benediction microerotica on twitter: update

I’ve been writing microerotica for 5 days, adding a line each day to the vignette. I’m not sure how long it will be. (Tantric microerotica?) It’s a challenge to write one sentence a day that has some impact. Writing stories, paricularly novel-length, allows for a lot of “waste”: sentences and paragraphs that give the writer time for nuance or getting at a scene from different paths.

This is more like poetry, where each word is loaded, or hopefully so, in order to expand the story rather than shrink it, like many words and more control over the scene do. Sometimes writers deny the reader her own imagination by filling in too much.

The tricky thing about writing on Twitter is that the story is in reverse order unless you read it daily. In case you’d like to be caught up, here it is so far:

Chestnut hair cascades its gentle weight, sways with her laughter. My pale eyes dilate in the darkness where I masquerade as her friend.
I want to breach the intimacy of her lips, fill my mouth with her heat. I want to touch her. Just touch her.
The amaretto-soaked cherry pauses at her lips. From behind the amber cellophane of my glass, I drown my desire in sublimation.
I’ll write a Western, and she’ll be a saloon whore. She’ll wear a bodice and her hair in a ribbon, and men will ask why she isn’t married.
She doesn’t know her own heart, doesn’t see that I can’t stop myself. I take her home. My hands insist.
With a touch, I possess her, my lips to hers, a first trespass, an unraveling.
Her breath fills me as her mouth receives my tongue. Night settles on our skin. Mingled breaths eclipse the day as we befriend the night.
Reckless touches follow. With an easy glide, her moisture admits my intrusion, and her breath leaves in a startled gasp.
My hands covet the wet flesh pulsing with warmth. She moans and spreads her legs. I stroke inside her, loving the soft walls.
She trembles as my fingers grope. She makes blind my desire, like a spike in my vein. I slide down, my greedy tongue tasting soft flesh.

(twitter.com/teresawymore)

benediction: microerotica on twitter

You’ve heard of flash fiction (usually a story in 100 words). What about microfiction?

I’m trying my hand at microerotica. My first story is more a vignette and will unfold on Twitter in the next few days. The fun will be moving the action along with each tweet — 140 characters. After the epic literature I’ve been writing and illustrating lately (the Darklaw series–soon to come), I thought the simpler sensuality of microerotica might be a nice divergence.

Hope you’ll like “Benediction.” You can follow the story here: twitter.com/teresawymore

the heart of the rose: free story erotic romance (part 1)

Part one of the M/F erotic romance, The Heart of the Rose, is available as a free story at Pen Flourish. You’ll find a new part each week of Advent.

As Advent begins, the angel Raphael arrives to answer love’s unspoken prayers:

Drifting through the house, Raphael passed the kitchen table where a wreath encircled four candles propped in brass holders. One of the candles had been burned, its tapered contour lined with a hardened flow of wax. By custom he knew the candle to be violet and the wreath pine, but in his spiritual form he could not distinguish such features.  

Raphael had come to St. Mary of the Angels Parish to puzzle over the mystery of Lillian. Already, he had marveled at her melancholy afternoon as she stared out her kitchen window, and he wondered at her feverish evening, when she put written form to chaotic thoughts. Now, he settled beside her and roamed the landscape of her dreams, listening as only an angel can, while attending to the longing of her heart.

Everyone had a prayer, but Raphael could not find Lillian’s. Although he had scrutinized the sad woman from the time she made her morning coffee to when she slept, he could not find any hope left in her. Nevertheless, she simmered with intensity, as if ready to brim over with torments yet untouched. She seemed the type of woman meant for tragic love, not one to bring fulfillment to a sincere priest struggling with his vows.

priests in love: free stories of erotic romance

Coming up at the Pen Flourish Erotica Blog in the coming weeks are seasonal stories of erotic romance. These are transgressive and transformative romances about Catholic priests.

As Advent begins, the angel Raphael arrives to answer love’s unspoken prayers. “The Heart of the Rose” is set during Advent & Christmastide, so it’ll be broken up into the four weeks of Advent this year beginning Nov 29.

As Maggie’s confessor and spiritual guide, Father Duncan knows grace can empower him to resist, so why doesn’t he? As Epiphany passes, I’m reposting my even more erotic, erotic romance “Alter Christus.”

So, drop by this season for a little free romance at Pen Flourish.

rene girard and co-opting the feminine

At The Mountain Astrologer magazine (12/2009), Kate Sholly interviews Alice Howell–author, teacher, and lecturer. From her precocious early years, when she declared herself an atheist at 12 due to the hypocrisy of the Christians she knew (she even calls her boarding school abusive for its hypocrisy), to her continuing desire to unite science and religion, Howell has had a remarkable life and remarkable lifelong spiritual search. Religion has lost its proof, she says, and science has lost its sense of the sacred.

What struck me most in the interview was her examination only late in life about how we gender the word “wisdom”. The word for wisdom – sophia in Greek — is notably feminine in every language, but

the only problem…is that when the Roman Church fathers translated Hagia Sophia, the Holy Wisdom of the Old Testament, from the feminine into the masculine Spiritus Sanctus, which takes a masculine pronoun, the feminine left the Holy Trinity. As far as I can tell, she’s been hidden in fairy tales as the archetype of the Fairy Godmother ever since.

She’s usually a benign character who mediates between the invisible and visible worlds and always gives the little hero or heroine practical advice — and the adult ones as well. It is the motif of endless tales in all cultures. She is the disowned Mother God within all of us…. So as you can see, one cannot kill an archetype.

That was the beginning of my insight that feminine wisdom is simple enough to look for enlightenment in ordinary things…. So, instead of a serious and wise old man, what if the philosophic archetype is a playful woman of delights, whose name is Holy Wisdom, or Hagia Sophia? (For more, see The Web and the Sea by Alice O. Howell)

Girardian Christianity: The Art of Subversion

How often it’s occurred to me that Christianity is nothing more than a co-opted form of feminism. That is, values traditionally attributed to the Feminine (and female gods)–unconditional love, forgiveness, compassion, love over law, relationship over principle–are now attributed to a Father who created but did not give birth to the world, his Son who delivered this feminine message into history, and a masculine Spirit that brings this feminine life to all believers.

Over the years, I’ve found a lot to appreciate in Rene Girard’s theory about the Scapegoat. But he’s lost his appeal for me; he’s merely the latest purveyor of this patriarchal agenda. Through his critical theory, he and his followers make a claim for Christianity’s culture-stablizing system without acknowledging how Christianity’s power to reveal the Scapegoating process lies in the fact that it resurrects values of the Feminine from the patriarchal graveyard, but only by grafting them on to a “new” version of the Masculine.

Afterall, as N.O.W. feminism has proven, identifying with the Masculine is the the only thing that can give any theory authority within a patriarchy.

No wonder politically progressive thinkers were the first to seize onto his theory: it allowed them to embrace pursuits like peace, gay rights, even women’s rights as essentially masculine pursuits. Liberals can feel the taint of effeminacy leaving now that the revelation of a religion so masculine that the only image of the Mother is a virgin (an unrealized adult and unempowered female) asks all men to share the unconditional love of a father.

Even this “progressive” school of Girardian thought doesn’t delve into the notion of gender as anything but one more scapegoated category, when it is the foundational one. In other words, it isn’t a Christian god that is bringing awareness of the Scapegoat–the innocent victim–into history but the return of the Feminine. And when the Feminine gets too obviously feminine, it’s back to the old dichotomies. This is shown by the ”conservative” school of Girardians, who only prove the theory’s patriarchal myopia by continuing to scapegoat homosexuals. Homophobia is an extension of misogyny.

Girard analyzed great literature and developed his anthrolopogy of religion–the idea that cultures can maintain themselves only by directing aggression externally to a scapegoat (many against one). When that scapegoat is seen for what he is–an innocent victim–escalating violence ensues internally (many against many), and peace can only be restored by finding a new scapegoat that isn’t seen as such. 

Girard won’t call his ideas a “theory”. It’s his followers that have done that. He has always admitted there is nothing new in his ideas. Indeed, even less than he imagined.

the entitlement of “ordinary men” to rape, molest, abuse

Lots of interesting information in the study released by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York about clergy sex abuse, most of it disheartening.

I know it says that there is no connection between homosexual identity and sex abuse of minors, and that is good to have the statistics to back up what we all know. Stop blaming the queers.

But the study also says this:

clergy abusers tended to be maladjusted men rather than the pathological abusers…they tended to have few victims and often committed a range of other crimes or improper behaviors, which is similar to the profile of abuse in the wider American society. “These are ordinary men,” Smith said, echoing the verdict of a 1970 study of the psychological profile of priests. (New Catholic Sex Abuse Findings: Gay Priests Are Not the Problem)

Ordinary men.

Certainly, Pope Benedict will be happy to use this idea of how modern culture corrupts, proof that modernity is the cause of all that is bad so that women need to stop seeking their own authority and queers need to get reverse engineered. (“The abuse of minors…had to be eradicated in a broader attack on the degradation of modern-day sexuality” see my post Bill Maher’s Apology Was Better Than the Pope’s.) 

As in the past, the Pope’s rhetoric will address declining morality among societies (that means all people, all genders) as shown through the acts of depraved men. This reminds me of how that great patriarchal architect, Sigmund Freud, developed his theory of normal human (in other words, male) psychology by studying sexually-abused young women and claiming they only fantasized about having sex with their fathers (in other words, they wanted it so bad they fantasized it, not that they were really abused).

But I wonder if this idea of “ordinary men” says something more disturbing still. What do we teach our boys about being men, if “ordinary men” have such a sense of entitlement that they seek sexual and ego gratification even from the helpless, even at the cost of violence, because they refuse to negotiate mutual relationships?

The Church will like the notion that sexually predatory priests are just “ordinary men” — as much as Evolutionary Psychologists, I assume. The idea that men-will-be-men, that men are bred by evolution and god, apparently, to take sex wherever they can get it. Instead of this being an issue of a corrupt ideology of gender roles, it’s merely an issue of curbing excess and providing services to those entitled to something they may not deserve. The Church for one; properly-conditioned women for the other.

It’s much easier when women have reached maturity with their corrupt role message intact, so that they acquiesce to the old tale that men can’t help themselves. A woman’s self-violence and self-abuse is a blessing for an abuser. It’s what makes battered women stay in unlocked houses, what makes them accomplices to the crimes not just against themselves but against their children — from kidnappers, to sex traffickers, to genital mutilators.

But if that doesn’t get the job done, and women don’t volunteer for service, there’s always conscription into the ranks of sexual service through rape and molestation and victimization under authority of ”ordinary men.”

straying from the path: anthology excerpt & free story, speculative fiction

Straying From the Path: New Tales of Little Red is now available from Drollerie Press! This collection is a re-telling of the story of Little Red Riding Hood in poetry and prose. In these stories, Red is sometimes innocent, sometimes less so; and the wolf is sometimes a monster, and most often human.

I contributed a speculative fiction version of Red Riding Hood, Anthem, that you’ll find in this anthology–which is one of the few stories of mine you’ll read that is NOT erotica. I’ve also posted a free story below that is set in the same universe as Anthem.

Anthem, in a future where quantum computing determines the masters of men, the “Little Red Riding Hood” Wolf is a liar, a killer, and a cannibal. Only a planet fuzzy with time can give her the chance to reclaim what she has lost because only there can she change history.  Read more…

Resurrection Countdown, where Earth is a world managed by an invasive network, and what must be done to free it will burden the conscience of its future. Read the free story…

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Anthem (excerpt) by Teresa Wymore Her plea made my heart pound faster, and I wondered if I could ease surrender from her exhaustion. I left my chair and tried to kiss her mouth, but she turned away, so I kissed the rise of her cheekbone instead. After a moment, she acquiesced. “I’ll do whatever you want if you tell him I escaped.” She began to unbutton her shirt, but I stopped her, although I couldn’t seem to let go of her hands until the discipline that had circumscribed my last twenty years reasserted itself. Accepting her offer might solve my dilemma, but it wouldn’t solve hers. The premier wanted his daughter home. She smelled inviting, like warm cedar, so I stepped away. “It’s because of the Protectorate that you can make speeches about all men living in peace, about all men being equal,” I said. “I know you’ll do what an ‘enlightened conscience’ dictates, but I’ll make sure the Nation’s preserved in spite of its idealists.” “She’s experiencing withdrawal,” said a metallic voice. I shifted my focus. The translucent human face of my sentinel stared back from the contact in my right eye, its voice piped directly to my auditory nerve. It faded from view, replaced by clouds of color. Patches of blue overlay parts of Alex’s body, revealing the poor functioning of her liver and several surgeries from her childhood. More than a thousand users routed access through her bioprocessors, and a routine crawler was examining her genome. Nothing concerned me until I saw her hormone fluctuations, the result of sedative abuse. The sapiens soldiers ate the drug like candy. I refocused on Alex. “How are you feeling?” Her eyelids drooped, so I guided her to the command chair and addressed my sentinel. “Scream, direct 5 cc’s GBVH to Alex. Go hot.” Along with the bioprocessors that comprised the Integrid, tiny microarrays floated in her bloodstream, allowing her own body to manufacture the medication I prescribed. She pushed away. “Don’t drug me.” “You’ll feel better in a minute.” I carried her to a sleeptube. Afterward, I sat in the command chair and thought of home. I had left in late November, when high above Lake Michigan, the scarlet tiles that jacketed Embassy Tower recalled the saturated autumn. The bright glass building was more than an idiosyncrasy amid a brittle season. It was the first defiant apportioning of a world that had once belonged to a single species of man. A Patriot had saved me from a lynching when I was seven. Not that my would-be judges knew what I was. It wasn’t so easy to tell a virens from a sapiens, although they claimed the wolfish grin always gave us away. Like most virens, I had resisted becoming a citizen, but unlike many, I quickly accepted the inevitable. By training, I was a psychiatrist. By title, I was a Patriot serving the Protectorate of the Virens Nation. I was a protocol redactor, an agent who fit history to policy, and so, in essence, a woman who recreated the Nation almost daily. My age had given me a certain perspective and my career a certain status. Nevertheless, the path I followed in pursuit of Alex had turned me in a direction that was much less than certain. And now, she had silenced the guiding anthem of my life. COPYRIGHT NOTICE. ANTHEM. Copyright © 2008 by Teresa Wymore. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any form without permission, except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. http://www.teresawymore.com Available From Drollerie Press

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Resurrection Countdown by Teresa Wymore What would give light must endure the burning. –Viktor Frankl Cassie was still awake when Watts returned. She tightened her robe against the memory of his last visit and stepped away from the door. “You said you didn’t believe me.” Watts walked into the apartment, hands thrust deep into his jacket pockets. He studied her face and the blood on the floor before he sat down at the table. Her body began to tremble. She touched her lips, still bruised and swollen. She told herself she wasn’t afraid. After a few deep breaths and a moment to think, she decided she didn’t want to think. She wanted to believe everything would be all right. Only Watts allowed her that. That’s why she had opened her door to him when she was alive. He seemed to have all the answers. Sociopaths were like that. She sat down across from him and willed her body to stop its fearful shiver. She straightened and gave him a hard look. A moment of silence followed before he said, “I’m a practical man.” “Here’s practical: when the nation adopts the Integrid, they’ll know right where you are.” He shrugged, amusement replacing his probing gaze. “That’s progress.” “We’ve gotten used to it.” Cassie brushed a trickle of sweat from her forehead and discovered it was blood still oozing from the fatal gash. “A doctor prescribes medication and internal microarrays manufacture it using our own chemistry. You do it for your patients all the time, don’t you? Doctors love it. Taxpayers, too. The only ones who objected to the MediGrid were pharmaceutical companies having to explain losses to their shareholders.” “Sure. Universal healthcare.” “You can generate medicine, even cure a disease, but imagine that same command initiated from a subgrid. You see? If the nation funds the Integrid, it’ll make things even cheaper. That’s because a doctor won’t need to access my microarrays through a local clinic. No trail, no log files. Anyone with authority can issue commands from anywhere. A backroom in Washington. Hell, a toilet in Raleigh! Rumor has it that’s where an agent comm-axed the Ripper. Can’t you see that those decisions will always serve security, not law?” Watts stared at her forehead, marveling at his handiwork. “Does it hurt?” She glanced away. “With the MediGrid they know where you aren’t, but once they put quantaprocessors in you, they’ll always know where you are. Geography won’t matter. Time won’t matter. Backtrack through decoherence and pinpoint anyone’s internal network. Issue a chemical release. Heart attack. And one day, not long from now, the new alchemy will find a way to brew insanity from a body’s own chemistry. Discredit the whistleblowers.” “What’s that mean?” “It means there are bigger things to worry about than a few hundred murders.” She knew he didn’t understand, but she had made it possible for him to believe anyway. Dead people were like that. He squeezed his lower lip with two fingers. “Quantum technology isn’t so robust in a biological environment. Besides, the miracle of the Integrid may be that it can access my network from anywhere, but it can’t prove what I’ve done. It takes men for that.” “The Berlin Bomber was never tried, was he? No witnesses. No charges. No trial. But he was axed.” “The man suspected of those bombings died of a heart attack.” “Oh hell, Watts! The press hasn’t been guilty of an act of journalism since they started publishing white papers as ‘news.’ They’re sightseers, tour guides distracting us while their corporate masters pursue dominion. A twenty-five-year old terrorist just up and dies from a heart attack and you nod because the ‘paper of record’ says it’s so?” “No one would allow it.” “They already have. A trial run.” “The Berlin Bomber? How’d they get quantaprocessors in him?” “Flu shot.” She waited, but his curiosity turned back to her forehead. “Money, power, sex? What would you sell your soul for? The techwizards in informatics and pharmacy sold theirs for a game. Little Napoleons coveting pieces of synthetic worlds, burning ants in the sun.” “Someone has to give access, check credentials.” “Oversight? My, but we’re all too busy feeling safe to bother with courts. And it’s so cheap! The G.N.P. used to count us as economic units. Now we’re nodes in a network. When authorities axe the violent nodes, we’ll be so grateful we’ll trust even the pimply techwizards who see as much need for ethics as for sunlight. So they remove the nodes corrupting our children — drug dealers, traffickers. The A.C.L.U. complains. So what? Next, get rid of the leeches on society, the ones on the dole and the homeless. The U.N. complains. So what? Sterilize the poor and stupid.” She paused to remember and shrugged. “No one complains, but it was too late by that time, anyway.” She leaned forward over the table. “So we had to find another time.” She stretched. “My back hurts.” Watts considered her complaint. “I can command a painkiller …or would you prefer scotch?” He pulled a flask from his jacket pocket. She raised an eager eyebrow. Contrary to the theological rumor, being dead didn’t preclude comforts of the flesh. She felt an unreasonable sense of relief. Unreasonable because of the man sitting across from her. Later, she sat with the flask resting between her hands on the table and closed her eyes. When he asked how she felt, she opened her eyes to see his lewd smile. “Nasty contusion there.” He touched the air in front of her forehead and licked his dry lips. “I can fix it. Order up more clotting agent.” His body was so tight with arousal that his attempt at an easy smile appeared like a grimace of pain. “Death makes fictions of us all, Watts. Do you think you’re different?”  “Oh, but I make a difference in so many lives.” He gestured at her head. Laughter erupted from her with a derisive grunt. “Shit, you’re real pulp fiction stuff, aren’t you? Blurb for the century’s grisly tale of eroticized violence, a footnote to the masculine malfeasance that circles priests around reptilian impulses and calls it ‘morality.’ Delivering death only makes you an arbiter of fictions, a phantom editor for the adventure of nonexistence.” “You’re crazy.” “It takes time to digest the truth, like a pig passing through a boa, and often you wonder what that bloated lump really is and if the discomfort is worth it. Quantum information has a techcreep your techwizards don’t understand. It doesn’t rely on geography, after all. If they accidentally axe the Parousia with an aneurysm, they abort their future. How will they manage the conscience of a world without a promised retribution?” He reached into his pocket and drew out a woman’s pinky ring. Although he set it on the table, he kept a finger on it, and she saw it wasn’t hers to take back. “You knew about this.” Recalling the day her mother gave her the delicate band shaped like a butterfly, her grip tightened on the flask. “It’s a problem,” she said. “You have a number of them.” He scooped the ring into his palm. “You’ve accused me of things you can’t possibly know.” “Because I’m telling you the truth.” “You haven’t told me how you know the future.” “I know the past.” She studied the deep lines that swept over each cheekbone from his eyes to his mouth. In shadow, his swarthy features were diabolical; in soft light, seductive. She knew many years later, when time and bitterness had taken their toll, the sensual face would become merely fierce, reflecting the tragedy of a life lived too long. “You’re a rapist.” The accusation hit him like a blow, forcing him to turn away again. She knew he had never said the word to himself. “The fetish started as a child.” She nodded at his hand. “The rapes in residency. Drugged patients and prostitutes. When you escalated, you lost control of yourself, hunted the rich and famous and got yourself wanted by a lot of people with a lot of money. We had the Integrid by then, but the rest of the world was leery. Despite the terrorists on everyone’s lists, it was stopping the most wanted serial murderer in two centuries that finally sold it to the world.” “I’m not a killer.” She spread her arms. “And yet, here I am.” “How can you be dead?” He watched her carefully. “You opened your door to me.” He grinned. “Again.” She wiggled her fingers. “You nicked my only ring.” A dark light passed through his eyes. He squeezed the ring. “So, you’re dead but your past is also my future? Tell me what happens next.” She took a moment to think. “South America. Then Singapore. You made mistakes.” She closed her eyes and felt as if the floor were falling away. “Let’s see, bleach, or they’ll have your DNA. No scalpels, or they’ll know you’re a surgeon. You’ll have to stick with the poor and prostitutes, or senators will start caring.” “I told you. I’m not a killer.” “Oh they taught you well. They taught you with those preemptory notions of entitlement that destroyed any chance at resurrecting the soul your incestuous father smothered. Their strict teleology may refuse to accept the voodoo of libidinal impulses, but they’re damn effective in providing clear definitions for your hazy logic. Cracking my skull was only an opportunity, really, followed by compulsion. Why do you think you came back? It excited you. You’ll never get over that. Showing the world how powerful you are with every thrust. A victim’s manifesto: retribution.” He stood and dropped the ring into his pocket. “You believe me?” “Only because you should be dead.” “Did the ‘Grid tell you that?” She laughed at the irony. His eyes narrowed. “Then I guess you don’t have to be afraid of me.” She continued to laugh until long after he had gone. She wasn’t afraid of him. She was afraid of the people who were afraid of him. So afraid, in fact, that she would help him murder hundreds of women, rather than the seventy her own history knew about. Like all agents, she found herself a tiny cog in a great machine. She had drawn the short straw at the departmental meeting, and her oath wouldn’t allow her to refuse an assignment, even one so vulgar as to reanimate her raped and beaten body in some other timestream. The techwizards at headquarters had rallied their contemptuous genius and convinced the department that if the Integrid failed to find the most elusive butcher since White Chapel, the world wouldn’t tolerate its trespass. As long as the Gold Ring Ripper was killing, the technology embraced by so many other worlds as a savior would leave room for another here. This Earth, at least, would remain free.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE. RESURRECTION COUNTDOWN. Copyright © 2008 by Teresa Wymore. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any form without permission, except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law.

a taste of freedom: lesbian erotica story review

I’ve posted a review of a short work by Bryn Colvin at the Pen Flourish blog. Her story, A Taste of Freedom, is a good rainy afternoon read. Just wish it were longer. Just wish characters like Sophie took walks in my park.

The story is available from loveyoudivine.com, but I got it at Fictionwise. I’m liking the process through the Fictionwise bookshelf  with my iPhone app. Maybe if this new B&N reader is as good as I’m hearing, I can finally move to a full-size screen to read!

why women have sex: another stupid study by evolutionary psychologists

Those researchers who like to give themselves high-falootin’ titles like “Evolutionary Psychologist” (neither science nor psychology is truly part of their discipline) are at it again.

Tanya Gold, writing in the Guardian (Why Women Have Sex), gives us a little sarcasm, but too little. I wish she had ripped this book apart like some of the commenters did. To be fair, the book writers “discovered” all kinds of reasons women have sex, and I’m sure they’re all true. What’s ridiculous is the question. What’s ridiculouser is the notion that the reasons all somehow find their beginning in genes.

My objection to this line of research isn’t in the results: they come up with 237 reasons, ranging from sheer lust to pity to security to greed. Obvious. Some idiot gave a grant to have a book published that tells the obvious. Hope it wasn’t tax dollars. No, what bugs me is what always bugs me about EP: their gender bias and culture-blindness. 

Apparently, the reasons men have sex are obvious–no book needed–but no one can figure why women would give up their Friday evenings watching Ghost Whisperer.  The women who do, do it for reasons that relate back to rearing more and better babies. Genetically successful women wear lipstick, heels, and get boob jobs to attract a mate because evolution has somehow programmed men to pop one at seeing these CULTURALLY SPECIFIC and HISTORICALLY TRANSIENT features. All this somehow leads to survival of the fittest. It’s not explained–ever–how survival mechanisms can be extrapolated from cultural activities.

How would EP explain the 16th century with gene theory and no analysis of cultural coercion? For those of you ignorant of the march of time, it was men who used to slap on the Maybelline and pooch their butts up for women to behold. Not only that, in that fashionable time, women were thought to be barely restrainable sex mongers; hence equating women to the devil, seeing them as witches, and denying them any public power.

In other words, men aren’t attracted to women with lipstick because it reminds them of a vagina; successful genes haven’t survived because men’s sensibilities take note of the physically healthiest female body from transient clues. The men who are attracted to women who wear lipstick or who get boob jobs, for example, are more likely interested in women who are of a certain class and attitude and who can therefore be the partner the man desires, in ways far more complex than just a good time, or even a baby-maker. 

A woman’s status as an object in a patriarchal culture rises the more she plays the part culture assigns, and a man’s possession of her reflects his status. 

Where is the discussion of culture in this ridiculous discipline? This is why we need to teach feminism in schools. But, no point in looking like an angry dyke. Just call yourself a scientist and reinforce the patriarchal ideas of what a woman is for and what a man can’t help. 

So, I’m off to watch Ghost Whisperer. You really think I’m going to give up watching that cleavage? That’s reason number 238. They didn’t interview me for the book.

like a queen: lesbian erotica anthology review

I have more free stories lined up at penflourish.com, but today I’ve posted a review of Like a Queen: An Anthology of Lesbian Fairytales, edited by Cecilia Tan & Rachel Kincaid, published by Circlet Press (2009).

It’s tough finding lesbian erotica, even online. I had to click through 4 or 5 pages of m/m at Fictionwise before finding this brand new one. Although I had some objections to particular stories and a few across-the-board complaints (like the surfeit of oafish men), it was an enjoyable read with some sparkling parts.

As with a great deal of lesbian erotica, this anthology leans heavily on S/M contrivances. I like characters who express real power and seduction. I don’t object to S/M on the grounds it is immoral, but on the grounds it is fake and provides no character development. Some of these stories would have been better served without resorting to whips, racks, and chains. That being said, there are a few bright spots–and one truly outstanding second-person story!

the green hour: free story literary erotica

Today is my birthday, and to celebrate, I’ve posted my favorite short story. The Green Hour is available at Pen Flourish, the Drollerie Press erotica blog.

The Green Hour has not been previously published. Although the editor for whom I wrote it liked it, she didn’t think the venue’s audience would “get” the literary nature of the piece. This is why I love Drollerie Press, where you’ll find more of my stories in the coming year.

The Green Hour is literary erotica that confounds bad choices with good liquor, and offers a nice helping of Rimbaud on the side. Hence, the interesting video of a traditional “green hour” that I’ve embedded here, with Chopin’s Nocturne no. 8 performed by Lang Lang — for those who like the whole media experience.

While I analyzed business strategies on my laptop, she made a diet of black coffee and Rimbaud, sometimes at my table and sometimes alone. As she read, she sipped from a steaming cup, her moist lips forming words in silence.

I recognized some of the words she mouthed but didn’t know French well enough to recognize the poem. Je regrette les temps de l’antique jeunesse, Des satyres lascifs, des faunes animaux. Watching her so absorbed in a libertine’s fantasies made me wonder what her marriage was like.

She was the only daughter of a philistine who made it rich with thoroughbreds and an actress who left the stage to become the old man’s trophy. She was married to a trust fund baby, a marriage over in all but name. Because she was Catholic, she stayed with a man more interested in screwing his caddy than his wife, despite the successful union of cigarettes and self-abuse that kept her own figure boyish.

Some days, I preferred to watch her from across the coffee shop rather than my table. We smiled and nodded and went about our business. She would glance at me and let me know she saw me. My appreciation, my desire, was nothing I could hide, nothing I wanted to hide.

When she finally shared her portfolio with me, her cryptographic allusions returned. A well-groomed cadet in yellow boots looking through a sheet of rain. She said this was her husband. An orange sun eating away the edges of a prosecutor’s silhouette. This was her mother. A fat priest in a worn cassock gazing at a crumbling brick church. This was her father. Two children in snowsuits waiting on the curb of a busy street. These, she said, were us.

After translating a poem for me one Friday, she invited me into her limousine and introduced me to her “green hour.” With ice water and a sugar cube, she performed the louching of a glass of absinthe, which turned the spirit milky green. A sip of the licorice-laced liquor, banned for nearly a century, infected me with uncanny lucidity.

“The most luminous geniuses used absinthe to liberate their art,” she told me. “Baudelaire, Van Gogh, and, of course, my dear Rimbaud.”

The elixir had helped generations abandon their gritty reality in favor of symbol, imagination, and dreams. It was no less for us. She was a camera seeking scenes. I was a widow at a grave. Like Percival avoiding the healing questions, we talked and read, and our days together were a collage of impersonations.

casting shadows: free story erotic horror (part 3)

Come visit us over at Pen Flourish, the erotica imprint of Drollerie Press. Today, the free erotic horror story, Casting Shadows, concludes, and you may find the climax, although satisfying, is not what you expected.

Erotic horror not your cup of tea? How about a draught of literary erotica? The Green Hour is literary erotica that confounds bad choices with good liquor — and offers a nice helping of Rimbaud on the side — next Tuesday at Pen Flourish.

Casting Shadows: A sensual lover and seasoned killer follows her heart, believing the only way she can overcome temptation is to give into it.

I had been seeing Charlotte for three years, after serendipity transformed an opportunistic hunt into a discussion. During that time, I sometimes imagined consuming her in an orgy of lust or attempting to turn her, as if I might hold onto her forever.

Now, as the ocean appeared like a second star field in motion, its blue depths rippling with black waves, it occurred to me that we don’t live in an ocean of time but only in island moments. More than most people, I could fully live each moment, because that was all I really had. I was immortal, but only Charlotte possessed eternity.

We kissed hesitantly, and she trembled until our awkward touches evolved into an intoxicated harmony of appetites. Her lips clenched mine, and her warm breaths caressed my cheek. I pressed my lips to hers and then spread her mouth to taste her moisture. She slowly dropped to the ground and I followed, until we lay together in the sand some distance from the ocean.  

The fresh scents of her shampoo and perfume couldn’t hide the smell of sweat made sweet by her day in the sun. I kissed the exquisite taste from her cheek and chin and worked my way down.

Cooing my name, she tipped her head back and her breath caught beneath my gentle bites. Saliva spilled from my lips when I realized I had her carotid. My fangs descended and my thoughts scattered. My senses scattered, too, so I was unsure what was most real: the hollow in my stomach, the longing between my legs, or the constriction that made it difficult to breathe. Releasing her throat, I struggled with love so intimately bruising, my chest ached.

I wanted to possess her, to make her love me and no one else. Mine was the love of death–love that accrues, dominates, and controls. The love of life heals and liberates, seeks meaning and connection. This was the love Charlotte possessed, or maybe it possessed her. As I let go of dying circumstances, a new mystery absorbed the world, making my touches about pleasing more than pleasure, but the clarity I cherished was gone from her gaze. That keen-eyed awareness was behind a wall of arousal, which strangely disappointed me.

casting shadows: free story erotic horror (part 2)

Come visit us over at Pen Flourish, the erotica imprint of Drollerie Press. Today you’ll find Part 2 of my free erotic horror story, Casting Shadows. 

A sensual lover and seasoned killer follows her heart, believing the only way she can overcome temptation is to give into it.

As often happened, I had not found the opportunity to steal clothing upon reforming, and she looked me over, confused by my nakedness. My mystical presence was already having an effect, or she would have been shouting for her comrades. Instead, she answered my question, and after I discovered her name, I asked, “How many men have you killed, Maria?”

“Too many to count, and you will be next if you’re an enemy of the people.”

I recognized her lack of political instincts, and with a clear understanding of slogans, my hand swept the space between us. “This air is your air, Maria.”

“I don’t own it.”

“It’s here for you. No one can keep from you what you need.”

“They do all the time.”

Becoming a killer affects people in various ways. Some people develop a stress disorder. Others adapt to it as a mere function they later leave behind. Some become addicted to the visceral sensuality of it, while others attach themselves to the power. And then there are those who, like Maria, lose all meaning–a suicide of the soul if not the body.

She frowned but didn’t struggle as I removed the rifle from her grip and guided her into a thicket near a lagoon. I had looked into many young eyes in my life, and hers, though tired and much older than her years, were quite forgettable. Everything about her was forgettable—her short hair tucked into her beret, her nervous gaze, and her naïve expectations. She was another meal among centuries of meals, only I find I still haven’t forgotten Maria. 

She had emptied herself of the feeling of pain for the mere feeling in her hands and thought that made her strong. She hated being a victim so much that she put a rifle on her shoulder to make victims of others. Reflecting on Maria’s choices, I began to wonder at the contradiction between my passion for life and my dispassion for particular lives.

Preparing to feed, I realized I could simply walk away, or disentangle her will from mine and allow her to fight. I found I had options, but no choice. After all, I was one of those visceral, sensual killers, addicted to the taste of pulsing flesh, and the only I way I knew to overcome temptation was to give into it.

casting shadows: free story erotic horror (part 1)

Pen Flourish, the erotic imprint of Drollerie Press, has a blog that’s just springing to life. As we grow, you’ll find excerpts, free reads, and discussion, and we hope our little corner of decadence will become a thriving community for smart and diverse expression. To celebrate the approaching season–my favorite, I’ve posted a free story of erotic horror. The blog is for mature audiences, so you’ll have to register to read Casting Shadows.

This story was originally published a few years ago by a now-defunct press. I’ve revised and posted it in three parts, the first available today and the other two over the next two weeks. This story of lust and violence is not for the squeamish. Primarily a lesbian love story, it is also a story about an anarchy of desire that expresses itself in ghastly ways.

She took my hand, kissed my palm, and left the scent of patchouli behind. After I stood, she kissed my mouth earnestly, her lips full, her breath arriving in slow waves. She drew me closer, one hand holding my lower back and the other behind my shoulder. Her small hands were made strong with passion, and I arched against her to feel her flesh, to be more fully a part of this upheaval of life.

Like dying stars, my anxieties dimmed as her tongue traced a line toward my ear. Her breathing grew quick and shallow, her excitement fanning my own, until a sudden lucid fear seized me. I didn’t want her to know only this moment of pleasure. I wanted her to know me.

When I drew away, she suggested we go somewhere more comfortable. She took my hand and led me from the building.

As she drove, she mentioned a hotel, explaining about her husband and then asking about my house. I told her to leave the highway, take the gravel road, turn up the hill. We parked on a promontory that overlooked a farm. The low horizon offered up a brilliant panorama of stars untainted by city lights. A new moon sat like a hole in the sky.

After leaving the car, crickets serenaded me and warm air carried the expansive scent of life. I stepped through prairie grass and heard the rustle of creatures at my feet. Without moonlight, the stars left the landscape a muddle of silhouettes, and I looked back through them to feel her dismay as she watched from the car. 

She wouldn’t be persuaded, but the thought of surrendering nature for a stuffy room was too much, even for a dream. I wanted to make love to her near a tree where wildflowers perfumed the air and we could smell the earth, but she told me all the reasons a hill at midnight was dangerous.

I understood. She had entertained the darkness, but she didn’t trust the night.

As a long-time fan and author of serious erotic fiction, I’m ecstatic to be associated with Drollerie Press!

lesbian cowboys: available from cleis press

Lesbian Cowboys, an anthology of erotic lesbian stories, is now available. I’m not one to recommend Amazon usually, but you can buy it there a little cheaper than at Cleis Press.

I had a lot of fun writing my story, a pulp fiction salute (“The Adventures of a Lesbian Cowboy”),  for this anthology.  In fact, I have plans to make a series of short stories with this character: a cross-dressing lesbian Pinkerton detective who always catches her man…and her woman.

And I’m in good company in this volume, with the likes of accomplished veteran erotica authors Cecilia Tan, Radclyffe, and Sacchi Green.

I have an excerpt you might enjoy here: the randy tale of a lesbian cross-dressing pinkerton detective in 1894 rawlins.

the cartel: the corruption in american education

Q: What is a Cartel?

A: Group of people who hold dominant power in a marketplace of products or services and take actions to limit competition to protect their business.

Can’t wait for this DVD “The Cartel.” Many sites have reviewed it, giving their opinions. Tells me nothing. I need to see it for myself and examine the supporting documents, many of which you can find listed in the movie website’s FAQ.

I’ve already read everything I can find. Looks to be pretty damning. Not that claims of corruption and general incompetence are new to U.S. education.

It’s not the teachers, mind you. It’s the socialist system defended by liberal ideologues blind to their own self-interest. Corruption always follows on fatter government. (Just wait and see what happens over the next decade in Washington as the bloat sets in from our recent economic “rescue” of various industries.)

The filmmaker of The Cartel appears to be an advocate of school choice and particularly lauds charter schools. I didn’t find mention of homeschool, which is suprising, given the arguments made from statistics.

American education has no checks-and-balances, no accountability.

Except for homeschoolers. We make education account for itself by saying we can do a better job. Then we do it. And we even save the school system money when we do.

Let’s Be Upfront About This

What supports that claim is a paper Homeschooling in Nevada: The Budgetary Impact going around the homeschool blogosphere right now (published in 2005). It’s not exactly an analysis done by an unbiased source. The researchers have previous issues with public education: Clements is a homeschool advocate, Wenders has projects critical of public education and the need for performance-based measures, and the Education Consumers Foundation, a consumer advocacy organization, has this to say:

Public education’s status as a regulated monopoly also serves to enhance the prominence of certain educational perspectives and to insulate them from the demands of parents, the public, and their elected representatives. Thus despite vast research and development efforts undertaken over decades, certain theoretical and institutional constraints effectively impose boundaries on the educational research that is undertaken and published. (http://www.education-consumers.org/research.htm)

And the The Nevada Policy Research Institute calls itself an “independent research and educational organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for all residents of the Silver State through sound free-market solutions to state and local policy questions.” How telling are the keywords “free-market solutions” to you about the Institute’s political bent?

Nevertheless, despite any bias of the paper’s producers, the facts speak for themselves. You’ll be amazed at not just the amount of money homeschoolers have saved Nevada, but how much the taxpayers sacrifice for a broken system and in how many areas homeschoolers surpass their public school counterparts.

I would like to see similar research in Iowa and every other state.

why i hate independence day

So glad it’s over.

My 5 yr old asked why we shoot off fireworks on the 4th of July. I told him we celebrate our nation’s birthday by celebrating what we love about America. Looking back, I realize that was a bad answer. Or maybe all too accurate.

Let’s Celebrate!

Two-hour-long traveling billboard advertisements throwing gobs of candy into the streets for kids to fight over;  carnivals with expensive rides and unhealthy food; crowds in traffic jams competing to get to a field to sit on their asses the longest so they can be closer to the shows where they’ll enjoy NOT nature or fresh air but gaudy, loud, smokey explosions of the same stuff they use for war that terrifies animals and risks the limb even of professionals; locals and kids making a game of crime by hiding from police so they can buy and shoot off illegal fireworks.

Ah. America.

I don’t hate Independence Day. I hate the way we celebrate the triumph and sacrifice that gave it to us. I especially hate what our celebrating is teaching my kids. They now look forward to the local “parade” (i.e. cars rolling by with local business’s signs on them, owners waving) every year because they want to fill a bag with candy thrown into the street. I’m going to start a homeschool unit on the American Revolution before next summer!

My DH calls me a holiday scrooge. Maybe a little. The only bonus is that, like most holidays, it’s also about family, and that is certainly a part of America I can believe in. Even if my family happens to love those gaudy, loud, smokey displays of war-like explosives.

apostolic visitation: burqas and habits because women are a herd

Not sure why this ad for ice cream is “offensive,” except maybe it’s hitting a little too close to home?

Just when a great part of the world is trying to liberate women from disempowering, dehumanizing customs like the burqa, the Vatican is trying to force nuns back into habits and cloisters.

Like portions of the Muslim world, the Vatican knows how disempowering it is to strip away individuality and self-expression, and they want women back to being seen as a herd; hence the “Apostolic Visitation” going on in women’s religious orders across the U.S. 

Let me remind you that the last Vatican Visitation was to the seminaries in the wake of the sex abuse scandal. What came from that was a new initiative to roust out homosexuals from the seminaries, regardless of their activity. Straight priests might be screwing everything in sight, but celibate gays were to be removed. In other words, gay men in the seminaries became a nice scapegoat for the sexual abuse of minors in the Church. Nevermind that the stats show differently or that the real issue — the one the U.S. courts found the Church liable for — has always been that bishops covered up their inaction. My diocese didn’t go bankrupt because priests abused kids but because the bishop lied about it.

“They think of us as an ecclesiastical work force,” said Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, professor emerita of New Testament and spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, in California. “Whereas we are religious, we’re living the life of total dedication to Christ, and out of that flows a profound concern for the good of all humanity. So our vision of our lives, and their vision of us as a work force, are just not on the same planet.” (US Nuns Facing Vatican Scrutiny)

Mother Clare, who heads this Visitation, says, “There’s no intention to make us all identical” which is a telling statement because we all know that’s EXACTLY what the intention is.

Detractors from this ice cream ad will tell you it’s bad because it “sexualizes” religious, but the Church always blames sex. The thing to realize is that sex isn’t a cause of anything but the symptom, and the deeper thinkers in the Church know it. 

Sex is one result of experiencing independence, because with independence, you begin to feel you have a right to self-expression and pleasure. In turn, the experience of pleasure (in whatever form you find it) leads to greater joy and trust in yourself as God’s creation. You may begin to doubt the proclamations of an authority whose agenda includes the very unspiritual pursuits of power and control.

No wonder ads like this shake up the powers-that-be. Independent women always have.  Hence burqas and habits.

A newspaper advertising campaign for ice-cream featuring a young nun and priest about to share a kiss has been banned after complaints that it was offensive to those working in a religious order. Guardian

one iowa: iowa stands for freedom

Gay marriage will be officially acknowledged in Iowa as of today. Did you see the NY Times article about how this may seem an unlikely place for such progressive legislation? Not unlikely at all. Iowa stands for freedom.

Many people, even some who live here, cannot mesh their plain-Jane image of Iowa, a state that sits so sturdily in the middle, with the front lines of the same-sex marriage debate.

“To be honest, I would rather not have it in Iowa,” said Shirley Cox, who has spent most of her 84 years in this old railroad town [Eldon]. Ms. Cox said she had always been proud to tell people what state she was from, but now was not so sure.

“But the thing is,” she went on, “it’s really none of my business. Who am I to tell someone how to live? I live the way I want, and they should live the way they want. I’m surely not going to stomp and raise heck and campaign against it.”

This reluctance to interlope in the lives of one’s neighbors — “a very Iowa attitude,” in the words of one local political scientist, derived in part from the state’s rural heritage — may help explain how Iowa finds itself in this moment. Add to that individualistic sensibility the state’s current political alignment and its little-known, pioneering legal past on once similarly volatile questions, like segregation and the role of women, and suddenly it seems far less surprising to outsiders that this could happen here in the seemingly endless, rolling acres of cornfields. (Same-Sex Ruling Belies the Staid Image of Iowa)

how the grinch stole marriage

This is just too good not to spread all over the web. This poem is by by Mary Ann Horton, Lisa and Bill Koontz, and as Mary Ann writes, “If we allow ourselves to voluntarily sit in the back of the bus, we’ll never make any progress. Rosa Parks had to sit in the front of the bus to make a difference. We must as well.”

Every Gay down in Gayville liked Gay Marriage a lot……
But the Grinch, who lived just east of Gayville, did NOT!!

The Grinch hated happy Gays! The whole Marriage season!
Now, please don’t ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be his head wasn’t screwed on just right.
It could be, perhaps, his Florsheims were too tight.
But I think the most likely reason of all was
His heart and brain were two sizes too small.

“And they’re buying their tuxes!” he snarled with a sneer,
“Tomorrow’s the first Gay Wedding! It’s practically here!”
Then he growled, with his Grinch fingers nervously drumming,
“I MUST find some way to stop Gay Marriage from coming!”

For, tomorrow, he knew… All the Gay girls and boys
would wake bright and early. They’d rush for their vows!
And then! Oh, the Joys! Oh, the Joys!

And THEN they’d do something he liked least of all!
Every Gay down in Gayville the tall and the small,
would stand close together, all happy and blissing.
They’d stand hand-in-hand. And the Gays would start kissing!

“I MUST stop Gay Marriage from coming! …But HOW?”

Then he got an idea! An awful idea!
THE GRINCH GOT A WONDERFUL, AWFUL IDEA!

“I know what to do!” The Grinch laughed in his throat.
And he went to his closet, grabbed his sheet and his hood.
And he chuckled, and clucked, with a great Grinchy word!
“With this beard and this cross, I look just like our Lord!”

“All I need is a Scripture…” The Grinch looked around.
But, true Scripture is scarce, there was none to be found.
Did that stop the old Grinch…? No! The Grinch simply said,
“With no Scripture on Marriage, I’ll fake one instead!”
“It’s one man and one woman,” the Grinch falsely said.

Then he broke in the courthouse. A rather tight pinch.
But, if Georgie could do it, then so could the Grinch.
The little Gay benefits hung in a row.
“These bennies,” he grinned, “are the first things to go!”

Then he slithered and slunk, with a smile most uncanny,
around the whole room, and he took every benny!
Health care for partners! Doctors for kiddies!
Tax rights! Adoptions! Pensions and Wills!
And he stuffed them in bags. Then the Grinch, with a chill,
Stuffed all the bags, one by one, in his bill.

Then he slunk to the kitchen, and stole Wedding Cake.
He cleaned out that icebox and made it look straight.
He took the Gay-bar keys! He took the Gay Flag.
Why, that Grinch even took their last Gay birdseed bag!

“And NOW!” grinned the Grinch, “I will pocket their Rings.”
And the Grinch grabbed the Rings, and he started to shove
when he heard a small sound like the coo of a dove.
He turned around fast, and off flew his hood.
Little Lisa-Bi Gay behind him sadly stood.
The Grinch had been caught by small Lisa-Bi.
She stared at the Grinch and said, “My, oh, my, why?”
“Why are you taking our Wedding Rings? WHY?”

But, you know, that old Grinch was so smart and so slick
He thought up a lie, and he thought it up quick!
“Why, my sweet little tot,” the fake Shepherd sneered,
“The judges are evil, the other states weird.”
“I’ll fix the rings there and I’ll bring them back here.”

It was quarter past dawn… All the Gays, still a-bed,
all the Gays still a-snooze when he packed up and fled.
“Pooh-Pooh to the Gays!” he was grinch-ish-ly humming.
“They’re finding out now no Gay Marriage is coming!”
“Their mouths will hang open a minute or two
then the Gays down in Gayville will all cry Boo-Hoo!”

He stared down at Gayville! The Grinch popped his eyes!
Then he shook! What he saw was a shocking surprise!
Every Gay down in Gayville, the tall and the small,
was kissing! Without any bennies at all!
He HADN’T stopped Marriage from coming! IT CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!

And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
stood puzzling and puzzling: “How could it be so?”
“It came without lawyers, no papers to sort!”
“It came without licenses, came without courts!”
And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!

“Maybe Marriage,” he thought, “doesn’t come from the court.
Maybe Marriage…perhaps… comes right from the heart.
Maybe Marriage comes from all the words the Gays say.
Words like Husband, like Wedding, and Spouse who is Gay.”
And what happened then…? Well…in Gayville they say
that the Grinch’s small brain grew three sizes that day!

And the Gays had their Weddings. They promised for life.
They swore to be faithful, to Wife and her Wife.
The Husbands were happy, to each other they vowed
To be Out and be Honest, be Gay and be Proud.
They told all their neighbors and friends of their Spouse,
They told of their Marriage and sharing their house.
They said “We got Married.” They shouted it loud.
Their marital status was “Married and Proud.”

And the minute his heart didn’t feel quite so tight,
He whizzed with his load through the bright morning light.
And he brought back the rings, cake and Gay birdseed bags!
And he… …HE HIMSELF… hung the Gay Rainbow Flag!
…
The Lord looked down, at the proud and the tall,
and said “These are my children, and I love them all.”