There's a new car parked outside Nr. 937 across the street--- a slightly different model, newer, of Jaguar sedan, this time in a dark green. I haven't seen the blonde girl. Stella at stelladellasera is clear that the girl is a high-end semi-pro, or at least someone's sugarbaby. I'd like to think she's right. I like the thought of living across the way from an ongoing Story. The girl at GirlKisses (D-Land) likes the idea that whoever brought the blonde girl home Sunday morning was different from whoever she may have been with on Saturday night. I like that idea, too. Multiple partners and performances: I do find that intriguing.

I finished "Landscape With Traveler" sitting there on the patio this afternoon. There are pages in the back listing titles in the old Vintage Contemporaries series. I scanned down them and tried to pick out the ones I'd read. I miss working in a bookstore. That was one of the best parts of grad school--- working in a bookstore, having access to any book I wanted to read. Another Barry Gifford novel was listed--- "Port Tropique". I may have to track down a copy. I really want to recommend "Landscape With Traveler" to both Alessandra at bel_ebat and Ginny at ginny_mccoo. I think I'd like to recommend it to Liz V. at nightmareteeth, too.

Towards the end of "Landscape", Francis Reeves makes Lists--- nods to Sei Shonagon. It occurs to me that I must've paid attention to the Lists when I first read the novel. His list of favourite books includes Louise Bogan's "Blue Estuaries"--- a collection of poems I remember buying based on the list. I gave my copy to a girl at Auburn when I was teaching there. We danced at a club called UltraBox on autumn nights and made out furiously on the balcony there, but we never actually (damn it!) ended up in bed. The "Landscape" book list includes Edmund White's "Nocturnes for the King of Naples". That may have been where I first ran across "Nocturnes". That's another book to recommend to Ginny and to Liz V. "Last of the Wine" is there, too. I'd probably already read that--- I remember a girl named Janet (a Microbiology PhD years later--- drinking problem as an undergraduate, but delicious blue eyes and a kissable ski nose) giving me a copy of "The King Must Die" my first fall at university. So I was probably already a major fan of Mary Renault. Years later, I'd make a point of assigning "Last of the Wine" to my Ancient Civ. classes. A favourite novel--- powerful, melancholy, and a Hellenic version of mono-no-aware... Yes, by the way: it's another novel I've given to girls as a seduction ploy. Almost invariably successful, too. And I have no moral qualms about that. A girl who falls in love with "Last of the Wine" is vur' much worth pursuing--- seeing if she'll fall in love through the novel.

Ginny at ginny_mccoo told me once that the three key novels of the last century were "Lolita", "Portrait of a Lady", and Firbank's "Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli". Okay--- I've never read anything by Firbank. I suppose I should--- I do trust Ginny's tastes. Though I do want to ask her exactly how her PhD program tossed up those three particular titles. And I'll have to find a copy of the Firbank novel...and be in the right mood for that whole English high camp 1920s style.

I remember the late summer of the Year Five, when the most-pettable little K-dot at citydress and I were New Friends. We'd talk all night about books, learning about each other's favourites and interests. The little K-dot will always be a vur' petted little Small Sea Otter.

The K-dot pointed out to me that I shouldn't be wearing carpet slippers out on the patio to read. She's amazed that I am the only living human in North America who doesn't own a pair of flip-flops. She is right about that; I've never had a pair even for beach or pool. Flip-flops work as part of a slutwear look for lithe leggy wicked co-eds in tiny shorts or a too-short denim mini: easy enough to kick off for impromptu sex, easy enough to dangle from one tanned foot as an enticement. But they're not for me. They never have been. I never understood how to keep them on or walk in them. And they're not something males should ever wear--- or at least any male who isn't a Taiwanese peasant by birth. Any fashion site or reasonably classy sex blog by girls will express utter horror at "mandals"--- sandals for males. Flip-flops work for leggy slutgirls, but they're just not a male thing. I'd rather get Sperry Top-Siders in white canvas or L.L. Bean deck shoes.

Kim at kim_chi_lite posted a query: which three film characters could you see yourself as? Well...in a better world, I'd be Ralph Fiennes in "The English Patient" or Jeremy Irons in "Damage": characters doomed by hopeless and destructive loves. But in point of fact, I'd be a lot more like Chris Eigeman in "Metropolitan" or "Barcelona". His characters are much more Oblomov than Pechorin, and that, alas, is...me. I'm too good at finding clever things to say that keep me distanced from everything, and I'm far too good at finding clever reasons not to take action.

It's been a long time since ever a lovely wicked literary girl has climbed naked between fresh sheets and then called me to read. It's not likely to happen any time soon.

I think--- think ---that Ginny at ginny_mccoo wrote me once that she'd spent a December night lying naked in bed reading Plath's "Ariel". She was reading it alone--- no lover there, no voices on the aether. I suppose she just didn't have my keitai number.

I have such a literary crush on the girl at _manufactured (AndWeBreathe at D-Land). She writes brilliantly, and she has five years of archives to explore. I only wish that Lily at CloverSt would unlock the archives at her old Apparitional D-Land diary. And that I could read back through the archives at warmscars.

Alpha or Proxima Centauri--- choose one, give reasons, and be specific.

Stella at stelladellasera has been writing about s/m rituals she's been through--- or constructed for others. Reading her entries made me realise why I'd never be a good dominant. It's an odd thing to say, but Stella and Lucia and her Island girls and their various poly intersectors do rituals that are too...sexual. There's too much overt flesh, too much physicality. This is why Angela in Houston never quite meshed with me. She wanted collaring rituals and being told to kneel naked in Presentation Posture. I like the idea of s/m--- I like the accessories and the idea of ritualised sex. I certainly like the idea of transgression and pushing past limits. I do have a selection of riding whips there in the closet, after all. But any rituals I've designed in my head are erotic maybe only to me. (And Lacey, yes--- let's not forget that) Looking at the kinds of s/m rituals I'd design (and I think I wrote Stella about this), all the rituals have too much backstory implicit. They show too clearly all the years I spent getting that History doctorate. The rituals I design in my head have far too much ecclesiastical and military influence. Costume, setting, precision--- those things are more important to me than naked flesh or vulnerability. And there's not as much clear submission as in Stella's rituals.

The gaunt and lovely and sharp-hipboned girl stands naked in a hooded cloak and walks with firm step to the altar. She shrugs off the cloak and spreads herself on the silk altarcloth... There can be ice and candle wax and blindfolds; there's certainly penetration. But there's no act of surrender or submission. There's giving oneself to the ritual, but that's not the same thing. It's becoming a character in a Story. I'll have to talk with Stella and maybe kirstys_girl about this. (I'd like to hear from Ms. Flox at besideserato, too...) It's all part of my whole auteur fetish, isn't it? It's part of my inability to transfer sex from something abstract and mannered and intellectualised and into flesh and direct physical sensation. I really don't live in my body. I live through films in my head.

Suzan at ivydevice once wrote that she was taking up calligraphy and fine handwriting as an erotic art. That's something I can understand.

This morning I read Lissy at emigree's account in her secret journal of her Montauk week with her soldier-lover. I read it and felt...unsure of what I was feeling. Jealousy? In some abstract sense, yes. A beautiful girl making love in a rented beachfront room--- of course I'd be jealous. But that might only be envy. Is it that I'd want that particular girl, or that I envy the ability to be part of a romantic week, to be able to kiss a girl's bare back on hotel room sheets? I can't be sure whether I want the girl herself or the ability to have that scene. I'm not likely to have either, mind you. I lack the value to have the girl...and I lack the money, time, looks (and girl) needed to have a romantic week anywhere. I haven't had a vacation since 1997. And even if could afford to take a hotel room, no girl would ever go with me. Once upon a time, yes. But not now.

I'd still like to know how Lissy at emigree handled the logistics of the trip--- and especially how (or if) she told her parents she was going off to spend a week with a lover. And how did she explain her soldier-lover at her basement door or in her bed at her parents' house? Lissy is twenty--- how does she conduct a romance without risking parental disapproval and loss of finances?

I do note that Stella at stelladellasera didn't disagree with my suspicion that even a professional--- a provider, Debauchette would say ---would turn down my money. I used to think that the great thing about escorts and call girls was that it would be a simple exchange of cash for service, that looks and age and social standing were irrelevant. That was before I realised that skilled professionals do have their own standing to consider. Being with someone like me destroys a working girl's professional reputation. There's something that escorts do called GFE--- Girlfriend Experience ---where the girl goes out in public with her client and pretends to be his girlfriend for a few hours. Well--- some things can't be bought. No call girl would risk her future earning potential by being seen with me. And for anyone like me, the true Girlfriend Experience would vur' likely entail not someone like Lissy at emigree or Suzan at ivydevice going to a Montauk hotel room for sex 'n' romance, but rather a girl standing there snarling at me with contempt and derision upon seeing me undressed--- mocking me as she stalked out of the hotel. Of course--- the same thing would be true of a call girl meeting me in a hotel bar or seeing me in a hotel room doorway. Of course, too--- a call girl could get on her Blackberry and berate her bookers. A "regular" girlfriend would only have me to berate. I've only heard Ms. Flox's voice on her voice posts at besideserato, but somehow all the contemptuous and derisive things I hear in my head are in her voice.

I should've had steak tonight. Or at least sushi. But eating takes up time where I could be having vodka-lime and listening to Loscil's "Plume". Barry Gifford's Francis Reeves in "Landscape With Traveler" has given up sex before the novel starts. He finds that desire has faded away into a life of books and friendships. But then I'm not Gifford's hero. I have books, and vodka, and ambient music. What I don't have is the option of being part of a lovely girl's Stories, or having her want to be in mine. The blue stucco house across the street has Stories. Lissy's room in Baltimore has Stories. Ms. Chang's sailboat has Stories. I have books on a nightstand and a lack of any energy--- energy to eat, energy to be valuable enough to have Stories or be part of rituals.