On Dirty Girls

Pardon me, but I have to get something off my chest. Or more accurately, my thighs and ass.

I'm recently returned from a short trip through western New York, northern Pennsylvania, and northern Ohio on my way to Akron, trying to dodge bad weather hammering Cleveland and Erie.

I like Ohio in many ways. The people are uncommonly friendly, from hotel desk clerks to crowds milling in line to enter Akron's gorgeously renovated Civic Theater. The weather, while wintry, has more sunshine than I get at home. Drivers tend toward courteous, letting you into their lane.

But there's one thing I loathe about Ohio. I first noted it more than a decade ago, and it seems to be worsening. I see it at highway rest stops, restaurants, hotels, stores, academic buildings on college campuses, sports stadiums, museums, movie theaters, comedy clubs, and music venues large and small.

Ohio women--surely not all of them, but far too many--hover above the toilet seat rather than sitting down. They piss on the seat and often the floor as well. They do not clean it up. If you're the next woman and not paying attention, you're going to seat yourself in somebody's pee. If you are paying attention, you get the pleasure of wiping up some stranger's urine.

Oh, sure, I've gone to the next stall, and the next, and the next, living one of those weird dreams you're having because you really need to pee but haven't waked up yet, to no avail. It's not that some inconsiderate woman has hover-peed. It's that a great many do. At a place with a half-dozen stalls, it's not at all unusual to find every single one of them sporting a wet toilet seat.

This does not happen in neighboring Pennsylvania, by the way. You use a public restroom in Pennsylvania, the seat is likely to be dry, same as in most places.

So what is it about Ohio? My theory is that there's a basic distrust of and contempt for other-ness. In one's home, for instance, and perhaps at one's job, one's church, etc. surely these women sit. They presume the bathroom that looks clean is clean and the basic hygiene of the others using the bathroom is fine. They're right.

However, they also presume people and places they don't know are dirty, that sitting on toilet seats which only look clean might make them dirty, too, that the default for other women is unclean. And so they hover, making the seat unclean for others.

Who's dirty?

I take offense at the attitude that anyone who's not One of Us is presumed dirty. This isn't just about toilet seats but carries over into politics and social mores, and it's every bit as ugly as somebody's cold piss on the seat.

Yup, I'm in There

The internet is all the proof required to know many, many people cannot reason at the most basic level. The family member who thinks schools need to teach logic in middle school is absolutely right.

I'm a fangirl--it doesn't matter which actor--and there's a woman I see on various fan sites who is certain the actor is gay. She reads between the lines of every print interview in which he mentions a male friend or colleague, gleefully reposts pictures in which he stands near any other handsome actor (while ignoring those of him near or touching gorgeous female actors), knows his few public relationships with women are for publicity's sake, ignores the pregnant girlfriend, and generally sees what she wants to believe whether it's there or not.

Among her favorite arguments to convince others (which seems to be her mission in life) is a novel written by a gay director who has worked with the actor. A character in that novel is very probably based on the actor, and that character is gay and has sex with the narrator. Obviously the director had sex with the actor, right? Is this not proof?

This is where her logic fails.

Novelists, including this director, put themselves into their characters. There's a bit of me in everyone I write, male and female, hero and villain, gay and straight and in between. I'm the curvacious wife--and her neglectful husband, the new lover, the older woman who becomes a friend, the elderly neighbor headed for a nursing home, the harried doctor, the stuttering man who prays aloud, and the cop.

Writers add many details which are not drawn from their own lives. They're inventions, fantasies, what-ifs, intended to develop the character or propel the plot.

Do I fret over my looks like Natalie? Yes. Am I long and happily married like she is? Yes. Would I add a very attractive person we'd only met that evening to our sex lives? Nope. I made that part up, like the director probably did his gay scene with "my" actor's character.

Using our own lives, and minutia drawn from those around us, is how authors make their characters seem real and rounded, with lives which existed before the events in the book and which will continue after its end--unless we kill them. I work hard to give my characters backgrounds and childhoods, opinions, beliefs, hopes, fears, families, friends, weaknesses, doubts, jobs, frustrations, tempers, senses of humor, hobbies and interests, and everything else real people have which make the simplest lives rich.

I make it all up, peppered with a few tidbits from real lives if they fit in the fictional mosaic of my characters' lives.

On Writing vs. Having Written

I've been hanging around in-person and online writing communities for a lot of years now, and there's one phenomenon which is a constant. If you, too, observe or participate in any group of writers, you've no doubt seen it yourself.

There are a lot of people who call themselves writers who write very, very little, if at all. I don't mean this month, or even this year. We all know life takes some crazy turns which can eat all of a person's available time or every bit of energy, creativity, or motivation they can muster.

What I'm talking about is the person who likes to consider himself a writer among his own kind when he only talks the talk and rarely walks the walk. You know these people. They're the self-identified writers who talk about their story, who figure out what actors at what ages would play their characters, who draw maps of the settings or create the world where it takes place, who generate detailed character biographies and determine the limits of the monsters' or aliens' abilities, who run potential titles or plot ideas past their "fellow writers"--but do not sit down before the blank screen or page to put down the words to make it so.

These people don't want to write. They don't like to write. What they want is to have written, and what they like is to call themselves writers.

On Second Place and Accepting a Half-Assed Effort

I live near the flagship store of Wegmans, the grocery chain ranked best in the US by Consumer Reports. It earns its reputation across the board--competitive and consistent prices, the quality and variety of goods they sell, how they treat their customers, how they treat their employees, their contributions to the community. It's all first-rate, as shopping experiences go.

There's another grocery store chain here, with locations nearer to the less prosperous citizens, although no stores inside the city itself. Not long ago they closed a fairly decent location and opened a new store nearby. What the hell, we thought. Let's shop there, try it out.

For a new store, the produce section was tiny. Where Wegmans offers much variety within types of foods--say, seven or eight types and sizes of tomatoes, five of onions--this store had very little depth. Still, a lot of our list was produce, so we bought what we could and made substitutions for the rest. (OMG, we have to chop our own celery to make jambalaya!) They had no field greens salad mix, no large bags of pre-made salad, no heirloom tomatoes, no local berries, no pre-pared vegetables ready to cook, no chunks of trimmed pineapple or melon.

Our next stop was the deli, where the selection was smaller than Wegmans but still not bad, with some brands Wegmans does not carry. I chose quickly, but the woman already being served was buying a pound or more of several types of meats and cheeses. There was only one employee working the deli, mid-day on a Friday. She called a specific employee to come to assist, but he never arrived. The woman already being served was aware how long I'd been waiting and apologized; she was buying everything for a large family reunion picnic. The lone employee finally went to another department, apparently spoke to a manager, and brought back the employee she'd called over who hadn't come on her say-so.

We continued our shopping, finding they carried neither of the Popsicles we devour. Oh, well, it's not like we're addicted. Just very, very dependent.

At the checkout, the lines were long. We chose one where the woman in front of us had a large order. The cashier was slow, the kind of uncaring employee who projects I-hate-this-job and refuses to respond to any attempt at pleasantry. (She wouldn't last long at Wegmans. Really, they're uniformly either friendly or at least neutral.) She apparently rang multiple items up more than once, which caused the customer to correct her.

The cashier didn't like that and moved even slower, never mind the people in line at her register who'd caused her no problems. When it was time to pay, the customer's debit card, credit card, and personal check were all rejected, even after a front-end manager was called to run them. Now the cashier was in in a visibly foul mood and made no attempt to hide it. She seemed to resent having to scan our membership key tag--so much effort!--and sighed largely at the imposition. She made no eye contact. She coughed a fair bit, half-coverng it with her forearm.

Maybe it wasn't that she didn't give a fuck about being a good cashier doing a good job representing her store. Maybe she didn't feel well--in which case she most certainly should not be handling my food.

Anyway, we were in line to check out, our stuff on the conveyer belt, for at least twenty minutes. At no time did anyone, including the front end manager who came to attempt to process payment for the order before ours, apologize for the delay.

Delays happen at Wegmans, too, but there the front-end manager would have apologized and gotten someone to unload our groceries from the conveyor into a cart and rung them up on a register opened just for that purpose.

And the perfect ending: By eight that night, so many of the strawberries and raspberries purchased mid-day were molding or so soft they became semi-liquid on handling that we estimate more than a third but less than half were inedible. By lunch the day after purchasing bagged mixed salad, with its Best By a date still six days in the future, the lettuce within the new sealed bag was rusted, some of it rotting.

[There's no point in naming the other store. If you know where Wegmans flagship store is, then you know what store is the also-ran.]

And why am I sharing this here, besides a nice healthy venting? Because I see it in aspiring writers. They know their book--or poem, or screenplay, etc.--is not the best. Instead of working on it until it can truly compete with those which are excellent, these writers settle. It's good enough, they tell themselves. I'm not trying to be J.K. Rowling, Khaled Hosseini, Diana Gabaldon, Jonathan Franzen, Neil Gaiman, Susanna Clarke, etc.--I just want people to enjoy my book. Or I don't need content edits. People can tell what I mean even if the dialogue isn't punctuated right every time. A few spelling or grammar errors don't really matter. I'm going to make a simple cover and self-publish.

But it does matter. It matters a lot. I don't want your rotting salad and berries, or your coughing cashier who hates waiting on me. I want Wegmans!

We be Jammin'! Jambalaya Recipe

Not long ago, I tweeted that I was about to make healthy jambalaya that rivaled the less-healthy version at the local Creole-Cajun place. We'd already gobbled it entirely when I got a few requests for the recipe. Happy to oblige.

MARYN'S HEALTHIER JAMBALAYA
based on Emeril Lagasse's recipe

Brown and drain, then set aside

4 to 6 ounces (cooked weight) hot Italian poultry sausage

We brown the whole pound and freeze what we don't use, since it's great on pizza, in lasagna, etc. While your sausage cooks, make the seasoning mix. You'll use this both in preparation and possibly sprinkled on top if you like things extra-spicy. This makes far more than you'll need for a single batch of jambalaya. Mix well and store in a clean jar or sealed sandwich bag.

2 1/2 teaspoons paprika

2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons garlic powder

1 teaspoon black pepper

1 teaspoon onion powder

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon dried thyme

Next, do your dicing, until you have

1/4 to 1 cup chopped onion

1/4 to 1 cup chopped green bell pepper

1/4 to 1 cup chopped celery

We always go with about a cup of each, because it makes more jambalaya without adding anything that's not terrific both in terms of taste and texture and healthy aspects like fiber. You do want to have approximately equal amounts of the holy trio of Creole veggies.

On the same cutting board

1/2 cup tomato, diced and set aside in a small bowl

2 Tablespoons chopped garlic, add to tomatoes

2 to 6 medium shrimp, peeled, deveined and cut into1/2-inch pieces

1 small chicken breast, 4 to 6 ounces, diced into 1/2-inch pieces

Put the shrimp and chicken in a bowl with 1 Tablespoon of the seasoning mix. Blend well and set aside.

Get out and measure the rest of what you need:

2 Tablespoons olive oil, placed in large saucepan or dutch oven

3 bay leaves, add to tomatoes

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce, add to tomatoes

1 teaspoon hot sauce, add to tomatoes

1 cup rice

3 cups chicken broth or stock

Salt and pepper

Heat oil over high heat with onion, pepper and celery, 3 minutes. Add garlic, tomatoes, bay leaves, Worcestershire and hot sauces.Mix well. Stir in rice and slowly add broth. Reduce heat to medium and cook until rice absorbs liquid and becomes tender, stirring occasionally, about 15 to 25 minutes. When rice is just tender add shrimp and chicken mixture and sausage. Cook until shrimp and chicken are done, about 10 minutes more. [Stir often. Here is when it starts sticking to the bottom on the pan and burning.] Season to taste with salt, pepper and Creole seasoning.

Serve with an ice cold beer or plenty of red wine.

Smell-O-Vision

One of the things my best writing teacher taught us is that fiction isn't a movie. We get to use all our senses, not just what an audience can see and hear.

As an erotica writer, I use touch a lot. The feeling of a fingertip moving lightly on a leg or arm is completely different depending on whether it goes with the direction of hair growth or against it, for instance. A slap or swat can sting, then a different sort of hot pain bloom an instant later from the blow.

Smell and taste are tougher sells. There are only so many ways to describe the natural smells and tastes of humans when they're not dirty or unwell, all of them now trite. Readers don't want me describing the taste of their coffee or the PB&J eaten on the fly.

But in real life, there are smells and tastes which trigger such a richness of memories that I'm determined to find ways to have my characters experience something similar.

I've just made Hot German Potato Salad, and the whole downstairs smells of bacon (a rare treat) and white vinegar, which I often use for cleaning. In combination it's so much more, fully evocative of my mother's love.

Other smells which knock me out are clean babies, the first whiff of ocean, freshly turned garden dirt, and the classic new-mown hay, which is so much better than mowed grass I'd like to have a back yard of the stuff.

Take a Picture, Why Don't You?

Years ago, comedian Bill Mahar took a fair amount of heat for saying—and refusing to apologize for saying—stereotypes have a basis in fact. Society didn't just up and decide one group drank to excess, another was reluctant to spend money, a third exhibited inadequate driving skills. The groups labeled in those ways had members whose day-to-day behavior exhibited those negative traits.

Today I visited a gorge in New York state. I clambered up a steep trail, with enough steps to be daunting, to circle its rim, then back down (uh-oh, my glasses and irregularly spaced steps going down are not a happy combination!), finally walking along the trail at the lowest part of the gorge to the most scenic spot overlooking an impressive waterfall.

There's a small viewing area (great, more steps down) where three generations of an Asian family were taking pictures of themselves in various combinations with the falls as a background. It's hard to mind when two adorable little boys are totally hamming it up for their grandparents.

After a while, though, it became easy to be annoyed when this one group of six people had occupied the vantage point fully, preventing others from viewing the falls or taking their own pictures (unless they were willing to spoil the pictures the family was taking by entering the frame), for fifteen minutes. How many ways and combinations are there to pose five people against a scenic background?

Yeah, I know. Not all Asians are this selfish with scenic vista viewpoints, nor so obsessed with picture taking. Of course they're not. The assumption is both ridiculous and ugly racism. But what I found more disturbing the longer I thought about it was that while the hogging of the public space for private picture-taking bothered me, worse was that they'll return home only with pictures of themselves. Not one of them, not even the kids, took a moment to turn and view this large waterfall with the wonder and awe it deserved.