I was looking at Arthur Philips' "Prague" this afternoon. It's actually set in Budapest in 1990, just after the collapse of Communist rule. It occurs to me--- reading about the young Western expats and interns in the story ---that should any of them have impregnated local girls, their daughters would be just about old enough now to be having sex with Westerners in Budapest clubs. Which is a way of saying that the old regime in eastern Europe is now nearly twenty years gone. I was in Buda in 1991...and I really don't like various of the implications in that statement.

I did join the book group Belle de Jour has set up at Facebook. The book for July of the Year Eight is "The Ladies of Grace a Dieu". I'm a major fan of Clarke's "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell", and I liked the title story in "Ladies" rather a lot. I like Belle's blog a lot--- though not so much the book she did. Still...I want to read along at her book group and see what her literary tastes are like.

Debauchette and Kasia at the BeautifulAndDepraved blog are trying to do a website for what Kasia calls "postmodern porn"--- erotica that's "celebratory" and elegant and well-crafted. Both girls are good writers; I'd like to see what the finished site is like. Erotica is hard to write--- dialogue most of all. Erotica can so easily turn into bad slapstick, and it requires continual inventiveness. Maybe it's Sade's "120 Days of Sodom" where after a while Sade just...lost interest. He just throws mathematics at the reader: so many characters, so many possible couplings, so many acts. Do the math. There have been a couple of porn films that I thought were elegantly done--- Andrew Blake's "House of Dreams" and "Secrets". Of course, they were done back in the heyday of the MTV/"Miami Vice" aesthetic. They have that feel--- lots of David Hockney colours, lots of quick cuts, no dialogue, lots of Richard Neutra-esque houses as sets. And of course girls dressed in '80s L.A. haut-decadence designer chic. I made a note somewhere when I first saw "House of Dreams"--- it looked like the sets for "Manhunter". You could've walked out of the Tropical Deco FBI headquarters in "Manhunter" and into the rooftop Malibu sex scene in "House of Dreams" without missing a beat.

"Manhunter" is delicious to look at. And the obvious jump is to "To Live and Die in L.A."--- another Wm. Petersen film. And "To Live and Die in L.A." has that great Wang Chung soundtrack...

When Debauchette and Kasia do their new site, I wonder if they'll give it an s/m flavour (or at least a Helmut Newton kind of s/m flavour). Last night I was exchanging notes from a girl who'd actually done university in western Louisiana, and she did agree that s/m can be seriously attractive. I will have to talk to her about what makes it attractive to girls. There's the whole sensation of surrender, I suppose. And maybe the fashion thing. But I've always said--- I've certainly written about it here ---that I was first attracted to s/m for reasons of class.

Fetishes have their own rank-hierarchy, their own social class markers. S/M is at the top, always. It's the upper class fetish. It's the intellectual's fetish, too. S/M is abstract and ritualised. It requires scenarios and attention to character. The key s/m novels--- "Story of O", say, or "The Image", or "Carrie's Story" ---all take place in expensive surroundings and feature expensive equipment. Stella at stelladellasera wrote of spending last week doing s/m things on an "estate" in northern Virginia--- with visits from an ex-Older Lover/Master who owns an estate and manor house of his own in Scotland. Let's take it as a given--- if you're at a party for a particular sexual taste and people are flying in on international flights, it's a high-end fetish.

S/M is at the top of the fetish rank hierarchy (though bondage is far lower down, since it's all about ropes and knot-tying rather than sex or fashion or expensive equipment). My guess would be that either the Pretty Feet people or the Big Baby types are at the bottom: low-rent fetishes, fetishes with no Helmut Newton potential. Furries, of course, are so far down that they're off the scale and out into space.

Sarah--- the girl from western Louisiana ---told me that she'd once had a vur' bad affair with some guy who would try to hurt her during sex and snarl "Take it, bitch!" I had to cringe. I like Sarah, and there's a crucial difference between s/m sex and wanting to hurt someone. And "Take it, bitch!" is just so utterly cliched and stupid... Even for Sodomitical Practices with co-eds, it's a cliched thing to cry aloud during sex. I can only think of one way to make it work. I can imagine tracing a fingertip over a girl's lips--- very slowly, with a delicate, feathery touch ---and whispering, "Take it bitch..." while I do. That just might work. I'll have to ask Sarah and Ms. Chang both about that.

Every time I see "Prag"--- the German spelling ---I want to start pronouncing "Prague" as "Prag-way". Call it one more reason why I'm going to hell...

The blonde sugarbaby/escort girl across the street at Nr. 937 drove into her driveway and garage this evening. Her own vehicle is a new Civic. Not a Jaguar sedan, but efficient and respectable and nondescript. That's always a good set of qualities in a car for a girl with an income based on cash. I did note last weekend that she has a deck in the back yard. She was out on the deck tanning--- bikini top off, hands over breasts. That seems to be the new Display Item suntan pose this summer. I managed to see the blonde girl while walking past her house on my way down to the park by the old Spanish fort to sit and read. I refuse to succumb to the whole "Rear Window" thing here, but I would like to know her backstory--- and know what her market niche is, what her special skills are.

It did rain this morning--- a sudden, sharp, five-minute rain at 1030 hours. I only realised that it had rained when I left my office to walk back to Kinko's and saw the drying streets and smelled that after-the-rain smell. Well--- I always hope for Iso T-Storms in the evening. I'll hope for them this weekend.

I am thinking of telegraph sex tonight--- ditditditdahdahditditdit ---and wondering about steampunk erotica... It does have a certain charm...as long as it doesn't turn into something like Klingon Wife-Swapping at Star Trek conventions or Ye Olde Medieval Ren Faire Sex...