The Magician and Me #Tarot #Writing by @GiselleRenarde

Universal Waite deck © U.S. Games Systems, Inc.

I'm coming home to things I loved as a teenager. Tarot is one of those things.

When I can't sleep, I listen to tarot podcasts. One night, I listened to a podcast about calculating your birth card. I knew about significators--cards you use to signify yourself or other people--but I'd always used the card associated with my astrological sign as mine.

My birth card (Major Arcana card you get to by adding down your birth date, month and year until you have a number that's less than ten) turned out to be... The Magician.

I wasn't feeling particularly magical when I made this discovery. This past year has been full of grief, depression, anxiety, and plenty of other deep feelings. I've been in midlife crisis mode, big-time. I've made sweeping changes and questionable choices.

Where work is concerned, I wondered: "What is the point?" My books are still selling, but only the old ones. When I write something new, I can't seem to convince more than 3 people to buy a copy.  It's disheartening, it really is.

Life felt like something that was happening to me, not something I was actively engaged in. When I was numb, I didn't care whether I lived or died. When my feelings came back, I had too many all at once. Too many emotions, too strong. What's preferable? Feeling too much or feeling dead inside?

When I realized The Magician was my birth card, it opened up something inside me. Couldn't have come at a better time, because I was really starting to feel like I had no control over my life. Huge choices and life events all seemed to be in other people's hands, and I felt like I was just waiting for others to make a move so my life could finally begin.

The Magician doesn't wait around. The Magician makes things happen. He is me. I can manifest my will here on earth! I can do it!

One of the tarot podcasters I listen to and love is constantly saying that nothing's fixed in stone--if you don't like the direction your life is going, you can change it. For some reason, that had never occurred to me. I felt like I just had to wait around until something happened, and hope it was something good.

The Magician card convinced me that I have a part to play in my own life. I don't have to feel like everyone else is running the show (though, realistically, I still do, most of the time). I have the option of making choices and acting on those choices. I can choose which direction I want my life to go.

Even that much is progress. A few months ago, I felt like I had no life left in me.

#Writing as Impulse Control, a post about #taboo #erotica by @GiselleRenarde

Grief is weird.

It makes you want to do things you know you shouldn't. You KNOW you shouldn't. But you want to do them all the same.

You want to assert yourself as a living being. You want to LIVE because the person who is gone can't. Someone else's death is a reminder of your own mortality.

Or else you go numb and you just want to feel something. It takes more and more just to feel something.

Or else you don't care anymore. You don't care about yourself. You don't care about right and wrong. You don't care.

Or else you're just looking for some form of comfort while you heal.

You all know by now that I live with a sock puppet called Lexi Wood. She bashes her face against my keyboard to produce some of the most taboo smut I've ever seen.

Lexi has been my rock, of late. She's taken the wheel. Not only has she held my hand through all the losses I've lived through in the past 6 months, but she's helped me curb my impulses to go out into the world and do things I'll only regret when I get my shit together.

I'm sure I mentioned to you that writing helped me cope with my cousin's death this summer. Some of that writing was journaling about the situation specifically and about grief, both specifically and generally. But some of that writing was... well, it was Lexi, plain and simple.

It was strange, experiencing this extreme sadness and concern for my family, to be thinking about family all the time, and then turn around to find Lexi writing really raunchy smut about barely-legal teens begging their stepdaddies for a fuck.

Part of me was asking, like, is this really the appropriate time for taboo fiction? But apparently it was, and having something to focus on, something other than my family's state of mourning, helped me tremendously.

Then it happened again.

It was November when my grandmother died--National Novel Writing Month. I'd intended to work on a novel. But that didn't happen.

Following my grandmother's death, obsessive thoughts started creeping into my mind. Obsessive thoughts of inappropriate intimacies. Stuff I knew I couldn't do. Not in the real world. But I found myself thinking about these things all the time. Anyone who's ever wanted to do something they knew they shouldn't knows how excruciating it is to be haunted by those thoughts.

Luckily, Lexi stepped in once again. Lexi saved me from myself by routing all that strange sexual energy into a collection of taboo erotica I've recently published as Taboo Sex with an Ex.  Nice of Lexi to keep to a theme. She's got marketing in mind even when I'm grieving deeply.

Without Lexi, would I have done something I'd live to regret? That's one of those impossible to answer questions, I think. I would like to imagine I'm enough of an adult to say to myself "No, I'm not going to do that" and then... just not do it. But there's a rebel in all of us that hears a NO and automatically says YES. Not only does it say YES, but it digs its heels in a little deeper every time it hears a NO.

Writing smut helps in working through those impulses. I'm a living testament to the power of smut-writing.

We always hear about porn etc normalizing and even encouraging unsociable sex, but here's what I'm thinking: if writing taboo fantasies helps the writer cope with inappropriate sexual thoughts, isn't there a chance reading taboo erotica helps the reader in the same way?

Whether or not you're having impulse control issues, I invite you to read Lexi's latest collection, Taboo Sex with an Ex. It's currently in Kindle Unlimited because I'm doing an experiment which you can read about here.

Taboo Sex with an Ex
6 Explicit Erotica Stories
By Lexi Wood

These girls love their daddies so much they just keep coming back for more… even though they know they shouldn’t… even though they said they wouldn’t! In this mouth-watering collection of sinful smut, six young women return to their daddies to fill their needs as only a daddy can. They shouldn’t have done it in the first time. They shouldn’t come back for seconds. But here they are, pretty and purring and ready for more!

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MLW8Z3F?tag=lexiwood-20
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07MLW8Z3F
CAN: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07MLW8Z3F
AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B07MLW8Z3F

What Good is #Writing? A post by @GiselleRenarde

I used to tell people writing meant nothing to me. Family, friends, writers, readers... I told everyone that writing was something I only did to make money. Writing wasn't like breathing, for me. I didn't feel like I had to do it or I'd die.

I'd heard from a lot of other authors that they'd write even if nobody paid them for it.  Even if nobody bought their books.

Not me. I was only in it for the cold hard cash.

That was then.

It took me quite a number of years before I started to realize the place of meaning and resolution writing held in my life.  When I first started writing, I was selling erotica shorts to anthologies and periodicals. I was signing contracts with niche publishers.

I think it was the market for periodicals that dried up first. Anthologies followed a few years later.  Around that time, the small publishers I was signing with started toppling like dominoes.

So I started self-publishing. Why not?  The stigma was lifting.  It was suddenly easy to publish independently. And I had quite a number of works at my disposal, including those that had come back to me from publishers that had folded.

Things went pretty okay.  I was hardly a Kindle Millionaire, but I understood the process.  Publishing seemed pretty straightforward. I uploaded my books to various retailers through various distributors and in various formats. They sold copies. Again, not a million copies, but enough that I could pay my rent and put food on the table (and in my cats' bowls).

And now?

Looking at my life holistically, I'd have to say, at the moment, it's a mess. My career is a huge part of that mess. I've experienced an enormous amount of grief and loss this year--in terms of loved ones dying and so forth--but also in terms of loss of income, dwindling sales.

The last book I wrote that was meaningful to me sold two copies.

Although my career is writing, writing is not merely a career.  Not anymore.

Writing has become much more than a career.

Much, much more.

After my cousin's death this summer, I started writing about grief.  About my grief.  Non-fiction. I started out telling myself it was publishable, that I was writing for monetary gain. But I realized very quickly that allowing anyone on the planet to read the most intimate details of my family's pain would be a betrayal to those who were hurting the most. There could be a time in the future when that changes, but that's kind of not the point.

The point is that, even after I realized I was writing stuff I couldn't possibly publish... I kept doing it.

I kept writing because the act of writing helped me. That's when I realized I was actually journaling. Didn't feel like it, because I'd never typed a journal before. I'd run out of people to talk to (or, I convinced myself I had, convinced myself nobody wanted to hear me repeat the same thoughts over and over again), but I could always write.

It helped me so much. I could never have imagined how much, honestly.  If you're going through some shit and it's never occurred to you to write it all down, I highly recommend it. Most people have probably figured this out by the age of eight.  Guess it took me a little longer than that.

There's something freeing about getting to a low point in your career.  You can stop thinking about what others want from you, because clearly they don't want anything--if they did, they'd be buying your books.  It's a time when you can turn to yourself and ask, "All things being equal, what would you really like to work on?"

And then you can write a book like this:

Or a book like this:

Or a book nobody's ever going to see, because it isn't a book at all.

How Do You Celebrate the Holidays Following the Death of a Family Member?

a post by Giselle Renarde

Thanksgiving has never been a big holiday in my family. It isn’t as big here in Canada as it is in the states. I’d venture to say it also means something different. It’s mostly just an excuse to eat turkey. At least, that’s always been the case in my family.

My mother is a terrible cook, but she always cooks for us (myself and my siblings). Over-cooked, under-seasoned food is part of our tradition.

If we’re very lucky, my mom’s sister invites us to join herself and her husband for Thanksgiving. They’re amazing hosts and excellent chefs, the both of them.

We got lucky this year. We received a very unusual invitation, as far as Thanksgiving dinners go.

My family is in mourning at the moment. You know this, if you’ve been reading my posts of the last few months. In case you’re not aware, one of my cousins died unexpectedly of an overdose. What I’m learning, from this death more than any other, is that grief can weigh heavily on a family for a long time… potentially forever.

My late cousin’s immediate family—my aunt, uncle and cousin—are not okay.

Thanksgiving was the first time I saw them since the funeral. My mom’s sister planned a gathering with them in mind—with grief in mind. In a way, grief was the guest of honour. It sat among us, silently drawing our attention in its direction as we conversed.

The host of this gathering, my mother’s sister, was incredibly thoughtful in her approach. Knowing that the holidays are a hard time for those in mourning, the evening she planned was the total opposite of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner.

There was no turkey, no stuffing, no sit-down meal. In fact, we didn’t even eat indoors. We ate in the garage. It was lit by fairy lights and candles (fake ones, so we wouldn’t burn the house down). No meticulously laid-out table. No gleaming cutlery. No cutlery at all. We ate with our hands. It was all that sort of food.

My mother’s sister, who planned the gathering, told me she’s been learning that different people prefer different atmospheres. Some people like the darkness, especially during a mourning period. They don’t have to worry what they look like. And my aunt, uncle and cousin—they’re not looking so great these days.

When I got my aunt alone, I asked her how she’s doing. Some days are better than others, she said. Some days are terrible. Some are okay. She’s more concerned about her daughter and her husband. My uncle blames himself for his son’s death. She looks at her family, at her daughter and her husband, and she sees that they’re thinking… they’re thinking…

And I know exactly what she means, because I noticed the same thing. When we were all sitting around the living room chatting—with the lights on—I often looked at my uncle and my cousin, and I noticed them staring into space. No, not staring into space—staring into a space. Into that space occupied by grief.

As I said, grief sat among us. It was just more visible to those who felt they should shoulder the blame for my cousin’s death. The looks on their faces… well, it reminded me of a friend of mine, of when she used to have frequent PTSD blackouts. You’d look at her and she just wasn’t there. Her face seemed vacant.

One more reason the darkness at dinner was so welcome to so many of us. In the dark, there’s no one policing the look on your face, no one noting what you’re eating or not eating. Perhaps nobody would be judging you anyway, but in the dark there’s no false perception of being judged.

So, how do you celebrate the holidays after the death of a family member? Like this. In the dark. Maybe some people would prefer to cling to traditions, but for others, traditions bring on a wash of associations that are too much to handle when a family member’s death is still so fresh.

This will be a year of firsts, for my family. Thanksgiving was the first first. Next will be Christmas. I don’t know if we’ll dine in the dark for that, but I wouldn’t mind if we did. I wouldn’t mind one bit.

Supporting someone who is grieving deeply is so difficult, and most of us feel lost. We have no idea what to do and we’re scared of saying the wrong thing. I want to help my family, and in many ways (and for many reasons) I feel like I don’t know how. That’s why I’ve decided to donate all my October royalties from sales of my Erotic Older Women books to a non-profit in my city that does peer grief counselling. I might not know how to help, but they do, so please help me help the bereaved by purchasing:
Older Women, Wild Desires
Older Women, Lesbian Desires
Older Women, Kinky Desires
Or all three in one collection: Erotic Older Women

The Flood, a post about grief by @GiselleRenarde

I used to be an art snob. I never bought prints. Money’s a little tighter now than it was when I had a “real” job, so I can’t always afford to buy original pieces anymore. I still want to support artists, especially young ones and those just starting out, regardless of age. That’s why I don’t mind so much, buying a print.

Last month, I bought one that gripped my heart: it’s an image of a girl, a giant girl. She’s crying so hard that she’s flooded the streets. You can only see the tops of cars. That’s how many tears she’s shed. She’s drowning out vehicles.

The night before my cousin’s funeral, I flipped on the local news. Their breaking story was weather-related. A severe localized rainstorm had caused flooding in the downtown core. They had footage of cars stuck in underpasses. You could only see the roofs. The weather guy kept saying it reminded him of footage you see from other countries, not from here. We don’t get this kind of flooding in Canada.

Except we do, because we did.

It stopped raining during the night, but started up again the next morning. By the time I left my apartment for the visitation, which would precede my cousin’s funeral, the rain was hammering down. As I waited for my second of three buses, it started coming through my umbrella and dripping on my clothes. A lane blocked off for construction had flooded entirely. Rain water washed over the sidewalk.

My mother had phoned me before I left the house. She wanted to make sure I was out of bed. I don’t usually wake up in the morning. I work late, sometimes until 5 AM, and then sleep until noon. But I was up and dressed and ready to go. She said, “Bring an umbrella,” and I said, “I’m wearing my galoshes—the fancy European ones we found at that outlet store.” We’re bargain shoppers. It runs in the family. But she called me back the second she’d hung up and said, “Bring a change of shoes. It’s more… proper.”

When I arrived at the cemetery, there was a huge puddle blocking the entrance. I couldn’t tell how deep it was, and, anyway, I was lost in thought. The third of my bus drivers looked strikingly like my cousin. And he was nice to me. He was very sweet and kind. That’s what I was thinking about as I began wading through the lake that came up almost to my knees. Some Australian guy was astonished that I would put my boots through such trauma. But they’re galoshes. You can put them through anything. They only look fancy. They’re deceptive that way.

Indoors, staff at the funeral home was going nuts with the wet-dry vac. The building had flooded overnight. Of course it had. Of course.

The first mourner I saw was a woman I didn’t recognize. She was sobbing so hard two men were holding her upright. I’d never seen someone cry like that in public. I wasn’t even sure, at first, if we were there for the same funeral. It turns out we were, and that she’s my cousin’s cousin on his father’s side (so, my uncle’s niece). This was the woman who’d lost her own mother (my uncle’s sister) to pancreatic cancer a couple months ago. She’d taken her family on vacation to try to give her kids a sense of normalcy, and so my aunt and uncle decided not to call her to tell her about their son’s untimely death.

This sobbing woman only found out our cousin had died when she arrived back home—the night before the funeral.

No wonder she was such a mess. She just lost her mother. She just found out she’d lost a cousin.

Usually, I know in advance how a funeral’s going to feel: I’ll sit there, listening to happy stories from the life of the deceased, feeling strangled by tears and yet struggling not to cry.

From the moment I walked into our lovely funeral room, I knew this one would be different. My cousin was laid out in the steel casket his sister had chosen for him, but that isn’t what set me off. It was the picture boards, the photographs of my cousin as a little boy. When I knew him well. When he and my brother were like brothers. When they egged each other on into mischief. When my cousin shoved a slice of birthday cake down our heating vent and it took us weeks to figure out what smelled funny.

I used to be one of those people who never cried in public. My Grade 9 French teacher told my mother, “There’s steel in that girl,” and there was, back then. It’s liquid now. I’m more fluid than I used to be, in many respects. I didn’t feel awkward crying.

My brother hadn’t told me he was asked to be a pall-bearer. If you want someone who feels emotions very deeply, it’s my brother. I cried for him, because I can’t even begin to imagine how hard that was, for someone who already lives inside a well of sadness.

The funeral was family-only. My cousin’s parents and sister, aunts and uncles, cousins and grandmother. Nobody else. When I first arrived, my cousin’s sister hugged me and said, “I’m so glad you’ve come. I was afraid no one would be here. I thought we’d have a funeral for nobody.” There was no death notice in the paper. The service wasn’t even listed on the funeral home’s online roster.

But it led to the most honest funeral I’ve ever been to. The minister didn’t go on and on about my cousin’s good works. Part of me hoped he would. Something good. Something to latch on to. Instead, he focused on us, the grieving. The service wasn’t for my cousin. It was for us. The minister assured us there was nothing more we could have done. Perhaps his death was accidental. Perhaps it was suicide, the culmination of years spent struggling with depression. We’ll never know for sure.

Whatever the root cause, the minister said we should not blame ourselves, but rather turn to each other for support. Sure the funeral was family-only, but when you looked around that room, you realized this is a big family. We’re a lot of people. We can lean on each other and not fall down, like the lady I saw sobbing before the service. She had two family members by her side to hold her up.

Last night, I dreamed about the neighbourhood I lived in 15 years ago, down by the lake. In my dreams, the landscape is always different from reality, but I recognize it from other dreams. Last night, my dreamscape was flooded. In my dream, I was taking my cats for a walk, goodness knows why, and I didn’t have them on a leash. I kept having to pull them out of the deep water and hold them in my arms. It wasn’t easy. You know what cats are like. They squirm and try to escape.

As I walked along, I passed through a café, and my family was there. My aunt and uncle, the ones who just lost their son, were pushing a baby carriage. They were smiling and healthy, the way they looked thirty years ago. I was about to walk on by when my aunt stopped me. They had a little girl with them, a toddler, and my aunt asked me if the girl could pet my cats.

“This one’ll swat at you,” I said to the child, “but don’t worry—she has no claws. She can’t hurt you, even if she tries.”

Lhasa De Sela -- "I'm Going In"

What Was Lost: Three Flashers -- #virginity #kidnapping #eunuch

By Lisabet Sarai

Five Stages

“When did she disappear?”

“Four years ago.” My companion hardly looked old enough for this to be plausible. She examined her manicured nails and sighed. “She’d be seven now. More coffee?”

“No, thank you.”

She sipped hers, deep in thought. I scanned the sunny backyard, noting the jungle gym in the far corner. The lost girl had been an only child. I wondered at the woman’s serene composure.

“How do you manage?”

“Therapy.” A wan smile. “I’ve learned the five stages.”

“You mean, like the stages of grief?”

“A bit. But simultaneous. Grief is the first. Every day I spend some time in despair.”

I nodded. “And the others?”

“Acceptance. I have to realize I may never see her again. Then there’s service. Like volunteering for the lost child hotline. And giving this interview.”

“Which I appreciate.”

“Stage four is continued investigation. I have a top PI on retainer. I’ll know as soon he finds a shred of new evidence.”

I tapped some notes into my tablet. “And stage five?”

She smoothed her hands over her designer slacks. Her lips tightened into thin line as she met my gaze. “Retribution. I won’t rest till I’m holding his bleeding balls.”

Ready

I’m ready.

We’ve been making out for more than an hour in his dad’s car, parked by the fields on the outskirts of town. I’m on fire from his roving hands, his evergreen cologne, the masculine roughness of incipient beard on his high-school-boy cheeks. I’m eager to lose my innocence, to step through the gateway into womanhood.

He’s ready, too. He’s stashed a blanket in the trunk. A full moon rides among the stars over our heads. Hand in hand we wade through the tall grass to the top of the hill. I strip, feeling his eyes on me, knowing my own power. He does the same. His erection is massive, scary, thrilling. Power indeed!

From his discarded jeans he pulls a condom. Fascinated, I watch him tear the foil, extract the limp bit of latex, try to roll it down over his cock. It’s not working.

“Can you help?”

I’ve touched him before, even stroked him to messy climaxes, but now my hands are clumsy. The head is inside, but the rest seems stuck. As I fumble, his cock wilts.

Finally we lie defeated on the blanket, in each other’s arms.

Guess we weren’t ready after all. 
 

For the Queen

“It’s not true, you know.”

“What?”

“Castration doesn’t eliminate sexual desire. Not when you’re cut after puberty.”

“You still feel aroused? You still want women, even after—”

“And men. Eroticism begins in the mind, Eleanor. Imagination is a potent aphrodisiac. When someone attracts me, I start spinning fantasies. Usually, of course, I don’t act on those notions, but they’re surprisingly satisfying.”

“Usually?”

The chief eunuch gives an enigmatic nod.

“Why did you do it?” I can’t conceive of a motivation compelling enough to make me give up my breasts or my clit—which I notice is tingling due to this turn in our conversation.

“For the Queen. She needed my counsel, my wisdom, my admittedly Machiavellian skills, to develop into the steel-spined ruler the kingdom needed. She was so young when she came to the throne. But she already understood the distractions and dangers of sex.”

“Does she know?” Our Majesty is no longer a green girl.

A buttery smile stretches his pudgy cheeks. “She guesses. She trusts me now.”

I should be wary of this powerful creature, but I can’t resist.

“How–when you’re aroused, how do you–?”

He lays a soft hand on my thigh. “Let me show you.”

Tears from the Sky

by Jean Roberta

Bodies, human and animal, exude body fluids. Do sweat glands “cry” when the temperature goes up? Do women’s pussies really “cry” or "weep" when they’re hungry? (They’ve been described this way, but that seems like a stretch to me.) Do clouds “cry” rain?

Here is the opening paragraph in a story, “Tears of the Gods” by Sarah L. Byrne, that I chose from a pile of excellent stories to include in Heiresses of Russ: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction:*

“Legend has it that the blue rain was the tears of the gods, though just why gods would weep in blue no one could quite explain. Modern science said the odd meteorological phenomenon was simply a matter of copper sulphate, spores from the blue copper-feeding algae in the deep vents forced into the atmosphere by volcanic activity. Gita knew differently.”

Of course she did. And of course, since this story is closer to sci-fi than to fantasy, there is both a scientific and a metaphorical explanation for rain as tears. Gita has accepted an assignment to a desert outpost on an out-of-the-way planet where she is exposed to rain that blisters her skin, even though this was not a “career-boosting move.” Gita is grieving for her former research partner, who was also her life-partner.

Everyone who studies literature learns to avoid the “pathetic fallacy:” using weather to represent the emotions of major characters. Most writers do this anyway, because it’s just so tempting. (I think it’s unfair to single out the famous nineteenth-century sentence by Edward Bulwer-Lytton that starts: “It was a dark and stormy night.” Victorian writers who wrote like this had a lot of company, and still do.)

This week, snow finally fell on my town in Saskatchewan so that it looks picturesque for the holidays. Before that, the weather had been so unseasonably warm (apparently due to a worldwide natural phenomenon called “El Nino”) that many were predicting a “brown Christmas” of bare ground.

Drifting snow, consisting of beautifully individual snowflakes dancing on the breeze, is not usually associated with tears. Au contraire. The first snowfall is usually seen as a blessing or a sparkling blanket to cover the litter, dog poop and decaying vegetation that lingers on the ground in winter.

Just as the snow seemed like a magical surprise, I got an unexpected letter in the mail from the local law firm that handled my late parents’ will. As one of the heirs, I am entitled to an equal share of the next “disbursement:” more money from a large pot that has been subject to mysterious (to me) accounting practises. (One of the factors that makes this complicated is that there are four heirs, three in Canada where inheritance is not taxed, and an executor in the U.S., where inheritance is taxed by the federal government, and possibly by the relevant state government, as a smaller version of Uncle Sam.)

My parents passed away within six months of each other in 2009. As far as I remember, I didn’t cry over either death. Both my parents had been in failing health in a nursing home for a few years before the end. In 2010, I received a fairly large amount from their estate, and I was grateful.

When each parent left this world, I had a sense of relief that was at least as complicated as the process of sorting out the money they no longer needed. Yes! I thought. They are no longer in pain, and that’s a good thing. I honestly hoped they had gone on to a better place, and I still hope they are around in some form, and at peace. Their ashes rest in an outdoor vault in a cemetery. I rarely go to visit them there because I don’t think they are more likely to hover over their physical remains than to hang about in their former house, or in other places they loved when they were alive (e.g. the local Unitarian Centre, the large park in the middle of town).

To be honest, I was also relieved when each of them passed away because this meant they could no longer confide in everyone they knew that I was “mentally ill,” and that they hoped I would find a second husband to take care of me.

I can forgive them for everything they did that hurt me, on grounds that they—like other parents—were probably raising children as well as they knew how. They got it right more often than they got it wrong. However, I can’t forget certain frustrating disagreements over the nature of reality, when I would report something that had really happened to me, and one of my parents would respond, “Honey, I’m sure that’s not true.”

One of my father’s staunch beliefs, which my mother “went along with” (as wives accepted so much in her generation) was that all stories of supernatural events were bogus, the products of mental illness or deliberate fraud. If my parents are now disembodied spirits who could contact me if they chose to, would they choose to?

I can’t help thinking of the unexpected promise of money as a Christmas present from the Beyond. I’m tempted to tell a photo of my parents, “Really, you didn’t have to. You’ve already been incredibly generous.”

The letter made my eyes sting, but I couldn’t cry. It’s a mysterious process, crying. Maybe the questions of who owes what to whom else need to be sorted out further before my tears can flow as naturally as rain or snow. Time will tell.
------------------
*Heiresses of Russ was co-edited by Jean Roberta and Steve Berman, published by Lethe Press (December 2015). All the stories in it were first published in 2014.

The Unreachable Other

by Jean Roberta

Her name was Chris Weeks, and she lived with her mom and dad in a little blue concrete house next to our acre, on which the construction students at the state college had built a house for my family. That was when our country road had started becoming a fashionable suburb, a place for faculty families.

Chris and her parents were from the time before, when Johnny Creek Road, three miles outside the town limits, was as country as any dusty road along a dry creekbed in a country song. Chris’ dad worked for the railroad, her mom was a housewife, and the family kept sheep to supplement their income.

I’m not sure “friend” is the best word to describe what Chris and I were to each other. She was several years older than I was, with breasts that pushed out the bodice-fronts of the cotton gingham dresses her mom sewed for her. We saw each other every day because we waited for the school bus together.

Chris was beautiful enough to grace the cover of an album of country songs. Her hair was long, wavy and red, touched with gold when the sun was going down. Her eyes were large and blue. She loved animals, and always had a dog by her side when she wasn’t going to school. For a few years, her constant companion was an Irish setter whose fur was the exact color of her hair. He helped her herd the sheep. When he was run over by a car on the road, she was more distraught than I had ever seen her.

I was there when it happened, and the sight chilled me to the bones. Did I have a premonition? I’m not sure.

I knew that Chris and I were unlikely to be friends when we grew older. She told me that she wasn’t planning to go to college after high school, since she didn’t see the point of it. She seemed headed for an early marriage with a local boy, who might work for the railroad with Mr. Weeks. It went without saying that Chris’ husband would have to like animals and children.

“Write to me,” she said when I told her we were moving to Canada. I was fifteen. I said I would write, but I wondered how long the correspondence would last. Would she expect me to come to her wedding? Would she ever consider visiting me in my strange new home?

Moving to a bigger town in Saskatchewan and settling into a new school system took up all my energy for several months, but Chris was always in the back of my mind, where I pictured her tending a lamb, a dog, or some other animal. I intended to write to her, but I didn’t know what to say. Her dreams were not mine.

Less than six months after our move, my dad told me that a former colleague of his had sent my parents a letter saying that Mr. Weeks had died of a heart attack, then Chris and her mother were both killed in a car accident. So the little blue house was empty until it could be sold or completely torn down as an anachronism on “The Hill,” as Johnny Creek Road had come to be called.

I wondered what became of the sheep, and I hoped they weren’t all slaughtered for their meat. Chris would have hated that.

From time to time, I still imagine Chris bathed in the glow of sun from behind the mountains that formed a frame for the valley we loved in. In my dreams, she roams the sagebrush hills, unchanged since the 1960s, with her Irish setter, while every passing breeze flirts with the skirt of her cotton dress.

I probably sentimentalized Chris, even when she was alive. She seemed like the kind of uncomplicated natural woman I could never be. I sometimes wish we could discuss our mutual impressions of each other, but by now, she has been dead for much longer that she ever lived.
------------------------

On a parallel note, here is an excerpt from “Winter Break,” a story in my out-of-print collection, Secrets of the Invisible World (1988). It is loosely based on another doomed relationship, which included sex:
*************************

Her expression was dangerous. “You think you’re smart, don’t you? Just because you know a few long words. You’ve always talked your way into what you want.” I felt sick. “If you’d grown up in my neighbourhood, you would have been creamed! Your education won’t help you in the real world, lady.” Seeing the look on my face, she softened. “Cup of coffee?” she asked, trying to sound cool. I nodded. “Look, babe,” she said, “I care for you too. I love you, really. But you have to learn one thing if you want to be with me. I decide what happens to me.” Her voice was steely. “Not you, not my mother, not even my boss. I’m not going to change, so don’t try it.”

I held the cup of coffee in both hands. I couldn’t look at her. “Babe—“ she started, then sighed. “Little woman.” She tried to put an arm around my shoulders, and I pushed her away. “You grew up in a rich family,” she said, as though stating the obvious.

“Rich?” I asked in disbelief. “Rich?”

“There’s a whole lot you don’t know about life,” she explained. “I know you know a lot about books. I respect that, I really do, but sometimes you don’t know what’s going down.” She had quietly poured herself a glass of rye.

“Don’t drink,” I said grimly.

“Don’t push me, girl.”

By now I knew the discussion was hopeless, but I kept on. “Shit, Maxine,” I said as roughly as I could. “I know an alcoholic when I see one.”

“Shut up,” she warned me. “If I need a drink now and then, you can’t stop me.” She paused. “You like me this way.” She hunched her shoulder, caricaturing her own posture. She waved her drink at me.

“I don’t –“ I started angrily.

“Yeah, you do,” she persisted. “I could fuck you in the road, and you’d love it.” I gasped. Then I grabbed the glass out of her hand and threw it against the wall, where it shattered in a satisfying burst of shards.

“Bitch!” I hissed furiously. “Stupid bitch!” I tried to stomp out of her kitchen. “You’re going nowhere!” I yelled, glaring her in the eyes. She grabbed my arm, and I almost hoped she would hit me. I would have found that easier to handle. She held me in a bear hug as I struggled in vain to tear myself away.

“Hey, don’t leave. Little One, I’m sorry,” she crooned into my ear. The look of pity on her face was unbearable.

“You’re going to be stuck,” I choked out, “in your stupid life until your liver rots! Who the hell is going to want you in ten years? Who in their right mind would put up with you?” I couldn’t stand to think what this question implied about me. “I tried to help you,” I insisted.

“Come here,” she said quietly, moving me into her front room without relaxing her hold on me. “Come sit here,” she said, pulling me onto her lap.

I could no longer hold back my tears. “We can’t stay together, can we?”

“No,” she said sadly. “Little One, maybe I’ll go to university someday, but I’ll decide when. Maybe I’ll give up smoking and drinking too, but not now. I’m not the one you need. I love holding you,” she chuckled, “but I hate the way you put me down with your education. And the fact you’re older than me. And whiter.”

I was shocked. “I never put you down,” I said vehemently.

“You probably don’t know you’re doing it,” she said calmly. I could see there was no point in disputing this further.
--------------------------------------

I could say that I’ve been drawn to people who are obviously not my type (or vice versa) because of a shortage of better choices, but I’m not sure that would be true. I’ve been drawn to people who seem very different from me because I want to learn something from them, or I want to “help” them improve their lives (usually a very bad plan), or I want emotional support from them in exchange for whatever they might want from me.

I should know better by now, but I’m not sure I do.

The Illusion of the Never-Changing

by Annabeth Leong

In times of deep grief, I fear that if I begin crying I will drown in an ocean of tears. I will lie on my couch forever and never get up again to go out to the park or to the mall or to wash my dishes. If I so much as whisper the names of those I have lost, the howling will tear me apart on its way out. I must fight the wall of sorrow that threatens to close me off from the rest of the world forever.

In times of deep joy, I fear that the slightest motion of my pinky finger might destroy the thing that is growing between us. With my head on your shoulder, I want to stop walking or even breathing. In this moment, I have all I want—I'm not even worried about the sweaty acrobatics we could get up to naked. I want to rest here forever.

A person is not an object at rest.

And so a moment comes when I can no longer hold back my grief and the tears begin, rolling in and out of me like a tide. I find I am not in the middle of the ocean. I am on the shore, buffeted but still standing with toes sunk into the sand. I get up and go to the park, sit on a sticky, rickety set of bleachers, and cry while the sun strokes my face dry.

And so I get a crick in my neck and have to lift my head to check the expression on your face. I learn all your names and meet your parents and engage in tortured descriptions of what I actually want from you, only to change my mind six months later and try again. We fuck, sometimes giggling, sometimes sobbing. Sometimes I can't come and other times I can't stop coming. Each time I return to you, I find somewhere to rest my head. Tonight, I turn my cheek to fit it on your thigh. It feels different every time. In the back of my mouth, I taste the way it used to feel.

I don't think a person can stay at rest.

Sometimes, I think I have the answer. I've got my work flow figured out. The words will run out of me like water from a carefully calibrated faucet. They aren't flooding me, and they aren't trickling. Now that I know how to do this, I will never have to struggle again. If I stay in motion just like this, I can write perfectly forever.

Sometimes, I think I'm going to get trapped. When you get on the marriage train, it's an express, not a local. A ring is on my finger and people have been invited. I look back toward the depot where I began the journey—in a state of love and naivete, I believed I wanted to take this ride all the way to its conventional end. But now here I am, and I am going to wear white and my stomach will swell and I will have babies and I will be safe and secure except for all the silent hate that people seem to grow. If I stay in motion just like this, I'm going to wind up thwarted and bitter forever.

A person is not an object in motion.

And so I discover that sometimes the words do flood. Sometimes, they come so fast I choke on them. They tell me things I'm not ready to hear and they keep me up all night, drugged and confused by unrelenting revelation. And sometimes, my heart is empty and barren, and I sit and very carefully type the word "the" and then very carefully erase it. Every law I thought I'd learned has been repealed. In both cases, I am eventually reduced to starting over, reinventing who I am and coming up with something new to say.

And so I discover that as relentless as the marriage train seems to be, there are a thousand decisions along the way. I can go to the doctor and have my IUD taken out, and then panic and start researching sterilization. I can discover that I don't want to be hit anymore, not even if it makes me come. I can discover that I want to be touched, even if it makes me cry. I can care for another person in intimate ways that I never thought I would be willing to care for someone. I can be cared for, so much that it becomes okay for me to walk down the street holding another person's hand. Every word is reinvented.

I don't think a person can stay in motion.

The concept of inertia as applied to people contains so much implied helplessness. The reason an object at rest will stay at rest, or that an object in motion will stay in motion, is that the objects in question don't have internal motivation. Inertia is a natural law of resistance to change, a requirement that force must be applied from the outside. But my self is full of struggle. My limbs will not be still. And when the journey becomes long and hard, I must rest my head.

July 25, 2007

by Kristina Wright

My mother and me. She was 29, I was 5.

The phone rang a little before 8 AM. I'm not a morning person (even now, with two babies under 2) and no one who knows me would call me that early. It was too early to be a friend, too early to be a solicitation. I reached for the phone, sleep still clinging to me like cobwebs even as a feeling of impending bad news settled into my bones. Do you know that feeling?

"Hello?"

"Hello. It's Chuck," he said. "Your father."

Stepfather, technically. And it was the first time I'd heard his voice in over a decade. Close to fifteen years, in fact. Not that I needed the clarification of our relationship. The name, in his gruff voice, was enough.

"Yeah?"

I was being rude. Deliberately so. No, "Hello" or "How are you?" or any of the polite things people say when they haven't talked in years. Just, "Yeah?" We had no relationship, no bond. There was only one reason he would be calling me. I knew without being told. I waited for it.

"I was calling to let you know your mother passed this morning."

I hate that word. "Passed." It's the worst euphemism for death, I think.

"What happened?"

The details followed in short, choppy sentences punctuated by my equally short and choppy questions. I'd already had an inkling something had happened after a cousin mentioned my mother's heart attack several days earlier in an email. A heart attack I hadn't heard about from my stepfather. This was the only phone call I got. To tell me she was dead. "Passed."

I know I had questions--when, how, what caused it--though I don't really remember much about what I asked or what he told me. I remember long pauses and breathing, in-out, in-out, willing it to be over so I could go back to sleep. I remember him rambling on, telling me the minutia about the hours leading up to her heart attack. What she'd been doing (watching television, first Army Wives and then Bill O'Reilly), where she'd been (on the couch), what she said about not wanting to go to the hospital. I do clearly remember asking if she had been in any pain before she died. He said no. I think I said, "That was days ago. You could have called me before she died." He made some excuse about being busy at the hospital.

He said something about funeral plans. I told him to let me know. He didn't.

Then the conversation was over. He finished with, "Well, give us--I mean me--a call sometime." His voice broke and for a minute I felt sorry for him. Almost 40 years of marriage. Rocky years, mostly, but he probably felt lost without her.

I hung up the phone and looked at the clock. We'd talked for less than ten minutes. There was no closure, no "I love yous" or any other heartfelt sentiments you'd expect between a father and his daughter upon the death of the woman they called wife and mother. It was what it was.

I didn't intend to call him any more than I planned to attend the funeral several states away. The only thing I did was look for her obituary online several days later. Under her surviving relatives, I was referred to by my maiden name. My stepfather's last name. A name I hadn't used in nearly seventeen years. Figures.

I didn't go back to sleep that morning. The tears came about five minutes later while I lay there trying to feel something about her death. I cried for about as long as we'd talked, feeling the permanence of a loss I'd lived with for most of my life. The mother I wanted and never had. The mother I needed who didn't exist. I cried, not for her death, but for the loss of what could never be. The fantasy. The hope that someday we might find a way to be the mother I needed and the daughter she wanted. It never would have happened, of course. Even if she'd lived to be 100 instead of only 64, we never would have had that fantasy relationship. I knew that. Had always known that. But death brings with it a finality that destroys even the most optimistic hope.

I called my husband who was out of the state at the time and I called three friends who knew about my non-relationship with my mother. No one knew what to say to me and I couldn't have told them. There really were no words to make it better or easier. It was what it was.

That afternoon, I went to an amusement park with one of those friends, a date we'd planned weeks before that I refused to cancel. I stubbornly stuck to the plan even though I would have rather crawled into bed and stayed there for the rest of the day. In retrospect, I realize my stubbornness was mostly grief-stricken shock. It was a child-like celebration of life. I rode rollercoaster after rollercoaster until I was dizzy and sick from it and at every flip and turn I screamed.

A rollercoaster is a good place to scream. No one is startled. No one even cares. You could murder someone on a rollercoaster and as long as no one saw you do it, the screams would go unanswered.

I screamed as loud and as long as I could, until my voice was hoarse and raw from strain. I screamed as if my heart were breaking. I screamed as I hurled through the air, head over heels, the ground above me, the sky an upside down blur. I screamed into the wind, my voice lost among other screams and the sounds of machinery and carnival music. I screamed, not caring that it would hurt to talk the next day. I screamed with my hands in the air in defiance of every instinct that said hold on tight and protect myself.

Yes, I cried on the day my mother died. But mostly I screamed.

In the Vale of Tears

There are big events that provoke tears: loss, rejection, abuse, huge, unexpected disappointment. Some tear-jerking events are sexual: intense pleasure, mind-numbing violation, the pain of childbirth. The death of a loved one is supposed to provoke tears.

Then there is the shocking sting of tears that seem inappropriate, a lurid over-reaction to someone else’s tragedy. Tears like that seem undeserved (at least by the one who weeps). They are like sudden, unexpected orgasms – especially embarrassing if they happen in public. They are like water gushing out of the ground from an underground reservoir that no one knew was there.

Her name was Ann – not “Anne” with an e like the famous Anne of Green Gables. She was part of a small community of American academics in our town in Canada who all got together on American Thanksgiving.

I met Ann through my parents when I was a teenager and she was my father’s younger colleague. In time, I noticed that she didn’t really have friends.

Ann always seemed brittle, as though she would break if someone touched her. On the bus, where we often travelled to the university together, she would give me a brisk nod without words. She taught history, and often pointed out (after too many drinks in the home of the one who usually hosted the Thanksgiving dinner) that her parents had prevented her from following her first love by majoring in art. Apparently they thought history was a more suitably intellectual subject.

Once when the heavy topic of child sexual abuse came up in conversation at Thanksgiving, Ann said between gritted teeth: “How can you be sure that never happened to me?” She was chain-smoking, as usual, and she stubbed out her cigarette for emphasis, even though it wasn’t finished. I wondered to whom her question was really addressed. No one seemed able to look her in the eyes.

In her thirties, Ann married a local painter who had a reputation for being eccentric, if not downright insane. He created weird-looking metal sculptures. The marriage was over within five years, but she kept his family name for the rest of her life.

The three-story apartment that Ann and her husband had rented was cheap even by the standards of the 1970s, so I moved in with my current husband. The basement walls had big smears of red paint, presumably thrown there by Ann’s husband. We often came home to see lights on in the basement, even though I could swear I had turned them off. That part of the place had such a creepy vibe that I hated to go down there to do laundry. The washer and dryer never sat evenly on the concrete floor, and could shimmy into vaguely disconcerting positions, as though trying to give me messages in the private language of appliances.

My own marriage ended melodramatically when I escaped from house arrest with our three-month-old baby.

When my daughter was a preschooler, Ann borrowed a recent photo of her from my mother. Ann was taking a non-credit art class, and she used the photo as the basis for a drawing that she turned into a print. I wondered if Ann regretted her lack of children as much as she seemed to regret being exiled from the art world. I felt vicariously flattered that she chose to immortalize my baby girl in art, but the print itself didn’t impress me. I thought it lacked soul as well as technical skill.

The woman who always hosted the Thanksgiving dinners died of cancer, and my parents went into a nursing home. The circle of expatriates from the 1960s seemed to fall apart as a social group. I lost touch with Ann for several years, even though we were teaching in the same university.

Thanks to the efficiency of the university administration, every death, marriage and birth among the faculty is announced far and wide by email. That was how I learned of Ann’s death in her early sixties, when she was within sight of retirement.

My parents couldn’t attend the funeral, and I felt honor-bound to represent them – or to bear witness to the past. I had always planned to research and write something about the influx of American immigrants to Canada in the 1960s and ‘70s (before the U.S. government declared an amnesty for draft dodgers). Ann had been part of that wave, and I sometimes wondered (briefly) if my project would excite her and if she would want to be involved as more than an interviewee. But then I would remember that she was a pawn of Clio (the Greek muse of history, after whom Ann named her cat), not her lover.

At the funeral, I looked around for Ann’s relatives. I even asked a few of our colleagues where they were. There was no sign of them, or of her ex-husband.

The eulogy was given by the head of the History Department, who seemed to be making a recommendation: Dear God, this person has been a suitable employee, so please open the pearly gates for her. There was even a hymn (which all those present were expected to sing) about Sophia, the spirit of Wisdom, as a gift from God.

I looked around, and saw no signs of grief on any face. That did it.

OMG. OMG. The woman is dead, and this is all anyone can think of to say about her. Someone should be crying, dammit. Someone should be upset. I dabbed at my eyes with a Kleenex, and my tears flowed faster. Luckily, I was sitting near the back of the church, and I was able to avoid making noise.

I remembered having a similar reaction to the death of two gay men (a couple, not close friends) from AIDS-related illnesses within twenty-four hours of each other. One of them had been the treasurer on a board where I was the secretary. Number-crunching had been his day job as well. I learned at the funeral that he was younger than I thought (38 when he died, even though he had a receding hairline). That made my eyes wet.

Maybe I wasn’t entitled to mourn, in either case. Maybe my grief wasn’t personal enough. Maybe I should have sucked it up.

But dammit, someone should shed tears at a funeral. The dead aren’t coming back – at least, not in any recognizable form.

Someone once said that we don’t cry for the dead, we cry for ourselves. Be that as it may, I hope someone will pay a tribute of tears for me someday. I can already hear my parting song: “Please cry for me, Pasadena.”

---------------