Two Six Six: Voix

A new year has begun. No one is quite sure whether we're in the Twenties of the new century yet. There's still that debate over whether we have to wait until 2021 to say that a new set of Roaring Twenties is here. Tonight it seems likely that "Roaring Twenties" may refer less to parties and Bright Young Things and more to a new war in the Near East, but there are still a few optimistic souls who hope that the new decade will be all Gatsby's mansion and debs in Bugattis.

I'm finding that the new year and new decade are likely to be one of silence.  New Years itself was grey and quiet here by the lake. I began 2019 with an evening of cocktails and flirtations with lovely bartender girls. This year as the numbers changed I was at home with a glass of Irish whiskey, sitting alone on the deck, looking out to lights on water. I do suspect that most of the year will be like that.

I've always prided myself on my ability to tell stories, to create a world out of words. I've always said that such luck as I've had with lovely, long-legged Young Companions has been based on words and not flesh. There's a certain kind of literary co-ed I've been able to talk into bed, and I'm all too aware that it has nothing to do with my looks or body. It's always been about the stories I tell. This year, though, this new year--- I suspect I've lost that.

2019 began with lovely girls talking with me all night and finding me to be an experiment worth trying. That seems to have evaporated.  I've lost the ability to talk, to tell stories. There are places where I spent the last half of 2018 dining, sampling wines and cocktails, and flirting with lovely girls. I can't bring myself to do that any more. I can't bring myself to have conversations in public. For reasons I can't quite articulate, I spend less and less time out. I haven't been back to any of my old haunts in six or seven months. All the doorways downtown where I used to go seem alien and depressing. I've managed to talk myself into a state where I feel unwelcome everywhere. Sitting at a barstool that may have been a favourite spot once upon a time now feels empty, uncanny, and out of place.

I no longer know what to say to lovely girls. I no longer have faith in my ability to tell stories, or to do exchanges, or to be part of a conversation. I no longer believe I have anything to say to anyone. I find it harder and harder to believe that anyone would want to be part of a conversation with me.

Part of me wonders if the social rules have changed, and whether I'm simply excluded by the new rules. No one has ever said anything like that to me, but the nagging fear is there nonetheless.

Let's also note that I'm less and less at home in my body. I've become uneasy thinking about my own flesh, and I find myself  uneasy, ashamed, and preemptively embarrassed by the thought of having my body seen or touched. It's harder and harder to imagine undressing for a lovely Young Companion, and the thought that a lover might be disgusted by my flesh haunts me in a way it never did at sixteen or twenty. I find myself scrubbing my skin 'til it's raw and showering twice a day under the hottest water I can stand. I find myself looking for OTC drugs that will shut down bodily functions lest they humiliate me. I find myself unwilling to imagine a lover's touch, or be undressed even when alone.

My suspicions are that I'm approaching some kind of depressive spasm, and that by Lent I'll have talked myself into being housebound and mute.

I do walk past downtown doors and listen to music and voices leaking out and realize that I can't speak there, that I have nothing to say, that I no longer know how to respond to voices. I can't imagine anyone wanting to hear anything I have to say.

Two Six Two: Silence

I've written about this before, but it's something I keep thinking about. It becomes harder and harder here in the age of the gender wars to tell anyone that you feel physical desire towards them. It becomes harder and harder to express not just underlying desire, but your own preferences.

Despite however many years of popular culture talking about "communication", it seems to be increasingly difficult to tell a potential lover what it is you actually like to do. It seems to be just as difficult to ask someone what she likes.  I know that I feel far more afraid now of being mocked or attacked for my preferences than when I was, say, eighteen. I feel that telling a lovely young companion that I find her desirable or telling her what I like in bed is just a lot riskier than it was when I was an undergraduate.  Desire itself feels somehow suspect.

I'm well aware that it could just be me--- a function of age and despair. Yet my reading of comments at articles and blog posts about sex and relationships makes me think that it's something more general. There's a spirit of disdain and mockery in the culture at the moment that's depressing and disturbing.

A few years ago, I felt that I had a reasonable grasp of my own strengths and weaknesses as a lover. I was clear on what I liked, and clear on what I'd like to learn and experience. My lovely blonde friend down in the Land of the Long White Cloud told me once that she couldn't imagine me ever being too shy or scared to tell a lover what I wanted. She may have been right once upon a time, but that's no longer so. She also told me that one of the things she liked about me was that I was willing to try whatever my partner thought would give her pleasure. She was (and is) right about that. Someone else, a lovely friend in Montreal, told me that one thing she liked about me was that I was willing to discuss the things that gave pleasure, that I wasn't shy about asking whether something pleased my partner. These days, though, I stay mute. I'm not about to ask anyone anything, and I'm certainly not about to make any revelations.

Over the last few months I've been posting stories here, trying to save stories girls have told me, ones that leave me excited and intrigued.  I do wish I had newer stories to post. I sometimes fear that the days when lovely young companions and I could exchange stories and try to arouse one another are gone. Out there on the web, it seems less and less a Done Thing to tell stories.  I miss listening to a lovely friend's tales of adventures. I miss the sense of sharing lives and Pasts.

I miss the days when it seemed easier to tell someone what I enjoyed, what I'd like to try with them.  I miss the days when sex and romance involved constructing adventures and challenges, when lovers could risk being open to one another,  when silence wasn't the default state for being out with someone.

Two Two Seven: Ink

I have been trying to imagine writing a love letter again. It's not an easy thing. I've always had a good eye for ritual, and I've always been able to lose myself in rituals. It's hard tonight, though, trying to imagine writing a love letter.

I've told you how it should be done. On good paper, always. At the very least, you should use hotel stationery, preferably a good hotel in some city far away overseas. Good paper, though, is always best. Something purpose-made for serious correspondence.  Heavy envelopes, too. And a wax seal.  There are people who'd tell you that a wax seal is pretentious, but I think they're wrong. The seal is archaic, but deliberately so. It says that something is personal and private, that whatever's in the envelope is private and valuable. There should be something satisfying for the recipient, too. When she breaks that seal, she knows that she's seeing something that was for her and her alone.  You should always use good ink. That's a given. A fountain pen and good ink. It should be a pen you have to think about, a high-end tool for something important. You need to feel the pen when you write, to feel a sense of doing something that matters. The ink itself should be, well, not just black or blue. I do mix my own--- blend inks to get a colour that means something to me, a colour that reminds a lovely girl of me and what I am.

I can imagine those things. I can imagine laying it all out--- paper, pen, ink. You can write a love letter at a cafe, or in the reading room of a good library. Home is best, though. Easier to have the right music when you're at home. Easier to feel a sense of intimacy, too.

I'm not sure that I could do it tonight, even if I had someone to send a love letter to. I'm not sure what I'd say. I'd be afraid that any statement of feelings would be considered manipulative or coercive. Something simple--- I want to take you in my arms and kiss you. I want to feel you next to me in the morning. Something simple and basic and ordinary. But here in the age of the gender wars, couldn't it be made to sound coercive or threatening, even if the recipient was someone who'd shared your bed and who'd told you that she felt desire and affection for you? If you tell a lover (or a hoped-for lover) that you'd like to go places with her, do things with her, see the world with her, aren't you demanding her time? I read a piece online not long ago where the author was horrified at the idea of asking someone out. You were asking for someone's time,  he said, and for his generation, nothing was more carefully-hoarded or valuable than time. Asking someone to make time for you, to do something they weren't work-obligated to do, to do something they hadn't thought of themselves...wasn't that coercive and "entitled"? More--- asking someone to do something, asking at any time, was saying that you didn't think their own lives were already filled with important things. It was asking someone to expend time and emotional energy in reading your letter and in having to actually go out and deal with people.

There are other fears, too. A really passionate love letter could seem emotionally overwhelming. And the recipient could all-too-easily read it aloud to her female friends and mock you. I think--- or I'd like to think ---that no well-brought-up young lady would've done that in Jane Austen's day. I'm not sure I'd trust a lovely recipient not to mock me to her friends now, and that fear leaves me empty and sad on two levels--- that someone might do it, and that I'd be the sort of person to imagine her doing it.

In all honesty, I can't sext. The format is just wrong--- it's not a format I'd be any good at.  Texts are too short, my typing too inept. I don't have the room to craft fantasies. And, yes, I think of texts as too easy to spread out to people who'd laugh or be disgusted at what I'd sext to someone. I've always had an imaginary audience judging me, I've always tried to avoid the derision of the imaginary judges in the audience.

Tonight I'm looking at my collection of fountain pens and bottles of ink and wondering how you go about telling a lover (or hoped-for lover) about what you like, or what you want, or what your feelings for her are.  What ways do we still have, here in the age of social media and the gender wars, to do any of those things?

Twenty-Four: Spectres

I do remember a young friend in Montreal, walking the streets near McGill late at night, looking at her reflection in storefront glass and asking herself who that girl was, and what story she was from. She'd walk up rue Sherbrooke late, late at night and wonder whatever would become of the girl in the glass.

Not a thought about her future, no. Another kind of thought altogether. She was asking how long reflections last, and whether they live on inside the glass. Every time we look up at the night sky, we're looking back into deep time. That's something that's part of introductory lectures in Astronomy 101 everywhere. There's nothing down here to slow the light, though. Not distance, not resistance inside what was once called the luminiferous aether. Whatever's in the mirror vanished in an instant. Look and walk on, and the world in the mirror evaporates...and the girl in the glass does, too.

There's a last time to be with a lover, a last time to have a lover in one's arms. Figures slip out the door or board the airliner and they're gone. Every affair is ephemeral, every parting is far too likely to be a last one. We know those things. Waiting for a lover at an arrival gate, walking into a room and seeing her--- those are just the pattern for their reverse.

Every kiss can be a last kiss. And every last kiss of an affair can be the last kiss ever. One morning you'll wake up in a lover's arms and, all unknowing, that'll be the last morning of a love affair. One morning you'll wake up in a lover's arms and, all unknowing, that'll be the last time you'll ever be with any lover. One night you'll kiss someone and that'll be the last time you ever kiss anyone.

Sophocles at eighty is supposed to have thanked the gods for releasing him from Lust, the cruelest of masters. I could never do that.

I do watch the reflections as I pass storefronts and watch them distort and disappear. They disappear, and that's a way of counting down to that last kiss, that last lovemaking, counting down to a time when you walk along the streets and pass in utter solitude, with nothing at all in the glass.