I'm Not Dead

Just so you know, I haven't been abducted by aliens, the FBI, or a creepy stalker. Other than that, anyone's guess is probably good.

Flash Fiction Friday - Offering

I stumble and fall and you are there to lift me up, light as a feather, your strong arms cradling me like a child. No. I push you away and you cry and I cry and we both want something different. You want me to let you lift me. I want never to stumble and fall. You offer love. I wish I could accept.

---

I have a hard time accepting help. I need it a lot, but even when I take it, I either hold it against the person who offered or I convince myself that it was me. At least, when I'm at my worst. At my best, it's something else.

I took one look at this picture, saw the title, and almost ignored the phrase because I couldn't do anything with it. But "Offering?" That I could work with.

I've been there. Both carrying and being carried. There's a line from Hamlet that a lot of people know; Polonius says, "Neither a borrower nor a lender be." He's giving advice to his son who's off to college, and the scene is supposed to illustrate Polonius' character, and also to be amusing (which it can be, in the right hands). Some people take the line out of context and choose to believe that Polonius is making some deep point, when in fact he's a comic character whose advice is supposed to sound idiotic. But I'd like to make a deep point based on his shallow line. Forgive me.

Being a borrower or a lender isn't about whether or not you owe people anything, or whether anyone owes you. There's no way to be totally isolated from the rest of the world; you'll always have debts and people will always owe you something. That's the nature of living: we are connected. What being a borrower or a lender means is that you count your debts. If you're a borrower, you worry about paying back your debts, and if you're a lender, you expect repayment. It's a balance sheet. That's no way to go through life. Be a giver and a receiver. Give freely and you'll receive just as freely. But if you happen to give more than you get, guess what: that's life. You're only miserable about it if you keep track. If you worry about the balance sheet of your life, you're going to wind up miserable and worried because there's no way you're ever going to come out even. You can't repay some debts.

I'm not advocating taking without giving back. But sometimes, all you can do is try to give as good as you get (which is another phrase I'm turning on its ear here). In fact, don't think about debts, think about gifts. Be grateful in receiving, and magnanimous in giving. If you stumble and fall, let someone help you up, and if you see someone stumble, help that person up in turn. Love and be loved. Not owing anyone anything is lonely, not admirable. Mutual gifts tied together societies throughout history, and they can tie together people now. Pride keeps us alone.

There was something about her hand on his shoulder, the way she turned her face from him, that just suggested the brief snippet I wrote to me. I tried to write another about something else, connected but distinct, but couldn't make it work out. Maybe I was just fixated on the first idea. Because I've been there.

Anyway, this long and rambling discourse concluded, I must entreat you to visit Flash Fiction Friday headquarters and see everyone else's stuff. I probably won't make it in again this week because I have barely enough time to write this, but they deserve your attention and mine. Maybe sometime I'll talk about justice, and how it's fine to be a giver without counting the cost but in the end some people take and take without giving back. I feel a bit like that recently, Flash Fiction Friday-wise. But there are only so many hours in the day.

TMI In Bed

Does anyone else do that with fortune cookie fortunes? Or is it just me? No, I know other people who do. Anyway, it seemed apropos for this week's TMI, for which I'm too late but I don't give a damn.

TMI Tuesday this week was submitted by My Undercover Metamorphosis. Thank you! Show her some love, stop by her blog and say hello.

1. A friend is coming to have sex. There are 3 twin beds and an air mattress in the room. What do you do? (choose one)

1. Have sex where ever we land first, who needs a bed?
2. Have sex on a single twin mattress
3. Have sex on an air mattress
4. Or? (tell us your solution)

Pull all the mattresses off the beds, lay them out strategically, and then go at it on them. Or, if the room isn't mine and it's someone's who might mind mattress stains, I might consider the air mattress, because they're easier to clean, being rubber and all. But they aren't my first choice.

2. What is the oddest thing you have in your bedroom that someone would be surprised to find. Why is it there?

I think I may have once mentioned some odd books I own (non-sexually odd, I hasten to add, because really, odd sex books wouldn't be out of place in my room) but the oddest thing I have in my bedroom might be my bedside lamp. I won't go into detail (for various reasons); it's just out of character. I've had it forever though, so it has sentimental value if nothing else.

3. What are your favorite sheets?

1. Flannel
2. Cotton
3. T-shirt cotton (jersey)
4. Satin

I love flannel sheets, although if it's hot, I sometimes prefer something more sheer. Cotton is okay. I've never had jersey, and satin is too slippery for me. Too cold too.

4. Do you sleep with sheets tucked in or out? Why?

Until I started spending a lot of time with Sveta I never knew that tucked-in sheets were anything that people really did. I only ever encountered them in hotels or in bedrooms which were clearly supposed to resemble hotels in their neatness. I know hotels are disgusting, really, but they look neat and trim. Anyway, "making the bed" isn't something I do all that often; I like rumpled. And I don't get tucked-in sheets at all, which bugs Sveta a bit, I think. She likes them. I feel constricted and drafty. To each her own.

5. What is your usual bedtime? Why?

Usual? Hahahahahahaha*snort cough choke gag wheeze*hahaha. I'm on Tokyo time, if Tokyo observed 38 hour days or something. I fall asleep when I can.

5. Do you sleep with closet door(s) shut or open? Bedroom door shut or open? Any particular reason why?

It depends. In places where people might see and I don't want that, I close the bedroom door. And I keep closet doors closed as a matter of principle, not because I'm afraid to sleep with them open. Hell, in my house, I don't have a closet in my room.

6. Have you ever broken a bed or other furniture during sex?

I never have. Other people who were fucking me have, but it was never my fault. Mike.

7. What’s your favorite type of bed for sex?

A nice big one, soft enough but still firm, possibly a pillow-top or a memory-foam-top. I like big though. Plenty of room to move. Making love on Sveta's tiny little dorm bed is tough on my aged form.

8. What do you sleep in?

1. Lingerie
2. Underwear
3. Day clothes
4. T-shirt
5. Nothing

All of the above, at one point or other. I've been sleeping in underwear more than usual recently. At home, I sleep naked most of the time. I don't wear lingerie to sleep in, and I've never really had any pajamas, per se, but I have worn over-sized T-shirts to bed, and on occasion I'll pass out in day clothes, although that's a real rarity. I guess mostly either nothing or underwear. I suppose I should do the mature thing and get some sleepwear, but I'm not mature.

Flash Fiction Friday - Crystalline

I was nowhere near Barstow when the drugs began to take hold, alone and scared and shitting myself with anticipation. The guy promised me a good trip but then he left, they all left, and I was clawing at the air trying to break through. It’s like reverse birth, only instead of a baby there’s vomit. Lots of vomit. When my pineal gland opened unexpectedly, I breathed out creation, and there were crystalline spheres floating in front of a stunning broad, totally naked, waiting for me to fuck her brains out. I don’t recall much of the rest of it, but the lay was good.

---

“Come to me,” tinkled the crystalline voice, and he dove deeper, down where there was no air, into the deep, velveteen blackness, until he saw spots grow and resolve into a myriad of worlds, and sitting before him the Mother Goddess, shamelessly displaying her wanton form, beckoning him. “You seek to understand life,” she whispered. “I hold all the answers.” And where lesser heroes might have turned back, he strove on, and thrust himself into her in a rush, and found that all he understood was that birth was a woman’s work, and that he merely provided the seed.

---

His control of her was not total, and Pina wandered the dark halls, crystalline light seeping from unseen lanterns. It wasn’t such a bad place. Her mother wouldn’t approve, but each night in his bed she found a new meaning for pleasure. He was cold, to be sure, and yet... she hadn’t decided to leave.

Her eye lit on the fruit. What was it about pomegranates? She had forgotten. Though they looked and tasted strange, she feasted on the juicy seeds, never noticing how they anchored her there, until she no longer thought of leaving at all, even when her mother called her home.

---

Three. That's right. Three. They were so short.

The first... well, the joking reference came to me immediately, and I felt like writing something gonzo-ish and silly. Can you really blame me? Okay, yes you can.

The second and third were iterations; I thought of the third but wrote the second, then had to go back and write the third. The second is a more reasoned and mythological take on the idea of enlightenment, which seems to have completely escaped the narrator of the first. And then in the mythological vein, Proserpina, or Persephone, lent herself. Three different takes on what the non-female things in the picture are (spheres, worlds, pomegranate seeds), three different looks, or just three things which came to mind. You be the judge.

Good to have FFF back this week. Head over to the headquarters to see what's shaking and take a look at all the other great stuff. Me, I'll be busy Friday, which is why I'm writing this in advance. I may not even get to add my name to the list until quite late. But head over there and see other people's work. It's worth it.

Turnabout is Fair Play

I have seized the camera. I control the horizontal. I control the vertical. You cannot stop me.

So I told Sveta, "How would you like it if everyone got to see your ass?"

And she said, "I'd like that just fine."

So here it is.

I have a few more that I might parcel out if she keeps making me give you pictures of me. I know, you're all suffering so much, aren't you?