I'm knackered. Been to London, to the Royal Academy. Tomorrow is the last day of the Vuillard exhibition, and it's had really good reviews so I thought I'd give it a go.

Really glad I did: it was ace. It struck me as I went round that a very high percentage of his paintings - and most of the best ones - were from private collections rather than major galleries. I'm sure that if more of them were in public collections he would be much better known. At the moment he tends to be dismissed - that is, if he's even considered at all - as derivative, following the fashions of the impressionists and post-impressionists without really establishing his own style.

And certainly the first couple of rooms appear to back that up. I thought it was pretty awful. Actually, it was quite funny really - you could point at paintings and say who they were meant to be - "that's his Pissaro, there's a Monet, the Renoir's particularly fine." LOL

There was a side view - almost a silhouette - of a grandmother which immediately made you think of Whistler's Mother. He experimented heavily - and often badly - with pointillism, including one with the biggest dots I've ever seen, like a child's impression of Seurat. There was a painting of a man reading which had the wild colours of Gauguin, and actually the man even looked vaguely like him. Monet's waterlilies were recalled in a couple of landscapes from les jardins publiques, and there were some which were exactly like Van Gogh's Japanese-style flower paintings. Even Toulouse Lautrec got a look in, with some greatly stylised posters.

It was like he was the Rolf on Art of his day, promiscuously filching ideas, skilfully copying the styles but completely missing the substance.

But then something changed.

It seemed to be around the mid 1890s when he came into his own. The paintings develop and mature, they become recognisably his, and you realise you're in the presence of something beautiful.

His trick is light, particularly artificial light. He uses it to create meaning in a moment, a question unasked but hovering. There are two paintings in particular which are simply stunning. You have to see them in reality to appreciate the effect - the illustrations just don't do them justice.

One is a picture of Jane Renouardt from 1926. She is a dancer, dressed in an elaborate gown, and seated in her dressing room with mirrors to front and rear. You see her reflection and the reflection of her reflection, and even the beginnings of yet another reflection. The light - completely artificial - is sumptuous, erupting onto the canvas and bathing it in richness and warmth. The colours are vivid and startling - rich red, velvet curtains, the wonderful green patterns of her gown, leopard skin seats, delicate drapes, all cohering into a fine and startling presence.

The other was the last picture in the exhibition. Talk about saving the best till last. I'm broken-hearted that I will never see this painting again, because it's privately owned. Le boudoir aux voiles de Gênes shows a woman seated in her boudoir, looking directly towards us, but almost swallowed by the room itself, as though she were merely a part of it. Everywhere is intricate detail - flower patterns on the wallpaper and chair, four separate sprays of peonies and other flowers scattered throughout the room, a large mirror giving that characteristic sense of spatial depth and so on.

But it is the light which is truly extraordinary. There are two electric lamps, one in front of the woman, the other to her left, and no natural light is evident. The lamps throw light into the foreground and up the wall, but the woman, seated in the corner, remains in shadow. The effect is unreal, almost ghostly, and yet at the same time, from a technical point of view the creation of the light effect is extraordinarily realistic. This is why the painting is so beautiful: the realism of the execution creates a shuddering ethereality.

There was one other painting I loved, but that was for a more personal reason. La terrace à Vasouy: le déjeuner is part of a diptych and shows a group of people seated round a table with a red and white checked tablecloth. Two men and a dog are watching a young couple strolling past, staring at one another and smiling. What I love about it is that the man is so indistinct. He is on the far left surrounded by trees, and it seems as though he is emerging from the painting, like a ghost shimmering into reality.

Being fanciful, I think of him as my str8guy, gradually sliding from secrecy into the light, although it's a bit disconcerting to see the way the woman is smiling at him so complicitly. Clearly, not a true reflection of my situation, but since he painted it sixty years before I was born I can't really criticise Vuillard for that...

Mention of Mr str8guy probably prompts you to ask what any of this has to do with the price of pomegranates, and the answer is not much, but I wanted to write about those paintings before I forgot. So now, after a brief intermission, back to the point of this journal: the unmasking of str8guy.

I sent him a photo today. I wasn't going to. I was going to have a complete str8guy free day, but in the end I couldn't resist. She was just too beautiful to miss... :-)

I saw her in the exhibition. Actually, she looked like she'd just stepped out of one of the paintings. She had a serene quality, reserved and composed, like someone from the nineteenth century, someone not accustomed to the bustle and speed and ephemerality of modern life. As soon as I saw her I thought she was a perfect candidate to send to him, because she would probably appeal to me much more than to him. If I'm going to collude with him in this game, I'm going to do it on my terms... *G*

So the seeds were sown. I had left my phone along with my stuff in the cloakrooms, so I couldn't take a picture in the exhibition itself, and I thought no more about it. A chance come and gone. But afterwards, as I was walking through the courtyard back on to Picadilly I saw her again. My heart leaped and instantly I felt a nervous tension in my stomach. It was a bit like the moment when you're about to ask someone out, and can't decide whether or not you'll have the courage to do it. My hands were shaking - literally! - as I took the phone out of my bag and pressed the buttons.

I was behind her, so she couldn't see, and I looked around to see if anyone else could spot what I was doing. No-one seemed especially interested, and I pointed the phone towards her, as naturally as I could, and took a picture.

A fraction of a second.

It was done.

It looked okay. It had caught her nicely [decribe it]. Now I had to decide if I was going to send it or not. I sat on the bench outside the RA and deliberated. My hands were still shaking as I keyed his number and then "send".

I did it.

He replied almost immediately.

Lovely. Where are you?

London

Whereabouts?

Royal Academy

Show me. Pic of you in front

I held the phone in front of me and positioned myself so that the building was behind me. The first attempt chopped my head off, but I got it right second time round and sent it to him.

Nice. What you wearing?

Skirt & blouse

Show me panties

That was a step too far. I couldn't cope with that. I looked around, but there just seemed too many people. I told myself no way and tried to convince myself, not responding to his text.

But I was still sitting there, so who was I kidding?

Show me panties

My heart was hammering in my chest and my ears were ringing. I felt hot and dizzy. Sliding on the bench, I began to ease my skirt up my thighs, looking around all the time to see if I was being observed. I continued to shuffle until my skirt was midway up my thighs - far enough. I parted my legs and looked down, immediately closing them again when I saw how obscene I looked. My cheeks reddened instantly and I looked around once more. There was a family approaching, but still quite far off, and no-one else was around. This was my chance. Probably my only chance, given the nervousness I felt.

I sat up quickly and slid the skirt further up my backside, then sat down again and spread my legs. Holding the phone in front of me, I quickly snapped a picture and checked to see what it looked like. It was fine - which is to say it was terrible!! Obscene! Fumbling with my skirt, I composed myself and sat, trembling, staring at the picture.

What was I doing? What on earth was I doing? Oh well, it was nothing worse than I had become accustomed to doing on the internet, although at least that was in the privacy of my own home. Frankly, I had no idea what I was doing.

I pressed send.

Beautiful.

Thank u

Panties off now

Fuck off

What a bastard! He's never fucking satisfied. If I'd done that, next it would have been "ass in the air," "run around stark naked," "fuck a stranger in the fountain."

So I switched the phone off and came home.

Here's a man who knows how to fuck up a mood 3;