We met Holly and Dan at a sushi restaurant. I had been corresponding with Holly for a few weeks online, where she found me on the dating site I still use to passively acquire new friends. She wrote to me first, which was nearly unprecedented until recently. In the prior month, two other people had contacted me and then vanished after a few messages, this after well over a year of apparent silence on the site. I felt I was justified in being slightly guarded, particularly that I couldn't be absolutely certain that these were not three faces of the same person playing a curious game. (This is not so much wild paranoia as a hypothesis based on prior experience.)

I believe it was Holly's art site that convinced me it was nigh about time we met. It was too smooth, too lovely to be false. The art was skillful, the sort I would want hanging from my walls or decorating what would immediately become my favorite t-shirt, especially as it touched upon our mutual geeky love of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Also, the web address contained her name, which would have been a very nice touch were this an elaborate ruse to steal my liver. For this touch alone, she would have earned any filter organs she yanked from my split torso.

Despite her lovely art, I might have hesitated a bit longer, but she stated from the beginning that she was happily in a relationship. In all this, I want to make clear that she was never less that witty, affable, and sweet. All this suspicion was on my side, from having reacted with horror at people who introduced themselves and then, once it seemed I began to drop my guard, asked how I felt about polyamory and/or Jesus and/or drag queening (which is to say, it's fine if you enjoy these things - alone or in combination - but it is likely a safe assumption that I do not wish them to be the reason you are contacting me). The fact that she was happily partnered implied she was a degree safer.

Dinner was pleasant, though I remained on my guard. To me, it felt as though I released strange, multicolored homunculi onto the table, one by one, each tentatively representing some aspect of myself I have found to be an acquired taste that has repulsed other people. Buffyverse scampered a bit and Holly would nod, as she had her own twin homunculus practicing gymkata beneath the table. Weird Sense of Humor covered himself in wasabi and ran screaming around the edges of the table before soothing his agony in some soy sauce, which produced enough chuckles that he felt he was not completely stupid for this gambit. Bad Movies fell off the table after failing to amuse immediately, but no one seemed bothered by his tumble. Academic Interest in the Paranormal peeked his head out, but couldn't be coaxed from his cage. Obsessive Writing eloquently introduced himself with much bowing and then went back to scribbling down everything that he imagined people thought of him. By dint of the fact that Holly and Dan failed to fail any of these cloaked tests, it could be inferred they passed.

Dan, about whom I knew little more than that he existed, seemed the more outgoing of the pair, which surprised me. Holly had been the face of this couple and had been the one to contact me, so I imagined her partner would be a bit demur. Coming into this, I knew a bit about Holly: she is a painter and clothing designer, she teaches art at a high school, she has sufficient geek cred by virtue of having painting my favorite representation of Spike and Drusilla. She is taller than I imagined based on her pictures, but I hadn't formed much of a mental picture of her despite having seen pictures of her. Dan seems boisterous, but genuinely interested in what other people are saying, not simply waiting for his turn to shine again as I have found with similarly outgoing people. He was dark hair peppered with light strands but a young face, making him indeterminately aged (I discover later that he is roughly my age and that Holly is the older of the pair).

I am not myself with them for the first half hour, but rather the version of myself I wear for mixed company (at least while releasing figurative homunculi). I am waiting for the other shoe to drop, as it were, for them to be disconcerting or unpleasant. The longer they remain interesting, the more palpable the tension becomes that they might not be and all of my increasingly pleasant feelings will be wasted once they mention that they are in the Klan, descendants of Thomas Midgley Jr., or regularly slaughter puppies for an evening's entertainment.

The evening ends without incident. "Well," I say to Amber as we enter the car, "they are clearly serial killers and we can never speak to them again."

We see them a week later, as both Dan and Holly had mentioned a movie night they hold every week and it seemed a good testing ground. If there are meat hooks dangling from the ceiling, scattered and smashed human skeletons, and vicious attack dogs everywhere, I would have my answer. Instead, they are almost too perfect. They live in a converted photographer's studio set back on a dirt road, surrounded by yard and trees. Dan works with computers and it shows as there is an entirely section of their bedroom devoted to multiple screens and his ergonomic keyboard. The screen on which the movies are shown is connected to a projector and wireless keyboard. Above the staircase to their second floor bedroom is a fiber optic ball at least three feet in diameter. I begin noting aspects of their home as though they are fictional. What do high ceilings and a bowl of Peanut M&Ms say about them as characters? They both help with this, unwittingly, by showing me all their wonderful toys.

In giving us the tour, Holly leads us to the guest room and Holly jokes that we are welcome to move in. It does not appear to be a murder den, but it is likely in the best interest of serial killers to keep these subtle.

Amber and I melt into the couch sized beanbag chair with fuzzy pillows and happily answer Sporcle trivia question read to us by Dan, who moonlights as an MC for bar quiz nights and seems a natural for this.

From then on, movie night (or Noctilucent Cinema Club, as it comes to be intentionally pretentiously known) with Holly and Dan becomes one of the parts of the week I most look forward to. The themes Dan picks tend not to be straightforward, such as bizarre time travel movies (The Butterfly Effect and Run, Lola, Run) or the works of Kevin Peter Hall (Predator and Harry and the Hendersons), but that only adds to the fun of it, particularly since I enjoy terrible movies and so am happy no matter the quality of the night's fare. (It is also never slaughtered puppies, so that helps.) Their occasional friends who show up seem to be good people, the sort central casting would hire specifically to attend a movie night, cutely edgy and just urbane enough that they remain approachable.

When I miss a movie night, owing to Amber's busyness in preparing for the Pine Bush UFO Fair and my feeling under the weather, I am antsy for a week. Several time, Amber and I are the only two that show up (and occasionally stay far too late given that Holly is a teacher and it due at work in under seven hours), which gives us a chance to have long talks after we run out of movies. We see vacation photos and the evolution of their couple costumes each Halloween (Leeloo and Dallas, Audrey and Seymour), more artifacts for me to piece together.

I admit, part of my delight in them is that they constitute that rare species called "couple friends". I could have a dozen close friends (in theory, but I don't think I ever would, since I am a bit too fond of being left alone), but friends who are a stable couple provide for fellow couples a quality and perspective that would otherwise be lacking were we to have friendships solely with the single. (Amber and I like them enough, both individually and as a unit, that I am going to refrain from addressing them either as Dolly or Han.) I've had this rarely in my life (Kei and Dan are the most notable examples, and I loved Kei long before Dan came into the picture) and it still takes some getting used to.

Also, I am stuck on this concept of the transactional nature of friendships, which is a rather sterile and cynical way of considering things. I cannot figure out what I contribute to their lives that was worth seeking me out initially. I see very clearly what they contribute to my life - a weekly social outlet; the fact that they make Chinese food, Thai tea, and calzones for refreshments; good conversation about topics to which I can interject; a large screen on which I can make Amber play an emulated version of Bubble Bobble - but I am a bit fuzzier on the topic of why I am the recipient of these things. I'm not averse, of course. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy, really. It just seems like karmic largess which I may not have earned. Granted, I don't remotely pick my friends by what they can do for me nor have I met a single worthwhile person who did, but there remains a niggling worry that can only be sated by more movie nights. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20130506.php 08 May 2013 00:00:00 EST https://www.facebook.com/events/517154528343202/ 03 May 2013 00:00:00 EST http://lilysawyerbooks.blogspot.com/2013/04/welcome-thomm-quackenbush.html 20 Apr 2013 00:00:00 EST

To break the silence, Amber says, "It's nice that people would miss us."

"They are used to having me around, love. Melissa pretty much insisted that our leaving wasn't an option."

We had just left Jacki's annual St. Patrick's Day potluck. When the other guests had vacated, aside from Eric, Amber mentioned that she had applied to a yearlong artist residency at her alma mater in York, Pennsylvania, over five hours from where we currently live. She would have to work on her art and programs for the community for fifteen hours a week, after which she would be free to do as she wished. We would have a rent and utilities free apartment for a year and Amber would be given a monthly stipend that could not feed a dog. She does make York seem endlessly dull, except where it is outright criminal, which doesn't precisely put a shine on the concept. But it is an option, one of the few being presented to us right now. It is something other than our having to live separately.

We will only do this if I actually lose my job owing to the governor's budget cuts, but no one is admitting to knowing how likely this would be. Possibly, I would be offered another job with the state immediately, albeit not a teaching one. Possibly, reason will win the day and my facility will not close because people really don't want my residents released to their home communities all at once. I've been applying to other jobs in the region, but the only responsive school is one that I am guessing cannot come close to my current salary and benefits (but which would likely be a far more liberal and relaxed environment than teaching stubborn, adjudicated boys the basics of English grammar and composition).

Jacki and Eric offered various alternatives - Amber could commute to York, she could work all required hours in two days and then drive back to the Hudson Valley to cuddle beside her underemployed boyfriend - but did not come right now and say that they were entirely against it and Amber was forbidden to take me away.

On the drive down, we had broached the topic in broad terms by enumerating who we would miss most. Daniel topped the list, as we three have a quiet friendship where he can come over and we can sit and play on our respective computers while watching a movie and not feel a moment has been wasted. I don't know that Amber has ever had a friend so much like her as Daniel, an almost hermitical introverted artist who feels deeply beneath his stillness. She reaches the inevitable and unarguable conclusion: we will have to bring him on the residency with us. I tell her that there are certainly worse things in the world for him, among them continuing to deal with bankruptcies at work.

Daniel is only the tip of the iceberg. Red Hook has been good to me and is one of the prettiest places I have had the fortune of living. Bard College provides events enough to keep me busy every night of the week if I chose to let it. Amber and my weekly movie nights at Dan and Holly's has become one of the high points of my week because that alone is the closest I have ever had to the sort of sitcom-fond friendships I fetishized in my mid-twenties, where we all get together and banter merrily and intelligently. Seeing Daniel simply because we have a free evening is just perfect. Having money enough to take care of my lover is something I have never before experienced and would be loath to lose. I want to see more springs as I wander through trails, I want to raid Bard when the undergrads flee for the summer and dip my bare toes in their goldfish pond, I want to see autumn painting the mountains from Poet's Walk, and I will cope with another Hudson Valley winter as best I can. Wherever I go with Amber, I know I can build a life, but I don't want to lose the one I have now and all the wonderful tiny things that compose it. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20130316.php 16 Apr 2013 00:00:00 EST

Social scientists report that one lose half one's friends every seven years. I don't think it is too much of a coincidence that one's cells have been completely replaced in this same amount of time, a sort of Ship of Theseus. As a society, we pretend that this gradual transformation isn't existentially terrifying but, on a cellular level, both parties have become completely different people. Perhaps these two people aren't that close. Perhaps, on the most biological of levels, one really does outgrow other people.

Seven years ago, I was twenty-five. My life seemed to revolve around my long term relationship with Emily and a small nucleus of friends that resisted all my attempts make them like one another for the sake of turning my life a sitcom. I was just finishing grad school, clinging to my long hair as an unneeded symbol of my individuality and identity, barely managing to imagine what adult life entailed because I had spend every year of it concerned with an eventual degree. I know some people from this time, but I am not close with many of them. Seven years before that, seventeen, drowning in fondness for my emotionally distant best-friend-turned-girlfriend while my other best friend resented me near to hatred for dating her. I was lost in a world of high school, as one must be at that age (and hopefully no time else). I mark some people I knew then as status updated about babies and drunkenness, but we don't really talk. With all but a very few, the fourteen years difference in context means that I'm not sure we'd even nod when passing on the street. I am likely to have more in common with strangers in a bookstore.

This seven year half-life doesn't mean that half of one's friends drop off all at once, of course, but it does mean that an innate characteristic of most friendships is an expiration date. I struggled with this concept for much of my life. I refused to see that friendships should be less than permanent. Yes, they might shift in character but they needn't go away entirely.

But they do.

Sometimes, it is that life drags two people apart and the friendship cannot withstand the distance. Hannah joined the Navy and, aside from being the maid of honor at her wedding and a couple of letters, that was pretty much it for our friendship, though I couldn't have guessed it at the time. We are no longer even friends on Facebook, an act done quietly and without my knowledge until I sought to send her a link to something. Zack, whom I was friends with for well over a decade, moved to Indiana to start a new life without letting most people in this area know. He apologized to me some years later for leaving without a goodbye, but much time had elapsed and this apology meant only that he regretted parting that way, but not that he regretted parting (nor should he, since he has gone on to lead a fulfilling and happy life from what I can tell). I think we have a regard for one another, but I understand that we are never again going to hang out in playgrounds. As longtime readers can attest, these were not minor friendships by any stretch and, were you to tell me that I would one day barely know the other person, I would have thought you were crazy.

Some fizzle on their own, through neglect. I was once friends with Conor and, though he was a bit flighty, whenever we connected, I had full faith that he cared deeply for me and missed me. About seven years ago, he stopped contacting me or replying to messages, even though he was no further than a town away then. I don't think I did anything to offend him, but I saw no plenty in continuing to pester him with questions. I am sure he is a fine man - I glean enough via Facebook to see that he is ostensibly happy teaching live action role playing to teenagers - but he isn't someone I will be calling up to go to a diner anymore. Our lives diverged at some point, perhaps more known to him than to me, and we grew apart in a more literal fashion than that cliche suggests.

Some friendships are simply born out of a need. Once the need is met or ceases - be it simply to feel less alone or to enable a leisure activity that cannot be done alone - there is a vacuum. The other party is left adrift, not quite knowing what has changed but knowing that something must have. It is always a matter of fitting into the narrative and, once you step out of the role, once you want to take in a b-movie instead of discussing the theme of plants in a Chekov play or decide you like female folk singers and not just German death metal, you are ushered offstage. I have heard this happening with people who enter Alcoholics Anonymous and all of those blood brothers from the bar no longer remember your number once you sober up.

And, yes, some friendships end because they can't continue in any healthy fashion. You just have no need for acting out in your life any longer and this slowly comes to mean you simply don't have space for them. People do not universally age out of things at the speed one requires, nor should they be expected to. However, the guy who is a blast when you are both eighteen is tough to have a conversation with when you are in your thirties, yet he is still eighteen in his mind. You get tired of being the one biting your tongue so you don't have to say "I told you so" for the twentieth time for someone who seems to know better until it comes to relationships, drugs, thrill-seeking. I've been cast into the role of surrogate father before, against my will. When I stood my ground and said I was done with having to be the one rebelled against, I was told I was just done knowing them period.

In early college, I lost a friend because I would not take her advice about clinging to an ex. As far as I know, she did not have a horse in this race, as it were, that would better explain her reaction. She opted to cut me out of her life rather than deal with the continuation of my bad decisions in regards to someone she never met. This hurt, since I did not know the cause of her evacuation until I ran into her online years later and confronted her for closure, but I mark now that I likely didn't lose much of a friend.

Yet there are some friends who continue in your life largely because they were present for the last cut and were somehow spared. Again and again, they fail to leave your life, becoming the proverbial beer poster from college that clashes with the rest of the decor but which you keep if only because you've had it so long. You wouldn't buy it now, but you can't shove it in the garage behind the Furbies and Tamagotchis because it hung on the wall for so many great memories, whether or not it played any role in them. There's no getting rid of it, no matter how often your friends, lovers, parents look askance whenever they sit near it.

I feel no animosity or sense of rejection now when I quietly grow apart from friends. They do not slight me by choosing other company, as there was not a guarantee of exclusivity (lovers being the exception, of course).

Losing friendships would have once worried at me, as though I were insufficient or as though I could only prove my worth by maintaining them. I know I have played this song before, but the lesson seems to need repeating, in my life if not the lives of my readership. I spent so long in my life needing other people to justify myself. I no longer do. I have my writing, I have myself. These are enough. Anyone else is in my life because I want them there, not out of a pathological compulsion to never willingly sit in solitude.

Loss can sometimes be the best of all possible states because it forces us to consider what we truly need and what we are clinging to long after it occupies a space in our life that could be put to a better use. I grow closer with others, amazing people that perhaps would never had been in my grasp had I clung to those who left. It was only owing to Emily leaving me that I sought out new friends online, finding Melanie and Daniel. Had I not closed the long chapter of my life starring her, I would not have had the confidence to move on. Only when Melanie left me did I attempt another circle, finding the women who hosted my first signing and, most importantly, Amber. At the moment, I have several close (in proximity as well as emotional attachment) friends that make clinging to ghosts seem even more pathological and ridiculous. I see Daniel several days a month, I go to movie night Thursdays with Holly and Dan (about whom more will be said in a future entry). They are not friends who exist only to fill a need, who are time and place specific. They are people who fit where I am in my life and who I want to continue seeing because they are whole without me and vice versa.

Yet I cannot say I am wholly copacetic with everyone who has slipped away. There is a woman with whom I was nearly as close as could be for years, having a platonic love affair and feeling infinite as only teenagers to early twenty-somethings can. We began to drift after four or five years of friendship and I couldn't put my finger on why, though I assumed it was because we had started down very different paths in our lives. I went to a series of colleges, she entered the working world immediately after high school. I avoided drugs and alcohol, she indulged. I stayed living with my parents off-and-on until I was in my mid-twenties, she moved in with her friends almost as soon as she could. She went farther from who I wanted her to be, what I expected of her. I received more than a few calls through the years, which I now realize to be drunk dials. Talking to her was painful to me, but I did still care about her, at the very least because I once loved her so much and I wanted to believe in the persistence of affection despite changes. Then she sought therapy, she began a stable job, she became a better woman than the one my adolescent self could have imagined. I've seen people beaten down by less, but she rose above and flourished. But we were no longer close. Even though I feel we could meet now and be the best of friends, the history between us is too much of a wedge. I am the man who cut her off and shouted at her for drunk dials, not the eighteen-year-old who ran up painful phone bills listening to her breathe. I am not even a thirty-two year old stranger who sees her as admirable and worth getting to know. I was not there when she needed someone to be, at her worst, so I do not warrant being there now that she is approaching her best and I must make my peace with that. It's been over seven years since we were close and I regret to say that I believe she falls into that half of my friends I have lost. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20130310.php 11 Apr 2013 00:00:00 EST  

Ludwig Montesa was a fixture, an inexplicable light switch in the new apartment of the New Paltz community that definitely turns something on but you can't quite say what. You flick it whenever you get home and inexplicably feel a sort of relief, promising yourself that you'll figure out the wiring one of these days, but not today. Today, you are a bit too busy.

I met him for the first time at a party my freshman year of college. My then girlfriend, Kate, seemed to know him somehow and may have simply said by way of introduction, "Oh, that's Ludwig," as though that were enough to explain everything. To me, he seem to be an overly effusive and possibly gay Filipino stranger wearing heels that gave him an additional foot in height, but he greeted me as though I'd met him a dozen times before and I was silly for having forgotten him.

Years later, Ludwig still hovered. Whenever I visited New Paltz, it was a fair bet I would encounter him somewhere. I could walk by the drumming outside 60 Main and he would be singing some nonsense song along with them, showing off his double jointed fingers. I would go to a party and he would be shrieking/crooning some mid-eighties power ballad. He carried an old boombox with him all the time to facilitate this. He seemed to know everyone and be universally loved, such that I am not sure he was invited to half the parties he attended but no one would dream of turning him away.

He inspired myths. He would often dress in garish evening wear and insist that his name was Gloria, his words running together and stretching to catch up all in the same sentence. He was a gender-bending icon, someone who was so baldly out that it was hard not to feel immediately welcome in town if you fell somewhere on the LGBTQA spectrum, so of course he was at the Pride March I attended. Some said that he was born so prematurely that the doctors did not think he could have ever survived to toddlerhood. Others maintained that he had been exposed to a lot of lead as a baby and it altered his development. Upon meeting him, it was difficult not to understand that Ludwig was not quite as most people are. He had the occasional seizure, as New Paltzians would attest from having cradled his head until the episode released him, but these seemed a very small price for his company. He would tell people of his fiancée, though people seemed to share wry smiles and raised eyebrows when he brought her up, since Ludwig seemed to be a creature well beyond the binds of romantic love. Then he began showing her around, a woman as curious as he was, as though they were made for one another. I once asked how it was that Ludwig was free to roam about without a care, doing odd jobs for the shops on Main Street but largely doing nothing more pressing than being Ludwig, and I was assured that his father was very well off from owning a few shops in a tourist village, so that Ludwig would never want for anything. He seemed never to age. The world shifted around him, but he was this fixed point in time and space. In the best ways, he was a bit like a cartoon character, curious but immortal, not beholden to the laws of physics. As I read in the days that follow, it becomes clear that Ludwig was the child of New Paltz for at least fifteen years, perhaps more, such that people living there couldn't quite imagine New Paltz without him. He was the soul of that town, the closest thing it ever had to a mascot.

People in New Paltz seemed to understand that Ludwig was too strange to harm. In a number of cities in the world, Ludwig would have been a statistic. He was sweet and trusting without question, something that the opportunistic would have found too easy to abuse. But New Paltz saw in him a wonder that perhaps they had forgotten. Harming him would be like wounding a kitten who is rubbing against your leg, an unconscionable and unforgivable sin.

Even on my first date with Amber, Ludwig loped up the night dimmed streets, greeting everyone with a wide and impossibly infectious smile that showed more of his top gums than bottom teeth, and I introduced him simply as, "Oh, that's Ludwig."

Dan Kessler's girlfriend Stephanie loved him. I do not say this in the fashion that everyone loved Ludwig, as a strange and adorable being, as someone without ego and fear at every open mic night, this entity somewhere between a pet and a minor deity. She had lived and worked in New Paltz, having spent a while as a barista at 60 Main, one of Ludwig's main hang-outs. Maybe it started out as a few conversations whenever he would come in - it was pointless trying not to talk to him, he had too much to say to allow nonparticipation - but it evolved in a relationship of her truly caring for him. The closest analog I know is that she was like a mother to him, so much so that I would exclusively use her as a reference point when Ludwig seemed smilingly baffled when I greeted him. "Hey Ludwig, I'm Stephanie's friend." Once I said this sacred invocation, his eyes would light up (more so) and he knew that he could especially trust me, though I firmly believe that he trusted everyone and was never given a reason not to.

After a trip to the City where Stephanie helped him through a seizure, he wrote her a letter like so many others to which she was the recipient, writing:

Dear Stephanie,
Thank you very much for all the help that you did for me when we were on the bus coming back from the city. It made me feel like that you were a mother to me and taking so much care of me.
P.S. Roses are red, violets are blue. May God bless you with love and peace, but most of all Stephanie it made me feel like that I'll never forget the moments that we had in the city or you being like a sweet mother to me when we on the bus going to the city and coming back. Because I felt like it was almost a mother and son thing to do is go into the city.

Love,
Gloria

The vigil on Main Street

He was discovered around 10AM. He'd had another seizure, but this one proved too much for him. He was simply gone and it was far too late to do anything about it.

Usually, there is this cynical core in me that doubts a sudden outpouring of fondness for the recently deceased, but this can't be true for Ludwig. I read these messages, how Ludwig reacted to everyone as though they were his best friend, and I know they are true. Whatever altered his neurochemistry, it gave him a perpetual innocence that it seemed impossible not to find charming.

I tended to take him for granted, as something that would always be there when I visited New Paltz, whether it be a week from now or a year. When I hear of his death, I realize I miss him as more than a background character in the series that is my life but as a nearly inexplicable and truly unique being. Whatever the biological reason, he gave totally of himself and required nothing more than to be treated with the worth he had earned. People talk of putting up statues in his honor, of painting vast murals, and I believe he deserves every bit of it. With Ludwig, New Paltz lost something too precious even for grieving. Ten, twenty years down the road, people will still tell stories of Ludwig and those who never had the fortune to meet him will be baffled by the vehemence of the fondness those who know him still need to convey, knowing that they will not see his like again.

Mid-Hudson News Obituary
Ludwig Montesa Fan Club ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20130409.php 09 Apr 2013 02:00:00 EST  

My coworker offered me tickets to An Evening with Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman, since she is moving this weekend. I don't need these; I bought mine the moment I possibly could and presented them as a Valentine's gift to Amber. I drive to acquire them so that Daniel and Sarah M may join us.

Though the drive is only fifteen minutes, I do not doubt that I stretch if not outright break a dozen traffic laws in my excitement on my way to her condo, where I yank them from under the door.

Daniel and Sarah are already present when I return home. Amber is dressed in her best "artist" ensemble, striped thigh-high socks beneath her black, homemade bloomers, a tight vest over a pale blue shirt. She complements these with a rare touch of eye make-up as I endeavor to bring Sarah up to speed as to the nature of Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman, since she is aware of both but not experienced of either. I select a few videos that underscore that Ms. Palmer-Gaiman is reduced in the popular consciousness to nudity, passion, armpit hair, ear-worminess, and eyebrowlessness. Neil Gaiman looms too large a concept in my mind for such a reduction (also, it is tricky to force someone to understand the essence of a writer in a three and a half minute video, so I simply play her a promo video for the Coraline movie where he talks of koumpounophobia.

As they watch, I change out of clothes that still smell of smoke from a potluck turned bonfire we attended the night before. "Imagine Neil Gaiman calls me onstage as his personal guest to read from Artificial Gods," I shout into the living room, "what am I wearing?"

Heaven is the waiting...

"Are there any Hot Topics nearby?" asks Daniel.

Amber says, "I had a dream about Neil Gaiman months ago and he told me that he had only read the second chapter of Danse Macabre so far."

"That's not a bad chapter for him to have read, actually, but answer the question. I am onstage. What am I wearing?"

They decide a purple long sleeved shirt and jeans is good enough, which means they are not properly playing along with this fantasy I have been indulging for days. I know it won't happen, of course, but there is still a secret thrill to mulling it over, not unlike one's first discovery of masturbation. It is self-indulgent and ultimately unproductive, except for pointing out something I want enough to strive and work for it. Gaiman has touched my books and may still own two of them, unless he fed these to his dog. At least once, for a few moments, my name lingered in Neil Gaiman's mind. It is a Brobdingnagian leap from that fact to calling me onstage, but it may elevate me more than many of the people I will be rubbing up against tonight.

We arrive forty minutes before the show is set to begin, since I cannot stand being anywhere but in the closest proximity to Neil Gaiman. As we are directed to a far parking lot, I see that I am far from the first - or two hundredth - to feel this impulse, however having a set seat number obviates any benefit to early arrival. As we walk, a woman behind us nearly shouts to her companion, snottily wondering how many of these people around her are only here because of Spawn. Gaiman has a small affiliation with that comic series, having created a few of the characters and having then spent the next fifteen years suing Todd MacFarlane for using them without permission, but choosing to believe any of those walking toward to show are here because of that minor, ancient in terms of pop culture fact is astounding. As I count a dozen faded Sandman shirts and at least as many Dresden Dolls ones on my stroll to the theater, it seems far more likely that people shelled out for tickets based on more mainstream interests that some forgettable bit of comic esoterica to which she feels obvious contempt.

We squeeze into the lobby of the Fisher Center, a building described in We Shadows as a ravenous fish made all of sheet metal. I feel that there must be something here for us to do now, before we are allowed to seat ourselves, but I can't fathom what it might be. The presence of other people, a large portion of whom have hair the color of Skittles, makes me uneasy and I feel some inner Wormwood springing to life, its snotty voice curiously familiar as it wonders how many of these people are really fans of either or both of the artists and how many are smatterers that are about to occupy seats that should, by dint of the fact that Gaiman has thrice spoken to me on Tumblr to give me advice or assistance, be mine. Contrasted with this hairdresser's palette who even my Wormwood deigns may actually be legitimate fans (even if a few of them seem to be committing the mortal but temporarily forgivable sin of Wearing All Their Weird on the Outside and Trying Too Hard) are older people arrayed as though this might be a night at the Met - opera or museum, your choice - who I simply cannot bring myself to fully believe have any awareness that one of the headliners has taken an expletive as her stage middle name.

I am aware I am experiencing an unsubtle sense of entitlement, fueled largely by envy. When I am directed to my seat, I notice with annoyance that the theater has been redesigned in the seven month since I was last here and there is a wall between our seats and those of the theater center. Anyone within thirty feet in front of me earns my glares. Who do they know that allowed them to get better seats than I did? Anyone beyond this circle, I feel nothing toward. Possibly, it is because I burn out over a certain level of base and unfounded hatred. Possibly, it is that they are simply too blurry to be loathed properly (save for a larger woman in the front row with deep purple hair and a torn black shirt, who jumps and flails to attract people's attention to the excellence of her seat, for whom I am still able to rally a laser beam of animosity because Wormwood assures me she is rubbing it in). I do not consider that Daniel and Sarah are trapped in the second balcony, their sight line interrupted by a pillar, so far from the stage that Daniel later tells me he simply gives up and closes his eyes. (He is not sorry for this fact, he assures me later, because it allowed him privacy with his thoughts to absorb the experience.)

Amanda Palmer

A couple near us seems to be trying to cram as much related media into their facial orifices as possible before Neil and Amanda take the stage, listening to iPods packed with all of Palmer's albums as they cuddle reading a pirated version of The Sandman series on his iPad. Amber takes out a sketchpad, creating a squinty onion person while waiting. If just to have something to do, I try to write notes so far, but I cannot bring myself to have any observation more profound that scribbling that I am not close to as excited for this experience as I was for the last. It may simply be that I am farther back and there is no way short of my fantasy invite that I will be within a few dozen feet from the stage. Amanda is not in the audience, lovingly heckling Neil as she was last time. I have nothing to deliver to Gaiman. I am simply a spectator, a role I don't care much for. Once they take the stage, there are several times I blur my focus a little and it is easy to imagine I am watching this all on a screen at home, divorced from interaction, far less intimate than our last foray.

One trouble is that I have this unjustified feeling that Neil Gaiman belongs to me and Amanda Palmer to Amber (as I do not doubt many of the people around me could say of themselves). They have been there like friends, often more so than friends, on those rough days where we want to melt into the magic of a world with cagey gods or rage along with the crowned queen of the punk cabaret. We are spoiled by feeling their presence whenever we need them, but the intimacy of it is one-way. I can rattle off details about Gaiman's life and works, Amber can sing the better part of Palmer's discography from memory (only inserting my name into choruses to pester me with her affection), but they are not our friends and they do not owe us anything beyond hopefully continuing to be worthy of our interest. As much as my childish hindbrain doesn't wish to share its toys, they do not belong to me in any way beyond how they have personally affected me.

Amber positions her camera and telephoto lens on her knee, essentially becoming a steampunk pin-up as she contorts in her seat to steady the lens, despite the passive-aggressive throat clearing of a seventy year old couple in front of us, though I believe this is more directed at the content of the songs and stories than the gentle click-whir of Amber's camera.

One gets the feeling he is somewhat smitten

Several seats around us are left vacant. I try to text Daniel and Sarah to tell them to wave so I can have them come sit near us, but I think they must have no reception in their Siberia.

The show begins with Amanda Palmer announcing their special guest, a musician I have never heard of who is not Sara Bareilles, but who belts out her song and then vanishes backstage, never to be seen from again. I had been guessing at who the reported special guests would be, and admit to being a little disappointed that she is the only one, if only because I don't know her through no real fault of hers.

True to my assumptions - a statement I always hate - it seems several of the people had no idea what this evening would involve. When the Palmer-Gaiman's call for a ten minute intermission a bit before ten, I would guess ten to fifteen percent of the crowd simply leaves, the harrumphing elderly couple in front of us included.

Gaiman reads a couple of stories inspired by Twitter prompts sent to him, which are clever and which I have yet to read, though I express my delight to Amber that one about a djinn sounds very much like the sort of tale I would tell. There is nothing quite like hearing them from his lips, though, because my mental impression of his voice always sounds needlessly posh.

There is a brief question and answer portion, though all the questions were submitted on notecards available in the lobby (I knew there was something I was supposed to do out there!) and boil down to:

• I named my baby-to-be Indris, please acknowledge that this is cool.
• Are you still buddies with Brian?
• How did you two meet?
• What is one thing you like and one thing you don't about Cambridge?

I cannot blame the crowd for these softball questions, as Neil and Amanda selected the ones they were going to ask one another from a fat stack. As Neil is answering, Amanda thins out her stack considerably, the cards floating to the floor. This portion only lasts ten minutes and, while cute, I wished it had been a bit meatier, aside from Amanda embarrassing Neil on his love of French accented women.

I am surprised to hear Neil Gaiman sing almost as much as Amanda. Though he has a patient and sonorous voice, much the sort of voice an author should have who is going to give copious public readings, it translates into a sort of deadpan singsong, not unlike what should come out of the snout of a wry cartoon dog. The first of these is a duet of "Makin' Whoopie" with an off-stage Amanda. Never in my life did I quite envision I would be listening to one of my literary idols crooning this, but it is well-received by the crowd.

Whenever Amanda plays piano or sings, Neil sits on the edge of the ridiculously orange chairs, a hand to his cheek, and smiles up at her like a schoolboy. I can only guess at their private relationship, based on posts and reposts in dueling social media, but it is charming to see how in love he persists in being with her. I don't know that I could handle a relationship such as theirs, where their schedules separate them for months at a time. Since Amber and I move in together, I have not slept the night without her next to me.

Amanda Palmer sings a song she wrote only three days before, "The Thing About Things", the message of which is that we often don't love people until they are no longer alive to love us back. Though she is being almost silent, though Amanda Palmer belts out each note between those of her piano, I sense Amber sobbing. She still clicks away on her camera. No earthly trauma can get between her and her need to create art, but she allows me to kiss her and nuzzle against her hair to soothe her. When I later comment on the clarity of these pictures, how crispy everything is in focus, she remarks that she has the instincts of a sniper, shooting between sobs instead of heartbeats.

Amanda plays "The Ukulele Anthem" as her encore, though Neil does not return to the stage. As we exit, I pass a middle-aged couple arguing with the college usher guarding the rope that keeps fans away from the stage doors.

"I know them! You got to let me in there," the bald man shouts.

"Okay, well, let me just check on the list..." she says through a clenched smile.

For a few seconds, I play out a scene in my mind where I try this. I would approach one of the ushers, tell them I would like to see Neil, make eye contact and appear confident, assure them that I should be on the list, they radio back and... and Neil Gaiman tells them that he has no idea who I am and I am turned away, mortified. After that, I believe seppuku is the only way to restore honor to my name, so I decide it is probably best to find Daniel and Sarah.

How he reacts to being reminded of French accented women.

Amber wants to stand in the long line to examine the art book being sold. I leave her in the capable hands of Sarah while I search out Daniel, who said he would be getting air. Directly outside the glass doors of the theater mill a dozen smokers. I know Daniel, he will not be among people after having spent so long confined with them. I look into the night, for a spot of darkness that is a bit darker than the surrounding area.

In greeting, I say, "I find it all a bit unfair. What have these Bard kids done that makes them worthy of a sleepover with Amanda Palmer or a fiction class taught for a week by Neil Gaiman, other than been privileged enough to go to Bard in the first place?"

"That's all they have, the fifty thousand a year their parents pay for them to be in this bubble," says Daniel, "but they don't see outside, how lucky they are."

"It's a very narrow worldview. I get the distinct feeling that most of them don't even grasp that this should legitimately be one of the greatest things that ever happened to them. Hell, I could have been an amazing TA for Neil, if I had been invited in any way. Amber said she wouldn't be good at it, because she would be too busy cuddling his dog Lola, but I could have swinged it, if only I'd been a Bard kid." Just for this past week, for the opportunity to think nothing of sitting at the feet of Neil Gaiman as he proselytizers the edicts of good fiction or being blase about cuddling beside Amanda Palmer at a pajama party, I want very much to have been one of them, even if it meant being sneered at by everyone over the age of 21 outside of campus.

Amber calls me back inside to pay $5 toward her book, all the while the guy behind the table apologizes for a slight ding on the spine that dropped the price $20.

She says that this completes her evening, that she feels fulfilled, but I feel antsy. I wanted something more out of tonight. Not the impossibility of my fantasy, but to have felt a little less like a spectator. It would have been a feat to top my last time seeing them, but I didn't think I would already feel so entitled and jaded by what would have been pants-wettingly thrilling had this been my first time.

Perhaps I am more like a stereotypical Bard kid than I thought... SET LIST (with great thanks to H0wlingfantods for compiling most of this):

• "Makin' Whoopie" (Neil & Amanda)
• "Down to a Sunless Sea" (Neil)
• "In My Mind" (Amanda)
• "Dear Old House" (Amanda)
• "In Relig Odhráin" (Neil)
• "Ampersand" (Amanda)
• "Psycho" (Neil and Amanda)
• "October Tale" (Neil)
• "July Tale" (Neil)
• Ask Neil & Amanda!
• "I Google You" (Neil & Amanda)
• "Jump" (Neil & Amanda)
• "The Killing Type" (Amanda)
• "The Bed Song" (Amanda)
• "The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury" (Neil)
• "The Thing About Things" (Amanda)
• Cover of ACLU Benefit's "I Love You So Much" (Amanda/audience)
• "The Day the Saucers Came" (Neil)
• "The Amanda Poem" (Neil)
• "The Problem with Saints" (Neil & Amanda)
• "Ukulele Anthem" (Amanda)

It is a subject of great debate in the soft sciences why we want what we do in bed - is it hardwired or the product of formative experiences our conscious minds can no longer actively recall? (By this, I don't mean sexual orientation. If you need me to tell you that I think sexual orientation is part of your hardware, not software, you haven't been paying attention.)

The desires are there, no matter the provenance. The human animal becomes infuriatingly unpredictable when it comes to sexuality, as so many people have kinks and quirks one could not guess by looking. (I would imagine most everyone has a slight divergence from the supposed mainstream, be it for dental braces, men who look and act like Gregory House, or women who can sing. Any preference taken a shade too far becomes a fetish.)

Dan Savage, sex advice columnist, says that a sexual partner ought to be Good, Giving, and Game. That means that one should at least consider a partner's request to be tied up and called a naughty slut. One does not have to necessarily indulge their desire to be peed on in a threeway while you eat a hearty salmon dinner, but it couldn't hurt to hear them out (and maybe put a tarp down).

Sex can become increasingly complex, perhaps exponentially so, as one becomes more experienced. Each lover one significantly encounters can bring issues that result in a slight twisting of one's sexuality, so one may turn to pain, bondage, dominance, or any number of other kinks that can - but do not necessarily - make one a bit more distant from sex. When one feels one can't express the fullness of one's sexuality with a partner - because one loves them too much to smack them at the point of orgasm, because one feels shamed by one's carnal wants, because it would result in criminal charges in forty-eight states - one may turn to porn. This isn't always the case, but I have been a teenage boy and I understand that porn's seduction has little to do with sex I would ever want to have.

In addition to unconscious reactions to prior experiences, I would imagine much of it is built on primal instinct. For instance, cuckoldry fetishes could be based on reproductive dealings during the dawn of our species. In short, men are programmed to want to displace the seed of competition with their own seed and they will, as it were, jump more fervently to action if they believe their mate has recently been inseminated by an opponent. Interracial fetishes are indicative of this as well, plus a heaping dose of implicit racism.

Though the origins of these may seem atavistic and even outwardly offensive, it is important to understand that these fetishes do not make their possessors bad people by any stretch. None of this is intended as kink-shaming. Fetishes are not usually a matter of choice - you cannot be forced to have a fetish, though sometimes medication and therapy can alleviate a personally disturbing one - and one can indulge these safely and sanely (which is not something that can be said for all fetishes), occasionally by using porn.

Thus, Amber and I have unearthed the Ambush Discontinuity (a portmanteau of its discoverers and also refers to how much this can sneak up), the chasm between what one's brains/genitalia thinks is hot in porn and what one actually likes in real life. The only real bridge between the chasm for most people is talking dirty, as you certainly do not actually want your loved one to be choked with the gym socks of the girls who tormented you in high school (fetish atypical and impersonal, but stated for means of example).

I do agree that quite a lot of porn is a bit gross by design - most kinks are not mine and thus do not appeal - but I would not endeavor to legislate that which makes me uncomfortable. Like so many boys who grew up in the eighties, my first exposure to pornography was from a series of explicit magazines my older brother and his friends had pilfered. I could not have been much older than eight or nine - possibly I was a bit younger - but I did understand that this was exciting. I liked the idea of naked women, even if I happened to be a bit confused as to some of the specifics.

Despite what some conservative groups would say, I don't think this early exposure warped me. I am not plagued by anhedonia because I thumbed through dirty magazines any more than I've lost my taste for sushi because I had fish sticks as a child. Porn seemed to be an awkwardly lit fantasy world. At no point did I assume the girls in my grade would ever be interested in these staged scenarios any more than I assumed they would suddenly start tossing glowing flames at werewolves (I may have actively wished for the latter, since wizards and slayers were bound to be better company than porn starlets). In fact, I may owe porn a debt of gratitude, as it led me to HBO's Real Sex series which, while often tawdry and once detailing a clown orgy, contained better sex education than my schools cared to give.

Once I turned fourteen and started interesting actual girls, these magazines were left to molder in the basement. I gave any surviving magazines to my college girlfriend's artist roommate, who used them to make a collage of vaginae and breasts that would impress a serial killer.

I consider myself almost blessed to have pushed through adolescence and several relationships without any lasting psychic trauma that needs to be reenacted in fresh beds until I find catharsis. I know that I went through an emotionally loose period as a teenager ("Hey, I just met you and this is crazy, but here's my number, ARE WE IN LOVE NOW?") that thankfully tapered off and refocused once it came to the chemistry of intimate bodily fluids. If anything, the Ambush Discontinuity helped stave off the urge to do anything more scandalous than a bit of petting. ]]> http://xenex.org/journal/20130305.php 13 Mar 2013 01:00:00 EST "Like, in cancer books, the cancer person starts a charity that raises money to fight cancer, right? And this commitment to charity reminds the cancer person of the essential goodness of humanity and makes him/her feel loved and encouraged because s/he will leave a cancer-curing legacy."

-John Green

John Green is a monster from the hell dimension Lacrimosa who exists only to bring soul-wracking anguish into the homes of the literate.

I knew within a page that this was a book about Cancer Kids, having only picked it up because I kept reading quotes from it that I wish I had written. I don't like cancer as a plot device. Cancer is writing porn, like talking about 9/11 or the Holocaust. It's too effortless, too much emotion because of the condition which frees up the author to be lazy. Once a character is described as having cancer, the reader knows someone is going to be dead in the next hundred pages and they are going to cry. Here, we have three characters, all who had or have cancer, so the odds are against this being a lighthearted romp. Green seems to be aware of the limitations of this genre when he provides the metatextual criticism of a novel his main character likes, saying, "This isn't a cancer book, because cancer books suck." (John Green seems to be all about winking at the reader, as when Hazel later says, "I think you’re a pathetic alcoholic who says fancy things to get attention like a really precocious eleven-year-old and I feel super bad for you.") I figured that, understanding the genre and its tropes, I would be more or less inoculated against the worst of what he could throw at me.

Never have I been so wrong. I read the book straight through between panels I did at No Such Convention. I do not recall the last time I cared enough about a book - or more wanted a book to be over - than this one. Not quite halfway in, I began bawling, "If I keep reading, someone is going to die." Amber wanted more clarification, but I was reduced to making quiet walrus sounds and just thrust the book at her. This is something that occur several times throughout the novel.

Spoilers: Someone dies. This does not end the book because we have not suffered enough for John Green of Lacrimosa. Not human suffering can ever be enough.

My main criticism is that, despite how many times his characters mock how cancerous people behave in books and movies, every teen in this books seems to have metastasized Diablo Codyitis. These are some precocious kids, ones who toss around words like "hamartia" as though most teen know about tragic flaws and literary criticism. Obnoxiously precocious when it comes to one-legged bone cancer sufferer Augustus Waters, who keeps a pack of cigarettes that he does not light but will occasionally put in his mouth, using the twee logic that it is important to put the instrument of death in your mouth but not give it the power to kill you. Our poor protagonist, Hazel, was damned to fall in love with him from his introduction. And yes, the novel is a bit masturbatory, as characters pause to make sure the reader understand how special everyone is, with lines like, "You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are." I didn't really mind it. This books is overall a good metaphor for what its characters are experiencing. You come to love unreal characters you know had very exact deadlines.

You get pretty much what you should expect out of this book. Yes, it is a bit cloyingly clever at times and things work out in a cinematic rather than realistic fashion. There should be a sticker on the front reading "This novel brought to you by the Amsterdam Tourism Board". As long as one doesn't expect it to closely follow the edicts of reality - as long as you accept it as its own world - it is exhaustingly enjoyable, one of the most exquisite literary experiences I have enjoyed in years. So long as you know words like "numinous", you may well feel the same.

Ideally, it should come boxed with tissues and the number of a trained and well-read crisis counselor. I was not quite the same for days afterward. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/ography/fios.php 10 Mar 2013 00:00:00 EST

Continuing with I Citizen Mag's series of Indie Author Interviews we've got a great Q&A with Thomm Quackenbush. It's always a delight for us to get to know authors a little better through this series, the online community may seem large at times but it's a small world if share our love for indie writing and support exciting, new or unique authors.]]> http://www.icitizenmag.com/2/post/2013/03/interview-with-thomm-quackenbush.html 07 Mar 2013 02:00:00 EST

As always, the standard warning: I am going to relentlessly spoil this book.

Oh, what a joy it is to be able to write a glowing review.

(First, a note. I am going to refer to the main character as Wade throughout this review. This is not the name he uses for most of this novel, as it takes place within the virtual reality of the OASIS and everyone within uses a cyber-pseudonym. However, "Parzival" is not a name I care to spell reliably and the end of the novel leads me to believe it is a more fitting one than his screenname.)

My initial description to others of this book to others was that it was like a transcript of Roald Dahl and Neal Stephenson getting together over beers in 1989 to discuss the works of Kurt Vonnegut (or, less opaquely, what would happen if Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Snow Crash had a love child atop a pile of Atari games). Aside from Stephenson, all these references are so plain as to be spray painted on the side of a starship (no, really, Wade names a spaceship the Vonnegut).

The execution of the premise is inspired, even if the premise itself is baldly derivative. In the not too distant future (2044), humanity has ground to a halt owing to peak oil. Vehicles - aside from those with solar panels - are worse than useless. The world is a desolate and overcrowded place. Wade lives in a stacked trailer (with so little living space and such rampant poverty, trailers are stacked and connected with rickety girders) with his indifferent aunt who steals from him whenever possible. He is eighteen and well-versed in the only world that matters, the OASIS, a virtual reality that almost everyone alive is connected to most of the time. Even though he is poor, surviving entirely by finding and fixing computer equipment, he always makes sure to have a reliable connection to the OASIS.

The creator of the OASIS, James Donovan Halliday, died years prior after outlining in his will that the first person to find an Easter egg in the game will inherit the entire OASIS and all the goes along with it. This is less a matter of finding a needle in a haystack as finding a needle in Russia, since there are so many worlds in multiple zones in the OASIS. No keys are found in the intervening years and most of the smatterers have given up the search. The only clues anyone has are the video will and the 1980s-soaked diary he left behind, both of which become matters of no minor obsession among egg hunters, soon shortened to the portmanteau "gunters", and the villains of the book, Innovative Online Industries, a corporation that wishes to seize control of the OASIS and curtail its freedom for profit. These villains, called the Sixers (or Sux0rz) by the gunters, operate identical avatars and have all possible advantages within the OASIS, since they have the collective wealth and knowledge of their corporate masters.

I thought Cline's devices to avoid dealing with what a future world would be like were clever. There's no need to explore that dystopia outside because they have the best video game even created at their fingertips, free to play. There is no need for Cline to make up any history beyond the early 2000s, since everyone we care about is fixated on the minutiae of the 1980s. If you are disinterested with either video games (the vast majority of this novel) or 1980s culture, you would be best advised to look elsewhere.

Some of the physics of the OASIS were grand, such as the fact that different worlds allow and prevent abilities. Your ninetieth level wizard is going to be nearly useless in a technology only zone, your Firefly-class spaceship is going to conk out on the edges of a magic only zone and need to be towed back by a price-gouging mage in a psychic bubble. As in our world, virtual loot and gold is worth real money, though it is clear that Wade and the other gunters value the currency of the OASIS far more than legal tender (it can be used to buy products in the real world). I appreciate that there are rare artifacts that are worth the equivalent of millions of dollars and which are far too powerful given that they were inserted into the OASIS when it was just a game. I love the idea of online schools, something that is already peeking into our reality, as a means to combat social anxiety and inequity (of course, instead of people obsessing over who has the coolest new shoes, it is about who has the shiniest accessories for their avatar). I like that an avatar dying still has consequences, as this means the player must start again from level one with none of their loot. Otherwise, it would be only too easy to drown the enemy beneath digital corpses and regenerate at full power.

It is not that some of the seams are still not visible in the final product. I can see where Cline backed his characters into corners and then had to revise the book to get them out again. I can detect where one of his beta readers must have said, "Well, this doesn't make much sense." Sections of the novel seem more like the descriptions of action being seen in a movie than as if the characters are immersed in it; it is showing, not telling. On the other hand, these characters are jacked into a virtual reality, avoiding the horrors of their actual reality, so this might be less laziness than a stylistic trick. Wade is not used to a world that doesn't involve a screen and haptic gloves. The overall experience is such a delight that I am inclined to be forgiving.

This book doesn't provide many surprises. If you do not understand by the tenth page that Wade is going to win in the end and learn an important lesson about love and friendship after triumphing over adversity, you clearly grew up in a very different culture than I did. At the very least, you haven't seen many 80s movies (or Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory), which provide the moral backbone of this book. But knowing the inevitable destination doesn't detract from enjoying the scenery on the way, and it is some pretty scenery. This is a book rife with space battles, eighties music, magic, mazes, puzzles, comic books, giant robots, and pretty much every fandom worth knowing. I am a child of the eighties in a literal way, but I cannot promise to have understood all (or likely many) of the allusions and references. Thankfully, these tend not to be subtle. This is, after all, an entire virtual reality made by an eighties geek with an Easter egg hunt predicated on his obsession. You may not get the clues before Wade does, but it does not really matter. This is an adventure novel, not a mystery.

One thing that struck me as an afterthought (but which undoubtedly struck dozens of studio execs immediately) is that this book is, despite its filmic nature, downright unfilmable. It is not that the visuals wouldn't lend themselves to being on celluloid. As I've said, this is some pretty scenery and I'd love to see a three dimensional interpretation of it. The issue is exclusively one of licensing. Cline's characters inhabit a world obsessed with the 1980s and not a one of them is shy about namedropping, buying, waving about, or outright reenacting intellectual property. There is a battle between mechas of multiple studios, the lawyers of which would undoubtedly look askance at seeing them all fight in a movie. There are sections of the book where the gunters play a game consisting of perfectly acting out character's parts in movies, down to the gestures and with whom they are interacting. I suppose one could just make near copies of the properties mentioned to avoid paying out tens of billions for the rights, but it seems to defeat the purpose of the exercise. There is a reason characters in movies tend to either drink prop brands or deal in product placement.

That being said, the movie is already stated to be in development. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/ography/rpo.php 06 Mar 2013 00:00:00 EST  

I come home on Valentine's Day and the living room has been transformed into a blanket fort. I had been forewarned that this would happen - Amber had been talking for weeks about how she wanted to camp out and had me buy the fixings for something called "hobo stew" - but it is still startling to see what my lover can reduce our living room to when given a few spare hours, the contents of our linen basket and bed, and whatever twine she can fine. Within the fort, she has placed our inflatable mattress and the books she had been reading since finishing this masterpiece.

I had taken Friday off from work, knowing this would be a blissfully long night. We spend the night ignoring our art and writing, neglecting the internet (except for when I post bragging pictures of her fort - earning a few comments that people wish she were their girlfriend - and to watch a suitably bad movie that has nothing to do with romance, The Stuff), and cuddling together on our bouncy mattress. The hobo stew is interesting, a combination of various vegetables and ground beef roasted in aluminum foil, though perhaps not so much so that I am going to fold it into my culinary repertoire. We toast marshmallows for smores over the electric range and I introduce her to one of my favorite old school video games (Chrono Trigger).

I kiss the top of her head. "You know, you are a short-haired, unemployed Etsy artist who just made me a blanket fort for Valentine's Day for her slightly curmudgeonly writer boyfriend. My darling, I am afraid you fit the exact definition of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl."

She pouts at me and fakes crying. "No! I am a Depressive Pixie Dream Girl."

I squeeze her to me. "You seem more yourself today. Is it to do with your hair?" The day before, I sat patiently as the salon down the street turned Amber's long locks into a pixie cut, something she did largely because she wanted a change. My mother had texted to ask if this haircut meant Amber would now be a lesbian, but I had been given ample evidence to the contrary shortly after walking through the door.

"Like, does having short hair change things?" She wets her lips in thought. "Yes, I guess it does. I can't hide behind it now. Also, I'm usually busy making art, so we don't get a chance to really talk."

There, I think, is the crux. Even though we live with one another, the mundane needs of that life tend to drain away the ability to actually connect. We talk, but we don't really listen. We can be on our respective computers, reading or working, and neglecting the other person for hours out of no sense of malice. She is tracing figures in her mind, I am plotting out the next book I ought to write. It's easy to lose sight of the other person when lost in the worlds of our creation.

WHERE DID HER HAIR GO?

This isn't always a bad thing. We need to do our individual work to be content. We are separate beings and need to foster that which makes us so, because it is among the reasons we love the other person. At the very least, we need to do art and write, respectively, to maintain our sanity. We cannot just remain in bed, leaving only for cereal or bathroom breaks, as appealing as that seems at first blush.

Freud said that both love and work are necessary components of happiness, but it is too easy to give too much to work because love is seen as being omnipresent. Word has deadlines, love doesn't. Yet I don't love Amber any the less when I am fulfilling the needs of my day job or when I am in my writing closet, pounding out my latest sequel. If anything, I love her more, because I have had time to feel her absence.

At times, I believe I fall to the misapprehension that Amber needs me more than I need her. I am financially secure, I am further along in my artistic career by dint of being older, I am emotionally independent. But I don't love her because she is in my home. She is in my home because I love her. She has more time home because I work elsewhere and that can make her seem to be on the hungrier end of this relationship dynamic. I have been on both sides of this dynamic and they have their charms and pitfalls. I have been the unemployed artist (and resented to shame for it). I have felt second place to my lover's work and anxious for attention because of it. I never want Amber to feel that she is less than my priority, because I need her just as much as she needs me, something tonight proves again.

She has grown so much since I met her, from the irresistible mute of our first date to this increasingly confident woman (who still leans a bit on the defense mechanism that she is tiny and cute). Last weekend, she roped me into being a model at a bridal expo with her, something that I would have found unimaginable a year ago. She goes above and beyond to interview artists who join the local Etsy team, driving to their studios to take pictures and talk. She cut away a physical representation of her defenses. She has taken to drawing nudes because she avoided it when in college, within a month transitioning from crude figures to adept representations. She is steadily becoming the woman I sensed in her the first time our hands clasped, the one I've hardly stopped touching since, brave and clever. I feel as though I am still just getting to know her, that I am just falling in love with this cervine beauty who pounces on me with kisses whenever I walk in the door.

As we fall asleep on our squeaky, bouncy bed that night (a wall away from our proper bed), I cannot help but feel lucky to be the one trusted beneath the blanket barriers Amber constructs. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20130215.php 04 Mar 2013 00:00:00 EST