There is such a thing as magical thinking. I bought a couple of the small travel toothbrushes that girls-- e.g., Sera Fae at serafaery, Lissy at emigree, Kelsey at clush, Sarah at sarahmarie02 keep in their morning-after kits. That's all about magic, really. Somehow yesterday at the Big Box store I believed that if I could just buy the kinds of toothbrush that lovely wicked girls keep as slutgirl supplies, then...magically...some girl would pack an overnight kit and come to my flat or take me for hotel sex.

Somewhere tonight--- Baltimore, NYC, Portland, Camp Carroll ---beautiful girls are leaving for drinks with a toothbrush in a clutch bag, or putting a carefully-folded wrinkle-proof dress and a pair of flats in a shoulder bag, dropping in a mini bottle of deodorant and their contact lens kit. Beautiful girls are considering whether or not to bring a thong--- and, one hopes, deciding that there's no point in underwear at all, not that night or the morning after. Somewhere tonight--- Baltimore, NYC, Portland, SETX, South Korea, Santa Monica, Chapel Hill ---lovely girls are preparing for a late night that will become a morning after. And of course not one of them would ever consider needing a morning-after kit for me.

I want to just point out that I mostly dislike text messages and the idea of texting. I've been told that my dislike of text messages is generational, and that it's a male thing. All I can say is that I really, really dislike text messages. They're intrusive--- they demand immediate attention and response. They're irritating--- the little incoming txt msg noise always sounds while I'm reading or (worse) talking to someone on my keitai. And while I don't recall the terms of my mobile plan, I'm sure that I get only some relatively limited number of free texts a month. Incoming texts run that number--- whatever it may be ---down. There are texts that I don't mind--- call now or i want you desperately. But a text message should be a quick reminder, not a conversation. Volleys of texts drive me wild with irritation. Conversations are for phone, e-mail, or letter.

Any time I see on my keitai screen that I have five or six new texts, my first impulse is to delete them all instantly. I hate being taken away from whatever I'm doing by the incoming-text noise, and I hate having to compose an answer with a single finger there on the keypad--- and trying to compose a message in fewer than 165 characters. It may well be generational--- but I really do find texts intrusive and demanding. A text that says call me I can accept. Or a small note at random: i love you, i want you. But otherwise--- just remember how angry that incoming-text signal usually makes me.

Needless to say, though...I do find myself (yet again) eaten up with envy and bitterness when I see beautiful girls sending off flirty or seductive text messages to possible hook-ups. I'm not at all fond of the whole world of instant, continual communication, but I look at wickedly lovely girls sending seductive texts and feel...useless. No girl packs a morning-after kit with me in mind, no girl would send me a seductively wicked text.

It's as good a time as any to reiterate one of my key policies. I don't open messages--- e-mails, letters, on line comments ---that might be Bad News. I will delete unread any comment that might be harsh or minatory. The pettable little K-Dot at citydress once asked me why I did that, and I told her the truth. I hope that readers and correspondents like me. I like being liked. And I always hope that there will be lovely intelligent wicked delightful girls who are new readers and correspondents. I told the K-dot that my entries are what I have by way of introduction, what I have to explain myself. Harsh, minatory, angry comments suggest to new readers and correspondents that I'm a Bad Person. Angry or dismissive notes suggest that I'm not worth befriending or knowing. And as I become less and less able to leave my rooms, it means ever more not to have people driven away.

Let's remember, too: I will always and instantly believe anything bad anyone says about me. I don't need to be told that I'm ugly and useless and vile and without talent or value. I believe those things already. I take them as given.

I saw just the edge of a note someone in Baltimore, someone I miss deeply,left--- I saw only her LJ name and the word "revert". The comment remains--- will always remain ---unread. I can't read anything angry and dismissive from someone who used to be a lovely late-night voice on the aether. I certainly can't read that she's now ashamed of everything she did with me.

There are people who've vanished out of my life without a word--- e.g., the Lost Liz Farrell, or Katy V. in San Antonio. There were people like the girls who wrote at the_sea_the_sea and henceforth or Minderella at D-Land who just turned on me with contempt and derision. I remember how at least one of those explosions happened. I'd posted something back a couple of years ago, and the girl at the_sea_the_sea responded with sharp disagreement. We'd been exchanging a few notes about books and art and travel; we were starting to become friends. I don't remember the topic that sparked the quarrel--- it may actually have been political. Whatever it was, I saw that it was harsh and clicked away. I wrote her to say that I couldn't deal with that. She sent a flurry of other comments, and I deleted them unread. I never argue or debate--- I never win either, and argument and debate only eat away at having someone find you useful or desirable. There was one last message, one where I saw the phrase "fear of having an adult conversation", and she locked me out of her journal and comments. End of story. The same thing happened with Amy-Elizabeth at retyped.

I've never seen the point to argument and debate. They never make anything better. No one ever really changes his or her beliefs because of argument or debate. I love discussion and conversation; I love telling and hearing stories. I love information. But I never try to do anything adversarial. I never try to convince or persuade. I'm not interested in making a point. I'd only fail in any case...and I don't want to poison the atmosphere of a friendship or seduction with debate.

I told Lissy at emigree once that I hated activism. That's true enough--- I really have no use for activism. (Hence my contempt for Obamamania) Activism depends on two highly questionable assumptions: that the world needs to be saved, and that it needs you to save it. And activism is tied to earnestness and moralising--- two other things I take as deeply suspect.

And...I'm losing my focus. Evening cocktails can have that effect.

People vanish. And sometimes I'll never know why. I won't read anything that's Bad News. I sent the manuscript of my doctoral thesis off to the leading scholar in the field, and he graciously agreed to read it and suggest how to publish it. When the package came back, I couldn't open it. What it he thought the work was contemptible? What if he thought it was garbage? After all--- I was from somewhere down in the Deepest South. I didn't have a girlfriend. The Evil Dana Lynn had just broken off our engagement, and I couldn't find a way to take anyone new to bed. No girlfriend, no value as a male, and somehow therefore no value as a scholar. I never opened the package, never responded to Larry Sondhaus. That was a lifetime ago. I still have the unopened package with its yellowing address label there in my closet. I couldn't face being told I was too valueless to be an historian.

I did the same with my law school grades--- sent them unopened to the Lost Liz Farrell. Wouldn't let her tell me my grades or rank. I refused to look up my GPA or class rank--- hence, no interviews. Interviewers for firms want to know that they're getting the top people. I knew I had to be too useless for any real firm--- no money, no girlfriend, no interview suit. No one went out with me, no one kissed me all through law school. My classmates went to Cancun or Vegas for spring break and spent Friday and Saturday nights drinking and hooking up at bars in the Quarter or along St.-Charles. No girl ever joined me for drinks during law school; no girl kissed me. I never went to Barristers' Ball any of the three years--- no date, obviously, and no chance to asking a girl to dance, let alone making out with her at the Ball. And what would be the point of Barristers' Ball, or parties, or even going to a bar, if making out wasn't a key part of things?

Jilly at coco__ wrote me once about sex against the wall at a formal dinner at Trinity College, Cambridge, about why cocktail dresses were meant to be panty-free at Cambridge formals. All I could do was sigh and feel empty.

I suppose I really could ask Umi at ivich or Emily at iminhell. Maybe Gia-Carangi at D-Land or even Suzan at ivydevice. I know I can't get any NYC girl to send me a new subway map, but I really do need to know what "nondescript brownstone hotels" are there by Washington Square and Chelsea Piers. It's not just that I want to know all the Details to all of Lissy's Stories, whether from emigree or her secret diary. It's not just that. Yes--- I could live vicariously through her Stories and/or imagine myself as her hotel sex partner. But it's also magic; it's magical thinking again. If I knew the names, the addresses, the decor, the Details--- then somehow magically I'd get to have girls take me to those hotels, somehow magically girls would want to have hotel sex. They'd find me valuable enough for hotel sex.

Kelsey at clush wrote me to say that she'd learned about Older Lovers. The staff sergeant she went home with after a soju and tequila-filled night was thirty, eleven years older than the soldier she'd been seeing. The difference between thirty and nineteen, she wrote (Kelsey turned twenty this July) was...incredible: experience, skill, technique, awareness. Lacey lost her virginity to someone fourteen years older than she was--- I wanted to point that out to Kelsey, to suggest that Lacey never had to make the usual complaints about sex with high school or undergraduate boys. I did suggest to Kelsey that she was better off panty-free (and not just because of South Korean summers), but I couldn't bring myself to point out that if the sergeant was so much better because of eleven years, then I must be...well...try the math at that. I did not do that.

Stars of the Lid's "Avec Laudanum" is playing behind me. Ambient/drone music...eerie-lovely. I still wonder if Lissy ever thinks of properly...thanking...the boy Brandon who used to recommend ambient and experimental bands for her. I'd certainly...thank...Kelsey at clush for recommending Helios' "Eingya".

Loscil's "TriplePoint" will be up next. I will always thank Lissy at emigree for introducing me to Loscil.

And I must note--- proper attribution is always key ---that it was actually the lovely Mari at violetsnvalium who told me about Pink Martini. I need to apologise to her for not recalling that.

Ginny at ginny_mccoo writes of crawling through high salt grass in Florida once upon a time to smoke cigarettes unseen by family. I wonder how old she was... In her teens? I rather like girls who smoke. It's a lovely film noir/slutgirl thing. I'll be watching "Pornografia" tonight--- Polish film, from the Witold Gombrowicz World War 2 novel ---on Ginny's recommendation. I trust her tastes in both film and East European novels.

Though Ms. ginny_mccoo does still owe me long Stories about her Infatuation in London last summer.

I'd say that I want to hear Lissy at emigree's Stories about "nondescript brownstone hotels"...with all the Details...even if only at her secret journal at Diaryland. There was a time when I might have hoped that she'd tell me by phone, that she'd tell me Stories late at night. I'm not worth that any more. I'm not worth telling Stories to late at night. I'm not worth hotel sex, and I'm certainly not worth voices on the aether.

There may be something very wrong in doing chilled tequila shots alone.

I keep looking at the two little travel toothbrushes. I keep treating them as magical objects. I am wishing that some girl will think me worth an overnight kit, will think me worth hotel sex---- will do the things with me that Lissy at emigree and Kelsey at clush and Liz V. at nightmareteeth or Lizzie at skylinehaze do with their hotel partners. I need to know that they'd do those same things with me, that I have some kind of value. I hold the travel toothbrushes and try to convince myself that some girl wants to hold my hand going into a "nondescript brownstone hotel", that some girl would ever make out again on a train with me.

I get closer and closer to tears. I get closer and closer to just having a breakdown of some kind. I am of no value if I'm not sexually valuable. Nothing--- not the PhD, not the JD, not anything else ---is of any value if I can't have lovers, if a girl isn't caressing herself on an Amtrak on her way to meet me, if a girl isn't naked on a couch drinking absinthe with me in a Stockholm night, if a girl isn't sneaking naked into a pool at 0300 to do tequila shots and have sex in dark water. If no girl thinks me worth a morning after, if no girl thinks me worth sneaking me into a basement apartment or a dorm, or checking into a hotel with no luggage, if no girl thinks me worth taking risks, or even being a voice on the aether, then I have no value at all. And I haven't had any value in years and years.Or any reason for being anything.

If magic doesn't work, then I really have no reason to pretend that my life is worth living, or that I have anything like a future.