Doing My Damn Best

In this era of #cockygate, #bookstuffing, and #tiffanygate, it can be tough to be an erotic author that’s ethical.

If I was in this for the quick buck, I think I could do it. I’ve read up on what all the unethical and scammy authors are doing. I could cash in and ride the money wave for as long as I could before Amazon catches on to my illicit behaviour and casts me out. I’d take my money, laugh, and move on to the next get-rich-quick scheme.

But — haha — I’m not in this for the money. I’m in this for the stories. I’m in this for the publishing. (I love the act of publishing as much as the act of writing.) I’m in this for the long haul.

It can be exhausting trying to keep up with the scams and all the dirty tricks that the get-rich-quick crowd is up to. It seems like there’s a new thing almost every week. Not only is it exhausting, it diminishes our reputation. It casts dirt on the whole self-publishing industry.

There are many outside the self-publishing world that don’t know about all these scams and they fall victim to them. Years ago, back when Kindle Unlimited paid per-book rather than per-page, my mom (who was not a KU customer) started reading this serialized erotic romance book … which was broken into seventeen parts. She said that each part was very short and broken up in odd places and she couldn’t figure it out. It became too expensive for what it was, so she stopped reading after the first few parts. I explained to her about how the per-book payment on KU works and that this author is scamming the system. (There are legitimate ways and reasons to serialize a novel — this author was not doing any of those, but rather breaking things up to get 17 times the profit.)

With book stuffing — the act of “stuffing” an ebook with “extra content”, whether it be dozens of extra novels or even thousands of pages of gibberish, a practice intended to milk the per-page payment for all its worth, damn the professionalism — readers who are not up to speed on what’s going on in self-publishing are finding that these self-published books are woefully unprofessional. And if the few self-published books they’ve read are really bad or really strangely put together, then they must all be like that, right? So it must be better to stick with traditionally published books.

And, of course, if an author is in it only to squeeze every last cent out of the system and that final profit is the one and only thing that matters, then basic things like editing and proofreading are not important. If an author puts out garbage, it doesn’t matter, as long as readers click through to the end and the author gets the full payment.

And here I am, doing my damn best to put out top-notch books. I put care and thought into my storylines, I hire editors and cover artists, and I don’t engage in scammy behaviour.

I might not make the quick buck that these other authors make and I might not reach the heights that they do, but I can stand proud knowing I’ve brought my all to this and I’ve worked on my professionalism. Those money-hungry authors might think I’m foolish, but, honestly, fuck them. At the end of the day, I’m proud of what I do and that’s all that matters.

Cameron D. James is a writer of gay erotica and M/M erotic romance; his latest release is Silent Hearts. He is publisher at and co-founder of Deep Desires Press, member of the Indie Erotica Collective, and hosts two podcasts, Deep Desires Podcast and Sex For Money. He lives in Canada, is always crushing on Starbucks baristas, and has two rescue cats. To learn more about Cameron, visit http://www.camerondjames.com.

Below and Behind--All the Things, Things, Things

Sacchi Green

There’ve been just a few nights lately when I’ve been able to go to bed pretty sure I’d done all the things that had to be done that day. Just a few nights. Not tonight.

Selling my father’s house has suddenly become real, and hectic, with a buyer and all sorts of requirements to be met in a fairly short time. And all the stuff to be sorted through! Next week, the septic system inspection, and the house having been built 64 years ago, I’m sure the regulations now are much different than they were, if any, then. Something expensive will have to be done. And today, searching for the kind of smoke-plus-carbon-monoxide detectors that the fire department requires has been somewhat harrowing. No simple battery-powered ones these days; I’ll have to get an electrician to connect them, assuming the aging electrical system is even compatible. And I’ve lost the key to my father's bank deposit box (that I looked through just a couple of months ago) so I’m waiting for the bank to set up an appointment with a locksmith to bore through the lock, and that will be expensive too. Just papers inside the box, but some that I’ll need for the house sale, and some of great interest in terms of the family history.

Oh, and when I got back from the smoke-detector search, I found that the bear had returned while I was away, and taken down the bird-feeder post.

Serves me right, all of it. It’ll all work out eventually, including the emotional chaos. Maybe, in spite of all the driving back and forth, I'll even get my garden all planted before it's too late. But I’m feeling more Below and Behind than Above and Beyond. Not good to write about.

So clearly it’s story-excerpt time! What could be farther Above and Beyond than heroism in battle? Here goes an excerpt from one of my favorite stories, “Sgt. Rae,” originally published in Kristina Wright’s Duty and Desire, reprinted in Best Lesbian Romance 2013, and some time this year or next to be reprinted in a collection of my work which, in spite of all my warnings as to why they shouldn’t do it and how badly collections (and erotica in general) sell these days, is going to be published by Dirt Road Books.

____________

Sgt. Rae

By Sacchi Green

Sgt. Rae was so strong she could carry me at a run through gunfire and smoke and exploding mines. Two years later, she’s that strong again. With just one hand she can keep me from getting away, no matter how hard I struggle. Even her voice is enough to stop me at a dead run, so it doesn’t matter that she can’t run any more. And anyway, I’d never want to run away.
I’m smaller, but I’ve got my own kind of muscle, even if it doesn’t show. A mechanic in an armored tank unit has to be strong just to handle the tools you need, and if you’re a woman doing the job you need a whole extra layer of strength. I’m not an army mechanic any more, but I can still use tools; Sgt. Rae isn’t an army Sgt. any more, but she’ll always be in charge. At the town hall where she’s the police and fire department dispatcher, they tell me she’s got the whole place organized like it’s never been before.
In our house, or in the town, I’m supposed to just call her Rae these days, and mostly I remember. I’m just Jenny. In the bedroom, we don’t need names at all, except to wake each other when the bad dreams come, and whisper that everything’s all right now. Or close enough to handle, as long as we’re together.
Out here, though, on this trail I’ve made through the woods and across the stream, we play by my rules, and that means I’m Specialist 2nd Brown and she’s the ball-buster Staff Sergeant, even though neither of us has any use for balls.
She’ll be coming along the trail behind me any minute, coming to see what new contraption I’ve constructed. What she expects is something like the exercise stations I’ve built for her into every room in the house, chinning bars and railings and handgrips at different levels, and in a way that’s right, but with a different twist. She expects I’ll want her to order me to drop and do fifty push-ups or sit-ups, or run in place until I’m panting, but this time I want something else.
I check the gears and pulleys one more time, even though I already know the tension is set right. It’s my own tension that’s nearly out of control. The posts and crossbars are rock-solid, while I’m shaking in my old fatigues, so nervous and horny that I can’t even tell which is which.
I hear the motor now. I could’ve made it run quieter, but if you’ve been where I’ve been, where we’ve both been, you want to be sure you know who’s coming around the bend.
She’s crossed the rocky ford in the stream where no regular wheelchair could have gone. I salvaged tracks from old snowmobiles at the repair shop where I work, and they’re as good as any armored tank tracks, even though they’re made of Kevlar instead of steel. Fine for this terrain, and even the steel kind got chewed up in the desert sand in Iraq.
Mustn’t think about the desert now. Here in New Hampshire, green leaves overhead are beginning to turn orange and red. This stream flows into a river just beyond our house, and we can watch canoes and kayaks pass by; no desert in sight. This is home. We’re together. Safe. Except that safe isn’t always enough, when you’ve known—had to know—so much more.
Now I hear Sgt. Rae veering back and forth through the obstacle course, steering the mini-tank around trees, stumps, boulders, right over small logs. With a double set of the tracks on each side, the only way to steer is by slowing one side while accelerating the other, and that takes strength. I think of her big hands on the levers, the bunched muscles of her arms and shoulders, even stronger now than in the army because she insists on a manually powered chair anywhere but in these woods. Gloves help, but her hands get calloused from turning the wheels. Calloused, and rough, even when she tries to be gentle… Anticipation pounds through my body.  
 I kneel on the ground, close my eyes, try to clear my mind—but on the distant bridge over the river a truck backfires, and in spite of the leafy dampness the desert flashes around me again, the clouds of dust, the explosions, the machine gun fire on that final day. I think of Sgt. Rae’s powerful voice, how it cut through the pain and confusion and kept me breathing when I didn’t think I could last another second. “Brown!” she bellowed, again and again, coming closer to where the shattered truck cab trapped me. “Brown, damn you, report!” That sound gripped me, forced strength into me, so that I moved, just a little, no matter how much it hurt, and she found me.
I never remember what happened next. I don’t think Sgt. Rae does, either, but somebody told me later they found a bent assault rifle barrel nearby, and maybe she levered the truck cab up enough with that to drag me out. I just remember being slung over her shoulder, feeling her run and swerve and run some more, and hearing her voice drilling right through to my heart in a tone I’d never heard before. “Jenny, Jenny…hang on…”
Right then, with bullets still screaming around us, it was like I’d died and waked up to a new world. Ever since the day we met, Sgt. Rae had mesmerized me, obsessed me, and I’d worked to hide my foolish longings behind hard work and casual jokes and chatter. But in that moment, as her strong voice shook, a window opened in the midst of hell and gave me a glimpse of a heaven better than anything they’d ever preached about in church.
I passed out when she set me down behind a sand bunker some of our guys had piled up in a hurry. Maybe I heard somebody say another soldier was still out there, or maybe I just heard later how she went back into that hell. Either way, I know she went.
It was a month before I saw Sgt .Rae again. I was still bandaged but up and walking. She wasn’t. At first, when I stood beside the hospital bed, I wondered whether she was really there at all, inside, until she saw me.
“Jenny?”
I could scarcely hear the word. But then strength came back into her voice, and the power I’d always felt surrounding her was there again as though a light had been switched on. “Specialist Brown, report!”
So I did, listing my injuries and treatments and recovery, even though her half-smile softened the formal order. Later, when she’d had her meds and fallen asleep, I pumped the nurses about her injuries and prognosis, and from that day I was never away from her for more than a few hours. There were some rough parts, and sometimes I had to be the strong one to get her through. A nurse or two caught on that there was more to it than just that she’d saved my life, but they never made any fuss. It helped that I could fix mechanical glitches in the orthopedic ward’s equipment, and even make some things work better than originally designed; I think somewhere along the line they claimed me as an adjunct physical therapy technician.
____________

Hey, look, I’ve finished my blog! That’s one thing done today, at least.

Thank you for being a reader. #readers #writers #gratitude

by Giselle Renarde

I saw a tweet the other day that really pissed me off.

I won't say who it came from or even what line of work they're in, but the tweet was a real screw-you to all their followers. It said something along the lines of: you think you're so supportive because you follow me and retweet me, but if you're not buying my products then you're not helping me at all because retweets don't pay the rent.

When I saw that, I was seriously taken aback. I haven't stopped thinking about it, and I certainly don't feel that way about my followers on twitter or on my blog or here or anywhere else. Quite the opposite. I appreciate the time you take to read my words, whether they're in blog form, tweet form, or book form.

I appreciate your time.

If you read something I've written here or at Donuts and Desires or on twitter and you take a moment to share it with others, I appreciate that action tremendously.

In fact, it's about more than just your time. It's about much, much more.

The other day I was thinking about book reviews. I don't read reviews of my work, but I appreciate beyond words that readers take the time to share their thoughts with the entire internet.

Sharing your opinions with the world isn't always easy, especially when you consider the nature of what I'm writing: erotica and queer fiction. If you write a book review about my work, you're sharing a lot about yourself.

Some readers are not in a position where they're able to be "out" as kinky or queer or whatever the case may be. They don't feel they can tell the world this is what they're reading. If you fall into that category, I want you to know it's okay. I don't wish for you to put your security in jeopardy to boost me up. Just know in your heart how much I appreciate that you're reading my words.

And if you are in a position to share your views on my work with the world, I appreciate that too. I appreciate it tremendously. And I appreciate it even if you didn't buy the book you're reviewing--if you checked it out of your local library or you got it for free during some kind of promotion or you found a tattered copy in a bus station bathroom.

Yes, I write for a living. Yes I need to put food on the table with my words. And pay the rent. And cover utilities. I couldn't do any of those things without readers. But does that mean I begrudge the people who "only" subscribe to my newsletter, who "only" retweet me once in a while, who "only" read the free stories on my blog? No! Not in the least.

Let's be real: this is the world of erotica. Most of the people who buy a title like "Forbidden Family Erotica" don't give a fuck that today is my grandmother's 87th birthday (Happy Birthday, Grandma!). They won't remember my name once they've read my smut. And you know what? I'm okay with that.

Not every reader needs to be a fan, and not every fan needs to be a reader. Most of my twitter followers have probably never read my work, and they probably never will. But every so often someone retweets a book trailer I've made, and that gets seen by a few people who've never heard of me, and they get interested in my work and a fan inspires a reader without even knowing it.

It's so shitty for anyone to tell their followers "if you're not purchasing my product, you mean nothing to me." I can't get over it. It's got me so riled up.

Hey, YOU. Yes, you! If you're reading this right now, you mean something to me. I've written these words. You've read these words. No money has changed hands, but we've made a connection. And that means something.

At least, to me it does.

And if you want to support me financially, Patreon is as good a place as any!

A World of Dew

This world of dew

Is only a world of dew.

And yet.

                                Issa

“Love is only a cloud hiding the color of the moon,” she said, and kissed his ear. “Love is a fog, Shoji-chan. It hides the nature of things, until it burns away.”   
                                                               
                               Lady Dainogon   “The Color of the Moon “

The Georgia sun is making me sweat almost instantly as I start my barefoot old guy jog around the parade field.  I run barefoot.  I like to feel the sand of the two mile track under my feet as I run.  I don’t run for two miles, I wouldn’t; lie to you about that.  I’d lie to you about other things, but at my age, physical prowess is unnecessary.  I need to get to my coffee shop and do some writing, so this afternoon with the heat nearing 100 a mile is challenge enough.  I’m getting old and a little thick.  People are calling me Jerry Garcia.  They mean it with affection, but the name sticks because

more and more I’m starting to look like Jerry Garcia in the last year or two of his life.

I love to run barefoot.  I love to walk barefoot.  I love to fool myself that I’m pushing my limit as I hop forward, you can barely call it running.  After about fifty yards or so, I have to slow down and walk.

I love this track.  I’ve written a lot of stories in my head walking around this path in a more leisurely way with a notebook.  Especially at night.  A dirt two mile track with overhead lights is a surreal place to walk in the dark with your thoughts.

I first began walking this track about a good ten years or so ago.  It was a different time.  I was suffering a lot then.  I wasn’t good company for anyone.  Myself especially.  I have a memory of suffering.  I have y memories of suffering,which I invoke to remind myself that I have suffered in the past but these days aren’t that bad at all.  I was also more adventurous then.  I wonder if the two things go together.  Now I play it safe and try to stay comfortable.

An old man tends to exaggerate the pleasures of youth.  It helps to have kept a diary for a long time, to keep the memory honest.  When you’re 25 you think you’ll never die, when you’re 65, you know you will.  And yet, as Issa says.  And yet.  I can remember suffering much more at that time.  I can remember envying dogs lying in the shade of summer, and wishing I could be them.  Thinking their life must be better, or at least simpler than mine.  I envied dogs.  I can remember cursing God, though I’m not sure why I felt that way at the time.  I think I know, but it doesn’t come to mind easily, I have to fish around for the reason.

I was never suicidal, exactly.  But I was passively suicidal.  Indifferent to survival.  If a fatal disease came to carry me off, I didn’t think I wanted to fight it.  Now, I find myself more than content to live.  In fact, even as I am more aware of my mortality, more aware of how the people and things we love sooner or later disappear downstream, the world is made of dew that vanishes with the rising of the sun, and yet.  There are these fleeting moments of joy.  Even exuberance.  I know someday that will pass too. I know better than to feel triumphant.  We have these things for a while, but they’re

very fragile, as they must be.

  I won go into detail about what has changed or how the change was brought about.  That will be no comfort foranyone reading this going through something anyway.  And maybe if I start giving advice that will be the moment mybubble will pop.  It’s enough to know that the sun does rise.  Maybe sooner for some than for others, but there is always the possibility of sun.  I would refer readers to a post I made years ago here called The Mook in Me.  There was so much blood on the page that folks here became afraid for me.  Me too.  I don’t want to go back to that time.  I suppose suffering makes one grow, but I’m content not to grow for a while.  I feel there may be a staleness in me, but I’m in no hurry to fix it. I am content.

Against all the odds...

I was inspired by Lisabet’s post yesterday. In common with most of the developed, media-rich world, I watched in awe last month as Mamoudou Gassama sprinted up the side of the building in Paris like a human fly in order to save a child. I was impressed not only by his selflessness and courage but by the sheer athleticism of the act. If things don’t work out for him in the French fire service, a career as a cat burglar beckons.

So, I got to thinking of other examples of individuals who either do the incredible in the face of adversity, or who simply never give up. Here’s one of my favourites.

I’m sure we all remember the case of the Chilean miners in 2010. Thirty three men were trapped 2300 feet underground on 5 August 2010 when the main ramp into the mine collapsed. All the men managed to reach the refuge area underground but were completely cut off from the outside world. Frantic attempts to locate the men were fruitless, and the rescuers on the surface had no idea even if they were alive or dead. 

Hopes faded as the days passed, became weeks, but the authorities did not give up. Neither did the trapped men, and over two weeks after the collapse they managed to send a note to the surface attached to the end of a drill bit. Crude, but effective. Now the rescue efforts began in earnest, but it was uphill work, so to speak. It took a further two months and a massive international effort watched by millions around the world, but the rescuers worked together to figure out and implement a plan to bring the men safely to the surface.

But they did it. On 13 October, 69 days after they had become trapped, the first man was winched to the surface in a tiny capsule through a borehole which had taken weeks to drill. One by one they were brought out, blinking, into a world that held its breath.

I'm no expert on the best ways of saving people trapped half a mile underground, but if there is one thing which I think made the difference for the Chilean miners, it was the willingness of the mining authorities and the government to work together and also to seek outside help. They could not have done it alone, and there were other nations with expertise or technology which could help. In the end it took three separate drilling teams, almost every department of the Chilean government and a dozen different nations chipping in to complete the rescue. It cost an eye-watering $20 million.

I have never been to Chile, will never meet any of the miners or their families or those who worked tirelessly to save them, but every hour throughout that day in October 2010 I listened to the radio news as the tally of saved men mounted. Ten were out, then fifteen. Twenty, thirty. It was an emotional moment, shared by an estimated 1 billion people around the world, when the last man emerged safe, and a tribute to the dogged determination of everyone involved. 

Sometimes, against all the odds…

SpiderMan -- #Heroism #AboveAndBeyond #Altruism

By Lisabet Sarai

Last week the world witnessed a startling feat of heroism, when Malian immigrant Mamoudou Gassama climbed four stories up the side of an apartment building to rescue a toddler dangling from a balcony.

According to the twenty-two year old young man, he reacted instinctively, scaling the building without stopping to think about the implications. Indeed, if he’d paused to consider the possible consequences, he might not have taken action. Not only did he risk injury and death, but also, because he was residing illegally in Paris, his highly visible activities were guaranteed to alert the authorities to his existence. His story ended happily—the French government (rather hypocritically, considering their general policy toward migrants) gave him immediate citizenship—but it could have had a far different conclusion.

Stories like Gassama’s always make me feel a little bit better about humanity. I wish the media did more to celebrate the everyday heroes who put aside their own best interests to help others. There are more of these people than we realize; they just express their heroism in somewhat less spectacular ways than the guy whom the tabloids have christened “Spiderman”. I’m awed, for instance, by the people who work with Doctors Without Borders, providing medical and humanitarian services in conflict zones where they are as much targets as the individuals they serve. Or for an even quieter type of heroism, consider the millions of people who devote themselves to the health and well-being of the severely disabled—not just professionals (though their day-in, day-out service is also heroic), but ordinary folks whose children, siblings or parents can’t survive without them.

I have a three-year old cousin who was born with SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy), a genetic neuromuscular disorder that leads to gradual paralysis and (usually) early death. His parents are my personal heroes. They’ve reorganized their lives to give little D not just the medical support he needs, but also to make his childhood as normal as they can. Last year, the whole family (D has a seven year old brother) took a trip to Disneyland, despite the fact that D is confined to a wheelchair and has to wear an oxygen mask because his lung muscles are too weak to let him breathe.

“That’s family,” you might say. “Everyone takes care of their own blood.” Aside from the fact that there are many dedicated caregivers who work with unrelated individuals, does that make the actions, the dedication, the sacrifice, worth any less? Not to me, at least.

Although sometimes it seems that society has become totally selfish and self-centered (think about the billions of dollars spent on devices to capture and “share” trivial self-portraits), altruism is a fundamental human characteristic, one that is not sufficiently acknowledged. It flows, I believe, from the unconscious knowledge that we are all connected. I don’t think it’s an accident that last week’s Spiderman comes from a traditional culture where family and community are given higher value than in individualistic Western societies. I don’t have any data, but I’d bet that instances of heroism like this are more common in more sparsely populated rural or agricultural areas, where people tend to know their neighbors, than in crowded, anonymous cities.

Superheroes are all the rage these days. Traditional comic book characters are being resurrected and reshaped for the twenty first century. From what I can see, though, these characters are more occupied with egotism and inter-personal conflicts than with truly helping the powerless. In today’s typical superhero film, the so-called heroes have no qualms about destroying vast swathes of public infrastructure in their pursuit of the so-called villains. Civilians become collateral damage in a clash of super-powered titans.

Entertaining? Maybe, but I wouldn’t label that as heroism.

Real heroes aren’t necessarily as flashy. But they’re all around us, if we look. Including when we look in the mirror.

Standing Up(side Down) for Myself

K D Grace

I took up pole dance last June. Gawd no! It’s not erotic. Hell yes! It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

So today I’m laying aside the self-deprecating part of me, the hyper-critical part of me, the part too shy to blow my own horn because, yes, I am very proud of my accomplishments. Later this month, I’ll be doing my first photo shoot. Mostly it’s a way of gaging my progress, but it’s also a way of overcoming my fears and claiming my right to stand, spin, and invert along side a lot of other strong women who will be doing the same. It’s a position I’ve worked hard to earn. It isn’t just the physical challenge of the sport itself, which is a brutal one, but it’s the way that raw effort exposes the rest of me to myself that has taken that challenge to the next level. 

I had the advantage of going in to beginning pole class stronger than most, in spite of being twice as old as a lot of the women there. I had the disadvantage of my own doubts and fears – the ones that I brought along with me and the ones that I uncovered through the journey from the very first bruising lesson to where I am now. It didn’t take me long to realize, however, that every woman in the class had her own share of doubts and fears. I was in good company.

I got fit in the first place because I found being physically active helps me deal with depression – some of which was brought on by the joys of menopause and some of which is just because I am my mother’s daughter. Being active, challenging myself physically, not only helps me keep on top of the mood swings, but it’s a wonderful catalyst for creativity. Some of my best stories have been inspired during hard workouts or very long walks. 

Lots of people are physically active without doing something crazy insane like taking up pole at “a certain age.” And believe me, my hat’s off to anyone who makes an effort to eat well and stay fit. It’s not easy. But for me, it was a natural progression. I started by seeing a personal trainer twice a week at the gym because I knew if I paid for it, I’d go – a sort of forced commitment, if you will. At the time I was a basket case coming off writing four novels in one year and being broadsided by menopause at the same time. I wasn’t fit for human company. I wasn’t fit for my own company. 

After a couple of weeks, I was no longer working out because I had to; I was doing it because I wanted to. I started going to the gym more often than my twice-weekly PT. I started asking my trainer if we could try new things, harder things. Then one fine day I discovered kettle bells, and I was in love. By that time I was always looking a for new challenge, not because I’m an adrenalin junkie, but because I was astounded by how resilient my body was and by all of the amazing things I could do with the proper training – even at “a certain age.”

The wild, sometimes painful, journey on which I’ve take my body these past several years has been a stripping away, a laying bare of the woman hiding behind her fears and doubts. The beginning of that journey was just to keep from falling apart. Then I began pushing myself because I enjoyed the challenge. Finally, I lost 35 pounds in a healthy way and have kept the weight off two and a half years and counting. That I did because it was time, and because I knew my body would function better without weight I didn’t need. 

As I said, I am my mother’s daughter, and I inherited her fear-based personality -- something I am more aware of as I grow older. Everything I do has been an effort to push through being terrified, and few things have been more frightening than pole. Pole took that stripping away to the next level. As much as the physical challenge -- which has been staggering as well as exhilarating -- pole has been about finding the woman huddled in the corner and, sometimes coaxing, sometimes cajoling, her to come out and play, to stand up, throw her shoulders back and celebrate herself.

As a writer, I’m often astounded at how the fictional worlds I create for my readers reflect my inner landscape. I never plan it that way, but with the symbiosis of mind and body, and the creativity that results, I’m not really surprised either. Isn’t writing, in some quixotic way, the author’s unconscious effort to heal herself or to possibly expose herself?

Exposing myself. Yes, pole has been about exposing myself in so many ways. It has definitely uncovered my neuroses. Most of the time I don’t think about being twenty to thirty years older than almost everyone else in the studio. I know I’m fit, I know I am holding my own, even doing fairly well. Most of the time I’m just focused on meeting the challenge of the day. But what to wear has brought my age neurosis back to me with a vengeance. Skin contact with the pole is necessary to perform some of the more difficult moves. Wearing less and less clothing to compensate for more and more complex moves has been, and still is, one of my biggest challenges. Most of us start beginning pole in our sweats and tee shirts. But if we stick with it, the process becomes a slow, and sometimes reluctant, strip tease. As we learn and improve, we move to leggings, then to shorts, then to racer back tops we can tuck into our sports bras when we need belly for grip. Then finally the day dawns when we graduate to pole shorts and tops, with not much more coverage than a bikini, and we just get on with it. But here’s me in all my vanity, wanting to look good and fearing being judged for not looking twenty no matter how good I look. 

And yet, all that fear and insecurity goes out the window when I approach the pole, when I find myself inverted and working my way into moves that, if I’d seen photos of a year ago, I’d have never imagined I could do. I am an equal among equals, a student learning with other students, all of us with our own challenges to meet.

Owning my age is one of the benefits from my pole training. (Still a work in progress, I have to admit) I’ve made an amazing discovery. There is no downhill slide once you pass that “certain age” and find yourself looking sixty smack dab in the eyeballs. There is, however, a paradigm shift – or can be if I’m willing to open myself to the possibilities. I was much more fearless when I was younger, back before I had been battered about by the world a few times. But the older I get, the more I fear. That seems to be a common side affect of getting older. 

The paradigm shift comes when I’m bold enough to say, “fuck it, I’m just going for it!” Whatever ‘it’ is. There’s another kind of fearlessness that happens as I approach sixty. I’ve battled my internal version of ageism long enough to know that most of what I fear is never going to happen, and it’s going to be a long boring journey to the grave if I let those fears about being “of a certain age” control me.

The push, the challenge, becomes to live in the moment, to live urgently and boldly, to remind myself when doubt rears its ugly head that age is just a number. It is NOT who I am. I’ve been on this fitness journey long enough to realize that the bumps and bruises and aches and pains as well as the challenges met and the triumphs celebrated are just an outward manifestation of the deeper journey going on inside me. The slow strip tease, the exposure of skin – bruised and abraded, and not as supple as it once was, goes so much deeper than muscle and bone. It becomes the laying bare, the exposing, of the inner wounds and bruises, the deep-seated fears that I’ve kept hidden away. It is a viewing of myself more clearly, a loving of who I am and what I’m becoming more completely. It is

learning to be more gentle with myself even as I push myself harder than I ever have before. I am still filled with doubts, still afraid of the challenges ahead of me, I still want to run away and hide underneath my duvet. But I’ve fought the battle long enough to have some success at pushing through the fears, and success breeds more success — something worth reminding myself of every day.

The wonderful surprise of it all is that I’m stronger, fitter, more sure of myself now than I ever was in my twenties. And the even bigger surprise is that I keep getting more so. My skill improves with my strength and stamina, and with those my confidence and my view of myself as a creative force and of the world as a place full of possibilities. The paradigm shift is a reminder that I get to choose. I get to embrace this journey and move forward in spite of my fears, because overcoming those fears, one step at a time, one challenge at a time, is truly what it means to be fearless.