I'd heard Marianne Faithfull's "As Tears Go By" when I was a vur' petite little long-eared desert hedgehog. It was a song that one heard late at night on radio stations that specialised in Sixties nostalgia. And I knew a few things about Ms. Faithfull--- the affair with Mick Jagger, that she'd been naked in a fur rug at a famous drug bust, that she'd been in a couple of arty films in the late Sixties, that she'd been famously self-destructive. She was a name from the past, just a casualty of the Sixties. And then one winter when I was at New Haven, Constanza insisted that I listen to Marianne Faithfull's "Why'd Ya Do It?" This song, Constanza said, was from her comeback album, and would never be played on the radio. I listened to it and just sat there stunned in my rooms on Court Street. I made a quick trip to buy the album the next morning and just played it over and over. "Broken English"--- the title track ---was incredible. And so were "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan" and her cover of "Working-Class Hero".

Marianne Faithfull was the voice for so much of my Lost Youth. She did three albums in quick succession that just became soundtrack albums for my life: "Broken English", "Dangerous Acquaintances" and "A Child's Adventure". All the mixtapes I made for girls in those days had Marianne Faithfull tracks on them. "Times Square", "Falling From Grace", "Running For Our Lives"--- those were songs I always played for girls I fancied, and they were songs I played for myself nights driving in to dance clubs.

A boy named David--- sometime stand-up comic, failed screenwriter ---used to tell me that one day he was going to do a screenplay for Andrew Holleran's "Dancer From The Dance", and that "Times Square" had to be played as the main theme. I'll give him that--- he was right about the song. He was right, too, that "Dancer" needed (and still needs) to be filmed. He was never happy that I'd read the novel, or liked it, or had any views on how it should be filmed. Straight boys, David would say, shouldn't be reading "Dancer". I didn't know Dr. Maturin's line in those days--- "The back of my hand to such stuff!" ---but I did let him know that "Times Square" had been a favourite of mine long before he'd heard it and that I'd read "Dancer" and been charmed it by long before he'd heard of it.

Marianne Faithfull was in her early thirties when that run of albums came out. She'd been the angelic blonde plaid-kilted convent-school girl when she first did "As Tears Go By". There in the early Eighties she had a fragile, haunted, spectral beauty. All in black, slender legs, enormous eyes, delicate and pale as a Venetian mask. I'd loved the voice I'd heard on "Broken English"--- that night-city voice, all cigarettes and whiskey and heroin. And one night at a club called Xanthus I looked up at the video screen over the dance floor and saw the twenty-years-after version of "As Tears Go By": b/w footage of Marianne at seventeen, when she'd first recorded the song...and the lyrics done in that beautiful, ruined voice from her thirties. Whatever I'd taken, however much coke or Ecstasy I'd done, however much vodka I'd had, everything burned away and I just stood there and felt absolutely alone in the dark, absolutely clear-headed, and absolutely in love with the girl and the voice.

I did see her live once. Lacey and I saw her in a tiny little club in New Orleans one cold night just as I was finishing my doctorate. Lacey sat there in some too-short black skirt and a black cashmere turtleneck with three-quarter sleeves and smoked Gitanes and rested her chin on my shoulder. I remember that. We were at a table as close to the stage as I could manage. Ms. Faithfull was in a man's white shirt--- tab collar, undone French cuffs ---and black leggings. When she sang "Sister Morphine" and faded it into "St. James Infirmary" I could feel Lacey's fingers tighten hard on my arm through my blazer. When she sang "Falling From Grace" I could feel tears start.

Later on, Lacey kissed me and lit another cigarette and looked at me and said, "She's the only one you'd leave me for, isn't she?" All I could say was that, well--- maybe in 1964... Lacey pressed one bare leg against me and shook her head. No, she said. No. Not then. She wasn't doomed then.

Well--- Lacey was right. Lacey at fifteen, Lacey at twenty-one, Lacey now. She always knew me better than anyone else ever has.

Earlier this evening I watched a documentary about Marianne Faithfull--- "Dreaming My Dreams" (1999). She must be in her mid-sixties now--- but she's elegant and articulate and thoughtful. A fine actress, too. And she still has that voice--- she's done some brilliant Kurt Weill covers. Marianne Faithfull singing "Surabaya Johnny" or "Pirate Jenny" or "Ballad of the German Soldier's Bride" will still take your breath away.

And "Times Square" is still the song--- and video ---that I have in my head whenever I think of the night city where I want to live.

There are no answers yet to the Essay Question I posed in my last entry. It does depress me that no one has offered up an answer. I seem to have no luck at all with requests for Lists, and now no luck with Essay Questions. I'd wanted to hear from ghostgirls out there about voices late at night on the aether, about whether phonesex makes them feel more or less isolated, about whether phonesex is a way they've found to explore the night dreams inside their fantasies. Essay Questions, but no answers.

I did go out and swim laps earlier. I like the exhaustion. I like having chlorine in my hair. I like the feel of sitting in the sun afterwards and feeling the heat on my face. I may even go out late tonight and swim again. I've had encouragement from Ms. Chang on that, and from bella_sumision and sarahmarie02.

I have no idea who Jamie Beauboeuf is. She's a girl whose name I saw in some quasi-Papyrus font, engraved and done in a rich, deep royal blue on a high-end wedding invitation. I saw it there on the sidewalk this morning when I walked to work, there in the doorway of the hip little salon near my office. I know the salon--- a leggy, cachexical, semi-goth girl called Kendall does my hair there. I don't know Jamie Beauboeuf. I have no idea who she might be. A lovely name, though. I should've picked the invitation up and made note of when she's getting married. After all--- I would've had an invitation. I could've dressed in something respectable-yet-casual and gone to the reception and had champagne and little triangular sandwiches ("sammiches"). You can never have too many little triangular sammiches.

Selena at Atwowaydream at D-Land writes that cigarettes are her tool to make hunger easier. She's write about that. A cigarillo, a Parliament, a Gitane Filtre--- those can all be accessories for hunger artistry. Swimming laps does that, too. A pleasant exhaustion, but no sense of hunger. I must ask Ms. Chang about that, too--- find out if swimming through salt water helps Libet not eat.

I did find this at one of Ms. cataplexis' secret journals:

How quiet and deliciously urgent it will be when we arrive at my parents' house from the airport, muffled under layers of blankets, our nakedness electric.

Ms. cataplexis is writing about returning from her stay in Manila. I've noted to her that she needn't be monogamous while overseas. Infra Equinoxialem nihil peccari: that's always been true. No sin below the equator, and none in the tropics, either. Allegiances back in Pennsylvania don't count in the Orient--- or the Gateway to the Orient.

But the passage I quoted is something that makes me feel empty and disheartened. That she can imagine so easily having sex at her parents' house is something I could never have done in grad school. I'd have been far too afraid of having to Explain myself, afraid of having family say something--- say anything ---about my having a girl with me. Ms. cataplexis took a lover to Spain with her family on a family trip. Again, I could never have done that. Sharing a hotel room with a lover on a family trip would've been unthinkable. Someone would have said...something. I never introduced lovers to family or friends. I still won't. And I still won't meet a girl's family or friends. I don't want to have to deal with comments, and I don't want to introduce outsiders (myself included) into any family or friends situation. But it does utterly amaze and dishearten me that Ms. cataplexis so openly and easily lets her family know she has lovers. It's nothing I could ever have done, or ever do. I don't want to be judged, and I don't want comments about what I was doing or who I might be with.

Lissy at emigree does the same: goes off on romantic weeks with her soldier-lover, has a lover at her basement door before dawn, takes her soldier-lover up from her basement bedroom to breakfast with family. I could never have done that at twenty, and still wouldn't do it now. I could ask Lissy at emigree about it, but I do suspect she's not reading me--- or planning ever to tell me her Stories again.

I do wonder how Ginny at ginny_mccoo deals with introducing her Older Lovers to her parents. Or how she'll explain a trip to Shanghai with one.

Boards of Canada is playing behind me. I forget who first told me about them--- Lexie, maybe, or Christian Alexander at McEarstix. Ms. cataplexis asked me for a list of good ambient bands. I'll certainly prepare one for her. She tells me she wants ambient music that's "vaguely sexual"--- so maybe there are delightfully wicked things that she's doing alone under mosquito netting there naked in her Manila hotel bed. I do wonder whether the ambient music lists Brandon made for Lissy at emigree were carefully chosen to be...seductive. I won't be able to ask, but I will wonder.

"Persepolis" arrived today. I want to sit down tomorrow night and watch it through. Lissy at emigree gave the film high marks. I do have the complete graphic novel, but I'll wait on that 'til after I've seen the film.

I remain vur', vur' intrigued by both BaneBerry and PondLife at D-Land. I need to find out about Ms. BaneBerry's own secret diary. Is she the mysterious person in Raleigh NC who reads my diary? I know only that she's 5'10 and articulate and sardonic. And PondLife is breathtakingly well-done. Articulate, melancholy, dream-haunted. Someone whom I'd love to sit with over drinks in a long Charleston night and talk.

I can't think of eating tonight, and I can't quite focus enough to read. I will go out and swim more laps. Then I'll take more sinus pills and try--- for once ---to get a full night's sleep.

Though I still hope--- hope being all I have ---for answers to my Essay Question from lovely readers and correspondents out there on the aether. There are so many ghostgirls out there--- EVP voices, voices over a keitai heard on a seashore, or at the edge of the high desert. The Essay Question does matter. The trick is getting someone to offer up answers to me, to be a ghost voice leaving me answers here...