Thirty-Six: Noonday Demon

Whenever I read discussions about the state of sex these days, what I find is fear. I read about the ways sex is approached and regarded, about the current state of courtship rituals, and what I find is a subtext of fear. We're afraid these days, and it's hard to put a name to exactly what we're afraid of.  Yet if you read all the social analyses of sex, it is there. Sex--- or lust, or longing, or desire ---is still the noonday demon. That term is St. Augustine's, I think. I always liked the description: lust or desire as the noonday demon, as the dark force that spring upon its victims even in daylight, the predator that doesn't have to wait for a new moon midnight to go hunting.

We're afraid of allowing desire or lust or longing to gain a foothold in social interactions, in social settings. It's dangerous to hug, lest one party feel a sexual frisson. It's dangerous to admit that desire can be there at any time, in any social interaction, since admitting that somehow undermines or devalues everything else about the interaction. It's not new to understand that desire and lust can be dangerous. The Greeks knew how dangerous Aphrodite could be. But what is new is the insistence that any trace of sexual desire or sexual sensation somehow corrupts and devalues everything else around it. We give a kind of power to desire that the Greeks and Romans never did, nor the courtiers of Heian Japan. If sexual desire makes an appearance at any moment, it displaces everything else and lessens the value of everything else around it.

I'm not sure what the wellspring of the fear is. Is it the fear of loss of control, of not being able to master desire? The Greeks knew all about that, but they never saw it as a reason to reject desire. It may be a fear that desire or lust erase the "serious" in life, that if you look at someone with lust in your heart you can't possibly think that they could be of any other value. We're not good at that in this society, in this time and place. We're not good at admitting that we can put multiple values on things, at admitting that people can be more than one thing.

We're afraid, too, of the noonday demon in a way that comes down to a fear of the imagination, a fear of what happens behind the eyes. Oh, we're afraid of the gaze itself, but what lies farther along that route is a fear of the imagination. Desire enters at the eye, and the imagination shapes it. I suppose that's about control. To be desired is to lose control, to be subject in some way to another's imagination.

Desire enters at the eye: that's always and ever true. We're visual creatures as we move through the world, and what we see becomes what we want. What we see becomes raw material for hopes and longings and dreams and the stories we tell ourselves. And that gets to be taken as a negative thing, as an oppressive thing. Desire is equated to a desire to subjugate, to oppress. To admit to desire is bad enough amongst the so-called "social justice" writers, to admit to fantasy is worse: it's taken as an admission of violation and a will to oppress.

Sometimes I read current discussions of desire and lust and sex and think that the imagination itself has become an enemy. The imagination is the natural haunt of the noonday demon, a place not so easily disciplined, a place where the external world is re-shaped. Though maybe that's the real fear, the fear that being part of another's imagination is all about loss of control, a loss of some kind of autonomy.

That may be it, and if you're reading this, tell me what you think: are we afraid of any kind of fantasy, any kind of desire, that we can't control in others?

Thirty-Five: Contact

I'm physically affectionate in some ways. I've always liked holding hands across a table, or tracing a fingertip across a young companion's cheekbone or lips. Driving with a hand on a lovely young companion's thigh has been something I've loved since my long-ago youth, and what can be more exhilarating than running through the streets of a nighttime city hand-in-hand with a lover? Yet I'm not someone who hugs. Touch as a romantic gesture is very much part of what and who I am, but I'm not from a physically demonstrative family, and I've never been one for hugs.

Having said that, though, I did discover a new reason to avoid hugs the other day. I ran into an argument on the web where the author argued that hugging was tantamount to sexual harassment. I assume that the gender-studies crowd and the so-called "social justice" crowd agree with the author's position, though that should hardly surprise me. The argument was that the person (and here the person was assigned as female) giving the hug probably intended it to be a non-sexual gesture. The person (inevitably assigned as male) who receives the hug may feel some kind of sexual frisson upon being hugged. Since that feeling was never intended, by feeling anything sexual--- even inadvertently ---the person being hugged was engaging in a kind of non-consensual sex with the person initiating the hug. And, the author noted,  neither party could ever predict whether a hug could produce those feelings in advance. The author announced at the end of the article that hugging was too dangerous a thing to do or receive, if one truly believed in issues of consent and harassment.

Now I don't like being hugged very much. I like physical gestures that are clearly part of a romance or a seduction. But I find the argument here to be...exasperating. There's a level of fear in it that baffles me. There's a fear that sex may be lurking in any gesture, and I suppose it's related to the same fear that once had teachers monitoring school dances, ruler in hand, checking to see how far apart dancers might be. I find it telling that the argument wasn't that initiating a hug as a way of touching someone--- the hug as groping ---was a kind of nonconsensual sex, but that any sexual feeling that the person being hugged might feel, even if inadvertently, was somehow an act violating the will of the hugger. It's the lurking monster that the author was afraid of, the idea that any physical gesture might somehow allow in the noonday demon.

Once upon a time, in another city and another life, I was sitting with a lovely companion at a coffeshop near a major university, and we were listening to the people at the next table discuss the evil of sexual fantasy. The girl at the next table doing most of the talking was explaining that all sexual fantasies that involve any real, living person were a kind of violation. She used the terms "abstract rape" and  "rape through the imagination". Her argument that was that any fantasy was a kind of non-consensual use of the person being imagined, and that all fantasy was about exerting the power of the "imagined gaze". She made the point that all (male) masturbation, insofar as it involved fantasies about actual people, was no better than rape, since the person being imagined had never given explicit consent. To fantasize was to violate, to be fantasized about was to be violated. My young companion just shook her head and pointed out to me that there were clear reasons why she'd chosen to attend a university just up the railway line and not the one just up the street. I had to laugh--- we both attended the better university to the north, and there was some feeling of justified superiority on our parts ---but I did feel a small touch of fear. I couldn't imagine what a world would be like where our cafe neighbors' ideas were taken as correct...and socially enforced.

There's a kind of fear out there that I don't understand: a fear of what might be lurking inside the mind, a fear that any sexual tinge added to a contact is oppressive and destructive, a fear of what might be hiding inside the imagination, a fear of what can be born from the gaze. I don't hug, but I do hold hands, and twine fingers, and construct fantasy scenarios. I can't decide what the final argument is to be--- is that contact itself is a gateway to social evil, or that the imagination itself must be dismantled?  

Thirty-Four: Frames

I was watching girls in bikinis down by the pool last evening when it did occur to me that I was feeling a sense of exasperation and annoyance watching them. I thought at first it might be a hostility born of sour grapes. After all, they weren't with me, and I'd have felt very much the intruder if I'd gone down to the pool. I'm not likely to fit in to a poolside scene, and there was no chance I could speak to them. But when I thought a bit more about it, it did occur to me that something else was happening as well.

I was watching the bikini girls from the window by my writing desk, and it did strike me that the window was part of it all. I could see the girls swimming and sunning and laughing together, see them drinking bottled beers and chilled gin drinks. I was exasperated and annoyed that they weren't topless in the sun, or skinny-dipping in the pool, or drunkenly kissing one another. I was annoyed that, as flimsy as their bikinis were, no one's top came off when she dived into the pool. There's no reason why any of those things should happen in real life...though those things would've happened in almost any film. I was annoyed that what I was watching wasn't playing itself out the way it would have in a film. The window was a frame for what I was watching. Sitting at my desk and looking out through the glass was exactly like watching something on a television screen. They were framed in the window, centered there as a scene.

Social programming, I suppose. Anything seen in a frame, anything seen on or through what might be a screen, isn't daily life. It's supposed to be scripted and edited. It's supposed to be a story told to entertain or excite or amuse the viewer. Too many years of living inside books and films have left me much less able to distinguish what I see on a television or laptop screen from what I see framed in my window.  The bikini girls weren't real-life girls who live near my flat, they were characters in a film, and one that I was exasperated with for its poor writing.  It wasn't just sour grapes that they weren't with me. It was that I was watching a flawed film, a film that couldn't hold my interest. I suppose I see far too much of life that way.

Thirty-Three: Arcs

I found an article on line the other day that was about an interview on satellite radio with a young female stand-up comedian, an interview that focused on a story she'd told about her late-teen days. The story was that one night, when she was eighteen, she was out in the city (I'll assume it's Manhattan) getting very drunk with friends. She was dressed for flirtations and partying on a summer's night--- miniskirt and tube top ---and was rather drunk by midnight. She and her friends piled into a cab on their way to a bar across town. The friends were in the back seat, and were asleep. The girl telling the story sat in the front with the driver. The driver, she said, was "old" and "gross" and "dirty", though she didn't specify what she meant for any of those things. But she was in the mood to do something outrageous, and so she slid a bit closer to him and slowly opened her legs. The title of the article was straightforward enough "X Gets Fingered", and that much was simple enough. The driver slid a hand up her skirt and fingered her while making nervous conversation and her friends slept on.

The story as written lost its point from there. Part of the article was a comment on how inept the interviewers were, and how they wanted to ask for details but didn't know how to do that without seeming "creepy" (or perhaps just violating station policy). The article also veered off into a discussion of how women in comedy are allowed or expected to talk about sex. I came away not knowing what the author wanted to say. Were we expected to look down on the two interviewers? On the girl? On ourselves for wanting to know the details, or, worse, wishing we could've been the driver?

The story itself could've been a fairly hot sequence in a "Red Shoe Diaries" episode. I will say that. Zalman King could've shot the story well. I can see the way it could be told, and there could be just a bit of humor to it. The basic outline of what happened isn't all that outrageous, and a young friend once told me her own version of it.

My friend grew up in Seattle, and she was a punk-rock girl, a girl who spent her teens hanging around the arts scene and punk clubs. One night, when she was sixteen or so, an older man (older meaning late forties, she thought)  in an expensive car saw her sitting stoned and drunk outside a club and offered her a ride. She went. It was obvious that there would be sex involved, that he was expecting some kind of sex. She told me that she remembered worrying not about the more obvious things--- the physical danger ---but about how the sex would work in the car. Would he put a hand behind her head and push her down into his lap? She had on Doc Martens boots and a long skirt--- would she be able to get the skirt up if he climbed atop her or pulled her over to straddle him? In the end, he only put a hand on her thigh and worked the skirt up and fingered her while they drove. She wasn't wearing anything under the skirt, so once her skirt was pushed up, the rest was easy. She told me that she was puzzled that he didn't do more or want more. Her age, she suspected. In the end, he was afraid of her age, afraid of her being underaged. She thought he was something of a coward for that, for not just taking what was there for him. She came twice, she said, and was as loud as she could be in the car. Now I did ask about that, and she told me she'd always been loud, but that even drunk and high, she wanted to be loud to prove to the driver that he was getting her off, that this really was about sex.

My friend is something like twenty-five now. The story happened nine years ago and a couple of thousand miles away. Talking about it over drinks, she told me that, yes, in those days she'd been self-destructive and willfully blind to dangers, but that she didn't regret what she'd done that night. I asked the kind of questions I always ask. Was she expecting him to buy her drugs or offer her drugs? Was she expecting money? (I didn't ask about the age issue--- after all, she was out for drinks with me.) Her answer was that she did it because she wanted to be able to say she'd done it. She was in a mood to be touched, and the risk made that hotter. She liked thinking that she could make men take risks--- risk legal troubles ---for her, too. But the key thing, she said, was to be able to say that she'd done it, to be able to tell her friends at school the next day, to make it part of her image.

I did understand that. We're storytelling animals, and I've always believed that we live through our stories. There's an old saying that no one wants to climb Mount Everest as much as they want to be able to tell people that they'd climbed Everest. Telling the story later matters more than the actual event. I can agree with that. I know that in my own life I've done so many things so that I could have stories later. I can look back on so many things in my life and realize that I did them specifically so that I could have raw material for stories. My friend from Seattle understood that at sixteen, and she and I agreed about it eight or nine years later. She got into the man's car already planning in her head how she'd tell the story of what might happen.

There is the Aristotelian pyramid here: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, dénouement. The structure is simple enough. And it is how we've been taught to look at any narrative. We shape narratives to the story arc. And we need stories in our lives, to tell others and to tell ourselves. We seek out story material. The stand-up comedy girl understood that. She had a story to tell her friends afterward, to shock and amaze--- she had a story that she'd be telling to interviewers years after the event. She knew that when she first slid her leg closer to the cab driver. She'd had years to craft the memory into a story that would hold her listeners' attention, one that would be part of her image. My friend from Seattle knew that, too, when she picked up her backpack and climbed into the man's car. 


I've known that all my life, too. And I suppose it is something I offer my young companions: being part of a story, being part of that arc, being part of something we can each shape later into stories that create who we are. Stories are how we make ourselves, and they're gifts, too, that we give to others. I try to keep that in mind when a lovely young companion talks to me across a table or takes my hand and says, "I wonder what would happen if we..." I try to remember that, and to remember that a life that isn't crafted and shaped is no life at all.

Thirty-Two: Hostilities

I was following an on-line discussion about sex work and sex workers and followed a link to an article at Jezebel.com about the clients of escorts and prostitutes. The thing that amazed me was the level of hatred and contempt in the comments for any male who hired sex workers. The commentariat took it for granted that any man who hired an escort or a street girl was a monster who'd be violent with a girl in a heartbeat. That's certainly the way clients are portrayed in moral-panic journalism, and it's certainly something taken for granted politically by a large swath of feminists. I suppose I expected that--- it's certainly the message that the Scandinavian view of sex work puts forth: all sex workers have been "trafficked", all clients are violent abusers.

I wasn't, I think, expecting the depth of personal contempt for anyone male who left a comment saying that he'd been a client.  The men who wrote in wrote to say that they weren't violent, that the girls they hired weren't heroin-addicted girls brought in from Belarus. Some wrote to say that because of their own lives--- physical disability, social awkwardness, lack of attractiveness ---their only access to sexual partners was via sex workers. That brought out far more contempt and anger  than even the standard political claim that all clients are, by definition, violent abusers.

The hatred was directed at the men for being...failures. If the men couldn't get sex because of their looks or awkwardness or disabilities, then they didn't deserve to have sex. They were told to go masturbate and then mocked for having to do that.  The target of the contempt and derision shifted across the comments from being about the idea that sex workers could be abused to being about the idea that men could be awkward or graceless or unattractive and still want sex.

I didn't join the discussion. I can't afford to hire escorts or even street girls; I can't support a sugarbaby. But I have no problem with the idea. My own tastes are quite niche-specific, and if I had the money and lived in a city where there were services that had the resources to cater to my tastes, I'd have no problem using the services.  My interests are very specific, and I'm well aware that every passing year makes it harder to find what I'm looking for. Find a service, specify what I'm looking for, negotiate a price. That just seems very straightforward. And treat the girl who'd arrive at a rendezvous with the respect one gives any professional. I'd be hiring a girl as much for her skills as an actress or in conversation as for what she could do in bed, and I'd always offer up clear professional respect. She'd be someone hired to be a character in my internal novels or films, and I'd be well aware that I was paying someone with skills and knowledge to create a role with me.

I'm still someone that the commenters are Jezebel.com would despise, though. It's hard to grasp that their contempt would be based not on anything I might do to a girl I'd hire, or on anything I might feel or think about her. Their contempt would be based on the idea that I might need to hire someone, that I wouldn't be good enough to have a potential partner find me desirable--- and based on the idea that I might want something that would be above my station.

I can't afford a service of the kind I'd need to use, and I don't live in a city where such services exist. So all this is theoretical. I am amazed, though, at the depth of contempt the Jezebel commentariat have for men who might have only the options of involuntary celibacy or hiring a sex worker. I'm beginning to sense a contempt for any male sexuality, too--- something I must discuss with young companions or my acquaintance.

Thirty-One: Originals

Judith Butler famously described gender as "a copy for which there is no original". Gender is now described as purely a performance. One does one's gender.

I'm fond of the phrase--- "a copy for which there is no original" ---though not because I'm fond of Dr. Butler and her work. I like the phrase just for itself. It's wonderfully Borgesian, and I'll always like for that reason alone, without relating it to Butler's ideas of gender. How can you not be fascinated by something that's a copy with no original?

I know that I perform a role when I'm with young companions. The Older Admirer, the gentleman, the figure who talks about books and ideas while flirting. I can do that without thinking; there's no difference between mask and face.

Now I will admit that I don't always feel so secure in being simply male, in performing that role. I suppose no one male ever does. Being male, being "a man" is about being judged and accepted both by other males and by desirable women. There's no definitive moment when you're given the title, and it's never once for all. The criteria change over time and across societies, but every society has them. I suppose there's something inevitable there. There's no clearly physical moment to become a man, no menarche or childbirth. It's something that has to be shown over and over. It can't be achieved; it can only be lost.

I do think about that. A sense of social recognition as "a man" is always temporary, and no one keeps it into his later years. Age takes away all the things that enable you to have that temporary victory. The list of criteria here in this decade and this culture isn't long; you can't miss more than one or two.

I suppose I'm a bit gloomy tonight. I have been reading about what gender is about, and I've been following discussions on the web about what it means to be male, about what it implies--- and requires. I have been thinking about mortality and about the sense of possibilities being foreclosed.  I'll go on performing as long as I can. There's really no choice about that.

Thirty: Constructions

A young companion spent time with me the other night sitting over drinks at a table on my balcony. We talked and told stories and held hands and kissed. At some point I did open the shirt she was wearing--- a man's dress shirt ---and kiss her collarbones. She laughed at that and brushed her fingers through my hair and turned so that I could kiss the hollows above the line of her collarbones. She leaned back in her chair and drew on her cigarette and told me that men amazed her, that men all had their peculiar tastes. Her last boyfriend, she told me, had a whole obsessive thing for her feet. And I had a fascination with her bones, with her collarbones and hipbones and cheekbones. She always tried to imagine, whenever she went out with a new man, what his fetishes might be. All of you have them, she said. I just like guessing what it'll be.

She's right about me, of course. I prefer my young companions tall and very slender. I like angles and edges; I dislike curves and too much flesh. She has sharp edges, my young companion does: collarbones and hipbones and shoulderblades. She runs and swims relentlessly, and she has the lines I've always liked. She has those Nordic cheekbones, too, framing almond eyes. She knows that I can spend time kissing those edges, that I whisper to her that she has the fine hard lines of a sword blade.  She's fine with that, it seems. She enjoys the game of guessing, though, the game of finding out what parts of her body excite men, what parts they'll focus on.

There's a question there, of course. How do girls discover the tastes and preferences and fetishes that men are likely to have? Is it all via the web these days? That's possible, of course. Web porn and web gossip are universal, and by the time she goes off to university, a girl can have an idea that there's a whole array of sexual tastes out there. If she's seen web porn, she's seen how some of it works. I suppose, too, that there's always word of mouth, that girls exchange tales of what men like. Though that's hard to imagine--- a girl who's more experienced explaining to friends that, yes, there are men who want to whip you or spend time licking your bare feet or who want you dressed up as a French maid. That turns into a comedy skit far too easily, into incredulity and jokes. Maybe it is just a kind of cultural seepage, knowledge that's acquired almost subconsciously. By the time a girl goes off to university, she knows that s/m exists, that costume play exists, that men have secret tastes. The question is still there, of course, about what girls think in their mid or late teens when they hear of male tastes, and what they think as undergraduates when they first see male interests in the flesh. That's something I must ask young companions about.

I'm fortunate, I think, that girls seem to have a broader view of what's physically attractive--- and a broad view of what male interests can be. I'm not at all sure that there's not an age difference there, that girls don't accept as part of being with an older lover interests and tastes that would be seen as silly or bizarre  in an undergraduate boy.  One more thing to ask lovely young companions about. All those years of training come to the fore when I consider these things--- the urge to know what how my young companions see the world, and how they envision sex as being constructed. If you're reading this, do give me your thoughts.