(no subject)

[johnny9fingers]

Notwithstanding that I am in some way an Eleanor Roosevelt-type person, I feel Spring is most definitely in the air. The sun shines. The sap rises. Thoughts turn to women. Well mine do but that's my problem.

My chum Stephen has a set of prerequisites before even contemplating stepping out with a female. They make for an amusing read:

i) she must be not mad. He's very insistent upon this having met a number of my girlfriends over the years. 
ii) she must be English. I've never quite agreed with S on this point. But he did once step out with a Welsh Girl, and an Italian lass or two, and his family are Irish (of a particular kind) anyway.
iii) she must be a 'gentlewoman'.

Now I would tend to include article iv) that the woman in question should actually be interested in him. Stephen, being a certain sort of chap, never has problems in believing that all women of taste and discrimination should find him fascinating. Stephen's chums, out of kindness, have not yet cared to disabuse him of this delusion for fear of making him unhappy.

I've stepped out with women of most hues and cultures and I've come to the conclusion my needs are easier to fulfill than Stephen's.
Not mad would be an advantage.
Same continent would also be good.
Over thirty (younger falls into that horrific category - young enough to be my daughter is a disconnect too far). Well preserved and of my own age would help.
Witty....this should go first on the list really: I'll put up with a lot if I'm laughing.

But somewhere at the core....
Spring is really in the air.
A seasonal disorder, no doubt.

Comments

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Or precisely seasonal order. Also, for the record, Swiss girls rock the LTR.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

French, German, or Italian Swiss? You chaps are more likely to be German-Swiss, but I may well be wrong.

I don't quite consider my life as....(looks for a metaphor)....I haven't got to the stage where I'm listening to Strauss's 'Four Last Songs' on continuous rotation. But I am a reasonably sophisticated man of middle years, and I can see the last two acts without a telescope.

I suppose I should be pleased that the sap still rises: I had begun to consider I was not the man I had been in my youth. I'm glad to find this is not the case.

Bah....what am I like?

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking about comparing thee to a summer's day. :0

I'm not sure which "you chaps" you refer to. I am pure New York Jew. But my wife is from what was once a tiny little burg in the Rhine Valley bordering Austria. It's been quite the run for us.

Funny thing is, her parents were the very opposite of what you might call cosmopolitan. Yet their older daughter ran off with me and the younger one almost simultaneously married a Thai and ran off to Bangkok. Odd, that.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Whilst I still hold to summer's lease, I should beg some lass to trim my sails, I suppose. But I beg so badly, 'tis not in my nature. Humbling oneself is difficult for folk like me, and requires conscious effort and application. Or the shame of being wrong, or in the wrong.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

I thought guitar players let their axes do the seduction for them. It's us pianists who need to develop charm and wit.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

And why did you start playing guitar, Johnny?
It was the only way my teenage self could think of that might just possibly get two women into bed together with me....

Sorry, that was glib: and young men are prone to such reasoning.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

There is ocnscious and unconscious reasoning. If you hadn't copped to it as a conscious one, I would have simply been forced to assert that it was there unconsciously. I have studied the species for years.

Hey, did you ever like Vernon Reid -- him of Living Color?

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

I met Vernon in '94.
Jeff Corbett had played drums for Vernon as part of the Black Rock Coalition. He came to England in '86 or so and played with Peter Gabriel and a few sessions for other folk. He ended up in a band called 'The Vapours' as replacement drummer. The Vapours frontman was a chap known to me, David Fenton. 'Turning Japanese' (a song about masturbation) put David through Law School, and he's now Head of the Musicians Union legal department, and has his own ambulance chasing business as a sideline.
I stole Jeff from David's band for a project of my own, that included Steve K (from TPA studios) who was in those days a singer.
(Note the glee with which I wrote that.)

Name-dropping of folk of whom you've never heard ....sorry.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Of course I know the song and the band. At the time it came out, I was living on East 92nd Street and hanging out everywhere. Mostly with the avant-garde hypernegroes of the Lower East Side -- but also amongst the equally entertaining punk/performance sceners.

During that same time I jammed with Reid. He liked me -- most particularly because we of this acid-rock version of All Blues we spontaneously broke into before we had even exhcanged a single word.

I still remember our last phone call. I was living with my parents in Jersey, and he with his in Brooklyn. He asked me to come out there to do something or other. I wasn't in the mood to schlep myself and my Fender Rhodes that distance that day. And if I had...?

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

....If you had, it wouldn't be up to your (younger?) son to attempt world domination.
Though Living Colour didn't quite manage Led Zeppelin status, alas, because they were infinitely better than the competition around at the time.
If they ever allow me back into the US I'll bring a guitar.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Hehe. He wouldn't even exist -- which is why I am regretless. And I never would have rocked the way LC did. I was much more the Art Ensemble of Chicago type.

Let me know if you need me to intercede with the Homeland Security folks on your behalf.

strauss listening

[e4q.livejournal.com]

as i get older i find myself less sympathetic to hearing any kind of music. there are certain things i like, but only very precise things. like i like mozart's requiem, but nothing jollier. i like ballet music but not much opera, i like jazz that is very close to being systems music, but not noodle jazz or really anything involving a lot of screeching or high hats.

otherwise, anglophone is good, age appropriate is good, humour always a winner.

not so much smoking drinking to any great extent and SNORING!

Re: strauss listening

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Ah you see, you describe my best features in your last sentence. I am wedded to the weed, after which, I apparently snore like a pneumatic drill.

Re: strauss listening

[e4q.livejournal.com]

well, see. it is not meant to be.
you should get yourself a nice neti pot.

Re: strauss listening

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Madam, compose yourself....honestly.
Women, what are they like?

Pink for a girl, blue for a boy?

Too many jokes to get them all out in a sentence, or paragraph even.

Milady, we didn't even manage to play 'Scrabble' together across the net. This is definitely a stage too far.

Re: strauss listening

[e-compass-rosa.livejournal.com]

You are obviously unacquainted with the joys of the Neti pot. They are quite wonderful inventions, though those in the picture do seem to take on a salacious quality.

Re: strauss listening

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Come on, when does a chap get a chance to throw lines out like that.....In fact, I should have thought about it and compiled a list.

Re: scrabble playing

[e4q.livejournal.com]

it doesn't work out for everyone. i have a blue neti pot and nothing bad has happened, i still seem to be female in general. amazingly, not only has it enabled me to breathe at night, but also taken away some intransigent sinus pain, something i didn't really dare to hope for. it's not a sex aid. (haha 'sex aid' no one says that any more, do they?)

Re: scrabble playing

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Peculiar form that 'sex aid'. I find alcohol normally works up to a point.

Re: sex aid

[e4q.livejournal.com]

yes. i used to rather rely on it. it is very interesting to watch your inner weather without.

[e-compass-rosa.livejournal.com]

Do you have a particular 'gentlewoman' in mind? And can I ask, what exactly defines a 'gentlewoman'? With all due respect to S., it sounds horridly limiting to me.

[e4q.livejournal.com]

i like to think of myself as being a bit of a gentlewoman, though not of the gentry as such. just that i am educated and civilised and a bit patronising.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

I should introduce you to Stephen then.

[e4q.livejournal.com]

do if you think he wouldn't mind me!

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

His conditions are not mine. I do not demand gentleness, nor do I hanker after nobility: I'm sure I can manage with what I have of those qualities.
I think S is single perhaps because he is too fussy. High standards, you see.
Nah, what I'm after is not impossible, but just down to chemistry of various kinds. And perhaps something like proximity.

[e4q.livejournal.com]

fussy can be scared. which is not unreasoned though can be ditched.
chemistry is important. the sniff factor is nature's way of running the show.
after the debacle of my last long distance relationship, i think relative proximity is a must.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Nah, I don't reckon 'scared' in that way is part of his make-up. Half of Cambridge's female academic population were at one time pining for his fond caress, but he's older now. Not that we remind him....

[e4q.livejournal.com]

being popular might make it worse.
i have seen that happen.

[winterlion.livejournal.com]

Spring really IS in the air!
*pondering list*
The lady I'm seeing is:
- in the same valley (a city away)
- not at all mad, I think.
- under thirty... (but I'm not -that- far over 30)

although it comes to me - what do you consider 'mad'?

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Congratters. Hope both of you do good things with and to each other. Above all have fun, but do stick by your honesty and integrity.
Truth is important: and aside from that, I know you to be a caring and thoughtful individual so all other advice is superfluous.
Rock on m'dear. May your gods watch over you and grant you happiness.

[vlion.livejournal.com]

Not mad is an exceedingly important facet in a romance, I have come to learn.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Too true, though I tend to make allowances for brilliance: in fact brilliance and elegance and wit over-ride all other considerations for me....excepting of course goodness. Beauty of thought and behaviour are qualities against which any reasonable man's heart has no defenses, because they can never be in opposition.
A love of the carnal don't go amiss either: given I'm trapped in these mortal chains I might as well enjoy it. But that's Spring talking again.

[e4q.livejournal.com]

i would like goodness. kindness never used to much matter to me, but now it is probably top, then carnal, then funny (to me, i don't want a comic) and after that probably clever, but then i think i mainly find clever funny. not much bothered about looks, but more something in the affect can put a person off, but maybe that's the scratch and sniff again.