"9 Songs"... Lovely film. Of course I have a major crush on Margot Stilley, who plays Lisa. How not? Tall, cachexical, short-haired, coltish. Twenty-one in the film. Perfect. And it's Michael Winterbottom--- always a fine director, always a fine sense of colour and light. Margot Stilley... sigh. The film is notoriously graphic, of course: unsimulated sex between the principals. I wonder what Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo thought of it. Or Laura-Ashlee at bladeoftheknife. I wish I could ask. Miss Lissy at emigree has probably seen it--- for the soundtrack if nothing else. But what did she think? The film is 2004--- when Miss Lissy was still Melia, still Charlotte J. Nolan. When she was naked on a carriage house sofa in Silver Spring, what did she think of the film?

"9 Songs" does leave me empty and exhausted. I remember long afternoons, long autumn weekends in bed with lovers. Lacey, of course, is the key memory. It's always Lacey. She'll always be the key memory. "9 Songs"... I wish I could be there in a bed in Michael Winterbottom sunlight with a lover, with a girl who'll laugh and trade caresses and stories and a simple sense of presence and affection. I do imagine Miss Ginny there with me, sharing a bottle of pinot noir and listening to her vinyl collection. And there for a few weeks in midsummer I imagined Laura-Ashlee there with me, sharing a joint, lying naked in my arms in tangled sheets, listening to Debussy. Laura-Ashlee at bladeoftheknife is lying naked in a lover's bed tonight--- she's used to beds all across Birmingham ---but she'll never be in mine. "9 Songs" reminds me that I'm alone, that I'll never share a bed or a long sunlit afternoon with a lover again. I can watch "9 Songs" and know that I'll never have any of that again--- affection, genteleness, caresses, a sense of value and belonging.

Last week Laura-Ashlee at bladeoftheknife sent me an mp3 of a Schubert Lieder and promised to send me both more Schubert and Martin Jones doing Debussy. She won't. I'll never hear from her again. She's not reading this--- she's naked in bed with a MacBook Pro, planning where she'll go with lovers. She won't send mp3s any more than Lissy at emigree will send the mix CDs she promised me long ago.

For the record, yes. I do cry when I listen to Idina Menzel sing "Defying Gravity" and "I'm Not That Girl".

I could listen to Neko Case tonight. Neko Case always makes me feel better. But I really can't. Laura-Ashlee took up Neko Case at my suggestion. I can't listen to Neko without thinking of Laura-Ashlee. And I think of Britt-Nicole singing "Hold On, Hold On" to me for my birthday last year. Laura-Ashlee at bladeoftheknife promised to sing that to me--- one more thing I'll never have. In a short story I wrote once, the character who was Lissy at emigree sang Neko's "Deep Red Bells" to my character in bed at Le Parker Meridien in NYC. I want to hear Laura-Ashlee's voice tonight, want to hear her sing to me. I never did hear Lissy sing--- though that was always one of her 43 Things: singing Neko Case at a jazz club in Tokyo.

Artemis at artemislives and Trish at kissingverlaine and Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo will all publish. They'll all give papers at conferences. I never gave one, never published. I got my PhD and then...too afraid to publish. I always knew that if I published--- tried to publish ---and got rejected, I'd never be able to write again. And I'd never be thought of as Smart again. I'd never be taken seriously again. Or thought of as having Promise. So I threw away my career and any chance to have a professional life. I did the same at law school with interviews--- too afraid to be judged and found wanting and useless by Grown-Ups. I won't ever go to trial for clients. I'd only lose and be mocked and never be treated as Smart again. Lissy I'm sure will go to law school at Columbia or NYU or even go to law school in England and end up doing brilliantly at an international law firm or a human rights NGO. No one would ever interview me, let alone hire me. The members of the committee that did my viva voce exam for my PhD all told me my thesis was excellent, but I was too afraid ever to try to publish. I knew that I could never be as good as Grown-Ups, as people from Cool Places and Real Places. No one like me could ever be worth publishing. I'll never have the courage or determination or value of Artemis at artemislives or Lissy at emigree or Trish at kissingverlaine. I was never as smart as anyone else, anyway. And I'm too afraid of not being Smart to risk discovery.

I'm too afraid even to read notes here, or read e-mails---- I'm desperate to have e-mails and notes/comments, but I'm far too afraid and bitter ever to read them.

"9 Songs" is sexy and romantic and beautifully filmed. But it leaves me exhausted and empty and bitter. My bed will be empty all through the Year Nine and forever after. A year ago I was planning to go to NYC with a lover. Six weeks ago I thought I'd be back in NYC in October with Laura-Ashlee. At some point in the late spring I thought I'd invite Miss Ginny to NYC...or get her to invite me to Montreal. I'll never leave this town again. I'll never travel. And I'll never meet a lover anywhere again. I can watch "9 Songs" and just feel like I'm watching a documentary about an utterly alien world.

Holly Beth Vincent's "Crush" is playing. I've loved her music since my early twenties. Her "Honalu" remains my key song, the song I'd play for a lover and a first night, a first kiss. Again, so empty... I suppose it's all on my LastFM tracklist. But no one reads that. Or at least no lovely clever wicked panty-free girl reads it, no girl who'd use my tracklists for recommendations, or see them as reasons to find me interesting or valuable.

Tonight Miss Ginny is drinking in Montreal, Lissy is out partying in the Manhattan night, Trish is flirting with boys in Ohio bars, and Laura-Ashlee is peeling off skinny jeans in a boy's dorm room at Samford. I'm here alone drinking Demerara rum and looking at Margot Stilley's beautifully-starved hipbones and ribs and her long legs and feeling empty and useless and valueless. Not that they'll ever read this. Not that anyone ever will.

I wish I could hear from Miss Ginny and Laura-Ashlee about "9 Songs"... Though I never will. And "9 Songs" only makes me realise how empty and valueless my own life is and how I have fewer and fewer reasons ever to go on.