Recently I had a dream where Zachary Levi explained to me in excruciating detail why men don’t like me.

It hurt, but it didn’t hurt, because ZL is not someone I’ve ever cared for…even so, that doesn’t change the truth and despite it being a dream it has excavated some very old pain. 

My dream life is often much more vivid than my real life and, in this case, the words in them are not made up, but memories of what other boys said in my youth.

My whole life, from third grade on, I have been hyper aware of my distinct lack of appeal to anyone who didn’t have to like me.

Women and men equally don’t like me, but it hurts more with men because society places so much worth on women’s worth to men and the older I get the more I know I’ve failed at life.

From the time I was 12, my mom always pushed me to be normal. In restaurants she’d verbally nudge me to talk to waiters and it only got worse as I got older. 

My lack of interest in men seemed to both insult and infuriate her, even before I tried to come out. In her eyes I just wasn’t trying hard enough and if I did I’d “get one.”

She didn’t believe in my ugliness like I did because she believed it was only a matter of my tweaking things. Her anger wasn’t with my looks, but with my indifference, my lack of engaging in the efforts to have a boyfriend.

For more than 40 years I have never doubted my attraction to women, even if I  didn't understand it or welcome it in the beginning and still don't to some extent. To this day, I find my strongest emotional and romantic and (this said with much reluctance and even some shame) physical pull to women.

But because I have recently found myself a tad flustered around this guy I know, I have to wonder if maybe I should consider myself queer (a word that doesn't sit well on my mouth since I grew up with it being considered a slur) instead of a lesbian.

 

Early last year Gillian Anderson was looking for people to share their sexual fantasies for a book she was putting together, now due out September 17th. 

She had a link for women to submit theirs to be featured. I so wanted to submit, but knew both my talent and my fantasy would be way too mild. 

This is how I reacted when I saw the initial post:

My fantasy, really, is just something I call the Fully Clothed Comfort Woman in bed with another Fully Clothed Comfort Woman.

As a very unpretty 52-year-old lesbian virgin, I feel highly unqualified to write about sexual fantasies, but on the other hand, I also have always had a longing inside me that has gone on three decades plus, unspoken, because I just don’t know who to speak to about it. None of my friends would understand

They either don’t talk about sex, just like I don’t, they’re completely straight and don’t understand what it’s like to long for someone of their own gender or they’re too busy being married.

I don’t really think that what I feel is a fantasy, I’ve never really let my mind go there because of how I was raised and how even now I’m still conflicted about being gay

I might be underwhelmingly low in my sex drive, but I am overwhelmingly drowning in my romantic side…my fantasy involves finding somebody would understand and not judge that I am, but understand what it’s like to just find beauty and the idea of holding hands with someone and spending the night in the same bed with ease and coziness rather than with frenzy and passion.

Because I've never had sex I don’t think I know what to fantasize about. I just know that my emotions feel like a fantasy.

My fantasy, given all the wreckage that lies behind it, is still rather simple: I long to be another person in another body, comfortable with both and comfortable with the idea of love and sex and not the fear of going to Hell that goes with it.

…wisps of fantasy, strong despite such flimsiness, but never fully formed because of my fears and lack of experience. 

 

Oh my gosh, this!:

“Just the—desire for an ideal, something you think is impossible, so you find it in books,” he said. “And you tell yourself it’s silly, but at the same time you live a secret second life there, despite yourself.” Adrian was nodding seriously, trying to follow. Andrew winced. “And that life feels more real than your real one. It’s just—that’s exactly what it’s like sometimes,” he finished lamely, too ashamed to explain further.

Locus is my main source of info for my speculative fiction and horror TBR titles. Not only does it overflow with oodles of good reads every issue, it also shares about awards, authors and topics relevant to the sci fi and horror communities.

The August issue lead me to this story, which I cannot recommend enough:

http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/the-spindle-of-necessity/

 

I often do not agree with what Lionel Shriver has to say (her views on Critical Race Theory and trans issues alarm me). But I will always admire her for the breathtakingly chilling We Need to Talk About Kevin. Another of her titles, Property – Stories Between Two Novellas, also reminds me that just because you don't agree with someone doesn't mean you can't find value in things they say or write.

 

Another middle of the night, seemingly random, thought popped into my head as I found myself flashing back to using Prodigy back in the early 90s.

I have both good memories and bad. "Good" being I used to belong to a Quantum Leap message board where some of us would share QL fanfiction. It's the only time I ever remember writing something people responded to with encouragement. 

In the story Sam, "trapped" in the late 70s, and Al worked together to save a singer named Alison Blacksmith, who died young in the early 80s.

Details long forgotten are now in my head. She was loosely based (with much sincerity in my early 20s mind) on Karen Carpenter. The circumstances behind the fictional singer's death were different, though, as even back then I knew no singular event could be tied to or prevent (or simplify) eating disorders.

A few people wrote me wanting the second part, but I never posted it, as a week later I was banned from using Prodigy by my parents who had discovered I had also been using Prodigy as outreach for struggling gay youth (not officially titled as that back then).

My pen pal T. and I had not been corresponding in any inappropriate manner, but the way I accidentally came out to my parents could have been handled so much better. That was an absolutely horrible time in my life and yet I think of Prodigy now with both remorse and a weird kind of nostalgia.