My Weird Fetish

There's only one ritual I wish I could break. I have others: needing to have something on the telly while I write, making a playlist for it, etc. I have to have a shower before I got to bed and I don't like moving from any place without checking first that I've got everything. You know, little things like that.

But they're not as bad as the one ritual I can't seem to get rid of, no matter how hard I try:

When I watch Masterchef, or any other food program, I have to have something to eat. Which doesn't sound that bad, until you realise how much I LOVE Masterchef. Like: seriously. My Sky planner is packed to the gills with every iteration of this show.

Australian Masterchef. Australian Kid's Masterchef. Masterchef On Ice. Masterchef For Dummies. You name a Masterchef - even the ones that don't exist - and I'll have watched it. I even know the theme tunes for most of them, and can state the things the judges are going to say before they say it.

For example: I know John Torode hates fish paired with orange. I understand that Greg Wallace does not really assess food - he simply lists the ingredients in it and what they usually taste like. "You get iron rich spinach, beefy steak, tangy garlic..." Well yes, I kind of hope you do. It'd be weird if you were getting spinach rich with zinc and steak that tasted like chicken.

But anyhoo - I digress. About Masterchef, and what I absolutely have to do while it's on.

I have to eat. And it's gotten so bad that I've had to start lining up my meals with watching it - otherwise I'd just be eating all the time while my television turns into the Masterchef box. It's worse than that, in fact, because the other day Husband noticed that I wasn't eating the dinner in front of me. And then he realised why: it's because he'd paused Masterchef to go get himself a drink.

Which probably makes it less of a ritual and more of a weird fetish that I can't shake.

Sorry, Lisabet. I've discussed the wrong topic. I thought we were on "Mad Things Charlotte Likes To Do For No Good Reason", and penned this post accordingly. Maybe after I've had some beans and toast while watching Greg Wallace describe how food tastes, I'll be able to come up with something that makes more sense...

Ritual

By Lisabet Sarai

To GCS

They meet, infrequently, to perform the ritual. She waits for him to arrive, heart slamming against her ribs, stomach twisted with nervousness. When he enters, they embrace, awkwardly. It has been so long. She attempts lightness, a joke, a jibe, pretending that she does not know why she is here. Then he gives the sign - a mere eyebrow, arched in a question - and her protective humor slips from her along with her clothing.

The ritual demands much of them, the steps choreographed, but always with room for improvisation. First he binds her, with rope, or silk, or leather, ceiling-hung with thighs spread, or splayed across the bed, or bent double over a hassock. Sometimes he will position her limbs and bind her to stillness with his command alone.

Then he teases her, dabbles his fingers in her wetness, lovingly mocks her sluttishness. She melts at his slightest touch, sinks liquid and helpless into the ritual spirit, moaning just as he intends. She could drown in his rich voice, nuanced and full of power. He pinches her nipples into aching peaks, captures them in clothespins, or cinches them with rubber bands. All the while he strokes her pussy, calls her his pet, muddles the pains and the pleasures beseiging her.

Next, he beats her. Here the ritual has many variants, but all with a single purpose: to invoke the purity of her surrender. She writhes under the lash, twists away from the hairbrush, whimpers as his bare palm reddens her buttocks. She does not wish to resist him; her only thought now is to please. But the pain is difficult to endure. Breathe, he says, soothing, encouraging, even as he scourges her. Open yourself. Yield yourself to me once again.

His voice is the key that unlocks her. Some barrier shatters and she floats free, each stroke of the whip an ecstatic kiss. His mind moves with hers now, sharing her agony and her joy. His breath comes in gasps like hers. His organ is granite. Now, come to me, my love, he whispers, entering her front or rear or spraying her marked thighs with his burning seed. She obeys, sliding into climax as he slides inside her, white hot fringed with red streaks of the pain.

Transcendence. Communion. Completion. They do not speak of it as they dress. There is no need for speech when the ritual is complete.

They meet infrequently. Sitting alone, on the plane or the bus taking her homeward, she savors the gaping, twitching sensations in her rear hole, the sharp echo of her stripes as she shifts in her seat, the slickness, still, in her sex. His voice echos in her mind.

Theirs is an old love. She thinks of him daily, imagines his life, her chest swollen with bittersweet aching. He thinks of her less frequently, but when he does, he gnashes his teeth, driven almost to madness because he cannot possess her. Then he recalls her sweet pliancy, her willing debasement, and his lips curve in a smile as he strums on his cock.

The ritual renews them. When she lies in a dentist's chair, or on the surgeon's table, when she wakes in fear in the night, she remembers him. Breathe. Open. Surrender. She relaxes into the fear, trusting as she trusts him.

She is sure that she will think of him, that way, when she surrenders herself into the arms of death. And then, perhaps, their meetings will be more frequent, and the ritual will be perfected.

(You must all get tired of this theme, over and over. But I can't help it... ~ Lisabet)

One Night in Heaven

by Kristina Wright

On Tuesday night, I spent my first night away from baby #2. I had not been away from baby #1 since last August, when I was hugely pregnant with #2, so this night away was a long time coming. Last August, husband and I went away for one night, followed by one night on my own. It was relaxing and peaceful, but since I had the constant reminder of baby #2 kicking me in the ribs or dancing on my bladder, it was also exhausting. I hardly slept, never able to get comfortable or stay asleep for long. I still enjoyed it, just as I had enjoyed other nights away, but I have been longing for a good night's sleep and a day/night to myself for months. Finally, on Tuesday, it happened.

It's hard to explain to someone who doesn't understand how important it is for me to get my alone time. Prior to the arrival of baby #1 in December 2009, I had an abundance of alone time. With a military spouse who was deployed several times and whose schedule when home often involved long hours and duty days (overnights on the ship), I was often alone. And I loved it-- most of the time. Then my best friend came to stay with me in November prior to baby #1 and then baby #1 arrived and then... I was never alone. Ever. Even with my husband deployed, I still had an infant in the house.

It was August of 2010 before I went off for a night alone. It was a deliberate and conscious effort to separate the "me" from the "mama"-- a night in a hotel just twenty minutes from my house. A night for my husband to be alone with the baby, a night for me to relax. It didn't go well. I didn't sleep, I was out of sorts, I felt strange and guilty. The second time I went away, I went far, far away-- to Portland, Oregon-- for five days. That was semi-work related, I had readings and events scheduled and hung out with writer friends, which I could justify as work-related. But, really, it was another attempt at getting myself back, getting the alone time I needed. Four nights in the beautiful Heathman Hotel, my body rested, my brain fed with new sights and wonderful conversations, I came home refreshed and rejuvenated. Baby #1 was ten months old and I felt like I could conquer the world as a writer, partner, mother. I was determined to go away a few times a year, to refill the well, so to speak. To feed my soul...

And then, two months after I got back from Portland, I got pregnant again. My goal to get away regularly evaporated as I faced another pregnancy and all the fun stuff that goes along with it. I did go away a couple of times for more work-related stuff-- readings in Richmond (two hours away), Baltimore (four hours away) and the Williamsburg weekend with my husband-- all with mixed results. Being pregnant and hormonal, I was physically and mentally exhausted most of the time and any time away involved dealing with other people's needs, as well. With the exception of that last night in Williamsburg, I didn't ever feel like I was truly getting what I needed for myself. Then baby #2 arrived September 1, 2011 and once again any thoughts of getting away disappeared into the fog as infant care (and toddler care) took precedence over my needs.

This time after the baby was born, even though I was making promises to go to this conference or that event, I wasn't sure if I'd ever be able to get away again. Two kids are more work than one kid, especially when they're less than two years apart in age, and I didn't want to put that on my husband even if he was willing to do it. But the nature of my job means doing at least some very basic promotion and event attendance and so I've had to commit to a few things, including an event at a bookstore in Richmond on Tuesday night. And so, while I was sort of reluctant to go because it involved my husband taking off work and a rather dull two-hour drive, once I was there... I felt like myself again. Checking into a hotel alone, spreading my belongings around a hotel room and bathroom, having nowhere to be until 6:30 PM and the ability to wander the neighborhood unencumbered by babies and strollers and diaper bags. Oh, it was lovely. So lovely. That was me-- that was my life-- for so very long and oh, how I've missed it.

I had 29 hours alone, from 11:30 AM when I left my house Tuesday morning until 4:30 PM when I arrived home Wednesday afternoon. Of those 29 hours, I spent 11 of them in bed, 5 of them in the company of other people (which was lovely, too) and 13 blessed hours completely and utterly alone. You cannot imagine what that is like. I know I couldn't have imagined, pre-kids, how much of a gift it would feel like to be given a day or night to myself. I wasn't in denial about parenthood-- if anything, it's turned out to be easier than I expected (I expected the Apocalypse-- anything less would be easier). But I underestimated my need for solitude. I thought it would be enough to have twenty hours a week in the coffee shop to do my work and the hours after the babies went to bed. But while those times are nice-- and necessary, if I'm going to do my job at all-- my mind is always on the clock. What time I have to be home, what time I need to go to bed in order to get any kind of sleep to prepare me for the rigors of two energetic boys. Being able to go away and not even look at the time, to wander into a coffee shop and sit there for two hours reading and daydreaming, to wake up in the morning, roll over and go back to sleep, to take the scenic road home even though I'm not familiar with it and might get lost... these are things I took for granted before I had children. And they were the things that fed my creative soul.

We make do with what we have. We find ways to create without the things we crave. We do. We have to. At least, I have to. And so I do. But that doesn't mean my soul craves it any less. And so I have to carve out those times, even if it is a hassle to plan around the childcare, even if there is maternal guilt over leaving my children and spousal guilt for putting the parenting duties fully on my husband for a time. I'm lucky that I have not only a flexible job but one that gives me opportunities to go away, as much or as little as I want or can. I will probably never go away alone more than a few nights a year, for both financial and emotional reasons, but knowing that I can again-- knowing that I have a trip coming up, that I will get a few days here and there to recharge and plan and plot and create and connect with other writers... that's my idea of heaven. That's what feeds my writer's soul.

Coming home to my family after just one night away, I felt like I'd found my center once again. I felt refreshed, more like myself. I missed my babies, even for one day, and I came home earlier than I needed to just to be there when they went to bed and to spend a couple of quiet hours with my husband. I might run away, but I'll never run far or for long. I'm a free spirit with wanderlust in my soul, caught between the family life I adore and the solitude I crave, always searching for that elusive balance between the two that will keep my domestic and creative selves happy. This week, I found it.

What Feeds Me

by Jean Roberta


1. Animal companions. My spouse & I have 3 dogs and 3 cats who all get along with each other. We’ve seen interspecies snuggling interspersed with play-fights. (Small, female dog barks ferociously at large cat, who arches his back and hisses. Moments later, they curl up together for a nap.) I’m not sure if keeping pets is a distinctly lesbian tradition -- most people we know here on the Canadian prairies have animals, and folks who live out of town tend to have horses, goats, pigs, etc.

However, note the above portrait of writer Radclyffe Hall and her partner Una Troubridge, about 1930. (I have noticed that using animals as accessories is generally not a good idea, much like using children for the same purpose.)

2. Clothes-shopping. Much porn or erotica that is aimed at women uses detailed descriptions of clothing as a kind of foreplay leading to the main event. In some stories, clothes-shopping and sex are a delicious combination of activities that lead to a grand climax in a fitting room, with ridiculous shoes and frothy lingerie as part of the scenery. I try not to carry this motif to a cringe-worthy extreme, but here is the opening scene of “Opening Ceremony,” set in a boutique which hasn’t opened for business yet. This is one of my stories which were published in a “Wicked Words” anthology from the now-defunct Black Lace Books (UK):
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pru’s tall, slim body was coiled elegantly on the leather sofa in her new shop. Her grand opening was scheduled for the next day, but for now we were alone, like two actors on a stage before the curtain goes up. I couldn’t help admiring the glow on my friend’s dark lively face, or her elaborate hairdo. She had learned from a Nigerian woman how to wrap dozens of tiny braids in black thread that caught the light from different angles whenever she moved her head.

“Well, what do you think?” she asked.

“It looks good, Pru,” I assured her.

Pru’s clothing store was decorated to look like a forest, and the effect of the murals on the walls and the indirect lighting was surprisingly convincing, despite the full racks of dresses, suits, blouses and trousers that seemed to be blooming in the unexplored wilderness. The furnishings were in earthy shades of green, gold and brown. “It looks like a sacred grove,” I ventured, running the risk of offending her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This story was very loosely based on my relationship (so to speak) with an upscale women’s clothing store in my town where I could barely afford the items on the “reduced to clear” rack, circa 1985, but I visited regularly. The owner, a glamorous woman from the Caribbean, often waited on me herself, even though I’m sure she could size me up (as it were) as a low-income wannabe customer. The store did so well that the owner expanded by opening a restaurant next door. Unfortunately, this mini-mall didn’t last long. Both businesses folded, and the owner disappeared. (In spite of this, I still admire her vision and guts.)

3. Surprising myself with my actual skills. On bad days, I don’t really believe I’m good at anything, so discovering that I’m actually competent at something is always a revelation.

3a) Note to all wannabe singers: it is possible. Trust me. If I could sing in a choir, you can do it too. With practice and a reasonably good ear, you can hit the right notes most of the time, and when you don’t, you’ll be drowned out by the rest of the choir (with luck). Practice is the key. So is a good, patient choir director. Even if you don’t have the makings of a real diva (as I don’t), you and a group of other moderately-talented voices can join forces to sound better than the sum of your parts.

3b) I’ve just finished copy-editing 12 essays by a diverse group of academics, all writing on gay/lesbian/bi/trans subjects. Once I got started, I realized that I have much more perspective on other people’s writing than on my own. I could spot awkward or unclearly-constructed sentences at first glance, and typos or (OMG) grammatical mistakes jumped off the screen at me. So far, 11 of the contributors to the book I’m co-editing have responded to me, and they’ve all accepted most of my suggested revisions. Several even thanked me for polishing their prose. Yep, this is something I can do. (Over 20 years of grading student essays must have taught me something.)

4. Actual food. Luckily, my appetite seems to have decreased as I age. (Good thing – otherwise, my ass would have increased along with the years.) I seem to have broken my addiction to coffee, which used to be the fuel I needed to get going every morning. Now it’s a luxury, and I savour one cup on special days.

Chocolate has never lost its appeal, nor has red wine. (I’m not fussy – anything above the level of the cheap stuff sold in gallon jugs suits me fine. My spouse claims that most red wine tastes like tree bark. All the more for me.)

Most kinds of seafood appeal to me, although considerate dinner hosts (who are not female and/or not lesbian) have told me they avoid serving fish to lesbians, because this would seem like a tasteless joke. Not tasteless at all, I say, though a surprising number of my sisters in the local community say they don’t like to eat anything that came from an ocean or a river. (Then how do you --? Oh, never mind.)

5. Sunshine! Despite the general state of the world, there is nothing like a sunny day to give me hope that something good is on its way, even if I don't know yet what it is.
----------------------

The Deeper Gods

As I head out across the parking lot, across the street, heading for the Barton Field parade grounds, I’m blinking back tears. I did this to myself on purpose. I’ve been sitting in the car listening to a CD I bought by the Chieftains called “Voice of Ages”. There’s a song called “School Days Over” which tears me to pieces every time. There’s a handful of songs that do this to me and I reserve them for the days I'm going to write. Listening to one of these personally sacred songs is an act of communion, like standing on a cliff over the sea, blowing a conch shell to invoke the deeper gods. They bring up to the surface that interior part of me with all of its scars and images, up from the dark and the cold, up to the surface where we can commune and look each other in the face. Music is how I conjure the gods and the demons both.

“School Days Over” has to be one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard, but only because it speaks to me. A Irish father is telling his son to wake up, put on his pit boots and work clothes for the first time. He’ll have to drop out of school, give up whatever he hoped to be, and begin his first days in the coal mine as a laborer who will be old before his time. With a soft mixture of pride and grief he sings "Put on the sark and moleskin trousers, time to be on your way." Trading dreams for the pick and shovel is what men have always done for those who need us to do this and need us to be that. Its how the male soul defines itself to women and children, and ultimately to ourselves. Women do this too in their own way. A man purchases his manhood with his freedom. A woman purchases it with her happiness.

As I reach the two mile dirt track, young men and women go jogging by. A small squad of them gallop past as a sergeant chants cadence. They’re wearing exercise uniforms and sneakers, but the pit boots are there nevertheless.

I take off my shoes, pull off my socks. I stuff the socks in the shoes and roll up my pants cuffs. It’s a warm day in the deep south, with some wet thunderheads on the horizon. I want to walk barefoot. I want to feel the cool oiled sand under my feet, even though I’ll walk with a funny penguin gait. It’s what I want more than anything right now.

Walking under the trees, with my shoes tucked under my arm, thinking about the coal miner and his schoolboy son whose childhood is over. Letting my mind wander anywhere.

Last night I was watching James Cameron’s masterpiece “Titanic”. I don’t know anything about romance, but the passion and poignancy of the romance between Jack and Rose speaks to me. Jack might have been that coal miners son, who decided to step into the unknown and find the world for himself. He refused to let anybody dictate what he would be. Especially the wealthy swells of the time who tread contemptuously on the miners and Irish poor in the steerage. When it was time to man the life boats, the steerage poor were locked down below so that the "people of quality" might have the boats to themselves. All that changed in only a few years. That iceberg may as well have been World War I crashing into British society and sinking it, But the ending bothers me. Rose, the old woman, dies and is reunited with Jack the young man. They are young and on the stair case.

But wait wait.

Who is Rose? Is she the old woman, married at least once and with children and grandchildren, or is she Rose of the Titanic? Who? And who is Jack, frozen in time? Is he a ghost.

But wait wait.

Is that what a ghost is? An image, like the gray of a flashbulb on the retina, of a moment frozen in time? If this is the best possible moment for Jack and Rose will this instant last forever repeating itself endlessly? Is that what a haunted house is? Is this the real meaning of Heaven, life’s best moment repeated in an endless loop. But what is Hell? What of Jack and Rose's worst moment, chained to a pipe as the ship fills with ice water? Is there a frozen ghost of that moment? Is that Hell?

But wait wait.

If we’re sitting at the bottom of a well of circumstance and neurology, who are we really? Who is the real me walking the track?

Freud and Jung together made the conjuring of the unconscious their craft and laboratory. Freud realized that the unconscious doesn’t distinguish values, it doesn’t distinguish between fantasy and reality. If I imagine love making vividly enough, I’ll get hard and feel desire for release. A woman, imagining passion will dilate and become wet, ready to receive. The unconscious doesn’t make a distinction.

Jung understood that the unconscious works in imagery not in words, maybe that's why it doesn't distinguish reality. He was fascinated by tarot cards and dream imagery and the mystery of coincidence.

Magick, ritual magic as opposed to stage magic, is based on the concentrated projection of imagery and imagination. Almost any image will due if it can be imbued with emotional content. It’s the power of a song to make a man cry, when he sees himself there. Its an unspoken language. So much of magick as I’ve read of in books is about focusing the will and the imagination together to bend reality. Very few can do it. But religious people do it with acts of faith all the time. There is a theory in Tibetan Buddhism that the afterlife is composed of the images of our strongest desires and fears made real to us. If there were a Jack and a Rose there is no reason they wouldn’t find themselves on that stair case, frozen in their moment of greatest happiness.

Overhead a red hawk is circling and I feel the great urge upon me, because writing is an urge. Its not just something you do, its something you can’t help but do.

I see the hawk circling above. I’m imagining a room with predatory animals as trophies on the walls. I’m imagining a man with an eye patch and a silver haired girl is talking to him and he tells her of his fascination with predators. That he is a hunter, a predator himself. And what is the ultimate predator? A man? No, he says. There is one greater.

Would she like to meet her?

I’m done walking. I need to write. I’m on my way to find the table, one of three locations I sit at depending on where I am, because I know the sea god is waiting for me there. My rituals are about to begin.


(If you would like to see a performance of "School Days Over" by the Chieftains and The Low Anthem, you may find it here:)

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2012/02/chieftains-low-anthem-school-days-over-video-premiere.html

Starvation

There are several things that feed my soul:

1. Literally food. Which is bad, because it means my soul is all fat and satisfied and filled with chocolate, but it also means my ass is fat and satisfied and filled with chocolate.

2. Films/television shows. Not only do they feed my soul, they also feed my stories. Images from film, particularly the films I loved as a child, are my single biggest writing influence. And yeah, I know it should probably be books, but it's just not. When I write about a lonely soldier on an outpost on some planet, falling for an android in the middle of a monster attack, it's the movie Aliens I'm seeing behind my eyes. The iconography of that film has stayed with me all these years: the visceral look of the creatures, the action beats played out perfectly, the interpersonal conflict, the distinct but raw sketching of the marines...it's all echoing through me currently. Just as Labyrinth echoed through me for Tigerlily, and Secretary echoed through me for Power Play.

3. Books. Films are the driving passion behind my writing; books are the reason I can write.

4. My Husband's silly ways. Nothing gives my exhausted, battered soul more succour than Husband's little daft comments, his strange attempts at comfort, his random hugs, his steady love. He is my Sunday best and my daily bread, and I eat the soul food he provides greedily.

I think I'd pretty much starve, without.

Hum

by Kathleen Bradean

Way back, when I lived in Oklahoma, there was the long way to school on paved streets, or there was the shortcut through open fields of sweetly scented prairie grass and a little gully with a stream and trees. Guess which one I took? Even though it meant sitting on the front porch pulling burrs off my knee-high white cotton socks and a search for tics before I was allowed in the house, I always went the short route. Of course, it took me much longer than walking the "long" route because I had to check the creek for crawdads, climb into the rotting tree fort, stop and listen to the meadowlarks, catch a horned toad, and sing songs I made up at the spur of the moment at the top of my lungs. Back then, I didn't care that I couldn't sing. The songs poured out of me like stories. I can't even remember what I sang about. I just did it.

I miss that effortless creativity. I don't understand why it went away. Or maybe I remember doing it more often than I did and I've always had uneven spurts of output. All I know is that sometimes I try to be creative and it just doesn’t work. It's not an on-off switch. It's not a bottomless well I can draw from forever. But I do know that it can be coaxed out if I don't try too hard. All I need is a little soul food.

When it feels as if my soul has run dry, I usually turn to nature. A visit to the Huntington Library does me a world of good. If it's winter, the camellias are in bloom. I've never seen a camellia I didn't like. And the succulent garden is in bloom. It's amazing to see the delicate flowers such prickly plants produce. In spring, wisteria covered walkways offer fragrant, cool tunnels of green and purple. Koi, living jewels, leisurely swim under lily pads in quiet pools. Hidden waterfalls burble like laughter under ferns and tropical leaves. In the Japanese garden, a moon bridge arches gracefully over a reflecting pool. And then there's the Zen garden - white stones raked carefully in rippled lines to represent water, boulders arranged to look like mountain peaks above the clouds, and in the background, a Japanese maple or an azalea, lending a spot of color to a monochromatic canvass. And then there's the library. They have a Gutenberg Bible, one of the original Audubon books, illuminated Book of the Hours, and even the Canterbury Tales.

I don't sing out loud any more, but as I stroll through the Shakespeare garden or the roses, I can feel my soul humming along - or maybe that's purring with content.