It did rain earlier--- a few minutes of rain across the swimming pool. I've always liked that--- raindrops hitting the surface of water, hitting pools and fountains and lakes. Not enough to cool anything off, really, just enough to leave the flagstones on the patio dark and damp. I miss summer rainstorms. I miss afternoons where the rains came like clockwork, a brief quick hard shower, fifteen minutes of hard rain every day at four...

I'm watching "Roger Dodger" tonight. It's a cold, deeply ironic film. Campbell Scott stars. I've always liked him-- e,g., "The Sheltering Sky", "The Spanish Prisoner", even "Singles" and "The Daytrippers". I like the characters he plays--- his type. I've always seen myself as more like Chris Eigemann's characters, but I admire Scott for his intensity and sardonic wit.

"Roger Dodger" leaves me intrigued but depressed. Scott's character is a semi-failed ladies' man, showing his teen nephew how to acquire lovely girls. It's a dark film, but I do love Scott's monologues. And I identify with his hint of desperation. I really identify with that hint of desperation and loneliness.

I wish I could talk about the film with someone--- Suzan at ivydevice, maybe, or mynameisvanity or even _manufactured or Umi at ivich. I need to talk with NYC girls about the film. It's not a film that plays well for Denver or L.A. or Vancouver--- the attitudes in the film are vur' NYC.

The wickedly gaunt kraftig_bewegt wrote to say that she's been sleeping naked in her new apartment on sheets stained with semen and sweat. She finds it...comforting...to know that she's lying there amid evidence of sex with strangers, or with the Very Generous Older Admirer who has her nominally in keeping. She writes that she likes bringing home men to lie with her on those sheets amidst DNA traces from other males. It's proof of her sluthood, she writes, and of course it's almost a way of making the men gay, of making them mix their semen and sweat as if they were there fucking each other. There's a wonderful dark sense of cruelty in kraftig_bewegt's submission... I do imagine that she's keeping her Older Admirer on a vur' short leash...and extracting both his money and his self-respect. Melissa is one of those dark-hipster girls whose Stories are perfect late-night dive bar fare.

I started reading "Beautiful and the Damned" this afternoon. Reading Fitzgerald again after all these years is a new world. I wonder what re-reading Faulkner would be like after twenty years... And I never did get Alessandra at bel_ebat to tell me what she thought of "Absalom, Absalom"...

This afternoon I put aside drafting a lease-purchase agreement for a client's apartment building and spent time reading two Diaryland diaries. I went through the entries for a girl called AndWeBreathe--- she has her own LJ, too, under another name. And I read back through Selena's entries at Atwowaydream. They're both talented and haunting writers. They're both girls whose Stories I'd like to hear as voices on the aether or across a table in a late-night cafe in an exiles' city. Back in the summer of the Year Two I was amazed by Diaryland, amazed to find stories and voices that I wanted to read, amazed to find a world of lives and writing that I could be part of. I started keeping a paper journal in the spring of 1998--- ten years ago. I've been on-line since June of the Year Two. I've posted nearly every day. It means a lot to me to be able to write. And it means a lot for me to hear voices, to find comments, to know that I can exchange notes about ideas and books and stories. KdG at k_navit is the only person at LJ I've known in the flesh--- I've known her since before she was ever at Montevallo. But the journals I read on-line--- I take each one as a real person, as a real voice. The people I know on-line are the voices in books I used to talk to all my life. They're the voices from all the other worlds I can only look into from outside.

I suppose that's why it hurts when voices like soft_melodies or the_sea_the_sea or coco__ or warmscars vanish or shut me out. I hate losing one of the voices on the aether, losing the stories flowing over the web.

I did order DVDs of various "Red Shoe Diaries" episodes today, "The Art of Loneliness" and "Swimming Naked" and "Strip Poker" among them. I need to get "Pillar of Salt" and "Weightless", too... And that classic episode with the "Bride Needs Ride" hook. I miss the Red Shoe series. And I wonder if Jill at dehumidifier misses it--- or remembers it...

"Roger Dodger" has an edge that will leave me depressed and empty. Maybe I'll just drink Scotch and read Fitzgerald and listen to Loscil...and hope that one evening soon I'll find more stories--- Lissy at emigree, Gen at ginny_mccoo, even Selena or AndWeBreathe... Those are glimpses into other lives, into worlds I'll never know, into dreams I can't share, into hopes I've lost.