Exercise for Success by J P Bowie

Exercise - not something I'm particularly keen on . Oh, it's nice to fantasize about having a beauteous, bodacious body like so many men and women who grace the covers of fitness magazines...but the reality of getting to that place is not one that fills me with ambition.

Years ago I attended a gym or two, signed up for 2 years to get the 'special low price' then never went back after approximately two weeks. I read somewhere that the fitness centre franchises count on that happening. Imagine if all the people who signed up actually showed up on the same day. Talk about a mass of heaving, sweaty bodies!

Of course all my heroic characters have bodies to die for - but not the overly muscular monstrosities with veins popping out all over and a facial expression like they're about to take a giant dump. No, my guys have  lithe, limber hard bodies and go in more for the cardio workouts, maintaining lean muscle. Like Nick Fallon, my ace PI. He's a runner, pounding along the shoreline of Laguna Beach and finishing up with a hard climb up the steps from beach to cliff top. There he stands, manly chest heaving from his exertions, smooth skin glistening under the California sun...

And pause for effect.

Anyway, I've written a couple of stories involving exercise, hoping that my less than 'hands on' research isn't too obvious:

Personal Trainers

I have never been a gym bunny—actually I’m too old to be any kind of bunny really. Thirty-one last birthday. Middle aged, over-the-hill, and all those other cruel and nasty things people like to put on your birthday card when you pass the thirty mark.
Fortunately, I’d been blessed with a fairly trim and athletic body, but standing in front of the mirror one day after stepping out of the shower, I noticed bulges where there ought to be none—namely around my waist. Yikes...love handles! Double yikes as I stood sideways...the beginnings of a potbelly! Oh no, this would not do, I thought, slapping at the bulges as though I could beat them into oblivion. I frowned at my reflection as I combed my dark brown hair. Nothing for it, Robin, I thought. Gotta sign up at a health club, before you start to look like Jabba the Hutt!
All the way to work on the subway I fretted. Every time a guy looked my way I’d think he was staring at my thickening middle and mentally crossing me off his list of potential boyfriends. Man, talk about paranoid! At the coffee shop outside the building where I work, I ordered coffee, black, no sugar—and definitely no cheese Danish!
My office is on the third floor, but that morning I ignored the line at the elevator, and took the stairs two at a time, arriving at my desk thoroughly winded and even more determined to start some kind of exercise regimen. I sighed as I read over a memo from the boss stating that the company’s figures were way down for the year, and although he didn’t actually say it, he more or less blamed the employees for this regrettable state of affairs. I looked around the office and almost felt the blanket of gloom that had settled over my fellow workers.
The depressing start to the day became even worse as I watched Dan Waters, the office jock, preening in front of the water cooler. Dan was hot, and boy, did he know it. Twenty-six years old, and already the office supervisor, he was tall, built, hunky—and a total asshole, always ready with the put-down, and smart-aleck remark. Seeing him put the make on the office girls was enough to turn my stomach. The guy had never mastered the art of the cool approach. He was all swagger and pretension, with no subtlety whatsoever.
I hated him. I’d have jumped his bones, but I hated him, and there was definitely no love lost between us. He smirked, catching my eye, as he scanned his domain and we lesser mortals arranged therein.
“Hey, Carter...” He sauntered to my desk, giving me the fish-eye. “You get the memo?”
“We all got the memo, Dan.”
“So, you going to do better this week? Your figures are way down, you know.”
“I know,” I mumbled. “It’s the time of year.”
“You mean it’s your time of the month, doncha?” he sniggered. “Well, let’s see some improvement...”
Or you’re outta here was the implication, left unsaid.
I flushed crimson with anger and embarrassment. I had been with Barclays Financial for seven years and had been their top producer since day one. I should have been Dan’s boss, not the other way round, but his Daddy being the CEO had definitely swung the odds in his favour. As far as Dan was concerned, the memo I’d just read hadn’t been enough of a warning for me. He just had to rub it as a special treat for me. It galled me when I thought about the times I’d brought clients to Barclays after cold-calling on my own time and on my own dime.
A couple of the other guys sent me looks of sympathy after Dan had strutted back to his office, but I was already over it. The money at Barclays was good—too good to let an oaf like Dan Waters goad me into quitting. An oaf with a great butt—but one that I would have gladly kicked at that moment.
 ****
So Robin sees an ad for a personal trainer in a fitness magazine and decides to give him a call...exciting isn't it?

 * * * *
During my coffee break I picked up a Men of Iron magazine someone had left lying around, and started flipping through the pages. Muscle magazines generally bored me. I’ve never been into steroidal-looking guys, flexing massive muscles and looking like they needed to take a good dump. I was about to throw it down, when a smiling face caught my eye.
What a cutie, I thought, studying the image of an attractive blond young man, his open, friendly expression an instant turn-on. A great smile will do it for me every time, and this guy had one of the best. “Jack Kelly, personal trainer,” I murmured, reading the blurb under this photograph.
“He your type?”
I looked up, flustered, to see Dan sneering down at me.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me, Carter. The blond himbo there with the muscles. That what you go for?”
“What I go for is none of your business, Dan,” I snapped, bristling. “And your question is a little inappropriate, wouldn’t you say?”
He rolled his eyes and snickered. “So, you gonna sue for sexual harassment? You need witnesses for that, in case you didn’t know.”
He strutted out of the break room, leaving me seething with pent-up rage. Man, but I would have loved to plant my fist on that smug face. I had a wild vision of me doing just that and watching with a deal of satisfaction while his nose flattened under my punch, forever spoiling his cover boy looks.
That would certainly be the end of my days at Barclay Financial, as well. My downcast eyes fell upon the personal trainer’s ad again.
Let Jack Kelly give you back the physique of your youth. No matter what your age or present physical condition, I can coach and encourage you to good health and high self-esteem. Call today for an appointment…
I made a note of the phone number, not really knowing what I’d do with it. A personal trainer? Please… I’d never even dreamed of such a thing. Yet, maybe he could help me get rid of those extra inches round my waist…pump up my arms a little.
Couldn’t hurt.
Being thirty-one and single, I needed all the help I could get. High self-esteem, huh? Maybe I would get the nerve to plug Dan one!
Flipping through the pages, my interest turned to a rather pretty girl advertising an ab machine. I’m gay and haven’t been into women—excuse the bad pun—since high school, but there was just something about her smile that got me. Plus, she had a cute boyish figure, and I found myself smiling back.
At lunchtime, I called Jack Kelly’s number and got his voice mail. His voice was just like you’d expect him to sound. Warm, deep and sexy.
“This is Jack Kelly. Sorry I can’t take your call right now. Leave a message and I’ll get right back with you, soon as I can.”
“Oh hi,” I mumbled. “I saw your ad in a magazine and…uh…wondered if you could let me know your fees and…uh…stuff…uh…my name is Robin Carter.” I left my cell phone number and hung up with a sense of excited anticipation.
About mid-afternoon, he returned my call.
“Mr. Carter? This is Jack Kelly. You called earlier…”
“Oh yeah, hi. Just a moment.”
I rose from my desk and headed for the break room. We weren’t supposed to take personal calls at our desks unless it was an emergency, and I knew good ole Dan would be ready with an admonishment if he heard me making an appointment with a personal trainer. He’d probably have something ass-holey to say as well. I could just about hear his sneering voice. “Oh, Carter’s gonna come back all pumped up and muscley—yeah, fat chance!”
“Yeah, I’m here,” I whispered into the mouthpiece.
“You sound very far away, Mr. Carter. Do we have a bad connection?”
“No,” I said, raising my voice and feeling dumb. “Um, I saw your advertisement and was wondering if I could make an appointment with you. I’m a bit out of shape and could use some professional advice.”
“I’d be happy to help.” His voice was deep and relaxed, with a hint of that smile I’d seen in the magazine.
“What do you charge?” I asked, without much grace.
“Fifty dollars per session, plus one hundred dollars for your first visit. I’d like to sit with you, give you an evaluation, and an approximation of the kind of results you can expect. I would also like to schedule at least three sessions per week to get you off to a good start.”
I gulped. This guy was not cheap! But, what the hey? “Um…okay. Can I see you later today?”“Let’s see… My last appointment today is at three-thirty, so yeah, I can see you at five, if that’s convenient?”
“That’s good. Where are you?”
He gave me the name of the gym and directions on how to get there.
“Better make it five-thirty,” I said, after he’d finished.
“Fine. I’ll see you then, Mr. Carter. Thanks for answering my ad.”
“Oh, you’re welcome.”
For the rest of the afternoon, I found myself in a state of quiet excitement. I made several calls to clients asking if they’d like to upgrade their portfolios. Maybe the new dynamic in my voice made my usual sales pitch more interesting, as three of the four people I called increased their investments, thanking me profusely for my time and help. I turned in my reports at the end of the day, watching rather smugly, as Dan’s eyes widened on seeing the new figures.
“Looks like my little pep-talk netted results, eh, Carter?” He threw me a shit-eating grin that made me want to pop him one. And there was that vision again of Dan holding his broken and bloody nose…
I smiled benignly and headed for my appointment with Jack Kelly, personal trainer.
 ****
And of course the moral of this story is exercise for success! 

Do Your Characters Work Out?

By Lisabet Sarai

A screaming siren wakens me at four-thirty. The sound fades off into the distance, but my heart continues to pound against my ribs. Somebody else bleeding, maybe dying. Another victim.

I try to argue myself out of these dark thoughts and back to sleep, but it’s no use. The rectangle of gray that is my uncurtained window gradually brightens: first to charcoal, then to ash, finally to pearl. I turn my thoughts to Jimmy Ostermann, but they keep sliding away to Tony Pinelli.

Finally, around six, I give up and head downstairs for a cup of coffee. Throwing open the back door, I take a deep breath of the early morning. The air is cool and smells of earth and growth. It’s drizzling, the sticky warmth of the previous day only a memory.

My work means late nights. I don’t usually get out of bed before noon. I hardly know what to do with myself at this time of day. Munching on a piece of toast, I consider the question.

Rainy weather. Good for paperwork: paying bills, filing receipts and so on. Maybe I’ll spend some time looking through those Adriatic cruise brochures I got last week.

And Tony? Some other part of me interrupts my planning session. You need to figure out what’s going on with this situation, she says. If only to protect yourself. How did Tony’s widow know who you are, or how to find you? Why did she come by, and why did she seduce you? And why did you tell her that Mr. Clean—Andy—intended to shoot you in the hotel room? What’s going on, Stella? You’re a smart lady; figure it out.

This other voice is giving me a headache. Okay, I’ll spend some time on these questions. But bills first, and then a bit of a workout. After that, I’ll sit down and do some serious thinking.

Telephone, electric, gas, dry cleaning account. (My costumes need special care.) Department store charge. (They had a big sale last month, and I do like to dress well.) Maintenance fee for my dad’s cemetery plot. With a sigh, I update the balance and slide my checkbook back into the desk drawer. I can take care of myself, but it feels as though I have been doing it for an awfully long time.

Some stretching will pull me out of this funk. I change into leggings and a jog bra, then carefully unwrap my ankle. It’s still swollen, but a lot less discolored. Definitely better. When I put full weight on it, though, fiery pain shoots up my leg. Okay, so I’ll go easy for today and just do floor work and my weights.

A Supremes CD in my compact stereo, I begin with some leg lifts and sit ups. It doesn’t take long before I’m shimmying my shoulders in time with the beat, singing along with Diana. “Stop, in the name of love,” I moan as I alternate bicep curls with pec presses. “Before you break my heart, think it over.” Old as it is, this music never fails to cheer me up. Three quarters of an hour, and I feel like myself again: Stella Xanathakeos, queen of the strippers, one tough cookie.

~ From Exposure by Lisabet Sarai

****

Exercise has been part of my life ever since I was a kid. With my coke bottle glasses, clumsiness and flat feet, I was never athletic. However, for some reason my general klutziness didn't extend to dancing.

Growing up, I became used to seeing my mom put a record on the hifi (hey, this was a while ago!) and do stretches and dance exercises. Like me, she had dancing in her blood – she even worked as a professional belly dancer for a while. Sometimes I'd join her. I took dance lessons as a kid and belonged to the modern dance club in high school. I even performed in the school talent show, dancing the role of Bonnie in a number a friend and I choreographed to the theme from “Bonnie and Clyde”. (My eagerness to perform was another paradoxical contrast with my terrible shyness during this period.)

In college I swam laps as well as doing more modern dance. In grad school I swam, bicycled and belly danced. When I got my first job and moved to the west coast, one of the first things I did was to join the Y so I could use their pool. Later, I discovered Jazzercise. I was addicted to this lively, rowdy activity, doing two or three classes a week for more than two decades, even though I had to drive half an hour each way through rush hour traffic. (Now I guess Jazzercise is a bit passé, superseded by Zumba, pole dancing, and the Vixen Workout. The latter, I have to admit, sounds like incredible fun.)

Anyway, I've always enjoyed (moderate) exercise, especially when it involves music. When I don't work out for a while, my stress level noticeably increases. Like my heroine Stella, I find that exercise cheers me up and gets my mind off whatever's bothering me.

Of course, for an erotica author, exercise, with its tendency toward minimal clothing and lots of sweat, can serve as an intro or an excuse for characters to get involved in other sorts of physical activity. Gym equipment presents all sorts of opportunities for novel positions and sensations. And given my penchant for writing BDSM, how can I ignore the fact that a gym makes a fantastic impromptu dungeon?

****

I want sex, I need release, but it doesn't seem that I'm going to get it tonight. I stand, stretch, realize that my muscles are stiff and sore. Perhaps from my awkward position this afternoon. Perhaps because I haven't worked out in several days. Then I remember the well-equipped gym Rick showed me during our tour of the house. Just the thing.

I change from my sweat- and sex-damp dress into a sports bra and shorts, pull my hair into a low ponytail, and wend my way down the dark corridor toward the back of the building, where it settles into the hillside. Everything's very quiet. There's no light under Rick's door, or under Margaret's.

It crosses my mind that Margaret was odd and unfamiliar tonight, less diffident, more assertive than usual. She seemed to radiate a happy confidence that overwhelmed her usual seriousness. I guess that she has gotten over her embarrassment about her interlude with our host. I'm pleased at her resiliency.

The gym is even darker than the corridor. Like Rick's office, it has only small windows set high in the wall. I grope for the light switch, turning on the track lights overhead. Experimenting, I find that I can dim them down to a more pleasant, less blinding level.

I start with some stretches at the barre, watching myself in the mirror opposite me. I don't normally spend much time gazing at myself. I know I'm beautiful. But the woman I see reflected back at me tonight seems a stranger. Her petite frame, her small breasts, her delicate ankles, make her seem fragile. With my hair pulled back loosely, I look young. Innocent. Vulnerable.

I have to laugh at this fancy. I know that I am strong and full of power. I shift to one of the stationary weight machines, working my triceps and biceps until they burn. I've stopped watching myself. Next I turn my attention to my quads and adductors, pushing the weights apart as I open my thighs, working against their force to pull my legs back together again.

I work hard, trying to burn my arousal away into exhaustion. Somehow, it's not happening. Every time I spread my thighs apart, I'm acutely aware of my throbbing, swollen clit, hidden in my soaked shorts. I increase the force and pace of my repetitions, determined to be the mistress of my body and my urges. It's almost as though I'm climbing the slope to orgasm. The harder and faster I work, the more excited I become.

Finally, I have to stop. I lie back in the apparatus, panting. The room smells of musk and sweat. With a pang, I recognize the odor not only of my perspiration, but of his. Rick's. Damn. I close my eyes wearily, willing my body to relax. Damn, damn, damn.

There's a sound. My eyes fly open. I am no longer alone. For the briefest instant, I think that it's Rick, and my heart accelerates as though I were still working the machine. Then, with an inner smile, I realize my error. Raoul.

"Ruby!" he says in that soft Latin voice. "Sorry, I didn't mean to intrude. I had no idea that there was anyone here."

He has obviously come for his own workout. He wears a loose pair of shorts, nothing else. My eyes trace the curlicues of hair on his muscled chest. I smile. He smiles, sniffs, strolls over to stand between my spread thighs.

"I was having trouble sleeping," I tell him, knowing that he's reading other messages in my body, in the air. "Exercise is usually a good way for me to get rid of tension."

"Maybe I can help," he says, almost whispering. His hands on the tops of my thighs, he leans over and kisses me full on the lips. It's a simple, uncalculated kiss, no hidden agendas, no power trips, just texture, wetness, warmth. It's an invitation.

I accept. As he bends over me, I raise my legs and clasp them around his waist. I can feel his delicious hardness, pressing against me through our clothing. He gives a soft laugh, pulls up my bra and takes my nipple in his mouth. Lovely, to feel that texture, warmth, wetness against that sensitive flesh.

He gives me long minutes of bliss. When he stops, my nipples are round and rigid as ceramic beads. "Let me go for a moment," he says, and I release the clutch of my legs.

He stands and with a grace I find in few men, removes his shorts. I can't help but marvel at his beauty. Muscles that swell rather than bulge, curves that flow under his bronzed skin and lush fur. His cock juts proudly from a jet tangle at his groin. I have a sudden, uncharacteristic impulse to kneel at his feet and take him reverently into my mouth.

Before I can evaluate or act on this impulse, though, he seats himself on a recumbent stationary bicycle and leans back against the seat, one bare foot in each stirrup. His cock stands straight up, swaying a bit as he moves. It's simultaneously silly and wonderfully lewd.

He grins up at me. "Care to come for a ride, Ruby?"

~ From Nasty Business by Lisabet Sarai

****

Later in this novel, I set a long femdom scene in this same personal gym. Weight benches are great for bondage, I discovered. And the mirrors that line the walls of many gyms mean that both the dominant and her victim have an excellent view of discipline's effects.

Lately I haven't been working out as often as in the past. A hip replacement and a fractured knee have made me less flexible and a good deal more conservative in my routines. And I have such a long to-do list, I sometimes feel that I can't spare the time.

That's crazy. I know how delicious it will feel to get away from the computer, do some stretches, and shake my booty to some classic rock. If it's good for Stella and Ruby, I know it'll be good for me.

Roots

Monsters are usually thought of as animals, sometimes imaginary hybrid animals from ancient mythology, real but extinct predators (meat-eating dinosaurs, saber-toothed tigers), shapeshifters such as werewolves, or cursed men such as the “beast” in Beauty and the Beast.

However, there is a history of stories about scary plants as monsters. “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” a nineteenth-century story by U.S. writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, probably isn’t much read anymore outside of university English classes, but the musical Little Shop of Horrors (about a blood-craving plant as an alien from outer space) seems better-known. And no one can forget the classic R & B song “Poison Ivy,” first recorded by the Coasters in 1959. (Years later, the songwriters admitted that Ivy’s “poisonous” nature is code for a sexually-transmitted disease.)

Ten years ago, when I read the call-for-submissions from Torquere Press for an LGBTQ anthology on “myths and monsters,” I thought of the immense power of plants to change the course of human history. After all, it was a disease of the potato plant that caused massive famine in Ireland in 1847-50.

But plants don’t get widespread publicity. One fascinating story to be read between the lines of colonial U.S. history involves the development of a superior indigo plant on a plantation in South Carolina in the 1740s. At the time, indigo was in great demand for blue dye, widely used for police and military uniforms. After a hardier plant was developed, the English colonies were able to compete successfully with France in the indigo trade. In due course, the colonies could survive economically on their own – and colonists resented being taxed and otherwise controlled by the British crown. The rest, as they say, is history.

But who figured out how to grow a better indigo plant? The history books give credit to a seventeen-year-old girl named Eliza Lucas, daughter of the plantation-owner. Her father was often away, and her mother was a semi-invalid. It seems likely that Eliza got credit for this achievement simply because no other white person on the plantation could plausibly claim it.

There would have been African slaves there, and some of them might have been brought from their homelands as adults, with valuable knowledge of the plants that grow in tropical or semi-tropical climates. What if the real gardener who improved the indigo plant was an anonymous person with no recognized rights at the time? In that case, both the plant-breeder AND the plant would have a reason to resent being written out of history.

These were the seeds of the following story, “Roots.” Eventually, Torquere Press got so many stories that they brought out two anthologies, named Myths and Monsters. My story appeared in Monsters.

Roots

The florist shop looked and smelled exactly as Rosa expected. The perfume of ripening flowers was like a melody over a bass line of wet earth. Sunlight poured through the windows to spotlight leaves in all sizes, shapes and shades of green, from deep-forest through emerald to fresh lime. The light glowed on the smooth features of a mahogany face that never changed expression while two sets of long, gloved fingers pressed the spongy soil around a newly-transplanted begonia. A nametag pin identified the woman as Lily.

In spite of the sweetness of sunlight on flowers, Rosa shivered. She had often passed by this place on her way to and from work, but something about it had discouraged her from coming in before now. She felt sure she had met that woman before, that she had felt those competent fingers on her own skin.

“You’ve come,” remarked Lily, the owner, “to find flowers for a special occasion?” She had a faint accent that Rosa couldn’t place, and her full, insinuating smile implied a lifetime of intimacy.

Rosa had a normally tawny complexion, but she felt pale. She hated feeling like a slow learner, but something was clearly happening that her conscious mind couldn’t grasp. She had awakened in the morning with a vague but strong conviction that she had to go to the florist shop immediately after work to find something she needed – something living and growing, which might be lost if she waited too long.

“No,” stammered Rosa, wanting to gain control of the conversation. After all, she was the customer. “I just – I need a new houseplant.” She glanced around as though looking for a particular type, genus, species and form.

Lily stood up, and Rosa noticed that she was over six feet tall. Her name suited her surprisingly well; she had the regal grace of one of the newer, richly-colored and curly-petaled hybrid lilies. Her breasts looked heavy on her willowy frame, and they bounced slightly with her movements under a loose green shirt. Her hair was done in neat cornrows that showed the elegant shape of her head. Rosa was embarrassed by her impulse to throw her arms around Lily and press herself against her.

“There are so many beautiful plants here,” purred the owner of this indoor garden. The gleam of her teeth did not inspire trust, but it added to Rosa’s excitement. “Let me show you.”

Rosa barely heard the names of annuals and perennials, succulents and hostile-looking cacti, flashy tropicals and plants like precocious little girls: baby roses, lily-of-the-valley and gerbera daisies. None of them spoke to her in any language.

Turning away from Lily, Rosa was startled by the impression that the tall, solid woman had disappeared. She was nowhere in Rosa’s peripheral vision. Rosa turned her head quickly, and Lily abruptly sprang back into view. “I need a low-maintenance houseplant,” the customer blurted, smelling her own sweat mixed with the smells of other life all around her. “The ones that need special care always die on me.”

The stare that Lily fixed on her made it impossible for Rosa to look her straight in the eyes, especially since this would have required looking up. When not studied closely, Lily’s skin looked exactly like polished wood, poreless and immobile. “Uh,” remarked the expert. “Their needs are simple compared to ours. And they give us so much. Would you want to live in a world with no green things in it?”

Rosa mumbled something that sounded like “No, but.” She felt both guilty and resentful, like a smug white donor to a tax-deductible charity who has been called on her unacknowledged prejudice toward races, cultures and neighbourhoods other than her own. On a deeper level, she was afraid.

Lily wrapped a cool, strong arm around Rosa’s shoulders like an old friend. Rosa shivered, but didn’t object. “These are my children,” Lily told her. “You must see the ones that need special care. I keep them in the greenhouse at the back.”

Chills were still running down Rosa’s back from the places where she had been touched as Lily strode to the front door and locked it. “Come,” she ordered softly, directing her customer’s attention to a door in the back that looked too small to accommodate modern adults.

Rosa was guided forward with a hand on her waist. Despite being shorter than average, she had to duck to pass through the opening. The narrow width made her uncomfortably aware of her fleshy body; she thought she was too fat but couldn’t resist comforting herself with food. Followed by Lily, Rosa had an unsettling sense that the taller woman had shrunk at will.

The greenhouse was humid and cool, full of rustlings and the gentle hiss of moisture on plastic walls. Rosa noticed several large-leafed plants and potted trees that looked exotic, wild and sentient. She was afraid to touch them, and she wondered if they were really for sale.

“My father studied plants all his life,” Lily explained. “I learned a lot from him, but some kinds of knowledge must be gained directly from them.” Rosa vaguely remembered reading an old story about an obsessed botanist with a beautiful, poisonous daughter. She had thought the plot was based on the author’s fear of everything beyond the limits of Victorian, white Anglo-Saxon respectability.

Rosa told herself that she had nothing to fear. By now it was clear that Lily wanted her, that anything could happen between them. Rosa was eager to discover the depth of the other woman’s passion as well as her own because she believed that this adventure wouldn’t count. Random sex with strangers would never have to be part of her official life-story as long as there were no human witnesses or mutual friends, and no commitment between her and the momentary lover except to keep the encounter buried in silence. For the present, Rosa reminded herself that plants are the least aggressive life form, and that women lack the piggish assumptions of men.

Rosa didn’t call herself a lesbian, or even bisexual. For years, she had told her parents that she would marry and give them grandchildren once she had found the right man. In the meanwhile, she kept losing boyfriends. She preferred to blame this on her weight than to admit that her air of self-sufficiency and her relationships with women, sexual or not, made the men in her life feel like mannequins in a store window.

Moisture trickled through soil to nourish roots, and trickled into Rosa’s panties as her heat rose. “My dear,” purred Lily. “Let me introduce you to the guards.” She gestured toward several large plants near the entrance. “They are related to the Venus Fly-trap, and they keep this place almost free of insects. Don’t put your fingers in them.” Rosa couldn’t be sure she was joking.

“And see this,” Lily went on. The tub of murky water that held some kind of wild grass looked unremarkable compared to the other inhabitants of the greenhouse. “Indigo,” the expert named it. “Incredibly valuable when it was the only source of blue dye. American indigo was inferior to the French kind until my father bred a stronger strain, more productive. Economies rise and fall by such discoveries. Who knows what America would be today if not for these little plants that used to grow wild? Yet my father is never mentioned in history books. His work was credited to those who owned him, according to the law.”

Lily looked like a woman of her time, but she seemed older than civilization. With a flash of panic, Rosa wondered if the storyteller knew that commercially-viable indigo for dye was developed on a colonial plantation before American independence, long before the lifespan of any human being in living memory. The woman had to be lying or deluded, probably the latter. In Rosa’s mind, the voice of her common sense screamed: Get out now! But she wanted to stay and learn all she could. She told herself that she would never have to come back.

“Some of them came with us,” the strange woman told her chosen pupil, gesturing at her living treasures. “On the ships from Africa. Seeds from home that they didn’t find or take from us. Seeds that wouldn’t die.” She pulled Rosa into her arms and pressed a long, hot kiss on her unsuspecting lips.

When both women broke contact to breathe, there was an unspoken promise between them. “You know whose girl you are, don’t you, sweetheart?” demanded Lily. “You came to me.” Rosa felt as if she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs. She felt as if she had entered a sealed tunnel with no light at the end, just because she had a long-standing appointment with the invisible being that lived there.

The hard wooden bench that Lily led her to looked right, somehow. Rosa didn’t worry about splinters poking her exposed, awakened skin as she took off her jacket, her blouse, her pants and shoes, all the components of an office uniform that made no sense here. Lily impatiently unhooked Rosa’s bra, and released her breasts into her waiting hands. The seducer laughed under her breath as Rosa sighed and moaned.

With unexpected force, she grabbed Rosa’s cotton panties and tugged until the fabric ripped. “You won’t need them,” Lily explained, pulling the scraps down so that the shorter woman had to step out of them, revealing a damp triangle of dark, curly hair between plump thighs.

“Tell me,” growled Lily in a voice that no longer sounded feminine, or fully human. “Tell me what you want, my sweet rose.”

Rosa lay on the wooden slats, feeling her back and buttocks pressing into them as she watched the tall woman efficiently peeling off her own clothing. “I want you to -- t-touch me,” the willing woman stuttered. Lily looked down at her with unsmiling amusement. She seemed to be waiting for a more lurid confession.

“I want you to – fuck me, to fill me up until I’m satisfied.” Rosa took a deep breath. “I’m wet for you, Lily. It’s been a long time since I’ve been with a woman.”

“Little cat in heat,” responded the interrogator, “rolling in the grass. Everyone needs to be fed.” Her deep, expressionless eyes held Rosa’s as she descended on her as though settling herself on a cushioned sofa. She sucked each of Rosa’s nipples until they were red and stiff, and Rosa’s gasps tickled her ears. “Mmm,” commented Lily. “You don’t want me to be gentle now, do you baby?”

“No,” agreed Rosa. She didn’t know what else to say.

Long, sharp fingernails raked Rosa’s ribcage, leaving thin trails of electricity in her skin. Lily kissed her hard, and nibbled her lips with teeth that bit down just firmly enough to feel threatening. Rose moved her hips and spread her legs farther apart.

Lily held Rosa’s wrists against the body-warmed wood of the bench. Strong, flexible binding was wrapped around them, securing Rosa’s hands to the slats. She was still reasonably comfortable. She felt voluptuously helpless and desirable.

Lily licked and sucked her way down from Rosa’s collarbone to her thick chestnut bush. Her probing tongue sank into pungent wetness and teased Rosa’s clit, making it grow.

The squirming woman felt something smooth and gourdlike pressing in between her lower lips. Lily’s head prevented her from seeing the object or the harness that seemed to be holding it in place. The thing dipped partway into Rosa’s heat and withdrew to the rhythm of Lily’s hips and her girl’s response. “Oh,” moaned Rosa, clenching her hands against the vines that held them. “Take me hard.”

Rosa couldn’t see the phosphorescent glow in Lily’s eyes as she grunted, plunging in as far as her phallus could go. Ten fingers grew to twice their usual length and fingernails hardened into thorns that pierced Rosa’s breasts.

Understanding was mercifully slow to penetrate the victim’s consciousness. She gasped in pain, hoping that her playmate would realize she had gone too far. The sight of her own blood, flowing in thin streams, made the woman stare at the predator’s hands. She couldn’t believe what she saw.

“You are wet, my dear,” chuckled a voice like wind sighing through tree branches. An inhuman face grinned into Rosa’s shocked eyes, and a long tongue tickled the opening of one of her small ears. Before the victim could make a vain effort to escape, the fluid warmth of the tongue changed into the cool suppleness of a woody vine. Rosa screamed when it broke her eardrum.

The persistent sounds of vegetative life filled the woman’s head when she could no longer hear normally. The pain in her cunt became unbearable as the thick root inside her developed blood-seeking offshoots which burrowed into soft tissue. “No! Stop!” wailed the woman, bucking violently to dislodge the invader. The resulting increase in pain made her realize too late that her flesh had been claimed as food and a home for those she had casually described as lower life forms. Rosa would never be alone again.

Death brought relief and the appearance of peace. Vines lovingly embraced the still curves of the woman who seemed to stare unblinkingly at a plastic roof and the darkening sky beyond it. A tongue snaked into Rosa’s open mouth and pushed its leisurely way down her esophagus to find the richness of vital organs.

The invasion and disintegration of the body continued at a steady pace. Within a week, the woman who had once had a name and a history could no longer be recognized. In due course, the stubborn remains of fat, sinew and bones nourished all the well-tended plants in the greenhouse.

A month after Rosa’s arrival, the florist in her shop glanced briefly at an article about a missing woman as she wrapped a red rose and baby’s-breath in newspaper for a customer who was planning to propose to his girlfriend.

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

Disappointed by the Prince

by Annabeth Leong

At first I thought I was the only one unsatisfied by the ending of Beauty and the Beast. On paper, the story ought to work. Beauty learns to see through the Beast's monstrous veneer and falls in love with the man underneath. At the right moment, that man—a prince—emerges. I suppose it's meant to play as if the prince is the person she has learned to see, so that his appearance is confirmation and validation of the feelings she develops over the course of the story. There's a moral to that story, the idea that true beauty and goodness are inside, not on the surface.

Except that to me the prince always seemed like an imposter who showed up and usurped the place of the dear beast. I knew my heart was supposed to leap with romantic joy when the thin blond man joins Beauty at the end of the story. But I couldn't make myself feel that. I missed the monster, with his awkward sweetness, his turbulent moods, and, yes, his sexiness. Before I was old enough to put that into words, I sensed that Beauty had a lot more chemistry with the Beast than with that perfect-looking prince.

I know plenty of people hate to see the Beast replaced. In the foreword to Kristina Wright's Fairy Tale Lust, Angela Knight discusses this at length. "Personally," she writes, "I liked him better with fur, claws, and a bad attitude." Indeed, the opening story of that book, Delilah Devlin's "The Obedient Wife," is a riff on Beauty and the Beast and allows the beast to remain a beast.

You could talk about kinky sex and bad boys, but believe it or not, that's not where I'm going with this.

My favorite case of this realization (that the beast should stay) is in the body of work produced by fantasy author Robin McKinley. Her first retelling of Beauty and the Beast, called Beauty, was an early work. I remember liking the book, and recognizing that it had been a heavy source of inspiration for the Disney movie (bookish Belle seems to have been cribbed from McKinley's story). This book follows the traditional script and changes beast to prince at the end.

However, in 1998, twenty years after writing Beauty, McKinley produced Rose Daughter, another retelling of Beauty and the Beast (and one that I consider to be better, deeper, and much more original). I've lost track of my copy and there doesn't seem to be an electronic edition, so I'm afraid I can't pull out exact quotes, but I recall a fascinating introduction in which McKinley discussed why she felt the need to revisit the story. Then, at the climactic moment, the Beauty character sees the Beast beginning to change into the prince and feels loss, because that's not who she's fallen in love with. The Beast's body reasserts itself, however, and she is glad of it. I remember being so pleased by that moment, that revision of the story.

I think it's because it's actually truer to the moral of Beauty and the Beast than the more common ending. "Rewarding" Beauty for falling in love with a monster by replacing him with a non-monster is actually a slap. It disrespects the nature of the sort of love she's experiencing. Learning to love a person as is, flaws and ugliness included, is a beautiful thing, and I think the true romantic vision of it is not just about acceptance, it's about embrace. Taking away the flaws and ugliness, once they are included in the love, diminishes the love.

Not only that, who's saying those things are flaws? To me, the Beast generally looks better as beast than as prince. Correcting his supposed flaws becomes doubly misguided.

The point is that the Beast of this story actually isn't a monster—not in the sense of evil. As people have written on this topic over the past couple weeks, I've realized that this is an important distinction. Garce and Lisabet, for example, both gave examples of true monsters—beings who by nature aren't capable of loving back. A story about loving a monster, as in loving a being of implacable evil or utterly alien disposition, is disturbing to say the least. Stories about loving a bad person and believing that person will become good make me cringe because to me they ring with the rationalizations of victims of domestic violence.

On the other hand, there is Beauty and the Beast, which I think is about loving someone who is considered by society to be a monster—a very different thing altogether. In my vision of this story, Beauty falls in love with someone who doesn't look "right" and has moments of monstrosity, but is deep down a fundamentally good person fully capable of returning love. This could simply be a comment on how everyone is human and all of us have unlovely parts. I think it's more, though, because of the important role that prejudice and societal judgment often play in the story.

Whenever a monster appears, the question is always whether this is a real monster (implacable evil) or something that seems to be a monster because of prejudice (the Beast, beneficial and nonvenomous snakes, and so on). I look at Beauty and the Beast and see a representation of people who don't live lifestyles approved by the mainstream, or who don't look attractive in a traditional way. I really don't want the message of this story to be to transform and conform (to turn into that bland and supposedly handsome prince). I want to see the Beast stay the Beast, because he's awesome that way.

The Monster In Us

by Daddy X

When we hear of monsters we think of the alien, the otherworldly, the strange and unexpected. When we explore a notch deeper, we imagine those archetypal fears common to all of us on a survival level: the fear of the dark; of the dead; fear of the unknown; fear of being eaten; fear of the Other.

Last week Giselle mentioned her suspicion of the black/white absolutes: Good and Evil.  She questions whether or not these poles actually exist. Perhaps they do exist, but not as opposing poles. Instead, they’re lying side-by-side within us.

The Christian fundamentalist feels he’s doing a righteous and holy act when he shoots an abortion doctor or blows up a clinic. His supporters label him a hero, a preserver of lives. How hypocritical in our terms, but he, and the world he associates with, believe he’s doing the right thing. They can recite biblical passages to render useless any self-examination of their own actions.

So too with the uneducated Islamic militant who gives his life in a suicide bombing. His primary basis of knowledge consists of hand-selected quotes from a single ancient document. But in this man’s own conscience, he’s doing his part in making the world a better place. As a martyr, maybe he’s thinking of heaven for himself. In his perception, he’s not only making the ultimate sacrifice; he’s doing a favor for mankind in the process.

Religious dogma is not the only guilty party. Atheist conventions of thought produced the communist doctrine that caused such havoc in 20^th century Eurasia. For that matter, the far right Hitler thought he was making the world a better place. He’s a monster, just as Stalin was. Together, these monsters conceived, propagated and exacted disaster after disaster in the name of righteousness. The evil was there, cuddled up right next to the altruism.

Of course, I’m noting extremes here, and perhaps that’s the point. It’s the system of values that embrace the absolute acceptance of extreme behavior that leads us to those horrors.

Dogma requires an uncompromising confidence in certitudes.  As a world, we’ve been in a nonstop forward intellectual thrust since the Renaissance. Lately, our understanding of the physical world has accelerated at an unprecedented pace, with the results benefitting mostly those in the upper end of the economic spectrum.

Now, the capitalist “Market” has acquired the authority of a god. “Remove all regulation, and the ‘Market’ will take care of itself,” they tell us. “Just have faith,” they say.

What happens if this disparity in knowledge and understanding becomes even greater? Those people in the lower income societies will receive even less of an education.  Power will continue to concentrate in the upper echelons.

Those relegated to ignorance, become ever more vulnerable. As always, power will use that ignorance to preserve its own dogma. A likely scenario could be the dawning of a new dark age. Whether it’s Christ, Allah, or an economic idealism run amok, in the eyes of the believer, it’s all exacted in an air of absolute certitude in the path, as well as unwavering faith in a common goal.

So perhaps the monster is not so otherworldly after all. Maybe the idealistic human spirit, operating without the benefit of critical approach, could be the culprit.

Monster (Nympho)Mania

Sacchi Green


We’ve mentioned the current craze for monster erotica before, chiefly with regard to the monstrous book sales (actually mainly short story sales) the writers in this sub-genre are enjoying. Virginia Wade’s Cum for Bigfoot seems to be the classic in this group, if not the first, with reported revenues of $30,000 a month at one point. If only we more pedestrian smutscribes had known enough to get in on all this before the market was glutted! Or is it glutted yet? There seem to be some problems lately with Amazon suppressing these books, but Smashwords is said to still have plenty of offerings.

Writing erotica requires an understanding of what turns on the target readership. It helps to share that particular kink, but that’s not absolutely necessary. If writers couldn’t portray characters totally unlike themselves there wouldn’t be much worth reading. So what is the appeal of, say, a Sasquatch? Bigger than ordinary men, stronger, probably fierce, not talkative or softened by civilization? Check. Pretty sexy. Hairy all over? Well, not necessarily a deal breaker. And everybody’s heard of them.  Just minutes ago, as I sit here typing, I’ve seen two commercials for some brand of beef jerky featuring “Messing with Sasquatch” vignettes, wherein the jerks trying to play tricks on the big guy get their comeuppance. No sex, of course, but quite possibly inspired by the porn.

Sasquatch was a brilliant choice for erotica. Close enough to human for sexual attraction to seem at least remotely possible, imaginary enough to endow with whatever monsterly powers (or superpowers) the writer (or reader) desired. But now that Sasquatch has been, well, taken, other writers’ flights of erotic imagination have soared on into less believable realms.

The least believable, to me, are the apparently wildly popular dinosaur “heroes”. Taken by The T-Rex? What possible appeal would a mammalian female have for a reptile, except as lunch? But Chrissie Sims and others have made it big with the biggest guys of all. Dinosaurs, being extinct but not imaginary, might not seem to qualify a monsters per se, but the way they’re presented here is as imaginary as any bug-eyed alien monster slavering over a scantily-clad human female on the cover of an old pulp scifi magazine, so I guess I shouldn’t quibble about cross-genus pairings.    

Creatures from various mythologies are popular sex partners, too, which makes a certain amount of sense, since those mythologies were created by humans in the past whose carnal urges must have influenced their imaginations, if only subconsciously. I was disappointed to see that someone has already done recent fiction about a Minotaur; I would have liked to have a go at the two-legged Raging Bull, who was, after all (so the story goes) born from the union of the Queen of Crete and a white bull given by Poseidon to King Minos. The Greeks were way ahead of the current curve when it came to monster sex, what with Zeus taking the form of a bull or a swan to have his way with maidens who caught his fancy.

The alien monster pulp stories were ahead of this curve, as well, with the difference being that they didn’t include much if any explicit sex, and they were aimed at males, while the current batch is out to fulfill female fantasies. Why fantasize about monsters? Let’s face it, in sexual fantasy, size does count, but there’s more to it than that. Power counts, too, not just the power wielded by the impossibly huge, wild, dangerous creature, but the woman’s power in attracting him. And in a culture where sex still has a lingering aura of the forbidden, yielding to an unquestionably overpowering lover, the more dangerous and terrifying the better, might intensify the fantasy sex while canceling out guilt entirely. Really, though, I think it’s pretty much the impossible size factor, and the power trip. (And, for the writer, a way to make the sex seem more and more over-the-top without trying to think up new and original metaphors to describe it. Monsters don’t need metaphors, especially when they’re metaphors in themselves.)

Yes, I’ve been too flippant here, ignoring the truly scary aspects of monsters. The fear and fascination we feel regarding monsters seems to be both universal and timeless. The creatures we should fear the most in modern times are tiny viruses and bacteria, but we’re probably still wired to ancient times when real, savage danger lurked outside the circle of firelight in our caves. Sabre-toothed tigers and giant cave bears and other tribes of slighty different varieties of competing hominids, for instance. That sort of fear may be bred into us.

I’ve had an even more disturbing thought about the modern linkage of monsters and sex. If a child has real, human monsters to fear, and discovers that submitting sexually is the only way to pacify them, if only temporarily… No, I’m not saying that many, if any, people who enjoy reading about monster sex were abused as children, but the thought won’t quite go away.

Let’s be flippant again, okay? Or even just practical, from the writer’s point of view. Which potential monsters haven’t yet been overdone in erotica? To tell the truth, woolly mammoths rather appeal to me. Who needs tentacles when you have a huge, flexible trunk? Hmm. Mastered by the Mammoth? Or does Mastered by the Mastodon have a better ring to it? I have to admit, though, that I don’t like to portray my female characters as being “mastered” by any male creatures at all, even when I'm writing the occasional heterosexual story, but oddly enough “Mistressed” doesn’t seem to be a word, and if it were, it just wouldn’t have the same feel to it.

Still, for that many sales…

Let’s wind down with a brief snippet from a story I wrote about dragon sex (published in She-shifters edited by Delilah Devlin for Cleis Press) except that the dragon was a shapeshifting deity masquerading as a greenery-covered island in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam, and took human form for most of the sex. Here’s a bit of pre-shapeshifting foreplay:

Seok-Teng stumbled, unbalanced, and still managed to slice the kris across the smuggler’s throat before he toppled backward into the sea.
She swung around and saw what he had seen. A golden eye gazed down at her from the island’s greenery, and then two eyes, in a long, elegant, emerald-scaled head that lifted to regard her full-on.  
“I had him! He was mine!” Seok-Tengs’s blood-madness ran still so hot that she felt no fear, no amazement that a dragon such as she had seen only on painted screens or the prows of festive longboats was here before her in the flesh. If indeed dragons were made of such. “I needed no help!”
The dragon seemed to laugh, though what difference there might be between a dragon’s laugh and its snarl Seok-Teng did not know. Indeed, as her blood slowed, she scarcely knew whether she herself dreamed, or imagined, or even lived. She held the kris upright, flat between her breasts, as talisman rather than weapon; it quivered, but gave off no heat. 
Heat of another sort did warm Seok-Teng’s flesh as the dragon’s gaze moved slowly along her body. Did dragons lust after human women? She had never heard such tales, but after all, she herself lusted after women, though so far only in her dreams.
“Why not?” The voice was not her own, yet unmistakably female—and it spoke from inside her own head. “Who can know so well how to please a woman as another woman?”
A dream, then. That sort of dream. Already Seok-Teng’s loins stirred with longing. Her bedroll would be damp and tangled when she woke. If only this dream would take her far enough for relief!
The boat she stood upon had floated nearer to the island. Seok-Teng looked full into the golden eyes, not flinching when the dragon’s green coils, their scales textured to resemble leaves, loosened from the rough limestone enough that its neck could arch outward above her and descend. Even when a flickering forked tongue, impossibly long, darted across her belly, Seok-Teng held her ground, though she could not suppress gasps and jerks at the tantalizing sensations it aroused. 
“Set aside your noble blade,” the voice said, “if you would taste of more tender delights.”
She sheathed the kris but kept it belted at her hip. This time the dragon’s laughter echoed inside her head, drowned out soon by Seok-Teng’s own cries as the deep-coral tongue lapped at the paler coral tips of her high breasts, teasing and tweaking at them until they hardened and darkened and sent bolts of pleasure close to pain down through her belly into her cunt.
“How brave are you, girl? Enough to follow me?” The voice seemed uneven now, almost breathless. The long tongue reached down between her thighs and slick lips to find the jewel of pleasure there, and a low, rough moan was wrenched from deep in Seok-Teng’s throat, followed by a keen wail as the stimulation ceased.

   

Little Monsters

Post by Lily Harlem

Mice…. and I'm not talking about these…

I'm talking these!

Mice with long tails and twitching whiskers are little  monsters - though I do find them quite cute and I'm not scared of them. This winter a family have set up home in our old stone garage. Mr H and I call them the Mickey and Minnie (not very original I know) and have yet to see them, but we know they're there.

We live out in the countryside, there is farmland and woods and bracken-covered hills all around us so it's not surprising that they've found their way into the peripheries of our home. The garage, where we only happen into on occasion in the colder months, seems to have been perfect for them.

The evidence these little monsters are there…

There is a bag of old horse feed that has been munched from the bottom up, spilling the contents on to the floor. I'd imagine that Mickey and Minnie are now obese as it was high-calorie horse feed!

Mr H went to wash his car the other day only to discover his bright yellow sponge half gone and teeny tiny pieces of it spread around the base of the bucket - oh yes, they can climb.

I then went to get a vase from one of the shelves and was greeted with a few droppings - yuk!

I do have a cat, rescued like all of my animals, and she is actually a pretty good hunter (or she was in her younger days) so I could set her in the garage to solve the problem. But no, I can't, Mickey and Minnie are all fat and cozy in their yellow sponge bed with a feast fit for a king and no doubt reading from their Kindles. They can stay for now, because soon they'll be off. Once we start banging around and clearing out the garage they'll dart away into the hedgerows once more, no doubt multiplied but that's just the way it goes. I guess I'm a live-and-let-live kind of gal - as long as Mickey and Minnie stay in the garage and don't bring all their mates for a party that is, because that would be a disaster!