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The Big Damn Buffy Rewatch S03E010 “Amends”

In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone burned her hand very badly on a Pop Tart and is busting through the lidocaine spray so furiously that she might actually develop an addiction. She will also recap every episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer with an eye to the following themes:

Sex is the real villain of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe.
Giles is totally in love with Buffy.
Joyce is a fucking terrible parent.
Willow’s magic is utterly useless (this one won’t be an issue until season 2, when she gets a chance to become a witch)
Xander is a textbook Nice Guy.
The show isn’t as feminist as people claim.
All the monsters look like wieners.
If ambivalence to possible danger were an Olympic sport, Team Sunnydale would take the gold.
Angel is a dick.
Harmony is the strongest female character on the show.
Team sports are portrayed in an extremely negative light.
Some of this shit is racist as fuck.
Science and technology are not to be trusted.
Mental illness is stigmatized.
Only Willow can use a computer.
Buffy’s strength is flexible at the plot’s convenience.
Cheap laughs and desperate grabs at plot plausibility are made through Xenophobia.
Oz is the Anti-Xander
Spike is capable of love despite his lack of soul
Don’t freaking tell me the vampires don’t need to breathe because they’re constantly out of frickin’ breath.
The foreshadowing on this show is freaking amazing.
Smoking is evil.
Despite praise for its positive portrayal of non-straight sexualities, some of this shit is homophobic as fuck.
How do these kids know all these outdated references, anyway?
Technology is used inconsistently as per its convenience in the script.
Sunnydale residents are no longer shocked by supernatural attacks.
Casual rape dismissal/victim blaming a-go-go
Snyder believes Buffy is a demon or other evil entity.
The Scoobies kind of help turn Jonathan into a bad guy.
This show caters to the straight female gaze like whoa.
Sunnydale General is the worst hospital in the world.
Faith is hyper-sexualized needlessly.
Slut shame!
The Watchers have no fucking clue what they’re doing.
Vampire bites, even very brief ones, are 99.8% fatal.

Have I missed any that were added in past recaps? Let me know in the comments.  Even though I might forget that you mentioned it.

WARNING: Some people have mentioned they’re watching along with me, and that’s awesome, but I’ve seen the entire series already and I’ll probably mention things that happen in later seasons. So… you know, take that under consideration, if you’re a person who can’t enjoy something if you know future details about it.

I’m not super enthusiastic of this one, but only because I’m not super enthusiastic about Angel. At least, in Buffy. He’s too complex a character to be shoehorned into someone else’s story, and his compressed characterization (especially in one-off episodes like this) make him come off as a big ole bummer. He’s so much better in his own thing.

The episode begins in Dublin in 1893. A guy with impressive sideburns appears to be fleeing something in the snow. It’s Angel, with unfortunate facial hair:

Look at that. It’s like if Danny Trejo and Burt Reynolds had an ugly baby and it grew up to make poor grooming choices.

The guy apparently owes Angel money, so Angel kills him. Then we cut to Angel waking up from a dream, doing the shivery breathing thing he Always. Fucking. Does. Honestly, if I had noticed it sooner, I would have made a number for it, but he’s going to be gone at the end of the season, anyway.

It’s Christmas in Sunnydale, and Angel is out for a walk. He passes a store window where a television news broadcast is predicting a sunny, hot holiday.  Angel runs into Buffy, who has tragically short bangs:

That is such a ’90s move. That hair could only be more ’90s if it were The Rachel.

In the middle of their awkward post-breakup encounter, Angel hallucinates the dead guy from his dream standing in the street. Then the opening credits happen, and it’s a good time for me to ask: is the entirety of Sunnydale a pedestrian fucking mall? Buffy and Angel are downtown, during Christmas shopping season, and traffic is so light that they can just stand in the middle of the street chatting?

At school, Buffy tells Xander and Willow that Angel was acting weird.

Xander: “Angel? Weird? What are the odds?”

Shut up, Xander. You were a hyena once.

Willow suggests that Buffy talk to Giles about it.

Buffy: “No. I don’t wanna bug Giles. He’s still kind of twitchy when it comes to the subject of Angel.”

Xander: “Oh, it must be that whole ‘Angel killed his girlfriend and tortured him’ thing. And Giles is pretty petty when it comes to stuff like that.”

Buffy: “Xander, enough, okay?”

On second thought, Xander, keep going. Because I feel like this is a point that is generally treated as unreasonable by the storyline. Xander is one of the only people who ever consistently brings it up, so it’s easy for the viewer to be like, “Ugh, Xander is just saying that because he doesn’t like Angel.” And yeah, he doesn’t like Angel, but sometimes we have valid criticisms of people we don’t like. And sometimes, we can forgive a lot when we care about someone, and then that valid criticism sounds like just plain old being mean. I would have loved for Willow to, at some point, step in and be like, you know, Angel killed someone I cared about, and it’s okay for me to feel angry about that. Instead, this very valid point is treated like a symptom of Xander’s jealousy. Buffy doesn’t want to bring Angel stuff up to Giles? That’s fine, and it’s sensitive of Giles’s feelings. Buffy doesn’t want anyone to bring up the fact that Angel very recently murdered and tortured their friends? That’s not.

Willow suggests that Angel might just be suffering some holiday depression. The subject changes to Christmas plans:

Buffy: “What are you doing for Christmas?”

Willow: “Being Jewish. Remember, people? Not everybody worships Santa.”

I really like this part, because I like to see characters call out erasure of their identities. It’s an amazing tool in fandom arguments, and gives people an example of how it’s not the end of the world if your friends call you out.

Xander accidentally makes eye contact with Cordelia, and quickly tries to avoid any more. He tells Willow and Buffy that he’s going to be camping out on Christmas because he likes nature, and Cordelia fires one right through the mast:

Cordelia: “I thought you slept outside to avoid your family’s drunken Christmas fights.”

Xander: “Yes. And was a confidence I was hoping that you would share with everyone.”

I hate how often Xander’s truly sad experiences in what sounds like a neglectful, if not openly abusive, home are played up for laughs. If you really sit down and think about it, his always-on personality and his inability to forgive people probably stem from being raised in that home environment, but that’s never really explored. Missed opportunity, there.

Maybe that’s what makes me so frustrated with this episode. It highlights all the places where more could have been done to give these characters added dimension. All we really needed was one vulnerable human moment from Xander, about Xander, and he would have been a totally different (and less irritating) character.

Cordelia gloats about going on vacation to Aspen for Christmas break, and taunts Buffy and Willow and Xander about being poor. When she leaves, Buffy remarks that Cordy is back to her old self, and Willow points out that Cordy has a legitimate reason to dislike them. She also gets another chance to scold her friends for dismissing her identity as a Jewish person, so go, Willow!

Oz warily approaches like the adorable little mouse he is and asks Willow if they can go somewhere and talk. So cut to a totally empty classroom in the middle of the school day, where they have this long conversation undisturbed.

You know, now that I think about it, that’s happened before. Giles and Ms. Calendar had a sexually charged conversation about books in a classroom that wasn’t either of theirs, and nobody walked in or thought it was odd.

Anyway, while Willow insists that everything with Xander is over and begs Oz to believe her, it becomes pretty clear that whether he believes her or forgives her doesn’t matter:

Oz: “This is what I do know. I miss you. Like, every second. I mean, it’s like I lost an arm, or worse, a torso. So, I think I’d be willing to give it a shot.”

Then they make-up hug and the horrible knot in my chest can finally loosen.

Later that night, Joyce and Buffy are shopping for a Christmas tree. Because why not enjoy the outdoors in Sunnydale after dark? Joyce suggests that they invite Faith over for Christmas, and Buffy tells her mom that she and Faith aren’t really talking to each other anymore. But Joyce is concerned about a teenager spending Christmas alone in a dirty motel, and Buffy agrees to ask her. Then Buffy asks about inviting Giles, and Joyce is like, absolutely no way.

Cue the spooky music! Buffy walks through the mini-forest of Christmas trees and finds a whole bunch of dead ones. The Christmas tree guy tells her that the trees died suddenly, and offers her a deal on a dead one. You know, normally I would find this odd, but it is Sunnydale. Maybe this is like, the one guy in town who actually gives a damn that vampires and demons are around, and he’s like, “Might as well sell one a Christmas tree.”

Meanwhile, Angel is having another nightmare, and we get a glimpse of what will later become a pretty important villain:

That handsome fella right there is a Bringer, and they show up again in season seven.  Now, according to this divination book I have (because I actually have a pretty extensive collection of divination oracles like tarot, runes, stones, etc. and I bet you didn’t know that about me until right now),  those runes carved into dude’s face are protection from evil (on the left) and fertility (on the right).  I’m certain that’s a bunch of New Age fiddle-faddle, but it’s still kind of funny to me, because this show usually pays pretty good attention to New Age fiddle-faddle, and likely this was picked because it looked spooky and arcane.

This is all in another one of Angel’s nightmares, from which he wakes, gasping for air. (#20). So, now Angel has had a dream about killing a dude who owed him money, and one about scary no-eyes cut-up face dudes doing some kind of ritual with bones.

Buffy goes to Faith’s motel to invite her to dinner, but Faith claims to have been invited to a big party. It’s clearly a lie, but Buffy leaves the invite open, anyway. She also compliments Faith’s Christmas lights.

Cut to Giles’s house. Where he is cooking dinner. With the top buttons of his shirt unbuttoned. And he licks his fingers. And I write like sixteen short fanfics about exactly this scene. My actual work is suffering. I need to talk to my doctor to see if there’s any sort of treatment program for unreasonable attraction to a fictional character.

There’s a knock at the door, and Giles is in a super good mood until he opens it and sees Angel there.

Angel: “I’m sorry to bother you.”

Giles: “Sorry, coming from you, that phrase strikes me as rather funny. Sorry to bother me.”

Angel. “I need your help.”

Giles: “And the funny keeps coming.”

One thing I like about this show is that the characters who spend a lot of time together start to talk like each other. You could argue that it’s actually a bad thing, and a sign that the writers couldn’t give the characters their own voices, but that’s not what’s happening. “And the funny keeps coming” is easily something you could hear Xander or Buffy say, but not Joyce or Snyder or Angel. It’s interesting to me how the core group has their own little language pieced together from each other’s speech patterns. I wonder if that was a conscious thing on the writers’ parts, or if happened organically.

Giles agrees to help Angel, and walks away from the door. Angel reminds him that vampires can’t enter a home unless they’re invited, and Giles is like:

Welcome to my beautiful home.

He does invite Angel in, though. Angel tells him about the dreams he’s been having about the past. He says that he can’t understand why he’s back on Earth when he should be in a hell dimension. Then Jenny Calendar appears behind Giles, wearing the same clothes she died in. Angel freaks out, but Giles can’t see Jenny. So Angel ends up running out. He goes back to the Mansion, and into another dream sequence. He’s in London, with the same terrible hair, at a Christmas party. He manhandles a serving woman and eats her, right there under a staircase while people are like, ten feet away. And nobody seems to notice? Like, seriously? Also, he bites her and she shrieks, then she’s like, immediately dead. From just the quickest, tiniest bite. She can’t call out for anyone? She doesn’t scream?

I know this is a dream sequence, but Angel tells Giles that he’s having dreams of the past that are very vivid, so these are more like flashbacks, right? Why did nobody notice? And why is even a brief vampire bite fatal? He just bites her and throws her down, and she’s dead. What’s going on with that?

You know what, that happens enough in the Buffyverse that I  think it needs a number.  #35: Vampire bites, even very brief ones, are 99.8% fatal. Which doesn’t make any sense, because people get bitten in this series and don’t die. What is making these people instantly die? Weak constitutions?

When Angel looks up, he sees Buffy standing there, watching him in horror. He wakes up, breathing heavily (#20), and we cut to Buffy, also waking up, because they were having the same dream. Which, by the way, actually happens to people, and if it’s never happened to you, I hope it doesn’t because it’s eerie as fuck. Anyway, when Buffy wakes up, she isn’t gasping for air. So, the human being isn’t out of breath, but the vampire who doesn’t breathe is. I just find it awfully convenient that Angel doesn’t breathe when the plot when requires it (there’s a gas leak, Buffy needs CPR, etc.), but the rest of the time he’s huffing and puffing like a three-pack-a-day smoker running a 10k they haven’t trained for.

Angel gets out of bed and is confronted by a really angry Ms. Calendar:

Angel: “What do you want?”

Jenny: “I wanna die in bed surrounded by fat grandchildren, but I guess that’s off the menu.”

Sidebar: Can you just imagine how adorable Jenny and Giles’s children would have been? I’m picturing a little dark-haired, pedantic girl in pigtail braids and glasses like Molly, the American Girl doll, but capable of withering sarcasm, and a little boy who has to have his screen time drastically limited because he’s just so into computers and doesn’t like to read at all and it drives his father crazy, the way his father drove his father crazy by wanting to be a fighter pilot.

YOU HAVE ROBBED ME OF THIS, ANGEL. YOU HAVE ROBBED US ALL OF THIS BEAUTIFUL FUTURE.

Anyway, Jenny torments Angel, then turns into the dude he killed for money back in Ireland. He tells Angel that he’s not trying to hurt him, he just wants to show him who he really is.

Buffy tells Giles about her dream, or specifically, about being inside Angel’s dream, and Giles reluctantly admits that he’s already spoken to Angel and is working on the case. Buffy wants to help. She tells Giles it’s going to be difficult to get over Angel if she’s constantly hanging out in his dreams, so Giles agrees. Xander steps in out of nowhere and volunteers to help, as well, citing “the Hanukkah spirit” as his reasoning. Giles gives them books and tells them to start researching. Buffy asks Xander if he really wants to spend his Christmas break working on demon stuff, and he tells her that it’s really all that he’s got going on, and asks who else has such a pathetic social life? Enter Willow, who gets there just in time for a montage of researching and eating pizza.

When Xander and Giles are out of the room, Buffy and Willow have a talk about Oz. Willow doesn’t know how to make Oz trust her again. Buffy says that Xander has a piece of Willow Oz can never have, so building that trust is what’s important. They reach a dead end in their research, which isn’t very convenient, since Angel is still being tortured by his past.

His current tormenter is reminding Angel how he arranged the man’s children like they were sleeping after he killed them. Angel is surrounded on all sides by people he’s killed. They tell him that he’s nothing but a sadistic killer, and that when he was a man he was a worthless drunk who disappointed his parents. Jenny keeps telling him that she doesn’t want to hurt him, she just wants to make him realize that the only thing he’s good at is being a murderer.

In the library, everyone is falling asleep researching. And I never noticed this detail before, but it’s adorable:

We only see it blurry like this, in passing, but it’s a sweet touch. And I’m 100% certain it came from Willow.

Buffy is asleep on the floor in the stacks, and Angel is asleep on his coffee table. Buffy wakes in her bed, with Angel over her. They start getting frisky in the dream, so basically Buffy is having a wet dream in the library. Awwwwwkward. A Bringer appears in the dream room, and Angel gets vamp face and bites Buffy. They both wake from the dream, and Angel is once again visited by Jenny, who tells him he should just give in and become evil again. She tells him that he has to kill Buffy. That’s why he was brought back.

At the library, Giles has found information about the Bringers and The First, as in, the very first evil. Buffy says she saw a Bringer in her dream, and Giles is all like, what else happened in your dream? and Buffy changes the subject real quick. He explains that the Bringers are probably haunting Angel, and that there’s no way to fight The First, because it’s not a physical being. She decides she’s going to track down the Bringers and kill them, instead.

Buffy goes to the demon bar where Willy the slimeball works. After Xander ineffectually threatens him, Willy tells them that something is scaring the monsters out of Sunnydale. Which is bad, because monsters aren’t usually scared. Because they’re monsters.

Willy: “Hey, you did great by the way. I was very intimidated by you.”

Xander: “Really? Thanks!”

As they leave the bar, I notice that there’s an actual sign above the door. This is a bar that’s basically only catering to demons. When you walk in, it’s all demons, and vampires in full vamp face. And this bar is located near what sounds like a busy street. This is not a secret bar. People in Sunnydale know about vampires. Why are they all not wearing garlic and not carrying stakes? (#8)

Back at Willow’s house, her parents are out of town. Oz comes over to watch videos, but he finds Willow dressed all sexy, with candles lit and a romantic fire started and Barry White playing.

Oz: “You ever have that dream where you’re in a play, and it’s the middle of the play and you really don’t know your lines, and you kind of don’t know the plot?”

Willow: “Well, we’re alone and…we’re together. I just wanted it to be special.”

Oz: “How special are we talking?”

Willow tells Oz that she’s ready to have sex, but he is clearly not. He lets her down gently, telling her that he’s not ready to have sex with her. He’s had sex before, but he wants to wait until Willow isn’t trying to prove anything to him.

Hey, guess what this is? It’s amazing. I mean, it’s also an example of #18, because you know Xander wouldn’t take such a nuanced approach here. But what gets me about this scene is that it’s showing young guys that they can say no. It runs counter to the expectation that all guys should be out there striving to get laid. It also shows young women that if a guy rejects them, it’s not because they did something wrong. Willow tries to initiate sex, and it doesn’t work out. Now she (and by extension, the audience) knows that it’s not true that guys are just sex crazed and willing to get it on at any time, and that a man declining sex isn’t a rejection of them as a person. This is a great and important scene in the series.

At Buffy’s house, Joyce has started a fire in the fireplace and is about to turn on the air conditioning, because it’s  super hot in Sunnydale. So when Faith shows up, obviously she’s wearing a jacket. Did the costume people even read the script? Because later, Buffy is wearing a full-on winter coat. Anyway, Buffy goes upstairs to get presents, but Angel is there waiting for her. Jenny appears behind her and tries to goad him into having sex with Buffy. Or eat her. Or both. He dives out of the window instead.

Faith stays to protect Joyce while Buffy goes out to find the Bringers. She goes to Giles and begs him for help, and he tells her that if Angel actually does get dark-sided, she’s going to have to kill him again.

Back at the mansion, Jenny is still trying to get Angel to kill Buffy. He decides instead to go outside and wait for sunrise. And at this point, it’s pretty clear that Jenny is not actually Jenny. So we can all breathe a sigh of relief because it would be pretty fucking horrible if she was looking for vengeance from beyond the grave after all that talk about vengeance not being cool while she was alive.

Giles and Buffy are still researching the Bringers, but they’re not getting far, because they’ve been so aggrandized in arcane literature:

 Giles: “Yes, but more posturing, I’m afraid. ‘For they are the harbingers of death, nothing shall grow above or below them, no seed shall flower neither in man nor,’ uh… they’re rebels and they’ll never, ever be any good.”

But Buffy recognizes something in the text. The dead Christmas trees are her clue to where the Bringers are. So goes to the Christmas tree lot and hacks her way into their lair. They’re gathered around their altar, droning in Latin.

Buffy: “All right, ten more minutes of chanting and then you guys have to go to bed.”

The Bringers flee, and Buffy destroys their altar. The First appears as Jenny and warns Buffy that fighting is futile:

The First: “You think you can fight me? I’m not a demon, little girl, I am something that you cannot even conceive. The first evil. Beyond sin. Beyond death. I am the thing that darkness fears. You’ll never see me, but I am everywhere. Every being, every thought, every drop of hate–”

Buffy: “All right, I get it, you’re evil. Do we have to chat about it all day?”

But Buffy isn’t as cocky when The First tells her that Angel is going to die, then transforms into a huge crab looking thing before disappearing. Buffy goes to the mansion to find him. He’s standing on a bluff overlooking Sunnydale. He tells her that The First brought him back to kill again. She argues with him that it’s foolish to listen to some random evil thing, but he doesn’t care about that so much as what the thing wanted him to do.

Angel: “It told me to kill you. You were in the dream. You know. It told me to lose my soul in you and become a monster again.”

Buffy: “I know what it told you. What does it matter–”

Angel: “Because I wanted to! Because I want you so badly. I want to take comfort in you, and I know it will cost me my soul, and a part of me doesn’t care.”

He tells Buffy that he’s weak, and it’s not him as a vampire who needs to die, but him as a person. She pleads with him to go back inside, and says that if he dies, all he’ll ever have been is a monster. She tries to drag him away, and he pushes her. She hits him, and he punches her, knocking her down. As she cries, he shakes her and tells her that the world wants him to go. She asks him if she doesn’t count, because she wants him around. She says that even killing him didn’t make her stop loving him. She tells him that she hates how hard it is to be around him and how much he hurts her. Also, that she doesn’t need to know everything he did in his past, because he did a bunch of that stuff to her.

Back up the abuse train. Remember back in season two, when the guy was abusing his girlfriend and Buffy was like, criticizing her for not leaving? We just literally saw Angel punch Buffy and shake her. We know he murdered someone he cared about, and both physically and psychologically tortured her friends. And all of this is being presented as part of their tragic love story, with Buffy telling Angel how he has to stay with her and they’ll get through all of the pain and tragedy together. This is gross, and straight up #6. It’s also one of the reasons I’ll never understand why this is considered a great love story, or why everyone felt Buffy should have wound up with Angel. He’s not evil now, and he’s still willing to hit her. Even if your girlfriend is the super-tough Slayer, that’s not okay.

A cold front has apparently moved in, and that’s good, because Buffy is already conveniently wearing a winter coat. Gentle snowflakes start drifting down, ending their argument as they look at each other in wonder at the Christmas miracle. Quick, everybody, forgive that unresolved fight! Pretend we never saw it! We see everyone experiencing the snowfall. Oz and Willow cuddling in Willow’s room, Joyce and Faith coming outside to stand on the porch, poor Giles all alone in his house, and worst of all, Xander, carrying out his sad childhood tradition of sleeping on his fucking lawn because his family is so terrible, and now he’s covered in snow.

You know what I think would have been cool for this episode? If Giles knew about Xander’s horrible home life and invited him to spend Christmas at his house. I mean, Xander annoys the fuck out of Giles, but I can’t imagine that he would just let the poor kid sleep on the ground outdoors on Christmas Eve. It’s the first time there’s ever been snow in Sunnydale, and there’s a lot of it. Also, the sun isn’t going to come out, apparently. That leaves Buffy and Angel free to walk hand in hand down the snow-covered street as the episode ends.

Honestly, this episode would be one I could enjoy, if it didn’t end the way it did. There was no reason at all that Angel needed to punch Buffy in the face. There was no reason he had to shake her and shout at her while she cried. And there’s definitely no reason that the scene was supposed to be passionate and proof of their true love. The “love hurts” theme in our entertainment media confuses all of us, I think. It’s not even a matter of “think of the children.” It happens with adults, too. Look at some of the great love stories we’ve seen in books lately, and who the audience for those stories was. As a fan of this show, as someone who loves almost everything about it, the amount of violence equated to love in the scripts disappoints me.

The only things I really like about this episode are the scenes with Willow and Oz, and the fact that it kicks off Angels character arc for the show Angel. He’s consumed with knowing his purpose now, and that leads into him going to L.A. and becoming a vigilante. We’ve finally reached the point in his arc where he’s not feeling obligated to fight the forces of evil to atone for his sins, but because he wants to fulfill his destiny.

Oh, and also, Giles is ridiculously hot with a crossbow.

Don’t Let Them Know What You’re Against Or What You’re For (The Pettiest Blind Item You’ll Ever Read, Part 3)

This is part three of an ongoing series. Part one can be read here. Part two can be read here.After her first sale, Erika continued to rake in contracts. She sold some titles to Total-E-Bound (now Totally Bound) and the infamous Ellora’s Cave. But they were M/F (male/female) titles, and they didn’t do as well as the M/M (male/male) titles that were popular at the time. So, Erika tried some other stuff. She wrote a series of polyamorous books featuring alpha male characters who doubled, sometimes tripled up on the heroine, who was almost always an accomplished career woman who later decided to give up all of her achievements to get spit roasted daily by guys who would grunt “You. Are. Mine.” while they were inside her.

Yeah, I’m not a fan of that kind of book. I always got the feeling from Erika that she fantasized about many men wanting her to quit her job so they could care for her and make her feel sexually desired, because of her addiction to control. She was so busy trying to dictate the lives of everyone around her–going so far as to do her kids’ homework and projects for them–that she had no time for herself. She often humble-bragged that submissive sex appealed to her specifically because she was so busy running everything in her perfect, perfect life.

The Mudslingers continued meeting on Friday nights, but we didn’t critique each other’s writing anymore. I was perfectly happy with that; one of the last times we did read our work, I’d written a passage about a heroine with an obnoxious coworker named something Erika perceived to be too close to her own name. Though she claimed it was a nickname that people called her all the time, I’d never once heard this happen and had no clue. In fact, I’ve never heard anyone refer to her by this nickname that “everyone calls me” to this very day. Instead of reviewing our chapters, we all hung out in Erika’s living room and wrote. Carol eventually stopped coming. “What’s the point?” she asked me. “I could stay at home and write and get more done.”

Carol no longer coming to the Friday night write-ins was seen as a horrible slight, as was my decision to move back to the town I’d grown up in. Although I was still driving an hour one-way every Friday for group, my lack of immediate availability appeared to be a problem. In 2006, Erika, Bronwyn, and Carol threw me a surprise wedding shower at Erika’s house. That was the last time I was ever in her home. In 2007, she got tickets for an advance screening of a movie I wanted to see, and she invited me. We weren’t “not friends” anymore, since we saw each other at GRRWG and were still friendly, but we weren’t as close. A part of this, I figured, was that we were moving in separate directions in our careers, and I was beginning to notice the patterns in her behavior toward me with regard to our individual successes. When something good happened to her, we were all expected to be ecstatic for her. When something good happened to us, she found a way to sow doubt and criticism, diminishing our accomplishments.

Erika was still disappointed in the performance of her books, because she while M/M/F was popular, the big “thing” of the moment was M/M . Readership of M/M books seemed to explode overnight, like a field of mushrooms, if the mushrooms were hungry for stories about cowboys fucking each other. M/M authors went from struggling to raking in cash hand-over-fist. So, naturally, Erika (who always cautioned us against following trends but constantly chased them herself) started writing M/M.

Now, I have no problem with this. In the course of my career, I’ve written all sorts of pairings, and I don’t think it’s necessary for an author to write just one type of pairing. But it did bother me that Erika was writing M/M. Because Erika was a full-on, raving homophobe.

Erika always had a problem with Bronwyn Green’s sister. We’ll call her Kate. Erika was very possessive of Bronwyn, who was her best friend and, being the benefactor of that best friendship, shouldn’t need anyone else in her life. Erika was deeply, weirdly jealous of the relationship Bronwyn had with her sister. Let that sink right in: Erika was jealous that Bronwyn cared for and enjoyed spending time with a member of her immediate family. Compounding the problem, in Erika’s mind, was that Kate is a lesbian. Because she was raised in a supportive and loving home, Kate came out while she was still in high school. In Catholic high school. Bronwyn was naturally proud of her sister for being so brave. But Erika was disgusted. She repeatedly lectured Bronwyn about how important it was to steer Kate away from being gay, as though that were possible. If Kate ever came up in conversation, Erika would roll her eyes and dismiss Kate’s sexuality as a phase or a plea for attention.

Erika recoiled from the very idea of homosexuality. She hated any suggestion that an entertainer whose work she enjoyed could be gay (my all-time favorite instances in which she defended her darlings from spurious accusations of homosexuality were Clay Aiken and Adam Lambert). Homosexuality, Erika explained to us one night, was a choice. And it was a choice between going to heaven like a good Christian or going to hell like a sinner.

When that “choice” meant she could make money off it, though, she suddenly became very publicly pro-gay. Which meant she had to work harder to hide her “secret identity”; if anyone at her stridently anti-gay church found out what she wrote, she would be ostracized, and if anyone at her publishers ever found out that she went to the stridently anti-gay church, she would probably lose her contracts. This was a point that was repeatedly hammered home to us: do not, under any circumstances, reveal her identity. Lots of authors feel this way about the pen names they use for various reasons, and I understand. People have been fired from their day jobs because nosey  coworkers discovered their secret romance careers. But Erika treated her pen name as though it were some all-consuming mystery that had gripped the public at large. She seemed to believe that everyone was trying to find out, as if in all the hallways of every publishing house, in every aisle of the bookstore, on every internet message board, people were desperate to uncover who she really was.

In the romance industry, the biggest event of the year is the Romantic Times Convention. In 2008, Bronwyn and Erika and Carol attended. I was super excited. I was going to be there with Mr.Jen and my BFF Jill, as well as another friend I’d met at the convention the previous year. I couldn’t wait to hang out with everyone and have a good time. I saw Bronwyn and Erika a couple of times, very briefly, during the five days of the conference. We met by chance on one of those days. Bronwyn and Erika introduced me to a woman I’ll call Maya. Maya wrote for some of the same publishers as Bronwyn and Erika; I believe that’s how they met. We chatted a bit, I introduced Jill and Mr.Jen to Maya, and then Erika said, “Well…see you later.” I had been dismissed.

Ellora’s Cave held a lavish party one night during the conference. They put on a laughably cheesy stage production starring their cover models, who ended their performance by gyrating to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless The USA” and somberly folding an American flag like a bed sheet. The theme of the party was something to do with Hollywood, so when you entered, it was on a red carpet lined with Walk of Fame-style stars with their authors’ names on them. And in case you didn’t catch their names the first time, the authors paraded across the stage one at a time, accompanied by the models. There was even a velvet-rope VIP section in which only Ellora’s Cave authors were allowed. Erika made sure that Bronwyn and Maya stayed in that area at all times, and when I tried to talk to Bronwyn over the velvet rope, Erika quickly called her back because, “We need you!” I can’t fault Bronwyn for going; an editor was sitting at her table and it was a networking opportunity. We were at an industry conference, after all, so we were on the clock. But it seemed too convenient to me that Bronwyn was only “needed” if she was talking to me. At another party, Erika made sure to save seats for Bronwyn and Carol, but when we showed up she informed us that the table “filled up too quickly.” I suspect she didn’t even try.

Bronwyn and Erika left RT on Saturday afternoon, so Erika could be home in time to go to church on Sunday. She’d spent all week flirting with cover models and celebrating the erotic romance she wrote. She’d spent all week pretending to support the LGBTQA+ community. Then ran home in time to tithe to a church who hated us.

When we returned from RT, we no longer met as a critique group, or a writing group. My second book series debuted the next year to critical panning and dismal sales. Erika continued to attend her church while reaping the rewards of a successful career writing erotica. But Erika’s time as GRRWG president was almost up. Although our membership had tripled, the group was still small. Finding volunteers to fill board vacancies had become difficult, so the membership voted to stagger the elections. The president and treasurer elections would take place on odd years, the veep and secretary would be decided on even years. This wasn’t a bad idea, but it did mean that Bronwyn would be tied up for an extra year and wouldn’t be eligible for the upcoming election. I resigned my post as secretary, and Carol (who had been serving as treasurer and had just ended her term) stepped into my shoes until the next election. Erika was succeeded by a soft-spoken woman we’ll call Ruth, but our former president still found a way to keep her fingers in the pie. She appointed herself “board advisor”. Past presidents would stay on the board for the entirety of the next presidency, break tie votes, and oversee the board operations, just to make sure everything was going smoothly. In this case, “smoothly” meant “going the way Erika wanted it to.”

It was only a few months into her presidency that Ruth discovered she was pregnant with twins, and wisely decided to resign. As vice president, Bronwyn should have stepped in to fill the vacancy until the next election. Most members of the group would have been happy to let her continue on as president for the rest of Ruth’s term. Erika advised Bronwyn not to accept the position, as she wasn’t “organized” enough, but it was more likely that Erika just couldn’t stand the thought of the woman that she was best friends with to have some kind of perceived power over her. Because Erika wasn’t just jealous of Bronwyn’s relationship with Kate (or anyone else); Erika was jealous of Bronwyn full-stop.

Once, Bronwyn complained about an argument she had with her husband, the way people occasionally complain to their friends about their partners. Erika’s response was to say, gleefully, “I’m so glad you guys fight.” She had been deeply bothered by the fact that Bronwyn has a good marriage. Erika’s wasn’t always the happiest, and the fact that Bronwyn’s was meant that Erika was somehow losing a competition that Bronwyn wasn’t even aware of. Most of their friendship was like that, with Erika desperately needing Bronwyn to engage in any hobby or writing-related activity she came up with, so that Erika could prove she was better. She often told Bronwyn what she could and couldn’t write, presenting these edicts as helpful advice. “You can’t write BDSM,” she told Bronwyn. “You’re not very good at it and I don’t want you to embarrass yourself,” and other blanket statements that every member of the Mudslingers had been the target of. For me, it was “You can’t write romance. Too many people die in your books, and they don’t have a happily ever after.” But her need to compete with me wasn’t nearly as insidious as her need to control and “win” with Bronwyn. So it didn’t come as a shock to me that Erika didn’t want Bronwyn to take over running GRRWG. And she definitely didn’t like it when Carol volunteered to be nominated in a special election. Carol won, and became president over GRRWG, which had grown into a much larger group than we had ever anticipated.

Meanwhile, my feelings toward Erika had slowly begun to change. Carol and I were beginning to doubt our friendship with Erika, and for that, we deserved to be punished.

To Be Continued…

True Blood Twwwendnesday? S02E03 “Scratches”

I explain why I forgot True Blood Tuesday this week in the audio. Which you can download here. Just do that, then start it playing when the HBO logo and sound fade out.

The Room Where It Happens (the pettiest blind item you’ll ever read, part 2)

This is part two of an ongoing series. Part one can be read here.

I mentioned before that I met Erika through a local RWA chapter. Erika didn’t have many nice things to say about the members of the group, and because I didn’t know better, I internalized every negative thing she said. After all, if we were required to like and dislike the same entertainment choices, the same obviously held true for people.

One of the biggest problems Erika had with the chapter was that the business portion of the meetings went on for far too long. In fairness to Erika, they absolutely did. For an hour we would sit and pour over every report from every committee, from the president of the group right on down to the woman who kept the chapter scrapbook. It was exhausting. When Erika said she planned to run for president at the next election, I felt such admiration for her. She saw a problem, had a solution for fixing it, and forged ahead with confidence. When she invited me to run for a board position as well, I jumped at the chance. I was the worst treasurer in history. So maybe all the Hamilton references in the titles of this story aren’t terribly apt. But we ended up with a board consisting of Erika, our president, Bronwyn, our vice president, Carol as secretary, and me, the worst treasurer of all time.

It was during our term on the board that Carol sold her book, and that Bronwyn and I received our revise and submit letters from Harlequin. It was also during that time that we realized that the RWA chapter we belonged to wasn’t a great fit for us. We were all from the Grand Rapids area, and the chapter moved from city to city, trying to cover as much area as possible for its membership. One month we’d be driving to Lansing for a meeting, the next we’d drive to Kalamazoo. Because one single member lived in Jackson–so far across the state that the member would have been better served just driving an hour to the Greater Detroit chapter–we held two meetings a year there. During our time on the board, that member never even attended the Jackson meetings, but we couldn’t get the membership to agree that the location was inconvenient and pointless. It was very frustrating. The only sensible solution, Erika decided, was for us to form our own RWA chapter.

This is possibly the second good thing that came out of my acquaintance with Erika. She took the reigns to create a group that, while not still RWA affiliated, is a fantastic resource for writers (if you live in Michigan, you should come out and see us sometime). We decided to name ourselves the Grand Rapids Region Romance Writers of America, or GRRWA for short. Erika would, of course, be the president. It only made sense. She’d already been president of our old chapter, and she was the one who’d done all the research into how to form a NFPO, how to run a meeting (Strunk & White had been replaced by Mr. Robert and his rules of order), and, as she often reminded all of us, she was by far the most organized and pulled together of our bunch. Bronwyn would stay vice president, and Carol and I would flip roles.

Our first meetings were very small, with only about five or six of us present. What shocked me, though, was the presence of Pam. It struck me as odd. While Erika had her strict rule about no one talking about her, she made free to gossip about anyone she liked.  She found Pam strange and unpleasant, thought she was a bad parent, disapproved of almost all of her life choices, mocked her appearance, and of course there was still the (very real) plagiarism incident. I couldn’t fathom why Erika would consider Pam a valuable asset to our fledgling group, but, as with so many other things that happened during my friendship with Erika, I didn’t question it deeply. Erika clearly knew better than I did what was going on.

We were just getting into our groove when Erika received an odd piece of mail. The Mudslingers met for our usual critique session, and she presented us with a hand-written letter. I wish I could remember what it said. Suffice it to say, it was vaguely threatening, with stuff about “knowing the truth”, etc. Erika called the police, and an officer came out to say there was nothing he could do about it. As it was the night before our regular chapter meeting, we opted to play it safe and not convene at our usual restaurant–a venue that Erika complained was too far from her house, anyway–and meet at her house instead. She told us all that she was sure Pam had sent the weird letter. She could tell from the handwriting. I was furious that Pam would try to sabotage us like that. We started holding our meetings at restaurants closer to Erika’s house.

It’s only now that I suspect the letter didn’t come from Pam at all, but from Erika herself. I can’t prove that’s the case, but I don’t know what to believe about it all. At that point, Erika could have said Mel Gibson sent the damn thing and I would have believed her.

Our new RWA chapter didn’t change much from the format of the old chapter. Even the interminably long business meetings returned. Erika would call us to order, then give her report, which often included talking directly to Bronwyn in hushed tones for long stretches of time while the rest of us waited. She would say something to Bronwyn or Carol, then glance at the rest of us with a knowing look, as if she were reveling in the fact that she held our attention.

In the interest of furthering our growth as writers, Erika proposed we have a writing “retreat”, a weekend at a nearby hotel where we booked their biggest suite and planned to sit around the table writing and talking and having a generally good time. We did it once, with great success. When we did it a second time, we showed up and found that Erika had decided to change the format. Instead of having a weekend to write and relax, she had planned an intensive seminar, which she would teach. We sat around the table for eight hours while she taught us the entirety of Chris Batty’s No Plot? No Problem! No one really wanted to do it, but everyone went along with it, either because we were brainwashed by Erika or, for some of the non-Mudslingers, just because everyone else went along with it.

Just like everyone went along with Erika’s idea to publish a how-to writing guide. It sounded like a great idea: the five founding members would write sections of a comprehensive guide that we would self-publish as an e-book and print-on-demand title. In order to get the word out (both about our own writing and our new chapter), we would create a CD version of the book and send it with Carol to the RWA National Conference to sell it. I don’t know if they had a vendor room or what, I wasn’t in on that part of the planning. What I was a part of was the production of the CD. I designed a label and would burn every copy. I think we were making fifty. Erika outlined the book herself, and divided up the essays we would each write according to our strengths. She took on the bulk of the writing herself, because, she told us, she worked faster.

There was a very specific time frame we were working under to get this project done. This was back in the olden days, when burning data to a CD could take anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes, depending on how fast your computer could creak along, so even once everything was arranged to go on the disk, I still needed enough time to burn them all. I couldn’t start until everyone finished their articles. Carol’s essays were done. Bronwyn’s were done. Mine were done. We were just waiting on Erika. She swore she would have them to me in time to send them to the conference with Carol, but the day came and Carol had to leave Michigan without them. We would have to ship them, and were down to the wire. When Bronwyn called Erika to ask about the progress of the articles Erika hadn’t finished, she either wouldn’t answer the phone or would answer only to bark at Bronwyn for daring to call. Didn’t She know that Erika was working? Didn’t Bronwyn trust Erika to pull it off? When Bronwyn suggested we could divide up the remaining essays between the three of us just to get them done, Erika stopped communicating with us altogether.

At around noon the day before the last possible day we could ship the CDs to the conference, Bronwyn called me and we faced the music. There would be no further essays from Erika. After taking on double the responsibility, Erika had managed to produce less than half of what she’d promised. Bronwyn and I split up Erika’s missing essays and wrote them ourselves, all the while sick to our stomachs at what her reaction would be when she found out that we’d taken what was rightfully hers. We stayed up for twenty-four hours straight to get the project finished and sent out to Carol, and braced ourselves for the retribution we’d receive for stealing Erika’s spotlight.

It never came. After Carol returned from the conference (where we sold a whopping six copies of the CD, so maybe fifty was overkill), Erika asked us all to meet her at a local restaurant so we could talk about how the project fell through. I assumed she would apologize for letting us down. I don’t know now why I thought that. I couldn’t remember a time Erika had ever apologized for anything. We all crowded into a booth and, instead of an apology, Erika explained to us that some truly horrible family issues had arisen for her, and that’s why she’d dropped the ball and not finished the project. I understood how a person could feel like things were out of control, but what I couldn’t understand was why she’d rejected Bronwyn’s offer of help. Why she hadn’t talked to us at all, or just stepped down from the project? I asked these questions as gently as I could, because I was still very put out at this lack of professionalism from the one person in our group who insisted that she was perfect. Erika’s mother (who was a member of the group and who had worked on the CD, as well), put on her most patronizing voice and told me, “Well, we’re always hearing about how you’re so busy with your revisions.”

At this point, I’d been offered a three book contract from Harlequin, but I’d been shuffled from their Bombshell line to the Luna, then Mira lines, as well as bounced between three editors within the space of about five months. With each change came a new set of revisions to my already twice-revised manuscript. It was frustrating to keep working on the same book over and over when what I really wanted was to write something new. I guess I’d been complaining about that a little too much, and it had come across as humble-bragging. I was mortified. I hadn’t meant to be such a jerk. I went home wishing I’d never sold my book. It was obviously turning me into an egomaniacal monster, and it was hurting Erika.

Nobody ever brought up the CD debacle again.

Now, a term on GRRWA’s board of directors lasted for two years, and you could hold one office for two terms. Basically, like the U.S. House of Representatives, but with term limits. Erika had been president for about two years when she sold her first book. It was to Ellora’s Cave, a company that specialized in e-book erotica. At this time, RWA National had a sketchy attitude toward both e-books and erotic romance.  Because of this, Erika couldn’t be considered “PAN eligible”; that is, she wouldn’t be allowed into the organization’s Published Authors Network because she didn’t receive an advance and her book wasn’t “in print.” She’d finally sold a book, but she wasn’t considered “published” yet by RWA. Suddenly, it became imperative that we dissolve GRRWA and create a new group.

I’m glad with all my heart that we dissolved GRRWA. At the time, in addition to the attitude that e-books weren’t “real” books, gay and poly romance was also being discouraged by RWA’s national board. I wanted to leave RWA, but I couldn’t do that and remain a member of a local chapter. And although I did recently rejoin RWA, dissolving our chapter turned out to be a great move. After a grueling four hour meeting to change our name, we became The Grand Rapids Region Writers Group.

The name was really the only thing membership had any input on. With one term on the board up, we began to discuss who would take over when Erika had to step down. That wasn’t a problem, because Erika had no plan to step down. She informed us that as GRRWG was a new group, she had never been president of it before, and therefore she had two terms ahead of her. There wasn’t even a question of having  an election; it was a “fledgling organization” she explained, and any change in leadership could be ruinous. As president, she spruced up our policies and bylaws, including adding a definition of “published”, much like RWA’s PAN requirements. But unlike PAN, you didn’t get anything out of being an official published author in GRRWG. There were no extra perks, no access to specialized resources, hell, there wasn’t even a lapel pin. There was no need to have a delineation between published and unpublished writers in our group, except to satisfy Erika’s ego.

It didn’t take me long to realize that Erika’s ego was the entire reason our chapter left the RWA in the first place.

To Be Continued…

Every Concert I’ve Ever Been To, In Absolutely No Order

On our way to Chicago for the Billy Joel concert, Bronwyn Green and I bemoaned the fact that we’d been to so many concerts, but couldn’t remember them all. We decided to sit down and tally them up. We did not endeavor to put them in any sort of order, though. Here is my list of artists I’ve seen live. At least, what I can remember:

Lee Greenwood Technically my first concert. Battle Creek Airshow, sometime in the ’80s. Went with my mom.

Hootie And The Blowfish What I tell people my first concert was. 1994. Went with my mom.

Rusted Root The first time I learned what pot smelled like.

Joan Osborne She opened for Rusted Root, the night after she lost every Grammy category she was nominated in to Alanis Morissette. It came up.

Alanis Morissette Twice, once for Jagged Little Pill, second time because she toured with Tori Amos.

Tori Amos Five times, including a show Bronwyn Green was at, before I knew her. She mentioned this in front of my Baba, who said, “Oh, my granddaughter was at that show! I think you two would like each other.” Met Tori twice. One of those times, I puked on the sidewalk.

R.E.M. Twice on their tour for Monster.

Radiohead When they opened for R.E.M.

Patti Smith Twice with R.E.M., including her first performance in like, twenty years or something.

Oasis

Bush

No Doubt Not as good live, I can tell you that for free. Saw them with Bush.

The Goo Goo Dolls Not as good live. Saw them with Bush.

The Verve Pipe About a billion times. They’re a local band.

Green Day In front of the stage in the pit. Billy Joe said, “If that girl with the pink hair falls down again, somebody help her up!

Dave Matthews Band I remember nothing about this concert. Not because of weed, but because I was on sedatives because I’d been in a…we’ll say it was a plane-landing accident the day before. Probably should not have tried to go to anything for a while.

Steve Martin and The Steep Canyon Rangers Front row center. Lots of eye contact with Steve Martin, which was very weird.

The Black Crowes Birthday present from D-Rock. Second row, amazeballs.

Tony Bennett Really recently, too. And he’s still got it, baby!

Mandy Patinkin Twice, and got to meet him once. He gave me a kiss on the cheek.

Rufus Wainright With Tori Amos

The Cranberries Just as good live.

Barenaked Ladies Someone puked on my coat.

Sarah Brightman She flew on wires. There were glitter canons.

Flight Of The Conchords Worth the ticket price, definitely.

Korn (I worked concessions at a Family Values show. Counting this because I couldn’t escape the music)

Incubus (see above)

Orgy (see above)

Rammstein (see above, but they’re the one band I was excited about. I was excited about Ice Cube, but he left the tour literally the date before this one)

Limp Bizkit (see above)

Ani DiFranco

Richard Marx Actually awesome concert. He’s really funny, you should go see him if you have a chance.

The Living End

Indika

Gavin Degraw With Billy Joel

And of course, Billy Joel, twice.

You can check out Bronwyn Green’s list here. And share in the comments the musical artists that you’ve seen. I very much want to be envious of you all.

Pro-”Gay For You” Arguments In The Romance Genre (And Why They’re All Still Bi/Pan Erasure)

Yesterday, a Facebook friend made a post about the “Gay For You” or “GFY” trope popular with readers. The trope is sheer garbage: a character is straight as an arrow, never questioning their sexuality for a moment or even aggressively asserting their straightness. Then they meet “The One”, the romantic love interest. The straight protagonist knows, deep, deep down, that this is their One True Love™, and that love can overcome any odds. Even if that odd is that one of them is straight and the other is their same gender. “It’s okay,” the trope reassures us. “He’s not really gay. He’s just gay for him.”

This is seen most often in M/M fiction. M/M romance is written by people of all genders, but within the romance community it’s no secret that women are the target audience. Romance readers in general are voracious, but M/M readers seem to have a voracity and budget all their own. At a recent conference, I met a woman who said she reads M/M exclusively, and that she buys up to a hundred books a month. But the genre is still competitive, with some authors releasing twenty or more titles a year. As a result, M/M romance reaches–and influences–people who aren’t LGBTQA+, for better or for worse.

Gay For You is one of those areas where the “for worse” comes in. The GFY trope satisfies the reader’s desire for a happy ending by promising that the couple will find happiness together despite their sexualities, rather than finding their happiness through discovering their sexualities. Homosexuality is treated as a hurdle to be overcome, a tragic circumstance that could have destroyed the relationship had the romantic connection been less intense. That’s not just homophobic. It’s biphobic, and it’s bi/pan erasure.

It didn’t come as a huge surprise to me that the conversation quickly became heated, with lovers of the trope defending it as “just fiction” and actual LGBTQA+ people desperately trying to explain why the trope erases bi/pan people. In one particularly frustrating thread, a reader took the position that it’s “just fiction” and people shouldn’t be using it to learn from. She stated that she herself would rather learn from “real people” about these issues, but when four very real bisexual/pansexual people tried to engage with her on the subject, she refused to listen and cited her transgender cousin and “lots of gay friends” as proof that she can’t possibly be homophobic.

Yeesh.

Because actually interacting with these types of readers and authors is frustrating beyond belief (and because bi/pan people were being tone policed by straight, gay, and lesbian readers and authors in the Facebook thread that inspired this post), I thought I’d create a handy guide to the most common defenses of the trope and the reasons that all of those arguments are 100% Grade A USDA Certified Trash.

“It’s just fiction!” The old saying “life imitates art” didn’t spring up for no reason. Our earliest histories were stories painted on cave walls and told around fires. Stories inform the way we see our world. The first time I saw two women kiss on TV, it was Mariel Hemingway kissing Roseanne Barr on primetime television on the sitcom Roseanne. If you’re unfamiliar with the episode (titled “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”), the kiss takes place in a gay bar that the title character of the show, Roseanne, visits in an effort to prove that she’s okay with gay people. Hemingway’s character kisses Roseanne without asking her permission, and the kiss goes on for an uncomfortably long time as the camera fixes on her shocked expression. When Hemingway pulls away, Roseanne makes exaggerated faces in an effort to wipe her mouth off. Seeing this cemented two things in my mind: one, that lesbians were predators out to make straight women uncomfortable, and two, that normal, relatable women should be disgusted by F/F sex. And while the show was fiction, it was the only way the information was ever presented to me. No one took me aside and gave me a list of resources to change my mind. The show did end with Roseanne acknowledging her homophobia, but the kiss scene had already done its damage.

For many readers, fiction is the only chance they have to interact with people outside of their own experience on a deeply personal level. That’s why #OwnVoices is such an important hashtag on social media: it’s not enough to just put marginalized people in stories. They have to be portrayed in a way that’s authentic, or risk reinforcing stereotypes that harm real people. If your defense of “Gay For You” is, “It’s just fiction!” then you’re ignoring the visceral power fiction has over our minds, and how often it’s used to transform them.

Sesame Street is fictional, too, but I bet it still taught you your ABCs.

“Gay For You happens in real life all the time!” No, it doesn’t. A person might realize late in life that they’re gay, and that might be the result of an attraction to a person of the same gender. But that’s not Gay For You. Is the character gay? Then they’re gay. Is the character still attracted to and wants to have sex with a member of the opposite sex? Allow me to introduce you to the concept of bisexuality or pansexuality. Is your character attracted to anyone, irrespective of gender, but with preferences that change throughout their lives? Allow me to open your mind to the idea that sexuality is fluid, and that the sexuality of a character who wants to have sex with just this one particular guy but no other guys can be described more accurately without the word “gay.”

This might sound like some kind of weird homo-gatekeeping. Don’t get me wrong, people are free to label their sexuality however they’re comfortable. But authors using “gay” to describe all same-gender sexual relationships, even those engaged in by people who don’t identify as gay, isn’t just bi/pan erasure. It’s homophobic. And saying, “But it happens in real life!” doesn’t magically fix that when there’s so little accurate representation of bisexual and pansexual people in entertainment in the first place.

“So what if it’s not realistic! It’s not like women can actually fall in love with vampires or something!” This argument relies on a false equivalency between bisexual people and vampires. One of these things is not like the other, in that one exists, and one does not. If you write a vampire book, but your vampire really looks more like a werewolf on paper, you’re not hurting vampires and werewolves. If you write a Gay For You book, you are hurting real gay, lesbian, bi, pan, queer, and sexually fluid people.

“I read GFY all the time, and I’ve never once read one that erases bisexual people!” The very fact that you’re calling it “Gay For You” erases bisexual and pansexual identities. It’s not being marketed as “Bi For You.” It’s not being marketed as “Pan For You.” “Gay” cannot be used as a shorthand for bisexual or pansexual in this context without erasing us, because it reinforces the belief that all bi/pan people are just undecided voters.

In fact, “For You” in any context when describing sexuality is reductive, because it reinforces the idea that all sexuality is defined by the genders of an individual’s partners and not by the individual themselves. This is the type of thinking that leads to “gold star lesbian” and “fake bisexual” labels. This is the type of thinking that totally removes asexual, aromantic, and gray-ace people from the discussion entirely, as not having sex or not having romantic relationships leaves them undefined in the narrative.

“But the GFY books I read call the characters bisexual.” That’s nice, but see above. If you want to read about bisexual people or people coming out, super. But don’t refer to those stories as “Gay For You” in shorthand. The second you say “gay” when you mean “bi/pan,” you’re erasing us.

“I write stories about bisexual characters and people who are realizing their sexualities as adults, but I market them as GFY because they sell better.” Let me translate this for you: “I don’t care if it hurts real people. Reinforcing harmful stereotypes also reinforces my bank account, so I’m going to keep doing it.”

Marketing is hard, especially when so many books are out there. You want to find your audience. I get that. But think of it this way: do you really want to find the audience that is looking for books that reinforce ideas and misconceptions that result in real-life harm to people? Do you really want your work to appeal to them? And if it does, what does that say about your work? What does it say about you?

Plus, saying, “I don’t really believe this, it’s just how I’m marketing the books,” isn’t a magical shield against criticism. If LGBTQA+ people question your integrity as a result, it’s their right. They don’t have to believe you have good intentions. They don’t have to absolve you or give you the benefit of the doubt. If their real life struggles mean less to you than your bank account, and you’re willing to state that in public, don’t be surprised if people call you out on it. And if you do it again and again, don’t be surprised if people grow tired of it or terse with you.

Write what you want to write. Read what you want to read. But if those things are harmful, stereotypical, or downright bigoted, then you need to own that. I’m fond of saying that there’s no such thing as unproblematic media. As long as we live in the culture we’re living in, that’s going to remain true. But don’t defend it. Don’t argue with the people it’s hurting. And if you’re not willing to listen, say so at the outset instead of wasting everyone’s time. If you don’t like being thought of as homophobic or biphobic, maybe the easiest way to avoid that is to stop being homophobic and biophobic. Maybe stop asking, over and over again, why people think GFY is wrong. And if you’re a reader or a writer who truly wants to read about bisexual characters and portray them accurately, stop touting your stories as Gay For You.

True Blood Oops Day

Hey there everybody! Because of some circumstances that were not great, I didn’t get a chance to record a True Blood Tuesday track. It’ll be back next week, I promise!

Here’s an Itemized List of Thirty Years of Disagreements (the pettiest blind item you’ll ever read, part 1)

This weekend, I burned a bridge that I’d been too busy to bother torching for the past few years. That’s right, this post is about a friendship that became a non-friendship. And while it wasn’t actually thirty years long, at least thirty years worth of “what in the actual real goddamn verifiable fuck” got packed into a single decade.

When I first started writing, I had a wonderful support group. A circle of women who all had the same dream: to become published romance authors. Like an elite team of assassins a la Kill Bill, we each had our own specialty. Some of us wrote romantic comedy. Some of us wrote romantic fantasy. Some of us wrote romantic suspense, or paranormal romance. You get the picture. There were five of us. To protect people, I’ll change their names, except for Bronwyn Green. Because Bronwyn Green is pretty much how this entire story began.

I fell in with this group of women that called themselves The Friday Night Mudslingers after attending one of my first RWA chapter meetings. As I walked past one table, a woman dressed like a forest spirit trying to blend in with the humans caught my eye. “I love your shirt!” she enthused. “If I had your boobs, I would wear stuff like that all the time.”

I’d never met this person, but it turned out to be Bronwyn Green. She sat at a table with two other women. We’ll call one Pam, and the other…we’ll call her Erika. I call her that because she looks very much like another famous writer named Erika.

Erika was as friendly and as engaging as Bron was, though slightly more reserved. When they learned that we lived in the same city, they invited me to join the Mudslingers. Beside them, Pam sat sullenly, interjecting into the conversation that “some” of them were in the group. Not her, I gathered.

I learned early on that there were some unspoken rules Erika expected all of the Mudslingers to adhere to, whether or not we were aware of them. Once, Bronwyn told me a cute story about Erika’s children. It was an innocuous anecdote that couldn’t have harmed anyone, but when I mentioned it in front of Erika, she gave Bron a look that said, “we’ll discuss this later.” Bronwyn told me that Erika had considered this “talking about her”, which was her number one “don’t” of friendships. I could only wonder, if it was so important to her, why hadn’t she mentioned it? Anything from simply telling someone else what you got Erika for Christmas could be construed as malicious backstabbing, so we were constantly on guard.

There was a hierarchy to our clique, and Erika was firmly at the head. She was our leader. She knew The Elements of Style the way some people know the Bible. For an industry outsider, she always seemed to be in on all the latest publishing gossip (being pre-Twitter, this was very impressive). Our meetings were usually held in her home, where she would make elaborate appetizers and we would stay up until “stupid o’clock” in the morning, reading our chapters aloud and working through grammar problems, inconsistencies, and head-hopping. We always printed enough copies for everyone, so they could read along, and at the top of each first page we wrote our names and the date. Why? “Because we had a problem with plagiarism before,” Erika informed me. “Pam stole something from Bronwyn’s story. That’s why she’s not a part of the group anymore. That’s why she acted so weird when we first met you.” Later, she would insist that a mysterious threat mailed to her house had come from Pam, who’d sent it out of jealousy.

Being a Mud Slinger was one of the best times of my life. Without their help, I would have never gotten published. When I joined, Erika was well into the submission process on several of her books. In those days, romance authors sent out query letters, three chapters, and a synopsis, all printed out and stuck in a real envelope and sent through the mail. It was truly an archaic world back then. I envied how professional and calm Erika was about all of it. She received rejections from Harlequin, from Dorchester, from Berkley, and even though they were rejections, they sounded so glamorous. She was a real writer. She made it all seem possible.

Over time, I noticed a few more odd, unspoken rules of behavior required to remain in her good graces. Disliking a book or a television show or a movie that she liked was a personal slight against her. I learned this rule harshly when I said I didn’t like a Sherrilyn Kenyon book I’d tried to read; to this day, I’m not sure if I actually did end up liking Sherrilyn Kenyon’s books, or if I enjoyed them out of fear of being rejected by Erika. This rule had a matching clause wherein if you enjoyed a book or a television show or a movie that she didn’t like, it was also a personal slight. Bronwyn and I loved Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Erika did not. Just a mention of the show in Erika’s presence was unacceptable. If Erika found a new book about writing or a new diet, we were pressured to follow those techniques, too. Only someone who didn’t want to be successful in life would go against Erika’s advice.

Yet even if you did take her suggestions, you were doing her wrong. The moment you became “better” at something than she was, you became a threat. You were now unwilling competition, locked in a contest you never wanted to take part in. When she and Bronwyn and I signed up for Weight Watchers together, she would ask us our weight loss for the week to compare. Always, hers would be more impressive, and always this led to more sage advice about what we were doing wrong.

At this point, you might be thinking, “Why did you stay friends with this person?” Because she was genuinely fun and magnetic. She had a way of making sure you knew that was more experienced than you. That you needed her. That without her help, you wouldn’t make it.

That’s why it’s no surprise to me, looking back, that everything started to unravel after the first of us sold a book. It was Carol, our quiet friend with a quick tongue and a belief in signs from the universe. She sold a paranormal romantic comedy to Dorchester. We were all shocked. I don’t think any of us really believed that one day, our hard work would pay off.

Or maybe we did, but we all just believed that it would be Erika, by default.

During our Friday night critique sessions, things began to feel weird. Erika would constantly allude to “secret projects” she had in the works. Though she never said it outright, she heavily implied that she couldn’t share the details with us because her ideas were so good, we might copy them. This led to a bizarre confrontation in which she scolded me for changing my email address without her okay. I’d used the name of a Celtic goddess in the address, and she’d planned to use that same name for one of the characters in a “secret project” she’d never even spoken of to me. “Now I can’t even write it,” she spat, “because all I can think of is you!” She became convinced that the publishing houses she submitted to were plagiarizing her query letters as back cover copy for other books. She was furious when a common phrase she used as the title of one of her manuscripts was used as the title of another book, insisting that they’d gotten the idea from her.

On my second try submitting to a major publishing house, I received a revise and resubmit letter. Bronwyn Green received one for one of her books, as well. Erika decided that it was no longer worth anyone’s time to submit to publishing houses, and we were all being very foolish. She would look for an agent, instead. She also created a new format for our reading order during critique group. We would draw numbers from a basket, and go in that order. For five weeks in a row, I drew the last spot. For five weeks in a row, she announced that it was far too late in the evening to read my pages. I was hurt and confused, and I didn’t even know why I was. It wasn’t as though she could have fixed a random number draw. It never occurred to me to think it strange that it had never been too late at night to finish everyone’s chapters before, and certainly not for a whole month.

Around this time, Erika invited someone new into our group. Maggie was a very friendly, very Christian woman who carried a handgun in her fashionable purse, and had a handsome family in a Dutch Reform town nearby. Her house was beautiful, and much larger than any of ours. It looked like someone had professionally decorated it and staged it for a magazine every time we saw it. She wore just the right clothes and her hair was just so. She wanted to learn how to write, and we were all happy to have her. Shortly after she joined our group, Erika bought new couches and a coffee table, and painted her living room a trendy color. She started criticizing Bronwyn’s parenting, almost as if to impress Maggie. “My kids only watch two hours of TV a week,” Erika insisted one night, though we’d been at her house for four hours already that evening and her children had been glued to television in their bedroom for most of that time. During one heated scolding, Erika told Bronwyn that she was abusing her children by not getting rid of her cats and keeping a perfectly dust-free house; we all sat stunned while Bronwyn wiped away tears of shame.

Why didn’t we speak up? I have no idea. I don’t know why anyone didn’t speak up for me when Erika took me to task for the email thing. Or why no one said, “But it’s not fair, we haven’t read Jen’s pages in over a month.” The only thing I can think is that we were all so used to marching to the tune Erika played, we didn’t realize we could fall out of rhythm. And we couldn’t, if we wanted to stay in the group. Because once you left the Mudslingers, it was over. You had no more friends. You were an outsider. We had all watched Pam cling to the fringes, desperate for a way back in. We didn’t want to be her, so we kept putting up with it.

Carol’s book was published. I got a three-book contract from Harlequin. Erika told Bronwyn, “I knew it would either go me, you, Jenny, then Carol, or Carol, then Jenny, then you, then me.” I sympathized with Erika. It had to be difficult to see your friends get something you wanted so badly. It was okay, I figured, that Erika couldn’t seem to be genuinely happy for us. Someday she would be. She would get a contract, and then everything would be back to normal. In my prayers (because I prayed back then), I would ask God to please, please let Erika sell a book, so we could all go back to the way things were before.

It would have saved me a lot of time if I’d just realized that things would never, ever be the same again.

To be continued…

Jenny Reads Fifty Shades of Midnight Sun: Thursday, May 26, 2011, part two or “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do…until I want to do it.”

It’s time for another Grey recap! I realize that somewhere along the way, I stopped putting in links to my older recaps. This is because I’m as capricious as the sea. You’ll note that instead of writing this, I could have put the link in.

Also of importance: I’ve noticed the occasional remark in the comments asking about inconsistencies in the book (like Ana taking off her graduation robe, etc.). These are just places where I skipped that passage or didn’t mention what seemed to me to be an inconsequential detail. If there is a massive inconsistency like that, I’ll definitely note it. My nit-pickery is the stuff of legend. I just don’t want you to get the impression that this book has errors in it that it doesn’t actually have. There’s enough badness in it already.

Okay, let’s get inside of this like a skin suit.

Previously, on Grey, Chedward made Ana’s graduation all about himself and his sex wants. Now, he’s leaving the graduation by himself. Taylor tells Chedward that the Audi A3 has been delivered to the Heathman:

Now I just have to give it to Ana. No doubt this will involve a discussion, and deep down I know it will be more than just a discussion.

I believe it turns into, “I sold your car without your permission,” actually.

Then again, she’s agreed to be my submissive, so maybe she’ll accept my gift without any fuss.

She agreed to be your submissive on weekends. Not your full time financial submissive whose property you can shuffle around all willy-nilly.

I call Andrea and tell her to put a WebEx breakfast meeting into my schedule tomorrow with Eamon Kavanagh and his associates in New York. Kavanagh is interested in upgrading his fiber-optic network.

What…what exactly does Christian Grey do? Is he in customer service? How important is Kate’s father that when he wants to upgrade something technical at his business, he actually speaks to the CEO of the company and not someone in sales?

Andrea also tells him that he has to be in Seattle for a charity thing the next night. I wonder if we’ll actually see the charity thing, or if it will be skipped in favor of more stuff about running or working out.

Tonight will be my last night in Portland. It’s almost Ana’s last night here, too…I contemplate calling her, but there’s little point since she doesn’t have her cell phone. And she’s enjoying time with her dad.

You like that little afterthought? No point in calling her, since she doesn’t have her cellphone. Oh, and she also has a life outside of my wants.

Now, we all know that there is no one so skilled as E.L. James at capturing the voice of a twenty-something American male, and here we have a shining example of that sterling authenticity:

Staring out the car window as we drive toward The Heathman, I watch the good people of Portland go about their afternoon. At a stoplight there’s a young couple arguing on the sidewalk over a spilled bag of groceries. Another couple, even younger, walks hand in hand past them, eyes locked and giggling. The girl leans up and whispers something in the ear of her tattooed beau.

This is practically right out of a Kevin Smith screenplay.

Of course seeing these two couples has made Chedward think of Ana and their impossible relationship:

Ana wants “more.” I sigh heavily and plow my fingers through my hair. They always want more. All of them. What can I do about that?

Consider the women you have sex with to be actual humans with thoughts and emotions of their own, that might not always line up with the things you want?

The hand-in-hand couple strolling to the coffee shop–Ana and I did that. We’ve eaten together at two restaurants, and it was…fun. Perhaps I could try. After all, she’s giving me so much. I loosen my tie.

Could I do more?

Probably not, Chedward. You scoffed at the idea of helping her move into her new apartment.

(Underline = Italics)

I’m still astounded at how sociopathic Christian comes off. I know, I know, don’t armchair diagnose behavioral disorders. But he has so many of the hallmarks. He can be charming to get what he wants, he has an inflated sense of his self and what he’s entitled to, he can’t empathize, he was violent as a child/teen, his emotions are very superficial, he’s a thrill seeker, and while he’s very successful in business, we see that he has a terrible work ethic. These are all red flags for sociopathy. And this instance is a pretty good example. He’s thinking, okay, I want to fuck Ana, I want her to be my sub, but she wants more. And he doesn’t think, oh, she wants more as in, she wants love. He’s thinking she wants the surface trappings of a relationship. Oh, she wants more? I guess I can hold her hand and take her to dinner. I guess I can imitate the actions of people I have seen who are in love, and that will be enough. Because he doesn’t understand that it’s not the actions that will make Ana feel loved, but that feeling love results in those actions.

There’s a section break, then Christian goes back to his room and changes his clothes and goes to work out, then there’s another break and he video calls Ros. They use the usual big business-y words and toss around the names of important cities, then he tells her the graduation was fine and then he emails Ana. So the whole thing with Ros is totally unnecessary scene number 4,926,510 for this book.

The email is basically that she looked beautiful and they need to talk about the soft limits. He also decides that since she didn’t call him back that morning, she needs a better cell phone, so they can be in constant contact. But the problem wasn’t that her cellphone isn’t good, it’s that she didn’t have it. Whatever. He asks Andrea to have a BlackBerry delivered to Ana. Then there’s a section break.

Christian’s mother calls and imparts information we’ve already gotten a few times now: that Christian needs to pick up Mia, that they’ll be having dinner on Saturday, that Elliot is bringing Kate to dinner. Grace tells him to bring Ana, and he thinks:

Take Ana to meet my parents? How the hell do I get out of that?

“Sorry, mom, Ana was busy.” There. You’re welcome.

Ana emails Christian back and tells him that she can come over to discuss the soft limits that evening, and Christian emails her back:

I’ll come to you. I meant it when I said I wasn’t happy about you driving that car. I’ll be with you shortly.

Christian prints out another copy of the contract and tells Taylor to pick him up from Ana’s place later.

Before I leave I stuff two condoms into the back pocket of my jeans.

I might get lucky.

This is the most human-like thing Christian Grey has done in the entire book so far.

The A3 is fun to drive, though it’s got less torque than I’m used to.

No shit? NO SHIT? You drive an R8. Of course a supercar has more torque than a compact car.

Christian goes to a liquor store to buy champagne:

I forgo the Cristal and the Dom Pérignon for a Bollinger, mostly because it’s the 1999 vintage, and chilled, but also because it’s pink…symbolic, I think with a smirk, as I hand my AmEx to the cashier.

Symbolic of what? Her vagina? Also, the liquor stores in Portland must be a lot different than the liquor stores in Michigan. If I wanted to buy any of those, I would have to go to a specialty wine shop, or a hoity-toity food shop. Liquor stores here are like, come buy Mr. Boston mixers with dust on the caps and some scratch-off lottery tickets. The floor is almost always chipping linoleum tile, one of the overhead fluorescents is out, and for a business that doesn’t sell car parts, it smells an awful lot like motor oil. #PureMichigan.

Ana is still wearing the stunning gray dress when she opens the door. I look forward to peeling it off her later.

The constant assumption that sex outside of their agreed upon arrangement is infuriating.

I hold up the bottle of champagne. “I thought we’d celebrate your graduation. Nothing beats a good Bollinger.”

“Interesting choice of words.” Her voice is sardonic.

“Oh, I like your ready wit, Anastasia.” There she is…my girl.

It’s funny because he said “beat”, and that’s how Ana views any and all BDSM. As abuse. That’s why it’s so funny. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.

Ha.

I watch her wander into the kitchen. She’s nervous and skittish. Perhaps because she’s had a big day, or because she’s agreed to my terms, or because she’s here alone–I know Kavanagh is with her own family this evening; her father told me. I hope the champagne will help Ana relax…and talk.

So, Christian does notice that Ana is uncomfortable and wary around him. He thinks that it might be because she agreed to the contract. Hey, Chedward? Maybe this is a sign that she doesn’t really want to do it, and therefore probably wouldn’t make a very good sub? He also considers that it might be the fact that they’re alone together. Again, how will this private, one-on-one relationship work out? And he hopes that alcohol will “help Ana relax,” as though this is the only solution. How about talking to her? Not about the contract, not about what you want sexually. Talk to her as though she’s a person and not a sex toy, and maybe she won’t be constantly worried that you’re going to put her in a position where she feels unsafe.

Nah, that’s too much hard work, just do this:

I think I may have gotten some flack for bringing this dude up in a 50 Shades recap before, but I can’t remember why and am doomed to repeat my mistakes.

There’s a brown parcel on the table with a handwritten note attached.

“I agree to the conditions, Angel; because you know best what my punishment out to be; only–only–don’t make it more than I can bear!”

Heads up, that super romantic and totally about spankings quote is, in context, what Tess is saying to Angel after he’s like, “Hey, I had this affair, but please forgive me. You do? Awesome, then we can get married. Wait, you were raped? Fuck it, I’m out. If you need anything, you know where my parents are.”

Super. Romantic.

But you know, it accurately reflects the way Christian Grey would react in that exact same situation.

“A very apt quote.” I trace her handwriting with my finger.

Yeah, I know! Your author doesn’t know, though, and that’s what makes this so tragically hilarious.

“I thought I was d’Urberville, not Angel. You decided on the debasement.”

“Wait, I thought I was the rapist, not the guy who rejects rape victims. PS. have some literary victim blaming.”

“It’s also a plea,” she whispers.

“A plea? For me to go easy on you?”

She nods.

To me these books were an investment, for her I thought they’d mean something.

“I bought these for you.” It’s a small white lie–as I’ve replaced them. “I’ll go easier on you if you accept them.” I keep my voice calm and quiet, masking my disappointment.

Take note, dear readers: Christian will maybe respect your limits, but only if you do exactly everything he wants you to do. Is that so hard?

Look, to all potential submissives out there:

you DO NOT have to allow a Dom to overstep your personal boundaries in order to assure the Dom’s compliance with the agreed upon terms of your consent. Yes, even in a 24/7 relationship. If your Dom is telling you straight out, “If you don’t do this, I’m going to treat you however I want without regard for the agreement we’ve made and that you’re comfortable with,” then RUN.

Ana is asking to forgo hard play, and Christian is saying that no, that’s not a possibility if she doesn’t allow him to overstep her boundaries in other areas of her life. This is example #8375981735981735684756187346581734698609245860-92745986723874561837675923846-09245698273495872349086729457698237459263458623498679234976920384759283475092384769823476908273498672034765827346589723649872349672 of why he should not be a Dom. Actually, it’s reason # that same exact string of nonsense numbers that Christian Grey just should not be.

“You see, this is what I was talking about, you defying me. I want you to have them, and that’s the end of the discussion. It’s very simple. You don’t have to think about this. As a submissive you would just be grateful for them. You just accept what I buy you because it pleases me for you to do so.”

Translation: “Look, if you were a REAL sub, you would–”

Chedward is preying on Ana’s insecurities about her inexperience with submission to get her to agree to stuff she doesn’t have to agree to. If she doesn’t want the books, she is under no obligation to keep them just because he wants her to.

“I wasn’t a submissive when you bought them for me,” she says quietly.

As ever, she has an answer for everything.

“No…but you’ve agreed, Anastasia.”

And accepting gifts without argument isn’t in the contract. She didn’t agree to that.  This is another indication that what is/isn’t in the contract really doesn’t matter. It gives her no protection or agency whatsoever, and at no point in either the negotiations or their relationship does he respect her wishes in anything.

Ana agrees to keep the books, but she’s going to give them to a charity in Darfur, so they can auction it or something.

“I will buy you lots of things, Anastasia. Get used to it. I can afford it. I’m a very wealthy man.”

Read it in his voice. It fits perfectly.

“It makes me feel cheap,” she says.

“It shouldn’t. You’re overthinking it. Don’t place some vague moral judgment on yourself based on what others might think. Don’t waste your energy. It’s only because you have reservations about our arrangement; that’s perfectly natural. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”

Translation: “What you feel is wrong. You shouldn’t feel that way. If you do feel that way, you’re thinking wrong. Don’t do that. This is what’s really bothering you, not that other thing. I know that because I know more than you do, even with regard to your own feelings.”

I know a lot of people throw the term “gaslighting” around these days, but if you ever need a go-to sentence to illustrate the concept, it’s his response there.

What if he had said:

“I’m sorry I made you feel that way. I understand now that because people do judge women who receive money or gifts from rich men, you worry that I see you in the same light. I should have thought of that before, but I’ve never been on your side of it, so it didn’t occur to me. I shouldn’t have pressured you into taking the gift, but please know that when I do give you something, it’s not because I think of it as a payment. I want to give you things because this is how I express my feelings for a person, and I sometimes forget that not everyone would see a very expensive gift as being over the top or pushy.”

Would that have made him “less sexy?” I use the quotes there because there is no way to make Christian Grey less sexy. He is already at rock fucking bottom. In reality, if you did remove his self-centeredness, nothing would be left behind. His entire personality is just the word “ME” emblazoned in ALL CAPS and vomited onto this manuscript.

“Hey, stop this. There is nothing about you that is cheap, Anastasia. I won’t have you thinking that. I just sent you some old books that I thought might mean something to you, that’s all.”

Translation: “Obey me. Other women are cheap, but not you. You’re not allowed to have that feeling. I gave you this very expensive gift, the value of which I will now downplay to make you feel guilty about not appreciating them properly.”

What if he had said:

“Again, I understand that you feel this gift is degrading, but I promise that if you keep it, my esteem for and opinion of you will not lessen.”

But we can’t have that. Because if we had that, we would have a book that is readable and a hero we don’t want to murder, and the crux of Fifty Shades of Grey‘s success is the huge market it had for hate reading.

They stop fighting about the books and open the champagne.

“It’s pink.” She’s surprised, and I haven’t the heart to tell her why I chose pink.

Can you at least tell us? I know that answer is supposed to be so super obvious, but there are so many options. Is it because she blushes? Is it because her ass is going to be red from paddling? Is it about her vagina? I must not understand the complicated nuances of this masterful prose enough to glean the answer for myself.

She raises the cup to her lips and takes a quick sip. “Shall we go through the soft limits?”

“Always so eager.”

It’s…why you came over. And you already spent at least ten minutes arguing about the fucking books.

“Your stepfather’s a very taciturn man.”

Thesauruses are NO ONE’S friend. That shit is how the phrase “masticating emptiness” ended up in my first novel.

They talk about her dad and fishing, and the wine at the reception:

“Yes. It was foul.” I grimace.

“I thought of you when I tasted it. How did you get to be so knowledgeable about wine?”

Wait…

“Yes. It was foul.” I grimace.

“I thought of you when I tasted it. How did you get to be so knowledgeable about wine?”

Me right now.

After they talk about how super wine-smart she is:

I refill her cup. She regards me suspiciously. She knows I’m plying her with alcohol.

Thank you, Chedward, for confirming my accusations from the first book.

“This place looks pretty bare. Are you ready for the move?” I ask, to distract her.

To distract her from realizing that he’s getting her drunk to manipulate her. Not because he cares or is interested in her life outside of his sexual wants.

 “I’d help you move,[...]“

No you wouldn’t, you fucking liar. We’re inside your head, we saw your thoughts on helping Ana move. So what we’re seeing in this scene is you lying, and using this lie to distract Ana from the fact that you’re trying to get her drunk.

He asks about jobs in Seattle, and gets frustrated when she tells him that she’s already looking for one. She’s two days away from moving, of course she was looking for a job. Anyone would assume this, and probably be shocked if she wasn’t looking. He also has never asked her if she was looking for a job, so why does he get to be upset that she didn’t tell him? He wants to know the names of every publishing house she’s applied for internships at, and she won’t give them up. Good for you, Ana.

Chedward pours her more wine, or “liquid courage” as he mentally refers to it, but also worries that she hasn’t eaten. She rolls her eyes at him and then:

Leaning forward, I take hold of her chin and glare at her. “Next time you roll your eyes at me, I will take you across my knee.”

“Oh.” She looks a little shocked, but a little intrigued, too.

“Oh. So it begins, Anastasia.” With a wolfish grin I fill her teacup and she takes a long sip.

“Got your attention now, haven’t I?”

She nods.

“Answer me.”

“Yes, you’ve got my attention,” she says with a contrite smile.

They are not in a scene here. They are negotiating terms. She is off-duty. He should not be ordering her around.

They get out the contract and go over some of the soft limits.

“No fisting, you say. Anything else you object to?” I ask.

She swallows. “Anal intercourse doesn’t exactly float my boat.”

“I’ll agree to the fisting, but I’d really like to claim your ass, Anastasia.”

So back in the day, my response to this scene was something like, just try the butt stuff, and it was met with a lot of protest. I stand by my assertion: Ana, you are the heroine of what has been (wrongly) dubbed the single dirtiest erotic novel of all time. How are you not going to even try butt stuff?

That said, this whole thing is such bullshit. She tells him a limit, and he acts like her asshole is still on the table. Or…I phrased that poorly. She’s not a cat. But you know what I mean. She said no, he says, nah, your “no” doesn’t work for me.

“But we’ll wait for that. Besides, it’s not something we can dive into.”

I bet some of you were waiting for this.

I’m not going to disappoint you.

Here it is.

Thank you, Alyssa, your contribution lives on like…what is it, five years later? Jesus, I’ve been doing this for five years?

 

“Oh yes. It’ll need careful preparation. Anal intercourse can be very pleasurable, trust me. But if we try it and you don’t like it, we don’t have to do it again.” I delight in her shocked expression.

“Have you done that?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“With a man?”

“No. I’ve never had sex with a man. Not my scene.”

“Mrs. Robinson?”

“Yes.” And her large rubber strap-on.

Ana frowns and I move on quickly, before she can ask me any more questions about that.

This conversation confused me when I read the first book, because it’s never specified that he’d tried receptive anal sex. Now we know, but it would have made more sense to tell us this in Fifty Shades of Grey, because it was like, well, okay, anal intercourse is pleasurable and you’ve done it…but you weren’t the one being penetrated. And with all the “HE’S TOTALLY NOT GAY NOT AT ALL SUPER ABSOLUTELY NOT GAY” in that first book, I assumed they were talking about him doing the penetrating. I also think Ana assumed that, too, though I can’t remember what she thought in the other book. It was probably something like, “Holy crap” or “Oh jeez” that lends absolutely no context or clarity to the situation. But my guess is that a woman who had never heard of BDSM probably hadn’t ever heard of a strap-on, either, and just assumed Chedward was doing the giving and none of the taking.

Also, let’s be honest: “But if we try it and you don’t like it, we don’t have to do it again,” is not true. Not coming from Christian Grey. He’s more a “But if we try it and you don’t like it, I’ll convince you that you did by saying that if you didn’t, it’s because of some sexual hangup and you’ll keep on doing it to prove you’re worthy of my extreme kinkiness.”

The move on to other things on the list.

“And…swallowing semen. Well, you get an A in that.”

Thanks, I’ve been practicing.

He gives her either her third or fourth cup of wine:

Steady, Grey, you just want her tipsy, not drunk.

HE IS TELLING US IN HIS OWN THOUGHTS IN HIS OWN HEAD THAT HE IS GIVING HER ALCOHOL SPECIFICALLY SO THAT SHE WILL AGREE TO SEX ACTS SHE MIGHT NOT HAVE AGREED TO WHEN SOBER. It doesn’t matter if that sex act isn’t performed that night or the next night or the next week or month. He is using a drug to get her consent, ergo he does not have her consent at all and he never can, no matter what she signs.

I want to find every person who insisted that he didn’t get her drunk to get her to do sexual stuff and just take this page and smear it all over their fucking faces. I mean, really grind it in there. Probably while screaming, “DO YOU SEE IT NOW?! HUH? HUH, MOTHERFUCKER? DO YOU FUCKING SEE IT NOW?!”

This would all take place in the parking lot of a grocery store, but I’d like to think that I could cheese it before the coppers got there.

They’d never take me alive.

Chedward and Ana discuss sex toys, including vibrating eggs, which Ana thinks are real eggs–so I was right about the strap-on assumption, then–and Christian laughs at her. When her feelings are hurt, he apologizes,  and they move on to bondage.

“Don’t laugh at me, but what’s a spreader bar?”

“I promise not to laugh. I’ve apologized twice.” For Christ’s sake. “Don’t make me do it again.” My voice is sharper than I intended, and she leans away from me.

Shit.

Ignore her reaction, Grey. Get on with it.

What a fucking dick piñata this guy is! Don’t make you apologize again? How about stop mocking her when she doesn’t know what something is? How about apologies aren’t fucking miracle cures when someone’s feelings are hurt? And ignore her reaction? Lovely. Prince fucking Charming this guy is.

They discuss the use of gags. Ana doesn’t want to do it, but of course he explains that they’ll be doing it anyway. She asks him if the reason he ties up his submissives is because they can’t touch him, and he tells her yes, but won’t go into further detail.

“Would you like another drink?” I ask. “It’s making you brave, and I need to know how you feel about pain.” I refill her cup and she takes a sip, wide-eyed and anxious. “So, what’s your general attitude to receiving pain?”

I’m reading this book, aren’t I?

This is where I’m stopping, because there’s not great place to stop for this one. There are still fourteen more pages until the next section break and I haven’t the strength.