Here's a "sordid promise" unforgotten, before we get back to the VoWs.
Everyone knows how my sexual fantasies, routinely considered appalling and shameful by my peers and teachers in my early years, were changed by women.
My school dictionary, an Oxford one, gave such a helpful definition of masturbation: "physical self-abuse." That's all there was, those were the '60s. Ask teachers what it meant, they went red. Ask most parents, they changed the subject. As usual, you found out in the playground.
Yesterday, the Kid wanted to watch one of the serial killer movies I like for plot structure, deep characterisation and mastery of suspense. One of the best, in fact, David Fincher's 'Seven'.
Seeing it again myself, I fully appreciated the magnificent photography and editing throughout, other fine detail of the "unsaid" in movies, but Manou had an ear for the words: "Is Brad Pitt going to swear so much all the way through?"
"Yes, luv, he swears a lot. Why?"
"It'll be good for my vocabulary then, I might learn some new words."
My own parents wouldn't have been amused. What the Kid may be practising in the playground this week was taboo.
Times have changed so much it's almost surprising 'Les Inrocks' is the only French weekly mix for right-minded "lefties" of music, cinema, the arts and even politics that could recently devote six pages to female masturbation.
You'd think the subject long since wide open, well covered, but the article was unexpectedly interesting, providing a historical perspective and excerpts from a vast and funny vocabulary of terms for the practice from 'déplorable habitude', 'main homicide' (murderous hand) and 'infernale épidemie' to 'one-man show', 'plaisir philosophique' and 'panacée sexuelle'.
It would seem an "expert" is an American historian who thinks inhibitions about masturbation are still Voltaire's fault with a reasoning I found a bit hard to fathom. For an expert, he came out with some bizarre notions. If you're curious enough, DazeReader said in March 2003:
"Berkeley history professor Thomas Laqueur recently published Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation. Sharon Lintz interviews Laqueur ... at Nerve. (First question: 'So you wrote a big book about jacking off.')."
The 'Nerve' story's fun, it's a good read and Laqueur's no fool. Yet still he managed to provoke the one "ping-pong" (letter from readers) the next 'Inrocks' published, worth translating:
"Dear Thomas Laqueur, You said, in n° 494 of Les Inrocks that in a way '...women are typical masturbators because they produce nothing but desire and an excess of imagination -- there is no ejaculation.' Going by the state of my thighs and my sheets after succumbing to an agreeable itch, I can assure you I produce far more than desire and an excess of imagination. A woman."
Good heavens! I went back to look and indeed she was right. Laqueur did indeed say that. Unless misrepresented, where on earth has he been? Has he been on earth or lived on as many other planets as I have, though I never met him?
My first lessons in women and "agreeable itches" came in that long hot summer of 1980 when I arrived in France on account of a letter in French I'd failed fully to understand, which changed my destiny. The woman hadn't meant me to pack in my whole life the other side of the Channel on her account.
I'm glad I did, since on turning up at her front door, I walked through it into an early episode of the Quiet Revolution with her and her lovely Spanish flatmate, another idealistic student who seemed scarcely to know what clothes were except when she had to go out.
Now I remember those days and all that preceded and followed them, the details are part of my screenplay. To say they were the best years of my life is rubbish and today there's no point in regretting how a mind as open and astonished as the one I had then went into "shutdown mode" again for years afterwards.
That part of my story is over.
The worst times have become a source of some amusement, especially with the woman I went on to marry. One can speculate idly. Had Catherine and me then known as much about each other as we do now, and had I realised what a "randy bitch" she was -- a term I use with much affection -- things might have been different.
We both had hang-ups then. Obviously I won't write about hers. Confronting my own was a part of this log for too long to go on about it any more. I'd planned to leave all that out, pursuing instead the projects I've said I'll sort out during these few days off work.
However, I've been asked to reconsider. For 'Les Inrocks', Laqueur found an highly academic way of saying even our blogs, books,films and music, etc. are merely scratching "agreeable itches". He makes such a strong case that it's a relief, in his Nerve interview, to find the man's less "disembodied" and more down to earth than I'd feared.
He might want to take a closer look at the sheets sometimes if he was serious when he said women can't have itches as messy as men's. As an American, he should also know that when it comes to shared sex, many women in his own country were among the first in the last century to open up about being on top of things and anything but submissive.
When I left Britain, it was otherwise. The thing on top was called Thatcher, she'd only just started and already a political party largely comprised of men who'd had an expensive schooling like mine was yelling: "Yes, yes, beat me more! Humiliate me again!"
OK, I shall reconsider. The request is that you get more of this; not less. One came from a friend when I told her how the Kid had a real tsunami a few minutes into 'Seven' when I knocked over a glass of something messy while I was shifting one of the loudspeakers for her benefit.
"I'll clear it up properly later," I told her, dabbing hopelessly. "Can't we just watch the film?"
But no. Marianne thought otherwise. I suppose I should be grateful, because a lesson in housework from her is a rare experience. Normally, she's like the cat. Where she finds order, she leaves chaos in her wake. A bit like her father, except that hers is more physical.
To be fair, she has promised to help me with a real clean-up.
But I've found biscuit packets, even bits of biscuit or cheese, in places that make Zoe's blog look like 'House and Garden' magazine. Still, Zoe proves my friend's point:
"Over the past weeks I've done a lot of thinking which has worn my brain out to the point of exhaustion. I've basically been tracing my steps to try and find out what triggered my funk and although I have a rather good idea I'm not quite sure as to when it started. Sometime late December is when I realised that my eggs were no longer sunny-side up but I tried to hide it for as long as I could until things got to the point where an appointment with my doctor was my best option before either I killed someone or someone killed me.
And that's all I have to say about it. I'm depressed, but I aim to get better" ('My Boyfriend is a Twat,').
Over the past weeks, I too have done a lot of thinking which has worn my brain out to the point of exhaustion. And it's shown But it's best shared, because there's nothing like knowing you're not alone.
I hardly think Laqueur has got any answers for Zoe. Far from it. But some of my VoWs do. What they show me, often saying what I take ages to write in the space of a couple of lines, is how much it matters to share the hard times as well as the good ones, to such an extent that ... well, again, you'll see.
Earlier, Zoe was blogging about age. Not the usual stuff my friends worry about, when they're women all around a certain age and think it's the end of the world when I know better.
Something else said before that I'll say again is, for all the nubile 20-somethings I bung here occasionally, women tend to get very sexy around then, but lucky's the man who realises that for the wiser ones, that's just the beginning.
True love's all very well. But there's a whole lot more to life and its surprises once you get your head sorted out about sex.
Already I'm beginning to think a week's not enough! On "African time", me? Today, my body didn't even wake up and get me out of bed until around 4:00 pm. Unthinkable! Well, let's have a bit more of the unthinkable.
(To be continued...)
10:47:55 PM 
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