Review Tuesday Moved to Monday: Best Lesbian Erotica V3 - #lesbian #erotica #anthology #ReviewTuesday

Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year: Volume Three edited by Sacchi Green

Cleis Press, 2018

These days, I don’t read many anthologies. In too many cases, I find that erotic short story collections feature one or two gems, surrounded by unremarkable, predictable tales that slip from my memory the minute I put down my e-reader. Anthology stories tend to have a sameness that, quite frankly, bores me. My own long history in erotica is part of the problem, of course. I’ve consumed so many sexy tales in my twenty year erotica career that I’ve become somewhat jaded. I’m difficult to impress.

Best Lesbian Erotica Volume Three turns out to be a welcome exception. Sacchi Green has assembled a dazzling assortment of stories that explore lesbian desire from a wide range of perspectives. Every tale is competently written, and most are arousing, but at least half go way beyond these minimal criteria. To put it colloquially, they knocked my socks off. I’d finish one of these amazing stories, take a deep breath, wait for my heart rate to return to normal–then go back and re-read it.

“Morning Fog” by Scout Rhodes is a case in point. Almost a prose poem, this tale captures a moment in time, celebrating the profound physical and emotional connection between two women with histories and scars.

Here we are, she and I, two old queers who have endured long, curious, circuitous lives that have brought us to this place, this morning, this moment. We’re neither of us gold star anything, having fucked men, women, trans folk, and many, many people between the two of us. We’ve both borne, breastfed, and raised children created the “old-fashioned way,” which makes us pariahs in certain hard-line lesbian circles. We both identified as bisexual in our youth, we’ve both married men in our time, we’ve both been subjected to degradation and abuse at masculine hands, but

now we’re both butch dykes, and we’re both survivors. That’s it— we’re gold star survivors. Isn’t that enough? It sure feels like a lot, after far more than a century of combined years.

Two gold star survivors who found each other in this crazy, neo-fascist cesspool that America has become, and we hold on to each other for dear life while living in the crosshairs.

This story combines tender emotion with raw physicality in a one-two punch that left me dizzy with admiration.

“Where There’s Smoke” by M. Birds, which comes next in the volume, offers a radical contrast in structure and tone. A small-town marijuana vendor finds a new customer, and a new lover, in a crippled city professor who needs the pot for pain relief. June, the dealer, is a practical, no-nonsense woman forced by circumstances to bury her dreams. The social distance between the two women makes their eventual connection all the more intense.

The woman in the woods didn’t shake June’s hand and June noticed the curves of her long fingers, the way they stuck tight together like she was wearing mittens, knuckles round and swollen. “What do you want exactly?”

“I wanted to see . . . ” June paused, chewing her lip. “If there was anything you needed. Kyle said there might be.”

“Kyle from the pharmacy.” Miriam crossed her arms. She glanced back into her cabin, and then out toward the path leading through the woods. “Did you walk here?”

“Yeah. Didn’t take long. I live in the Wander-Inn. I mean, I own it. Or my family does.”

“Is that the one that looks like an Alpine resort? It’s very . . . very, um . . . ”

June laughed and nodded. “Like a time warp, isn’t it? Like someone from the sixties saw one postcard of Switzerland and then dropped acid and thought ‘I should build that.’”

“I was going to say—quaint.”

“Sure you were.”

I’ve rarely read a story by Sommer Marsden that I didn’t love. Her tale “Husher” in this collection is no exception. More light-hearted than the previous stories, the story chronicles the hook-up between a painfully tongue-tied barista and the black-clad hair stylist she’s been crushing on for weeks. Angela, the stylist, seems like the dominant partner in the interaction. But appearances can be deceiving.

One thing that impressed me about this collection is the many varied definitions of “erotic”. In Pascal Scott’s “The Night Shift”, the protagonists – the fifty-something night supervisor of a tour company call center and a lonely woman who mis-dials trying to reach a phone sex line – don’t even meet. Yet this story is just as hot as those that feature much more extended and explicit sex scenes.

An even more extreme example is Xan West’s astonishing piece “Trying Submission”. The point-of-view character is a shy, physically disabled, autistic trans woman of color who somehow summons the courage to ask a trusted acquaintance to top her. For Liliana, every touch is a potential threat, yet she craves the experience of submitting, of being owned and being cherished, of being called “girl” and calling her top “ma’am”. There’s no sex at all in this story, yet I found its emotional depth and honesty beautifully erotic.

Then there’s Raven Sky’s wonderful “Fuck Me Like a Canadian”, which chronicles a steamy affair between a dread-locked Canadian backpacker and an exquisite Moroccan haman attendant.

There is a heat to attraction. An energy. You can feel it. It’s undeniable. This is the last place I expected to feel it. Not least of all because it’s illegal here. Is it punishable by death? I strained to remember my online research predeparture. Morocco. Homosexuality. What did Google have to reveal about that? My mind blanked. Because her hands were on my naked flesh, lathering me in a traditional black olive oil soap. Something in her actions was more than indifferent. Something in her eyes, when they happened to catch mine, was not impersonal.

In Till’s culture, women can play, but penetration is forbidden, the prerogative of some future husband. The constraints only make the characters’ interactions more poignant.

I won’t tell you about every story I loved. I want to leave some discoveries for you to make on your own. However, I have to mention the last story in the collection, Anna Watson’s “Sweet of My Heart”. In this richly imagined and romantic tale, set in Depression Era New York, a penniless dance hall girl falls for one of the “Angels” attending the charismatic preacher who runs a network of soup kitchens. The life experience of Mimi La Rouge and Charmed Soul could hardly be more different, but desire draws them together and cannot be denied.

I lean into her and reach out to take up the very end of her braid. I pull off the string she’s tied it with, and slowly begin to separate the strands. When I’m finished, I place both hands on her cheeks and kiss her forehead between the wings of her hair. She blushes and stays very still. I move behind her on the bed, lean against the wall, and draw her close between my legs so her back rests against me. I spoon myself to her, the rough weave of her undershirt delicious on my nipples, the slick of her smooth slip lovely on my cleft. I do know to tread lightly with girls like my Charlie. I do know that. I press close, I rub my body on her. Oh, sweet of my heart the darling! She can’t hide it. She is breathing, sighing, and helping me to rub. She need not turn around, though, my skittish thoroughbred. For this first time, I will carry her and bring her along.

Butches and femmes, fresh young things and veterans of the cultural wars, experienced dykes and dreaming innocents, wealthy sophisticates and women barely getting by, rock stars and ballerinas, professors and truck drivers – you’ll find all these and more in Best Lesbian Erotica Volume Three. Sacchi Green has done a remarkable job weaving these disparate narratives into a satisfying and coherent whole.

There are several series of anthologies entitled “Best”. All too often they disappoint. In the case of this book, the title definitely fits. Overall, these are the best lesbian stories I’ve read in a long time.

Review Tuesday: The Peppered Moth by Margaret Drabble #ReviewTuesday #Literature #FamilySaga

The Peppered Moth by Margaret Drabble

Harcourt, 2001

From her earliest days, Bessie Bawtry knows she does not belong in the dreary, polluted coal mining town of Breaseborough. She is better than her dour, unemotional mother Ellen, her distant father Burt, her ploddingly dull sister Dora. She is destined for something great. South Yorkshire is a prison which she is determined to escape.

As the protegée of a teacher with “modern” ideas, Bessie studies hard and wins a scholarship to Cambridge. She marries a man of means and makes a home in lovely Derbyshire. Freeing oneself from the past is more difficult than it would appear, though. Even with beauty, brains and ambition, Bessie finds it difficult to build a satisfying life.

Nearly a century later, Bessie’s scientist granddaughter Faro returns to Breaseborough for a seminar on her family’s genetic roots. She tries to solve the puzzle of why some people stay put and simply adapt to their environment, no matter how difficult or dark, while others manage to relocate and thrive.

I picked up this novel at a used book sale because I’d never read anything by this respected literary author. It’s an intriguing story, mixing a multi-generational family saga with some serious meditations on love, biology, luck and fate. The narrative voice is mostly third party omniscient, a stylistic decision I found annoying at times. In particular, the author has a tendency to ask sly rhetorical questions when of course she knows the answers.

Still, I enjoyed The Peppered Moth, partly because of its vivid descriptions and elegant prose but mostly due to its memorable characters. Bessie’s self-centeredness and her tendency to sabotage her own happiness make her pretty unappealing, but Faro and her mother Chrissie are both strong, complex women with whom I could identify. I particularly loved the description of the intense, ultimately tragic love between Chrissie and Nick Gaulden, Faro’s father. Somehow the author descends from her omniscience down to the earth when describing their youthful passion.

Faro is intriguing and complex, at least partially because she is a descendant of all these varied individuals—Bessie, brilliant and perpetually dissatisfied; Aunt Dora, patient and nurturing; Chrissie, practical and (after her betrayal by her first love) unromantic; and the rakish and irresistible Nick.

Although The Peppered Moth is a dark story at times, it ends on a note of hope. Faro is the future; you want her to escape from the negative forces in her genetic background and to flourish. By the time you close the book, you are fairly convinced that she will.

Review Tuesday: A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter (#erotic #ReviewTuesday #classic)

A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter

Farrar, Straus and Girard, 2006

I first became aware of A Sport and a Pastime while reading an interview with another author, about his favorite books. I’d never heard of either the book or its author, but the article offered high praise for both its lyrical style and its sensuality. I was intrigued enough to go buy a brand-new copy, something of a rarity for me. As an avid reader, as well as an erotic author, I was curious to see how well a self-styled literary novel handled the question of sex.

From the interview, I’d thought the book was relatively new. However, it turns out that A Sport and a Pastime was initially published way back in 1967. Furthermore, it is considered by many to be a modern classic. While searching for it on Amazon, I found Cliff Notes for students who were assigned the book in class!

The novel is narrated by a middle aged man whose name, if given, is unimportant. He’s an intellectual, a photographer, a writer perhaps. Certainly he’s a keen observer with a talent for vivid description.

Here is the first paragraph of the novel:

September. It seems these luminous days will never end. The city, which was almost empty during August, now is filling up again. It is being replenished. The restaurants are all reopening, the shops. People are coming back from the country, the sea, from trips on roads all jammed with cars. The station is very crowded. There are children, dogs, families with old pieces of luggage bound by straps. I make my way among them. It’s like being in a tunnel. Finally I emerge onto the brilliance of the quai, beneath a roof of glass panels which seems to magnify the light.

The narrator flees Paris to take up temporary residence in the house of friends, located in the provincial French town of Autun. His motives are a mystery. He seems melancholy, or at least moody, as he settles into the backwater and gets to know his neighbors.

Occasionally he returns to Paris, to participate in glittering, superficial cocktail or dinner parties with friends. At one such event, he meets Phillip Dean, an attractive young man from a wealthy family who has dropped out of Yale and is traveling, rather aimlessly, around Europe. A few weeks later, Phillip shows up at his door in Autun, driving a borrowed vintage car, and takes the narrator touring around the region. In a raucous club in Dijon, they meet Anne-Marie who is hanging out with a group of black men. She is obviously not innocent despite her long hair and sweet face. Later they encounter her again, in Autun, and Phillip begins an affair with her.

The nameless narrator exposes bits and pieces of Phillip’s and Anne-Marie’s relationship, chronicling their intense physical attraction, contrasting it with their difficulties in communication. Patrician Phillip barely speaks French. Anne-Marie comes from a poor, common family. Their expectations and assumptions could hardly be more different. Still, something luminous binds them.

The radio is playing. They undress in the winter daylight. Dean is a little embarrassed at his condition. His prick gets hard whenever he looks at her. He can’t help it. His chief desire is to raise her on it, exultant, to run her up into the sunshine, into the starlight, where she can see the world. They begin to dance a little, naked, in the early darkness, the music thin and foreign, their feet bare on the rug. Then they make love, she astride him, in the favorite manner of the Roman poets, as he informs her. He lies gazing up at her, his hands encircling her ankles. The rich smell of her falls over him. At the bottom of it all, his eyes lingering there, the mute triangle in which he is implanted.

How, though, can our narrator know these intimate details? He’s not present at these trysts, yet he describes them in achingly beautiful language. Is the love affair only in his imagination? He clearly identifies with young Dean, understands the younger man’s confusion and his overwhelming desire. Are these echoes of his own youth that he is projecting on strangers? Are Phillip and Anne-Marie merely figments of his melancholy nostalgia?

These questions are part of what defines A Sport and a Pastime as “literary”. The narrator admits his own unreliability:

Certain things I remember exactly as they were. They are merely discolored a bit by time, like coins in the pocket of a forgotten suit. Most of the details, though, have long since been transformed or rearranged to bring others of them forward. Some, in fact, are obviously counterfeit; they are no less important. One alters the past to form the future. But there is a real significance to the pattern that finally appears, which resists all further change.

Phillip’s and Anne-Marie’s relationship does not end well. We can anticipate this from the start. Youthful passion rarely endures in the best of circumstances. Meanwhile, Phillip is clearly too feckless and self-absorbed to return the love she obviously bears him. Though Anne-Marie wants to build a life with him, for him she is no more than the sport and pastime of the book’s title.

Nevertheless, the two young people share moments, days, and nights, that will burn forever in memory—theirs, the narrator’s and the reader’s. They tour France in Phillip’s borrowed sedan, visiting towns both renowned and forgotten, sleeping in cheap hotels (Phillip is perennially short on funds), eating in cafes, arguing, making love. They come from different worlds, but their bodies speak the same language. It is perhaps the only language they have in common.

Speaking of language, Salter’s prose is, as promised, exquisite: evocative, vivid, almost poetic in its concrete simplicity. The brief extracts above will give you some idea; nearly every page, I found myself pausing to savor some particularly lovely or apt passage.

The narrator, toward the end of the story, describes Phillip as a hero. I found this strange, though consistent with the narrator’s fascination with the young man. Dean hardly admirable, with his irresponsibility, callousness and lack of direction. His only heroic qualities reside in his unquestionable charm and his courage to engage life and love, without plan or intention.

The narrator, I believe, wishes he had these qualities. In fact, I think he’s a bit in love with Phillip Dean himself. He lingers on descriptions of Phillip’s sun-browned skin, his wiry body, his rampant erection. There are definite homoerotic echoes in this book. (I wonder if the Cliff Notes mention this?)

Highly recommended.

"Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves" (#civilrights #sixties #literaryfiction)

By G. Lloyd Helm (Guest Blogger)

My latest book is a literary novel called Serpents and Doves. It is a book that took forty years to write. It is about my college experience in the mid-1960's. It is fiction but, as with all decent fiction, it has a lot of the author in it. The title comes from the new testament Book of Matthew. When Jesus was first sending out the disciples out to preach he said, "I send you out as sheep among wolves, therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves." The novel is about learning what that really means and about finding wolves in places where there should be sheep.

The mid-1960's were tumultuous. The Vietnam war was the background for everything though it was easy to forget that in the midst of the sexual revolution, but the two--sexual revolution and war -- mixed in the midst of protests. Add in some civil rights protests and there is more confusion and more spice.

I was in the middle of much of the protesting, not so much the war as the civil rights protests. I had many black friends. I had never experienced that in my pre-college days, but when I got to college I met many great young men who were all caught up in Dr. King's Civil Rights movement and those friendships pulled me right along into the movement as well. I was not a major player, more around the edges, which put me in a position to observe.

That of course is what writers do. We observe then shape and record what we see. My recording/shaping took a long time. I wrote more than a thousand pages before I really began on Serpents and Doves. I just couldn't get hold of a starting thread.

I think that is among the hardest thing any writer can do. The old chestnut about fearing the blank page is absolutely true, but from a different angle than most people think. Most writers when they sit down to write have some idea of what they are going to write, but finding that first thread to begin weaving the whole cloth of the story, that is hard.

I have found that thread for other books and written five including a volume of short stories, but Serpents and Doves was particularly difficult, perhaps because it is so close to my own life. I had to get my mind around how to present the happenings of my life without libeling any of the people therein. That's why, if anyone who knew me in those years should read the book, they are likely to recognize some of the characters with different names and slightly filed off serial numbers.

My life since college has been interesting. I have traveled around the world with my wife and children having lived in Spain, Germany and Italy as well as Virginia, Indiana, and California. A novel set in Indiana is probably coming down the pike. I am making notes and considering things right now but it will get written if I live long enough. Right at the moment I am concentrating on short stories and criticism as well as selling books around Southern California.

Blurb

The mid-sixties were turbulent: the Vietnam War, Protests, the Civil Rights movement, and the Sexual Revolution. Stephen Mitchell, a naive California church boy, goes off to school at a small church college in Tennessee, where he learns about sex, betrayal, friendship, and what it really means to be black in the segregated south.

Excerpt

The cop bent down a bit more and looked at Stephen. “Whose yer uncle boy,” the cop asked.

“Rev, Paul Clark sir, West Side Cumberland Church,” Stephen said.

“West Side, eh? He one of them integration preachers?”

Stephen was stunned and he didn’t know how to answer. If he lied and said no the cop was gonna wonder why this single white boy as riding with these coloreds, and if he said yes the cop might decide to make life tough for all of them.

“Well sir,” Stephen began, “He’s just, Uh. I’m going there to help him serve Thanksgiving to some college students.”

The cop didn’t like the answer. He blinked at them, rain running off the patent leather bill of his cap and said, “I think maybe ya’ll better step on out of the car here,” he said.

“But officer,” Stephen began and Robert knocked his knee against Stephen’s, clearly saying shut up.

“Yes Sir,” Charlie Horse said as he opened his door. The other doors opened and the young men stepped out. Stephen was boiling, but he kept his mouth shut.

“Ya’ll just go ‘head and lean up on the side of the car,” the cop said. All the black men did as they were told, assuming the position, but Stephen once more protested. “We didn’t do anything. We were just driving down the road.”

The cop did a step through and dropped Stephen to the hard concrete of the sidewalk on his face. “Don’t you sass me boy, I am the PO-lice and when I say do something you do it.”

Stephen was stunned and his nose was bleeding from being bounced on the concrete. The cop had a knee in the middle of his back and was patting him down looking for weapons, and as the hands went roughly over Stephen’s sides one thought kept rolling through his mind, but, I’m white. I’m white, I’m white.

“Now you just stay right here boy,” the cop said “while I check your friends for guns.”

“Pat them niggers down too, Buford.” He said. “I’m ‘ona search the car.”

Buford stepped up to Reg and Bobby and ran is hands perfunctorily down their sides then made a point of jamming his hand hard between their legs. Both men winced, but didn’t take their hands off the roof of the car.

The first cop, half crawled in the still open doors or the car, turned off the engine and pulled out the keys to go and open the trunk, meantime Buford had searched Charlie, Silent Al, and Stan, giving them the same final squeeze of their testicles. They all stood tight.

“OK Frank” Buford said, “They clean.”

Frank came back to Stephen who had done as he had been told and not moved. There was a growing puddle of watery blood forming where his nose had dripped to the concrete. Frank poked his toe into Stephen’s ribs, hard enough to hurt, but not break anything. “Ya oughtenta hang around with niggers boy. It could get ya killed.”

Stephen didn’t say anything. The litany of race kept running through his mind, I’m white, I’m white, I’m white.

“All Right ya’ll,” Frank said. He bent down and hauled Stephen up by the collar. “Get on outa here. But don’t you let the sun set on you in this neighborhood.” He tossed the keys at Charlie.

“Yes sir,” Charlie Horse said. Everyone got into the car. Charlie hit the starter and the engine turned and turned, but didn’t catch. He let the button go then cranked it again. This time the engine coughed, stubborn because of the wet. He hit it again, the engine coughed again and caught. After he let it run for a moment he slowly pulled away from the curb watching the two cops in the rear view mirror. After a moment he glanced at Stephen in the mirror. “You alright Steve?”

“Yeah,” Stephen said, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and holding it against his nose.

“Is it broke?” Robert asked

“Serve you right it is,” Stan said. “Dumb fuck! Mouth off to a cop.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Stephen said. The front of his rain coat was stained with blood. “But we didn’t do anything!”

“Just like we told ya. Driving while Black, and especially with a honky in the car.” Reg said. “We damn lucky he didn’t decide we were agitators or something. Would have jailed us sure or maybe shot us, but he just decided he’d settle for just hoorahing some niggers.”

Stephen sighed and said, “I’m sorry fellas, I didn’t know—“

Robert said, “Yes you did know, because we told you, but now you don’t just know. Now you understand.”

Buy Links

Smashwords

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/638123

Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Serpents-Doves-G-Lloyd-Helm/dp/1624202764

About the Author

G. Lloyd Helm writes fantasy but fantasy of a different type. In his work people have to power to stop war by simply saying “stop” and to change the universe by belief in a system called “the design.”
Helm has been writing for more than forty years, short stories and three novels. He is currently working on a sequel to his first novel OTHER DOORS. His work harks back to the classic fantasy of the golden age but is as modern as the war in Afghanistan.

G. Lloyd has traveled the world spending ten years in Europe, living in Spain, Germany, and Italy with his wife of forty years. His epitaph will no doubt read, "Ne're do well scribbler, and part time genius. He married Well."

Amazon Author Page

https://www.amazon.com/G.-Lloyd-Helm/e/B007QEJNDI

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/pages/G-Lloyd-Helm/131075753917107

Goodreads

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2809594.G_Lloyd_Helm

What the Heart Wants (#PTSD #war #hemingway @MyWarWithHem)

By James Charles (Guest Blogger)

Emily Dickinson said, “The heart wants, what the heart wants.”

When two people fall in love, there is nothing that can separate them. Zach, a young veteran in MY WAR WITH HEMINGWAY, (AMAZON: (https://t.co/9dpsIOxkyv) who struggles with PTSD, alcoholism and intimacy, is afraid to lose anyone. He lost his mother at a young age to suicide, lost his father to alcoholism, lost friends in the wars. When he meets a girl in college (Jessica), who comes from a wealthy family, he tries to keep his distance from her because he can’t understand why she would be interested in him (a poor boy from a small town). However, as they fall in love, her family conspires to keep her away from him.
 

She stabilizes him, his alcoholism is not as profound when he’s with her, and his PTSD and hallucinations with Ernest Hemingway subside. She disappears. As a result, Zach tailspins into despair and ends up near death.

However, as Emily said above, there is nothing that can keep two people from one another. With great odds, they come together again, but Zach must overcome his conditions, including her trust.

Inside my room, I sit on the edge of my bed and take my shoes and socks off, stand and undress, tossing my clothes on a chair. I jump into the shower and blow the mist onto the shower wall. I think back to New Orleans. Did Stein really save my life that day?

After a hot, steamy shower, I exit the bathroom with the towel wrapped around my waist. I rummage through my bag and find a pair of underwear, toss them on the bed, and grab my toothbrush and paste. I return to the bathroom and brush my teeth. I rinse, spit, and go back over to the bed. I drop my towel to the floor, grab my underwear and while pulling them up, Jess opens the door and slips in as if she’s evading a freight train speeding down the hallway. Just as quickly, she closes the door. “What’re you doing?” I say. “Are you crazy?”

She only wears a large T-shirt that hangs just below her waist. She hurries over to me. “Yes. I think I’m crazy for you.” She pushes me backwards and I fall over onto the bed, coming to rest on my back. Because of her parents, is she enjoying this defiance, this danger? She jumps on top of me and kisses me.

In between passionate kisses, I try to speak. “I don’t,” kiss, “think,” kiss, “this,” kiss, “is,” kiss, “a,” kiss, “good,” kiss, “idea.”

“Oh, I do,” she says. Her hair cascades onto my face and chest as she works my lips with hers.

I get an erection. “Your father will kill me. He probably has the means to make me disappear or something.”

“My father is a scheming troll,” she says while kissing me.

“Wow. Tell me how you really feel.”

She stops and looks me right in the eyes. “I really feel like doing this.”

“Your parents are right down the hall,” I plead.

She kisses my neck. “This tells me you do too,” she says squeezing my boy.

“I do. I do. It’s just not the right time.” She rolls off me, lays her head on my chest and runs her fingers through my hair that has grown in since leaving the army. It is not too long, but I’m now able to comb it over on top with a little glob of gel. “I really do like you, Jess. But we can’t do this now. Here.”

“I more than like you, Zach,” she says kissing my chest. “I think I’m falling in love with you. I don’t know how I’m going to concentrate on my studies now.”

“Funny. We’ll get you through your studies.” We lie there for a few minutes. “Why did you go to Columbia and not Yale like your brother?”

“Are you kidding? I didn’t want my brother spying on me and reporting to daddy.”

“So, you don’t think I won them over?”

“I don’t care. I enjoy being with you, Zach. You’re different. I’ve had a couple of boyfriends, but they were typical. They just wanted sex. You’re really sweet and such a gentleman.”

I run my fingers through her hair and we continue lying together for a few minutes. “We better say goodnight,” I say.

“Goodnight,” she says.

“You have to go back to your own room.”

“Oh, all right.” She gives me a long wet kiss. I escort her to the door where she looks me up and down. “I could eat you from head to toe.”

“I bet you say that to all the guys.”

We embrace and kiss again. “Like I just said, you’ve been a real gentleman, Zachary Powell. When I get you back to New York, look out.”

I’m a veteran and wrote this story as an amalgamation of several veterans. However, it’s not a depressing overview of a veteran with PTSD, rather an interesting, and often comic relief story whereby Zach interacts with the historical Ernest Hemingway (quite the character himself). Zach kept a journal in combat, he wrote stories for the high school newspaper, and he reads a lot of books (something soldiers do in their barracks in Iraq and Afghanistan where they have a lot of “down-time”. Please consider donating old books to organizations that ship books to soldiers).

Hence, Hemingway is interwoven into Zach’s situation because they have a lot in common; such as Hemingway’s father killed himself, Hemingway was an ambulance driver in WWI and suffered great physical, and some would say psychological wounds, and Hemingway was an alcoholic. In any event, Hemingway not only saves Zach from suicide, but becomes his writing mentor at the college newspaper and his counselor as he struggles to accept Jessica’s love.

Excerpt (With Ernest Hemingway)

I close the door and flop onto the bed with my clothes still on. Damn, am I in some sort of dream world?

“I don’t think so,” he says.

“Jesus, Hem. Stop doing that.” I sit up as he sits and hands me his flask. I swig. “Absinthe again?”

“Your girl’s airtight.” He takes the flask back.

“Airtight? More nineteen twenties lingo?”

“Hey, that was a hell of a time, ya know.”

“Yeah. I’ve heard. Then it all went to pot.”

He shrugs. “It always does.”

“It’s been awhile. Where’ve you been?”

“You’ve been busy.”

“But why now?”

“You’re conflicted.”

“Conflicted? What’re you my shrink?”

“She’s inviting you in, kid.”

“Yeah,” I sigh, “I know.”

“You have to let it go.”

“But…”

“But nothing. We shot fear in the eye.”

I nod.

He gets up and goes to the door. “You want me to go a few rounds with the bastard?” He play punches the air.

“No. I can fight my own battles.”

“Have it your way.” He opens the door and tiptoes down the hall. I have to get up and close the door after the loon.

At last, days later, Zach allows Jessica to take him:

I hold her hand as we cross the street and head back to my apartment. I don’t even get the door closed before she pushes me up against the wall. I drop my computer on the chair next to the door and she is all over me. Trying to get the words out between kisses, I say, “I don’t know if anyone’s here.”

“Hello?” she calls out. “Dale? Basir?” She hurries around and surveys their rooms. “Nope. No one here.” She jumps into my arms, wrapping her legs around my waist and kisses me. In this position, I carry her to my room, close the door, and fall over with her onto the bed. We tear one another’s clothes off. “Wow,” I say struggling again between kisses. “You’re an animal.”

She kisses me on my abs and works her way up to my nipples. She gently kisses my bullet scar and ravishes my neck. She works her way across my chest, then my abdomen, and goes down on me.

At last, I reciprocate, kissing her breasts. I kiss her belly and explore her with my tongue, her moaning so loud I worry someone will hear and I’ll get evicted.

I come up for air, locate a condom from my nightstand, tear open the packet with my teeth, and roll it on. She climbs on top and writhes, moving up and down. We enjoy intercourse for several minutes. I try as long as I can to hold it, wanting it to last forever.

But I can’t.

She stays on top and holds on. We are so out of breath neither of us speaks. Several minutes pass. I can tell her heartbeat is returning to normal. “Are you okay?” I say.

She kisses me and rolls off. “I am in love with you.” She toys with my nipple, the one I almost lost. I take a deep breath and exhale. “What was that for?” she says.

I shrug.

“Zachary,” she says, an upturn in her voice.

“It’s just that, well, I’ve never done it like this before.”

“What?” she says pulling her head up to look in my eyes.

“Well, I’ve never, you now, made love before. It was always only sex.”

“Oh? How was it?”

“Extraordinary,” I whisper in her ear while running my fingers through her hair. “I have this deep feeling in my gut. I’ve never felt this intensity before.” A tear runs down my cheek. I turn away trying to hide it from her, but she sees it and wipes at it with her finger.

She snuggles up and lays her head on my shoulder, saying, “I know what you mean.”

I kiss her on the top of her head. Her hair smells so sweet. We lie there in silence for the longest time holding one another and kissing some more. I fondle her breasts, kissing them. She plays with my penis and this time she lies back. Yet again we enjoy sweet intercourse.

I pivot to her side, still inside, and while holding her, I drift off to sleep not aware of what happens next until she tells me some time later.

After this scene, Jessica’s parents make her disappear, and Zach feels betrayed, descends into alcoholism, and bizarre situations with Hemingway occur putting Zach’s life in danger.

Although there is tragedy along the way, love wins out in the end and it is a happy ending; who wants to be left with no hope after reading a book?

Many Americans are burnt out over the most recent wars, and although this story begins in a dramatic, combat-related fashion, the essence of the story is one of hope and love wins out. “The heart wants what the heart wants.”

About the Author

James is a veteran and now an administrator with the Los Angeles Unified School District. His other books are listed on his website below. His 6^th book, a romance novel, Spirit of the Amaroq: A Story of Salvation is forthcoming.

MY WAR WITH HEMINGWAY (Amazon): https://t.co/9dpsIOxkyv

JAMES CHARLES’ WEBSITE: https://jamescharlesarlington.wordpress.com/

FACEBOOK PAGE (thanks for your “Likes.”): https://www.facebook.com/mywarwithhemingway/

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/MyWarWithHem