I noted that Stella at stelladellasera replied to something I wrote about her caressing her gay younger brother's "big handsome cock". I cannot separate that phrase from some imaginary Patrick O' Brian scene. I can't stop doing this bizarre English accent and imagining Jack Aubrey's landlady at The Grapes saying, "Oh, Captain Aubrey, for shame! A great big handsome cock like you, having dinner at the First Lord's, and both elbows out in your best coat!" I just can't stop.

The phrase itself still makes me aware of my own failings. I'm not likely ever to have a girl use the phrase about me in any approving way. Though it's all too easy to imagine a girl saying it to me with absolute and withering sarcasm. Any of the sex blog girls, Metonym or Minderella at Diaryland, besideserato here, Taci in Portland, very probably Ms. cataplexis and Ms. Chang in Florida: it's easy enough to assign names to the mocking voices. I could imagine voices of girls out of my own past. They never actually said anything like that to me; they never mocked or derided me to my face. But it seems so sure to me right now that they'd have been laughing whenever my back was turned, or when they drove home, shuddering with the disgust they'd hidden from me.

Every time I read memoirs or blog posts or erotica where girls write about the "iron-hard" or "hard, thick" or "big handsome" cock of a lover, it just reinforces my belief that not only will I never, ever have sex-in-the-flesh again, I'd have to refuse any offer that might lead to public mockery and humiliation. After all--- if a girl mocks you there in the bedroom, she'll tell all of her friends as soon as she gets to her BlackBerry. My looks, poverty, age, and social failings mean that I'll never have sex-in-the-flesh again. And the fact that girls do write entries about "big handsome cocks" means that not only can I never risk sex in the future, every sexual experience I've ever had has now been invalidated. I can never not think that every girl I've ever been with was secretly mocking me and now looks back at me with disgust and contempt.

I have no suits in my closet. I don't own a suit. I can't afford them, hate wearing them in the heat, and don't know how to look good in them. I have no suits in my closet. This is exactly the same as not having a penis. Which is the same as having a bald spot. The mathematical linkages there do leave me puzzled.

Last night I awakened at 0300 with major sinus pain. I took more pills and went out to sleep on the couch. Sleeping in the living room seems to help. Maybe it's just that it's a larger room, one with more air circulation. I don't want to spend the rest of the summer sleeping out here and hoping against hope that my sinuses don't get infected.

I do want to know more about the backstory at PondLife. PondLife lives in Charleston, a city I've seen only vur' briefly. I remember wrought-iron and palm trees and sunlight on the harbour. There was a girl I knew on-line once, a girl who called herself GenVali and lived just outside Charleston. That was in...maybe the Year Three. I haven't heard from her in five years. I think of her when I do think of Charleston. I do want to know PondLife's full backstory. It's a backstory that does make me hear David Sylvian and Bryan Ferry in my head.

I've had two people respond to my Essay Question--- kirstys_girl responded here; BaneBerry responded at D-Land. I'm hoping--- hoping ---that Ms. cataplexis will answer. I'd really like to hear her thoughts. I'd like to hear from sarahmarie02 and Tiff at vanity_overkill and Selena at Atwowaydream, too. Answers from Alessandra at bel_ebat and Lissy at emigree and Umi at ivich and Krystina at yes_please would be fascinating, but I'll never hear from them. I'd never be able to ask them. Ms. Flox at besideserato will never know that the question is out there.

I need to sit and watch "Persepolis". I need to be able to talk with Lissy at emigree about it. It's just hard at night to sit and watch a film. The sinus pills may be making be nervous and edgy, or it may just be that I'm so obsessed with being on line at night that I won't sit there and watch when I could be writing on line. I used to have what the Germans call Sitzfleisch--- the ability to sit in one place all day and just read or watch films. I'm too on edge these days to do that. I can't finish books or films, and I know I'll have to work at watching "Persepolis" all the way through, no matter how good it is.

Stella at stelladellasera and her friends and lovers of the Island are now part of a whole interlocking geometry of s/m couples, of networks of masters and slaves and trainers. I have to say that while I always liked the idea of a hidden, alternative world of elegant s/m decadence, one problem does occur to me... As a single male, I'm not really welcome at parties or clubs or dinners in the ordinary world. I have to wonder if the same wouldn't be true in the s/m world. And of course--- that applies a fortiori to a single male without a "big handsome cock" and a seven-figure income. I'd be convinced that whenever and wherever I entered the s/m world, the Cool Kids would be elsewhere. Let's remember: I suffer from both terminal buyer's remorse and major Prague Syndrome--- i.e., the conviction that I'm in Budapest and all the Cool Kids are in Prague.

It does occur to me that the Encounter Lissy at emigree had in Stockholm with an Older Stranger was fueled by absinthe. I have a collection of bottles of good absinthe there on my shelves, but I can't actually open them. They were purchased to be opened for Events, to be shared with someone special, to be fuel for seductions. And there's just no reason for them ever to be opened now.

Marianne Faithfull had a son when vur' young--- she was married vur' young indeed to a fellow who was a sculptor at Cambridge. Her son is in his forties now--- a rather respected financial journalist. Nicholas Dunbar, he is. He has a book out called "Inventing Money" that's supposed to tell the story of the rise and fall of one of the first program-driven hedge funds. I do like it that Ms. Faithfull has a son who's successful as a writer, who's written books on economic theory. I do like that.

I'll never have a girl use Stella's line to describe me. I'll never have a girl want my body (did they ever?) or my voice again. I'll never have what either Ms. cataplexis or Lissy at emigree seem to have: a lover, and the courage to make a lover part of their lives. I've forgotten how to touch a girl, how a lover is touched. As a single male--- as a male tout court ---it's contemptible and pathetic to touch oneself. I can't touch a lover again--- run a finger over soft lips or a bare thigh or sharp hipbones. There won't be hotel beds for me again, or looking at a lover across a coffeeshop table in the morning. There won't be touches again. And now there won't be voices, either. I've lost the ability to touch or be touched, and I can only think that I should lose my voice as well. There's nothing that my voice is valued for.

At the end of the Year Seven, I wrote:

Sometimes as a small, long-eared desert hedgehog, I do pretend to be a vur' small little vicuna standing on the shores of the Strait Lemaire. This does make me feel better when I am sad.

I need to imagine that again. I could tell myself that when I am sad, I eat a cookie, but I have none in my apartment. Hunger artistry doesn't happen where there are cookies--- not Hydrox, not pecan sandies with chocolate chips.

A small vicuna standing on the shores of the Strait Lemaire... That does seem vur' lovely. Silence, solitude, placelessness, a kind of vision of oblivion out there in the grey Southern Ocean.

Placelessness and oblivion and empty spaces and silence matter more all the time. Back in December of the Year Seven I wrote that

As a small, fluffy vicuna, I could go sproing! and bound down to the edge of the Strait Lemaire and listen to a new iPod. I'd just have to choose the right music for the Green Flash.

I'll have the new iPod by Monday. But I still need to go down to the Strait Lemaire and look for the Green Flash.