Incarnations

11/10/92 Tuesday

Last night after dinner I got a phone call from Dave.   “Can we come over tonight and talk?”  Sure.  “Will Maria be there?”  Yes.  “Good.”  Weird.  I knew, even though David sounded cheerful, that heavy news was on the way.  He and Maria haven’t gotten along well in the past and he would usually avoid her whenever possible.    Also the “we” part worried me.  If he was coming to talk about computers he wouldn’t be dragging his family along with him.  It was going to be a serious family discussion of some kind.  But as it turned out it was the best news of my life.  Ikuyo was pregnant, to everyone’s surprise most of all her own.  She was 3 months pregnant because even though all the signs were there the possibility of ever having another baby was so remote that it had not occurred to her to check even though all the signs were there.  They had found out from the doctor only that afternoon and their first thought was of us.

Maria was pleased but less than thrilled.  She wants to straighten out Papa’s situation and had even been thinking about whether to accept a child from Steve and Kimiko Cox until things were more organized.  But now here it comes ready or not.  I must tell Steve and Kimiko we’re okay now so we don’t leave them in the lurch.  But I was totally thrilled.  It’s literarily a dream come true.  And from my brother next door.  What could be better?  We’ve made a 40 day prayer condition.  I didn’t say it out loud but I was thinking especially of 40 days as a separation from Satan since Maria has always had a hard time appreciating David and Ikuyo.  And I know it’ll be a long six months as far as building unity is concerned and all too short as a foundation of faith and substance.  If I ever needed God’s help it will be from now.  But thank you God.  I have almost forgotten the bitter spiritual struggles we have gone through to get to this point. I hope a new door will be opening for us now.

3/4/95

Depressed and sorry for myself today.  We all went to downtown Panama to visit Chaguin.  I looked at the people around me and I found it hard to identify with any of them.  They all seem so physical and simple.  No philosophers.  No book readers or computer hobbyists.  No intellectuals.  Just dancers, housewives, and babies’ all salsaing their way through life.  Ignorant.  I know it’s wrong to feel this way towards others, but if I break through there, I just want to record where I came from at this moment.

Beans and rice.

Anthony and I got haircuts.   Anthony cried all the way through his.  He looks like a little marine now.

I miss terribly the creature comforts of American life.  The good quality which is so easily available.  Even this notebook, so common – where will I find another like it?  I never thought of myself as materialistic, but I find in this moment when my “heart of restoration” has lapsed, that I miss material things.

6/26/99

Next week is our last week.  We leave next Sunday.  Monday and Tuesday they’ll pick up our stuff.  The last couple of days I’ve been getting the Audi fixed up so we can get it shipped without a fight.  Today we went to Casa Del Carne for what is probably our last grocery shopping in this country.  I was reading over my diary of when we first arrived here.  I had forgotten what a hard and lonely time that was.

6/27/99

Today, Sunday, will be our last halfway normal day here.  We’re going to begin organizing what will be picked up tomorrow.  Then Tuesday they’ll pick up what little furniture we have.  Wednesday we’ll be out processing. And ship out the car.  We leave early next Sunday morning and that’s that.  But this time (8:30am) I’ll be on my way to another life.

I find myself beginning to believe in reincarnation because I see the parallels of it in my own life.  I seem to have been many people already in my lifetime.  I have had friendships with people I have not seen again.  All gone now.  I’m keenly aware of this.  My life in New York was like another incarnation, another life time.  Then time in this country which is coming to an end now with its myriad memories.

This morning traveling here to work on one of the Diablo Rojos it was such a sentimental journey through the past for me.  I’m leaving the way I came in when I was a poor man, grateful for a break.  I had prayed for a fighting chance and God gave it to me.

I got up this morning still feeling a few traces of the illness which wrecked my health for the last few days.  I had coffee and packed this diary and my networking book and Maria walked me out to the bus stop just like when I first began.  These things she does make her unique.  Other women wouldn’t do that.  Riding the Diablos, surrounded by working people and school kids, not isolated in my car, my attention not distracted by traffic I had the luxury of seeing the old places go by.  Riding through downtown I remembered my lean days trying to wade through the paperwork, the bureaucracy of getting a work permit and a cedula.  The walking from the Registry Civil, the disappointments and setbacks, trying to connect with people and the Fidonet BBS because there was no Internet here at the time.  Some days were successful and some days were painful.  Papa was living with us and we were trying to get his checks set up so we could survive.  Chaguin had died and people still grieved over him.  We walked the dirty streets of Caledonia and picked up some bags of beans and fruit for dinner.  That was what we could afford and it kept us lean and young.  When I got my job it changed my life and eventually even my religion.  Riding through Balboa on the bus I thought of these things and my heart swelled with joy of my life.  My life has been so varied and so rich with feeling and memories how will I ever remember it all?  My life on the streets of downtown seems like another incarnation.  I have had many lives in this one life.  I am not the same person I was when I came here.

******

The 1990's were probably the most important and dynamic decade of my life.  I hadn't thought of things that way until this topic came along and I started to list some of the stuff that had happened.  I started out as a part of a fundamentalist fringe of Christianity, worrying about God and Satan.  Then over time I lost my faith and became spiritually adrift and angry at God for years.  In the early part of the decade my brother and his wife offered us a baby to adopt so that we could be parents too.  What greater or more genuinely sacred offering than that?  Then we moved to Panama and I experienced life as a genuine immigrant in a foreign country, without language, without citizenship, without means except my own wits to get by on.  Then things became better, fairly prosperous. Then we left Panama and made our way back to America.

As I wrote then, I have been many people in this one life.  

The Nineties Rembered by J.P. Bowie

Wow, the nineties...trying to wrack my brain here for things I did, heard, didn't do (a lot of those) and places I visited. Actually in 1990 I left California and moved to  Henderson, Nevada a growing suburb of Las Vegas. At the time it seemed like a good idea. I'd thrown off the shroud of my fading show biz career and become a real estate agent. I wasn't exactly crazy about this switch in careers. Showing properties to squabbling husbands and wives while their kids destroyed the inside of my car with their sticky fingers and unreliable bladders, was never a favorite occupation of mine. Fate determined that this real estate venture would be short lived. The company I went to work for went under as the Vegas real estate market (as is its wont) crashed, and I was once again a member of the great unemployed.I flitted around from one RE office to another but there was nothing doing.

Well, Vegas being famous for its bright lights and tourists anxious to throw away their money, I thought, why not help them do that? I reluctantly paid the several hundred dollars it took to become a trained 21 dealer and spent every day for the next few weeks trying to prove to myself I could be an ace dealer. I had to finally admit I sucked at it. I think I already told you the story of the nickel in the slot machine, but it was then I decided I had to get a real job.

In 1991 I applied for a position in Bally's casino and for a time was a floor supervisor. Hated it!
D'you remember the Pyramid schemes? You know where you buy in at the bottom of the pyramid then get some other idiots to buy in and push you up the ladder until you come out on top with thousands of dollars.  Right. Well, in 1992, it actually worked for me first time around, which was fortunate because I badly needed a new car and I had enough for a hefty down payment. The idea of course is that you buy in at the bottom again to give those floundering halfway up the pyramid a kind of equal opportunity. Like the nice guy I am I did just that, and of course, disaster struck and quite a few of us were left with a half built pyramid slowly sinking into the desert sand.

Singing the blues to anyone who'll listen sometimes bears fruit. There I was, unemployed again. Bally's was going through a rough time financially and their method of saving the CEO's zillion dollar salary was to lay off those peons who were considered disposable - yes, I was one of those. But - cue the drum roll - my grumbling paid off when a friend mentioned they were looking for back stage help at the Mirage's Siegfried and Roy Show. Off I went to interview and got a job as part time dresser. After only 2 weeks, one of the guys who'd been with S&R for a hundred years decided he'd had enough and retired. I got his full time position and for the rest of the decade worked for those Masters of Illusion. Or so they liked to call themselves.

In the meantime, Phil, my now husband, and I had been dating on and off. A bit difficult as he was still in California, but in 1994 I persuaded him to leave the surf part of surf and sand behind and move in with me. '94 was a good year for me as in addition to having a live in partner I also became an American citizen - and in 1996 could help Bill Clinton keep his job as Prez. I know he was really pleased because he sent me a signed photo of himself as a thank you gift.

1997 brought sadness. I still vividly remember all of us backstage listening to the news reports of Princess Diana's death in Paris in that awful car wreck. Later that year Phil and I were in London and there were still floral tributes to her outside the gates of Kensington Palace.

I enjoyed working at the Mirage, but after nine years of tedious summer heat, we were ready to move back to California, so in 1999 we were once again living near the ocean. I know I haven't touched on my writing in this time capsule - that's because I was a reader in those day. The writing , although  straining to come out and be noticed, didn't happen until 2000. Books I remember reading in the nineties - in no particular order were, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt, The Reader by Schlink, The Green Mile by Stephen King and Possession by A S Byatt. Oh, and a really good mystery series by gay author, Michael Nava.  It was he who inspired me to write mystery novels. I'm sure he'd be really pleased to hear that.

Uncensored Fantasy

By Lisabet Sarai

Quite a lot happened to me in the nineties. I turned forty. After more than a decade of considering ourselves married, my husband and I overcame our distaste of government meddling in our personal affairs, went to a Justice of the Peace, and legalized our relationship. The company he and I founded together received a federal research grant. We traveled in Italy, in Indonesia and in the Philippines. We lived for a lovely year in the historic Boston district of Beacon Hill.

However, from Lisabet's perspective, the last decade of the twentieth century was most significant because that was when I wrote and published my first novel. And like many major turning points in our lives, a minor incident was responsible for triggering the chain of events that led to the 1999 release of Raw Silk.

After years of my enjoying my husband's tales of Hagia Sofia and the Grand Bazaar, we'd finally managed to make it to Turkey. We stayed in a tiny boutique hotel in the heart of old Istanbul, two narrow houses that had been converted to serve a handful of guests. The hotel, which adjoined an ruined haman (bathhouse), featured a boulder-strewn, cat-filled garden and a view of minarets and the Sea of Marmara from the window of our fourth floor room. In the white-washed stone lobby, above a divan spread with rich embroidery, I found a book swap shelf, a common feature in traveler's locales around the world. Leave a book, take a book – we cycle our reading and share our passions. Having run low on reading material, I picked up a slim black and gray volume. The cover featured a moderately discreet image of a couple in an ecstatic embrace. Gemini Heat was the title, authored by Portia da Costa.

The novel was published by a UK imprint called Black Lace, whose slogan was “Erotic fiction for women”. A benighted American, I'd never heard of Black Lace. At the time, I hadn't read much erotica. My master had “assigned” me The Story of O and Anne Rice's Beauty trilogy, and I'd sampled a few bawdy Victorian titles, but for the most part I was innocent, from a literary perspective at least. I'd been penning my own D/s erotic fantasies for a while, copying them by hand into greeting cards and sending them across the country for my master to savor (following in Pauline Réage's footsteps, though I didn't know it at the time). However, I'd never considered sharing those fantasies with the world.

Gemini Heat astonished and aroused me, with its intelligence, its erotic diversity and its unabashed heat. Identical twins Deanna and Delia Ferraro look enough alike to fool most people, although their styles and personalities could not be more different. Deanna is brash, bold, even a bit wild, a freelance artist with a penchant for hippie-style clothing and a taste for adventure. Delia is shyer and less experienced sexually, but more polished and organized, as accomplished at her job in corporate middle management as she is in cooking or home repair. One evening, with busy Delia's blessing, Deanna attends an art opening using an invitation intended for her twin. The paintings on show turn out to be of the erotic variety, stirring her hot blood to the point that she allows a seductive stranger to fuck her on a balcony overlooking the crowd. Only the morning after do she and Delia realize that her partner was Jackson Kazuto de Guile – millionaire businessman, unabashed sybarite, and Delia's boss – and that he'd thought Deanna was in fact his employee Delia. And now, despite her more cautious personality, Delia wants her turn with the delicious and demanding Jake.

The story piles one erotic episode on top of another, as Deanna and Delia pretend they are the same woman, alternating in the role of “Dee” and discovering new dimensions of their sexuality. There are sex clubs and opulent mansions, Jacuzzis and massages, exhibitionism and voyeurism, lesbian and gay male interactions, bondage and beatings, lovely fetishistic articles of clothing that get torn to shreds in the throes of lust, and lots of intense orgasms. Jake involves a cast of co-conspirators (especially the notorious red-headed author Vida Mistry) in his education and sexual conquest of the twins.

The book was a perfect fit to my own erotic inclinations. It pushed all my personal buttons. I was delighted to discover the existence of Black Lace (though the other Black Lace authors I sampled did not come close to Ms. Da Costa in their ability to excite me). And after I'd calmed down a bit, I began to think, “I'll bet I could write a book something like that.”

I sent away for the Black Lace author guidelines. (Nobody had websites then, remember.) The document I received was unbelievably intimidating – ten pages long at least, written with severe precision, and focusing far more on what they didn't want than what they did. Nevertheless, still inspired by Gemini Heat, I started working on a novel about a woman's sexual odyssey, set against the sensual backdrop of exotic Thailand. In a matter of weeks I'd penned three chapters. I sent the chapters off with a synopsis (by snail mail – no email submissions in those days!) to editor Kerry Sharp. Then I more or less forced myself to forgot about the matter. Although I'd had great fun writing those chapters, the chances of being accepted seemed totally remote.

About four weeks down the road, I received a post card acknowledging my submission and warning me that due to the volume of manuscripts Black Lace received, I might not hear anything further for several months. I shrugged and filed the card with the guidelines. I was not surprised or disappointed.

Three days later, Kerry Sharp emailed me, enthusiastically declaring that Raw Silk was just what they were looking for, offering me a contract and asking me when I could deliver the full book.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. When could I deliver the full book? I didn't have the foggiest idea.

I've written elsewhere about the process of writing Raw Silk, how easy it was, how I poured all my fantasies uncensored onto the page, most especially my cravings for submission and surrender. I've also talked about how naïve I was concerning the publishing business, how I imagined imminent glamor, fame and fortune, press conferences and release parties, book tours and free trips to London. I didn't realize how most publishers, even back then, operated on a shoestring. I learned, though. When Raw Silk went out of print, I reclaimed the rights and placed the book with another publisher. The novel is on its third publisher now, but I still sell at least a few copies a month.

I should mention that this whole incident was totally beginner's luck. Kerry Sharp flatly rejected the next two proposals I sent her.

I'm reprising this now because I just finished rereading Gemini Heat. (Yes, the same dog-earned black and gray paperback!) I wanted to know if it could still move me now, after I've published more than fifty single author erotic titles of my own and read at least three times that many by others. Would it seem clichéed or silly? Would I find it tame?

I'm pleased to say that I still would place this novel among my top ten or top twenty erotic books. Ms. da Costa excels at describing the internal state of her characters. The sexual encounters that occur in Gemini Heat are far less extreme or outrageous than they seemed upon my first reading, but their impacts upon the characters (which is really what counts in my view) remain intense.

Meanwhile, in these days of sub-genre tyranny, I value the diversity in Gemini Heat more than ever. These days, erotic romance reigns. (Black Lace officially rebranded itself that way a few years before it folded.) The thrillingly sensual lesbian interactions in Gemini Heat would probably get the book rejected now – not to mention the description of the M/M sex show at Club Seventeen. Then there's the hero's decidedly non-alpha appearance and behavior. Sure, Jake is a Dom, but he is not tall, gruff and muscle bound. He's slender, graceful, elegant, as one might expect from someone who is part Japanese, with long, silky hair and smooth, mostly hairless skin. Ms. da Costa is perfectly comfortable with a hero who shows some feminine characteristics, but I suspect that many of today's readers might reject such ambiguity. In fact, despite his adeptness at power games, Jake is a switch – that becomes quite clear in the final chapter of the novel. I loved the breadth of the author's sexual imagination, but I'm willing to bet that if she submitted this novel today, the publisher would want to attach all sorts of Reader Advisories.

I didn't realize when I first encountered Gemini Heat that it was one of Portia da Costa's very first erotic novels. Now I suspect that her experience writing the book must have been similar to mine – that the book is an uncensored outpouring of her personal favorite fantasies. I've read and enjoyed a lot of her later work, but with the exception of the brilliant Entertaining Mr. Stone, none of these novels has made the same impression on me as her tale of the horny twins and their diabolical seducer. Her writing has become smoother and more controlled, technically more accomplished, but rarely reaches the same level of raw heat.

People sometimes say the same thing about my work. Raw Silk has many flaws that are all too visible now to my more experienced eyes: excessively verbose descriptions, repeating words and phrases, horribly stilted dialogue. Nevertheless, I've received more praise from readers for that book than for anything else I've written. I know why. It's the pure emotion I poured into the pages. The novel is my personal journey, mostly imagined though studded with bits and pieces of my real life. In a sense, Kate is me – not in terms of her personality but in her desires and her reactions. And readers sense this.

At the same time that first book, released at the very end of the nineties, was just the start of my journey, the first steps on the road to becoming Lisabet Sarai. Now, fifteen years later, I still have no idea where that road will ultimately lead me.

Friends with Benefits

by Jean Roberta

First off, I’m sorry I missed my day to post. All I can say in my defense is that since I’m not teaching a class at present, all the days of the week tend to run together, so that a Friday feels much like a Thursday or a Saturday. (Not much of an excuse, I know.)

The posts on friendship have been so good that I find it hard to add anything new.

There is a sentimental little round that I learned in elementary school:

“Make new friends, but keep the old,
One is silver and the other’s gold.”

This is a noble sentiment, but it rarely seems to work that way until one has gained some maturity, i.e. this is not characteristic of friendships in elementary or secondary school.

Trying to mix sex with friendship seems especially messy, yet friendship (mutual trust and familiarity) seems like a much better basis for any relationship than romance, for lack of a clearer word (a sense that the other person is exotic, mysterious, different from oneself).

Friendship seems to be a theme in my most recent erotic stories that have been accepted for publication. In “Naming It,” which was recently accepted for Best Lesbian Erotica 2015, a gentleman-butch singer-songwriter comforts her old friend, a law student, after her fiancée (with whom she was about to move in) cheats on her in a public place. Law Student lets Old Friend comfort her with sex, but is much more squeamish about “naming” the friendship as something more serious. As she asks, “Who will I turn to if you let me down?” Old Friend swears that she won’t, but heartbroken Law Student (who has all sorts of legal schemes to deal with the ex-fiancee) wants to spend some time thinking about it. She demands that they stay apart for a month before meeting in their favourite coffee shop for negotiations. Old Friend successfully negotiates the waiting period down to a week, and chews her fingernails during that time. When they meet, Law Student sets out “ground rules,” and Old Friend complies. Law Student admits that she has actually loved Old Friend for years, but didn’t want to admit it.

I think of this story as a dark comedy. It has its roots in queer social reality: for people who primarily define themselves as lesbian, gay, or even bisexual, friends and lovers are usually drawn from the same pool of people. The clear division between potential “dates” (members of the “opposite sex,” those glamorous aliens) and “friends” (people like oneself, who can serve as confidants and advisers) that exists in most heterosexual romance stories isn’t as neat or clear for queer characters in fiction, because it isn’t that clear in real life. (The movie When Harry Met Sally is a heterosexual exception.)

In my story “Shelter,” which was recently accepted for Forbidden Fruit: Stories of Unwise Lesbian Desire, the two women were classmates as children, but they are hardly friends. One has grown up thinking of the other as Bad News, but for some reason, the “good girl” lets the “bad girl” take shelter in her apartment overnight. As the reader comes to know, the narrator has several reasons for doing this, some of which she is reluctant to think about.

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

I didn’t intend to open my door for anyone at 1:00 a.m., but I couldn’t resist looking through the peep-hole to see who was there.

Cheekbones, long nose, full lips, short dark hair, direct gaze, evil grin. Unmistakably Renee Sharp.

I opened my apartment door before I could stop myself. “You can’t stay here,” I told her, stepping back to let her in.

She accepted my unspoken invitation. “It’s good to see you too, Anna baby. I thought about you while I was away.” A year in prison hadn’t deprived her of energy. What was sex like in the joint? I didn’t want to think about it, but I wanted to know.

The woman was leaner than I remembered, more compact. She could take me down. I knew I should call the police, but I couldn’t do it.

“You don’t have to call the cops, girlfriend. I’m not here to steal your stuff or hurt you in any way. Unless—“ She let her sentence hang in the air while she looked down from my eyes to the thin cotton nightshirt that barely covered my naked breasts. I could feel my nipples jiggling with my breathing, and I buttoned my cardigan from top to bottom. Renee snickered.

“You don’t really want the cops to know I’m here, Anna. No one has to know you ever met me. In the morning I’ll be gone like a wet dream.”

“Renee,” I started.

“Friends call me Razor.” She pulled five chocolate-brown Canadian hundred-dollar bills out of the frayed pocket of her denim jacket and laid them on my hall table.

Oh my god. I still wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted from me, but she obviously thought I was for sale.

I was glad she had shut the door behind her, even though that meant I was trapped in my apartment with a criminal. “Razor-blade,” I said. “Mack the Knife, whatever you’re called now, I don’t need your money. Some of us have legal jobs.”

She grinned. I didn’t touch the stack of bills, and neither did she. “Well, could I get a drink in this fine establishment, Anna baby?”

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

What do you think are the odds that these two establish a friendship?

I’m sure this subject will continue to intrigue me for years to come.

Being Known

As Sacchi wrote on Monday, I hung out with her and Jeremy Edwards over the weekend, and, inspired by the current topic at The Grip, we spent some time recording a conversation about friendship. Jeremy heroically provided the equipment and processed the audio from that, and I'll share a few snippets here.

I want to make this post worthwhile even for those who aren't set up to listen to audio, so I'm going to riff on some of things that came up, then embed the clips (and link to where they're hosted).

Do You Know Me?

I tend to assume that people don't remember me. Unless I am certain it isn't necessary, I usually remind people of my name and where we've met when I encounter them in person. In cover letters, I'll usually tag previous interactions (such as, "You've published my work in four of your books") up to, perhaps, a ridiculous point. After all, if the editor has published my stories in four of their books, I would hope my name would at least ring a bell...

Similarly, I don't assume readers know who I am, though at this point there are a pretty large number of places where they could have encountered me.

There's a downside to this assumption, though. What seems like prudence to me can lead to impostor syndrome or a tendency to miss out on opportunities to interact with the larger community. If I had a dollar for every time I've wondered if I'm "allowed to" interact with someone on Twitter, I'd have at least a month's rent.

And to become friends with people, I have to allow it. My behavior can lean formal in a way that I think holds people at arm's length. I want to relax that at least a little.

I brought up this point in the conversation with Jeremy and Sacchi, and we discussed becoming friends with others in the erotica business.



Direct Link

Do You Really Know Me If You Don't Know I'm Annabeth?

I keep my ego shelf in the living room, which is the first room a person walks into when entering my apartment. I've questioned the wisdom of this many times, because it's been awkward once in a while. For example, my priest came over once and was sitting not three feet from my vast collection of smutty books. I will probably forever wonder if he noticed or not.

There's a reason I put the books there, though. In a small way, it's an effort to avoid feeling ashamed of something that's a huge part of my life. I would like to believe that anyone who's close enough to come into my apartment is close enough to see the books. When I do get asked about them, I answer honestly, and this only gets weird some of the time.

The thing is, if you don't know that I write erotica, then you're missing a big part of my life. For me, the question of letting real life friends know what I'm up to as Annabeth is still active and difficult.

Jeremy, Sacchi and I talked about our experiences in this respect.



Direct Link

Do You Really Know Me If You Know That I'm Annabeth?

I try very hard to be real in conversations in person or over e-mail—in private conversation, really. I try to tell the truth on this blog, as well. On The Grip, I've discussed some really difficult issues that I don't usually talk about, and I have the same ideals for my Annabeth Leong blog.

For me, that's come as the result of becoming bolder and braver. I have seen so many exhortations to never discuss politics on social media sites (you don't want to alienate your customers...). Here's the thing I've finally realized. If you don't like my politics, you won't like my writing. I craft my writing to be inclusive of people of all genders, races, orientations, etc. Accurately representing the world is one of my deepest passions as a writer. I also believe in questioning stereotypes wherever I can—and for me that's good both as politics and as strong characterization and plotting. I've had places where I've fallen short, of course, but I've been trying to make my voice stronger lately.

That said, the way I'm Annabeth in public does still conceal some things. I don't generally post about what discourages me, what business practices I think are nonsense, and so on. This touches a bit on what Giselle brought up, in my mind anyway. I need a little privacy to myself. I am as present as possible in all my writing—whether that's stories, blog posts, or brief things on Twitter. It's not the whole picture, though.

That's where writer friends come in. I've been making an effort lately to have at least a few friends who know what I, as Annabeth, am struggling with. And I think it makes all the difference in the world.

Jeremy, Sacchi, and I talked about discouragements as a writer, particularly about moving on from erotica.



Direct Link

There are five more snippets than the ones I included with this post.

If you're interested in the entire conversation, I've got it all posted here, along with descriptions of what we cover in each section. If anyone has trouble getting the clips, shoot me an e-mail and I'll happily send them to you that way.

And thanks again to Jeremy and Sacchi for a lovely conversation.

Just a Matter of Time?

by Daddy X

I once heard that the measure of a friend is whether or not they’d send you money if you were in trouble on the other side of the world. That was a pretty good gauge until those Nigerian princes came along. One good way to tell is by how long you can ride in a car in silence with somebody and not feel awkward or uncomfortable.

How much time could you spend alone with your best friend? In a car? On a long bus ride? As roommates? Could it be that the closeness of our friendships can be measured by how much time we can stand to be around each other? When dealing with others, we have to make compromises.  Are those compromises worth it?

Did that woman you dated have a shrill voice? God, the staff must have heard her in the kitchen complaining about the food. All fucking night long. So sharp, my ears rang for hours. So embarrassing.

Was that dude for real? I couldn’t wait to get away from that asshole. It was the lunch from Hades!

Then there are friends we are perfectly happy to be with. But a couple of hours tends to be enough. Some we’d have to think about taking along on a vacation.  For a weekend, anyway. Wouldn’t want it to be a longer trip. Except for the Jamison’s. I’ll bet we could even go to the Jamison’s cabin and stay with them all summer. They’re so gracious.

So there are those we can have a short conversation with, those we can spend a day with, and those we can take a vacation with.

And then there are those we choose to live our lives with. All of it. Those we can wake with each day, who can stick beside us all day, every day.   

Yeah, that’s the ultimate friendship.

                                                          ...

And now, to get that sappy taste out of your mouth, here’s a bit of filth to gargle with.

Enter our favorite idiots, Hank and Delbert, best of friends:

                                                  C’mon Over

Brinnnnggg-

“Hello?”

“Yo, Hank—it’s me, Del.”

“What is it this time?”

“You should see the chick I got over here, man. Total nympho.”

“She’s over there now?”

“Yeah man. C’mon over. You won’t believe this shit. Met her at that bar outside town. She was blowing guys behind the pool table.”

“She’s still at your place? She didn’t run away screaming when she walked in that shithole?”

“What’s that?”

“You’re not the greatest housekeeper, after all.”

“Aw, that’s cold, man. Here I am, offering you this fine piece of ass, and you do me like that? Some fucking nerve. Besides, she was pretty drunk, and I already fucked her in a toilet stall for chrissakes.”

“Ah, so now it comes out. You took advantage of another one, didn’t you?”

“She wasn’t that drunk; at least not at first.”

“And what about later? You fucked her all night, didn’t you?”

“Yep. As many times as I wanted, every hole. Jerked off in her hair too. She just slept through it all.”

“You fucked an unconscious woman? What the fuck’s wrong with you, Del? What she say when she woke up?”

“She ain’t up yet.”

“I’ll be right over.”

                                                                 ...

This flasher was chosen for the ERWA Summer Gallery, along with “Carnival Ride,” a story that has its roots in autobiography.

Friends are what make it all worthwhile

Possibly no other day this year made me appreciate the value of friendship more than Sunday did. It was my birthday. I live by myself (my husband passed away nearly five years ago) and my children are all grown and living successfully on their own (thank heavens) so it’s just me and the cats. I sat down at my computer to communicated with the world and was stunned by an avalanche of birthday wishes from my digital friends.

Over the years since I first became published I have grown my community of friends way beyond any number I thought possible. Some of you I have met and enjoyed every second of our time together. But the vast majority of you I have not. We communicate through Facebook or Twitter or some other digital platform.

Writing is a solitary occupation. Even though writers have friends they plot and brainstorm with, it’s still just you and the keyboard when you sit down to write. You hope and pray that your words reach out to people and affect the That you give people pleasure with your stories and that through that you will become friends with them. But of course it’s not a given.

So when I sat down the morning of my birthday I hoped that a few of you would remember the date and send me wishes. Wow! That’s all I can say. Wow! The flood of birthday wishes totally stunned and amazed me. And the digital cards. The pictures of cakes and flowers people took the time and trouble to put together.

I called each of my kids to share the moment with them because everyone who took the time to send me a note or post a message touched a special place in my heart. I am awed and honored that on a day when people relax with families and friends or have special events planned so many of you took the time to remember this special day for me.

So to everyone out there, thank you so much for your friendship. You will never know how honored I am by it or how my heart is warmed. Or how much pleasure I get from your messages and your tweets and your Likes. And of course, you support of my writing.

I wish you all lives filled with joy and the knowledge that to me, your friendship is one of the most priceless things in the world.