Grey and windy and cool outside... Rains and dark skies out of the southwest---remnants of Tropical Storm Edouard, of course. Still...the kind of afternoon I do like. An afternoon for taking the laptop onto the upstairs patio and looking out at the skies and drinking vodka-lime while the clouds rush north and east...

A lovely girl in the Pacific Northwest sent me her own mornings-after kit list, and then e-mailed me to say that she wouldn't bring one for me. She wouldn't want the clutter. All she'd bring for me, she wrote, would be a book of favourite poems to read aloud in bed. With me, she wrote, she'd want it all raw and without having to worry about mornings. Poetry, she said--- poetry and the CDs I have. That's all she'd need with me. I had to write back and tell her that, No--- if ever she showed up at my door, she'd have to bring the mornings-after kit. I appreciated her confidence--- that I could make the sex raw and powerful and based on good music ---but if she didn't bring the kit I'd be...bitter and disappointed.

Girls have sent me their Mornings-After Kit Lists--- e.g., Sarah at sarahmarie02, Lissy at emigree, Liz V. at nightmareteeth, Sarah in Portland at serafaery, Gia-Carangi at D-Land, Kelsey at clush. They pack little travel toothbrushes and breath mints and contact lens kits and wrinkle-proof, tightly folded dresses and extra flats or flip-flops. They go off to Army barracks or "nondescript brownstone hotels" or dorm rooms with Slutgirl Supplies. They put the travel toothbrush in a clutch purse just in case, because the guy they were with might just be good enough to go home with, because their date or hook-up was worth something. I want that. I want that--- being valuable enough for a girl to need a Mornings-After Kit. A girl just showing up for sex would be good--- and God knows I'm desperate and starved for a girl's touch ---but it wouldn't be as good as if she brought the kit. The kit is a kind of currency. The Mornings-After Kit would be proof that I'm as good as the Other Males girls like Lissy at emigree or Ms. cataplexis or Kelsey at clush or Ms. Chang go home with. It would be proof that Lissy or Kimberly or Kelsey or Libet valued me as much as Other Males, that were willing to do for me what they'd do with Others.

Details matter. It matters that a girl puts in her purse the same things she puts in as Slutgirl Supplies when she goes out with or hooks up with Others. It matters that we have sex in the same "nondescript brownstone hotels" or the same late-night kind of swimming pool or the same Amtrak compartments she's had sex in with Others. It matters that we go to the same cities and beaches. It matters desperately that I know the names and addresses and locations of hotels and cities and beaches. My Stories--- I no longer have any Stories that mean anything. I no longer have the value needed for Stories. I need desperately to know that a girl will do with me what she's done with Others, that I'm worth those things, too. Details Matter--- they matter desperately.

A Mornings-After Kit full of Slutgirl Supplies is proof. It's a set of magical objects. Remember...I take almost no unmediated physical pleasure in sex...or in anything else, really. No matter how good a girl is in bed, no matter how orally skilled, or how adventurous and athletic and wicked--- I take almost no physical pleasure in sex. All my pleasures are mediated through books and films. Lissy at emigree or Ms. Chang or Ms. cataplexis might be utterly hot in bed, but I can never take physical pleasure from that. So much of my pleasure in sex is in sex-as-proof, in knowing that I'm valuable enough for a girl to do wicked, transgressive things with, in knowing that a girl thinks I'm as valuable as Other Males. Sex is proof of my value.

And for me sex is always something that I have in terms of scenarios and rituals. Sex is about films-in-my-head. It's not that a girl is having sex with me in a "nondescript brownstone hotel" as sex, it's that she's having sex in a hotel, that it's part of a Story, that it's an Adventure, that it's a way of showing me that I'm worth doing something with her that she's done with Others.

Sometimes I think it's better that I don't take physical pleasure in sex as such. Given my age, looks, body--- physical pleasure isn't something I'd be entitled to have. It's certainly not something I could give a girl--- not at my age, not with my body. Not with my whole failed social status behind me, either. The sex blog girls would all agree. And entropy always wins. Rust never sleeps, entropy always wins. I can't imagine still having the energy or the physical stamina to be the things ("rock-hard") that girls like Ms. Flox at besideserato insist are base criteria for any worthwhile Male.

Lissy at emigree once responded to my fears that one day I'd have a bald spot--- which of course necessarily entails having one's penis fall off ---by writing to say that I wasn't to worry, that if I were kneeling between her thighs to lick her and she looked down and saw a bald spot, she'd become all the more wet thinking of how transgressive and wicked it would be for her at nineteen or twenty to have me there with my tongue inside her. I read that and sighed. I know that she wrote to make me feel better, but somehow...it couldn't. Ms. Chang said something similar, but for all Libet's kindness and affection, she couldn't make that image work, either. Even if a girl like Lissy or Libet or Ms. cataplexis had no problems with an Older Lover who had a bald spot, even if the transgressiveness made them wetter--- they'd never any of them have allowed me there between their thighs to begin with. Whatever they may have said once upon a time by phone or e-mail, they'd be appalled and disgusted by me in the flesh.

Sky-Rocket at D-Land wrote an angry entry about the Older Lover she's staying with in Florida, a financial analyst who'd going to be taking her cross-country to Vegas soon. Part of her rage against him was based on his looks. He'd bought a set of expensive new shirts for the trip, and she mocked him for trying to model them with his "hairy bitch-tits". I read that and recoiled. If I'd pulled on a new buttondown in a hotel room and some girl had said that to me, I'd have...collapsed. All I could do would be to walk out and just not come back. Abandon the girl, abandon any thoughts of sex, abandon the hotel room and my luggage and just...go. There was worse, of course. She threw his trousers at him and mocked him for his waist size. She named the size. I don't have to finish that thought, do I? What comes next is obvious. I thought about the jeans and pants in my closet and just sat at my desk and tried not to be sick.

Behind me an old Traffic song is playing--- "Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys". An old, old song no one remembers any more. The song itself must date to the early 1970s. But it was one of the first jazz-rock things I heard on college radio at New Haven. It had a kind of dreamy elegance that I loved. But "Low Spark" can't make me feel any better tonight.

Sky-Rocket is a lovely girl and a fine writer. I've seen her Flickr page: she is vur' attractive. But that entry was shattering. One more piece of evidence, one more part of the proof that says that no girl is ever going to be in my bed again, that no girl will ever find me as good as Other Males.

DarkGracie's Tumblr had a lovely wicked sexy photo new-posted this morning: Gracie lying naked and languid on a wooden floor. Vur' hot photo, no question about that. But it left me empty and bitter. I forwarded the photo to Lissy at emigree and Ms. Chang and Ms. cataplexis and Ginny at ginny_mccoo and Kelsey at clush and pointed out the bitterly obvious. Oh, yes--- I have wooden floors. I've been in this apartment for nine months. My wooden floors remain Unchristened. Ginny and I commiserated about that last January--- both our apartments remained Unchristened, beds and wooden floors both. Nothing changes. Girls out there can Christen the floors of hotel rooms or dorm rooms or basement apartments or swimming pool changing rooms. These floors, this bed, this couch--- Unchristened, still. And likely to remain so.

No girl thinks I'm worth hotel sex. No girl will ever bring a Mornings-After Kit and her iPod through my doors, or even put a toothbrush in a purse for me. No girl will ever again suddenly grab my hand and laugh and pull me down the street toward a small hotel. I'm not even worth girls calling late at night and telling me about hotel sex. I'm certainly no one a girl--- SETX, Penn State, NYC, Baltimore, Rochester, Korea, Portland ---would ever think merits using up Slutgirl Supplies for. No one from my Past will ever call and tell me that I'm worth that--- that I'm as valuable as Other Males, that she'd do with me what she'd do with Other Males. And do girl will ever do it for me in the future.

I thought once upon a time that I'd become a good historian, that I'd be a good academic. I thought very briefly that I might be any good as a Rechtsanwalt. I suppose I even thought once that I might be worth something as a lover. None of that is true. I'm not worth hotel sex, or a Mornings-After Kit. I'm not worth travel together, or even kisses after drinks here. The girls who were part of my Past all now despise me--- I'll take that as a priori true. That's just a given. And even the girls who were voices on the aether for me over the last couple of years have vanished--- and of course have decided that I was a failure as a fantasy voice, that anything I ever said or did with them was contemptible and pathetic and vile. The girls who were voices on the aether once now only mock me the way Sky-Rocket mocked her Older Lover. I don't know if that's better or worse than if they simply write me out of existence.

Black Tape for a Blue Girl is playing--- the "Scavenger Bride" CD. It is beautiful. Perfect for a grey-dark storm-clouds night.

I really don't eat these days. I sit alone at night and drink bottles of shochu or work my way through the Skyy that I have in my freezer. There seems to be less and less reason to go to work or imagine any kind of a future. I can hold up my hands and know that they'll never run over a lovely wicked girl's bare smooth thighs and hipbones again. No girl will put a finger on my lips again. No girl will look down at me between her thighs--- bald spot or not. No girl will ever tell me that she's learned to love blow jobs and raise an inviting eyebrow. No girl will wake up next to me in a "nondescript brownstone hotel" and reach for a mornings-after kit.

I'm not worth that. I'm not worth as much as Other Males. I'm not worth anything--- the academic degrees mean nothing. I have no talents, no skills, no looks, no body, no symbolic penis, and for any practical purposes, none in the flesh. Hotel sex is a marker for value. And I don't have any.

I have the katana in storage, so there's no cutting up plastic patio furniture again. It seems sometimes to make more and more sense to find the short-blade wakizashi that goes with the longer blade katana and think seriously about I always call Japanese Bulimia. Without value, without a future, without any of the things that would bring a girl here with a Mornings-After Kit, Japanese Bulimia just seems to be something worth considering. Entropy always wins, after all. Always.