miss_pryss

I feel as though I've had an eventful day, though in truth this is not really the case.

I finished reading "Post Captain" last night and although it left me with questions, I adore it mightily and cannot wait for Amazon.com to cough up the next one. In the meantime, I read the first half of "Because of Winn-Dixie" yesterday morning on the subway to work and the second half on the way to dinner. What a sweet, neat, dear little book.

Now the Boy has leant me "Quicksilver" - the first installment in Neil Stevenson's gargantuan "Baroque Series". Good God Amighty, that fucker weighs as much as a cat.

So, about a week ago I bought four boxes of Hello Kitty greeting cards, mostly because I covet the boxes they come in. But then I realized that the boxes had cards inside, and that I would need to do something with the cards before I could put the boxes to use as jewelry and nick-nack holders. So I sent a bunch of notes out to friends and family, some of whom I haven't spoken to or heard from for years. And now the responses are appearing.

My old friend R used to be one of my riding instructors at the stables I hung out at. She and I have been friends of the sort who send christmas cards for nearly 10 years now (since I was 13), though it's been a year or so since I heard from her. She wrote me back, filling me in on her life. She's a licensed vet tech now, but looking for work in warmer climes as both a vet tech and a librarian, since that's been her area of expertise till now.

She's one of the first adult friends I had, and a remarkable woman. I house-sat for her for a few weeks the summer after my freshman year of college. She and her husband live in a strange and wonderful old farmhouse in the country-country. At that time they had three horses, five cats, a dog, and a few miscillanous animals like chickens and ducks. It was the first time in my life I'd been in charge of a homestead that way, and I had such an amazing time. There were ripe strawberries in the patch every morning, and the horses came thundering out of the paddock when I got them their breakfast. The cats climbed up my legs and demanded to be petted. It seemed like a kind of paradise. I suppose it was.

Although I haven't ever asked her, I wonder sometimes if R is, you know, one of us. A (dare I say it?) writer and reader of slash fanfic. She certainly fits the bill - tech-savvy, feminist, cranky. Librarian, reads a lot of science-fiction and fantasy. If we were closer friends I'd certainly feel her out on it, but there's really been no opportunity since I discovered fandom about 6 years ago. So I suppose I'll just have to wonder.

Sometimes I see a woman on the street and I immediately think she must be a slasher. But the thing is, I think I have a grossly innacurate and stereotyped idea of what the average slasher looks like, since I only know one or two in RL and I don't think of them as being average anyway (they're my friends, after all!).

Basically, the women I imagine might be slashers are heavy, wear long, flowing skirts and birkenstocks, sport big klunky ethnic jewelry (especially anything celtic looking), have long, mousy brown hair, are generally spotted at cultural events or institutions of higher education. And are white. Oh, and wear glasses.

Usually, I'll see one of these women sitting in front of me at an early music concert, or walking down the street with her nose in the pages of a dog-eared fantasy novel, and I'll think, "to the rest of the world, that woman looks like an uninteresting nerd. But I know what lurks behind that homely exterior. I know that that woman has written volumes of the most astonishingly well crafted gay porn. I know that her characterization is dead-on, no matter what fandom she writes in. I know that she has legions of adoring fans. I know that that woman is a goddamned star."

Does this make me a bad person, to engage in such tired and simplistic sterotypes? I don't know. It certainly isn't very realistic of me, since I know that there are women in this community from nearly every country and ethnicity in the world; that we are fat and thin, short and tall, hippies and yuppies, children and old ladies. We're the motherfucking rainbow of multi-culti porn writing.

And yet. There she is at a peace protest. There she is in a student center. There she is, eating dinner by herself at the deli. My mouse-haired, pasty-skinned, bespectacled, ankh-wearing slasher, with her great big glamorous, pornographic secret known only by me.

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