I'm still slightly hungover from last night - not good.

Partner & I had to meet someone at the gay bar to continue collecting money for donated items that we auctioned off during GLBT Pride Week.

The customer came and went (she got a leather vest for $20, which clearly brightened her day), but after our first glasses of wine, other folks at the bar kept treating us until 1:00 a.m. Well, that's how bar friends show good will & generosity. I shouldn't have kept drinking. I haven't had enough practice to do it well.

For those who read my previous post, the universe has a sense of humor,
the situation seems to be resolved. Both editors now know they each have a different version of the same story of mine, and BOTH are still on schedule to be published. This is awesome.

It amazes me how fast I go downhill when I stop taking flaxseed oil (available in pill form) every day.
I ran out of it on the weekend and didn't bother to pick up more at the supermarket, and then I noticed the return of the dreaded Hormone Headache (as I think of it) - a sneaky sort of pain that grows stronger & stronger until (on a few Worst Case occasions), it can literally knock me out. 

This morning I made sure to pick up a bottle of the pills, and now I'm much better. Apparently flax oil is a cheap, OTC version of Hormone Replacement Therapy for women past menopause - with no negative side effects.

Adrienne at Erotic Readers & Writers Association loves my August piece for my column, "Sex Is All Metaphors," on the site: www.erotica-readers.com.

Tune in August 1 to read my views on marriage, both same-sex and opposite-sex - Canada is one of the few countries on earth that allows both. Even if you can guess my approach, you might as well surf over there anyway. :)

I went to a yard sale where all the paperbacks were FREE. Yes! I resisted the temptation to bring a wheelbarrow.

I picked up Witch Hunt: The Underside of American Democracy by Michael Dorman (Dell, 1976). It starts with the trashing-by-innuendo of a U.S. general in the 1790s, and moves swiftly to the founding of the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee, Richard Nixon's involvement,  the rise of Senator Joe McCarthy, Nixon's eventual election as U.S. President and the Watergate scandal.

Here is somethng I hadn't known: HUAC, formed to investigate a "Communist conspiracy" in the U.S., was set up in 1938, largely spearheaded by folks who were alarmed by Roosevelt's New Deal and what they saw as a disturbing shift to the left in response to widespread poverty during the Depression.

HUAC's first report criticized President Roosevelt for failing to pursue "subversion" with sufficient vigor, and set up these characteristics as evidence of "un-American" beliefs:

- Absolute social and racial equality [OMG, this line of thought might even lead to a black President!!]

- The idea that it is "the duty of government to support the people" [what chutzpah!]

- substitution of communal ownership of property for private ownership [this probably explains why so many of my grade-school classmates in the 1950s believed that "Communists" were likely to break into their homes to steal their pajamas and the family dog]

- abolition of inheritance [obviously, the children of billionaires deserve every penny]

- a system of political, economic or social regimentation based on a planned economy [well, obviously, planning is bad]

- a collectivist philosophy [why give a shit about anyone else?]

- destruction of the American system of checks and balances, with the three independent, coordinate branches of government [HUAC was a prime offender here, constantly going beyond its jurisdiction].

So there it is. It seems I was never really an American, even (or especially) in my childhood in the U.S., when Reds were thought to be lurking under every bed.

According to HUAC, the above set of beliefs are all "foreign," and point to a vast web of folks who look & sound American, but who represent the interests of foreign governments - hence un-American.

HUAC's pursuit of people who were thought to harbor these foreign beliefs led to the compilation of lists with 1000s of names on them. Once your name appeared on a list, it was likely to appear on the front page of the local newspaper.

Then you were likely to be fired from your job, shunned by former friends, and in some cases, unable to acquire other work in any field - which therefore proved that you were too lazy and degenerate to demonstrate the Protestant Work Ethic, that basis of American values. Quite a few victims chose suicide.

Those who think this could never happen again need to think about how & why it happened before.

1) I got a very nice letter from a university administrator saying that I would (key word here) deserve a merit increase, based on my teaching performance in 2008, but I am at the top of my salary range, so no raise for me until/unless current salary negotiations result in more $$$ for all.  Well, it's a nice letter.

2) I sent a story sub to Editor #1 in June 2008. No word for months. I assumed the antho had been published. This story was still an unpublished virgin, so I decided to tweak it further in response to a call-for-submissions less than 2 weeks ago, as I mentioned here. I sent the expanded version to Editor #2. Oh joy, she accepted it immediately. The e-antho is scheduled to be released later this month.

Then Editor #1 sent me a message (about 1 year & 2 weeks after my submission) to say that the original version of this story was accepted for her print antho, which is supposed to go live in August 2009 & would I please sign & return the contract. It never rains but it pours. :)

Well, writing is a great cure for what ails me, or at least a distraction.

My 3 story subs were rejected for Best Lesbian Erotica 2010, so nothing by me will appear in that volume. New series editor Kathleen Warnock has mastered the art of the diplomatic rejection letter.

Today is Canada Day, anniversary of that historic day in 1867 when Canada was created by signatures on paper, NOT the blast of cannons and muskets. (Of course, 21-gun salutes at noon are a tradition.)

The sky here is full of grey clouds that look like cotton wool heavy with water - likely to be squeezed down on us at any moment. The weather forecast predicted rain this morning, though it still looks like a threat, not a downpour. The park is full of people, dogs & Canada geese with goslings - never let it be said that the hardy folk of Saskatchewan are intimidated by weather (unless it dries up the wheat crop, & even then we're okay - we always have a good crop of uranium, on which the ongoing debate has recently heated up).

It's all good. Early this morning I finished a story sub with breakneck speed - a lurid tale of tempted nuns & a transgendered Angel Gabriel for an erotic antho on angels & demons. Word max is 10,000 words, so I used 6250. This means it's prob. too long to fit anywhere else if it gets rejected, but writing is always better than not writing.

My story production has slowed to a trickle this year, & I can't be sure of the real reasons. Other commitments have obviously cut into my time, but there are always other commitments, if only to eat, sleep, wash, clean house, do laundry & run errands. Living in the real world hasn't slowed me down this much before. And I like writing non-fiction, so if anything, it should fertilize story ideas (thinking of metaphorical or downright unnatural conception). 

Re my other writing commitments, read my latest rant in "Sex Is All Metaphors" here:
www.erotica-readers.com (look in the Smutters Lounge gallery).

See my review of Liaisons, a Black Lace anthology, here:
www.eroticarevealed.com

I  finished my review of the Black Lace anthology Liaisons for the July edition of "Erotica Revealed" (www.eroticarevealed.com). As usual, my review is about 1100 words long.

I'm not quite sure if the story "The Woodsman" by Charlotte Stein actually works. The woodsman of the title shows up in a contemporary English forest, and shows himself to be a sex god but not necessarily an actual person in the same dimension as the female narrator.

Judge for yourself.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I don't even know his name. His name is so unknown to me that I've started capitalising Woodsman. Of course it's probably not an appropriate name -- he's probably more of a Criminal, or a Caravan Man, or a Gypsy -- but it sticks anyway, and he's just going to have to live with it.

I wonder if he knows my name. I wonder so many things about him that I go insane and writ ehim notes that I can't give him, and walk out in the middle of the night to see if I can see his caravan, and write little plot outlines for his plotless life. He has no life; he is no one. he is a cipher, a nothing, a symbol.

Just a symbol of my own unfulfilled lusts.

Of course then I start to really worry that I'm going crazy. I consider telling Francie about him so that she can tell me how likely it is that he's real. I think up stupid plans to help prove my own sanity, like taking a secret picture of him while he sleeps.

Only he never sleeps, so I suppose that idea is right out. Or at least he never sleeps around me.

Though I'm sure he must sleep somewhere.

Which is probably how I end up investigating this whole sleeping business. . . So I creep through the woods as dusk sets in, following the ominous smell of something burning, and feel like Little Red Riding Hood. Halfway through the tilting and more-gnarled-than-they-seemed-before trees, I curse myself for not bringing a basket of goodies.

How do you keep off the wolf with nothing to bargain with?

Or maybe I do have a chip to bargain with, and it's something far dirtier than I'm thinking of. He's going to ask me for my maidenhood by the light of the first full moon. He's going to drink my virgin's blood at the winter solstice. He's going to sacrifice me to Fenrir, the wolf god.

And all of these thoughts keep me walking, terrifyingly, rather than stopping me. Not even the thought of my actual lack of virginity can stop me creeping towards the smell of smoke and burning flesh by the light of the rising moon.

I'm on the verge of being sure that I am lost when I get to a clearing in the woods. To what is, in fact, a caravan. His caravan, looking so squat and hunched that it could almost be the sort of thing that's in all my bloody Other obsessed thoughts. The gnarled cottage in the heart of the forest, with a dark stranger waiting inside.

There is a little fire trailing smoke before this tiny home, and over the fire there is a crude grill with a haunch of something cooking on it. Less on the nose things hang about the place, like a T-shirt or two on a half-heartedly strung washing line. A line of his tattered boots by the steps that lead to the cracked open door. Lettering on the caravan, almost washed away: Ace.
 
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Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, both gone too soon. And the Hollywood-watching public had barely recovered from the unexpected death of Natasha Richardson. Not to mention the whole pantheon of those who died young in the tradition of James Dean.

The Women's Coffee House, traditional part of local GLBT Pride Week, was fairly sparsely attended this year.

I read a shortened version of my single-mother story (in which mother & teenage daughter both "come out" in different ways as sexual beings - but with no explicit scenes). The MC was polite, but jokingly said it was less raunchy than she would have liked. Well okay, this could be a compliment, & was prob. meant to be taken that way.

I sensed that I might have had more rapt attention from the crowd (which mostly looked 20ish to me) if: my reading had included hot dykey sex involving imaginative use of sparkly toys, and/or if it had not focused on a mother-daughter relationship told from the mother's viewpoint. I could be wrong, of course. 

It drives me insane. Anyone local who has heard of my writing at all has usually heard that I write "porn" (snicker), and I feel compelled to explain that I can and do write non-porn as well. (I am sometimes tempted to carry a red-leather-bound copy of my Master's thesis on Doris Lessing's "Children of Violence" novels around with me as evidence.)
I also feel compelled (sometimes) to point out that I am not ashamed to write sexually-explicit fiction, to use the most neutral term I can find.

I sometimes imagine, esp. just before a reading, that members of the audience are digging each other in the ribs and asking each other whether this old lady (who teaches English at the university, would you believe it??) will really read something raunchy. And then, of course, either I do or I don't, and I sense that in one case, the audience is disappointed, and in the other, they are gleefully amused that my mind is still in the gutter even though I am clearly long past my prime as a babe (& it might have been a short prime - June 1983?).

But since no one says anything like this to my face, I could be nurturing my insecurity like an egg that could ripen into full-scale paranoia, thus proving what some might already suspect.

But if I choose never to pick up on such vibes, I could be perceived as stunningly naive, strangely reminiscent of someone's grandma who spend most of her life on an isolated prairie farm.

I give up. Robust mental health eludes me, if it even exists.

&*@:+     (*?%. . . . '" éé&??    %%  ¨¨^ççç^^

Tonight is the Women's Coffee-House, a popular annual event in our local GLBT Pride Week.

I like to do readings, but am always torn between reading erotica (which the MC and the audience generally seem to expect, but don't necessairly approve of) or something else.

This year, I plan to read at least part of my near-miss story, "Spring Fever," which was sent to Best Lesbian Romance 2010, made it to the short-list, but was apparently trimmed from the manuscript in the last cut to keep the book within a certain length limit.

I hope to find a home for this story somewhere, someday. It has no sex at all (unless a kiss with a little tongue action counts), so all the erotic sites and annual anthos are out.

 Here is an excerpt:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Spring Fever

I started “spying” on my daughter, as she put it, soon after she had her first period. The old closeness between us was gone, and I knew she wasn’t telling me everything. I was desperate.

         I had never wanted to be a controlling mother. I just wanted Katie to be safe and surrounded by people who cared about her. I couldn’t trust her new friends. She obviously had no idea what type of reaction her budding curves and sweet face could inspire in a teenage boy. Or another girl.

         “Mom, don’t be mad.” This seemed to be Katie’s usual opening line, ever since she had started the current school year. This time, her friend Sarah had pierced her ears, and the little steel studs looked remarkably even. Even still, my heart jumped into my throat.

“Katie, do you know how dangerous it is to let some untrained person do that to you? I hope she used an antiseptic, because otherwise you’re guaranteed to get an infection.” I heard my motherly voice coming out of my mouth in an endless stream while Katie rolled her eyes at me as I had done at my mother a generation before. I wanted to say, “You’re beautiful and it scares me,” but what good would that have done?

Having her father around would have done more harm than good. He was a drinking man who had always blamed me for letting our child grow as wild as a dandelion, even when she was a baby. I had moved out with Katie when she was four. Her father had largely left us alone since he had remarried three years later.

“Anyway, I’m going out with Sarah and Lindsey and them tomorrow, so I’m telling you now, Mom. I always tell you where I’m going.” This was the voice of my child, sounding so arch, so incredibly patronizing. Underneath that tone, though, I could hear what she wouldn’t say: I love you, Mom, and I won’t get into any serious trouble. Trust me.

“It’s a school night,” I reminded her. “Don’t you have homework?”

Katie sighed, mimicking the patience of an indulgent parent with a demanding child. “I’ll do it before I go, Mom. We’re just going for coffee. It’s no big deal.”

I was secretly amazed at the number of friends whose names kept popping up in her conversations. At her age, I had been shy, bookish and tormented with pimples. Katie seemed to attract admirers like a spring flower attracting birds and bees, thus proving – what? That I had been more seductive than I (or anyone else) knew? That every generation fulfills the dreams of the one before?

I knew that Katie kept a diary because I had given it to her, and she told me she liked to write in it. I could guess that it was probably in a bureau drawer with other precious trinkets. I wasn’t seriously tempted to look for it until the week of the pierced ears and the punk haircut.

What Lindsey did to Katie’s hair was the last straw. Young Lindsey, whose parents obviously tolerated her retro 1980s style and an older son who was on probation for breaking-and-entering, aspired to be a hairdresser. Her best buddies, including my Katie, were willing to be her guinea pigs. Katie came home from a sleepover on a quiet Sunday morning looking like a refugee from another planet.

My daughter’s thick, formerly shoulder-length chestnut hair was completely shaved in the back and gelled into spikes in the front, except for one long, braided strand. And the hair was green, which made it look like a badly-mowed lawn.

The next day, I searched Katie’s messy room for evidence: dope, condoms, love notes, whatever I could find. And that revealing diary.

I felt guilty, but not enough to withdraw. I rummaged through girlish underwear, including a contraband red thong, feeling like an intruder. I couldn’t help wondering if Lindsey’s brother had similar methods, and if the search for other people’s valuables turned him on.

The diary was in her top drawer with tights, hair accessories and little plastic characters from recent movies. “Sarah told me she likes Jason today in algebra but I know he likes Michelle so I told her she could find someone better.” Nothing too shocking there, even though this teenage plot told in vague pronouns had the makings of a Jane Austen novel. I read on. “Mom thinks I’m still a child, but she’s not as bad as Talisa’s mom. I don’t know why she doesn’t run away.” It warmed me to know that Katie didn’t think I was the World’s Worst Mother. Not yet.

Her diary was all about relationships: girl-to-girl, girl-to-teacher, girl-to-parent, girl-to-world. References to boys were sprinkled throughout like glitter dust, but the boys she actually knew sounded no more real than the rock stars and actors whose personae signified Romance to her.

I was relieved not to find any incriminating confessions, or at least that was what I told myself. I carefully left everything in Katie’s room where I had found it. Even still, guilt seethed in me like persistent heartburn.

Katie had her diary and her friends. I needed someone to talk to.

Up to this point, I had avoided making friends with anyone I worked with. I knew that too much honesty could completely blow the image I tried to maintain at work, and I couldn’t afford to lose my job. As it turned out, though, Amanda gave me an invitation I couldn’t resist.
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Yes!

My beautiful framed print (#19 of 250) of a golden dragon guarding a precious collection of acorns in an oak forest arrived today by snail-mail. Artist: Emily Mott. Original: gouache on clayboard, printed on 100% cotton art paper.

This seems miraculous.

I bought this charming little picture at the art sale at WisCon LAST YEAR, May 2008. I couldn't resist. (I have a weakness for lizards and their fantasy cousins, dragons.)

All art-buyers were supposed to leave their purchases on display until the last day, when we were all supposed to pick them up before noon. Meanwhile, the WisCholera (stomach flu?) struck.

I managed to venture out at about noon on the last day, still not feeling well, only to find that all the art had vanished. To where? I asked imnotandrei of this list, and (if memory serves), he referred me to someone else, who didn't know exactly whom I should contact. Neither did anyone at the desk of the hotel, or any of the organizers I could still find.

I tried pursuing the Case of the Missing Dragon after I returned home, with no luck. I had paid via credit card. I planned to try reopening the case at WisCon 2009, but then realized that I really needed to cut back on trips in order to catch up on debts.

My picture arrived today with a brief note saying that since it was not sent to me earlier, it was being sent to me later (obviously this was better than never).

Partner and I agree that a good spot for the dragon to be displayed is in our upstairs hallway, near my French print of Saint Jeanne d'Arc (my patron saint) as a child in armor.

I got some useful info from the vet.

No one in my family has yet been able to clean all the dingleberries from the hind end of Ista, feline queen of my household (a calico-point Himalayan).

After a day of moping in corners, she was persuaded to eat from a dish of her own, away from the other pets (2 other cats & 2 dogs). She seems to be recovering, and the problem is diminishing, so to speak.

This morning, Ista actually jumped into my lap, purred and bumped my hand with her head, asking to be petted. This might or might not be her way of apologizing for trying to shred my flesh when I sat her in a bath.  Luckily, she didn't leave any evidence on my clothes (today). The aroma lingers, however.

I tried to approach her behind with little embroidery scissors, but this was a lost cause.

I phoned our regular vet for advice. She said we should buy 15-milligram tablets of Gravol and cut them in quarters, then give a one-quarter pill to the kitty about an hour before we want her to zone out. Apparently the dosage is not enough to knock a cat out altogether, but enough to make him/her drowsy and pliable, and doesn't harm them.

When we will have time to do this remains to be seen, but it seems worth a shot. Stay tuned.

Note: at one point, a photo of Ista was posted on the website of Circlet Press, in a gallery of Circlet authors' pets.

This post should really go with a photo or 2, but I haven't taken any.

Ista, our beautiful and vain female calico-point Himalayan cat who always keeps herself impeccably groomed (no fur-mats for her), was desperately trying to clean herself yesterday. I discovered that she had a large amount of wet poop stuck to the fur of her hind end. I tried to wipe it gently, but she hissed and growled. I thought I could convince her that I had the best of intentions.

I took her to the upstairs bathroom and sat her in the bathtub, which resulted in much splashing and scratching. When I lifted her out, trying to avoid her claws, she sank one into my arm, where it got stuck like a fish-hook as she kept trying to pull it out. (Did I mention that her claws are like curved needles? She never goes outside, so never gets to dull them on tree-bark).

We were both breathing hard when I managed to remove her claw from my flesh.

I asked Partner to wrap her in a blanket and hold her still, but this proved impossible. Eventually Ista, with wet bum, tail and hind legs, went to lie on her back in the windowsill in our bedroom to let the sun dry her out.

Later, I discovered three bloody scratches on my left breast, which she managed to dig into through my clothes, and another on my thigh.

Stepson came over today to calm her down and clip her claws as Step One in the grooming process. She was calmer with him than with me, but wouldn't let him do more than pet her, so he says he will come back tomorrow. She has been moping in corners and wouldn't eat until Partner coaxed her.

I think this all started when Samson (youngest kitty) stole 2 boneless chicken breasts out of the kitchen sink where I had recklessly left them to thaw out for supper. I later found the remains in the basement with the kitty dishes. 

Ista pooped on our bed, and puked in front of us. If this continues, we will have to take her to the vet, even though tomorrow is the kickoff of GLBT Pride Week in our town. My life is never boring.

This morning, there was chaos in the house. Partner had to rush off to her class in Life Skills coaching (very important - this is the last segment, followed by graduation on the weekend).

Years ago, a rainbow flag for GLBT Pride Week disappeared from the local gay bar - or wherever it was. I'm not sure if it was privately owned, but once it disappeared, it had to be replaced. So Partner ordered  a new one from Little Sister's Book & Art Emporium in Vancouver. I think it belongs to the Pride committee, of which we are both pillars, but it lives in our house.

Partner searched the basement, the ground floor, & the Library (upstairs bedroom full of books & computer). She waved a plastic storage box under my nose, saying the flag was supposed to be there.

The two young men in the story that I absolutely had to finish a.s.a.p. (because the deadline had been extended to the breaking-point) were getting it on, and did not want to be disturbed.

I told Partner I thought the flag was in the one place she hadn't looked. She reminded me that it had to be found and brought to City Hall by 4:30 closing time, otherwise we could not have an official flag-raising on Monday, June 15.
Partner couldn't attend to this herself. She left in despair.

I finished the story, fired it off, then looked in the one place Partner had apparently been afraid to go (a closet stuffed full of the minutes of various GLBT organizations, dating back 25 years, and other Pride stuff). Voila! 

O say, does our bright-colored banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free - and the home of the brave?

It does. My story was accepted with amazing speed, then I headed out in the rain to deliver our flag (wrapped in a cloth bag inside my briefcase) to City Hall, where I assume the right official will know where to find it on Monday.

Today has been a lucky day.

One of these days I'll take a photo of what I saw this morning at the university: a mama prairie dog (gopher) on one side of the door  I just emerged from, sitting up on her hind legs and calling to her baby, who ran behind a post when I opened the door. Mama called in a very high-pitched squeal that mixed with bird calls. It sounds like a whistle if you don't know what it is. I backed away far enough not to be seen as a threat, so baby responded to Mama's call by running up to her, then they both scampered into the grass.

The campus is dotted with gopher holes, with little beasties running in & out of them. Here on the prairies, farmers shoot them to protect their crops. In exotic eastern cities, I've been told, they sell in pet stores for $200 each (Canadian, but serious money in a recession) .

I'm not a farmer nor even a dedicated gardener, so I'm fond of prairie dogs. Seeing them as soon as I arrived got my day off to a good start.

If you've never seen them, you could look them up. Their technical name is Richardson's Ground Squirrel. (Not that they care. Their names for themselves prob. sound something like: Squee!-Click-Click-Squee!)

I can't post much now, which might be a good thing.

The local Pride Guide to the events of local Pride Week is ready to print! Yes! The debates over every word have been resolved! This involved a blizzard of emails.

I have to rush off to Staples to get the thing printed between covers in every color of the rainbow flag - at least every color available.

I finished my opinion piece for my column, "Sex Is All Metaphors," and sent it off to the editor of the Erotic Readers & Writers Association, but it won't go live until July 1.

Meanwhile, a whole new set of reviews for June (including my review of Broadly Bound, which hasn't been released yet) are available here:

www.eroticarevealed.com

Happy Pride Month!

I've written elsewhere about why I was allergic in my teen years to the dog-eared paperback "romance" novels that my girlfriends devoured. The story of Cinderella (the Walt Disney version, featuring that deathless aria, "Someday My Prince Will Come") seemed to be the basic model. Poor but virtuous girl (a virgin, of course, but this has to go without saying because even use of the word "virgin" is a sexual reference) waits to be rescued by a handsome, powerful, chivalrous man. He falls in love with her at first sight, but then loses her, so must use the one remaining clue (her little glass slipper) to find her. Once he does, wedding plans immediately go into effect (remember that Cindy & the Prince interacted for one evening before he proposed), and they are both destined to live happily ever after.

Will the new princess have any freedom to determine her own fate? Will she and the Prince have children? If so, how many, and will she have any say in this? Do her new in-laws, the King and Queen, really approve of their son's choice of a bride? How will they treat Cindy once she is a permanent member of their household? Will her servants adore her as a poor girl who made good, or will they despise her as a member of their own class who lucked out?

Considering that Cindy and the Prince still hardly know each other by the end of the story, how much time will they spend together after the wedding, and what will they talk about?

At least housework (cooking, cleaning, taking out the garbage, shopping for groceries) and childcare won't be an issue, presumably - there will be a household staff for that. Class oppression sometimes trumps or eclipses gender oppression.

The word Romance at one time simply meant fiction, a story about unreal events which never took place in the real world. Fantasy, wish-fulfillment, love that is better than anything anyone has ever really experienced are all built right into the word itself.

And yet devoted readers of Romance (and sometimes writers) claim that much may be learned from any romance novel, which is a story about the development of a relationship. And everyone is interested in relationships, esp. those that include sex. Supposedly this is why romance as a genre will never die - because it is the stuff of life. Real life, complex, realistic characters and real emotions. Yum.

I complained to Partner lately that no one (readers or writers of Romance, admittedly a broad and slippery term) can have it both ways. Either romances are realistic and plausible, or they are intended to enable readers to escape from tedious, frustrating, lonely or oppressive reality. Partner said they are fantasy, and she sees nothing wrong with that. Let romance readers have their harmless fun, she said.

But it is not harmless if stories based on Cinderella are read as manuals for courtship, traditionally a heterosexual and unequal game, but now often based on same-sex relationships, which were traditionally so taboo that if discovered, the lovers were likely to be separated at best and executed at worst. 

Even those who uphold the innocent magic of old, het stories about love-and-marriage admit that at some point in the relationship, new brides traditionally got such a huge, even traumatic revelation about what they had signed on for (presumably on the wedding night) that they were likely to be in shock, at least until they had learned to adjust.

Nowadays, brides rarely have their first experience of sex AFTER the wedding. But men and women still have to negotiate roles and the division of labor after moving in together.

I dont really know whether self-defined husbands are doing more housework now than in the 1970s, but studies I have read indicate that social change in that form proceeds with glacial slowness.

When I married in the 1970s, my new fiance had no trouble promising to treat me like an equal. Of course, he said. Of course we will share everything, discuss everything, mutually treat each other with the greatest respect.

Even before the wedding, he bragged that he was letting me work outside the home. When both of us came home from a working day, we usually argued about whose turn it was to cook. Eventually, I would usually get hungry enough & frustrated enough to start cooking something for both of us. We needed to eat, not to aggravate each other. Conflict really spoiled the mood.

One thing we could both agree on was that we did not like to argue. We wanted to stop doing that. Both of us were cheered by each others promise to stop arguing. My man hoped I would settle down to become a Real Wife, which obviously meant I would do all the cooking and cleaning to show him how much I loved him. My efforts would speak louder than words.

I hoped that the man who had promised to give up traditional masculine privileges to live with a woman who was not a doormat would realize that the key to our shared happiness was a fair division of labor. Both of us were working for pay and sharing our money. Therefore, I thought, both of us should share the domestic work.

The argument was never resolved, partly because we were speaking different languages. I talked about dividing up the work, and he wanted to know why I didnt love him enough.

I will never forget the evening I spent with the rest of the volunteer staff of the student newspaper at the university I was attending. I wanted to learn how newspapers are put together because I thought this experience would have resume value. Husband insisted that I was free to do whatever I wanted, but he thought it was reckless of me to spend time with people I didn't really, really know. If they weren't all close, trustworthy friends, he thought I should stay away from them. There were young men on the newspaper staff, and he thought they would get the wrong impression of me, even if I mentioned my husband every 5 minutes.

The evening I phoned to tell him I had to work late on the newspaper (with the rest of the staff), he told me to come home immediately because he had not had supper. I advised him to cook. I told him that someone at the newspaper was planning to send out for pizza for all of us. Husband found this shocking. He told me to leave the newspaper office at once.  I said goodbye and hung up. I wouldn't admit to my fellow staff-members how much trouble was waiting for me at home.

When I came home, Husband was pacing, hurt and angry. He demanded to know whether I really expected him to starve to death. I reminded him that he had cooked for himself before meeting me, and he told me that was not the point. Good wives cooked for their husbands, according to him, and I was showing the whole world what kind of wife I really was. Luckily, he was afraid that my parents could get him arrested if he beat me - otherwise, our discussion might have ended in a trip to the hospital.

Negotiating housework with my current Partner is much, much easier because we both have a gut-level sense of responsibility for such things. Neither of us thinks our physical needs for food, clean clothes or a comfortable environment have to be met by someone else. We don't have a written schedule of chores, but we manage well enough.

I am sometimes amazed at how our impulses tend to mesh. If I have an urge to clean house (because I cant stand the mess) or do a big load of laundry (because our bedding really needs to be fresher & we have no more clean underwear), she has an urge to cook something we haven't eaten for awhile. I feed and walk the animals and take out the garbage, she does minor repairs on mechanical stuff (or knows which expert to call for that). It works out.

Maybe this is why she thinks that any discussion of housework in a Romance would be trivial and boring. But housework is the stuff of life, I say. It's the day-to-day work of keeping ourselves and each other fed, washed, and ready to face the world. It doesn't need to be divided equally in every relationship - if one person (the Princess or the Housekeeper, of whatever gender) wants to do it all, while the other (the Prince, ditto) is willing to pay all the bills, they have a deal. But you can't know whether you have a deal that satisfies everyone involved until it has been tested.

I want plausibility in my fiction, even if it is about magical beings in other dimensions, ESPECIALLY if a relationship is the focus. But if Partner is right in her assumption that Romance-readers simply want an escape, that seems to be what they are offered, even now. I find that a pity.

Re the discussion of the panel, "Take Back the Sci-Fi," at WisCon 33 (first discussed here by Moondancer, I believe, then by several other eyewitnesses), I wasn't there, but the general topic can be trusted to bring out everyone's true views on gender oppression, as a geiger counter shows the presence of radioactivity.

Re Second Wave feminism and the analysis of gender roles, it is possible (hard, but possible) to get even arch-conservatives to see that males and females are treated differently in most human cultures. When conservatives argue that this is hard-wired into everyone's endocrine system, one can then ask, "But why ---?" (Why has there been an amazing influx of women into the professions in the last 30-40 years? Did we all suddenly acquire more testosterone due to some freaky meteor that passed too close to the earth?? Why have there always been some "exceptions" to the gender rules in every culture in every era? Why are there crazy-making contradictions within gender roles? Why do such things as family size and marriage rates fluctuate at all, if all this is eternal & unchangeable?)

Sexual abuse (to use a very, very broad term that covers every kind of unwanted sexual behavior from crude innuendoes & malicious office gossip to gang-rape in war) is the phantom elephant in the living room. It's huge, it affects everyone in some way, but it can be completely, totally denied. Here are some denials that were used in my youth, and probably still are, though I haven't heard them lately (because I hang out in better circles now):

- Canadians are polite and law-abiding. Rape (legally defined as sexual assault since 1983) is against the law. Therefore there is no Real Rape in Canada. Absolutely none.

- There might be a few Normal Rapes (men screwing women who claim they don't want it, husbands demanding their rights), but males can't be raped since they don't have female plumbing.

- Most women are asking for sexual attention! They're begging for it!! Why else do they all walk around flaunting their tits & asses?? So if men respond to all that provocation in a logical way, it's not rape.

- Most women are pathetic, hysterical creatures at the mercy of their biology. When they want sex, they project this onto the first male they see, and assume they've been raped. Then they try to get the poor guy in trouble by reporting their lurid fantasies to the police, who take them seriously. It's really sad. It's not women's fault, of course - they can't help the way they are.

- Some women are insanely vindictive, or they hate all men for no logical reason. When some guy tries to break up with them or doesn't give them the attention they crave all the time, they claim they've been raped. This is an evil feminist plot, and it needs to be stopped.

When I lived in London, England, in 1973-74, and moved in with my Nigerian boyfriend, I heard from most of his male friends that men (in general) suffer a lot because women make up stories about how they've been assaulted & abused, and the accused men are thrown in prison for years for crimes they haven't committed. 

When I expressed doubts about whether male-dominated legal systems really work this way, the men would qualify their claims. They would concede that maybe this doesn't happen in Britain, at least not any more (though it probably did in some vaguely irrational period in the past, probably the Middle Ages), but it still happens a lot in Africa, especially Nigeria. Oh yes it does.

When I asked how they knew this, everyone had a story. For instance: my friend Faithful, a really honest man who wouldn't lie about something like this, told me about a friend of his cousin's old classmate who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for supposedly raping his girlfriend, even though he never did. It happens all the time.

I was in my early 20s at the time. For years, the only rape story I knew was my own, but over time, I began hearing about other women's experiences, usually after I promised not to repeat them to anyone else. My common sense told me that if the woman telling the story seemed sane the rest of the time, her story was probably true, and usually understated or full of euphemisms. (After I joined the local Sexual Assault Line, I ran across some callers whose sanity could be questioned, but even then, it seems like a safe guess that an unconvincing story might have a grain of past truth in it.)

Stories that are quietly passed around a female grapevine are heartbreaking, disturbing, enraging. And most stay below the radar of official truth. Meanwhile, the various male grapevines continue to spread the line that "sexual abuse" is a lie, a myth, as vicious & unbelievable as stereotypes of Jews as cannibals who eat unbaptized Christian babies, or  cartoon images of Africans boiling white missionaries in pots.  

I've been told that all men are horribly vulnerable to unjust laws (and the unjust application of them), and that if feminists like me had any concern for gender-blind justice - even a smidgen - we would adopt convicted rapists as prisoners-of-the-month, bring them hope and cakes with files in them and unlimited blow-jobs, and campaign for their release and for the repeal of the ridiculous laws under which they were locked up.

A groundbreaking book on the subject of sexual harassment was published in Canada in the 1980s ('86? '87? not sure), and the topic was discussed around my family's dinner-table. My sister's husband complained that men can be victims of that too.

Well, yes, we (all the women present) agreed - it can happen to anyone.

Brother-in-law proceeded to explain that the secretaries in the firm where he worked with computers seemed so hell-bent on finding husbands that they flirted with every man in the office, including him. So he, too, was a victim of sexual harassment.

When I asked him whether he had reason to believe he could get fired if he just ignored the secretaries, he said no, his job didn't seem to be on the line. He clearly wondered why I would ask such a thing.

I realize there has been a lot of education on the subject since the advent of Second Wave feminism about 1970.  It can only go so far, however. Honest revelations based on mutual good faith could accomplish a lot, but public discussions of this topic, however well-intended, can't guarantee good faith.

On the subject of my own experience, I'm fairly sure there must have been an official policy in the mental health establishment in Canada in the early 1970s that patients (women only? girls under a certain age?) who report being sexually abused must not be encouraged to believe that their fantasies are objectively real. At one time, I tried to follow the paper trail of my own "treatment," but couldn't find this policy in writing. I would appreciate any leads.




 

See this!!

There will be an erotic reading in a Toronto restaurant, Big Mamma's Boy, on JUNE 22, including me, Jean Roberta. I own a black leather coat & could wear a hat pulled down over my eyes to look sexy & hide the crow's-feet, but I draw the line at smoking.

This event will be part of Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/Two-Spirit/Genderqueer/Genderfuck Pride Week in Toronto.

Unfortunately, I can't be there for the FULL 10-DAY "week" because Pride Week where I live lasts until June 21, and I'm on the organizing committee.

I think several of us will be reading from Best Lesbian Erotica 2009 (Cleis Press, edited by Tristan Taormino & Joan Larkin), and at least one will read from a brand-new anthology, Girl Crazy: Coming-Out Erotica, edited by Sacchi Green, published by Cleis. It sounds like a fabulous event - speaking from my completely objective viewpoint.

:D           :D           :D           :D           :D           :D