"Blue Nails": A conversation

I can’t believe I’ve forgotten my watch again.  I left it at home on the bed.   I feel insecure without my wrist watch, almost naked.  And she’ll be here soon, but she’s such an old school German, in spite of growing up as a country girl in a time when clocks were a luxury, she is punctual.  When she says she’ll be here, she’ll be here.  She is her own watch.

I could go up to the barrista and ask her what time it is but there’s a line of people and she’s cranking out drinks for them.  Also if I leave my table out here on the sidewalk someone will snatch it and she won't see me.  She'd just go into a kind of hunting mode and track me by scent like a blond haired bloodhound.  I don't like being around her when she’s like that. Twitchy.

I check the settings on the little iPod that I’ll be using to keep the interview going.  My ears are itching inside from using those little ear buds which I should probably wash.

A sharp finger flick on the back of my head.  Bop.

“Hallo, Scheißekopf.”

I reach back and touch the back of my head just as she swings into sight and plops into the other chair in front of the uncapped bottle of Heineken I bought her.  The milk pale face, the platinum silver hair, she looks as though she was poured into her clothes from moonlight.  “They don’t have Paulaner?”

“Always something with you,” I say.  “They don’t have True Blood either.”

“Oh - you asked?”

“I really did!”

She laughs with happy teeth, not a danger in sight.  "You doof!  What did they say?”

“Oh nothing, they thought I was being dumb.  I’ll bet a lot of drunks this time of night ask for weird stuff.  Hey - I found a place that sells Absinthe.”

“Like in the Anne Rice books?  You did?”

“Yeah!  I found it in a liquor store too.”

“Buy us some.”

“The Green Fairy comes high,  little miss Queen of the Damned.”

She takes a swig of beer and holds it in her mouth, looking around for a place to spit.

“Shit,” I say, “I forgot - wait.”  I run up to the counter and the barrista, a little grumpy at being interrupted in her psychic flow passes me a big plastic cup without looking.  I bring it back and Nixie spits in it. 

“You’re good to me Scheißekopf.”

“Waste of good beer.  And you want Absinthe?”

She lifts her middle finger and takes another swig.

“Did you watch the True Blood DVDs I borrowed you yet?  Fifth Season?”

She spits the beer.  “’Loaned you’,” she says  “Don’t you say ‘loaned’ ?”

“I come from Minnesota; they say ‘borrowed’.”

“You should be teaching me proper English.”

“ ‘Borrowed you’ says I.”

“Shitty teacher.”

I push the iPod forward.  “I wanted to pick up where we left off last night.  You told about how you were turned.  We were at the part where you had to leave your Uncle’s house.”

She waves her hand imperiously.  “You're kind of rude.  You.  We have all night.  Don't be so grabby.  Yes!  I watched all of them in two nights.  True Blood.  Sookie,what will she do?  That Bill!  Garce!  He is a monster.”  She draws out the word with a kind of gleeful relish.

“Bill has bigger fangs than you do.”

“And he has a bigger dick than you do!”

“You’ve never seen it.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Absolutely and twice on Sunday.”

“And mein gott - they fuck a lot on that show.  Everyone.  Schtup!  Schtup! Schtup! It’s ridiculous.  You know who I like best?”

“Who?”

“Who do I like best?”

“Jessica.  The red hair.  Definitely.”

“Yes!  How do you know this?”

“She was very religious in the beginning, like you.  Then she becomes crazy later, but she’s deep.  She has a lot of soul.”

“In real life Debra Wohl, she’s supposed to be a really sweet person.”

“Yes, but you were religious like Jessica.”

“I’m not religious now,” she says, “but I’m spiritual.”

“But do nosferatus have sex?  Sex is an evolutionary function to reproduce a species.  You reproduce asexually.  Technically.”

She puts her bottle down with a sharp petulant rap.  “You.  You are all about the science.  The science.  I fucked Daniel when he was alive. Like on True Blood, like crazy we fucked.”

“You said you don’t fuck.”

“I don’t fuck prey.  He wasn’t prey.  He was never prey.” 

I turn on the recorder app on the iPod.  “Let’s get back.”

“No,” she says.  “Let’s chat.  Schießen die Scheiße.  Shoot the shit.”

We sit in awkward silence for a minute like a bad first date.  Finally I think of something I’ve always wondered. “Do you dream?  When you sleep?”

“I dream sometimes just before I rise.  Mostly it is very silent and time passes quickly.  When I wake up I always feel kind of sad.”

“Why?”

“Oh.  Dunno.  I miss the sun.  But I dream.  Mind . . .”

I sense the German philosopher in her rising to the surface like Moby Dick.

“Mind is like a spectrum.”

Thar she blows. . . 

“There is the conscious mind.  Then the unconscious mind, which I have like you.  But different.  My nosferatu consciousness, its a little different because I am adapted to my limitations differently.”

“Do you worry about having a soul?”

“I do,” she says.  “But I am not worried about Hell.  I know about Hell.”

“You mean figuratively?  Poor me, I’m in Hell?”

“No - really.”

“Seriously?  A real Hell?  You’re usually so German about everything.  Rational.”

She looks off in the distance and slouches back in her chair, slinging an arm over the back of it with the bottle in her hand.  When she does this she’s getting ready for something.  She reminds me of my Dad in the fishing cabin when he was about to explain something abstract.  This moment, this philosophical slouch is why I know I’m safe from her.  She can’t talk like this with anyone else.  She needs me.  For this.

“There is Hell.  But to understand Hell you must understand the universe.”

“Ooo,” I say.  “Sookie never talks like this.”

She sits straight.  Puts the bottle down.  Dead serious.  Here it comes.

“Scientists now, they say that all that exists in the universe, everything that exists is within layers of existence.  And that the only thing that actually exists is energy.  There is only one thing that exists by itself. Everything is energy in different, you know, states.  Conditions.  But there is only one thing.  Energy.  And energy is never lost.  It only changes its state of being.  Like the Einstein.  E equals M and C times two.  Energy equals mass.  Mass is energy.  But - “

She looks to see if I’m paying attention.  I totally am.  Not to her words, but to her.  What does a vampire do best but fascinate?  But this isn’t a vampire anymore.    A cannibal with table manners.  This is my friend.

“ - there is one more state of existence.  Physicists say energy is the final state, the only true state.  But there is one more.  All energy has consciousness. There.”  She points the bottle at me.  “Jah?  Hören Sie?”

“Okay.” 

“That is the secret of god.  All energy is conscious.  But - consciousness exists on a spectrum.  There is a universal and unmanifested consciousness beyond energy from which energy comes forward in what the Hindu's call 'Prana'.   Prana is not good or bad.  It does not love or hate.  But it creates, it must manifest.  It must Be. It does not hate me anymore than it hates the wolf or the tiger. There is such violence in nature, Garce,  that I would look like a baby compared to what a wasp will do to a cockroach or a poor caterpillar. If you knew what horrors a parasitic wasp can do to a poor cockroach, you would weep for the icky little bastards.  Really.  But it is the fabric of the world and the fabric of the spirit.  We are all connected in one great web of existence. Hören Sie?  I’m not putting you to sleep?”

“Why do you believe in Hell if you think God doesn’t hate you?  I mean, what does the idea mean to you?”

“Hell is to be outside the web of existence,” she says slowly, “It is to be in a state of exile.  But exile, existence, these things, like mind - they exist on a spectrum too.  Hell is not being alone.  It is good to be alone for a time.  Hell is to be cut out from the web of existence.  But you can never be cut off from the web of existence.   Hell is an illusion of ego.   Only a part of the spectrum of existence, even as you continue to exist within it.  Like a ghost.  I am in exile from humanity.  But I am also human, because I come from human.  Because I can love.”  She holds up her green beer bottle, tips it towards me.  “I love you.”

Did she say that?  Is that dangerous?  “You’ve never said that before.”

“I do love you.  I only just knew that now.  I don’t want to fuck you - “

“Shucks.”

“ - but you’re my friend.  We are friends.  Because of you I am not exile.  That would be Hell.  To be out of existence, to be out of the web.  Because of you I am not.  You make me gentle.  If there were True Blood I would drink it and harm no one.  That’s you.”

“Thank you,” I say. I can feel myself getting squishy inside. “You too.”

“True spirituality, good spirituality, and I have learned this from my experience with Hell, is to be most human.  What will make you most fearlessly human, without armor, without deceiving yourself - that is good religion.  Good spirituality will make you bigger and more deeply connected to the web of humanity and your place in it and this is by compassion.  Compassion is the only real spiritual virtue that will make you more human.   Bad religion makes you small.  Good religion makes you big.  Have you read Schopenhauer?”

“No.”

“You should read him.  In Deutsch. Maybe I will borrow it to you.”

“ ‘Loan’, sweet thing.  The word is ‘loan’.”

“Oh shut up.”

This time when she tips back the bottle - I see.

Oh - I see.

It stops my breath with wonder.

“Nixie,” I whisper, grim as death.  “Oh child.  What happened to you?  Who did this to you?”

She spits the beer in the cup.  And smiles.

The killing teeth.  Now I see them.  She puts the bottle down.  So slowly.

“What have you done?”  Almost crying.  “Fuck me.  What is that?  What is that?”

 She holds up both her hands as if being arrested, turns them around, wiggles her fingers, smiling behind them with a tiger grin.  Her eyes flash like a cats.

“Nixie.  Jesus.  You did your nails.”

“Yes!!”

I’m breathing again.  Laughing, both of us like lunatics.    

“You like them?” she says.  “Yes?”

“You painted your fingernails?”

“Yes! - but - " Jumping up and down; “Do you like them?” 

“Yeah!  Definitely.  I mean, I always associate metallic blue with mental illness but they look fine, really fine, kind of go with your hair.  Your nails?  Are you kidding?  Did you do your toes?”

She looks down, does something with her sneaker and - thunk - puts her left foot on the table, twisting her leg so I can get a look.  Bright red toenails. With perfect white trim.

“Jesus!  You are such a girly-girl!  When did that happen?

“Revlon China Flower and they’re perfumed.  Perfumed nail polish!  It’s new.  Smell.”

“No.”

“Smell my toes.”

“Here?”

“Smell my smelly toes or die.”

“Oh all right, okay.  Whatever.”  I swear I throw myself across the little table and get a whiff of her big toe in front of people passing by.  It smells like jasmine.  Really nice.

“And that’s the toe nail polish?”

“Scented.”

“Perfumed toenail polish?  You did that?”

“No, a sweet old Vietnamese lady.”

“Oh, Nixie, no.  No, no, no.  Not a sweet old lady.  That’s unforgivable.”

“She’s fine.”

“Swear?”

“I swear she’s fine, Scheißekopf.”  She holds up her pinky finger.  “I swear.  More than fine.  Beyond fine.”

Now it hits me.  Now I get it.  “So you gave it to her.  The little sip.”

“Yes,” she nods up and down and her eyes are pink rimmed with blood tears.  For me.  She wants so much for me to say this is okay.  

"Now I know, all this stuff about compassion.  I knew there was something way different about you."

“Your interview with me two weeks ago, my early days in Munich, just before I was turned.  It made me think about my life.”

“You’ve started a blood family.”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

“Just two.  So far.  There’s Bai.  And a man named Oscar.  Oscar’s pretty ill.”

“But getting better now I’ll bet.”

“Yes.”  She nods eagerly, wipes at her eye.  “My experiment.”

“Do they love you?”

“Bai loves me.  When she gets younger I think she wants to sleep with me.”

“Do you love them?”

“Yes,” she says softly.  “I think I do.  In my way.”

“So,” I say, “Not only spirituality, but intimacy exists on a spectrum too.”

“How is that?”

“Sex is intimacy.” Now I’m thinking too.

“Not always.”

“True, true.  But its communication.  It’s touch.  We are what we are.  We need to touch.  Its part of being human.  You talk about what makes us most human.  Sex is one way we become more connected, so sex has always had this edgey spiritual side to it.  Sex and spirituality come from the same place.  Prana.  Expression.  Connectedness.  It will make you human, Nixie.   I think its because the energy is all coming from the same place.  Maybe like the spiritual visions you used to have long ago. Its about union.  When sex is good its about union, intimacy.  There's that moment when it makes you bigger, transcendent.  Ecstatic union with the divine through another person and losing control for that special moment.  Like dying to yourself."

"La petite mort."

"People who have direct experience of god, especially mystics, often describe it in erotic terms because there is that moment when they lose themselves in ecstasy.”

“In the past,” she says, “there were sometimes people when I drank from them, it was very erotic.  For me.  I felt their spirit, I felt union. When I felt that union I would spare their lives.  When it was an evil man I didn’t.”

“Usually when we think of God we always think of god as being dominant, but in your visions it wasn’t always like that.  I think what God wants is a lover.”

“No,” she waves her hand with its blue fingernails.  “You’re being a theist.  That’s a mistake.  There is only god.  There is nothing else.  Don't be a dualist.  Sat Chit Ananda.  I am That.  Thou are that.  All This is That.  The web of life and union.  No energy is lost.  All energy has consciousness.  So no consciousness is lost.  There will be existence after death, not the same as in life.  But there will be something.”

“But you’re dead.  Sort of.”

“No, I’m not.”  She sets down the empty bottle, pushes it aside.  “I’m still waiting.  But now I think I have something to feel hope.  My little blood family.  Now I can wait longer.  You.”  She comes across the table so suddenly for an instant I feel a wave of fear as if a viper is striking at me too fast to escape.  Her face is suddenly close, her lips open.  She plants a big dry kiss on my mouth with cold lips.  “You have awakened something in me,” she whispers.  “Thank you.”

  

 

Non-believer

Oh dear, ladies and gents, but I'm afraid I have to bow out on this particular subject. I'm an atheist and as such have no belief in anything holy. Even though I have written a couple of ghost stories, I don't believe in ghosts or the hereafter. So, not wishing to offend anyone, I will say no more, and look forward to the next topic.

Illumination

By Lisabet Sarai

I've always believed that flesh is holy.

Having met others who were not so fortunate, I understand how lucky I was to grow up in a family and religion where sex was not considered a sin. My mom, in particular, was a lusty woman who would sometimes dress provocatively and flirt outrageously. I was never taught to be ashamed of my sexuality.

At the same time, from my earliest years I was fascinated by things of the Spirit. I've written before about my Catholic girlfriend who intended to be a missionary nun. I was her first “convert”, when she baptized me at the tender age of seven, after having been well-schooled about the saints and the sacraments. Later, I was exposed to Hindu mysticism through an aunt who was the disciple of an Indian guru. My few experiences with psychedelics convinced me that, as many Eastern traditions teach, the material world is a thin skin spread over a limitless ocean of spiritual energy. I saw for myself how passionate imagination could shape “reality”, crystallizing new truths out of the formless potentiality of Infinite Mind. Many times in my personal experience, the so-called real world has twisted and reformed itself in response to my heartfelt desires.

For me, sex seemed to confirm the existence of the soul. In many sexual encounters, I felt a sense of connection with my partners that extended far beyond the physical. Perhaps I conflated sex and love, shallow pleasure and deep joy, but regardless, those experiences changed me. During what I like to call my “sex goddess” period (others might simply label me promiscuous), I was simultaneously fucking people right and left and experiencing daily spiritual revelations. As I wrote in my journal during that period:

Where will this all end? Can there be such a thing as living too much in the moment? Have I no “will power”?

How ridiculous! It suddenly occurs to me that tonight's events with E were in fact a straightforward manifestation of my own will, an expression of numerous daydreams, night-dreams and fantasies....

Or am I just an addict? God is giving me what I need. This I must believe. Lord knows I needed G (in the sense: needed for my growth). E too has something to teach me. (And I him.)

I am willing, open to it.. but it is just too much!

Nothing taught me as much about Spirit as my initiation into BDSM. In my early scenes with my Master, I came to a new understanding of faith and trust. When I completely let go of myself, allowing him to take total control, the rewards were limitless. Not just pleasure but true bliss, a sense of deep communion, an acute awareness of the power we wielded together when our bodies, minds and spirits were attuned. It was just a step from here to the notion of submitting to a non-physical Higher Power, because in some sense we are all manifestations of underlying Spirit.

A poem jotted in my journal, from the same era:

Take me, lord.

My hands outstretched,

eager for your chains.

Head bowed,

Long hair hiding my breasts

(only so long as you will it)

Take me.

Let me be

consumed in your flames

of mercy and desire.

Soul of the priestess within me

Naked upon the altar.

Faith incarnate.

Surrender.

Power.

Peace.

It's hard to explain this if you've never experienced it yourself, but these feelings are not unique to me. In 2006, S.F. Mayfair and I edited an incredible collection entitled Sacred Exchange: Stories of Transcendence and Spirituality in Dominance and Submission. The book is out of print now, but if you can find a used copy, you'll get fresh insight into why I feel that submission can be a sacrament. My contribution to that volume (“Communion”) was explicitly religious, the tale of a fourteenth century nun restored to her lost faith through being scourged and sodomized by a renegade priest. She pays dearly, but gladly, for her illumination. Here's the first paragraph:

When the first flames taste my flesh, I feel no pain. Eyes closed, I attend to the summer dawn: blossoms mingling with the wood smoke, birdsong greeting the sun. Ecstasy wells up inside me even as my robe ignites. Grace, gratitude, glory. I open myself to the agony, let the pain wash over me as the Master taught me.

These themes of surrender and redemption run through much of my erotica. (They're too serious for romance readers.) Here's a bit from another of my short stories, “Higher Power”, about the true nature of magic.

He turned away for a moment, then returned with a leather blindfold. "This will help you to concentrate," he said. I nodded, not daring to speak. I blushed again at my reaction to his brief touch as he slipped the blind over my head. Everything turned velvety black, black as his curtains and his eyes. Now there was nothing but darkness, darkness and his luminous voice.

"Myra, I want you to relax and trust me. Listen to me. Focus on me. Let me fill your consciousness, until you know nothing but me." As he spoke, I thought I felt his fingers, dancing lightly over my body. Yet I could tell from the sound that he was standing several feet away. He began to chant in some language that I did not recognize. His musical voice rose and fell in a soothing rhythm. I felt a stirring of air around me. Little by little, the tension leached from my body. Warmth flowed in like honey to take its place, thick and sweet, coalescing into a dampness between my thighs. I could not understand what he was saying, but his intonations gradually took shape in my mind, whorls and eddies of vibrant color that held me spellbound. I hardly realized it when his incantation ended. Then I smelled sulfur and heard the snap of a match bursting into flame. My fear flared in response.

"Myra," he said softly. I could tell that he was closer now, right beside the chair. "Trust me. There will be no pain." I felt intense heat against the skin of my forearm, smelled paraffin and singed hair. Yet he spoke truly. I felt no pain, only exquisite warmth that began in my extremities and raced toward that swelling center below my belly, which seemed to have become the center of the universe.

"I choose you," he intoned. "I anoint you. I consecrate you to my service." With each phrase, he sprinkled burning wax onto my skin as if it was holy water. I smelled the incense of my childhood, and felt the ancient awe. Yet at the same time my whole self hummed with lust. I was aware that the evidence of my desire leaked from me, staining my business clothing and scenting the air. I did not care. Shame had left me. I hung on to his voice, rising and falling, eagerly awaiting the next blissful, fiery benediction.

Complete bliss. That was what I felt. Then suddenly, there was a giddiness, a disorientation. My body was moving, floating upward. A shard of terror threatened to rend my joy, but his voice knit up the fabric of my concentration. "I choose you, I anoint you. Trust me. Yield to me. I am the One, the One you seek, the One you crave."

I was suspended in his net of words. I understood with new wonder that my body hung unsupported in the air, mysteriously buoyant. I was literally flying. I could still feel the embrace of leather on my wrists and ankles, yet somehow, irrationally, I knew that I hovered several feet above the seat.

Suddenly I comprehended the reality of his power. This was no illusion, no hypnotic suggestion. I knew, with total conviction, that magic truly lived in this man's voice. "Yield to me," he said softly, and touched me between the eyes with one delicate finger. A fireball of an orgasm seized and consumed me. I swear that I smelled burned flesh as I convulsed blindly in the air.

The next thing I knew, I was crying. He was brushing my hair back from my face and speaking some soothing nonsense. I looked into his eyes, excitement flooding through me. "It's real, isn't it? The tricks, the magic? The power?"

He smiled enigmatically. "As real as your submission. As powerful as your concentration." He handed me a glass of water, and my skin tingled at his brief touch. "In any case, Myra, you've got the job." There was mischief in his eyes. "That is, if you want it."

I should mention that I had trouble getting both these stories published. Mixing religion and sex tends to make people nervous, even before you throw BDSM into the mix.

I have to speak and write my own truth, though. For me, sex has been a path to spiritual knowledge. And surrendering to my Master has bestowed on me the paradoxical power to accept and embrace whatever comes, as expressed in this one last excerpt.

Ritual

To GCS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seasonal Drama

by Jean Roberta

“All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey.”

Alas! Our Mother has died of grief, and we shall die too. The Lord of the Dead stole her daughter, and now the Mother is too distracted to feed her human children. Death has conquered the land of the living.

Why do we have to go to work when the temperature is 40 degrees below zero? Why did anyone ever think the Canadian prairies were fit for human habitation?

In Northern climates, we celebrate some holiday near the time of the Winter Solstice to comfort ourselves. The hours of daylight are short, it’s cold, the land that once grew crops is covered with snow, so we party hearty to compensate. We’re probably insane.

The missing university student has been found. He had some drinks with friends in the campus pub, then decided to walk home. He passed out on his way, the snow covered him, and when the search party found him, it was too late. He will sleep off his hangover forever, and his family will never be the same. All the other students (and many faculty members) are relieved that it didn’t happen to them. And we’re all keeping their fingers crossed that it never does.

Finally! Almost all the snow has melted, and there are buds on the trees! It’s a miracle. On the ironically-named non-holiday called Good Friday (a day to spend away from work or school, not celebrating), Christians have traditionally contemplated suffering, death, the winter that comes to every life. Then on the following Sunday, they go joyfully to a church decorated with lilies, and come home to eat candy and boiled eggs with their children. Presumably, Christ has been rescued from his suffering, and has been granted eternal bliss: springtime forever. Believing in this requires a lot of faith.

Like survivors of trauma whose memories are unreliable – or who bury the event somewhere below the level of consciousness – we tend to forget, over and over again. When the green leaves of summer change colour, we admire the canopies of red or golden leaves overhead, and try not to think about what they signify: the death of plant life as the weather grows colder. We watch the Canada geese organizing themselves for their long journey, then rising into the sky in chevron after chevron, heading south. So many Canadians imitate the geese by catching planes to warmer places that they have a label: Snowbirds.

If we have to wait out the winter, we use every available means to stay warm and distract ourselves. We avoid considering the fact that humans aren’t very tough compared to other mammals (including bunnies and gophers), and low temperatures can kill our vital organs after our extremities (fingers and toes) have been destroyed. Some of us have a minor condition that mimics the death of the extremities. It’s called Reynaud’s Syndrome, and it usually seems to affect little old women (short, relatively thin, over 50) who have lived in the North for so long that our blood takes it time returning to numbed fingers and toes. So while we huddle in blankets indoors, we can watch our waxy-looking fingers or toes slowly recover feeling and life.

Many of us have had close calls, but we survived. We’re all right, Jack.

Spring brings amnesia. The Mother is alive again! Her daughter has returned to her! We can imagine Demeter and her girl Persephone frolicking in the green wheat, blessing the newly-planted gardens and waking up the perennials that lay dormant all winter. The sun is bright, and the air is growing steadily warmer. Our Mother loves us again.

Summer is too much of a good thing. The sun blazes, flowers bloom, people who are stuck indoors turn on the air conditioning, and those who can get away rush to the nearest large body of water. If there’s no ocean nearby, a lake or even a river will do. For a few months, it’s hard to believe that all the green lawns, fields of grain, and dusty vacant lots were ever covered by snow. Threatening weather now takes the form of thunderstorms that can produce hailstones the size of golfballs. An hour of these things pelting a wheat field can flatten a large crop, which is the main reason why farmers buy crop insurance. For anyone who isn’t a farmer, thunder, lightning and hail are dramatic events that punctuate a summer of outdoor fun. The sting of icy little hailstones can even feel refreshing after the heat of the day.

Too soon, the air turns cooler, the leaves start changing colour, then they fall to the ground and form crunchy carpets. The cycle continues, and we discover, once again, that the conditions we’ve grown used to never stay the same.

It’s probably just as well that when the livin' is easy, most of us seem unable to remember the times when we thought we might not make it.

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Accident

I've never had a near-death experience of the type JP described last week. I did get in a car accident once that scared me more than anything else. At the time, I used to soothe and/or entertain myself by writing songs, and I wrote one extrapolating a much worse scenario than the one I was in—the character in the song has indeed had a close brush with death, and maintains a continuing relationship with it. I call the song "Accident."

For a long time, I had a fantasy that I would figure out how to arrange music to go with the lyrics and vocal lines I wrote, but it's been years and I still haven't. So here it is raw, with apologies for the poor quality of the recording:

Near Death

by Daddy X

I never saw that light at the end of the tunnel. I never came so close as to have my heart stop beating. Not completely. The only times I’ve found detachment or levitation from the body have been on drugs. But, as some of you already know, I’ve taken some chances.

There was the time I shot hashish. Yeah, intravenous hash, soaked in water overnight. What a fool. Got what junkies call the “dirty water blues”.  A bad case that time. Some call it “cotton fever”, named for the little bit of floss in the spoon, used to strain out larger impurities from whatever it is they’re putting in their arm. Symptoms usually happen when something gets into the bloodstream that really doesn’t belong there. Victims get chills, fever, joint pain, vomiting. The only cure is sleep. If you can.  Although I caught “the blues” numerous times, it was always due to a mistake, whereas shooting the hash was on purpose. Some would say I took a chance every time I shot up, and that would be true, but we didn’t see it that way at the time. Ah- The folly of youth. We all have to learn somehow.

And then there was the time Momma X and I were attacked by Indians, chased along the Klamath River in California.  That one wasn’t our fault.

We had set up at a state campground. Doing some fly-fishing, sightseeing, campfires at night, all in an area of California that virtually hasn’t changed in years. In fact, parts of the far north of the state are pretty much the same as they were fifty years ago. Good place to get out of the city and back to something more down-to-earth. Or so we thought.

We left camp one morning and drove to the river. I spotted some deadfall, and pulled to the shoulder to pick up firewood for the evening. Momma and I busted up several branches against an embankment, threw them in the hatch of our little Honda and continued down the highway. Not long after, a car sped up behind us, drove alongside, and a woman in the passenger seat pointed to the side of the road, to pull over. I thought they had some emergency, so her pleading look caused me to do what she’d asked.

When we stopped, all the doors of the other car opened, and out came a bunch of people, all native Americans, running at our car, saying “Get ’em.  Get’ em!” I looked over to Momma, said something like, “I don’t like the looks of this!” slammed the car into gear, and peeled out onto the road again in a cloud of dust and gravel. In my rear-view, I could see them getting back in their car, doing the same.

The next five or ten flat out, white-knuckle minutes were some of the most difficult moments in my life.  We were in a wonderfully remote but economically depressed area, the next town still twenty miles off. No place to get any help. The road along the Klamath in that area is twisted, not banked, with few guardrails, sometimes climbing hundreds of feet above the crashing water below. We were taking curves sideways, my rudimentary sports car driving experience now coming in handy. The people chasing us were in some big, beat-up American V-8, trying to pass every time we hit any kind of straightaway. In turn, I would swerve to force them off the road each time they were alongside our car. We were reaching speeds of over ninety miles an hour. I wished I had my .38 pistol with me, but we’d left it squirrelled away at camp.

Then up came a van, following the car behind us. It became apparent that they were all together, both vehicles chasing us. The V-8 managed to pass me. Now Momma and I were sandwiched between the two of them.  The one in front slowed in the center of the road. I hugged his ass then passed them again on a sharp curve. We took off again at high speeds, but someone was going to die if we kept up like this. It was becoming surreal. I knew I had a fifteen-inch length of electrical service wire, about three quarters of an inch in diameter, hidden under the driver’s seat, kept as a weapon for possible emergencies in the city. It’s a great sap that would break the arm of anyone trying to block it. I pulled to the side of the road, got out, brandished the thing and hollered “Come on motherfuckers!” By now I was mad.

They all got out of the vehicles, lots of ‘em. They charged me, some more aggressive than others. I heard someone yell, “Jumping our claim!”

I went at them, threatening with the sap waving in front of me. “What the fuck?” I screamed. “What fucking claim?”

Everybody stopped.

The woman who looked like the only sensible one of the group said, “Our gold claim, you city fuckers! You come up here lookin’ for a quick buck. We saw you, working with picks. We saw you with binoculars by the side of the road.”

I yelled, “You’re fucking kidding me, you assholes. We were getting firewood!” I threw open the Honda’s hatch and showed them the broken branches in the back of the car. “You could’ve got us killed!”

“Oh, firewood!” the woman said. “That’s cool, man!”

All of a sudden, most of them either started laughing or became embarrassed and apologetic. Only one guy (I suspect he was driving the car I tried to shove off the road a few times) wouldn’t let it go. Luckily his friends held him back. Now, on the bright side, I’m one of the only two people I know who’s been chased by wild Indians. Momma’s the other. Good thing we hadn’t brought our gold pans along for the drive. They were back at camp with the .38.

Years later, the real heart-stopper happened just before I was wheeled to the operating room for my ’04 liver transplant. I was one of the lucky ones. According to the stats back then, at any given moment, there were approximately 20,000 people in the US that needed a liver. They do about 5,000 a year. So, just being called up after months of waiting was a big step. With still many steps to go, as I found out.

When liver cancer patients receive a transplant, in order to keep diseased cells from contaminating the rest of the body, they inject the old liver with something that actually kills it dead before they open you up. They’d never told us that part. It hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks.  Humans can’t live without a liver.  What they had said was that the new liver wasn’t always viable once they get in.

I asked: “So, if something goes wrong with the new organ?”

Silence all around.

Not Dead Yet

Sacchi Green

Today is my birthday, so I’m more inclined to focus on still being alive rather than near-death experiences. I've had some near misses, mainly of the automotive kind, but never been in a physical state of very nearly being extinguished.

I have, however, been very close to the deaths of several other people, family members, and will be again, all too soon. And then again, unless I go first. I thought, with great reluctance, of writing about that kind of experience, until I was rescued by a memory of the most dramatic of my automotive adventures. Who knew I’d ever feel so glad of what happened, besides just being happy that I’d survived?

It was at least ten years ago. I was driving in the far left lane of the New Hampshire Turnpike in heavy traffic, with two family members along in the car. To my left was a high concrete barrier. A big tanker truck was on my right, and clearly the driver didn’t bother to look before he began to move into my lane. I honked, and he kept right on coming. Traffic was moving fast. I slowed as much as possible without being hit from behind, which wasn’t much, held on tight, resisted being pushed into the barrier when the truck smashed my rear-view mirror and gouged a crease all along the side of my car, and then he was more or less safely past. We got his license number and the company name on the truck, and eventually pulled up beside him motioning at him to pull over to the breakdown lane, but he ignored us and dropped back so far we couldn’t keep track of him.

I was shaking with anger instead of with panic. Just as well. We survived, and the car was still running. The crisis was over. But what happened next was almost amusing. Okay, it was amusing, in its way. About fifteen miles down the road we pulled over into a big rest area at a tollbooth, complete with State of New Hampshire liquor store, and called the police to report the incident. By the time the police arrived that same truck had pulled in there, too, and parked well away from anybody else, without noticing us. The cop was brusquely skeptical at first—how could we be sure it was that truck when it happened so far back? And then he went to see the truck driver, who denied everything, but had obviously been trying to scrub the paint from our car off of the wheel that had hit us. At that point another cop arrived, and they called the company that owned the truck, where they immediately fired the driver, who had had some other serious complaints made against him and was on probabation. Then the cops inspected the driver and the truck thoroughly and came up with more than enough reasons even without out report to keep him off the road, and in custody overnight. By then they were entirely sympathetic to us, and amazed that we’d got through it alive.

It did seem amazing. One of those things that turns out all right just by a hair. So here I am years later, taking a train to NYC for the Lambda Literary Awards ceremony tonight (my anthology Wild Girls, Wild Nights is a finalist,) grateful to be alive and to have an anecdote to write about on a topic that at first seemed beyond me to manage.

(Full disclosure—I’m writing this just before midnight on June 1, so it isn’t quite my birthday yet, and I’m not yet on the train, but close enough. And now to schedule the post, and make sure I’m packed for the trip, and see if I can get some sleep. But I can always sleep on the train.)