The Linus Blanket

This is completely unrelated to the 52 Books project…it’s closer to what my old Myspace blog was, ages ago.  I miss that blog and, while it came out of a dark time in my life, I miss that time and space.  I think something similar might be helpful right now.

I’ve recently been informed that I’m basically losing my mind.  I’ve been told that I’m losing my shit on a fairly regular basis, and more frequently than is normal even for me.  Although I maintain that (a) I’m not, and (2) if I were to be slightly less hinged than normal, coming slightly unglued at the edges, I’d certainly be justified, I have to admit that the asshole who told me that might have a point.  Maybe.  A small point.  I’ve called him Damaged since I met him, so he may know a thing or two about fucked-up-edness.  (That’s not as mean as it sounds…I told my best friend that I met a Tall, Dark and Damaged guy.  Only one of those names stuck around, although he is still all three).

My stress level regularly hovers around “Friday the 13^th and a full moon in a city emergency room…” so I don’t necessarily notice when it goes to “…and the zombies are attacking.”   But they’ve been attacking, and winning, for awhile now. 

I don’t really like change.  It’s a Cancer, nesting, I carry my house on my back kind of impulse.  I have this intense need to feel secure, but I also have this thing that says nobody will ever take care of you, so you have to protect yourself.  I’m sure with years of psychoanalysis I could figure it out, but I suspect it’s related to being told that nobody was going to protect me as a kid.  I’m just spitballing there…I could be wrong. 

This kind of understanding of the world drags me into two places: first, because nobody is going to take care of me, I’m suspicious of anyone who tries.  Psychotically suspicious, even, especially if it’s someone who might actually care about me, and specially especially if I actually need the help.  (I can take help from someone I don’t know well, when I don’t really need help, perfectly easily).  I tend to treat an offer to help me with something when I clearly need it like it’s an offer to eat candy and play with the puppies from a guy with a mullet and a windowless van.  And, apparently, being treated like a creepy child rapist might be insulting to some people.  (Maybe I should treat them like non-creepy child rapists.)

Secondly, I try to substitute physical security for emotional security, which works perfectly adequately until I don’t have the same level of physical security that I’m used to.  Say, and again this is just an example, I pick up and move to a different state.  I love living here, but from a business perspective it’s expensive and risky and I’m paying rent and a mortgage and I still can’t find an indie coffeehouse I like to save my fucking life and even when I try to go to my clear blue ocean place, I have to fight my way through an army of theme park freaks because the closest Sephora to where I live is in the middle of goddamn downtown Disney. 

So, the physical security takes a hit, or a few, and then my mental state which has been really leaning on at least I’m not going to end up homeless goes absolutely batshit.  That’s where I am right now…I refuse to recognize that I might have any backup from anyone else, and the things that usually calm me down are gone and I don’t know if they’re coming back.  I feel like I lost my Linus blanket.  I didn’t realize that I felt this marooned until right now.  I’ve been white-knuckling it this whole time, and I’m really tired of that now.  

A Caress of Twilight

A Caress of Twilight

Laurell K. Hamilton

Reading this series is sort of the literary equivalent of eating Annie’s boxed mac and cheese instead of the neon orange powdered stuff, or peanut butter Puffins instead of Cocoa Puffs. 

I’m perfectly aware that if you didn’t have hippie parents, that comparison means nothing.  You’ve probably never heard of Annie’s or Puffins.  I don’t so much care…I did have hippie parents, and I ate homemade yogurt and unsweetened oatmeal.  If I had to eat it, you can handle hearing about it.

My point it…it’s literary junk food.  It may have some redeeming qualities, but it’s junk food nonetheless.  Whatever.  I happen to like Annie’s mac and cheese and peanut butter Puffins.

I also like this series, for one big reason: the open, structured, functional polyamory of the Unseelie sidhe culture.

It’s very different from the open, structured, functional orgy culture found in Anne Rice’s work and in so many other fantasy-genre authors.  (Not that I’m opposed to functional orgies.  Literary porn is the bestest porn ever).  Hamilton’s work reads like it comes from a place of knowing how polyamory works in the real world.  It’s not a two guys for every girl kind of thing, it’s a tonight is my night, tomorrow is your night, and we will deal with the rest of it as it comes.

It’s unusual that fiction involving polyamory addresses jealousy.  And it’s unusual that it’s unusual, because that’s a cornerstone issue in those relationships.  “I tried to be hurt, jealous or even miffed that he might have been playing slap and tickle with Marie, and I just wasn’t.  Maybe it was because I was sleeping with the other men.  Maybe to be truly jealous you have to have some pretense of monogamy.  I didn’t know why, but it simply didn’t bother me.”

The book occasionally brushes past group sex, which it does as truthfully as possible, given that the main character, Meredith, is literally a faerie princess.  It’s not cop-out, bullshit two-on-one masquerading as group that some people cling to.  (Yeah, boys, that’s directed squarely at you.  If you want the girl+girl(s) to play in a girl+girl+guy scenario, you have to be willing to help out with the other guy when the ratios are reversed.)  I love this part, simply because the men are interacting with each other: “Doyle moved from beside me to put his back to Rhys…As if they’d arranged it, Rhys rose from the pillows to his knees and showed clearly that he was nude.  He rolled Doyle’s long braid in his arms until he came to the end and began to undo the ribbon that bound it…Rhys was working Doyle’s hair free of the braid.  I’d seen Doyle with his hair free of that braid only once.  Only once had it been like some dark living cloak to shroud his body.”