The Nineties-a milestone decade for me

Note: I’ve given you a taste of Once Burned below. Leave a comment and you might win an ecopy.

As I read through the other posts about the Nineties here I thought, holy crap!  How can I match these other posts? Then I let my mind wander and realized that yes, I’d had some life-changing experiences that affected how I moved forward. So what happened to me?

To begin with I changed jobs, moving from the development division of a state university to that of a smaller private university. My objectives were publicity and fundraising and it was rewarding to do it in a setting where I could connect with students, faculty, alumni and donors. I worked in a beautiful setting, made some incredible friends and expanded all my world horizons.

Early in the Nineties my oldest daughter married. Can I tell you that there are few things in life as pleasurable as watching one of your children embark on a life journey with a mate so perfect for them they might have been special ordered. It was such a joyous occasion, made even more special by the fact that my mother, who was not well, was able to be there and celebrate with us. It wasn’t too long after that we lost her but while sadness tinged our joy she left us with a wealth of wonderful memories.

It was my mother who first interested me in books. Our house was always filled with them. She and my sister were ravenous readers and she taught me the power of the written word. While she herself had no desire to write, she encouraged my own fledgling need. Because of her I began a series of journal where I jotted down ideas that I hoped later would become part of stories.

The Nineties were also the decade where my urge to write, to create my own stories, began to grow and blossom. Soon my plotting became a collaborative effort with my staff. They would email me ideas, drop into my office to suggest characters, ash if I wanted to brainstorm with them. The journals I had begun so long ago continued to grow in scope and size.

The Nineties (1990 to be exact) also saw the release of what to me will always be the best movie of all time. There are many who will disagree, but The Hunt For Red October had all the elements of an outstanding production: it was faithful to the book (Lord, how I hate it when producers buy the rights to a great book and then think they can do it better.), it was riveting every single minute, cast excellently. I think I have seen that movie more than three hundred times and I never tire of it. And while many criticize Tom Clancy’s style of writing as pedantic, but I think he knew how to get to the reader, grab the attention and keep it. I have tried to remember all of that as I journey in my writing career, even though what I write are not political thrillers.

If you’ve read any of my books you know that I write romance. Would you believe in the Nineties the book I plotted for my debut was “a mystery with romantic elements?” I had everything outlined, included character profiles. But when I finally sat down to write I couldn’t seem to get past Chapter Three. Then I read (gasp!) my first romance and realized I was on the wrong train. I don’t even have the draft of those three chapters any ore, or the outline, or the plot. But I did carry it into my new-found love of romantic suspense. So today I thought I would treat you to a book that has been a staple of my backlist for a long time—Once Burned. I think I love it so much because there is a lot of me in the character.

*****  

One hot summer Cassie Fitzgerald gave her virginity and her heart to Griffin Hunter. When he married her sister, Diane, she fled Stoneham and for six years nothing could make her return. Not her sister’s murder, for which Griffin was and continues to be the only suspect. Not her father’s suicide, which the police chief wants to sweep under the rug. But now her mother is dead and she has legal obligations she can’t avoid. Nor, it seems, can she avoid Griffin, who wants her more than ever and makes no bones about it and to whom she finds herself just as susceptible. Will Cassie be able to control her own hot need for this man or will she be pulled back into the same sensual vortex? Can she uncovers the secret Stoneham’s hiding, the riddle of Diane’s murder and the answer to her relationship with Griff without destroying herself in the process?

EXCERPT:

Her breath was frozen in her chest. Swallowing hard, she made her feet move, one in front of the other, doing her best to ignore him, her eyes still drawn to him. This was a different Griff from the daredevil who lived in her darkest dreams. He was not only older but harder, less yielding. His hair was still sun bleached and too long, his body fuller but still tanned and muscular. Aviator sunglasses hid the remembered blue of his eyes but his mouth that had pressed such passionate kisses on every part of her body was set in an expression of bitterness. There was something almost lethal about him now. If she hadn’t known him so well, she might have been afraid of him.

And something else defined his posture. Anger? Sadness? She didn’t want to know. She especially didn’t want to feel the quickening of her heartbeat, the tightening of her breasts, the instant hardening of her nipples and the primal beat that began throbbing between her legs. The heat had burned her once—scorched her—and she wasn’t about to play with fire again.

But her brain apparently had taken a vacation, along with her ability to make a sensible decision and stick to it. All these years, all that pain and it took only seconds for her body to leap to life in the once familiar response.

She detoured to the trunk of the rental car, her keys in her hand that trembled despite her best efforts.

Griff reached out one arm and pressed down against the lid of the trunk so she couldn’t open it. “I heard you were in town. I came to see for myself.”

“Please let me open my trunk.” She tried to make her voice as flat as his.

“We have things to talk about, Cassie.”

“You’re wrong. We have nothing to say to each other.”

“Oh but we do.” He moved until he was standing right next to her, crowding her space. “We have a lot to say. We have unfinished business between us.”

Check out this book and others on my backlist at www.desireeholt.com

Do I Believe in Yesterday?

Sacchi Green


“Yesterday…”

In the 90s, the Beatles' songs of my college days like “Yesterday” were far in the past, although you’d still hear them occasionally, and I sometimes played them in the college-town store where I made my living. Likewise Simon and Garfunkle. Any music much beyond that era hasn’t stuck in mind, although my employees in the store—several generations of college students—did expand my horizons somewhat with the music tapes they brought in. Or CDs? I can’t even remember whether we had CDs in the 90s. “Help! I Need Somebody!”

The memory of my real, current yesterday is all too vivid, when I realized that I had a fast-worsening case of poison ivy the likes of which I’d thought were left behind with my teens. The worst part is the swelling and itching around my eyes, very nasty on one side but fairly minor on the other. I went to a clinic open on weekends, and now have prednisone working, I hope, on my case. If it hasn’t improved at all by tomorrow, I’m supposed to go to my regular doctor. All of which is entirely off-topic, but may explain my lack of a proper (or even improper) focus today. I want to get this written before I take more antihistamine to ease the itching, though—don’t scratch! Don’t Scratch!—because it’ll make me drowsy (aka even more stupid,) so here goes.

What I remember best about the 90s is that I finally started writing and submitting my work. I’d been immersed in raising and supporting a family into the early 90s, and it didn’t entirely stop then, but when I reached my 50’s I knew I had to get moving, or give up on what I’d always planned to do.

My first venture was a very short story entered in a contest run by the 1995 Worldcon (World Science Fiction Convention) held in Glasgow that year. Good grief, was my last visit to the UK really that long ago? Sigh. My story “Virtual Empathy” placed second, which was nice, and it gave me the nerve to expand the piece and send it out to real publications. My first try, Asimov’s Science Fiction, netted me a very kind rejection with encouragement to send more, and my next try, to a very new, very small-press magazine, succeeded. I never tried Asimov’s again, since I didn’t think I had anything quite right for them, but I had a pretty good run with small presses and a few modestly major anthologies. I was able to join SFWA and feel at home, if on a lowly level, in the science fiction and fantasy community. It was great.

Then, amidst the gossip and shared market listings, I heard of a call for submissions from another genre. Best Lesbian Erotica 1999, the third (or maybe 4th) in the series. Maybe I could do that! Several, if not most, of my speculative fiction stories had an undercurrent of the erotic, and many of my characters were lesbians in my mind, even though not overtly so on the page.

It turned out that yes, I could, appealing to some editors precisely because I came from a different genre and wrote even non-specfic in a way that seemed original and fresh to them.

I chose a pseudonym for erotica, because I’d done some work for anthologies aimed toward kids, and figured I’d go on to do more. Nope. The erotic side of the force had got its talons (or assiduously trimmed short fingernails) firmly into me, and my pseudonym proceeded to get all the mileage for quite a few years. I’ve been getting back to specific a bit lately, usually combined with erotica, but enough of that. Back to the 90s!

Rats. My relatively new computer won’t let me open the old file of my first Best Lesbian Erotica story. I have it accessible on my older machine that has dire touchpad issues, and I could probably access it with some effort, but I’m too fried just now. I do have updated files of a couple of my fantasy stories from that era, supposedly due to be reprinted soon in an e-book mega-pack of Sword and Sorcery stories from Wildside Press. Hmm, maybe I can find an excerpt worth sharing here, since my mind isn’t doing well at original thoughts today. Don’t Scratch!

This is kind of embarrassing. It’s pretty clear why the old style of Sword and Sorcery stories has gone out of fashion, but here goes, from “Steelwing,” by my alter-ego Connie Wilkins, first published in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine. This comes near the beginning:



Arka had gone from my command into the personal service of the White Robes, and I had intended to look for her on this visit. My military side considered her too good a warrior to be wasted standing guard on a stronghold in no real danger of assault.  Still, too many who came to me as raw, half-trained girls grew into seasoned companions, only to fall under the steel and spells of the enemy or the talons of their minions.
I was startled, but not by the suddenness of her appearance. I stared at her dark hair, oak-leaf red except where pale wing-shapes swept upward at the temples. My hand lifted to my own head, as if fingertips could feel the difference between the grey streaks and the black strands surrounding them.
"It's a badge some of us wear," Arka said. "A sign of having served under Steelwing." A slight flush tinged the brown skin. "Perhaps we should have asked you first."
"I suppose it does no harm." I was unsure how I felt about this. "As long as no one follows me into battle like that."
"No, we know the wings are your pennant, we have found you by them often enough through clouds of dust."
"Well." I remembered my summons. "I think no one will march behind this banner again, so it scarcely matters." I gripped her arm once more and passed on, conscious of observers.
The young Gray Robe who guided me within was new to me, but White Rena waited in the lighted chamber as so many times before. The course of war often required conference between leaders from the field and those who directed from Above. She was as skilled at strategy as at wielding Power, and I....
I fought back the intrusive thought. The Robe was not for me. I had no Power, would not seek it, would not accept it even if it found me.
"Steelwing, welcome." There was a hint of amusement in her voice. "I suppose you noticed Arka's hair?"
"My eyes are still strong, even if my knees are going." I took the cushion she offered and sank onto it with just the tiny delay that let her be seated first. "You think you've wrung all the foolishness out of them...."
"There's no need to wring out all the youth. War does that soon enough."
I nodded agreement and took a steaming cup from the tray before me. Such small talk was unusual from White Rena, but we had been through much together, and were as close to being friends as our different roles allowed. I didn't mind waiting for her to get to the point, enjoying the tranquil breath of herbs rising from the cup.
"You have a rare way with the young," she said at last. Her words seemed to stab at me, but some pain is better left unexplained. I had expected this, after all, an assignment to the training valley. I might have the skill and spirit of a warrior, but I no longer had the knees, though I could still outmarch those who had less experience of endurance and pain.
"I have managed to beat many a wild one into shape, sometimes quite literally." It was as well to leave command before they had reason to doubt that I still could.
"You have mothered many a lost child, too, I know."
Again that stab of pain, and a suspicion that she intended it.
"Those who need it most would spit on the word 'mother.'"
A narrow eyebrow lifted. "You sound like the foremost spitter, yet you were not left as a babe on the Maker's Stone, as are so many. You came to us of your own will, a woman grown."
"And the White Robes took me in, blotted out the pain that drove me there, and gave me life and purpose. I do not forget that." I stood, with a twinge, and faced her rigidly. "I am wholly yours to command. You need not lead me through mind games."
"Steelwing... Sarym..." She gripped my hands and urged me down again. Her compassion was beyond doubting; so too was the hidden purpose behind her use of the old name, my one memory of that other life. I questioned not the purpose but the method.
"Do the White Robes propose to remove the memory block?" I refrained from adding, "If my sword is no longer of value to you," but she heard it in my bluntness.
"If you truly believe that wall is still the one we made, you have answered my question." She was equally blunt now. "That wore off long ago, and would never have worked except by your own will. I only wished to discover how much you have allowed yourself to remember."
She saw my expression. "You think I shouldn't need to ask? Believe! It is not courtesy, or even friendship," and here she touched my hand again, "that stays me from the mind probe. White Rena cannot reach thoughts that Steelwing wishes to keep private, much less penetrate what she will not reveal even to herself. I do not say that it could not be done by one who specializes, but we will not treat our own like enemy spies!" From her grim tone I suspected that a certain faction in Above favored doing just that.
"Why is it so important that I remember?" Curiosity couldn't fill the cold hollow in my gut, but it could grant me superficial distraction.
"Better now than in the middle of a vital mission."
This was distraction worth having, and I leaned forward, only to be dashed back.
"As your Power grows it will break down its own barriers. You will remember." She waved off my denial. "We would give you time if we could. Your sword has been worth more to us than spells and wards, your leadership more than any White Robe's Power. And you have not entirely suppressed your other... skills, from what I've heard."

 [No, my fellow gutter-minds, not those kinds of skills, although I kind of had them in the back of my mind. Steelwing turns out to be an Earth-Mage who can move literal mountains, or at least shake them, but suppresses her memories her power and a tragic past.]


Well, there you go. It’s just as well we’ve moved on past the 90s, but we couldn’t get here without having been there first. On some brighter notes, I’ve just won my third Golden Crown Literary Award as an editor of lesbian erotica (that makes three Goldies and two Lambdas) and I’m about to make my eighth Best Lesbian Erotica appearance, the first since 2009, which feels almost as long ago as the 90s.

I do, I guess, still believe in Yesterday. And I believe it’s time to take an antihistamine.

The 90's

Spencer Dryden

 

If you came to this blog today for reminiscence on music, art, culture and politics of the 90's including the definition of what "is" is, you've come to the wrong place. I missed all that. The 90's was a decade of painful personal transformation for me, that continued into the 21st century and truthfully continues to this day.

In 1988 I stood at the altar and repeated the words, 'for richer or poorer, in sickness and health'...you know the rest. For those who have married, you know you don't really know what your are pledging. I didn't, and it's better  I didn't know. I'm pretty sure I'd have chickened out and missed the most important things of life.

It was a second marriage for me. The first was a disaster from beginning to end—another three or four blog posts that won't leave you or me any better understanding of how badly things can go when you lack boundaries and are driven by imperatives that deny your humanity. To summarize, it left me with a desire never to recite those words again.

During the early 80's I was single again, having the time of my life. Maybe we'll do a segment on the 80' sometime. I'll have to use a different pen name though.  I was alive and on fire then, grasping for every carnal pleasure that was denied in the 70's.

The heart heals. I met a wonderful woman who made me forget all the pain. I proposed on Valentines day of 1987 so I would never forget the day. I didn't want children, but I knew our marriage wouldn't work without children. As long as she took care of them I thought I could endure. She was willing and anxious to be a wife and at-home mom.

At the start, we were both well paid white collar professionals. After many slips and falls my commercial insurance career was finally gaining traction. Better still, I was closing in on a life long dream in television, producing and hosting a community television program about medical technology. I was merely a nod away from the local public television station from stepping to a much higher platform. I had become an avid DIYer and was near completion of the renovation of our turn of the century Victorian home.

We announced our first pregnancy to tears and hugs from my in-laws. It was all golden glow. The plan was that my wife would stay home, my commercial insurance and television careers providing us all we needed to live above the fray.

It was a difficult pregnancy but my wife bore it with grace. We went to Lamaze classes and practiced breathing to Yanni music. Deliver day arrived at last. Instead of Yanni and a few pushes, the delivery room had nearly thirty people in attendance working feverishly to deliver our baby, who was stuck in the birth canal too far to be delivered by C section—putting both lives in jeopardy

In the frantic final minutes the OBGYN did an episiotomy on my wife with a hedge clippers and  no anesthetic while a nurse was pressing her full weight on my wife's abdomen. I was quite certain her screaming marked the end of our sex life. Out he came at last.

I did the most rational thing I could think of when I saw my son. I burst into tears. But the moment joy of August 18th 1991 lasted about a minute. Something was wrong with our baby. He was breathing but still blue. They whisked him away before my wife could even hold him.

Two agonizing hours later, a cardiologist came to our room to explain that our son had a congenital heart defect. The fear, agony and terror of that moment are still bewildering. It  sucks the air from my lungs and puts a lump in my throat.

Back in my childhood in the 1950's I remember hearing women say, someone had a 'blue baby and it died'. We had a blue baby. They rarely lived more than a week. But by 1991 there was immediate surgery and more later that might offer him a chance at life. No promises.

My heart goes out to anyone who has lost a child at birth. The meeting with the cardiologist was the beginning of my decade of transformation. I had planned to go back to work the next day.  My career aspirations were gone in a moment. All I wanted was  to do whatever we could to give our son a chance for life. It's a time when you have to be as brave as you can be and not give into to the paralysis of the unknown. We had to make hard decisions every day. In those first days, every time we held our baby, we did it with the awareness it may be the last time. But we turned him over to the doctors time and time again—living in limbo between grief and gratefulness.

We lived on pins and needles, always at the edge of tears. He had major surgery when he was 18 hours old. Then they sent him home after nine days in the ICU, hopefully to grow big enough to have major heart reconstructive surgery. And if he survived, an unknown future. My wife wouldn't leave his side and when she had to come home without her baby she wouldn't go into the nursery I had worked so hard to prepare.

The thing you don't know, that I didn't know, was how much courage you have when you have to have it. So I offer that as a message of hope. You have it. It's there in a very special reservoir in the heart, you won't fail. It's hard to relive this time again enough to tell it well. I still collapse into tears wondering how I managed to work, to get through, to process and decide and most of all not give into the the fear.

Our lives turned inward,  we lived one day at a time, one follow -up appointment at a time. He survived the neonatal surgery and six months later after three false starts he had major reconstructive surgery. He survived that too. One day at a time it became apparent he would live.

Our tension subsided as he began to do normal things, but fears about his prognosis were no more than a careless thought away.

My wife had been deprived of the peaceful joy of a newborn. She desperately wanted another child. I acquiesced, of course. 

By April of 1994, my career was slipping away with my changing priorities-which didn't sit well with my boss (oddly enough a single mom). I was dumped unceremoniously about three weeks before our second child was born.(Mommy tracked as they say.) His birth brought me no joy, only the terror of wondering how we would make it work. My father-in-law, my best scotch drinking buddy, died very suddenly in May.

There was no way to afford two children in daycare. I had been unable to find work so when the measly termination payout ran out we slipped into financial distress. (Okay armature psychologists let's stop for a stress test : a special needs baby, a newborn, loss of a job, loss of a loved one-each one in the top ten of life stressors. Add looming bankruptcy.) Apparently I lost my mind because I suggested to my wife that I stay home with the kids. She agreed. How hard could that be? Six weeks later I was down at the Women's Center trying to surrender. I get it now, why modern women are so stressed. I was a wreck.

The transformation continued. The goal oriented, task oriented mentality which served me so well with work was detrimental, if not downright harmful when trying to raise children. We sold our big house and moved to a small house in the suburbs. There were no other at-home kids in our neighborhood. I have since said in all seriousness to anyone who thinks life is passing by too fast: get yourself a rambunctious toddler and a fussy baby that are on completely different biological clocks, no money and no where to go- a day lasts forever. All three of us sat by the window and wept when my wife left for work each day. We learned how to live large on less.

What few guys realize is that caring for young children happens mostly in state of profound sleep deprivation. In fact, if you look at strategies for interrogation of prisoners of war it is a combination of isolation, harassment, and sleep deprivation that turns prisoner's minds to mud. I give you the life of an at-home parent of young children.

I had done some business writing so my redeeming hope was to become a male Erma Bombeck. That dream died under a pile of dirty laundry. Turns out, Erma's kids all slept at the same time and she had the constitution to arise very early in the morning to do her writing. Never happened with me.

I disappeared into the identity of my kids. I became Max's and J.R.'s dad, having lost my own identity. I see a lot of moms shaking their heads. it was a regular topic at the parenting programs I participated in. (As the only guy with at-home kids)

For me the the 90's was about Thomas the Tank Engine, Radio Ahs, The Power Rangers, Disney and Pixar movies and endless housework. Fine dining was ordering large fries with my happy meal. It's all a blur now. I'm looking forward to the other posts so I can see what I missed.

We entered a new century and a new set of challenges-school, but that was after the 90's. Another decade went by.

My boys have turned into fine young men. There wasn't a hint of it even a few years ago. According to all the modern parenting paradigms I did everything wrong. Our number one son had learning problems in addition to his heart problems. We never did get those addressed very well. He barely passed the minimum standards for high school graduation. Today he is an assistant manager at a Jimmy Johns Franchise and makes more money than most college grads-without the attendant debt. Thing 2 continues to be the child from another planet. He's trying college again having flunked out in his first semester two years ago.

Rewards? Not the money and fame I craved as a young man. My wife and I have been married for twenty-five years now. There is a richness in our relationship that only comes from linking arms and walking though the storm together. The unexpected reward was that all the caregiving gave me the skills and heart to care for my mother in her final days. We had a great time together. In the aftermath of her passing I got another silly idea-writing erotic fiction.

To the universe and beyond.

I Wanted It To Be Different

by Giselle Renarde

Have you read my Adam and Sheree series?  If you haven't and you enjoy extremely taboo erotica, you should treat yourself to a copy of the box set. And you know I'm not a sales-pitchy person, so if I'm telling you this is a kick-ass series, you know it is.

The third novella in the series, Adam and Sheree's Family Christmas, involves Adam finding his sister Sheree's diary--the diary she wrote when she was 19 and sleeping with her uncle (that was years before she started sleeping with her brother. Ahhh, the innocent old days!)

When I created Sheree's diary, I wrote it the way I figured a 19-year-old girl would.  I'd completely forgotten that, at 18/19 I kept a diary too.  In fact, 1999/2000 was the only (school)year of my life I actually kept a diary, if you don't count the dream journals I maintained from the time I was thirteen or so.

I found my diary earlier this year and I was humiliated.  What I wrote back then was just so... so... so what? Embarrassing? Vapid? Selfish? I don't even know.  Maybe I was seeing too much of myself.  Let me tell you, I was jealous of Sheree.  Her diary was so much better than mine.

And yet I couldn't put my diary down.  I read it cover to cover, and then I read it all over again.  I hated it, but I couldn't stop.  See, 1999 was the year I fell in love with my teacher. And he fell back.

12/10/1999

Ha! Wow! I know I haven’t written anything in a long time, but school has been all work and no play. But today was a great day!

Fun stuff first:

Lawrence hands me a set of beeswax candles: “A pre-Christmas present.”

Hi! Thanks! Yum!

“And, if you’re not busy during your fifth period spare, would you care to join me for a coffee?”

Hello! Yes! Of course!

Not so fun stuff:

When Lawrence and I headed to his car after fourth period, we weren’t the only ones in the parking lot. Mr. Dupont was out there, too, and he walked over as Lawrence turned the key in the ignition. He tapped on the window, and when Lawrence rolled it down, he asked, “Do you have written permission to escort a student off school premises?”

Lawrence sort of laughed in a way that I knew he felt awkward and ashamed. He said, “Uhh… no…”

Mr. Dupont didn’t let up. He said something about how teachers needed parental permission to take students off school grounds because the board of education could be sued if anything happened to me. But how stupid is that? It’s not like I’m a child. I’m a legal adult. Maybe Mr. Dupont didn’t know I’m eighteen. I don’t need parental permission to do anything.

I don’t remember what Lawrence said after that. My head started throbbing and I honestly thought I was going to cry. It was so humiliating.

But somehow the issue was resolved. I think Lawrence basically just said, “Thanks for the heads-up” or something like that, and drove away with me in the passenger seat. We didn’t talk about it at all. Far too embarrassing. What a blow to our egos. Thanks a lot, Mr. Dupont.

Better stuff:

As Lawrence parked on one of the side streets around Hazelton Lanes, I was applying Cinnamon Sugar Lipsmackers. I asked him if he wanted some (just being polite; expected him to say no) and he said sure! We browsed for a while at L’Atelier Grigorian, and after that went to buy the coffee he’d promised me. When the coffee woman asked if he wanted cinnamon on his Café-au-Lait, he responded, “Please! It’ll match my lipstick.”

How amused was I?

Alright, so now for the good stuff that has Giselle on an enormous power-trip:

He thanked me for giving him the rest of my half (the smaller one, at that) of the almond croissant we shared. My response was, “You paid for it. [nota bene: I never offer to pay for anything.] It can get expensive to keep a mistress.”

Oh, he came this close to spitting out his coffee, but then he laughed: “I’m not sure we’re quite there.”

I know—I’m sure—that he did not say “yet,” but I distinctly heard it anyway, almost as though it had been implied.

At any rate, he followed that up by saying, “Yes, I can see how it could. I once knew a man who was revered because he could go to dinner parties with his wife on one arm and his mistress on the other.”

“Well, isn’t that ideal?” I asked.

I don’t think he even realized that he said, “Yeah.”

Like It's 1999: Diary of a Teenager in Love with a Teacher is weird. It's so weird. It's not what I want it to be, but it is what it is, and there's something strangely freeing about that for me, as a writer.  I can't change the past.  I couldn't alter what I'd written without making truth into fiction.

And I wanted to publish the truth for once. Like It's 1999 is it, New Age warts and all.  I changed nothing but the names.

03/02/2000

I don’t get it!

Not even close.

What the fuck was that, Lawrence?

How could you have done it?

And not told me!

I’m not even sure whether I’m more angry that you did it in the first place, or that you completely neglected to tell me about it.

Do you know how stupid you made me look? Patrick is one of my best friends. I’ve known him since he was eight years old. I know his sister! I know his parents! And you had to go report him and George to the principal? You are such a hypocrite, Lawrence. I’m not even joking.

It’s because they’re gay, isn’t it? I mean, George isn’t even a teacher. He’s a volunteer! And not a skeevy old man, like some people—he only graduated two years ago. And here you go acting like he’s some kind of sexual predator just because you saw them doing whatever. How is their sex life any of your business? Patrick’s a smart guy. He can make his own decisions.

And did you really think you could tell on another “teacher” without your virtue being called into question? It doesn’t even matter that we’ve never done anything wrong. People see the way I look at you, and see the way you look at me, and they draw their own conclusions.

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.