The Power Of Limp Jesus Compels You
“Yeah, I made a mistake looking up Downton Abbey on IMDB,” I said.
“Why’s that?”
“Well, I was trying to figure out where I knew some of the actors from. And I forgot that IMDB tells you how many episodes they’re in.”
“You dork. You’re just starting Season Two,” said Gini.
“I know! But it lied. It said that Limp Jesus appeared in every episode, but he wasn’t in the last one!”
“…Limp Jesus?”
“You know. The butler-dude with the limp. He’s gone, and now everyone’s talking about him like he’s Aslan.”
“He has a name! His name is Mr. Bates! Do you remember no one?”
“Yeah. There’s Lord Noble, and Bitchy Single Girl, and Snitchy Sister, and Dark Butler, and Cataract Girl, and….”
“You can remember the name of Aslan, but you can’t remember one name in the entire cast of Downton Abbey!?!?”
“Well, if there was a talking Lion-God in the cast of Downton Abbey, I’d remember his fucking name!”
Gini eyed me suspiciously. “I’m not sure you would,” she said. “I’m not sure you would.”
The Start Of The Veto Is Not The End
“The Veto” is one of those auto-debate topics in polyamory, like abortion or religion or Billy Mitchell, where merely mentioning it to the polyamorous causes a hive-like breakout of debate. Those who have veto power in their relationships feel that it’s the only sane method and view everyone without a veto as some sort of Darwinian poaching ground where slavering fuck-chickens knock you down and mount your partner, whereas those without a veto see the vetoers as Relationship Stalin, executing potential lovers with a single word.
Full disclosure: I am a Stalinist. My wife has a veto, as do I. I personally don’t recommend the veto system for every poly relationship, as like most parliamentary procedures the veto becomes a disaster without the proper frameworks to support it.
Yet I wanted to talk about what the veto is not: an end to conversation.
For me and Gini, the veto power is of such a devastating potency, like nuclear weapons, we’re loath to use it. The only reason we’ve given each other such power is that we know neither of us would ever use it without having tried every other recourse: talking, begging, negotiating, smoke signals, operant conditioning, feng shui, late-night infomercials touting the merits of dating someone else.
The veto is our bond of trust: “I know that you would never use this power unless you felt you had no other way of being heard – and so when you use it, I know it is because you are hurting so badly that we need to stop right now.”
As such, in all our years of marriage, we have never vetoed anyone.**
But if Gini or I did veto a partner, shutting down that relationship, that would not be the final word.
Too many people view the veto as a trump card – you slam it to the table, yell “VETO! NO BACKSIES!” and then your partner can only give a Swiper-like “Aw, man!” and dutifully slink away. There is no further discussion, just a sullen obedience.
Whereas if I ever vetoed one of Gini’s partners, Gini would indeed stop dating (or perhaps even talking) to that person. That would be Gini, showing me her understanding of how badly this relationship is hurting me.
But then I would have to explain all the reasons how her behavior with this guy is causing me so much pain that I felt I had to thumb the big red “NO” button.
And then we have a big discussion of a) what’s acceptable and not acceptable in our relationship, and b) how she could alter her behaviors to both make me feel loved and date this guy.
Because I want Gini dating other guys. (And girls.) I want Gini dating other guys and girls who I’m not necessarily involved with. I want Gini to not be dating other people, if she’s in the mood to. I want Gini to be happy.
If I’ve just shut down her relationship, obviously neither of us are happy.
And I think that’s why the veto gets a bad rap: too many partners use the veto as a way of walling off the things that make them uncomfortable. “I don’t like that guy,” they say, yanking the big “Veto” ripcord and then walking away without a word of explanation.
Except that for me, Gini obviously gets pleasure out of her partners. Maybe she’s so caught up in them, she’s neglecting me in ways that make me feel horrible. Maybe he’s abusive to her in ways I do not wish to tolerate. Maybe he’s better at something than I am, which makes me feel small and scared.
The veto power is not the shutdown, for us. It’s the start of an emergency talking session, and that discussion is entitled, “How can she continue to date this person, and still make me happy?” And my goal is to keep her dating that person, if at all possible.
Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes two people have toxic habits when combined, or one person really is disrespectful in a way that doesn’t fit with your relationship. The veto risks discovering that yes, it’s them or me, and now you have to choose. Which is another reason we try not to push that big red Veto button: it could be them. Maybe I’m acting like a jealous ass. Maybe this discussion is going to reveal that I’m the one at fault. It’s unlikely that Gini’s going to leave me, her husband of well over a decade… but I have just opened up that possibility.
In the end, we love each other, which is why we’ve never vetoed. We’ve managed to negotiate through all the difficulties our other partners have caused, and keep them going.
The reason we’ve managed that is because our primary goal is to make the other person happy. That veto works because of mutual assured respect. And I think a veto given to the wrong person, one who wishes to control or suppress, would be an unmitigated disaster.
In the meantime, we’ve got this Veto button sitting between us. Haven’t needed it yet. But if it gets pressed, we know to listen.
* – If you have not seen this movie, which is the best documentary I have ever seen, then you are missing out on the majesty that is Billy Mitchell, my friends.
** – Full disclosure: There has been one veto from my girlfriend, and that after months of misunderstandings and discussion about the party in question. Which should also put a lie to the idea that vetos are a way of enforcing not-really-poly binary relationships: my girlfriend also has veto power.
"I Would Love To Be Friends With An Alien!"
Jim Hines brought my attention to this quote from someone in science-fiction fandom:
Instead of insulting us, [Hines] could be using whatever influence he has in social media to help recruit more people of color into our circles. They need to know they’d probably be much more welcome here than they might be elsewhere. (After all, many of us would love to befriend extra terrestrials or anthromorphs.)
Many of these guys would love to befriend an alien… in the abstract. But I’m pretty sure that if we did meet aliens, they’d be, well, alien. They wouldn’t understand humans all that well. They’d arrive from an entirely different culture, one they’d consider to be the “default” culture that all sentient beings follow in their heart of hearts, and they’d make constant mistakes. You’d get invited to the alien’s house, and they’d forget, oh hey, you eat chicken strips and not cans of semi-sentient slime.
Man, that’s so messed up that you eat dead chickens, the aliens would say. Why would you do that? Why aren’t you drinking our slime? Hey, check it out, this guy eats dead chickens – do you just snap their necks and gnaw on the bodies?
You don’t? Crazy. Anyway, all we got is slime, so here, we put some ice in it. You humans all love ice.
And the aliens would be thrilled, showing you around to all their friends, because you’re their proof that they’ve got a human friend. You have the vague feeling that they really don’t give a crap about you per se, you could be any human, but they’re very happy to show you off like you’re some kind of prize they won when you go to their alien parties.
And when the aliens are a little tipsy on their slime-drinks, they make comments. They high-seven each other and talk about how great it is that we helped you. Because you guys – you’re always “you guys” – never did invent intergalactic space travel. We had to give it to you. Oh, yeah, I’m sure you would have gotten there eventually! But it’s good to help the races that just don’t put it together as fast. You folks were pretty much stewing to death in your wars and garbage and whatnot, and, I mean, wow, you sure like killing each other.
“I never killed anyone,” you’d protest.
Your people do, though, they’d say, and you’d have this discomforting feeling like there’s no distinction between you and everyone else like you.
And at parties, some of the aliens would dress up like you, putting on a comically oversized Texan hat and dancing Gangnam Style and putting on that big, swinging foam genitalia they think is so hysterical because they all reproduce asexually and eyew sex, and they’d wander around mashing your whole culture into one discrete wad, and they’d laugh because you humans have so much of interest to tell us. And their stories would all feature humans as a stock figure of The Race That Didn’t Really Want It, a bunch of backwards hicks who were so caught up in strangling each other they never thought to look to the stars, either the tragic figure who had to be killed to make way for progress or the goggle-eyed comic figure who wandered around Jar Jar Binks-style, astounded by all their magical inventions.
And after a while, you might stop coming to the parties, because the slime-drinks weren’t any good and their movies made fun of you and the aliens kept getting drunk and touching your junk because oh my elders, is that how you reproduce, lemme see that! And when you complained, they assured you that you were making too big a deal of things, those were just jokes, and these were just movies, they didn’t think that way about you, come on. We love you guys. We love you. Just stick around.
You might stop attending those wild alien parties. And the aliens would talk among themselves, trying to figure out why the humans were staying away. We were friendly! they’d cry. We bought them chicken strips!
What’s wrong with them, that they don’t show up?
Why I Can't Outline My Novels
I am, as they say in “the biz,” a pantser. I don’t plot anything; I just find an interesting starting point and get to writing.
This is a high-wire act, rife with failure. Neil Gaiman once likened it out leaping out of a plane and hoping you can knit a parachute on the way down. And I have the smashed wreckage of many stories that I could not find an ending for, including one sad novel that devoured half a year of my life before coughing up blood on my vest.
Yet I am currently rewriting the last third of a novel, after someone In The Biz pointed out that the last third didn’t fit with what had happened before. (Oh, the plot made sense, but thematically it’s like Dorothy went to the Land of Oz and then jetted over to visit Christopher Robin; the last third wasn’t bad, but it was addressing entirely different concerns than the first bits.) So I made a detailed outline (10,000 words!) and ran it by some very smart friends of mine who’d read the book for me, and they agreed it was pretty good.
Writing the actual words has been a vacuous hell.
As it turns out, I write to see what happens next. And knowing what happens next, all the bits afterwards are boring transcription: I’m left with all the tedious details, the equivalent of choosing camera angles after the actors have been cast and the sets built. And some really get off on selecting camera angles, there’s nothing wrong with that, but for me I know what they’re going to do and they can’t vary all that much from it because it’s a quite good outline, so now what?
This novel will make me gain weight, as the only way I can force myself to write it is to promise myself a large glass of chocolate milk when I am done with the day’s work. And nothing is better than a large glass of chocolate milk.
Oh, there are little surprises, enough to keep me going: here’s a need for a secondary character, here’s a scene that turned out more powerful than I’d envisioned, and of course I need my protagonist to be more active in his fate. (Always my problem in early drafts.) But in general, this is loathsome writing to me, a thing I find mechanical and hateful.
Many outline their plots wonderfully. Every time I’ve tried, it’s ended in disaster. My inner muse doesn’t like being bossed around, and I guess I’d better let her run amuck.
Which is the real lesson for all writers: There’s nothing that works. There’s only what works for you. Find it.
She Put It Perfectly
Regarding my concern over how many female writers I am reading, pktechgirl phrased it wonderfully:
The premise is not that women are lesser writers who need a hand up. The premise is that the same quality of book will get less attention when written by a woman, and we should actively work to counter that.