Outside on the upper patio, looking out across the little narrow street where I live. A white Jaguar sedan comes down the hill and turns in to the little driveway at the little blue stucco house at Nr. 937. A blonde girl comes down the steps and strides out to the Jaguar. I'm standing there looking down into the evening with a vodka-lime in my hand. The blonde girl is tallish, maybe thirty. Center-parted blonde hair to her shoulders. She's wearing a black cocktail dress and stilettos. Knee-length, asymmetric hem. Bare tanned legs. Very thin shoulder straps, dark-tanned shoulders. Elegant little purse. She has an effortless confidence in her walk. The driver gets out. White slacks, golf shirt, hair that was probably once reddish. Late sixties, easily. Maybe early seventies. He shuffles along to her and she presents a cheek to be kissed. He shuffles ahead of her to let her in the passenger side. He's unsteady on his right leg. The Jaguar backs out into the street and goes down to the base of the hill to turn in to the road past the lakes. I have no idea what I've just seen. Who is he--- Sugar daddy? Client? Father, grandfather, boss? Is she a mistress, an escort, an amuse-bouche at the casino boats? Or just a daughter, a granddaughter, a secretary on her way to a dinner or a reception or a show? It's something I'd like to discuss with Stella at stelladellasera or even Melissa at kraftig_bewegt or Amanda at mynameisvanity. I trust Stella on these things.

The blonde girl does have good legs. She wears black silk well. A young Deneuve in "Belle de Jour". I'd like for her to be meeting a client. That says something about me.

I want vur' much to talk with Ginny at ginny_mccoo about Alan Brown's "Audrey Hepburn's Neck". It's a book I like. And the hero comes from Hokkaido. There are haunting descriptions of Hokkaido and the landscape of the far north of Japan. I'm sensitive to landscape. When I saw "Brokeback Mountain", I liked the doomed love story. But what held my attention was the landscape, the starkness of Big Sky Country. I've seen the Hungarian Alfold, but I've never seen Idaho or Montana. I envy Tara at MidnightHope for having seen the Altai. I want to see Hokkaido in autumn. I do have to do that.

Les soirées sont très belles en cette saison. I want to say that to a girl in some exiles' city on an autumn twilight.

Ioana at winterbymorning bought a vur' 1930s gold lighter today. She'll be standing in an upstairs window tonight, wrapped in just a sheet, lighting a Gauloise. In my clubland days I used to buy Gitanes Filtres; they're not available in the States these days. Ioana shares my taste for cigarillos. Rachel at sirena73 smokes cigarillos when she's at clubs or parties. Alessandra at bel_ebat smokes Parliaments. So does Liz V. at nightmareteeth. Krystina at yes_please smokes a custom blend in Zurich. I'd like to know what Umi at ivich smokes on NYC nights. And I'd vur' much like to know what ginny_mccoo smokes. I will have to ask Ginny directly.

Some novel read once long ago--- some escape-from-suburbia novel written in the mid-'80s. I remember the beginning. Thirtyish suburban housewife leaves her family downstairs one night and goes upstairs in quiet desperation to cut her wrists in the bathtub. Downstairs her two obnoxious children are shrieking to go get fried chicken for dinner: 'Tucky Chicken! 'Tucky Chicken! She lies back naked and slowly begins to cut. And two things occur to her. The sensation of the razor blade is actually...sexual. It makes her wet. But she has to stop. It's not that she doesn't want to kill herself. She looks at her body--- still thin and taut and aerobicised at thirty or so ---and thinks that she's too old for razor blades. Girls can't cut themselves once they're past co-ed age, she thinks. Razor blades or a finger down her throat--- she's too old to start either again. She dresses upstairs and flees into the city to try to lose herself. I don't remember the title. I don't remember what happened in the rest of the novel. I think there was s/m involved, and multiple partners, and cocaine, and lots of over-serious conversations in dive bars and dance clubs. The Eighties, after all. What I do remember is the image of kids' voices: 'Tucky chicken! 'Tucky chicken! I hope never to hear that while I'm having sex.

Ms. Chang is a great fan of Joyce Carol Oates. She was utterly taken with both "Them" and "Garden of Earthly Delights" when she was in her last year of high school. I was always fond of "The Assassins" and "The Hungry Ghosts" and "Bellefleur". I would like to get Libet's take on "The Assassins".

John Updike, "Museums and Women"... I want to hear from lovely readers and correspondents--- e.g., Ginny at ginny_mccoo, Lissy at emigree, Alessandra at bel_ebat, Ms. Chang ---about the title story. Just as I want to hear from lovely readers about the title story in Susan Minot's "Lust and Other Stories". I first read "Museums and Women" there in Cross Campus Library at New Haven. The heroine of Gael Greene's "Blue Skies, No Candy" reads the collection while on an adulterous trip to St.-Bart's. That's where I first heard of the title. I've always liked the title story, even though it's one of the more neglected Updike collections. I do hope any lovely and literary readers will write me about it. I'd even like to hear from Kelsey at clush.

I once asked Lissy at emigree a question. Suppose, I asked, that she had an Older Lover kneeling there between her parted thighs to go down on her. And when she looked down at him, she noted a major bald spot. What, I asked, would she do? Would she laugh? Would she feel contempt? Could she possibly have sex with a man who had a bald spot? Lissy wrote back to say that if she looked down and saw a bald spot, she'd actually become more wet and aroused. After all, she wrote...a bald spot on an Older Lover would just make the whole thing even more transgressive and therefore hot.

I keep touching the top of my head. There's no bald spot--- no ghastly calvity ---there. Or not yet. But I'm terrified of a calvity appearing. My hair has outlasted Mister Taylor's; he began to go seriously bald as an undergraduate. But I am terrified of a bald spot. Lissy at emigree might still find it a sign of an Older Lover, and therefore hot, but I'd be afraid that a calvity would be a marker for impotence, for a failed penis. Well--- I should just stop touching the top of my head. The Small Pika told me years ago to stop doing that--- and that was back in the days when I thought that there were strange bumps and ridges forming on my skull, that I was devolving into a Zinjanthropus.

Lissy at emigree did write that she found the whole idea of a transgressive ("age-inappropriate") affair utterly, utterly hot. Ms. Chang and her friends in high school swore an oath to only have affairs with men who were at least as old (and well-dressed) as Jeremy Irons. Tara at MidnightHope and Tam at drocera wanted nothing more in their teens than what Tara called "a Humbert all my own". So did Rachel at sirena73. Ginny at ginny_mccoo wrote about a classmate at university who confessed drunkenly that she was having an affair with a fiftyish professor. Ginny had to reassure the girl that she wasn't appalled, that the two of them belonged to the same tribe. Nothing, Krystina at yes_please wrote, is as powerfully arousing as transgression and defiance. The sample may be self-selected, but I do seem to keep running across girls who carried copies of "Lolita" in their backpacks in high school the way lit-crit girls at university carry copies of "On Grammatology".

The charming steeping writes that there's something brilliantly dissociative about hotels and motels--- Ms. Flox at besideserato has said the same. Hotels--- and a fortiori motels ---are places that aren't places, places that have an otherworldly quality. Staying in motels on some long cross-country drive is like staying in small enclosed worlds that are cut away from the outside and the past. I did suggest Lisa Zeidel's "Layover" to steeping. Yes--- it has the sexiest cover photo I've seen on any book in a long while. But it's a novel I'd like to hear from steeping about. It's a novel that Lissy at emigree and Ms. Chang both liked...

Rachel at sirena73 has a Swiss Army knife on her keychain and has a Leatherman multi-tool fetish. Caitlin at kissmecaitlin has one, too. I really do like that. Multi-tools are brilliant things. And everyone needs a Leatherman Squirt or a Micra. Take that as a given. Any lovely wicked clever panty-free girls should always have a little Leatherman Micra in the pocket of their ultra-low hiphuggers.

I still have "Fear and Trembling" to watch tonight. Though since there's no mail pickup 'til Monday, it won't get back to Netflix 'til Tuesday even if I wait 'til Sunday to watch it. I have "My Blueberry Nights"in my queue--- something to watch over the holiday weekend.

I wonder if I'll be up and out on the patio when the blonde girl returns from her...assignation. There's some intelligence value in noting when she returns. And who might be driving her. I would like it if she were an expensive escort. I could never afford her, mind you. Or even speak to her. But there's something to be said for proximity--- for being able to infer stories from glimpses had at dusk here on the upstairs patio.