Another angry ramble…
I should be in a good mood. No check that; I should be in a great mood. Yesterday, we went downtown and I got some new Levi's and a second controller so hubby and I could play Portal 2 together. Hubby checked our bank account and we are in good financial shape compared to this time last year, when we had roughly 80 euros to last through two weeks. My own sales are finally up enough where I could afford a cover job, and the next cover is already one-third paid for. I came home to find that Kate from The Future Fire Reviews had delivered a lengthy and detailed critique of The Life and Death of a Sex Doll, and gasp, she even went looking for hidden meaning and symbolism.
And for part of yesterday I was STOKED, especially over that review. The ultimate writer's high had me, a glowing review where someone looked deep between the lines and saw not only the surface story, but the ideas I was trying to convey to the reader through my characters and dialogue. And this reviewer guessed right on 98% of her interpretations. That's such a high number, I won't even bother pointing out where she was wrong. After a review this near perfect, it's a trifle that she missed one of the bonus questions. This is totally an A+ review, with a gold star.
A LOT of pro reviewers don't do this kind of critical deep scan, and I've repeatedly had reviews that were positive, but which made me sad because the report read, "there's nothing here but fluff." I can draw hidden pictures in the clouds for you, but if all you want to see is the cloud, I can't force you to squint and use your imagination. I also cannot be subtle with you. This only leads to misunderstandings of the worst sort. So just like the reviewer says, some themes, I feel I need to "beat you on the head with." That's because I tried to be subtle in earlier works, and it didn't work. Live and learn.
Somewhere around 10 PM, the high wore off completely as I realized that even if that is close to a perfect review as I'm ever gonna get, it really won't change my circumstances. I still need…something. I wish I could define what that something is, because every word I try to fill in the blank, I can't have those things. I'm not being pessimistic either. I really can't have anything on my little list of wants.
I told hubby last night, "I have this dreadful feeling that one day, I may stumble across the right book to make 100,000 sales in a month, and I'm still going to be depressed because nobody really understands me." And it's a strange thing, being a monster, telling people I am, and asking them to understand me on my terms. Because people refuse to see me as I am. I'm something cute and harmless, a former victim who climbed her way out of the bullying hole. It bothers me that outsiders cast me in this kind of role, but it's because I can never get people to see a complete picture of me. I can show you every aspect, but you choose which facets to focus on. A lot of you choose to look at my positive side while refusing to acknowledge that there's a much larger dark side. But most of you can't understand why your cheerful myopic view depresses me. Then there are others who only focus on my negative aspects, who only read me when I'm complaining and will never bother looking at my creative side.
It is true that I got out of the state where I was bullied as a kid, and I became a world traveler while my bullies rotted in the one horse town where they were born, stuck in dead end jobs and single because their mongoloid attitudes couldn't even attract the dumbest women. I'm not making that up. I've been back to my home town after traveling, and I got all the gossip while I was in town. The women took me in as one of their own. (they always did, though. That's one thing I've always been proud of Texas for: the women there are fucking awesome despite the men.) The gossip gals told me that all my dreams had come true, and all the people who hated me are hated and ignored now. That's poetic justice, isn't it? So, shouldn't I be happy?
Every day, I have people who tell me they love me. And in my own way, I love them too. Of course, my love is wary and cautious, because I have to worry about personal boundaries. I'm not allowed to touch any of you. God, I want to. You don't know how many times in public I've felt the urge to walk up and embrace someone. Dude, chick, old fogey, teen; doesn't matter. I long for physical contact, for tactile sensation. It's not even really about sex. I just long for a real connection in a world where people hate to be touched anywhere. So I live most of my life online, feeling increasingly bitter about being a prisoner in a world where I no longer want to work toward the future. I want someone to hit reset, because I'm tired of people poisoning my planet with toxins, and I'm tired of people poisoning each other's minds with moral judgements. But everyone else think status quo is worth pursuing. So that's where we're stuck. Forever.
I live in a world that advertises SEX, SEX, SEX, but then punishes anyone who should actually fall for the lies in the media. I live in a world where I'm bound to my husband because of societal obligations, and any attempts to explore my sexuality now that I finally have the right genitals is called cheating. I haven't even done anything, and already, I live with guilt because I want to explore. I want to find out what feels good to me as a woman, and I can't.
With most of the people I talk to, I don't think they get that my problem is being a sex addict in a world where all sex of every kind is dirty. And please don't hand me bullshit about how it isn't. Year after year, I'm drowning in a flood of your morality in news articles about who's fucking whom. And if the articles are bad enough, the comments section of every story is toxic poison to further kill my faith in humanity. Every infidelity, you punish with your lectures and condescension. Every affair is open to the public, because our private lives are never truly private. Then out of the other sides of your mouths, you claim to support diversity. Apparently, you tolerate it so long as diversity doesn't turn into intimacy.
Completely random tangent: Yesterday, I saw a picture of Pee Wee Herman, posing with fans for the first time in years. And it reminded me how one of my childhood heroes was thrown out of kids entertainment for masturbating in a porn movie. Not a fetish porn movie, and it wasn't like he was jerking off to a rape scene in a horror film or something equally disturbing. No, this was the most natural, heterosexual reaction to watching porn, and his career was ruined for decades because of prudes.
Every day, in every way, straight people have reminded me how you rule the world, and you fucking hate your genitals with an insane unreason that I have never understood. You protect the genitals of your children like personal possessions that belong to you, even from the exploration of other children. You've codified sex as a crime and even put children on lifetime sex offenders lists for a natural act. That kind of discovery between children is somehow "unnatural" to many of you. But having a ninety-year-old nurse explain puberty with a lousy slideshow is? I at least admit I'm crazy, but you straight people think the word is too divisive to apply it to yourself.
This is why I'm in a lousy mood. Because I'm preaching real diversity and acceptance and being told I'm full of shit while the vast majority of the world is preaching intolerance and suppression of human instinct. And part of me feels guilty for saying "maybe the rest of you need to stop persecuting sex." Drop the sex offenders lists, stop hanging scarlet letters on adulterers, and stop treating queers like they want to eat your kids. I probably seem like the crazy unreasonable one because I keep shouting at everyone these days. But I'm not the society shaming teen mothers about "making bad choices." I'm not the part of the society that pokes its nose up the ass of every gay man, into the crotch of every transsexual. I'm not the one putting virtual chastity belts on the kids in a vain attempt to indefinitely preserve their "purity."
At every turn, I've declared myself outside of this mess. I'm an alien looking in on your world, and I've asked people why their societies need to torment each other over a physical act built into us either by natural design or by God. Either way, it's a part of us, a part of our shared experience with each other. And way too many people treat it like the filthiest thing they've ever done. That's actually shitting, by the way. And we all do that too. And we're all shamed by that act too. Makes no fucking sense, but then nothing about society makes sense to an outside observer. To me, you all look crazy. But then I'm the one who wants to molest everything. Hell, hand me your puppy and I'll have a tactile ball with them too.
I'm making myself more upset and bitter because it's occurred to me that the world will never grow up and stop obsessing over sex. There will be no Star Trek future for any of us, because instead of looking to the stars, societies never stop staring in each other's pants for all the wrong reasons. And I'm going to die being the lonely, guilty, angry person who hid in a room to avoid hurting others, while the rest of you will die content despite all the harm you've caused indirectly with moral judgments and shunning.
This a positively rotten way to sell books, isn't it?
