Belle De Nos Jours

I know I’m leering, but my god Billie Piper is sexy as Belle De Jour. And I know I’ve mentioned this before, but as my post below suggests, I’m notably lacking in women in my life. So I’m stealing cheap thrills from attractive women on the flickering screen, and Billie is the most gorgeous there is. She’s superb in the role too, all knowing sexuality and earthiness, combined with absolutely breathtaking sexiness and a certain vulnerability. I saw her on the stage once, acting alongside her new husband (the lucky swine), and her understated performance was’nt sufficiently stagey – She’s a TV girl, and wow, she’s good. 

A snapshot of my sexuality

You see I’m crap on my own. Maybe everyone is. I sure as hell know I am. I’m kind of lonesome at the moment. I left home at 18, and since then have lived constantly with people (friends – girlfriend – wife) apart from the searing shock of 6 months in 2005 when my marriage broke up, and I found myself alone for the first time.

At that time I launched my body, soul and intellect into a recovery program – Which looked to my close friends more like a desparate search for intimacy with random women. Some of you readers will be familiar with this because you read my blog at the time – It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Picture a man who breaks his ankle but who screams, shouts and bounces around the room to effectively drown out the pain, and that’s a pretty close metaphor.

So anyway, back to the now. Here I am, living alone again, only this time I have no major personal disaster to frame my response. I’m just a 30 year old single man, sitting in his flat. And wow, I’m lonely. I wrote (in a pseudo-intellectual whine) last week about how I’m transferring my loneliness into shopping. But really it get’s much worse than that.

Male sexuality can be a very ugly thing. Mine too. Last night about 6 I started seriously looking for prostitutes to come to my apartment. I spent an hour or so looking at thumbnail images of women who sell sex for a living and arrived at a shortlist of 3, from 2 websites. I rang the first place, which despite having a London number rang with a foreign ring tone. The lady who answered called me “darling” and “babe” and the conversation was reminiscent of those I occasionally have with 16 year old saturday girls in shops – Where I suddenly realise I’m a grown up and seen as such.

She talked me through who was available tonight. My number one choice was an Italian lady called Rose. She could be there in 40 minutes. Within an hour I could be having sex with an attractive woman, who sells that commodity (but it’s me paying and sealing that commoditisation) and whom I have never met. The spanner in the works was that she cost £400 for 2 hours. UK ATMs only let you get out £250 per day, so that was out. I rang the second place and got a much more business-like woman on the phone. The woman I liked was available immediately, but it would need to be within the hour as she was their most popular woman and was booked until the early hours – Put another way, she’d be havings sex with several desparate men like me tonight. She would do a single hour – I could afford her services – But suddenly the reality of being one of many desparate men on a rainy night in London hit home. I told her I’d ring back, but never did. I’m looking for intimacy. Sex, which is intimacy’s brash older sibling, won’t help. Particularly if I’m paying the other party to be there.

I went back to the PC and pulled up some porn. Specifically this site. I’ve used the site several times. Women are “bitches” and ”sluts”. Being sexy is their crime, being fucked their punishment. It’s acutely depressing, and if you switch your brain off, rapidly arousing. I wanked myself off, lying on my back on the sofa. I let my sperm land on my belly and lay there watching my penis retract until the sperm got cold and a drip had snaked down towards the leather.

I filled the dishwasher, cooked some food (an extravagant steak for one), channel surfed, vacuumed and invented a new game I’ll call ‘kick a hacky sack over my armchair and into the fruit bowl’. The gentle, knawing unease, my persistant friend for the last couple of months, continued.

Later I tried a new tack. I joined a website for casual sexual encounters. I placed a classified ad in which I tried to balance a certain sexual knowingness, a light-heart and confidence. All three were evasions. The underlying message was “please come and have sex with me, then let’s hug in bed”. Now I think of it, I would probably have been better served by using that exact line. I posted an intimate picture and got two immediate responses mocking my penis. I posted another ad, this time a gay one (I’m basically straight, but did once have a gay thing, maybe I could have fun trying this again). Did any man want to come and corrupt a straight man? Many did. Six responses in an hour, and many more this morning. All written in a brisk and intimidating gay language with which I’m not familiar, and which turned me off – “7.5 uncut hairy”, etc. The pictures (there were many) were enough to underline that while I like hard penises, I really don’t find the rest of a man attractive.

Meanwhile the straight ad yielded it’s only serious response. A woman who ”can hold a conversation but we don’t need to talk too much”. She asked for my number, which I sent, but I don’t expect to hear back.

By this time I was checking and re-checking ads, checking emails, looking at pictures of prostitutes and so on, in a sort of depressing heavy rotation. In the background a documentary competed for my attention – About male Japanese ‘hosts’ who make lonely Japanese women fall in love and bankrupt themselves on champagne and false declarations of love.

At 1am, defeated and pathetic,  I shuffled off to bed.   

Women

I’m single right now. I’ve slept alone for 62 nights and felt every last one. I have no significant other, I touch no-one and no-one touches me (apart from the woman I met at Vauxhall Station in last Friday’s strange episode – check it out below).

Despite this, women still warm my days. I feel a visceral pleasure when I meet an attractive woman. I feel it when watching TV. I’ve been transfixed by Billie Piper as Belle Du Jour. I look at her gorgeous exaggerated features and absurdly sexy body and just luxuriate in this virtual and vicarious pleasure. I’m like a cat squirming in a shaft of sunlight and for a moment, I’m blissfully happy. 

Asha Tanna

So every once in a while you’re watching TV and an unfamiliar face leaps out at me. All my ‘new man’ pretences fall away, my mouth drops to the floor and I’m transfixed. It’s a gorgeous person reading the news. My first instinct is to ogle. Once she leaves my screen (note how I’m personalising it – She’s being broadcast to a million screens, but she’s on mine…) my second instinct kicks in – Time to Google her…

Of course the internet has spawned many a news readers ogle fest fan club. The most famous of which is the intellectual and gorgeous French newsreader Melissa Theriault

So today I found myself watching the Sharks and Nazis fest that is Channel 5 in the UK. The news bulletin was presented by a lady called Asha Tanna. And let me tell you, there are none so gorgeous. It’s her smouldering eyes that do it. Better still, she’s so new to TV that there’s no internet campaign, array of YouTube vids, topless on the beach paparazzi shots or porn listing domain squatters. Yet. She’s more than welcome to enjoy a cup of tea round at my bachelor pad, any time of the day or night.