My Valentine's Day

Thanks to evolving Death Flu, the romance for Gini and I last night consisted of chugging NyQuil and collapsing into bed by 10:00.  We know how to party at La Casa McJuddMetz.  (Alas, I had a big night planned with all sorts of kinky shenanigans, too.  But now the ice chicken’s melted.)
In other news, is anyone else as fucking creeped out by Brent’s googly terror-eyes over at PVP as I am?  Those huge, jiggling orbs look like flan inside a fishbowl.  I know it’s supposed to make Brent more sensitive and expressive, but instead he just looks like Shaggy going “ZOIKS!” as he sees a monster for everything, including when he’s ordering coffee.  Brent’s gone from uber-cool to Mister Wimpy, and I keep worrying that he’ll accidentally catch those enlarged orbs on a pencil or something and they’ll leak out of his head. It’ll be like that dude at the end of Raiders, only with eyes.  And then who will comfort Skull?

It's Valentine's Day For Everyone, So Celebrate Regardless

So with every Valentine’s Day comes an unfortunate backlash from cantankerous singles: I’m not dating anyone.  Why should I have to endure a day dedicated to fake romance?  It’s so commercial, designed by card companies, and if you have to be reminded to be nice to your partner on a special day then it can’t be a good relationship at all yadda yadda yadda…
Look.  Nobody likes wine made from sour grapes.
Being single has its sucktacular momentsand I can understand how the day might make you feel a little blue – but I think part of being a good human involves learning to cheer for accomplishments that aren’t yours.  My lifetime dream is to have a novel published, but that doesn’t mean I can’t celebrate to the rafters when a friend of mine snags her first novel sale.  I’m not always thrilled when one of my partners finds a new boyfriend, but I still find a way to be happy for them.
Sometimes, a celebration’s not for you, and yet you should be happy for other people even though there’s nothing for you in it.
And yes, the day is commercial.  But it’s also an excuse for people to go out of their way to be kind to each other – which isn’t something we celebrate enough.  In an ideal world, perhaps every couple would be spewing wild declarations of passion to each other daily – Gini and I do – but for those who aren’t quite as open with their affections, having a day that encourages them to say “Lordy, I love you” is a Good Thing.  Not everybody’s going to be as enlightened as you.
Occasionally, someone bitter comes up with the idea of “Singles Day,” which is blackly defined as an opposite to Valentine’s Day.  I say, fuck that.  If you’re going to devise a Singles Day, let’s define one as part of the strengths of being single, the way you can pursue what you love without worry of alienating someone else, as a time to be passionate about other things, as a time to experience a different and in some ways stronger kind of life.
And if that happened, where for a day I was suffused in the reminders of all the little compromises I’ve made for love, I’d cheer the shit out of that too.  Because if your life is bettered in some way, I’m for it.

A Spoonful Of Jealous Makes The Poly Go 'Round

If you’re dating me, you’re most likely polyamorous, so let me give you some wise advice:
Be a little jealous once in a while.
I don’t desire a constant jealousy – a fuming “Oh, I saw you talking with HER” isn’t going to help much.  I’m apparently a flirty person, even if I don’t always see that, and if I have to spend most of my time smoothing your feathers, well, I can’t see this working out in the long run.
But a dash of jealousy lets me know you care.
The occasional revelation that sometimes you’re envious of the attention I lavish upon others tells me you value the time we spend together.  A periodic insecurity that I might leave lets me know that I occupy a space in your life that no one else can fill.
If you’re too cool, I start to think that I’m interchangeable in your life, a nice option that you’d get by without.  If your attitude towards the orgy I just had with the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders is a constant, “Oh, that’s great, I’m sure they’re wonderful in bed,” then I start to wonder whether you love me or just don’t mind having me around when I happen to be there.
And in return, I might admit the guy you were exchanging silly puns with on Twitter last night made me twinge.  Just a teeny bit.  Nothing I can’t live with, because the name of this game is open relationships, but hey.  Sometimes we’re irrational that way, no matter how we front.  And I won’t act upon that emotion, but I’ll let you know it’s there.
Admit you’re a little nuts.  Because I know I’m a little nuts about you, love.

Why Satisfying Is Not Often Smart

One of the best pieces of advice I received was, “The satisfying thing is usually not the smart thing.” And I think that’s exemplified in this father’s YouTube video to his daughter:

Summed up: Not-too-bright daughter writes whiny, friends-locked Facebook post about how her parents are lazy slave drivers before handing her laptop to her Dad for upgrades. Dad creates a fraught video explaining just what a callow, lazy jerk his daughter is before shooting her laptop with hollow-point bullets and explains that if she wants her own laptop from now on, she’s going to have to pay for it herself.
Some parents – a lot of them, actually – are calling him “Dad of the year.” And I understand why. Emotionally, this is cathartic, the kind of thing you’re tempted to do as a parent when your kids do stupid, disrespectful, and insulting things that stem from a lack of understanding about how good they have it. (Which all middle-class and up kids go through.)
This video is about what parents want to do, because it would be very very satisfying to see the look on your selfish daughter’s face when she realizes what a fucking bad idea it is to cross you.
But then you think, and go, “What am I really teaching here?” Note how the dad isn’t much better than his daughter – his daughter made a fool out of him on the Internet, so he’s gonna hurt her even worse. He’s not teaching her that this sort of response is inappropriate – the lesson here is that if someone wounds you, and they’re in your control, the proper response is to hit back hard.
If you’re a good parent, you think about going dumb-ass off the handle like this…. And then you sit back and think about what you actually want to teach the kid: work matters. And there’s a lot of overlap between what you do to teach “work matters” and what Sad Dad here does – if the kid’s actually that bad, then you actually do most of what the guy does in the end: you take away the computer, you explain that if you really think you have it that bad then it’s time for you to pay for more things, maybe you have her write a letter of apology to that so-called “cleaning lady.”
But when you’re punishing, you keep in mind that your child’s main fault is that she’s immature – and to teach her maturity, you have to model the correct behavior. You have to be unemotional, rational, and responsive… and not to get in front of the Internet, nearly sobbing with rage, and tell everybody, “LOOK HOW MUCH YOU HURT ME, KID, WHAT AN INCONSIDERATE CUNT YOU ARE!” when your original complaint was that she was bitching to her friends and making you look bad.
Sure, I guess it could teach her how awful this feels when the shoe’s on the other foot. In reality, one suspects it teaches her that she just needs to learn how to bitch better, because in the end, the person who freaks out with the more sympathetic position will win. He’s not teaching her to be a better person, he’s teaching her to be more sophisticated in her approach. If the kid gets Facebook again, will she hide it better? If the kid has any sort of emotional reaction, will she keep it from her Dad? You bet your ass she will.
What the Dad did was what parents everywhere are tempted to do, because it would be very satisfying. But my wife has already discussed why the dad’s reaction is disproportionate, and that’s why what’s satisfying is not smart. What he’s doing is escalating in a war of control, achieving victory but not actually changing any minds.  I find it hard to believe that the daughter will feel bad about what she did, she’ll just feel bad about what the consequences were.
I think for all the parents cheering, most of them will come to the conclusion that this is awesome to watch, but not so much to actually do.  Which is correct.

New Story! "Devour," Now Live At Escape Pod!

Some stories are just too damn personal.  When my stepfather Bruce died of Lou Gehrig’s disease and my grandmother went blind, then senile, then died in a sad nursing home, I had a lot of emotions churning about.
So I decided to write a story about love, and what happens when the person you adore is taken from you.
Being me, I made it science fiction, and I may have switched the protagonists to be an elderly gay couple, and I may have raised the subtext to, er, text, by infecting one of them with an identity-eating virus that consumes his personality.  But the emotions in this story are roiling and true, and it’s one of my stories that cuts so close to the bone that it’s hard for me to reread.
Thankfully, Escape Pod – the premiere science-fiction podcast – picked it up as an original story, and Dave Thompson gave it a gorgeously emotive reading (saying, quite kindly, that it was “brimming over with humanity and love“), and now it’s live!  Obligatory sample:

“I want some water,” Sergio says.  The bicycle chains clank as he strains to put his feet on the floor.
Sergio designed his own restraints.  He had at least fifteen plumbers on his payroll who could have installed the chains – but Sergio’s never trusted anything he didn’t build with his own hands.  So he deep-drilled gear mounts into our guest room’s floral wallpaper, leaving me to string greased roller chains through the cast-iron curlicues of the canopy bed.
“You’re doing well, Bruce,” he lied, trying to smile – but his lips were already desiccated, pulled too tight at the edges.  Not his lips at all.
I slowed him down; I had soft lawyer’s hands, more used to keyboards than Allen wrenches.  Yet we both knew it would be the last time we could touch each other.  So I asked for help I didn’t need, and he took my hands in his to guide the chains through what he referred to as “the marionette mounts.”
Then he sat on the bed and held out his wrists while I snapped the manacles on – the chamois lining was my idea – and we kissed.  It was a long, slow kiss that needed to summarize thirty-two years of marriage. And it should have been comforting, but his mouth was a betrayal.  His lips had resorbed from their lush plumpness.  His tongue had withdrawn to a stub.
His kiss still sent flutters down my spine.
I pressed my hands against his back, moving towards making love, but Sergio pushed me away.  ”We don’t know how transmissible this is,” he said.  Then he tugged on the chains to verify he could lie down and sit up, but not leave the bed.
I pressed the keys into his palm, trying to burn the feeling of his skin into mine forever.  He snipped the keys in half with a bolt-cutter, then flung it all into the corner.
“That’s that,” he said, and rolled away from me to cry.  My arms ached – still ache – from not being able to hold him.
Six days later, I’m still here.  And Sergio is still leaving.

Now, Dave’s reading is top-notch, but the #1 complaint I get with audio readings is that people want to read, not listen.  Which is why it’s nice to say that the entirety of the story is in written form at Escape Pod, if you are low on time.  Go over, check it out – and if you like it, please link to it, Tweet it, Facebook it.  As you should do for every story you love.  Each scrap of PR helps fledgling authors, remember.

Helping A Local Bookshop

My friend Patty Cryan helps run Annie’s Book Shop, an indie book store that specializes in SF and Fantasy fiction.  (And Doctor Who.)   Unfortunately, after a successful first year, her store’s hit a bump thanks to local construction routing traffic around the store (a Cleveland specialty I’m surprised to see in MA), and she’s now trying to raise some funds through a Peerbackers Donation Campaign, wherein you will get some Doctor Who merchandise should you donate.
It’s a tough economy, but if you can lend a hand you’ll be helping the cause.  Link, retweet, Facebook, you know the deal.