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 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 Seven Four: Notes

 Once upon a time Liberty and I were sitting on the porch steps of a weekend cottage we'd rented by a river in the hills. It was an autumn morning, and we were drinking coffee while there still mist outside. She was wearing nothing but one of my pullover sweaters-- I remember that -- and leaning back with her legs stretched out. I traced a finger along her leg and she laughed.

Her last older man, she said, had always liked her in anything that showed off her legs. A beautiful young girl, he'd told her, should always sit in one of two ways in a skirt-- legs crossed to show off how long they were, or else slightly parted so that she'd be a bit on display, so she'd be aware that strangers could tell she wasn't wearing underwear. I remember kissing her knee and telling her that I agreed with that. 

She sat up and kept her legs apart. No problem, she told me. She disliked ever wearing underwear anyway, and she liked having me look at her. What she wondered, she said, was about why her last older man had wanted her on display for strangers. It wasn't that she minded that so much, but she questioned whether he'd wanted others to see her to show them that she was there as his sex toy or that he wanted her to be aware of and excited by being on display. Older men, she grinned, all had very precise interests. She raised an eyebrow and looked at me for comments.

I told her that I understood. I liked being able to look at her, and I liked knowing that she was available to be seen and touched. And if she was sitting there, legs a bit parted, she'd be aware of how vulnerable she was. She nodded-- older men liked her to seem vulnerable. She was twenty-two that autumn, and she laughed about that. Maybe two or three more years, she said, maybe two or three more years when she could still be a young girl who could be corrupted and violated. After that, she said, she'd have to act like a grown-up woman, and she had no idea how sex and sex play went with adulting.

Older men, she said, had always been something she'd liked, all the way back to the kayak shop owner when she was a teen in the Pacific Northwest. Older men were something she could learn from, and she liked that-- learning things, having someone teach her things. Kayaking, rock climbing, art, books-- she wanted to learn about things and try being something or someone new all the time. That went for sex, too. Older men were the sounding boards who showed her all kinds of pleasures and games and things to explore. That, she told me, was what I was there for.  I had to be flattered by the vote of confidence. 

The older man before that, before the one who'd taught her to sit open-thighed, was a foot fetish devotee. She grinned and told me that she pretty much believed that older men were always into feet. Not that she minded, she said. It was an easy fetish for her, since she'd grown up barefoot half the time anyway. Her foot fetish man had paid for lots of expensive pedicures for her, too. And having her toes sucked and her feet and ankles licked felt nice. Foot jobs were fun to do, she told me, especially with uncircumcised men. The only thing she didn't understand, she said, was why a lot of foot fetish play that she found at places like PornHub seemed to be about submission and domination. She didn't think her older man was creepy about the fetish, and she didn't feel like she needed to play the domme and order him around. He enjoyed it, she liked the way what he did for her felt, and just asking for something was always better than ordering someone around. 

I remember her looking at me with a raised eyebrow then. She told me that when I wanted to blindfold her or tie her wrists, or play with a riding whip, I should just ask. Or she could ask me to do it to her. Neither of us needed to play at domination, let alone humiliation. She was much more submissive than dominant by nature, but while she liked being a bottom, she never understood humiliation as sex.

She asked me if I ever wanted to suck her toes or lick her feet, and I just shrugged. If she asked, I told her, I'd do it. I was, after all, her current official evil older predator, and I was open to whatever she wanted to try. Good, Liberty said. She expected her older men to teach her things and she expected them never to be afraid or ashamed to explore things with her. 

She opened her legs a bit more and grinned at me. What she liked, she said, was that attitude. I'd been good at creating scenarios for us, and she liked that. I'd been good at playing faux-nonconsensual games, too. She liked that about older men-- the being able to understand about faux-nonconsensual sex. Boys her own age, she said, knew nothing about games and irony. Sex, she said, was about pleasure and having fun. She didn't need people who were grindingly earnest about sex, or about anything else, in her life. 

I make notes about you, Liberty told me. You're in my journal. I expect you to show me things.  I remember that, and I was proud of it.  

Keep sitting like that, I told her. Especially in public. Keep avoiding underwear. And I'll think of things. I will work at that. I know my role. 

Liberty is someone I do still think about. I remember the stories she told me and the things she and I explored. I do have to write about her more.

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 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.

Three Six Four: Ghosts

 I haven't been here in a while, and I do apologize for that. This blog is a project I do want to keep up, and I hope to write here often enough to attract comments and questions.

I'm thinking tonight about ghosts. Not the ghost girls who've been part of my life and still haunt my dreams, but about the ghosts of erotica past.

I've been saying for rather a while now that erotica seems to be fading as a genre. There seems to be less and less erotica available. Porn clips at streaming services, sure. PornHub and its fellows are readily available. But actual erotica-- written or drawn or painted, not put on video or conjured up via AI? The boundaries seem to be shrinking.

I hadn't gone to Literotica for a while-- well, yes, several years --and my thought when I did go back this week was that there seems to be a dearth of new stories. And there seems to be an utter drought of inventive stories. No one seems to be writing anything elegant, transgressive, stylish, powerful. 

The boundaries of erotica seem to be collapsing towards the ordinary. What erotica I can find is flat and dull. The link between the erotic and the darkly elegant seems to be broken. Even S/M stories are just...boring. There's no longer an association between S/M (I dislike BDSM as a term) and style and elegance. Where there is any attempt to be transgressive, it veers towards urban punk and not towards decadence. And for me, decadence-- rooted in class and style --was always key.

Tonight I'm thinking of two figures from my past-- Michael Manning and Olivia de  Berardinis. Both of them erotic artists whose work meant something to me in the days of my lost youth. Olivia began work in the l970s doing her "O Cards"-- greeting cards with wickedly clever and highly erotic art based in decadence and dark elegance. Michael Manning appeared in the mid-1990s. His work combined goth, manga, cyberpunk, and gender fluidity. I miss both artists.

Olivia's work came under attack in the early '90s, if I recall correctly. A lot of her '70s and early '80s work had references to s/m, certainly, but also clever references to drugs. By the '90s, cocaine was no longer a chic quirk or erotic accessory, but a Social Menace. She was pressured to discard much of her early work, and her work became ever less explicit throughout the '90s. Once upon a time, I'd buy several dozen O Cards at a time, some for my own collection, but most to be sent to lovely young companions during correspondence. That's all gone, now. I have no idea what happened to the O Cards I saved, and there's nothing out there today from her that has the wicked and elegant darkness that her '70s and '80s work had. I've seen interview snippets where she apologizes for the explicitness of her paintings and cards. That's deeply sad.

Michael Manning's graphic novels-- "The Spider Garden", "In a Metal Web", "Hydrophidian", "Illuminagerie", "Tranceptor", etc. --were amazingly erotic and engrossing. His heroines crossed through boundaries of gender and sensation into some very dark and elegant places. He incorporated cyberpunk and biomechanics motifs as well as lovely Oriental architecture. For a while, late in the 1990s, he was with a now-vanished publisher called Eurotica, which is where I discovered his graphic work. But in the world of the Noughts and beyond, he found it increasingly hard to market his work. 

The Culture Wars caught up with Michael Manning, I suppose. His version of gender fluidity was based on sci-fi and fetishism rather than trans ideology-- he had characters who were self-described "androgynes", fabulous creatures whose "trans" status meant "trans-human". His androgynes were languid, willowy, goth-Heian, cruel in their beauty, and eerie. That didn't help Manning in the current age. And late-capitalism caught up with him, too. It became harder and harder for him to get credit card transaction companies to process orders. In a world of on-line marketing, he was hamstrung.  I haven't seen anything new by him in years. I can look at his "Cathexis" collection and feel like I'm looking at lovely art and wicked stories from a lost age.

There's less and less erotica out there that wants to take chances. There's less and less erotica that wants to link class, style, and darkness. Experimentation is frowned upon, fetishism (either in the anthropological or the private club sense) is rejected. There's less and less out there that I find erotic. 

And so here we are, in the spring of the Year Twenty-Three, focused on politics and economics, and with no interest in the possibilities of the erotic.  

Three Five Eight: Wars

It's a strange time to be writing about sex and erotica.

I'd thought that the pandemic would generate a new batch of sex blogs and would see a revitalization of phone sex and erotic exchanges via email. I'd hoped that the pandemic might even lead to people sending love letters and erotic missives. After all, there must be some people who'd prefer to lie awake in bed and read over handwritten fantasies from a lover (or even an alluring stranger) than scroll through their texts. 

I know that I for one would rather read a handwritten erotic letter or even an email than scroll through sexts. I've never been able to sext. Text-speak isn't a way I can construct any fantasies that interest me.

Somehow, though, the Red Death did nothing to put new life into sex. If anything, the world after 2020 seems more sex-negative. 

I remember adding "Gender Wars" as a content label here back when I first started writing here. In those days, "gender wars" meant male-female hostilities. It meant things like the Dublin Elevator Encounter and #MeToo. Now it means the Trans Wars, the GCs versus the TRAs. And there's been a spillover from the Trans Wars into disdain for sex-- both the activity and the biological idea.

Look, I do agree with the GC side that humans come in two sexes only, and that one's sex is fixed at birth. That shouldn't be taken to mean that  trans people need to be "erased" or that they shouldn't have full civil rights and access to medical treatment. It does mean that socially presenting as another sex doesn't make you a member of that sex and that there should still be single-sex spaces. 

What bothers me about the GC side is that they've gone from arguing something simple-- two biological sexes, no changing biological sex, gender as socially constructed --to becoming increasingly anti sex-as-activity. There's far too much Second Wave prudery on the GC side these days. They don't like the idea of Pride being a kind of Carnevale, they don't like kink, and they don't like fetishes.  And you might guess that I've been fascinated with kink all my life. I like the idea of sexual adventuring and exploration. Reading GC advocates attack kink and fetishes makes my teeth grind. I also dislike the way they create an image of the "woke" enemy as university girls with blue hair. My clubland days were back in the lost land of the Eighties, and I always liked girls who ran through hair colours every few weeks. I had a white slash dyed through my hair for a couple of years in those days, and I did like that. I hate it that the GC side, much of whose thought I agree with, sounds increasingly prudish.

Now the trans side draws my disdain for other reasons. Look, I do not believe that TWAW. I do believe that socially presenting as the other sex is LARPing. There's nothing wrong with LARPing, by the way. If a certain social presentation feels more natural, then present yourself that way. Wear a dress if you want. Call yourself by whatever name you prefer. Your life may be better that way, and that's all to the good. But you haven't changed biological sex, and the search for "authenticity" will always end badly. 

I do not believe TRA assertions that pansexuality is the only moral or ethical kind of sex. I dislike the way that the TRAs are trying to destroy the idea of being gay, lesbian, or bi--- I dislike that more than I dislike the GC hostility to the idea of "queer" as a category that includes things like S/M or role-playing. 

I dislike the way that both sides are against the idea of sex as adventure and pleasure rather than some sort of moral-political statement. I dislike the way that both sides are so ready to mock cis-het preferences and cis-het sex as either boring or morally bankrupt. Though at least the GC side believes that cis-het does exist, whereas the TRA side believes that it doesn't (or shouldn't) really exist.

2022 is winding down, and there are so many economic and political nightmares hovering just at the edge of our vision. I had hoped that this year there would be new sex blogs with clever tales of adventure. I'd thought that after two years of dealing with the pandemic and its one million dead we'd be ready to explore the possibilities of pleasure. That hasn't happened, though.

It's hard for me to imagine a world without desire and kink and a sense of aesthetic play. But we seem to be coming to that.

Three Five Five: Interlocutrix

 The phone sex worker I met last month and I have been exchanging emails and texts. I'll note right at the outset that I haven't engaged her professional services, and that I don't intend to raise that subject. 

She is a professional, and apparently a highly regarded one in her field-- the equivalent of an FMTY Girl. It would be disrespectful to ask for freebies. I don't ask friends who are chartered accountants to do my taxes for free, and I don't ask doctor friends to treat me for free. Professionals are paid for their skills, and to ask them for freebies is a sign of disrespect. I know her per hour rate, and she'd certainly be worth it. I know that she treats her regular clients well and does empathize with them, but there's always (as there should be) a certain professional distance with clients. I'd much rather be a friend.

She asked if I have either Zoom or Face Time, so I expect we'll be talking via our laptops. It's easy to sit up late at night and just exchange emails. We've talked about our lives and about films and music and places we've been. It's easy to tell her things, and I have missed the idea of email as a way to actually correspond. I've been saying here that I miss things like letters and long telephone conversations in my life, and talking to her has been a throwback to the days when people did exchange information and stories. That's the part of friendships and relationships I've missed most in the social media world. I'm a long-form sort of person, and I can't tell anyone anything important in 280 characters or whatever the text/Twitter limit is.

I can see why her clients-- mostly older, mostly monied --are willing to pay her rates. She is an excellent interlocutrix. That's her key skill. She can make a client feel safe. She listens, asks questions, is sympathetic. Phone sex, she told me the night we met is another world, and a fantasy world should not only have No Shame, No Limits, it should be...comfortable. 

Being good at phone sex is a rare thing. Being good at ordinary sex-in-the-flesh is probably a rare thing. It takes thought. Passion, yes, but it also takes thought. Anyone good at phone sex has to make his/her partner feel not just desired, but comfortable inside that desire. I've always been someone who talks during sex. I want to exchange information with a partner-- about how each of us is feeling, about what each of us is thinking, about what the physical moment reminds us of. One lovely young co-ed in my past laughed and said that what it all made her think of was a space mission and Mission Control. Yes...we may have done NASA voices the rest of the evening. Voices are lifelines, even during sex (or maybe especially during sex).

Phone sex isn't just two people masturbating while holding their iPhones. It's about world-building, about building worlds the partners feel comfortable inside. It's about creating and sharing fantasies and knowing that you're able to be safe and still explore No Shame, No Limits. My friend has those skills, and she's made a very successful career out of them.

I don't expect I'll ever find out about her skills first-hand, but I love the stories she tells (names and identifying details all omitted, of course) about fantasies she's been part of. And I do very much enjoy being able to talk with her about our lives. Voices matter, details matter, being valuable enough to be someone's interlocutor matters. 

Three Five Two: Essentials 2

 I had posted the list of 20 Essentials my friend Natalie sent me back in 2013. I promised to post the response I sent her-- a list of Essentials every Gentleman, whether Young or Of A Certain Age, should have. I couldn't find the original of my response, so I have reconstructed it here. These are things I think every Gentleman should have. Please do let me know what you think.

20 Essential Things Every Gentleman Must Have

1. A good blazer. This is the exoskeleton of your entire wardrobe. A good, well-fitted blazer will take you everywhere. I prefer black to navy blue.

2. Good black walking shoes. Something that'll take you on long city walks and carry you from a corporate meeting to a hip bar by the university. I prefer blucher to Oxford style.

3. A signature scent. For me, that's Eau Sauvage by Dior or Eternity for Men.

4. A local bistro that's a second home. A place where you're a regular. Where they serve you off-menu items you didn't know you needed. Where they know your tastes, and where you have a group of interlocutors around whenever you're at the bar.

5. A bottle of good single-malt. You'll need it on nights when you're poring over that book you've been looking for all your life, and you'll need it when that special guest comes by. If Herr Herzog shows up unexpectedly, I'll pour him a glass of Dalmore Cigar Blend or Suntory Yamazaki.

6. A passport. Yes. It's a big world, and you need to see it. And you never know when you might have to suddenly flee the Agents of the Dawn.

7. Dude Wipes. In case a lovely Young Companion unexpectedly knocks at your door. You need to be ready for that.

8. Cigarette lighter. You may not smoke, but the lovely, mysterious girl at the next barstool just may. A gentleman is ready for that. And it is a good way to open a conversation.

9. A good, durable shoulder bag. Your laptop or iPad, a good book, sunglasses, this week's New Yorker, your charger, a couple of pens, and a Moleskine. You need this. I've been using Land's End briefcases as a shoulder bag for decades.

10. A signature dish. Well, I'm New Orleans-born. I make a very decent jambalaya. Young Companions seem intrigued.

11. A good chef's knife and a cast-iron skillet. Something any civilized person needs. Those two things will get you through a myriad of cooking moments. And they've served me through many a Friday night with a good rib-eye and a bottle of wine.

12. A Moleskine notebook. Like everyone else from my generation, it was Bruce Chatwin who told us about Moleskines. They're classic, simple, timeless. I used hardbound grid-ruled ones for years and years, but these days I'm using the softcover, lined version. I keep a supply on hand, and I wouldn't be without one.

13. Some knowledge of wine. Of course. However not? There's a world of good wine in the $20-$50 range. Try things. Read about things. My preferences these days are for New Zealand sauvignon blanc and pinot noir. But I do appreciate a good Argentine malbec. And whether you're watching a film alone in your flat or sitting out on the deck with a lovely, long-legged Comp Lit co-ed, a glass of wine is always a good idea.

14. A good fountain pen. There's something very sensual about writing with a good fountain pen. And it tempts you to write letters and actually communicate with people. Makes you develop a reasonably elegant handwriting, too. My current favourite is a classic Waterman with an XF nib. I like my inks in a bordeaux shade-- or the Birmingham Inks "Waterfront Dusk" shade.

15. A seduction playlist. The lovely N. at RadioKvetch says that every girl should have her own strip-tease song for use with a lover (hers is Kavinsky's "Nightcall"), but as a Gentleman of a Certain Age, I have a seduction playlist instead. The key songs on it are-- Cowboy Junkies, "Sweet Jane"; Beth Orton, "Anywhere"; and Duran Duran, "Come Undone". There's probably some "Gods & Monsters"-era Lana Del Rey in there, too.

16. A good face care regimen. Because the clock is ticking. Always.

17. A good book collection. Because I have lived my life through books, and books open up the world and the past. And a good book collection is indispensable for tempting leggy Comparative Lit co-eds into your lair.

18. A lovely Young Companion. Oh, yes-- long-legged, slender, sharp-cheekboned and sharp-hipboned, with lovely eyes, an aversion to underwear and sleepwear, bookish, whip-smart, wicked, and open to adventures.

19. A small stuffling friend. A stuffling is loyal, faithful, comforting, and a good listener. Dorian-- the best of all Small Mongolian Pony stufflings! --has been with me for a lifetime. He's traveled the world with me, and was there with me for my PhD viva voce.

20. A mysterious Past. Well, obviously. A Past with good stories, a Past that will hold the attention of that leggy Comp Lit co-ed. You need good Stories, and you need the ability to tell good stories. All those years lecturing to classes at least helped me with that.

If you're reading this out over the aether, you are of course invited to submit your own Lists. What Essentials should a lovely girl have in her life and shoulder bag? What Essentials should a gentleman have for structuring his own life and attracting lovely Young Companions?

Three Five Zero: Essentials

A lovely friend wrote this back in 2013, in response to a List I created for her-- a List of 20 Essential Things Every Gentleman Should Have. You'll have to tell me what you think of her List...

 I've been inspired to write a short list of things every girl needs to have. So, here it goes:

1. Black skinnies. Goes with everything and can be dressed up or down; I like Gap as their sizing is the most consistent and the prices are reasonable.

2. Black flats. Same as above, APC makes a delightful pair, as does Bloch.

3. A strip-tease song. Mine is "Nightcall" by Kavinsky from the Drive soundtrack- wonderfully sultry and slow enough keep a sensual and fluid rhythm.

4. At least one foreign language. How else will a Ghostgirl communicate in the Far Foreign? French is a must (obviously) and another should be unique, specific to your interests. I love Russian and Korean, however Arabic or Japanese are perfect as well.

5. A small book to carry around in one's purse. Perfect for reading on the quad or at a cafe and is a great conversation starter. Mine lately have been "Invisible Cities", "Discipline and Punish", and a copies of n+1.

6. A good vibrator. Need a girl say more?

7. A lighter. For the impromptu post-sex cigarette or lighting a stranger's--- a great way to get to know someone.

8. A brand of cigarettes. This becomes your signature and reveals a lot about your personality. I smoke organic American Spirits (liberal arts, humanities educated, "concerned about the environment", and upper-middle class). Please don't be a Parliaments or Menthol girl. Just no.

9. Some knowledge of wine. Being an oenophile is sexy and can really impress a date. Choose one that fits most dishes and is in the $15-30 range. You never want to be cheap when it comes to wine--- girls who buy $8 bottles of Moscato are almost always virgins. My favorites: Garnachas, Tempranillos, Sangioveses, Cabernets from Napa.

10. An animal friend. An animal companion can instantly lift one's mood; my Dmitri is my everything.

11. A troubled past. Provides for great stories and a better understanding of the human condition (at least in my experience).

12. A passport filled with visas and stamped to oblivion.

13. A few favorite artists, poets, directors, etc. that one can discuss in-depth. A few of mine: Mikhail Vrubel, Neruda, Almodovar.

14. Red lipstick. I wear YSL Rouge Volupte (so creamy and it smells like mangoes!). Classically sexy and an easy way to vamp up any look.

15. A signature perfume. YSL Opium for going out and Viktor & Rolf Flowerbomb for the day for me. Always be careful when applying: you want someone to only smell your perfume when they lean in close for transgressive suggestions.

16. Some ability to sing or play an instrument. I did choir for 5 years and have a fairly good voice and played piano for 9 years. Also, have a favorite composer. I love playing Chopin and Rachmaninoff.

17. A reliable pen for writing down potential lovers' contact info, random thoughts, and Lists (in a Moleskine, of course). I prefer Pilot G-2's.

18. A cast iron skillet and good chef's knife. That being said, know how to cook. Nothing is sadder than a girl who lives on takeout and can't chiffonade for shit.

19. A moneyed lover. Naturally.

20. Sharp cheekbones, jutting hipbones, and long legs.

I'll note that she listed black skinny jeans but didn't list any lingerie. That's a good thing. Beautiful young girls should habitually be panty-free. 

Tell me what you think of her List. I may have to find my own original List for Gentlemen, or at least attempt to reconstruct it. I'll post here if I do, of course.

Three Four Eight: Signposts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three One Two: Paint

I've spent time going through my storage cube and seeing how much of my past is hidden away there. In one plastic storage box I did find things Levin left for me long ago. I remember her packing to go off to grad school, remember that she packed up her life in a couple of bags and a few cardboard boxes in the trunk of her car. She gave me a few of her old notebooks--- You're a historian, she said.  This is history. She may have said my history or our history, Too long ago to remember.  But I have been looking through them and thinking about ghosts. 

The notebooks are hardbound Pentalic journals--- both sketchbooks and lined, What's the size? 5 x 8? I haven't seen Pentalic journals in forever, and I have no idea if they're still made. These have hard blue covers; I like the solidity.

Levin had posed naked for sketches and paintings since she was in high school. Self-portraits and for friends and (older?) lovers when she was a high school girl, for the painting professor whose muse she was at university, for lovers male and female. Her sketchbooks have details of nude self-portraits, sketches of collarbones and throat leading down to breasts, sketches of Levin done in a mirror. 

I remember that at one point she and her painting professor had spent time laughing and painting on one another. She'd been thrilled at that. Not just because it felt good or was part of sex, but because her older lover had been able to laugh about it, had been able to give up authority and art-world fame and just play.  So there in the sketchbooks are drawings of herself topless, or just of her breasts and throat, colored in in pencil. 

Levin had large areolae and nipples. I liked that, liked the way it looked when she was in the boy's white singlets that were a uniform look for her, She liked it sometimes, but felt awkward at others. A boy in high school had mocked her for having "pepperoni tits", and she'd been wounded by that. Still, Levin was always bra-less, and I loved the shadow of her areolae and nipples against thin cotton.  I love the drawings, too, and love the colors she used. 

She told me once that one summer she'd worked as a server in a men's club called Rembrandt's. The club wasn't exactly a strip bar. Its gimmick was that the servers and bartendrix girls were topless and painted--- the body paint glowing under the black light that flooded the club. For something like $25 you could paint on one of the girls. Girls had designs and names painted on them.  A patron, she told me, could touch a girl's legs and stomach and back and go around her breasts, but couldn't touch the breasts themselves (something the bouncers enforced). Depending on the tip, the girl would paint her own breasts or slyly trace a glowing streak across the crotch of her bikini. I did laugh when she told me how many men wanted to paint football team names and slogans on a girl. I listened to Levin talk about the club and spent time imagining that there was a secret inner club where girls were totally naked and that girls and their patrons were having black light sex in VIP rooms. I have to grimace about that now. Black light is so very much a period thing, though never one that's been retro-hip. I've run ice cubes around Levin's nipples and dripped candle wax on them and kissed vodka and champagne off them, but we never played with paint. 

One of the notebooks has long passages in Portuguese in it. Levin had done a year abroad in Lisbon, and she was proud of knowing the language. A couple of the passages are marked in red and have my name by them. I've never done Portuguese or Spanish, and I have no idea what the passages are about. She used to whisper to me in Portuguese while we were having sex, and she told me that she was saying the most outrageous Talking Dirty things she knew. I took that as a gift then, and I still take it as a compliment. I wish I could've responded better in German, but in those days my German was far too academic and formal. I should've looked up more bedroom-useful words and phrases. 

I do wish I'd been able to paint her or sketch her...or paint on her. I can talk about a few, a very few, things in art history, but I have no artistic talent of my own. 

Her sketchbooks have a couple of sketches of my face. That's my name and a date on the page, but it's so hard for me to recognize the young man there all in pen-and-ink or colored pencil. Yes, at some point I did have a goatee. Yes, for a while there was a white streak dyed in my hair. Yes, I must've been that thin. I know that I gave her written things--- love letters, the odd bit of poetry (don't ask) ---but I wish I could've given her something visual. I wasn't hopeless at photography in those days, and Levin would've been perfect as a photo model. Portrait photos, nude or not, would've been something to give her.

Levin's painting professor told her once that she needed always to point her toes when she posed naked for him. Nothing, he said, was more alluring than a lovely girl who stretched out her legs and pointed her toes--- especially alluring, he said, if she was in the midst of an orgasm. I have to agree, and I do remember that when her legs were over my shoulders she always stretched and pointed. I'm not sure that means anything now, but I did take it as both very sexy and as a gift.

Three Zero Eight: Lessons

 I'd thought that I might be writing tonight about sex in hotels, but I decided in the end to write about what I'd learned in my life from porn. I suppose we can include written erotica in that.

I've been reading things on line about people's sexual problems, and one of the recurring themes in the comments is that people--- meaning of course cis straight white males ---have to stop learning about sex from porn. That immediately sent me to PornHub to do a random tour of categories. I spent a while looking through PornHub clips and trying to recall what I'd learned from porn.

I know that I learned some things. Though in my long-ago youth, it was harder to do. That was before the web, of course, long before there was anything like PornHub or its sister sites. To see porn in my youth I had to sneak into actual backstreet cinemas to watch movies. I was probably in my twenties before I saw porn on satellite channels, and I never had much of a porn collection on either videotape or DVD.  But I did learn things from porn. 

That makes sense for me, of course. I learned about so much in my life from books and films.  Novels and films shaped who I am. I read books to learn about what to wear, which wines to drink, how to behave at dinner parties. So why not porn?

I learned from porn (yes, from a book first, from "Story of O") that there were beautiful girls who didn't wear underwear. I learned that there were girls there in the ordinary world who were deliciously bare under skirts or shorts. I learned that I could suggest to lovers that they be panty-free. I learned that I could whisper to a lovely girl and tell her to wear nothing at all beneath a sundress while she walked with me down a beach or a city street--- learned that this could be an adventure. And it has become a signature thing for me--- asking girls with whom I'm involved to give up underwear, at least while out with me.

I learned that there were beautiful girls who slept naked.  I may--- may ---have learned that first from the early James Bond films, but certainly it was porn where I found that sleeping naked was something beautiful girls seemed to do everywhere. I watched that and knew--- even in my early teens ---that this was something I'd be asking lovers to do lifelong. 

Porn showed me new positions to try. Porn showed me new places for risky and thrilling encounters. Porn showed me that, yes, oral and anal did happen...and showed me how to do both. And the same is true for various kinds of s/m. Until I read about something, until I see it on a screen, it isn't real. 

Porn gave me an incentive to try things, to think that certain kinds of adventures were possible. It gave me the courage to offer up ideas and suggestions to lovers. Were the things that I asked about or found fascinating "unrealistic"?  Maybe. Or even probably. But "realistic" has never been what I was after. 

Porn offered me raw material that I could shape into things I could share, things that I use as guides to adventures and to creating stories for myself and a lover. Porn showed me what I could like, showed me things that I didn't know I'd like. 

I never thought that porn was a guide to what a girl looked or sounded like while having orgasms. I never thought that porn showed how large or how hard a male was supposed to be, or how often a male could perform. But then I wasn't interested in those things anyway.  I did think that porn showed me how sex should be lit, and how bodies can be posed for maximum visual effect. Porn taught me how sex could look. And I'll always be grateful to certain porn directors (e.g., Andrew Blake) for that.

Three Zero Two: Organization

The other day I found a wonderful blog--- TheOrganisedEscortBlog.com. It's a delight. It's one of those random discoveries that can make your whole morning. So...The Organised Escort Blog is exactly that. It's a blog by an escort working in Australia about, well, professional issues. She says that she began her career working in legal brothels in the Australian states that have legalized sex work, and that's she now both a fairly high-end escort and a business coach for other sex workers. Her blog is filled with entries that are Lists, and...who doesn't love a List? I immediately sent links to some of the better entries there to Jill in WLG. I'd love her comments on the Lists.

The Organised Escort--- Amelia, she calls herself ---introduces herself this way:

I’m a sex worker, just like you.

I inspire and educate sex workers who are looking to grow their business with unique marketing tools and proven strategies. I understand the struggle of trying to build a business as a sex worker, so I deliver resources that will help you live more and work less. 

Sex work is hard. 

I’m here to make it easier for you.

I like the whole TED Talk atmosphere at her blog. And I like her Lists--- e.g., My Escorting Capsule Wardrobe, My Tour Packing List: Essentials You Need, How I Prepare For An Escort Client, or 3 Surprising Items You Need In Your Escort Kit. I sent links to all of those to my friend Jill in Wellington. The brands Amelia recommends are pretty much all Australian, and I do want Jill to let me know what she thinks of the brand selections. She seems to spend time flying off to Melbourne or the Gold Coast, and she has access in NZ to Australian brands as well.

In case you're wondering, the "3 Surprising Items" are--- a tongue scraper (bad breath is totally a disaster if you're an escort); boric acid pessaries (okay, I had to look up "pessaries", too); and...hemorrhoid cream. On that last one--- it's not for what you think it is. It's for closing up any small vaginal tears, which does reduce the risk of STIs. And, too...you can use it under your eyes to reduce puffiness. That's an old beauty pageant trick, in case you're wondering.

There's also an entry that's My In-Call Essentials You Need To Know About and one that's What’s In My Outcall Bag--- two entries that immediately appealed to my whole obsession with Lists and Kits. I love the idea of planning and organization, and I love the image in my head of a lovely girl in her apartment, assembling a kit for her weekends as a part-time escort, or just as a party girl. Jill in Wellington tells me that over the years a few men have paid her, or at least mistaken her for a working girl there at WLG or Auckland bars, and that the idea of an envelope of cash on the bedside table is exciting. I do love to think of what she might take with her on nights when she thinks she might be doing hotel sex or at least sleeping in a bed yet to be determined. 

If you're reading this, do go by the Organized Escort blog and let me know what you think. If any of you have your own Kits, either personal or professional, please do let me know. Send me Lists if you can. I'd love to read about what you take with you on Adventure nights in cities out over the aether.

Two Nine Three: Lessons

Last night I watched "Altered States"--- a film from c.1981 that I've always rather liked.  If you haven't seen the film, I will recommend it.

There's a moment in "Altered States" where Wm. Hurt has the first physical symptoms of regressing into some kind of archaic hominid. He's in bed with one of his students at the time (she calls him "Dr. Jessup" when he leaves bed and dashes to the bathroom to look at his transformation in the mirror). The actress is named Ora Rubinstein; her character is billed only as "Young Medical Student". I like that...and wonder if you'd still still have that character if you re-did the film in the Year Twenty. Could you still have Dr. Jessup sleeping with one of his students? The film takes it for granted that he'll have affairs with students, and one of his senior med school colleagues says off-handedly earlier in the film that he has to go, that he has a date with one of his students,

Which once again takes us back to Levin and her painting professor. That affair was something that happened long ago, and certainly long before #MeToo. Levin had no objection to sleeping with her professor, and no particular thought that she was being exploited. She found some of his stories pretentious and self-involved, but that just went with being in the art world. What I'd like to know is the full backstory. At what point did she sense that his interest in her was a seduction? How did she react to the discovery--- surprise, amusement, excitement? Did she ever think she was being exploited or used (in a bad way)? Did she laugh at how cliched it all was--- art student and her professor? Did she decide to sleep with him early on, or did she make a quick decision that night in the studio when he asked why she wasn't naked yet?

I asked her once when she made that decision about me, and she shrugged and told me she'd decided early on, when I was telling her what films and books I liked. Just seemed like you'd be interesting, she said. I mean, I'll take that as a compliment and a perfectly valid reason. But I did wonder when she'd made a decision and what criteria she was using. 

Levin was a fine arts major. I do wonder how her criteria compare to Liberty's.'s criteria. Liberty was a coastal ecology major--- a science girl, albeit in what was regarded as a "hippie science". From what I could infer, all the "soft" sciences--- the ecology programs, anthropology, biology ---were very sexually active. Funny thing--- "Altered States" gives the same impression, that the physical anthropology students and faculty are more sexually active than the hard sciences or even the liberal arts. I need to look into the accepted mores of various academic departments. 

I of course was a History major--- a department not noted for carnality. Fine Arts and Comparative Lit were of course notorious for both ambisexuality and teacher-student affairs. Neither Levin nor Liberty ever seemed to find sleeping with faculty to be anything out of the ordinary, mind you. And both seemed to have accepted bisexuality as perfectly ordinary since their teens. Okay, yes, great--- I'm now thinking about a survey and analysis on sexual criteria by academic major back to the Sixties. Somebody get me a research grant and a Netflix deal.

What I'm also thinking about is what each of them--- Liberty, Levin, even the Young Medical Student in "Altered States" ---wanted from the experience. We'll learn things, Liberty said to me. When Levin first stayed over in my rooms, she spent time prowling through my bookshelves and asking about books and authors. My friend at McGill told me that she expected any older lover she took to have a bedroom full of books and a whole fund of knowledge about 1960s French and East European films. 

Though I suppose it's possible that they wanted the idea of "experience" more than any particular concrete experience. Levin was part of the art world, and there's still a strong master-pupil attitude there, the idea of learning by transmission from some older figure with talent. That may be part of it all.  Levin and Liberty (and my friend in Montreal) liked the idea of having experiences,  of collecting experiences that they could use to form themselves. I suppose I felt the same way in my own late teens and undergraduate days. The idea was to be able to say that, yes, I did this, or that I'd read that, that I had a range of experiences (all approved in novels or films) that I could use to become (or become seen as) the sort of character I wanted to portray.

Liberty told me that all through her teens and into her twenties she'd collected experiences and kept a journal about what she was learning about the world and about lovers. She claimed to have kept a separate "Older Men" chapter with notes on what men in their thirties and forties had taught her and on how to deal with them. Did she really? I'll never know, though I hope she did. I hope she'll find that notebook when she's forty herself and read it through and see if she agrees with Liberty-at-twenty's observations. 

I wish I could have both Liberty and Levin write down the things they'd learned from older lovers. My friend at McGill--- I know how she'd answer. She'd list the names of authors and directors, the titles of books and films. Reading Deleuze, she'd say: that was a big thing. Not quite the physical things Liberty claimed to have learned (light s/m, foot fetishes)...or how she learned to paint Southwest desert light. Not quite those things...but still lessons that my Montreal friend saw as crucial to her constructed self.

Now I do recognize that I've been a source of some kind of lessons and experiences for girls like Levin or Liberty. I'd like to know more about what lessons and experiences they'd been looking for, and how they did use them (whatever they were) to construct selves later. I'd like to know what counts as a lesson, too.  And I'd especially like to know how each girl sees the older men they were with all these years later.

Two Eight Six: Saint Tropez

Tonight I'm thinking about Levin and the nudes her painting professor did of her. I remember looking at the framed nude portrait she had  in her bedroom and envying her older lover his skills. I can barely draw stick figures, and his portrait of Levin was amazing--- sunlight and shadow, the way her nakedness blended with the room, the way the furniture and windows set off how lithe and alluring she was. I'd seen her naked, of course, seen her naked in all sorts of rooms. But I did envy him the things he must have seen in her, the things he brought out in her image. He could see things in her that I couldn't. I could write about her; I could tell her stories. But I couldn't see her.

I can't decide whether thinking of Levin made me recall a 1991 film called "La belle noiseuse" or whether seeing the film again not so very long ago made me think of Levin and her portraits. If you haven't seen the film, please do take this as a recommendation. I purchased a DVD of it not long ago and sat enthralled with it here in the lakeside flat. I'd seen the film years ago--- probably because Jane Birkin is in it, and Ms. Birkin will always be a major crush of mine. "La belle noiseuse" was released in 1991. A young Emmanuelle Beart is the female lead, the muse to an aging painter. Beart would've been twenty-six, I think, when it was filmed. The film is almost three hours long, and Mlle. Beart is naked through most of it. The story is about Beart and the painter, about her modeling for him as he tries to reclaim the ability to paint. It's deeply powerful--- about obsession as much as desire ---to watch the painter pose her, move her, drive himself as he does figure studies, as he tries to build a painting from an idea he gave up twenty-five years before.  Much of the film is about the techniques of painting, about shots of a disconnected arm wielding brushes or charcoal, doing washes, sketching out lines and curve. It's a film I wish I could've watched with Levin all those years ago, and it's a film I wish I could watch with my blonde NZ  friend--- Jill, we'll call her ---down in the Land of the Long White Cloud.

The act of painting, the act of drawing--- that's an erotic thing all on its own. I've never been able to draw or paint or even sketch.  Once upon a time I did do photography. I spent Saturday mornings at university climbing over buildings looking for architectural moments, and I did spend time photographing girls with whom I was involved, dressed and undressed both. Some of the photographs I took of lovers and companions were good, and my subjects appreciated how I made them look. But no matter what I could do with a pre-digital SLR, it wasn't painting or drawing. In those days I tried to emulate the styles of fashion photographers I liked. I may have been reasonably good at it, but it always lacked the power of a painting. I could do light and shadow, I could pose a girl in some wicked outfit or naked on a rooftop...but it wasn't the same as the painting on Levin's wall or the sketch she gave me of herself in a rented seafront bedroom.

That bedroom sketch, with its shadows and the hint of the girl face down on the bed, did remind me of David Hamilton. Hamilton died in 2016; I only discovered that a couple of days ago. When I was first off at university, Hamilton's photography books were something art-school girls as well as aging nympholepts collected. "Summer in St. Tropez", "Dreams of a Young Girl", "Sisters", "Premiers Desirs"--- I had all of those when I was eighteen or nineteen. I even saw the film versions of "Premiers Desirs" (yes, a very young Mlle. Beart was in that) and "Summer in St. Tropez". Levin had her own copy of "Dreams of a Young Girl"; I do remember that.

I suppose all those books are long out of print. We're long past the days when David Hamilton's photos of young girls were on art-photo notecards and postcards. You know why, of course--- Hamilton's models were are all either in their teens or at least appeared that way (Emmanuelle Beart was twenty when "Premiers Desirs" was filmed). By the time he died, Hamilton must've been on any number of enemies lists and very likely being considered for indictment under British law about "historical offenses" with young models.

Nonetheless, I do remember Hamilton with fondness. You could always tell his photographs--- the long-limbed, coltish models, the way he used sunlight and settings down in southern Provence. Levin told me once upon a time that she knew that there was something very cliche-pervy about Hamilton's work, but that she couldn't stop looking at it and wishing both that she could sleep with all the models...and be one herself.  I haven't owned any of his books in years and years, but I'd like to see them again. I know what I thought of them in my own undergraduate days, and I know what I thought of them a decade later. But I have no idea how I'd see them now. We see bodies and nakedness very differently from the way we did in Hamilton's day, or even in the Nineties. We see the idea of coming-of-age very differently, too.

It's so easy for me to imagine Levin at nineteen or twenty as a Hamilton model.  I just wish I could have drawn or painted her myself. I wish I could have taken more photos of her, especially in that city with wrought iron and a seawall--- and saved them down the years.  I wish I could've looked at Levin naked in a deserted Victorian house and painted the passion I always felt in her.

One day I must ask Jill in NZ if she's ever posed nude for paintings. She's had nudes taken of her on camera phones (what posh, wicked Millennial girl hasn't?), but I'd love to know if she ever posed to be sketched or painted--- or even posed for higher-end art nudes.  I can imagine some ghostly figure with a DSLR shooting photos of Jill, but she needs--- has needed since she was the age of a Hamilton model at St. Tropez to be painted. It's only paint on canvas that draws passion out.

Two Eight Five: Pedagogy

Someone told me once in passing that a certain kind of erotic linkage underlay all education. They were talking about Plato and the Symposium, but I understood what they meant--- that the desire for knowledge and erotic desire are often hard to separate one from the other. Falling in love with a certain kind of knowledge is easily transmuted into desire for the person with the knowledge. Having one means having the other. Or so any number of French coming-of-age novels and any number of films about teacher-student affairs tell us.

Back a while ago I wrote this about my friend in New Zealand:

My lovely, long-legged, posh blonde friend down in the Land of the Long White Cloud wrote me once upon a time to answer questions about her adventures in her teens. Her life as a posh bad girl has always fascinated me, and I did send her a master list of questions about the things she did when she was a self-described wicked schoolgirl.

I asked her the obvious question about encounters and adventures with teachers--- something that's the stuff of any number of coming-of-age films (right now I'm thinking of Mischa Barton and her teacher in "The O in Ohio" or Kat Dennings in "Daydream Nation").

This was her response to my question about whether she'd ever had sex with one of her teachers back at her posh private school in Lower Hutt:

I slept with a teacher a few times...but he was sort of a family acquaintance. But he was also my science teacher, so it totally counts! (I was sixth form, so 16 when I did it)  

She also wrote me to say that:

At 15, i sucked a maori trainee-teacher's cock behind the school gym... just sucked him that one time...i would have loved to fuck him though!


I'm wild to know all the backstory for each encounter--- how it happened, what she thought and felt during and after, if she discussed doing either thing with her circle of close female friends. I'd love to know if she was ever discovered--- by parents or staff ---doing schoolgirl-teacher things.  Those questions do matter to me. She was I think thirty or thirty-one when she answered those questions, and I do wonder how she sees her fifteen or sixteen year old self, and if she has any regrets.

I think I noted before, too, that I've come to suspect that not all the stories she's told me over the years have been true. So while I'd very much like those stories to be true, I just can't be sure. It's sad and disturbing that I can't just believe her outright these days, and all the more so since for years I've known that I'd run off and live with her or marry her for the asking.

But let's assume it's true. Let's assume that she did have sex with her science teacher. And that she gave head to a Maori teacher-trainee behind the gym. Those are great stories, and I can add them to my list of teacher-student stories from girls I've known.

Liberty of course slept with her coastal ecology instructor when she was at university. From all I understand, the environmental sciences department (regarded as a haven for hippies) was notorious for things like that happening. I do love the idea of the sleeping bag and the dock (see my earlier entry), and I'd like to know if she slept with him again after the field trip. I suppose it's possible that it was only that the rules are suspended on field trips, but it's something I wish I knew. And if she was ever jealous that the instructor (oh, obviously and inevitably) slept with other co-eds in his classes.

Levin told  me once that she'd slept with one of her art professors. In some ways the affair had been a perfect art school cliche--- she'd even modeled for him. She was rather proud that he'd painted and sketched nudes of her. She had one framed in her bedroom. She was proud of being his muse, proud of being painted. The affair (and it lasted for a while) was art school cliche and filled with art school drama. Levin discovered that the professor had also slept with a boy she'd dated her freshman year...and who was now living with a girl Levin had once had a fling with. I nearly fell off her bed laughing and applauding.  She agreed with me that it was funny, although it made her feel that  art school was far, far too claustrophobic and incestuous.  I'll note here that I found that whole round robin thing far easier to believe than some of my New Zealand friend's stories, if only because I'd spent enough time around art school undergraduates and faculty in my clubland days. Art school always seemed to me to be a mix of indie mumblecore movies and Arthur Schnitzler's Reigen.

I will say, too, that the framed nude she had in her bedroom was very, very good. Very evocative, very powerful, very alluring. I did envy her art professor's skills, and I envied him for seeing all the things in Levin that he'd put on canvas.

Marsha told me once that she'd  had a thing with someone who was almost her teacher. She was in geometry in Grade 10 and he was a student teacher doing his required couple of weeks of classroom teaching. She ran into him away from school the next semester (memory says at a pizza place) and he remembered her. All the stories I've told here about Marsha involved cars--- the vintage MG in Thessaloniki, the Triumph along the river road here, the police car on the  levee ---and so does this one. They first had sex in a parked car here, though I'm unclear whether it was around the lakes by the university or atop the levee along the river road. I do remember her telling me that the car was a battered old hatchback, and that he had an ice chest with beer (dark beer, she remembered-- Heineken Dark?)  in the back. She got her skirt up and rode him in the car, and of course there was road head.  They may have done it at his parents' house a few times, and once she made him park at night in the school parking lot and do her with the seats lowered. He'd have been maybe twenty-two. His people, she told me, were "wild Hungarians", and his name was distinctively Magyar. Memory says that he went to Colorado, and of course in some perfect world (or at least a rom-com world) she'd have met him again when she was as the Colorado School of Mines. That didn't happen, but it should have. She told me the story just before she and I went to her senior prom together, possibly to make me just jealous enough to be competitive. After all, he was older and almost her teacher.

Teacher-student affairs do intrigue me. Or maybe it's that I'm interested in how girls see them a decade on. My NZ friend, Levin, Liberty, and Marsha all seem to have taken the encounters in stride. None of them was (or thought she was) in love, none of them felt 'groomed' (or at least felt that that was a bad thing), and all of them liked having the stories to tell later. Levin and Liberty certainly saw their academic affairs as just part of their lists of adventures, and certainly not as anything traumatic. My friend in NZ saw her affairs as competitive markers amongst her friends, who were notorious posh bad girls.

If any of you out there reading this have experiences that you've turned into stories, do tell me about your own academic encounters. Tell me how they happened, and what you thought while they were happening. Tell me how the memories feel to you now, some years on.

Two Eight Four: Lithography

I'm thinking tonight of a girl from my past, from far back in the last age. She and I knew knew each other casually when I was at grad school, and there was a brief affair back in my clubland days.

Her name was Levin, and I did like that name. I can't recall how she ended up with the name. I've known posh families who gave daughters first names that were family names--- a girl might end up with her mother's maiden name. That explained the Schuylers and Mackenzies and Hunters that I knew at university. Levin's name may have come from that. But there's also "Anna Karenina", isn't there? Remember that Kitty and Levin were the other couple, the couple of whom Tolstoy approved. I suppose that back in those days I'd have hoped she was named after a character in "Anna Karenina", even if the name came from a male character. I'll note that I've always liked androgynous names on lovely girls. You're free to make of that what you will.

Levin was doing fine arts at the university here--- lithography. She was five-four or five-five, I think. Pixie-cut blonde hair,  very slender, tanned.  I can't recall the colour of her eyes, though I want to say blue or green.  Soft voice, I recall. She'd learned Portuguese at uni and spent a year studying there. She had a signature look, I remember: white singlet, skinny jeans, ankle bracelet, espadrilles. Sometimes cotton drawstring trousers.  She bought the singlets in packs of three, sized for young boys. Always worn next to the skin, of course. I laughed with her about air-conditioning and how she was always the girl with erect nipples.  She had a barbell piercing in her right nipple--- the first girl I'd ever seen with one.

I remember her rooms at university--- sketches and lithographs tacked to the wall, the smell of chemicals from the lithography process. No idea whatever happened to her, though I think she wanted to go out West. I do remember sitting on her sofa and watching her work on her sketch journals (was the brand Pentalic?) and drinking vodka-limes with her. I wish I'd kept some of the sketches she gave me.

Levin always told me that she liked my bookshelves and liked it that I'd listen to her talk about art. She had good tastes in music, I thought. We both liked New Wave and synth-driven dance music, and we spent more than a few nights dancing at the local clubs near the university. I can remember standing behind her on the balcony at a place called Options on spring and summer nights, arms around her, kissing her shoulders, feeling her press back into me, knowing that she was all bare flesh under charcoal linen drawstring trousers.

It was a brief affair, and casual.  There was a time back in the last age when it was still possible to have casual affairs. I'm not sure that people-- at least people under thirty --have affairs any longer. And from what I'm reading in late-Millennial and Gen-Z literature, sex in these later days seems to be more about apologies than passion. Anyway--- Levin and I had a few months together off-and-on and parted friends. We even had goodbye drinks when she went off to do an MFA on the other side of the continent. We spent a last night together in her empty rooms on a tree-lined street, her art supplies all in boxes. I remember that her wardrobe all fitted into a couple of duffel bags. She'd be leaving the next day with her whole life in the backseat of a compact car. I did give her a couple of my  shirts as a goodbye gift, along with a couple of sketch journals (if not Pentalic, what was the brand?). That wasn't a bad way to part. I kept the sketches she'd done for me for rather a while; I think I had a favourite framed.  The sketch was one of a bedroom with light coming in through French windows. The room was one we'd rented one weekend in a city known for wrought iron balconies and genteel decay. I always told her that the city outside those windows could've been Alexandria or Charleston or Lisbon.  There was a hint of someone on the bed, and she told me to imagine it was her, face down over the bed, looking out to the city while I took her from behind. I did like that, liked the idea that she'd turned that hint of shadow on the bed into something I'd remember.

Levin is easy to remember tonight--- kisses on her ankle bracelet, kisses on that nipple piercing (still shocking in those days), Pet Shop Boys playing and her hands always smelling of lithography chemicals. I've reached the time in my life when I spend time remembering girls from the last age, when melancholy becomes the dominant mode in my thoughts. Easy enough to remember Levin's hipbones and ankles and the pale gold fuzz on her upper thighs. Easy enough to remember a time when art and desire and the taste of vodka-lime all went together.

So let's think of that tonight, and a couple of lines from Cavafy:

These things are all so very old---
the sketch, and the ship, and the afternoon.