Massive Attack is playing there behind me--- the "100th Window" CD.

I will have to thank PondLife at Diaryland for sending me to the video at YouTube for David Sylvian's "Darkest Dreaming". Beautiful, haunting song. From the CD "Dead Bees on a Cake". I must get the CD--- and get Sylvian's Nine Horses side project as well. PondLife gets my thanks...and an encouragement to post more--- always...

I wanted to share the David Sylvian song with Lissy at emigree, to share "Darkest Dreaming" as well as the Massive Attack CD. Both things I want on my iPod. I'm going to assume, though, that no one is reading this, that I've driven everyone who might have been a friend and correspondent away. I haven't been able to read any comments or notes here in days. I'm afraid of what people have to say to me. I can't face that--- harsh and dismissive and contemptuous things from people I want in my life.

I miss Rachel at sirena73 deeply. I'd thought she and I would be friends. We seemed to share a sense of humour and tastes in music. I don't know how she went from being kind and supportive last week late to being angry and dismissive by Sunday. I'll never know what I did, never know why she wouldn't call and talk. The same is true of Jill at dehumidifier--- a sudden dismissive rage. I'll miss Lissy at emigree most of all, of course. Lissy is someone I've cared about rather a lot over the past couple of years. It hurts vur' much to lose Lissy.

No one's going to read this ever again. This really is like a voice out in the high desert night, a ghost on the aether.

A girl from Boston, a girl who's now teaching at Oxford--- I'll guess that she's not speaking to me, either. She asked me to help with cite checking for an article she was doing, and I did agree...and then just...couldn't. I couldn't even tell her why: the whole thing with Lissy and the Mornings-After List fiasco, the complete need to starve and drink and wish myself into oblivion, the realisation that I'd never have sex again... There was no way I could focus on anything academic. And now she'll never speak to me again, either.

Last evening I went out on the upper deck and looked across to Nr. 937, to the grey-blue house where the blonde sugarbaby girl lives. She was home last night--- no Jaguar sedans or Infiniti sports models arriving with clients to pick her up. She was there on her porch with her keitai and her iPod. I watched her talk and laugh on the keitai and then fit the earbuds for her iPod. No porch light, but she was backlit from inside--- faded short shorts, cropped bra-less halter-tee, deliciously barefoot. No idea what was on her iPod, of course, but I could see the cherry of her cigarette move in the shadows and see her blonde hair swish round her face as she danced to whatever it was. Bopping, I thought. In my Lost Youth I'd have said she was bopping.

I always say "deliciously barefoot", but I worry about being mistaken for one of those Pretty Feet types. But it's the semiotics that matter, the encoded meaning of her attire. A lovely girl barefoot in tiny shorts or a tiny skirt is deliciously sexy--- after all, the semiotics of her look say that she's comfortable with being not-fully-dressed, that she's already begun to be undressed. And it's a look for schoolgirls and co-eds--- barefoot and panty-free in tiny shorts or a miniskirt always suggests a young girl in her dorm room or or her parents' deck with a secret Corona, dreaming of wickedness and Adventures... Ginny at ginny_mccoo would understand.

I've always loved it when a girl barefoot in tiny shorts or a too-short skirt kisses me and glides a bare ankle along my leg. I like the sensation. I've always loved holding hands, but in general I'm reserved about being touched. I like it when a deliciously barefoot girl does that for me, though. It's always a major sign for me when I'm okay with just being...touched.

I'm the only living person in North America who owns no flip-flops. Deck shoes, tennis shoes, but never flip-flops. Flip-flops are for Asian peasants and beautiful, slutty co-eds. Not for males of my ilk. I always tell lithe leggy wicked panty-free co-eds to wear the cheapest, thinnest, rubber flip-flops they can find. Much sluttier--- easier to just kick away for passionate, immediate, no-names sex with handsome strangers, easier to dangle from one tanned, bare foot to entice Older Males... (A look Ginny at ginny_mccoo says she likes on slutty co-eds herself...)

I thought about cashing in everything and just going across the street with a box of cash and handing it to the girl at Nr. 937. I saw "Leaving Las Vegas"; I know how it works. I tell myself that she's at least a semi-pro, a sugarbaby. My hope would be that she's professional enough to take the money and then not laugh at me--- at my body or my performance.

A very tall, very gaunt girl at a party long ago came up to me very drunk and asked if I thought it would be hot to fuck a dying girl. Not an opening line you get very often. What she meant was that she had a heart problem--- something to do with a valve ---that she'd have to have corrected before it became life-threatening. She sat there on the arm of a chair and asked if it would be hot to fuck a girl who could die during sex. I didn't take her to bed, though I probably should have. She was pretty, and very drunk, and on the cusp of either tears or rage. I should've, but I didn't.

The girl at Nr. 937--- if I gave her the money and told her that she'd be someone's last fuck, would that excite her? Scare her? Leave her bored? That's something worth knowing.

I have playlists for the Psyduck iPod that I'd like to share. Is it possible to do that--- send one's playlists to another iTunes user? A technical question I could've asked the girl in Seattle, or maybe asked Umi at ivich or Suzan at ivydevice. Or Lissy--- I could've asked her. There's just no one left to ask.

Ms. Chang tells me that her husband is sullen and untalkative--- she's leaving for Russia in two weeks and her husband has become seven years old over it all, even though she will be back by Christmas and she spends her academic year in Rochester anyway, while he stays in Florida. I told her to get in his face and remind him that this is important to her career and her future, and that she's not going to leave him for some Petersburg new-money type with an Audi A-6 and knife-edge cheekbones. I'm not used to that, mind you--- telling beautiful girls to stay with their husbands. I had to stop talking there on the phone and tell Ms. Chang how strange it felt to say that. She laughed and agreed--- not something she'd ever thought to hear from me. All the more so since once upon a time--- just before she met her husband ---I was very seriously considering what she'd say if I asked her to marry me. I told her that the other night. That summer when she was back just after her first year at Rochester, I was seriously going to ask. Bad timing, though. Still--- at least she was amazed rather than appalled when I told her.

If a girl tells me that "you're so smart..." would I really break her jaw? Probably not. But I'd want to, there inside my head. And I'd tell her I would, if only to see if I could make her flee. Making her afraid would be...a small victory. That whole condescending, dismissive tone that says "you're so smart...but not fuckable" leaves me in a cold rage. Yes, I'm smart. I have paper on the walls--- BA, MA, MA, PhD, JD ---to prove it, but none of it has ever done me any good. What I need is to be fuckable, to be someone a girl like Ms. cataplexis or Rachel at sirena73 or Genetikerin at Diaryland would come up to at a party and make out with even without an exchange of names. I'll never be kissed again, I'll never have a girl think I'm worth bringing along a toothbrush for. Metonym at Diaryland once wrote about men talking to her at clubs or parties, and I'll change the genders and agree with what Erin said: if a girl doesn't want to make out at a party or a bar, then don't bother talking to me. Don't bother. Don't tell me I'm smart or well-read, let alone nice. None of that matters. If you don't find me first-date fuckable, if you don't want to just stop talking and make out, if you don't see me as part of your Adventures and Encounters for the evening, just go away. If you won't do with me what Ms. cataplexis or girls like Kelsey or Lissy or DRL or Genetikerin would do with boys they meet at parties, then don't talk to me, don't make eye contact, don't stop. Just go away. If there's no making out, if there's no chance of hotel sex, if I can't be seen as something immediately, compellingly sexual--- even if only as a way for a girl to relieve her boredom ---then I don't want to talk to a girl or waste my time being out. If I'm not as valuable as Others are to girls, I'd rather go home and drink myself into unconsciousness.

If a girl doesn't want to make out, she's only making me feel worse about my Value. If she doesn't bring a Morning-After Kit just in case, then she's already told me that I have no Value.

A girl summering on an army base in Korea wrote me this morning to say that she found herself regretting how sexually active she'd been this summer. Easy enough to do, of course. Beautiful tall lithe bright lifeguard girl of twenty on a base with thousands of lonely soldiers. She just hated that she'd slept with five soldiers since June and only thought one of them thought anything about her as a person rather than just as a fucking-the-colonel's-daughter moment. I had to agree with her--- she's bright and beautiful and leggy. There's nothing at all wrong with promiscuity--- I certainly encourage it in beautiful girls ---but she needs better guys. Yes--- much older. Yes--- someone who can share bookshelf recommendations with her. But in any case...better.

Still--- I read her Facebook message at 0730 this morning and thought...five guys. She's been with five guys since early June. I knew about three; I seem to have missed out on the other two. But nonetheless...five. The first thing through my mind was...names. Body count names. I could look back to early June and list...seven names: NYC, northern Virginia, Santa Monica, New Jersey, Decatur GA, Butler PA, Seattle. Seven names--- and for an instant I felt like I was ahead of the game, like I didn't have to feel like a failure next to the girl in Korea. And then I realised--- seven names, yes, but all by phone. Seven names by phone, plus two more (a hotel room in Manila, Bridge City TX) via Facebook chat. Yes--- failure. Seven girls felt like there was something to be gained by calling me to be seductive, two more were willing to do that by Facebook IM. Which is still...a failure.

I realised that if I said anything to the leggy blonde girl in Korea about that, she'd only be...disgusted. It doesn't count by phone--- I think we can be clear about that. Her five on the army base far, far outweigh seven-plus-two by phone and IM. I could tell other girls from the past--- Baltimore, Portland, St. Paul, Montreal, San Antonio, Boston ---that. Nothing they did with me by phone counts. They don't even have to be ashamed. It might as well never have happened.

But of course, girls don't have to be ashamed of phonesex. Girls buy vibrators, write about vibrator choices, discuss vibrators with friends, travel with them. Phonesex for girls is still Daring and Wicked. Masturbation for girls is "empowering". It's regarded as (at best) pathetic or (at worst) creepy and disgusting for males. Seven-plus-two girls found me worth calling for Wicked reasons over the last ten weeks. Not that it counts--- except maybe against me.

Okay, then: by phone. But...only by phone. Yes--- I'm reclusive and near-suicidally depressive and unwilling to risk failure and humiliation by actually being out anywhere. And by phone seems...somehow something to be ashamed of. It either says that I know adventurous girls and have a seductive voice/style...or that I need to be ashamed of doing something both creepy/loathsome and a marker for failure. Even having girls call at three in the morning to be seductive--- being someone a lovely co-ed or grad student girl would call when lonely or feeling wicked ---still feels like failure. It's not in the flesh. And the phonesex thing is still regarded as creepy and pathetic for males.

The girl in the Manila hotel room had also done the Skype/webcam sex thing with her boyfriend back at her grad school in the States. Ms. Chang did buy a webcam so she can do the same thing with her husband while she's in St.-Petersburg this autumn. They don't see anything creepy about it; they're happy to be able to have some kind of sexual contact with distant lovers. But they're girls--- it all has a different value when girls do it. There are girls--- Baltimore, Boston, Rochester ---who've done phonesex with me and who'd never think that the doing it (as opposed to doing it with me) was shameful. But they're girls.

I'm always competitive about numbers. Maybe every male is. I felt good for a second about having seven names on a list--- seven plus two ---and all girls I like, girls I'd love to see and talk with and go dancing with and hang out with, girls who can talk about the things that interest me (books, films, music, international politics) even during seductions and phonesex. [I talk during sex--- I always keep up conversations during sex. And, yes--- girls have said that I'd be a good fuck if I'd just...shut up...during sex...] All the girls on the list were people I like and regard as smart, fun, sexy, talented, kind, valuable. Yes--- they thought I was worth calling, as being worth being on their lists. But my list itself--- a list of phonesex girls ---only demonstrated that I am a failure.

I told the girl in Korea that I have no problem with one-night stands, mine or anyone else's. Certainly not hers. I just feel embarrassed and ashamed about having a phone list--- I wish it could be girls-in-the-flesh, and having it be a phone list worries me, since that's such an easy thing to describe as creepy and loathsome and contemptible. Seven-plus-two girls--- NYC, Decatur GA, Butler PA, Santa Monica, Seattle, New Jersey, NoVa, Bridge City TX, Manila/Penn State. They don't have to worry about being loathsome and creepy and contemptible. Like two very beautiful girls in Baltimore and Rochester, they can claim never to be ashamed of having done phonesex--- only secretly ashamed of having done it with me.

The seven names mean nothing--- or mean only something derisive about me. The girl in Korea need never be ashamed, not of her Adventures, or of her five men this summer, and certainly not of ever being on my list. That's not something I'd ever ask her to do. I like her--- have liked her through three LJ diaries, and I only wish her Delights and Successes. Why should I ask her to be on a list that she'd find shameful soon enough? And of course the same is true for Rachel at sirena73: she'll never have to feel ashamed of anything done on the phone with me. Make a note--- despite a promise to call last Sunday, she Dismissed me with contempt and derision. I'll never know why.

Swing Out Sister's "Somewhere Deep In The Night" is playing. Lacey taught me about Swing Out Sister. I love Corinne Drewery's voice...

I need to have my German back. I need to get my German back and see if Genetikerin / Porzellan at D-Land finds me worth talking to auf Deutsch. And, yes: I keep hearing Nena do "Nur Geträumt" in my head...

No girl will make out with me again--- not at a party, or on a date, or at a club. No girl will ever feel anything other than shame and disgust about being on a phonesex list with me. And even if a girl did do sex in the flesh with me, she'd be ashamed and disgusted about having to see or touch me. I'd never be as good as anyone Kelsey at clush or Lissy at emigree or Kim at cataplexis would ever be with, and they'd never do any of the things they do with Others with me. Not that they'll ever speak to me again.

No one will read this or comment on this. This is a ghost voice, a voice out on the aether with no listeners anywhere in the high deserts. No one will comment, no one will call me. And there are girls--- in Seattle, in the Anaheim Hills, in Baltimore, in Las Vegas, who'll never call, and who'll erase me from their memories.