Crystal Method is playing behind me--- the "Drive" CD they did for Nike. It's a suggestion I really have to thank Lissy at emigree for. It's vur' danceable--- the kind of think I'd have been all over the floor with all night. I do want to be all-in-black dancing to it...or maybe sweep into a Wm. Gibson nightclub somewhere in the Sprawl with a team of bionics-enhanced mercenary gunmen to take out the hit team of a rival zaibatsu.

And I really do want to tell Rachel at sirena73 and Lissy at emigree and Kim at cataplexis that they are right: Massive Attack's "Mezzanine" is seriously good Sex Music. I want Ms. Chang to know that, too. And of course Kelsey at clush.

Though Massive Attack's "100th Window" is great Sex Music, too--- for other genres of sex. I need to talk with Liz V. at nightmareteeth about that.

The new Niyaz-- "Nine Heavens" ---arrived today, too. Niyaz is one of Azam Ali's side projects. She has that powerful, haunting voice, and whether she's singing in English or Persian or Breton or Latin, she's just...breathtaking. And she has that aquiline, pale, raven-haired look that I look: goth-exotica.

A girl at D-Land who calls herself GirlKisses wrote me this morning to say that she always hates it when males need her to say that they're as good in bed as Others, that she hates making comparisons. I had to tell her that I was talking about something just slightly different. I don't need to know that I'm as good in bed as a girl's other lovers. It's not about whether my hips can piston as hard or for as long as some other male; it's not about cock size and hardness. What obsesses me is being as Valuable as Others in a different sense--- is a girl willing to do with me what she does with Others? Is she willing to go to the same places and do the same things that she does with Others? It's not about the sex as such in the hotel, it's about whether a girl who's gone to "nondescript brownstone hotels" with Others would do that for me, too. It's about whether she's willing to make the same effort and do the same things with me as with Others. Am I worth the effort in packing that toothbrush or the change of clothes when she's getting ready to leave? Am I worth being a fantasy while she caresses herself on Amtrak? Am I worth an expenditure of Slutgirl Supplies and time and thought the same way that Others are?

I once made a point of taking a girl to Asheville for a week simply because she'd once spent a week there with another lover. I wanted to see if I was worth the same--- Chimney Rock, the Biltmore Estate, dance clubs near UNC-Asheville, B&B sex... She'd flown over to NC from Birmingham, met her lover at Cary NC and driven to Asheville. A complicated trip. I needed to know I was worth air travel (I could still fly then) and then a long drive in a rental. I needed to know I was worth that, too--- and of course I insisted on sex at Chimney Rock Park, something she hadn't done with him.

It does make me angry that no girl has ever made me dinner. That's one thing I've never been worth. The Evil Dana Lynn once promised me grilled salmon steaks, but of course ripped my heart out before ever doing dinner for me. No girl has found me that valuable. The bikini girls here all bring boys over and cook for them. Girls in my law school class always talked of inviting boys over for dinner. That's one more thing girls have never found me worth. Ms. Chang noted that she was raised in a Cuban-Chinese household--- she was proud of her culinary skills and liked cooking for boys she planned to seduce...or entice into violating her. One more thing I feel empty about. Girls don't think of going for drinks with me and then put that toothbrush into a purse, let alone morning-after flats and a tightly-folded cotton dress. Girls never think of making dinner for me (easy enough--- no cheese, no tomato) or of seductive after-dinner desserts and liqueurs. I'm not worth the pan-seared sea scallops...or even the pasta with oilve oil and garlic butter.

What is want is to know that I'm worth what a girl does with Others. I want to know I'm worth...the things they give Others. Or maybe it's just that I want to be...Others. Girls assign me no Value--- not even for phone calls. I think I've know that for years: that I need to be anyplace but here...and to be Someone Else. Almost anyone else.

Be clear--- what I need is random, nameless, wordless sex. Now, this summer. I need something where I have a purely physical value. I've never had that. Girls have said, "You're so smart..." Which of course means "...but not fuckable." I just want the value Others can have. I want to be one of the boys Kim at cataplexis would've gone to bed with at a Johns Hopkins party after exchanging only a handful of words, and never exchanging names. I want to be someone Lissy at emigree would've met randomly at a train station and gone home with to lie naked in the sun on his deck and make out... I want to be someone Kelsey at clush would've seen across a bar while doing tequila or soju shots and just gone over to and ground herself into him. I want to seen and valued as something purely sexual, purely physical. I want Value not as someone smart but as someone fuckable. I want to be desired apart from the books I've read and the things I know. Girls tell me that I have a vur' good phonesex voice--- but what I want is to be desired apart from my voice, to be desired for the sake of release and passion alone.

I want hotel sex--- to have a girl lead me wordlessly to a hotel on a first date. I want a girl who'll kiss me hard enough to keep me from talking and thinking. I want to be fuckable. And I want to be worth being part of a girl's Stories, to be someone she can put into the stories she tells her closest girlfriends after lots o' chilled vodka. DRL in Houston told Stories like that--- Debra RL had her "I'm such a whore" stories about seducing her masseur or sex in the UT-San Antonio library with someone she'd been making eye contact with all evening study carrel to study carrel. I want to be worth being part of that. I want to be a character in a story Lissy at emigree could put in an issue of "Revolver, Dauphin" or that Ms. cataplexis could write about in her Secret Journal, or that Sarah at sarahmarie02 could write down in a Moleskine on the way home from a hotel in Galveston or Houston.

I used to know that a certain tribe of co-eds saw me as a potential Wicked Older Lover. Girls who dreamed of "a Humbert all my own" saw me as a Theme Park Thrill Ride... I had value once upon a time--- I could be in Stories as a Wicked Older Lover. There's not even that any more. Girls might even call to ask what they should wear--- cropped tee or suit jacket with nothing underneath to pair with a black mini and heels? But the Story they're constructing has no room for me.

All value is market value. Didn't I say that once? Value is when a girl will do for you what she's willing to do, what she's done, for Others. Value is when you can be taken up into an "I'm such a whore" Story of nameless, wicked, shattering sex.

I need to tell Ginny at ginny_mccoo that I did watch "Pornografia" last night. I need to read the Gombrowicz novel--- and so does Ginny. We both (naturally) fell in love with Sandra Samos, the ash-blonde teen actress who played Hania. Wm. Gibson wrote once of Slavic girls who seem to have a whole extra set of cheekbones folded into their faces--- Ms. Samos has that. Ginny sighs that she's not herself exotic--- not elegantly Asian ---and that men don't fetishise her... But Ginny has Slavic cheekbones herself. Yes, as she says--- it may seem that only Elderly Russian Men want her, but I certainly find her deliciously exotic enough to tell her to pack her Norton Anthologies and come with me to a hotel on the quay in Tallinn...

I am terrified that Lissy at emigree will Dismiss me, that she'll be like Lexie and both vanish and turn against me. I'm convinced that Kim at cataplexis will do that, too--- that she'll not only not comment on the poems I sent her for critique, that she'll never speak to me after flying home from Manila, that she'll despise me for being part of any conversations from Manila hotel rooms. Lissy at emigree means a great deal to me--- bright, clever, wickedly delightful, someone who's been in my life for more than two years... It hurts deeply to think that she can simply Dismiss me without a word. Katy V. in San Antonio simply vanished--- poof! ---and so did DRL in Houston. But I don't want that to happen with Lissy. I want to be able to talk to her again, to read her Stories and entries and thoughts.

I've forgotten how long it's been since I've eaten. Something like four days or so. I come home and drink and stand on the balcony with a cigarillo. Smoking blunts hunger, Selena at Atwowaydream says; Liz V. at nightmareteeth agrees. I can touch my hipbones and cheekbones and think of nights when I was all-in-black and led girls out on a dance floor while Split Second did "Bend My Body Armour" or RevCo did "Attack Ships...On Fire". I did do tequila shots before going to work the other morning ("Tequila shots?" someone e-mailed me. "What are you, a sorority girl?"), just as a kind of marker: doing something self-destructive.

I thought of hunger artistry as a kind of experiment--- seeing if I could do what Ms. Chang or Liz V. could do, seeing if I could discipline my body, to let it know that I wouldn't simply submit to entropy. And I wanted to experience that sense of ghostly euphoria Cynthia Gralla describes in "The Floating World". Lying back in the pool, drinking vodka-lime or iced shochu, feeling utterly disoriented and separate from one's flesh--- that is as incredible sensation as Kelsey's "fucking trippy" asphyxia moment.

Somehow, too--- there is a part of me that sees hunger artistry and drinking my way through bottles of shochu as a kind of punishment, as punishing myself for having no Value, for not being anyone a girl would randomly kiss, for not being anyone worth a Morning-After kit, for not being able to touch a lovely girl's bare soft skin. No girl will ever caress herself on an Amtrak and think of me...or ever stand in a open doorway in the pre-dawn and kiss me before climbing into my bed. No girl will lie naked on my couch and drink absinthe. Not eating links, too, to no girl being willing to go with me for sushi and iced sake...let alone make dinner for me.

I feel utterly isolated here tonight. I can hear Niyaz playing; I can taste ice and vodka and lime. I just need...voices. I can't have kisses, I can't be anyone a girl desires. But I need voices. I need to think that I'm worth...something. And I want desperately for Lissy at emigree not to Dismiss me without a word.