Tag Archive: Writing


Lit tea light candles against a dark background

Lit tea light candles against a dark background


 
I got some bad news yesterday.
It’s sort of the way of the internet that sometimes we miss things, or find things, totally by chance.
I found out, totally by chance – because a fellow kinky queer author had posted a screen-shot of someone else’s twitter post to instagram, of all things – that another fellow kinky queer author has died.
 
Corey Alexander – a writer that you may know as blogger TGStoneButch or under the pen name Xan West – was found dead in their apartment, apparently due to complications related to diabetes.
 
There’s been a go-fund-me to cover their funeral expenses (information here) which I think has been fully funded and, as such, has been paused (rather than taken down – possibly because there may be further, unexpected expenses to cover. Not sure).
For folks who want to make in-memorium donations, there’s a list in the works and I’ll update this post once it becomes available.
In the interim, and while the above go-fund-me is paused, I’ve been told that donations to trans lifeline, in Corey’s name, would be welcome.
Donating to a disability justice org of your choice would also be a way to honour their memory, as would just… offering some cash to help another disabled or chronically ill trans person cover their medical expenses (hit up #TransCrowdFund and/or #DisabilityCrowdFund on twitter to help someone out directly).
 
If you are a fan of their work and have questions about their author-estate, there is an FAQ here. Needless to say, there are other things taking priority right now, so please be considerate and be patient.
 
Shira Glassman has opened a virtual room in-which to sit shivah (link goes to information, not to the zoom-room itself).
 
There will be a virtual Minchah and Kaddish for them (link goes to information) this Friday, August 21, at 4:30pm EDT, to-which all are welcome.
So, y’know, I know what I’m doing this Friday, as it turns out.
 
There is a virtual guest-book where you can post brief messages and memories of Corey (and if you are like me and “only” knew them online, that still counts).
This is what I wrote.

I didn’t know Corey particularly well, but we’d been aware of each other for years. Shop talk on twitter and comments on each other’s blog posts, that kind of thing. Their writing on the vulnerability of dominance and the violent desires of sadism, as well as their work to challenge the fantasy image of dominants, tops, and sadists as inscrutable, consistently confident, and without needs or fears, has both helped me find words to put around my own experiences, and pushed me in terms of my own writing. I’m so sorry they’ve died. They remain an inspiration and I’ll miss their thoughtful presence in my life.

 
It was a short message, and I guess I want to elaborate a little bit.
I would feel very presumptuous calling Corey my friend. We didn’t know each other like that. But friendly acquaintance, peer and colleague? Yes. For years. I was part of the blog hop they did to promote their book, Show Yourself To Me. Their writing has influenced and informed my own.
 
Like I said, they gave me language and a way of talking about how embodying and existing within my own insatiable, violent desire is a vulnerable position to occupy. They helped me notice the ways that, oh, gosh, how do I name this… “dom-normativity”? Subcultural social expectations of Dominant Behaviour? …how That Stuff maps onto heteronormativity and expectations around what it means to be (conventionally) masculine which, in turn, helped me dig further into what it means for me, as a Femme, to cultivate and nurture my (sense of consensual) entitlement as a Domme and the reasons why my dominance-as-practice sometimes fails to resonate with, or mirror, the ways dominance is conventionally portrayed (in, say, BDSM porn or in people’s workshop-presenter bios)[1].
 
Weirdly – or maybe not so weirdly, synergy being what it is – their writing about being Butch (like the writing of other leather butches, as it turns out) has given me ways to articulate elements and aspects of my own Femme identity, leather and otherwise, about being “all mouth” and yet having my teeth clamped shut, about the ways that feminine appetite is coded as monstrous and how that affects me (and expectations directed at me) as a dominant, sadistic woman who is both emphatically queer and somewhat “conventional” in the outward presentation of my (Middle-Aged, Nice White Lady) femininity[2].
 
I’m sorry they’ve died. Far too young. They were kind and thoughtful in my interactions with them. I liked their brain and what they had to say. I think what they had to say was important.
What can we do but continue to explore this stuff, continue to name it and bring it to the foreground? What can we do but pick up their Work and carry it on?
 

For Corey Alexander[3]
 
[…]
Cicadas howling
their brief lives
in summer heat
A visceral response
 
to a death not theirs
but mine
to mourn
It would be presumptuous
to call you friend
or back from the dead
demand my old colleague
come to my candle
be present
in the recounting of the stories
 
you wrote
But you’re in every word
[…]

 
 
See you at their memorial,
Ms Syren.
 
 
[1] I guarantee you there are going to be more posts on that one, as it is a long and on-going trip.
 
[2] My day-to-day dress, on those occasions when I leave the house, looks more and more like Gothabilly Lite or Office Witch, than the leopard print and mini skirts of what I think of as “Classic Femme” or the lingerie-as-outerwear and oil-slick lipstick of my early 20s.
 
[3] This is a chunk of a drafted glosa (on Liza Rankow’s “Femme Poem 1”) I wrote, yesterday, in the wake of learning of their death.

Poem – Shiver

My skin is
hungry flutter in
my chest
aching for touch
smooth my hands over
thighs
hips
neck
cheek
fingers trace the line
of lip and collarbone craving
hot shower
hot chocolate
burn my tongue on the absence
of a lover’s mouth
lonely body
longing for all that
heat
enough
to make me
shiver

Hi, folks!
 
So, today, I’m taking part in a blog tour promoting a new erotica anthology – Show Yourself to Me – from author Xan West (You can find the whole tour at this link, yesterday’s stop can be found here, and tomorrows – which involves a time-difference – can be found here. The tour itself includes a number of reviews, but you can also find – and add – reviews at Good Reads and Amazon). I jumped at the chance to read a slew of stories from an author I respect and admire, as well as the opportunity to ask some writerly questions about the nuts, bolts, and decisions involved in writing an anthology like this.
 

Show Yourself To Me - Cover Art Close-up of a hand, holding a chain-leash, thumb brushing the lips of the person on the other end of the leash.

Show Yourself To Me – Cover Art
Close-up of a hand, holding a chain-leash, thumb brushing the lips of the person on the other end of the leash.


 
Before we get to the interview, here’s the blurb about the book itself:
 

In Show Yourself to Me: Queer Kink Erotica, Xan West introduces us to pretty boys and nervous boys, vulnerable tops and dominant sadists, good girls and fierce girls and scared little girls, mean Daddies and loving Daddies and Daddies that are terrifying in delicious ways.
 
Submissive queers go to alleys to suck cock, get bent over the bathroom sink by a handsome stranger, choose to face their fears, have their Daddy orchestrate a gang bang in the park, and get their dream gender-play scene—tied to a sling in an accessible dungeon.
 
Dominants find hope and take risks, fall hard and push edges, get fucked and devour the fear and tears that their sadist hearts desire.
 
Within these 24 stories, you will meet queers who build community together, who are careful about how they play with power, who care deeply about consent. You will meet trans and genderqueer folks who are hot for each other, who mentor each other, who do the kind of gender play that is only possible with other trans and genderqueer folks.
 
This is
Show Yourself to Me. Get ready for a very wild ride.

 

And now, on with the interview! 😀
 
 
~*~
 
1) Show Yourself to Me opens with a story that, fundamentally, is about belonging. Can you talk to me about that, and why you chose to open your anthology with this piece?
 
“Missing Daddy” sets the mood of the book in so many ways, and belonging is absolutely one of them. For me, as a queer writer who centers my fantasies and desires in my work, belonging is such a central aspect of that, of my queerness, of my kink, of my politic. Being connected, not just in the context of a romantic couple apart from the world, but being in the world, belonging to community and family, belonging to self, as well as being claimed and claiming in the context of D/s. They balance and match each other, all those belongings. Especially for a story that begins by speaking openly about abuse in the context of kink, and the legacy of that in kink life and community, it is so important to center this story of longing and nostalgia in a deep memory of belonging and care in the context of BDSM. This story wants the reader to hold all of that reality in queer kink life: abuse of power and also care with power, legacies of abuse that last long beyond abusive relationships, and legacies of leather that feel whole and beautiful that also come with us, belonging to self, giving self to a partner, belonging in community and family.
 
 
2) Pieces like “My Pretty Boy”, “The Tender, Sweet, Young Thing”, and “How He Likes It” touch on how it can be easier to accept cruelty than gentleness. Can you talk about that for a bit?
 
I’ve had a lifetime of experiencing sensory input in ways that didn’t match how people thought I should be experiencing it, how it was “supposed” to feel. It took me a long time to come to terms with and accept that reality, which has shaped so much of my daily life, especially play and sex. The simple truth is that people are different, and they experience sensations differently. Something that is intolerable for me might be pleasurable or neutral for you. Kink really helped me hold that reality, because although there were cultural expectations about how people would experience sensations, I kept finding, as a top, that the folks I played with would experience them so very differently from each other.
 
This theme in my work, of light touch and gentleness feeling close to or actually intolerable, where sharp, firm or intense touch, and pain in particular, feel welcome and desired, is my attempt to center and validate an experience that is so rarely acknowledged, even in kink life. It is an experience that often resonates for stone-identified folks, and that is definitely part of my motivation as well, to write stories where stone folks can see themselves reflected without judgment or pathologization, as those stories are incredibly rare.
 
It’s also a layered thing, one that gives opportunities for internal struggle within a scene, and pathways for sadism. In “My Pretty Boy,” they consensually play with the fact that Rickie hates gentleness. This created a wonderful way to shift perspective on what cruelty and sadism can look like, and illustrate that sometimes gentleness can be very cruel indeed.
 
 
3) This is a collection of your erotic writing, some of-which is forthcoming (I think… like the excerpt from Shocking Violet), and some of-which has been published elsewhere. A lot of them run to what I think of, accurately or not, as “standard anthology length”, but some are longer and some are much, much shorter (“This Boy”). I’m wondering how many of these pieces were written for specific calls (“Facing the Dark” seems like a likely example), how many just turned up in your head demanding to be written down, how many were born out of personal explorations or writing practice? (Yes, this is essentially a “where do you get your ideas” question).
 
You got it right, close to half of these stories were written for specific calls (including some of the shorter ones, for flash fiction collections). For a number of years, writing to a specific market was part of what drove my writing process. “Facing the Dark” was written because an editor asked me to write something for a gay fireman anthology. “Missing Daddy” was for a bear call, “Ready” for a gay motorcycle collection, “Falling for Essex” for a college boys call, “My Will” for a gay time travel anthology. “Please” was written as an exercise in writing to a tight editorial preference—for Violet Blue’s Best Women’s Erotica series. “The Tale of Jan and Tam” was written for a fairy tale retellings call.
 
When I’m contemplating writing for a call, or am solicited by an editor for a specific kind of story, I sit with it for a while, do some research if needed, see what wants to stick. I often go through a few ideas before I land on one that works for the call and feels doable to me. I’m especially looking for a spark, a beginning, a strong voice, or a moment in the story that I find so compelling I feel like I need to write it. My notebooks are filled with potential ideas like this, and there are some I will bring out years later, and try to write them.
 
The other times, I often find a spark in something else. “The Tender Sweet Young Thing” was sparked by a conversation I had at a regular queer gathering I go to. “Compersion” was sparked partly by a class I went to on the subject, that felt like it completely left out so much of my own experiences of compersion. “Nervous Boy” was written in response to a craigslist ad I saw, and answered, though I never got a response. I’ve also written fantasies and dreams that kept returning demanding to be told. I’ve written pieces for lovers, and potential lovers. I’ve written stories in response to scenes I’ve watched.
 
Often, it’s a mesh of things that drive my writing; the spark or the voice or the lines that come into my mind are just the beginning. There are often experiences and ideas I want to capture, and things I want to talk about in my stories. I’m fairly unabashed about having certain agendas in my work.
 
 
4) I know you make a point of showcase a lot of different bodies in your erotica – your characters don’t default to “able-bodied and thin”, for example, and you make sure your readers know it. With that in mind, when a character ends up being white or fat, fem/me or cis or disabled (or whatever cluster of identities a given character may have), how much of those intersecting privileges and oppressions are just “how the character showed up in my head” versus how much of it is an active decision on your part as an author about the kind of story you want to tell?
 
Much of the time, not defaulting takes conscious work. Sometimes I catch myself not having defined some aspects of a character’s identity and there I am, stuck in my usual defaults. I usually am stuck by the things I haven’t defined, a little ways in, not knowing where to go. Conscious work gets me unstuck, and a lot of the time that is at least partly about establishing specificities of identity.
 
Some aspects of a character’s identity will come to me with the character’s voice or the situation or the conflict I’m imagining at the beginning of the process. Sometimes those choices are driven by the way I puzzle out what I can bring to a specific call, how I can imagine bringing these people together.
 
One of the things that has become very clear to me is how much the specificities of identity of my characters are often shaped by my own identities and needs. When I think about the specifics of the queer genders that appear in this collection, it is clear that I’ve mostly been writing stories about my own gender experiences, or about genders that I have fantasized about being. Over the past 15 years of writing erotica, the body of work from which I drew the stories for this collection does not include the diversity of genders of the people in my life and my communities. Instead, my deep hunger for putting myself into a genre where I have mostly been erased or misrepresented has driven many of my choices about the genders of my characters. As a whole collection, those choices contribute to a deep erasure that mirrors the ways trans misogyny and misogyny often operate in queer communities. For me, this recognition is even more reason to work more on consciously considering the identities of my characters.
 
When I was pulling stories together for the collection, from the body of my existing work, one of the things I worked on was more clearly marking the identities of the characters, so that they weren’t just clear to me, but were clear to the reader. So the reader also was less likely to go to defaults while reading. I needed to do this much more with my earlier work than with my later work.
 
A few years ago I began a project of deliberately centering disabled characters in my work, one that coincided with my decision to live more deeply into my own disabilities. I wanted my creative work to hold the same intentions as my personal work, so they could feed each other. I have found writing these stories to be so powerful in my own life. Many of them are included in this collection; they are the ones written in the third person.
 
 
5) On a related note, you tell stories from a lot of different perspectives – both from story to story and sometimes within a single piece. Can you talk about the factors that determine whose PoV you’re writing from, which stories are going to involve “head hopping” versus which ones stay with a single narrator? I’m thinking, in particular, of stories like “My Precious Whore” where you’re dealing with some fairly heavy edges (for the characters but also for, um, me as a reader…) but also of “The Tender, Sweet, Young Thing” where the narration is bouncing between half a dozen heads. Can you talk a little bit about that?
 
Most of my early work was in the first person, though I played with that some by having POV characters sometimes imagine that they knew the perspective of other people (like in “Nervous Boy”). My recent work has been in third person. It was a conscious choice to shift that way, because I found it unblocked me. Until I tried third person, I kept hitting up against a wall, couldn’t figure out how to more clearly mark characters as disabled.
 
When I chose to shift my work, I embraced head hopping, something that is often frowned upon in erotica circles. I wanted to explore multiple interior experiences, see where that got me. In “The Tender Sweet Young Thing”, I wanted to stick with three perspectives—to stay inside the heads of the three queers that were central to plotting the fantasy scene, because they each were deeply invested in creating this scene from a different place. Dax, from a fantasy ze had held since childhood, Mikey partly as a gift of love and recognition for Dax, and partly for her own self, and Téo, who recognized a gender he wanted to play with. The story shifts from one to the other as the dynamics shift between the characters, that’s how it flowed out, so by the time you get to the actual scene, you hopefully have a stake in each of them getting what they need from it, and from each other.
 
With first person, often a voice comes to me as a story sparks. Point of view is one of the first things that solidifies in the story. In “My Precious Whore”, I was working on a few things in that story:
1. I was working to illuminate the edges inherent in playing with misogyny and whorephobia, to take the reader deep enough to really be able to see how deeply dangerous this kind of play is.
2. I was trying to illustrate how a structure of D/s and consciously chosen power play can create a container for this sort of intense and risky psychological edge play, make it possible to do it.
3. I wanted to capture something specific about orgasm control, how it can work in humiliation play scenes, how helplessness from forced orgasms can be particularly intense and beautiful.
4. I wanted to write a story that explored possessive top desire that wasn’t feral (which I’d mostly been writing), but went to colder places, wielded power differently, grappled with the edges of misogyny and deep psychological play.
5. I was attempting to illuminate the ways being the top in a scene centered on humiliation, objectification, and play with oppression can be incredibly edgy for the top and how the top can need support from the bottom.
 
Some of those things would be a good match for the bottom’s point of view, especially #3. (I want to write another story from a bottom’s point of view that can get me there more deeply.) #1 and #2 could work from either point of view. But for #4 and #5 I needed the top’s perspective to get me there.
 
I put that story in a drawer for a while after I wrote it. It felt too volatile to put out into the world, and too personally edgy. That’s how it has often worked for me with the stories that go deep into play with misogyny. (“Strong” is another example.) I was concerned about the damage they might do in the world, and worried about the ways they could be misinterpreted. This version of “My Precious Whore” illuminates top vulnerability much more than earlier versions, and it showcases the support of the bottom. Telling it from the top’s perspective really helps it get there, helps the reader touch those things.
 
 
6) In “The Ballad of Tam and Jan” (and I love that Carter Hall turns up in more than one story, by the way), you talk about transformative experiences for tops. In it, and also stories like “My Pretty Boy”, you talk about tops needing to remember and honour their own needs. There’s this pervasive (or maybe it’s just me?) thing where sadistic, and even just toppy, desires are framed as not okay – like it’s totally fine to want to be anonymously skull-fucked by a truck-load of random people, but wanting to turn someone into “just a hole” (to pick a theme that ran through a lot of your stories), to dehumanize them, is less okay. Wanting to beat someone to a pulp because it feels good to hit defenseless people is, well, monstrous. I find in a lot of Kink 101 stuff, the top is framed as facilitating the bottom’s experience, with the bottom being “really in charge” and the top being a provider in a lot of ways. Can you talk about that stuff in the context of the needs and vulnerabilities of tops?
 
The fear of top desires and needs that you describe is one of the most frustrating aspects of kink culture for me. I’ve written several essays about it. It’s a big problem, and can make navigating play so much harder for everyone, so much less likely to be mutual. This image of the top as facilitating the bottom’s experience and having no needs of their own is a huge contributing factor to ableism in kink communities. It’s been a challenge for me, personally, to find play partners that are up for considering and honoring my needs as a top, especially my needs for support around pushing my own edges.
 
My work, and in particular the stories in this book, are invested in creating different images of tops, different narratives about what tops need and desire, what bottoms do to support tops, what play that is mutual and honors the needs and desires of all parties can be like. Stories help create culture, and this book is one of the ways I’m trying to shift the way we think about top desires, top needs, and top vulnerabilities.
 
These stories openly celebrate sadistic and dominant desire, and that aspect of them alone is likely to make people uncomfortable. I’ve had stories rejected (with rather intense judgmental language) for openly describing sadistic desire. Once I had an editor suggest that I edit the story so that the dominant was not so clearly getting off on making the submissive cry during sex, because that felt inherently non-consensual. The editor suggested that I change the story so that the dominant was doing it to facilitate the experience the submissive needed.
 
In these stories, I am attempting to carve out room for the beauty and heat of unapologetically sadistic desire, and it is partly to meet my own needs. I need a kink culture that honors sadists who have their own desires, that supports tops to be vulnerable, that asks bottoms to support tops in play, that honors that everyone has needs. Not just because I’m human, but particularly as a disabled top.
 
 
7) Tell me something you love about this collection and want everybody to know.
 
I’ve talked about writing stories that center disabled and sick characters, how that was my project over the last few years. These stories often include disabled and chronically ill fat trans and genderqueer characters playing with each other, in community with each other, creating accessible spaces together. I’ve never read stories like that before, which is one of the reasons I needed to write them.
 
What I haven’t talked about is how impossible it has been to place these stories in anthologies. I’ve been aching to share these stories with the world, but have had no luck getting them published. I finally decided that I had to try to sell them as a group with my other work, in a collection like this, in order to get them printed.
 
Before I could seriously tackle that project, Go Deeper Press approached me to request a manuscript. They love these stories in particular, which makes me incredibly glad. And now these stories are out in the world, and I am so thrilled that people get to read them! I love that my first collection shows some of my oldest work, next to the new directions I’ve been going in as a writer.
 
 
Thank you, Xan. 🙂
 
 
~*~
 
 
You can pick up a copy of Show Yourself to Me from Go Deeper Press (print or digital), or as a e-book from Amazon.
 
You can find Xan’s thoughts about the praxis of sex, kink, queerness, power, and writing at xanwest.wordpress.com.

Hey.
So, y’all are about to get cross-posted to death, so please bear with me on this one.
 
I just had a lovely chat/consult with life-coach and fellow Woo Person, Sofia Wren, talking about energy blocks, life goals, and Pulling It All Together.
 
What I said to her was that – to boil down my rambling into something a little more coherent – I have my fingers in a lot of pies, and I want to keep doing all of them… but I also feel a little scattered and a lot like I don’t have a clue what I’m doing… And what I’m looking for is, basically, way to reframe my million scattered elements so that I can see how they all dovetail and fold together and slot into place to form a cohesive whole (AKA: My Career).
 
Something that was really neat to see her picking up on was that, when I think about “My Career”, even when I do imagine actually make some sort of reliable annual income from it, what I’m thinking of isn’t “money”, it’s “connection”. I don’t want to be a writer like Stephen King or a performer like Madonna. I want to be like Cat Valente and Holly Black. I want to be like s00j and Heather Dale.
 
My two big take-aways from my wee, free (thank you!) introductory coaching session were:
 
1) Clean out your heart and your throat (and I get a little bit of pressure in my throat when I write that, so hey) chakras, ‘cause your passions are right in there[1].
 
AND
 
2) Integrate sex-as-nature and body-as-nature and food-as-nature. This was a really neat observation/piece-of-advice which, combined with the above observation about connection, led me to the idea of career-as-ecosystem, both in the sense of (a) an ecosystem is thrives when it has a lot of variety in it (no monocultures for me!), and (b) I don’t want to be in competition with other people doing the similar things to me; I don’t want to be taking food out of Lee and Andrea’s mouths if ever I wind up on a lecture circuit about polyamoury and consensual-power-dynamics (just as a for-instance). I want to be part of an ecosystem that is thriving.
 
 
That’s what I’ve got to work with, while I’m working on the novel, the locavore cook-book/memoire, the D/s-related essays, the chapbooks, the jewelry, the Making Of Things, the keeping of my house, the search for my Forever Home and its Garden, and all the zillion other little things I have on the go at any (every) given time.
 
I was lucky and got to have one of her free coaching sessions, which is wonderful. I happen to think she’s awesome, and I found the session helpful and also encouraging, so I’m passing her services along to all of you. Do go and have a look at what she offers both as a coach and on her blog.
 
 
TTFN,
Ms Syren.
 
 
[1] I am not surprised by this. Dammit, it really is all about the singing, isn’t it? Also, as a PS, when I did the above-linked throat-chakra-clearing meditation, I felt my mouth fill up with steam. What does that mean? Thoughts? Beuler? Anyone? It was an interesting side-effect, for sure.
NOTE: For other throat-clearing / chakra-clearing exercises try here, here, here, and here.

E is for Erotica

Hey folks!

So I’ll be heading to Unholy Harvest this year (first time outside of my own city, no less) and am excited about a number of things – singing (zomg I haven’t performed an opera piece in something close to a decade!) at the Talent Show, attending the Flow workshop, seeing the Extended Leather Phamily for Thanksgiving Dinner, and reading some of my porn at the open mic.

It’s that last one with-which I’m concerned today.

I write erotica. I used to write erotica all the damn time – to the point where I was actually worried that I wasn’t able to write anything else, or that maybe I was defaulting to sex scenes because they were becoming a habit rather than because it was something I actually wanted/needed to put on paper right then.
These days, it comes far less often.
Alas.
Because I’d like to get it back.

I wrote a piece – “Wolf and Scarlet” – to submit to an anthology. I didn’t get in (which is not actually horrible – it still means that a writer whom I respect a lot actually read my stuff, and that’s kind of a big deal for me), but I’m really proud of it. I’m looking forward to reading it aloud to my community, though I’m going to have to make sure it doesn’t take more than eight minutes to read which… seeing as it takes about twenty minutes to read (I just checked) is not likely to work out.
Cripes. 3500 words, or so… If I can read 175 words-aloud in one minute… I basically need a story that’s about 1200 words long.
Hrmph.

I’m not sure how I’m going to fix that…

Back to the drawing board with me!

Cheers,
Ms Syren.

So, as previously mentioned, I’ve started a personal blogging project that involves posting on a kinky/sex-positive/feminist/queer/etc topic of my choice, at regular intervals, while basing my topics/titles on the progression of the alphabet. Part of this is to make sure that I post here regularly. The other part, though, is to give me something a little more light-hearted (or not, depending on the week), to put up here in terms of content.

See… Look. “B is for Beauty” is my chosen theme for this post. It’s really tempting to make this a post about “standards of beauty” or working in an industry where, to one degree or another, one is expected to fit those particular standards (Lee Harrington’s post got me thinking about that, actually). But, honestly, I spent a significant portion of last Thursday writing a post so bitter and grouchy that, probably, it will never see the light of day. I’ve been feeling a little “burnt out” (despite not having done “all the work” for any particular Community Event, beyond my poetry showcase, in over eight months), feeling a bit like all I do is knit-pick, find fault, and complain. And, on the one hand, that’s What You Do. “If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention”, as the old adage goes. But, on the other hand, I’m sick of being angry all the time and would like to focus more on what’s beautiful in my life.

Thense the Greater Granola Blog Project and, thense, B is for Beauty.

I feel like I’ve been walling myself off, avoiding vulnerability, drawing up a false set of options where Option A is “be an event organizer[1]” and Option B is “be a hermit” and there is no third option for “participate” or “create casual social environments in your own space”.
In retrospect, this is perhaps not the healthiest way to be looking at my social life.

So this is my goal: I’d like to focus on The Good Stuff.
I’d like to go poking deeper into the magical and mystical aspects of S/M and D/s (this is mostly being done through (a) experiments in energy work, and (b) reading books – which I will discuss on here as I read them). I’d like to reconnect socially with friends who, lately, I’ve only been seeing in Work and Protest contexts – or as we’re both hurrying in opposite directions on our various vital errands. I’d like to have more dinner parties and share more food with people (I do a LOT of canning in the name of fun and a “negabucks” type of economy. My kitchen is slowly being taken over by jars). I’d like to push for change – small, very localized change, I know, but still – through actions and activities that add to the joy and compassion in the world (instead of just writing strongly-worded letters to MPs whose politics push all my rage buttons).

To that end, also trying to up the percentage of Syrens content that is centered on Stuff I Think Is Cool and Thought Provoking (on the themes to-which this blog is dedicated) to balance out the posts where I’m writing about Stuff I Think is Enraging and/or Problematic.

To the end, a short list of things that start with B:

Bodyslides – Like a massage but rather more involved. 😀
Breakfast – A lovely way to start the morning after, and a great excuse to eat Bacon and Berry-slathered Brioche
Books – I just picked a couple. In addition to Dark Moon Rising (which I got a while ago), I recently picked up Sacred Power, Holy Surrender: Living a Spiritual Power Dynamic and Power Circuits: Polyamory in a Power Dynamic. I’m looking forward to reading them, and am thinking of adding Sacred Kink: The Eightfold Paths Of Bdsm And Beyond to my list in order to round out the beginnings of my wee collection.
Bondage – Not really my thing as I enjoy holding people steady/in-place through (a) command, or (b) the awesome power of my Body, but it can be very, very pretty. Also, it’s useful for preventing too much flailing on the part of someone you’re hitting with a stick.
Bastinado – For people who love (a) feet, and (b) hitting other people with sticks. I should really do this one more often. 🙂

This has been your speedy post for the day.

Cheers,
Ms S.

[1] I’m not sure where, along the way, I went from feeling like “If I want there to be X type of event available for me to attend, and there isn’t one, I’d better get off my ass and make one happen” to feeling like “If I’m not organizing ummpteen different events, then I’m somehow letting down my community/ies”… but it seems to have happened. Time to chill out a little, I think.

Inspiration comes in unexpected places.
I decided to fill out someone’s survey about same-sex couples and relationships, and one of the questions essentially asked the respondent to write some fairly personal porn.
Specifically, it asked:
Please write a fictional paragraph, according to your personal preferences, describing an ideal sensual encounter or fantasy between you and a partner. You may of course choose to write about your current partner.
Though you are not limited to your choice of words, you must incorporate the following verbs in this paragraph:
To love/To be loved (someone/by someone)
To kiss/To be kissed
To touch/To be touched
To hold/To be held
To caress/To be caressed

I’m not entirely sure I’ve done what they wanted, but this is what I wrote:

~*~

You’re a long drink of water in a sequined top; all leg in those jeans, and wouldn’t I love to have them wrapped around me. But this is how I work, see? Maybe I’m all about being in charge but I have to know you want it. I need you to make the first move: notice me noticing you and let me know that you like it; sashay over here and compliment my necklace, tuck your long hair behind your ears and smile, so I know you noticed me, too.
Would you like to dance? Kick up those high heels with me, then slip outside for a drink and a chance to talk?
Would it ruin everything if I kissed you?
My stomach may be fluttering, heart pounding under this cocktail dress, but I want to hold your hand in spite of it. I want to hold more than your hand, in fact; want to trace the length of your spine with my tongue, knot my fingers in your hair, graze your throat with my teeth, caress your cheek, then slap it. I want to be rough and gentle with you at once.
But I never was any good at these one night stands. Too easy to get my heart broken by someone who only wanted to touch me, open to me, then go. So I gotta know: Are you interested enough, interesting enough, to take the time to know me in the not-so-biblical sense?
Are you willing to risk my heart tonight?
Are you willing to take the chance that you’ll love me back?

~*~

I’m hoping to work it into a longer piece over the next little whilte, but I figured I’d throw it up here for now. 🙂

TTFN,
Ms Syren.

So. January 18th, 2012. Blackout Day on the Internet.

Basically, because of SOPA and PIPA threatening to wipe out free speech on the internet, a bunch of websites, big and small, have locked their contents for the day and left a note for their readers/users/contributors/etc explaining why.

No, actually, I’m not being hyperbolic about this. Watch this video for details (the last minute of the video is probably most important in relation to this post):

I support this black-out. It’s meant to show people – people who might otherwise not pay attention to something about Hollywood – what the internet could end up looking like if these laws get passed.

However, I’m also in Canada and thus, like everyone else outside of the U.S. (who none the less uses U.S.-based (either by owner or by ISP) websites), I’m pretty-much stuck.
Their vaguely-worded, heavy-consequence-bearing would-be laws would screw the rest of us, too, but we don’t have a political voice (or perhaps a political ear?) to harass their congress into stopping it.

See… Here’s the thing. In theory, this is about the entertainment industry having cart blanche to shut down any website (entire site – as in all of WordPress, not just one blog) they’ve decided is violating copyright laws in some way (like, say, someone posts a video of themselves recreating a Lady Gaga video in their livingroom). But it has the potential to be grossly abused both in the U.S. and as a model for laws passed elsewhere[1].

This is why people are so (rightly) up in arms about this. And this is why, if you live in the U.S., the rest of us would really appreciate it if you’d get on the phone (or the email, or the twitter feed, or the snail mail, or all of the above) to your congress-person/senator and tell them in no uncertain terms that you do NOT support these laws and don’t want to see them pushed through. Americancensorship.org even has a handy pre-fab letter you can send in directly (hey) via the internet.

Go forth and save us all.

Thank you, (no, really, THANK YOU),
Ms Syren

[1] Like here, not to put too fine a point on it.

Hey, my dears,

This is just a quick, self-promotional fly-by posting directing you to the following:

Naughty and Nice: An XXXmas Story in Three Parts – Part One

Naughty and Nice: An XXXmas Story in Three Parts – Part Two

Naughty and Nice: An XXXmas Story in Three Parts – Part Three

Dyke porn includes tit-slapping, age play, a trans femme, a cis butch, a really big dildo, a three-way, and Santa Clause. What’s not to love? 😀

TTFN,
Ms Syren. 😀

December 17th is Coming Up…

Red

Out of the darkness
they come in
sky-high heels and
thigh-high boots and
sneakers with the toes
kicked out
of shelters they know
too well
they make tracks like
rose petals
lipstick kisses
blisters and blood spatter
clatter of red
shoes clicking
scuffing down lonely
stretches of highway
through labyrinth industrial
parks and darkened streets
They come in
packs
have each others’ backs
as they did in life
sister, brother, wife
they circle with smiles
like knife
gashes eye
lashes like piano wire and
teeth like broken bones
they are coming
home
our dead sisters,
brothers, wives,
red shoes click-clacking
scuffing on pavement
graves bent open
and silences
broken
red throated
they will name you
red handed
and red clawed
they will claim you
and brand you
complicit
complacent
murderers
If you drown
in their red blood
it will have been
too long in
coming

December 17th is International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.

If you’re in Ottawa this Saturday, go to Parliament Hill at 2pm. Look for the red umbrellas. We’ll see you there.