VACATION MAN PART V: My Own Foreign Lands

Outdoor sex, sex-work-as-litmus-test, Nice Guys, still life paintings, gelatogate, Rohmer-esque vacation revelations, Deleuze on traveling for pleasure

Still from Eric Rohmer’s Le Rayon Vert.

At last, this is the fifth and final part. You can read Part I here, Part II here, Part III here, and Part IV here.

FRIDAY

L attempted to adjust the stubborn seat clamp on the cruiser bike one last time, to no avail.

“I’ve got an idea,” L said, freeing a smaller, black-and-green bike from a mass of bikes leaning against the garage wall. “Try my son’s bike.”

The wheels were small in diameter — L’s son is ten years old — but I could comfortably stand on my toes over the crossbar and dismount from the seat.

I looked goofy on a boy’s bike, pedaling furiously on small wheels to keep up with L, but it was better than having the cruiser bike saddle jamming into my tailbone on a long, uneven bike path.

*****

We biked through the entire Stadtwald and continued on an unpaved path bordered by dense tree lines. We pulled up to a quiet, uncrowded reservoir with a windsurfing rental booth and food kiosk. 

After we’d rested and finished our beers, we went for a walk on a quiet path that circumnavigated the reservoir. 

When we’d reached a particularly unkempt section of the path, L stopped and looked into a clearing lined with trees and bushes. 

“Hey,” L said, turning to me, “do you want to have sex in the woods?”

“OK! It has been so long since I’ve had sex in public, outdoors.” 

“Me too,” replied L, “the last time was with my ex-wife, in the woods, after we’d signed the lease on our first apartment.”

“Oh my god, the last time I’d had sex outdoors was almost ten years ago. In Riverside Park, when I was dating a grad student.”

It’s funny how, at a distance, some places look perfect for semi-secluded outdoor sex, but when you walk over and start scouting for a good location, the once-ideal looking area is positively riven with peepholes, too-clear sight lines.

Eventually, we wandered into a copse surrounded by some reasonably tall shrubs. This would have to suffice.

I quickly scanned the sturdiest tree trunk for ants, spiders, poison ivy, anything Gross, and then leaned back on it, let L kiss my face, unbutton the decidedly unsexy, eminently practical hiking shirt I’d worn for the bike ride. I wished I’d worn my swimsuit top instead of my likewise very practical sports bra, but no matter: L pushed it out of the way and put a breast in his mouth. 

We swapped places and I unbuttoned his shorts to give him a blow job. Here on my knees, my senses were on alert: I could hear L’s breath, groans; but I also heard every leaf rustling, stick snapping, anything that could indicate the approach of another person. I started to feel paranoid. There would be no plausible deniability available to me if some unsuspecting stranger or officious German park ranger caught me with a dick in my mouth.

Focus, my god, be present, I thought, pressing L’s dick deeper into my throat, hoping the sheer effort of Not Gagging would take my head out of the clearing. 

L helped me up, dusted off my knees, and bent me over so he could fuck me from behind as I held on to the tree for support. I closed my eyes, trying not to think about getting caught, how much easier this would have been, logistically, if I’d worn a dress.

L wasted no time finishing. As he pulled out, a slug of cum landed in the heel of my shoe.

“Oh — a souvenir,” I said, gesturing at the glob in my shoe, still clinging to the heel of my sock.

“Sorry, we can throw that in the wash.” 

We walked out of the clearing feeling giddy, the way one does when one successfully performs a minor transgression.

*****

Biking alongside me, L said that he’d missed having spontaneous sex, like our outdoor rendezvous, toward the end of the marriage. When his wife no longer wanted to have sex, he sought it from “a professional—a beautiful Romanian woman.” 

“I couldn’t just see other people. This city is too small for that. And it would have been hard to find a woman who just wants to have sex, nothing else. It was the easiest way.”

“Yes, that checks out,” I said, “I’ve been a professional too. Many of the men I saw were married, too. It was a way for them to stay married, avoid an expensive divorce. They wanted to compartmentalize their sex life.”¹

“Really? Why — I thought you had an office job?” 

“I was either unemployed or didn’t make enough money at my full-time job.”

“How much did you charge?”

“$800 when I was younger, but only $500 in my thirties.”

“That is a lot! I only paid 100-200 euro.”

“I think I could’ve earned slightly more if I’d made more of an effort with my appearance. But I don’t think my appeal was ever about Being Hot. Honestly, I think the men were either into Asian girls, or liked that I looked…accessible — low-maintenance and inexpensive. A dilettante who won’t negotiate fees. Not like a real, hot, high-fee escort.”

“Yeah, you don’t look very professional,” L said, smirking.

“To be fair, I put in an effort in other ways: if they wanted to chat or hang out, I tried to be engaging and charming. When I was younger, I let them give me advice, too.”

“That’s why I liked the Romanian Woman: she made me feel very comfortable. She always seemed to enjoy spending time with me. It never felt perfunctory; she was very warm.”

“What was she like? How old was she?” I asked.

“I couldn’t tell how old she was. She was around the same age as me, I think. But she only did it part time. She liked cars and was saving money from this gig to buy a Mercedes.”

This conversation, I thought, had gone well. Sex work is a subject that has become a sort of litmus test for intimacy among my friends and acquaintances: how one responds after learning of my erstwhile side hustle as an escort usually determines the nature and likelihood of further connection, empathy. L’s interest in the material benefits, the pragmatism of it all, was entirely on-brand; and I appreciated that he hadn’t steered the conversation into one about “empowerment.”² I felt, if not quite acceptance, a certain alignment with L.

*****

We stopped for another beer at a kiosk near the city’s historic dam, a place I’d visited with L the previous summer. Back then, the weather had been warmer, the vibe more romantic. This time, we sat at a table overlooking the lech, allowing the sound of rushing water to fill the silence between us while we rested with our beers.

“Next week is going to be so busy,” L said, staring into the water, “I’m not looking forward to it.”

“I have to go back to work, but I can’t go back to work,” I said, “I never want to work again.” Vacation was a welcome reprieve from the grind. But it had not redeemed for me the value of living, as I’d hoped. It did not stem the resentment I felt about having to work so much to sustain a life that could not afford me as much literature, art, community, meaningful “work” as I felt necessary to justify my existence. Rather, it made clear the impracticality of it all, that I’d be on a burnout-vacation, boom-bust cycle for the foreseeable future.

Above all, I’d wanted release from these same crabbed, limiting beliefs — that life was not worth living unless I could do x, y, z, in a meaningful way. I wanted to feel compelled —to welcome, even — a pragmatic approach to life, lowered expectations, gratitude for my little sphere of the world, a salutary reduction in self-obsession in favor of turning outward, toward community. And, like all therapy-based revelations, I struggled to convert such awareness into authentic belief, theory into practice. 

I expressed none of this to L, however. 

“I am afraid to open my email when I return to work,” I said, behind my sunglasses.

*****

Later that evening, L and I went to a nearby bar for a nightcap after he’d returned from dinner with his publisher. I’d asked him how it went, but his response was vague: “good. I think she’s interested in another book project.” Again, he seemed distracted and would not volunteer more details.

We settled the bill and walked back to his apartment. 

L, apparently thinking about his marriage, his recent breakup with the Younger Woman, launched into an unprovoked complaint:

“When I tried to be a good husband, a good boyfriend, the women never wanted it. Nothing good comes of it. Women always want men who treat them badly. In fact, when I ignore them, or treat them badly, or act selfishly, I can see the yearning in their eyes.”

“That’s an entirely unoriginal observation,” I said, repulsed by L’s gross admission of seeing “yearning” in the eyes of women he had, by his own admission, treated poorly. 

“There’s some truth in clichés,” L responded.

“Perhaps. But the problem is not ‘women.’ I think the real problem is acting inauthentically: if you’re not being yourself — only behaving a certain way because that’s what you think women want — it makes sense that you’d resent women for not responding to your presentation of an entirely made-up ideal. You’re making assumptions and getting mad when you’re wrong. What do you expect?”

“But sometimes I do ask, but they don’t tell you what the problem is, they’ll tell you something else,” L responded.

“I understand this,” I said, “It’s hard to know what one needs, and sometimes what one needs is not what one wants. But that’s hardly a problem unique to women.“

“So do you like men who treat you badly?”

“Do I ‘like men who treat me badly’? Of course not. But I admit that I feel compelled to ‘win’ or ‘overcome’ an impossible, unrewarding expectation I’ve set up for myself, such as fixing or conquering an unavailable man. I no longer want to possess this man because I’m attracted to him, because I genuinely want him; I want to “win” him for the sake of winning. Because my mind—wrongly—equates rejection with confirmation of my own inadequacy. That’s where the ‘yearning’ lives, if you can call it that. It is ridiculous. And I hate it; I’m trying to stop doing that.”

Thankfully, as we arrived at L’s door, we dropped the conversation. And, because the conversation riled me up, I was grateful for the calming effect of a ritual spliff. I wasn’t entirely convinced of my reasoning: that I pursue men who Treat Me Badly because I don’t take rejection well — that the yearning stems from the masochism of it all.

The issue, in my mind, was that treating someone “badly” could mean a lot of things. I thought of Third Beer Man, considered whether he might fall into this category of men. In truth, I know that my frustration with Third Beer Man could be resolved, in some way, by direct communication on my part: I’d been so afraid of rejection, afraid of losing a situationship that was tiding me over for a now-extended period of time (Until when? For what?) that I’d avoided expressing what I want or asking for clarification. He was “treating me badly” to the extent that he couldn’t read my mind—couldn’t augur from my silence and acquiescence—what I wanted from him.

SATURDAY

In the afternoon, L and I went on a short bike ride to the river for a swim. We found a nice, sunny spot and lay down on a blanket in the grass. L leaned back and closed his eyes while I fished out my book. 

After reading two pages of my book, distractedly, I looked over at L: he was on his side, turned away from me. His back looked youthful, tan, fit — beautiful. I considered touching his back, pressing my face between his shoulder blades and kissing him there. But he seemed too remote lying there, napping or looking at his phone. I refrained, returning to my book but not reading.

I thought of our trip to a different fluss the previous summer. Then, he’d cradled my head in his lap, touched me whenever I was near. The distance that had accumulated in the intervening months, my inability to penetrate his present state of distraction, disinterest, pained me.

“Would you like to go for a swim?” L asked.

“Yes, let’s go. I’m hot.”

“The water is very cold. But it’s nice, like an ice bath. And you don’t really have to swim because the current is very strong.”

The water was, as promised, very cold. I couldn’t feel my toes after a few seconds. We drifted down, giddy from the icy water, to a set of stairs a few minutes downstream.

Lying back down on the blanket, L studied the trim of my swimsuit.

“Your swimsuit is yellow, but there’s a sliver of red here,” L said, tracing his index finger along the edge of my swimsuit bottoms, near my thigh, “that’s a nice detail.”

Finally. A momentary reprisal of his affectionate gestures from last year.

“Let’s take a photo,” L said, raising his arm to take a selfie of us.

I leaned into L’s shoulder and smiled.

“These are nice,” L said, “I’ll send them to you later.”

“Thank you,” I said, inspecting the selfies. We made, I thought to myself wretchedly, a nice-looking couple.

While reading, I picked at the weeds alongside the blanket. I placed a few sprigs of wood sorrel into my book so that I would open my book at some point and remember this afternoon  — an act of pure emotional sabotage.³

*****

After dinner, we went to a bar that L described as “very German.” 

“You should see it. I think you might like it,” L said.

It was a dive bar, and L was right: I liked it. It was, in fact, not unlike an American dive bar: it had a sticky floor, sold inexpensive drinks, and they played a mix of American Dive Bar Standards with schlager music: think “Sweet Caroline” with “Schatzi schenck mir ein Foto.” Here, among the sweaty and drunk men who made up roughly 90% of the patrons, I turned a lot of heads because I was a. a woman, and b. Asian —doubly exotic in this environment.

Men rarely approach me at bars — I can count on one hand the number of times some man has tried to chat with me at a bar — but here I was very popular. Any time L stepped away to order a drink, have a smoke, or use the restroom, another patron swooped in and asked what I would like to drink, if I would like to dance. While the bar was low — every man had a glassy look in his eye, clearly several beers deep, and I was one of few women present — I was very pleased by the attention, and liked that it had elicited a pleasing degree of rivalry from L.

“Who was that guy?” L would ask.

“I don’t know,” I replied each time, smugly.

L and I finished our drinks and made our way to the area at the front of the bar, near the DJ booth, which had been cleared for dancing. L took me in his arms and spun me around, did a sort of two-step. Schlager music, with its volk-y melodies and rhythms, lends itself to such old time dancing.

“You’re a good dancer!” exclaimed L.⁴

*****

We left the Dive Bar when it got too crowded to dance, and walked to one last place closer to L’s place — a standard dance club playing mixes of top 40 music. We did not stay long at this spot: once we’d found a spot to rest our drinks and dance, we started making out furiously.    

“Shall we just go back?” L asked.

“Yes, let's go. Are we going to try to have sex at night?”

“Yes, let’s try. But we have to hurry.”

We made a rushed exit and broke into a jog.

“My apartment has never seemed so far away!” 

“Better than last year when we had to take a car back to your house outside of town!”

Back at L’s, we rushed to his bedroom. I lay back on the bed and let L kiss me while he pushed my dress up past my thighs, unbuttoned his pants.

But at 3am it was too late, literally: after a few minutes, it was clear that L was both too tired and too drunk to have sex.

“Ahhhh, we were so close!” I complained, half-jokingly. I was frustrated, still horny, but not upset. On the whole, I’d enjoyed my evening.

“Yes, sorry, we have to wait until tomorrow morning,” L said, flopping onto his back and turning his head toward me.

“It’s okay. I’m glad we gave it a shot. I’ve never run home for sex like that before. First time for everything.”

“I have never run like that, for any reason” L replied, amused.

SUNDAY

So we had sex in the morning. It was, like most of my sex with L, vanilla but effective — I can come easily this way. While L was in the shower, I reflected, with a little sadness, that this would probably be the last time we have sex. The next morning we would head out early for the airport. 

“So, today I get my children back from my Ex,” L said with great casualness as he poured me a coffee.

“Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you’d get them back while I was still here. I can try to find somewhere else to stay for the last evening. And I can take the train to the airport tomorrow.”

“No, no, that’s not necessary! Unless you are afraid of meeting them? It’s not a big deal. Stay here tonight and I’ll drive you early in the morning. The older one is OK on his own for a short while and can keep an eye on his brother. They’ll still be sleeping by the time I get back from the airport, anyway.”

“Are you sure? They’re not going to be weirded out by the fact that there’s this random lady in their house?”

“No, they won’t mind. They’ve met a lot of women here,” L said. “They met the Younger Woman as well as the Chinese Banker.”

“Oh. That’s so…bold. Are you sure they won’t be freaked out? Isn’t your ex-wife going to be upset?”

“They’re shy at first but then they go back to being themselves. I also think: why pretend? Why shield them? If I don’t plan to remarry, they’ll have to get used to seeing other women around here. And my ex? No, I don’t think she should be upset — she is seeing someone, too, she claims. But the boys haven’t met him.”

“I don’t think he exists,” L added, laughing. “I think she was jealous when the boys told her the Younger Woman was at my place this spring.”

*****

I lingered after breakfast to read, wait for the museums to open. L approached me with a stack of books — five hardcover copies of his exhibition catalogs— and placed them on the coffee table in front of me.

“I have an idea.”

“Yes?”

“Would you do me a favor and distribute these books to some galleries in New York?”

I stared at the pile of books. I’d packed lightly for my trip and did not relish the idea of hauling a bunch of hardcovers in my carry-on.

“I don’t really know any gallery people. You know more gallery people than I do.”

“But you don’t have to know them, you just have to go inside and talk to someone. Tell them your friend is a painter and here’s his work if you’re interested.”

“I can’t do that. I never talk to anyone when I visit a gallery. And how would I explain my relationship to you? I’m not your agent. It would be very confusing and weird. Also, I don’t think they’ll accept an unsolicited book.”

“It’s not that complex, Marisa. I got my gallery in Munich this way. I just walked in and started chatting with people and I showed them my work.”

“Yes, but that’s because you’re the artist and you’re pitching your own work. No one wants to talk to some random person who claims to know the artist. It would be better if you did it yourself.”

“Just try it and see. Let me wrap the books first.”

L bubble-wrapped the books into one large, heavy, awkward package.

“There you go. That should be safe.”

“What? So I guess I’m taking these back now?”

“Is it too heavy? Try putting it in your bag.”

I placed the books in my carry-on and lifted the bag.

“It’s doable.”

“Excellent! There’s a painting for you if you manage to find a new gallery for me.”

I immediately snapped a photo and posted it on instagram to share my incredulity with others: “I SHOULD GET A PAINTING REGARDLESS, JUST FOR EXISTING, PLUS COMMISSION.” If I couldn’t put up a fight, at least I could post. However, despite my frustrations, I’d grown attached to L and wanted to please him. I felt myself acquiescing to my exasperating need to be loved, willing to do something that I’d originally found ridiculous. Perhaps, I thought, it wouldn’t be such a difficult favor to do for L? 

*****

For my last afternoon out, I went to the Schaezlerpalais, a palace that houses a collection of eighteenth and nineteenth century European paintings and decorative art. The still life paintings speak to me, as always, but especially that day. Here were the still life bubbles, suspended in air forever, their surfaces reflecting the windows in a studio space long gone. Here were the cherry stems and skinned chicken flesh, each rendered exhaustively. The mania for detail in still life paintings — for exhausting representation— aligns with my need to fully exhaust the present, especially when I’m seeking pleasure, or enjoying something, when I know it will all be over soon.

The centerpiece of the Schaezlerpalais is its Goldener Saal, a beautiful, mirrored Rococo ballroom. Walking through this room is like touring the inside of a diamond: the mirrored walls and tall windows dazzle the eyes with reflected light. The gilded molding and frescoes appear in the mirrors, in fragmentary fashion. The space seems to contract, by turns expansive and confined as one moves among the embellished surfaces and their reflections. Unlike still life paintings, which sustain and discipline the gaze with detail, the Rococo room hypnotizes, suspends absorption by disorienting the viewer: one does not merely regard the Rococo room, one submits to the Rococo room. Another way to “vacation”: sublime distraction, supreme inattention, the complete emptying of thought and collapsing of time that one experiences in a little death.

*****

While L went out to fetch his children, I decided to make myself scarce, did not want to be around for their return. I went for a final walk through the city center. I sat myself down at a cafe and ordered a beer, reflected on my imminent departure. There’s a ghostly quality to the last twenty-four hours on vacation; I felt like an apparition, lingering around observing goings-on but otherwise inert, no longer a participant in the narrative around me.⁵

I was startled out of my brooding when a child walking by spilled a bag of marbles in the street, right in front of the café.⁶ Everyone got up and helped gather the marbles. My attention then turned to L’s children; I realized that I’d had nothing to offer them as a guest in their home, that I would otherwise have no other way of connecting with them since I could not speak German.

Finding a gift in Germany at 5:30 pm on a Sunday is a tall order: most shops are closed on Sunday, and everything else closes early. I broke into a jog: the department stores, bookshops, toy stores and confectioners were closed. My best bet was to get some sort of dessert food as some eateries were open. But the only places that sold dessert-like items were American franchises: Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks. 

L called me: “are you coming back? We’re going to eat dinner soon.”

“I didn’t know you were expecting me for dinner! I thought you might want to spend time alone with your kids.”

“No, no, let’s eat together. They want to meet you.”

Oh my god, I thought. This was even worse: not only would I show up empty-handed, but I would also delay dinner.

“OK, I’m twenty minutes away. See you soon.”

I was making my way back toward L’s when I saw a miraculous sight: an open gelateria.

I searched the menu, against hope, for a large, “pint” option, as one might find in American ice cream shops. As I couldn’t bring myself to ask for a large container, I ordered four individual scoops of different flavors.

So with two cups of gelato in each hand, I jogged through the city center, trying to get back to L’s before the gelato melted entirely. Once again, I turned heads, this time because I made a ridiculous sight: no one runs in the city center, much less double-fisting gelato. 

*****

L’s children are beautiful, very blonde. They’d both inherited their father’s gaze, the structure around the brow. They’ll leave a trail of broken hearts in their wake, when they are older. But their style was surprising: they both had fashion-y mullets, sported a single rhinestone earring in their right ears, and wore flat-billed Yankees hats and t-shirts with the word “Brooklyn” on them.

“I brought gelato for the boys,” I said breathlessly, “put it in the freezer, quickly.”

“Thank you! You did not have to do that,” said L, “but they will be happy. They love gelato.”

L introduced me to his children as his “guest from New York, who has brought them gelato” and exhorted them to greet me, say thanks. They did, shyly, looking down at their plates.

L had shifted into parent mode, a part of him I’d never seen before. He spoke to them directly, in the sort of sing-song voice that adults adopt around children. He looked at them with great affection, with no self-consciousness. In addition to their physical resemblance, there were other striking echoes: a similar grin, the way all three of them twirled their noodles around the fork, using their spoons as a brace. It was moving to see L so obsessed with his children, to witness the emergence of L in parenting mode, to have my impression of him altered: here he was, expanded, capable of caring for others unconditionally. 

After dinner, we watched a movie in L’s bedroom with the gelato. L’s children had picked a Jackie Chan movie dubbed in German. Surprisingly however, the movie had very little action and was heavy on sentimentality: it was about an aging stuntman and widower reconnecting with the daughter he’d neglected to advance his career, coming to the realization that he’d allowed his loyal stunt horse to stand in for his child.

I looked over at L’s children and wondered if the themes were upsetting them, how they felt about living between two homes, witnessing their parents disagreements, the rupture of their family. However, the youngest one had fallen asleep. And the older one looked calm, absorbed. Later he’d told his father that he liked the movie, and seemed intent on demonstrating that he liked Serious Movies as well as action movies.

We stepped outside to smoke the evening spliff and went to bed without sex. It was nighttime, of course, but L was concerned about waking up on time. We’d set multiple alarms between the two of us and turned in. L fell asleep quickly, but I was restless, went on my phone and texted friends across the Atlantic.

MONDAY

We left the house at 5:30 am — no time for sex — and drove east toward Munich, rushing toward the sunrise. We did not say much in the car. L seemed preoccupied with directions, his plans for the day: he’d go shopping with his children to pick out items for the new school year. Now time was moving quickly, and I didn’t want to forget anything, wanted to cling to the present: I snapped a photo of L driving, of the sun coming up on the horizon. 

At the airport, L parked his car near the departure entrance and stepped out to bid me farewell. 

“I want to come back to New York at some point,” he said, “I’ll let you know. Maybe I can stay with you this time.”

“Of course,” I said, half wanting him to visit and half wondering how I would pull this off with my situationship. “I owe you one.”

L embraced me. I brought my face to his for a real kiss, but he opted for a peck. 

What.

I felt spurned—kissed-off, literally—and was torn between the urge to get away from L quickly or stay, try to get the kiss that I’d wanted.

“OK, bye! Drive safely. And thank you again for everything — I had so much fun,” I said, turning toward the entrance. But a minute later, I turned back around again and watched L drive away without seeing me.

*****

I spent a lot of time on the plane crying. The end of vacation always feels a little like grief. And I felt it acutely because my vacation had been mixed. My hopes for a transportive, escapist romance with L had been curbed. I had some fun but it had mostly left me wanting, and in its worst moments, had compounded the insecurities I felt about my relationships in general. The pie-in-the-sky option — a move to Europe to start fresh, fall in love — had been tabled. As expected, it could not happen with L; the passion of that relationship, our connection, was contingent on its impermanence.

I also felt unprepared to return to the business of my life in New York: my frustration balancing work with a creative practice, the insufficiency of my relationship with Third Beer Man and the sheer amount of effort it required me to maintain a degree of faux casualness. I did not feel rested or restored enough to tackle these things. 

But I did obtain something from my vacation: I’d traversed my own interior, allowed the change in scenery to add an inquisitive valence to my self-examinations, created space for some of my convictions and expectations to change.⁷

And in my disappointment, my comeuppance, I got the Rohmer-esque vacation revelation: that life does not always adhere to one’s idiosyncratic logic—one’s understanding of the way the world works — and often eludes attempts to orchestrate outcomes. That the most important thing, in spite of it all —the only thing one can do, really — is to make choices.⁸ Delphine, in Le Rayon Vert, is a woman who wants change, escape from her loneliness, and she cries because she is unable to choose among the unideal options (whether vacation locales or men) available to her. So she chooses to wait, to move intuitively, to be herself as much as possible. There’s some grace in choice—even if one chooses inaction—and having the courage to live with it.

*****

When I got back to New York, Red and black spotted lanternfly parts littered the sidewalks. Everything was loud and gray again. But I felt comfortable, like I’d returned home. Here was my cocoon.

********** STRAY OBSERVATIONS********

• Well, this got so long I didn’t even get to writing about the sublimity of Massive Attack as the soundtrack to one’s Sad Girl walks. I’ll write a (much shorter) addendum later about “Unfinished Sympathy.”

1. That’s what the fee guarantees: discretion, boundaries. A golden prophylactic against the formation of emotional attachments, complexity.

2. Over ten years ago, I told a man with whom I was in love that I’d had a sugar daddy for a few months while doing an unpaid internship at the Magazine. I remember his surprise, his attempt to cultivate an air of Open-mindedness and Concern for my well-being. He seemed eager to frame the situation as one of liberation, a feminist choice — something “positive” for me. Truthfully, I don’t find it liberating at all (absurd to think of any work one must do to live as liberating). It's an expedient way to make “a lot” of money when I’m not earning enough.

3. Me? Sadist and masochist. The weeds fell out of my book and onto my bed in New York a few weeks later— it was like a pinprick to the heart! I do a similar thing with ticket stubs: I like to leave them in my bag and in coat pockets and stumble upon them later. When I rediscover them, I use them as bookmarks.

4. Old-timey dancing is easy: perfect for a person who prefers to be led and has a very rudimentary sense of rhythm. But I welcomed the compliment!

5. There’s a scene at the end of A Sentimental Education, in which Madame Arnoux, Frederic’s lifelong, unconsummated romantic ideal, visits him as an Agéd Woman, just for an hour. The temptation to rekindle their romance rises, but the moment passes, and their last fifteen minutes are spent absent from one another. It’s heartbreaking, frustratingly pragmatic:

She sat down again but kept her eyes on the clock; he continued to smoke as he walked up and down. Neither could find anything to say. There comes a moment during leave-taking when the loved one is no longer with us.

6. Children still play with marbles? Maybe only in Europe.

7. Contra Deleuze in The ABC Primer, a recorded interview, in which he explains his aversion to traveling “for pleasure”:

All the intensities that I have are immobile intensities…I can assure you that when I read a book that I admire, that I find beautiful, or when I hear music that I consider beautiful, I really get the feeling of passing into such states… Never could traveling inspire such emotions. So, why would I go seek these emotions in places that don’t suit me very well, whereas I have the most beautiful of them for myself in immobile systems, like music, like philosophy? There is a geo-music, a geo-philosophy, I mean, they are profound countries, and these are more my countries, yes?

Parnet: Your foreign lands.

Deleuze: My very own foreign lands that I don’t find by traveling.

But I think one can manage both: travel provides an opportunity to reframe one’s thought, to experience such interior “intensities” in a new way. This is helped by close observation of the environment (Georges Perec, once again, exhausting the Place), of art. This is not necessarily pleasurable in an ataraxic way, but it does afford one the pleasure of experiencing emotional states (a kind of “living”), of obtaining fresh perspectives, new thoughts to pursue.

8. Am I a latent Catholic? I’m out here yearning for Rohmer’s Catholic tendency toward submission, his willingness to accept that one cannot know everything but must allow for grace.