I was going to write a novel once. A girl I knew was going to write it with me. It was going to be dark, and set in a nighttime city. There weren't any vampires. I did insist on that: no vampires. We wrote it in vignettes. Each of us wrote pieces. The idea was that we would assemble the pieces later. She was a comp lit major who painted on her own. At the end, I found out that she'd written maybe twenty pages. I had something like one hundred forty pages. She was a Derridette who could paint, but she couldn't actually...write. Or couldn't take time away from snorting crystal to write. I don't know whatever happened to her--- all this was when I was at New Haven. I still have some of my pages. It's hard to look at them and imagine the Eduardo-kun who wrote them. It's hard to tell where I wanted the story to go. But I'm never good at finishing things. I hate endings, after all.

I came up earlier from swimming laps. Moisturise, moisturise, moisturise--- Ms. Flox at besideserato and Ms. Chang and Gia-Carangi at D-Land all insist on that.

Japan is playing behind me again. Always a soundtrack for writing here on a summer evening. I told Lissy at emigree that she needs to get a copy of "Gentlemen Take Polaroids" and add it to her Sex Music playlist there on her iPod.

A passage from Listfield's "It Was Gonna Be Like Paris" that I do love:

We made love for hours, for ever. We did not sleep. You see, he said, we could still make it work. We could live together. I'll change, really. I won't get so fucked up, and you could still have your room for painting. We should live together. I wouldn't care if you wanted other lovers from time to time, but we should be together.

It wouldn't work, I said. I kissed him. Calmly. I did not need his permission to take other lovers. I did not need his permission to paint. We could never make it work, I said. Not in real life.

Well then, he said, we could have an affair that lasts forever, we should always be lovers, despite our real lives. Lovers without expectations.

We could never be lovers without expectations, I said.

I love you, he said. Of course. Of course I loved him, too. I knew that. But it no longer mattered.

I do wonder--- how many girls reading this, how many readers and correspondents, have had that conversation?

I'm thinking of re-reading Huxley's "Island". It's been a long, long time. And I do wonder if I won't confuse Huxley's "Island" with Austin Tappan Wright's "Islandia"...

The New York Times carried an article last weekend on sake bars in NYC. There used to be a vodka bar a few blocks from my office here--- two hundred brands of vodka, they claimed. They even had Russian black bread. But I'd like to do a tour of sake bars. Sake may replace martinis and single-malt as the next NYC fashion. I'm told that shochu is the next Bay Area fashion. We'll have to see. But I do like chilled sake with lime. That's one memory from my Birmingham days that I don't regret.

The lovely bella_sumision and the leggy denim_miniskirt both like breathplay. Stella at stelladellasera has promised to write me about her own experiences. I still need to ask Kelsey at clush whether being choked there during combatives training gave her any kind of sexual rush. I can feel a taste for experimentation developing. (Am I wrong in thinking that sarahmarie02 has had her own fantasies about breathplay?) I'm just not sure with whom I could experiment.

And of course there are things that make me hesitate a bit. It's not just that Fox Mulder is fated to die from autoerotic asphyxia. Once long ago I knew someone who did die that way. The death was taken at first as a suicide, which wouldn't have been unexpected. He drank far too much, and was deeply bitter about his disability--- his left arm was withered and fixed at some awkward angle. Birth defect or injury--- I never knew which. When I heard about him having hanged himself, I wasn't surprised. But then the news broke that it hadn't been a suicide at all. He'd been kneeling in his closet, doing the autoerotic asphyxia thing with a belt. When he started to black out, he couldn't get the belt loose. His left arm was useless. The death was a drunken autoerotic asphyxia accident. That's not a mistake one wants to make.

But I know how my own interests develop. The lovely Krystina at yes_please taught herself--- taught her body ---to respond to new and random fetishes as a kind of experiment. But for me it's always a thing where films-in-my-head will suddenly have new scenes. So I may be discussing the idea of breathplay with lovely wicked clever cachexical girls--- even if only as a matter of historical interest, as a matter of hearing their Stories. The same may be true for the delicate and precise knifeplay that the girl summering in Manila likes.

A copy of H.F.M. Prescott's "Man on a Donkey" arrived today--- a new edition here in the States. It's an obscure novel--- but it's a lovely thing. A very well-crafted novel about the Dissolution of the Monasteries. I need to recommend it to the girl at Oxford.

I still wonder what I might have done if I'd met Stella at stelladellasera in a bar in some imaginary city in the Nachsommer of the Year Six. Well...I wonder too what I'd have done as a colonel of hussars, or as American intelligence advisor to a local warlord high in the Nuristan hills. All three are equally unreal.

Stella wrote today to say that any girl who says she hasn't had violation fantasies is lying to herself. Well...various girls that I've known and admired and desired--- Baltimore, Rochester, NYC, Montevallo, San Antonio, Penn State, Bennington, here ---have all agreed with something, have all said laughingly that consent is an orgasm-killer. I've always asked that, of course, always asked girls in bed to promise never to consent.

[Lacey at sixteen, sitting astride me in bed: What do I need rape fantasies for? I have my own personal rapist. On call, too. All said in this wonderful Daria voice. I told her I preferred "bespoke" to "personal" in that description.]

Still... I do have the DSM-IV / "Law and Order: SVU" fear. Late last October I wrote:

Whenever I think about girls from my Past who used to go out with me, or girls who used to make wicked phone calls to me, I find myself anxious and edgy. I have a real and deep-seated fear of girls revising the Past, of girls looking back and despising me for what happened in the Past. I've developed a major fear of ever telling girls about fantasies or erotic/seductive scenarios that I might have. The thought that a girl will make the eeeeww! noise upon hearing about the things I like is always there. But there's the deeper fear that any fantasies that a girl and I once shared will be re-written later and used as evidence of how contemptible I am. I'm convinced that if ever I tell a girl what I do fancy--- even if she shares the fantasies now ---she'll hold it all against me later. I hate that-- a girl telling me that fantasy scenarios that left her wet and breathless once upon a time are, upon revision years later, evidence of how much she despises me.

October of the Year Seven was a strange time. My siblings and I were selling my father's house. We were disassembling twenty-five years of someone's life. I was desperately alone, and of course convinced that I'd have nowhere to live in the Year Eight. I did feel that I was utterly disconnected from the world, and from closeness:

A lovely girl in Baltimore wrote me to say that she keeps love letters from her lover overseas in her leather satchel. I can't recall the last time a girl wrote me a love letter-- years ago, anyway. And there's no chance that wicked lovely girls will be sending me love letters this year-- certainly not letters with foreign stamps and elegant calligraphy.

There should be a website-- SendEduardoImaginaryLoveLetters.com --out there somewhere. I regret bitterly that I never signed with ImaginaryGirlfriend.com back in the Year Three or the Year Four and had the lovely Ms. Flox at besideserato write me Imaginary Love Letters.

SendEduardoImaginaryLoveLetters.com--- there should be a site for posting elegantly wicked love letters to me. "Darling Eduardo-kun...." No love letters have arrived for me at De Guzman House in longer than I can remember. And no letters in fountain pen ink on fine stationery ever seem to arrive at my mailbox. The pettable K-dot and I once discussed whether girls write love letters any more. After all-- there are text messages and e-mails. But it's only love letters-- fountain pen ink, fine stationery, complex and wicked erotic images --that really count.

I do desperately envy Lissy having love letters with foreign airmail stamps. Envy, mind you-- not jealousy. Envy is something vur' different. I hate it that no girl finds me worth writing love letters. There's always the image of the lithe lovely wicked girl lying naked on her bed and writing me on fine stationery. Ms. Chang once promised to do that with stationery she ordered from Florence. Needless to say, she never did. So-- I can read about Lissy's love letters there in her bag to be read when she feels like being secretly wet in habitually panty-free hiphuggers while she's in class. I can read about that and envy her the letters-- envy her having enough value to tempt lovers into writing.

Well... I still need letters. Foreign subway maps, too. But I do need letters. I need to open envelopes with foreign stamps and messages written from hotel rooms in exiles' cities.

A few weeks ago I had the library get me a copy of "Nocturnes for the King of Naples". It hasn't arrived yet--- though I keep expecting it. Patience is not a De Guzman family trait. But I do wonder--- after more than a few years, what will the story say to me when I read it again? I do suppose I must urge PondLife at D-Land to read it--- and Ms. cataplexis, too. And Coe's "I Look Divine". I want to hear from both of them about "I Look Divine".

Lynn Vanucci, "Coyote". Kristin McCloy, "Velocity" and "Some Girls". I do wonder if Lissy at emigree has ever seen them. I do want to recommend them to her.

Stars of the Lid is playing now--- "The Ballasted Orchestra". Lovely dark ambient, minimalist electronica. That's something I'd like to talk to Lissy about, too.

I watched "The Twelve Chairs" the other night--- an early Mel Brooks film, a film version of the Ilf & Petrov novel. A very young Frank Langella plays Ostap Bender. Langella was stunningly handsome--- and he kept his looks well. He was Dracula a few years later, and Salieri on Broadway. Girls found themselves wet and breathless whenever he crossed the stage. But then he was Clare Quilty in the 1997 "Lolita". Entropy always wins.

I haven't eaten in a day or so. It's easy to lose track. But I do close my eyes and dream of breakfasts at an outdoor table, of dark thick French roast coffee and fresh-made buttered biscuits with red currant jam. I don't want the food itself. I like the sensations of hunger artistry. But I do love imagining food, imagining the idea of food. Cynthia Gralla was right about that.

Much to do tomorrow: FedEx a copy of my doctoral thesis manuscript to the girl at Oxford. Maybe send copies to a couple of other friends as well. I need to write again. I need to have a sense of purpose.

Vestal NY, Fayetteville AR, Chicago, Surrey BC, Brighton in East Sussex... I do wonder who reads me in those places... Let alone Claremorris in County Mayo, Ireland. Or Newtown PA.

And I hope more lovely readers and correspondents will write me about Sex Music. As always--- Lists Matter.