Thunder is rolling all across the south and west, and dark clouds and heavy rain are coming in. This afternoon from my office I could see the bridge almost hidden in rain, and see the westbound traffic stopped dead by the downpour. We've been used to the afternoon Iso T-Storms here, but this is a full-blown rainstorm, something likely to last 'til evening. I do like it, really: cool, dark, windblown, with the sound of rain lashing at the swimming pool and water pouring through the gutters.

I'm listening to Gui Boratto's "Chromophobia"--- a CD suggested by Lissy at emigree. Good ambient/electronica for a rainy Friday in the Deepest South. One more thing to thank Lissy for while I'm here drinking iced sake and lime.

The senior partner at the firm gave a major party at his house last night. I'm not part of the social or networking world around the legal community, so I was at home last night listening to My Scarlet Life and drinking iced shochu. But this afternoon the senior partner stuck his head in my office and told me that he had something for me. There in the kitchen were two bottles of merlot and a huge bag of spiced chicken wings--- party leftovers. He'd brought bags of party food and unused wine and distributed them down the feudal line at the firm. Why...how very...Tudor of you, I wanted to say. But of course I didn't. I was quite grateful. I haven't eaten in days, but the chicken wings are the kind of thing I can feed on all weekend--- like popcorn while reading. And one never turns down decent wine, even red wine in summer.

Reading Kelsey's revived entries at clush makes it vur' clear that I need to polish up my German. I do want my German back. I lived in Vienna, and I once did German with enough fluency to do doctoral-level research. I need my languages back.

PondLife writes about listening to Epica there evenings in Charleston. Maybe a bit too metal-tinged and guitar-driven for my tastes--- I'm a synthesiser fan ---but sometimes something a bit goth-metal works there at sunset. And the vocalist--- Simone Simons ---is deliciously alluring.

Lacey once leaned in while dancing with me to New Order's "Blue Monday" and asked if I thought people in the next century would be shamefaced about having once liked New Order. No, I said, Not at all. I mentioned that to her in an e-mail a few days ago--- "Bizarre Love Triangle" and "Blue Monday" are still good dance songs. Nothing to be ashamed of at all.

A bit later I'll put on Kronos Quartet doing Philip Glass, and then maybe Sarah McLachlan's "Vox". And Loreena McKennitt, I think. I want to hear her do "Mystic's Dream" and "The Highwayman". And something I told Caitlin at kissmecaitlin once upon a time: I miss a lost song called "Light Flight", by a lost band called "Pentangle". Make note: check in with PondLife this evening--- about both the music and drinks that go with Friday nights here and in Charleston. PondLife and I seem to be exchanging notes about that every evening: what's on your CD player, what's in your glass? I quite like the ritual.

I was thinking about vocabulary this morning at work, about two words that really do irritate me. The first of course is "pretentious". God knows I've been called that before. I raised the point once with Mr. Smiley at the Zeppelin Pilots' Club, and we did agree. "Pretentious" has to imply a kind of falseness. It implies public pretense, that whatever it is you're doing, you're only doing it to impress. The blonde in the LAX lounge in one of iJustine's posts, the girl bookmarking a volume of Proust with her new iPhone--- it's pretentious if you're doing it to show the world that you're the kind of person who reads Proust. It's not pretentious at all if you went out and bought a set of "In Search of Lost Time" because you wanted to read it. I spent a major part of my life in grad school doing History. I did that because I liked it. If I'm sitting somewhere reading Fernand Braudel or some account of Budapest in 1900, it's because I like the books. If I talk about worlds a few thousand miles and a few centuries away, it's not because I want to impress anyone. It's because I live inside those worlds, because they're what I read and talked and wrote about for years.

My friend Frank the Bartender used to say about breast implants, "If you can touch them, they're real." The same is true about things labelled "pretentious". If you do them because you like them, because you're interested in something--- there's no element of pretense.

The other pejorative I've come to dislike is "narcissistic". That's become the new favourite term of abuse at Gawker and Jezebel. It's also a favourite among cultural conservatives of the New Criterion kind. Anyone who writes in the first person can be attacked and their work dismissed out of hand as "narcissistic". It's a handy term of abuse. "Narcissist" is like "Communist" used to be: an all-purpose way of dismissing both the work and the author out of hand. And since it's a DSM-IV kind of word, since it has that flavour of psychiatric failing, it really does serve to attack the author as well as the work.

It occurs to me that various commenters attack, say, Julia Allison for writing about going to parties on the grounds that Julia is a "narcissist". Their charge is that writers like Julia put themselves in the story, that they write about themselves going to the Page Six events. But of course that's exactly what I'd want from a story about going to a major literary party in NYC. It's not my world--- I want a writer to stand in for me, to write about how he or she managed to get invited, about how you prepare and dress for the occasion, about what it feels like to be there. When I read about a war correspondent going off to Afghanistan, I want him to write about what it feels like to be there, about what he carried, about how he learned the language and social codes of the soldiers at an American firebase, about the whole learning curve he went through. When I read Julia Allison, I read it as part of an ongoing Bildungsroman on her part: seeing the famous, learning to live among the famous. I want to hear about what she learns, about the tricks of the trade that she masters. I want to read about that just as I want to know about how Henry Esmond learns the same things.

Lissy at emigree writes that she's about to make a leap into the unknown. In a few months she'll be finishing up at her two-year college in Baltimore and then going off to NYC. School at Eugene Lang or Columbia or NYU, she hopes. Her parents aren't helping her at all (which is unconscionable, really) and she'll have to finish her B.A. through loans and grants and scholarships. Lissy is looking at it all as an Adventure--- one must take risks sometimes, she writes, and I'm overdue for a great leap into the unknown.

I envy and admire her. I wish her well, naturally, and I do worry about her. Lissy is vur' dear to me. She's been a good friend these last two years or so. But I envy and admire her. I went to New Haven on full scholarship. When I was doing law school here, there was no problem in terms of a place to live. I never had to fear being without Educated White Boy amenities. I didn't run off after law school--- and, despite the K-dot's urging, I haven't run off now ---because I'm afraid to risk losing air conditioning and internet and security, no matter how basic. Even when I went off to Turkey and Croatia, I knew that I had employers (including the Army) who'd backstop me. There was a university who'd take me back--- I had that. I'm out of the habit of taking risks.

Various lovely clever wicked readers and correspondents have sent me purse/backpack lists. I like reading them. I like knowing what tangible items people carry with them, what objects help define them. I like knowing when a lovely friend always carries a graph-ruled Moleskine with her, or when she carries hand sanitiser and eye creme. I like knowing brand names and makes and models. Details Matter.

Kelsey at clush writes that she always keeps a small toothbrush and mini-tube of toothpaste in her blue corduroy tote bag just in case a late night date turns into a morning after. I do like that. I've always liked girls who came prepared to dates with a change of clothes in a shoulder bag...just in case. Darcy at Auburn always had a pair of running shorts and a t-shirt and a pair of cheap flip-flops in her bag--- just in case. Coffee at 0730 in last night's club dress was just too Walk o' Shame, she said. Going home with a handsome stranger was one thing, but looking like last night's fucktoy the morning after was another. The Air Force taught Darcy at least that--- be prepared. So I do wonder--- does Kelsey keep a change of clothes when she goes on a date? And what does Lizzie at skylinehaze carry with her...just in case? And...what would Lissy at emigree bring with her on a first date with an Older Lover or Beautiful Stranger...just in case? And what did Ms. Chang do at Rochester in her slutgirl days? I'll have to ask...

Vas is playing--- "In the Garden of Souls"... Azam Ali...sigh. I have such a crush on her... There is a new Vas album out this summer--- "Nine Heavens". I'll have to get it.

When I was at New Haven, back in my Lost Youth, I read a small fashion piece where some designer said that he always used wrinkle-free fabrics because when a "modern girl" went out to clubs, she was never sure where she might wake up. That's something from a vur' different world, now. Moralistas, feministas, and the snarky types at sites like Jezebel all disdain the idea that a girl might go out looking for sexual adventures. The new code word is "self-respect". No girl, the moralistas and feministas say, can have any "self-respect" if she seeks out sex with strangers, or if she has multiple partners. Again--- physical pleasure and the rush of the new are seen as inherently Bad. Sex is about "intimacy" rather than sheer pleasure. And while one can go to a different restaurant each night of the week, or read a different book, a different partner in one's bed is regarded as a Bad Thing--- and a sign of psychological failings. Moralistas and feministas converge in saying that monogamy and earnestness are the only ways to have sex. Adventures and Wickedness are disdained by both left and right.

The gaunt and wicked and beautiful Liz V. at nightmareteeth writes that she's willing to let her Inner Slutgirl out after drinks, but that she's intimidated by phonesex. I will have to send her an essay about that. Not an invitation--- I'm not that vain, or pushy ---but an essay about why phonesex is often superior to sex-in-the-flesh. There are girls who are intimidated by phonesex because they think they can't tell stories or be seductive enough by phone. No--- that's as silly as a fear of speaking to a class. Any girl who's bright and articulate can master phonesex. I used to tell students that if they could explain any episode of "Nip/Tuck" or "The Hills" to friends over coffee, they could handle any essay test I might give them. The same is true of phonesex. I want Liz V. at nightmareteeth and Tooths at D-Land and Lizzie at skylinehaze and Ms. cataplexis all to know that. It shouldn't be intimidating. If a girl has imagination, if she can sense verbal cues, then she can be skilled at phonesex. Though it's really something best shared with partners who have imagination and a sense of wickedness and some verbal facility--- i.e., over-educated Older Lovers. Call that a shochu-fueled Advertisement For Myself.

Sarah McLachlan is singing "Vox" there behind me... The album must be twenty years old. Her voice was so ghostly-beautiful... Her "Strange World" is so utterly beautiful...

Too much iced shochu. Far too much after not eating for days. I've had to leave Facebook messages for girls I know offering up preemptive apologies in case I send messages offering to run away with them to Mongolia or Tokyo or Tallinn or the Argentine... Though of course now is a perfect moment for any girl who wants to call and ask me to run away with her to Budapest or Barcelona...

Lissy at emigree keeps an NYC transit card there in her purse. She can reload it whenever she goes up to NYC for weekends... I so envy her that. I miss subways. I miss trains. I miss kisses at railway terminals or on late-night subway cars.

Do Kelsey at clush and Lizzie at skylinehaze both do rock-climbing? Did Lizzie actually scale the high-rise where her therapist had an office? I've never been rock-climbing--- it's one of those things I would love to try. I do wonder if Ms. Chang has ever done it...

Too much shochu, too much haunting beauty in the voices carried on my CD player... I need to pace. I need to gnaw on a few spiced chicken wings and then sleep 'til time to check e-mail at 2230 or so... Or sleep 'til it's time to go swim laps after midnight...