Repin’ the Realness of Race, Class and Wellness in Erotic Lit - #LGBTQ #womenwriters #blackwritersmatter

By Stephani Maari Booker (Guest Blogger)

Writing has been my lifelong vocation, and for a good chunk of my life I’ve been a voracious reader of erotica, mostly F/F erotica being that I’m a lesbian. However, I’ve written only four complete erotic stories in my life, plus an erotic fantasy romance that’s currently in progress. On top of having had jobs in journalism and nonprofits, I do a lot of different kinds of writing, so erotica just isn’t always on the front burner when I have many other things cooking on my stove.

In my completed erotic stories, I’m repin’ the realness of race and class when folks hook up. To translate from African American Vernacular English to Standard American English, I’m representing the everyday truths of race and class in romantic/sexual relationships. I’m not depicting big conflicts and dramas but rather the down-to-earth little pushes and pulls between intimate partners that with respectful communication, love and a little sex can resolve into deeper understandings and connections.

An interracial and inter-class couple are main characters in two of my published erotic stories. Madeleine (“Maddi”) is an African American woman from an urban low-income background who fought for the education and opportunities to enable her to have a lower-middle-class job, while her lover Freya is a European American woman who’s been middle class since birth and is a classic lesbian eco-feminist Goddess-worshipper. Their differing perspectives based on their backgrounds and identities affect their individual choices and beliefs about everything, including money and sex, often with amusing results.

My first published story with Maddi and Freya is “The Trade-In” in Coming Together: Girl on Girl, one of Eroticanthology.org’s collections that raise money for charity. In “The Trade-In,” Freya wants Maddi to get rid of an unattractive, cheap jelly-rubber dildo and replace it with a quality silicone one. However, Maddi thinks it’s extravagant to pay a lot of money for a sex toy.

The second published story featuring Maddi and Freya is now in Owning It: Embracing Our Bodies, Sexuality, and Power, a newly released anthology from SinCyr Publishing, a press whose mission is "shifting rape culture one sexy story at a time." Here’s the publisher’s description of this collection:

“Owning who we are is powerful. By embracing our bodies and owning our desires, we best experience beautiful, sensual, and intense sexual expression. The characters in Owning It love their bodies regardless of their physical limitations. In these pages, a Daddy and his 'little' explore the healing waters of a DD/lg dynamic. Others enjoy a wide range of sexual encounters and relationships from playful to intense, from straight to queer, from light to dark. These authors give us characters that truly own it.”

The idea of “owning it” includes proudly claiming your identity and recognizing how it informs your sex life, as well as managing issues of health and ability in ways that benefit sexual, physical and emotional wellness. My story in Owning It, “The Best Medicine,” focuses on these themes by repin’ the realness of race, class and wellness in a romantic-sexual relationship.

The story takes place at the beginning of Maddi and Freya’s relationship, when a particularly irritating minor health problem threatens to put the brakes on their new sex life. In this passage, Maddi has told Freya over the phone that she has a yeast infection. Freya, a self-described witch, proposes natural ways to cure the infection that are rejected by Maddi, who tends to look askance at anything that seems impractical and superstition-based. However, there’s one method Freya offers that Maddi can’t refuse:

“Ohhh,” I heard Freya moan. “You know, Maddi, you could just eat yogurt instead of using the cream. Yogurt will cure you of yeast just as good.”

“Yeah, yeah, Ms. All-Natural,” I dismissed her idea, like I do most of her hippie-dippy nature girl stuff. “It probably takes forever to work, like all those natural cures you’re into.”

“A plain yogurt douche works, too,” she kept on.

“Please, like I need something messier and slower than Monostat cream! Freya, my baby doll, I love you, but let up on that stuff sometimes!” I hated to even admit I was following some of her “food is the best medicine” advice, but I did it anyway:

“I am eating yogurt on top of using the cream every day, though. I want to knock this shit out. But in the meantime, my poonani is off limits to you, baby!”

“Hmmm…you know what? I could help you with this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I could…this weekend…give you some plain yogurt.”

“Illlh!” I stuck my tongue out with disgust. “Plain yogurt with nothing in it?

There’s no way I’m eating that.”

Slowly and slyly, she said, “I didn’t say anything about giving it to you to eat.”

No. She. Ain’t. Talking. About... “Hooooh…hell naw, woman!”

“A plain yogurt application—just what the natural health practitioner ordered!” she proclaimed, her voice high with triumph.

“Mm-hm,” I conceded. “Aren’t you happy you’ve figured out a way you do your little natural girl thing on me?”

“I’m happy I found a way where you would let me,” she replied, sounding as cheery as a chipmunk.

Are you itching (pun intended) to read about Freya’s sexy medicinal ministration to her lover Maddi? Then pick up a copy of Owning It: Embracing Our Bodies, Sexuality, and Power, where you can read this story as well as 14 others in which people of many genders, sexual orientations, races/ethnicities, classes, ages, abilities, sizes and kinks find health, hope and happiness through sexual healing.

Owning It on Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1128291186?ean=9781948780025

Owning It on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2CB9t87

SynCyr Publishing info: https://sincyrpublishing.com/2018/03/24/owning-it-release-day/

About the Author

Stephani Maari Booker of Minneapolis, MN, writes prose and poetry for the page and for performance in which she wrestles with her multiple marginalized identities: African American, lesbian, lower-class, nerdy and sexy. She has nonfiction, science fiction, erotica and poetry in many publications. For more information about Stephani's work, go to www.mnartists.org/smbooker or www.goodreads.com/athenapm.

Giveaway!

Leave me a comment with your name and email, and I’ll enter you into a drawing for a free ebook of Owning It, courtesy of SynCyr Publishing.

Sizzling Sunday: Dragon Boat Blues - #Vietnam #MMF #SizzlingSunday

Welcome to another Sizzling Sunday! Today I’ve got a spicy bit from the latest in my Asian Adventures series, Dragon Boat Blues, just released last Friday. The story is an MMF ménage romance set in Vietnam.

Blurb

Take your chances as they come

My lost superhero Josh had jet black hair, movie star cheekbones, clever hands, the devil’s mouth, and an instinct for driving me crazy. Josh believed in his own myths. He was forty miles an hour over the speed limit that day, more powerful than a locomotive, when we smashed into the tractor trailer. He blew out like a candle. I sputtered in a sort of half life, year after year, marked forever by that brief dance with insanity.

I booked the dragon boat cruise on Ha Long Bay to use up a few free days at the end of my business trip, figuring my disability wouldn’t be a problem on the luxurious junk. I wasn’t looking for companionship, just a bit of peace. But when British honeymooners Stan and Phil welcomed me into their circle of love, I discovered how much healing I still needed.

Excerpt

“Won’t you let me pleasure you, sweet?” He slid his palms up, closer to my center. “I’m dying to taste you.”

“I don’t think—please… Oh, Stan…” I could have stopped him as he hooked the elastic waistband of my leggings and peeled them down over my hips, baring the untrimmed brown tangle of my pubis. But why bother? He’d stop by himself when he saw what lay beneath.

Stan paused, breathing in my strong scent. “Oh, Lydia!” He leaned closer, lips parted, nostrils flaring. “Let me get these off you…”

With a deftness I wouldn’t have expected from a gay man, he stripped me of the footless tights. I raised my butt to help. Why postpone the inevitable?

The horror that lit his face when he saw my scars gave me a sort of grim satisfaction.

“My God! I had no idea.” With a hesitant finger, he traced the livid, cross-stitched track that ran from below my knee to my groin, just one of the puckered, discolored souvenirs I bore from my nine operations. “Do they hurt?”

Somehow I kept my voice neutral. “From time to time. Most of the pain comes from the joints, though, where the prostheses interact with the bone. The doctors did the best they could, I suppose, but there’s a limit to what medicine can accomplish...” Tears threatened again. I dashed them away with the back of my hand. “You should probably go now.”

Stan looked startled. “Oh, no, love…” He bent to my ravaged flesh and licked along the length of the scar. I shuddered at the wet heat. “Oh, no,” he murmured, so close to my pussy that I felt the vibrations, deep inside. “I want you more than ever.”

He drew my thighs apart, parted my labia with his blunt thumbs, and blew a stream of hot air over my cunt. Fiery pleasure leapt up in response. I think I moaned. Taking that as encouragement, he swept his tongue through my folds, back to front, ending with a flick to my rapidly swelling clit.

Like a speeding train, arousal hit me, smashing my reservations into insignificance. I sank my fingers into his lush hair and dragged his face to my pussy. He didn’t offer the slightest resistance. Burrowing into my cleft, he devoured my soaked sex-flesh, licking, sucking, probing my depths, fluttering over my clit, until I was half-crazy with need. I ground my pelvis against his plump lips. I impaled myself upon his stout tongue. I took what I wanted, what I so desperately craved, smothering him in my cunt, drowning him in my juices. Arching against his mouth, I clung to his skull like a life raft as my orgasm swept over me in liquid fury.

Buy Links

Amazon US – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BJJTHQF

Amazon UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07BJJTHQF

Smashwords – https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/804710

Barnes and Noble – https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dragon-boat-blues-lisabet-sarai/1128233847?ean=2940155178255

Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39330037-dragon-boat-blues

The Thin Person Inside - Character Interview (#rockstar #eatingdisorder #addiction @RochelleWeber)

By Rochelle Weber (Guest Blogger)

Today I want to introduce you to Kristen Jensen, the heroine of my romance The Thin Person Inside. I've got an excerpt from the book after the interview, too.

Q: What’s your story/back story? Why would someone come up with a story about YOU?

KRISTEN: I guess the reason people would want to interview me is because of the unique way I met Sean Wesley. His manager pulled strings to get him into treatment at the Danville, Illinois, VA because he was having trouble staying clean after he ODed during a recording session. I was there to address my food addiction. I weighed three-hundred pounds when we met. Who would ever expect a rock star like Sean to fall for someone that fat?

Q: Can you tell us about your hero?

KRISTEN: Sean is tall, and drop-dead handsome with black hair and incredible blue eyes. He’s one of the lead singers of The Haystack, and I was in love with his music long before I met him. He’s kind, and intelligent, and incredibly brave. Can you imagine a pianist making a comeback after losing a hand?

Q: What problems do you have to face and overcome in your life?

KRISTEN: Having been morbidly obese most of my adult life was a pretty big one, pun not intended.

Q: Do you expect your hero to help or is he the problem?

KRISTEN: Sean and I support each other. We have different addictions, so we’re not binge buddies. Although, he says he was a fat kid and he has to watch his food, so I guess I’m a good influence on him.

Q: Where do you live?

KRISTEN: My apartment’s in Rantoul, Illinois. It’s about 125 miles south of Chicago, ten miles north of Champaign, and forty-five miles northwest of Danville. I was raised in Chicago, but rents are less down here and I’m close to my daughters.

Q: During what time-period does your story take place?

KRISTEN: You would call our romance a contemporary one. It’s the 20-teens.

Q: How are you coping with the conflict in your life?

KRISTEN: Aside from having had a heart attack recently, I’m doing okay. I’ve lost about a hundred pounds so far and I’m still losing. I work out along with Sean when he does his physical therapy, and I’m healthier than I’ve been in over twenty years. My kids aren’t embarrassed to be seen with me anymore.

Q: Bubble baths or steamy showers? Ocean or mountains? Puppies or kittens? Chocolate or caramel?

KRISTEN: Who doesn’t love bubble baths? For so long I didn’t fit in the tub. Half of me was out of the water, and even if I did sit down, I couldn’t get up. Now I really luxuriate! As for the rest—do I have to choose? Can’t I gaze at the mountains from the beach? Snuggle with both puppies and kittens? Eat chocolate-covered or flavored caramels (provided they’re gluten & sugar-free, of course).

Q: Satin sheets or Egyptian cotton?

KRISTEN: Neither. You slide all over the bed and spend the night chasing your pillows on satin and cotton’s too cold. In winter I like flannel, and in summer I like jersey.

Q: Party life or quiet dinner for two?

KRISTEN: Parties can be fun, but quiet dinners are more romantic.

Q: I love pizza with (fill in the blank).

KRISTEN: Sausage, mushrooms, green peppers, black olives, and extra cheese.

Q: I’m always ready for (fill in the blank).

KRISTEN: Trivia, karaoke, and family games like Apples to Apples.

Q: When I’m alone, I (fill in the blank).

KRISTEN: Read and watch TV—a lot of PBS.

Q: Those are all the questions we have for you. Thank you for speaking to us.

KRISTEN: You’re welcome. I really think Sean is much more interesting than I am. After all—he’s the rock star.

About Rochelle Weber

Rochelle Weber is a Navy veteran with a BA in Writing from Columbia College in Chicago. Her novels Rock Bound and Rock Crazy are available in both e-book and print. Her third book, The Thin Person Inside, is available at MuseItUp Publishing, Inc. Ms. Weber edits for The Author’s Secret, and publishes the Marketing for Romance Writers Newsletter, winner of the 2013 and 2015 Preditors & Editors Readers’ Polls for Best Writers’ Resource. She also mans Roses & Thorns Reviews.

Ms. Weber battles bi-polar disorder, quipping, “You haven’t lived until you’ve been the only woman on the locked ward at the VA.” Her song, “It’s Not My Fault,” won a gold medal in the National Veterans Creative Arts Competition. She lost over a hundred pounds and kept it off for over three years. She lives in Round Lake Beach, Illinois with two cats who have her very well-trained.

The Thin Person Inside

By Rochelle Weber

The Plot

Kristen Jensen, a Navy veteran, tips the scale at a crippling three hundred pounds. In desperation she asks her VA therapist if she can go into addictions treatment with the guys where she meets Sean. With black hair, blue eyes, and a perfect body she figures the reason he’s speaking to her is that she’s the only other person in the room.

The Haystack told their lead singer, Sean Wesley, to get clean or get out. But none of the big-name clinics worked. Sean’s a Desert Storm vet, so they send him to a VA in the middle of nowhere. When he meets Kristen the first day, he thinks it’s tragic such a pretty girl’s trapped in a huge body. And her honesty, intelligence, and bravery are even more impressing. Sean’s drawn to Kristen, but she’s had decades to build layers of defense.

Excerpt

Sean Wesley went into the snack room to help himself to coffee and a roll. He’d probably gain weight while he was here without his personal trainer and weight room. He’d been a fat kid—always the last to be chosen for games, and stuck in right field when he did play. He’d been saved from a life of obesity by a growth spurt in his late teens, a judge who gave him a choice between jail and the Marines, and switching addictions from food to booze and then cocaine.

By rights, Sean shouldn’t be at a VA facility. Celebrities like him usually got sober at places like the Betty Ford clinic or Hazelden. Actually, he’d come from Betty Ford, but he’d still felt shaky so his manager, Don Nelson, had done his homework. Danville, Illinois, was in the middle of nowhere. The program was different, based on Rational Emotive Therapy, and Sean was a veteran. While he made too much money to be treated at the VA, there’s money and then there’s money. Sean had money—the kind that opens doors and breaks down barriers. The kind that makes even the Federal Government say, “We’ll see what we can do,” and then do it.

So here he was in the middle of a cornfield in bum-fuck Illinois at a shabby old VA hospital. An enormously obese woman came into the snack room interrupting his reverie, and Sean thought, That could’ve been me. What a shame—she’s so pretty.”

* * * *

Kristen noticed the table of goodies and the drop-dead-gorgeous man perusing them in the break room when she went in there to put her lunch in the refrigerator.

“Want one? I heard they send ’em over every morning. I guess they’re yesterday’s leftovers.”

That’s right. Offer sweets to the fat lady. She managed a tight grimace. “Thanks, but I’m here because I’m a food addict.” She held up her orange.

“I’m Sean.” He prob’ly wouldn’t give a fat chick like me a second look anywhere else. Still, what is it about men with black hair and blue eyes that makes me go all mushy?

“Hi.”

“I’ve heard of food addicts, but what makes ya call yourself that?”

“When my kids were little, I left them without a babysitter while I went to the store and wrote a rubber check for ice cream and M&Ms. I’d say I’ve been about as desperate for my fix as any addict or alcoholic.”

“Wow! Yeah, I guess so.” He held the door for her as they exited and then followed her into the Day Room.

Kristen sat on a love seat, taking up the whole thing, while Sean sat in the chair on the other side of the end table next to her. They were the only two people in there since there were classes going on. She was sure the minute other people came out he’d find someone else to talk to. She pulled out her crocheting. She was fairly certain Eric would propose to Viki at Christmas and had already begun work on a tablecloth for them. She worked on it a minute and then decided to be polite. “So, what’s your drug of choice?”

“Cocaine. I’ve been clean a coupla months, but it’s hard ta stay clean.”

“I’ve heard that. I was at a halfway house fundraiser and they said it takes something like over a year for cocaine to completely leave the body, and during that time a person can still have random cravings. They were raising money for an extended treatment program.”

“That explains why I’ve been having such a hard time. I hope this treatment helps.”

“Yeah.”

People started coming into the Day Room from classrooms just down the hallways. Several of them gave Sean and Kristen curious looks. Yeah, what’s a great-looking guy doing sitting with a fat chick?

Buy Links

MuseItUp Publishing, Inc.: http://tinyurl.com/rwmusettpi

Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/rwttpiamz

BN: http://tinyurl.com/rwttpibn

MuseItUp Publishing, Inc.

Amazon

BN

Trailer: https://youtu.be/DLJBtjXWwRk

Contact Rochelle

Website: www.rochelleweber.com

Blog: http://rochelleweber.blogspot.com

Review Site: http://rosesndthorns.blogspot.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/rochelle.weber2

Facebook Author Page: http://www.facebook.com/Rochelle.Weber.Author

Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/RochelleWeber

Amazon Author Page: http://amazon.com/author/rochelleweber

What Makes It All Worthwhile

Sometimes I feel like throwing in the towel, as far as writing is concerned. I guess all authors suffer from this kind of discouragement at times. I struggle so hard to write and in one year, produce half a dozen books at most, while the annual output from some of my peers is in the double digits. I spend time, energy and money on promotion, only to see my royalties stagnate or even drop. For some reason my books are rarely reviewed (though when they are, the comments are generally positive). I honestly think I write pretty well, but in fourteen years of publishing, I've never, ever had anything approaching a best seller. I don't bother checking my Amazon ranks. It would just be too depressing!

Yesterday, though, I had an experience that made me realize it's all worthwhile. All the sweat and tears, all the frustration, the waiting for titles to appear, the scrambling to get the word out - it means something. Something important.

You see, I got an email from a long time reader and fan. She recently had a computer crash, and she lost a lot of books of mine - some that she'd bought, a few that she'd received as prizes over the time she has been following my blogs and entering my contests. She told me she intended to spend the money to replace the titles her computer tech hadn't been able to recover, because she really wanted to have them on her bookshelf.

Of course that made me feel warm all over. Then, however, she shared something that literally brought tears to my eyes. Although I've "known" her for quite a long time, I didn't know much about her life. It turns out that that she has a severe disability that keeps her bedridden much of the time. Reading is her therapy, her way to escape from the unpleasant realities of her daily life. She told me that my books take her to another world, one in which she can imagine anything happening.

This - well, this is a big deal. I'm not just a writer of trash, of smut that gets hidden behind adults-only filters. I'm a creator of worlds, and I have at least one reader for whom they're very real. When I start feeling down, I can remind myself that sales don't really matter - not nearly as much as bringing happiness to the few loyal readers who really do love my stories.

And furthermore, despite what some puritanical pundits might say about my subject matter, I can reassure myself that writing and publishing my sexy tales is downright virtuous - that in a small way, it makes our world a better place.

The Wild Boar in Me

By Ann Regentin

Q: Why are you interviewing yourself for this blog? Isn't that a little weird?

A: I'm uncomfortable writing this. An interview format makes it easier for some reason, so I hope everyone will indulge me.

Q: Your story in Coming Together: In Flux is called "Meltdown". What inspired you to write this?

A: This story wasn't so much inspired as requested. Nobilis Reed, who edited In Flux, asked me to write something about the transformative nature of chronic illness. I was diagnosed with lupus twenty years ago and have developed other problems along the way, so I have extensive experience with that.

Q: So this should have been easy.

A: It was one of the hardest short pieces I've ever written! I normally write from imagination or from a somewhat distant vantage point. Putting this much of myself on the page was excruciating.

Q: Is this autobiography?

A: Not exactly, but it's not exactly fiction, either. It's somewhere in between.

Q: You compare life after chronic illness to the site of the Chernobyl meltdown. Isn't that a bit too lifeless for sex?

A: The area around Chernobyl is teeming with life. At the time of the disaster, about twenty percent of the area was forested. Now it's up to about eighty, with over two hundred species of animals. There are even birds nesting in the concrete Sarcophagus that encloses the damaged reactor. The Red Forest, which got hit so hard with fallout that it’s one of the most contaminated places in the world, is green again. There’s evidence of genetic abnormalities in both flora and fauna, things like slowed growth or abnormal tail feathers, but overall the area is thriving.

There are still a few people living there. Some are scientists and workers decommissioning the remaining reactors, and others preferred to live with the radiation rather than leave their homes, but the wildlife has pretty much taken over.

Q: And that's how you see yourself? Taken over by wildlife?

A: Yes. Being chronically ill means that I don’t get out much. It cuts me off from human interference, which has left me to develop in idiosyncratic ways. In addition, lupus has directly influenced my sexuality, much as the radiation has influenced the wildlife around the Chernobyl site, so while I've had some freedom, I've also been altered, and some of those alterations have been to parts of myself that were influenced by the other people's expectations.

Q: How did other people's expectations influence your sexuality?

A: People have expectations about how we’re supposed to be sexual, and that’s not necessarily bad. Relationships need ground rules, just like any other human interaction needs ground rules, but I always chafed under them. There was a constant, underlying anxiety that destabilized me, and I can’t afford that when I’m ill. After I was away from those expectations for a while, I found that I preferred to drop them entirely. I didn’t want to reject them or rebel against them, because that just comes with a different set of rules. I wanted them to not exist.

The isolation made it possible for that to happen, and when it did, parts of me that had previously been constrained started taking over. It was out of this radioactive wildlife sanctuary sexuality that my erotica was born. Before that, the kind of exploration I needed to do wasn't possible, and I've since found that relationships are incredibly disruptive.

Q: Why do you think that is?

A: Partly because I'm still radioactive. I'm still disabled. Neither modern nor alternative medicine have a decontamination protocol that works. I have adapted to my condition, but it was a painful process and most people prefer not to have to go through that, even second-hand. I didn't enjoy it myself, so I don't blame them.

The other problem is a hard truth that came out of the aftermath of Chernobyl: the dangers posed to wildlife by radiation are nowhere near as bad over the long term as the dangers of human intervention. Plants and animals can adapt better to high levels of radiation than they can to habitat encroachment, pest elimination and other efforts on the part of humans to manage their environment. For good or ill, I've adapted better to disability than I ever did to the rules governing intimate relationships, regardless of what form those relationships took.

All most people see in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl is the radiation and the effect it had on human lives, and there’s a certain amount of rubbernecking going on, which is different from observation. The nearby town of Pripyat attracts tourists, who come armed with Geiger counters and whatnot, and it attracts graffiti artists, photographers and looters as well. There's a lot of shock, and sadness and anger and horror and perhaps even a sense of superiority, that we never had a meltdown like that, and I see a lot of that with chronic illness, too. People are shocked, sad, angry, horrified and, to put it bluntly, sometimes rather smug, and they rubberneck, too. It's rare that anyone sticks around long enough to realize, as the scientists who study the Red Forest did, that the meltdown's impact on the ecosystem was a net positive.

People describe that area as "post-apocalyptic" because of the decaying remains of a abruptly abandoned lives, but for a wild boar, the area is, if you'll forgive the expression, hogs' heaven. They’ve been hunted nearly to extinction in other, more human-friendly places, and that's the thing. The wild boar in me is very, very happy and doesn't want the humans to move back. It’s fine with the radiation. I don’t think it even notices. The human in me continues to scratch her head over this situation, because while the empty buildings and rusting vehicles are monuments to tragedy, the wild boar has value, too, value that we push aside when we build all of this stuff. It would be great if we were better at negotiating with the wild boar, but whether or not we can do it, we don't do it. Even when we set aside space, we're still doing it on our terms, and it takes something like Chernobyl before the boar gets to make the rules.

It’s been a little disturbing to realize that I adapted better to disability than to the relationships, and that I’m most contentedly sexual when I’m alone, but that’s the wild boar in me.

By the way, I'm giving away a copy of my novel Train Wreck to one person who leaves a comment on this post. Please be sure to include your email address.

***

From "Meltdown"

In Coming Together: In Flux

http://www.eroticanthology.com/influx.htm

But in solitude, I have gone feral, able to give in to every desire, and fiercely defensive of my territory. Female sexuality is a powerful force, one that most cultures put enormous time and effort into controlling, and mine is now unchecked. It can go anywhere it wants, burning through what was supposed to contain it, consuming everything man-made and transforming into something no one has ever seen before, including me.

I have become comfortable with myself in new ways. I know exactly what I need, when I need it, and it is instantly granted. I answer to nothing and no one. If I want fast, I do fast. If I want slow, I can do that, too, building up for so long that orgasm resembles cocaine, then waking up from it to realize that over an hour has passed.

How often? However often I want, and the non-physical nature of arousal has never been more apparent to me. Sometimes I lie in bed imagining things, or reading them until I can no longer stand it, and only then do I resort to touch. Sometimes I start with touch, and let fantasy swirl around for a while until it becomes something coherent. I know exactly where I’m most sensitive, mentally and emotionally as well as physically, exactly how to use that, and have discovered that the end trigger for orgasm can be something as simple as a touch on my belly or thigh. Sometimes I come in my sleep.

Passion has burned through its containment vessel, blowing off the lid, setting fire to the world itself. The new growth of grass, the first spring crocuses, an iridescent beetle on a brick wall are all brighter than before. The first flakes of snow hit my face as delicately as a lover’s touch. Wind caresses my skin and sun warms it until it glows. The sensation of sliding in between cool sheets makes going to bed a delight, and curling up in a pair of flannel pajamas makes anticipating winter a form of foreplay. A morning shower heats me all the way through. A piece of chocolate melts me. A cup of spiced tea warms me. I live in a state of near-constant arousal, not the equivalent of a raging erection, but enough to make every sense just a little sharper and a lot sweeter.

Deep inside the sarcophagus, the corium looks inert, but it is still hot to a geiger counter, so hot and so hard that they had to use an AK-47 to get samples and then send in a remote device to pick them up. It generates dust spontaneously, and new, unnamed compounds are forming in it as it ages. Chernobyl is still active, only now it’s free of its confinements. The human race can encase it or ignore it, but they cannot stop it.

The meltdown at Chernobyl scorched the nearby woodland so badly that it became known as the Red Forest. People estimated that it would be barren for decades, but now it’s green with birch trees. Wild boar have moved in, as have wolves, lynx and hares. Endangered eagles have found a haven there, and it’s one of the few places left in the world where Przewalski’s horse roams free. The survival rate is lower than usual and there are mutations, subtle genetic confusion caused by the radiation, but nothing two-headed. While humanity bleats and wrings its hand, the area around Chernobyl has become a wildlife preserve.

I am not pretending that this upheaval is easy, or comfortable. It is, however, natural. Sickness and radiation were built into this world, death was built into this world, and it shows us the limits of our control. When we find something powerful, our impulse is to harness that power for our own use, and we are arrogant enough to believe we can contain a force of nature. Mistakes and miscalculation are fatal here, but they, like death, are part of the human condition. Eventually, somewhere, a system will fail, and create something more dangerous than what we started with.

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Bio: Ann Regentin has written everything from reading comprehension test to poetry and music, but seems to have found her real niche somewhere in the gutter. As of now, she's still too happy there to climb out, but if you'd care to join her, you can visit her web site.