Wedding

It's dull and conventional to end a story with a wedding, but I must, for L tells me she is to marry someone, not me, of course.
I shall not write here anymore. I will leave it for the entertainment of the young and as an awful warning to other middle-aged men.

Finis.

Post 14th February post

I don't have the stomach for this. I can't summon the energy even for the necessary denunciations of yesterday's VD nonsense.

One part of the myth though seems to me worth attention, the belief, perhaps Chaucerian, that on 14 February birds choose their mates. Yesterday I saw seagulls eyeing each lasciviously and squawking invitations to rough seagull-sex. This means little seagulls in the months to come, and the associated nest debris blocking chimneys, aggressive behaviour towards passing humans, vandalising rubbish sacks left in the street and, above all, a lot more shit.

Party going

At a party, L and I sit at some distance from one another. I buy her a drink; we pass commonplace remarks to one another across others' heads, yet still each platitude seems to me to have extraordinary significance. Someone else is there, who, saying goodbye, kisses me fondly. In my arms this woman seems light, as if her skeleton were as hollow as a bird's, and as delicately warm as a pastry resting from the baker's oven. Few others ever felt like this, only L in that short embrace at a railway station, the hug that started all this so long time ago, and a few others. I wonder if L noticed?

Aversion therapy

I see a lot of L these days. It will not last, but for the moment it is very agreeable. She chats away to me. Innocently, she tells me about her weekends away with the current boyfriend, who can boast of holding that title for the second time round, They go to snug hotels in agreeably pretty parts of the English countryside.
I thought I could take it. Then I had a job interview, and was grilled by a young woman who could have been L's younger sister. I saw her as she came to coellect me from the foyer and gasped at the resemblance. She has a little more reticence than L, who has an enviable natural social grace and openness, but in every other respect they are so alike. I shall not be offered the job.
Ever since, I have obsessed. Awake and asleep, I imagine L in bed with me. We lie together naked; she kisses me; her long legs are folder over mine.
At my age, this is quite ridiculous. I ought to be able to train myself out of this nonsense.

Voluptuousness and sordid uncleanness

You may wonder how I have been passing the time. I have been emulating the life of Sardanapalus, described thus by Diodorus:

Sardanapalus, the thirtieth from Ninus, and the last king of the Assyrians, exceeded all his predecessors in sloth and luxury; for besides that he was seen of none out of his family, he led a most effeminate life: for, wallowing in pleasure and wanton dalliances, he clothed himself in women's attire, and spun fine wool and purple amongst the throngs of his whores and concubines. He painted likewise his face, and decked his whole body with other allurements like a strumpet, and was more lascivious than the most wanton courtesan. He imitated, likewise, a woman's voice, and not only daily inured himself to such meat and drink as might incite and stir up his lascivious lusts, but gratified them by filthy Catamites, as well as whores and strumpets, and without any sense of modesty, abusing both sexes, slighted shame, the concomitant of filthy and impure actions, and proceeded to such a degree of voluptuousness and sordid uncleanness, that he composed verses for his epitaph, with a command to his successors to have them inscribed upon his tomb after his death, which were thus translated by a Grecian, out of the barbarian language—
Haec habeo quae edi, quaeque exsaturata libido
Hausit; at illa manent multa et praeclara relicta.
What once I gorg'd I now enjoy,
And wanton lusts me still employ.
All other things by mortals priz'd,
Are left as dirt by me despis'd.
Being thus corrupt in his morals, he not only came to a miserable- end himself, but utterly overturned the Assyrian monarchy, which had continued longer than any we read of.

Swain escorts

I spent a day with another man's wife. I took her to the town I was born in; we ate an intimate lunch by the river, as she enthused about the romantic surroundings. We sat close to one another. We saw a play, and afterwards had a drink. I could not take my eyes off her.
I have known her for some years. 'S, the pretty one', is how a friend describes her, and she is indeed pretty, but more, there is a captivating smile and a rare, beautiful intellect.
At the end of the day, her husband joined us. We three enjoyed a drink and some nervous banter. Then I took a train home.
I seem to spend a great deal of time squiring other men's wives. I shall start an escort business.

The afternoon men

I was in a wine bar, near somewhere I worked over fifteen years ago. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, on a working day. I had just been to see Julie Delpy in Two Days in Paris. By definition, everyone there was superfluous. No one would haved noticed or cared that they were not at their posts. In the centre, a trio of upper-middel class men brayed. One was drunker than the rest, and gave us a long and loud monologue about his son who, though only twelve years old, was supposed to play for the England cricket team.
I know these useless afternoon men only too well, the half-baked projects that they dream up to justify their existence, then they blag a project budget and employ a PA to take their messages when they're in the wine bar bullshitting about their sons, and they make sure she's young and pretty so they can think of her as they make half-hearted love to their wives.
Oh L, why aren't you with me in the afternoons?