Stella at stelladellasera writes of the Ninth Circle of Hell, of Dante's frozen lake there at the bottom of the Inferno. I can close my eyes and see the faded calfskin book where I first read Dante. Something on the shelves at my grandfather's house, something from a set of matching classics he'd bought as a young man in Pennsylvania. I wanted to read the Inferno, though not so much the Purgatorio or the Paradiso. I think I'd seen some of the Gustav Dore illustrations, and, like "Picture of Dorian Gray", I associated the Inferno with the horror novels that had referenced it or combed it for epigraphs. I remember reading through the Inferno over the course of one summer. I remember thinking that I liked the idea of Vergil, though I didn't quite understand who he really was. I liked the idea of the City of Dis. I liked the name as much as I liked the idea of a city of demons. And I liked the idea of the Ninth Circle. I always imagined it in pale, frosted blues and deep purples and blacks. Of course I did cry over the idea of the First Circle--- not for the others. Everyone I admired in History was there. The First Circle of Hell is only a deficient Heaven, one critic wrote. I think I understood that slightly differently, even there at twelve: the First Circle was being kept forever in a waiting room, with no destiny at all, no resolution for anything. I was more afraid of that than any of the lower circles.

This morning I got up at dawn and drove to my old suburb. I found a little fake-Deco diner and did the Amber Valleta breakfast: black coffee and a cigarette. I finished that while the sky was still gray-blue, before the Deepest South day became too tropical and light-blasted for either.

The Big Box store by the post office was open, of course--- one of those places with cars there round the clock. I did buy a wall charger for the iPod and some sort of acrylic case. I'll keep the wall charger in my bedroom--- I don't want to have to keep the Tare Panda Laptop turned on all the time just to keep the iPod charged. I'll probably buy a cheap wall charger for my office, too. That makes it match with my little Nokia: one charger at home, one at my office, and one kept in my briefcase.

I keep hearing David Sylvian's voice in my head. "Gentlemen Take Polaroids", of course. And "Taking Islands in Africa". I always think of them as night songs--- songs that don't work if played in sunlight. "Taking Islands in Africa" is a song for the tropics, but it's still something that calls up open water at twilight:

When the evening fires burn
The daylight dead and gone
With you beside me we can run

Outside there's a world waiting
I'll take it all by storm
And when the sunset finds me
I'm coming home

Taking islands in Africa
Watch the slow boat hit and run
Taking islands in Africa
Just watch the slow boat hit and run

Everyday the sun beats down
I'll pull away from shore
The wind blows hard into my sails

I do think of sailboats moored off the coasts of Joan Didion countries. I imagine lithe and haunted girls--- Ms. Chang, Ms. cataplexis, Alessandra at bel_ebat ---diving naked from the deck into twilight water. Always twilight water. Sunlight and girls with all-over tans--- I do like girls with dark tans. But it's always twilight when I imagine them diving naked from the deck. I can imagine the colours out on the horizon, and the light of glowsticks there by the wheel. Open water at twilight--- or a bend in the James at midnight. I can see that, too.

Kamila called from Seattle last night to offer me advice on importing music via iTunes. I think that I activated the Tare Panda Laptop and did something with the iTunes settings, something to make songs take less space, something to make the whole thing more efficient. I think she walked me through that. 0230 hours--- my memory of it all is fragmented. Though I think I did tell her to see both "Persepolis" and "My Blueberry Nights".

Lissy at emigree writes that she went up to NYC by train with her soldier-lover and spent moments remembering lying naked and tangled in a lover's arms, remembering the safety of knowing that the body next to her wasn't going away. She pressed herself against her soldier-lover and then felt a small thought cold in the back of her mind: what if what she felt wasn't love for the individual boy with her, but rather just about finally having someone for whom she could offer herself up... I do know that fear. I can look into a girl's eyes and lose myself, but I'm never quite sure that I'm falling in love with her or with the idea of being part of a Story about a seduction, a Story about being in love.

Melissa at kraftig_bewegt called an hour or so after Kamila. She was frustrated and angry--- a client was at her Williamsburg apartment and wouldn't leave...and he just kept crying. I told her to be harsh: get him out, refuse to see him again, take all his cash and maybe one credit card. Never let a client see your own place--- I did tell her that. Never, never let a paying client stay over. And never deal with hedge fund types who are having some kind of breakdown, drug-assisted or not. I missed much of the story; I'll have to e-mail her about it later. All I could think of there at quarter to four in the morning was that there was little enough reason to get back to sleep...and maybe that Melissa's call was all part of some indie-noir movie I didn't want to be part of.

When I came down to my car this morning, I looked across the street at Nr. 937. The porch light was on, though the Civic was still in the garage. The blonde sugarbaby girl wasn't home yet. If I'd stayed there in the lee of the wall behind my complex long enough, I'd have seen a Jaguar sedan or a new Infiniti sports car deliver her home in the morning. I take it as a given that it's not the Walk O' Shame if a girl is delivered home by a chauffeur or a car service. And I suppose it's not the Walk O'Shame if a girl is delivered home by a client/keeper in an expensive vehicle. Cabs, yes--- cabs are Walk O' Shame. But not a car service, and not something chauffeured.

I'd never heard "Walk O' Shame" as a phrase until law school. Girls from Tulane used it--- about themselves, about other girls. It wasn't something I'd heard at New Haven or Auburn or Montevallo. I've heard it used in TV ads these days--- marketing some kind of energy drink to get a girl in last night's cocktail dress home in the morning.

This morning I climbed into my car there in the dawn and tried to remember when I last drove home from a girl's apartment. The last lover in my Past was at a hotel. I drove her back to her dorm suite at USM. I can't recall when last I walked home or drove home from a girl's bed. Two wars ago--- that would be true. America has fought two wars against the vile jihadis and the Mahometan hordes since ever a girl found me valuable enough to have me sleep over. Alessandra at bel_ebat was the first girl to tell me that when she went on dates there at university, she kept a small overnight kit in her purse--- just in case. I think Umi at ivich laughed once about how she was going to start keeping one available--- at least a toothbrush and make-up essentials. Stella at stelladellasera and Melissa at kraftig_bewegt kept professionals' kits in their purses: something working girls always do. It's different if you're male, of course. Coming home disheveled and unshaven at six in the morning is like coming home from the wars with battered armour and a laurel wreath: a badge of honour. I'm sure that one of the books Lissy was reading--- "He's A Stud, She's A Slut..." ---would have something unkind to say about that. But it's always been true. I'd sit at some coffeeshop on the way home--- shirt half-tucked, tie loose, wrinkled and with razor stubble ---and feel deliciously tired and successful.

It's just that I don't get to do that any more. The Towers still stood in NYC the last time I walked home from a girl's bed, the last time that I was kissed goodbye in a doorway as an Older Lover with value. I'm a creature of voices only. I can watch cars turn in to driveways late, late at night or watch girls walk home in morning gray. It is like watching characters in a film. I'm only a voice, a whispered EVP voice masked amidst other messages.

Ghosts don't walk home in the dawn, or steal a last kiss in a doorway. Ghosts never leave the First Circle of Hell. There's nothing waiting for them at Dis or in the lower circles. There's just nothing waiting at all.