A Brief Plug For A Book, Newly Cheap
A while back, I reviewed my friend Sara Harvey‘s “Convent of the Pure.” You can read the review here, where I said, “The best part about Convent is the very real, very sexy, and very tender relationship between a woman and the lover she can no longer have. While Portia is battling succubi and demons and mad scientists, the heart of the story is about two women who love each other so deeply that they’re trying to stay together even after life itself.”
Well, Sara’s novel is now only 99 cents on Kindle for a limited period of time, so if that sounds interesting to you – I mean, hey, it’s a buck. Why not try it out? I liked it, and I find it hard to turn up almost any decent read for just under a dollar. Check it out.
I'm Not IT
A friend of mine has an insanely good idea – she’s holding an IT reunion party, since (as all good Stephen King fans know), the next anniversary of Derry’s 27-year cycle is coming up next year on May 30th. So why not get the Losers’ Club together and play our assigned roles?
Naturally, I called Stuttering Bill Denbrough – the famous writer, the noble man, the man who’s just awesome. But as I said, “I’m requesting Bill, but frankly I suspect I’m gonna wind up as Richie.”
The response: “You are just so totally Richie.”
Know Your Role, Steinmetz! Wacka, wacka, wacka. And now I do the dance of crazy for your amusement!
You Are All Bad And You Should Feel Bad If You Think This
When I discuss health care, people tell me, “I have good insurance.” I always reply, “Have you gotten seriously sick? Have you ever had to make a serious claim on your insurance for major surgery or a large-scale illness?”
To which they have until this point inevitably replied, “Why, no, I haven’t.”
You don’t know, then. So shut the hell up.
The problem I have with a lot of the health care debate is that it frames “health insurance” as some sort of magic shield where everything is covered and you can’t go broke. But here. Take a look at Jay Lake, successful fantasy writer and owner of a fully-fledged and well-paying Day Jobbe with what he considers fairly good insurance. He got cancer, pretty bad cancer that’s required multiple surgeries and chemotherapy. He’s paying roughly $200 a week in co-payments for his medicine, and estimates that the cancer is costing him at least $10,000 a year in medical bills alone. No word on what it costs him in terms of time off from work, his inability to attend writing workshops as an instructor, his lost writing time thanks to cancer-brain, et al. Lord knows what will happen if his Day Jobbe is callous and finds that Jay’s fogged brain is a liability to his productivity, and sorry, time to let you go.
If not Jay, then think of my sister-in-law Kristi, who had health insurance through her husband. She got a deadly, rare illness – and the insurance company refused to pay for the only known surgery that was known to treat it. In the meantime, they pulled every bit of bureaucratic bullshit they could get, delaying her payments to the point where she had to keep switching to other pharmacies because it was three months before they paid up, switching representatives whenever she convinced one this surgery was in her favor, denying routine claims on the first couple of tries. If it wasn’t for our constant advocacy (terminally sick people don’t have the strength to fight bureaucracy) and her family kicking in the money to hire a lawyer, she’d probably be dead.
Insurance doesn’t necessarily save you. As my wife the bankruptcy lawyer can tell you, over 60% of all bankruptcies in the US are due to medical costs…. And 78% of those people had insurance when they started out.
Here’s the deal: your insurance is always good on paper. But that’s like assuming all your friends are close, reliable buddies because they hang out at the bar and drink beer with you. Of course your insurance is awesome now, when all you’re doing is the occasional doctor’s visit for that cold and the Advair you need to keep breathing! You’re not asking anything of them.
The real test of a friend comes when your partner’s left you, and you have to move out of hir apartment, and there’s a shit-ton of heavy dressers to move while you’re on the verge of crying and your girlfriend’s there and there’s a good chance a new fight’s gonna start up while you decide who gets the Blu-Ray, and your friends know all this is likely to happen and yet they show up anyway.
Every insurance is wonderful until you say, “BTDubs, I’ve got $150,000 in surgery I need.” Then a lot of them make their excuses at the bar and find somewhere else to be on moving day.
So you know what? Stop talking about “insurance” as though the act of having insurance keeps you safe from any illness. There are levels of insurance, and levels of disease even within good insurance, that can still leave you utterly untouched or bankrupt should you get the wrong kind of sick.
That’s what the conservatives don’t want to acknowledge: you can do everything right according to the system and still get screwed. That’s the core problem. And I don’t mind them exploring other solutions to it aside from Universal Health Care, but I do mind them acting as though “insurance” is a generically wonderful thing that saves everyone equally.
It doesn’t. Try to face reality when making decisions, folks.
Can't Decide If This One's For Poppy Or Seanan
You know what I want? A “LARRY UNDERWOOD AMERICAN TOUR” T-shirt, showcasing all the lovely stops Larry made on his trip across America, flogging his great new hit “Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?”
The year would have to be smudged, of course. And the final dates of the tour would be Boulder, then Vegas.
A Letter To Those Who Would Write To Me
About once a week, I get an email from someone, saying, “You don’t know me, but I’m in this situation with my partner, and I don’t mean to bother you, but I wanted to ask for your advice.”
I just want to be clear: that is totally cool. Do not hesitate to contact me.
I would not write all these insights I have on having mostly drama-free relationships if I didn’t intend it to help. I’m not saying I’m an infallible guru on such matters – I’m not necessarily correct, and often I have a very narrow window into your world – but if I can be of service, I am happy to. It’s not an insult, it’s not a waste of my time, I’m happy to do what I can for you.
Now, my timeliness on this may be in doubt – I’m busy, sometimes you get spam-trapped, sometimes it takes a day or two – but if you don’t hear from me, follow up. You’re not an inconvenience. I am deeply committed to helping people be happy as best I can, and if I fail, it’s not you, it’s me. Yell at me. I’ll come around.
The only non-cool thing? I usually know who you are. If you’ve commented in here a few times, I generally have some bead on you. Don’t think you’re that forgettable, okay? Though telling me where I know you from will help, because I have no idea that Danielle Dericky Deschamps is actually LJ User=CharityWhore.
(However, I usually don’t spread links asking for monetary assistance unless I know the people in question. No offense, but if I’m asking people to donate money to a cause, that’s partially me vouching for them – so I have to believe personally. That’s a tricky thing, since I don’t like to spam. If I point folks at someone, I want it to be super-effective.)
The Ferrett's Hard Limits Of Dating
(Also, if you want to read a very good essay on why your partner isn’t going to be having better sex with someone else, Jenna writes an extremely good breakdown of why “better” sex is a silly notion here.)
A friend of mine posted a very good list on Red Flags in relationships at – the things you should realistically stop a relationship when they appear. And I think it’s interesting to list my own Red Flags in polyamorous relationships, naming the things that have gotten me into trouble in the past that I should be able to stop at these days.
There’s the obvious lying and trust issues – I mean, if you’re not honest with me, I don’t want to be with you. At all. And [NAME REDACTED]’s list serves as a basic 101 of relationships in general, demanding the usual respect that EVERYONE should have. I mean, it’s a good list, since people DO tend to forget, but it’s right up there with “humans need oxygen, food, and three-dimensional space to survive.”
But there are other subtler polyamorous patterns that don’t work FOR ME. I have a very specific polyamorous pattern with my wife, and we’ve found what does and does not work for us… And there are certain patterns that have popped up again and again to the point where it’s like, “Really, if this is an issue, we shouldn’t be together.”
- WE ARE YOUR FIRST POLY RELATIONSHIP. Honestly, we’ve done the starter polyamory thing, and it doesn’t work for us; people go in with the best intentions, but usually it winds up being a rocky road as we navigate the usual jealousies and fears that go with it, and poorly. At this point in my life, I need a relatively quiet and stable relationship, and the first time at the rodeo ain’t ever gonna be quiet.
- YOUR CORE RELATIONSHIP, IF ANY, IS IN TROUBLE. If you can’t find a way to respect your primary partner, it’s going to be extra-difficult to respect me. I’m not saying that if you’re experiencing difficulty with your lover that we can’t make it work later when all is well, and I’ll cheerfully flirt all day long… But a new relationship always adds a fresh layer of stress to any existing relationship, and the danger that I’m going to be the distraction that lets you ignore the center isn’t cool with me. Either you Tarzan-swing to me, which means that you’ll probably be swinging over with all the same problems that contributed to your last relationship, or you eventually come to blame me (in part) for breaking up the old relationship. So if you are dating someone else, make sure it’s good.
- YOU ARE IN A RELATIONSHIP WITH SOMEONE WHO’S NOT INTERESTED IN POLYAMORY, BUT IS THEORETICALLY COOL WITH WHATEVER YOU DO. It’s hard to diagnose these things remotely, but in my experience those relationships have a higher-than-usual percentage of being dysfunctional; sometimes it works beautifully, sometimes it turns out that the other partner isn’t really poly but is gritting his/her teeth to see if you work it out, sometimes it winds up being a variant on “Whatever I do better be okay with you or I’m outta here.” In any case, it’s usually at least a little awkward.
- YOU NEED LOTS OF TIME. I’m working full-time, writing at least an hour every night, doing slush-work, and a ton of other things. You’re not a bad person if you need to see me three times a week or get long daily emails from me… but I’m juggling my wife and two lovely girlfriends, in addition to some other flirtations, and if you need a lot of time, then that’s going to be an issue. When I focus on you, you’re the only thing in my life and I will give you concentrated bullets of pure affection… But I’m not going to be a full-time relationship. Can’t be.
- YOU ARE DISRESPECTFUL OR DISDAINFUL OF MY PARTNERS. You do not always have to like them. I’m in the middle of a fairly complex web that has its own problems; it’s tougher to negotiate things that in some relationships come without question, even when the trade-off is stability. I can see being irritated by having to deal with someone else’s issues, and my Poly Paperwork Patrol.
But I love my partners. I won’t hear of them being insulted, belittled, or disdained. And if you think they’re that useless, then you clearly can’t think all that much of me for wanting to be with them. I won’t be a party to that.
- YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND THAT I MAKE DECISIONS BASED ON PERCEIVED MERIT. I’ll often say that I won’t do X because it would hurt Gini’s feelings… But that doesn’t mean that I’m held hostage by Gini. It means that I’ve looked at Gini’s feelings, decided that if our positions were reversed I might be hurt, and said, “Well, even though I’d like to do that, it’s not worth taking a chunk out of Gini’s self-esteem.”
Yet for every time that happens, there are three times where I look at Gini’s feelings, go “Okay, sweetie, I think you’re being completely irrational here.” And we’ll have a long discussion, where the most likely outcome is that a) Gini convinces me that she’s right, or b) I convince Gini she’s not, and X happens.
The thing is, if I tell you, “Well, Gini wants X, so I’m doing X” and you respond with, “You’re just saying that because you’ve been married to Gini for eleven years,” then you fail. Hard. I don’t make decisions based on seniority; I make them because I think Gini’s actually CORRECT.
Anything else is a way of saying, “You’re taking her side because you’ve known her longer.” Fuck that; anyone who knows me knows that I’ll argue ANY case I find to be unfair. If I feel any of my partners are out of line, rest assured I’m going to bring it up with them. (And I expect them to do the same with me.) I’m not the sort of person who takes people’s sides automatically just because they’re my partner – Gini is the love of my life because she has a long history of having good instincts, and I’m with her because I think that she’s a very smart cookie, but I can’t ever imagine being with someone where I give them the right of blind trust.
There may be couples who blindly take each others’ side. That’s fine. I’m not one of them, because they’re fucking stupid. Rest assured that if I think you have a point and one of my partners doesn’t, I’m going to be going hammer and tongs with them to prove your point.