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.

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.

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: 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…

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.

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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.