Beverly Diehl's Writing in Flow

Mas-tur-BA-tion! Can Be Fu-un

2013-05-20T05:00:00.000-07:00

Birds do it, bees do it... well, maybe not the birds and bees. They don't really have genitals the way humans and chimps do, and they don't have hands.

Not that lack of hands stops some creatures from showing themselves a good time. If you have a male dog, and he has a "lovey" object, be it a stuffed animal, wadded up blanket, your leg, or an actual dog sex toy, you know what I'm talkin' about.

More than 70-80% of women masturbate, and 90% of men masturbate. And the rest lie. (Joycelyn Elders)

So why does the thought or discussion of many sex acts, but especially, masturbation, make people want to get on their high horse and giddyap out of there?

We Can Do It - We Just Can't Talk About It

We feel embarrassed - maybe we were taught it was very, very bad. So we hide behind slang and euphemisms.

For gentlemen, we seem to go hard on the animal metaphors:
Choking the chicken, cleaning your rifle, corking the bat, cranking the shank, cuffing the carrot, fisting your mister, flogging the log, flute solo, jerkin'the gherkin, manual override, painting the pickle, pocket pool, polishing the banister, polishing the rocket, pounding your flounder, pumping the python, spanking the monkey, teasing the weasel, wonking your cronker, yanking the crank... These are only a few of the terms.

For the ladies, our taste is more for food metaphors:
A night in with the girls, auditioning the finger puppets, checking for squirrels, clam bake for one, drilling for oil, fanning the fur, fingerpainting, flickin' the bean, muffin buffin', paddling the pink canoe, polishing the pearl, riding the unicycle, rubbin' the nubbin, spearing the bearded clam, squeeze the peach, strumming the banjo, tickling the taco, tossing pink salad... (And yes, there's more.)

I'm Doing It For You, Honey - Masturbation Can Improve Your Partnered Sex Life

Why masturbation can be good for women, from Web MD:

Women who masturbate on a regular basis learn what feels good for them, Segraves says. "It helps build sexual confidence," she says. "It helps you guide the partner when you have a partner.”

You can say, for instance: "Please put your hand here," and not be embarrassed, she says.

Women who use a vibrator during masturbation tend to have better sexual functioning with a partner, Herbenick says.

Sex therapists typically recommend masturbation for women who have a difficult time reaching orgasm. It can help them learn about their body and feel less self-conscious.

"We know that women compared to men have a harder time learning to orgasm," Herbenick says. Masturbating can help, and masturbating with a vibrator may help even more, she says. "Using a vibrator, for reasons we don't understand, helps women orgasm." The survey is published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

Those who used a vibrator, she found, even if it had been a year since the last use, "had better sexual functioning in terms of vaginal lubrication, desire, arousal, and ease of orgasm, and they tended to have less pain or discomfort during intercourse."

Why masturbation can be good for men, from Web MD:

For various reasons, solo sex can be a real boon to sex with a partner. It helps teach men about their own sexual response -- what feels good to them and what doesn't -- so they will be better able to explain to their partners just how they like to be touched. It helps men learn to recognize the "moment of inevitability" just before orgasm and helps teach them how to avoid premature ejaculation. Perhaps most significant, it's a great coping mechanism for any man whose partner is temporarily unavailable for sex -- because of absence or illness -- or has a sex drive that doesn't quite match his own (something sex therapists call a disparity in frequency preference).

There are a small handful of ways that masturbation can be harmful. If we masturbate so often it becomes, basically, our day job - we frequently turn down social invitations so we can stay home "playing one-handed poker," this is a problem. Or if we are partnered, and come to look at soloing as better and preferable to interacting with our partner, rather than a supplementary activity.

An erotic activity that takes a huge amount of partner trust is to masturbate while our partner watches us, and vice versa. It can be hard, pun intended, to add this to our couples' repertoire, but with the right partner, it is SO hot.

While masturbation will not give us any diseases, can't get us pregnant, and won't grow hair on our palms (unless we get our Rogaine and lubricant mixed up), we can, if masturbating to excess, develop a skin irritation, especially if our hands or other objects are not clean. When in doubt, always consult a medical professional.

Speaking of other objects - while spontaneity and using what we find around the house can be exciting, we need to be very careful about what we insert in our various orifices. There are hundreds of sites showing x-rays of weird items people stuck "up there" and had to go to the emergency room to have removed: keys, flashlights (searching for the keys, maybe?), perfume bottles, light bulbs, matchbox cars...

The Objects of My Affection

from gurl.com

While some men are perfectly happy with a Kleenex and some hand lotion, maybe an adult flick on the TV or computer, many women, like me, like to use a vibrator. Vibrators come in all shapes and sizes, including some that look like a lipstick or mascara and many that can be recharged with a USB connection. Even a Hello Kitty model which is about the last thing that would ever "do it" for me, but I'm tryin' not to judge...

I live in drought-prone California, so I feel too guilty to enjoy a long, luxurious showers. But if you live in an area where water is abundant, a good handheld shower massager could become your new best friend.

There are a variety of sex toys for men, too, from textured sleeves to artificial vaginas and vibrating rings. And nipple clamps and lubricating lotions and butt plugs and "eggs" for both sexes, if that's something we'd like to play with. Much better than a matchbox car.

We can visit an adult novelty store in person (I love The Pleasure Chest!) - go solo, with a partner, or with a friend - or, if we feel too shy or are too busy to go in person, buy online.

Self Serve Toys comes highly recommended by a girlfriend. They offer video advice on buying your first sex toy, and can even help you choose eco-friendly products.

Adam&Eve has a wide selection, too. You can even buy sex toys on Amazon, for cryin' out loud. Get your 50 Shades of Grey and your toys at the same time. (Actually, don't get 50 Shades. If you want good erotica, try Eden Bradley/Eve Berlin, Roni Loren, Maya Banks, Roz Lee, Sylvia Day, and Anaïs Nin, instead.)

My friend Chris Lam of What I Run Into pointed me to this pretty pink cartoon, about my own favorite toy, the Magic Wand. *can't help smiling* One of my boyfriends dubbed mine "The Jackhammer," and I chortled out loud to see that this artist uses the same name for it.

Please go to Oh Joy Sex Toy for the rest of this hilarious illustrated product review.
Very NSFW (Not Safe For Work)

We're Not Only the Talent, But The Casting Agency, Screenwriter, and Director.

When we masturbate, we can go for a fast and dirty O, or we can seduce ourselves. Bubble bath, candles, glass of wine and soft music... Because we're worth it.

It's like we're making our own adult flick, with ourselves as the star... only without the cameras. Most women and men like to fantasize when they masturbate. Relive a particularly exciting moment between the sheets (or where ever it was.) Think of somebody who makes you tingle.

Cover of George Clooney
Soooo hot, IMO

Cover of Queen Latifah
So beautiful. If I was gay or bi...

You like men in uniform? Two (or more) at a time? Role playing?

There is no "wrong" fantasy. Why not try something we wouldn't normally do, and pay attention to how it makes us feel. If we're used to making love quietly, we can make some noise. If we have a partner who likes us noisy (I had one partner who wanted so much dirty talk I felt like I was doing a running commentary on Sport Center), we can try hushing up the sound effects.

We can read something sexy and masturbate, or watch some p0rn (there is, actually, a fair amount produced for the couples or women's market). The beauty of masturbating is that we are in total control.

We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation. (Lily Tomlin)

Life is too short not to love ourselves.

R.I.P. Chrissy Amphlett

Did you learn anything new here today?

Do you have your own toys?
Got any to recommend?

Devotee Romance - Interview with Ruth Madison

2013-05-14T03:00:00.000-07:00

I first met Ruth Madison through the Romantic Friday Writers group, and the romance and sensuality in her short snippets blew me away. Through her, I've learned about a whole new world, that of able-bodied men and women who are romantically drawn to those who have physical disabilities.

In a romance universe that includes interspecies love (human/werewolf), interracial love, and BDSM love, isn't the most important part of the equation the word love?

1) Devoteeism. This sounds like an Eastern religion, with chanting and incense. What is it, and do you have any estimates on how many devotees there are - either in numbers, or as a percent of the population? One in twenty/in a hundred/a thousand...?

It does sound like that! Such a dumb word, but somehow the one that got attached to us. Not that there are any better words that I've heard. The first thing people tend to say when you say "Have you ever heard of devotees?" is "You mean like Krishna devotees?" And no, I don't. I guess the word came about because someone liked the rhyme of "amputee devotee" and it used to be thought that there were only devs of amputees. Now we know that's not true. I've also heard the word "admirer." I don't know, they all make it sound like we're zombies, slavishly obsessed.

So right, to answer your question, a devotee in this context is a person who is attracted to people with physical disabilities. The distinction of physical disability is important here. Devs are not people who are preying on people with diminished mental facilities who might be unable to understand or consent to a relationship.

There's no telling how many of us there are. People usually start having these feelings as teenagers (though I was a young child when I started experiencing it) and it tends to be a source of guilt, fear, and secrecy. There are very few people who are going to willingly come forward and say that they are a dev. There are also probably many who know that they like books about disabled heroes but they don't know or think about why. I don't think we'll ever know how many there are.

2) Would you consider devoteeism a preference (like I prefer dark-haired men, but will date blonds or redheads), a fetish, a kink, or a perversion? Is there a spectrum, that for some people the erotic need for disability is stronger or weaker than for others? Are there people who are "locked in" to a particular disability - for instance, they would date a man with cerebral palsy, but never a blind man?

I do like to use the hair color example a lot to explain it. It helps non-devs kind of begin to get the idea, but it is a lot more complicated than that. There is an enormous variety in the experience of devness. For some people they are not able to be turned on by anything that does not involve disability. To me, that's a fetish. But a lot of people don't like to use that word. It has the connotation of being something so freaky and inhuman in a way. Also I know some people think that fetish happens because a person is so promiscuous and wild that normal sex no longer satisfies them. That is not at all true of devs and from other fetishes I've examined, I think that's very rarely the case.

The hair color example falls apart because there is a power dynamic issue that's going on in a relationship between a non-disabled and a disabled person. That has to be acknowledged and worked through. I don't think it's always the case that the person who doesn't have a disability has more power. It really depends on the couple and the situation. But I know there is a concern particularly for women who have disabilities that the power dynamic with a non-disabled man could be very skewed.
The thing that devs most want you to know is that they are interested in the whole person. Just because they are physically drawn to someone because she is an amputee doesn't mean that they aren't paying attention to the rest of the girl as well. There are a few devs who have some kind of social disorder and are not able to treat human beings with respect, but I am absolutely convinced they are in the minority.

Some people are perfectly satisfied to read books with disabled characters and have no desire to try out dating people with disabilities in real life. Others do try, though it's very difficult because there is a lot of prejudice and hatred against us. I have dated several men with various disabilities, though none turned out to be the right match for me personality-wise and I'm now marrying a non-disabled man.

Yes, there are some devs who fixate on a particular disability and others who are turned on by many different kinds of physical disabilities. Some like many disabilities but are most attracted to a particular one. It can mutate too. I started out being only attracted to paraplegics and the older I got, the more it grew. I have a friend who particularly likes blind guys and another who particularly likes amputee guys. Both have had successful and honest relationships with men who have those disabilities.

When people first hear about the existence of devs there tends to be a negative gut reaction, but from the devs I have met and communicated with, it seems like we are in a great position to understand disability and to even see it as an advantage. Sometimes people with disabilities will say to me "I don't want to be with someone who can look past my disability, I want someone who enjoys all of me."

3) In (W)hole, Elizabeth has always, even as a young child, had erotic fantasies centered around male disability. She also felt great shame, because she knew/feared if her secret was revealed, her parents and everyone around her would despise her as a pervert. In your research, have you found this is the most common experience? Or do some people fall in love with a person who happens to be disabled, and after that relationship ends, find themselves more drawn to disabled persons?

I would say that people who happen to fall in love with a person with a disability and then date other disabled people are probably not devs. Unless there was some deeply buried reason why they got into the first relationship. It can definitely happen that someone falls in love with a person who has a disability and they realize that it's not a big deal and it's fundamentally a relationship like any other. So then they aren't intimidated or scared of the idea of dating someone else with a disability.

The people I've met who identify as being dev had those feelings of attraction years before they even knew anyone with a disability. (W)hole is very closely related to my own experience, particularly how Elizabeth felt as a child. Her family is not like mine and I never had a relationship like hers with Stewart (I never date anyone without telling them I'm a dev, even the non-disabled guys). But from talking to people, it sounds like the very young age that I experienced it was unusual. Most start noticing it around puberty as their sex drive begins to develop.

There's a lot of theories floating around about what causes devness and where it comes from, but there has never been sufficient research on the subject. It's all just gut reaction and misunderstanding. For example, some believe that as a child I must have had some experience of admiring a person with a disability and it turned into a fetish. But I had no such experience. I had dev feelings before I met anyone who had a disability. I had a very normal and happy childhood and the feelings were with me from such a young age that I really feel like I was born with it.

4) Traditional YA often allows unspeakable violence, but little to no erotic sex. Think Hunger Games. When I read (W)hole, I felt that it had a very YA voice, but that the sensuality would keep it out of the YA section of a bookstore. In what genre would you shelve this, and why?

Oh, so true! This was the biggest challenge in publishing the book. No one wanted to touch it because it was too risque for YA but too tame for adult. It's classified now as Romance, though it's really a Coming of Age tale. This inability to find a genre for it has, I think, held it back. No one quite knows what to make of it. Though, I think it's a fascinating read for people who are curious about other people's deepest, darkest secrets! (Bev: An idea - there's a up-and-coming genre now called New Adult... perhaps it would fit there?)

5) Let’s talk movies and the disabled. I remember how blown away I was by the sex scene between Jon Voight and Jane Fonda in Coming Home. *fans self* Did you see The Sessions? What did you think of it? (I particularly enjoyed the actress in a wheelchair who portrayed disabled people having rather wild and crazy sex lives.)

I have not seen The Sessions yet! I really want to. It's definitely on my list. I've heard such good things. Money is tight these days, so I'm waiting for a free RedBox coupon or for it to come up on Netflix.

The first movie for me that I found really sexy was Born on the Fourth of July. I was probably way too young to be watching it! I also found Avatar ridiculously sexy.

I'm happy to hear about the actress you mention. I think it's great that we're starting to see stories of people with disabilities being regular people. Because they are! In fact, I really dislike the "us" and "them" language that I feel kind of forced to use. I wish there were more roles given to actors who actually have the disabilities being portrayed. Too often in movies the experience of the character with the disability is given a really cliche and insulting portrayal. I'm excited to see Teal Sherer build her carer as an actress who uses a wheelchair. I think she brings a great nuance to characters.

6) When people write paranormal romance, nobody asks if they have personally had sex with a vampire or werewolf. When people write murder mysteries, nobody asks how many people they have killed. It’s all presumed to be fantasy and imagination. But when people write erotic romance, like BDSM or menage, for example, they are often asked how closely the material is modeled after their own sex lives. Are you comfortable discussing whether there is a personal experience factor in choosing to write stories with this common thread? Or, could you share what is the weirdest or worst assumption people have expressed to you?

Hahaha, that's true! It's all about fantasy when you write Romance. You're just telling yourself a story that makes you happy and feel good. I'd say that my characters are more comfortable in their own skin than most people who have the same disabilities in real life.

Realism in certain aspects is very important to me. I want to give realistic portrayals of how sex works with spinal cord injury and not just gloss it over. Because if I do my job right, then I'm showing women that they totally could have a great relationship with a paralyzed guy and there's no need to turn down that person in real life. So I want them to see the real challenges and how they are overcome.

I started writing my stories because I ran out of books in the library that had disabled guys in them. I started creating my own, writing what I wanted to read. Later in life I did start dating men with disabilities and that has allowed me to add some more realistic detail. But the guys in romance novels don't tend to be real guys and they're not supposed to be. What I love in books I wouldn't really want in real life. For example, I like books about bad boys. In real life, I love geeky, kind, gentle men.
I'm sure people have made some nasty assumptions about me, but none that I've been directly told! I guess people expect me to be more sexual and promiscuous than I actually am.

7) Dev Dreams is a collection of short stories and novellas, which range in heat level from sweet to super-spicy. Who’s your favorite couple in this set, and why will a reader love them?

Tough question! I love all my couples. I guess I have a particular fondness for Ember and James from On Saturday Afternoon. Em is definitely a side of me, trapped and debilitated by her shyness. She has to choose whether to follow her heart or give in to what others want from her and that's a struggle I can relate to.

8) On your website, you have short stories that people can read for free, or donate. I’ve heard of restaurants like that, but not writing models. Do people donate, or just help themselves?

You know, the donation button was something that I thought I'd try, but it hasn't been successful. I like to experiment with different ways of bringing stories to people, so it was worth trying out, but I'm going to take that down. I like to give away the shorter stories so that people have a chance to see what my writing style is like and they will then have an idea if they would like to read my books.

9) What project are you currently working on, and when you expect to release it?

I have so many ideas and it's really hard to prioritize and focus on one until it's done! Currently I'm working on a novella that is a twist on the classic romance plot of a rich man and a young secretary. In mine, the rich man is a quadriplegic. That will be going to my editor and proofreader within the next couple of weeks. I'm so looking forward to sending out an email to my list subscribers when that's ready because I haven't had anything new in a while!

I'm also working on something really different for me, which is a cozy murder mystery with a girl detective who is in a wheelchair. My writers group is helping me to polish that one.

Then there's the story of Dylan Sinclair that I think people are really going to like. It's about a young man who is paraplegic and dreams of a career in music. He has the talent, but not the look. So he convinces his brother to impersonate him and the scheme works a little too well. I'm so excited about this story, but I'm having trouble moving forward with it because I want to make it perfect!

10) What question has no one ever asked you (and what is your answer)?

Ooo, another tough one. I'm such an open book and I always encourage people to ask me anything they want. Yeah, I really can't think of anything! Okay, readers, it's up to you to pose a question for Ruth in the comments.

Want to read one of her stories? Here's some to choose from:

Amazon.com Widgets

There isn’t enough fiction out there with characters who have disabilities. Ruth Madison aims to fix that. After years of combing through the dusty back shelves of libraries looking for her elusive, imperfect hero, she started writing her own.

Ruth’s romantic tales are full of wounded heroes: men physically challenged by life, but not defeated. These men overcome the difficulties of amputation, paralysis, or cerebral palsy to find acceptance, happiness, and heroines who love them exactly as they are.

E-mail: Ruthmadison82@yahoo.com
Website: RuthMadison.com
Facebook: RuthMadisonDev
Twitter: RuthMadison82

Got a favorite Ruth Madison book?

Questions? Comments?

Sex and the Differently-Abled

2013-05-13T05:00:00.000-07:00

Many people, if they think about having sex with a disabled person at all, hold some preconceived notions, like it would only be a pity f*ck, or perhaps, somebody would have to be paid to do it.

Reality? Just like non-disabled people, some disabled people do pay for sex. Others are celibate, others have married sex (which ranges from little to much in frequency), and others are all but swinging from the rafters, as humorously portrayed by the gorgeous Jennifer Kumiyama in the 2012 movie The Sessions. (Actually, since sex swings are "a thing," perhaps some are literally swinging from the rafters. Just like some non-disabled people.)

Fetish Fantasy Yoga Sex Swing via Adam & Eve
I must be a chicken, because when I look at this, it
doesn't scream "sexy" to me, it screams uncomfortable.

The Sessions, which I loved, starred Helen Hunt, John Hawkes, and William H. Macy, and garnered dozens of award nominations.

Based on the poignantly optimistic autobiographical writings of California-based journalist and poet Mark O'Brien, THE SESSIONS tells the story of a man confined to an iron lung who is determined--at age 38--to lose his virginity. With the help of his therapists and the guidance of his priest, he sets out to make his dream a reality.

People fall in love

Regardless of age, of the color of their skin, and whether or not they have working legs, or eyeballs, people fall in love, and not always "with their own kind."

The first time I became aware of this was when I was very young, watching the movie Coming Home. Jane Fonda portrays a woman with a husband serving in Vietnam, who falls in love with a disabled combat veteran while her husband is overseas.

The tenderness, the attraction, and later, the lovemaking between these two was smokin' hot.

Likewise in Dee J. Adams' Dangerously Close; she's paired a newly blinded heroine with a rock star hero, a man who's used to people judging him at first glance.

He sat next to her and Ashley imagined the serious expression on his face. “No,” he said. His warm palm stroked her jaw as his thumb grazed her cheek. His voice had that husky quality again and her insides started a slow melt. “It’s my way of making sure you’re okay the rest of tonight. I want you close to me.”

Ashley’s breath hitched. The contact, the words and the way he said them were electric. Maybe she was too wigged out from tonight. Maybe all of it was in her head, but it didn’t change the way her body felt. A definite hunger slowly built from her center and fanned out to her fingers and toes. She didn’t move. She couldn’t. She sat there frozen, waiting for more of his touch, more of his heat.

Hot, hot, hot - and why not? Why should romance novels and movies only portray 25-35 year old superfit whole bodied men with amazing pecs, and 18-30 year old superfit whole-bodied women with perky breasts and both a law degree and a PhD in biochemistry?

Not that I don't enjoy those books, too, but IMO, it's more interesting when a character is imperfectly shaped or has a physical challenge as well as an emotional/spiritual one. One of the things I love about Mercedes Lackey's fantasy fairy tale novels is it's not unusual for her to feature heroines or heroes who are damn near blind without their glasses. (Like me!)

When a fat girl has a hot boyfriend - and yes, it happens, frequently - he may face social pressure from people telling him "you can do better," as if the only standard of beauty (and worth) for a woman is being thin. There's a common expectation that if you are already married and your partner becomes ill or disabled, well, of course you would stick by him/her. But if a man or woman meets and marries someone who is already disabled, or perhaps ill with HIV or MS or bipolar disorder... Society tends to question, "Why? Is there something wrong with you?"

It's almost as if the person has become that condition or disease - the wheelchair, the illness, the deafness - and that's all many people see.

In some cases, it's looking past the physical attributes, disability or disorder.

I prefer men who are taller than me, and men with hairy chests (even if that's not currently "in" among romance male cover models), but I've dated men shorter than me, and bald-chested men, and sometimes had long relationships with someone who was "not my (physical) type," because I enjoyed so much more about him. For me, and for others who are attracted to A but not dead-set against B, it can be a case of looking past initial physical attributes and connecting with the person, perhaps even coming to prize those attributes over time.

Others are initially attracted to others because of those physical attributes.

Tomorrow I'll be extensively interviewing author Ruth Madison, who introduced me to the world of devotees - people who are sexually attracted to partners with physical disabilities.

Stay tuned!

Your thoughts?
Got any book recommendations that feature
disabled or otherwise "different" heroes or heroines?

Slut of the Month: Ava Gardner

2013-05-06T05:00:00.000-07:00

Ava Gardner (Photo credit: Lexinatrix)

"If I had my life to live over again, I'd live it the same way. Maybe a few changes here or there, but nothing special. The truth is, honey, I've enjoyed my life. I've had a hell of a good time."

I don't know what they carved on her tombstone, but Ava Lavinia Gardner did indeed have a hell of a good time in her life.

Born on December 24, 1922 (she later made pointed remarks about that Jesus Christ person trying to steal her birthday), the youngest of seven children to poor cotton and tobacco farmers, her ancestry included Scots-Irish, English, Irish, French Huguenot, and Native American (Tuscarora).

"She can't sing, she can't act, she can't talk, She's terrific. Sign her!"

Ava Gardner (Photo credit: Lexinatrix)

After a New York talent scout wanna-be spotted her picture in the window of her bro-in-law's photography studio and dropped some hints, said bro-in-law and sister sent the 18 year old over the MGM's New York talent office for a screen test.

Al Altman didn't even bother to record her speaking, since her North Carolina accent was so thick he could barely understand her. But when Louis B. Mayer saw her screen test, he sent a telegram with the above quote, signing her to a standard MGM contract. And provided a speech coach.

“In one scene, when I was supposed to say, "In a pig's eye you are," what came out was, "In a pig's ass you are." Old habits die awfully hard.” ― Ava Gardner, Ava: My Story

Louis B. Mayer would not be the last man to fall in love with Ava for her stunning looks.

Her list of men was almost as long as her list of films.

Micky Rooney, actor, husband (1 year)
Artie Shaw, band leader, husband (1 year)
Frank Sinatra, musician/actor, husband (6 year marriage, 2 abortions)
Howard Hughes, eccentric businessman/aviator, friend
Ernest Hemingway, author, friend
Luis Miguel Dominguin, bullfighter, lover
Benjamin Tatar, actor, lover

“Maybe, in the final analysis, they saw me as something I wasn't and I tried to turn them into something they could never be. I loved them all but maybe I never understood any of them. I don't think they understood me.” ― Ava Gardner, Ava: My Story

Her beauty made people underestimate her talent.

"She had this natural poignancy and her feelings ran very deep. To my mind she developed into a fine actress. I've been telling her that for years, and she always waves it off." -Gregory Peck (Ava: My Story)

Cover of The Barefoot Contessa

She was nominated for an Academy Award for Mogambo, and for several BAFTA's (British Academy Awards) as well as a Golden Globe for The Night of the Iguana, but never won.

“Don't think for a minute that bad publicity and endless criticism don't leave their claw marks on everyone concerned. Your friends try to cheer you up by saying lightly, "I suppose you get used to it, and ignore it." You try. You try damned hard. But you never get used to it. It always wounds and hurts.” ― Ava Gardner, Ava: My Story

Although she acted in dozens more, she is best remembered for roles in:
The Hucksters (1947), Show Boat (1951), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), Bhowani Junction (1956), On the Beach (1959), Seven Days in May (1964), The Night of the Iguana (1964), The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), Earthquake (1974), and The Cassandra Crossing (1976)

English: Screenshot of Ava Gardner from the trailer for the film en:Mogambo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

"Maybe I just didn`t have the temperament for stardom. I`ll never forget seeing Bette Davis at the Hilton in Madrid. I went up to her and said, "Miss Davis, I`m Ava Gardner and I`m a great fan of yours." And do you know, she behaved exactly as I wanted her to behave. "Of course you are, my dear," she said. "Of course you are." And she swept on. Now that`s a star." (Ava: My Story)

Ava continued acting in feature films and television until 1986, when she suffered two strokes. She died in London in 1990 at the age of 67.

Because of her sultry, screen siren roles, and because at the time her romance began with Frank Sinatra he was married to another woman, she was pilloried by the Hollywood press, the Catholic church, the Hollywood establishment, and Sinatra's fans. If she wasn't outright called a slut, she was called everything but.

"She was exactly the opposite of the roles she played. She looked like a femme fatale and she wasn't. She was really sweet and dear and lovely..." -Arlene Dahl (Ava: My Story)

Even after their marriage ended, she and Sinatra remained friends till the end of her life.

Past Sluts of the Month:

Future Slut of the Month Candidates:

Mae West
Joan of Kent
Cleopatra
Sandra Fluke
Morgan le Fey
Aspasia
Madonna
Liz Taylor
Dorothy Parker
Kassandra of Troy
Tullia d'Aragona
Marie Antoinette
Lillie Langtry
Anne Boleyn
Eleanor Roosevelt
Rhiannon
Shelley Winters
Mary, Queen of Scots
"Klondike Kate" Rockwell
Catherine de Medici
Lucrezia Borgia
Umrao Jaan
Sarah Bernhardt
Cher
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Theodora (wife of Emperor Justinian of the Byzantine Empire)
Jeanne d'Arc
Margaret Sanger
Hwang Jin-i
Coco Chanel
Isadora Duncan
Sappho
Joan of Kent
Dorothy Dandridge
Catherine the Great
the "Unsinkable" Molly Brown
Eva Perón
Susan B. Anthony
Natalie Wood
Diana, Princess of Wales
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Mata Hari
Lady Gaga
Malala Yousafzai

“Hell, I suppose if you stick around long enough they have to say something nice about you.”
― Ava Gardner, Ava: My Story

Who's your favorite slut?

Vote for one on this list, or name another slut to be added to it.
Do you have a favorite Ava Gardner movie?

Seriously Sick Series

2013-04-29T05:00:00.000-07:00

One could fall in lust with this cover
based on the intimation of
chest hair alone!

And I mean "sick" in the most flattering, Urban Dictionary definition of the word.

One of the hardest things in writing a series, is to please the loyal readers who have been following all along in the previous books, giving "what's happening now" for favorite characters from those books, while at the same time, not boring a new reader to tears with those details.

Another test is whether the books can be read out of sequence.

Grace Burrowes does these things beautifully. (Probably why she keeps hitting the New York Times Best-Seller list.)

There are to be eight books (plus at least two novellas) in her Regency Romance series about the Windham family. I've read them in this order (links are to my GoodReads reviews):

Spiderman's got nothin' on His Grace

Novella, The Duke and His Duchess

So the only two I’ve not yet read are Book 4, The Virtuoso, and Book 8, Lady Jenny's Christmas Portrait, which has not yet been released. I do plan to enjoy them both.

Ms. Burrowes has created an imaginary Duke of Morelands, his Duchess, and a very large family - 8 adult children, plus two ghosts.

Each book features the story of the romance of one son or daughter, but also includes family interactions, servants and other secondary characters, horses - who generally have names and personalities, children. One would think that by the time we got Book 7, there would be no room left for Lady Eve.

Yet despite the appearance and help of her parents, all her siblings, and their spouses, in Book Seven, Lady Eve and her decoy-turned-husband, Lucas Denning, have a full and satisfying romance, without being squeezed off the pages. How?

Part of me is still trying to figure that out.

What each book does not have:

An info-dump in the first chapter or two devoted to “here’s what happened in the last book.” There may be allusions to other storylines, sprinkled in lightly, and the weaving in of secondary characters from previous or upcoming books, but they don’t bog down the current book, nor are they teasers.
Flawless heroes and heroines. Sometimes the women are not pure as the driven snow. Sometimes the men are afraid of thunder. Strict formulas of when the hero and heroine come together and break apart are not obeyed.
Laura Ashley syndrome. There’s just enough description in each scene to give an impression - we don’t see that the color of the throw pillows matches the cushions on the fainting couch matches the curtains, trimmed with lace.

What each book in the series has:

A strong, smart, likeable hero and heroine - generally both hiding secrets.
Gobs of humor.
Secondary characters who introduce themselves and pique our curiosity for the next book(s), but know their place and don’t try to take over.
Names for characters that are unique to the time and sound hilarious to a modern ear: Percival, Esther, Gayle, Bartholomew, Magdalene, Wilberforce.
Critters (generally horses, could be dogs or cats or something else) with amusing names and personalities. I must admit, Herodotus the mule, and Lady Ophelia the breeding sow, are two of my favorites.
Great sexual tension and sex scenes that are both hot and often tender.
Insecurity. Based on each heroine’s backstory, the reader is not sure how she will react upon learning the hero’s secret - and vice-versa.
The heroines and heroes all have their own unique scents, favorite treats and beverages.
Past sorrows and traumas. There are two dead Windham brothers, and they are talked about and much missed by the current lead hero or heroine in every book.
Each Windham sibling (and spouse) has a particular strength or talent. Gayle, The Heir, and Maggie, are astute financial managers. Jenny creates naughty lingerie. Eve and Devlin understand horse training. Emma is a baker. Anna arranges flowers. Val plays the piano.
Children. Whether in the womb or already underfoot, kids are very much a part of each novel.

Even though Regency Romance is "not my thing," (my favorite reads are women's fiction and sci-fi/fantasy) I have tremendously enjoyed these books. Because regardless of what corset or cowboy hat you dress somebody in, human beings are human beings.

We all behave the same way (with minor eccentricities). We all want to be loved/admired and desired.

Mostly loved.

We all get caught up in the same family and romantic dramas, the same exhilaration and misunderstandings.

And we all want a happy ending (at least, *I* do).

Have you read any Grace Burrowes?

Which are your favorites?

Do you have a series to recommend?

Two of the Times Someone Raped Me (Part III) #saam #rape

2013-04-26T05:00:00.000-07:00

As someone who's experienced rape up-close and personal-like, who's talked with a lot of other rape ~~victims~~ survivors, and cried over the ones like Audrie Pott and Rehtaeh Parsons, who did not survive, and as someone who's done extensive research on the subject, I feel entitled to call bullshit on some of the rape myths.

Trigger Warning: Profanity. This series may be triggering to some rape victims.

The concept that any rape victims "wanted it" because they dressed provocatively or got drunk is like saying that jaywalkers wanted to be hit by a car.

Do some rape victims make poor choices that put them at greater risk of sexual assault? Yes. While I don't disagree that there are things that young women (and men) can and should do to make themselves safer, the reality is that rapists gonna rape.

Clothing (or lack thereof) doesn't make anyone rape anyone. If skimpy or provocative clothing led to uncontrollable lust, then why isn't every beach on the planet swarming with men and women pouncing on each other?

Women wearing burqas and ratty old sweatpants get raped; octogenarian grandmothers in long flannel nightgowns get raped; young boys in baseball uniforms get raped; babies of six months old get raped.

from Slutwalk LA 2010

The common factor in all rapes? Presence of one or more rapists.

While it's not the worst idea in the world to teach children, teens, and even older people how to be less vulnerable to rape and sexual abuse, what we really need to focus on as a culture is teaching men (and women) not to rape.

"No One Will Believe You" is a Lie From the Pits of Hell

Rapists and child molesters count on the old myths about rape to keep us silent. Lies like, "A man with an attractive wife or girlfriend doesn't need to rape a fat/ugly/geeky person like you."

We know now that "happily married men (and women)" do rape and molest men, women, boys and girls. Often they target someone who is especially vulnerable and insecure, perhaps because we are less conventionally attractive, perhaps because we have a troubled home, or have just moved to the community and haven't made any friends yet.

This doesn't mean we need to be suspicious of every offer of mentoring or friendship. But it does mean that if a teacher/coach/team quarterback/whoever assaults or rapes us, we should not believe this lie they tell to save their own skin. Someone will believe us. Tell, and if the first person doesn't believe us, keep telling.

If You Don't Hear a Very Clear Yes, It Means No.

Only Yes Means Yes Campaign (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Part of what has muddied the waters is that too many of us have read stories, seen movies, or watched p0rn, where, “No, please, don’t, stop!” turns into, “Please don’t stop!” We need to teach teens how to say no, firmly and forcefully, and how to hear no, even in the heat of the moment.

In J.L. Campbell’s A Baker’s Dozen: 13 Steps to Distraction, a short story prequel, Kyra has been on a date with her ex. She goes with him to his hotel room to collect a present he has promised for their son, and he makes a move on her. At first, she is aroused and goes along with his seduction, but she realizes, after she is naked and he's fumbling with a condom, that she doesn’t want to have sex with him after all.

Though she pushes at him and protests, he’s still determined to pry her legs open and have sex with her, until she bursts out, “Jesus Christ, Joshua! You really goin’ to rape me?” This brings him back to his senses.

Even if you've been engaging in foreplay and you're both stark naked, no means no. Saying yes to flirting, to kissing, even getting naked together, does not mean that the other person is "entitled" to have sex with you.

from Marquette University:

Consent for sexual contact cannot legally be given if an individual is under the age of 18, is incapacitated due to alcohol or other drugs, is unconscious or asleep, or has limited mental capacity. Consent is a clear yes, not the absence of no.

Understanding Consent
Consent is positive cooperation involving an act of free will, absent of coercion, intimidation, force or the threat of force. A person cannot give consent if he or she is unable to understand what is going on.

There must always be active consent on both sides. Consent to one thing does not imply consent to another. If limits are made clear and consent is not given, pressuring someone into changing his or her mind is not consent.

Consent is based on choice.

Consent is active, not passive. Silence and passivity do not equal consent.

Consent is possible only when there is equal power.

Giving in because of fear is not consent.

Giving in or going along with someone to gain approval or to avoid being hurt is not consent.

Consent means two people (or more) deciding together to do the same thing, at the same time, in the same way, with each other.

Saying Yes Once Does Not Mean Lifetime Access

Not to a vagina, not to an anus, not to a mouth. That permission is even time-stamped. Just because you said yes to someone, or tried a particular sex act, does not mean your partner now has lifetime or even one hour later access to the same (or another) orifice, without your renewed permission.

Thinking that no partner will want you because you've been raped is like thinking that no merchant will want your money after you’ve been mugged.

I can testify, from my own experience, and that of many other rape survivors I've known personally, being raped doesn't make us "damaged goods," or any less desirable in the eyes of most partners.

Of the very, very few who could never cope with the idea that their partner was once raped, trust me, these losers are not worth having. These are the same jealous, obsessive freaks who would go ballistic if you smiled at somebody "the wrong way" or left the light on when leaving a room, coming right back. We don't want them.

Not that your worth or my worth or anybody's worth is dependent upon whether or not somebody wants us in a sexual way.

Rape Doesn't (Have To) Ruin Your Life

One of the lies that piss me off more than almost anything is the frequent comment I hear and see posted about Jane Doe from Steubenville and other rape victims recently in the media,"Those boys should be locked up forever, because they ruined her life!"

I know these people mean well, but that's a lie. Unless our rapist actually murders us, our lives are not ruined. It's that kind of remark that the more vulnerable victims and victims-to-be hear and accept as an unshakable truth. The internal belief that after a rape you are ruined forever is a big factor for those who take their own lives, so I wish the people who say mindless stuff like that would STFU.

Our lives after rape change, absolutely. Rape is a horrible violation of our persons, and impacts us physically, mentally, and emotionally. It may take a long time to recover from rape, especially in cases where the rape was accompanied by other physical damage like internal organ damage, broken bones, or long-term consequences, such as an STI or pregnancy.

It may take time, counseling, support, and much self-love to heal and recover after a rape, but it is always possible. If we buy into the lie that rape "ruins our lives" it's like we're letting him/them mind-rape us forever.

No limp-dicked, cowardly rapist deserves so much power.

The best revenge, after being raped, is to go on to have a happy, healthy, successful life.

Talk of the Town Today, Forgotten Tomorrow

I wish I could have talked to and hugged Rethaeh Parsons and Audrie Pott and all the other rape and molestation victims who felt such despair that they took their own lives. Mostly, it seems, from the humiliation that "everyone knew about it" and the bullying that followed. As a teenager, I remember thinking that feelings of despair and rejection would never, ever end, and that I would be an outcast forever.

That's simply not true.

Three points:

High school doesn't last forever (it only seems like it does). However popular or unpopular we are in high school has almost nothing to do with how successful we will be later in life: at making friends; succeeding in business; finding a spouse... From Lady Gaga to Bill Gates, seems like it's the nerdy outcast types who really shine later in life.
The truth can be hard to swallow. I wouldn't want to believe that my boyfriend/best friend/brother, the high school quarterback, is a rapist, would you? Of the two choices: either that someone must be mistaken or making it up, or that this person we are close to could commit such a horrific crime, we'd rather believe someone is mistaken or making it up. Over time, many people who initially didn't want to believe the victim, do come to see that we are telling the truth, and will be on our side.
People want to feel safe. If they can come up with a reason we were raped: that we "asked for it," that it only happened because we were crazy drunk, or that we are lying, then they can feel less afraid that rape could happen to them, because they can avoid doing that thing. The idea that anyone, anywhere, is vulnerable to being the victim of a vicious attack is pretty terrifying. Sometimes when people "turn" on us, it's because we embody an idea or concept that they can't handle. If we could be raped, so could they.

My message to the teen rape victims out there: if you are afraid to talk to your parents, either because you think they will blame you, not understand, or because you don't want to hurt them, please, go talk to somebody. An aunt, a friend's mother, a counselor at school, a minister, priest or rabbi.

If you don't know anybody you feel you can trust, or even if you do, call 1-800-656-HOPE (4673), or go to RAINN.

Even if it feels like your whole school is against you, other people have felt that, too, and this too shall pass. {{{{hugs}}}}

I've been raped (and raped more than once, lucky me!) and I am still happy, healthy, successful, loved, and a sexual person. You can be, too.

To read Part I, go here.
To read Part II, go here.

What lies & myths about rape have hurt you or someone you love?
Your thoughts?

Two of the Times Someone Raped Me (Part II) #saam #rape

2013-04-24T05:00:00.000-07:00

The only thing I can blame on myself, the time someone raped me at knifepoint, was that I had left my front door unlocked.

Trigger Warning: Profanity. This series may be triggering to some rape victims.

I was 19, and my then-boyfriend was living with me. He had a union meeting that night, and if it ran par for the course, I expected him to be dropped off, late evening, hammered.

I was very tired from work; a long, hard day on my feet for most of it. So after greeting our dog (a sweet-natured Keeshond we’d rescued from the pound, named Winnie the Pooh), feeding the cats, kicking off my shoes and taking off my pantyhose, I ate the KFC I’d picked up on the way home, unlocked the front door so my b-f could just let himself in without disturbing me, and climbed into bed, still dressed, to read and doze.

When I thought I heard someone fumbling at the front door, I partially woke up. Was my boyfriend home? Winnie growled softly. For a moment I felt afraid, but there was no further noise, and watching the dog carefully, she kind of shook herself, then laid back down. I thought, must have been someone looking for my next-door neighbor (my apartment was half of a duplex), somebody who figured out he was at the wrong door, and moved on. I dozed off again.

I awoke to Winnie’s barking, and a stranger standing by the side of my bed. He wore a nylon stocking over his face (which is not a flattering look for anyone, just sayin’), and held a big kitchen knife in his right hand.

On A Scale of 1 to 10, This Joke Rates a -20.

At first I thought it was a really, really bad prank. One of my co-workers possessed an exceptionally low sense of humor, and it would be just his style to think a stunt like this would be funny. I even called for Friend L to stop hiding and come out of the living room.

via Wikimedia Commons
This is not Winnie, but looks much as she did,
a medium-sized, very fluffy dog

Winnie had stopped barking but was crouched by the foot of the bed, growling. (The cats, you will be unsurprised to hear, were totally unhelpful and disappeared.) The intruder grabbed the front of my white blouse with his free hand,and ripped it open, causing a button to pop off.

I realized it was not a joke.

Then the phone rang. In those days, it was a landline. The intruder gestured with the knife for me to answer it.

It was a wrong number. I was terrified that the intruder would think I was pretending it was a wrong number, that I was trying to send some kind of signal to a friend or family member. In the space of a few seconds, I obsessed over how I could prove to the guy I wasn't trying to "pull something." After I hung up, he used the knife to slice through the phone cord.

As I type this, I only now realize that knife was impressively sharp.

He directed me to perform oral sex on him, with which I complied, then he inserted his half-flaccid penis in me. Yes, like many rapists, he never achieved a full erection. The tape running in my head, over and over during this time, was, “Remember every detail you can, so they can get this guy,” but somehow, almost nothing stuck. The only detail that burned into my brain was his boxer shorts: light blue, solid, with no pattern, with white trim around the edges.

I couldn’t remember anything much else, really; no tattoos, moles, birthmarks, or anything distinctive about his body. I think he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but I’m not even sure about the jeans, couldn’t remember the color of his T-shirt or what kind of shoes he wore. He was blond, fair-skinned, a little shorter than me, medium build - not fat, "built," nor skinny. I probably outweighed him.

Fight, Flight, or Freeze?

Briefly, I considered fighting the man, or going for his knife. With some rapists or batterers, their intent is first to cow you, then to kill you.

I didn’t get a “vibe” from this man that he intended to hurt me (besides the rape), and I was afraid that if I did fight him, I might get badly hurt by the big, sharp knife, during the struggle.

IMO, each rape or assault victim has to decide for her/himself what the right thing to do is. If you survive, you made the right decision. (And if you don’t survive, it still was not your fault.)

He seemed young (early twenties?) and rather unnerved by the dog growling, the phone incident, and I think I warned him my boyfriend would be getting home any minute.

How long he raped me, I don’t have a clue. He pulled out, grabbed a wide-mouthed wine bottle in which my b-f and I were saving spare change, and left. First I ran to lock the door behind him, then I started shaking and crying.

I couldn’t stand to wait home alone, till my boyfriend got home, so I jumped in my VW and drove to my sister’s house, about five miles away. She called the police, and went with me and the police to the hospital, while my brother-in-law went to my place to meet my boyfriend and the police there.

At the hospital, they collected a rape kit. Yep, just like in the movies, they put me into a room with intensely bright lights that glared painfully into my eyes. I had to comb my pubes over a piece of paper in hopes of catching one of his pubic hairs, and they swabbed me for evidence of his semen. I didn’t think he had ejaculated in me, but I wasn’t sure. They took my blouse, skirt, and underwear as evidence - eventually, I got the blouse and skirt back.

Did I have a rape victim advocate? I don't think so, I think it was before they were a routine part of the process, but if I had one, I was too dazed, shocked, and confused to remember.

Sometimes It’s Hard To Tell Who The Good Guys Are

The police who took me to the hospital were great; afterwards I was assigned two detectives, one male, one female. She was okay, he was a flaming asshole.

I felt shaky and nervous for weeks afterwards, exacerbated by the fact that my rapist attacked other women, and they caught him. I had to go to identify my rapist in a lineup, which I did, and then there were hearings I had to attend. Most of the details are very blurry, but one time I remember is waiting in a small room, with my sister, when the male detective came into the room.

He threw a pair of men’s boxers into my lap. “Are those the ones he was wearing when he raped you?”

WTF? In the first place, nice concern for the victim's sensibilities, not. In the second place, this pair was white, with a blue paisley print. Had the detective not been paying attention to the one detail I could remember? “No, the ones he wore were solid light blue, with white trim.” I was annoyed, and my sister was furious on my behalf; I think she left the room and lodged a complaint against the detective, but I’m not sure.

I think there was a hearing, to determine if there was enough evidence to go to trial. Judge only, no jury. Beforehand, we (my sister was with me) had to wait in a big hallway outside the courtroom, that included my rapist and his attorney. That was creepy.

I did take the oath and the stand. Answered a handful of very brief questions from the ?assistant DA? Then the defense attorney asked me questions. He seemed to be trying to trip me up, and I remember him pressing really hard on the question as to whether or not the rapist ejaculated in me.

"I don't think so, but I'm not sure."

"You don't know? A knowledgeable, sexually experienced woman like you can't tell if a man has ejaculated or not?"

This pissed me off. "I'm not knowledgeable or sexually experienced about perverts," I said. The court broke for lunch, and afterward they dismissed me, no more questions.

In the end, my rapist opted to plead guilty rather than go to trial. I think he got 1-3 years, but I am not sure. Maybe more, since they “had” him for at least 2 other cases. I can’t even remember what his name was; I’m sure it was on the subpoenas and other papers, but I didn’t keep them, and my mind has chosen not to remember.

I Know I Got Off Lucky

I was not beaten, cut, stabbed, bruised, or otherwise physically damaged. I did not contract a loathsome disease or become pregnant. They even caught my rapist, in a fairly short period of time, and he went to jail, so I did not have to wonder or worry if he was out there, might be coming back for me. I am fully aware that, as far as rape victims go, I got off lucky.

I was also lucky in that, this time, it was a “legitimate rape.” It even made it into the newspapers - just about every detail but my name, so that my neighbors, co-workers, and other people would’ve had to be dumber than paint not to know exactly who the articles were about.

I did directly speak to my (male) boss at the time, who gave me his deepest sympathy and all the time off (I think, with pay) that I needed to get over the initial trauma and the subsequent court dates. I was believed, I was supported by family and friends.

The Boyfriend Issue

I think it’s important to mention that my boyfriend, and many partners of a rape victim, have their own Issues and Challenges, after a rape. They “failed” to protect us. And now what? It goes against the grain to sit back and let the legal system take its course, rather than finding the rapist and at the very least, pounding the shit out of him. Still, that’s what they’re required by law to do, to wait, let the law do its thing. That helplessness is hard on everyone who loves a rape victim, but especially on male partners. Who do they turn to for support and information?

Figuring out how to support a raped partner is not something we talk about very much in our society. In my case, I wanted to be held, I wanted to make love again, ASAP, kind of like reformatting a computer hard drive and overwriting it with new data. Some rape victims don’t want to be touched at all, and others run hot-and-cold; sometimes wanting to be held and comforted, other times not wanting physical contact.

Although in the long run, we did not marry, my then-boyfriend was tremendously supportive of me when I needed it, and I will always be grateful to him for that. With his help, (and later, that of other men), I reclaimed my sexuality, eventually becoming just as joyful, happy, and even more uninhibited than I started out.

How The Mount Everest of Dog Diarrhea Helped Me Get Over My Rape

My next-door neighbor in our duplex was only a few years older than me, and we socialized together frequently. One day she was in my apartment, comfortably settled into to a chair or a cushion, and she asked me to run over into hers and get something.

She had a really big dog, and her really big dog had taken a really big dump right in the middle of the living room. We are talking the Mt. Everest’s of soft, wet, dog diarrhea. But I didn’t see it. Until I stepped in the middle of it, with my bare foot.

It was disgusting. It was still quite warm and contained corn chunks or some other solid nasty stuff along with the loose grainy nasty stuff and smelled about as vile and nauseating as anything can smell. I hopped outside on the other foot, rinsed off my foot with a hose, then went into my house and washed my foot about 3-4 times with scented soap, gagging. I still gag, when I pull up the visceral memory of that experience. All the thesauri in the world cannot come up with enough synonyms for how incredibly gross it was.

But, here’s what I didn’t do. I didn’t cut off my foot. I didn’t pretend that my soiled foot no longer existed and stopped walking on it. I continued to use it, and I’ve continued to enjoy it, whether it’s being massaged by a foot freak or a pedicurist, or just getting me from Point A to Point B.

And so, though my genitals have had encounters with the human equivalent of dog shit, I have washed them off, and I continue to enjoy them. Why not? I am not denying or suppressing the memories of being raped (not consciously, anyway), but I refuse to allow being raped by some limp-dicked loser be the entire story of my vagina or sex life. Because it is not. It is only a tiny fraction of all the wonderful pleasure sex and my vagina has brought me.

To read Part I, go here.

To be continued...

Your thoughts?

Two of the Times Someone Raped Me (Part I) #saam #rape

2013-04-22T05:00:00.000-07:00

Do you see what I did there? We are so accustomed to distancing ourselves from rape, we usually talk about it as if it was something awful that happened to us: "I was raped." No. Not even, "I was raped by <a stranger; my ex-boyfriend; a group of boys at a party; my father>."

Trigger warning: Profanity. This series may be triggering to some rape victims.

Rape is not like a car accident: "the brakes failed, and I was broadsided by another car."

This is part of what "they" mean when they talk about rape culture. We need to learn to talk about rape - a crime, and an action - as something that someone does to someone else, because rape is a choice.

What My Parents Didn't Teach Me

My parents taught me much more than many young girls learned about the mechanics of sex., especially for my (GenFab) era. From the time I was fairly young, I was allowed to look at my father's Playboy magazines (mostly to find the bunny on each cover), and told that the human body, female and male alike, was beautiful and nothing to be ashamed of. That sex felt good and that wanting to have sex was healthy and normal.

BUT, my mother died when I was ten, and my father thereafter handed me a series of books about sex, the human body, menstruation, and so forth, and emotionally stepped away. At twelve, he told me that he trusted my judgment (really?), and that I should feel free to do whatever I wanted to do, as long as I didn't get pregnant.

It will not take Einstein to deduce that at the age of 12 (two years before I began menstruating), I was not quite ready to be entirely free of parental supervision and guidance.

In high school sex ed, I could wow my teachers by not only being able to locate the Fallopian tubes on those purple mimeographed diagrams, but to spell Fallopian tubes, uterus, and a whole lot of other body parts many of my classmates had never even heard of. Yet my understanding of the workings of romantic relationships was rudimentary at best.

So, There Was This Boy...

If you're a (hetero) teen girl, there is always a boy or five that you "like." I liked boys, going back to elementary school, but had no clue as to where to draw the line regarding sexual activity - or even if there really was a line. Kissing felt good. Touching and rubbing felt good.

A couple of times, when I was very young, I went "all the way." But I was beginning to pick up the societal mores that sex was supposed to be dirty/naughty, I was afraid of getting pregnant because I thought sperm lived in a woman's body forever, and also, I joined a ~~church~~ cult that put premarital sex off-limits.

When I was 17, I left the cult. I didn't know how to date - and mostly, the young people in my neighborhood didn't seem to date, anyway. We "hung out" together, in groups. So there was this boy, call him Boy A who seemed to really like me, and he was... okay, but neither his conversation nor his body really excited me. I did let Boy A kiss me a few times, but his kisses left me unmoved, and I made it clear that he and I weren't "going out," even if we were "hanging out."

Among his friends, however, there was another boy, let's call him Boy B, who I thought was very sexy. We all went bowling together, and Boy B and I flirted heavily. We seemed to have a special connection, and although Boy B didn't ask me out, well, nobody "dated" in our crowd.

One night at a party, I got really, really stoned. We were all in a place where we shouldn't be and had to scatter. Boy B took charge of me (oh, the alpha male!) and managed to get me into his room, alone.

After what seemed like hours of sitting in the dark beside each other on his bed, not even daring to breathe very loudly, lest we be caught, he began to kiss me.

Rape Is A Many Splendored Thing

Many soap opera storylines, movies, and books all taught me and other women of my generation that at least sometimes rape = uncontrollable passion/secret, unacknowledged love.

Take General Hospital, where Luke raped Laura, and later, she not only forgave him, but fell in love with him. That scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where Katharine Ross is forced to undress by gunpoint and then is forcibly kissed, and at the very end, barely whispered, is a hint that this is a "rape is fun" game. (Which I entirely missed the first 2-3 times I watched the movie.)

Kathleen Woodiwiss's The Flame and the Flower (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Even today on GoodReads, discussions rage as to whether Alex raped Tess in Tess of the d'Ubervilles, or Rhett raped Scarlett in Gone With The Wind, or whether those were seductions. The most popular romance authors of my girlhood: Kathleen Woodiwiss, Rosemary Rodgers, Johanna Lindsey, Judith McNaught wrote many, many rape and "forced seduction" stories.

Candy at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books took a crack at understanding the lure of the rapist hero:

What makes the rapist hero different is how the very fact that she makes him lose control, he, a man who has bedded women without count, makes him lose control even more. He desires her, and hates her for desiring her, and he punishes her accordingly. By the end of the book, though, he has submitted to the fact that he doesn’t just want her, he needs her, the way Ozzy Osborne needs Vicodin and red wine.

The more unkind critic would note that his dick has made judgment, and his dick apparently knows better than any other organ of his when he’s found his soulmate.

The less unkind critic would point out that many women secretly want to drive a handsome man crazy for love of their irresistible little selves, even though such behavior in real life would probably result in panicked calls to the police and restraining orders.

He Wasn't Even A Very Good Kisser

After all the sparks and flirting and excitement, this was a real letdown. I should enjoy being with Boy B, making out with Boy B, but mostly, the thought going through my muddled head was, "As soon as the coast is clear, I'm getting out of here."

At some point, he convinced me to lie down on his bed, and for what seemed like a very long time we lay there together, side by side with him occasionally stroking my cheek and nibbling my earlobe.

Without warning he climbed on top of me and tried to wrestle my underwear off, while I whispered "No!" as loud as I could without getting him into trouble, and yanked my pants back up. In a detached corner of my mind I thought how ridiculous this must look, him yanking my pants down, me pulling them back up.

I have since learned that in crisis mode, that's exactly what happens; the brain distances itself and you often fixate on some weird little detail.

In the end, he managed to get them down enough, get me pinned enough, to penetrate me. It hurt, a lot. I stopped fighting, trying to "lie back and enjoy it." But unlike in romance novels, it never felt good, or even okay, It simply continued to hurt.

Why didn't I call out for help?

Because geez, Boy B was my friend, I didn't want to get him into trouble. I also had some vague thought of not wanting to hurt Boy A's feelings, either. Besides, I had wanted to be with Boy B, right?

I got him to sneak me into the bathroom, when it was over, so I could clean up.

I was bleeding.

He became upset that I had bled onto his sheets, because it could get him into trouble. I actually apologized to my rapist because his raping me made me bleed.

I Thought Boy B Must Really Like Me, Like All The Romance Heroes

My deepest shame from that night, now, is not from his penis being briefly inside me, or my reluctance to call out for help, or even the ludicrousness of apologizing to my rapist for bleeding onto his sheets, but that I actually wrote him a love letter the next day. As I walked home, sore and aching between my legs, I convinced myself that Boy B and I had something special between us. That he was overcome by lust/love, like all the "forceful" romance heroes I'd read, and that the next time we had sex, it would be better.

Then I got a message passed back to me through the group grapevine. Boy B isn't your boyfriend, he doesn't want to be your boyfriend. He already has a girlfriend; he just wanted to fuck you, dumbass.

The confused and shamed feelings I had were very similar to these, expressed in Ilie Ruby's The Salt God's Daughter:

But it was the shame and humiliation that lingered most of all as I watched him speed away on his bicycle, knowing I’d never see him again. And self-loathing that followed, the slow and painful slogging through grief as I knelt on his white blanket, stained with my blood, hands covering my face. I would begin walking the never-ending path to forgiveness, trying like hell to figure out how I could have let this happen....

...Charges were not pressed. I didn’t fight him. I hadn’t even screamed. In those days, in the early ‘80s, few girls pressed charges, especially when they’d gone with a guy willingly, as though lambs to the slaughter, like I had done. People called it consensual... ...What if you just lay there, doing nothing, motionless, lost from the shock or the alcohol? What if you didn’t struggle enough? What if you had wished only to kiss him?

Did you want it?...

... When it was over, when he was done with me, before he took off, he picked up one of the smashed roses and thanked me.

I’ll never forget it: I actually took the rose.

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

The latest tragedies of young women being raped and then slut shamed, who have felt so rejected by their communities and betrayed by their friends that more than one have committed suicide, breaks my heart. That could so easily have been me, but, back in the day, we didn't have FaceBook or Twitter or Tumblr to keep shame alive.

I want to say, much like the "It Gets Better" campaign, that it doesn't matter, it doesn't affect your worth as a human being whether you willingly engaged in consensual sex at halftime on the 50 yard line with the entire football team, or whether you were raped by some/all of them, you are not just a vagina (or other body part, in the case of male rape victims).

Estimates are that 1 in 4/5 American women will experience rape in her lifetime. Yet how many of us talk or write about it? Using our real names and real experiences?

Admittedly, being a rape survivor is not the first thing that does or should come up in conversation, except in therapy groups. "Hi, I'm Beverly, I've been raped a few times, and I write sexy women's fiction in my spare time," is kind of an awkward intro.

What's the appropriate reply, "Hi, nice to meet you, sorry about the rape thing, try the cheese dip"?

Yet what we do now - most women (and male victims), pretending they have never been raped, not allowing rape victims' names to be printed in news stories without the victims' permission - perpetuates the idea, for many rape victims, that they are all alone, and that rape is shameful.

Rape is shameful - for rapists. Rape should not be shameful for rape victims.

to be continued...

Your thoughts?

Welcome to Cat Disneyland

2013-04-08T05:00:00.000-07:00

My cat, Metaphor, aka Stinky, has every toy a feline could possibly want to play with. My living room looks like a cat Disneyland, complete with tunnels, empty boxes, rolling fishbowl thingies, light-up toys...

I am constantly buying cat toys,

rotating them, trying to lure her into physical activity with a new feathered or squeaky or furry object. Most of them she ignores, or she'll glance at them, then stare at me. Her look says, "You cannot possibly believe I am so stupid as to be interested in that silly thing, do you?"

She is not fooled by a laser pointer. Sometimes Stinky will play with a new toy for seconds at a time. Sometimes she will engage in a totally different way.

I think I like it, but I'm not sure...

Now it's purrfect!

Metaphor (Stinky) on the left, Simile on the right

But regardless of how much she engages with her toys, regardless of the brand of diet cat food she is fed in strictly measured amounts... Stinky is a very big girl. She got fat in the year after we moved (with her sister, who died shortly after) in with my now ex-boyfriend, when she was only three years old. It was a very stressful environment for all of us, and Stinky blew up like a balloon.

I had hoped, once the two of us were in a stress-free apartment, continuing on her diet, and with plenty of play opportunities, a nice high perch from which to watch the birdies and squirrels, the weight would come off. It's been several years now, and that hasn't happened (for either of us).

Stinky, now ten, gets regular vet visits, and though the vet agrees that being this obese isn't good for any cat, her heart is strong, her lungs are clear, her teeth are good, and she doesn't test positive for diabetes. Healthy. She purrs a lot, is more cuddly than she used to be, so I judge to be her happy, too.

I'm thinking perhaps Stinky is my life lesson from the Universe, because I have long been not only dissatisfied with her shape, but my own.

In theory, I am a huge believer in the idea that human beings come in all shapes and sizes. I, too, am not diabetic, have a strong heart and lungs, decent (if not fabulous) cholesterol levels and low blood pressure.

I too am a big girl.

Unlike Stinky, I am not carefully measuring my food. For the most part, I eat a healthy diet, lots of broccoli and salads, I drink plenty of water and get enough sleep, but I do have my indulgences. (Hello, chocolate!) I would be even healthier if I could find a way to move more. That's been a challenge since I developed Morton's neuroma in my right foot several years ago. Hiking and walking and dancing at an aerobic level is out; despite my custom orthotic inserts and butt-ugly extra-wide shoes, it hurts too much, and I pay for it too long in terms of pain and immobility afterward.

Cover of Curves

This fall, I developed what we first thought was tendinitis, but is now officially diagnosed as frozen shoulder in my left shoulder - after dealing with a similar condition in my right shoulder the entire year before. For years I did the Curves circuit, which did not aggravate my foot too much, but it absolutely killed my shoulder. My physical therapist says no more Curves for a while.

Biking has been suggested, but I am very uncoordinated, so besides the purchase of the bike, I would have to mount a rack for my car so I could drive to a local park, since I am likely to wobble to my death in neighborhood traffic. Realistically? I'm simply not that motivated to ride a bike. Though perhaps an indoor exercise bike would be doable, when funds permit. I used to love playing volleyball, but need to be able to lift both arms over my head before that even becomes an option.

Once the weather warms up I can swim again, which I enjoy, or I could check out a membership in the "Y" and go for a water aerobics class.

I feel confident I could restrict my diet and vigorously exercise and take off the excess weight.

After all, I've done it many times before.

And then the weight has always come back to the party, usually bringing friends.

So instead of plunging once again into that yo-yo cycle, I'm going to plunge into figuring out just where my head needs to be. Oh, I won't postpone finding some way to exercise, because I know I need to - and I enjoy life more when I feel fit.

But maybe I need to accept that the Universe does not intend for me to be slim, or even "normal" sized (whatever that is) on a permanent basis. None of the women in my family have been anything but plump as they aged, and so I might be battling genetic tendencies as well as a chocolate addiction. Honestly? If I have to choose between giving up chocolate forever, and being fat, I say, "Bring on the muumuus!"

Does this box make me look fat?

I know, theoretically, that hating on ourselves as a diet technique may be a large part of why we regain the weight. That depriving ourselves of foods we love simply brings on binges, later. That the whole meme of "If I get to be XX pounds or size XX, then I would be so happy" simply isn't true. I am actually rather happy with myself and my life right now.

Except when my body parts hurt. Or when I'm picking out my work wardrobe for the week and I can't even choose clothes that fit me just fine a year ago.

I adore Stinky, in all her glorious Stinky abundance.

I have friends of all shapes and sizes, and I don't judge them harshly (okay, I admit that the slim friend who's always yammering about cutting back this or that food so she doesn't get fat kinda ticks me off).

But can I find a way to extend that nonjudgmental love to myself? Can I love myself as I am right now, and really focus on being healthy instead of on getting back to size XX?

I know I "should." I'm going to try. But can I get it from my logical head to my emotional heart?

I always welcome your comments, but this time, am gonna attach some strings.

Please don't suggest any specific diets. Any hate-talk will be deleted or edited.

Please do share about your own emotional struggles with weight,

an exercise you found unexpectedly delightful,

or your stories about a fat but lovable pet.

Your Lovable Local Library

2013-04-04T05:00:00.000-07:00

These are only two - of my eleven bookshelves.
I've crammed in a couple dozen more since I shot this.
And then I have my stacks o' books...

Book geek here - always have been, always will be. I love the sensuous smell and feel of books, in whatever format: the sharp-cornered dangerousness of a hardback, the soft yielding promise of a paperback, the infinite variety and stimulation of an e-reader, even the seductive mellowness of an audiobook narrator.

*fans self*

And because I have come to know so many wonderful authors, of course I want to support every single one of them by buying their books. Repeatedly. However...

There comes a time in every wallet's life when you have to step away from the cash register.

Cover via Amazon

Although I spend more money on books than shoes, occasionally I do have to buy a new pair. And pay rent on the place where I keep all my hardbacks and paperbacks, and the electric bill that lets me charge my Kindle, and so on.

I can't always afford to buy new, or even used books. Sometimes, there's a book I need to read - for example, my book club has picked it out - and I'm not yet sure I want to invest money in this unknown author. We've all been there, haven't we, squandered ten or fifteen bucks (or more) on a book which it turned out, we didn't like or perhaps couldn't even finish?

My first introduction to libraries was a Bookmobile that came to my elementary school.

It was interesting and exciting, because it was new! and we got to leave the classroom! But my family had more books at home, I thought, and the Bookmobile carried a very limited selection for readers of my age.

Then we moved, and I started at a new school. One that had an actual, on site library.

I will never forget my first peek inside the library, of realizing that all those books, from my old friends Curious George and the other books for little kids on that side of the room, to the glorious shelves on the other side that reached to heaven (okay, a little above my head), were available for the reading.

My friend Hilaree calls it "the ah-aah moment," you know, when the clouds part and a bright beam of sunshine streams down and you hear angelic voices singing, "Ah-aah."

The Romance, The Mystery, the Shame

I remember the airy, two story HS library with thick red carpeting, and big windows that looked out into the courtyard. And two internal staircases. Another, older library in the center of town, not particularly well-lit,with its tightly packed rows of books and old book smell, made me feel as if I was sneaking books out of a Duke or Earl's private library, especially when as a teen I'd check out the sexy books and wonder if someone would try to stop me.

library card found in pittsburgh pa
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I recently went to a book event and almost swooned when I received my raffle tickets tucked into an old-fashioned library card sleeve. Anybody remember library cards? The librarian would stamp the due date on a small index card that bore dozens of previous date stamps, and she'd tuck the card into the sleeve on the inside front of the book. Now library books carry bar codes; they're scanned and they give you a flimsy computer-printed receipt. *sad face* Not that I'm not grateful, but it seems much less romantic.

I remember having to keep slipping those inked up cards out of the pocket to check when my books were due back. The tension, the drama, the feverish reading into the wee hours of the night, because I had to know what happened before I returned them.

Or on tenterhooks, going to the library to beg for an extension of the loan, for a book not quite finished, hoping no one else had reserved the book after me. Now you can just log on and renew your books online. Again, I'm grateful, but the mystery and suspense is gone.

And oh, the shame when library books were overdue! Slinking up to the counter with my pennies and abject apologies.

Modern Libraries - Like Friends With Benefits

They're clean, they're all airy and well-lit, with inviting reading areas, computers, work tables, and plenty of space to move around - a vast improvement for our brother and sister readers who have disabilities. If there's a little less mystery and romance, there's much more comfort and familiarity.

And it's mot just physical books, anymore, but most libraries carry books on tape/CD, DVD's, magazines, and more.

Also, provided you belong to a city or county with a big enough library system, you can check out e-books! Just concluded my first adventure with checking out an e-library book.

First (no duh!) you need a current library card. If you haven't checked out a book in several years, you may have to stop into an actual library building and get a new library card.

They even come with handy key tags now.

Then you can log into your system and find your books. If you want a dead tree book, you can see if it's on the shelf at your local library branch, and if not, but it's at another library in the system, you can arrange to have it transferred over.

With an e-books, there can be a wait list for newer or more popular titles. (The Steve Jobs autobiography wait list was at 400 or so, when I idly checked it.) Also, not all books offer any e-version, let alone one for your Kindle/Nook/iPad (though most newer releases do). When you find your book in your format, click a few buttons, and it'll download to your device either automatically, or next time you are connected to a hot spot (my Kindle is old school, it's not constantly online).

When your book is close to coming due, you'll get a reminder, and then, on the day after your e-book was due back - it's been automatically removed from your device. Magic! No dashing to the library in your sweatpants and bunny slippers!

(Though I'm sure that unlike me, you look adorable in your sweatpants and bunny slippers.)

You also get a message on your Kindle telling you it's been removed, and asking if you'd like to buy the book - so if you loved it and want your very own copy, just another couple of clicks.

I'm happy to purchase books when funds permit, but my wallet is even happier that I'm also a book borrower through my public library.

How about you? Got a fond childhood library memory?

Have you been to a library lately?

What are your experiences checking out e-books?

Slut of the Month: Anaïs Nin

2013-04-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

English: Photograph of Anaïs Nin as a teenager, circa 1920. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Anaïs Nin, it has been lately discovered via DNA testing, was actually a man in drag. His name was not Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell, but Fred Hinkleschnerfer.

No. April Fools, y'all.

Anaïs Nin, born in France on February 21, 1903, was as female as a cat in heat - and, judging by her writing, she frequently felt like one (not that there's anything wrong with that).

“We don't see things how they are, we see things the way we are.”― Anaïs Nin

Because I reek at pronunciation worse than a college basketball player's lucky socks (I used to say "Aunty-Kay" for "antique" for years) I am linking the official pronunciation for others similarly challenged:

From Inogolo.com:

Phonetic Pronunciation: ah-nah-EES

Phonetic Pronunciation: neen

Anaïs lived most of her life in the United States, so is considered an American author. (Yeah, USA!) But she is more truly a citizen of the world. Her composer father, Joaquin Nin, grew up in Spain but was born in and returned to Cuba. Her mother, Rosa Culmell y Vigaraud, a classically trained singer, was of Cuban, French, and Danish ancestry.

After her father deserted the family, Anaïs attended Catholic schools in the United States beginning in 1914, dropped out of school at sixteen, and worked as a model and a dancer.

Anaïs studied psychoanalysis with Otto Rank and briefly practiced as a lay therapist in New York.

Was There Ever A Woman More Sensual?

In 1931, Anaïs, then married to Hugo Guilar who was a banker and later a moviemaker, began a passionate affair with as-yet unpublished Henry Miller in Paris, as he worked on Tropic of Cancer.

And perhaps, a few (dozen) others. Which led to some amazing erotic literature.

“He was now in that state of fire that she loved. She wanted to be burnt.” ― Anaïs Nin, Delta of Venus

via Wikipedia:

Faced with a desperate need for money, Nin, Miller and some of their friends began in the 1940s to write erotic and pornographic narratives for an anonymous "collector" for a dollar a page, somewhat as a joke.^[15] (It is not clear whether Miller actually wrote these stories or merely allowed his name to be used.^[16]) Nin considered the characters in her erotica to be extreme caricatures and never intended the work to be published, but changed her mind in the early 1970s and allowed them to be published as Delta of Venus^[17]^[18] and Little Birds.

Delta of Venus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Nin was a friend, and in some cases lover, of many leading literary figures, including Henry Miller, John Steinbeck, Antonin Artaud, Edmund Wilson, Gore Vidal, James Agee, James Leo Herlihy, and Lawrence Durrell. Her passionate love affair and friendship with Miller strongly influenced her both as a woman and an author.

“When she closed her eyes she felt he had many hands, which touched her everywhere, and many mouths, which passed so swiftly over her, and with a wolflike sharpness, his teeth sank into her fleshiest parts. Naked now, he lay his full length over her. She enjoyed his weight on her, enjoyed being crushed under his body. She wanted him soldered to her, from mouth to feet. Shivers passed through her body.”― Anaïs Nin, Delta of Venus

for a wonderful tribute of Anaïs Nin photos and a recording of
her reading her own work, please play this clip

Later, Anaïs would act in her husband Hugo's experimental movies. She would also marry for a second time in 1947 (without troubling herself to get a divorce from husband Hugo), to an actor named Rupert Pole, her being 44 to his 28. (And why not?)

Anaïs became a very skilled performer at what she referred to as bicoastal trapeze.

On the East Coast, she was Anaïs Guilar, with checkbooks and prescription bottles to match; in California she was Anaïs Pole. Although tax and legal issues compelled her to obtain an annulment of her marriage to Pole in 1966, they continued to live together as if married until her death of cancer in 1977. After Hugo Guilar died in 1985, Rupert Pole commissioned the unexpurgated versions of Anaïs's journals.

After her death, Anaïs was cremated and her ashes scattered in Mermaid Cove, Santa Monica, California. Later, husband Hugo's cremains were also scattered in Mermaid Cove - as arranged by Rupert Pole. I was unable to verify what happened to husband Pole after his death in 2006, but it's highly likely, according to Anaïs biographer Deirdre Bair, that his ashes joined theirs in a posthumous ménage à trois.

Are We Too Straitlaced for an Anaïs Nin Today?

The mere thought of a woman openly exploring her sensuality and sexuality throws most people (at least in the US) into a tizzy. I have been told about one of my novels that the idea that the heroine might fuck other men en route to discovering her enduring love for the hero... Well, it's simply not done, these days. [In fact, my dear, on a blog one should say "the eff word" or politely blank out characters, such as "f--k other men".] A fictional heroine can have sex, she can even have wildly graphic and kinky sex while tied up in a Red Room of Pain, but monogamy to the hero must be maintained throughout the book.

Some people just about rolled into a ball and died over Beyoncé's 2013 SuperBowl performance, or the "wardrobe malfunction" of Janet Jackon at the same event in 2004. Nipples! OMG!! (Never mind that all women and men each have a pair of their own.) So I wonder, even though today her writings are widely respected, her nuggets of wisdom are quoted everywhere, if we, as a society, would accept or reject a woman who practiced the scandalous lifestyle of Anaïs Nin?

Like Rodney Dangerfield, Anaïs couldn't get any respect.

In the 1940's and 50's, the (almost entirely male) literary society was happy to get Anaïs's input - and to thrust theirs upon her (take that any way you like), but publish her? Consider her work as important as Miller's or Steinbeck's?

Being discounted as an artist could make a person angry and bitter. Below, Anaïs discusses anger as related to the artist.

Her diaries - the edited versions - first became widely published in 1966; the erotic novels such as Delta of Venus (1977) and Little Birds (1979) posthumously.

Reading or hearing her words, Anaïs does not seem to be an ordinary creature, but apparently, she too had her dry spells and household chores.

“Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous. I want to be a writer who reminds others that these moments exist; I want to prove that there is infinite space, infinite meaning, infinite dimension. But I am not always in what I call a state of grace. I have days of illuminations and fevers. I have days when the music in my head stops. Then I mend socks, prune trees, can fruits, polish furniture. But while I am doing this I feel I am not living.”― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Somehow, if we are writers, we must not only seek the high moments, but accept that moments of drought, when we are not in "a state of grace," when all we are fit to do is mend socks and polish furniture, happen to everyone. Even to Anaïs Nin.

I love so much of the writing and poetry of Anaïs Nin, but my favorite quote, which I have framed on my bedroom wall, is Risk:

And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to blossom.

Past Sluts of the Month:

Future Slut of the Month Candidates:

Mae West
Joan of Kent
Cleopatra
Sandra Fluke
Morgan le Fey
Aspasia
Madonna
Liz Taylor
Dorothy Parker
Kassandra of Troy
Tullia d'Aragona
Marie Antoinette
Lillie Langtry
Anne Boleyn
Eleanor Roosevelt
Rhiannon
Shelley Winters
Mary, Queen of Scots
"Klondike Kate" Rockwell
Catherine de Medici
Lucrezia Borgia
Umrao Jaan
Sarah Bernhardt
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Theodora (wife of Emperor Justinian of the Byzantine Empire)
Jeanne d'Arc
Margaret Sanger
Hwang Jin-i
Coco Chanel
Isadora Duncan
Sappho
Joan of Kent
Dorothy Dandridge
Catherine the Great
the "Unsinkable" Molly Brown
Eva Perón
Susan B. Anthony
Natalie Wood
Diana, Princess of Wales
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Mata Hari
Lady Gaga
Malala Yousafzai

Who's your favorite slut?

Vote for one on this list, or name another slut to be added to it.
What do you think of Anaïs Nin and her work?
Do you have a favorite Anaïs quote?

If I May, If I Might

2013-03-25T05:00:00.001-07:00

Winston Churchill in Downing Street giving his famous 'V' sign. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I ain't always (ever?) real confident on grammar and suchlike.

I know what sounds right to me, reading, and what sounds wrong, but sometimes what sounds wrong to me is grammatically acceptable, and vice versa.

Sometimes we can get all twisted up about grammar rules, such as making sure not to end a sentence with a preposition. There's a quote attributed to Winston Churchill, “This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.”

Silly, isn't it?

I spent my teen years in a region (south-central Pennsylvania) where you outen the lights when you leave the room, where if you drink the last of the milk, it's only courtesy to let someone know "the milk is all," and when, after asking for a ride to the mall, get back a cheery, "I'll be glad to run you over."

It's all the little colloquialisms and regional turns of phrase that make reading and writing so much fun.

But recently while reading a book I very much enjoyed, I kept getting thrown out of the story by the liberal use of the word "may." It didn't sound right. It didn't feel right.

It bugged me so much I had to stop and go look up the proper grammatical usage. Was the author and her (professional) editor wrong, or was it me?

Take this fragment: "he was afraid he may not want to take her collar off when two weeks was up." Or this one: "She may have not had a lover in a while."

via Wikimedia Commons

Instead of wondering whether this dominant and submissive were headed for a long term romance, I was obsessing about the grammar?

Sadly, yes.

English Grammar Lessons. com says:

might
We use 'might' to suggest a small possibility of something. Often we read that 'might' suggests a smaller possibility that 'may', there is in fact little difference and 'might is more usual than 'may' in spoken English.
It might rain this afternoon.
She might be at home by now but it's not sure at all.
I might not have time to go to the shops for you.
I might not go.
For the past, we use 'might have'.

He might have tried to call you while you were out.
I might have left it in the taxi.

Grammar Girl Confirms:

World famous whitewater rafting in the Valley. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I remember the difference by thinking that I should use might when something is a mighty stretch. Imagine something you'd almost never do, and then imagine someone inviting you to do it. For me, it's white-water rafting. The idea terrifies me. So if someone (such as my former employer) asked me to go on a corporate bonding white-water rafting trip, it's unlikely I would go, but I could be convinced if I thought my job depended on it. But it would be a mighty stretch. So I'd say something like, "Yeah, I might go; and pigs might fly, too."

So imagine whatever it is you'd be reluctant to do but wouldn't completely rule out, and then imagine yourself saying in a nice, sarcastic voice, "Yeah, I might." And that should help you remember to use might when the outcome is uncertain or unlikely and to use may when something is more likely to happen, such as attending a nice, safe company lunch where helmets and life vests aren't required.

You might clean your room, but you may call your friend later. You might climb Mt. Everest someday, but you may go hiking in the foothills next weekend.

She goes on to illustrate (I adore Grammar Girl, just sayin')

First, might is the past tense of may. So you have to use might when you are referring to the past. For example, even if it's likely that Squiggly went to a party last night, Aardvark shouldn't say, “Squiggly may have gone to the party’; he should say, “Squiggly might have gone to the party.”

The second exception is a gray area. When you're talking about something not happening, it can be better to use might because people could think you're talking about permission if you use may. This is clearer with an example. If you aren't sure whether you'll go to the party, and you say, "We may not go to the party," it can be misinterpreted to mean you don't have permission to go to the party, particularly in writing, where voice inflections don't help guide the meaning. But if you say, "We might not go to the party," then your meaning is clear. It's the safer bet.

So remember to use may when the outcome is likely and might when the outcome is less likely or uncertain. But also remember that you use might for everything in the past tense. Also, it's OK to use might when you're writing about negative outcomes, even if they're likely outcomes, if using may would make people think you were talking about having permission.

So the phrase: "She may have not had a lover in a while," is wrong, because it refers to the past, and the wording is clunky, besides. Smoother and more grammatically correct would be: "She might not have had a lover in a while," or even, "She might not've had a lover in a while..."

In the sentence fragment: "he was afraid he may not want to take her collar off when two weeks was up..." grammatically, it's not wrong; it falls in that gray area. To me, as worded, it's confusing. Would it work with "might"? "he was afraid he might not want to take her collar off when two weeks was up"? I find that clearer.

Another option, since so much is happening in that sentence, might be rephrasing it altogether, "he was afraid that when the two weeks was up, he'd want to keep her collar on."

I would never want to edit out all the flavor and local turns of phrases

Not from this author's work, nor from any other. I enjoy it. The gods and goddesses of grammar know how often I have to change something I've written because the meaning is either unclear or grammatically incorrect, so I ain't throwing stones.

But to my way of thinking, it's best to leave the colloquialisms to dialogue and italicized inner thoughts, rather than narrative, even if the narrative is in a character's point of view. Anything that throws a reader out of the story and racing for a grammar refresher is not a good thing.

And on that note, I'm running myself over to the store, as my martini mix is all.

How comfortable are you with the proper use of "may" and "might"?

What kind of local phrases are used where you come from?

Have you been sidetracked by a clunky sentence in an otherwise good book?

Nobody Propositions My Feet Anymore - Aging Gracefully?

2013-03-18T05:00:00.001-07:00

Foot fetishism? (Photo credit: C1ssou)

Apparently, back in the day, I had incredibly sexy feet.

When I was in my twenties, running around barefoot in my apartment complex doing my laundry, this guy who was a friend of a neighbor who was having a party spotted me - and my feet - and was instantly smitten.

"I want to be upfront with you," he said. "I have a foot fetish, and you have incredibly sexy feet. I will <insert crude and lewd proposition here> for hours, if you'll let me fondle and play with your feet for a little while."

I was a little surprised, a lot shocked - and, I admit it, somewhat intrigued. He was kinda cute. He might be good at the aforesaid activity (though on the other hand, he might be terrible).

What did he want to do with my feet, anyway?

The writer in me said, "Say yes. This would make such a great story."

Then again, just because this was some guy who was invited to my neighbor's party, did not mean he was not a weird foot fetish serial killer. Though it would be hard to drag my dead body past the crowd of 30+ people in the courtyard.

I let the man sweet-talk me for a few minutes, then asked for a little time to think about it (after all, I still had to add fabric softener).

And my underage son was home, though due to be picked up by my ex within the next coupla hours.

It could be HAWT. After all, I'd seen the famous bondage and toenail-painting scene in Bull Durham.

Alas, it was not to be. Apparently for that particular foot freak, at that time, it was a now-or-never kind of thing.

Once my offspring was gone, and my laundry was folded, FootGuy was nowhere to be found.

Later, I Met Another Foot Fetishist

I admit it, I was curious, and this new guy, too, thought I had very sexy feet and propositioned me, so we agreed to go for it. As it turned out, the date on which we had planned to experiment intersected with another date, one I marked on the calendar each month with red XXs.

We played around a little anyway, but by Bill Clinton's definition, did not have sexual relations. A lot of rubbing and groaning (on his part), a lot of counting the ceiling tiles on mine, except there were no ceiling tiles. You get the drift.

He was no Kevin Costner. Goodbye, Foot Fetishist #2.

It wasn't that I was unwilling to let him get his freak on, periodically (God, I'm saying this all wrong), but I found out he was a creepy religious type. As in, he informed me that Christianity was very important to him, and showed me his... pages, of his novel in progress. The first pages were full of lavish and loving descriptions of hell; torture and hot pokers and sharks ripping open people who don't die, just scream and bleed without surcease...

I eased out of any future dates very carefully. And if I hear his name connected with some gruesome serial killing, I will not be one of those people saying on camera, "But he always seemed so nice and quiet."

There's More of Them Out There

Bradley Cooper at the "Whatever Works" Premiere, Tribeca Film Festival 2009 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's not that I think that all men (or women) who are into feet are potential serial killers. I'm sure many of them are perfectly nice - I actually know one. Since he's my ex's best friend, we are Not. Going. There. Ever.

Besides, the man smokes cigars, and that's disgusting. (Next to cigars, feet prolly smell like roses.)

I've had wonderful foot massages as part of loveplay, but nothing that led me to believe my lover was especially into feet. Sucked a few toes, and had mine sucked, but doesn't everyone? And the Internet is now buzzing with stories about Bradley Cooper and his supposed foot fetish.

It's not that I want footplay to be a part of my sex life. I just liked the possibility.

I Liked Having Sexy Feet

As a teenager, my best friend was ~~kind of~~ a bitch. She had these dainty little feet - size five, I think - while I am five nine and have proportional-sized feet, 8 1/2. When we'd do the whole girlfriends-kicking-off-the-shoes thing, my shoes looked like rowboats next to her tiny ones.It awoke all the Cinderella's ugly stepsisters with big honking peasant hooves complex I'd carried since I was little.

Me: My God, my shoes are huge!

What girlfriends are supposed to say: No, you're tall, they're not big at all for someone your height.

What my (former) girlfriend would say: Yeah, they are pretty big. Too bad you can't go on a diet for your feet.

A pair of co-worker G's shoes.
I covet those butterflies!

Time passed. I worked with a woman five inches shorter than me. Who wore the cutest shoes, and had the same size feet as me. I realized if she could carry shoes that looked cute, with her height, so could I.

It was shortly after that that my feet were first propositioned. Even though my big toes, all squared off, still reminded me of Frankenstein's monster.

I went shoe mad, for a time. I bought strappy sandals and red pumps and gold snakeskin shoes and dainty black shoes with bows on the toes. I got pedicures and wore toe rings. My feet looked mostly adorable for years. But then they started hurting.

I knew what it was - I didn't want to admit it, but my older sister serves as kind of a canary in a coal mine for me. And she developed a serious case of Morton's neuroma - in both feet.

Hers was so bad (because she dragged her feet about seeing a podiatrist) that she had to have surgery. As she described it, they cut them open and scrape off the excess tissue buildup, like scraping meat off a chicken bone. *gagging*

My feet, not so bad (yet). All I needed to do was get some cortisone shots, and be fitted for custom orthotics to wear in my shoes every day.

My double or triple width shoes, flats only, which I have to wear for the rest of my life.

I Am Now a Lifetime Member of the Sisterhood of the Butt-Ugly Shoes

Plus I fail miserably at doing my own pedicures. Afterwards there is so much nail polish splattered all over my toes they look like they've participated in a serial murder.

Co-worker A

It's rather depressing. The women I work with wear shoes so sexy they'd bring tears of envy to the eyes of a porn star. And there I am, in my grandma shoes.

The only thing I have resisted so far is Birkenstocks (though I hear they're quite comfortable).

I've tried going to a regular shoe with just a little bitty heel once in a while, and it feels like I stepped on a nail. You can't look sexy unless you feel sexy, and you definitely can't strut your stuff when you're limping like you have a nail stuck in your foot.

Co-worker G

In fact, some days my foot feels like that anyway. I probably need another cortisone shot. Still hoping to avoid the gruesome meat-chicken-bone operation.

It's not like I was into the whole foot fetish thing. (Although I could make an exception for Bradley Cooper.) But I mourn the loss of my foot desirability. I want to be the one turning down the foot freaks, not be turned down by them.

But it is what it is. Now that I'm ~~old~~ a mature woman in the prime of her life, I know I should be damned grateful - and I am - that I have (relatively) healthy, functioning feet that take me where I want to go.

I would still like to punch that c**t Cinderella in the face.

Want to read more posts on aging gracefully (or fighting it all the way?)

Do you suffer shoe envy, or can you still wear the good stuff?

Have you ever made footplay part of your loveplay?

(You can tell me, I won't tell anyone.)

Your thoughts?

Five Favorite Books - ONLY Five ?!

2013-03-11T05:00:00.001-07:00

A game like this is like somebody asking you to pick your five favorite fingers, and cut off the rest. Only five? But Veronica Scott, who writes amazing romantic fiction set in ancient Egypt (and on spaceships), asked if I wanted to play.

Being a player, I couldn't say no.

Here's the top five that I keep going back to reread, discovering new nuggets every time.

Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell.
Rhett & Scarlett, two of the most fascinating characters of all time. Politically correct, no. Romanticized (and racist) look at slavery and the Civil War, absolutely. Still interesting to read as a reflection of that mindset. Not only that, but last time I reread it, I noticed Mitchell ended each chapter with a great cliffhanger.

The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula K. LeGuin
One of the most thought-provoking works I've ever read. What if when you had a certain kind of super-intense dream, what you dreamed came true? Only with that weird, twisted way dreams have of shifting reality, like dreaming that someone who annoyed you was killed in an accident. Then you woke up, and she was dead, had been dead, for years, and no one remembered the alternate reality. What if the person you went to for help decided to use that ability to reshape the world for the better?

Time Enough for Love - Robert Heinlein
I would so marry Woodrow Wilson Smith, aka Lazarus Long, if I got the chance. (Or at least invite him mattress-dancing.) Love, adventure, sex, time-travel, talking space-yachts and computers with personalities. Heinlein's I Will Fear No Evil is a close second.

Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery
Anne is the little girl we all once were, or wanted to be, an ugly orphan so lovable she won the heart of... pretty much everybody. In spite of (of because of) accidentally dying her hair green, her nose red, and other misadventures. I love the whole series down to Rilla of Ingleside. Looked at through older eyes, Montgomery does an amazing job creating characters and giving flavor to the interpersonal relationships - people are still the same, their wants, needs, and schemes don't change, regardless of era or setting.

The Mists of Avalon - Marion Zimmer Bradley
Morgaine le Fey, Arthur, Lancelet, Merlin, and Guinevere, with a heady swirling of magick and myth. The other legends are replayed as something of a battle between The Old Ways and Christianity, as well as between the civilized part of Britain vs. the Saxon invaders.

I'd grown up on tales that demonized Morgaine as an evil sorceress, and this gives a very different, heroic outlook to her part in the story. Love Morgaine, the Lady of the Lake, the priestesses of Avalon...

If I could keep the other five fingers...

Katherine - Anya Seton, with her Green Darkness a close second. A real life Cinderella story, the orphaned daughter of a poor knight becoming a Duchess, via a passionate love affair with a King's son. Lots of drama, heartbreak, and history (though the history part's more than a bit distorted, according to Alison Weir's non-fiction Mistress of the Monarchy).

Moreta, Dragonlady of Pern - Anne McCaffery
I adore all the Pern books, the Crystal Singer books, the Rowan books, the Freedom books, and... know I'm forgetting something. But this book, with its powerful queen rider in the prime of her life, with grown offspring, entering into a forbidden fling with a Holder, on the cusp of an epidemic that could wipe out the population of the entire planet, really hooks me.

The Proud Breed - Celeste de Blasis
Long, sprawling historical work, akin to the Thornbirds but set in California (and IMO, better written). Sixteen year old Teresa Maria Julietta Margarita Macleod y Amarista, granddaughter of a proud Californio tradition, stabs, then nurses and falls in love with Gavin Ramsay, Yankee trader. (We don't see that kind of romantic introduction much!)

We see the unusual partnership with Gavin's half Indian, half Negro friend, "Indian," and travel with them through the days of the ranchos, to the gold mining camps, to the settlement of San Francisco and the Civil War and beyond. There's romance, rape, betrayal, babies, gambling, war, adultery, friendship, scandal, and through it all, Tessa and Gavin, two distinct and compelling characters, as well as two generations of their descendants, battling for love.

Epic, in every sense of the word.

Wine of the Dreamers - Susannah Leigh
Parallel stories of Meryt, Egyptian princess, forced to marry a man she doesn't love, for political purposes, and Aimee, the pampered daughter of a Parisian merchant, also forced into an arranged marriage. Aimee's greedy husband believes he can make another fortune in Egypt, so he hires an ethical but broke archaeologist hot on the trail of an undiscovered royal tomb. The archaeologist is hot in other ways, and the tomb they discover belongs to an Egyptian princess... named Meryt. And what is the secret of the chalice left on the Egyptian woman's tomb?

The Ugly Little Boy - Isaac Asimov
This is actually a short story, later expanded into a novel with the co-writing of Robert Silverberg, and there's oodles of Asimov to read and enjoy. I loved the whole mind-bending of the story, of scientists who find a way to bring forward people from an earlier time, but only in a small enclosure, and for a limited period of time. They want to talk to them, take tissue samples, study how they move and behave. After scoring with a peasant from the Renaissance, they manage to bring forward a small Neanderthal boy. If this story doesn't make you cry you have no heart. And afterwards, it'll make you think.

There's more, of course, I love Isabel Allende and Anaïs Nin and Sylvia Plath, I'm a big Mercedes Lackey fan, plus Lisa Hendrix, Grace Burrowes, Norah Lofts, Piers Antony, Tessa Dare, Diana Paxson, Robert Silverberg, and anything about Tudor England or the Titanic. As favorite non-fiction writers, I like Antonia Fraser, Sharon Begley, Walter Isaacson and Daniel Pink..

And I must recommend Veronica Scott's Priestess of the Nile and Wreck of the Nebula Dream. Both very different novellas - one set in ancient Egypt, the other aboard a Titanic-esque starliner of the future. Both quick, fun reads. I do review what I read on GoodReads (eventually), so feel free to Friend me there and lets talk books.

If you like my choices (or if you don't), check out these Fabulous Five writer/bloggers' picks (their posts will be up sometime soon):

Brenda Moguez of Passionate Pursuits
Babs at Zero to Sixty and Beyond
Kim Sisto Robinson of My Inner Chick posted hers on Skirt
Rebekah Weatherspoon of Let Us See, Shall We
Samanthe Beck

Have you read any of the books on my Favorites List?

Could you narrow your Favorites down to five?

Ann & Nancy Wilson - My Big Sisters

2013-03-07T05:00:00.000-08:00

Cover of Ann Wilson

They're not, actually. (Their mom would be stealing their song WTF?)

A girlfriend introduced me to Dog and Butterfly, the song, and the album, when I was a young teen, and I was instantly hooked. Women with power, passion, and talent? My sisters, in spirit if not of blood.

I think this is my favorite Heart album cover
Not theirs - Ann loves Bebe Le Strange

I went back, collected Little Queen, Magazine, and Dreamboat Annie in cassette (all on my iPod now). Couldn't wait for Bebe Le Strange to come out and saw Heart on that tour at the LA Forum in 1980. Have collected most of their albums since then - and Red Velvet Car rocks, all these decades later. Somehow the combination of melody, harmony, and lyrics made me feel that they knew me - and that I knew them.

But it wasn't until I listened to their autobiography, Kicking and Dreaming that I felt I really did know them.

Genuine Heart fanatics who've followed every Rolling Stone and Circus and fanzine interview may feel like there's nothing genuinely new here.

Generally when it comes to books, I'm a reader, not a listener. I like turning pages and looking at the pretty pictures, okay? But a friend was insistent on giving me a couple of audiobooks for Christmas, I'd been wanting to read Kicking and Dreaming, and when I saw it was read by Ann and Nancy themselves, I was sold.

There are also sections read by their sister Lynn, and by others, like their co-songwriter Sue Ennis, and the band's former manager (and Ann's ex) Mike Fisher, lead guitarist (and Nancy's ex) Roger Fisher, Howard Leese, and more. There's a narrator who announces who's speaking. Unnecessary in the case of the Wilsons. Nancy's voice is sweet, and she has a way of inflecting sentences in the MIDdle, almost as if they are a QUEStion. Ann's voice is richer and lower in timbre, but was also somewhat raspy, and I wondered if she recorded her narration with a cold.

It's quite long - almost nine hours. I became impatient with all the backstory - where's the Magic, Man? But as it continued, I saw how it all fit together.

Women in rock had traditionally been offered two places - at the microphone, and in a hotel bed, as groupies.

English: Nancy Wilson of the American rock band Heart (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ann and Nancy didn't want to be the Beatles' girlfriends, like their friends did - they wanted to be the Beatles; to play their own music, write their own songs, to be feminine and sexy and powerful. So they drew inspiration from ancestress Hannah Dustin, who wielded a mighty axe of her own, in a way that had not been expected of her.

Ann was raised on the story of their mother Lou taking the train from Oregon to the East Coast to marry their father, Dotes. So why shouldn't Ann leave the US for love, to find Mike Fisher in Canada?

The life of Marine military brats, never staying anywhere long enough to have houseplants, always packing up and moving to their father's latest posting, set them up for the gypsy life of a touring rock band. The military uniforms even influenced some of their costumes in the 1980's. Well, that, and Ann's major crush on Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty.

No, They Can't Pass for Girls in their Twenties Anymore

So why is this fact treated as if the Wilsons have somehow betrayed their fans by daring to grow older (and sometimes heavier)? They are in their sixties (or close to it, in Nancy's case). They have had hit records in five fucking decades, and yet, some reviewers continually pan them based on the "distraction" of Ann's fluctuating size. K & D discusses Ann's struggles with her weight going back to pre-adolescence (something I can certainly relate to), and the pressure this put upon her, and the band - as if the only accepted standard of beauty is thin, and the only measure of musical quality for a femme-led band is not voice, nor songwriting quality, nor musical performance, but the size and shape of the female members.

I adore Robert Plant (who, meaning no disrespect, looks like he has been "ridden hard and put away wet too many times"), and Led Zeppelin, who turned out incredible, groundbreaking music in the nine years they performed as a band. But reality is, he can't still still carry this song... and Ann can.

Btw, that's Jason Bonham (John's son) on drums
Love love love the gospel choirs & orchestra arrangement. Gives me goosebumps

Something I discovered in listening to K & D, was that Heart originally performed a 30-minute set of Led Zeppelin covers every night as part of their 5 hour set in Vancouver. That they were even dubbed by some as "Little Led Zeppelin."

Crazy On You

Ann had joined a Seattle band that included guitarist Roger Fisher, who surprised Ann with her first glimpse of "full frontal" male nudity in a post-gig hotel room.

And then she met his brother, Michael.

Ann talks frankly about her love/obsession for Michael Fisher. Quitting the band and taking off for Canada (whence M. Fisher had gone to escape the Vietnam draft), and living with him in a little round house over a stream, in a bed built on driftwood branches. "It completely took me over," she says.

Can you relate to "losing it" for a Magic Man - or Woman?

Michael Fisher was Heart's first manager. He had a "five year plan," and was quite controlling of various details, including Ann's diet. When Nancy joined the band, she became involved with lead guitarist Roger Fisher, Michael's younger brother, forming as it were a"never-ending double date," with Ann and Michael as the alpha couple. The problem (or one of them) was that Roger "wasn't built for monogamy," something Nancy discovered early on, but accepted/tolerated, until her attraction to drummer (Michael) Derosier inspired her to make a formal break with Roger.

Sometimes a woman (or man) can take so much, for so long,in the interest of preserving a relationship, and then it simply becomes too much.

I love the brass horns on this; not so sure about Nancy's sailor suit

Roger Fisher was very open about his "dalliances," but part of the issue was his drug use (something not unique to Roger), and another part was that while he was a brilliant performer live, he struggled when called upon to lay down studio tracks, repetion after repetition. After a period of intense friction within the band, RF was voted out, and shortly after, Ann's boyfriend Michael (who had also strayed physically and emotionally), was gone as well.

Bebe Le Strange was the first post-Wilshers (Wilson-Fishers) album, and although it was still filled with passion and emotion and sold well, the two albums that followed, Private Audition and Passionworks, met lackluster sales. Most chart-breaking rock bands never lasted beyond five years. Was Heart finished?

Leave It To Cleavage

Heart dubbed every concert tour with a nickname. A tour particularly laden with accidents and mishaps was subbed the "Crash and Burn" tour.

The Eighties were dusted with a fine white powder called cocaine for almost everyone in in the music industry, Heart included. New management, new record label. MTV was the big thing, calling for expen$ive video productions costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, corsets, hair spray, stilettos, and musical compromises like outside songwriters that it sounds like, in retrospect, the Wilson sisters greatly regret. (Though they wouldn't say so outright, perhaps so as not to alienate their fans who loooove their eighties material, which brought them greater Billboard charting than previous efforts.)

I do love this song, and many, if not all, of their eighties hits, especially There's The Girl

Ann and Nancy did refer to it, however, as a "Deal with the Devil." Fans who'd seen the videos expected to see the hairsprayed, elaborately made-up Wilson sisters in concert. Never mind that moving across the stage in heels for two hours ain't the same thing as a .3 second shot in a video. Additionally, the almost continuous MTV-play of their 80's material meant that instead of fame expanding their worlds, their worlds were shrunk. Following the assassination of John Lennon by a crazed fan, and death threats against them, Ann and Nancy could not even hang out in the lobby of their hotels. They would bring a VCR in their baggage, order room service, and hole up in their hotel rooms, watching classic movies like Gone With The Wind, rather than being free to explore their host city.

Ann also detailed the painful experience, early on, of learning that the groupie/one night stand experience was not something she could experiment with. The band had visited a club in one tour city, there had been been many attractive people there, including an attractive and charming male fan Ann invited back to her hotel room.

In the morning, she awoke to hearing him call in to a radio station with a whispered, "Guess who I'm in bed with?" This wouldn't have been radio-worthy for an Aerosmith groupie, or a Rolling Stones groupie, but it brought home the point that "road romances" were not gender-neutral.

Other Miscellaneous Details of Kicking and Dreaming

It bugged me that although song lyrics were spoken, there weren't audio clips of the songs, or the lyrics being sung, rather than read. Copyright issues, no doubt.
The intriguing details about the Magazine album, and finishing it under armed guard.
I loved hearing about the "birth" of one of my favorite songs, Mistral Wind.
The many stars who tried (and failed) to bed the Wilson sisters, either separately or together.
Ann referring to "the song writing me," something I often feel about a story.
The glimpses of the birth of the Seattle grunge movement, and Ann as one of its "mothers," down to sheltering its stars in her home and (platonically) in her bed.
I cannot now remember which Heart band member wore unitards so as to show off his third nipple.
The birth of the Lovemongers acoustic group.
The 1995 official Heart hiatus as Nancy needed to work on babymaking.

I highly recommend this book - loved the audio version, and plan to pick up the hardcopy, when funds permit, as well as fill in the holes in my Heart musical collection.

Leaving you with one last taste, one of my ultimate favorites, Love Alive. It's got everything (except top recording quality): amazing vocals, Ann's flute, fabulous interaction between Nancy and Roger, great guitar solo, wonderful acoustic guitar, driving bass, blood harmonies...

Are you keeping your Love Alive?

Have you read or listened to Kicking and Dreaming?

Do you have your own Heart memory?

If you have one, what's your favorite Heart or Lovemonger song?

Slut of the Month: Jezebel

2013-03-04T05:00:00.000-08:00

English: Jezebel and Ahab Meeting Elijah in Naboth's Vineyard Giclee. Print by Sir Frank Dicksee. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Her name has come to represent the symbol of an uppity, slutty woman. It's the name of a movie, a butterfly, and of a popular website. But who was Jezebel, anyway?

By marrying Ahab, King of Israel, Jezebel became Queen - and a very powerful one.

From How Bad Was Jezebel? (Biblical Archaelogy Review):

As the Books of Kings recount, the princess Jezebel is brought to the northern kingdom of Israel to wed the newly crowned King Ahab, son of Omri (1 Kings 16:31). Her father is Ethbaal of Tyre, king of the Phoenicians, a group of Semites whose ancestors were Canaanites. Phoenicia consisted of a loose confederation of city-states, including the sophisticated maritime trade centers of Tyre and Sidon on the Mediterranean coast. The Bible writer’s antagonism stems primarily from Jezebel’s religion. The Phoenicians worshiped a swarm of gods and goddesses, chief among them Baal, the general term for “lord” given to the head fertility and agricultural god of the Canaanites. As king of Phoenicia, it is likely that Ethbaal was also a high priest or had other important religious duties. According to the first-century C.E. historian Josephus, who drew on a Greek translation of the now-lost Annals of Tyre, Ethbaal served as a priest of Astarte, the primary Phoenician goddess. Jezebel, as the king’s daughter, may have served as a priestess as she was growing up. In any case, she was certainly raised to honor the deities of her native land.

<snip> Jezebel does not accept Ahab’s God, Yahweh. Rather, she leads Ahab to tolerate Baal. This is why she is vilified by the Deuteronomist, whose goal is to stamp out polytheism.

Map showing the Kingdoms of Israel (blue) and Judah (orange), ancient levant borders and ancient cities such as Urmomium and Jerash. The map shows the region in the 9th century BCE. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The LORD was a hard sell in 9th Century BC. If you read Numbers and Deuteronomy, they're full of rules that are a beast to carry out. Plus his prophets are always smiting and cursing people, or bringing down she-bears to rip apart little boys. Additionally, there was a big theological as well as political split between the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Each of those countries claimed to be worshiping the One True God in The Only Right Way, and claiming the other Jewish people had gone astray.

In the meantime, the native peoples of the area had long worshiped other gods and goddesses; deities who were more tolerant and fun than the jealous and somewhat neurotic LORD. It was natural for them to return to the old ways, and natural for Jezebel, who may herself have been a priestess, to hold onto her own religious upbringing when she moved into the country next door, but Elijah didn't see it that way.

Jezebel Wasn't One to Weep and Wail

One of the other things Jezebel is accused of, in the Biblical story, is setting up a man named Naboth who refused to sell land to her husband King Ahab. Ahab was so upset he:

lay on his bed, turned away his face, and would eat no food. (1 Kings 21:4)

I'm not sure what a "proper" wife would've done - joined her husband's childish tantrum, until they both starved to death? (On a side note, 2 Kings 10 states that Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria alone, so clearly Jezebel was not The Only Woman in his life. But since no other queens or concubines are mentioned by name, clearly Jezebel was the one who counted.)

If the stories are true, Jezebel personally arranged to have Naboth falsely accused of blasphemy. He was then stoned, and voila, the coveted property dropped into Ahab's happy lap.

She not only took action, but she used the religion she despised as a tool to make it happen. That is either stone cold wicked or amazingly chill, depending on your point of view.

Can You Say Double Standard?

One classic Biblical story is that of King David, who committed adultery with Uriah the Hittite's wife Bathsheba and knocked her up. Next David tried to trick him (Uriah) into having sex with her so he'd assume the baby she was carrying was his. Failing that, David set Uriah up to be killed. Even by the standards of the time, these behaviors were considered unsavory all around. The death of the love child shortly after his birth was considered to be a judgement from the LORD.

Yet David would still hold God's favor, and the next child he and Bathsheba had, Solomon, would become king after him.

Clearly, if Jezebel had Naboth set up, it was not for personal gain or power, but out of loyalty and concern for her husband. But it's not entirely clear that she did set him up; 1 Kings states:

So she wrote letters in Ahab's name and sealed them with his seal

SealofJezabel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Archaeologists are in possession of what appears to be Jezebel's seal. As a queen powerful enough to have her own seal (this was a very rare and unusual thing), she had no need to use that of her husband or forge letters in his name. She could write them in her own damn name.

If the Bible is wrong about the seal, it's possible some of the other details could be wrong, too. Maybe Jezebel was a cunning and ruthless woman, but in twenty-two years of Ahab's rule, the two years that followed of her son Ahaziah's rule, and then the twelve years that followed during her son Joram's reign, these are only the two negative stories about her - that she protected the priests of Ba'al and persecuted those of the LORD, and that that she had Naboth killed.

Wore Too Much Makeup?

The third story is that when Jehu, who killed both her son, King Joram, and Ahaziah, King of Judah (in ambush after asking for a parley), came into the city of Jezreel, Jezebel "painted her eyes and adorned her head." Some have spun this as harlotry and an attempt to seduce her son's murderer. (Really? When if she had become queen at fourteen years old she still had to be fifty or older?) Others see it more as a display of royal pride and dignity, akin to Benjamin Guggenheim dressing in his tux in the Titanic's final hours, so as to go down like a gentleman. She knew she too was about to be killed, but she was not the type to cringe and beg for mercy.

In any event, some of Jehu's cohorts threw her body out of the window, he and his company trampled her body with their horses, and went in to eat and drink. (This is the upstanding guy who violated a parley and shot both Joram and Ahaziah in the back, according to 2 Kings 9.)

Where do the stories of Jezebel come from? In the end, history is told by the winners - or those whose writings have survived.

Elijah Was The Donald Trump of the Old Testament

You can barely turn a page without seeing the name Elijah plastered onto something or given credit for some mighty act of bravery. He is always portrayed in a heroic, righteous way, and was the top prophet of the LORD [according to himself].

Elijah pitted himself directly against Jezebel, and though he won a few battles, for the most part he lost the war, often fleeing the country or hiding out in caves.

A power struggle. And a woman was winning?! Intolerable. Later, his protege Elisha took up both Elijah's mantle and his grudges, including the one(s) against Jezebel. You will not be surprised to learn that Elisha also is credited with many miracles (as well as setting the bears to tear the boys into bits for teasing him).

Jezebel Was My Kind of Slut

Common Jezebel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Frankly, I take the bad-mouthing against Jezebel by Elijah and Elisha to be more like a recommendation; they are what's known in the writing craft as "unreliable narrators." In our current age we have talk radio "prophets" and other pundits who also rant and seethe over strong women. Their derogatory language and twisting of facts speaks more to their own fears and questionable manhood, than it does to the character of the women they attack.

Jezebel may not have been all sweetness and light; she may in fact have had blood of innocent people on her hands. She also held firm to her personal beliefs, took action to get what she wanted for her husband (at a time when he was sulking like a two year old), raised as least two sons to be Kings, and met a horrific death with courage and dignity. Despite centuries-old efforts to smear her reputation, hints of the real Jezebel shine through, and I believe that's why most women do not consider it an insult to be called a "Jezebel."

Future Slut of the Month Candidates:

Mae West
Joan of Kent
Cleopatra
Sandra Fluke
Morgan le Fey
Aspasia
Madonna
Liz Taylor
Dorothy Parker
Kassandra of Troy
Tullia d'Aragona
Marie Antoinette
Lillie Langtry
Anne Boleyn
Eleanor Roosevelt
Rhiannon
Shelley Winters
Mary, Queen of Scots
"Klondike Kate" Rockwell
Catherine de Medici
Lucrezia Borgia
Umrao Jaan
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Theodora (wife of Emperor Justinian of the Byzantine Empire)
Jeanne d'Arc
Margaret Sanger
Hwang Jin-i
Coco Chanel
Sappho
Joan of Kent
Catherine the Great
the "Unsinkable" Molly Brown
Eva Perón
Susan B. Anthony
Diana, Princess of Wales
Anaïs Nin (coming next month!)
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Mata Hari
Malala Yousafzai

What do you think of Jezebel? Do you think she was evil?
Who's your favorite slut?

Vote for one on this list, or name another slut to be added to it.

The Deeper Horror of the Go Daddy Kiss

2013-02-25T05:00:00.000-08:00

This commercial made me feel deeply ashamed of my own hypocrisy.

I admit it. I gagged.

My full range of knowledge about these two actors is that she is what we consider traditionally beautiful, and he is... not.

Oh, and that they both possess bodies capable of sitting in chairs. I also deduced they both have lips. And they certainly have tongues.

Are they nice people?

Smart, funny? Is there any reason they couldn't be a couple? They're of similar age, they might share endless common interests, like anime, concern about genetically modified foods, and a groupie-level fascination with 80's hair bands like Dokken.

Okay, I admit - I am the one with a Dokken obsession.
Unchain the night, baby!

For all I know, Jesse Heiman (the glasses guy) has a tongue that won't quit and is packing a pecker a p0rn star would envy.

Yet to judge from the internet buzz, I was not the only one making the Beyoncé face.

via msn, where there are more hilarious Beyoncé face memes.

So why did I - why did we - react that way?

I am not a traditionally beautiful woman

English: George Clooney at the 2009 Venice Film Festival (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Though occasionally I am smokin' hot, there are other times I look like the dog's breakfast. Generally I fall somewhere in between - my face doesn't scare small children, but I ain't causing traffic accidents when I walk down the street.

I certainly don't want people to sneer at me as unworthy to be paired with a sexy guy (should George Clooney become available), based purely on my iffy looks. I know that I am much more than appears on the surface. Hey, I got skillz.

I've dated men of all different sizes, shapes, and skin tones. Plus I am very ~~inquisitive~~ nosy and people tell me things. So I can testify, many men (and women) who'd never grace a romance cover are amazing in bed, and some men who are hotties on the outside... Let's just say they have their shortcomings.

(Not implying that about you, George. But if you feel compelled to give me a demonstration, we could work something out.)

I'd like to blame society

You know, those people over there, not me - for being judgmental about people based solely on outward appearance. Reality: I am judgmental about appearances. Despite all I know on an intellectual level, despite my personal experiences and time-tested method of asking around, despite my resentment of people who might look at me and make superficial judgments, I myself am judgmental.

I may not go all Beyoncé face in public. When I see a "10" walking down the street with a "2," I may be able to zip my lips and not make a derogatory comment. But inside, that's my first, gut reaction.

I really, really don't like this about myself, and want to change my internal settings somehow, just as I'd like to reset my taste buds to remember kale as irresistibly delicious and chocolate as something nasty to be avoided.

They say the first step is awareness

for solving any problem. So, okay, I'm aware I'm a hypocrite. I'm also very conscious of being part of a society with a twisted concept of beauty that influences girls, boys, men and women to starve themselves, sometimes to death, to try to achieve that "perfect" outward appearance. To surgically add breasts, pecs, and fake butts, and suck out fat from other areas. Which sometimes works and other times leaves the recipient looking like a freak show exhibit.

Oddly, I find I don't feel as judgmental on women (and men) who have plastic surgery, the facelifts, the tummy tucks, the Botox in the forehead, because I "get" the pressure of needing to feel young and sexy.

I've thought about trying to have my brain deprogrammed, but since it's awash in magazine ads and TV commercials telling us all that beauty = XYZ, any brainwashing might not stick. Besides, if it did stick, I might lose my crushes on Don Dokken and George Clooney, and my lack of patronage could singlehandedly crash the chocolate industry.

I guess I'll just have to work on not getting squicked out by public couples like Bar Refaeli and Jesse Heiman. (Though as a side note, the public tonsil-swallowing? Nobody wants to see that.) I will keep writing couples into my fiction work where the characters are not Cosmo Cover-ready, yet are sexy anyway. I will try to be aware of my prejudices, and supportive of people regardless of their appearance.

Have you ever felt judged harshly for being with a partner

who was much more or less attractive than you?

Do you find yourself put off by couples who appear physically mismatched?

If so, how do you deal with it?

Purging the Dreaded File Cabinet

2013-02-21T05:00:00.000-08:00

So a couple of months ago, I was irritatingly smug about cleaning my desk. Cleaning my desk was an excellent thing, truly, but the thing is, only a few feet away lurked...

The Dreaded File Cabinet. <insert "da-da-doom" creepy sound effect here>

You see, I bought this very lovely file cabinet for my office, lo these several years ago. Problem: rail guides in top drawer did not allow for hanging file folders, because they were not drilled in the right place. The drawer itself glided in and out beautifully, but not anything inside the drawer.

So, because I couldn't use hanging file folders in it, I simply piled old notebooks and manila folders and three ring binders and wire-bound notebooks and paperclipped copies of critiqued short stories that I needed to edit and magazines on writing and all kinds of crap into the top drawer. And because it just felt wrong to make the bottom drawer my "working" drawer, I simply filed various bullshit in the second drawer, like my sixth grade report card and travel brochures for the Kern River.

Just FYI, one of my earliest novels still retains the pin-fed paper guides on each side.

In a working human body, you consume food, and excrete waste. If you don't get rid of the crap, you will reach a point where you not only feel terrible, but can't function.

My writing had become constipated.

Time for a high colonic.

I realized that the issue of the top rails not functioning was not a Decree from on High. I could, in fact, drill new holes and move the rails, so that they worked. I was a little nervous, because I was sure I was gonna drill right through and mess up the aesthetic front of the cabinet, but I - didn't.

Woo-hoo, me! *swaggers and blows sawdust off drill bit* Look out, Builder Bob, there's a new carpenter in... No, not really. I just got lucky.

So I made an Office Depot run (does anyone else squee whenever you are forced to make a trip to an office supply store?) and bought box-bottom hanging file folders, and set up a section for each novel. Outline/synopsis, research docs, character studies, working drafts. Query Letter. Rejections folder. Book Contracts (none yet, but I'm keepin' hope alive).

I had been collecting tidbits about locations, from NoHo to the RenFaire to Griffith Park and had already set up file folders containing notes, magazine articles, etc. about each one. I moved those to the front, since I ~~might~~ will want to use them for more than one novel.

A full 25% of my top file drawer is now set aside for short stories, on most of which I need to actually review the crit notes and revise. And now I can.

My Hoard of Great (but ancient) Writers' Magazines? Bye-bye.

In theory, I was planning to go through each magazine, xerox the best articles, and put them into a three-ring binder, neatly organized with tabs. In reality? Ain't happened in the last 20 years, ain't gonna happen.

But I did keep about 50 really, really good articles, both from traditional magazines, and the 'Net, that I thought were worth revisiting. Here's how I organized them.

Section One:

Genre Glossary (from Dystopian to Steampunk to Magical Realism to Cozy Mystery)
Outlining
Synopses
On Learning/Writing Style (Visual, Auditory, Tactile)
Characters (main)
Characters (secondary)
POV (Point of View)
Staying Motivated/Writers' Block
Craft Exercises
Vocabulary and Cliches, Duplicate Phrases

All my great articles, mid-organization

(My writing style is to figure out everything out about my characters, first, down to whether they're a fan of broccoli or not, and worry about plot later. You may go at it in the opposite direction: plot first, characters second. )

Section Two

Plotting
Dialogue & Dialogue Tags
Openings Pages
Hooks
Ending Pages
When to Tell, When to Show
Common Problems
Writing Humor
Writing Romance
On Prologues
Editing

Section Three

On Writers Groups
On Agents (Why You do/don't want one, How to tell a good one)
Queries
Pitching
Market Research
On Rejection
Book Proposals
Publishing Contracts
On Self-Publishing

All the articles neatly organized. Yeah, file folders!

My plan is that now that my articles are in an order that makes sense to me, it will be easier to review the pieces I need when I get stuck in some area, or to quickly add a new article I love. I still think a three-ring notebook would be a great idea, in theory...

Scribbling 'R Us

I tend to jot down notes on whatever notebook I am carrying around with me at the time. And, of course, I continually bought lots and lots of new notebooks, because you can really only record fresh new ideas in a fresh new notebook.

If there was any actual value to a barely consumed wire-bound notebook, I would now be rich. But what I have done is tear out all those nuggets of what I thought were brilliant ideas *snort* and put them in one file folder, to be gone through... soon. While the notebooks are now freed up for new ideas, as I have become less finicky about only using virgin notebooks in my ~~old age~~ prime of life.

Oh, dear sweet sentimental youth, I found a wire-bound notebook with a carousel horse on the cover.

Not that there's anything wrong with carousel horses. Or dolphins. Or big-eyed teddy bears.

It's just that I'm not 17 anymore.

I have also noticed that my handwriting has vastly changed over the years, morphing from "Tortured-curlique" to "Screw-it- I-have-better-things-to-do" style.

Good thing I have a heavy-duty shredder.

Aaah. I feel relieved.

Cleansed, even.

And I didn't even need to spray air freshener.

True, it did take most of the day (though I feared it would take even longer than that). I still have to look at all my scribbled notes - you never know, might be gold in them thar hills!

I also found a recipe I'd been looking for. Seeing as it involves major quantities of shredded hash browns and cheese, this may not be a good thing.

My hands are beat all to hell - deep paper/file folder cuts, shallow cuts, dry and ashy.

The cat went to bed without me.

But I have a deep sense of satisfaction. And a couple dozen half-fresh notebooks ready to record new ideas.

I'm starting with the carousel horse one.

When was the last time you purged a file cabinet?

Did you find anything surprising there?
Do you keep articles on writing? Any tips on organizing them?

Rumor Has It...

2013-02-18T05:00:00.000-08:00

Doesn't that short phrase perk your ears up? It sure does mine.

What surprises me, is that I recently checked out two books in the library, two very different books, one chosen for my reading group, and the other at random, and in both books the power of rumor in a small town makes up a big part of the plot.

Stones from the River, by Ursula Hegi, published in 1994, is an epic novel set in the fictional town of Burgdorf, Germany, beginning in 1914 and concluding in 1952. It's about 530 pages, dense pages, 5 x 8 book size pages.

Kristan Higgins' Catch of the Day, published in 2007 is a wicked funny, contemporary romance, a trade paperback of under 400 pages, set in fictional Gideon's Cove, Maine, and covers the course of one year.

While there is no population stated for Burgdorf, Gideon's Cove is 1,407; Burgdorf feels about the same size. Both lead characters (Trudi and Maggie) are in charge of a town gathering spot; Trudi runs (with her father) the town's pay-library; Maggie runs (inherited from her grandfather) the town's only diner. Both women are Catholic and the church is a fairly significant part of their lives and of the town's events. Trudi looks for a date in the classified ads of the newspaper; Maggie looks at online dating sites.

So how do these books differ?

In Stones from the River, there are Nazis. (Then again in Catch of the Day, there's Mrs. Plutarski, the priest's secretary, who comes off as something of a Nazi.)

Trudi is a Zwerg, a dwarf. This makes her a bit of an outsider, and what makes matters worse, her mother is crazy. As in, going to church and taking off all her clothes for the angels, crazy. Then she dies before Trudi is even four years old. Trudi learns to collect stories, and takes pride in retelling them, reshaping them, making them her own. She also has a touch of prescience.

The Jewish people in Burgdorf are an integral part of the town, initially. But slowly, over the course of years, they are first subtly demonized. There are the German people, and there are the Jews, Us and Them. After the feeling of separation is created, after people have come to tolerate the Jews being insulted, cheated, stones thrown at their windows, they may have their fine houses and businesses taken away. If a Jewish person is thriving while the rest of Germany is in recession, it's easy enough to play on the resentment of the neighbors. Surely those things couldn't have been honestly earned. Once moved to the outskirts of town, they are then moved to other towns, and finally the "work camps." Hegi does a powerful job of portraying how such a horror can come about. At first, rather than protesting their mistreatment, many of the Jewish people themselves believe that if they just keep a low profile, this too shall pass. By the time the harassment gets serious, it is also taken for granted. Those who protest and speak up to defend their neighbors, are also jailed and harassed.

I found this part of the story fascinating. I found Trudi herself sometimes admirable, generally interesting, and other times not very likable. In the beginning, when she believes that if she hangs from her arms, it will stretch her out and she will grow, I felt very sorry for her, and was moved by her experience of meeting another Zwerg, a beautiful and talented woman named Pia who was comfortable in her own skin. Then there's the search for a boyfriend or lover, because like any girl, she wants to be kissed, and loved. Trudi is definitely a complex, but not comfortable character. She uses rumors - collecting them, spreading them - to get back at those who've hurt her, or who've persecuted their Jewish neighbors.

I think about 90% of the book is told from Trudi's point of view, including the first third. The early chapters move slowly, and several readers in my book group gave up right there. As Trudi's voice becomes older, it becomes much more compelling. The end, on the other hand, is a little choppy, as if the author realized how incredibly long the book was already, and felt the need to wind it up quickly. All in all, this is an excellent book, rich in description, and well worth the read.

***

Cover of Catch Of The Day

Maggie, in Catch of the Day, is the unmarried half of identical twins. Her sister Christy has a great husband, a beautiful baby, and a very nice house. Maggie is happy for her sister, but doesn't see why she can't have the same thing for herself. Then Tim O'Halloran comes into the diner: light brown hair, green eyes, broad shoulders, beautiful hands, and an Irish brogue. She falls in instant crush, and the only thing missing is what the man does for a living, because as he was telling her, there was a hubbub in the diner, and she missed that part of their conversation. She felt too embarrassed to ask him to repeat it, but that's okay, she'll be seeing him in church on Sunday.

You guessed it, it's Father Tim. Unfortunately, Maggie is the kind of woman who finds it hard to keep a secret, so half the people in the pews know all about her hot Irishman, and turn to stare at her as the new priest appears at the altar and introduces himself. The book is light, hilariously funny, as Maggie gets into one dating scrape after another, not always her fault. She owns and runs the diner, to her mother's vast disapproval, she also owns a small house in which she rents an apartment to a 91-year-old widow, to whom she brings food, watches movies with, and cuts bunion pads for. Maggie also babysits her baby niece one night a week, and does Meals on Wheels one night a week.

Her hero, besides her dog, Colonel, is Malone, the lobsterman who berths his boat next to her brother's. Malone is almost a caricature of a Maine lobsterman. Nobody even knows the man's first name. In this story, Maggie manages to generate and spread rumors that hurt not only herself, but the man she's fallen for, and her friends.

Although I really like Higgins' engaging voice, and adore her sense of humor, I found it a little hard to read it first, because it's written in first person, present tense. "I ask, I say, I smile, I stand, my mouth drops open…" I also wanted a little more emotional connection and conversation between Malone and Maggie. I felt Maggie was doing too much work trying to build a relationship out of great sex, but in the end it all worked out. (This is not the case in real life, boys and girls.)

Have you read either of these books?

Have rumors ever gotten you in trouble?

Would people call you a good gossip, or a good secret-keeper?

The Only One with Explicit Sex?

2013-02-15T05:00:00.000-08:00

I belong to a terrific writers' organization, RWA (Romance Writers of America) and an extremely kick-ass, prolific chapter, LARA (Los Angeles Romance Authors). Many, many members of our chapter are best-selling authors, and in the almost two years I've been a member, several have even become personal friends.

So when the decision was announced we were putting together a short story anthology, Five Minute Love Stories, I was like, yippee, I'll write a story for it. Maybe they'll even take it.

Chellesie B. Dancer, author of Power Play, which beats 50 Shades like a buggy whip, in both cover and hot smexy content, raised her hand. "Is there a limit to the heat level?"

"Any heat level would be fine," said amazing anthology wrangler Kathy Bennett, author of the best-selling A Dozen Deadly Roses.

A delighted murmur went through the room.

Hmmm, I thought. I guess the trend will be to go super-hot. Can I even write a super-sexy romance in 1500 words or less?

I felt scared. I felt intimidated. I felt clueless.

And then one day, I was riding the spastic elevator to my day job, and I was ambushed by a very naughty idea.

So I wrote it.

And they took it.

And now, along with Kathleen Cadman, Leigh Court, Samanthe Beck, Robin Bielman, Debbie Decker, Chellesie B. Dancer, Robert Hecker, Kristin Elizabeth, Janie Emaus, Debra Kristi, Brenna Johns, Scarlett Llewyllyn, Christine London, Brenda Scott Royce, Veronica Scott, Laura Sheehan and Lisa Weseman, my little story is "out there," available for purchase.

Only, as it turned out, among all these fabulous authors, many who write erotic scenes so hot I must read them with my Ove-Gloves on, mine was the only story that required a warning for containing explicit sexual material.

Awkward.

You know, like when you're at the roller rink doing the Hokey Pokey, and everybody does the Hokey-Pokey to the left and you go to the right? But you're still somewhat happy and proud because at least you didn't faceplant?

That would be me.

Explicit sex (scenes) may not be to your taste.

You might love my story, you might hate it, you might feel meh about it. But I hope you'll drop a few bucks for Five Minute Love Stories, because besides Emergency Stop, the anthology is chock full of awesome. Some of the stories also boast a fair amount of steam, while others are sweet as a cupcake.

I'm not going to tell which title goes with which story or theme (read 'em and find out), but I will tell you, we've got:

Egyptian time-traveling heroes
Heroines falling... falling in love, too.
Red, white and blue heroes
Librarians
Matchmaking dogs
British lords
American Actresses
Widowers studying up on their romance novels
Demons
Angels
Single Parents
Business Travelers with luggage issues
Protective and loyal brothers
Tag-along sisters
Cake decorators
Nephilim
Long lost loves
Honeymooners
Suffragettes
Giraffes
Earls
Music Teachers
Widows
Traffic School
Sleepwalkers
Doctors
Long married partners
Baristas
Divorcees
Teenage time travelers
Babies born on the 405

Who could ask for anything more? Conveniently sized for sampling on lunch, break, or whenever you need a quickie... love story, that is.

As a sidenote: The editors advised me the word "fapalicious" might be confusing. I kept it anyway. From Urban Dictionary:

The definition of something or someone so irresistible, that you cannot help but feel the urge to masturbate.
Did you see the tight ass on that lady? She's definitely fapalicious.

Five Minute Love Stories can also be purchased through B & N for your Nook, and via Smashwords. And on Amazon, did I mention (like 8 billion times)?

We know you have other anthologies for your reading pleasure, and we appreciate your choosing to enjoy Five Minute Love Stories. Have a ~~safe flight~~ fun read.

Misery, Romance's Essential Ingredient

2013-02-12T05:00:00.000-08:00

Romeo and Juliet (1968 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Or, if not misery, then at the very least, Serious Conflict.

It makes everything in romance better, like baking with vanilla.

Don't believe me? When was the last time you were enthralled by this romantic story:

Once upon a time, two happy, well-adjusted people of similar and appropriate age met and fell in love. Their loving, supportive families and communities couldn't do enough to lend support to the new couple, who shared the same values, goals, religious beliefs, and economic class status. After a dating period that was neither too short nor too long [hey, wake up! I see you nodding off] they married and lived happily ever after.

We want to live that story. We don't want to read or watch that, because as a story, it's boring.

Lovers Against The Whole World

We want class barriers, family feuds, forbidden love. We want insurmountable odds the couple must battle to overcome to be together, and even if they fail in the end, à la Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story's Tony & Maria, or Titanic's Rose and Jack, at least they got to be together for those few, blissful hours. *wipes away a tear*

In some ways, doomed romances are even better than those that are fulfilled, because we never have to witness the inevitable bickering: It's your turn to get up with the baby; Have you seen my keys?; My god, what is that smell?

We don't have to watch Romeo's hairline recede or Julie's breasts sag.

Mind you, even if the author doesn't kill off one (or both) of the lovers, it's usually better if s/he ends the story while the passion is still hot and before tedium sets in.

Love As A Black Hole

Then there's the "pull" of two people with incredible chemistry who fight their attraction all the way, not wanting to be in love with each other. But, like a black hole, we know they're going to to get sucked in eventually. That's the fun of it; we see it, even if the characters don't.

Moonlighting's Maddie (Cybil Shepherd) and Dave (Bruce Willis - speaking of receding hairlines). Romancing the Stone's Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) and Jack Colton (Michael Douglas).

And of course, Gone With The Wind's Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler. That incredible kiss while Atlanta wasn't the only thing burning:

He was kissing her now and his mustache tickled her mouth, kissing her with slow, hot lips that were as leisurely as though he had the whole night before him. Charles had never kissed her like this. Never had the kisses of the Tarleton and Calvert boys made her go hot and cold and shaky like this. He bent her body backward and his lips traveled down her throat to where the cameo fastened her basque...

Oh, my! *fanning self with hand*

Gentlemen (and ladies), that is how to kiss, as if nothing else is going on, even if the whole world is exploding around you, and your woman thinks she's in love with someone else.

Three's Not Always A Crowd

Love triangles take the best elements of forbidden love and the irresistible attraction, and if done right, we still root for the lovers, even though by society's rules we should despise them. In the myths and legends of King Arthur, we have Queen Guinevere and Lancelot (yes, I know, much of this was layered on later). In real life, we had aging Catherine of Aragon, her husband of 18 years, Henry VIII, and innocent victim? scheming interloper? Anne Boleyn.

However she initially felt about him - it can be quite dangerous to scorn a King's affection - there is no question that Henry was besotted by Anne:

"...I would you were in mine arms, or I in yours, for I think it long since I kissed you."

King Henry and Anne Boleyn Deer shooting in Windsor Forest (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The thrill of the hunt during the thrill of the hunt

Henry was willing to turn his kingdom upside down for her, to break with the Pope, a kind of breathtaking passion that sounds quite romantic - on paper. Later, he was also passionate enough, in a different direction, to have Anne's head chopped off. In real life, generally a husband doesn't have the power to have his spouse legally executed when he's sick of her, but tragically, too many women (and some men) are killed by their spouses and lovers.

Back to GWTW - there was the Scarlett-Ashley-Melanie triangle, plus the Ashley-Scarlett-Rhett triangle. Triangles all over the place, like Southern-fried geometry.

Then there was Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester, and (unbeknownst to Jane) crazy Mrs. Rochester chained up in the attic.

Mad, Mad Love

Juana la Loca via Wikimedia

Another scenario that makes for an exciting story is when one member of the couple or triangle is actually, diagnosably, not right in the head. In Jane Eyre, Mr Rochester couldn't be with Jane because of Mrs. Rochester - only nobody except Mr. R and Mrs. R's keeper/bodyguard knows that Mrs. R is still alive. Whether you think that Mr. R is a cad for not telling Jane about Mrs. R., or about trying for a more humane arrangement for the woman than chaining her in the attic, or a hero for not accidentally-on-purpose slipping her a little too much laudanum, her presence certainly adds a certain spice to the love affair.

What happens when you fall in love with someone and s/he goes insane (possibly gets PTSD following a major trauma, like being deployed overseas), or becomes alcohol or drug-addicted? (When A Man Loves A Woman.) This can make for a great story.

Don't go too far, though. In Real Life, Joanna of Castile (aka Juana la Loca) was so deeply in love with her husband Philip the Handsome that after he died, she used to travel with his coffin, and regularly drag his decaying corpse out of the box to caress and kiss it. Girlfriend, unless you are mated to a vampire and everybody knows this, that whole necrophilia thing is gonna squick people out.

Killing Me Not So Softly

One big genre in romance is the suspense/thriller genre. Few things throw people together as quickly and urgently as somebody shooting at them. To put it crudely, if they're imminent danger of dying, the adrenalin gets flowing, and many people want one last f*ck before they die. *raises hand guiltily*

If your characters do get shot or stabbed or blown up, make sure you don't actually blow them into too many pieces. Remember: life-threatening wounds (followed by mind-blowing sex within a totally unrealistic time frame) = excellent drama. Actual death of main character = mood (and plot) killer.

Unless it comes at the very end, after we've already had a satisfying consummation, à la R & J, or Titanic.

Back to the "But He's a Muslim Jet, and She's a Wiccan Shark" Thing

When I was a little girl, Meredith Baxter and David Birney starred in a TV show called Bridget Loves Bernie, about a wealthy Catholic woman in love with a poor Jewish man, and the difficulties that ensued, because the religion issue, at the time, was huge. From Wikipedia:

With a primetime slot between All in the Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Saturday nights, the situation comedy was #5 in the ratings among all shows for that television season and obtained a 24.2 rating, tying with The NBC Sunday Mystery Movie. Nevertheless, CBS executives decided to cancel the show in response to hate mail from viewers who objected to the inter-religious marriage depicted on the series. It was the highest-rated television program ever to be canceled after only one season.

The stars fell in love themselves, married in 1974, and had three kids together. After divorcing in 1989, Baxter remarried and re-divorced. Most recently, Bridget (Meredith Baxter) has announced that now she loves Nancy, another woman, and as far as I can tell, nobody has batted an eye. I also find it interesting that nobody sent hate mail about the rich marries poor aspect of B Loves B, something that isn't so easy to manage in Real Life.

At the same time as BLB premiered, there were still places in the United States where a person of Caucasian descent could not legally marry a person of African-American descent. Much as today, there are few states where men can marry men, or women can marry women, and even in states where it is legal, it's not yet legal for income tax purposes. I don't think anyone doubts that within the next decade, or at the longest, two decades, "gay marriage" will be legal everywhere in the US.

While there are adoptable children languishing in foster homes, and elderly couples on their second, third (fourth or more) marriages, the whole "but in nature these couples can't reproduce" argument goes flying out the window.

Mississippi Masala (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Still, marriage and couplehood goes deeper than a compatible shade on the Pantone color chart or the way one's plumbing is assembled. Putting aside the whole "Grandma would shit a brick" or "Dad will hit the ceiling," or that "the neighbors will whisper" issue, it is a great challenge to become a couple with someone of a completely different cultural background.

Mix It Up, indeed.

Mississippi Masala dealt with a romance between an Indian-American woman (originally from Uganda) and an African-American man from Mississippi. Who "owns" the truest African cultural heritage in that situation?

While the whole "Us Against the World" Situation can push a couple together, what if the whole world isn't pushing back, but quietly minding its own beeswax? The dynamic, both for a storyteller, and for someone trying to live the life, is to find and express new ways to understand the inner conflict between two people who want to be together, but are pulled apart by internal, rather than external forces.

Is That My Mother On The Phone?

What if the love triangle isn't between a man and two romantic interests, but between his wife and his mother? That's the premise of Everybody Loves Raymond, where there's a married man still a bit too enmeshed with Mommy Dearest (who just happens to live across the street). It could just as easily be the wife who is still closer to her mother than her new mate, or closer to her daddy, or her friend from elementary school.

Wandering Back to the Main Point

If we want an engaging romance - to read, watch, listen to - we need Misery, aka Conflict. We do not want to eavesdrop on endless pages of goo-goo ga-ga "I love you more," vs."No, I love you more, my Cinnamon Applesauce Surprise." We need some of that, but mostly, we want the angst, the misery, the "OMG, these people belong together but there's no way they can ever make it work." And then, somehow, the writer makes it work.

That's the satisfaction of True Love. When despite all the odds, our couple gets together anyway.

Who's your favorite fictional (or real-life) couple? Why?

(Besides you & your spouse, you don't want me to get all stabby.)

Slut of the Month: Peggy Lee

2013-02-04T05:00:00.000-08:00


via Peggy Lee.com

Nobody could sing a song like Miss Peggy Lee, though many have tried.

Born Norma Delores Egstrom in North Dakota in 1920, Peggy Lee endured something that makes-or-breaks many women, the loss of her mother at an early age, and an absent/uncaring father. According to Wikipedia:

Her mother died when Lee was just four years old.^[3] Afterward, her father married Min Schaumber, who treated her with great cruelty while her alcoholic father did little to stop it.^[4] As a result, she developed her musical talent and took several part-time jobs so that she could be away from home.

When the Crowds Were Loud, She Went Soft

From the official Peggy Lee site:

It was at the Doll House in Palm Springs, California that Peggy Lee first developed the soft and "cool" style that has become her trademark. Unable to shout above the clamor of the Doll House audience, Miss Lee tried to snare its attention by lowering her voice. The softer she sang the quieter the audience became. She has never forgotten the secret, and it has given her style its distinctive combination of the delicate and the driving, the husky and the purringly seductive. One of the members of the Doll House audience was Frank Bering, the owner of Chicago’s Ambassador West Hotel, who invited her to sing in his establishment’s Buttery Room.

Benny Goodman discovered Peggy Lee’s vocalizing in the Buttery Room at a time when he was looking for a replacement for Helen Forrest. Miss Lee joined Goodman’s band in July, 1941, when the band was at the height of its popularity, and for over two years she toured the United States with the most famous swing outfit of the day, playing hotel engagements, college proms, theater dates, and radio programs.

Peggy Lee wrote music for films, acted, and created conceptual records albums - which encompassed jazz, chamber pop, art songs, and poetry. From Joel Siegel's 1998 review of Miss Peggy Lee:

As The Penguin Encyclopedia of Popular Music observes, "Her smoky, laid-back sexuality had something teasingly neurotic about it, vulnerable but also untouchable in the end." Like her label-mates Frank Sinatra and Nat Cole, she achieved and sustained vast popularity without compromising her refined musical principles. She assembled a wide-ranging repertoire – ballads, swing and Latin tunes, novelty numbers – and was one of the few white singers capable of interpreting black music without condescension, introducing bluesy songs previously recorded by Little Willie John, Joe Williams and Ray Charles to mainstream listeners. Her infallible rhythmic instincts served her well at all tempos, and her chameleonlike ability to shift character from song to song enabled her to communicate a rainbow of emotions.

She was nominated for 12 Grammies, ironically winning only two for Is That All There Is? (She was also given a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995.)

Yes, She Liked Men

Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee
(Photo credit: classic film scans)

Married four times, clearly the title of her 1959 album I Like Men! was quite true to life. She also admits (brags?) of numerous affairs in her autobiography.

"I learned courage from Buddha, Jesus, Lincoln, and Mr. Cary Grant," she said.

And She Inspired Miss Piggy

Bonnie Erickson in an interview with Smithsonian Magazine:

My mother used to live in North Dakota where Peggy Lee sang on the local radio station before she became a famous jazz singer. When I first created Miss Piggy I called her Miss Piggy Lee—as both a joke and an homage. Peggy Lee was a very independent woman, and Piggy certainly is the same. But as Piggy's fame began to grow, nobody wanted to upset Peggy Lee, especially because we admired her work. So, the Muppet's name was shortened to Miss Piggy.

In honor of Valentines' Day, coming up, I must share this clip from my favorite romantic movie.

Peggy Lee didn't just sing the tune, but actually wrote the lyrics. (She also supplied the voices of the Siamese cats, and "Darling," in addition to the female dog, "Peg," clearly modeled after her persona.)

Later, when Disney discovered this cool new technology called videotape and began making a boatload of money by selling their back catalogs in videotape format, they figured no way Peggy Lee and their other musicians were entitled to share in the profits. After all, they hadn't signed contracts that included videotape, had they?

Disney Messed With the Wrong Bitch

Miss Peggy Lee, and after a long court battle, the courts, saw it very differently. Without her efforts, and the precedent setting court case, many recording and other artists who signed contracts in the days before videotape, DVR, live streaming (and whatever comes next) would not be receiving the royalties they do on works from classic works like Lady and the Tramp.

What A Dame!

In her seventies, despite polymelitis rheumatosis that put her in a wheelchair, a broken pelvis, diabetes, and (rumors of) heavy drinking, Peggy Lee was still giving sell-out stage performances. Writing. Painting pictures.

Miss Peggy Lee died in 2002 at the age of 82.

Future Slut of the Month Candidates:

Mae West
Joan of Kent
Cleopatra
Sandra Fluke
Morgan le Fey
Aspasia
Madonna
Liz Taylor
Dorothy Parker
Kassandra of Troy
Tullia d'Aragona
Marie Antoinette
Lillie Langtry
Anne Boleyn
Eleanor Roosevelt
Shelley Winters
Mary, Queen of Scots
"Klondike Kate" Rockwell
Catherine de Medici
Jezebel
Lucrezia Borgia
Umrao Jaan
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Theodora (wife of Emperor Justinian of the Byzantine Empire)
Jeanne d'Arc
Margaret Sanger
Hwang Jin-i
Coco Chanel
Sappho
Joan of Kent
Catherine the Great
the "Unsinkable" Molly Brown
Eva Perón
Susan B. Anthony
Diana, Princess of Wales
Anaïs Nin
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Mata Hari
Malala Yousafzai

Who's your favorite slut?

Vote for one on this list, or name another slut to be added to it.

And Red All Over #goredforwomen

2013-02-01T05:00:00.000-08:00

That's the punchline to more than a few jokes. It's also the theme of Go Red for Women.

I admit, I usually intend to participate in this event, and I also usually miss it.

Because I'm usually busy busy busy, ya know? Besides, heart disease is for old people, it's something that affects men, not women, and I don't have to worry if I don't have any symptoms, right?

All myths. Heart disease claims the lives of one in three women, while only one in thirty-one dies of breast cancer in a year.

Would you even recognize the signs of a heart attack? (Hint: they can be very different from the way they're portrayed in the movies, or experienced by men.) Take a couple minutes and watch this clip.

Sure, "we all gotta go sometime," but do you really want to go in a stupid, preventable way? I don't.

Now is the time to find out what your risk is. (I recently had a physical, and while my outlook is great in some areas, there's definitely room for improvement.)

The Heart Truth® is a national awareness campaign for women about heart disease sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The Red Dress®, introduced by the NHLBI in 2002, is the national symbol for women and heart disease awareness. Visit www.hearttruth.gov for information on women and heart disease. ®, TM The Heart Truth, its logo and The Red Dress are trademarks of HHS. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Take up regular exercise - it doesn't have to be boring, nor hugundously expensive, nor hard on your joints. "The practice of yoga is known to improve many risk factors for heart disease including high blood pressure, high cholesterol, hardening of the arteries, and stress and inflammation in the body," saith this doctor in this article. People tried to talk me into yoga for years, and I pooh-poohed it; now it's the one exercise I get in almost every day. I feel so much better when I've done my morning yoga.

Consider donating money, or time, or simply spreading the word. Take a CPR class.

But if you do nothing else, learn the signs of a heart attack in women. It could save your life, or that of someone you love.

Are you wearing red today?
This month for Valentines' Day, show your love to you,
by taking good care of yourself .

Babies Come From Armpits & Other Sex Myths

2013-01-24T05:00:00.000-08:00

crazy armpit-smelling friends
(Photo credit: jekert gwapo)
Who's having a baby?

In a recent edition of Newsweek, one Chinese woman said that her mother led her to believe that babies come from a woman's armpit.

Anybody else hear the interesting tale about "the birds and the bees"? (Neither of which reproduce anything like the way mammals do, so I am puzzled how that phrase ever came about.)

I had a fairly decent idea of "how things worked" in the sex department, but one thing I didn't know was that sperm comes with an expiration date of 2-3 days, tops. As a teenager, I believed that once you had sex, the sperm just hung out in your uterus, like Jaws, swimming, waiting, hungry for that helpless ovum to come floating along...

For years I lived in fear of sperm. And sharks.

Plus I found the mere existence of sperm whales absolutely terrifying.

A pregnant woman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Recently I saw a (presumably adult) person insist that pregnant women carry babies "in their stomachs." No, dude, that is where women carry food.

Technically, the external part on a pregnant woman that sticks out is her belly. The stomach, lungs, and liver are internal organs which don't hold babies. Ever. (Well, technically, the stomach could hold a baby, if the baby had been eaten, but that's not pregnancy, that's cannibalism.) The uterus is the internal organ which may carry babies, or an IUD, spare change, those missing car keys...

Okay, the last two are incorrect. Though there are stories of women who have inserted unusual objects into their uteri, in hopes these objects would function as birth control devices.

And you really don't want to know about the objects people insert into their own or a partner's rectum as part of their sex play. (Or maybe you do, in which case, click this link.)

We've all heard other myths - babies are found under cabbage leaves (why not lettuce leaves, like a nice Romaine?) or brought by the stork.

(It's a myth that) you can't get pregnant during sex if:

It's your first time
You douche with a warm Coca Cola afterwards. (Actually, Coke is a very, very weak spermicide, but some of those swimmers are like Michael Phelps, they're already out of range. And the Coke douche could give you a raging yeast infection.)
You do it standing up (see Michael Phelps, above)
He pulls out before ejaculating

As many a consumer of Clear Blue or First Response will tell you, these "methods" of contraception are not effective. Stick to the pill, the IUD, and condoms, mmm'okay?

sperm whale (Photo credit: doublebug)

Or how about the myth that you can get pregnant just from kissing a boy?

Or from going into a swimming pool, jacuzzi, or ocean, if a man has ejaculated into the water? Not so. (But personally, I would still avoid swimming with the sperm whales, just in case.)

Is bigger, better?

This is a persistent myth which has led many men concerned about their, uh, shortcomings, to invest in Ferraris, scary big assault-style weapons, and bad toupees.

Ferraris (Photo credit: Axion23)

From personal experience, and my entirely scientific method of polling all my girlfriends, I would say, no, bigger is not better. While very rarely there is an instance of a man who wants to play Hide the Salami, while his partner is wondering Where's the Beef?, most men cater just fine in the sausage department, provided it's clean, relatively solid, and their other skillz (kissing, handsies, melting hot looks) are rated Grade A. (Or even Grade B, with a willingness to improve.)

On occasion, big is too big. Look, the people who yearn to sit on a telephone pole are freaks, okay? I once blew a boyfriend off (speaking figuratively, not literally) because when it came to Hometown Buffet, it would've required a team effort to consume all that mangoodness.

And except in certain positions and with extreme care, it hurt.

A woman wants a man who can go all night.

No, we don't. (See scientific method, above.) Women want to snuggle. We want to make love and make our partner equally happy and then snuggle.

The whole marathon of hours and hours and hours of nonstop sex because our partner is trying to maximize his Viagra and/or cocaine investment before contacting a medical professional is not a joyous experience for most women. We get sore and dry out (yes, even young women). We don't need to hang from the chandeliers and assume every position in the Kama Sutra, every time.

It's a game of numbers

Here is another area where some men (and women) get ultra-competitive. "How many times did you...?" you may be asked.

Via Flickr Creative Commons

Sex is not basketball, but if it was, countless two-pointers do not make for a more exciting game. Nor is it like bowling, where you are trying to beat your personal high score. Besides, if you had a really good time, you will not be in any condition to deliver a post-game analysis.

For almost all women (and most men, from what I've been told) quality is better than quantity. Would a woman turn down two (or three) teeth-clenching, toe-curling, OMG yeses! in one lovemaking session? Of course not.

But that's not what makes memorable sex. It's that intangible connection between the partners, a magic spark that has nothing to do with number of orgasms or positions or hours spent in the sweaty exercise. And golly, is it fun when it happens!

What other sex myths did you learn?

What surprised you most about the Real Thing?

The Contradictions of MLK

2013-01-21T05:00:00.000-08:00

Martin Luther King leaning on a lectern. Deutsch: 1964: Martin Luther King Português: Martin Luther King (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The handy thing about dead people is how flexible they are.

People can state, "So-and-So would have wanted this (or hated this, or supported this)," and since So-and-So isn't around to vocalize his own opinion, the speaker conveniently gets to attach So-and-So's stamp of approval to his own position.

When I think of Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr., I always think of nonviolence.

“Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.”

I find it ludicrous that some people claim, in the Great Gun Debate now ongoing, that MLK would support the right for crazy people to have assault rifles. And yet...

from Adam Winkler: MLK and His Guns

Most people think King would be the last person to own a gun. Yet in the mid-1950s, as the civil rights movement heated up, King kept firearms for self-protection. In fact, he even applied for a permit to carry a concealed weapon...

William Worthy, a journalist who covered the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, reported that once, during a visit to King's parsonage, he went to sit down on an armchair in the living room and, to his surprise, almost sat on a loaded gun. Glenn Smiley, an adviser to King, described King's home as "an arsenal."

As I found researching my new book, Gunfight, in 1956, after King's house was bombed, King applied for a concealed carry permit in Alabama. The local police had discretion to determine who was a suitable person to carry firearms. King, a clergyman whose life was threatened daily, surely met the requirements of the law, but he was rejected nevertheless. At the time, the police used any wiggle room in the law to discriminate against African Americans...

Eventually, King gave up any hope of armed self-defense and embraced nonviolence more completely.

I also think of Dr. King as being, in my mental image of him, as extremely supportive of women and women's rights. Wasn't he fighting for freedom for all oppressed people? And doesn't that include women?

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

And yet...

Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

from Teaching Tolerance: Sexism in the Civil Rights Movement:

Dyson quotes civil rights activist Bernard Lee as saying: "Martin … was absolutely a male chauvinist. He believed that the wife should stay home and take care of the babies while he'd be out there in the streets."

from Hipstercrite: In the Shadow of Martin Luther King, Jr.:

Reading about Daisy Bates made me think of all the unsung women of the Civil Rights Movement who often are left standing in the shadow of Martin Luther King Jr. Not to discount the inspiration and dedication King gave to the movement, but it is disheartening to know that there are many strong and brave women who also sacrificed so much yet are often left out of the history books. It broke my heart to hear about the women who were honored and spoke at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, yet were not invited to any meeting between civil rights leaders and government dignitaries.

English: Photograph of Rosa Parks with Dr. Martin Luther King jr. (ca. 1955) Mrs. Rosa Parks altered the negro progress in Montgomery, Alabama, 1955, by the bus boycott she unwillingly began. National Archives record ID: 306-PSD-65-1882 (Box 93). Source: Ebony Magazine (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It certainly appears that Rosa Parks and other "mothers" of the Civil Rights Movement were shoved to the side while the menfolk took center stage and credit. Given her prominence and capabilities following her husband's death, it appears that Coretta Scott King was capable of much more than raising babies and ironing shirts.

Then there's the issue of King's extra-marital affairs - does it mean disrespect for women, for his wife in particular, or was it a personal moral failing? From Ralph David Abernathy's And the Walls Came Tumbling Down:

Martin and I were away more often than we were at home; and while this was no excuse for extramarital relations, it was a reason. Some men are better able to bear such deprivations than others, though all of us in SCLC headquarters had our weak moments. We all understood and believed in the biblical prohibition against sex outside of marriage. It was just that he had a particularly difficult time with that temptation.

Some people would say that I am "running down" Dr. King. No. I do think, over time, MLK has become a larger-than-life figure, godlike and heroic - and he was heroic, in many ways. He was also somebody capable of changing his mind (over guns), capable of weakness and yes, deception, and vulnerable to the attitudes (sexism) of his time.

King was very, very human. He was not a saint, attaining levels of moral amplitude no modern man nor woman can ever dream of attaining. We can reach for the same dreams he did, push for reforms in our government and our society, and not chicken out because we, too, are flawed and imperfect.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We can postulate where Dr. King would stand on gun control (I'm guessing, being assassinated and all, he would not be in favor of deranged people having easy access to weapons), women's rights, gay rights, and poverty, but truly, we can never know for sure. He might even have become one of those cranky "Get off my lawn!" geezers.

Even though he wasn't perfect, even though we are not perfect, we can learn much from the man.

“Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right.”

Have you ever felt you shouldn't speak up about injustice because you're not the hero-type?

What are your thoughts, on this holiday that isn't, quite?

(I'm working my day job, alas.)

*Beverly Diehl's Writing in Flow*

Mas-tur-BA-tion! Can Be Fu-un

More than 70-80% of women masturbate, and 90% of men masturbate. And the rest lie. (Joycelyn Elders)

We Can Do It - We Just Can't Talk About It

I'm Doing It For You, Honey - Masturbation Can Improve Your Partnered Sex Life

The Objects of My Affection

We're Not Only the Talent, But The Casting Agency, Screenwriter, and Director.

We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation. (Lily Tomlin)

Devotee Romance - Interview with Ruth Madison

Sex and the Differently-Abled

People fall in love

In some cases, it's looking past the physical attributes, disability or disorder.

Others are initially attracted to others because of those physical attributes.

Slut of the Month: Ava Gardner

"She can't sing, she can't act, she can't talk, She's terrific. Sign her!"

Her list of men was almost as long as her list of films.

Her beauty made people underestimate her talent.

Seriously Sick Series

Two of the Times Someone Raped Me (Part III) #saam #rape

The concept that any rape victims "wanted it" because they dressed provocatively or got drunk is like saying that jaywalkers wanted to be hit by a car.

The common factor in all rapes? Presence of one or more rapists.

"No One Will Believe You" is a Lie From the Pits of Hell

If You Don't Hear a Very Clear Yes, It Means No.

Saying Yes Once Does Not Mean Lifetime Access

Thinking that no partner will want you because you've been raped is like thinking that no merchant will want your money after you’ve been mugged.

Rape Doesn't (Have To) Ruin Your Life

Talk of the Town Today, Forgotten Tomorrow

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On A Scale of 1 to 10, This Joke Rates a -20.

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Sometimes It’s Hard To Tell Who The Good Guys Are

I Know I Got Off Lucky

The Boyfriend Issue

How The Mount Everest of Dog Diarrhea Helped Me Get Over My Rape

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Two of the Times Someone Raped Me (Part I) #saam #rape

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Rape Is A Many Splendored Thing

He Wasn't Even A Very Good Kisser

Why didn't I call out for help?

I Thought Boy B Must Really Like Me, Like All The Romance Heroes

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

Rape is shameful - for rapists. Rape should not be shameful for rape victims.

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I too am a big girl.

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I adore Stinky, in all her glorious Stinky abundance.

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There comes a time in every wallet's life when you have to step away from the cash register.

My first introduction to libraries was a Bookmobile that came to my elementary school.

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I'm happy to purchase books when funds permit, but my wallet is even happier that I'm also a book borrower through my public library.

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Slut of the Month: Anaïs Nin

Was There Ever A Woman More Sensual?

Anaïs became a very skilled performer at what she referred to as bicoastal trapeze.

Are We Too Straitlaced for an Anaïs Nin Today?

Like Rodney Dangerfield, Anaïs couldn't get any respect.

If I May, If I Might

It's all the little colloquialisms and regional turns of phrase that make reading and writing so much fun.

I would never want to edit out all the flavor and local turns of phrases

Nobody Propositions My Feet Anymore - Aging Gracefully?

The writer in me said, "Say yes. This would make such a great story."

Later, I Met Another Foot Fetishist

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Women in rock had traditionally been offered two places - at the microphone, and in a hotel bed, as groupies.

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Beverly Diehl's Writing in Flow