Great Things I've Been Reading, January 2017

This round-up has been on hiatus over a few particularly chaotic months, but is back for 2017. A few old stories and articles popped up in here because I was reading voraciously over that period - I just was encumbered by workload, a novel, and family events and illnesses. This month the round-up comes in three flavors: Short Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Non-Fiction Related to a Certain Odious Fool.

Short Fiction
"Ndakusuwa" by Blaize M. Kaye at Fantastic Stories of the Imagination
Pour one out for Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, which is closing its doors. It paid more than double the professional average for short fiction, and steadily gathered interesting voices and great reprints. As I've gone through my back catalog, this one stuck with me. It's a flash fiction biography of a genius, from the first time she disassembled a clock, to all of the times she left her parents, always for further and less imaginable shores. Perfect poignancy.

"Mamihlapinatapei" by Rachael K. Jones at Flash Fiction Online
Another day, another title that's tricky on the tongue. You'll have to read to the end to learn the meaning of the title, and it's a joyous revelation. The line "For these children, there has never been a world without dinosaurs" gave me such a smile. It's exactly the sort of thing I crave people to speculate in our worlds of speculative fiction. This flash is saturated worldbuilding about coexistence and what it means to have to switch cultures and languages. Jones is, as always, really good at writing characters switching.

"Monster Girls Don't Cry" by Merc Rustad at Uncanny Magazine
My writing naturally lends itself to long scenes, which leaves me fascinated by writers like Walton and Zelazny, who are so comfortable with compact scenes. Rustad's story is a case study in how to do extremely quick cuts in prose, with some scenes lasting only a paragraph, but still being poignant. This takes such advantage of the short fiction form to build to some wonderful emotions.

"The Psittaculturist's Lesson" by Marissa Lingen at Daily Science Fiction
A cracking story of an assassination attempt on an empress whose magic and guards have stopped every avenue so far. More than their, she surrounds herself with parrots, and it's in teaching them language that the twist comes.

"My Grandmother's Bones" by S.L. Huang at Daily Science Fiction
When an editor asked for some good flash for a possible anthology, this was one of the first recommendations I emailed to him. This tab stayed open for a couple months because I relished in revisiting Huang's meditation on an adoration that existed in orbit with love and respect. It's a beautiful and concise view of a relationship.

"In Memoriam: Lady Fantastic" by Lauren M. Roy at Fireside Magazine
It opens complaining about a sexist obituary for one of the world's first superheroes, and it rolls on with rich personality from there. It's a great intersection in poking at superhero culture and at how we treat women, blended perfectly. The account of a fictional superhero life colors in how the narrator grew up, through the Halloween she dressed as Lady Fantastic, and her impacts later in life. Remarkably sweet.

The Halloween List: Train to Busan and Flu

Today I’ve got two hot films from Korea, including one of the biggest Horror movies of the year. It’s going to be a good day.

But before we start, I have to talk about an unfortunate parallel. Our first movie, Train to Busan, is fictional Horror about zombies on a train headed to one of South Korean’s biggest cities. But this October, the real Busan was struck by a massive typhoon. If you have any spare money, please consider donating to relief efforts.

Train to Busan

For all the buzz this has gotten as Korean revitalizing the zombie genre, I’m almost surprised to report that Train to Busan is… just another zombie movie. There is no great innovation in Horror or change to the zombie formula in this movie. Instead, it’s two hours of people stuck on a train, trying to fend off zombies from the rear cars. If somehow you are craving more zombie-smashing and tragic losses of survivors, then this is for you.

X-Men is My Star Wars

Star Wars or Star Trek? My answer is X-Men. Because I grew up with them, I like my SciFi Extra-Special-Implausible. Not growing up with Star Wars, I confess to never “getting it.” When the Prequels landed, I was unfazed. They were just another trilogy about a Mary Sue with his cast of not-as-special-people who were important because he knew them. They weren’t as well made, but they were clearly the same model. Today, the greatest thing about Force Awakens is watching other people get so much out of it.

I told you that to tell you about ADD. In my lifetime ADD became ADHD, then became a "myth," a thing doctors made up for money, or lazy people made up as excuses. The current scorn for its sufferers is garbage. I have it, and have since childhood - the same week I received medication, my grades skyrocketed. Even then I struggled with reading. Superhero comics, with their mixture of art and the written word, were a huge part of introducing me to the desire for literacy. Here, nothing was more invigorating than X-Men comics, and particularly Wolverine.

So half my readers just closed this article because, ugh, another Wolverine fan right?

The rest of you: hold on for four more sentences.

Because he became particularly meaningful to me at Age 13, when medical malpractice put me in full-body pain for the rest of my life. As opposed to Superman’s invincible skin or Batman’s eternal dodging reflexes, Wolverine feels every blow. He’s shot, stabbed, even eviscerated, and the good artists captured that the pain registered on his face. He could survive anything, but only win by powering through the pain.

KILL ME Props: Twitter, Jessica Jones, and a Thursday with Chronic Pain and Depression

It could be worse.

This is what it's like when it's bad.

Thursday is one of those nights. I intended to push four miles on the elliptical, but by dusk it feels like my spine is being pummeled whenever I sit up, and lying down makes it worse. The medication is definitely failing, so I can't even walk downstairs. My mind is thick with the fog of pain regulation, by all these alarms telling me to escape my own skin. I can't write or edit. I can barely make it through a couple paragraphs of anyone else's work. My friend's story beta will have to wait.

Twitter is something I shouldn't check when the pain is like this. Most often when people are happy, they enjoy the moment and neglect social media. You have more time for wifi when you're bored or angry. It shows.

Tonight people are outraged about anti-Muslim sentiments in America and Europe. Islamophobia will kill more innocents by the end of the year than all the terrorists attacks of the last month, but I can't get my brain to form cogent comments on it. Tweets cluster around the House's bigoted bill to prevent more Syrians from taking refuge here, but most tweets are just pissed in general. I want to support them because this could landslide, but am tag-teamed by the mental exhaustion of the pain, and the sense of worthlessness that depression always uses to dissolve good intentions.

Counting with George (Non-Fiction Fantasy)

Not the hospital I visited. VAH at Salem, MA.

This happened. It happened to me, and happens to others too often.

“You’re going to need a pre-op x-ray/MRI,” Dr. Man said, releasing my knee. For an old guy who specialized in joints, he handled mine brutally. I instinctively clutched the knee, which throbbed more from his two-minute examination than in the three weeks since it my fall.

“Pre-op?” I asked. I did not like the sound of that. It sounded like an ‘op’ was inevitable. I couldn’t afford any ops right now.

“Yeah,” he said. He took up a pad and scrawled something out, not looking at me. Apparently there was nothing more to tell me.

It’s difficult for me to ask people questions when they clearly don’t want to talk– I feel guilty for desiring the information. Only as he looked at the door did I squeeze out,

   1. “Do you know how much this is going to cost?”

He asked, “The MRI or the surgery?”

“Either. Both. I’m uninsured.”

“Oh.” He looked at me like I’d farted. “No, I don’t know. It’ll be bad. You can talk to billing.”

A Pain in the Neck

A little update since the blog has been quiet during convention season. Both 4th Street and Readercon were delights, and I'm greatly looking forward to Otakon this Friday. But travel just got harder.

Five weeks ago I did something bad to my neck. I cannot remember a singular incident, but it was around then that I began experiencing persistent shooting pains down my neck, through my left shoulder, and down my left arm. It seemed like an exacerbation of problems I've had in my shoulder ever since a botched muscle biopsy in my teens. It feels a lot like something sticking your finger in an electrical outlet, at random, every couple of minutes.

About two weeks ago I had a hard exercise session, and really pushed my cardio. Recent meds have caused me to gain a lot of weight, and I wanted to push against it. Instead, something in my neck popped. That was the first time I couldn't feel my left arm anymore.

The arm regained feeling, and I never lost motor control. Since then the shooting pains have randomly started appearing in my right arm to compliment the left. These symmetrical pain is rare enough that I keep trying to pretend that was just one-- okay, just two-- maybe just three times, not a pattern.

I have a doctor's appointment in August, which is the earliest they could take me. But for now, it's a distraction and a worry.

And If I've randomly frowned or grimaced at you lately, please excuse me. I promise that you're not a pain in the neck.

The Pain of Special Needs in Mad Max: Fury Road (Some Spoilers)

For this discussion I'm going to use "special needs" to refer to people with an array of physical and mental problems. There is no term I'm wholly comfortable with that collects things so ranging. "Disability" doesn't even cover it for me, and is sometimes more uncomfortable. But know that preference of terminology changes from person to person. This is always easier talking person-to-person, where you can tailor to what makes individuals comfortable.



You probably don't know Nathan Jones. He was a professional wrestler who quit because, at 6'11" (2.1 meters), travel became incredibly painful. He didn't fit in an airplane seat or on any motel mattress, and good luck driving a rental car from town to town with legs that long. He quit WWE in 2003 and went into film. To date, I don't think I've seen him in a film that acknowledged his size could be a problem in life. He tends to play villains, because it's easier for average people to see giants as powerful and dangerous.

He plays Rictus Erectus in Max Mad: Fury Road. He lumbers through the movie with very few lines. When he speaks, it sounds like the character has a learning disorder. That's typical of giant villains.

Since he has no individual agency, always acting in obeisance to his murderous father (Immortan Joe), his only further characterization is a breathing apparatus strapped to his back and plugged to his nose. He chases heroes, overpowering any he gets his hands on because Dad told him to. Late in the movie, a hero finally manages to stab Jones's breathing machine. Jones crumples, possibly suffocating, and my whole theater laughed.

I mean, the whole theater laughed except me. But my lungs are probably what'll kill me, so I'm biased.

Submissions Are Open for Viable Paradise, OR, Why Leigh Wallace is My Gosh-Darned Hero

They teach you about symbolism, too.

While I was in the hospital, submissions opened for the Viable Paradise workshop. It's run by the incomparable James Macdonald and Debra Doyle, and attracts superstar staff-authors like Scott Lynch and Elizabeth Bear. If you're a beginning or emerging writer, you want to go to VP. It's held every October in Martha's Vineyard, a week in a cozy hotel space with a couple dozen other aspiring authors, and a host of professionals who critique your work and educate on the underpinnings of storytelling and the publishing industry. I learned more in one week at VP than any year of college. If you take your craft seriously, you could not ask for a better week.

But that's not why you want to go to Viable Paradise. There's something more.

Through shared interest and mutual support, some classmates came to feel like family. The workshop improved our game through insights and streamlining. In the year after my class, I sold my first pro-rate short story. Many classmates sold their first pro shorts, too, or pro flashes. One friend giddily explained to me that she was paid more for one anthology acceptance than everything she'd ever made in writing before.

That's not why you want to go to Viable Paradise, either.

If you fast-forwarded a year after VP17, you'd find that my body turned on me. Close friends, including some VP alums, were rightly scared for me. My health has always been poor, but over the course of nine months my body rejected the meds I'd always relied on, and then four new experimental courses of medication. The pain became so disorienting that my ability to multitask disappeared. I spent two hours writing symptoms on a piece of paper so I could read them at the doctor, because I was incapable of having a casual discussion about them. My ability to write, and finish stories, dwindled.

And if you care about writing, then this is why you want to go to Viable Paradise.

Because a month ago I was lost in the wilderness of illness, completely unable to edit my work anymore, despite having what I'm sure was the best short story I've ever written. It was a promising first draft, and became a phenomenal third draft, and in December I could tell it just needed its science rigorously checked. The story is about a sympathetic, even funny, protagonist with albinism, one attempt to counter the Evil Albino trope. And while I'd done a lot of legwork to depict albinism accurately, I could not check my own science further. Paragraphs felt insurmountable. The pain, and the brain-fog that chronic pain brings on, were winning. Having your best work just outside your grasp is purgatorial.

Leigh Wallace, one of my classmates from Viable Paradise, e-mailed me an offer. She'd check the science of the story for me. She'd read up on albinism and ocular disorders, and flag whatever I'd gotten wrong or left confusing. She'd point out my problems and then all I'd have to do was fix them.

She turned the story back over to me in days. The way she marked it up? It was so accessible that I corrected the entire story in a weekend. And it was a hard weekend on the health front, my friends. Leigh was my gosh-darned hero.

Now the story is out to markets, and I am on a sixth course of medication. At least for today, I'm thinking clearer and making the most of that clarity. I'm beta reading a classmate's novel.

That's why you want to go Viable Paradise. The greatest gift a workshop can give is supportive relationships with other smart writers who can have your back when your back gives out.

Submissions are open here. If you get in, congratulations! My advice is to spend half your time working hard at your craft, and the other half helping your classmates with theirs. That's the gift.

Happy Birthday: In Defense of the Worst Year of My Adult Life

At the last hospital visit before my birthday, the nurse said I’d had a bad year. Nurses tend to be far more positive, so when she said that, it stirred me.  In the last couple months my mother, friends, fellow writers, and even acquaintances I didn’t know were following my story said this was a bad year for me. I don’t want to agree.

I turn 33 on Thursday. Last week I realized that will mean it’s been twenty years of this neuromuscular syndrome. For our anniversary, my body began rejecting medication, and the latest thing the doctor put me on only endows me with new and unwanted side-effects. Much of 2014 was waking up every two hours with muscle spasms, of being unable to think straight, and being so beat down I couldn’t even write anymore. Family begged me to take it easy on myself, to just take May easy. May slips so easily into June, especially when all you do is suffer.

Part of me knows I’ve done more than that. As my mind’s been bogged down by pain, I reach for oversimplifications more than I ever used to let myself. Depression is alleged to work like that. So I dwell:

ReaderCon 2014

A short update this evening: despite my health, I will be at Readercon.

It feels like my system is responding to the new medication. I've already written more in the last three days than in the last month, and I was actually able to do some chores tonight.

Kids: when you get old, you'll feel pride in chores. Sorry.

This means I'm good to go to my first convention since February. Readercon is a lovely little lit-focused SF/F convention in Burlington, MA. No, not Vermont. Burlington, Massachusetts. Yes, my friends were confused by it too.

It attracts a wonderful collection of authors. While I'm bummed to see Elizabeth Bear and Scott Lynch will be absent, Max Gladstone is making what I think is his first appearance. I just finished his Three Parts Dead, which is quite fun and I'd love to pick his brain about it.

So, I'm packing and hope to see people there.I may be scarce at the evening parties, but I'll be as social as I can. Feel free to say hello. If my health is terrible, I'll apologize and excuse myself. Allegedly, I'm very friendly at these sorts of things.

The Purgatory of Illness (and Jokes)

This picture will make more sense
by the end of the essay.

We weren’t sure what was wrong, but this week doctors believed either my body was rejecting all of my medication or I’d had a nervous breakdown. Even if you know nothing about my condition, we can all agree that if you can’t tell which of those two things is wrong, you’re in deep.

If you know nothing of my condition, it’s possibly because I scarcely write about it. It’s never appeared in my fiction, rather drawing me to sympathy and study of the illnesses and disabilities of others. But ever since I was thirteen and the recipient of some radical medical malpractice, I have had a crap immune system and have been in constant pain in every part of my body. Most recently, it began taking my hearing and my ability to focus thought.

If you didn’t know that every time we’ve ever talked I’ve secretly been in pain, it’s because I’ve been conditioning myself since puberty to manage the load. Two months ago, when I could no longer speak in coherent sentences, and when walking to the mailbox became too much of an ordeal for me to imagine (literally: I could no longer think straight enough to envision the trip), pain management was all I had left. Empathy seemed to evaporate from my mind. Beneath compassion, humor and creativity, all I had was the ability to not lose my grip on my body.

Today, I’m proud of that. I’m proud of having held onto that much when my entire nervous system turned against me.

At the time, I had no idea what was going on and felt guilty for bothering so many people about it. This is why The Bathroom Monologues have been particularly quiet for the last two months. I’ve completed no piece of fiction in the entire period; editing a novel became excruciating in ways I wish upon none of you. That little review of X-Men: Days of Future Past went up a week late because it took me an entire week to type that many coherent sentences.

If you’ve made it through those five paragraphs, then please bear with me for this: I don’t want you to apologize for my pain. Some of the worst parts of the last two months have been people frowning and trying to commiserate with me. All it does it perpetuate mood and fatalism.

Instead, join me in regarding the few instances of hope people gave me by being ridiculous. The first time it felt like anything could improve was walking through a Wal-Mart (of all places on earth). Out of the freezer section came a cart, pushed by a teenaged girl in huge, furry boots. Sitting inside the wire cart (not on the baby seat, but lounging inside the food carriage) was another teenaged girl in huge, furry boots, with as demure a grin as grins can allow within their city limits. They were half-grown adults enjoying something ridiculous, chatting about what to put on their Eggos.

I’m pretty that the next time I smiled was in learning someone had the gall to name their band “The Style Council.” Or it was a reclusive friend linking me to the strangest Vines he’d found that month.

Of everyone, my mother was the most worried for me. It’s something moms excel at, isn’t it? Some days she’d invite me out, I think just to give me a change of scenery. Funny to think asking someone to drop off the recycling is altruistic, yet in my easily overwhelmed state, I showed up to the car half an hour late. I was sure she’d be furious, and was prepared to apologize into her frustrations.

Instead she had found a rope swing and was happily spinning around a tree in the yard. She didn’t even hear me come out. She reminded me what a damned good role model is.

This is what I need, and in bulk. Don’t wish me well, and don’t put on grave tones, and don’t say the hardest part is over or is yet to come. I’ll take your prayers (and thank you, Father Andre and David Twiddy – that really did mean something to me), but I’ll also be glad to see you decorating this world with quirks. It reminds me of my purpose.

Faking Disability - #fridayflash

“He's not disabled. He doesn't look in pain, I saw him smiling yesterday. Sometimes he jogs; he must, since I've seen him in sweat pants. Cripples can't exercise.”

“I've heard him laugh. His back can’t be that bad, that's just something he tells the government. He's lazy. He's a liar. Sure, sometimes he goes to his room for two hours, sometimes for a day, but he comes back acting normal. Bet he’s jacking off, and if he can jack off, he's not that sick.”

“When he staggers around like that it gets a lot of sympathy, but he’s not a hunchback. He could stand up straight if he wanted. I’ve seen him do it for photos. It’s an act.”

“No, he’s probably drunk when he’s staggering like that. I had an uncle who liked to get fucked up, but the government didn’t pay him for it. Being fake disabled is a sweet gig.”

“How much do they pay him?”

“Too much, that’s how much, to just pretend like that. It’s depressing to look at, with that stupid tremor. How's he make his leg go like that?”

“Depressing because it’s an act?”

“…Yeah. Yeah.”

Fundraiser in Memorial of Amanda

So today's post was supposed to be asking you to donate to the fundraiser for Amanda. She was a lovely young woman, cousin to my friend Lillie Webb, who struggled with Takayasu's Vasculitis, a rare and vicious auto-immune disease. She had to be put into an induced coma and had insanely unfair bills coming her way if she ever woke up. Lillie set up a fundraiser to help with those outrageous bills.

 

And then, on Monday, Amanda passed away. I'm deeply sorry for her entire family.

Before the news broke, I posted to Twitter and Facebook with messages like, "If this young woman wakes up, she'll wake up unbelievable hospital bills." It felt wrong, if not downright evil, to include phrases like "If she wakes up." It wasn't so much jinxing – my belief in jinxes is sporadic and less canny – as it was feeling that speaking of such an outcome was unfeeling towards Amanda and her family. It's wretched such an outcome came true and befell this family.

The hospital will still charge Amanda's family for her treatment and the procedures, and now they have funerary expenses stacking up on top of that. It's a morbid part of our economic system and a burden we can help them with. If you have anything you can spare, Lillie has kept her fundraiser open right here.

It would mean the world to Amanda's family to know that there were people who cared. Please spread the message and donate if you can. Thank you.

Bathroom Monologue: The Catch

The breath caught in Ade Akingbola's throat for the last time as the doctor explained his heart condition. Well, the second to the last time, and as he looked at x-rays and listened to possible surgeries, he calculated to not permit the true last catching of breath for a damned long time.

He explained to the others that they'd be losing their second-best shortstop. How he loved softball, and he'd still come, and still bring the home-made limeade, though he'd add less sugar from now on. That, too, was a loss.

More doctors, these cardiovascular elites called "specialists," explained that the condition was spreading to his lungs. Except "spreading" here meant "atrophy" or "corrosion." In a month, it was in his bones too. How did your heart rob your bones? By being too weak.

In a month the softball season started up again, too. By then he needed a wheelchair. A second wheelchair, actually, a motorized one after he could no longer safely move him. The effort, you know, was often hard on people.

The spring was too hard on too many people. Ade only had to visit the hospital three times a week; his friends had to lose at softball on four. He couldn't play shortstop, he couldn't even yell to support them. He could dump vodka in the limeade, though, and by Week Five, he strongly suspected it was helping more than their coach. They still lost – he'd been their second best shortstop because all but Nelson and Idrissa lacked reflexes – but they were cheerier about it an hour later. Sometimes they played morning games hung over, and no hangover changed how badly they lost. Sometimes they came closer to winning, sliding into first while trying not to throw up on the opposing team.

Ade watched every game from his mechanical chair, a sippy cup of water to keep himself hydrated and an iPhone full of cardio stats he had to monitor. There was, it appeared, an app for your heart turning against you. An app for it taking your lungs and bones with it.

He used the phone to count the unhappy winners. Team after team waddled off the field as softball season grew deep, complaining about their backs, frowning at their bats, squinting at their cars as though they hadn't played a game for several hours, as though softball had been a square traffic jam and the dugouts a miserable off-ramp preventing them from hitting their cars. God, Ade hoped he'd enjoyed playing more than all these winners did. He remembered himself having loved it, but also remembered complaining more than he liked, the mere memory making his breathing speed up, which he couldn't abide. Not if he wanted to postpone the last time his breath would catch in his throat.

Ade Akingbola found his lips smiling – had to raise his hand and feel his mouth to be sure of it, and moving his hands idly like that was no easy task anymore. He was fondling his own smile as a winning relief pitcher, who'd shut out Ade's friends for the last three innings, grimaced, spat chaw in the red dust, and walked for his Volvo. Ade pushed the switch to wheel backward, to get out of the miserable winner's way. The miserable winner wouldn't look him in the face; looked him in the chair, sure, briefly, before ticking his head away. Winning must have been so hard on some people.

Bathroom Monologue: Mother-in-Law Vs. Mother of her Granddaughter Redux

“Oh God, can we just leave? I can’t take the stares. It's like I'm meat.”

"You look great, honey."

"You think?”

“For a human wheelbarrow? Yes! You should be proud.”

“…for a what?”

“It’s your body. You should be proud of your decisions, like the one to put on more pounds here and there.”

“I’m carrying a child!”

“Not in your thighs, deary. But don’t make excuses. Own it.”

“I haven’t even gained that much weight. My doctor says I’m at the dead-on average for seven months.”

“Dead-on average for the McDonalds generation, sure. But when I was carrying your husband? I was tight as a deer. Almost sinewy.”

“You have that look in your eyes sometimes.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing. Can we go?”

“We need to get dinner for Christmas, don’t we? Got to feed that fetus. And the rest of you.”

“Oh my God, you’re making more people stare.”

“If you can’t take the stares, then maybe you should take the stairs more often.”

“What the hell? That’s bad for the baby.”

“According to whom? When I was carrying Tim I lived on the seventh floor of a tenement with no elevator. The super always said I was very tight. When she stared, it was out of admiration. Those stares would have been grounds for divorce in six states.”

“This explains so much about Tim.”

“What was that? I can’t hear a thing in here. You'd think shoppers would use their in-door voices.”

“I said you’re not going to see this baby until she’s got her Masters degree.”

“Goodness, it’s noisy in here. Maybe we should leave. Want me to push the cart? We know how you feel about exercise.”

“…That’d be great. That’d be great.”

Bathroom Monologue: Ghost Culture

I've never enjoyed waking up early. My body just did it to me, as it did a lot of things to me in my childhood, which is why I had to live in the Special Wing. No one else in the bunks was awake, so I sat up and pulled my blanket over my head, turning myself into a human tent. I don't remember when I started doing it, only that from my earliest memories, it felt better than lying in bed. It's like a denial of the day, or at least a stay of execution.

My bunk shifted with as someone else climbed on. I tensed up, afraid an orderly would chastise me for not sleeping, but this girl lifted the foot of my covers. She was no older than I was, with spindly arms and legs and splattered with freckles, and perched there, draping the end of blanket over her head as though mimicking me. Like everything other kids did back then, I thought she was making fun of me, even when she spoke.

"I like playing ghosts, too."

Bathroom Monologue: Fuzzy Kind of View

The bandages on my wrist itch, and I'm scratching them for a while, for so long that my chin gets comfortable on my chest. For a while I forget whether my eyelids are open or closed, until the bed creaks and I slide left, into Sherri's side. She sits down beside me, you see, which I don't see because these new drugs retard my system. That's what Carlos said they'd do, and he'd know, and he was right.

Sherri puts an arm around me like Carlos was never allowed to in the hospital, tucking my shoulder into her flabby armpit. She feels like dough taken out of the oven too early, and she smells like sea salt and basil, and I dread what she's been cooking while I've been in the hospital.

"Getting drowsy?" she asks, or prods. I can't tell which. I used to be able to. The differences used to annoy. Before these new drugs.

"Nah," I say, shaking my head briskly, trying to wake myself up. I get more tired with every swipe of my head. Dr. Preisblatt's drugs have reversed the way my body wants to act. "I'm good. I'm great. I'm the best." I repeat things more often now.

"Because you look drowsy. It's about time you slept."

Man of Steel Podcast and Woman of Steel Fundraiser

Today's offering is a twofer of links:

Firstly, the first-ever one-man Consumed Podcast. Because Nat is on set and Max is in California, I ventured alone to Man of Steel. It's a shorter episode than usual, where I have to go give it up for Snyder and Cavill outperforming my expectations. There's also a short Spoiled segment at the end, arguing against the film's one major misstep. I can't spoil what that is, though, unless you listen.

You can download Consumed: Man of Steel
right here.

This episode is dedicated to Vira Gunn, our second link. Vira is a wonderful young woman who I've had the privilege of knowing since I was in high school. She has struggled with serious health problems for much of her life and fought through every one of them. But recently her neurological disorder mounted and she suffered a catastrophic shunt failure, requiring three surgeries in three weeks. It's wiped out her savings, her family can't afford to visit her, and she is in far too much pain to deal with this.

Because I've known her for over a decade, I can vouch that this cause is very real. You should not have to stay up worrying about money when the nurses are demanding you sleep post-op. I have been stranded without financial help post-op and it bankrupted me. She does not deserve this. We can help her.

So if you can donate anything, it's welcome. She has a PayPal account set up right on her Tumblr. If you can't afford anything right now, you can tweet this, share this on Facebook or Google+ or Reddit or wherever the internet is found.

Thank you for reading, and listening. I hope you enjoy the podcast.

Very Inspirational Blogger Award 2013

Franny Stevenson recently gifted me with her latest blog game. The Very Inspirational Blogger Award. It's been a couple of years since this one has come to The Bathroom Monologues, so I was curious how the rules had changed. They are:

1.) Display the award logo on your blog.  
2.) Link back to the person who nominated you. 
3.) State 7 things about yourself.
4.) Nominate several other bloggers for the award.
5.) Notify those bloggers of the nomination via comments.

Not too complicated. These "state things about yourself" rules have gotten trickier, as by now I believe I've revealed at least a hundred things for various awards. I've decided to go with seven reading facts in anticipation of my first book shopping spree in three years, coming up this weekend. I'm very excited.

1. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World was the first book where I stopped fearing for first person narrators. Though being chased by terrifying dinosaurs, I realized he had to survive in order to tell me the story. Teen revelations, man.

Bathroom Monologue: Message for Mona Liddel

"Hi, I’m calling for Mona Liddel. I just wanted you to know that I’m your son.

"This isn’t a crank call. You put me up for adoption in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1995. You left me a toy airplane, which I kept until we lost our house in a factory accident. I… I’m your son. I’m not crazy. I got your information from the adoption center.

"We’ve met three times. You think my name is ‘Jesse’ – it’s not, it was my dog’s name as a kid, and I panicked when you asked that time while we were waiting in line. I don’t even know why I had to see you. I’m not a stalker. I just recognized you in this coffee shop, and came by the next day at lunch to see if you’d return, and got lucky. And then I promised I wouldn’t go back again today, but I got a call from the hospital. That’s why I’m actually in town – there’s a great oncologist who specializes in kidneys only eleven blocks from here. Howard Kleinman, he smells like fish food. After they called, I couldn’t help it, and I almost came over to your table today. I’m actually sitting across from where you were having lunch.

"Damn it, I sound crazy. Mo… Mrs. Liddel, I’m dying. It’s my kidneys. I’m not looking for an organ transplant or anything—Kleinman says the onset was too rapid anyway. It’s a freak problem that might have had to do with where I grew up. There was a factory nearby that processed a lot of chemicals, and it exploded, and really, you don’t need to know about that, because I’m not calling you because I’m dying.

"I guess I’m calling because I’m not brave enough to walk up to you. This is easier, and I need a little easiness right now. I’ll be at this table for at least another hour if you want to come back. See me, yell at me, or whatever.

"You’re beautiful, by the way, when you don’t think anyone is looking. All three days now you’ve gotten that way, with the long stare, like something big is on your mind. If you wanted somebody to talk to about that… I don’t know.

"I wish I’d inherited your cheekbones.

"Okay? Okay. I hope I see you again some time. Otherwise, I guess, goodbye.

"Yeah, goodbye.

"Oh God, my name’s Kevin. Your son’s name is Kevin.

"Okay, goodbye."