Tiny Privileges
Whenever I go out to a restaurant that plays pop music, P!nk’s “Just Give Me A Reason” is playing.
That song is like pouring live ants in my ear.
It’s not that it’s a terrible song – I quite like P!nk, even if I keep wanting to pronounce her name with an alveolar click – but that it doesn’t hold up well on repetition. It’s a simple, repetitive melody that’s not helped at all by Nate Reuss’s overly earnest response. I’d wrung everything I needed to hear out of that song by the fifth time I heard it, and yet every time I walk into Jersey Mike’s for a sandwich, there P!nk is, annoying the crap out of me with this summer’s overplayed ballad.
And I’m grateful.
I’ve worked either at home or in an office for nearly twenty years now, having escaped what looked to be a lifetime of retail. And I remember being stuck listening to the awful loop of whatever it was that our management had decided was pleasurable for our customers – in some cases, the same 45-minute sampler CD that looped over and over again until we found ways to quietly disable it. Having to listen repeatedly to songs we had come to loathe was just another reminder of how insignificant we were in the scheme of things – low-paid grunts encouraged to shut up and smile no matter what the inconvenience.
Having control over what I can listen to? That’s a power. One that might go away if I get another job, a temporary benefit I’m going to relish for today. It makes me feel a little sad for all the millions of people out there being force-fed Ya Mo’ B There one more time. And it makes me appreciate the fact that I’m going to put on Fall Out Boy and listen to it until that wears thin, which it will, and then I can quietly discard it.
In Which I Talk About The Male Orgasm, And Feminism, And Stupid Ferretts
As most of y’all know, I’ve moved my explicit writings on sex over to FetLife, and only refer to ’em here when I think they’re particularly important.
In this case, I think it’s important.
I’ve written an essay over at Fet called “The Guilty Orgasm: One Guy’s Perspective On Guygasms,” which in turn is a response to a much better essay by a woman, titled “Men’s Orgasms: A Woman’s Perspective.” My essay has well over a thousand likes, and a fascinating comment stream of 200 or so comments; hers has an amazing 2,500 likes and 500+ comments, and I think should be mandated reading for men who have sex with women.
I’m not going to summarize overmuch, but the core point is how the societal expectation of how men should be in bed actually in many ways makes sex less enjoyable for both the woman and the man… and the two essays are a really good analysis of how men’s behavior is affected by a patriarchy just as much as women’s is. It’s about vulnerability, and why that’s really difficult for guys in bed.
In some circumstances, I might post the essay on my blog, but in that case, the essay that inspired it would still be behind a login wall, and I’d really encourage you to read both. Unfortunately, bugmenot has blocked FetLife, so it’s harder to log in, but a throwaway email address and two minutes’ worth of creating an account will get you in. It’s an interesting discussion, and worth your time if you can get to it.
Pacific Rim: Written By Ten-Year-Olds, Made By Masters
There’s a lot of hand-wringing in nerd circles because Pacific Rim wasn’t a monster hit; it came in third at the box office this weekend, behind Adam Sandler’s Grown-Ups 2. And that’s because Pacific Rim is a deeply flawed movie that reminds me of, of all movies, Titanic.
Because Pacific Rim is immune to criticism in the same way Titanic is. Yes, it’s full of cheesy dialogue. Yes, some of the action sequences don’t quite make physical sense. Yes, the plot falls apart to the point where you’re actively questioning the plot points as they arise.
It’s also, like Titanic and Starship Troopers before it, tremendous fun if you hop on board.
The thing about Guillermo del Toro is that he swings for the rafters on this; he has a beautiful eye for scope, and so these huge robots feel terrifyingly, gloriously, large. He keeps finding the perfect shot to make them large, putting smaller things next to them so you never forget the scale; a seagull, a school of fish, a schoolgirl. When they’re stomping through downtown Hong Kong, goddamn if they don’t look like they’re titans battling among skyscrapers. You feel small, and strangely ennobled, getting a ringside seat next to such massive violence. And visually, it’s one of the most stylish movies to come along in a while, because everything has this worked-over feel that the original Star Wars had; these robots are banged up, scraped, they feel well-used. If you’re looking for eye candy, your eyes will be swimming in diabetes by the time it is all done.
As for the plot, well, it has one. This film gets by on sheer audacity, with people making such boldly bizarre statements in that Charlton Heston way of delivery that you either buckle under the strain of this bizarre reality and let it invade you, or you despise it. I mean, of course when two-hundred-foot high monsters start invading from the sea, the only answer is to build even larger robots to fight them. Of course, despite this apocalyptic scenario, there are only two scientists in the entire world devoted to analyzing the biology of these bizarre sea creatures. Of course each of the monsters arrives on a schedule, so we can better plan our robot-fighting techniques.
But all my attempts at snark wash off. I was grinning like a schoolboy the entire time, because if you pile absurdity onto absurdity, eventually it collapses into a sort of bizarre Axe Cop-like black hole where you realize Pacific Rim is not trying to emulate reality, it is trying to assemble a whole separately new reality that’s twice as entertaining. It is staring logic in and eye and saying, “…but what fun would that be?”
On one level Pacific Rim is a hot mess of filmmaking… but on the other, it surpasses all of its flaws to be strapped together much like the robots in the movie: functioning despite all disbelief.
Pacific Rim claps its hands together and dares you to mock it. What it loves, it loves hard, and unapologetically. If you’re looking for giant fucking robots to judo-toss Godzilla, well, Guillermo Del Toro said, “I want that to happen.” And he welded all that together with dialogue straight from frommage and special effects to make you gasp and a story that kind of sort of hangs together, and either you decide to hop on board or you hipster your way out of a hell of a lot of fun.
It’s up to you, man. But I’d ride the robot, if you can. It’s worth it. (And doubly so in 3-D, which I hardly ever say.)
I'm Teaching Master Classes In Story Writing: Care To Watch?
In woodworking, they say the difference between the amateur and the pro is that the pro knows how to fix his mistakes. And that’s true. You’re always going to have a door that doesn’t quite fit, or a frame that’s not quite square, or dovetail joint that doesn’t match up; that’s the nature of working with an organic material.
The trick is to know what to do when things go wrong.
And quite a bit has gone wrong for me as I’ve been live-writing my latest story. My first idea didn’t pan out, and I had to be smart enough to recognize when to bail on it after three separate attempts. The second idea wound up having a very tricky plot that was at odds with its emotional impact, and so I wrote literally three passes on the first 2,000 words before I was content to call it even a first draft. And this sucker is due in two weeks.
What I’m doing at the Clarion Echo this year is fixing a story in real time. This is as clear a view as I can give you into my head when I’m analyzing a nonfunctioning story, showing you how I’m diagnosing the problems, erasing the weak parts that aren’t working and uncovering the core so I can bring it back to life. Which, I think, is the kind of information I would have killed for ten years ago back when I was wandering in the woods, wondering why my stories weren’t selling. Stories involve getting tons of tiny details right, and I’m showing you what happens when you focus on the wrong details – and, more importantly, how to strip those inessential elements away to bring out the truth in it.
Plus, you get stories. This week I’ll be rewriting my tale “The Girl Dances, The White Curtain Flutters,” the tale of a girl on a mining asteroid who’s in love with Bollywood movies. That’s a good solid draft I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy, and then I’ll show you what I need to fix to take it from “good” to “salable, perhaps.”
If that sounds interesting, then I’ll remind you that I am blogging for the Clarion Write-A-Thon, and a mere $5 donation gets you access to six weeks’ worth of intensive analysis from me. ($25 gets you a short story critique, if you desire one.) And even if you’re not at all interested in the nuts and bolts of writing, if you could donate whatever you can, I’d take it as a personal favor – Clarion was the workshop that took me from “struggling nobody” to “Oh, wait, maybe I have heard of that guy” in the world of fiction, and I feel a deep responsibility to my alma mater.
So. $5 and an LJ account will get you in. I’ll do my damndest – have been doing my damndest – to make it worth your while. Please donate?
How My Mother's Generosity Ruined Our Sex Lives
My Mom is a very sweet woman, and so after listening to us discussing our backaches from our decade-old bed, last Christmas she went in 50/50 with us on a new bed.
We’ve barely had sex since.
The lack of sex isn’t my Mom’s fault. It’s the bed. The bed is a luxurious king-sized bed, which we’d never had to navigate before – it’s lovely to sleep in, as we can curl up in our own nests, never having to worry about bumping ankles. But getting to each other involves crossing a vast veldt of black blankets, a kind of humping crawl that takes ten, maybe fifteen minutes to be able to touch each other in the center.
It isn’t helped that the bed is a fluffy quagmire. It’s a foam latex bed, not quite as bad as memory foam (whose tight, form-fitting grasp makes me feel like I’m Han Solo trapped in carbonite), but it is very soft and swallowing, so watching someone traverse it is like watching a fly struggle to get out of a web. This bed is made for sleep, and slumber enforces it with a firmly mattressed hand; I’ve watched Gini struggle to cross the field of snooze to get to me, grow exhausted, and doze off in mid-stride.
So, with such a glutinous surface beneath us, trying to get, er, traction on any sort of amorous times becomes a huge issue. It’s like trying to have sex on a bag of Play-Doh; anywhere you put your knees, your hands, your face, sinks beneath you, making any attempt to connect with your lover a strenuous effort. The bed is actively trying to separate you, your weight sucking you away from each other, making certain conjoinings damn near impossible. We’ve actually taken to going for the big S in other rooms in the house when we want to experiment, because this bed? Is a vacuum traction of anti-intimacy.
Then, as it turns out, the bed actually reduces our overtures of sex. We were analyzing the reasons why we’d dropped so precipitously the other day, and it turns out that much of our sexytimes are jump-started by cuddling. Because you know, we’re not in the mood but hey, let’s snuggle up, and whoah, there’s a warm and cute body next to us, so, you know….
…except that this sweeping plain of a bed makes snuggling an effort. We have to fight our way past tides of blankets to get to each other – and it doesn’t help that we’ve taken to creating our own sleepy-holes, piled high with pillows and blankets and twigs and spare bits of lint and what have you.
So last night, Gini and I decided that to save our sensuality, we had to make room for snuggling. No more plopping into the Bed of Nap and dozing off; no, we must fling aside these impromptu Les Mis-style of barricades and cuddle for fifteen minutes before we drifted off.
It worked.
But the interesting thing in all of this is how much of our sex lives are formed by tiny details. Would we have thought that a new bed would make such a large change to our usual flurry of activity? No. But change two things, and the results were notable. And while on one level it’s just sex, on another level it’s a meditation on how our environment alters our behavior in ways we don’t even consider. We’d noticed the slowdown, but it took us a while to hunt for the cause, and it turned out it was things that should, in a sane world, have nothing to do with each other.
And I’m reminded of my daughter, heartbroken, because the boy she loved lived in Alaska, and she lived in Massachusetts, and she didn’t want to move to Alaska and he didn’t want to move to Massachusetts. She was aghast that something so stupid, so trivial as a choice of location, could stop love. “But things like that destroy love all the time,” I told her. “Bills don’t seem like they’d break a relationship, but hell yeah they do. Cleanliness. Pets. The way you like things arranged in the bathroom. All sorts of stupid mundane things affect a romance, and it seems like this effervescence of beauty shouldn’t be dragged down by chores and jobs… but they are. They totally are. And you just have to deal with it.”
For us, it’s a bed that shifted the underlying methods of our love life in ways we’d never realized. Two unrelated factors shifted our patterns of intimacy, a Skinner reflex no one could have anticipated. But hey, at least we’re aware of it.
Now? Time to fight back against the Bed of Asceticism.