The lovely soft_melodies used a phrase that I find vur' haunting: lost girls and love hotels... She wrote that in an entry illustrated with a beautiful, ethereal girl in khaki short shorts posed before a 1950s-retro motel sign somewhere in L.A. It's a dream-like photo, and I do have to wonder where she found it. But it's the phrase that I love: lost girls and love hotels... There are stories there for girls like Umi at ivich or Lissy at emigree or even Deserie at eyelines...and maybe for windupsushi and shakeitfuckers... Lost girls and love hotels... That brings up films like "Stratosphere Girl"--- films with lovely girls in distant cities, films with dream-haunted romances with Strangers...

I'm thinking of disconnected worlds: the Japan of the lost film "Tokyo Pop" or Cynthia Gralla's "The Floating World", the Los Angeles of early Eve Babitz stories or Francesca Lia Block, maybe the Paris of Samantha Dunn's "Failing Paris"... All worlds where there could be romances with Strangers in love hotels or motels with retro neon...

The world of Lost Girls and Love Hotels has that ethereal look that David Hamilton mastered in his photos. It's a world that Ginny at ginny_mccoo might find on quayside streets in Tallinn. There could be something of the feel of early Jeff Dunas photos in it, too--- that flat southern California neon colour that would fit Eve Babitz's stories from "Slow Days, Fast Company".

That's all disconnected: Tokyo, L.A., the Baltic. I wanted to say something about Miami, about Tropic Deco colours. I know of one oddly sexy little mid-'90s vampire film--- "Girl With The Hungry Eyes" ---set in a Miami of faded Tropic Deco hotels, but I can't think of any novels or stories set in Miami that do anything like dream-haunted erotica.

One day I must get Stella at stelladellasera to tell me about Lisbon... Stella and her Lucia have been to Lisbon for wicked Adventures and seducing beautiful strangers in fado bars. I must get Stella to tell me about the architecture of late-night Lisbon, about the feel of Lisbon backstreets and after-midnight bars. Miami, too--- though Stella's Miami may be a South Beach of the latest clubs and hotels rather than the dreamscape of faded Deco.

Jess at bella_sumision and Lissy at emigree and Ms. Chang all agree with me that the great weakness in written erotica is the dialogue. Dialogue from eighteenth-century porn is hilarious if read aloud; dialogue from 1970s-vintage porn hardly less so. But dialogue from contemporary erotica is just...stilted and awkward and silly. Let's be clear: "Take it, bitch!" is acceptable sex dialogue only if it emerges in a computer-generated voice from Stephen Hawking's wheelchair. (Even then, it has to be said to Hermione Granger) Details matter--- and in erotica, details include attention to settings and dialogue both. Dialogue matters during sex. I've always talked my way through sex; I expect the lovely wicked girl there with me to talk back. I can't find anything exciting in erotica where the dialogue fails, where people say stupid things. Long, long ago Ms. Chang and I agreed that phonesex is a kind of test--- can you actually talk a girl into being wet? Erotica dialogue is always poised on the edge of disaster: high camp on one side ("mighty meat machine", "docking the zeppelin at Lakehurst"), sheer stupidity on the other.

Lissy at emigree I know has read Alan Brown's "Audrey Hepburn's Neck"--- another eerie expat-romance-in-Japan novel. I'd like to get her take on it. And I'd like to hear what soft_melodies and Alessandra at bel_ebat and Ginny at ginny_mccoo think of it...

Ms. Flox at besideserato has written about hotel rooms v. motel rooms, about the worlds contained within each. [That brings up Lisa Zeidel's novel "Layover", with its alluring cover photo and its lovely images of disconnected motel sex, a novel Lissy at emigree and I both appreciated] Ms. Flox is trying to re-create herself for "Stepford Wifery", for life as a Young Married. But I do wonder what she recalls of the days when she was part of a world of Lost Girls and Love Hotels, what cities that phrase brings to find for her... Debauchette and Stella could write about five-star hotels, about a world of clients and VIP Lounges and business-class travel. But that's not Lost Girls and Love Hotels. That doesn't have a dreaminess, an ethereality about it. Debauchette's world lacks an air of mono-no-aware, of melancholy delights.

soft_melodies' phrase conjures up a world I do like, a world of rainswept streets and distant neon, a world of ghosts and dreams. I want to ask her about Paris nights in her own life, or about Spanish boys in pensions in Barcelona. And, yes: I do want to hear Lissy's vision of hotels she'd like to find in Tokyo or Stockholm. I do need to find a girl who understands about the Eve Babitz parts of the Los Angeles night...

Stories matter--- they always do. And cities matter: cities full of architecture and nightworlds filled with Lost Girls and Love Hotels and Beautiful Strangers...