Kelsey at clush writes about Sex Music, about how now that she's teaching combatives to soldiers her vision of Sex Music has changed. Kelsey writes that it's hardcore music, speed metal, and rap-rock that she's beginning to think of as Sex Music. She posted a video at her Facebook--- Buckcherry, "Crazy Bitch" ---as an example of the music she likes both at the fighthouse and at the bar she frequents with her class. Sex Music for me, though, could never be anything hardcore or rap-rock. A girl long, long ago told me that her favourite song for sex was always Led Zeppelin doing "Black Dog". I knew right at that moment that the evening was not going to end well.

I can imagine a handful of songs with a heavier beat that I could listen to during sex--- Sisters of Mercy doing "Lucretia, My Reflection" or "This Corrosion", Neon Judgement doing "Chinese Black", Split Second doing "Mambo Witch" or "Bend My Body Armour", one or two early Thrill Kill Kult things. There would have to be a mix of acid and amphetamines involved--- acid and speed, never cocaine. And the music would be fast and hard, yes...but also lend itself to ironic poses, to a slightly tongue-in-cheek version of s/m.

Sex Music for me will always be darkwave and synthpop and trip-hop. Berlin works as Sex Music, and so does Cristina Monet. Bryan Ferry works, and so does the first Pet Shop Boys album. Marianne Faithfull always works. And Duran Duran. Sex Music has to reflect the way I have sex, after all: distanced, slightly abstract, tinged with irony and romanticism both. Even for one-night stands I'd have The Motels or This Ascension playing. Lords of Acid doing "I Sit On Acid" would be the song for sex-and-laughter with a beautiful stranger...or just maybe the first two albums by Garbage. But it could never, never be "Black Dog" or anything speed metal or rap-rock. Sex Music for me is like sex itself: always a step back from the physical and into scenes and films-in-the-head.

I suppose I should ask the various lovely wicked clever girls who might be reading this: So whatever is your taste in Sex Music? Why? What songs enhance sex for you?

I slept late this morning and then made my usual trip to the coffeeshop by the university gates. Chocolate cappucino and a croissant, a table in the back where I could re-read Emily Listfield's "It Was Gonna Be Like Paris". The Listfield novel is an old, old favourite. I bought it long ago in my clubland days--- wrote a fan letter to Ms. Listfield, got a nice little note back. It is strange, though--- re-reading it, I do realise how long ago that all was.

"It Was Gonna Be Like Paris" came out in...1984. It's set in the underground art world of the East Village. I loved reading about that scene when I was young--- there was a book called "Art After Midnight" about it that I treasured ---but it's as alien now as anything in sci-fi. The novel was set in a world before real estate developers priced bohemia out of existence in Manhattan, a pre-Giuliani world where Times Square was still a byword for decadence and decay, a world before the art world became all about investments. I'm not even sure that anything passes for "underground" art in NYC these days. It is about a lost world.

It struck me, too, that so many scenes in the novel have been outmoded. The girl who's the heroine agonises over the phone not ringing, over her beautiful junkie-musician boyfriend vanishing for days. That's a world before wireless, a world before everyone has a keitai. Everyone has a keitai, everyone gets text messages and voicemail, everyone is pretty much available at any time. The vanishing lover trope has just been...outmoded.

I'm listening to Roger Eno right now--- the "Between Tides" CD. There may be thunder outside. The Dread Iso T-Storms may be forming.

There are passages in Listfield that I do like vur' much:

He ordered my first martini for me, frowning with disappointment when I shivered at the first sip, smiling like a proud father when I ordered my third.

You must always buy two bottles of champagne at once, Brett said. If you drink champagne at night, then you simply must have it in the morning. Yes. Of course.

I think I remember that scene, that speech, in my own Lost Youth.

Je t'aime, he says. He is saying I love you, I think he is saying he loves me. Je t'aime, he says it again. He has said it before--- je t'aime. But never in English. Never I love you.

I'm trying to remember the music I listened to when I first read "It Was Gonna Be Like Paris". I was never much into the early NYC bands. Television, yes--- I loved Television. But I was more New Wave and New Romantic and darkwave. St. Mark's Square punk was never really my music.

The coffeeshop this morning had half a dozen dark-tanned co-eds with laptops in summer slutgirl uniform: narrow-strap camisole tops, braless; slightly baggy, slightly faded olive-drab fatigue short shorts, rolled up above mid-thigh; thin cheap flip-flops. Narrow-frame glasses. One or two girls in denim miniskirts and polo shirts and ballet flats. More Dell laptops than MacBooks.

The gaunt blonde girl with the Discman was back. She came in at 1030, carrying a backpack full of sketchpads and watercolours and coloured drawing pencils. She was thinner than last week, yellow-pale with sunken dark eyes and a fragile, unsteady walk. Her jawline and cheekbones were sharp enough to cut paper. She carried the backpack and black coffee to a table there in the back and set out her watercolours and brushes. She counted her brushes twice and arranged everything in perfect alignment. Faded black polo shirt hanging on narrow shoulders, open enough to show stark collarbones and a pulse at her throat. She kept her headphones on; I have no idea what the CD was. Her legs were always in motion, swinging, crossing, splaying open while she twisted in her seat. Another narrow, knee-length skirt, a charcoal-grey denim. When her legs opened once I could see a white triangle in shadow--- white cotton bikini underwear. I'd hoped for nothing but smooth-waxed skin, of course. She had on heeled Mary Janes again, and a red ankle bracelet. She painted and sketched and sat on edge, like she was poised to jump and sprint away. There in that denim skirt her thighs were no bigger round than my upper arms. When I left, I passed by her table and looked for clues in her backpack. But I didn't see any CD cases or cigarette packs or anything that might fill in her backstory. Anorexia, amphetamines, ruined loves, schizoid disorders, even consumption--- there just weren't any clues. She'll be back next Sunday, and I'll be looking for whatever her story might be.

Goldfrapp is Sex Music. I think we can all agree on that. And Imogen Heap.

Kelsey writes that she was at the base hospital this morning. She was doing blocking exercises yesterday and took a hit in the ribs. Fractured rib--- they did x-rays on that. I've had two of those in my life. The first one, at fourteen or fifteen, was at least on horseback. I put a horse over a fence for three jumps, and just at the last moment he decided that he didn't feel like doing a fourth. So I understand Kelsey saying that she was sobbing during the walk to the hospital. She'll be in a brace for a while, and not doing combatives. I'm just glad that she got her certification before the rib went. And I do admire her courage: The defining characteristic of a warrior is her willingness to close with the enemy. That's certainly something Caitlin at kissmecaitlin would agree with.

A girl at Bennington wrote me to say that she really liked breathplay, that she loved the sensation of blacking out, loved the yielding up of control to a lover. Another girl told me much the same, writing me from her Manila hotel room to say that she loved breathplay and knifeplay both. She had, she said, a "very complicated" relationship with knives and blood and sex. I do need to know more, of course. I need to know, too, if Ms. Flox at besideserato was a devotee of breathplay in the more decadent days of her own Lost Youth.

On Friday I wrote Libet about a book I found on the web: "The Sexplay Guide to Emergency Medical Situations". Yes, okay: I can see the need for the book. I'm just not sure that it's something I really want to find on a lover's shelves. I'm reasonably proud of the fact that no girl has ever needed to see the paramedics after sex with me. (Paramedics--- I suppose I shouldn't be so sure about therapists) And as one reviewer did note--- if whatever you're doing in bed requires an emergency supplies kit there on the nightstand, you might want to re-think things.

Breathplay, knifeplay--- I can see the attraction. Transgression, danger, the need for precision and delicacy, the exchange of trust, the yielding of control. Stella at stelladellasera and Ms. Chang and Kim at Cataplexis all agreed. The male has to know, e.g., that violation face down or face to the wall is more deliciously painful and vur' "Irreversible", but that face outward allows the girl to wrap her legs around her violator and moan and plead more clearly. Ms. Chang and the girl in Manila noted, too, that since they were certainly going to cry afterwards, they needed someone who knew how to deal with that, how to make them feel that they were cared for, and that the tears were all part of the orgasm--- again, someone much Older.

One girl who told me about her own violation fantasies threw a glass across her living room while talking to me. She hated being made ashamed of the key masturbatory fantasy she'd had since she was thirteen, hated being made to feel that she needed therapy, that there was something wrong with her. She hated it that she had to never tell her ordinary dates what could make her wet, that the range of people she could trust with her orgasm was so tiny and distant. I looked over at ice and vodka dripping down an apartment wall and didn't know for a second what to tell her. It was no moment to offer my services. That would've been Wrong. Yes, I wanted to. Very, very much. But I didn't. I did what years of Southern upbringing mandated: take her hands, tell her it was all okay, that there was nothing wrong with her, that what she wanted in fantasy didn't mean that she needed an Intervention, tell her that there would be lovers out there she could trust.

They are right--- Ms. Chang and Katy V. and the girl in Manila and Ms. kraftig_bewegt. Ginny at ginny_mccoo used to say that she was part of the secret tribe of girls who longed for Much Older Lovers. Ms. Chang and even Lissy at emigree and Ms. cataplexis all join Ginny in knowing that the membership in the tribe has to be largely secret, that the girls of the tribe all risk being labelled as Victims, as (how horrible!) "Inappropriate". But of course girls with violation fantasies have to be far more hidden--- not just the on-the-DL hidden of girls who like Older Lovers, but hidden in the way secret Jews hid in the Spain of the Inquisition. There are male fantasies that can be made to seem shameful--- same-sex fantasies, largely ---but there's far more anger and disdain for girls who have violation fantasies. They're regarded by feministas and moralistas as not just sexually and morally and psychologically flawed, but as betraying all other girls, as traitors to their gender. Stella at stelladellasera has something to say about that, I know.

It's hard for me to say anything here. I've heard Ms. Chang and Katy V. and Ms. cataplexis and Stella at stelladellasera talk about fantasies they have to hide. I'm Older, of course, and I love playing with transgressive things, and I have an Auteur Fetish--- the need to craft scenarios and enact them. But I can't say anything that sounds like an Advertisement For Myself. That would be Wrong. And in any case, I'm far too aware of how easily everything I want, everything I've ever done with girls, can be spun into something DSM-IV, something that can be treated with contempt or made the subject of a "Law and Order: SVU" episode (and not one where Mariska Hargitay does hot girl-girl sex with Katherine Moennig). It gets harder and harder to be part of the fantasies I've shared with girls and not be terrified of how what I'm doing and what I am can be spun by hostile commentators, moralista and feminista both.

You make girls feel like that they can do anything--- Lacey said that to me not so long ago. I've trusted her about everything since she was a Violated Catholic School Girl. No one knows me better than she does. I wish I could make girls feel like they could do anything. I wish I could make the girls I know feel like their own dreams and fantasies could be lovely elegant wicked delights. I've had girls tell me about Incestuous Sibling fantasies, about breathplay and knifeplay fantasies, about fantasies of being gang-banged in Baltimore subway tunnels, about needing Older Lovers. I can do all those images into films-in-the-head for voices on the late-night aether. I want the girls I know to feel like all the dark dreams can be delights in their lives. I feel ashamed of so much in my own life--- age, looks, poverty, location ---and I'm far too aware of how the things that make up my sexual identity can be spun as contemptible and vile and psychotic. I just want the girls I know and like not to have to feel that. I want them to feel that they can explore and seek out Adventures and Encounters. Self-serving, maybe--- I won't deny that. But I hope--- I can never not hope ---that the girls I know and like can construct their own films-in-the-head without having to hide their tribal insignia. I just find it ever more precarious to be part of the fantasies--- and not just because of my looks and age and lack of endowment.

Goldfrapp is still playing. Goldfrapp is Sex Music. Even for blindfolds and candle wax and ice. Locsil or Helios for breathplay, I think. And maybe Philip Glass and This Ascension for delicate knifeplay. But Goldfrapp for silk and long slender bare legs over my shoulders, Goldfrapp for vodka-lime or chilled dry sake kissed off hipbones and stark ribs and nipples. Nothing hardcore or rap. Goldfrapp, though--- vur' much her voice.

And, yes: Stella at stelladellasera, Ms. cataplexis, Caitlin at kissmecaitlin, Rachel at sirena73, Melissa at kraftig_bewegt, even Lissy at emigree and Ms. Flox at besideserato and Selena at Atwowaydream and Sarah at Tooths... I hope they'll comment here.