Pass the vodka please

"I hate it here. Why don't we ever go anywhere? This place sucks!"

Seventeen in a small town. Need I say more? The exact phrasing changes from day to day but the overall sentiment is unyielding and harsh. Boring. Stupid. Hate.

She says we are old and boring and lame and stupid and a half dozen other unflattering adjectives, usually when she thinks we are out of earshot but not always. She cannot and will not comprehend budgets and bills because she's never had to fend for herself, and refuses to accept that vacations are more than just loading in the car and heading down the road. After all, her parents go on holiday at least once a month, to places like Italy or Switzerland or the Black Sea. Her parents have regular parties with wine and friends, and her parents would not be caught dead in a town like this.

The Old Man

I have a blind dog. He wasn't always this way, but he's pushing fourteen now and his eyes are more grey haze than brown. We try to keep everything in the same position so he can find his way around the maze of chair legs and couch corners, but he spins in circles when he gets excited and then loses his place in the world. I have learned to shuffle my feet when I walk so he can follow the sound, and wait until he is directly lined up with the steps to call his name, rather than when he is coming around the corner. The other day he tried to turn around on the couch and fell off.

I got him almost ten years ago from the dog pound, death row inmate due to skin allergies that left him looking like a scabby newborn rat. We really don't know how old he is; he acted like an old man then but the vet guesstimated him to be around four then.

Despite his failing vision there is nothing wrong with his nose, as it reliably leads him to the most wretched spots in the back yard. I have a neighbor whose sinister cat scales our fence every evening to murder dove and grackles in our apricot trees. Sometimes the vicious bastard is thoughtful enough to carry his victims back home, but most of the time he flings their decapitated bodies to the ground for the old man to find. Of course he only finds them after they've turned to a rotted, reeking mess at which point he must enthusiastically and with great vigor roll and rub every inch of his tiny body in the remains.

Only then is he ready to come back inside, and if he is lucky and I am not mindful, he will beeline without bump or bobble to the nearest bit of furniture and proceed to share his newly donned aroma with it as well.

Nothing like the smell of four day dead dove ground into my blanket to start the morning off right.

Would you like fries with that?

An old college professor once told me to strap on the blinkers and run my own race, not worry about how others run their own. While I have found a stiff margarita to be an outstanding substitution for racing blinkers, as well as much easier on my hair, I still suffer regular bouts of "who the fuck am I kidding?".

Every so often, and really it's more every than often, I read someone else's work and am left feeling as if I should bone up on the latest techniques for properly preparing french fries and cheeseburgers and leave the writing to those with real talent. I don't know why this happens, it's not as if my scribblings are so wretched that the reader is driven to drink, hoping to erase the chapters from his memory. Or hey, maybe they are! In that case I will be proud to have contributed a valuable resource for anyone who needs a reason to get completely blotto.

I write because I love to, even have to, because I can sit down in front of the Dell at the crack of noon and get up for my first 48 ounce iced chai tea latte two pink stuffs easy on the ice of the day and discover it's already 5 in the afternoon. The time flies almost as fast as my fingers. Sometimes it seems I have an unruly hoard in my head demanding to have their stories told, and I can't write fast enough.

Today was not one of those days though. Today was "research day", thanks to Miss Emma Adler whose tale of lust, betrayal, and revenge demands I understand the fashion trends, hairstyles, slang, and daily life of a teenager living in the dustbowl during the Great Depression.

For the record, I think Marian Marsh is one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. I would gladly sacrifice a hundred Kardashians, Honey Boo Boos, and Snookies if I thought the gods would see fit to return old school glamour to Hollywood.

Free reads!

Charlotte Stein has a freebie up. It's probably been up for a while but I just found it today.

I fucking love Charlotte Stein. Then again, she makes me feel like I should stick to writing See Dick Run. I feel rather stalkerish right now. 

I need to go read some Letters so I can feel better about my many shortcomings.

Meet Dawn

Dawn makes her first appearance in Sex and Honey, with "The Light of Dawn". I didn't see her coming until she was right in front of me, insisting I write her story, which I'm working on now.
The following is from The Light of Dawn.

   He was about to give up and move in on the bony blonde when it finally came to him, a delicate, seductive mixture of ocean spray and warm cinnamon that evoked long lost memories of his childhood. His eyes closed as he drank it in this new and heady incense, and as he let it take over his senses he felt the early stirrings of lust begin.

   Abandoning his barstool and bourbon he plunged into the pulsing crowd, ignoring the appreciative glances of the women he pushed past as the intoxicating aura drew him through the club. The shoving and bouncing bodies around him went unnoticed, drowned out by the deafening sound of blood pounding in his ears. As he burst through the sweaty mob and cleared the dance floor he found himself directly behind the source of the provocative scent.

   She swayed at the edge of the gyrating crowd with her back to him, her hair flowing in loose waves nearly to her waist. Captivated by the untamed mane of fire and sunlight that smoldered like hot coals under the club’s lights, he had to restrain himself from reaching out to wrap his fingers in it. She wore a simple linen shift reminiscent of medieval times, its only adornment an ornate leather corset with an ancient world map carved into it. Her tiny waist fell to modest hips and her legs were bare from the knees down.

   Before he could reach out to her she turned and fixed golden eyes upon him with an intensity that made his heart skip and his cock rear up against its restraints. He’d never seen eyes like hers, swirling gold with tiny sparkles of reds and oranges and pinks, and they made his breath catch in his throat. The club kids’ taste in exotic contacts was familiar to him but to date he’d only seen the vampire and zombie eyes, with the occasional cat’s eye or eight ball thrown in.  These were unique, breathtaking even. Of course they’re contacts, he chided himself. No one has eyes like that. They were bottled sunrise brewing in porcelain skin above a straight, fine nose and butterfly mouth, and then her lips parted to yield a shy smile and he found himself mesmerized.

   Wordlessly he held his hand out to her, his eyes never leaving hers. Without hesitation she slipped her slender hand in his, and as she did her heartbeat raced up his arm like a boiling tsunami, causing him to gasp in amazement. In the four hundred plus years he’d been hunting, not once had he experienced one like this. Her pulse flooded into him from the palm of her hand and he realized that he hadn’t just heard her heartbeat early but had actually felt it pounding in his ears. Astonished he realized the scent he had trailed was the aroma of her blood, and as he held her hand it filled his nostrils and excited him to the point his teeth ached. Saliva flowed unbidden as his hunger roared to life and demanded he take her immediately. It took every ounce of his not inconsiderable self-control to restrain himself from leaping onto her and devouring her right there on the dance floor, and he suspected he wouldn’t have been able to hold back at all if he hadn’t ripped his eyes away from hers at the last second....

Unexpected Regrets

"You'll regret that someday."

The mantra by which I can mark nearly every major event in my life. The horse they told me not to ride, the one that put me in the ER in under twenty minutes. The speed I never should have pushed my first car to, around a curve, during the rain, that sent me ass over teakettle into a ditch. That lighter fluid sold as rice whiskey at a back alley bar in Beijing; jesus it's been three years and I can still feel the wasps in my head. The car thief I once hooked up with just to piss mom off.

Ok I don't really regret him. He was smokin' hot.

In fact I don't really regret any of them, each having served in some way to make me what I am today and all worthy of free drinks at the nearest bar. The things I really regret are the ones no one ever told me I would. The road trip around the country with my best friend that never came to pass. The audition to be a roller derby girl that I chickened out on.

The most recently surfaced regret is that I have lost so many stories over the years. Deleted, thrown away, forgotten, easily hundreds. Some were bloody awful and the world is better for their loss, but there were some fuckin shiny ass diamonds in there as well. The regret is not for whatever commercial value I might be able to squeeze from them, but the fact that I can't go back, read them, and think "damn I wrote that!" or in some cases "aw shit I wrote that?" and I'm left feeling slightly cheated.