The Usual Question: What DO I Want For Christmas?
As is usual around this time, I’m compiling my annual greed list in preparation for Christmas, in which I list all the prezzies I could possibly want for Christmas. But life is good; I have much of what I need (which is why my annual gifts invariably include a large, cow-sized gift to Heifer International).
So I ask you: what’s cool that I should want? Point me in the direction of the bizarre, the delightful, the wonderful – and the vaguely affordable. (Yes, I’d love a life-sized X-Wing in my yard, but I don’t think I’m gonna get it.) Show me something neat that any nerd like me would be thrilled to get for Christmas! Please!
(Also, if you have the personal with any starter fire poi kit or a straight-edged razor you’d recommend, please let me know. There are many kits, and I’d like to get the right one. Yes, this year’s Christmas includes an unusually high dosage of potential self-harm.)
A Brief, And Unexpected, Mourning
I have always wanted to eat fire.
It’s a strange hobby to want to have – but I’ve never done it, out of a combination of “lack of teachers” and “severe danger.” The concern is not burning your lips – you will do that, on a regular basis, blistering your gums. (Fortunately, thanks to the heavy blood flow in your mouth, it heals quickly.) Nor is it the drinking poison, which you also do on a regular basis, since you’re swallowing trace amounts of naptha.
The big concern is inhaling at the wrong time. Suck in a surprised breath and you cook your vocal chords, sear your lungs. That shit is permanent.
Still, I’d always wanted to try it. The one book I’d ever found on the topic, a fifty-page pamphlet, didn’t really provide enough information for me to feel comfortable doing it on my own. So when, stumbling around Amazon, I discovered a comprehensive tome on the topic had finally been written, I immediately downloaded it. And after making my way through it, I can’t recommend The Professional’s Guide To Fire Eating enough – it explains the danger and the nature of the tricks quite thoroughly.
If I was a normal person, I’d probably start learning straight away. My love of BDSM-related fireplay has had me handling a lot of fire lately – I’ve got the torches, I clearly have zero fear about setting myself on fire, and I have the experience to understand what’s heated and what’s not.
But there’s one danger I’d never thought about:
The heat ruins your teeth. Cracks your enamel. Most fire eaters need major dental work by the time they’re fifty.
I’ve had major dental work.
For those of you new here, I spent five years without front teeth because I had severe gum disease. It took five years of various gum surgeries to build up my gums to the point where they could hold implants, and now I have a row of artificial teeth. Exposing those to fire could ruin them, putting me in the hock for another $10,000 round of painful surgeries.
So. It’s a stupid hobby to take up, I agree. I probably shouldn’t have done it anyway. But now I cannot, and I feel a strange sadness for a thing that I’m now ready for, but cannot do.
Schrodinger's Novel
So as mentioned, I’m doing National Novel-Writing Month, and the words are pouring out. Whether they are coming out as liquid silver or pea-choked vomit remain to be seen, but I am 34,700 words into this draft already, cruising quickly into the second act.
The void is killing me.
I think that’s why I like short stories; I write 6,000 words at most, and when I’m done, I hand them to a crit group, and within two weeks I know how well I did! Anybody can get through a short story. It doesn’t matter whether the feedback is bad or good; I just like to know how much work I have to do.
But this novel, man…. I used to make Gini read my novels chapter-by-chapter as I wrote them, but then I realized that no human ever reads a novel like that. (Here, read a novel over the course of four months, in erratic drabs that have nothing to do with your interest in it.) So instead, I let her read my larger works in larger pieces – I usually try to get to the end of it, but what’s happened is that I get to a point where I’m not certain what happens next, and I can’t bounce ideas off of Gini until she knows what’s going on, so she winds up reading the first third of the novel so I can figure out how to get to the second third.
Gini, however, is involved in a crushing project. She will not be available until mid-December. By which point I will have hopefully finished up Act II, and be well on to Act III. I may even be completely finished by the time I make her sit down for a weekend and read it.
In other words, I’m writing this whole novel without knowing whether it’s any good at all. And I’ve sort of abandoned the idea of writing a salable novel, but I would like to know whether the novel I am speedily plopping onto the page is going to require seventy rewrites or just a touch-up. Are my characters likeable? Does the plot have too many whafucks? Is it interesting?
I am driving blind down a foggy path at seventy MPH. I hope I’m on the right path. But there’s no markers to tell, and eventually I’m going to coast to a stop and discover whether I’m at my destination, or stuck axle-deep in a boggy marsh.
That’s kiiiiinda scary.
My Sartorial Splendor, Such As It Is
Fashion experts say that we do not dress to make ourselves look good; we dress to remind ourselves of the times we felt sexiest. Sadly, this is more difficult for me, as my sexiest time was when I was in fishnets and high heels, doing Frank-n-Furter at the Rocky Horror Picture Show. And that outfit’s a little exhausting to pull off in the Midwest.
But I do like walking around in heels. It improves my posture. It makes my ass look better. And, as Gini noted, when I have heels on, I strut everywhere.
Problem was, finding the appropriate boots. I didn’t want stripper boots because, well, midwest. I didn’t want cowboy boots because I think cowboy boots imply a certain rest of a look that I wasn’t going to pull off. So what I really wanted, after some research, was Cuban-heeled boots, a.k.a. “Beatle Boots,” with a subtle heel that wasn’t too bad.
Ordered a pair.
Those Cubans have narrow feet, man.
So I was heartbroken for quite some time at these misfit shoes, begging my shoe-happy friends to find me links – and eventually, Nex0s shot me a link to a wide version of the Cuban heels! I waited at the door like a kid about to get his Red Ryder BB Gun, and eventually the shoes arrived! And they fit!
The pictures, sadly, don’t do the boots justice. It’s not the boots themselves; you have to know my slump-shouldered posture by heart, and then see the difference as I stand taller, forced into better posture by differing pedal physics.
I’ve worn the heels a couple of times (working at home, it seems a bit ridiculous to lounge around in them), and I have to say it’s quite the adjustment. While I got used to running up and down toilet-paper-slicked aisles in my heels, I never actually navigated stairs. So I look good until I get to a staircase, and then suddenly I’m a trembling foal.
Also, I have but one speed in these suckers: strut. It’s a sedate military pace, which means if I’m caught in the rain I will march, looking good, to the car, while everyone else flees. It’s causing some problems. But hey, as Frank Zappa said, beauty knows no pain.
In other news, yes, I did my nails as a glittery whore-red, and my nails, I forgot to show you them:
My manicurist – I have one now – loves this shade. She told me, “I am not painting your nails blue any longer!” And these do get compliments. You can’t really see how glittery my nails are in this shot, but trust me, they’re like little disco balls at the ends of my fingers. At some point, I’ll discuss why I paint my nails and the privilege wrapped therein, but that’s for a different day. Now, just admire the pretty.
Also admire the pretty of my pedicure and my amazing pajama pants. Yekaterina says that my pedicure should match my pants. I’m not a guy who matches with anything, Yekaterina.
Because You're EMBARRASSING Me, Man
So today’s PVP has a strip that makes me wonder whether I was partially responsible for Scott Kurtz’s latest character:
That’s right – it’s the White Knight, Defender Of Women’s Rights! (And the middle panel is suspiciously similar to my widely-linked coffee essay… though then again, being vexed by guys hitting on girls isn’t exactly a unique idea.) It’s amusing, and I’m curious to see where (if anywhere) Kurtz goes with it.
But lemme discuss why I’m big on women’s rights. It’s not because I hope to get laid. It’s because I think that ultimately, we’re all responsible for our nutballs.
Which is to say that when Muslim terrorists assault an embassy or the Christian right blows up an abortion clinic or a nerd talks about how fake nerds are a matter of great concern or a Texan wants to secede from the Union or furries are dry-humping a stuffed yak down at the mall in front of the kids, it’s generally not the mainstream of that organization talking. Most Muslims and Christians are peaceful, most nerds and furries are cool, most Texans would rather handle their differences in another way.
But every organization has a few fuckheads who ruin it for everyone.
Now, if you’re a member of that particular club, the problem is that these fuckheads call themselves by your name. Worse, they’re probably the most visible members of your society. You can have a million people praying for peace and it’ll never make the nightly news, but one bomb and wham. That’s all people know you for. Left unchecked, the nutbags become your PR wing, because the nutbags go out of their way to irritate other people.
And I’m of the opinion that if the only time you meet a [MEMBER_OF_GROUP_X], they’re fucking with you, it’s not unreasonable to form the opinion that [MEMBERS_OF_GROUP_X] are assholes.
There are those who will cry, “But Ferrett, that’s not fair! People shouldn’t judge based on their personal experiences! They should get online and read about [GROUP_X], and get to know the good members of [GROUP_X], and form their opinions based on what [GROUP_X] says they are!”
To me, that’s a fool’s errand that goes against everything we know of human experiences. Asking people to not form a negative opinion about your group because people who identify themselves as members of [GROUP_X] keep picking on them is to ignore the fact that [GROUP_X] are going out of their way to make some people’s lives miserable. It’s a way of saying, “Yeah, maybe you got hurt by these people, but your pain is kind of trivial, isn’t it?” And frankly, “No, we’re better than that, go read up on our many accomplishments!” is not an approach that’s worked well, ever.
So what do you do? In many cases, though, you can’t control the nutbags. While I identify as a geek and a male, I can’t really control what other geeks and/or males do.
But I can talk louder. So if anyone’s listening, they’ll have a positive voice to associate with my [GROUP_X]. So they know that not all members of [GROUP_X] feel that way. So they know that people in [GROUP_X] are actively ashamed at these assholes passing themselves off as us.
I write about women’s rights, but you’ll note most of my essays on women’s rights are an arched eyebrow that says, “Really, guys? You think this is a valid stratagem?” Because as a dude, it’s deeply embarrassing to hear the tales of OKCupid from my female friends, and the shared IM messages that go, “ur hot wanna fuk”. It’s painful for me to see guys whistling at women on the street, as if that approach ever worked.* It’s a constant facepalm extravaganza, watching nerds slip into the friend zone and try to emerge as a surprise fuck, rather than being honest about their sexual intentions.
I like fucking. I like getting laid. I actually get a fair amount of sex.
What often motivates me is not that I need to defend women, but that these guys are so fucking bad at fucking.
Seriously. It’s not hard to get laid. I have a gut like a tub of suet, buggly eyes, and a hairline receding so fast you’d think it was France in World War II. Yet I manage. Why? Because I think of women as people, and not as mysterious vending machines for sex. When I talk to a woman, it’s because I would actually like to get to know her, and not because I’m wondering, “How do I crack this safe? What act should I put on to woo her?” My conversations arise because I’d still be here chatting with her, even if sex wasn’t a possibility, ever.
And that. Fucking. Works.
Not all the time, of course. Or even a majority of the times. But there’s a lot of men who would only talk to a girl if he thought there was a chance of sex involved. They treat 51% of the population like they were some bizarre alien overlords we live underneath the rule of, lashing us with promises of sex instead of whips. (Or, you know, sometimes both, depending on your kink.) Without the Cracker Jack prize contained in a girl’s panties, these men would never talk to a woman if they could help it, and it shows in every discussion: they talk about women like they’re irrational masses of needs that could not be fathomed by rational humans. They discuss women in alternating tones of fear and worship, needing a virgin to find the whore. They rob women of their humanity, and leave in place a tainted mystery.
So here I am, with lovers and haters, yelling as loud as I can as a guy, to tell anyone listening that, Hey, those oafs over there? Not all men are like that. And maybe some women like the clumsy approach, and see me as the nutbag of mankind. I’m fine with that. I can’t stop them, they can’t stop me. I’ll be the turd in their peanut butter. Because I like women and men, I like people, and I don’t see the value in segregating the two like they’re salt and pepper.
But when I talk about women’s rights, it’s because I’m trying to provide a positive experience to offset the negative nutbag experience. I want my voice ringing far and loud, saying I am not them. They wear my name, but don’t think we are all like that.
I’m not trying to defend women. I’m trying to defend me.
* – Yes, I’m aware that for many it’s a shaming call. I get that.