it is not a yam

[oiran]

I had this nice, long post typed up in the stupid update window and then my browser just...closed. Went away. The web-based update is not now, nor has it ever been, my friend.

I would wager that I am the only person I know who has a sprouted sweet potato sitting on her desk. The delicate, tender sprouts tremble in the breeze from the vent overhead. I found it in the back of a pantry cupboard and I know it's garbage, but it was just too strange and pretty to throw out without memorializing it in some way.



The long story I typed up about a breakdown of our truck in the middle of nowhere 10 years ago, hostile cowboys and Mexican migrant workers, a vivid dress, and the only explanation for including the story that I could come up with (I think I was the sweet potato in that instance) will just have to be imagined, since I haven't the will to retype it.

After her visit, gothphyle left me with a book, The Erotic Edge: Erotica for Couples, as compiled by Lonnie Barbach, PhD. Please note, Alee did not recommend this book. I have read half of the stories and I have yet to find anything "erotic." I have, however, read many euphemistic references to nether regions and a great deal of stilted dialogue. In the foreword, the editor describes the reader's dilemma when it comes to erotic writings as being between "decency" and "lusty sexuality." Oh, man. Decency.

It's nearly entirely het, half written by men and half by women. None of them are good writers, so the editor's suggestion that we play a little game by trying to figure out whether a man or a woman wrote a given story is rendered uncompelling by the lack of story quality. Once again, I learn that women like reading about intimacy and hate any overtones of violence or crudity (it's because we're decent, yo!) Men, what with their visual fixation, like to write and read about pink parts squooshing together with an explicitness that may abrade a woman's tender sensibilities. For instance, as a woman, I should find "pink parts" and "abrade" together in a sentence distastefully violent.

The editor is supposed to be some sort of sexpert, though I'm not exactly sure what her credentials are. She does admit to a bias when it came to choosing stories for this volume, but she presents those same biases as facts when describing the differences between men's and women's interests and preferences.

In order for an "emotional" scene to resonate with me instead of just seeming hysterical and trite, there needs to be character development. Someone placing "his hardness" against "her moist sex" while they call each other darling is not really what I'd call emotional writing.

*has tantrum re: published erotica*

~~~

Went to get a cup of coffee at coffeeshop (Coffee Rachel was not there). Saw an acquaintance I haven't seen in months. She looked at me, shocked, and said, "Are you shrinking?"

Yay!

~~~

back to work.

p.s. It is okay to laugh at the potato glamour shot.

Comments

[rivier.livejournal.com]

Plant it! Pot, soil, some water, cool temperature, lots of light. What's to lose?

That yam is *crying* out for your nurturing fingers!

[velvetglove.livejournal.com]

Heh. Actually, I will probably go out and place it in the compost heap, where a great many other plants are already growing. Our garden is a mess of giant weeds, a thousand cayenne peppers on unruly bushes, and a great many snakes. My glamorous potato will fit right in, and since it's been living in a sunless cupboard for about six months, it should do all right on its own once I set it free.