The Gunfigher and The Gear-Head Chapter 1

My favorite cover to date!

I'm going to do something kind of unprecedented here, and I'm going to skip the preachy blog about sex advice, relationship tips, and feminist rhetoric. I know what you're thinking, and no, I don't have that crazy bird flu from the Contagion movie; I'm just feeling less opinionated and more giving right now.

I will say this briefly though--the reaction to this book thus far has been amazing! And, if you really need sex positive talk, relationship advice, and feminist brouhaha, this book has all of it in fiction form, which makes it much more fun to read. Enjoy!

Chapter 1: Short flights cut shorter.

“Coming up on the teeth of the line now,” Ramen’s voice buzzed through the static-riddled intercom.

The dirigible thrummed and breathed like a living thing through the hot air being pumped constantly from the boiler into the zeppelin cylinder and beating with the thumping of turbines of the engines providing the forward thrust; both created an unimaginable din, preventing direct communication without the intercom between her and the automaton running the major systems. Along the underside, between the ribs of the armor plates, ran a walkway the entire length of the airship from the boiler in the back to the primary weapon in the front. Gieo scampered down the narrow walkway, using the handrails to keep upright as the airship swayed and jolted in its flight path.

Tamping her leather top hat down on the four, purple braids at the four corners of her head, she lowered her green-tinted goggles over her eyes. The hat didn’t fit right, leaving her with three options as she saw it:  find a new hat, fix a chinstrap, or wear her hair in the four thick braids. It was an easy decision as far as she was concerned. Sliding down the ladder into the ball-turret on the nose of the great, sturgeon-shaped airship, her riding boots hissed against the copper piping.

“Go serpentine, Ramen,” she shouted into the intercom cup next to the base of the ladder.

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” the automaton’s voice crackled back.

The immense gears of the airship’s bat-like wings engaged with a squeaking, rumbling cacophony. Gieo strapped herself into the reclined seat of the ball-turret, affixing the leather belts across her chest, clipped into the metal tongs on the lapels of her tailed tuxedo jacket, holding tight against the brown, leather corset she wore beneath. As the chair lowered down into the Plexiglas turret, she hooked the rubber hose from the air-hydraulic feed into the leather and chain choker she wore, pumping fresh air up around her head to cool her and aid in breathing.

With the wings flapping in machinated patterns, the great airship took on a wide swing to its flight, shooting back and forth in as athletic of zigzags as a fifty-meter long blimp could manage. Gieo spun the handles on the weapon system’s hydraulic feeds, sending steam power into the four guns positioned in a box around her. The desert floor, thousands of feet below, rolled back and forth beneath her, held at bay only by the glass ball she sat in.

“Leveling the outcropping at the precise center of our undulations,” Ramen’s voice crackled through the com speaker in the ball-turret.

“Have the smoke-screen loaded and ready.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am.”

“Disengaging now.” Gieo pulled the pins on the ball-turret’s gyroscope arm. The entire turret, with her inside, dropped down off the bottom of the armored airship, dangling by a ten meter, articulated metal arm and a dozen hydraulic tubes and hoses. She slipped her feet into the leather straps of the turret and took control of the swaying arm. All around her the hisses of steam and clanking of gears let her know the gyroscopes were functioning as intended.

Puffs of white smoke from the ground erupted out of an underbrush canopy nestled between the furthest most rocks of the outcropping. Shells whistled up toward the zeppelin, followed by explosions, and the clanking of flack bouncing off the airship’s armor.

Gieo leveled the gyroscopes to steady her gun platform even as the airship swayed in evasive maneuvers. She brought the targeting reticule of a large, copper hoop with four smaller hoops arranged in the center to indicate the four guns, on the outcropping, and pushed the two trigger handles forward.

“I see your teeth,” she growled, “now take a look at mine!”

The four guns around her erupted in steam-powered blasts, sending shells of explosive material down onto the antiaircraft battery four at a time. The shells exploded across the rocky surface in showers of white, magnesium fire. She saw a few of the scattering Slark trying to escape the kill zone, and she zeroed in on them to put the fire right across their path. She got some, more than some, several even, before a direct hit caught her dirigible on the port side, knocking free one of the wings with a shriek of metal and a resounding thump.

“Son-of-a…” Gieo kicked free the emergency hold on the main spring of the arm’s gyroscope, pulling the entire swinging arm of the ball-turret back into the body of the blimp. The swaying of the ship was replaced by a long, descending spiral, as the wounded blimp fluttered toward the ground with a torn cylinder and only one functional wing. Gieo unhooked herself from the ball-turret and scrambled back up the ladder into the main body of the ship. “Launch the smoke-screen,” she shouted into the intercom.

“On the way,” Ramen replied.

Four quick pops were followed by four loud explosions as the outer plates on the boilers blew off and the water content dumped onto the stoking fires. White steam and smoke poured from the dirigible, obscuring even the vaguest outline of the ship as it began its slow, spiraling descent toward the ground. Gieo scrambled back down the walkway to the radio room, cranked the hand-wheel to extend the antenna, and tapped out the distress code for a languishing aircraft.

“This is Dirigible Purple Six, going down,” Gieo shouted into the mouthpiece. “Do you copy, air-defense network?”

After a few minutes of trying and retrying the distress call, an old, familiar voice crackled back over the shortwave. “This is air-defense Tempe-2,” the dithering old man said. “There hasn’t been anything flying in years. My radio was buried under laundry.”

“There has too,” Gieo protested. “We went through this not six months ago.”

A long stretch of radio silence followed.

“Are you sure it wasn’t years ago?” Tempe-2 asked.

“Positive!” Gieo shrieked.

“Oh, well, I guess if you’re positive,” the old man said. “What’s your situation and location?”

“Situation is stable, but crashing,” Gieo said, “and location is sector 7-G.”

“That’s the Tombstone Three-Three-O,” Tempe-2 said. “I’ll see if I can get someone over there on the horn for a retrieval team, but don’t expect much luxury. Those Tombstoners are hardscrabble from tip to toe.”

“Whatever, it beats walking home,” Gieo said. “Dirigible Purple 6, over and out.”

This was her sixth crash in the last three years and the story was always the same. Tempe-2 was the only air defense network radioman left in the world as far as she knew, and he was half-gone most of the time. She suspected he was a methanol drinker, peyote user, or ether huffer. Every time she got shot down, it was like the first time for him. She was glad for his existence, as he always managed to get someone out from one of the free cities to pick her up, but he never remembered having done it.

“We’re at 750 feet,” Ramen’s voice came through the com.

“Get back to the shop,” Gieo replied. “Hopefully I’ll see you in a couple days.”

She heard her automaton’s escape tube fire and the telltale thumping of his helicopter blades as he flitted away, too small and well below the notice of the antiaircraft batteries. She climbed up the ladder into the spider room. The spherical room, dead center in the zeppelin cylinder, composed of a network of rubber tubing with a harness in the middle. She shimmied into the harness, hooked herself in, including the neck brace, and waited for the ship to hit the desert floor.

Crashing was becoming routine. She was more curious about who she was going to meet from Tombstone than she was afraid of the impending impact. She’d never met anyone from the Tombstone hunting camp, although their reputation for being hardcore, psycho Slark-killers was well-traveled.

Her thoughts were interrupted by four concussive explosions slamming into the underside of the airship—shoulder-fired rockets. One must have snuck through a chink in the ship’s defenses as the dirigible’s descent took a violent shove from soft flutter into chaotic tumble.

“Oh, you guys are dickheads,” Gieo growled. She reached into her pocket, thrust the mouth guard over her teeth, and braced herself for impact. The ship hit with an explosive crash as the blimp portion ruptured. The boiler launched itself away from the wreckage, and the pilot whipped around inside the spider room like whirling dervish.

If you've reached the end of this and you're all, "Hey, wtf happens to her?" The rest of the book can be purchased on Nook, Kindle, and Smashwords (for you Kobo and iPad users).

Character Evaluation: Captain Val

Character Evaluation:  Captain Val

What if cloning wasn't creepy?

              There are characters and stories I love that I want other people to love as well. One of those characters and stories is Captain Val in Of Pirates and Politicians found in Lesbians in Space: Astral Liaisons. The long story made short about where the entire story idea came from was I needed a clone story for the science fiction book and I was kind of into group sex fantasies at the time. From this kind of banal beginning, the story exploded in my head (no pun intended) and all of a sudden I’m thinking this could be a book, or a series of books even! There’s this cool, cult following for the story that I didn’t quite expect. Someone even made “Captain Val’s Girl” their login for Barnes & Noble (totally flattered by the way). It was one of the reasons I brought this idea to a pitch session.

            Pitch sessions (play on words for bitch sessions—and yes, that’s my term for it, publishers call it something else entirely, but I like pitch session) is when you take a bunch of ideas for your next project and you hurl them all at your editor’s desk and they tell you which one they like for your next project. Parlaying Of Pirates and Politicians into a book was one such idea, which they tossed out immediately. Astral Liaisons is the lesser selling collection of mine and a traditional space opera about a lesbian space pirate and her clone girlfriends seemed too antiquated/fan fictiony/cross-dressing Han Solo to my publisher apparently. Whatever. Someone named their website logins after one of my book characters—they can’t take that away from me.

            The one they ultimately ended up picking, which was ironically source materialed of Astral Liaisons as well, was The Gunfighter and The Gearhead. This I pitched with sample chapters and agreed to the promise that it could be done well in advance of Cowboys and Aliens. I kept up my end, but the movie flopped, and the publisher didn’t have the book ready for a coinciding launch anyway.

            The next project after that they approved is going to be Fabled Fang Girls, which is going right back to lesbian vampires. After that’s done, it’s back for another pitch session in which I plan to pitch Of Pirates and Politicians again. If you like Captain Val, and you’d like my October pitch session to go differently, you could give me a hand on the sales figures with a plug or review on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Hard sales numbers and money always appeals to for profit companies.

            Anyway character evaluation stuff:

-                     I love Captain Val because she’s uncertain about her course, but she’s a captain so she should always appear certain, which gives her some great moments in misplaced confidence.

-                     The sex was fun to write, but I also wanted to write a clone story in which the clones weren’t carbon copies of each other (nature versus nurture) and where a polyamorous relationship seemed just as loving and normalized as a coupling.

-                     If I were to cast Captain Val in a movie, I’d pick Kristin Kreuk. The clones would probably have to be played by Grace Park with Meryl Streep’s brain.

Enjoy the excerpt and hopefully you’ll fall in love with Captain Val as well!

            Captain Valentina Dex was lost in thought. It was a remarkable thing that she could be lost in thought considering what was being done to her. She was reclined on her bed, propped up slightly by a few pillows. Jesse was kissing her in a soft, loving way. Jane had pushed the front of her shirt up and was licking her breasts while stroking fingertips up and down the flat of Val’s stomach. And Jill was between her legs, flicking her tongue over Val’s clit and slowly working a whirring, vibrating toy in slow, deliberate passes in and out of her, tilting it on the way in to vibrate along the underside of her clit. It really was just about the most amazing sexual act Val could envision for herself if she wasn’t completely preoccupied.

            Jesse seemed to pick up on her distraction first. She pulled back from the kiss and grimaced a little. “You’re not enjoying yourself,” she said. Jesse was special, after a fashion, being the only blond clone to date that Val had found.

            “I thought you liked this,” Jane added. She was one of two redhead clones.

            “I did, I mean, I do,” Val said quickly.

            “She’s thinking about her,” Jill said, slipping the toy out of Val and turning it off.

            “I think it’s romantic,” Jane said.

            “You would,” Jill huffed.

            “It’s not a romance thing,” Val said.

            “So you keep saying,” Jill said.

            Their personalities were all so different. Jill was the dark haired beauty with a propensity to brood. Jane was the sensitive romantic type. And Jesse played the peacemaker in all things, sacrificing her own comfort for anyone around her. If Val didn’t know better, she would assume they were sisters. Of course, they didn’t treat each other like sisters; in fact, with the exception of Jennifer and Jesse having one brief introduction at a marketing conference three years ago, none of the six clones had even met before Val brought them together. The three clones with the longer names—Jennifer, Jasmine, and Josephine, incidentally the three older clones, were all straight and not remotely interested in the fun and games Jesse, Jane, and Jill enjoyed. The seventh clone Val had found, also the youngest by seven years, was in the ship’s infirmary, pulled off a derelict ship the day before, and hadn’t awoken from her coma yet. The name tag on her flight suit had identified her as Joey, and the ship’s log indicated she was fourteen, which was about all the information they’d managed on her thus far.

            “We could do something else,” Jesse offered, “maybe play a game on the computer.”

            “Do you need something, Jesse?” the ship’s computer chimed in.

            “She was speculating on potential activities using the word computer as the indirect object,” Val snarled at the glowing blue eye set in the wall that was the computer’s primary sensor in her bedroom. She hated the ship’s artificial intelligence. It went by the name of ‘computer’ and so any reference to comp, CPU, or computer would immediately trigger its name recognition software. Plus, the default voice was set to incessantly-cheery, slightly-effeminate, British male.

            “If it bothers you so much, why don’t you just change its name?” Jill asked.

            “When I stole the ship, I didn’t exactly have time to ask the previous owner how every little thing worked,” Val said.

            “Screw it,” Jill said, “I’m going to go take a shower.”

            Val dove across the top of the bed, managing to snag Jill’s wrist before she could escape entirely. Jill regarded the sprawled out Val coolly. Aside from a few, minor alterations, all the clones had the same face that looked slightly reminiscent of Pacific Islander with a flattish, round nose, semi-slanted eyes, smooth cheeks, and a cute little chin. Jill tended to narrow her eyes a lot more than any of the other clones though, and had given herself tiny lines in the process.

            “I owe you,” Val said.

            Jill’s frosty demeanor melted some. She tucked an errant strand of her straight black hair behind an ear and smiled down to Val. “Pass mine on to them,” she said, nodding in the direction of Jesse and Jane.

            Val released her wrist. Jill walked out of the room via the j-shape entryway. That was one of the other peculiarities about the ship Val couldn’t quite understand:  there were no doors, anywhere. Privacy was accomplished by having curved or cornered entries into rooms without so much as a curtain anywhere. Val looked back over her shoulder to Jesse and Jane who were cuddled at the top of the bed, on the pile of pillows Val had formerly reclined on.

            “What did you two have in mind?” Val asked.

            “Exponential decline,” Jesse said quickly.

Gushing: the Spurting Story!

Yep, I'm going to be making water jokes with the pictures the whole time.

Gushing:  the Spurting Story!

 (Originally published in Sass Magazine)

            When I received a message about this, I honestly didn’t know much beyond the brief mention of “female ejaculate” in the first season of The L-Word (I love Dana!). The original message, and I’ll paraphrase here to protect the gusher, stated that she’d done this off and on in the past, but hadn’t done so yet with her girlfriend until one fateful night…apparently her girlfriend of two-ish months was not exactly into it, which I think is silly considering she caused it.

            Before we delve into the slippery and wet of the issue, there should probably be a history lesson (don’t go skipping through the history to get to the sex stuff—remember what the subject matter is—it’s all sex stuff). The existence of gushing or female ejaculation has been debated and it’s kind of odd who falls out on each side. A huge swath of the women’s lib movement/Gloria Steinam feminists dismissthe existence of gushing as pure fantasy, more specifically, pure malefantasy. If this made you shake your head in wonder, don’t worry, you’re not alone; I completely didn’t follow this when I read it either. Granted, my knowledge of straight male fantasies is about as plentiful as my knowledge of skyscraper construction:  I’ve seen them from the outside and have been in a few, but I have no idea how or why they’re made nor do I care to learn. Still, I don’t for an instant believe the entirety of female ejaculation was completely imagined, disseminated, and conjured into mythical existence by straight male fantasy. Other people have dismissed it as urine…that is apparently also completely false.

Aren't we glad it's NOT urine?

             Scientists of the vaginal, anatomical, and evolutionary bent have theorized that the g-spot is actually analogous to the prostate in what tissues each are made up of in the same way the clit is made up of a lot of the same structures as the penis. The g-spot and the prostate apparently function like valves. Gushing is not urine; this has been scientifically shown again and again by chemically testing what is actually in the liquid, and it isn’t urea (the protein base compound found in urine). To get down to the really chemically-analytical explanation, gushing seems to be the base liquid that semen would be added to in male ejaculate.

            Now that we know it isn’t a myth constructed by the straight male fantasy machine and it isn’t errant urine, let’s talk about why and how it happens. The answer, in a nutshell, is nobody really knows. I put it out to friends, lesbians, straights, bisexuals, stone-butches, super-femmes, and even gender ambiguous with some interesting, but largely conflicting reports. A lot of internet research said g-spot stimulation was the key, but then a friend of mine said she does it nearly every time she climaxes and she only climaxes through clitoral stimulation. I asked around and found a few other women who have gushed after clit-climaxes. At this point, it was less about the original question—which I do have an answer for, bear with me—I just wanted to unravel the mystery of gushing for myself.

As wet as you're likely to get if you use a dental dam--seriously, safe sex, ladies.

             I started eliciting advice on how to do it. Relaxing and letting go was something I was told, which, if true, would explain why I never had since I tense up like I’m undergoing electric-shock when I orgasm. Intensity was also apparently important; darn, poor me in researching this part. Armed with my two pieces of widely agreed upon information, I brought the quandary to my girlfriend. She told me she didn’t want to do it, wasn’t interested in making me do it, didn’t want me to do it in front of her, and if I was going to test it on my own, lay down a towel so I don’t make a mess on the off chance I do manage to make it happen. This really did demonstrate an element of the potentially off-putting aspects of the act. Before I could actually test whether or not I was able to gush, I had to know how common this reaction was.

            After asking a wide-range of people, I got an equally wide-range of answers, and they really didn’t seem to follow any helpful trends. Some lesbians loved it. Several butches I asked thought of it as ejaculating and really enjoyed the masculinity of that; other butches saw it as a badge of honor to make a femme gush. Many femmes agreed that they’d done it with a variety of reactions, but most didn’t really see it as masculine. Straight men I asked were almost completely split:  some liked it, some hated it, some had never seen it outside of porn and had no idea if it was real or not. Surprisingly, the two groups with a consensus were bisexual women, who didn’t seem to care one way or the other, and gay men who categorically thought it was creepy and several told me they thought vaginas had teeth in them (just kidding boys…but not really). Gay men aside, it really does seem to be entirely personal preference.

            Now let me state here, I did all due-diligence when it came to testing this for myself. I won’t get into the grittier of the extremely gritty details, but let’s just say, no stone of masturbation was unturned in trying to achieve this. And I couldn’t do it. Relaxing at the point of climax didn’t help, intensity didn’t seem to make a difference, and g-spot stimulation (which I canand do climax from, lucky me!) didn’t make any appreciable difference. I shared the results of my catastrophic failure with my girlfriend, and she assured me it was for the best that I didn’t teach myself a trick she didn’t want me learning.

I mean, it's not water sports...google water sports if you don't know what that is.

             So, to the answer for our dear friend, Ms. Gusher…

            Depending on who you ask, what you did was a beautiful, sexy thing or a gross deal-breaker with a lot of gray area in between. From the sound of it, this isn’t an all-the-time sort of thing for you. From my own experimentation (and the abundance of how-to articles/videos/guides on the internet), it doesn’t seem easy to do. It also might need to be something your girlfriend gets the fuck over too. Bodily functions happen during sex. Once you get out of the honeymoon phase of the first six months of your relationship, you’ll probably fart, burp, and pee in front of your girlfriend on at least a weekly basis; some parts of relationship intimacy are gross, but you get over it because it’s just biology and part of doing business as a human being. Part of your girlfriend doing business with your business parts, might mean occasionally having to take a splatter on the face or hand. Come on, straight girls apparently do it all the time and the stuff they’re getting shot with has swimming things in it…I’m getting gayer just thinking about it. If she can’t get comfortable with the fact that sometimes you spurt a little bit, and the studies did show it’s not significantly more than average male ejaculate volumes no matter what internet porn says (I had to watch unspeakable things to research this article), then maybe she should go out and find herself a nice sandbox to play in. There are people out there who are into it, and if this is a deal-breaker for her, you’re probably better off finding one of the ladies who loves it and try spurting in their general direction.

Question of Age and Dating

Can I have the coffee too?

 
I'm going to field another relationship advice question I received lately that I thought was interesting:

"My age always seems to be an issue and I can't help that I like older women.  My current problem I have met a very interesting woman and I find myself very interested in her both physically and mentally.  I am 32 and she is 44, it's not that big of difference to me.  If I had met her in person I would have gone for it, since I met her online she is scared of my age and that I would never leave where I am at to be with her.  Are lesbian women just used to no one making an effort? What happened to taking a chance? I thought everything was going great in our conversations and I have already lost her for those reasons.  Am I wrong to feel like my age should be an issue, I haven't even met her yet and I have already scared her off, I shouldn't have to feel like I need to lie about my age so that the women I am attracted to will give me a chance?"

This is such a strange problem that the breeders seem to have figured out before us. The whole cougar/cub dynamic that straight people are already enjoying doesn't seem to have translated to the lesbian community yet, which really does suck. If you were a straight male, it would not only be okay for you to seek out older women, there would be bars and websites all over the place that would cater to you doing exactly that (does straight male cougar privilege exist?). So let me start with the last part of your question first:  there is nothing wrong with you liking cougars and your age absolutely shouldn't be an issue.

This is so mainstream it has made its way to mainstream porn

From the other woman's point of view, I really don't follow her thinking. When I get older, if I'm not still with my current girlfriend and I sincerely hope I am, I'd be thrilled if I had younger women chasing me around; yep, I'm shallow enough to know that would help my self-esteem a great deal. What I think has happened here is you're ahead of the dating curve and now you'll have to wait for the rest of the lesbian community to catch up to you.

Here's how you deal with the current woman problem and future women problem should this arise again. You need to flatter the age difference until she feels as special as straight cubs make straight cougars feel. Don't participate in her dynamic of the age difference being a problem, set your own paradigm by saying how hot and awesome it is that you have this age difference. Straight cougars view their cougar status as a badge of honor--they are attractive and sexual when society has told them women should stop being attractive and sexual. You need to do your best to convince this special lady, and any future special lesbian cougars, to adopt this mentality:  she is so sexy at 44 that younger women can and should flock to her.

Should things not work with this particular lady, I would recommend you frame all future cougar hunting relationships in the same positive light before they can ever get down on themselves about their age. Explain how hot you think it is, how much you enjoy their rejection of the patriarchal societal norms that say they should vanish from sight by remaining sexually interested/interesting, and how big of a fan you are of strong cougars. There's something very sexy about older women (btw I was something of a cougar hunter myself at the very young age of 18) when you consider their life experience, their classiness, and their worldliness. Flatter her with these points, and if you need help, seek out straight male cubs for advice on how to pursue cougars; they have resources galore when it comes to cougar hunting since they've been doing it for so much longer.

This is literally old news (and kind of dopey news on the left here) in the straight community

I don't think it's a matter of lesbians not making an effort; I think it's a matter of the lesbian community lagging behind the straight community in certain dating acceptance norms.

Dating Advice and Updates

 

Bette and Tina of the past?

I realize I've been missing awhile. Apparently finishing my degree, finishing all the edits on my first novel, and moving across country was all a lot of work. I am now graduated with the expectation of my degree being mailed to my parents' address, still working on the edits of the book, and I'm comfortably in a hotel in Orlando. There was just something unappealing about signing a year long lease on an apartment sight unseen, so we drove all the way here and now we'll start apartment hunting from the comfort of a motel room. I'm going to need to change my website banner at some point to reflect my status as no longer living in Huntington Beach.

Relationship advice is something I've been dabbling in since sex advice isn't as reliable of work. As it turns out, I'm actually pretty good at it. Apparently being successfully monogamous for several years can really make you something of an expert on monogamy. Or, at least, that's what I keep telling myself...

“My question involves defining "average" body type in on-line dating. Can you help define it for me? I am overweight, but I have been losing weight. At what point will I be "average"? I am interested in a profile that has average body type listed under attractions. I read conflicting articles on-line that define average as a size 12, or 14, or even a 16 being the average size for a woman in the United States. What are the measurements? (waist and hip) Thanks. I just want to be honest in how I describe myself.”

~Sincerely,

Average in the USA

Dear Average:

I realize this isn’t a sex advice question and is more relationship/general info about the world, but I thought it was an interesting topic and I’ve been behaving so PG lately since I’ve started writing more relationship advice stuff. It seems less like an opportunity for sex advice and more like a chance for social commentary and we all know how much I love social commentary.

Firstly, let me praise you for trying online dating as a lesbian. We’re a teeny tiny portion of the total population (3% last census), and if you use the Seinfeld rules, only 5% of that is dateable. So really, you’re looking at a 0.15% dating pool in your given area. It’s probably why so many lesbians live in the Los Angeles area—0.15% of 10 million is a pretty good number. For everyone else, and even people living in a major metropolitan area, online dating expands your chances to meet people you wouldn’t normally meet, which is key for lesbians. I would also encourage you to expand the radius of your searches online; there are fantastic women all over the place, and you shouldn’t settle simply because of geography.

To address the actual question, I really don’t think it’s as simple as a dress size. Were you hoping I’d just say, “14!” and let you off the hook? I can’t even give a short answer to whether it’s raining or not and I lived most of my life in Southern California—little hope of a short answer to this. You said you’ve searched around for what qualifies as average in the U.S. and that might be a good start if we weren’t such damn liars about everything. There’s this enormous gap between what is literally the average in this country, and then there’s what we perceive the average to be. Our understanding of sizes and averages in this country isn’t so great. One of the jokes my girlfriend and I make all the time is how enormous Marilyn Monroe has become after death. Everyone always says she was a size…(usually one bigger than they currently wear). It turns out she was a size 12, and it turns out the 1950s version of a size 12 is actually closer to a size 8 or even 6 (in vanity size—clothing manufacturers artificially lower sizes on some clothes to makeyou buy them even though that 6 is an 8) in modern sizes. Back in the 1950s, they didn’t have as many sizes as we have now—they didn’t need them. The whole range could be contained by about 20 and the largest sizes weren’t as commonly worn, so a size 12 could describe about average back then when the same woman would be considered fairly small by modern standards. According to the CDC, twenty-something women in 2006 were 30 lbs heavier than the same age range in 1960. As a society, we have gotten a lot bigger (taller too for some reason), but our models and actresses haven’t, they’ve even got a little skinnier.

Can we please stop pretending she wasn't this thin?

And that is precisely the problem. Physically the average in the United States, is fairly large, but that’s not true across the developed world and it’s not true of what we think is average. In reality, you may be well under the national average, which is about a 10-14 taking the national average height of 5’5” and the national average weight of 165 (Marilyn was 5’5” and 140lbs at her very heaviest, also at the national average for 1960, although her acting weight was much closer to 118, putting her at a modern size 6 or 8—see what I mean about the fudging of sizes that goes on with her?). She looks bigger to our modern eyes not because she actually was, but because she isn’t the 5’9” 120lb Heidi Klum we’re used to even though, in reality, Marilyn Monroe, by today’s standards would be 25lbs under the national average. Yes, she was a size 12 by 1960s standards, but a 5'5" 118 lb Marilyn would be positively swimming in a modern size 12.

 Compare Heidi's picture to Marilyn's:

Starting to see what I mean about perception of size being our problem?

All of these CDC reports and vanity sizing and lying about how big Marilyn really was to make ourselves feel better is really pretty irrelevant though because it’s not a matter of what is statistically average, it’s a matter of what you feel is average and more important, what she thinks is average. This is something you’ll run into again and again—other people’s perceptions of your weight are going to be varied, they’re going to be unfair at times, and they’re all completely out of your control, so the best option is to get to the weight you’re happy with and understand people are just going to see you how they see you. There are a few things working in your favor here when it comes to dating other women:  we tend to be cooler about weight issues since we usually have our own body things we’re trying to hide and lesbians do tend to weigh a little more than our straight counterparts so average in the lesbian community isn’t the same number as elsewhere.

If Eddie Izzard can do it, so can you!

 BUT! All of this is negated by something else entirely! Here’s what you do… (I usually do come to an answer after making people listen to me for a long time). You need to take an honest, not cropped, not top down, not hidden beneath baggy clothing, full-body picture of yourself for your dating profile and send it out with pride to the women you’re interested in. Nobody will feel cheated, nobody will feel lied to, and if she’s attracted to you, then congratulations, you’ve hit what she considers “average” weight. This is, of course, easier said than done. Ladies, seriously, we need to stop doctoring our photos online (I do it too by the way). The top down one drives me nuts…you know the one, where you hold the camera over your head, point it down, and give your best sultry eye look up while forced perspective gives you the waist, hips, and feet of a Barbie Doll. Or the waist up crop, where you put on your best pushup bra and cut the picture off just above your navel—boobs for miles, but who knows what else is going on with the rest of you. Then there’s the “duck face” where you purse your lips and suck in your cheeks which gives the impression of cheek bones and full lips where neither actually exists (this is the one I’m guiltiest of).

Take an honest, full-body photo of yourself for your online dating profile, one that will not be a lie or marketing job you have to make up for when you show up for the first date. And let the women you’re interested decide whether or not you’re average based on full disclosure of what you really look like. Now if you’ll excuse me, I should probably go delete all my Facebook pictures where I’m making the duck face…

Reciprocity and Straight Girls

Grown up lesbians dealing with grown up lesbian problems.

I'm going to field a couple of questions directed at me through Twitter and hopefully answer some general, all-purpose lesbian questions in the process. Then I might finish it up by talking about threesomes a bit just for the heck of it.

The first question from Twitter involves a young lady who has been dating her girlfriend for awhile now and things have cooled off significantly in the bedroom over the past few months (to the tune of once a month for several months in a row--ouch!). She tries to instigate sex and is rejected while the girlfriend (once a month) apparently is the only one who can instigate sex without rejection. It looks like this has been going on for about six months now and the pent up asker of the question is getting a little sick of being rejected. The reason given by her partner for the low sex drive is that sex makes her feel vulnerable, which is kind of a "duh" comment deserving of a "Yeah, and...?" response.

First things first, rejection, sexual rejection especially, sucks giant squid balls, and I encourage people to say yes to their partner as often as humanly possible. The only time you should reject your partner's sexual advances (especially in a lesbian relationship) is if you're bleeding out of your eyes and feel like all that eye blood might ruin the mood. Part of being in a relationship is tending your partner's sexual garden, which means you might need to do a little water if you don't want to end up with a dry dusty plot (pun intended). Don't get me wrong though, sexual permissiveness doesn't extend to ham-fisted approaches like "wanna fuck?" Part of the instigating partner's job in this sexual give and take is to do their damn best to get the other party in the mood. Wine them, dine them, dress up for them if they're into that sort of thing, keep yourself clean/sexy/lickable in just the ways they like, and tend to their emotional state as well or you're not very deserving of that 'yes' now are you?

Foreplay is I finish my cigarette first.

To the asker of the question, if you're doing all these things. If you're fit as hell, dressed in exactly that thing she loves seeing you dressed in, pitching crazy woo at her with compliments, flirty comments, and have turned your bedroom into a potential fire hazard with candles around satin sheets, AND she's still rejecting you, this is on her. If you're showing up after a long day, whipping off your stinky work shoes, pulling your hair back in a ratty ponytail, and saying, "How about a little head?" You're not all that deserving of any sexual attention and rejection should be the only thing you can and should expect. Let's just assume you're putting the effort in, staying fit, staying sexy, tending her emotional state, and putting forth a real seduction effort...

At this point, you need to lay it all on the table with her. Tell her you feel unappreciated when she rejects your well-thought-0ut advances, that you need more sexual tending, that you don't feel she is open to having sex instigated, and that you need her to say "yes" more often and give you the chance to get her into the mood even if she's not starting off that way. That last bit is key. She doesn't have to be in the mood to say yes, in fact, as women, we usually won't be to start out, but it's crucial that we are in an agreement with our partner that we will be open to them making the effort to get us into the mood, and I think she'll find that going into this with the right mindset, she'll end up being in the mood in short order.

This conversation can obviously go one of two ways. She's either willing to work with you on being in a true sexual partnership where both people's needs are given equal value and importance, or she's not. If she is willing to work with you, then you'll have to keep very open lines of communication through the process to make sure neither one of you is feeling taken advantage of and that you're both getting something out of your sexual trysts. If she's NOT willing to work with you, then you have to decide whether or not her company is worth 12 sexual encounters a year, all instigated by her. I can't make that choice for you, but, speaking only for myself, there's no such thing as someone that would be worth that for me.

Quick summary: be worth saying yes to, everyone needs to be open to the possibility of being gotten into the mood, and if you're in a relationship with a huge discrepancy in sex drives it might not be the relationship for you.

The second question I got was from a bi-curious but straight identifying girl who was wanting to know how she could tell if a girl in her office was a lesbian. This question and a lot the answers to my follow up questions to her, really kind of bugged the shit out of me. First and foremost, bi-curious looking for lesbian is one of my pet peeves. Lesbians don't exist solely for straight identifying girls to run science experiments on. Secondly, after a loooooooong stretch of trying to get at the heart of all this, I found out the asker of the question didn't really have any plans of hitting on the girl because she thought the possible lesbian was out of her league, and she probably was. Anyway, I'll address this lack of gaydar to the best of my ability with the caveat of "no, you shouldn't pester her with your bi-curiosity" and "yes, she probably is out of your league."

Portia is a perfect example of why it is hard to play "spot the lesbian"

Gaydar rule #1 -- does she show the slightest bit of interest in men of any kind? Seriously, most lesbians have as much regard for men as most people have for floor lamps. They clearly serve some mundane purpose (like lighting a room or decorating a corner) but beyond that we don't really have much use for them. If she's chatting with men, open body language, and seems really interested in what he has to say about sports/movies/drywall/cars you've got yourself a straight girl. If her longest conversation with a co-worker male consists of: "Is that coffee fresh?" "Yep" "Cool" you're far more likely to have a lesbian (not proof positive, but it's a good sign).

Gaydar rule #2 -- does she dress the part? This is kind of related to rule #1 in that straight girls dress to impress guys and lesbians don't do that as often since women aren't as visual when it comes to most things (smell and sound count for a lot with ladies and guys can get past both if something looks good enough; when we're working on what we're attracting, this factors in). Does she wear 4" heels with tight jeans? Classic straight girl move. Does she wear contacts or glasses? Lesbians tend to go for comfort and glasses over poking ourselves in the eyes. Are there any hint pieces of jewelry or clothing that would indicate gay pride, equality, or that she is a fan of Tegan and Sara? Rainbows, little yellow equal signs in the middle of blue squares, and Lilith Faire memorabilia are used to signal other lesbians that we're in that club. Check her makeup, is it subdued, natural tones, or is it applied with a spray can? Lesbians are usually minimalists in the makeup department. WARNING! Don't rely on this solely! I am sitting here as a contradiction to at least two of these (makeup and contacts and maybe the clothes). There are lesbians out there who are visibly indiscernible from straight girls, and they're not as rare as you might think. Some real red flags should be icon neck-wear: a huge ass crucifix/Mormon pendant screams straight and rainbow rings/interlaced female symbols are pretty much only worn by lesbians.

Gaydar rule #3 -- what does she do with her free time? Again, this one can be tricky. Softball, walking dogs, golfing, and riding motorcycles used to be dead give-aways. Not so much anymore. Still, if she tends to have a lot of hobbies that most men would view as kind of threatening to their masculinity, you might be on the right track. Strangely enough, I think this rule's increasing ineffectiveness is owed to modern men not being so easily threatened by modern women usurping their roles, which has given straight girls far more latitude in what they can be interested in without scaring off men.

The Mona Lisa's look during college.

Gaydar rule #4 -- what is she doing with her hair? Again, I'm a walking contradiction here as I do the hell out of my hair. But lesbians in general do tend to go with shorter, less hassle, cute but not hot type of looks. Probably because we don't want to be bonked on the head by a caveman and dragged back to the cave; if that's not your thing, low handle length and easy breakage are good things.

These are obviously all across the room type observations. The real key would be to go up to the lady, have a conversation with her, and find out by listening to her answers to obvious questions that will hold lesbian indicators, but, since the asker had no intention of actually speaking to this woman, I have to assume this would be out of the question.

My real concern here, and I have been yelled at before my lack of concern for bisexuals, is that bi-curious girls do tend to views lesbians as fun experiments and breaks from men without real concern for the women they're hurting. My opinion, and this might just be the gold star in me talking, is that bi-curious girls should go fuck other bi-curious or bisexual girls, and leave us lesbians alone. I can just hear the bi girls now, "But Cassandra, lesbians are so experienced and exotic, and you know all about the wily woman on woman ways..." TRUTH! Okay, not always true, but in my case it sure is. Trust me, there are plenty of bisexual girls out there who know all about pleasing women. But, and more importantly, maybe you should have to build up lesbian cred before you can come to us with your head empty of knowledge when it comes to pleasing women. Which leads me to the rules for bi girls...

Rule #1 for bi-curious girls: YOU HAVE TO FUCKING EAT PUSSY! In fact, I'll put a sidebar on this one and say you should eat her pussy before she's allowed to go near yours. Being eaten out by a girl does not make you bisexual or lesbian, it means you have the ability to be licked while staring at the ceiling and thinking about whatever you feel like thinking about. To be blunt, ANYONE CAN FUCKING DO THAT. In Latin-American cultures, it was long thought (and still is sometimes) that a man who gets a blowjob from another man is not gay, but the man who gives the blowjob is. Same rules apply to us ladies, until you reciprocate by going down on her, all you are is a selfish straight girl. Bisexual/bi-curious tag denied!

Rule #2 for bi-curious girls: BE HONEST ABOUT YOUR GOALS! There are lesbians out there who are into one night stands, fooling around, and then sending you back to the forest of penises you came from with stories to tell that'll turn on frat boys. The problem is, most of us aren't like that. Find out if the girl you're hitting on even wants to touch bi-tail. Find out how freaking hurt and pissed she'll be if you go running around telling people you slept with her. News flash! You can do far more damage to our reputations than we can to yours. If you're honest and clear about your intentions and she still wants you, proceed to rule 3.

ZOMG I hope the guys are watching us so we can feel relevant!

Rule #3 for bi-curious girls: DON'T INVOLVE MEN IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM! If you want male attention for making out with girls, go find yourself another drunk straight girl and you can both be swimming in jizz before the night is over. If you want another woman to come back and fool around with you and your boyfriend, find a bisexual girl or hire a hooker. Lesbian does not mean, "hasn't met the right penis yet." You may thrive on male attention, we couldn't care less.

Fantasy land has a fight club.

This kind of loops around to the threesome thing (see how I did that?), which is something of a question brought up by one of my stories oddly enough. In Astral Liaisons, I have a story about a lesbian couple who has occasionally seduced lesbians girls for threesomes, but never in a way that threatened their primary relationship, and then they end up in an odd situation where they have to seduce someone who may be bi-curious or just plain straight. It's called "Flesh Menagerie" and you should probably read it to get the full effect. Anyway, one of my friends and readers asked if I thought this was something realistic to do. Honestly, I think so, but it's not something I've done in my own relationship. I absolutely do think there are open and poly relationships out there that work just fine. I am a little curious about what my readers think about this topic though. Any thoughts, concerns, experiences, or opinions on the validity of threesomes in committed relationships should go in the comments below.

So I answered a couple questions, established some rules, and invited comments about threesomes...that's a full blog's work in my book.

Lestopian Future

I've made no secret about the fact that I'm a girl gamer. Ever since I was a little girl and my sister and I got a Super Nintendo for Christmas, I've loved video games. I'm also not going to deny that I spent far more time than any sane person should playing World of Warcraft when I was in high school; I didn't have many friends and school work came easy to me, so escapism seemed like a good use of my time. One thing I've noticed over the past fifteen years or so of being a girl gamer (way back to when I was 6) is that the world of gaming is slowly evolving to start including more and more populations who formerly went ignored in favor of appealing to the straight, white male demographic. Being a lesbian, I've been thrilled that some games, even though they're still a small minority, have decided I'm worth appealing to. It's time to take a look at the gay-gamer-girl options I'm happy exist.

Bioware (a Canadian based game developer--go figure they're into equality) is a shining beacon of hope for stories and diversity in a world of video game studios who are still hurling themselves at the straight white males of the world. Their two primary series that have gone above and beyond in appealing to gay girls are Dragon Age and Mass Effect. More than just gay girls, these series appeal to women, gay men, bisexuals, and other ethnicities as well. They recent came under fire for some of the choices made in Dragon Age II, specifically the many gay options in the game, and dealt with said criticism from the straight white male population with remarkable flare and eloquence. This isn't to say they have a perfect track record in diversity options, as they seem to want to flee from or put an Astrix next to the gay and lesbian options in games. Mass Effect 1 had a "mono gendered" romance option, which was to say all members of this society were "female" but then immediately removed this character as an option in Mass Effect 2 really only offering hetero options again.

If you have to have just one gender, isn't this a good argument for women only?

The Mass Effect series really has brought a lot of new, interesting, and diverse options to the table when it comes to the audience appealed to. They represent handicapped people well with a pilot who has Osteogenesis ably voiced by Seth Green, African Americans are nicely represented by Captain Anderson voiced by Keith David, and the aforementioned lesbian romance option Liara T'soni. I think in general Bioware has gone the direction of diversifying their appeal to women by including romance options in their role playing games. I may not know much about men, but it would seem loving romance wasn't necessarily intended for them. I'm going to be 100% honest here, even if it ruins some of my cool cred, but I have the dopiest girl-crush on Liara knowing full well she's a fictional character in a video game. I applaud Bioware's boldness in including her, even though she's technically "mono gendered" and all but vanishes in Mass Effect 2 without purchasing a downloadable content pack. I felt like her inclusion, along with the ability to create a female protagonist who can romance her within the game, was a wonderful step forward in appealing to lesbian gamers.

Sure she's a religious zealot, but with red hair like that, I'll get past it.

Bioware really doubled down on their appeal to gay gamers of both genders in the Dragon Age series. Romance options within the first game included one female/female and one male/male in addition to the other hetero choices. Considering the homophobia within the gamer community and the fetishizing of lesbians by straight males, I thought the inclusion of Zevran as a male/male romance option was downright revolutionary of Bioware in a mainstream, highly distributed game. To quote Morgan Webb, "If you don't like gay elf sex, don't have gay elf sex." I love that they did it and defended it tooth and nail when the inevitable attacks came rolling in from the straight male gaming population who felt threatened by a gay male option. The lesbian option, who I again have an enormous girl crush on, is Leliana. The reason she comes in second, despite having the fucking sexiest French accent, is that she's entirely fanatical about the religion within the game, which is a barely veiled commentary on Christianity (specifically Catholicism of the Renaissance era). Not getting along with Christianity in general, the whole "good Christian...er Chantry" girl Leliana had a religious overtone I just couldn't ignore, even with the red hair and blue eyes.

In the age old question of pirates vs ninjas, I always pick pirates because of her.

In Dragon Age 2 (I won't be talking about the Awakening expansion pack because it was both awful and included nothing gay or straight, which was a HUGE mistake in my mind) Bioware really took things one step further and basically made every romance option available to both genders. This has to be the singularly best option they could have taken. Rather than telling the gamer that their options would be limited by artificial constructs within the game, the developers let the players decide who they wanted regardless of gender. Of course, this blew up the homophobic/sexist gamer world, but Bioware stuck by their guns, and said it was the right move, and they were right. In ironies of all ironies, my favored relationship in this game was with Isabella. It's ironic because I'm pretty vocal about my disinterest in bisexual women (and she's extremely overt in her bisexuality) mostly because I feel promiscuity with males leads to STDs which I'm terrified of (and there's little to no doubt Isabella likely had tons) yet something about the saucy, sarcastic, sexually-charged pirate captain really drew me to her despite all the flaws that would repulse me in real life. I guess I figured my character's herpes would only be a lifelong problem for the 40 hours of play time during the game. This isn't to discount Merrill, the other lesbian option, who has large green eyes and a soothing Irish accent. Surprise, surprise, most of the male gamers who played Dragon Age 2 didn't like Merrill's lack of enormous breasts and her facial tattoos or Isabelle's aggressive sexual posturing and liberated feminist views of female sexuality, which leads me to believe, these two characters were at least partially designed for gay-girl-gamers.

Jade Empire makes every little lesbian girl's dream come true: marrying a Ninja Princess.

When I first started passing around this idea of lesbians in games and how much I appreciated Bioware for Mass Effect and Dragon Age, I was told there were protean version of these things in their earlier games. Under advisement, I checked out Knights of the Old Republic, which apparently contained the holy grail of nerdery with lesbian Jedi. The game was fantastic on its own and held up well despite being 8 years old. The relationship was far more about feelings, involved nothing even implied sex-wise, and did indeed include two lesbian Jedi. Apparently Jade Empire, another Bioware game only slightly newer, continued along this path of open options, and included the staple for the Dragon Age series of having a female character open to both genders. The gameplay itself was on the monotonous and irritating side and leaned heavily on the idea that all American gamers aren't into Asian culture, but the romance of Silk Fox aka Princess Sun Lian was remarkably forward thinking and deep considering the game came out in 2005. Seeing the evolution of the lesbian storyline option in Bioware's games really made me appreciate exactly how far they've come.

There is of course The Sims series, which allows for gay, straight, lesbian, and bisexuality at every level with the utmost customization (I also played far too much Sims 2 in high school). But this is less remarkable as the design of the game is an electronic version of "playing house" that we all did as little girls and thus the target audience really feels like it was supposed to be for women. There's no winning, no losing, and no competition in the game, which gives it an entirely casual game feeling and the largest audience for casual games are the ladies. This feels less remarkable than Mass Effect (hybrid shooter) and Dragon Age (fantasy RPG) as those two genres of gaming are dominated by games for straight men. Still, the Sims series of games should be applauded for including equality when they were striving to make the most customizable game possible.

With how many Blood Elf men are gay, lesbianism seems almost like a necessity.

I did mention World of Warcraft earlier, and, as with the Sims, so much of the content is user created/alterable since it is an MMORPG with players from all over the world interacting, so gay and lesbian are two things that can and do exist in the game; however, this isn't something the developers really intended, nor is it something Blizzard has been all that tolerant of. In the early days of the game (released in November 2004) several gay themed guilds (male/male) were deleted by Blizzard simply for being gay themed. Considering I was probably one of a tiny handful of lesbians who played the game, lesbian themed guilds tended to be actually populated by straight men and they too suffered from deletion. In general, Blizzard's history with the gay community isn't very friendly, so while there are gay gamers who play and try to include gay content in World of Warcraft, it's generally not encouraged or supported by either Blizzard or the gaming populace within WOW. I've heard, but never actually experienced, that City of Heroes (a super hero themed MMORPG) is far more welcoming and tolerant of their gay community, but I can't say for certain that's true. Online gaming in general tends to be people by the immature, homophobic, and sexist young men of the world; this is a demographic shifting away from the stereotype of what a gamer is, but it's also the slowest to do so. I won't even talk about what goes on with Xbox Live, but let's just say, being a gay or woman there is not recommended.

The charge for equality in gaming is really slow and kind of has all its hope right now resting on Bioware. Gay and lesbian gamers are an audience worth having though, and I think Bioware is wise to appeal to us as we have little else pointed in our direction. We're a little more than 10% of the population and we tend to have more disposable income per-capita than our straight counterparts; the gaming industry as a whole would be wise to put this together and start making a concerted effort in the direction of gaming equality.

In Sim-land there is no homophobia.