Fear Sucks!

by "oceania"


As this topic's guest bogger I wondered what I would write about.
After all so many things SUCK!

Telemarketers SUCK. It seems the word NO! is not part of their vocab.

Help desk people with names like Biff or Julie and accents so thick you can't understand them -- that try to make you feel small because they have to repeat instructions, they SUCK.

Paychecks that get you through the first week and half of bills but not the rest of the month that really SUCK.

But those can be changed.

So I dug deeper and I scribbled notes on age, weight and gender discrimination. But those topics hit too close to home. My thinking wasn't rational, clear or concise. I obviously wasn't ready to tackle those topics in a blog post.

Then my phone rang. It was the part-time day job. They needed someone to work. It was my day off and I had things I needed to do, none of which I cared to elaborate on with the caller. But she asked so I rattled off my 3 page to-do list for her.

Her reply was I'll tell them I couldn't reach you and you tell them that you got the message late. She ended the conversation with - We never had this conversation, right?!

As the call ended I thought to myself, how awful to feel so fearful.

Fear Sucks!

.. Fear more than sucks…
It has been used as a control mechanism, a modifier and a motivator.
It breeds prejudice and narrows vision as it restricts.
It can become a life force.

The poet/ author Audre Lorde stated that the erotic is one of the deepest life forces. Yet many categorized eroticism as porn. And Porn is a very dirty word, note the sarcasm here, that causes fear in the general public. Yet it doesn't take a rocket scientist to find erotic stories in the Bible, (Song of Solomon), or in literature from Lysistrata to Emile Zola's Nana or even in contemporary works like the very acceptable new Fifty Shades of Grey. E. L. James’ first book in the trilogy has been called the fastest-selling paperback of all time. It is even surpassing the Harry Potter series.

Does this mean the public is becoming more aware / less fearful of the importance of having an erotic life? That would be nice, if not rather wishful thinking.

I know in my own life I have let fear dictate too much, from how I look, to what I say to what I tell people I do for a living I have put governors on. I am making changes. I am taking back my life in small bits and pieces.

My first step was repeating the mantra it will be ok when I take action to fix it.

That being ok part based on an action has helped me put panic in its place and allowed me to work through some fears.

So how has fear hurt you? Care to share?

----

posted by Jean Roberta.

(Note: "Oceania" is a legendary erotic writer, computer techie & recorder of audio stories. I should have asked for her bio. Look her up.)

FML? Not on your life.

by Kristina Wright


I can wallow with the best of them. Bitch, rant, moan, complain, cry, wail, shake my fist at the sky and proclaim (loudly) that the universe is out to get me and my life sucks. It doesn't last long, though. My wallowing has a self-imposed time limit because to wallow too long is to get depressed and I am already prone to depression. I have a pretty good handle on it (most of the time) and know that the best thing to do when I'm feeling like life sucks is to prove myself wrong. There is definitely something screwy in my brain chemistry that brings on bouts of depression, but they seem to be ebbing as I get older and are not to be confused with the bad-thing-happened-this-sucks kind of misery. But whatever the cause, I eventually find my way out of the darkness and back into the light. Thankfully.


When I saw this week's topic, it immediately brought to mind a bit of internet shorthand that I've seen over the past couple of years. The letters are FML. I had no idea what that meant the first (second, third) time I read it as a Facebook status. FML. For my love? Friend me, lovely? Friends may like? Faith moves legions? I had no idea. Then someone posted FML after a particularly lengthy rant about a bad relationship and I had to Google it. Do you know what FML stands for?


Fuck my life. 


And I thought to myself-- how can anyone truly feel that way about their life and still keep going? I get that it's usually nothing more than drama and frustration that makes someone type those letters, but when you type it out... whoa. Just looking at it up there on that line all by itself is giving me the creeps. I feel the overwhelming urge to delete the words, lest they foreshadow the future. Superstitious? Yeah, probably. But I grew up with a parent who seemed to live in a perpetual depression, the cloud over her hanging so heavy and dark it shadowed my life, as well. I walked away from that-- survived that-- to go on to have what I consider to be an amazingly happy life. So I have no desire to tempt fate or the gods or even my own brain into believing those words above.  


Maybe there's some truth to the adage that words lose their power the more you say them. That doesn't mean I'm ever going to say that phrase and mean it. Fuck my life. It's like bleeding onto paper, wadding it up and throwing it in a dumpster. Fuck my life. Not life in general, not humanity as a whole, but my own existence. Fuck my life. Everything I am, everything I have achieved, everything that makes me me. I can't even imagine typing those letters much less saying those words. Not even in my darkest depression where thoughts as dangerous as poison seeped into me. Fuck my life? Oh no. Never.


Things suck sometimes. As I wrote in my life lessons post last week, Be Fierce, You Special Snowflake, you have to learn to take what life throws at you, adapt, survive and ultimately thrive no matter what. I don't say that smugly-- I know there are situations that could bring me to my knees in a heartbeat and I'm grateful for the guardian angel or lucky charm or whatever karma or deity keeps me healthy, happy and blessed with a good life. But I have been through tough times-- and yes, I've said, "This sucks"-- only to come out the other side feeling stronger.

(In Long Kiss Goodnight, Geena Davis plays Samantha Caine, an amnesiac mom who is really a deadly secret agent named Charly Baltimore. Did she say, "Fuck my life"? Probably. But then she kicked ass, killed the bad guys, saved her daughter and lived happily ever after.)

I know there are people in this world who have a legitimate reason to say FML. I also know that they don't say it. The ones who are truly living in a hellish world, whether due to external circumstances such as war or internal circumstances such as terminal illness, are not the types to say, "Fuck my life." They're survivors. And that's what I always hope to be, regardless of what life throws my way: a survivor. 


(Speaking of survivors, I have a shiny new ebook out this week. Mammoth Book of Erotica Presents Skin Deep: The Best of Kristina Wright is a collection of six of my stories from previous editions of the Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica series edited by Maxim Jakubowski. The title story, "Skin Deep," is about a chance encounter between a heart transplant recipient and a breast cancer survivor. It's one of my favorite stories ever.)

The Smog Between Us

by Jean Roberta
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There is a story about punctuation from colonial India. A local man had been convicted of some crime by an English judge, and he was sentenced to hang.  His distraught mother sent a pleading note to the judge. English was not her first language, but she was able to write: “Hang him not save him.” Someone told her the sentence needed a comma, so she changed it to: “Hang him, not save him.” They did.

It’s unlikely that a better-placed comma would have saved the man’s life, but a comma in the wrong place certainly didn’t help.

Another sample sentence that is used to demonstrate the importance of punctuation is:
1) "Woman, without her man, is nothing. Or
2) "Woman! Without her, man is nothing."

Punctuation is hard to hear. Spoken aloud, this sentence would have much different meanings for different listeners.

Miscommunication. I hate it. This is not a pet peeve. It’s feral and out of control.

I’ve spent many a frustrated noon hour waiting for someone who said s/he would meet me for lunch in a certain place – but s/he never appears. Later, the response is likely to be: “Oh, were we supposed to meet on Tuesday? At twelve? At the Steaming Wok in the mall? I thought it was Wednesday at one at the Greasy Grill on Main Street. Well, you said something about the Greasy Grill when we were talking about Bob’s bout of food poisoning, so I just assumed that’s where you wanted to eat. On Wednesday at one.” Gah.

Many a first-year university student has picked up the notion that literature (especially poetry) is completely subject to interpretation, and has run with it. Here is the opening stanza of a poem I teach to expose students to sophistry, or false logic:

"Out upon’it! I have loved / Three whole days together,/And am like to love three more/If it hold fair weather."

One of my students wrote an essay on this poem, claiming that the speaker is mourning his dead wife. The student claimed to be deeply moved by the widower’s sincerity.

"Show me the dead wife," I said. "In which line is she hiding?"

"I’m entitled to my opinion," said the student. "That’s what I think the poem means."

The student knew a few things. He knew that all poetry of that time was serious, and most of it was about death, True Love or marriage. Or all of the above.

Many years ago, I was in my last year of high school. As I walked along a downtown street with my boyfriend of the time, he said something I didn’t hear, or didn’t want to hear. I was already thinking ahead to university, where I hoped to find more interesting companionship. “Dreamer!” laughed Boyfriend. We had passed the display window of a department store where a mannequin in a white lace wedding gown filled the space.

Boyfriend knew in his bones that I really wanted him to marry me right after high school graduation. After all, I was a girl. He knew how tricky females are, and how determined we all are to manipulate guys into long-term commitments. The more I insisted that I hadn`t even noticed the plastic bride (although once she was pointed out to me, she was hard to ignore), the more he laughed.

Boyfriend assured me that we could get married in the summer. I was tempted to leave town the following day, and begin life as a mysterious hermit with no name. It seemed the only way to avoid drastic expectations based on misunderstandings.

I try to avoid making assumptions, though I`m sure I`m sometimes guilty. If misunderstandings were visible, they would look like smog that swirls around us all, in all parts of the world. We peer anxiously through the haze like Sherlock Holmes pursuing a mystery in Victorian London. Unlike him, we often lose the body, the suspect and the key witness.

And now I`ll read the comments to find out whether anyone thinks I just said that public hanging would be a good way to lower the crime rate. :O

Fiona's Apple (A Story of Complaint)

It is related that long ago there was a certain shy young man who had been tricked and disappointed by women many times in his life.   To guard his heart he determined to study the ways of woman, to make a career of learning and cataloging her deceits and becoming a learned academic on the subject.  So it was he attended a university where courses of this kind were taught and studied hard and filled notebooks with his theories, secure in the knowledge that no woman would get the better of him ever again.

     After graduating from his studies, he left the university for home, traveling in a fine dog cart pulled by a horse with a fine bridle.  In the cart he arranged  his venerable books and notebooks and as he passed the time traveling on the country road he imagined the consulting agency he would set up and over time acquire some modest wealth and some manly fame for his hard earned sagacity.

    As the evening drew on, and the air became thick with shadows he stopped at the home of a local garlic farmer and was invited to spend the night.  The farmer was a simple man who felt honored to have a man of learning at his table.  The young man chattered on over dinner and explained his studies.  The old farmer was much impressed by his learning, and because he was newly married asked many questions about the ways of women.  He lit his pipe and let the young man talk.

   "I have," said the young man, "attained a level of sophistication in my understanding of the psychology of the female mind.  Women are treacherous and scheming. Their emotional histrionics will waste your time with distraction from the higher intellectual pursuits natural to the male sex.  Don’t tell me about women, I am a trained expert on women and I’m convinced God put the seemingly weaker sex on the earth to plague the minds of honest men and waste their resources of both time and money and especially of essential bodily fluids.”

    “Essential bodily fluids?” said the farmer, much amazed.

    “Essential bodily fluids.  Drained for the regeneration of their own life force and you may well believe your wife will live longer than you on account of it.”

    "That's rather a hard thing," said the farmer.  "Don’t you think its a bit hard?"

    "The mind of woman is essentially simple," said the young man.  “It is formed like the mind of a monkey.  It is composed of simple appetite and must be dominated.  Once tamed and made docile they may become a nominally suitable companion for a man.  Providing you are watchful of your essential bodily fluids."

    “You know,”  said the farmer, puffing  anxiously at his pipe "now that you mention it, I think she has not quite played square with me, you know."

    "And how do you mean?" said the young scholar.

    "I often spend a few days away from home, bringing the garlic harvest to market, buying seed and so on.  We have young farmhands here, and who know what happens when a man is away?”

    As it happened in those days young women were often married away to prosperous men to enhance the property of their fathers and the farmer's wife was especially beautiful.  She was half the farmer's age and had yet bore him no son, though she was broad hipped and deep breasted and as perfectly made for the provocation of essential bodily fluids as any woman could be, yet her womb was as fruitless as a rock.

    "Let me ask you, sir, are your essential bodily fluids regularly drained by the habitual predations of your younger wife?”

    “Not as often as I might wish,” sighed the farmer. 

    “Well, then you may live the longer for it.”

    “I grant you women are very clever about getting what they want,” said the farmer,  “even if their minds are like a monkey's as you say.  I do think my wife as clever as any, and I'd bet my farm against your cart and horse she could give you quite a turn in spite of your learning."

    "Did you say you'd wager your farm against my cart she couldn’t trick me?"

    "I did."

    "I'll take you up on that."

    The farmer held out his hand and they shook on it. 

    The next day the farmer packed up his own wagon with garlic and rode off to town to sell it.  He was hardly out of sight when the young woman called to the young man from the top of the stairs.  "Come up and have breakfast with me," she said is a cheerful voice and waved him up with her hand.  "I'm all alone and I can’t eat breakfast by myself.  Come have some tea and talk to me."

    The young man thought it would be rude to refuse and as he climbed the stair  he clearly saw the poking of her nipples against the fabric of her house dress and hesitated.  He realized with a gasp, she was not wearing undergarments, only a simple dress of thin cotton.  She stood in the doorway of the room and gave him a forlorn look.  As he approached she stepped aside and let him pass.  He saw her glance nervously up and down the hall and close the door.  She locked it quietly and they were alone.

   "Are you hungry?"  She indicated a bowl of fruit and bread on a small table next to the huge deep feather bed.  "No?"

   The scholar’s throat went dry.  He shook his head. 

   "My name is Fiona," said the woman.

   "My name is Karl," said the young man.

   "Would you like something to eat with me?"  Instead of offering food, she reached over, took a corner of the blanket and turned it down, exposing a soft pink sheet.  "Let me be frank with you," she said.  "My husband is a good man and I love him well enough and would not leave him.  But he comes in from the field at night reeking of garlic and I hardly bear to be near him.  And then he falls asleep with his pipe and almost never lies with me because he’s so tired.  I would like to give him a strong son to give his farm to, but he'll never get me with child, and soon I'll be too old and dried up inside to sprout a babe.  He would rather lie before the fire with his pipe than between my legs and our marriage sheets.  Isn't that sad?"

    "That's very sad," said the young scholar staring at the rising nubs of her breasts.

    Fiona reached over and picked an apple from the basket.  She tossed it on the bare sheet by the pillow and looked at him feverishly.  "Would you like to share an apple with me?"

    "I - ?"

    Fiona took hold of her house dress and with a sudden flourish pulled it over her head and tossed it on the bed.  Beneath, as he had guessed, she was nude.  Her thighs were lush and thick with a deep delta of dark hair between.  Her breasts were round and full with long pink nipples that seemed to stare up at him stiffly.

    He stepped towards her and clasped her in his arms.

    "Help!" she screamed  "Help!  Help!  Help me!"

    He let go of her instantly and ran for the door but the door was firmly locked.  Fiona stuck her head out the window and screamed to the farmhands "Help me!  Run!  Help me!"

    She threw her dress on and said "Quick!  Stretch out on the floor and close your eyes!  Hurry!"

    He hesitated but already heavy boots where clattering up the stairs.  He threw himself on the floor and closed his eyes.  He felt her hands grab at his lips, her fingers pulling his jaws wide apart and suddenly she stuffed the apple in his mouth.     "Don’t move," she said.

    He lay with his eyes closed and heard her fumble at the door and open it.  Suddenly the room seemed to be filled with large men.

    "It’s all my fault!  I was telling our guest a funny joke and he was laughing so hard the apple stuck in his throat!  Help him!  He's choking to death!  Do something!  Hurry!”

    "I know what will get it out, stand him up." said one of the farm hands.     A huge arm grabbed him by the waist and hoisted him up.  He held his breath and thrashed his hands around for show.

    Balling his fist, the farm hand struck the student such a mighty blow in the belly the apple went flying out the window.  Karl gasped and turned blue and his eyes rolled back in his head.  They laid him out on the bed, moaning, and  congratulated themselves all around and finally left to have a beer.

    When they were alone she wiped his face and chest with a wet towel.  "Well," she said "Did you ever read about that in any of your fine books?"

    When the farmer returned that night the guest was gone.  His wife presented him with the fine cart and horse and bridle and told him of how she’d won them.  He was so proud of her cleverness, he pushed her down into the hay and they tussled lustily till morning as he filled her again and again with his essential bodily fluids, and nine months later she bore them a strong squalling baby boy.

    Karl walked with his heavy books, poorer but wiser and spent the night under a bridge where he built a fire.  He fed the fire with the heap of books and notebooks which in his eyes were all they were good for.

    “Women,” he muttered to the flames.

The Brussel Sprouts Are Responsible For Everything

Seven things that suck:

1. Feeling like things suck even though they totally don't and not being able to shake it no matter how many tragedies you tell yourself you could be going through right now.

2. People being shitty to each other for no reason. Just knock it off, okay? What are you going to gain by being that shitty? All you'll do is remember the shitty thing you did forever and always feel guilty about it, unless you have no conscience and are an amoral robot who needs to DIAF.

3. Brussel sprouts. I almost feel embarrassed about the obviousness of this one. As though it even needs to be said! Everyone knows that brussel sprouts murdered my sister in cold blood. And to this very night, I hunt them with a steely determination and nothing but brutal vengeance in my heart. One day...one day I'll find them, and get the justice she deserves. Even though I don't actually have a sister and brussel sprouts are just a vegetable.

4. Planet X. We're all going to die in December when it crashes into us. But it's only fourth on my list cos brussel sprouts are clearly worse. I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that they were behind Enron. Even though I don't really know what Enron was.

5. The fact that the movie star Chris Evan looks different in every picture he's in. How am I supposed to legit fancy him? He's like seven hundred different people. I feel like I'm cheating on him with him. In my head. Where brussel sprouts are also murderers.

6. Greed. I mean, what the fook, man? Do you really need twenty cars that are all virtually identical? Why do people need so much money for things they don't really want? I just spent £13.27 on a Lovefilm description and I swear to God it gave me orgasms. I'm almost late writing this blog post because I got so lost picking so many movies that the internet groaned under the strain. It's easily one of the best experiences of my life, and it's not even costing me anything yet. And this is before I've gotten into all the things that are actually free. Do you really need twelve billion dollars, Rupert Murdoch, to do the things you love? I'm pretty sure you could be a total fooker without all that money.

7. Assholes at work. If I had a penny for every one of my friends, relatives, casual acquaintances who'd encountered some asshole at work basically being that douche off Holiday Reps, I'd be able to purchase 800000000000 Lovefilm subscriptions. Or maybe I'd just give it all away to the people that people like Rupert Murdoch aren't helping. Either way, assholes at work really suck. It's like total sociopathic jerks just gravitate towards being the boss of crappy companies everywhere, so they can have the tiniest bit of power over the most innocent and hapless of people. I tell you what, dickhead bosses of the world: try not to make so many people's lives a living misery. Again, I say this unto the universe: IT WILL NOT HELP YOU. YOUR LIFE WILL NOT GET BETTER BECAUSE YOU WORKED OUT YOUR ISSUES ON SOME POOR UNSUSPECTING PERSON.

And that is the end of my list of things that suck. It's not definitive. Clearly there are a billion other things that suck in the world, too. But I guess all we can do is recognise that, and keep trying to make it not suck. Which I'm going to do now, by telling you all that you are orsum. You are orsum for reading this blog, you're orsum for putting up with that asshole at work. You're orsum for not being greedy, you're orsum for being kind.

I love you for all of those things, total stranger, brother, sister, friend.

Those Stars Are Out to Get You

When I was young, I read every folk tale I could get my hands on. The lesson you learn from those stories - from China to Turkey to Ghana to Norway - is that wishes only exist to fuck you up and over and seven ways to Sunday. So I know that if I dared to wish I had more time to read or write, I'd lose my job. If I dared wish for a ocean view from my bedroom, I'd end up in a prison cell in Pelican Bay. If I wished I knew what life was really like two hundred years ago, I'd either drop dead from cholera or get burned as a witch or starve to death within a month of traveling back in time. Oh yes, I know all about the evil edge of wishes.

I also know better to complain. It's not guilt so much as a little slice of reality. When I was about ten years old, I visited my cousins who lived in a very wealthy enclave near Atlanta, Georgia. We decided to hike down to the local market for popsicles one hot afternoon. We walked through their neighborhood of large houses on big, wooded tracts of land, the kind of place with big sweeping lawns and carefully manicured hedges. Half a mile later, we passed even grander houses on bigger lots. They had white columns and verandas that wrapped around the house on every floor, hydrangea bushes in full bloom and tall spikes of hollyhocks in their shade gardens. One of them was an actual plantation house. The rest were imitations built in the early 1900s.

Thick oak branches bent over the road to shade it. Cicadas buzzed in the sweltering afternoon heat. My cousins, sisters, and I traipsed along the road that ran parallel to the railway tracks and talked about how much cooler it would be when we went to my aunt and uncle's lake house for the rest of the summer. There, we'd have a speed boat for water skiing, canoes, and a private dock to swim around. The adults would be gone during the week, but we'd be left with a refrigerator full of food and drinks, several TV sets (we only had one in our house!), a car big enough for my eldest cousin to drive us around in, and plenty of spending money. For my cousins, it was just a typical summer. For my sisters and I, it was like winning the kid lottery. Such luxury! But we tried not to show how impressed we were because we were very aware that we were the poor relations.

The road turned and crossed the railroad tracks. On the opposite side, there was a small house. It couldn't have sat more than ten feet from those tracks. I didn't see any power lines running to the shanty. I did see the outhouse at the far back corner of the lot, near the train tracks. The yard was hard red Georgia clay without so much as a weed sprouting through it. It was surrounded by a chicken wire fence that sagged from lopsided posts. The house had two window openings cut into the weathered boards on the front side, but no glass, and a faded sheet hung in the doorway. Two sagging steps lead from the yard to the house. Silent kids, from babies to teens, watched us as we went past talking loud about power boats and dipped cones from Foster's Freeze. 

I guess I was pretty self-aware even that young, because even I knew that there was a huge gulf of difference between our status as the poor relations and those kids we passed. We had clean water and indoor plumbing. We had food. None of us wore hand-me-down clothes. Thanks to the military, we had regular medical care, dental, and eye exams. We had glass windows and real doors that locked. Most of the time, we lived in houses that had air conditioning. Maybe we only had one, but we had a TV.

So I'm real careful when I complain. And even more careful about wistful wishes. Don't blow out all your birthday candles with one breath. That first star you see tonight? It's just waiting to pull a cruel trick on you.

I Politely Decline

By Lisabet Sarai

My poor husband! All I've done for the past two days is complain about the issues I've been having with my primary computer, the one I use for all my email, web browsing, and writing. You see, he's not only my lover, partner and co-conspirator – he's also my system administrator. And so when my computer insists on spontaneously rebooting two or three times in an hour - always when I'm in the midst of composing an important email (or so it seems!) - it's his problem as well as mine.

We've been trying to diagnose the defect, and meanwhile to find workarounds, another environment for me to do my work. So far we've hit one brick wall after another. I've literally been in tears (out of frustration), several times today. Thus, I would appear to have plenty of fodder for this week's topic: This Sucks.

However, I politely decline to discuss my digital issues any further. I'm sorry, but I believe that kvetching is bad karma. As soon as I start telling you how terrible everything is, I start to measure my difficulties against those suffered by others. And frankly, I'm ashamed of myself.

Yes, I have computer problems at the moment. But I have a computer – actually more than one. Right now I can't accomplish all the tasks I need to finish, but hey, I'm sitting here typing this blog post, which was one major thing on today's to-do list.

Not only do I have computational facilities that would make many an author green with envy, I have the technical know-how to resolve most types of misbehavior. When I can't figure something out on my own, I can draw on my husband's vast expertise. I don't have to truck the machine over to a service center (which is a blessing, since our baroque configuration would be far beyond the capabilities of most repair people). I don't have to spend a penny (unless of course we figure out that some hardware component is to blame. But that's part of the cost of doing business – and tax deductible!)

And let's broaden the scope a bit, to illustrate that honestly, it would be ridiculous for me to complain. My husband's not just smart, he's also considerate, creative, funny, and a full-body kisser. We live in an amazing apartment, which we rent at a bargain price (considering its characteristics). We both have jobs we love, challenging without being too stressful. We're both about as healthy as one could ask, given our ages.

I didn't get much done today, compared to my objectives. However, composing this post has helped me put the whole crappy computer situation into perspective. Yes, it sucks that I have to face a bit of inconvenience, that I have to accept that sometimes the fates have different ideas about how my day will go than I do. Nevertheless, I'd say I was a serious candidate for the most fortunate woman on the planet.