My Favorite Grrrls In the Literary World

Just want to take a minute to give props to two of my favorite authors.

I don't usually go all fan-girl over, well, anyone, but I kind of do for Jen Lancaster.  Even though our styles are completely opposite - I can't rock LaCoste shirts and I don't think she's into leather and spiked heels, when I picked up Bitter Is The New Black, I was hooked.  I could relate to what her and husband went through went the dot com bubble burst, albeit on a much smaller scale.  I may not have physically stood in the unemployment line clutching my Prada bag, but I filed online with my tub full of Pradas upstairs in my closet.  I laugh out loud every five minutes while reading her work.  The grace (and satire) with which she handled everything that happened to her gives me hope and inspiration.  If I'm feeling depressed or throwing myself a pity party because I've destroyed my credit and can't afford to live on my own right now, I pick up one of her books and my mood lightens, instantly.  Her writing also gives me hope and a reminder that if I'm unhappy, I am the only one who can turn things around for myself.  [Getting the actual fire to do it lit under my ass is a whole different beast.]  
You can check her out on Facebook here.
You can also find her on Twitter here.
Ok, maybe I fan-girl over more people than I care to admit, because I have a deep affinity for Erica Jong.  When I picked up Fear of Flying roughly 30 years after it was published, the iconic book that turned 40 in 2013, I was blown away and immediately devoured everything she has written.  She has the ability to write so frankly about sex and relationships and not make them seem dirty or taboo.  She's got the guts and gusto to write what she feels, and damn is this woman educated.  I would love to pick her brain, but I wouldn't even know where to start.  I can relate in some way, shape, or form, to every one of her books, particularly Any Woman's Blues.  [It's intense.  I highly recommend everyone read it.] 
You can check her out on Facebook here.
You can also find her on Twitter here.

Gimme Some Sugar, Baby, Part II

"One night stands can be nothing more than a few hours of pleasure, or they can be the beginning of something much more important, and it's impossible to tell until it's too late...
[That is] the real danger of a one night stand.  Not that it will lead to nothing, but that it will lead to everything.  In this way, casual sex is excruciatingly hazardous.  Those who are not ready to have their lives changed should probably abstain."


To be continued...

Gimme Some Sugar, Baby, Part I

Currently reading.  My favorite essay so far is called "Sex With A Stranger," written by Susan Cheever.

"If you are looking for love, sexual intimacy can be a shortcut.  It is among the fastest ways to get to know another person.  During sex, we literally and figuratively expose ourselves.  We show physical parts that are usually kept covered; we display our private likes and dislikes.  In its moments of unconscious response to physical pleasure, the body reveals a great deal of information:  a need to dominate, a difficulty following suggestions, an inability to express desires.  If we have trouble letting go or if we are painfully uncomfortable with how we look, it often shows up in the two-person drama of the sex act."


This little essay has inspired me to write about my experiences with one night stands.  Stay tuned.

The Demon Lover by Erica Jong

Dedicated to Buzzard

Unable to bear the falsehoods -
the girls calling up
each time you came
to my bed -
I fled
And now I dream of you

Knowing you are
dreaming of me,
knowing we will always be
each other's muse, forbidden lover,
witch and warlock
joined by a filament of flesh,
lover through the looking glass.

I dream of you
as the witch
beside her husband's hearth
dreams of the grandmaster
of the coven,
dreams of burning stones
that sting the flesh,
while her good husband
strokes her rump,
muttering words
of tame domestic love.

You are my demon,
the devil in my flesh,
the wild child,
the boy with eyes of flame,
the bad seed I took
into my body,
that infected needle
I craved
more deeply
than health.

On every seashore
I see you waving your arms
out of the whitecaps
as you drown
only to be reborn
in the foam
between my legs.

In every bed
you appear, sexual dybbuk,
mocking my lovers
with your twinkling blue [brown] eyes,
and the crooked cane of your cock
smelling of the pit.

You are trouble, double trouble,
triple trouble,
the wrecker of peace,
but you make
my cauldron boil.

I dream of you always
as I lie
in the sheltering arms
of another.
I dream of you
as the condemned witch
dreams of her end
at the stake,

when, lashed to the burning pole,
she will offer up her flesh
to become smoke,
her hair to become ash,
her soul to be carried away
on the wings of the air,
marrying, marrying, marrying
the final fire.

Excerpts From...

"...the illogic of fact has made the history of beautiful women coextensive with the history of miserable, depressed women."

"These days the only female role more entrancing than the darkly, distraughtly bad is the small town sweetheart who drips sugar and saccharine for all the world to see but is in fact full of lust and evil (which are one and the same in woman) and malice and bad thoughts in her secret, sinful Jungian shadow life."

"...the world does not have room for women with big, strong personalities - it simply will not tolerate their existence past a certain point, so they just kind of have to behave periodically - if they're smart."

"But it is strange that all the qualities that are supposed to make a woman desirable also make her a target of disquiet and distrust."

"...it seems that male fear of world's free-wheeling, devastating, difficult and complicated women is actually obviating a hell of a good time."

"Most guys do not want to get involved with a girl on fire - the ones who do seem only to want to add fuel to the flames, but very few seem interested in finding a bucket of water."

"Feminism, and art that has a feminist agenda, serves to remind us of all the things we could be, all the shackles we can shed from our lives if we wish. It reminds us that we can be anything we want to be this time around."

"People romanticize insanity because they believe it is the thing behind the art; in fact, it is the thing in front of the art, the roadblock and police barrier and phantom tollbooth that you are pushing against."

"Linda Evangelista said she doesn't get out of bed for less than $15,000 a day. Somewhere on earth there are women who don't get INTO bed for less than $15,000 a night. And I guess the rest of us have learned to settle."

"What is anyone going to say to the many of us out there who have been confronted by some version of a man's violent temper and have found ourselves excited, pulled in, taken in, turned on? How can we deny the draw, the obsessive grab of images and pain, whose force has no equal and goes unopposed in a society that has denied us the ecstasy of a god, of a religious explosion of delight, so that happiness has come to seem ho-hum and only our pain - our deep, bloody, undeniable pain - gives us the sense that we can feel at all?"

"...raise [their] daughters as if it's possible that they will grow up to be President of the United States or CEO of Microsoft or the doctor who finds a cure for AIDS or the economist who discovers a way to end the inversely proportionate relationship between unemployment and inflation. Raise your daughters to laugh at any man who even THINKS about throwing a punch, and raise them to be people with Filofaxes full of activities that are too fun and important and fascinating to be disturbed by a blow to the right eye. Raise your daughters to always think that any unpleasant situation - be it with a man or a manager or any of the expendable and fruitless annoyances that ruin our lives - just isn't worth it. Nobody NEEDS this, I don't want it, I'm outta here, there are better things to do, anyone who disagrees can fuck off and die."