Gratitude and Low Self-Worth ( #Humanity #SelfWorth #Activism #Advocacy #Entitlement )

By Annabeth Leong

While I acknowledge the importance and value of gratitude as a way of putting small problems in perspective, I feel deeply suspicious of gratitude as a way of life, and even more suspicious of gratitude as it’s often played in pop culture self help movements.

People talk a lot about entitlement and expectations, as if these things are completely terrible and should be eradicated from our psyches. (Sample quote, from life coach Adam Smith: “Entitlement is such a cancer, because it is void of gratitude.” Or the popular saying, “Expectations are premeditated resentments.”)

Both of these sentiments can serve as important correctives for a person who has lost perspective. For example, if a student expects and feels entitled to attend Harvard University on a full scholarship, and isn’t capable of accepting any other outcome or acknowledging that lots of other students exist who are also intelligent and talented, it might be time to pull out these sorts of quotes. It might be time to remind the student to be grateful for the opportunities that are available.

On the other hand, I get worried by what I refer to as “be grateful you have feet” syndrome. In self help settings, I’ve observed exhanges where, say, someone talks about their painful plantar fasciitis and how much it is bothering them and how they’re frightened they might need surgery on their feet. In return, someone else points out that not everyone has feet or the means to have surgery on them. And yeah, sure, it’s an even worse scenario if you don’t have access to your needed foot surgery, but I’m super frustrated by this approach as a way of shutting down someone’s honest and valid communication about their feelings of fear and pain. I’m not here for enforced gratitude, in which any negative feeling is criticized and countered with demands for gratitude.

What’s at the bottom of it for me is that expectations and entitlement can also be healthy. They can be an important part of standing up for myself, of asserting my worth as a human being. They can be the source of needed protection.

For example, part of what I see in the Black Lives Matter movement is black people asserting their own value and humanity (indeed, this is a major element of the message in the name of the movement). I see people saying that they’re entitled to better treatment from society at large. They’re entitled to receiving the benefit of the doubt from police in the same way that’s given to white people. I notice how often I’m hearing about black people pulled over for a broken tail light and ultimately killed. Then I notice other stories about white people who actually kill people and stay armed, but are eventually taken alive by compassionate, careful police work. I see that police are capable of that compassion and care, and I think everyone is entitled to receiving it, even if they’re under suspicion of a crime.

So the point here is that I think it’s healthy and important for black advocates to stand up for their worth this way. A sense of entitlement is a key part of that, and it’s good. Human beings should be entitled to live their lives without being constantly under suspicion due to the color of their skin. They should be entitled to survive traffic stops, and many more normal, everyday situations.

And all too often, I see activists getting told to be grateful for the progress that’s already been made in society. There’s a degrading message there, that you ought to be grateful for any scraps thrown to you, that you ought not to value yourself so highly as to think you’re fully equal to everyone else.

That’s a larger political example, and an important one. Then I have a lot of personal examples about ways that the pressure to feel gratitude has sometimes worked out to demands that I lower my sense of self worth. I’m going to give a few, ranging from minor to toxic.

— I thank my male partner profusely for “helping” me with the housework, when he’s done some relatively small thing, like wash a few pots. The gratitude I’m expressing here is concealing a few troubling assumptions: that the housework is my job more than his, though that’s not the agreement our relationship is founded on; that this relatively small contribution is worthy of effusive gratitude, while my much larger contribution goes unnoticed or unappreciated. I’ve also observed that being overly grateful toward male partners in this situation seems to contribute toward misunderstandings about the magnitude of household tasks. The partner in question may respond to my gratitude by feeling he’s done plenty, when that may not be an honest assessment from my perspective.

— I am so grateful to a publisher for recognizing my work and choosing to put it out into the world that I don’t advocate for myself, my work, and my career successfully. I sign poor contracts. I wait for long periods for any response for them, and then put up with sudden demands on my time when they get around to paying attention to me. I turn a blind eye to substandard service, such as poor copy editing or clearly unprofessional communications from the powers that be. I put up with delays in payments and errors in royalty statements, and I write gentle, carefully worded statements asking for the money that’s owed to me. After all, shouldn’t I be grateful that I’m allowed to pursue my creative dreams? Shouldn’t I be glad someone is reading my work and appreciating it? Wouldn’t it be selfish of me to want better for myself or my writing? What good does it do to think my work deserves more readers or better treatment? I should focus on being grateful for what I have.

— I am grateful to the first company to hire me out of graduate school. After all, they saved my ass by giving me a job in the city I was already living in, at a time when I really needed money. In exchange, I let them own me body and soul for the next several years. No demand is too large or small. I work myself into sickness for them. I put up with being passed over for promotion, with not receiving raises, even though other colleagues in similar positions get both. Every time I feel like I ought to find something better for myself, I question the emotions that lead me to that conclusion. Why am I angry and unsatisfied? I ought to be grateful.

— I run away from home as a teenager and live for a while with an older man who takes advantage of me in a variety of ways. I should be grateful, according to him, for the ways he takes care of me. After all, he feeds me, drives me to where I need to go, gives me a place to live. He also starves me when he’s not happy with what I’m doing, coerces me into sexual situations I wouldn’t choose for myself, and expects me to turn over any money I make at work. He tries to stop me from using birth control, and is constantly hiding my pills, trying to prevent me from getting to the pharmacy to pick them up, or putting me in situations where I won’t have enough money to pay for the prescription. I should be grateful, though, because living with him allows me to escape a different abusive situation with my mother’s boyfriend. I should be grateful because he loves me. I should be grateful because he doesn’t judge me for being a slut.

I know that for some people, gratitude is comforting. “At least I have someone to call to drive me away from horrible, abusive boyfriend’s house. At least there’s that.” If it does that for you, then that’s great.

At the same time, gratitude has many times left me unable to demand better for myself, even in situations where I really needed to. I think, as with all things, that there’s a time and a place for gratitude, and it isn’t everywhere. I wish the psychologically corrosive effects of trying to summon gratitude in the face of pain and damage were more widely acknowledged.

Some people may be too entitled, and others may not be entitled enough. There are times when a person should say, “I deserve better.” There are times when you’ve been served slop on the floor while other people are eating foie gras at the table, and instead of being grateful for what you get, it’s right and important to get angry about it and expect better.

Hurt Me, but Don't Tell Me What to Do

by Annabeth Leong

The more I think about it, the more I’m uncertain about why the acronym BDSM is strung together this way, as if all the activities it describes are related. There’s a constellation of kinky stuff that’s treated as if it always goes hand in hand, but that doesn’t really make sense.

When I started showing up at kink events, I said I was submissive because I knew I wanted to bottom and receive pain. I didn’t realize there were distinctions here, and most of the events I went to elided them, too.

Over time, however, I recognized a growing anger in myself. I hated, viscerally, the experience of being treated as submissive. Of course, I met some cool people. I also encountered a lot of smarmy sneering, people talking to my dominant instead of to me (which, depending on your point of view, might have been proper protocol), jokes that irritated me, incorrect assumptions, and stuff that pissed me off in general.

I had a partner at the time who I called my dominant. Really, my partner was my sadist. We weren’t using proper vocabulary, but most people around us weren’t either. When we went to events, my partner adopted what they saw as a dominant-type persona, and I found it embarrassing and cringe-worthy.

At the same time, I truly do enjoy bottoming—as in, I love being on the receiving end of intense sensation. I love being tied up for a variety of reasons. I like it as a meditative state, I like it as a way of inducing discomfort, I like it as a decorative art, I like it as a way of experiencing the sensation of textiles on the skin, I like it as a way of drawing blood flow to certain areas to make them more sensitive, and lots more. I also love receiving pain. Impact play is a favorite for me, but I also love electricity, clamps, biting, and so on.

Over time, I realized I needed to distinguish between bottoming as a masochist and power exchange situations that framed me as submissive. These two things are so commonly associated that I’ve encountered many people who respond with disbelief or confusion when I try to explain that I want to be hurt but there’s no way in hell I want to submit.

I think a lot of kink activities boil down to being about trust. I do have to trust a top or a sadist. For me, that trust works best when I’m in the situation as an equal. It’s also easier for me to trust myself to speak up when I need to.

What’s funny about this is that I have a lot of submissive instincts. I am very, very good at service. It is easy for me to subsume my needs and focus on those of others. If you give me an order, my first reaction is to obey.

However, I don’t like that stuff about myself. I don’t want to feed it. What I’m working on in my life is to stop knee-jerk obedience. I don’t want to practice it on the weekend.

I know that many people experience submission as freeing. For me, it’s much more freeing to meet a top as an equal and figure out together how to hurt me for fun.

The more I’m around kink events, the more the dynamics around power exchange feel touchy and delicate to me.

For example, there’s a big kink con in Rhode Island called the Fetish Fair Flea Market. I go every year, and usually have a mixed experience. In some ways it’s awesome, and in some ways it infuriates me.

Early on, I went in clothing that identified me as an s-type (a sub or bottom). I didn’t always love how I was treated, but I didn’t know anything else.

One year, I went alone in these hot boots that I really loved. I didn’t think much about it at the time—I’m into feet and shoes, and these were just hot. They were thigh-high black leather boots that laced all the way up, with at least a three-inch heel. I felt gorgeous in them.

I could never have anticipated how much the boots would change my experience of the Flea. Apparently, the boots made people read me as a D-type. All of a sudden, I saw everything from a different perspective. I got more respect in the vendor halls. People answered my questions. The conference opened before me like a flower.

I still got regularly sexually harassed, don’t get me wrong. Random dudes still came up to me to share their sexual fantasies about me (I still presented female, after all), it was just that those fantasies had changed. Still, it was shocking to be freed from receiving the biases and assumptions that had come at me when people saw me as an s-type.

These days, when I go to the Flea, I struggle to find a way to dress. There’s not an obvious outfit that says masochist, at least not that I can think of. It’s hard not to wind up looking s- or D-. But really, I’d like to be able to step outside of power exchange with my kink experience.

And there are times when the distinction is subtle.

Last fall, I went with a top to a carnival. My top tormented me with unpleasant, frightening rides, laughing delightedly at my misery (I love that kind of thing, so while I was horribly uncomfortable, I was also having a great time). They pushed me to get on these things relentlessly, one after another.

I would call that a masochistic experience, not a submissive one, but I think, if we’d been in a different place, that it could have been a submissive one. In my case, the focus was on unpleasant sensations. My top was administering them, but I was receiving them because I find unpleasant sensations fun/fascinating/arousing/oddly compelling. In the submissive case, I think the focus would have been more on doing these things for the top, on being obedient despite the discomfort.

The emphasis on obedience is one of the things I really hate.

I’ve revised the way I describe myself at kinky events more times than I can count, and this probably still isn’t the final answer. However, it was really important for me to realize that what I’m interested in is sensation, not power.

And I hope this goes without saying, but I want to be very clear: I hold absolutely no disdain for those who do identify as submissive and enjoy it. It’s just not for me. Because I’ve spent time in that role, I have observed some dynamics around it in the community that I think are messed up, but I’m absolutely in support of people who want to explore the role itself.

Meanwhile, I’ll be looking for sadists who want to treat me as an equal.

False Advertising

by Jean Roberta

Hypocrisy, to use a broad term, makes me almost too angry to speak, or to write. This is a problem when I need to explain why I’m angry. To write an explanation that might look logical to a reader, I have to be calm enough to defend my case. And if I’m calm, by definition, I’m not angry in the moment. It’s a Catch-22.

Okay, then, here is a list of topics that have made me angry in the past, and will definitely rouse my ire in the future, because they haven’t gone away.

1) The false promises of “romance,” both as a kind of euphemism for a long tradition of unequal sexual relationships between men and women, and as the definition of a genre of fiction. As I said here on the Grip in 2011, I’m not comfortable in the realm of traditional Romance for the same reasons I wasn’t comfortable in a number of dating relationships (e.g. with my high school boyfriend who dumped me after I won a writing award, with the biker who raped me the first time I said “no,” with the man who snorted every time I mentioned my plan to become a teacher, with several men who turned out to be married after we had sex). Marriage made me even more uncomfortable, especially since my husband believed that marriage vows simply erased his private promise to treat me like an equal, which was my condition for accepting his proposal in the first place. As he pointed out, he wasn’t willing to be “henpecked” by a proponent of “women’s lib.” What would the other men of his community think of him if it was obvious that he couldn’t even control his own wife?

Calling all these relationships “abusive” would suggest that what happened in them was outside the heterosexual norm in which men love, respect and protect women from harm while willingly providing luxurious material support.

On what planet have most men offered all this to women who have responded with true love that has nothing to do with fear?

I believe that mutual respect in heterosexual relationships is possible and that it does exist, though not in large supply. I’m just afraid that writing about this type of “romance” would involve going so far beyond the clichés that the story wouldn’t be recognized as “romantic” by fans of the genre.

So, to sum up, it’s unlikely that I will ever become a success by switching to Romance, where (I’ve been told) the money and the fans are.

2) Conservative neo-fascism. The policies of the current government of Canada are very friendly to corporations, including those that would gladly destroy the natural environment. Canada still has a fairly vast “wilderness,” but it’s full of natural resources that can be sold for profit, and the Canadian tradition of a social safety net for all citizens is being eroded faster than the prairie topsoil. All this in the name of freedom.

3) Leftist righteousness and barely-hidden agendas. After I escaped from my jealous, alcoholic husband in the late 1970s, I stayed out of leftist organizations for so many years that I came to think of myself as more-or-less apolitical, even though I feel strongly about political issues. I could hardly join the local Coalition Against Racism when my African husband was a pillar of that group – and I knew he was carrying out his earlier threat to me that if I left him, he would tell the whole world I was a nympho slut with a habit of constantly picking up random men. He also ran for president of the student union at the local university when I was a graduate student there. From time to time, I met his supporters, who assured me that he was a “radical.” I couldn’t see any advantage in telling them what I knew.

Since then, I have met other self-defined leftists who have announced that they are opposed to Violence, Poverty, and Injustice, and are fighting to bring about world peace, yet too many are anything but peaceful. Or honest.

And “feminism” no longer seems to be (if it ever was) the motivating theory that launched a movement for the rights of all women. I have been a volunteer counsellor on the local sexual assault phone line for 25 years because this seems like necessary work, but I stay away from cliques of the Politically Correct. I’ve been excluded or attacked too many times for being “bourgeois” (I have an academic job), white, and more committed to my own survival (and that of my nearest and dearest) than to “The Movement.”

My younger stepson has become known to his friends for his occasional misanthropic, pessimistic rants. As he sometimes puts it, “I hate people. They’ll stab you in the back.” (“People” apparently excludes his family, including me, and a few trusted friends.) I can’t honestly tell him he’s wrong.
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How I Got Angry

by Annabeth Leong

About halfway through writing Untouched, I realized that my hero, Eli, had become my villain. I don't mean villain in the cutesy antihero sense, where he's still the appealing center of the story. I mean he had become the obstacle to my protagonist's happiness and I hated him for it.

When I planned the book, I knew I didn't want a happily ever after ending for Eli and Celia (my protagonist). I wanted to explore the sort of relationship that needs to come to an end but teaches both people a lot in the process—the sort of relationship that a person talks about later with a wistful sigh, followed by a shudder of relief.

But at first I had an idealized vision of Eli. When I imagined the goodbye at the end, I thought Celia would tearfully admit that she just couldn't give him what he needed. I pictured her slinking off in hopes that she might someday learn to love, feeling grateful for the little bit she'd experienced with Eli.

I'm really glad that's not the book I ended up writing. About a third of the way through, I got in touch with Celia's anger—and therefore my own.

The thing is, Eli and Celia have a deal. They're both looking for a relationship outside the mainstream, and up front they agree to certain terms. Eli says he wants a companion and voyeur, a woman who wants to savor his conquests alongside him. He wants to be free to fuck as many women as he wants, and he's certain that monogamy isn't for him. Celia wants to express herself sexually with a companion with no pressure to touch or be touched. She wants to masturbate with an audience, and she's happy about the idea of watching him with other people.

I remember the day I wrote the scene where they make that deal. That sweet, exhilarating feeling of falling in love coursed through my veins and rubbed off on me by association. I went for a walk and sun poured down on me. I remember cherry blossoms floating through the air, though I'm pretty sure that didn't really happen.

But you probably see where this is going. The center of Untouched is the archetype of the doomed deal. The moment Celia thinks she's found happiness is the moment Eli changes the terms. He tells her that he needs to touch her after all. And Celia gets angry:

She flailed for more words, afraid now that if she let him speak he would say the unthinkable. But it was impossible that falling in love with her could make him want to say that. He fucking knew better.

Celia said, "I know my limitations, so it's never made sense to be possessive. I don't want to doom you to celibacy, Eli. I like that I'm part of what you want—maybe even the most important part, that's sort of nice—but I don't have to be everything. I don't have to try to do things that I can't do."

"Celia..." Eli broke off and hid his face in the comforter. "Celia..."

She felt a pang of deep regret. "Eli, please. Don't fucking say it."

"I have to."

She wrenched herself out of bed. The world was shattering around her. "God damn it, Eli. This is the center of fucking everything. You can't ask me for..."

He lifted his head. His eyes were as wide and frightened as a small child's. In that moment, the smooth, self-possessed man that she had known and fallen for seemed to have disappeared. His jaw trembled, and she sensed he was near tears. "Celia, I need to touch you. Please. Even a little. Even on the tips of your fingertips or your knee or anywhere that you can take it. Can you give that to me? Please."

She crossed her arms under her breasts. Tears glittered in her eyes, but they felt hard. She wanted to throw them at him like so many daggers. "Fuck you, Eli. Fuck you."

Before I actually wrote Untouched, I described Eli with a lot of sympathy. Celia's very patient lover was trying to explore how to help her tolerate touch.

Then the book woke me into a different reality. Why should Eli be the one to set the terms and change them when he wants? Celia was perfectly clear up front about what she could and couldn't do. Who the hell did he think he was? He thought love gave him a right to make these demands of her? How could that sort of violation possibly be the fruit of love?

The more I wrote, the angrier I got. Because it was damned uncomfortable as a writer to deny this man. Celia eventually holds the line (though she spends a while trying to bend herself to his wishes), and I was scared to death of letting her. I was sure my publisher would force me to change my ending (but Sweetmeats Press is fabulous, and Joe did not). I pictured reviewers complaining about Celia being an unreasonable bitch to this charismatic man who loves her and just wants a little touch. Celia had plenty of conflict, and she shared it with me—more truly than for anything else I've written, I struggled alongside her.

I'm ashamed to admit how hard it was for me to see my own main character's point of view—one that claims ownership of her own body and sexuality. As I started to understand her, I got mad at Eli, mad at myself, mad at the people in my life who've made me feel like my own needs and desires are things I should get over. And there have been so very many people who prodded and coerced and insisted and belittled. Or outright abused me and my trust. Many people have talked about the intensity of Untouched, but that's because Celia's sexuality is under siege. As I wrote that, I realized that this sprang from my own sense of being besieged.

I started writing erotica because I was interested in talking honestly about sex. How embarrassing that after five years of thinking I was doing that, after being featured in Best [Insert Sex Act Here] who knows how many times, this book showed me how closed off I've been to the true things about myself.

I've written here before that I think women are taught to perform sex, not to claim it and experience it for themselves. For so much of my life, I saw sex acts from the other person's perspective—how was I making them feel? I saw my whole sexual imagination and consciousness from outside, too, as a thing to be judged and controlled. Over the last several years, I've confronted a lot of my own taboos and explored in my life and in my writing what I actually like.

It was only by writing Celia, though, that I really got out of the passenger seat and into the driver's seat. It was that character that made me really see what it's like to be at the center of one's own sex life, and writing her was an act of defiance.

And now that my anger has been unleashed, I'm not the same writer or person.

It's hard for me to talk about Untouched, because the things I had to say were best said in the book, but writing it had a major effect on my actual sex life and I'm still dealing with the fallout. I found out a lot of truth, and I discovered a lot of rage, and I can't go on as I was before.

As a writer, I flailed a lot after finishing this book. I've always included subversive elements in my work, but I want to find a way to stop apologizing for what I have to say. And I'm angry at the distortions caused by common expectations in the industry. I was never a fan of straight rich white "alpha males," but oh my god now I really want to burn that down.

I don't want our corner of the literary world to be defanged and fitted neatly into the mainstream. I remember Best American Erotica 1996, which I wrote about in my first post for the Grip, and how shocking and uncomfortable—and vital—it was. I don't want to be reduced to toothless blog tours in which I'm counseled not to alienate readers by saying controversial things. Marketing and I have always been uncomfortable bedfellows, but now I'm feeling especially concerned about letting market values infect and corrupt my work.

So, this is what anger is for. It makes it impossible for me to put up with what I'm supposed to put up with and gives me the strength to step into uncomfortable territory. I've had a tough six months, but I'm damned proud of Untouched, and I think I owe it to myself and my readers to continue pursuing authenticity, without compromise and without retreat.

Wild and Angry Spirits

Sacchi Green

I’m good at suppressing anger. Maybe too good. I get angry at external events, violence against others, destructive and unjust policies of governments, but on a personal level I tend to see the other side, to know why someone else is acting the way they are and to know when indulging my anger freely would help nothing and cause harm. This doesn’t mean that I put up with abuse—that’s never been a problem. I just, as I said, see the other side of things. Maybe that comes with being a writer.

I was still surprised at how hard a time I had finding scenes of anger in my writings. But then I remembered that Lisabeth recently mentioned my story “The Wildest Spirit” in Mtizi Szereto’s new anthology, The Darker Edge of Desire, and, being a story of shapeshifting and memories of war and revenge (and sex,) there was inevitably a certain degree of anger there. Rage, in fact.

I’m not sure this excerpt from fairly near the end makes sense standing alone, even though I’ve let it be much too long, but here goes:
_____

On the day of the eclipse, the drifting fog tasted of death.
     She knew by his tension as they started up the trail. When she crouched beside the grimacing carcass he stopped her with a snarl.
     "Get away!" The harshness rose from his own rage and guilt, and his need to be alone before the change overcame him.
     Mist swirled between them as she tried to read his face. He avoided her eyes, focusing on the blood-red barberries, the tufts of gray fur caught on the thorny bush in the coyote's death convulsions.
     "Leave it! I..." The man-voice came with an effort. "I should have been here! If you hadn't kept me...."
     Blaming her couldn't ease his guilt. He should have been in the forest, on guard against senseless death, but he had let himself be distracted by the pleasures of human flesh, of hands and mouths and minds. His body still resonated with the memory, even as bones and tendons screamed to lengthen, shorten, change.
     "Get away! Leave me alone!"
     She straightened, arms clutched around her belly as though to keep herself from shaking. Her wide gray eyes burned through the fog.
     "You're right. It's time. I never meant to keep you, never thought...."
     Then she was gone. A last whisper drifted to him on a streamer of mist; "Good-bye, and thanks...." He blocked it out.
     He crouched in wolf-form in the underbrush through the day, a black hole masked by swirling cloud. Toward evening the air cooled and cleared; sunset glowered in the west as the moon rose in the east.
     He waited. Coyotes circled at a distance. Condensation soaked his outer fur, but the heat at his core burned steadily.
     The shadow crept across the moon, and across his mind. Only a bright sliver of clarity remained when tires crunched on gravel by the gate a quarter mile away and the scent he awaited trickled toward him on a faint breeze.
     To keep the wolf-form was to commit to a kill. In man-form, capture would still be an option. But something in him fought the change, and then, as he pressed, he knew with a touch of panic that it wasn't going to happen.
     He thought of the woman, mouth against mouth, skin against naked skin, but words stabbed through his mind; "I never meant to keep you...."
     The moon was a dull red bruise. Old images throbbed inside his skull; another darkened moon, other deaths, blood-scent heavy on the thick jungle air; another failed attempt to change.
     Coyote voices cut through his clouded thoughts. A few adolescent yips at first, then wave upon wave of howls, driven by the mystery of a full moon there and not-there at the same time.
     It might have been the eclipse that drained his power to change; it might have been the turmoil in his mind. It didn't matter. The wolf focused, committed, let his rage feed on the reek of fear and hatred spilling from the killer.
     Another howl, closer now, and the intruder slowed his approach. The acrid stink of his fear seared the air. He stopped, and the wolf tensed to pursue, but another howl from behind drove the man forward.
     A light wavered, glinting on a long knife and on the dull steel of a semi-automatic rifle.
     With what remained of man-thought the wolf wondered what dark fantasy drove the killer. He had smelled that bitterness before, that consuming hunger of one who lacked the strength of mind or body for true dominance. If coyote pelts on his wall fed the killer's lust for power, how much deeper would be the dark joy of defeating a wolf? Of defeating his own deepest fear?
     The human's fear of the coyotes was delusion; they were no threat to him. Even wolves were too sane to waste effort on revenge.
     Except for this wolf.
     The killer came on again, the beam of his light sweeping the brushy roadside. It swung past the wolf, stopped, swung back....
     In the absence of weapons the wolf would have taken time to savor the man's terror. Only a second now to display slanted eyes blazing with reflected light; then a snarl, just enough for a flash of teeth longer than any coyote's; then, as the light crashed to the ground and the gun swung forward, a twisting leap that carried him under and to the right of the burst of gunfire. A powerful, smashing shoulder; the man, unbalanced already by the gun's recoil and his own panic, went down with a guttural scream.
     Then the wolf was on him, slashing the forearm that clutched the rifle, snapping the bones with powerful jaws. The man still gripped the knife in his other hand, but the wolf scarcely felt it slice his thigh. The scent of his own blood was a mere trickle in the hot flood sweeping him as he tore through the man's shoulder, face, throat. Human blood in his nostrils, his mouth, his gullet, blood not just of this human but all those others, under that other bloody moon, as his comrade lay dying on the jungle floor and the wolf-form had no hands to help him, carry him, no voice to radio for help, no human thought but the thirst for vengeance....
      This man died too easily. Only that fleeting thought linked the wolf to the remnants of his own humanity.
     A bright crescent rimmed the moon's dark bruise. He moved, stiffly at first, then at a limping trot.
     He lay in a stream as the torrent flushed the blood from his coat and cleaned his wound. The slash was shallow; thick fur had obstructed the blade, but movement kept the wound bleeding and he would eventually weaken.
     He needed a den, a safe haven for rest and healing. His sense of place wavered as the woods around him warped into twisted, reeking jungle, returned to northern forest, distorted again....
     He emerged at last into a clearing and saw, by the light of the half-restored moon, the haven instinct had found. He crept toward the house and the waiting, moon-washed figure. The rightness drew him; the wrongness dragged at him and kept him low to the ground.
     She stretched her hand out slowly; he growled a warning. _No human touch_! But this touch, so familiar....
     She backed gradually up the steps and into the lamplit interior. He followed, stiff-legged, unable to close the distance, or to let it lengthen.
     Slowly she sank to the floor. Her eyes dropped, freeing him from the painful intensity of her gaze. She fumbled at her shirt collar, swept away her hair, and arched her smooth, vulnerable throat in symbolic submission.
     He crept forward, tested her with jaws that pressed from nape to windpipe. Then he released her neck and laid his dark head against her shoulder, gulping her scent in great shuddering sighs as her arms went around him and a cloud of russet hair fell forward to mingle with night-black fur.
     At last she leaned back enough to stroke the silver streaks at his temples. Her face still showed traces of shock, but more than a trace of tenderness.
     Then her hand moved gently toward his wounded thigh, and her touch set off such ripples of pleasure that he almost missed the signals of impending change.
     She stiffened at his urgent growl; he thrust his muzzle  against her eyes to close them, then tried to pull away.
     Her arms tightened. He gave in, let the change surge through his body as her voice flowed over him, murmuring, comforting, "It's all right, all right...." And her hands and body clung to his, explored him, as the wolf-form became man-form.
     At last he lay naked and exhausted in her arms. With an effort he raised a hand to open her still-closed eyes. The man-voice came with an effort. "You... knew?"
     "No... not _knew_I thought it was just my private fantasy."
     She stroked his head again, then moved her hand down over shoulder, chest, belly. When she eased from under him to kneel by his side and lower her face toward his loins a surge of longing stirred him, but her mouth went to his wounded thigh. Gently she licked away the blood.
     "Your blood--could it make me..."
     "No. You have to be born to it." And she wasn't, she couldn't be, he would have known if that flesh had ever changed. But there was something so unfathomable, so strange and wild, about her....
     "I thought so." A shadow more profound than disappointment crossed her face.
     Then she tossed the hair out of her eyes and stood. "He's dead?"
     It took him a moment to understand. "Yes."
     "Your clothes are out there?"
     "Yes, I should get them." He started to rise, wavered, then made it to the couch.
     "It's my turn now." She shrugged into her jacket. "Will it look as though coyotes did it?"
     "Coyotes couldn't..." The snap of a heavy arm bone between his jaws echoed in his head.
     "We can't let them be blamed, be hunted down. And talk of a wolf would be even worse." She felt in a pocket and drew out gloves. "Is the knife that cut you still out there?"
______

After which, the woman proves to be even fiercer in rage  than the wolf, with a spirit at least as wild as his own.

Infuriating Technology (or, Crisis at the Craft Store) (or, Giselle Needs Professional Help)

by Giselle Renarde

I'm much more patient than I used to be. Much less irritable, too.

But something happened earlier in the week that really set me off: my computer started acting up.  Maybe you can relate.  There's something about electronic devices not doing what they're supposed to do that's absolutely maddening.

I can handle a lot of intense stuff pretty calmly.  I have certification (albeit lapsed) in crisis prevention and intervention. Does that mean I never have out-of-control moments myself? Nope. I had one just a couple days ago. We'll get to that.

Last week I was at Michael's (the craft store) when a man burst through the door screaming and swearing.  Customers RAN from this person, who was obviously in crisis and perhaps has mental health issues.  While he screamed that he'd lost his towel and he was having a very bad day, a staff member asked if she could help him. She spoke clearly and casually, without a hint of fear and without that demeaning therapist voice people sometimes use when they don't know what they're doing.

The man asked for a product the store didn't carry (not a towel, by the way).  The staff member made a suggestion about where he might find it, which inflamed the man because he'd already been there.  He shouted about all the stores he'd visited. Nobody had what he needed.

The staff member listened without rushing him or interrupting. She eventually suggested a store he hadn't tried, and he left without escalation. The situation was handled extremely well. When you're speaking with a person in crisis, things can go really bad really fast. Here, they didn't.

Around the same time, my computer started acting up. Slowing down. Not responding.

Annoying, right?  I'm no expert, but I couldn't figure out what the problem was. I started running scans. Scan after scan after scan.  Nothing seemed to be working. The solutions I implemented to resolve my possible problems only exacerbated them.

I can't remember exactly what set me off.  After five days of getting zero work done because all my energy was going into resolving this issue, I had a bit of a mental health event myself.  The helplessness of not being able to fix my stupid little problem culminated in an explosion of screaming, swearing, crying, rocking, and punching myself in the head (a new one, for me). I'd lost my towel. I was having a very bad day.

It was a true crisis moment, brought on by... computer problems?

When I was a teenager, I remember a teacher trying to warn me off my ex because he'd once kicked the crap out of a photocopier.

There's something about technology.  It brings out my inner rage in a way humans never can.  I used to have a printer that could provoke similar reactions, though never as intense as this event. This was a bad one. I've never hit myself before. That was new and painful and actually pretty scary.

My computer's still not working properly. Mostly, programs randomly choose not to respond for reasons that remain a mystery. When this happens, I get up and walk away and do something else for a minute.  I know I have to take a breath and distract myself or risk another meltdown.

A close friend suggested seeking professional help, meaning an IT person. That made me laugh, because when my girlfriend made that same suggestion she was talking about a healthcare professional.

I think they're both right.

Angry Birds

By Lisabet Sarai

“Hey, Liz – isn’t that Bart?”

“Where?”

“Behind you, at the other end of the bar. Talking to the blonde with the big artificial tits.”

“Sounds like him. It’s not worth my energy to check, though.”

“Really? Last week all you could talk about was his six pack and his stamina. You told me you thought you were in love.”

“You’re dreaming. No way I could love that sleazebag.“

“But last week...”

“Last week is ancient history, Jill. Let’s bury it.”

“But...”

“Look, I was briefly deluded into thinking Bartholomew Jackson was a decent and reasonable person. I was wrong.”

“What did he do?”

“Can’t you just drop it? There are so many other, more interesting topics to discuss.”

“C’mon, Liz. I’m your best friend. Spill!”

“You really want to know? Okay, you asked for it. You’re gonna puke.”

“That sounds a bit dramatic.”

“Just wait. You know how he was the perfect gentleman when we met? So solicitous of my comfort and all?”

“Yeah – I have to admit I was a bit jealous that it was you he wanted. His buddy Jeff was a total dud. Couldn’t get it up to save his life.”

“That’s one problem Mr. I’m-a-Stockbroker-So-Bow-Down-to-Me Jackson didn’t have. He had a perpetual boner.”

“And that’s bad?”

“Well, no – I mean I like sex as much as the next girl...”

“More, I’d say.”

“Do you want to hear the story or not, Jill?”

“Sorry. Go ahead.”

“The first night was great, I admit. He rocked my world. I came three times, once all over his face. Very nice indeed.”

“So what happened?”

“It all started when he saw the shelf of my books.”

“Oh, Liz! You didn’t tell him your pseudonym?”

“In a moment of weakness and deep stupidity. What can I say? He seemed so nice, so appreciative. I’m hungry for recognition. As soon as he found out they were my books, though – that I write erotica - he changed. Completely.”

“How?”

“All of a sudden he was channeling Christian Gray or something. Using my stockings to tie me to the bed. Slapping me around. Forcing me to suck his cock. Bending me over and drilling into my ass without any lube. I guess he assumed that I must be a total slut, with no qualms about anything sexual.”

“Well, you are pretty wild, compared to me at least. I thought you liked a bit of kink.”

“Sure, with the right person, under the right circumstances. After the appropriate negotiations. Bart didn’t even ask. Like I said, he just assumed I’d eat it all up, that I’d swallow his cum and lick his butt hole and beg him to fuck me the way I did that first night.”

“So why didn’t you kick him out?”

“I tried! That’s when I found out he’d been secretly filming every damn thing he did to me. Even that first time, when I was all starry-eyed. He threatened to post the videos on the ‘Net, along with my pseudonym, if I didn’t go along with his filthy ideas.”

“Jeez, that would be a disaster for your job!”

“Tell me about it! So I strung him along for a couple of days, while I worked on the problem of how I could get the vids back, or at least destroy them. When he showed up at my door at 3 AM Sunday, with two other guys in tow, ready for a gang bang, I got desperate.”

“Oh my god! What did you do?”

“The first thing that came into my mind. I acted excited, like having my holes stuffed by a trio of slobs was my most cherished fantasy. In fact, I told Bart, I’d always dreamed of having guys piss on me.”

“Yech!”

“I warned you! They loved it! It just confirmed their opinion of me as the ultimate deviant slut. Anyway, I fixed them all drinks, told them I had to get ready but I’d wait for them in the bath tub. While they were chugging down their cocktails, I made some quick alterations to the electrical wiring in the bathroom.”

“You don’t mean...?”

“Hey, there’s got to be some use for all my engineering degrees! I made sure the floor was nice and wet, then I knelt in the tub – on the rubber mat. They stumbled in, barefoot – whipped out their junk – aimed and let fly... The liquid completed the circuit, just as I’d planned. The lights flashed – there was a smell of charred meat – the circuit breaker blew – then everything was quiet. When I turned on my flashlight, I found all three bastards unconscious on the floor, lying in puddles of their own pee.”

“Liz, you’re unbelievable! What if you’d killed them?”

“Unlikely. Anyway, I didn’t. After I’d made sure they were breathing, I slipped Bart’s iPhone and keys out of his pocket. Using his car, I drove to his apartment and let myself in. I flushed his phone down his toilet. Logged on to his computer, deleted all his files on Google Drive and Drop Box, trashed all his email. Then I used his baseball bat – you remember him bragging about being the top hitter in his Saturday league? – and smashed his MacBook into little tiny pieces.”

“God! He could have you arrested.”

“I suppose. Just in case, I made sure to take some shots of him and his cronies. I can always accuse him – with some justification – of rape. Those pictures was the last thing I sent Mr. Jackson before I wiped him from my contacts and unfriended him on Facebook. I sent copies of the pix, along with a somewhat less graphic account of the situation, to my lawyer, too. Just in case. But somehow I doubt Bart will bother me anymore.”

“’Hell hath no fury...’! Hey – do you still have those photos on your mobile?”

“Yeah, sure. I look at them every now and then to remind myself not to trust anyone with the secret of my identity.”

“Let me see... Jeez, that’s totally disgusting! Hey, I’ve got an idea. I’ll be right back.”

“Sure. Ah – Joe – can I please get another G and T?”

“You pervert! Get your hands off me, you creep! Oh no, don’t come any closer or I’ll call the cops...”

“Here you go, Liz. One gin and tonic... What’s her problem? Quite a pair of lungs on her!”

“Thanks, Joe. I think she may have just had her fantasies shattered. Hey, Jill – that was brilliant!”

“I hope that asshole learned his lesson. Never mess with an angry woman.”

“Never mess with a woman – period. Can I buy you another drink, girlfriend?”