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.
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*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.

Living Without Winter

By Lisabet Sarai

For the past seven years, I've resided in a tropical country where we have three seasons: the hot season, the rainy (and hot) season, and the laughably-titled "cool" season, when the temperature occasionally dips into the seventies. Thus, I've been deprived of winter for the better half of a decade. Before the move, though, I lived in rural New England for more than twenty years, so I have plenty of experience with all the joys the season brings, for example, blizzards, ice-storms and that nightmarish anomaly that seems to be a Massachusetts specialty, freezing rain. I remember winter only too well: power outages, snow tires, storm windows, shoveling, hauling firewood, pulling all the winter clothes out of the attic, making sure your anti-freeze is full... After spending two years in balmy California then returning to my native clime, I came to realize that winter in a place with serious weather is an incredible amount of work.

I usually go back to the U.S. once a year to visit family, but in the spring (during the excruciatingly hot season in my adopted country). Winter is a vivid but increasingly distant memory. I do find myself waxing nostalgic and romanticizing the season. I imagine the crisp, hushed beauty of a frigid night, when the stars glitter like faraway diamonds in the velvet sky. I remember the excitement of waking up to find the trees cloaked in a soft white blanket, the river a silent ribbon of ice, the footprints of a rabbit the only sign of life in the snow-smothered world. I find myself missing the camaraderie of working with my husband to clear a path up our long driveway to the street - conveniently forgetting aching backs and frost-bitten extremities. Memories of childhood delights return to entice me: racing down a snowy hill on my Radio Flyer, digging snow houses out of the piles left by the plows, sitting on the wooden bench next to the flooded and frozen tennis court to don my cherished white figure skates. The scent of wood smoke hanging in the air - Campbell's tomato soup topped with Cheerios and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch after stripping off my soaked snowsuit - real cocoa topped with marshmallows to warm my numb fingers... I could go on and on. Yes, I do miss winter, no matter how hard I try to focus on the dangers and inconveniences it brought.

One of the side benefits of being a writer, though, is that we can use fiction to recreate what we've lost. I definitely do that when it comes to the erotic aspects of my work. The faraway sexual adventures of my youth provide seeds for many of my stories. I write partially to recapture the thrill of those heady days when I was first exploring the joys and perils of passion.

In a similar vein, I can relive the experiences of true winter by incorporating the season into my fictional worlds. My most recent release, Almost Home, takes place during a New England blizzard, which traps the two heroes and the heroine in a eighteenth century farmhouse (modeled after the home of one of my former neighbors). My M/M novel Necessary Madness is also a winter's tale. In one of my favorite scenes, the protagonists, driving home in a storm, stop at a closed, snow-clogged highway rest area because - well, they can't wait any longer:

They’d left in a rush, barely polite. In their eagerness to get back to Rob’s apartment, they’d refused offers of coffee and breakfast. The one-hour trip from Petersham to Worcester seemed endless, especially since the state of the roads demanded extra caution.

Rob’s erection throbbed, painful and demanding. He guessed that Kyle was hard too, though with the bulky jacket and scarf, he couldn’t tell for sure. Kyle felt Rob’s gaze. He raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question and his full lips curled into a smile, but he didn’t speak.

Rob couldn’t stand it any longer. They were coming down the hill into Gardner. There was a rest area near the city line. Rob yanked the steering wheel and the car swerved into the exit lane, cutting off a truck easing up from behind.

“What the hell are you doing?” Kyle yelled. The rest area hadn’t been ploughed yet. The Saturn skidded for several yards before it came to rest in a parking spot. Rob scrambled out, then came around to open the passenger-side door. “Come on. I just can’t wait anymore.”

The lot was deserted. Wind rustled the tall pines sheltering the building that housed the toilets, knocking clumps of snow onto the windshield. Rob grabbed Kyle’s hand and practically dragged him out of the car.

“Rob, it’s probably locked.”

“I’ll break down the door if I have to.” Rob was desperate. But the men’s room was open, although the electricity appeared to be off. Wan light entered via a dirty window near the ceiling. He pulled Kyle through the door and pressed him against the tiled wall, devouring his mouth. Kyle responded with equal passion. Rob ripped open the snaps on Kyle’s jacket and grabbed at his crotch.

“I’m sorry. I’ve got to have you. Now. I can’t concentrate. I can’t drive. All I can think about is you.” He unfastened Kyle’s belt and unzipped his fly, then yanked the jeans down around Kyle’s knees. The young man’s cock sprang out, huge and ready. Rob cradled it in his hands, then squeezed hard. Kyle groaned.

“Rob, what if somebody comes?”

Rob chuckled as he wrestled with his own cold fly. “Somebody is going to come—you and me!”

“No, really. If a state trooper came in to take a leak and found us here—you might lose your job.”

“I don’t care. I can’t help it. Honestly, if I don’t fuck you right now…” Rob didn’t bother to finish the sentence. He turned Kyle to face the wall, bracing the other man’s hands against the cold ceramic surface. He wrapped his arms around Kyle’s chest and rubbed his cock back and forth in the boy’s ass crack. Kyle whimpered and ground his butt against Rob’s hardness, until Rob was sure he’d explode.

“Do it,” Kyle gasped, as Rob reached down and gripped his partner’s cock around the base. Kyle bent forward, presenting his rump. Rob spit on his fingers, then slipped one into the crevice between those pale globes. He probed the tight knot of muscle guarding Kyle’s entrance.

“I’ve got a rubber but no lube,” he whispered, wriggling his digit into Kyle’s rear hole. Kyle writhed in response. “Nothing but spit.”

“I can take it.” Kyle caught his breath as Rob inserted a second finger. “I can take anything you give me."

When I wrote this, I was there. All the sensory details were clear. I could feel the sickening swerve of the out-of-control vehicle, hear the pines groaning in the wind and the muted splat of snow blown onto the windshield. I shivered in the bitter chill of the unheated building, the scent of disinfectant rising in my nostrils, goosebumps prickling my bared flesh. Pasting the segment in here, I am surprised to note that almost none of the wintery sensations actually made it into the scene. The focus (appropriately, I hope) is on the sexual tension building between the characters. Winter is in there in the background, though, a contrast to the heat of my characters' desperate coupling.

Unlike some people who move to the tropics, I didn't leave my former home to escape from winter. Life is easier now, I'll admit, but I sometimes hunger for a taste of the cold, dark, snowy season and the complex emotions it evokes - fear, frustration, comfort, awe, hope. When the temperature drops below zero, you truly appreciate warmth. When the sun sets at four in the afternoon, you kindle a fire on the hearth to remind yourself light will return. Living without winter, I write to keep those feelings alive.