I got up early this morning and drove off to the little coffeeshop by the university gates. I do that every Saturday and Sunday morning. I like the ritual: chocolate cappucino, plain croissant, paper journal, book. This morning--- re-reading Murakami's "After Dark" and wondering what the film will look like. The Small Pika agreed with me that the film of "Tony Takitani" was well done, but that we wanted to see stories from "After the Quake" filmed. Everyone loves "Hard-Boiled Wonderland", but it's hard to imagine the film. I'd like to see some of the smaller Murakami novels filmed--- "Norwegian Wood" or "Sputnik Sweetheart". Anyway--- cappucino there at my usual table in the little back room of the coffeeshop. It's my way of getting out of the flat and trying to be out and just maybe part of something.

There was a tall, painfully thin pale blonde girl at the next table. All angles and bones and long, vur' slender legs. I'd have said "deliciously starved", but when she walked up to the counter to refill her coffee, she was unsteady on her feet. She walked with a vur' hesitant step, all fragility and disconnectedness. She was in a cropped black tee and a knee-length narrow skirt in dark-brown denim. Heeled Mary Janes and an ankle bracelet. She had a actual Discman--- that was what first caught my eye. I hadn't seen anyone with a Discman in years. I thought that every co-ed in North America was issued an iPod now. She sat there with her Discman and headphones, and I could hear the ghost of a drum beat and a hint of vocals. I have no idea what the songs may have been.

She had a quarto-sized artist's journal and tins of coloured drawing pencils. She was drawing illustrations for a child's story--- lovely drawings of children on skis or on swings, little coloured drawings of cute animals and houses. There were passages of text pasted into her journal, things clipped from somewhere else. I watched her fidget and draw--- those long, thin, pale legs moving under the table, crossing and uncrossing. But I did wonder: what story was she telling? One fiftysomething corporate type passed by and looked down and complimented her on the drawings. The blonde girl thanked him in a vur' shy and unsure voice. I do wish I knew what story she'd found, what the illustrations were for.

Two summers ago I wrote about a call from the most-pettable and most-loved little K-dot at citydress:

My most-loved little K-dot at citydress called me the other night at three in the morning to ask in her panicked voice if I were Safe. She wanted me to be sure all the doors were locked, that the appliances were off, that I had a fire extinguisher and a safe room and a weapon. K-dot tells me that I'm not allowed ever to grow old or die, that I have to stay Safe always. I'm not allowed, she says, to drive in the rain or to avoid doctors. She needs my presence to keep her Safe, to read Japanese children's books to her. The Small Sea Otter needs me, and that is important. I need to be valuable to someone, to be-- even if only to one person --useful.

I'd like to think that the Small Sea Otter still needs me to read children's books to her, that she still wants me to be Safe. I need to be needed. I need to be valuable to someone. I need to think that someone out there finds me useful and necessary. It's hard to think that I might be valuable; I don't have vur' much in the way of proof.

This morning I carried trash out to the dumpster and looked across at Nr. 937. I'd seen a light on there last night, so maybe the blonde sugarbaby/escort girl had come back from the weekend early. There was a car backed into the driveway--- a black Infiniti G Coupe. Nice little runabout car. Not the blonde girl's own ride, mind you. There's a little garage at the front of her driveway; her own car was in there. Someone spent the night there in the blue stucco house. So--- three clients/keepers: two Jaguar sedans and an Infiniti sports coupe. Annette at kirstys_girl thought it would be wonderful if the girl had a Jaguar sedan fetish, if she's been sleeping with everyone she finds who owns one. Ah, well--- there is the Infiniti as the statistical outlier.

In "Rendez-vous" Juliette Binoche's character explains that, in the three months since her eighteenth birthday, since she left Toulouse for Paris, she can count the number of nights she's slept alone on the fingers of one hand, and that it's pretty much been different guys every night. I have to like that--- if a girl sleeps with everybody, then sooner or later she'll get round to me. And if she has slept with everybody, the odds are that I won't be the absolute Worst she's had. The vur' charming kaylyssa wrote of randomly sleeping with a fiftysomething Englishman because he had a cool accent and was uncircumcised. British accents seem to make girls' hiphuggers unbutton themselves all over North America--- though I can only hope that the accents were Posh rather than Estuarine...let alone Devonshire. kaylyssa wrote that she'd decided to see what it would be like to have random sex with someone Old. [I'm still baffled by a description offered up by Piper at PipersPlace, who described the smell of a bedroom the morning after a gangbang as "like old people"] Various commenter girls wrote in to kaylyssa to say that they'd done the same kind of thing for random sex. There were lines like, "those grampa guys can be hot fucks". Why is that so depressing? It just feels vur' different from having girls like Ms. Chang or Lissy at emigree or Ginny at ginny_mccoo write about finding Older Lovers. Maybe it's just that I'm used to introspective literary girls, to girls who live inside books, and that kaylyssa and her commenters are indie-rock girls who spend time at clubs and bars and out in the social world.

I still need postcards from distant cities. I won't be visiting cities on my own again. It's a major operation just to get me to the sushi bar south of the university. I just need to know that there are still cities out there. And I need to know that girls find me worth the cost of mailing a postcard. And I'll note that, despite various promises, no girl over the last four years has managed to send me a Vienna subway map. They give them out free at the Karlsplatz U-Bahn station--- and I need to have one that I can frame for my wall.

Alessandra at bel_ebat wrote me about the affair she had with her friend Alice when the two of them were freshmen at university. High drama, it was--- scenes, passion, explosive sex, cocaine, friends alternately intrigued and appalled, emotional exhaustion. Alessandra described it as her first serious relationship with a girl. My understanding is that she and Alice have remained friends--- which is good. They're both lovely girls and fine writers. Alessandra was able to be vur' open at eighteen about her first lesbian affair. That's something I do have to admire--- that she was blasé about it, that it wasn't something she needed to hide. Alessandra has always had a great deal of courage about her loves, her travels, the risks she takes, the life she wants. I do admire her.

Just as I admire both Lissy at emigree and Ginny at ginny_mccoo.

Stella at stelladellasera and Caitlin at kissmecaitlin are off in Virginia for the holiday weekend, visiting various of the Island's poly intersectors. Stella has become something of a missionary for consensual slavery and s/m. Well--- Stella and Caitlin would be much better missionaries to find at one's door than either Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons ("Mom-rons"). The Vanished and leggy Marnie Lorimer devoted herself (successfully) during senior year at high school to seducing Mormon missionary boys on Oahu--- great Stories, mind you. But I do think finding Stella and Caitlin handing out copies of "Story of O" at one's door has even better Story potential.

Bill Murray in "Meatballs" (1980)...a youngish Bill Murray dancing with Kate Lynch to bad disco: "Is that a bra you're wearing, or are you expecting an assassination attempt?" This may or may not relate back to the bra-gun in "The Tenth Victim".

I must sit and talk with Liz V. at nightmareteeth about mid-morning cocktails. I don't do Bloody Marys, and Mimosas have been overdone. I do trust Liz V. about such things.

I'm looking at Elyse Sewell's journal at elysesewell right now. I'm a major Elyse fan. She's fun and clever and sardonic and has good legs. I loved her "Beauty and the Biz" book--- major thanks to Siobhan in Adelaide for a copy. She's posted photos of her latest tiny model's apartment--- in Hong Kong, this time. It's...miniscule. A Hong Kong version of a Japanese pod. But it does have a certain Wm. Gibson / "Stratosphere Girl" charm. And my own guess is that I'll be spending the rest of my life in places no bigger than the one in the photos.

One major regret about the Fourth of July weekend--- one that I had about Memorial Day and will have about Labour Day, too: Eduardo-kun gets no barbeque. No sausage, no burgers, no steak--- nothing done over charcoal. The Display Items in their bikinis down by the pool can invite themselves to any of the various Straight Boys' cook-outs. I'm not invited to any social functions. People in my current profession--- Rechtsanwalt ---seem to always be going to parties and crawfish boils and barbeques. You wouldn't know that from my Filofax, of course. I'm never invited anywhere, even to firm functions--- Eduardo-kun isn't able to get sausage or crawfish or burgers: again, I have no social standing.

The art-history girl in Nr. 210--- the one with the stack of ArtForum issues in the passenger seat of her Civic ---was sitting out on her balcony yesterday. Racer-bank tank top, bra-less, faded hiphuggers, hair down, barefoot. Working her way through a large bottle of white wine and being giddy-flirtatious on her mobile. I could hear the purr in her voice. The tall lithe bikini girl who lives in Nr. 110 brought her latest Male home last night. She was in her trademark tiny shorts, finishing off a Corona as she led him around the pool to her door. I could look out from my kitchen window at 0200 and see her kick off her sandals and pull her latest Male by the hand through her living room and back toward her bedroom. Someone was spending Saturday night with her legs over a lover's shoulders. I of course sat up and listened to Eluvium and Loscil and tried to drink myself to sleep.

Kamila did send me a message vur' late from Seattle. She wrote that she was up late smoking and listening to Mahler and hearing the sound of a train in the distance. Trains, she wrote, are always symbols of romance. I remember my apartment on Court Street in New Haven, and hearing the Montreal train go north from NYC through the railroad cut down behind my building every night. Trains are symbols of romance, yes. Lissy at emigree knows about caresses and orgasms on a train; Ioana at winterbymorning is planning for sex aboard a train running across Castile. Trains late at night can symbolise romance. But for me they'll always and ever symbolise escape. I spent summer and autumn nights for two years there on Court Street going out to sit by the railroad cut and watch the NYC-to-Montreal Amtrak run north. I always thought of just boarding the train at New Haven and getting off in Montreal the next morning and starting a new life with a new name. There's always the chance that I'd be valuable to someone then...