Bad morning. Panic attack at the coffeeshop--- panic attack and a rush of depressive, near-suicidal thoughts.

I got no real sleep last night. I was up 'til three. Too much shochu on ice, too little ability to find any value in myself or accomplish anything. I really accomplished nothing at all last night. I was outside before dawn, though. There's a huge bruise across the knuckles of my left hand. I did hit something full-force. Not metal, I think. Not the gates or the balcony rails. Not brick, either. One of the garage walls, maybe. At least I didn't do what I'd have done at my old house--- cut up patio furniture with the katana. The katana is in my storage cube. That's probably a good thing.

I took my iPod with me to the coffeeshop. My first time to listen to it, as opposed to spending time just loading it. Things went bad from the first. I left home very early, but halfway there I realised that I'd left the earbuds at home. I had to stop in at a Big Box store and buy more. When I got to the university coffeeshop, I took the iPod out and...couldn't make it play. I panicked--- it has something like two days' worth of music loaded onto it, and I couldn't get it to come on at all. I was already exhausted and on edge, and I just panicked.

Given all that I wrote about last night--- hotel sex, voices on the aether, any value ---I just felt as hopeless as ever I had since law school. The summer after my 1-L year I came to summer class convinced that I'd failed out of law school. I hadn't seen any grades--- I'd been afraid to open my grades ---and I hadn't received any notice from the school. But I was convinced that I'd failed at everything. I was considering--- not quite planning, but ready to make a final plan ---just ending it there in the parking lot. I'd have done it there--- shot myself in the car. The pistol was (and is) always there in the glove box. The car wasn't paid for, and it would've ruined the bank's re-sale value if there'd been blood and brain matter and a bullet hole. I liked the idea of costing the bank money. As it turned out, of course, I was still on the rolls. But that morning at 0730 I knew that my life was over. And I felt that empty and useless today.

I sat there at the table and desperately prodded at the iPod. I'd left the original earbuds at home, and I didn't have the little instruction leaflet. I didn't see certain things. There's a switch atop the iPod. Is that an On switch? I changed its position--- that seemed to enable me to press the click wheel. I finally managed to make it play. I found playlists and managed to activate one. But I still don't know how to move around inside playlists or choose individual songs--- or find songs, really. I got the earbuds in and sat and listened to one playlist--- my Synthpop 1 list ---and felt no less useless. I was unsure if I could find anything again if I turned the iPod off to go get more coffee.

Lissy at emigree and Kamila at electric_bath had told me that mastering the iPod was easy, that they were never separated from theirs and could go through them the way I go through library shelves. This morning just proved that I was useless at the learning curve.

At the Big Box store I bought earbuds...and I bought a couple of the little collapsible travel toothbrushes. There's no real explanation for that. Girls have sent me their morning-after kit Lists, and they all seem to list an extra travel toothbrush--- Lissy at emigree and Kelsey at clush and Sarah at sarahmarie02 all included a toothbrush. I suppose I bought them out of some hope that having them would magically make me able to have mornings-after like they do.

I suppose that doesn't really work. I bought absinthe once upon a time. I have several bottles here. But even though an absinthe-fueled evening led Lissy at emigree to have an Encounter in Stockholm this March, having absinthe hasn't put a beautiful wicked co-ed naked on my couch. Shochu--- soju, in Korea ---and gold tequila always help send Kelsey at clush home with handsome soldiers for one-night stands in their barracks. Three bottles of shochu and one refrigerated bottle of Cuervo Gold are left in my kitchen. But no lithe, dark-tanned, swimmer/combatives-skilled girls are in my bed.

Girls have been sending me their morning-after Lists. They've been rather good about that. I print the Lists off, of course--- all the things they bring in purses or backpacks just in case a date turns into a morning after. And, yes: they all do bring little toothbrushes. And travel-size deodorant. Lissy at emigree writes that she brings along a pair of flats and wrinkle-proof dress folded up in her backpack or purse. Well, let's be vur' clear. No girl would ever do that for me. No girl packs a toothbrush when going out with me. No girl would pack a change of clothes for a date with me. No girl ever will.

I hate myself for that.

I'm eaten up with envy for people who manage to have Adventures and Encounters, for people who get to go to "nondescript brownstone hotels" or have wicked lovely girls like Kelsey go home with them from bars. I'm eaten up with envy and anger whenever I think of anyone who's worth a lovely girl packing morning-after supplies for.

Envy is the only one of the Seven Deadly Sins where the sinner derives no pleasure from the sin. I'm well aware of that.

Melissa at kraftig_bewegt posted Facebook photos of herself and some little Spanish-y gay boy vomiting all over the hood at windshield of a new, white auto. The car supposedly belongs to a girlfriend of kraftig_bewegt's. I assume there was some sort of drug-fueled TBL (Teach the Bitch a Lesson) thing going on. Melissa was standing up on the hood of the car with three fingers down her throat--- in really ugly flip-flops, alas, but clearly panty-free in a brown summer tank minidress. Purging up some full, rich, thick dinner down the windshield and over the hood.

I've known Masturbating Mia girls before--- girls who masturbate while purging. But of course they don't binge. They starve before playing and only purge up water or vodka--- what they want is just the spasms in throat and stomach to pair with orgasm. Whatever Ms. kraftig_bewegt was doing was designed to be disgusting--- to leave a serious mess all over her friend's car.

I'd swim this afternoon, but I just can't. There are Young, High-Testosterone Males with cropped military haircuts in the pool. No one who looks like me needs to be around either bikini girls or Younger, Buff Males. There's no use in being mocked and derided, even in pursuit of a tan. Kelsey can get a poolside tan at the Army base in South Korea where she works; Ms. Chang can tan and have sailboat sex in the Keys. No one who looks like me should be seen around a pool, and certainly not by anyone attractive--- not by bikini girls, and not by the boys who can take them home. I know that I'd only be a figure of contempt and derision.

Effexor is the new Diet Coke... I still need to get Ms. cataplexis to comment on that. Lizzie at skylinehaze writes that her perfect diet is Diet Coke, pills, and cigarettes. Call it a variant of the Amber Valletta Supermodel Diet. Just replace black coffee with Diet Coke. I have to ask Ms. cataplexis about Effexor. It may not be one of her own meds, but at least she'll know what the line means.

Cristina Monet did play on the iPod--- "The Lie of Love" and "Quicksand Lovers". The songs fit in all-too-well with my mood. I don't think I actually cried, though I'm sure it was close. I felt too empty to do anything besides sit there with the half-understood iPod and feel useless.

Ms. Flox at besideserato writes that she's loved doing breathplay since her teens, and even being married-and-moneyed hasn't changed that. It was an early kink for her, and one she still enjoys. She likes the whole blacking out during sex thing--- "transcendental", she calls it.

Ms. Flox writes that she likes being choked unconscious while being fucked in her husband's office. She understands why Kelsey at clush found being choked unconscious during combatives training to be "fucking trippy". Silk scarves are good, Ms. Flox writes, but she prefers something rougher--- hands, of course, or rope. She says she wants the pain even more than the restraint. I have to draw the line at rope. I could see doing breathplay with silk, but not rope. Rope leaves bruises. Sending some lovely girl half my age or less home to dorm or apartment with ligature marks on her throat is just exactly what I need: a way of saying, "Hullo, Special Victims Unit".

I have to ask Emily at iminhell and Umi at ivich for subway maps of NYC. They used to hand those out free at the Grand Central info kiosk. I do need a new one. I'd ask Lissy, but that just seems...wrong. I envy her having a NYC Transit card. I really do. I don't know what it means, but I do. It's just not something I'm ever likely to need again. I'll never be back in NYC. I can't fly, even by Air Thorazine. I'm afraid of the TSA goons and airline functionaries even more than I'm afraid of Ragheads With Bombs or mechanical failure or bad weather. I'm too afraid of not knowing what to do in post-11 September airports or of looking like a Rube ever to fly. I'll never have a girl make out with me on a train, either--- let alone have a girl tell me she's caressed herself on a train while thinking of me. I have this obsessive and utterly illogical thing about NYC subway maps and Transit cards. I'll just never have any need for them.

I won't be in any "nondescript brownstone hotels" near Washington Square or Chelsea Piers, either. I don't even know where Chelsea Piers is. (Who could I ask? I need to know Details, but there's no one I can ask.) Such things weren't there the last time I was in NYC, back in 1997. I don't know the names of any hotels like that, or what they might cost. I certainly don't have anyone who'd ever demean herself by being in one with me. I have some vague idea of what hotel rooms cost in NYC these days. I'm just amazed that Lissy at emigree or her soldier-lover can afford hotel rooms there. (I can't afford a Sleep Inn or Budgetel here) I just wonder how often she's been there--- he's only been back from Iraq for a couple of months, and she can't be going up to NYC every weekend. Still--- she can go to hotel rooms with a lover. She can keep a morning-after kit. She once did an issue of her "Revolver, Dauphin" 'zine where a fictional character modelled on me became the Older Lover seducing the teen character based on herself and having sex in elegant hotel rooms overlooking Baltimore Harbour. That's as close as I'll ever get to hotel sex again anywhere. And these days I can't even be a fictional character who goes to hotel rooms with lovely girls. I'm sure, too, that Lissy regrets ever thinking of me even as a fictional character with value.

She wouldn't be alone in that. The sex blog girls that I read all write about things that make males contemptible and pathetic and creepy and vile. Somehow I manage to match pretty much every item on those lists. I'm very, very clear that every girl in my Past doubtless despises me and despises every night--- or every phone fantasy ---we shared. I'm not valuable enough for hotel sex, and I'm certainly not valuable enough for voices on the aether, for phone fantasies.

Make a note. When a girl stops referring to some Other, Younger Male by his given name and starts just saying "my boyfriend", that means that I'll never hear her voice again. No matter how much a girl says that she'll never marry, or that she always wants her relationships to be open, there's only and ever monogamy and morality out there when she first says "my boyfriend". Even if she's called me and been a voice on the aether after being involved with someone, as soon as she says "my boyfriend", I'm written out of existence. I may be good enough to be a set of words on a screen for girls in Manila hotel rooms or SETX apartments, but of course as soon as a girl returns from the tropics, the odds that I'll be a voice on the aether go to zero. Girls don't call to tell me Stories any more--- certainly not Stories of caressing themselves on Amtrak.

There used to be an Army marching call that went "I don't know/ But I've been told/ Eskimo pussy is might damn' cold!" Well, no--- though Esquimaux are in fact equipped with hideous feeding organs that would shred a human body in seconds. I'm more concerned with a marching call from university: "I don't know / But it's been said / Gender Studies girls won't give you head!"

I came home from the coffeeshop and started drinking. All I can hope for is that I can pass out. Any kind of sleep would be welcome. I'm just closer and closer to some kind of collapse. I have no future. And I have no value. I'm not even a voice late at night for ghostgirls on the aether. No girl will pack a morning-after kit for me; no girl will leave a ghostkiss while slipping out of our hotel room. I'm not worth hotel sex. I'm not worth voices. I can't operate an iPod. I'm unable to master any skills for the new century, and I've lost all the skills--- intellectual, sexual ---I once had.

I know why I went to the coffeeshop this morning--- anything to get away from my apartment. I just don't know why I bothered thinking I could have anything there make me feel like I belonged around people, or that any girl could ever look at me and find me valuable. I have no idea why I bother thinking that I have reason to hope.