In-jokes are so teh awrshome. But even better were the haiku he didn't report:

Po Bronson rang up
to tell Paul he wants his last
decade's ideas back.

You've heard the term 'beer goggles', I take it? This is the phenomenon by which a sufficient amount of alcohol in most people results in the short-term increased attractiveness of the opposite sex. But I'm not like most people.

Say hello, friends, to beer un-goggles.

Met Toothbrush on Saturday for a walk and a drink in a lovely part of the country. Sufficiently bolstered by a few rounds of ale, I got round to asking a question that had been bothering me for some few weeks: I know what he did at university, I know what he does now, but what, precisely, did he do for the ten or so years in between?

And I got an answer. It was... well, it wasn't what I was expecting, but it did give me pause nonetheless. As I had another beer, and then another, and we stumbled along the river to yet another real ale pub and he told me far too much detail about his past, I had decided this one wasn't for me, that knowledge was something I could not deal with, not effectively, not given my past. This even culminated in a rather tense (but in no way shouty) approximation of an argument at the second pub in which I took up a rather absurd challenge. Never let it be said I'm not a stubborn bint.

But when I caught the train to go home, he decided at the last minute to come with me. We met my friends, went to two house parties, and as I sobered up (stopping drinking at midnight is the new rule in these post-30th birthday times), I thought, don't be daft girl, he's perfectly nice, why are you being such a drama queen? And as the sobriety goggles descended I was glad because I took him home and we had the most marvellous sex. Even if he did laugh and call me a grouch in the morning.

I buy The Big Issue from a vendor who looks like Matthew McConaughey.

Am not sure whether this means he is a particularly attractive vendor, or that Matt McC could do with a bath, shave, and hot meal.

I know Wikipedia is generally regarded as laughable and a bit crap, but please.

It's Belle DE Jour, people. Not Belle du Jour.

As in, the BOOK Belle de Jour.
Also the FILM Belle de Jour.
Not to mention the FLOWER Belle de Jour.
And, indeed, the REST OF THE WIKIPEDIA ENTRY Belle de Jour.

Now, I understand, having had four days' worth of French lessons it must be severely tempting to 'correct' what you think is poor grammar. But I assure you, there is no such thing as Belle "du" Jour. Could someone with un soupçon of clue please re-edit the entry?

I had to tell someone I was a working girl.

Only in the most general terms, and certainly nothing about the writing. Last week. Friday afternoon. In a rather crowded and in no way confidential situation (although, after the fact, he did assure me what I said would remain between us.)

I needed to ask the sort of question that generalisations and examples simply won't touch. The sort of question most people would couch in probabilties and hypotheticals, or with the catch-all claim 'you see I have this friend...' I didn't - no, I couldn't - and just came out with it. 'Well, as it happens I used to be an escort. Now how does that affect the situation, if at all?'

The interesting thing is, I know he deals with people whose pasts hold (in my opinion) far worse secrets. And I wondered, is he really this credulous, this easily shockable, in such a line of work? But what is said can not be unsaid, just as what is in past can not be undone. (And also, apparently, how what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, though not having had the pleasure, I can't personally vouch for the truth of that particular statement.) No point apologising for something it is not in my power to change. So I continued to look him straight in the eye until he admitted that I needn't worry, my past was not problematic in this instance. And after another thirty minutes or so of conversation, he relaxed enough to almost start treating me as he had before that moment. You know, as a human being.

Practice, perhaps, for a time when I may have to tell someone who has much more invested in me than a fantasy about going out for drinks.

For various reasons I’ve often been dismayed with the reviews and interviews I’ve had. Obviously, no one likes to be trashed in the press. But more fundamentally I am disappointed with failure of reviewers and interviewers to address the questions so obvious to me. They seem obsessed with the What and Why of Belle de Jour, and very little interested in the How. The books document a particular side of my life, the sexual side, and no one seems too curious about how a female sexuality such as mine fits into the spectrum of women’s experience. It is instead usual that being unable to answer – or more typically, begin to ask – that question that many people write me off as a dangerous fraud.

[A certain number of reviews have been unable to resist noting that my blog grew, over time, more shrill and self-righteous. This entry will do nothing to convince otherwise. I am tempted to further defend myself by asking what they would have done in the same circumstances, but no matter. It’s my blog. I can (and will) do as I like.

At any rate – this entry is not about the business of being a writer, nor about the television show. It’s only peripherally, and perhaps academically, to do with sex, so if you’re averse to such musings I suggest you click away now and come back another time. I won’t mind.]

It occurs to me that most of these reviews – most often written by other women – call my authenticity into question based on the fact that my sexuality is significantly different from theirs (and thus, goes the usual conclusion, suspect as to whether or not genuinely that of a woman). This has long bothered me for reasons I have never quite been able to put my finger on, until recently.

My reading has led me to a study of female sexuality by Lisa Diamond which is focussed on the fluidity of sexual identification in long-term studies of gay and bisexual women. What the actual results of her research state I’ll leave for you to discover for yourselves – suffice it to say that certain things she mentioned tangentially, at least in my mind, related to my own situation.

What I understood, finally, was that I was not being judged by other women on the basis of feminine sexuality, that is to say, an understanding of sexuality that changes over time, has multiple routes of expression, and seems to bend to suit both temperament and circumstance. Because to such an understanding, surely, my sex life is completely comprehensible. According to Diamond, men view sex essentially differently from women, and it seems obvious even for my ability to compartmentalise and fuck like a man that I am still a woman at heart. I have identified previously as gay (albeit mainly to get laid by gay women), bisexual, and now, essentially straight – i.e. I am open to having my head turned but would prefer, as far as I can tell at this point, anyway, to end up with male partner/s in the long-term. This sexual history is something rather different from what I am often accused of (cold detachment, in fact more typical of depictions of women’s sexuality as written by men, as in the case of he original Belle de Jour by Joseph Kessel).

In other words, I feel I have been criticised not by women who see the feminine side of me and disapprove, but by women who are purposely enforcing a masculine template – the view of sexuality as having distinct categories, rigid practices, and unchanging elements of desire – and projecting that onto me. I would have expected other women at least to understand how what I write is simply my own journey, and in no way representative of anyone else, much less a group of people (young Londoners, prostitutes, Jewish girls, &c.) And yet female reviewers seem the most likely to object to me on the grounds that my experience does not match with theirs. I thought such generalisation was the realm of men. Why women would don a man’s viewpoint in order to criticise another woman is not for me to guess – not here, anyway. Buy me a drink or twelve and then we’ll talk.

The history of men writing about sex surely demonstrates the point of an inborn difference between male and female sexuality. Take for instance Philip Roth and Kingsley Amis. Here we have men in the classic mould, who over decades have chronicled sexual proclivities entirely suited to their respective class and personality types and also remarkably unchanging patterns in what they find stimulating. Their demonstrable heterosexuality is not the point; a gay Philip Roth would still be Philip Roth. The empirical evidence of my own circles of acquaintance confirm this – most men I know, gay, straight, or bi; vanilla or kinky, seem to come to an internal understanding of what they are at a young age and rarely deviate from those sets and categories containing the things that turn them on. For the women I know, this is not often true. I suppose a traditional feminist might argue a certain amount of this is due to early and unrelenting suppression of women’s natural sexual growth, but I have my doubts.

Of course being the age (and of the age) I am, such thoughts sit uncomfortably with me. As a direct beneficiary of 1970s feminism, and what’s more, only two generations from emigration, the notion that anything of my character is not self- (or societally-) determined is anathema. This is even in the face of much recent scientific and popular thought – one thinks of Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate - advancing the notion of human nature being not only the result of epigenetic factors (environment, exposures) but also genetic ones. Or to put it another way, ten years ago I was convinced femininity and women’s sexuality occurred at an intersection of cultural construct and individual choice, but now I’m not so sure. Even as an outlier on that particular curve in terms of the manner in which I approach many things, not least sex, there is a bell here I can no longer ignore.

I’m not going anywhere particularly interesting with this entry, by the way – it’s just something I feel compelled to get off my chest. I would like to think I lived in a world where my sexuality was not so incomprehensible to other women, or at least, if not understood, acceptable; I would like to live in a world where every story of a woman’s sexual journey does not have to be framed with longing for marriage and be peppered throughout with baby-hunger. I have on occasion strayed into writing about love and often regretted it – love as I understand and experience it is not only difficult for me but not a rewarding writing exercise. I don’t enjoy it, and no one enjoys reading about it from me.

There are many types of girl in this world, and most women will be more than a few of them at different points in their lives. Surely we can understand this and apply some acceptance. I would like to feel less like a specimen in a cage, a freak show for men to gawp at and women to despise. We are, as I have written elsewhere (in defence of Jordan no less) all women, the category is large enough to take all comers. Even a kinky bitch like me.

About three hours before we were set to meet, he sent a text:

Fancy having a shave for me?

I smiled and considered possible responses. There is a streak of pedant in me a mile wide that would like nothing more, simply because he failed to specify exactly which part of my anatomy merited shaving, to whisk my eyebrows off and claim misunderstanding. But no, I actually rather like this fellow and decided against. I replied:

Wot, all of it?

Now, going bald eagle is hardly the last word in kink. It's not even a word at all, it's a syllable at best, more likely a letter (and nothing as interesting as a vowel). On a scale of zero to let me push my fingers down your throat until you vomit up the piss you drank, then rub your face in it while I smack a dildo hard across your arse, going hairless is about a 0.00002. But one thing I am rapidly learning is that outside the world of the call girl, it is a truth universally acknowledged that men need to be made to feel as if they've battled for every last sexual favour granted them, no matter how usual.

Which to a girl like me is anathema. I don't see much need to play coy when it comes to how you want your sex, especially if the requests are fairly simple ones. Dressing up? Honey, let me give you a tour of the spare wardrobe. Strap-ons? Take your pick. Nipple clamps? I'll be there with bells (and extra weights) on. You don't even have to ask me twice - I love sex and am always game for tame.

However (with the aid, mostly, of newly acquired female friends) I am learning the art of withholding. This is a whole new world to me, one in which women give blow jobs once a year and only after an expensive night out. A world where a girl consenting to watching softcore with her partner is rewarded with professions of love and a holiday in the Alps. Where threesomes are le dernier cri in unfulfillable fantasies. A world, if you can imagine, where people who sleep in the same bed elect to have sex with one another as infrequently as they can manage.*

Also one in which every woman but muggins here seems to be able to hold on to a regular lover. It makes no sense to me, but there you go. Hence my response.

His reply:

yeah?

And it was the lack of capitalisation, that tender little y, the timid question mark, that told me more than he could have imagined - this is a man who is used to hearing no. This gorgeous, sexy, interesting, clever, fit man did not usually get his way in bed, at least not any time in recent memory. My heart all but broke over the realisation. I texted back quickly to let him know of course I would shave. And when he came over, we broke the bed.

--

* Lest you think I'm laying all blame for this state of affairs at the doorstep of women, I feel obliged to clarify - certain men encourage this behaviour. I've known men to walk away from a sexual dynamo only to end up panting at the feet of a frigid hag by choice. Clearly, in some minds, girls who have less sex must have pussies that are lined with gold. If you're one such chap, here's a free clue: the M1 still goes north regardless of how many people drive on it, 'kay?

I ran across this appalling sentence in a newspaper today,

The rise of the sex industry is one indication of how women's bodies are considered public property

Actually, no. The rise of the noncoerced sex industry is indication of the freedom of women to do as they like with their bodies. Without prostitution, a woman's sexual favours have historically been seen as legitimate only following a state- or religious-approved union. Where the sex industry is legal, it is confirmation that I have the right to use my sexual organs along with my limbs and my mind in order to earn a legitimate income, and that those parts of my body are no less mine than any other part.

The real indication of women's bodies being considered public property would be the shameful and disgustingly low rape conviction rate in this country, paired particularly with widespread belief that drinking in public or wearing certain clothing amounts to 'asking for it'. And while most writers who call themselves feminists agree such attitudes are Neanderthal, they are often the very first to criticise anyone who gets a little tiddly and likes a short skirt*.

* that is, unless the tipple of choice is a mojito and the skirt is Katharine Hamnett, in which case, carry on partying, sister.