Reyka vodka and sugar-free Red Bull this evening. Homage to Miss Ginny or Cynthia Gralla or maybe both. Or maybe it's just a way to have Icelandic vodka while boosting my energy levels. After all--- I did just take a multivitamin with Reyka-and-Red Bull.

There was a girl in my life once who used to call and remind me that I needed to take a multivitamin every day and hydrate often. I miss that. She and I ended badly, long ago. But I miss concern, miss knowing that someone does care. Nights can be very empty--- afternoons, too ---thinking that no one ever thinks of you or worries about you.

Last night I watched Steven Soderbergh's "The Girlfriend Experience". I rather liked it. It's a quiet film--- no obvious sex, nothing violent or dramatic. Sasha Grey was lovely and enigmatic and perfect for the role. Non-linear, fragmented, elliptical: I liked the structure. I won't make jokes about the idea of a "girlfriend experience". I will say that I understand what Sasha's clients in the film are paying for. Someone who'll just...listen. Other things, too--- they're paying for a lovely young girl who'll be seen with them in public. I understand that, too. But they're paying for someone who'll listen, for someone who'll hold hands, who'll just...touch...while they listen. The sex is assumed, of course. That's been paid for. Which makes the listening important--- you don't have to be on; you don't have to worry about performing well enough to be granted sexual favours. One of the characters in the film says that Sasha's character has a 'lack of affect', but it isn't that. It's that she knows how to be still. That's a rare enough talent. I watched her clients talking to her, watched them talking into the quiet around her, and I understood how valuable that is. You're never quite told what Sasha's character wants, but to some degree it's someone who feels safe enough to be quiet and silent with her, to let her talk. "The Girlfriend Experience"--- worth recommending. I would like to hear from lovely friends-and-correspondents about it. I'd really like to hear what Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo thinks. And I wonder what the Other Melissa at kraftig_bewegt thinks--- all the more so since she's had clients ask for GFE.

I've met Steven Soderbergh once or twice. His family were here for a while. His father was a university dean here, his mother was a psychic. Steven used to make little experimental films in his own Lost Youth and show them at a converted firehouse downtown. I remember seeing a few of them. I never really knew him--- he left for California young. I knew his sister and a younger brother a bit--- I did like the family. I was amazed by "Sex, Lies and Videotape". It's still a favourite film, and I miss the little dive bar that was a centerpiece of the film.

That whole ability to be quiet... Lacey had that, too. So did Britt-Nicole. But then...Lacey and Britt-Nicole did look so much alike. Lacey could sit at the Zeppelin Pilots' Club on a Sunday afternoon and just...look at me with those dark eyes and hold my hand across the table and just let me...talk. She knew me better than anyone else ever has, and she had a perfect sense of timing--- knowing when to offer up soft, ironic, gentle comments. Knowing when to touch my lips with her finger and take up her own stories. Lace always made me feel utterly safe and utterly part of something. She was a passionate and brilliant lover--- never, ever passive, not even as a violated and mini-kilted high school girl ---but she could always create that zone of silence and gentle quiet around herself.

Girlfriend Experience, then--- not just having a beautiful and dangerously-younger cachexical girl to show off in public. Or not just that. It's also that feeling of being inside the glass, of sharing silence and safety with someone.

That bench along the running track in Central Park, that bench just above the Met--- that's a GFE place. And the imaginary cafe in Tallinn where Miss Ginny and I could sit on a Nachsommer night and hold hands and talk--- that's one, too. I'd like to think that Miss Ginny has her own set of places like that in Montreal--- ones where she'd take me.

The hooded Yale sweatshirt came today. Fits well enough. I always buy sweatshirts and hoodies a size too large, and I always buy them extra-tall. I like feeling swallowed up in them. I like being able to sink down into them. Well--- a hooded Yale sweatshirt. I suppose I bought it only to feel as good as Lissy at emigree. I bought it to keep up with her own hooded sweatshirt from her university there on the Skinny Island. I need to think that I'll ever be marginally as good as Miss Lissy at emigree.

The oversized hooded Yale sweatshirt... I wish I could get one from McGill. The only question becomes--- sizes in Canuckia: are they on US or Euro standards for sizes? I need to ask both Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo and Heather at wantedwanted about that...and about access to McGill sweatshirts/t-shirts.

Yes--- autumn here in the Deepest South, and I'd love to have Miss Ginny out on the balcony with me tonight drinking Sofia Coppola faux-champagne... Miss Ginny in tiny shorts, barefoot, and wearing a McGill hoodie with nothing under it. She'd let me light her Gauloise and toss her hair back and kiss me... She'd be perfect for that autumn co-ed look...

The Vanished Laura-Ashlee at bladeoftheknife promised me a shirt for my birthday. I was never clear whether she meant a university sweatshirt (but from where?) or a buttondown. I miss her voice more than I can say.

I wonder where I could get a McGill t-shirt or sweatshirt... I must know someone who'd work out some kind of deal to get me a shirt with a McGill logo. Pity that I don't know anyone at SOAS in London or King's College at Cambridge. Though I don't fit into Euro sizes...

I do wish I could talk Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo into sending me a Montreal subway map. That would be...important.

I think that I'll wear the Yale sweatshirt and never feel as good as Lissy at emigree. She'll have a Life, and mine has long since been thrown away. I wonder--- if I'd seen her in a photo with a Goucher sweatshirt, would I feel the same way?

Miss Chang tells me that at 13, she'd have run to volunteer to be Roman Polanski's victim. She's not the only girl I've heard that from. I have no idea what that means--- after all, these are all beautiful, bright, bookish girls; they're all of them seriously bright. And they've all been willing to be around me. There are any number of dangerous avenues here. Roman would've been a great story for later, Miss Chang said. Just like you were. I'm not quite sure how to read that.

Old School Cantonese. Okay, yes. I did that. I ordered Mandarin chicken at lunch today. Why not? I felt...very 1963. I wish I could take Miss Ginny to Chinatown in NYC or Montreal and do a complete 1958 turista Cantonese dinner. But make a note: I don't do chop suey. Not under any circumstances. Nor egg foo young. And I would always defer to Miss Ginny for Old School Russian or Polish diners.

"The Girlfriend Experience"... at least Sasha Grey's character sleeps naked--- as all beautiful, clever, wicked girls should.

I do want someone who'll sit and trade stories there in the dark, who'll sit and let quiet envelope the two of us and whisper back and forth with stories and fragments of lives. Call it a GFE if you want. Sasha Grey was very good at conveying that kind of quiet. The film is worth seeing.

I miss Voices. I miss being there inside quiet and ethereality with a lovely girl.

And I hate knowing that even if I had sweatshirts from SOAS or McGill or wherever, that I'd never have a Life or be as good as the Vanished girls from my Past.