I just received an email from Maxim Jakubowski telling me that he’s accepted my short story “The Mercy of Strange Men” for his latest anthology The Mammoth Book of Erotica 6 (a title chosen because it’s a large anthology, not because it features erotica about mammoths. To the best of my knowledge). This is the story that won Palmprint Publications’s short story competition last year. I am now thinking of retitling it “The Freaky Little BDSM Story That Could,” although that doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

If it weren’t for the fact that I should have been in bed hours ago and have just cleaned my teeth, I’d have a drink to celebrate.

The first time my father’s pack-a-day Benson and Hedges habit ever benefited me, I was nine or ten years old. B&H were running a promotion whereby when one bought a carton of their cigarettes, one received a compilation CD of classic rock hits. Since my father has always been the kind of person to buy in bulk wherever possible (our visits to my grandfather would always conclude with the boot of the car stocked with dozens of bottles of wine from local vineyards), he quickly ended up with two of these CDs, and gave one to me.

It was one of the first CDs I ever owned, and introduced me to the delights of Chuck Berry and Little Richard, and furthered my enjoyment of the Small Faces, while simultaneously establishing my lifelong hatred of Gerry and the Pacemakers. But my favourite song on the compilation was “Lola,” by a band I’d previously never heard of called The Kinks.

I quickly fell in love with the story of the young man’s seduction, but it wasn’t until many listens later I began to suspect that something was a little awry in this classic tale of boy meets girl. A few more careful listens confirmed my suspicions that Lola was no ordinary sexually assertive young woman. To my mind, this made the song even cooler, which retrospectively seems quite an interesting perspective coming from a sheltered pre-teen country bumpkin who at that point in her life had met few adults who weren’t church-going National Party-voting farmers. Lola, I decided, was a bit of all right.

But then it occurred to me that my father was also listening to the same song, and I began to worry. I mean, sure, I was nine, I could handle it. But what of poor, innocent ol’ Dad? I wasn’t sure he would be able to cope with the song’s message if he figured it out. I decided the best thing to do would be to gently point out the subtext of the song and reassure him that there was nothing wrong with a man dressing like a woman and seducing naive but curious young men on the dance floor.

I picked my moment as best I could. One weekend when I was visiting my father and he had a tape of the CD playing in the car, I waited until he was fast-forwarding “Ferry Across the Mersey” at my request. Casually, I piped up with, “hey Dad? You know that song ‘Lola’?”

“Yes, gremlin. What about it?”

“Well,” I paused. Then I realised that there was point stalling for time. “I don’t think Lola is really a lady.”

My father paused, obviously to take in this new information. I glanced across at him, to make sure he wasn’t too shocked.

“No, darling,” he finally said. “I don’t think she is either.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d educated my father, and he didn’t seem too shocked by my revelations. All was well, and I could go back to enjoying my song without the burden of unshared knowledge.

I’ve been laid low for the past week or so with a nasty flu-like bug that seems to like me very much, as it won’t go away. I’m starting to feel a little better now, but in addition to the fun illness symptoms, it’s had some interesting side effects.

I have a tendency to have weird dreams, which becomes even more pronounced when I’m not well. A couple of nights ago, in the grip of the bug, I had an absolute doozy.

Like many dreams, the events kept shifting. It started out as me trying to get away from a zombiesque foe. I dream a lot about zombies, for some reason. Somehow in the midst of all the running and fighting, I kept bumping into people who kept saying, “Oh, you simply must buy Stephen King’s new book, Cell. It’s great!”. Over and over and over again. I woke up not with the usual relief that I had averted the danger and avoided the consumption of my tasty tasty brain, but with an overwhelming urge to pop down to my local bookshop and get me some King.

This sort of marketing campaign was funny when it was used in Futurama to sell Lightspeed Briefs, but not so funny when it happened in my own head. Knock it off, arseholes!

But it could have been worse. Dreaming about zombies I can handle, but I think I would have awoken in a cold sweat had there been an appearance by Kerri-Anne Kennerley or anyone from Danoz Direct. Now that’s true horror.

I was very excited the other day to receive my contributor copies of First-Timers: True Stories of Lesbian Awakening, edited by the lovely Rachel Kramer Bussel (who I’d think was lovely even if she hadn’t selected my story, honest).

I’ve not had a chance to read much of it yet but it looks divine - that gorgeous cover! - and features stories from some fabulous erotica writers. My own little story is sandwiched in between stories by Audacia Ray and Alison Tyler, which is certainly very good company to be in.

I don’t think I mentioned my acceptance into this anthology when it originally occurred, but I seem to recall it happening around the time I was having a bit of a great run with getting stories accepted, which is always a nice feeling: they like me, they really like me! And my dirty mind, too!

Go check it out over at Amazon if you are so inclined. Which I personally think you should be.

Update 25/04/06: I’ve received word that First-Timers will be available from its Australian distributor in May.  You should be able to order it in at any good bookstore (or even some of the crappy ones).  Bliss for Women should have it as a matter of course, and it might be in Borders’ woefully inadequate lesbian fiction section.

Look Ma, I’m on WordPress!

Thanks to Stu, who’s spent the last little while doing this when he could have been sitting around thinking about his sins on this, Good Friday, aka Honey I Killed Our Lord Day.

Although now that I ponder the death of Our Lord, I have to say that I think that without the influence of Jesus, there would be less racism in the world today. I mean, would the Ku Klux Klan burn rocks on black peoples’ lawns if he’d been stoned to death instead of crucified? I think not.

I have a tendency, when talking, to suddenly forget most of my vocabulary. This is particularly the case when talking to someone I don’t know well, which is an unfortunate side effect of never having outgrown shyness but being way, way too old to hide my face in my mother’s skirt. Mostly I cover this up by babbling, which is sort of my only defence because my mother lives several hundred kilometres away and generally wears pants these days.

There are a couple of things you can do when you suddenly realise you no longer know how, to paraphrase your kindergarten teacher, to use your words. You can pause and smile at the person you’re talking to (or at) in what you hope is a beguiling manner but will really just look goofy. Or you can do what I do, which is to plough on regardless and demarcate any misused or ironically used words with air quotes.

It’s probably best, really, to pause, to laughingly reflect that you’ve gone blank on the exact word, but whoops! it will come to you eventually. Because while you might look like an arsehole if you forget what you’re trying to say or are obviously having vocabulary issues, you will always look like an arsehole if you use air quotes.

Ahem.

I think I’ll keep the entry below, as a reminder to myself about the dangers of drinking and mashing my poor old keyboard. It’s just that when I’m drunk, touching things that move and do stuff is the most fascinating and wonderful thing in the world. This has led to many regrettable sexual encounters. Or it would have, if I didn’t have a strict policy of never regretting any sexual encounter I’ve willingly entered into, if only because it can be counted as a learning experience. Sometimes the lesson learned is “beer goggles are not your friends,” but still.

Given that I tend to correct my keyboard mashings rather haphazardly, you may have gleaned that I have returned to study. I’m now doing a Professional Writing and Editing course, which is a refreshing change from Uni. I actually get to do stuff, instead of talking about the theory behind why someone else has done stuff. It’s very odd. Also, it’s nice to be surrounded by people who actually care about writing enough to want to do it well, rather than people who a) share Adrian Mole’s acquaintance’s view on writers (see entry title) or b) are doing a writing subject because it it looks like a bludge and if they don’t do well on their English minor, Daddy is going to make them pull out of the Arts part of their double degree and then they’ll just have to do Law instead.

I’m taking Novel as one of my subjects, which has already made me have several minor freakouts; while I’ve started many novels, the idea of actually working on one to completion terrifies me. I submitted two synopses to my teacher because I couldn’t decide what to write, got his blessings for both, then thought “fuck this, I’m writing a werewolf novel”. So I am. Watch me backflip as the internal “You should be writing your Vogel entry” demon fights with the “Dismemberment is FUNNY!” demon. Dismemberment Demon usually wins, partly because I have the sneaking suspicion my “literary” fiction is horribly overwraught and no one wants to publish it anyway. DD also likes to remind me that I won a straight literary competition with a balls-out horror story and that my other successes have been in the sniffed-at “genre” categories too. Also that nothing makes me as psychotically tearful as badly-written “literary” fiction and the people who take it way too seriously.

I may return to this rant sometime in the future (and believe me, if I don’t stop here, I’m going to go careening wildly off into rant territory), but I think I’ll stop it here for now. Much like my increasingly frequent drunken antics, it’s something no one really needs to see.

IT’S FUION TO DO YHOUR HOMEWHETOK WHILE DRUNK ANDS LUSTENING TO STUPID MSUCIK.

EDEITED TO AQDD: THIS IS GOOIOGNG TOL BE THE BE3ST PICTUERA STORY BOSK EVFER!

Four years ago today, I was nervously grooming myself in preparation for hanging out with a cool guy I’d met at a zine launch some months previously and who I’d spent some time hoping would ask me out on a date. That never happened, although we kept in contact sporadically via email. I’d decided he wasn’t interested and told my friends, who’d observed our initial meeting with some amusement, that I now thought he was a bit of an arsehole.

Eventually we’d gotten back in touch, and I’d reneged on the arsehole judgement just enough to agree to coffee in St Kilda.

He arrived at my house fifteen minutes late and extremely apologetic. On the walk to the tram stop he shyly engaged me in a conversation about how awesome Dan Savage is, which I thought was cute because I’d mentioned my enjoyment of Savage Love in one of our phone conversations. He’d done his research. We rode the tram with the nervous awkwardness familiar to first dates everywhere, despite the fact that I’d fiercely assured my friends it wasn’t a date - “we’re just hanging out and having coffee!”
“Sure, Aimee,” came the replies. “Whatever you say.”

We went and had a coffee, which eventually turned into lolling around in a park for some hours, which eventually turned into returning to my place for “coffee”.

I don’t think I’ve seen him drink coffee since, although fortunately there has been plenty of “coffee”.

Happy anniversary, Stu.

P.S. I love you, but as you’re probably aware, I’ve never fully reneged on that arsehole judgement.

If there’s not a website featuring mature-aged people engaging in watersports, and if it’s not called Golden Oldies, then that matter really ought to be rectified.