Sleepy Sunday afternoon. Grey and rainy outside. Slow, steady rain since this morning. I was at the coffeeshop by the university when it began. No thunder, just the sky darkening and the hiss of rain across the gated courtyard.

Up 'til five this morning with my lovely gentle opera girl in Birmingham. Soft laughter and talk of cities and dreams. She'd been in Paris and Rome early in the summer with a choral group and I could lie back in the dark and listen to her stories of Chartres and Assisi. She told me, too, about parties and hipster bands and indie venues in Birmingham. I paced through my darkened living room and drank vodka-limes and imagined her there on my worn velvet couch in just her signature too-short khaki shorts and an Eisley or Beirut tee, her cigarette a pale glow, telling me Stories.

I told her that I wanted to travel with her--- to let her show me Paris, to show her NYC. At the very least, I want to see her here in the fall, a long weekend in the lakeside flat.

I've never been anyone's Co-ed Victim, she said. Let alone anyone's Incestuous Sibling. I think I like it a lot.

I think I'll be filling up my paper journal writing about her.

Chilled pinot gris right now. Lovely bright taste. Barefoot 2008 pinot grigio--- seven dollars. Not bad at all, though. I think Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo and I agreed about that, about Barefoot's pinot grigio and pinot noir both.

I need Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo to do her meme lists--- 10 Things She Thinks Of for the letters L and M.

Coffeeshop girls this morning--- short sundresses, thin cheap rubber flip-flops, dark tans, ankle bracelets. I love ankle bracelets on girls. I always have. Thin silver ankle bracelets against sleek, smooth dark-tanned flesh. So utterly kissable. The little shy girl who brought my skim chai latte yesterday morning--- very short strapless blue sundress, strappy sandals, ankle bracelet, honey-blonde hair, glasses ---was in the grocer's last evening when I bought wine. She had two frozen pizzas and a bottle of wine and smiled and waved. Very lovely.

My green-eyed opera girl calls me by my first name. Oh, by my title, too--- Dr. de Guzman. But she does use my first name. That means a lot.

I will write the Incestuous Siblings scenario as a story. Mostly in dialogue, I think. The girl just out of university, ten years after the first time, sitting in a cafe in some expat town, Tallinn or Barcelona, telling the story, using it to seduce. Talking while doing the Russian ritual with vodka. Or the absinthe ritual. I can hear it in Miss Ginny's voice. Or in my green-eyed opera girl's voice (what shall I call her here? she is an L-girl...) But a question: what's the street in Tallinn Old Town nearest the bay that has the hippest bars? I must look at my Lonely Planet map of Tallinn.

If I marry Miss Ginny, it should be in Savannah or Charleston--- I think Miss Ginny and I agreed on that. She'd wear the kind of white lace minidress that Jane Birkin would've worn to be married in 1967. A perfect dress for dancing barefoot at the wedding reception after--- dive bar, River Street... My opera girl dislikes the institution of marriage--- patriarchal, oppressive, out-of-date ---but did agree that if she reached 30 unmarried, she'd call me and we'd be married for six months just so we could each say we'd done it. I expect her to wear a shorter dress even than Miss Ginny (or dress in jacket and tie and be a beautiful boy for a faux-gay wedding), but--- where should we marry? Mexique on the beach? A rooftop in Marrakech? The Cloisters in NYC? The Witchery in Edinburgh.

Miss Ginny and I and my opera girl all agree that monogamy is, at least in theory, not something we do. So I doubt Miss Ginny would mind me marrying the Birmingham L-Girl, even if Miss Ginny had never formally been divorced. Miss Ginny always wanted to kiss beautiful co-eds at the wedding reception (surely SCAD would have Japanese and Russian girls studying there?). My lovely Birmingham L-Girl likes the idea of...properly thanking...the Moroccan or Cote d'Ivoire DJs we'd have at the reception. (My Birmingham girl and Miss Ginny do share certain ethnic tastes in men) And of watching me ravish her roommate Holly there in our hotel suite.

I'm re-reading Stuart Stevens' "Malaria Dreams"--- if I'm recommending it to Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo, I read to be conversant with the details.

I so need to know all the details about Miss Ginny's "serious offer" to go to Nairobi. It's a lovely idea. And men have asked her to go to Shanghai and Iceland before, though she's never done it. Lissy at emigree left Miss Ginny a note saying that if Ginny wouldn't go, Lissy would. I understand the idea--- I'd take the boarding pass tomorrow for a flight to Tangier or Mongolia. But not Nairobi or Cape Town or Kampala or Lagos--- black Africa is just scary. I'd do Western Sahara or even northern Mali, or Somalia and Eritrea. Just not tropical Africa. Communicable disease, random violence, heat and humidity. High desert and mountains and the dar al-Islam are more my thing. But I want to know all of Miss Ginny's Stories. Details Matter, after all.

Miss Ginny says that she has two friends who are in fairly well-known indie bands. I'd like to know those stories, too.

Finished the Plath journals. I'd meant to re-read "The Sun Also Rises", but I need to finally finish "The Cruelest Journey". I have to see how Kira Salak finally gets to Timbuktu.

Miss Ginny is the one who told me about Fela Kuti, just as my architect friend Jessica in SF told me about rai. But I must ask Miss Ginny about a Mali-born singer named Salif Keita. He's supposedly one of West Africa's most celebrated musicians, but he lives in fear. Not so much the political fear that Kuti or some rai singers have had to face. Keita is albino--- albinos in West Africa are associated with evil ghosts. And it's been known to happen in West Africa that albinos are kidnapped and sacrificed by politicians looking to guarantee divine intervention to help win elections. In the late '90s Keita found himself hunted through the streets of Bamako by political gangs who wanted a famous albino to offer up to sacrifice to assure electoral wins. Had to feel the country, finally. I do wonder what his music is like. Something to track down.

Just as I really do need Mini Viva's "Left My Heart in Tokyo" on mp3.

A Bambara phrase, from "The Cruelest Journey": turaboo beradela. A technique for consulting the spirits, using both cowrie shells and verses from the Qur'an. I like that--- the convergence of Islamic and animist traditions in West Africa. You ask the question, and the spirits give an answer, and you get a small Qur'an verse in a leather pouch to wear.

I need a new deck of Brian Eno's "Oblique Strategies" cards. Though they're 30 pounds now--- close to sixty dollars. Expensive in hard copy. Though you can find all the Oblique Strategies on line.

I love doing things like Tarot and the I Ching. I have no belief in the supernatural, the spiritual, or the divine whatsoever. But I love systems and ritual. I love the look of certain Tarot decks--- sp. the Palladini "Aquarian" deck, with its Art Nouveau lines and colours. I'd love to sit with my green-eyed opera girl and smoke hash and read her Tarot.

Pinot gris on a rainy afternoon... My lovely Birmingham girl texted me while driving home through the hills. I want to take her to Oak Mountain Park there and kiss by the little waterfall...and do a twilight picnic on an overlook, drink pinot noit or malbec at dusk and look out over the countryside below. If you think I'm developing a major crush on her, I am.

My green-eyed co-ed has an ex who thinks that I'm very much evil and that I'm exactly a Lifetime Movie of the Week villain--- a standard-issue Evil Older Predator. I'm not standard-issue anything. My lovely co-ed knows my age and my address and my Bar number. She knows exactly what I want and what my tastes are like. Full disclosure... and that doesn't seem to have scared her. BRDYTW girl...though she told me last night with a grin that she was far more train-wrecky at sixteen, and that I'd have been all over her when she was sixteen. That's only five years ago. And, yes: in the Year Four, I would've been all over her.

Very soon... she must sing "Hold On, Hold On" and "Anywhere" to me. That is important. And I will read to her--- Rilke and Cavafy.

A lovely wicked thoughtful bookish panty-free girl who loves indie bands and experimental music and travel... Oh, yes. All my niche predator instincts are alive. And all my sense of bittersweet romance, too.

I must get Miss Ginny to listen to Sonic Youth's new "Eternal" album. And I need to have her send me music suggestions all her own.

It's not the Skinny Island. It's not the West Village or Morningside Heights right now. It's not even Little Five Points in Birmingham. But it's an afternoon where I can imagine kisses and chilled pinot gris. And where I can imagine boarding passes and Stories in expat cities and long soft gentle conversations late at night. I may not be able to jump rope or box or go to the All Points West festival, but I do have pinot gris and a lovely girl who tells me she wants to travel with me. Not a bad Sunday.