It's cool and grey outside. Rain came this afternoon and washed the air clean. I walked home in that post-rain coolness and sat outside with a drink. I thought about being at Jamie Beauboeuf's wedding reception on an afternoon like this--- the guests relieved at being able to go out into the garden after all, the caterers dashing to set up the tables for the trays of small triangular sammiches and the serving stations for champagne. I'd drink champagne--- I'd imagine that Jamie Beauboeuf would have Taittinger served ---and stand by the gazebo and hide small triangular sammiches in my coat pockets, all wrapped in napkins.

There are fashion things I don't understand. It was 93 here today. Lissy at emigree writes about being at Montauk at the end of June and taking off her cardigan while climbing into bed with her soldier-lover. I remember summers on the Connecticut shore and at Easthampton. Late June down at Montauk could be as hot during the day as here. I can't imagine Lissy wearing a cardigan. How could a girl wear a sweater on a late-June day anywhere outside the Orkneys? But even while I was thinking of writing this, I looked out the window and saw one of the bikini girls leaving her apartment with a lover. She had on hiphugger jeans and a white cotton shirt (untucked, sleeves rolled up) and a navy-blue cardigan. Was she planning for wine bars with serious air conditioning, or was she privy to fashion knowledge I'll never have?

So far I've had a couple of vur' perfunctory and brusque answers to my Essay Question. Back-of-my-hand answers, really. And nothing at all from the girls--- Ms. Chang, Selena at Atwowaydream, Ms. cataplexis, Lissy at emigree, Ms. Flox at besideserato ---whose answers I'd most like to hear. The question was straightforward enough, I thought:

I wanted something that really wasn't about how girls did phonesex, or what they did, or their best/most wicked experiences. I'd hoped for something thoughtful, something that really was a riff on the idea of anonymity and placelessness, something that always had the art of loneliness is the art of love is the art of war as a background theme, something that was about oblivion as a dream. The question, I wrote, is about how you see phonesex, and how it fits in to your vision of yourself. I do still very much want to hear from Ms. Chang, or Ms. cataplexis or Sarah at sarahmarie02 about the idea of voices late at night.

Anonymity means a lot to me as a concept. Christmas at the little hotel downtown here--- the film-in-my-head about the solitary girl, about going almost wordlessly to her room, about watching her stand in just a sheet and smoke while looking out at winter rains. That's a dream that I'll have with me for years and years. The little all-night diners in the frame story at "Red Shoe Diaries", the cafe in the high desert night in Beth Orton's video for "Anywhere", even all-night cafes in Murakami short stories: romance framed with anonymity, with confidences shared with strangers. I do wonder if I'm really only at home with voices that come without names.

Imogen Heap's "Speak For Yourself" CD is playing behind me. I do love her voice.

I miss voices. I miss knowing that someone can reach out over the aether and find something valuable in me. That's not altogether a statement about phonesex. I miss voices that whispered to me about ordinary affection and playfulness. I miss hearing the Pony Voice. I miss soft, kind voices saying, "You are Three. I am Five. I will teach you how to cross the street and look both ways." I miss the Small Pika reading "The Moonflute" to me. I miss a girl being Roman Dirge's little Lenore and saying "I am very little!" in the Lenore Voice. I know that girls once long ago saw me as the Wicked Older Lover, that they expected to strike a kind of Jeremy Irons pose. That was how I had value: as the thrill ride at the theme park, as the voice for all the Humbert fantasies they imagined in their teens. I could never tell some girls about other voices I needed. I could never have stepped out of character with, e.g., Ms. Chang to talk about stufflings or be Three. Ms. Flox at besideserato wrote once that she'd instantly walk out on any male who had stufflings on his shelves. Maegan at _missingpiece read "The Little Prince" and "The Missing Piece" to herself alone in bed, but she'd never have slept with a male who wanted to read children's books aloud with a lover. I can be the Wicked Older Lover. I can be a theme park thrill ride. (Or at least I once could) But there's no way that I can explain that I do need to be petted upon the forehead and told that I'm a vur' good little long-eared desert hedgehog. The Wicked Older Lover can't ever make the Happy *Wuff!* Noise or sing the Llama Song in bed.

Note: there is a procedure for forehead petting. Arm extended straight out, parallel to the ground. One uses the wrist only, thumb of the petting hand folded under against the palm. One pets the forehead vur' slowly, in groups of three. And one says vur' slowly "thump...thump...thump" while petting. There are always procedures to these things.

I'm trying to remember--- ten years ago, almost. Candi Retiz in Houston was the girl who knew best how to say "thump...thump...thump" while petting foreheads.

"Voices Carry"... I miss that song, too... I took Lacey to hear Aimee Mann, once. I remember the cold blue lights on stage and Lacey in this white khaki miniskirt, pressed against me.

Selena wrote once about the first woman who was her lover, a voice who'd enticed Selena at sixteen to a motel room in Florida and turned out to be in her forties. Selena wrote that, well, in some sense the woman probably should've gone to jail...but that, after all, it was what Selena wanted and probably needed. And that it was there in the hot Florida night made it all seem...like it was inevitable. Lacey was always good at that, at finding the age difference part of the thrill, at using it later for stories. Ms. Chang and Lissy told me about the same thing, about being proud of being not-quite-legal and having Older Lovers whether in the flesh or over the phone.

Well, Lacey would say, there I was--- a junior in high school, out far too late, sneaking off where no one knew I was, and I ended up tied to a bed by someone twice my age and fucked with a pistol... All totally Lifetime Movie of the Week. She'd tell girls that and watch the horror on their faces--- and then it was time for my line. Timing is everything, after all. My role was to lean over her from behind and say, "And I didn't take you for dinner afterwards?" She had that perfect deadpan expression, and that lovely gaunt Byzantine icon face. She could always play so perfectly with the difference in ages. I remember Lacey three-quarters undressed in a parked car by the university lakes, lying back in my arms, laughing at how scandalous and delicious and hot her schoolmates thought going to parties with undergraduate boys was. Never fuck your prom date, I told her: Fuck the chaperones. She laughed over that for hours. She did show up at my door after making an appearance at her prom. Prom dress became cocktail dress--- worn with nothing at all underneath ---and we went out for cocktails and dancing. I miss that.

I miss the gentleness in her voice, too. On Ecstasy sometimes, true. But mostly just kindness. She'd pet my stufflings (Dorian always approved of her) and put my head in her lap and just talk to me and brush my hair. Gentleness matters. Even as my official Violated Catholic Schoolgirl, she knew how to create a space filled with the Pony Voice and with affection.

Philip Glass' "Orphee Suite" on CD arrived today--- a recommendation from Lissy at emigree. Lissy has good taste in ambient music. For all that she says that she's an indie-rock girl, I do defer to her tastes in ambient and electronica. And I've always been a Philip Glass fan, ever since in the early years of MTV I saw the video for "A Gentleman's Honour" from Glass' "The Photographer".

Ms. cataplexis writes that the best sex she's had has always been with boys she's known for a hour or two at most. Sex before names, sex before conversation--- Strangers Have The Best Candy. She and I do agree on that. Anonymity makes it so much easier to lose oneself in sensation, to not have to worry about the world outside a bedroom. I hope that Ms. cataplexis doesn't lose that in monogamy and morality, that she doesn't look back from her mid-twenties and reject her Wicked Youth.

Lissy at emigree is reading a book called "He's a Stud, She's a Slut...". A feminista book about double standards, obviously. Now--- I'll agree with the premise: there's a vur' pernicious double standard about such things. But feminista books all come down to saying that sluthood is bad, that both male and female should be held to a single standard that valorises monogamy as the Best Way. Feministas phrase that in terms of "self-respect" and "responsibility", but their point is the same as any right-wing moralista: Adventures and Wickedness are Bad, Sex shouldn't be about delights and exploration and pure sensation. I take it as a given that once a girl starts reading feminista theory that she'll give up being sexually adventurous...and I absolutely take it as a given that she'll never want anything to do with me. The sex blog girls have contempt for me as a male, and the same is true of feministas. There's not a single thing I'd done with the girls I've been involved with, not a single fantasy I've ever shared with girls over the aether or in a hotel bed that they wouldn't regard as contemptible, vile, and the sort of thing the "Law and Order: SVU" team should be prosecuting.

I used to look back at the girls I've been with and think that I'd been...useful. Or at least serviceable. The sex blog girls have managed to convince me that every girl I've been with must necessarily have despised me and found me contemptible--- looks, endowments, talents. And now the feminista and 12-Step Cult types (e.g., Dr. Drew) have convinced me that the fantasies I've shared with girls are...Wrong and all have DSM-IV labels.

There are no voices that offer me small, child-like Pony Voice moments, that see me as a vur' pettable little small long-eared desert hedgehog. And there are no voices that offer me seductions and think I can be part of Wicked Delights.

I could eat sammiches at Jamie Beauboeuf's wedding reception. But even amid anonymity and night voices on the aether, I can't lose myself in sensation, and I can't be valuable to lovely girls. I can't even get girls to answer Essay Questions or tell me their own dreams of oblivion and anonymous voices.