I made an iPod playlist just called "New Wave"--- songs from my Lost Youth. I was listening there on the upstairs patio while pacing with a vodka-lime and a cigarillo and something vur' suddenly came to me. I was listening to old favourites--- Holly Beth Vincent doing "Honalu", Animotion doing "I Engineer", Josie Cotton doing "He Could Be The One" ---and I realised that I was...holding myself very differently from the me at the office. When Smithereens' "Behind The Wall of Sleep" and Stabilizers' "Tyranny" were up, I knew what it was. I was standing taller, and less rigidly. There was something like confidence in my walk while I paced. Those were all songs from my Lost Youth, and I did feel...confident and capable and rather fuckable in those days. I will admit to...bopping...on the patio when Alphaville's "Big in Japan" came up, and Graham Parker's "Discovering Japan". Once upon a time I could dance--- straight white boy or no ---and I knew how to carry myself. I had to leave Lacey an e-mail about that--- that there was still something in me that was an echo of the all-in-black figure who'd danced with her to Cabaret Voltaire and Sisters of Mercy, the figure with red-tipped hair and eyeliner and the tailored black blazer. He might still be there.

Make a playlist note: Ultravox, "Dancing With Tears In My Eyes"... One of the great seduction-dance songs: melancholy, beautiful, powerful, synth-driven. I do have a list of girls--- Lacey, of course, but also Ms. Chang and Lissy at emigree and Kelsey at clush and Liz V. and ginny_mccoo ---with whom I so need to dance to that song. I used to delay going out to clubs until Night Flight had run the video there on Saturday nights. Ah--- Alessandra at bel_ebat. Vur' much her, too. And I think Taci, too. Ultravox isn't remembered much, though "Vienna" was a key early electronica piece. "Dancing With Tears In My Eyes"--- you really need it on a playlist. You really do.

Looking back through my old notebooks, through things from my Lost Youth that weren't quite a diary, I found a story I'd recorded once upon a time. I was at an arts world party here, lots of local artists and a crowd of gallery mavens and patrons. There was a lot of drinking going on--- a lot of drinking. I was there with a very tall girl in heels and a black, backless, halter-neck minidress--- certainly the youngest girl there. I was in the kitchen looking for ice when the wife of one of the guests--- maybe fifty, certainly very drunk ---came in and got in my face. She announced that she was "disgusted" with what I was doing, disgusted that I was there with some "half-dressed tramp" who was "young enough to be your daughter". And my date walked in at that moment. She came over to me, took my arm, and put her head on my shoulder. "And you know," she said coolly, "that's exactly what I pretend to be when we fuck." Exit horrified wife.

I was never so proud of her. I should've married her on the spot.

I wrote Lacey about that tonight. Ten points, I said, or a free saketini, if she could identify the girl who was my date. Lacey's reply---

If you remember, on the way home, I told you that since you weren't quite old enough to be my father, I imagined you as some younger third or fourth husband for my mother. I told you I imagined you as my wicked stepfather. My real mother heard about what I'd said at the party from English Dept. colleagues who were there. She wanted to be angry, but she had to admit I'd done pretty well. Not that she still didn't think you were evil and perverted. I think I took your tie that night. We spent the night at the Budgetel... You were glad I didn't call you Daddy while we checked in...

A girl with a memory, a girl who keeps her own notebooks. All these years later, she's still brilliant. I've asked two girls to marry me--- the Evil Dana Lynn just before I got my PhD, the Lost Liz Farrell just before I got my JD. Call that eight or nine years apart. But the two girls I should've asked--- Ms. Chang in the summer of the Year Six, Lacey in my Lost Youth ---were the ones that mattered. They're the two great mistakes of my life--- not marrying one or both. And I should've married Lacey just before she went to Tubingen to study. I'd marry her today. Even if she would now be "age-appropriate".

Apropos of nothing, Ms. Chang said to me not long ago that she knew that if she had married me and had an affair, I'd have been savagely jealous, but that if I'd come home and found her blowing the pool boy, I'd have just watched and given her directions. How, she asked, could I ever be jealous of a pool boy? They don't even have names, she said, just foreskins. I had to laugh--- but it's true. All pool boys are generically named Raul. They have no names. At best, pool boys are bit players in some late-night Cinemax film. I'd have given her directions, then punished Ms. Chang later. (And that, she said, is why I still love you. You understand these things!)

I downloaded two songs last night from the "Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex" sountrack--- "Siberian Doll House" and "Inner Universe". "Inner Universe" was the "Stand Alone Complex" main theme--- done by a Russian vocalist who calls herself Origa. Yoko Kanno wrote it, I think. It's a brilliant song. I do want to hear from lovely readers and correspondents about it.

I still sigh over the video to Gin Blossoms' "Found Out About You"...

The cachexically beautiful Liz V. told me to watch Heather Graham in "Broken". I do want to talk to her about the film.

I do wonder if Liz V. at nightmareteeth has ever seen "Liquid Sky"...

Once upon a time, Lacey said that she hoped New Order's "Blue Monday" or "Bizarre Love Triangle" would be Our Song. I kissed her and said that I thought that maybe Marianne Faithfull's "Running For Our Lives" or Berlin's "Sex (I'm a...)" was Our Song. I know that "Road to the West" from the "Cowboy Bebop" is my own theme song now. I just wonder what she thinks hers is here in the Year Eight. That's a question I wish I could ask Lissy or Ms. Chang...or even CloverSt or KaraokeKatey at D-Land... For any lovely wicked clever girls reading this: what exactly is your theme song?

Whether or not I ever get a real bald spot, whether or not I'm old enough for girls like Lexie to mock--- there's still another Eduardo-kun inside me. I wasn't Dr. de Guzman then, but I was a figure who was confident and at home on the dance floor, who had no qualms about being seen in public, about talking to lithe and wicked girls. I need to have his moves and grace again. New Wave music from my Lost Youth does that for me. I wonder if Goldfrapp's "Supernature" CD will do it as well...