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

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

another reason to love iowa

You already know that the Iowa Supreme Court struck down the ban against same-sex marriage in a unanimous, bipartisan decision. Iowa now legally observes same-sex marriage. You may not yet have heard that Iowa has two cities in the top ten urban areas with the lowest unemployment, including where I live and work. Iowa City is the urban area with the lowest unemployment rate in the nation.

This may not obtain for many months, since the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics is operating in the red, and though their losses are less than anticipated, they may be looking at layoffs later in the year.

Unemployment Rates for Metropolitan Areas — Monthly Rankings
(Not Seasonally Adjusted Mar. 2009)

1 Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, LA Metropolitan Statistical Area 3.6
1 Iowa City, IA Metropolitan Statistical Area 3.6
3 Ames, IA Metropolitan Statistical Area 3.7
4 Manhattan, KS Metropolitan Statistical Area 4.0
5 Lafayette, LA Metropolitan Statistical Area 4.1
6 Midland, TX Metropolitan Statistical Area 4.3
7 Amarillo, TX Metropolitan Statistical Area 4.4
7 Logan, UT-ID Metropolitan Statistical Area 4.4
7 Lubbock, TX Metropolitan Statistical Area 4.4
10 Lincoln, NE Metropolitan Statistical Area 4.6

(Bureau of Labor Statistics)

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.”

‘feminism vs religion’ — really?

Regan Penaluna’s Christianity and Feminism: Oil and Water? at First Things has some food for thought, and I enjoyed the introduction to a few early feminists I had never heard of. But Penulana knows her audience well and has set up a false dichotomy that fits with the conservative world-view – that somehow (modern) feminists aren’t truly Christians, or perhaps even religious.

After all, the power of any ideology lies in its ability to frame the world with a clear border of us-vs-them, good-vs-bad. As if not accepting a patriarchal reading of Scripture means I don’t accept religion. I just don’t accept the partriarchal reading of Scripture.

Penuluna gives a little background on two feminists — Damaris Masham (1659–1708) and Mary Astell (1666–1731)  — who argued for women’s rights from within the Christian framework. That is, they argued that women, as portrayed in the Bible, are not weaker, less moral, less able than men. The dominant cultural notion in the 17th and 18th centuries was that women were not only lesser humans, they were evil — but a necessary evil.

Both feminist thinkers made their cases by emphasizing the uniquely feminine virtue of nurturing. The two women made claims for women’s value based on that virtue, but they came at it from different points-of-view: Masham saying that women as mothers must participate in society in order to raise better citizens; Astell saying that women as citizens could make valuable mother-inspired contributions that men couldn’t make.

In other words, each of these thinkers accepted the prevailing notion that women are essentially different from men and that their value comes precisely from that difference: their roles as mothers. These early feminists sought to rehabilitate “nurture” as something important and helpful to society at large. They didn’t seem to question the fact that women managed to get stuck with a role defined by all those virtues considered less important by culture.

Why a Role is Not Essential

Penaluna’s argument is the kind conservative ideologues love, because it allows them to believe that the feminists who disagree with them are just a radical fringe. It allows them to believe they’re more reasonable, more mainstream. You know, like people who are against gay rights but claim they’re not bigots because, hey, they have gay friends…

This is why conservatives have begun to rescue early feminists from obscurity. Have you noticed these articles cropping up?

But when you say women are different from men and define that difference with specific attributes — say “nurturing” — then all your energy is spent trying to get respect for a role rather than questioning  the validity of that role. You assume a role is built upon nature, rather than something less essential.

In this case, these early feminists were in a no-win scenario, trying to gain respect for something whose very purpose was to unburden the patriarchy of qualities necessary to maintain society but that were undesirable nonetheless, since they diminished independence and hence, power.

Perhaps those early feminists weren’t yet aware, as we are today with the benefit of generations of struggle, that you can’t win with a pair of twos when your opponent has a flush and has stacked the deck to begin with. It’s the roles associated with the sexes that need to be examined and redefined. This is the kind of work modern feminists are doing. This is the kind of work conservatives fear.

After all, when you redefine one sex’s role, you naturally begin to examine others, and I imagine most of the readers over at First Things are quite comfortable with the flush they’ve been dealt.

The history of Western feminism reminds us that our concepts of liberation and equality are not always antithetical to the Christian tradition and that Christian theology and Scripture have served as a source of women’s liberation. (Penaluna)

I don’t know where Penaluna gets this summary statement; at least, I don’t see where in her essay she has supported it.

If by Scripture as a source of liberation, she means the argument made by women such as Masham and Astell, I wonder how she defines liberation. Liberation to live out a role that lacks self-determination, that is assigned by a society run by those with the right to decide most things for you, including what you do with your money, your family, your body? Perhaps as a woman liberated by Scripture, you can demand — well, not anything so un-Christian, I suppose, as civil rights or equal opportunity, but certainly an acknowledgement that your subservient role has its uses.

writing with rosilla

Rosilla says Hi!

If you  want a smart dog that weighs in at less than an apple, is fearless against dogs ten times her size, and loves to snuggle, get a miniature dachshund.

But if you live in an area prone to voles, like me, best not to have this small black dog scurrying around outside when you have a shovel in your hand. Just a little advice from me to you.

Rosilla is five months old and keeps me company when I write. My kids used to do that, but now they’re loud, so they spend time with Daddy at the mall playyard or McDonalds or the park — anywhere he can spoil them while he pretends to be a divorced dad checking out the divorced moms.

He tells me he’s good at sensing that “hint of desperation”  in women of a certain age. He says I was giving off that particular scent when we met. That’s his little age joke. You see, I’m significantly older than him. Yeah, that’s right, I’m that “cougar” I was talking about in my last post.  Except I married my boy toy, so no sexy labels for me. I guess I’m not savvy, sophisticated, or cosmopolitan. I’m just a wife.

I wonder what scent is emanating from me now. A hint of frustration? Hint of irritation? Hint of yeah-that-was-nice-you-should-get-going-now?

proof that my sister saves everything

Helped my sister move this weekend. Learned a lot, but it wasn’t the unopened bottle of Ensure dated 2007 that said it all.

It wasn’t the two-dozen black bananas in her freezer that she had saved over many months because she was going to make banana bread.

It wasn’t the boxes of empty bottles she was moving from one house to another.

It wasn’t even the sit-and-spin she put in storage, though her youngest children are 13 and 11.

No, it was what you see in the picture.

If you know what that little disk is, you’re old. If you’ve ever actually USED one, you’re even older. If you have one and don’t even have a working 331/3 lp record player and snap at me that I better not walk off with that because you might need it…well, then you’re my sister.

did you know? the information age and the world wide web

I wonder about some of the statistics, but this video is compelling regardless. My children are growing up in a vastly different world than I grew up in (a That 70’s Show sort of world). Do you  remember where we had all our questions answered before we had Google?

The important question it leaves for the end: what does it all mean? We create information from data and meaning from information. That takes a lot of work and — what many people refuse to admit – a lot of faith. I sometimes wonder if the sheer abundance of data and unreliable information will make nihilists of us all.

I believe that lovely soundtrack is Right Here Right Now by Fat Boy Slim. This video, “Shift Happens,” was created by Jeff Bronman, Karl Fisch, and Scott McLeod and recently revised from the one you saw a few years ago.

it’s 1997!

I laughed so hard I cried. Who doesn’t remember iMac and AOL dial-up? Stephen Colbert takes us on a trip back in time to 1997, now that our tanking economy — so the experts say — has us reliving that glorious year.