Jude
The garden party was hosted by the Dutch Consulate, to celebrate Queen Maxima of the Netherland’s birthday. I didn’t know Holland still had a monarchy, and Beatrix? Really? Sure enough, the huge, lush garden was dotted around with kitschy plastic standees featuring a hefty woman in an orange dress doing that regal wave thing. We […]
Monster
There’s a special secret sin to desiring an ugly man. I don’t mean someone mediocre with a few too many pounds around the middle. I mean someone truly ugly. Bones that refuse the grace of symmetry. Skin ravaged by early acne or one of those fevers one hardly ever hears of any more. Or scars […]
On Love
There is a kind of love that drags itself, gut-shot and with two broken legs towards death. It has no pride, or shame, or sense of self. It refuses all other loyalties, all other promises and obligations. There is nothing pretty about this kind of love. It turns those of us who have felt it […]
Ceci n’est pas un Homme
I have long admired D’s writing over at “Written In Pencil,” and most especially his written portraits of people he has known. Usually, I try to incorporate the people I get to know into my fiction somehow, but I don’t know the man in the portrait I want to offer you. I’ve only ‘read’ him […]
Fuck Decaf, or The Two Tribes of Perversion
There are two tribes of perverts. Those who believe and those who don’t; real perverts and fake perverts. I contend today that the world is dominated by the fake ones. I’m not a wholehearted fan of the Yugoslavian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, but he has proposed an interesting theory I embrace. He says that the world […]
The Jouissance of the Other: Envy disguised as Prejudice.
This week, I changed browsers. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but actually it was a chore. I’ve been a Firefox fan for a very long time. I love it for a lot of reasons. It’s an excellent browser and if they charged money to own it, I would have gladly paid. Then Mozilla made […]
When Men Write Erotic Fiction
When men write erotic fiction (as opposed to porn, where the piece is devoid of conflict and usually sequence of physical events interspersed with banal and cliché phrases that are the memes that stand-in, ineloquently. for someone getting pleasure) they often try to protect themselves. Even work by seasoned writers who should know better, I […]
What the Bones Said
The tiny white pill tugs at my willpower. Knows the ripe and tender spot, the toothed indents where it has lodged so many times before. Beneath the overhang of illusions, in the wet and reeking hollows, where the light of reason fears to go. “Sleep,” it says. “Sleep and ache no more.” An irresistible invitation […]
Outed in the Nicest Way
Some of you know my real name, some of you don’t. Today was a true milestone for me. One of my stories not only won an award, but has been published in a non-erotica anthology, and I appear there under my real name. The Trouble With Parallel Universes is the first anthology published under the […]
Schism
I know what you see, when you look at me. A small, unremarkable middle-aged woman. Perhaps you think my lipstick is a little too red for my advanced years? Why doesn’t she, you think, wear something more appropriate? Perhaps you look a second time and are troubled by the arch of my dark eyebrow. Perhaps […]