos of gifts clients and patrons have given them. So many of the photos show the gift boxes as well as the gift. I can recognize some of the brands-- usually expensive lingerie. I understand that Agent Provocateur is an expensive line of slinky lingerie, although lingerie is never a gift I'd choose. I'm not fond of girls in lingerie. I prefer girls panty-free, after all. The stockings-and-garters look hasn't appealed to me since the start of the Nineties. Long, sleek, taut, tanned bare legs attract me more than silk stockings. I'm far more attracted to a girl in just a man's dress shirt than in lingerie, and of course I prefer my young companions to sleep naked. All I can do is look at the boxes and try to gauge what the price might be and what statement each gift-giver is trying to make. 

I'll admit that I do like some of the boxes-- elegant things. 

I have limited resources, so I'm not likely to give Agent Provocateur lingerie or jewelry. Books-- I do give books. And I have been known to buy my young ladies men's shirts or pullover sweaters. My gifts have been hand-delivered in New Yorker tote bags, but never in boxes from exclusive boutiques in NYC or London Town.

One of the FMTY girls did hint at her fee schedule. A gentleman admirer, she noted, was flying her somewhere for a long weekend. The fee, she noted, would pay her rent for two months. Based on rents for the city where she makes her home, that's probably half again my salary for that same period. Far and away out of my league. 

Well, I wouldn't know what to say to a high-end escort anyway. I know nothing about business-- and so many girls at Escort Twitter do say that they love talking about "entrepreneurship". Many are basketball fans, too. I know nothing whatsoever about sports. And I'd be far too scared to attempt anything with a menu or a wine list. 

These days, I'd feel the same about some young companion here. I'd be too anxious to go anywhere outside of a few small, hip places. I'm not even sure I'd risk a good sushi bar. I'd certainly never risk anything with a wine list. Doing anything where I can be seen to fail in public, where I could be seen to fail at being the person I used to believe I was, is far too much of a risk these days.

Three Three Four: Companions

 It's been a while since I've heard from my friend in London Town. So much since the spring of 2020 is just lost. I know she spent lockdown time at a friend's house near Oxford, and that she was doing virtual lectures for a university in the States.  There are so many things I'd like to talk about.

She is the closest thing I know to an actual FMTY person. She has spent time on the edges of the demimonde, and men, meaning older admirers, have flown her to hotels and villas in Europe and Asia. She understands envelopes of crisp new bills left on a bedside table, and she understands how to fly in Oligarch Class and deal with bookings at Michelin star restaurants. She is the person I should talk to about my FMTY fears.

I had lunch last weekend with a very lovely girl here. She's young, tallish, deliciously queer, bookish, and bright. We sat outside at a hipster ramen restaurant with drinks and talked and shared ramen. A very lovely autumn afternoon, crisp and sunny. I enjoyed the whole afternoon, and I never felt out of place. I'm sure a few people raised an eyebrow at the age difference, but I'm used to that and she's indifferent to it. It took me a while to process you, she said once, but I'm okay with it all.  I suppose that's all I can ask from any young companion and any affair. Sitting there with her and holding hands and talking was wonderful. More to the point, I felt very much like I belonged where we were. I felt...safe. I knew how to order drinks, I knew how to deal with the menu. I never felt like I was being judged. 

I could never do that with any of the FMTY girls whose Twitter accounts I follow. 

I scan over the FMTY girls' biographies and note the descriptions: charming dinner companion, upscale dinner date. One NYC girl's biography reads Art student, lingerie collector. Take me around the world, and let's start with dinner. Another one reads: Over-educated and under-satiated. Your next dinner companion and co-conspirator. I can read those things and feel my interest stirring...and becoming overshadowed by my fears. Discreet, seductive thrill seeker. Passionate for dining, art, music & culture, London and beyond. I would have no idea what to do or say around any of these women.

Sitting at the hipster ramen bar or at the little South American-inflected restaurant where I spend so many afternoons with starters and a drink, I feel like I fit in. Aging, genteelly-impoverished roué is a role that goes with both places. They're places where twenty-somethings and the inevitable Comp Lit co-eds go. They're places where there's no expectation of being on stage.

I have no idea how to perform at a Michelin-star restaurant. I have no idea how to deal with the menu or the waitstaff. I know how to do gallery openings; I know how to sit at a concert. But fine dining remains beyond me. I enjoy wines, but I'd never dare go through a wine list with an FMTY girl. 

I have to wonder whether part of what I'd be paying for with a high-end escort would be her skills with a menu and wine list. I'd have to hope that she'd be willing to be the guide, the psychopomp. I'd have to be able to smile and say that I was placing myself entirely in her hands. I couldn't be self-confident or be the self-assured client they'd be expecting. I'd have to be able to give up my fears that she feels her own professional status is being questioned because she's with a client as hopelessly provincial and inept as I'd be. I'd never be able to do that, though. I'd never be able to feel I was good enough to be a FMTY girl's client. 

Sex is aspirational or it's nothing. I wrote that here a long time ago. It's something I've felt since I was in my teens. A key part of sex for me is the set of class markers attached to it.  Classy international companion based in Brussels. Speaks 5 languages and loves cocktails, fine dining, dark humor and books. You see how easily I respond those a description like that-- it offers access to (or at least proximity to) the world I always wanted to live in. 

Perhaps I should re-focus. What I need might actually be a muse, someone who's using her own undoubted professional skills to show me how to handle a menu or a wine steward. What I know I need to do is to not let the world of FMTY girls become the world behind impenetrable glass that reminds me of all my failings.