I was reading in Eve Babitz's "Slow Days, Fast Company" this afternoon. There's a wonderful story called "Sirocco" that I really do want to recommend to Alessandra at bel_ebat. There's a clever romance there--- Eve finds herself making out with a lovely younger girl one Santa Ana night in L.A., then leaves the girl for the mostly-gay ex-Charleston boy who turns out to be the ex-boyfriend of the male friend the younger girl ends up with. There's vodka involved, true, but Ms. Babitz blames it all on the disorientation caused by the Santa Ana winds. Just think, she writes, if we didn't have the Santa Anas, how straight we would all be...

I'd like to pass that along to Alessandra. She was never shy about having experimented with girls at her vur' hidalgo Catholic prep school in El Paso or while visiting family friends in England, and she did have a vur' romantic thing with her friend Alice. Alessandra has always felt free to sample both male and female experiences, and she's never hidden any of that. The lovely Ginny at ginny_mccoo is the same way up in Canuckia. The married Ms. Flox at besideserato writes easily about girls she's loved in her Past. It's not something anyone male can do--- or at least do anywhere outside of Bret Easton Ellis' Camden College in "Rules of Attraction". I've always wanted to ask Alessandra about her own attitudes to gender. Eve Babitz described her life in '70s L.A. with a blithe enough attitude: pretty people ended up with one another. Vodka and Santa Ana winds--- all the explanation anyone might need. When Alessandra was sixteen or seventeen, did she kiss girls because they were beautiful and alluring, because it was a wickedly stylish thing to do, or because she knew her body could find pleasure with more than one gender? Was it a surprise to her to be able to fall in love with girls?

More importantly, did she ever worry about having to explain to family why she was sleeping with another girl? Did she ever worry about hiding her girl-girl moments from her sorority sisters at university? Lissy at emigree has gone off up I-95 with her soldier-lover for a Romantic Weeklong Getaway. That's not an affair with another lovely girl, but--- did she worry about saying to family that she was going off with a lover? I have no idea how girls deal with having to Explain their loves and lovers.

I once threw away a major affair over that issue. I was home from university one summer and a girl I was involved with threw a party at her parents' summer lakefront place out in the west of the state. I was of course expected to show up, be shown off as her Yale boyfriend, and spend the weekend in her bed. The drive west, though, was about three hours. I needed to borrow a family car. And when they asked what I was doing and where I'd be, I just panicked and froze. I refused to tell them , refused to discuss anything. I left the car keys on the kitchen counter, went to my room to read, and wouldn't answer the phone. So--- end of affair. Never spoke to the girl again. It's not that anyone would've said that I couldn't use the car, or would've thrown a moral fit that I was going to spend a long weekend with a blonde co-ed. It's just that I had to...Explain. I'd have had to tell people what I was doing and why. And I hate that more than I hate either cheese or jihadis. I never lived with a girl at university because I'd have had to Explain what I was doing. I'd never have brought a girl home or done anything with a girl where someone--- family, friends ---might ask what I was doing. It continues to baffle me that girls like Lissy at emigree or Umi at ivich or even Kelsey at clush can bring lovers home or take trips with lovers. How do they face having to Explain themselves...?.

I hate it when anyone can ask me to Explain Myself, when anyone assumes that I need to answer questions. I'll admit that I was always terrified of doing anything that might risk my access to family support--- especially financial support. I'd always have been too terrified to live with a girl at university lest my family have said that since I was doing Grown-Up things, I should be fully self-supporting. I would never risk access to air-conditioning and extended cable. I was never prepared to give up Educated Suburban White Boy amenities. Let's take that as a given. But I become coldly angry that anyone can ever demand that I explain what I'm doing or why I'm doing it. I hate it when anyone wants to know anything about me that I don't choose to tell them. I hate it even now that my siblings or friends might ask me questions--- that they feel like they can ask me questions.

Eve Babitz at eighteen or nineteen had no problem going off all over the Pacific coast with lovers and friends. She could be blithely bisexual and just shrug and explain it all by the Santa Ana winds. I could never have done that. I could never have gone off with a girl, or moved a girl in. (And I can't imagine how girls explain their vibrators to family...) My whole life has been about trying to avoid being questioned or forced to explain myself. And I've always been too afraid of being mocked or berated--- or too afraid of losing access to support ---to risk doing anything, romantic or not, that might leave me open to contempt, rejection, or derision. Alessandra at bel_ebat and Lissy at emigree and cataplexis are far more brave than I could ever be.

Tonight in San Francisco and other California cities, gay couples are being married. I've been saying all day on Twitter that the whole thing makes me glum. Ellen and her Portia can get married, and of course I do wish them well. But I've told people on Twitter that gay couples can get married in California, but I can't even afford to visit California for a heterosexual marriage. I can't risk flying to California in any case, so it's unlikely I'll ever be there. And despite the promises in "Red Shoe Diaries" episodes, I won't find a lovely girl who'd ever marry me on a La Jolla beach or on the deck of a villa somewhere along the PCH. It doesn't matter if the Santa Ana winds do serve as a kind of erotic trigger. Alessandra will go to London or Los Angeles for affairs; Lissy will go to NYC or Tokyo. I won't be leaving this city again.