I feel tired tonight from commuting out to New Jersey, where my main freelance client is based. It's not that long a journey--about an hour each way from door to door--but it drains me sometimes. When I got back to Manhattan I took a short nap, then went out to a diner instead of eating at home, because I felt I needed a nice meal amid the voices and clatter of other people. I had a barbecued half-chicken with salad, potatoes, and corn. A little heavy, but tasty. I used to only go to this diner for breakfast, because I didn't like their other meals much; but I recently gave their evening repasts a try again, and discovered the food is quite good now: prepared modestly but with a pride that is evident in the freshness.

I didn't make it out to a stripclub last night; instead, I watched two-thirds of a 1960s German crime thriller, or "krimi" as they were nicknamed in German. It was entitled The Phantom of Soho (on DVD from www.oldies.com) and had a couple of nice scenes in a stripclub, so I guess I did get to see some peelers after all, if only on my tv screen.

I didn't expect to see any bare breasts, but there they suddenly were, as a blonde with a fluffy 'do swished her filmy black negligee across her torso to the delight of the patrons stage side, and Sir Cranky in viewerland.

The weird thing about this black-and-white movie was how several of the female characters, from their hair to their lingerie, looked up-to-date because so much in fashion now is retro-inspired.

I had to remind myself that the comely young ladies parading their pulchritude in the movie, their tight bodies adorned in black bras, garters, and stockings, are now around sixty years old and probably serving strudel to their liebchen grandkids.

Also when I watch these 60s movies, I'm always trying to figure out what I was doing precisely back then. When The Phantom of Soho was released (1966), I was 14 going on 15, a freshman in high school, discovering the joys of self-abuse. Therefore, the gals in The Phantom of Soho probably had six or seven years on me.

Why do I sit around wasting my mental powers on this kind of useless math? I should be utilizing my cerebral juice to dream up schemes to make more money so I can see strippers more frequently again in the flesh!

I'll get to it tomorrow...

It's funny. I put aside money to go out to a stripclub this weekend, but so far have not felt the desire. I may feel it tonight, who knows--Sunday evening being a time when I least enjoy solitude. But then again, maybe not.

On Friday night, when I had figured to go to a jiggle joint, I made plans with a platonic female friend for dinner instead. And last night, I decided to watch a couple of DVDs, including one of vintage 1950s burlesque movies.

I mean, it's been three weeks since I last stuffed a single into a garter, or turned over a twenty for a lapdance, but I just feel reluctant to spend the bucks right now even though I successfully saved them out of my weekly budget and did not make an extra trip to the ATM.

Since I don't feel any special connection with any particular dancer at the moment, the need is less compelling. There is no new Lily or Angela in my consciousness right now.

Also, in the three weeks since I was last at a club, I have honed my ability to turn the street into a continuous erotic show...the Pretty Parade. With a kind of mental shorthand, a five second glimpse of an attractive gal on the avenue now seems resonate in my imagination as strongly as the sight of a stripper strutting around for three songs on a stage and then dancing on my lap.

Strange how the mind accommodates itself sometimes to changed circumstances. I have less disposable income right now, and my belt-tightening, which I resented at first, has become more of a habit.

My mind's permanent library of images of erstwhile favorite dancers like Lily or Angela have been joined by an indelible three second glance of a haughty twentysomething Chinese chick on her way to work in the morning near Columbus Circle, her shoulders straight and somehow arrogant as she walked in her strappy high heeled sandals, her hips swaying slightly in her flowing skirt. She looked positively imperial, right down to her beautifully polished toenails...

And then there was the incredibly busty black woman in her late thirties whom I passed on Ninth Avenue, but then backtracked to see some more. She wore a light brown flower print dress, flat sandals, her glossy black hair up in a pony tail and headband, and large sunglasses on her face that gave her an air of celebrity-like untouchability. Her astounding cleavage was a radiantly tawny chasm in her low-cut bodice, pushed upwards and out for the delectation of the passing throngs. From across the street, she looked (in the words once used to describe the 40s actress Carole Landis) like a bureau with the top drawer pulled out...I don't often walk out of my way to savor the sight of a gal, but this one was worth the extra three blocks...as it turned out, she was on her way to the theater with a female friend.

Ladies, you have this effect on us poor men.

And on my way to pick up my laundry yesterday from the wash-n-fold, I saw two beautiful Asian girls on one street, and then as I came out with my bag of laundry, I thought, should I walk back up that same street again or take another block? I asked myself which block offered the best possibility of me seeing another beautiful Asian gal. I decided to take the other street, and sure enough, saw a petite stunner on her way to restaurant with friends. She looked Filipino, about 21, and was a perky doll in her tight jeans and pink top.

Women are just so beautiful to look at in this city...but they are evaporating my mind...

I saw a girl about 22 or 23 on the street early last evening who looked very boldly sexy--she wore stiletto boots that came to the middle of her shapely calves, short-shorts that had cuffs snug against the tops of her tawny thighs, a tight blouse that presented two jiggly sisters, and to top it all off, she wore her dark brown hair in a saucy ponytail. Nice to look at, nice to long for, nice to construct a fantasy around, but it still bothers me that regular, non-commercial women can dress like prostitutes and I can't go up to them and purchase their company.

When I moved to New York in 1973, if a girl had been dressed like that, she generally was for sale along Eighth Avenue between 42nd and 48th Streets, where the streetwalkers used to stroll.

I guess I have to accept that I am an old fogey of only 54 who, shackled by his vivid memories of youthful debaucheries back in the Sleazy Seventies, is shocked over and over again by the simple fact that ordinary gals in 2006 think nothing of walking down the avenue and flaunting themselves as if they're auditioning for Smooth Sam the Pimp Man, but in reality their clothes probably have little connection with their actual vaginal intentions.

But again, it would take the edge off for Sir Cranky if the girls wore those little buttons I wrote about the other day...I ACCEPT TIPS (see my post "Quick Money" from August 17th). It doesn't seem fair that the girls can fuck with our minds, but we don't get to demonstrate the awe and admiration stimulated by their exhibitionism.

It's just another thing to drive a man bonkers in New York...sometimes I think the fact that my buddies and I are still sane is proof that we are tougher men than anybody could have guessed. We may not have especially macho jobs, but under the surface we are a leathery brigade. Come to think of it, the fact that the entire five boroughs of Manhattan aren't populated by more eyeball-rolling and penis-bearing lunatics shows that we accept the discipline and rigor of seeing so much flesh to dazzle our eye, but still live to tell the tale in a coherent fashion.

If indeed, I am being coherent...

Yes, we run the Gorgeous Gauntlet, and yet can still crack wise!

I look at the top of my blog page and I see ads for "depression" and "bipolar disorder" even though I'm not writing about these topics...at least, not that I know of! Do these advertising software programs that place ads on blogs pick up keywords that detect such symptoms in my prose? Hmm...

True, I have been getting heavy here the last couple of days, examining my conflicted feelings about the erotic entertainment business as spurred by reading a masseuse's memoir on the site Nerve.com...

Be sure to read the comments between me and Lady Blumoon on my post "Clearing up the confusion? Or adding to it?" as they are addendum to the post. I could almost have posted my comments as an entry.

I tried to clarify to Lady Blumoon the psychological struggle I have with my mother (in my head and in reality) that is the basis for some of my absorption in the world of strippers...

Lady Blumoon (a thoughtful, reflective person herself) asks why I feel guilty for wanting "a sex goddess with the demeanor of a lady/angel." Boy, I could not have described my erotic type more accurately. I find a maternal, warm quality in an overtly sexy woman to be so powerful...

But do I feel guilty for wanting this, as Lady Blumoon asks? If I do, it is because I also have a lot of empathy for people--more so for women than men, I find--almost too much--and I feel guilty for being narcissistic and wanting women to conform to my cranky, infantile demands...

My mother proudly told me a few years ago that she toilet-trained me at FOURTEEN MONTHS. An ob-gyn I knew socially told me that was very, very early and unusual. I guess Mom wanted me to be a baby for as short a period as possible. Perhaps I got the message that the narcissism of infancy was an intrusion on her...that male self-centeredness was an intrusion on a woman, period. And so I have been self-effacing with women my entire life...and if not, I feel I am acting like a brute!

I feel empathetic with women, perhaps as an inadvertently positive result of this extreme training...

In my professional life, my ability to empathize with women has held me in good stead. I wish I could go into more detail about this, but for the sake of discretion I cannot. Just trust me on this. Although maybe you don't have to take it on trust, because I think my empathy for women comes through in this blog when you scrape away the crusty crankiness. If I didn't have this empathy--why would so many women enjoy reading this? Unless I present the constantly hilarious spectacle of a sex-starved asshole frothing at the mouth and, not unlike a supermarket tabloid, exert a certain cheesy appeal.

Perhaps because I feel empathy with women, I get angry when they don't empathize with ME! And give me a gold star like a good boy! This might just another way of phrasing what I said the other day, that I'm disappointed when women don't look lovingly upon me...

They only see the surface of Sir Cranky...just a mug on the street...

American culture, in the last thirty years, has emphasized the psychological chasm between men and women, as if men cannot understand women, and vice versa. However, I think that the feminists created a rift between men and women and an artificial chasm that did not exist before.

The needs of men and women may differ, but we are still human beings with emotions in common.

Sometimes I think my ability to see the other side of an argument has made it difficult for me to assert myself and have good relationships with women. I feel stymied by a sense of my own inadequacy to give the other person what she wants...and as a result, I have retreated into the world of fantasy, of the "tableaux vivant," or living pictures, that make up the world of erotic entertainment in all its manifestations.

Hmm...

I can only imagine what the Goooogle ads above THIS post are going to be.

Toilet Training at its Best?

Easy way for girls to make money in Manhattan, or other cities, for that matter:

Wear a button that says "I ACCEPT TIPS" when you're walking down the street, and carry a little drawstring sack, like a 19th century purse, into which your passing admirers can drop a dollar or two. Coming back from my morning coffee and bagel today, I passed at least twenty gals from ages twenty to forty-five who could have earned themselves an easy buck if they were wearing such a button. I would respectfully have slipped a single into each of their Tip Sacks.

Just a thought.