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 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. 

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 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 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 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 Six: Wellington, Rain

 You must've read this before. This is a story the leggy Jill in NZ sent me long ago-- maybe as long as a dozen years ago. I may have posted this before, but I'll post it again. 

As stories go, this is wonderful. Very powerful, very erotic, very shattering. It's a story that evokes jealousy and envy both. I'm hard-pressed to find stories in my own life that can match Jill's adventures in her mid-twenties.

I have no idea where Jill is now, but let's go to a rainy night in Wellington NZ back in the 20-teens--

rain was pelting on the windows. i woke up on the floor, naked under a kid's toy story blanket. dry mouth, pounding headache, very shaky. i sat up, and looked around for my clothes. an asian girl was snoring quietly on the couch. there were bottles strewn everywhere. i felt sick and dizzy. my black jeans were in the corner of the room, covered in mud. my keys and $650 were scrunched into my pocket. weird, i never carried that much cash. i pulled them on, no underwear, then vomited into a pot plant.

i couldn't see the top i thought i'd been wearing, so i grabbed a men's shirt that was hanging on the back of a chair and buttoned it up. i had no idea where i was or what i'd been doing. i wandered through the small apartment. there were three men asleep in one of the bedrooms. in another bedroom was a few weed plants. i looked in the fridge and took out a beer. one of the men woke up and asked me if i wanted a smoke. 

we stood on the balcony, under the eaves, and smoked in silence. i have no idea who you are, he said. i just shrugged. you're wearing my shirt, he said. i just looked at him. i was feeling too dazed to put a sentence together. you can keep it, he said. 

he flicked his butt off the balcony, and offered me another. he lit it for me. can i see your tits? he asked. i nodded, and he undid the buttons on his shirt. can i take a photo? he asked. i nodded. he took out a battered iphone and took a few pictures, then started slowly sucking my nipples. he was tall, and dark haired. he had a beard and green eyes. i fucking love your tits, he said. do you want to suck my cock? he asked. i undid his jeans and took out his cock. i got on my knees and took him in my mouth. i was still feeling sick and almost vomited once or twice, but i loved the feeling of him in my mouth. 

do you want me to fuck you? he asked. i nodded, with his cock still in my mouth. i stood up and he bent me over the balcony and slowly peeled down my skinny, muddy jeans. he kissed my neck and fucked me in the rain. the motion of it made me vomit over the balcony. i moaned at him not to stop. it felt so fucking good. his hand was rubbing my clit and his cock was deep in my cunt. i had purged and felt light and pure as air. he came, and rested his body against mine. he pulled my jeans back up, and buttoned my shirt. he put another cigarette in my mouth and lit it for me.

 i walked to caitie's apartment in the rain barefoot. i wasn't so far from there, 4 or 5 blocks. 

Caitie, just as a note, was the girl Jill was dating in those days.

I really do love the story. I wish there were still lovely, wicked girls out there over the aether who wanted to tell stories about their Adventures. I don't even know if there are still girls out there who want to have Adventures, let alone craft them into stories to excite future lovers. 

If you're reading this, what are the Adventures you'd like to have? What are the Stories you'd like to be able to tell? I know that 2024 is very different from 2012-- in this time of holy war and holy dread --but why do you think we seem nowadays to avoid adventures and transgressions and experiences?

Three Eight Two: BookTok

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Eight One: Performance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Seven Nine: Berlin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Seven Eight: Numbers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Seven Six: Episodes

 I've been thinking about scenes in s/m novels that have meant something to me over the years. There aren't so very many, and some scenes have just evaporated out of my memory. 

A couple of scenes do stand out. There's the opening chapter of "Story of O.", of course. That chapter marked me for life. I've talked about it before, but it has stayed in my mind. 

You know the scene. O. is in the backseat of a car being driven to Roissy. Her lover tells her to sit with her legs open and then removes her underwear. He tells her to lift up the back of her skirt and sit directly on the seat. She does all this without complaint, without a word. He unbuttons her blouse, produces a penknife, and cuts the straps of her bra. She will never, he tells her, wear either bras or underwear again. 

That small episode has stayed in my mind. It means a lot more to me than the later part of that chapter, where O. is taken and used by the male members at Roissy-- gang-violated I suppose, since she knows none of them, and no one asks for her consent. That part of things is hot enough, although it wasn't done terribly well in the 1973 film version (the Guido Crepax graphic novel did it much better). O. accepting her lover's instruction to be always bare under her skirts or slacks, to always sit so that she's aware that she could be seen-- that has meant a lot to me. O. is vulnerable and available, and perpetually aware of both. I've always liked that, and especially liked it that O. is so aware of how she's dressed. This is why I ask my young ladies to be bra-less and panty-free when they're out with me. Part of that is the sense of vulnerability, that there's nothing between her and the outside world. Part of it is the sense of availability, of her knowing that she could be seen or touched at any moment. I like it that she's aware of her body, aware that how she sits or bends or stands is something she now has to consider.

I've been lucky. My young ladies haven't been appalled by my request. They've been willing to do this thing for me. It's selection bias, I know. Any girl who's willing to be out with me or involved with me to begin with is likely to accept my version of what constitutes an Adventure. I've been lucky, and I'm very clear on that. 

The age difference helps as well. Co-eds and twenty-somethings see themselves (I think) as learning about the world, about checking off lists of new experiences. The age difference helps with that, as does the idea that they now have a Secret. 

There's another scene that I liked a lot-- it's the climactic scene in Joyce MacIver's "The Exquisite Thing". The ice-blonde heroine-- who's six foot two, something that does matter in the story --has always felt alienated from her body. The men and women she's been submissive to sexually throughout her life haven't given her a sense of being a body, of belonging inside her body. 

She's at last taken to a very exclusive, high-end sex club in Barcelona (or maybe Madrid) called La Jaula, The Cage. The man who brings her has her taken up on stage, introduced to the masked audience, stripped, and tied to a wooden horse. (Because I'm like I am, I obsessed over the being stripped part-- was she wearing underwear before she was stripped? did she keep her heels on or was she barefoot?) She's then whipped for the audience. For the first time in her life, she feels like she's inside her own body, that she belongs inside flesh. She of course has a shattering orgasm by candlelight there on the wooden horse. 

I read "The Exquisite Thing" when I was an undergraduate, and I do remember sitting in my window seat and reading it on a rainy summer afternoon. That scene...that scene...I was just amazed and thrilled. I think I envied the girl in the book-- not for the sexual submission, or the exhibitionism, but for the ability to stand up at six-two and walk up to the stage-- for the ability to actually throw herself into an Adventure. I envied her, too, the sense of inhabiting her own body, the sense of being able to feel that her body mattered.

Which of course may be something that all too-bookish academic types long for-- escaping the land of the word for the land of actual sensation.

In any case, you'll have read "Story of O.". If you're reading this at all, you'll have already read "Story of O.". But I'm rather certain that you've never read Joyce MacIver's "The Exquisite Thing". The novel came out c. 1970-- half a century ago. But it's worth your while to find. I think you'll enjoy it (as you might enjoy "The Frog Pond", Ms. MacIver's other novel). As for me, I wonder about how I'd behave as part of the audience at La Jaula, and whether I'd ever have the money or social presentation to be allowed into the club. I'm like that, of course. A club like that would be aspirational for, a chance to become part of a ritual and a story. But I'd never be allowed in. 

So... If you're reading this, what are the scenes in erotica that have meant something to you? Not just in s/m novels, but in any erotica, even the sorts of ghastly and unintentionally hilarious books sold in "adult bookstores" back in the 1970s and 1980s. High-end literary erotica is more my sort of thing, of course. How could it not be? I'm class-aspirational, over-educated, and something of a literary snob. 

But...I hope that if you're reading this, you'll tell me about scenes in novels that have meant something to you, that have shaped your own views of sex and sexual fantasy.

Three Seven Three: Guidelines

 Last time, I wrote about my anxieties over the idea of FMTY Girls. Please be very certain that I'm talking here about hypothetical situations. I'll never be in a financial position where I could afford the services of one of the FMTY Girls on Twitter. I'll never really be in the geographical position to access the services of an FMTY Girl. My city is off the tour circuit for FMTY Girls, and I'd never be able to afford the fees necessary to persuade an FMTY Girl that I'm vaut un detour. This essay recognizes those facts very clearly. This is about a hypothetical world, not about this one.

Please don't think that I spend my evenings obsessing over the Twitter feeds of FMTY Girls. My Twitter reading is largely about history, architecture, and literature. But I do see feeds by lovely passport-ready escorts and I recognize my own failings. I might-- might --be able to afford the professional services of a local escort, but I wouldn't know where to begin. And, yes, I'd feel many of the same anxieties.

Last weekend I did what everyone does about needed information these days-- I went to YouTube and looked for information on how to seek out paid companionship and how to behave on a date with a companion. In case you're wondering, there are videos devoted to exactly those issues. I'm rather impressed with that. YouTube videos have taught me how to open an Opinel knife (i.e., how to do the coup de Savoyard), how to properly cook a veal chop, and how to reset the oil warning light on my vehicle. And now I could, at least in theory, learn how to behave with a high-end escort.

Companion. My apologies-- the preferred term is companion. I understand that. It's the same usage as the ancient Greek hetaira-- which is companion also. I like companion as a term, and it certainly catches a very large part of what I'm looking for. And I have to laugh here. What I'm hearing in my head is a moment in "The Rings of Power" where Adar corrects Galadriel when she calls him an orc: "Uruk. We prefer uruk." (Oh, yes, I liked "The Rings of Power; Adar was my favourite character) 

There was one video that I liked a lot. It was by a woman with certification as a sex therapist and a graduate degree in psychology. She talked about how paid companionship could have positive effects for some male patients, and she gave very good, very practical advice about being with a Companion. Let's be clear that I have no problems with her video. Be polite, be respectful, pay your fee up front, be honest about what you're looking for, treat a Companion just as you'd treat any skilled professional. Simple things, and practical. But again, not something that addressed my anxieties.

There was still no advice as to what to do about Impostor Syndrome, about the feeling that you're not good enough for an FMTY Girl, even if you could afford the fees without blinking. I keep looking at my wardrobe and thinking that any FMTY Girl would be ashamed to be seen with me. My thought is that being seen in public with me would lower her reputation in her own profession and might put off potential clients. 

Videos put up at YouTube by working Companions are all designed to allay male fears. The male viewer is assured that with a Companion he won't be judged or mocked for his performance or his body. The Companion is there, the male viewer is assured, to provide services. She doesn't judge, and her skills include making the client feel like he's appreciated. 

That may or may not be true. But while I'd certainly meet certain requirements for behavior-- personal hygiene, of course, and treating my provider with respect --I'd never be able to move from dinner table to bedroom. And I'm not sure I'd know what to do at dinner. I know which fork to use, but I'm not a gourmet and I'd panic at the wine list. I'd be terrified that my provider would instantly assume that if I didn't know what I was doing at dinner, I wouldn't know what to do in bed. I'd assume that she was sighing to herself and lamenting that I was going to  require effort on her part.

Be honest with your provider; tell your provider exactly what you're looking for.  That's excellent advice. But I'd be too afraid to take it. Any fantasies or tastes I might have would be either too boringly vanilla or too annoyingly strange. In any case, my provider would have to expend thought and effort on me. I'd be desperately ashamed to be thought either too boring or too pervy. I'd never be the kind of challenge that might make her want to deploy all her skills. 

Yes, I know. I'd be a paying client; it would be her job to provide services. But any skilled professional, from accountant to zither-player, wants to know that her skills are properly appreciated. I wouldn't be someone who could do that. 

I suppose that it might never get to the dinner date, let alone the bedroom. Even if I had the money for her fee, dinner, hotel room, and tip there's still the "screening" hurdle. I'd never make that. I'm not even sure what "screening" would entail. Whatever it is, it wouldn't be good. It would be too revealing in too many ways. 

The days of CraigsList are long gone, as the days of Nerve.com personals. The same anxieties would apply there, too, mind you. Let's be clear on that. I'd never pass the screening. And I'd feel like the girl across the table had sought an Adventure and had only found...me. Well, at least a girl from a personals ad would feel free to just walk away. Painful and humiliating for me, yes, but at least it would be done quickly. A Companion, a provider, might feel that since she'd accepted the fee, she was obligated to grit her teeth and go through with the contract. I'd probably be able to tell, and I'd feel both humiliated and ashamed to have ruined the working evening for her.

I do have copies of my briefing document. Yes, I did draft one. And of course the preference points all come with inbuilt apologies. I'd never have the courage to ask for what I'd want, even if I were paying for it. I'd never know how to behave with a Companion, never know how to behave so as to help her keep up the experience of the evening. 

The YouTube videos were all very practical, very useful. But they don't address my fears. I have no idea how I'd be able to get through an evening with a Companion without disappointing or annoying her, and I'd never be able to ask for the things that might give me pleasure.

Three Seven One: Library

 Here we are at the very beginning of the year 2024.

I haven't been here in too long, and I apologize for that. I have no idea who if anyone reads this out over the aether, but if you're reading this, you do have my apologies. I've been away from this blog for too long, and I want to make 2024 a year where I spend more time here.

I'd like to spend some time this year focusing on fantasies-- what they are, how they evolve, how they're used. I'd like to focus, too, on what they mean. Note that I'm not using "mean" in any Freudian sense. I'd like to focus on what it means that we need fantasies, and on how (if at all) they relate to individual lives.  

Consider the sentence beginning "I am not my..." Consider all the things that can complete the sentence. Well, fantasies is one possible word. So I'd like to spend some time examining that version of the sentence. Are we our fantasies? Should we be "accountable" (a word I really hate) for our fantasies? How much are we defined by our fantasies? I want to think about those things and write about them during the year. 

But in the meantime, let's start the year with a few books that I'll recommend. Some are older, yes, but there are libraries and interlibrary loan systems. If you read any of them, please do tell me what you think.

1. Robert Hellenga, "The Sixteen Pleasures". A very clever and often very hot  literary mystery set in Florence in the mid-1960s. The McGuffin here is a 16th-c. book of erotica with engravings of the sixteen sexual positions supposedly most likely to give pleasure to women. Late Renaissance Italian history, erotica, and antique books-- how could I not like this book?

2. Georges Bataille, "The Story of the Eye". Okay, now-- a work of French surrealist s/m erotica. It's considered one of the most bizarre novels of the last century. It has madness, s/m, slapstick comedy, and lots of sex involving eggs. I don't know enough about it (or about Bataille) to say whether it's supposed to be a parody of French s/m. It is funny in a perverse way, mind you. And there's a film version from the very early Noughts that I do hope to see one day. 

3. Alec Waugh, "A Spy in the Family". Alec Waugh was the older brother of Evelyn Waugh, and "Spy" is at least as funny as some of the younger Waugh's early comedies. The plot is simple. A late-1960s upper-middle-class young London wife discovers that her boringly vanilla civil servant husband is actually a spy working for MI.6. Somehow she becomes a lesbian dominatrix working for Her Majesty's Secret Service...and really, really likes her job. Some very, very hot moments, some very witty dialogue. This does need to be a film.

4. Joyce MacIver, "The Exquisite Thing". A largely forgotten s/m coming-of-age novel from c. 1970. There are some very hot sequences, including a stunning scene in a Spanish s/m performance club. MacIver did at least one other book that's worth reading-- a kind of autobiographical novel called "The Frog Pond" that's also an s/m coming-of-age story. I haven't read "The Exquisite Thing" in decades, but the scene in Madrid still haunts me. There's a third book, too, called "Mercy"...which seems to be a Southern gothic Lolita tale. About MacIver herself I know nothing. But do read "The Exquisite Thing" and let me know what you think. 

So...four books for you here at the start of the year. I do hope you'll make a point of reading at least a couple of them. I'd like to be able to discuss them with some lovely young literary girl. And I'd like to know if these four books do anything for your fantasy lives.