Transfers
The arrivals hall at Heathrow looks like a badly provisioned shopping mall. A hundred branded grottoes to minor commercial gods. Has anyone standing around the chrome barriers waiting for arriving passengers ever bothered to visit any of them? As she waits, she tamps her anxiety down with objective musings on consumer behavior. She, anecdotally, has […]
13 Seconds of You
I have 13 seconds of you speaking the words of a poet. Beautiful but not yours. In the cracks between Neruda’s paving stones live the breaths you’ve taken to lay them. Woven through his phrasing, plays the cadence of your ordered memory reeling their filaments out into the ether. The syllables each wear their tonal […]
Tourist – Part 4
Julian hadn’t meant to do that. It was a tiny nick, to be sure, but the fact that it hadn’t been intentional, that he’d neglected to anticipate the girl’s state of panic, annoyed him. It didn’t overshadow the esthetic pleasure of watching one viscous bead of blood, and then another, erupt from the tiny cut […]
Tourist – Part 3
“Oh, no, no, no…” she said, so softly, more air than words, as if anything louder could trigger a cataclysm. The tip of the knife. Its impossible point hiccupped on her pores as it traced her jaw line. A tear slipped over the crest of her lip, hung there, burning the kiss-bruised flesh with its […]
My Problem(s) with Feminism
First, I’d like to say that by the very simplest definition of the term, I am a feminist. I believe, fundamentally, in the equality of the sexes. I don’t deny that there are both physical and cultural differences between men and women, I just believe that society is a much more stable place when we […]
Nathalie’s Tailor
It starts like a low, slow rip of paper, just audible over the hiss of shower water on the slate tiles. A slow exhalation of sharp-edged things that tears her throat on the way up, making a larger hole for the louder sound that follows. Until she’s crouched in the corner of the glass stall, […]
A Writer’s Obligations
I’ve had a marvelous and vibrant discussion on Twitter with a whole raft of writers on what it means to be a writer, and what a writer’s obligation is. I think there are some things that all of us, who care about what we write agree on. However, this is my list of a writer’s […]
Villains in Leather: Negative Portrayals of Kink in Fiction
It has been a few weeks of strenuous debate on the net about kink and how it’s portrayed in the media. Meghan Murphy (Rabble.ca) and William Saletan (Slate), who both have a large mainstream reading audience, wrote posts exhibiting a basic lack of understanding about kink and BDSM. They each, in their way, made exaggerated […]
“What’s With The Needles?”: The Origin of Desire & The Fall
I got an email today. All it said is: “What’s with the needles?” Yup, that’s all. With a fake return address. And since I take questions seriously, because they afford me some opportunity for reflection, I’m going answer it publicly. I gather it was actually an expression of disgust at story I recently posted called […]
Tourist – Part 2
In Julian’s experience, people who willfully sought their own degradation were those who could afford to do so. Seated in the recesses of the faux suede banquette, he surveyed the establishment: a club much like all the other clubs he’d been to. They existed in every large metropolis in the Western World. True, there were […]