Well, I did come into work early this morning, sit at my desk with a vanilla latte, and order an iPod. In theory--- there's an 80gb black iPod Classic coming via Amazon. I bought a protection plan along with the iPod itself--- advice from Lissy at emigree. In a couple of days, I'll buy a portable wall charger and a case. I'll download iTunes one night soon, too. The plan is reasonably straightforward: get the iPod and start loading it with my favourite music. I'm told that it takes a while to load an entire CD to a laptop for transfer to an iPod, so I'll have to master that--- and of course master loading individual tracks. I'll be calling various people I know for tech advice and generalised hand-holding. I'm not really tech-averse; I just have a low tolerance for frustration.

And of course there is the simple enough fact that I know nothing at all about downloading music. The most-pettable little K-dot at citydress has sent me a few songs over the years, but I've listened to them without actually saving them to the laptop. I have no songs on the Tare Panda Laptop, and I'll admit that I never quite understood why one would keep music on a laptop--- if only because of the sound quality and the speakers. And of course I've always had a mortal terror of filling up the hard drive. What if I ran out of memory just when I needed it? This is only another facet of my absolute fear of having batteries run low on anything.

Still--- my invitation to send me playlists remains open. I always need suggestions on music. And on films.

Two diaries at Diaryland---- PondLife and BaneBerry. I've just discovered them, and I'm fascinated by both. The story behind PondLife intrigues me deeply, and BaneBerry is wonderfully enigmatic and alluring. I hope that they'll be around indefinitely, and they'll both update frequently.

And I wish that Christian at McEarstix would return from wherever she's gone--- Cape Town or Bombay or Iceland ---and post again from Austin.

There's a passage at BaneBerry that I do love:

I want to exercise myself to death. I want to run and run and run until I disintegrate into another time, become a member of oblivion, and cease to be anything more than a hot desert drive.

I want to stretch my skin so tight across my bones that my body has no other option than to implode.

It's so easy to imagine a girl's voice whispering that into the clear, dry air of a desert night.

Autechre is playing. The "Amber" CD. Christian at McEarstix first told me about it. And Kelsey at clush, and I think Krystina at yes_please.

I keep thinking about telegraph sex--- ditditditdahdahditditdahdit ---and about steampunk girls keeping a telegraph key in a carrying case where other girls might carry a vibrator. It's a lovely image. How can one not like Morse Code sex? Still...it's phonesex that's always sex for the lonely and over-intellectual.

I'll pose an essay question here. I do hope that lovely wicked clever readers and correspondents will offer up their answers. It's an essay question, mind you, so what I'm hoping for are essays more than lists. Answers can be screened--- I can understand about discretion. But I do hope that girls will take a few minutes and try this as an essay questyion. I'll give the same instructions I used to give my students when I taught History: Think first, then write. Be specific and give examples.

So... quaere:

What is it that makes phonesex good for you? What makes a partner good at phonesex? Was there a learning curve for you with phonesex? Do you feel more or less free to be open and experimental at phonesex? Has phonesex changed for you over the years? Is it harder or easier for you to do it now than in your teens? Do you count it as "real" sex? Would you rather ask or be asked to do it? Is the quality of orgasm different from masturbation? From sex-in-the-flesh? Is it easier or more difficult to talk to a stranger after phonesex than after a hook-up in the flesh? Is there a particular tone or style of voice you find particularly hot for phonesex? Do you want anonymity from partners or not?

Any answers are appreciated--- the more introspective and thoughtful the better. And the question isn't about fantasies; it's not about that at all. The question is about how you see phonesex, and how it fits in to your vision of yourself.

Phonesex always had part of its appeal in being all about voices and Stories. I wrote here once about a Christmas hotel dinner in a small hotel downtown here. I imagined meeting a lovely solitary traveler girl and going up to her room for sex--- no names, few words ---while there was a cold rain outside against the windows. The attraction there was anonymity and oblivion. There's something of that in phonesex. When it's done right, when it's done with someone who has a kind of instinctive ability to meld fantasies with you, it can be passionate and delightful and fun. There's no question about that. There have been nights with girls on the phone that have gone on for hours and left both of us shattered and exhausted. But there's also the idea of anonymity, of being just a voice. And of oblivion, of cutting oneself away from the world and time and the past and losing oneself in being just a voice.

I keep returning to the image of being a voice on the aether, of being a voice there in the high desert night. Phonesex is sex without geography or history, sex that's only about voices. Voices, Stories, placelessness... It is a kind of oblivion. I do like that. There's an immense attraction in anonymity and oblivion. I've lived my life through words, books, stories. Phonesex is sex for ghosts. I've always liked that. I like the whisper of ghost voices back and forth across the aether.

The essay question is about how lovely readers and correspondents have experienced phonesex. Not so much about what they do while engaged, or their best experiences, or even how and when they first learned to do it. Those things are worth knowing, and they're things that engage all my years of training as an historian. Maybe some of the question is tied up with how a girl feels about masturbation, or about her acceptance of fantasy. I do know girls--- Baltimore, Sarasota, San Antonio, NYC ---who did phonesex all through high school with partners they'd met online. Strangers' voices, but their own touch. I do wonder how lovely clever wicked girls at sixteen imagine the strangers out on the aether, and how they imagine (or envision) what they're doing. Is it sex--- or "just sex" ---or is it romance as well, or part of the arts of loneliness?

There is hunger artistry. So many girls I know are devotees. But there are the arts of loneliness as well. The art of love is the art of loneliness is the art of war... Hunger, loneliness--- they can both be as mannered and formalised and ritualised as ikebana or haiku.

Voices on the aether are EVP voices, ghost voices. I do think of phonesex as being one of the arts of loneliness, the arts of learning to live as a ghost.

I am having having this sudden flash of linkage: phonesex and ambient music and EVP. I have no idea why. I can feel high desert air around that linkage, or close my eyes and taste salt air in off an autumn sea.

Out there anong the ghostgirls, I hope there are readers and correspondents who'll write and tell me about the essay question, who'll tell me what ghost voices over the aether have meant to them...