Three Zero Nine: Catalog

 I'm on the mailing list at several high-end sex toy boutiques. I've used their catalogs to buy gifts and accessories for young companions. Well, I use a couple of old-school equestrian shops to buy riding whips, but I suppose many such shops stay in business because of s/m far more than dressage. 

I'm had young companions thank me for the gifts I've bought them. And I've had FaceTime conversations with lovely young companions who were shopping in high-end sex toy boutiques in distant cities. I'm glad that the gifts were appreciated (and, yes, sometimes used together), but I remain out of the loop when girls tell me that they've been online shopping for sex toys or that they have a whole drawer in a bedroom dresser devoted to vibrators and dildos. I like the idea of accompanying a lovely girl while she shops for dildos, but there's something very alien about that. It's not something I could ever do on my own. I've seen lovely twenty-somethings earnestly consulting with sex boutique clerks over designs, colours, brand names. I can't imagine asking a clerk for advice in even the most gentrified sex boutique. That's not something straight males can do. My leggy posh blonde friend Jill in New Zealand lives in Wellington, where there's a rather famous sex toy boutique that delivers--- that has its own cadre of uniformed young women who deliver elegantly-wrapped sex toys to posh customers late into the night. I'd be far too afraid to open the door.

Over last weekend I found all the catalogs I had from sex toy suppliers and threw them away. They somehow seemed...pointless. I won't be ordering on line any longer. That really does seem pointless. There's no one in my life currently to buy bedroom gifts for, and I'm...worried that someone might find the catalogs and think that I used them to shop for myself. 

A male buying sex toys is seen as pathetic at best, creepy and disgusting at worst. And always a figure of mockery. I have no problem using toys on young companions, but I can't imagine using any myself. Girls in the past--- Levin, Liberty, my NZ friend, a certain lovely girl in the Home Counties, a Juilliard girl who was once a pro domme and who's now with the Vienna Philharmonic ---have asked to use toys on me. I've always refused--- gently, firmly, clearly. But you'd love it, they've told me. Just give yourself over to the sensations, give yourself to pleasure. No. No. That's not something I can do. There's always the fear that I'd be hearing the derisive laughter of the invisible audience in my head.

Sex toys are for lovely girls. Sex toys are ways they can find  pleasure or amplify it. I can't do that. Pleasure isn't something for straight males, and certainly not straight males of a certain age. Pleasure isn't something I can understand, and it's certainly not something I deserve.  Asking for pleasure, and especially asking for aids to pleasure, is a terrifying thing. I hate my own fears, but they're there.  Levin called across the boutique to the girl at the counter: do you have this in other colours? do you have ones that are shaped like uncut cock? uncut and with balls?  I of course froze and tried to will myself into invisibility. 

I can imagine talking about blindfolds and riding whips; I can imagine talking about candle wax and nipple clamps. I cannot imagine talking about any of the sex toys "for him" in the catalogs or at the upscale websites. Any sex aids for men seem designed to humiliate, to make the male user into an object of derision. And yet I feel envious of lovely young companions who can blithely buy toys to help them with orgasm. I've seen a girl look at a half-empty Corona bottle and suddenly laugh. This! she said. I so have to try this!  There's no male equivalent of that laugh. There's no male equivalent of the look that says that something is worth trying for fun. 

Well, the new year, the Year Twenty-One, is almost here. I won't be getting the sex boutique catalogs any more. No one to buy gifts for, of course. And it's impossible to think that I could ever be part of a world where using sex toys--- even with a lover I trusted ---would be safe. Pleasure isn't something that I can ask for, let alone seek on my own. There's nothing in the marketing plans of sex toy manufacturers for someone like me. Not this year, and not any other.

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 Seven: Permission

 As this grim and sullen year counts down to a close, I am wondering about the cartography of desire. I've been writing about this for a while, but the questions remain.  What are we still allowed to desire? What fantasies are we still allowed to have?

I have spent much of my life inside books (and not only erotica) looking for worlds where I'd like to live, looking for adventures and experiences I'd like to have. I've spent much of my life constructing fantasies--- about cities,  about lovers, about new lives. And I am increasingly worried about those things. Social media has made us all aware that we live at others' mercy. It's made us aware that anything we say or think or feel can be mocked and derided by strangers, that the disdain of total strangers can cost us jobs, respect, social standing. We've all had to become aware that the aether is haunted by people looking for excuses to be outraged, for excuses to attack and humiliate.

When I first began reading blogs--- twenty years ago, now ---the blogging world felt safe, felt like a place for building friendships and communities, felt like a place where you could talk about your thoughts, hopes, dreams, fantasies, desires and feel safe. Back in those days, I'd imagine blogging as being like sitting in a PurePod or some Wm. Gibson converted shipping container somewhere in the high desert, broadcasting out into the night. I imagined talking late into the night, telling stories, interviewing people by phone, getting emails and phone calls from distant cities.  It's all so much riskier now--- you're so much more vulnerable just for having thoughts and hopes and preferences.

I'm thinking that the time of blogs about sex is past. Given everything we've been through in the last few years, writing about sexual fantasies seems wretchedly self-centered and pointless. In a time of global pandemic, in a time when the American republic seems to have only very narrowly escaped a descent into right-populist authoritarian rule, sexual fantasies seem to be a dangerous distraction. And in an age of gender wars, desire (especially straight male desire) seems to be the enemy of social justice.  Sex, as any good revolutionary will tell you, is a distraction from important work. Sex is irrational, or at least a-rational, and fantasy worlds often embody images and tropes that represent parts of the current order that need to be swept away. As someone who subscribes to much of Marxism, I can't even disagree with that reasoning. 

But I will miss sex blogs and escort blogs if they vanish. I will miss knowing about adventures, costumes, scenarios, and  skills out there in the world. I'll miss checklists of what escorts have in their purses. I'll miss tales of which hotels in major cities are best for affairs and encounters. I'll miss reading tales of romantic and sexual adventures and learning about what's possible, learning about things worth trying with lovers in my own life. I'll miss knowing what beautiful Young Companions out over the aether have done in their lives and what they might (in some alternate timeline) do with me. I'll miss stories. I'll absolutely miss stories. And I'll miss sharing fantasies with lovely correspondents. I'll miss feeling like my own fantasies are worth something to someone. I'll miss feeling like I'm allowed to have fantasies at all.

These days... These days, whenever I think about erotica and fantasies, I find myself freezing up. I find myself paralyzed by fears that any fantasies I have are either repetitive and boring  and/or politically wrong. I can't imagine any fantasy as being judged only by a Young Companion with whom I'm sharing things. I can only imagine fantasies as being dissected and deconstructed by an invisible and hostile audience. I imagine harsh despotic voices telling me that I'm not allowed, now or ever, to want those things. It's not just the Freudian superego, either. It's the babble of voices out on the aether, telling me inside my head that I should be ashamed, that what I want unfits me for being part of any society. 

The days when fantasies and scenarios and fetishes could be offered up to lovers and would-be lovers as gifts and enticements, when you could share dark dreams with someone over drinks--- those days are gone.

I no longer know what thoughts I'm allowed to have, I know that in an age of "authenticity" and gender identity and  power analysis we're no longer encouraged or expected to experiment with sex and its components. Experimentation is looked down on as sharply as ever it was seventy years ago. It's been years now since strike the pose was a valid idea. It's been years since it's been seen as permissible to ask anyone to try anything new. I do know that I'm terrified of being cast out of the social pods where I live, and that kind of shame and fear is something new to me. I didn't have any of those feelings twenty years ago. But right now I'm totally paralyzed by them.

Three Zero Six: Requests

Once upon a time, I recalled something my friend Liberty said about the older men in her life and past:

Liberty told me that what she liked about affairs with Older Men was that they all had kinks and obsessions that they'd rarely (if ever) been able to talk about with anyone. She was always willing to listen and learn...and not mock them. 

That meant a lot to me once upon a time, hearing a lovely strawberry-blonde girl say that she wouldn't mock the things I like. That's something I've been agonizing over.

Back in another age, I had no problem asking girls for the things I liked in bed. I had no problem telling someone what gave me pleasure...and asking what they liked. Even ten years ago--- maybe even five ---I had no problem with just asking for things. I took it as a given that that was what an affair was about. You told a lover or potential lover about the things that gave you pleasure, and the two of you shared that knowledge. In all the years since I was fifteen or sixteen I'd felt perfectly safe doing that. An affair, a relationship, was about learning what obsessions and kinks a lover had...and learning something from trying them out. Back a dozen years, and I had no problem just saying, This is something I like. Have you ever tried it? I'd had girls laugh with me about those things--- the bright laughter of someone thrilled or intrigued or amused ---but no one had ever laughed at me about the things I liked. No one had ever recoiled in horror or disgust. But here in the third decade of the not-quite-so-new century, I don't feel safe any more. Not at all. 

Last evening I watched a brief video clip of a rather lovely porn actress who calls herself Ashley Lane. She's apparently a fairly well-known bondage and fetish model, and she does more standard porn as well. Lovely girl, by the way. Long light brown hair, high cheekbones, that lithe and slender look I like. Anyway...the clip was simple enough. She was sitting naked on a countertop, giving a foot job to some random male scene partner. She was smirking a bit, and obviously confident in her skills. I watched the clip and sighed. Ms. Lane herself was very attractive, and what she was doing looked fun and just wicked enough to seem worth trying in some risky place. And...it's not something I would ever ask a girl to do. I'd be far too afraid to ask.

If the girl offered, of course I'd accept. But I could never ask. Asking for that would be too close to the foot fetish world, and that world is always considered pathetic and risible these days. As a male of a certain age, I certainly couldn't ask for anything either specific or non-vanilla. To be a male of a certain age here in the brave new world is to be regarded as inherently creepy and disgusting. You're not allowed by the Arbitrary Social Rules to admit to anything non-vanilla...or to admit to any sexual preferences at all. 

There was a time when I had no problem looking at a girl across a table and telling her that I'd love to do the blindfold and candle wax thing with her, or to introduce her to a riding crop. Nowadays I won't even hold someone's hand.I'd never spend an evening talking about films or books while running a finger along a long, slender bare leg. If a girl asked me what I like, or what turns me on, I'll never tell her. I"ll respond to a direct offer, but I will never admit to having any preferences. I will never ask if someone might be interested in something. That's not mine to do. 

Nothing I might like, nothing that gives me pleasure, is anything I can admit to, no matter what it is. And I'm equally forbidden to offer some way to give a lovely partner pleasure.  In any case, it would be taken as a given that I'm incapable of giving pleasure--- or at least I'd take it as a given. Anything I might want to do or try is inherently pathetic or creepy. Any skill I might offer up is insufficient, and my thought that I might have a skill is a sign of toxic narcissism. 

We've reached a place where lust, adventure, and exploration are all regarded as sad and pathetic, if not abusive. The Age of the Windowless Monads, I suppose we can call it. Communication used to be the panacea for all things--- communicate with your partner! Not these days, mind you, Opening up to a partner is as unwelcome as an actual phone call. 

Three Zero Five: Sheets

 I was looking at a video clip with Kenna James and Skye Blue, two of the girls I do crush on at PornHiub. The clip opens with Kenna waking up naked in a strange bed. That's an opening image that I did like. 

Oh, there's more to it, of course. Skye Blue comes upstairs with carry-out cups of coffee (one cream, one sugar) and a bag of fresh croissants. It seems that she's stolen Kenna away from her own bachelorette party. Their interaction there on the bed is languid and gentle and very, very romantic. And what makes it work for me is the coffee and the croissants, the two girls talking before they begin to kiss and make love.

I've always said that beautiful girls should sleep naked. I've been saying that since I was a boy, since I was barely old enough to grasp sex as a concept. It was James Bond who gave me the idea, of course. When I was very young, there were magazines whose Entertainment sections had lots of pictures of Bond Girls. The classic image was a Bond Girl stretched across a bed naked, with crisp new sheets draped strategically over herself. I suppose I took it for granted that in some later, better world, beautiful girls would sleep like that in hotel rooms or penthouse apartments with me. I still cling to that hope.

The French fashion blogger Garance Doré noted in passing once that "all top models sleep naked, of course", a sentence that instantly caught my eye. I wanted that to be true, especially for Ms. Kloss and Ms. Rubik and Mlle. Valade. I wanted it to be true for the lovely long-legged undergraduate girls who ripple through the downtown in my city in black leggings and zippered hoodies. 

Liberty had slept naked since her early teens. Levin, too. For Liberty it was I think something she barely thought about, some mixture of comfort and presenting herself as a hippie girl in the Rockies. For Levin it was a fashion choice. Sleeping naked was something an art-world girl might do as a marker for being "European" and "decadent".  They both knew instinctively how to strike poses naked in late-afternoon sunlight or on late night balconies. Levin stretched out naked in the sun always looked like she should have a copy of something by Lawrence Durrell to read...which she often did. 

I'm male and older. Sleeping naked on my own is not something I'd do. With a lover, certainly. But not on my own. My body is not something I'm comfortable with.  Males sleeping naked on their own always call up thoughts of...well...skidmarked sheets. In the Ian Fleming novels, Bond slept naked as a young man, but then discovered the short Japanese sleep robes I can recall seeing sold in "novelty" menswear catalogs (yes, the kind that also sold cocktail sets and golf-themed joke ashtrays) when I was young. Is it a happi coat that Bond slept in? I will admit that I've had Young Companions sit up naked in bed and ask with some concern if I was okay, since they were sleeping naked and I was in a t-shrt and gym shorts. Well, being male and of a certain age comes with its own set of rules. 

If James Bond--- or at least the early Bond films ---taught me that all beautiful girls should sleep naked, it was Pauline Reage's "Story of O" that taught me that beautiful girls should avoid underwear whenever possible. I do remember reading "Story of O" at maybe fifteen and instantly accepting what the rules at Roissy tell O.--- no underwear. That's something I've tried to edge lovely young companions toward since high school. It's my particular obsession and something I always tell girls is a dress code thing if they're involved with me. 

I'm thinking of the gallery owner who had the major foot fetish thing with Liberty. My whole thing for having my lovely young companions panty-free under short skirts or skinny jeans or faded denim shorts is probably no less an obsession. It's certainly been with me lifelong. Not that I'd give it up, mind you. I love having a girl aware of her own body, aware of a certain kind of vulnerability to strangers' eyes. And it's certainly a signature thing for me, something that was always part of my reputation once upon a clubland time.

I do encourage lovely girls to sleep naked, to experience crisp fresh linen sheets again bare skin, to stretch out atop a duvet and do long phone calls not so much about phone sex as about books and politics and film...all while having a secret at their end of the phone. And...there is always something very, very kissable about bare shoulders (or hipbones, or ankles) just above the sheets. Always that.

Three Zero Four: Balconies

 I still have my crushes, even at my own advanced age. 

Last time I spoke about Kenna James and Kristin Scott and the crushes I've developed on the two of them from watching their interviews on YouTube as much as their video clips on PornHub. 

Right now I'm listening to Duran Duran do "Come Undone", which seems like a lovely song to listen to on an October night while you're thinking about crushes on distant girls.

Every crush has its speculative side, of course. You sit at night with a drink and you wonder how the crush would play out in real life. How would you meet? How would you interact? How would you make the transition to flirtation and seduction? What would you say afterwards?

Somehow my visions of all that always involve balconies. Somehow the initial meeting is random enough. Usually we turn out to be neighbors whose apartments had adjoining balconies, and we end up talking to one another in the afternoons. Eventually one of my crushes will come next door and we'll get used to spending time on my balcony with tea or a glass of wine. We'll...talk. It always comes down to talking. She--- Kenna or Kristin ---will tell me that I should be in a good mood, that an actual porn star is knocking on my door to come hang out. And we'll laugh about that. 

There are apologies involved, of course.  When in my visions there is flirtation and kissing involved, I'm usually apologizing for my age and my looks. There's no way around that. In real life, I'd be doing exactly that. What I can't decide is whether either girl would be amused or a bit exasperated by my apologies. I'd like to think that the girl would put a finger to my lips and tell me to hush, that she'd made a decision and was well aware of my age and looks and wasn't really bothered by either. 

I'd like to believe that could happen. In my own life here these last few years, I've had girls tell me that there was nothing wrong with me. I've never believed them, but I have been grateful to them for saying that.  

I've always said that the two hardest genres to write in are biography and erotica.  To do biography well, you have to know not just your subject but the whole world around him, the world that produced him. And erotica...? Well, you have to know how to present a set of fantasies that don't devolve into either slapstick or obvious narcissistic wish-fulfillment. That last part worries me. The best I can do is imagine that the girl chose me because the things I said were interesting or that she had her own wishes and fantasies and just found me...potentially useful. I still have to parse out what "useful" might mean. Ambiguous and dangerous word, really.

My fear with either Kristin or Kenna wouldn't necessarily be fear of systems failure, fear of performance. It would be fear of trying to talk to either girl and making a fool of myself. I'd like to think that I can carry on a conversation, that I have things to say. Having that come crashing down would be far worse than systems failure.

Three Zero Three: Crushing

 Here in the time of the Red Death,  so much of erotic life has been restricted to the web. I haven't been doing cam experiences or FaceTiming with lovely Young Companions. Life, alas, doesn't work like that.

But I have been listlessly sitting up at night looking at clips on PornHub and its kindred. I feel almost ashamed of that. I'm not one to spend time looking at online porn. The implication of indulging in the Solitary Vice does make me ashamed. The Solitary Vice is not something males can engage in without being held up to mockery. Autoerotic adventures are for women only. 

I'm not bitter about that, really. I understand the politics of self-pleasure, There's a large industry out there over the aether devoted to empowering women sexually, to allowing them to find pleasure on their own terms. Those are good things. But I do have to sigh and note that there's nothing like Good Vibrations or its kindred boutiques for men. Self-pleasure for men is regarded as creepy, pathetic, and aesthetically displeasing. I've said it before here--- once you've heard the word "wank" you can't really be male (or maybe only straight male) and indulge in the Solitary Vice without feeling ashamed and sad.

Nonetheless, I do sit at my work desk and search out PornHub clips. I'm impressed with how niche some of the clips are, and even more impressed with the sheer numbers of things even the most arcane search terms bring up. It probably took less than a month before there were scores of Covid-19 porn videos, with masked scene partners and storylines about Red Death quarantine bringing the most disparate and unlikely couples together (lots of step-siblings, a surprising number of Hot MILF and stepdaughter clips). I'm socially aware enough to wear a mask every day if I go into stores or shops or amongst crowds, but I do have to wonder what sex in a mask would be like. I'd probably start gasping for breath early on, alas.

I have found porn actresses to crush on. However not? I discovered a lovely long-legged blonde who calls herself Kenna James and a petite garconne who calls herself Kristin Scott. They've done a couple of scenes with each other, including some non-sex scenes in a story-driven  coming-out film called "Teenage Lesbian". Both very lovely, both very hot. 

My crushes on both are sexual, of course, but I think that it's their interviews that have fed the crushes. Both have several interviews on YouTube about their lives and careers, and they each have very good long interviews on Holly Randall's podcast. Ms. Randall, by the way, is the daughter of Suze Randall, one of the great glamour photographers (and female porn directors) of the Seventies and Eighties.  Both Ms. James and Ms. Scott are clever, funny, thoughtful, and well-spoken. So my usual track is to look for scenes each has done on PornHub and then see what interviews I  can find at YouTube. 

I do like it that porn actresses are giving interviews.  I like the idea of hearing about their lives in their own voices.  It says something about me that any fantasies I've ever constructed in my head about either Kristin Scott or Kenna James are largely about flirtations and conversations, They're both very lovely girls, and I expect that they'd be good--- adventurous, experimental, kind, open ---in bed...even with a male partner. Maybe--- maybe ---even with an older male partner. Still, now...all my fantasies begin with conversations and explanations by both me and a potential partner. 

I can't imagine sex without talking. I can't imagine sex that doesn't happen in the head long before it happens in the flesh.  I can't imagine sex that isn't about telling stories, about creating stories with a partner.