Do I make you feel squirmy? Good.

Today is my first day off of Vicks Sinex Aloe in two years. I have an addiction to it because my deviated septum means my right nostril is always making mucus. When I lay down and roll on my side, that mucus travels to the other side and irritates it, resulting in a buildup in both sinuses. I have had this problem most of my life, and throughout childhood, it was my habit to suck the junk back through my nose and into my mouth and play Spit or Swallow?

If what I had in my mouth was small and mostly liquid, then it wasn't so gross to swallow because it's like having a mouthful of thick saltwater. Really not that bad. But some mornings I'd suck back a huge patch of leather booger PLUS a huge wad of viscous snot with an irony taste of blood and pus. This is going in a toilet, cause no fucking way is that crap going into me for digestion. I don't care if it's mostly protein, I still don't want it. I feel confident that most people would agree with me if said nasty clot was in their mouths. Semen is actually nicer, and I spit that out too. (Sorry guys, I'm no swallower. That shit is nasty.)

So, back about two years ago, when cold season hit, I started taking Vicks. I'd done it before, leading to a one year addiction, and quitting wasn't easy. That's because without Vicks, breathing through my nose requires constant playing with my nose to clear it. So I can sit there and pick stuff out or snort water and let the water loosen stuff before I blow it out. Either way, I'm still sticking my fingers up my nose. So lady-like, right? But with Vicks, I spray, wait, and sploosh, one minty booger to play Spit or Swallow? with. And as an added bonus, for the next six hours, no boogers at all. How could I not want to be addicted to breathing free without picking my nose all the time?

All this talk of snot and boogers is actually a segue into my real topic, making people uncomfortable. I've had some reviews, both public and personal lately, where people said they wouldn't read my stuff because it made them feel awkward, and they don't read anything that pushes them out of their comfort zones. More recently, though, I was talking to a sci-fi writer who was complaining about fantasy books showing up in his precious sci-fi category at Amazon. I reminded him that some writers were fusing fantasy and sci-fi, and his reply was he knew, and all of those books were "unreadable crap."

This isn't true. What's true is, this writer has a personal comfort level for his genre, and nothing outside his market is worth his time. I would question the quality of a writer who can only draw experience from one writing field, and who as a reader refuses to acknowledge the talent of writers in other fields.

I do not consider myself a writer of any one field, but when it comes to my reading, I've always been evenly split between fantasy and horror. I'll also read romance, teen romance, YA of many flavors, and yes, sci-fi. A lot of great white hype tropes in all of these fields are dull to me, so I look for books at the fringes of these genres, the fusion stuff that other people go, "Oh, that? That wasn't a real fantasy/horror because of ____."

Which is how I found Anne Rice, because lots of people said her vampires weren't horror. They aren't. It's totally a dark fantasy, and people calling it horror were judging the series by the wrong standards. It isn't written to scare the shit out of you. It's written to keep history buffs turning pages. And it's really great history until you realize that it's ALL history lessons told by whiny privileged white men. (Even Pandora was a man. Yes, he was. Go back and reread his book. He says he was a man in a woman's body. So there were NO female narrators in the series…from a series written by a woman. Is Anne trying to say something without admitting it to…himself? I KID, really! Or, DO I?)

Um…anywho, the thing is, I'm not saying read stuff that bores you. If you're reading a book and it puts you to sleep, then the problem isn't with the writing's challenge level so much as its level of engagement. I've put down books unfinished many times due to boredom with the story or the characters, so if Anne Rice isn't your thing cause you think the stories are dull, I can accept that. Some of Anne's later books bored me cross-eyed, even though I enjoyed most of her series and standalone novels.

No, what I'm talking about is if you stopped reading Lasher because Mona Mayfair seduces Michael easily, without him trying to say much to resist a little girl. Then it isn't that the story is boring, but that it's saying something ugly about people during an intimate moment between two people that the reader doesn't want to see together.

I'll give another example from Piers Anthony's Firefly. There's a woman in that story who details her introduction to sex at the hands of a molester when she was five. The story jarred me hard when she started talking graphically about the experience, and it triggered a lot of uncomfortable memories for me. Each time the book talked about sexuality in this way, it hit me hard, and it made me seriously consider putting the book down. But I didn't, and I made it all the way to the bleak ending. Ever since then, I've wondered how other people took that book, and whenever I've brought it up, reactions have been pretty much against it. All of those scenes were "unnecessary" according to most readers. Even though most of the story revolved around this character and her past.

Sex and reproduction were also major themes in the story, so why the scenes were really deemed unnecessary is because they make the reader extremely uncomfortable. And this is the case whether you've experienced abuse or not. Seeing abuse happen, no matter how mild, should be a discomforting moment in a book. So part of the reasons the scenes are there is to jar the reader and make them feel ill. As far as I was concerned as a reader, Mission Accomplished. It's the same for most readers who dared try Firefly, but a lot of those readers then deny that that was the point. Instead, they insist that the writer is evil, and that the book and even the topic are "unnecessary" in fiction.

In another horror story, The Hollower by Mary Sangiovanni, there is a character who is sexually abused as a child, but the story only shows that a man with a bear came to her in the park. Nothing else is shown, so when the evil monster shows her a bear and she breaks down, there's nothing to really emotionally connect me as a reader to her reaction. The same is true of all the abuse in the book. Another character was abused by his father, beaten for every little thing. But again, the abuse is only implied. It was alluded to, but actually showing abuse in a horror novel, a book meant to discomfort and horrify, is taboo. Why? Because you don't abuse kids. Ever. Not even fictional kids, and not even if your whole point is to talk about abuse.

Compare that to It, in which Stephen King details the abuse of every main character, even touching on racism through Mike and explaining Henry's behavior through narration about his abusive father. At the end of the book, King has the kids reconnect psychically by having sex. This is for most readers an "ick moment," but I read the book at 12, and as a victim of bullying AND a sexually active child, that was the most honest writing I'd ever seen in my whole life. It was the book that made me want to write. And the thing is, the consensual nature of the minor gangbang made it less discomforting than the scene of abuse in Firefly, which I read at 16.

The tone of the writing makes the scene less vulgar and more about the redemptive qualities of intimate contact. Where as in Firefly, the act is one of molest, an exploitation of a young child even if she thinks she's the one in control. Her willingness to go along with her abuser's desires makes me want to skip pages and get as far away from that moment as possible. The same is true when she tries to defend her molester and ends up getting him sent away anyway. Both stories cover the same topics of sex and abuse, but King's version shows how the victims support each other, and the sex in their story is transformative. But while the same can be said of the sex in Firefly, that it is transformative, the resulting adult is so flawed that she openly contemplates showing her son how to masturbate. It's a difficult scene, but there is a point, to show the side effects of sexual abuse in spite of early intervention. Everything in the book was needed, but that doesn't mean it's something you're supposed to agree with or feel validated by. Quite the opposite, you should be going "My God, this is awful." Because it is. BUT, there is a point to it, even if you don't want to see it.

Let me switch gears and talk about Lolita. For years, I went to bookstores and went to find this book, only to stare at it and wonder what mystical power it had, that everyone knew the book, but no one would actually read or discuss it.

Years later, while writing Little Monsters, I decided to look the book up in Project Gutenberg, allowing me to get the book without admitting to anyone that I had done so. And…I was severely disappointed. I mean, I get why Humbert was talking so obliquely about his chosen topic, because he's on trial, and he's testifying and downplaying what he did. But his crime with his young lover pales in comparison to what Humbert does to her mother. He has her locked away as hysterical so he can go seduce a little girl. Meanwhile, his romantic interest has already been deflowered by a boy near her own age, and what Humbert has to offer doesn't look so hot with experience for comparison.

But the thing is, for all the power Lolita has in talking about pedophilia, NOTHING HAPPENS. The sex scene you're all avoiding is "And that was that." That's the whole sex scene. Really, you can uncover your eyes now. Before that, the only other thing that happened in the book is Delores and Humbert dry hump while reading a magazine together. And I had to read that passage twice to confirm that something illicit had just happened. Again, I understand why Humbert is erring on the side of discretion, but I don't understand how a book with nothing in it can have so much power over so many people.

I see a lot of people who call themselves avid readers who still only read from one field, and who only read stuff that confirms their views. Part of me is tempted to blame this on the Internet and our ability to filter out what we don't want to know about. But then I think about Lolita, and about how people know the book exists, but no one has the guts to read it and find out what a snoozer it is. So, how did it sell so many copies if no one has ever read it? Obviously, lots of people must have, and must still do, because there's always a print copy in any store I go to. So why is it that no one talks about it? Because no one talks about child abuse. Ever. It's like you honestly still believe in the fantasy "maybe the problem will just go away if we ignore it long enough."

You can't make problems better by avoiding the topic, and if you avoid it in your fiction just because it makes you squirm, then you're being willfully ignorant in every facet of your life. Which may allow you to remain a qualified armchair therapist, but it still leaves you woefully equipped to deal with reality when it's someone in your family or you who is the victim.

Please, push your boundaries and your comfort zones in your fiction reading selections. Read about something that makes you anxious or upset. These are genuine emotions, and if the author is making you feel anxious for a fake character, then they are doing their job right by making you feel something. You can't always feel validated and happy while reading. Choosing to only read for escapism is embracing ignorance and calling it truth. It's intellectually dishonest, and it's depriving you of the chance to grow as a person by experiencing discomfort and, possibly, enlightenment.