Listening to Nine Horses, "Snow Borne Sorrow"--- David Sylvian's latest project. Haunting and melancholy here on a rainy night--- and I always love his voice, love the worlds it conjures up.

I sent Kelsey at clush a handwriting note today. She had vur' kind things to say about my handwriting in a letter I sent her in Daegu. Her postcard in reply was lovely--- and her own handwriting is elegant and precise. And it shows that she went to school in Germany at least for a while. Her script is that Euro style that I've never mastered. I have to envy her that.

There's an old Chas. McCarry spy novel--- "The Secret Lovers" ---that I've always liked. Worth reading--- though its sequels are best left alone. Anyway--- the main character is a CIA officer in Europe in the early 1960s. I remember one scene where he's typing postcards to his contacts. His handwriting would give him away, he says. That Euro script is just impossible for anyone who learned to write in an American elementary school to master. So I really do envy Kelsey her handwriting.

My life this August is one depressing and soul-killing thing after another. Yesterday in the hall one of the partners came up behind me and said, "So, Dr. de Guzman, you know Rogaine would help with that." I very nearly dropped my coffee mug. "That thing'll just get bigger every day," he said. I fled to my office and spent the rest of the afternoon prodding at my scalp in search of a bald spot. No mirror in my office, and I was too afraid to go to the bathroom. So I sat there at my desk compulsively feeling up and down my head in search of a calvity. I didn't find one--- or I don't think I found anything. I couldn't feel any bare scalp or bone. Or I tell myself I couldn't. I've been doing it all day today, too. Whenever the air conditioner kicked on in my office, I could feel cold air falling down and kept obsessing over whether I was feeling it on bare scalp.

It's humiliating to be this afraid, to sit here fingering my head in search of a possible bald spot. But I do take the idea of a bald spot as a marker for sexual failure. Part of me really does believe that if you get a bald spot, your penis falls off. Or that it retracts into the body, migrates to the bald spot, and falls off from there. Having a bald spot just seems like a clear marker for impotence and lack of all sexual value to attractive girls.

The partner...is a major douchetard. I know that. This is the same man who looked up in a file review meeting and just blurted out, apropos of nothing, "Do you know how many clients have shown me their tits in my office? Three!" Total random non sequitur. And sad on a couple of levels, including the fact that if you're going to brag about that, three in twenty years is actually...well...not a lot. I know that he spends his days trying to ruin others' lives. I know that. And it works, at least with me. I know that he's a major douchetard. But I'm now afraid of my hair, afraid to let any girl see the top of my head. The Other Males who are doing hotel sex with girls I desire don't have bald spots. The characters in films who get to sleep with lithe leggy wicked clever girls never have bald spots. And right now I'm doing it again--- obsessing over cool air on my head, running my fingertips compulsively across the crown of my head.

There are girls who've e-mailed me to say that they've dated guys with shaved heads, or guys who started to seriously lose their hair as undergraduates. But Ms. Flox at besideserato cancelled all that out. Ms. Flox wrote to say that she has a clear understanding with her husband. She agreed not to gain more than five pounds after marriage, he agreed not to lose any hair. She was quite clear on what she'd do if he had a bald spot: instant divorce. And Ms. Flox was being quite coldly serious. She wrote that she'd made it clear to her husband: despite his money, despite the two homes, if he had a bald spot...no sex and no wife. Taci in Portland, sarahmarie02 in SE Texas, Nadej in Seattle, even Stella at stelladellasera all said that a bald spot didn't matter, that men could be attractive and sexually valuable even with a calvity. (I still want to hear from Kelsey at clush and Ginny at ginny_mccoo on this) Taci wrote:

And also - half the males I secretly want to fuck don't have their original hairlines. Age is beautiful - wear it well and with confidence. Women seriously don't care about hair loss, at least not women of substance. We want men who make us laugh, who dress well - thoughtful men we can show off to our friends that date knuckle-dragging construction workers. We take a great deal of pride in this.

I've known Taci online for ten years. I trust her. I especially trust her about anything to do with hair--- she's a vur' skilled hairdresser. But Ms. Flox's blasé statement just...leaves me terrified. She does see herself as a sexual role model for stylish and wicked girls.

I've been watching "Ashes and Diamonds" tonight--- a film (and novel) I really do want to discuss with both Kelsey at clush and Ginny at ginny_mccoo. They each have a clear and longstanding interest in Polish lit. I assigned "Ashes and Diamonds" to a class once at Auburn--- my students liked it. And I really do want to hear from Kelsey and Ginny about it. And I hope both of them will look into the mid-70s film "Coup de Grace" ("Der Fangschuss")--- wonderful b/w film about the German irregulars fighting the Bolsehviks in the Baltikum at the end of WW-1. The novel it was taken from--- Marguerite Yourcenar ---is worth tracking down, too. I'll offer that up to Tiffany at vanity_overkill...

Tomorrow I will begin doing a German review--- I want my German back up to speed. I need to be fluent again.

A voice came over the aether at 0200 this morning--- a lovely tall artistic girl in Seattle telling me she was walking barefoot over a rooftop in summer midnight rain, and that she'd be at home soon--- naked on her futon, lighting a cigarette and listening to the rain, with Leonard Cohen on her iPod and the taste of dark rum on her lips. A lovely image... A vur' lovely image.

If anyone has (or can find) mp3s of Eric Anderson's "Ghosts Upon the Road" and "Belgian Bar", I hope they'll send them to me. And explain how to download them, and then send them via iTunes to my iPod. Technical advice is always welcome...