I'm Dish and I write a weekly newsletter about life, love, and culture for those 40+. Because midlife and beyond is so much cooler than they said it would be. Hell yes, sign me up for the Dish.
If you're new here (welcome!), I'm Dish, the Master of Ceremonies. For more about me and why we're here go here.
In This Letter. +Dish Stanley's Rules for Polite Society. Give your undivided attention. +Throw Some Love Around. Better Ways to Spend February 14th. By Dish Stanley Fly along with Ace Combat Flight Experience +Songs That Make You Wanna F*ck. The latest Submission from CRUSH Reader That and that whole schoolgirl outfit aesthetic remains etched into my memory. +QUIVER. Sexual Debut Stories. By Lisa Ellex When I relayed Noreen’s good fortune to my mother, she told me Noreen would probably be pregnant soon – or get a venereal disease – because that’s what happens to people the first time they have sex. +Book Review: City of Desire: Christian Pan. Reviewed by Maeve Blackhead Pan approaches erotica with an artistically observant eye, picking up on the contradictory nuances of expression +Our Song of the Week Fire Walk With Me
Hello Crush,
Yeah, that's a HiNote I sent to a friend this morning. That's the free mobile communication app that let's you be a little more creative that I told you about in last week's letter - A Truly Good Thing: What My Smart Friends Are Trying & Doing Right Now. The HiNote folks launched a series of note forms for sexting just in time for Valentine's.
You know how I feel about the usefulness of adopting good sexting techniques (for everyday life, as well as conjuring up extraordinary experiences) from my Ode to Sexting. So I wanted to bring this development to your immediate attention just in case you could find it useful. Have fun.
On another note, I switched things up and included the Table of Contents at the top. (How do you like it there?) You can see from that we've got a big, loving Letter for you this Valentine's week. Let's dive right in.
Dish's Rules for Polite Society
New York Magazine ran a series in which a few New Yorkers, some famous, shared their personal etiquette tips. Did you see it? A lot of them I agreed with, like uber-New York Hostess Laura Santo Domingo's "Be up-to-date with White Lotus! As in, don't put your hands over your ears and scream "No spoilers!" Which is to say that I believe that if there is a wildly popular show among your peer group, or you're going to be a guest at a dinner party, it's ON YOU if you haven't kept up. Don't blow everybody else's opportunity to bond, laugh, squeam or delight in Jennifer Coolidge (I mean Tanya McQuoid's) latest delightful antic.
And then there was Amy Sedaris's list, in which she included "Learn how to properly mail a box." Not only do I believe that you can be a perfectly polite person without honing that particular menial skill, but it made you pause and wonder: what the hell happened to Amy Sedaris while in line at the post office? Somebody in front of her got all tied up in the tape? Somebody fatally wounded themselves on the edges of the box? What. A complete non-sequitor as far as I'm concerned.
Well New York Magazine hasn't reached out (yet!) to ask me to share my rules. But why wait for opportunity to knock? Honestly, who else is going to tell you that offering lube is polite? And to stop asking your solo friends if they've "found someone special" every time you see them? Here Dish digs deep to share with you the things you need to know to be a better friend or lover, or just to navigate the social world after 40.
Throw Some Love Around. Better Ways to Spend February 14th. By Dish Stanley
You could go ahead and make dinner reservations for another night out on Valentine’s Day {sigh}. Or you could consider some alternatives – many taken from CRUSH Readers and contributors to previous CRUSH Letters – that might spark more joy, as they say, or at least throw some love out to the world.
Check into a hotel that allows dogs and get room service for the two of you.
Have dinner delivered instead of going out; spend the night with your partner making elaborate plans for your next trip together. Build the anticipation up by texting your partner reminders and snapshots of where you’re going to stay, and eat, and what you’re going to be doing together. A few suggestions for couples’ trips (hat tip to long-married CRUSH Readers K&J for the first two!):
– The Mario Andretti Racing Experience has locations in Miami, Charlotte, Michigan, New Hampshire, and other locations. A close friend said she and her husband loved it on a trip to Las Vegas.
– Fly along with Ace Combat Flight Experience
– Reserve one of these New York hotels recommended by travel expert, Jeanne Bosse (from a previous Crush Letter) Five Great Boutique Hotels Around NYC and get spots in advance at one of these smoldering places recommended by fellow PrimeCrush Readers: The Box NYC, Duane Park Cabaret or the cocktail lounge Bergamos (booths in the back!).
Make Lauren Weinstein’s at-home facial mask (from a previous CRUSH Letter) The Comfort Face Mask You Can Try at Home. Then dive onto the couch and get your Get Your Spy Thrill On with one of Dish’s favorite spy thrillers, or learn How To Find Porn that Dish says is actually good.
Order a custom latex outfit, with tips from Jane Boon’s Reports from the Edge: Latex Stretches.
Eat Evie Arnaud’s Shameless Quick & Easy Mac & Cheese as an indulgent act of foreplay while listening to our list of PrimeCrush crowd-sourced Songs That Make You Wanna F*ck. A Compendium from the Readers of The Crush Letter, or if your more in the mood for classics, Lady Verity’s A Turntable and a Candle: F-ing Classics.
Throw a BDSM costume party and serve Love & Mike’s Bad Girl Pasta. {Note: don’t invite anyone from the office, especially not that hunky CFO.}
Write a letter to a close friend (which could be yourself) telling them (you) what you love about them (you) and what they mean to you. Mail it!
Read an erotic short story aloud to your lover. Below is a review of Christian Pan's debut collection of stories, City of Desire (it's not to late to get it by Valentine's). You could also to Christian Pan Erotica’s Patreon membership and get new stories sent to you by email weekly. Or try one from A.K.A. Darla’s list of Stories to Read Aloud to a Lover.
Start your memoir, or a gratitude journal. Either would be a powerful act of self-love. “It went out in an instant, a blaze of light the color of carrot cake. The blazing orange kind my Mother makes, not that dull auburn color of my former best friend’s hair …”
Research what is involved in fostering a stray from your local shelter.
Re-read Charlie Mackesy’s powerful ode to friendship The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse. We reviewed in one of our very first CRUSH Letters “Doing Nothing With Friends. It’s Not Really Doing Nothing. Review: The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse”. The movie is coming out …
And since you didn’t waste the night overspending on flowers, chocolate or dinner out, take that money and give it to your favorite charity. If you have a family, spend some time on Valentine’s picking out one together.
Songs That Make You Wanna F*ck.
An occasional pop-up where PrimeCrush Readers share the songs that make them want to bang. Thanks to MusicGeek77 for sharing his. Got one? Send it to me at Dish@PrimeCrush.com.
Submitted by Crush Reader " MusicGeek77"
The Pink Room by Angelo Badalamenti
What about this song musically does it for you?
I am always a sucker for a sleazy, creepy, sexy blues song. This instrumental is hypnotic with its beat and pedal steel guitar.
Is there a memory you attach to this song?
I am divorced, and my girlfriend asked me to create a playlist of dark moody songs to play in the background while we have fun. This song comes up often and gets me in the right headspace.
Who/what are you thinking of when you listen to this song?
In the scene in the very rated-R movie in which this song plays, the main character, Laura Palmer, is at a scummy bar back room engaging with the men there in particular ways that would never be shown on network television.
Anything else...?
I watched the show "Twin Peaks" when it originally aired at probably too young age to fully understand how much the show was wiring my brain sexually. I am pretty sure I actively hit puberty the moment I saw the character of Audrey Horne tie a cherry stem into a knot using only her tongue. That and that whole schoolgirl outfit aesthetic remains etched into my memory.
QUIVER. Sexual Debut Stories. By Lisa Ellex
A tender and exciting column of true stories looking back at first-time sex.
Who made YOU Quiver? PrimeCrush columnist Lisa Ellex wants to know. Just whisper it in her ear and your “first-time” story could be the inspiration for her next Quiver column. Anonymity a concern? She'll change your name, location, and any other piece of identifying info, just like they do in the witness protection program. Except you don't have to move. So if you want to Quiver with us, contact lisaellex@gmail.com
Phil
Phil is a career librarian living and working in a small Northeast town. After decades of dysfunction and isolation, he discovers love – and passion – at the dawn of his 60th year.
I never knew my father. I was raised in the very house where my mother was raised by her own mother, my grandmother. We had no money, no car, no comforts and, because Mother was an occasional recluse who I spent most of my life looking after, I had no friends. It was a co-dependent upbringing in the style of Gray Gardens, minus the humor and celebrity connection.
Mother and I spent Saturday afternoons using our food stamps at the local supermarket. Saturday evenings consisted of reviewing the latest edition of TV Guide to select our entertainment for the week. We lived in a world of pre-cable television and movies featured on Million Dollar Movie (old RKO films that ran twice a night for a week), The 4:30 Movie (ran Monday through Friday), and various game shows and series that we viewed on the 1972 Zenith TV that belonged to my Grandmother. I’m sure Grandma never imagined that her legacy – and my only escape – would be my daydreams of romance and swank lifestyles depicted in those old Hollywood films delivered via her Zenith.
On those Sundays when we were able to get a ride, Mother would pause her reclusiveity to attend church, followed by a coffee hour with our fellow parishioners. I always looked forward to spending time with them, as their smiles and kind words strengthened me for the dreadfully lonely school week ahead. The only classmate who ever spoke to me at lunchtime was Noreen, a sweet girl with the face of sunshine who was also from a single-parent home. Kind as she was, I became invisible to her once she found a boyfriend. When I relayed Noreen’s good fortune to my mother, she told me Noreen would probably be pregnant soon – or get a venereal disease – because that’s what happens to people the first time they have sex. If her intention was to terrify me, she succeeded.
Continue reading here
City of Desire: Christian Pan. Reviewed by Maeve Blackhead
The prolific erotic storyteller Christian Pan has a particular knack for connecting the unpredictable exuberance and the harsh loneliness of New York with the range of emotions and consequences that can arise from erotic encounters. The men and women populating his debut collection of stories, City of Desire, are mostly approaching middle age, reflecting on their sexual and professional lives, and their relationship to New York City.
Pan's writing is not only sexy but cinematic and literary; his characters feel real, like friends relaying their deepest secrets. In “Everything I Remember is Gone,” a forty-something European returns to New York after many years, lamenting both the creative life she abandoned as well as the loss of the city as it once was when everyone she knew “seemed to be an artist: dancers, actors, writers” [12]. With the city as her stage, she utilizes her sexuality and her desire to recreate a sense of artistry in her life, seducing a younger man in a downtown bar– “she felt in control, the director and the actor both within this unfolding little drama [5]." The story "Eddie Hand” (one of my favorites in this collection) explores a young man’s emergence into bisexuality, and how the city affords him the opportunity “be open about how I felt, who I was… New York seemed to be the place where nobody really cared” [56]. A man recollects his first sexual encounter as an undergrad at NYU in "Dorothy," remembering how New York “looked just like it did in the movies, only better. Gray iron, steel, like a garden of metal knives [68]."
The city-as-fantasy theme continues as the narrator has sex with a fellow student he meets during registration, but soon, the movie ends and reality sets in, and the object of his desire proves to be as indifferent as the streets of Manhattan. But City of Desire isn’t all heartache--there is an abundance of hot sex within these pages. Pan approaches erotica with an artistically observant eye, picking up on the contradictory nuances of expression: “The language of sex can be funny…how pleasure can appear the same as a wound, and how the expressions of agony can resemble ecstatic abandon [27]." City of Desire reminds us that humans, like great metropolises, are multifaceted, mutable, and mysterious.
Maeve Blackhead is a poet and research librarian living in New York City.
Song of the Week
The Pink Room by Angelo Badalamenti
We owe this dark and haunting Song of the Week to CRUSH Reader MusicGeek77 and his f*ck song selection. Do you remember when Twin Peaks came out in 1991? There was nothing – and I mean nothing – like it on television. We were still living during a period when Cheers and its celebration of ordinary people grabbing beers and everyday friendship at the local bar was a ratings juggernaut. I was transfixed by Twin Peak and its weird and original tone – danger and camp all rolled into one ball of creepy obsessiveness.
Listen here.
Re-Sharing These Gems
Dish Stanley
Crush PoV
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Dearest Crushes: Remember that a few weeks ago I started a new Ask Dish: Stray Questions column. Hit me up with your questions!
Ask Dish - Submit Your Question Here
Next week is our periodic DEVOUR Letter where contributing editor Lisa Ellex and I share what we think you should be devouring. We are focusing on what to watch (because it's not spring yet!), so I'll be watching lots of things for you this week end. I hope you have a Happy Valentine's Day, and a wonderful week.
X-oh!-X,
Dish
