Today’s flaneur doesn’t even have to leave home but can just “stroll” around the Internet. For an uninhibited woman like me — whose self-esteem can too often be measured in the height of my fuck-me high heels — staying glued to a computer screen is no fun at all, however.

I want to be seen as much as I want to see others. Without their eyes validating my sex appeal — my very sense of self! — I sometimes wonder if I’d even exist. I might as well be dead. Validation comes not simply with the male gaze, but most especially with the cocks that I make hard.

So it is that when you’ve had sex with as many men as I have, it’s hard to go anywhere without spotting a familiar face. Of course, across the ocean, in faraway cities, it’s highly unlikely they are the actual guys I have known…and been oh so intimate with. But occasionally they can certainly look alike — sometimes scarily so — so much so as to cause me to do a double-take, catch my breath, and feel, against my conscious will, the memories flow.  Not unlike the way an old tune suddenly coming on the car radio can transport you backwards, time-traveling — making yesterday even more real than today.

Take the apparition I see now at the coffee shop while I’m sipping my latte and my eyes glancing up from my laptop:

The ugly, old guy sitting at the cafe table not talking to the unhappy woman sitting across from him (she must be his wife).  He looks exactly like my very first trick!  How extraordinary.

How can I ever forget him?

I can still feel the fear as I drove to the rendezvous that spring evening.  I was wearing precisely what he had instructed me to wear when he booked the “date” — long, elegant jacket; with matching short, tight skirt; strappy high heels (of course); flesh-colored pantyhose but no panties. “Absolutely do not wear any panties!  Do you understand?” His insistent voice on the telephone, hoarse and heavy, really did frighten me.

I must continue this journal entry later as I, in the here and now, have another date, yet another, totally different man to please and so please me.  But I will say this for the moment: I’m no longer frightened…..