Abigail Barnette's Blog, page 19

$ PRIDE $ (and why I don’t think cops belong there)

Am I introducing Pride merch like a god damn conglomerate? You’re 100% right. If Lego can cash in, so can I. Except, when LGBTQA+ creators do it, it’s like when you hand money to the dude in the sleeping bag on the sidewalk instead of the dude ringing the bell to get money to run through the hands of the CEO before making the dude in the sleeping bag sit through a gospel reading to get a bowl of oatmeal and a roll of toilet paper.

Moving on.

Before I shamelessly hawk my wears, let me explain this shit like a fucking recipe blog.

I don’t think cops should be a presence at Pride. Not just because cops routinely raided gay bars and checked people’s genitals and counted how many pieces of “gender appropriate” clothing they were wearing and beat them and outed them and humiliated them etc. until Marsha fucking snapped and chucked that brick, but also because of how the police have weaponized their presence to prevent events and protests from even happening. Cities have tried to use, “but you have to pay for the police to protect you!” as an excuse to withhold permits and contracts from event organizers who couldn’t raise the funds. And “protection” from police at Pride has sometimes meant open harassment and violence against the people paying for their protection in the first place.

Just because marriage equality passed in the United States doesn’t mean LGBTQA+ people are safe and all our problems have been solved. We’re still considered “less-dead” in criminology terms: victims more vulnerable to becoming cold cases due to marginalized status.

The situation is somewhat similar to what happens to Black Lives Matter protests: Pay us to protect you at the protests you organize in remembrance of how we, specifically, have historically victimized you. Oh, and while we’re here, why not let us make you feel incredibly unsafe.

In the United States, there’s a flag that’s become a popular substitute for the traitor (confederate) flag. It’s a version of the American flag in black and white. One stripe is blue, to signify the “thin blue line,” the mythical concept that without the police to brutalize citizens, the workers will undermine the fruits of their labor or something dystopian like that.

In my area, they usually fly just above “Trump 2024” or “Fuck Biden” MAGA flags.

I fucking hate them.

Like, whenever I hear a firetruck, I fantasize that it’s one of those houses.

So, as with many, many things in my life, I was motivated by spite to make a flag for LGBTQA+ Americans who don’t want cops at Pride, based on the bootlicker flag:

This image file is huge, by the way, so that you can use it on what you want. Put it in your Cricut machine and make stickers and sell ’em on etsy. Make it a real flag, I don’t care. Put it on your FB, print it out and write love letters on it, whatever blows your skirt up. Monetize it. Get that cash, gaybies.

What I’m not cool with would be if someone not a member of the LGBTQA+ community decided to be an ally by making money off it. Or a corporation. That would disappoint me and I would lose respect for that person or entity. But I want it to be available for everyone so I’m not gonna copyright it or anything.

But I’m gonna sell merch!

Over at TroutMart, you can find this design, as well as a limited edition, super gayed-out version of our favorite misogynistic insult that will only be available during the month of June.

Giving queer people money is allyship, right?

Anyway, a very merry Pride to you, remember the people who died so you could watch cis straight actors pretend to be them in the biopic.

No Cops At Pride.

Jealous Haters Book Club: Crave chapter five, “Things Hot Pink and Harry Styles Have in Common”

I’m going to be straight up with you all: we NEVER find out what things hot pink and Harry Styles have in common.

Now, it’s been a while since we had one of these recaps and you might think, wow, it seems like this story is moving really slowly. I promise, it’s not. I’m moving really slowly. But we just got to Grace’s bedroom. Macy tells Flint (remember, the only Black character so far, named after either a predominately Black Michigan city or a kind of chert) that Grace’s bed is on the right.

It takes only a couple of seconds for me to figure out that no matter what she said about being okay with me having my own room, she had planned on me rooming with her all along.

For starters, all her possessions are arranged neatly on one rainbow-colored side of the room. And for another, the spare bed is already made up in—of course—hot-pink sheets and a hot-pink comforter with huge white hibiscus flowers all over it.

This is the moment where the heroine should probably be like, yuck, pink, I’m not like other girls, but instead, because she’s Grace and not a two-dimensional run-of-the-mill Bella Swann knock-off, she–

Ah, JFC. I just realized that Bella Swann’s name is literally “beautiful swan.” Son of a…

Anyway, Grace doesn’t suck, so even though she doesn’t care for all the pink, she’s touched that her cousin went the extra mile, even choosing hibiscus flowers to remind Grace of surfing.

That shade of pink reminds me of surfer Barbie more than it reminds me of home, but no way am I going to say that to her. Not when it’s obvious she’s gone out of her way to make me feel comfortable.

That’s right. Grace is capable of thinking of people other than herself. She is by far the best heroine we’ve ever had in a Jealous Haters Book Club.

Flint calls the decor cheerful and:

The look he gives me is totally tongue-in-cheek, but that only makes me like him more. The fact that he realizes how absurd Macy’s decorating choices are but is way too nice to say anything that might hurt her feelings totally works for me. If I’m lucky, maybe I’ve made another friend.

She’s even evaluating people on how they treat other people and not just her! It’s astounding. Because, you know how I like Twilight? One of the things I didn’t like was that Bella was super cool with just letting the Cullens shit all over everybody non-Cullen because they were nice to her. But here, Grace is going, okay, this guy is nice to my cousin. Maybe we can be friends.

So…how is it that she’s gonna end up with douchey vampire man?

Flint leaves and Grace calls Macy out on having a crush on him. Macy panics and is like, no, I totally don’t, but Grace just points out that the dude was standing in their room and Macy didn’t even bother talking to him.

“I don’t like him like him. I don’t!” she insists with a laugh when I give her a look. “I mean, yeah, he’s gorgeous and nice and supersmart, but I’ve got a boyfriend who I really care about. It’s just, Flint is so…Flint. You know? And he was in our room, next to your bed.” She sighs. “The mind boggles.”

Grace thinks she understands; Macy is naturally drawn to Flint because he’s a popular guy and popular guys tend to drag people into their orbits. And Macy agrees, with the caveat that Flint isn’t all that popular; Jaxon and his friends are the most popular kids there.

“Jaxon?” I ask, trying to sound casual even as my whole body goes on high alert. I don’t know how I know she’s talking about him, but I do.

I just now, JUST now, understood that “Jaxon” is “Jackson” but spelled differently. What was the point? What on earth was the point?

Macy explains that Jaxon is beyond explanation but obviously she thinks he’s super hot, even though he ignored them and almost hit them with a door just moments before.

“Don’t take it personally, though. That’s just the way Jaxon is. He’s…angsty.”

Oh, he has angst? Sorry, I didn’t realize there was angst involved. That’s a totally different ball game. He can just carry on treating people however he likes.

Plus, Macy delivered that line and like…I think Grace is the one who gets to be angsty, okay? She’s orphaned and in the middle of Snowhere, Alaska. What’s wrong with Jaxon besides his stupid name and his bad attitude?

Grace isn’t buying what Macy’s selling, anyway. She thinks he’s a lot more than “angsty” but also doesn’t know how to “feel” about their exchange. So, she doesn’t talk about it. She thanks Macy for setting up the room for her, and doesn’t let Macy duck her gratitude. Again, Grace behaves true to her name and says that yeah, it was a lot of work and she appreciates it.

They banter about being each other’s favorite/only cousins and Macy shows Grace the costumes from Heathers on Broadway:

Lined up inside the closet are several black skirts and pants, along with white and black blouses, a bunch of black or purple polo shirts, two black blazers, and two red and black plaid scarves.

That hurt my eyes to read and I can’t even describe why.

Macy has also made sure that Grace has new shoes, boots, coats, and all the school supplies she’ll need.

“There are socks and thermal underwear and some fleece shirts and pants in your dresser drawers. I figure moving here is hard enough. I didn’t want you to have to worry about anything extra.”

And just like that, she manages to knock down the first line of my defenses. Tears bloom in my eyes, and I look away, blinking quickly in an effort to hide what a disaster I am.

Macy hugs her and says:

“It sucks, Grace. The whole thing just totally sucks, and I wish I could make it better. I wish I could just wave a wand and put everything back the way it used to be.”

YES. YES, NORMALIZE SAYING THAT DEATH AND THE CIRCUMSTANCES AROUND IT CAN SUCK. WE ARE ALLOWED TO THINK IT SUCKS! I LOVE YOU MACY!

Grace thinks about how she wishes she could change it, too.

I wish that the last words my parents and I spoke weren’t hurled at each other in a fight that seems so stupid now.

Oof, that hits close to home for me, having been in a similar situation with a family member. I mean, we weren’t fighting about something I feel was silly to fight over. It was absolutely serious. But then that person died and it was the last conversation we ever had. I hope this thread of characterization plays out throughout Grace’s journey.

Then we find out that the way her parents died was by crashing off a cliff and into the ocean, which I know happens and is terrible, but which seems a little over-the-top when we’re trying to accept this heroine as a realistic character in a story where it’s fully normal that her uncle runs a school for vampires.

Like, we all get that this is a school for vampires, right?

But Grace also thinks about the fact that she misses her dad’s voice and her mom’s smell, which is great sensory detail. Having read another of Wolff’s books, I would recommend you pick up one of her books to get a feel for how to incorporate sensory details subtly, without bogging down the narrative. Her pace is fantastic.

I let Macy hug me as long as I can stand it—which is only about five seconds or so—and then I pull away. I’ve never particularly liked being touched, and it’s only gotten worse since my parents died.

PTSD! Whether the author states it or not (and I hope, hope, hope she does), this is PTSD. The romance of Wolff’s that I read had a hero who’d been kidnapped and tortured. I wonder if PTSD is a running theme in her books?

Grace thanks Macy without telling us in her head that she’s just saying it to be nice. Again, a nice change from the majority of popular YA/NA books.

“Of course. And I want you to know, if you ever need to talk or whatever, I’m here. I know it’s not the same, because my mom left; she didn’t die.” She swallows hard, takes a deep breath before continuing. “But I know what it’s like to feel alone. And I’m a good listener.”

Supportive roommate! Who isn’t immediately selfish, confrontational, or a huge slut that the heroine is so much purer than! What is this? Surely not a popular YA novel!

But also…speaking of that…

Where the fuck was all the buzz for this book? I follow a whole bouquet of various book bloggers and booktubers and maybe I just wasn’t paying attention when this came out but I saw very, very little discussion of it or any hype that wasn’t from people employed by the publisher or from paid “fan sites” where Entangled books are frequently featured in those paid pieces. But a lot of people have read it. There are tons of reviews on GoodReads and Amazon. Where were people talking about this book, when Booktok wasn’t even really a thing yet when it came out? I’m mystified.

Anyway, Grace realizes it’s the first time Macy has specifically used the word “die” and Grace realizes that she needed to hear someone say it. But then she remembers that Jaxon (I’m sorry, I can’t get past the spelling of that fucking outer space name) also used the word “die” and, where literally anything concerning Jaxon so far in this story seems to do, the “wow, what a refreshingly different take on common tropes!” disappears and just becomes common tropes:

He might have been a jackass all the way around, but he called my parents’ death what it was. And didn’t treat me like I was going to shatter under the weight of one harsh word.

Ah, yes. Don’t we all appreciate total strangers being viciously rude and intimidating to us despite being fully aware that we’re grieving? And it’s so hot and sexy when a dude is brave and noble enough to bully a girl who’s already in pain.

Maybe that’s why I’m still thinking about him when I should be writing him off for the jerk he is.

No, honey. It’s not your fault. It’s the trope’s fault.

Now, you might be wondering, “What do hot pink and Harry Styles have in common? Well…this is as good an answer as you’re going to get.

Fifteen minutes later, I’m out of the shower and dressed in my favorite pair of pajamas—a Harry Styles T-shirt from his first solo tour and a pair of blue fleece pants with white and yellow daisies all over them—only to find Macy dancing around the room to “Watermelon Sugar.”

Real “hello, fellow kids” vibe here. I’m getting a sense that someone just googled “what kind of music do teens like?”

But anyway, Harry Styles fandom is something both Macy and Grace have in common, so I bet I know what their favorite book is.

Macy makes sure that Grace drinks a lot of water and takes some Advil. She brings her chicken soup but Grace is way too exhausted to eat.

The last thing I think about before drifting off to sleep is that—despite everything—tonight is the first time I’ve taken a shower without struggling not to cry since my parents died.

Now, in the past, I’ve mentioned that I’m not a huge fan of books where characters going to sleep to end a chapter/waking up to start the next chapter bugs me when it happens over and over, but so far this is the first time Grace has gone to bed so it’s okay. Also, it makes sense here because a) she just had a harrowing journey and b) this is exactly the type of grief thought you have right before you fall asleep (in my experience). It feels real, not just like the author couldn’t think up a transition. Now, if all the other chapters end this way, obviously I’ll be a little suspicious. But so far, nothing in Wolff’s writing suggests she would do that to us.

I really think Tracy Wolff is going to go down in Jealous Haters history as the best author we’ve read.

Troutmart is live!

Troutmart is live, I feel like I died yesterday (Moderna round 2), so here’s the link and go get your vaccine if you can.

Click this link and consume if you would like to.

No Crave Post This Week

Hey yous all, my dog died and i finally got an appointment for my second dose of the vaccine (they ran out of Moderna, so I had to wait until they got some), so I gotta postpone this week’s Crave post because I know after they stick me with that Dolly Juice, I’m gonna be down for the count and because tomorrow will be a total wash because we live way out in the middle of nowhere and it’s like an hour to get to the crematorium for the dog. I guess in the meantime, rock out with your cocks out? IDK this has been a wild week and it’s only Tuesday.

State of The Trout: The Retirement of Abigail Barnette

This is my fourth attempt to write this post. The first one blew up bridges. The second was nuclear assault. The third was a little more measured and reasonable. I flirted with the idea of posting all of them, choose-your-own-adventure style: if you want to choose the high road, click here. To plunge into the fiery abyss of Jenny’s contempt, click here. But then I stopped and thought to myself:

I have so much awesome stuff going on in my life right now. I’m so blessed to be doing the things that I love. Why talk about people who aren’t included in that? This week, I’m launching some merch (I love how douchey that sounds. Merch.), I’ve got a video to post, a new recap to deliver, I’m finally crawling out of my grief pit a little bit, I’m half vaccinated…why burn a bridge I’m sure as hell not going to accidentally wander back down? But changes must be made.

As you can see from the title of this post, I am retiring Abigail Barnette. For a few reasons. I don’t need to comment on my views regarding the power of cis white woman tears in the ‘landia. I’ve referenced Mean Girls to describe the hierarchy of the industry but after Dudley only got twenty-six presents last week, it’s beginning to look a lot like MAGA. There are so many people trying to genuinely do good, even some of the people I find insufferable. And I wish those people well. But the hypocrisy of others, the entitlement and gatekeeping and diet social justice branding, the openly unethical actions and outright lies, it’s just…so tiring. And it’s really soured my experience as a romance author. I’m just not enjoying myself anymore. I don’t begrudge anyone their success; I actually have a lot of respect for con artists, if they’re good con artists. And I’ve seen so many incredible feats of manipulation and gaslighting in my time writing romance, made by incredibly successful people.

I’ve also seen some of the best, nicest, and most honest people have magical things happen for them. And I’ve made some great friendships, with authors and readers alike. Romance has always been a great love of mine. But I never meant to be a romance writer. My traditionally published books aren’t romances, they were just published by Harlequin and because romance readers are such big cross-genre readers, I did a lot of romance conventions and collaborations with romance authors. My writer friends were all romance writers. All of the fanfiction I wrote was romance. When I switched to writing and editing romance, it ended up being the worst move of my career. It killed my hobby writing and reading and made all of it a homework assignment. The pace, the environment, the intra-genre politics, all of it has burned me out. So, Abigail Barnette must retire.

I know this will come as a disappointment to readers waiting for a fourth Ian and Penny book. I had explored other avenues of continuing that series with new writers and I was in talks for about a year on that but ultimately a deal wasn’t reached. But when I look back on the end of Baby Makes Three, it feels like their happily ever after already happened. Everyone’s loose ends are tied up, except for one. That’s Danny’s book. I’ve had a perspective change on priest romances. I don’t think anyone is terrible for writing them or reading them, believe me. Priests are just not a subject I want to think about for reasons involving recent charges against a favorite one from high school. I won’t get into it because it’s a sensitive subject for a lot of people, I just wanted you all to be aware that his book wouldn’t have been happening regardless.

This isn’t me quitting fiction; as much as I would love to blog full time, I wouldn’t love to blog full time. I really like writing. I’m going to go back to the fantasy/urban fantasy I started with, and I’m still going forward with dark paranormal erotica/erotic horror as Jennifer Morningstar. So, upcoming releases like In The Blood and Queen of Hell aren’t affected by this shift. I’ll also be pursuing traditional publishing with future fantasy projects. Self-publishing requires more executive function than I’ve had for a while. But that’s quite a way out.

Do I believe that other genres are any better when it comes to petty squabbles and unethical behavior? Absolutely not. Where there be people, there…there shall ye find assholes. But at least they’ll be different assholes. And maybe that’ll make me less of an asshole?

State of the Trout: THE TROUTMART COMETH

If you follow me on Twitter, you may already know that I’m planning to launch some merch. Why? Because why the hell not? That’s why next week, on Saturday, May 8th, Troutmart will have its grand opening! And today, I’m gonna give you all the information I have for you right now.

Show us pics of the merch! Certainly, friend! I’ve got something for everyone (who reads this blog and gets the inside jokes)!

Thirsty? How about this official Jealous Haters Book Club tumbler?

It’s steel, with text in multiple shades of…monochrome.

Are you cold? You could cozy up in an awesome hoodie:

 

Or maybe you’re not a Jealous Hater? Maybe you’re more the cum-burping gutter-slut type? Again, I’ve got you covered with leggings and t-shirts in so many awesome colors so you can really clash if you want to. Here are just two of the aforementioned colors:

Now, brace yourselves, because the all-over print logo is only available in the United States. But don’t fret! Though I don’t have a photo of it, the same logo will be available on t-shirts and hoodies (you’ll see those on Saturday).

There are other products and colors (or shades of…monochrome) that I just didn’t photograph because there are gonna be photos on the store itself and it just seemed like overkill to post pictures of everything.

But that’s only two designs. That’s not really a store, Jenny. Well, hold your horses, lil’ reader, because I’ve spent a lot of time on a lot of different designs getting ready to launch this thing. As a result, there will be one or two merch drops per month that will stay in the store forever, and occasionally there will be limited edition exclusives. This gives me a chance to not only plug my merch everywhere, every month, like some kind of manic salesperson of intensely strange wares but also to have time to get samples of the product so I know I’m only passing on quality stuff to you. The schedule for the rest of this year looks like:

JUNE:

“Jealous Disaster,” commemorating the book that defeated me (pigeon included)“Scamlympics,” to celebrate the time a real Vegas performer/Olympic athlete left an anonymous comment here Limited Edition: “C.B.G.S. Pride” which does what it says on the tin. It’s pride flag for pride month.

 

JULY:

“Not my beaver, not my business”Limited Edition: “Trout Day” (because it’s my birthday, y’all!)

AUGUST:

“Scambook for Haters,” celebrating five beautiful years since Lanizade published whatever the hell that wasan original drawing off a neat animal I like that will remain a surprise for a while

SEPTEMBER:

TBA spooky thingTBA spooky thingLimited Edition: “Trout-o-ween” and “Trick-or-Trout” and all of these are Halloween designs so you can get your spoopywear in advance of skeleton season

 

OCTOBER:

“Nightmare Born” and “Queen of Hell” shirts to mercilessly promote my series

 

NOVEMBER:

“With God as my witness…” I’ve been posting the same WKRP in Cincinnati fan art on my private FB every year for my family and friends and somebody said, “You should make that into a t-shirt” so I looked up the legal protections of fan art as transformative works and we’re good to go.“Beautiful Penis in the Moonlight,” an original work by moi (will probably be poster/canvas only but let’s see how this shakes out)

 

DECEMBER:

“Mister Jealous” for those of you longing for the stereotypically backasswards imaginary Albania Erika made up in her headLimited Edition holiday design I haven’t decided to go with yet but it will probably be a dragon because dragons are neat

 

Wow! That’s a lot of work. And you already do a lot of work and you fall behind all the time. Aren’t you taking too much on? Why no, dear reader! Though the first two designs are text-based, the rest of them incorporate art, a thing I already like to do. And I don’t feel like this is “monetizing a hobby” so much as it’s having fun and drawing and being visually creative, which is a great outlet for me.

These prices seem steep (you say on Saturday). Print on demand. I don’t know what to tell ya. At least they’re not concert tee prices?

What about sizing? Because it’s print-on-demand, my options for finding inclusive sizing were…not so great. For example, the leggings? Those are for straight sizes only. Some styles of the shirts only go up to XXL. Some products do go up to 5X, and I’ll be sure to always include those. And if you’re just not down with clothes, I’ll always have some non-clothing items available, as well.

I hope this answered most of the questions I thought you would have.

Sincerely,
Trout
XOXOXO

P.S.: There will be another State of the Trout announcement next week that’s also gonna be pretty important and a Crave recap.

The Queen Is Dead; Long Live The Queen

In 2006, I got a cat. She was the runt of the litter, the tiniest little thing.

When I went to pick her up from “Cathy” (the fake name I use to refer to the worst person I’ve ever met, who I’ve written about before), she said, “Now the other kittens can come downstairs.”

In a litter of four, the smallest one had been afraid to try the stairs. And she’d made sure her littermates weren’t going to try them, either.

I have a very strong belief in the importance and power of names. For example, if you ask me if I want to pet your German Shepherd, Loki, the answer is going to be absolutely not and I’m sorry about your furniture. You thought it was funny to name your Great Dane “Tiny,” but now that he thinks he’s Chihuahua-sized and wants to sit in your lap it’s not so clever, is it? Our children named our dog Coraline; she runs away at night. We once had a pair of kittens we named Fred and George. J.K. wrote that final book and bam, Fred died of a saddle embolism, the avada kedavra of the cat world. Names are important, so when Cathy handed me this kitten and said, “Her name is Deidre,” I was like fuck that. In mythology, Deidre brought sorrow to everyone she loved and I wasn’t keen to invite that energy into the house.

Turns out, I didn’t get a choice in what to name the cat. I brought the hissing, crying baby home and took her to my office, a room away from everything where she could slowly get used to her surroundings. I put her down, showed her where the litter box was, put food and water nearby, all while she growled and raised the hair on her back and lurked under my desk. I decided to back off, to go into the living room and give her space. I sat down and turned on the television and…

mew.

It was an angry mew, too. The tiny little kitten was standing in my hallway, loudly yowling for attention. I stood and she turned to go back to the office. I sat back down. She turned around again and angry-mewed.

She didn’t want me to interact with her, but she wanted me to keep trying.

After thirty minutes of confused groveling on my part, she strutted out from beneath my desk to wander around the house and complain loudly about everything she didn’t like. The television, for example, was scary and confusing. It had to go. The toilet was dangerous, so the bathroom door had to be closed. And there was something just wrong about where I’d put my beer on the coffee table. It looked better on the floor. When it came time to sleep, I put her on the end of the bed and got in, careful not to disturb her.

But I’d gotten it all wrong! She didn’t belong at the end of the bed like a common dog. She belonged on my pillow, on the top of my head, in my hair.

That went on for roughly her entire life. And even from that first night, my hair was never clean enough. Just washed it? Smells like shampoo. Needs to smell like cat breath. Came home from the bar back in 2006 when people could still smoke inside? Oh, my foolish, naughty human. But it was that first night, those first disparaging mews that let me know how unworthy was I to stand in her presence that I realized I would never, ever be good enough to be on a first-name basis with this cat.

So, we called her Her Majesty.

At the vet, they would say, “Oh, hello Her Majesty,” and I would sheepishly explain that it wasn’t her name, but her title, so the appropriate address was Your Majesty.

During my very last phone call with the vet, he said, “I’m calling about…Her Majesty? Is that right?” I confirmed and he muttered to himself, “That’s about right.”

Despite being in the very last hours of her life, she still demanded royal treatment.

Because of her small size, Her Majesty couldn’t be spayed before she went into heat the first time. Despite every precaution, she managed to slip past us, out the door, and it was all over. She became a teen mom to a brood of half-Maine Coon kittens from the intact tom that wandered the neighborhood. We never did manage to get him into family court.

As the birth approached, the vet told us to make a quiet, safe place for her, away from the main living areas, where she could go and be alone and feel safe. That’s what cats do, they explained. I was to check on her, but not too often, as cats often sneak off to give birth on their own, and if I disturbed her too much she might move somewhere I wouldn’t be able to monitor her.

Though Her Majesty thoroughly enjoyed lazing in the nesting box we arranged for her in my office (easily the least chaotic room in our home), when the time for the royal litter arrived she demanded a change of venue.

She preferred to give birth on the floor of my four-year-old’s toy closet. You know. Where anyone would want to be totally vulnerable.

I tried to move her, but after the third time, I gave up. I let her go into the closet and resigned myself to weeks of nail-biting terror as I tried to protect precious, delicate new lives from an affectionate pre-schooler. I brought the towels and blanket from the nesting box and got her all good and ready to ruin our floor. Then, I turned the light off and left the door half-open and resigned myself to a long, nervous wait. I knew I couldn’t disturb her further, so I turned the tv off and switched to a book.

Her Majesty came back to the living room, meowing furiously. Her cute little mew had lasted all of three weeks before it had turned into the most pissed-off sound any animal has ever made. But now, it was mad and in a hurry. She forced me to sit with her in the closet while she labored. I had to be completely motionless. If I shifted even a little bit, she would bite me. If I tried to leave, she would try to follow me.

So I had to sit and watch what was objectively the grossest thing I’ve ever seen. And I used to take people to the morgue.

She had five beautiful kittens, the care of which she found tedious at best. Our Springer Spaniel, Tucker, was selected to be the royal nanny. He didn’t apply for the job. He did not want it or anything to do with the kittens, who sent him into a state of trembling, farting terror. Which I understood; imagine you’re a dog who lives with a mean cat, and suddenly the cat multiplies. That’s a new and terrifying power. But day after day, when the kittens were finished nursing, Her Majesty brought the kittens to Tucker, who would lay motionless but for the panicked flicking of his eyelids as he signaled to us in morse code for help. And she went off and did whatever she wanted to.

The dining room window is Her Majesty’s window. As in, only Her Majesty is allowed to look through that window. If you don’t obey, you get a scratch.

When offering Her Majesty catnip or treats, one does not simply shake an amount onto the floor and call the task done. Nay, one must wait until the offering has been inspected and is indeed sufficient. Her Majesty decides what is enough.

My husband once asked why I let Her Majesty kiss me by booping her nose on my mouth. “We are best friends!” I shrieked in outrage. “I was her labor coach!” I don’t think my family truly understood why I loved Her Majesty so much because, despite their best efforts, she treated them all like garbage. She adored the kids…when they were little. Once they turned ten, she lost all interest. Though she loved to use my husband as furniture while he slept, she spent much of her time with him glaring accusingly. He referred to her as Lady Cuntington. She never referred to him, at all.

Her Majesty could talk. At least, I talked to her and she made noises back and that was enough conversation for me. We talked about a lot of stuff. Once, I tried to explain lizards to her until she walked out of the room. Another time, I asked her why the fuck she wasn’t helping while I tried to chase a bat out of the house. She stood up, stretched, made a big show of yawning, and moved to a different position to go back to sleep. Her Majesty did not catch mice. And she found the movie Cats offensive.

This was her default facial expression:

Her Majesty died on March 30, 2021, after a sudden decline in her health. On Thursday, she walked with a little hitch in her giddyup, but nothing serious. I thought I’d keep an eye on it and call the vet. She came into my room that night and slept on my head, for the first time in a long time. Friday, she was sleepy and not interested in her food. I called the vet and took the earliest appointment they had on Monday. But Her Majesty got worse. She went from not being interested in her food to not being interested in treats by Saturday night. Sunday, she sat quietly by herself all day long. I held her in my lap and Mr. Jen offered her some chicken broth to get her to eat, but she turned her head away.

She still wanted the water bowl refreshed and the surface of the food undented. And she still wanted to be offered treats. So she could decline them.

After a night at the cat hospital, I got the call. Her Majesty’s white cell count and blood sugar were through the roof. She’d been diabetic, but we hadn’t noticed the symptoms. Her dry skin, I chalked up to the fact that she’d always had acne, to the point that she’d been on steroids and antibiotics for it on and off through her adult years. As a senior cat, she put on weight. Diabetic cats lose weight. There was never a noticeable increase in her thirst, but because we have dogs, there are multiple sources of water in the house, so it’s possible that she could have increased her intake. Because she’d been hospitalized several times for a bladder issue that required surgery, I always checked the litter box to make sure she was peeing, and everything seemed like normal cat pee in usual amounts. By the time her symptoms were noticeable, it was Thursday, and it was too late.

I guess I should feel like I failed her for not seeing it. At the same time, I can’t say for sure that she wanted me to know. She’d never been shy about telling anyone anything. Maybe she just decided that she had graced me with her presence for fifteen years, and that was more than enough for an undeserving mortal like me.

It was just me and her in the room after the vet gave Her Majesty the euthanasia shots. I kissed her nose and held her and petted her. I played “God Save The Queen,” the real version, not the cool punk rock version, on my phone as she died. When I came home, I announced somberly to the dogs, “London Bridge is Down.” I bought her an urn that I hope she would find befitting of the life she lived and the legacy she left behind:

She has been entombed among the crystals and house plants on my desk, all of which she absolutely lived to fuck with. Hence the dirt on the table.

I couldn’t bear to clean it up.

The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp, Chapter Seven

Need to catch up?

What is The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp? The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: PrologueThe Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter OneThe Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter TwoThe Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter ThreeThe Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter FourThe Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter Five The Business Centaur’s Virgin Temp: Chapter Six

The ceiling belonged to the villa they’d vacationed in at Montego Bay. White marble. Or maybe one of the endless crypts she’d visited throughout Europe on educational field trips in high school. No, that wouldn’t make sense. Unless she was dead.

Fiona closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Incense. Maybe she was dead in a tomb, after all.

“Chiron! She rouses!”

“I know you,” she rasped, choking on the strong herbal smoke.

“Be still.” That was a voice she didn’t recognize.

A strong arm slid beneath her back, helping her to sit up. 

“Here,” a woman said, and cool metal pressed to Fiona’s lips, followed by cooler water.

“Mint,” she tried to say, but the water bubbled out of her mouth and over her chin.

“I don’t know if it can be removed,” someone else said, and for a moment, she wondered if they meant the cup.

More liquid flowed over her tongue, shocking her with a memory of water twining up her legs, jerking her down to the depths.

Had that happened?

Pain arced through her body from a throbbing wound in her skull to the very bottom of her feet. She gagged up the water; it had tried to kill her.

“Are you trying to kill her?” a familiar voice echoed her thoughts. Her boss! She was so fired.

“We have to remove the mark,” the other voice said, gruff and patient all at once.

“You’re tired. You want to sleep,” a gentle voice whispered, and that whisper wound its way into Fiona’s brain and the next thing she knew…

She woke up.

The sky above her seemed wrong; the clouds didn’t move, and there didn’t seem to be any light.

It was a mural.

Bracing herself against potential pain, she cautiously lifted her head. The last time she’d seen the sky, she’d been falling. She remembered the sound of her melon splitting when she hit the ground. But she’d been all wet. Had she fallen into a stream or a brook or—

Whatever she’d fallen on didn’t matter. Fiona sat up slowly, expecting to feel…anything. Bruised, sore, leaking gray matter from her shattered skull, but no. Nothing. She felt better than she’d felt in years. Her teeth didn’t even ache from grinding them.

She’d forgotten what that felt like.

The soft throw carefully tucked around her slipped down her back. Her clothes had been changed; though her memory remained fuzzy, she knew she hadn’t been dressed like a figure on a Grecian urn when she’d arrived.

A finger-snap sounded in her brain. She was in the Astral. Because her boss had brought her. After she…

Her stomach churned, and she lurched to her feet. The marble floor was cool against her soles as she paced the room. Golden marble columns raised the magnificent ceiling overhead, but no walls enclosed the space. Still, the air was the perfect temperature.

In fact, everything felt pretty damn perfect.

Had she accidentally done heroin?

Voices drifted in from outside; they became clearer as she crept closer, tentatively bracing herself behind a column. From her vantage point, she spied a courtyard surrounded by a curved collonade. In the center, a crescent-moon fountain poured shimmering silver water over patinaed metal. A young man in a golden toga lounged on the grass, his tan legs crossed at the ankles. Human-looking but not human, Fiona assumed. An imposing, bearded centaur sat beside him, while another centaur paced the border of the colonnade, occasionally kicking at the meticulously pruned plants and ornamental foliage.

It was Marcaeus.

She’d occasionally wondered what Astrals would have been like if they’d never intervened in the mess that humans had made of planet Earth. This view of her boss in his element gave her a hint. Instead of modern clothing, he wore nothing. Not a stitch of anything. His hair, usually neatly combed, was touseled; he raked it back from his forehead and turned a fierce scowl on the other two figures.

“I can’t take her back. Not with the mark still on her.” He paced, the thumb of one tight fist tapping his lips. “There must be another way.”

“She would be welcome here, Marcaeus,” the young man said, idly twirling the stem of a silver goblet in his fingers. “Unless you think a demon might reach her here. Which is absurd.”

“It’s not demons I’m worried about. Elysia isn’t made for mortals. Not living ones, at least. She nearly died on an uneventful walk here.”

Uneventful! Almost died! Those words did not belong together.

“Marcaeus is right,” the bearded centaur said. “We have no idea what effects this realm will have on a mortal. Better to take her away sooner than later.”

Take her away? Visions of dank cells filled her head. At least it would be a dank cell back on her plane of existence. She hadn’t even been in the astral for a full day, and she’d already run into serious trouble.

“Ah, you’re awake.”

The musical voice startled Fiona. She turned to find a woman with skin the light blue of shimmering Caribbean waters. As she walked forward, she rippled like waves; her entire being, from the hair spilling down her back and the pristine white folds of her gown, consisted of sea.

“I am, Chariclo, wife of Chiron.” Her voice was the musical whisper of the ocean lapping on the shore.

“I’m Fiona.” Her throat went dry at the memory of the water she’d sipped when she’d been barely conscious. She hoped Chariclo hadn’t been the source. “Fiona Trasket.”

“I know who you are.” Chariclo never broke eye contact as she gestured toward a long, low table near the bed. “I usually inspire thirst in mortals. Please, help yourself to some water. I promise it will not attack you as my foolish sisters did.”

“Thank you.” The numb, surreal feeling to Fiona’s movements as she crossed the room reminded her of every yacht trip she’d ever disembarked. “And thank you for…whatever you had to do to save my life. If it was in danger. I’m not sure what happened.”

“Your life was very much in danger. It—” Chariclo stopped herself. “All gratitude belongs to my husband. And Asclepius.” Her gaze flicked past Fiona.

“Ms. Trasket.” Marcaeus’s hooves clicked on the marble as he passed beneath the colonnade and entered the room. “I’m glad to see you…vertical.”

Despite its cavernous dimensions, the room felt acutely small. Without his clothes, in his true form, Marcaeus seemed to somehow encroach on Fiona’s personal space from meters away.

His eyes met hers and held them for two heartbeats—she counted them without meaning to—before he looked away. “Chiron will speak with you now. If you are well enough.”

Fiona poured herself some water with trembling hands and lifted the goblet to her lips. She took a few steadying sips. “I can go now.”

He said nothing as she crossed the room to follow him. She cast a quick, stiff smile at Chariclo, the only way Fiona could think of to express her thanks for the moment of hospitality.

Her mind spun, likely from the concussion they’d been letting her sleep off like a bunch of geniuses.

Marcaeus didn’t speak as they walked the crescent colonnade. Fiona still clutched her goblet and against her own common sense, she watched the surface of the water, disconcertingly still despite the motion of her steps.

The Astral might resemble the Mortal Plane in some aspects, but it was an entirely different universe. The skewed perspective of the reflection on the surface of the water showed not the ceiling above them, but the sliver of a waxing crescent moon. A glittering comet crossed the sky and she gasped in wonder, stumbling into Marcaeus’s flank.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

“That was Selene in her chariot,” he responded softly. “No living mortal has seen such a sight.”

“Except me.” She took another sip from her cup. “Unless Chiron is going to—”

“Why would he murder you?” Marcaeus snapped. “Why heal you when he could have let you die?”

“Sorry! I recently had a head injury.” Tears rose in Fiona’s eyes. They felt manipulative even though they were genuine. She blinked them away.

“And you were treated by the two finest physicians in the known universe. Chiron wishes only to protect you. Remember that when you meet with him.” Marcaeus had the gall to sound irritated.

She put her hand on his arm and halted her steps; the fact that he stopped walking shocked her. It took a few blinks to find her words. “You’re angry with me. I get it. But you’re acting like I chose any of this—”

He turned his body to block her path. “Do not speak to me of choice. Not before you hear what Chiron has to say.”

The anger in his eyes chilled her more than his words. She followed him again in silence.

Another round, domed space awaited them at the end of the colonnade, as did the centaur she’d seen in the garden. He paced, his tail flicking, face grim as they entered.

“Female Trasket,” the centaur boomed. “I am Chiron.”

“Unmarried human women prefer the honorific, ‘Ms.'” Marcaeus corrected the older centaur.

“Chiron.” For some reason, Fiona found herself curtseying. “Your wife says I have you to thank for my survival.”

“Then perhaps you should.” He tilted his head, waiting.

Fiona looked to Marcaeus, then back to Chiron. “Thank you?”

The centaur gave a gracious nod. “Unfortunately, I could not remove the demonic seal placed upon you. Was it your will to be sealed to this pact?” Chiron asked.

“No! Of course not.” Those visions she’d seen when Marcaeus had first questioned her tormented her now. Of course, she’d known her brother was capable of despicable misdeeds, but she’d thought—hoped—that he had a limit.

“I ask only because of the stronghold it has upon you. Usually, one must be willing to create such a bond.”

Marcaeus cut in. “She undertook her subterfuge in an effort to help one of our kind. She may have agreed to the seal without realizing it.”

Chiron frowned. “Yes, as you’ve been trying to convince me all evening.”

Fiona looked to Marcaeus, an unspoken question parting her lips. His dark gaze met hers, then jerked away.

“Since you support this theory, explain to Trasket, Ms., what you’ve proposed.” Chiron folded his arms across his broad chest.

A look passed between the two centaurs. Whatever it meant, it did not bode well.

“We couldn’t remove the demon mark your brother placed on you,” Marcaeus emphasized the last part of the sentence subtly. “You’re still under his control. Chiron believes that keeping you a prisoner here until your brother can be deal with by other means is the most obvious solution, while I believe it is the most obviously illegal solution.”

“Am I truly to follow to human laws here in my own realm?” Chiron demanded with a sudden fury that reminded her exactly how fearsome the Astrals could be.

“To compromise,” Marcaeus went on, ignoring the outburst, “Asclepius suggests that you do return to your plane—”

“Oh, thank god!” She pressed her hand to her chest and almost lost her balance, washed off her feet by a tide of relief.

This time, Marcaeus paused at the interruption. His jawline sharpened. “—but remain under my direct supervision.”

“Your…do you mean at work?” How would that look? Being dragged off the floor one minute and promoted to the head honcho’s office the next?

“I mean at all times,” Chiron answered, though she hadn’t directed the question to him. “As long as you have the demon’s mark upon you, our adversaries have the advantage.”

“So, I’m a prisoner of corporate warfare?” She chuckled sharply in disbelief.

“More like a weapon,” Marcaeus corrected her with an easy shrug. “You have access to your brother. We know now that he’s meddling with dangerous forces. We can use you to monitor his activities.”

“And take action against him, if necessary.” Chiron didn’t have to say more.

Fiona got the point.

What she didn’t understand was how they expected her to spy for them when she hadn’t yet come to grips with the entire concept of a “demon mark” in the first place. “I still have this mark on me that can apparently control me without my even knowing it. The demon removed memories from my mind. It doesn’t sound like something I can resist. I don’t know when it’s happening.”

The dark look that passed between the two centaurs did nothing to soothe her growing sense of dread.

Finally, Marcaeus admitted, “There is a solution to that problem. But you won’t like it.”

She sighed. Of course, she wouldn’t. “Fine.”

Chiron’s eyebrow arched. “Would you like to know what the solution is, first?”

She grimaced and shook her head. “Will it matter?”

They both stared at her, stunned.

“If I don’t do it, how will that help my friend?” She kept her chin up, though talking to creatures of such looming height was beginning to make her neck ache. “My brother sucks. He flat-out sucks. And while my feelings might be…complicated, I don’t want him to get away with whatever he’d need a demon to accomplish. Get me the goat I have to sacrifice or the magic amulet I have to destroy, and let’s do this.”

Marcaeus’s broad chest lifted with a slow, deep breath. He shifted on his feet, scraping the floor with one foot.

Chiron paced with his arms crossed as he spoke. “There is but one magic that can overpower the infernal. The will of a god. If you were to receive a blessing or a curse binding your loyalty to Marcaeus—”

“I could work with you to bring down my brother without him suspecting anything.” She licked her bottom lip and wished she hadn’t. Everything in her cringed. “He suggested I try to seduce you, Marcaeus. If I’m supposed to stay under your supervision, why not let him think I’ve done exactly that?”

Marcaeus tilted his head and stroked his chin. “I would have to carry on with using your ridiculous alias—”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Johnson.” She huffed.

Was that a suppressed smile that ticked the corner of his mouth?

“—and pretend you’ve beguiled me with your machinations—”

“And the mark,” she added, tapping her forehead.

“—and your brother will never know you’re helping me.” He paused. “Provided that we can trust you not to doublecross us?”

“There is nothing my brother can hold over me now.” She squared her shoulders.

“Not even your friend’s reputation?” Marcaeus asked. “Be certain. If you cross us again, we will not be so lenient. Your alliance must rest with us, alone.”

“Larkin would never expect me to sacrifice my soul for her. I would. But she wouldn’t want me to. And what Blayde has done to me is unforgivable.”

Shame crumpled something deep in her chest. What else had she done or said—what had been done to her?—under the demon’s control?

“Fiona.” Marcaeus’s voice took on a low, gentle tone she’d never heard before. “We will get the mark removed. And we will help your friend.”

“Then that’s all the convincing I need.” She spread her hands. “Bring out the goat.”

“It’s not that simple,” Chiron warned her. “You’ll travel with Marcaeus to the temple of Aphrodite. There, she will bind your spirits with a blessing that will unite you.”

Red flag. “That sounds like a marriage.”

“No. It’s far more serious than that.” Marcaeus quickly added, “When the union is real, of course. For us, the blessing will be a tool.”

“Once the mark is removed, the bond can be broken. If Hera is in a good mood when I ask,” Chiron grumbled.

“And after my brother is ruined,” Fiona stressed. Unless Blayde’s power was taken from him—the money, the prestige, the friends—, nothing would stop him from doing this to her again.

Or doing worse.

“It seems there is more merit in Marcaeus’s idea than in mine,” Chiron graciously admitted. “Though it required a human’s opportunistic nature to help me see it.”

“Thank you?” She’d never thought of herself as particularly opportunistic, but she’d take the compliment.

“Bed down here tonight,” Chiron offered. “The two of you will leave for Aphrodite’s temple in the morning.”

Fiona shook her head. “I thought it was too dangerous for a mortal to be here for long.”

“You overheard that?” Marcaeus tilted his head. “You are a good spy.”

She shrugged. “Maybe you’re just a loud talker. And there are no walls here.”

“You will be safe with Marcaeus.” Chiron’s statement sounded more like a decision than a vote of confidence. “I’ll have something brought for the mortal to eat.”

“Thanks,” Fiona said, but Chiron had already turned and left. “You’re a brusk culture, I see.”

“No. Just him.” Marcaeus looked as though he’d swallowed something bitter.

His earlier words came back to her. “You said I shouldn’t say anything about choice until I’d spoken to Chiron. He gave me a choice. Not a great one. Maybe not couched in the nicest terms—”

“So it would appear.”

Did Marcaeus mean that it only appeared to be a choice? “Are you saying he manipulated all of this?”

“Not at all. I simply thought you’d fight harder against turning on your own flesh and blood.” Marcaeus turned and walked the way they’d come in.

Fiona followed. “If that was supposed to be an insult—”

“It was. But not the way I assume you’ve interpreted it.” He kept walking ahead of her, forcing her to lengthen her strides to keep up.

“How else am I supposed to interpret it?” she demanded.

He turned so fast she nearly collided with him. “Mortals have no loyalty to each other. Look at your brother, willing to make you into a weapon. A demon-controlled weapon which was already more than willing to attack my kind—”

“To protect your kind!”

“We didn’t ask you to! We’ve never asked mortals for anything more than aid in their own rescue. And you stand in Elysia, in the home of Chiron, and you dare to criticize his demeanor toward you?” Marcaeus snorted derisively. “Your short lives make you selfish, and you waste them in cruelty and selfishness.”

“What have I done that’s so selfish?” Fiona demanded.

Marcaeus opened his mouth to answer, then closed it as if he already regretted his decision to speak. That simple expression unsettled something in Fiona; what had she done that was so horrible he couldn’t speak of it?

But before she could ask or apologize, he turned and cantered away, leaving her no hope of catching up.

State Of The Trout: Fits and Bursts and Bits and Pieces

The year of Chaotic Creativity is…really quite something, so far. It might seem from the lack of recent posts here that I haven’t been doing much. Boy. Howdy.

Once I accepted two very important things, my creativity exploded. Those two things: my brain doesn’t work on a schedule and I’m not a failure if I don’t finish something every single day. As a result, I’ve been chugging along, putting bits and pieces into both blog business and the following things:

a children’s booktwo small-town romancesa massive fantasy novel/worldlearning to draw furry artfiguring out how to rap and writing a diss track about the hatersplanning out twenty episodes of a comedy podcast I’d like to launch this yeardesigning things to put on t-shirts and other mercha stream-of-consciousness memoir

Now, will any of this pan out? Who the hell knows? I’m using the patchwork approach to my blog and my Patreon and multiple other projects that must be released this year, like Queen of Hell (the sequel to Nightmare Born) and In The Blood (the first of hopefully many monster-fucking books I’ll release as Jennifer Morningstar), so I feel like please expect everything to come in fits and bursts and let’s see how this approach works going forward. But I can honestly say that this is the most creatively fulfilled and positive I’ve felt in a really, really long time. The other day, I wrote so much by hand that I ran out a whole brand new ink pen.

Also, you know those afghans people crochet or knit that have colors based on the temperature every day? And then at the end of the year, it’s like, here’s my blanket that shows what the weather has been like?

I made one of those, but different.

This is my pain blanket on the last day of January:

Every day, I keep track of the pain that I’m in and assign it a level based on the standard numerical pain scale. I would show you a physical example of which colors correspond to which pain level, but I spilled coffee on my bujo page where I’d made this lovely layout with pieces of the yarn and their colors and the dye lot. We’re gonna just settle on this.

2 – dark blue
3 – less bright teal
4 – bluish-white
5 – surgical scrubs green
6 – light brown/gray
7 – very light green
8 – darker brown
9 – obnoxiously bright teal
10 – obnoxiously bright sky blue

There is no 0 or 1 because I have not had a 0 or 1 day since 2009 and it would be a waste of yarn.

This will be the only time I’ll be able to show it to you spread out on a table. This section is actually about 50″ wide, so you’re only seeing a very small bit of it. When it’s done and blocked, it’ll be big enough for a queen-sized bed (if I did the math right). I started off with an actual blanket pattern, then I was like, nah, I’ll just do row after row of shells. It’s easier for watching tv and not paying attention, it will look the same on both sides, and it will catch up faster when I have days I can’t work on it. One row for each day, Pima cotton because if I’m spending a year on it, so I  want it to be sturdy.

And at the end of the year, when all is said and done, I’ll have a fine blanket to snuggle up in and a cool visual reminder that I’m not a superhuman who is choosing to fail at life. I am a disabled person who has to fight through tons and tons and tons of pain and if you consult that there chart for January, I’m finding out that I’m in worse shape than I thought.

Buffy/Angel Recaps are ending. After the events of the weekend, I can no longer pretend that separating the art from the artist is possible for me in this case. When I watch the show now, all I see are abused and traumatized young women. I’m so pissed off at Joss Whedon for abusing actors that the fandom had come to love as their real, human selves. I can’t watch my “friends” anymore knowing they were in such a terrible situation. It doesn’t feel right. I know this is disappointing and it sucks, but as more and more about Joss has leaked out over the years, the reality was getting harder and harder to overcome.

Finally, I bring you the gossip that you deserve: I know I said I was never, ever, ever going to give her publicity again, but I thought this was definitely petty enough to post. Jamie McGuire, writer of the infamous “cum-burping gutter slut” line, now has an OnlyFans.

 

But it’s only for stuff about her books. Nothing dirty. Just stuff about her books. And art. The cleavage and bikini and fuck-me-face and “Single Mom” on a website mostly used to sell adult content is just how you make it in the books and art world.

Look. I don’t care if someone has an OnlyFans account, okay? Maybe I’ll set up an OnlyFans account and it will just be me staring vacantly into the camera while I eat eggs. And I don’t know what kind of content she has on there. It might be nudes and I not paying ten dollars to look at freckly middle-aged caucasian skin. I’m just not into it, okay? I’ve got literally yards of my own. But even if she’s on there spreading beaver, fine. She has the right to do that. Not my beaver, not my business.

What is my business is that a woman who has made it her life’s mission to call other women sluts and whores and even ran for office as a misogynist piece of GOP anti-choice trash has her cups runnething over on a site associated with sex work. I don’t care if someone gets their tits out on the internet for profit. I do care if someone gets their tits out for profit while maintaining that only sluts and whores lose their virginities or whatever the fuck she was trying to get across in her pointless books. The constant hypocrisy that rolls like a tide of sewage onto the medical-waste-strewn beach of the Christian conservative thought process never ceases to disgust me.

Bonus, she’s taking a vacation right now. In Jamaica, a country with hit-or-miss medical care facilities. During the pandemic.

And you know she’s probably a fucking anti-masker.

Counting Lambs

Around August of 2020, my dreams became very small.

Maybe it’s the quarantine. The world has become very small. Can a brain run out of things to process?

It could be my stress levels.

For whatever reason, my dreams have become very small.

And I have become very aware.

There are places I can go to in my dreams. The same ones, over and over, cobbled together in a city that is at once Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, the French Quarter, downtown Las Vegas, and New York City all at once. There’s a lake. There’s a place that’s a cross between Disney World and various video games; last night, I spent quite a bit of time in a farming simulation that was also my high school and a community theater performance. Along with the familiar locations of my high school (often mixed with my middle school) and the community theater that is a jumble of both theaters I volunteer at, I can attend a nightmare mashup of the churches I attended as a child. There’s always a funeral going on! I can also go on vacation with my friends, ride jet skis, visit my grandparents’ lake house, or simply stroll the streets of my own village, which isn’t an exact replica but does contain the most anxiety-inducing grocery store ever designed.

Or the shopping mall.

It is every shopping mall and none. It is a closed-down mall, a 1980s throwback mall, a glitzy Detroit suburb mall, all in the same enormous building (one side of which is a second-run discount movie theater, another, a seedy strip mall).

Because I am lucid in these dreams, but still obviously dreaming, I occasionally treat myself.

But because I am lucid in these dreams, but somehow still awake, I occasionally treat myself. I wake up the next morning, confused as to why there are notifications that Wish has received my payment.

The first time this happened, I panicked, until I saw that I’d only spent three dollars on a charming little ring instead of eleven dollars for a set of ten crack pipes.

I don’t know why those always pop up in my recommendations.

The second time it happened, I’d spent twelve dollars, total. Nothing alarming. I’ve done this five times since August and as it turns out, I’m just as cheap in my dreams as I am in real life. Otherwise, I would have to seek some kind of treatment.

Most of the time, what I buy in my dream is nothing like what shows up in my mailbox. One night, I bought a huge potted plant and tickets to a Billy Joel concert. Waking in a panic, I found that all I’d ordered was a correction tape that prints little owls over your mistakes. Total cost: $3.87 after shipping.

Other times, I’ll dream of buying something adjacent to the product I’m actually sleep-buying. Nail polish in the night becomes an eyeliner/eyeshadow combo in the morn. Brass knuckles become a silicone mold for casting self-defense keychains from resin. They make sense. But none of them have been literal.

Until now.

We’ve come through a lot of words here to get to my point: I have literally had a dream come true.

It is a hoodie. And it is beautiful.