It's a holiday Friday. I will be doing a couple of small steaks for myself this evening. I'll have a few martinis with them. Last night I drank a lot of Tanqueray and tonic, and I've had a couple of those since mid-morning. Again--- Alessandra at bel_ebat is able to have undergraduate boys provide both drinks and lines of coke poolside. That's part of the tribute owed beauty, and certainly something Alessandra can charm out of Austin boys. I have Tanqueray and tonic on my own--- no cocaine, though I have to wonder whether cocaine might be a useful way to clear out my sinuses.

The pool here has been cleaned and refurbished for the Fourth. There are a couple of bikini girls at one end this afternoon--- clear division: bikini girls at one end, late-thirties gay men at the other. Much beer is being drunk, and not a few frozen margaritas. I'm not going down to the pool. Despite encouragement from the charming Jess at bella_sumision, I can't see myself down at the pool while other people are there. I don't fit in down there, and I'll never think I'm physically attractive enough ever to be among people (especially bikini girls) poolside. I need a tan--- there's no question about that. But I can't go down to the pool 'til after dark, 'til after it's empty.

Lissy at emigree is trying to get up from Baltimore to university in NYC. I do wish her well. I'd be thrilled if she got accepted and funded at NYU or Columbia. Lissy at twenty has the courage and determination to create a life for herself, to strike out for internships and romance and a degree. I'm pretty much convinced that I'll never be in NYC or DC again.

DRL once sent me a camera phone photo she took while driving over the bridge into San Francisco. The caption in the e-mail was "I guess you'll never take this ride yourself." She's right about that. I can never fly to San Francisco, and I'd certainly never drive across a major bridge.

I can smell the various grills being used down in the courtyard--- bratwurst, Cajun sausage, chicken, steak. It occurs to me that I'm never invited to crawfish boils through work or friends, and I'm not the sort of person who gets asked to barbeques.

There's a small though experiment I'll put up for consideration. It's really a question for males, and my readers and correspondents are (by design) largely female. But there is a principle involved, and I'll open it up for discussion. Consider--- you're male, and you have the option of dating one of two girls. Here are the options---

1. Girl 1 is perfectly nice, but quite plain. Not ugly, just...ordinary. She will however have earth-shattering, mind-blowing, supernova sex with you all the time.

2. Girl 2 is stunningly lovely--- lithe, leggy, someone who'd grace a runway or a Victoria's Secret catalog. She's more than willing to be out with you, to be seen with you, to be introduced to your friends as your girlfriend, and introduce you to her own circle as her boyfriend. But there's no sex--- none at all. Ever.

So--- which do you choose? Why?

Do you want the actual physical sex, or to be thought of as someone who has entree behind the Velvet Ropes?

After all... I really don't take unmediated physical pleasure in anything. Sex, travel, being out anywhere or doing anything. I don't take any direct pleasure. Those things are only valuable to me as part of Stories. Would the character I'd want to be in the films-in-my-head do this? That's the question I always ask myself. I told a girl not long ago that if you don't look good doing something, you shouldn't be doing it. I'll stand by that. How will this look in a Story? How would it look as a film? How could it be taken by a reader? That's what I ask myself about anything I might do. After all--- if there's one thing we've learned from a media/blog society, it's that if you can be criticised or mocked for doing something, you shouldn't be doing it.

Stories Matter. Details Matter. I've said that to Lissy at emigree and Umi at ivich and to Selena at AtWoWayDream and to Ms. Chang when she was Aeka at Diaryland. The thing itself really doesn't matter. I never ask about a lover whether I'll take pleasure in bed with her. I never take pleasure in anything. I can only ask whether the affair will be made up of moments and images that will make good Stories later.

I used to say that the great advantage of phonesex over sex-in-the-flesh was that you never had to actually worry about going out. And you never disappointed the girl. (And, yes, it's a lot cheaper than sex-in-the-flesh, especially if you have a good long-distance plan) But I think there's more than that. Sex by phone is all about Stories. I spent twelve years lecturing to classes; I've spent my life living through Stories. I'm not bad at Stories. It's only flesh that's a failure.

I will have to tell Ginny at ginny_mccoo that the one problem I'm likely to have with Hanrahan's "Lost Girls and Love Hotels" is the same problem that I had with Cynthia Gralla's "The Floating World" and Lea Jacobson's "Bar Flower": the idea of Life Lessons. I never have any use for books or films where characters learn Life Lessons. I've never learned one in my own life, and that's not what I want from novels. I agree with Larry David's motto for "Seinfeld" episodes: "No hugging, no learning". I want characters who move through Experiences and sample them and move on: a picaresque, never a Bildungsroman.

There is a great moment in Eberstadt's "Low Tide", a description of the teen years of the male lead:

From his mother, Jem learned how to deal with maitres d'hotel and to help ladies in stiletto heels across cobblestones with an authoritativeness that differentiated his solicitude from a kept boy's.

I've no idea why, but that strikes me as a wonderful description...and as a useful set o' skills.

I watched "Damage" again. It is a favourite film of mine. The young Juliette Binoche is stunning, of course. And I'd give a lot to look like Jeremy Irons in the film--- or at least to have his suits and office. I could see myself wanting to put everything at risk for a doomed sexual obsession with the young Ms. Binoche--- her character wears dress gloves indoors, has severely-tailored miniskirt suits, and once had an incestuous affair with a suicidal brother. Her character says something like, "Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive." That line took my breath away when I first saw the film. The only question is whether I'd have the energy to leave my rooms and follow her to Brussels or have Encounters in expensive hotels.

Oblomov, not Pechorin... I'm going to be using that line as an explanation for my failings. All those years of doing classes in Russian history and lit finally have a use.

Ms. Chang knows who Oblomov is. She gets many, many points for that. Now--- Ms. Chang will be in St.-Petersburg from the end of August. I know that she does love her husband, and that's she been faithful. But isn't there some kind of rule that says that an exotic (Chinese-Cuban) American co-ed studying in Russia has to have at least one affair with a Russian intellectual...or young Mafiya type? At the very least, I hope Libet gets to make out with leggy, sharp-cheekboned Russian girls at dance clubs. I'd think that having an affair while studying in Petersburg is as mandatory as atrip to the Hermitage.

Something I wrote about Ms. Chang in April of the Year Six:

Ms. Chang spends springtime days reading Lorca while suntanning topless on the roof of her dorm. That's another excellent image. Ms. Chang has always liked dressing and posing for effect; she loves strangers' eyes running over her bare thighs in the university library while she reads Bulgakov or James Billington. She told me once that she loved wearing her shortest charcoal miniskirt (panty-free; take that as a given) and a blazer and necktie-- and carrying a copy of the collected T.S. Eliot with her. What else would a girl with a necktie and a microskirt carry, she asked. Well-- I like her reading "Gerontion" or "Four Quartets" while sitting to show off her golden-dark legs. And she has the eyes to look up with a chill hint of sardonic challenge at any older male whose glance lingers on her legs or nipples. I have to admire a girl who claims to read "Dorian Gray" twice a year...and who picked up and seduced a resident at the university hospital.

Marriage and monogamy are such a waste... Libet once offered to draft a letter of recommendation for me--- recommending me to co-eds as an Older Lover. All based on theory and pure speculation, mind--- but aren't most letters of recommendation like that?

I should've taken her up on that, though. I should've asked other girls I've known to draft similar letters. However fictional they might be, letters from ginny_mccoo or emigree or yes_please (that one in German) or iminhell would be useful things to have...both to convince credulous co-eds that I'd be an Older Lover worth having and to convince any later readers that, once upon a time, Eduardo-kun had had sexual skills and success with beautiful girls. Stories matter--- and it matters there's some record somewhere that will show that I once had some sexual value.

Girls have written me to say that they moved in with lovers during their undergraduate years because they wanted to be with someone they loved, and that they were prepared to deal with parental displeasure and poverty. Two years ago, I wrote:

It does occur to me that since ever my father passed away, I have no one who could *comment* on things that I do. I have no family left whose comments would make me cringe. So I could suntan on the patio without worrying about comments about my tattoos. I could have a girlfriend around without dreading the comments and judgment of family. It's an odd and, yes, scary thought: I really don't have to *explain* myself to anyone any more.

I'll still never know how girls like triesticity or venusenvy could be openly gay or bi without fear of Scenes or at least *comments* from family. I'll never know how girls like Mehiel at Diaryland could discuss lovers with family. I couldn't ever risk introducing girls to family or risk doing anything at all that would draw comments-- and possibly result in loss of financial access. Let's remember: Money Changes Everything.

I constructed my whole life so that no one would know about anything I ever did, so that no one could ever *comment*, so that no one could tell me I was stupid or clueless or that my choices revealed me to be inept and classless. That's kept me a bachelor all these years; it certainly kept me from trying to publish. I wanted to be invisible (except to leggy, lithe, promiscuous co-eds), to be someone who wasn't judged and found wanting by all the Real People.

That was true in the Year Six, and it's true now.

I still wish Lissy at emigree would tell me how she deals with parental disapproval over having a lover in her bed or going off to Montauk with a lover.

The bikini girls down by the pool have a clutch of swaggering straight boys around them. Girls like that are always surrounded by boys who have tribal tattoos and baseball caps. I have no idea what they talk about. Of course--- I have no idea what anyone talks about.

So far this long weekend--- no voices on the aether. I'll take that as a kind of omen. Or judgment.

I've told the pettable little K-dot at citydress that the great difference between Old and New Testament is that Morgan Freeman is the New Testament God, and Samuel L. Jackson is the Old Testament God. I think that distinction is theologically sound.

Outside, the skies have gone black and rain is pouring down. The bikini girls and their admirers have vanished--- doubtless gone back into apartments for beer, bongs, and blowjobs.

Ginny at ginny_mccoo wrote me to say that she loved the idea of the tanned blonde co-ed sitting with long legs crossed, dangling a cheap rubber flip-flop from one foot. Ginny said that she knew it was a terrible thing, but as sexy as the image was, she never imagined lovely co-eds in tiny shorts and dangling flip-flops as having any interior lives. She always imagined them as Display Items and instinct-driven sex toys: enticing boys for sex for the same reason that birds migrated south. All pure instinct, done because that's what they do.

The afternoon thunderstorms at least solve my whole problem about the pool. I won't have to feel bad about not being outside to work on a tan. And I won't feel quite so bad about not being part of the charcoal grill thing around the courtyard.

Debauchette (debauchette.wordpress.com) is in California this weekend with a girl who calls herself Kasia. Kasia has a blog at BeautifulAndDepraved.blogspot.com that does have vur' thoughtful writing and some vur', vur' hot erotic memoirs. She's worth exploring.

I have no emotional sense that I people I talk to in my office or see on the street are Real. But characters in Stories and films are always Real to me.

I need to drink more Tanqueray and tonic. I need to hear voices on the aether. And I have "Rendez-vous" to watch tonight. And "Journey to Kafiristan" to watch again. I wish I could sit with Alessandra at bel_ebat or Ginny at ginny_mccoo and and talk about books and literary lives. I wish Lissy at emigree would tell me all about her Adventures and Stories. I can listen to Loscil or Delerium or David Sylvian while it rains. But there won't be any girls calling.

I could ask for Letters of Recommendation--- girls offering up recommendations about my skills as an Older Lover. They can be utterly fictional. God knows I've written recommendations for students that were based purely on tactics--- helping people I like get jobs, scholarships, or admissions to grad school. Of course--- it's been two years and more since Ms. Chang offered to write one for me. I doubt she'd do it now. And I'd be far too afraid to think of what Lissy at emigree or f1esh_and_bone or kissingverlaine might do. A letter from warmscars or besideserato might count--- they both have a substantial following on line and off ---but I could never trust what they might craft into a fictional letter of recommendation.

There will be steak and martinis here alone in the flat tonight. But there won't be any voices on the aether. And in eight months here, I've never had anyone come by for a drink. I'll drink and watch the young Juliette Binoche in "Rendez-vous" and sleep through Saturday. Tanqueray and tonic with lots o' lime--- that is one way of getting through a weekend without voices.