I mean:

Suppose that, for some reason, feasible inter-stellar space travel [i.e., consisting of journeys to far stars, even in neighboring galaxies, that take place well within the subjective lifetime of the inter-stellar space traveler, and are not longer than a few subjective months of his life, to get to destinations a few millions of light-years away, and to return from them--in effect, when, due probably to our first mastery of nuclear fusion, the universe will lie before us, inviting and, owing to the new quality of our ships and our expert use of the astrolabe, accessible as never before: the world as it appeared to Francis Drake. Exploitation? Well, Trade.  I cannot, dare not, hope to deliver the Caca-Fuego, (she shits fire) Nuestra Señora de la Concepción; but let's say that I might, safely, promise Trade and Dazzling, virtually Infinite Scholarship. Imagine what there is to be known in a dozen galaxies! What would be the Life of Academe that was 10,000,000,000 years old?] developed as slowly and steadily as all the anti-hysterics want us to believe that it must, and not otherwise, develop; with no explosions, or eruptions, or scandalous revelations--[and suppose that] it stuck there, in prime business mode, for a very long time, with few innovations in the quasi-magical physics of atomic fusion and time travel, in the temporal frame of the deliberations of which, the protocol of the science which produced inter-stella space travel might advance but slowly, over subjective centuries of the travelers' lives. Such that, in the end, say, 500 or a thousand years hence, everyone might have his own, favorite universal settings--just as everyone now has his cell phone, and is, so to speak, god.

It is to be remembered that Drake had, with all the singers and instrumentalists in his crew, a fairly sizable consort of musicians aboard the Golden Hind, listening to whose music he much enjoyed, especially at dinner, and which much impressed both the Portuguese and denizens of the Spice Islands.  I Remember it, and think it, and Jahangir's organ*, the two coolest damned things that ever happened in the history of music and the world.

*which that amazing man and Mughal emperor, Jahangir, greatest of bisexuals, father of Shah Jahan (Taj Mahal), had made for himself and shipped to him from England, and himself played, being particularly fond of English music, such as Tallis and Byrd--Our relationship (and soul-connectedness) goes way back.  

Mozart's 283rd Birthday

Well, I have lived my life, one seamless arc, adoring Mozart.  Some things in the cargo have shifted, but nothing is quite broken.  I am still ravished senseless by the clarinet works.  The piano concertos are still on their enchanted pinnacles, though I'm disconcerted in old age to discover  that they're not hard.  Withal, I'll revert to my former dictum that the future of music--after the invention and during the great, expansionist first era of exploitation of faster-than-light inter-stellar space travel--will lie in the re-creation of the music lost to us by the untimely demise of WA Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 32, in B Minor, Köchel Verzeichnis 832, by way of example. Just imagine.

Speaking as a Twit, or male Sylph (my Core Self),

I'm aware of the benefits of Hypocrisy, of Secrecy, and of keeping Safe by Silence--the occasional whirring and twittering in the unbelievably vulgar lower strata of Popular Media about "Pedophile Rings," often associated with adoption agencies, said to exist among Australian Businessmen and Republican members of the United States Senate, reminds me that the subject is still alive and responding to stimulus--though perhaps we'd better not talk about it.  Not as long as fitting punishment for it is widely held to be castration and death under tortures. And I'm not exaggerating: I have seen the backs of people's minds--and that, as explicitely as it can be rendered, is what most people believe to be adequate and condign punishment for pedophilia.

Nonetheless, there are certain evidences which, to  me, suggest that it (father/son pedophilia) persists (continues, for good or ill, to exist).  I could name famous fathers who have totally sexual relationships with their sons.  Not that it is not known, but that it is simply not recognized, much less understood or seen for what it is. And frankly, from what I (to the difference of others) see and appreciate of it, I admire it, and if I had means, and were I fifty years younger, I might engage in it myself--but I have long since bid my Horatian adieux to the delights of Boys, and given thanks for my deliverance from a Cruel and Capricious Master. The day will yet come when the world, and Child Protective Services, will judge approvingly of every sexual act which gives pleasure and delight, not pain or humiliation, and is remembered without regret or remorse by both/all parties, regardless of their respective ages or familial connection. In a word, the world, and women, have to get it through their heads that, for healthy, sane, normally bisexual men, there is no negative connotation to sex; that, for such men, sex is without malicious, cruel or psychotic implication. You can trust your kids with him. He might over-indulge them, but he won't be mean to them.

Does this mean that we approve of mother/daughter Lesbian incest, or Father/Daughter heterosexual incest? Jeezuz, I suppose so, I say reluctantly but consistently--though, I confess that I am weirded out and disgusted at merely having to name such abominations aloud, as it were; and there's one obvious abomination that I have not and will not mention, simply because it creeps me out--though it's probably the one most often practiced in that real world out there).

Ainsi que le veut la Nature--

by, as I remember, Stefan, and which may be found, somewhat (in my opinion) displaced, among les Histoires Taboues, though it has a very imaginative and well-written story attached to it--sums up nicely (gives a fair depiction of the real emotional, physical and spiritual connexion between the respective parties of male, incestuous pedophilia) what I think will be, likely, the last phase (even as it was, in Crete,  and in Japan, the first) of natural, fitting and proper male homosexual attraction to be socially acknowledged and liberated in the Third Millennium: Dad/Son, Man/Boy, though in Japan they prefer to think of it as Older/Younger Brother (which perhaps they have learned in Buddhist monasteries; but one who has observed anything of Southern Asian sibling attachments has to admit that Japanese fraternal relationships are among the world's kindest and most mutually supportive--These little boys are nice to another.). The age difference thing really alarms the ladies who naturally think of themselves as castrated boys; but they forget that, being girls, they are not at all like boys, castrated or not, and that boys who ordinarily dislike them particularly, don't want even to think about them (or their daughters) and, conversely, that boys do very much love and admire their daddies (and their uncles, and their uncles' and daddies' dicks). What the ladies imagine about man/boy sex, while malevolent and hostile, seems still to include them somehow--at least as objects of scorn and derision; even violence. But really, as Stefan is so cleverly insistent at pointing out, it's just about two guys, of different ages, but the same (though of course delightfully temporarily different) genitalia. Cock Worship. Prostate Glands. Dry Coming. There are no ladies in it.

And despite that, it has subtleties and nuances, and a fairly large membership, with a reasonably civilized and well thought-out philosophy and rules of play; among the precepts of which seems to be firstly: No Coercion.  Let the kid do what he wants.

At this oddly elevenish age of 77

somehow, I seem to've chosen the Fantasia of JS Bach's Keyboard Partita in A minor for my Signature Piece. I've got so I can play all of its different segments perfectly in three or four sittings. Why indeed?  The Main Thing about this Fantasy is its absolute and utter Twoness. Play the left hand by itself, it makes perfect musical sense. Play the right hand by itself, it also makes sense.  But when they are played together, they also make sense, and, as has been noted, it's a different sense.

The next Saturday Afternoon, finally, we fucked.

Let's just say that there was no vagina-phobia.  Or penis-phobia.  We fucked for a long time, and pretty much wore one another out. And the more we did it the more we seemed to want to do it, and (and this was rather scarey) the more reasons (some of which reasons were quite bereft of pleasure) we found for doing it--simply because it became a necessary form of communication between us.

Grown up stuff, like I wasn't into in 1968.  So I called it quits, and I acknowledge that that was an act of cowardice.

Next Day, as it happens, was Washington's Birthday,

which before 1971 was always on February 22nd, and was so still in 1968. It was such a Washington's Birthday as there have been many more of, truth to tell, in San francisco, than bright and sunny ones: It was cloudy, with occasional gleamings of sunlight, and a gentle softness in the air.  As it happened also on February 22nd, 1968, the cherry tree (60 or 70 years old then, I would guess now by the size of it) in the front yard of Carol's apartment house, was in full, exuberant bloom, and, with the big window in the front room open directly into the middle of it, seemed to fill the house with pink light and the fragrance of cherry blossoms.

I had not much to say, but she was very polite,  and sat next to me on the couch in front of the open window, and when I turned to kiss her, she kissed me back.  Then I left.

A week or so later Carol and I went to a fun/interesting play together, in a theater just off Fisherman's Wharf, that we somehow wound up being the only passengers (for blocks and blocks) on a cablecar to get to--with the exchange of several kisses by us sitting alone in the very front seats of the car, each of which was celebrated by the enthusiastic carillonning of the cablecar conductor and halooeing of the brakeman. Almost embarrassing, except it was all so good humored.

Best Sex? I have to admit maybe Straight—as in with a Woman...

It was that magical age—25. We were both 25.  Carol was just a month older than me--In that magical city, San Francisco. We worked in the same office, doing different clerical jobs, about a rod apart, with a row of desks between us.  My desk faced west towards the wall, her desk, north of me, faced south with her back to the window; so that I was always pretty much in her line of sight, and I always pretty much ignored her.

But she, she said, couldn't help noticing me; how I was always grinning at my typewriter like I was stoned (likelihood of my having been stoned, or that being stoned was the reason I grinned at my typewriter: about half), and the way I hunted and pecked with my middle fingers, even though I really already knew how to type—she thought it meant I was really thinking, at least subconsciously, about fucking. I learned later that she found me, physically, heart-stoppingly beautiful.

So, truth to tell, I didn't so much think about the fact that she was voluptuously beautiful (rather like, say Gina Lolabrigida)—which she absolutely was—as just that she came up to specs (the thought at the back of my mind, as nearly as I might have come to articulating it, was that I wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen with her), and that I admired her discreet but flashy style, and that I could tell that she was smart, and I wanted to be friends, maybe.

And what experience had I actually had of that precious, putative, theoretical beau Monde whose opinion mattered so much in my selection of a Female Counterpart, Consort or Mate Apparent? None, of course; but, then as now, I might have answered that I sometimes dream of it, or am dreamt of by it, and that, when I re-read the Rape of the Lock, as I often do, I revisit it.

At any rate (I think at this point we should say something about the poor young woman)--Carol said later that it was the weirdest come-on she'd ever dealt with: As we were leaving work, in the late afternoon of the 21st of February, 1968, I said to Carol,

      'You gonna be home tomorrow afternoon?  How about I come by after work?'

      "I didn't know how to say no."