We are the 95%.

TRIGGER WARNING FOR RAPE on all that follows, including all links.

[I wasn't going to write this post today. Believe it or not, I really don't like writing about rape so much. I want to write more about good happy kinky sex. But then all that stuff with the Good Men Project kinda blew up in my face, and this is the post you got.]



There's one big lie that rapists tell.  Most of the other lies are just part of it.  "Consent is complicated and confusing and there are a lot of gray areas."  "She dressed/acted/talked like she wanted it."  "She never said no; how was I supposed to know?"  "She just regrets having sex."  "We were both drunk and the alcohol muddied things."  "He sure seemed like he was enjoying it."  "I guess I just got caught up in the heat of the moment."  "People do this all the time and only paranoid feminists call it rape."

The one big lie at the center of all these little lies is: "If you were in my place, you could have done the same."

I mean, who among us has not been confused in the process of sexual communication?  Who has not thought someone was interested in them and then found out they read the signals wrong?  Who has not had a partner enjoy sex less than they'd hoped?  Who has not felt "swept away" at some point during sex?  Who has not done something stupid while drunk?  Who has not felt that the things their ex said after the breakup were awfully unfair? The rape-apologist narrative taps into some nearly universal experiences.

And then, in that one big lie, pretends that these everyday insecurities and disappointments could lead anyone to rape.  "It could have happened to anyone," say the rapists.  Especially to men.  And to themselves.

Here's the truth, though, from some pretty major studies:
Between 6% and 13% of men have attempted or completed rape.  4-8% of men are serial offenders, and responsible for the vast majority (90-95%) of all rapes.

I realize these numbers are still uncomfortably high, especially if you have twenty male friends.  But they also mean that 94-87% of men are not rapists.  Add in women (who do rape, but at a lower rate), put in some fuzzy math and broad guesses to get a good-enough ballpark, and roughly 95% of people never attempt or commit rape.

So when you hear all the totally plausible ways it could have been you, realize: nope, probably couldn't have been.  Most people don't struggle not to commit rape.  Most people don't have trouble understanding sexual refusal.  The vast majority of people go through drunken blunders and miscommunication and bad breakups without committing or being accused of rape, just as the vast majority of people don't have trouble restraining themselves from torture or murder.

And forget the numbers for a second.  If you, personally, make a commitment to never have sex without unambiguous consent, your odds of being a not-rapist are 100%.  It can't "happen to you" if you decide not to do it.



This is part of why I talk about consent so much.  It's not just to keep well-intentioned guys from accidentally raping.  Most well-intentioned guys don't really have that problem.  It's to help well-intentioned guys (and girls, and everyone else) see how vast the gulf is between them and rapists.

If affirmative, negotiated, freely given consent is the norm, then rapists lose the ability to say "I just didn't know."  They can no longer make anyone think "but regular sex looks practically the same."  If romance doesn't work a damn thing like rape, rapists can't hide behind "I was trying to be romantic."

Clear consent does make sex better, and it does prevent legitimate-yet-horrific misunderstandings. But that's not all of what it's for.  It's also so that rapists can't say--to us or to themselves--"I thought we were just having sex."



Only 5% of people commit it, but everyone lives with the effects of rape.  Because of this small minority of predators, everyone has to live in a world where they will have a sibling, spouse, child, parent, friend who's a survivor of sexual assault.  Everyone has to live in a world where women are told to live in fear of rape.  Everyone has to know a family, social group, school, political party that's been torn apart by bitter hostility between survivors and their supporters and predators and their defenders.

Because a lot more than 5% of people have been suckered in by the rapists' big lie.  A lot more than 5% of people talking about any case of rape in the media or their social circle start saying "sounds like a grey area to me," and "she really did send some mixed signals" and "do we have to be so hard on the guy?"  A lot more than 5% of people treat rapists with sympathy and survivors with skepticism, because they're thinking "shit, in a situation that confusing, it could have been any guy; it could have been me."

But 95% of the time, it couldn't have been.

We are the non-rapists, the people who will never commit rape and who suffer from the actions of those who do.  Imagine what we could get done if we presented a united front, and the rapists had no one but other rapists to defend and enable them.  We are the 95%.  Let's fuckin' act like it.

Occupy Boston.

I marched with Occupy Boston today.  I'll be back tomorrow. (I'll be working as a first aid volunteer. Come say hi! Or if necessary come say "oh god please get this pepper spray out of my eyes.")

It's scary and inspiring.  It's flawed in a whole bunch of ways.  It's worth being a part of.

It struck me as a very different kind of protest than any other I've seen.  Because it encompasses so many issues--healthcare, education, war, corporate personhood, national debt, jobs--and yet the central one is clear and emotional and obvious: "99% of us are eating the crumbs of 1%, and fuck that shit."

It's a different kind of protest because in many ways, it's less a protest than a forum.  There was a lot of talking at the Occupy Boston camp.  A lot of disagreement.  A lot of different issues being raised.  The camp was being run as a mini-democracy, not a party headquarters.  This is why the Occupy movements aren't releasing demands--because their goal isn't "enact a solution now" but "we need to start working on solutions."  That's a confusing, messy cause to be marching for, and also a tremendously humble and important cause.

The Occupy movement is also a different kind of protest because of the strange way it encompasses both the radical and the eminently reasonable.  Or really, how it shows that the reasonable has become radical.

The radical-looking people in the photo--the dirty-hippy types and the scary black-masked folks--most of them weren't screaming for the downfall of the State or the overthrow of capitalism.  They were shouting things like "fund healthcare and education" and "reduce the deficit."  I live in a country where people are putting on masks and writing a defense attorney's phone number on their arm so they can say things like "rich people should pay more taxes."

Maybe the crystallizing moment came when some doofus yelled "get a job" at us, and the crowd yelled back--not "fuck the system," but "we want jobs."

There was another crystallizing moment, though, of a different sort.  We were gathering and preparing to march, and one woman asked timidly, "are we allowed to march here?"  The answer: "we're always allowed to march."

Maybe all that we're proving is that protest still exists in this country--that a person with no "power" except the ability to stand in the street and hold up a sign is still a person with a voice.  That's pretty fucking important right there.

I don't know, now, if this is the start of a powerful snowball of dissent or if it's a little blip.  I don't know if it's going to be co-opted by people with ulterior motives or if it's just going to whither away as people have to go back to school and work.  I don't know if it's going to turn scary and violent or if it's going to turn big and important.  I don't know if it's going to change the country.

All I can say right now is that I'm glad it wasn't just another day in the Financial District.




P.S. Occupy Boston is ongoing in Dewey Square just outside South Station.  If you're going tomorrow, tweet me @pervocracy and I'll say hi!

P.P.S. The people who are saying "this is just a bunch of silly hippies who don't even know what they want" are the same people who said "this is just a bunch of silly girls who want to wear slutty clothing" about the Slutwalks. Pay them no mind.

Too tired for a real post.

Sorry I've been quiet the last few days. The last week of work seems determined to see me out with a proper "YOU FUCKING BITCH I WANT SOME FUCKING VICODIN RIGHT NOW OR I'M GOING TO PUNCH YOU AND THEN SUE YOU." Work, sleep, wake up, wonder why I'm lying in the driveway, go inside to my bed, sleep, work.

Tomorrow is my last day. After that, I have no excuse not to write on-topic posts. But right now I've got a great excuse! So instead of a proper Pervocracy post, here's a scene from "The Zombie Cure."





It was a warm night after a cold rain, and in the beams of the floodlights, the ground was steaming. Gary Cantrell, twenty-nine, pale, lanky, sweating like a horse, crouched in the darkness and waited. A pump-action riot shotgun was slung over his shoulder. He didn't want to use it. But he was glad as hell to have it there. He reached back and touched it, silently comforted.

The trap was a crab-pot design in hurricane fence--a broad funnel going into the corral, a narrow gate coming out. Gary held one side of that gate. Shealyn, only a few feet away but nearly out of sight in the blackness, pulled on her leather gloves and took hold of the other side. "We're ready," she whispered under her breath, and Bee stepped out under the floodlights, into the maw of the trap.

"COME ON YOU ZOMBIE MOTHERFUCKERS," she bellowed. "WHO MOTHERFUCKING WANTS SOME?" Bravado. The words didn't matter anyway; all the zombies knew was the sound of a human voice. The dinner bell.

For too long there was no sound. Gary shifted his weight uncomfortably. He didn't like hearing the mindless groaning of the unholy dead. But God, it was better than nothing. He wished he could see the moon, or some stars. Except for the pool of light on Bee and the trap, the blackness was absolute.

"I'VE GOT SOME NICE JUICY MOTHERFUCKING BRAINS!" Bee yelled. Gary realized that she had been a good girl before, a quiet smiley girl who never really learned how to swear. But they were all pretending to be tough guys these days. Hell, every time he used that damn shotgun he acted like his ears didn't hurt and he didn't want to puke even a little bit. "HEY YOU MOTHERFUCKING ZOMBIES, YOU GONNA SHOW UP OR YOU GONNA FUCK YOUR MOTHERS ALL NIGHT?"

Then the sounds finally, finally came. But instead of the usual moans and shuffling footsteps, it was the quick pitter-pat of running feet. Human feet. And what ran into the light was not a shambling mound of rotten flesh. It was a woman. She was crying.

"My baby," the woman said. She was tall and still looked strong, but bone-thin and filthy. Gary had been in worse shape himself when he came to the Fortress. The woman ran up to Bee, nearly screamed "my baby," and collected herself. "My daughter. Ellen. She's six. We had a safe place. But she went out and she. They. ...She got bitten."

Without a second's hesitation, Bee hugged the woman. "You're safe here," she said. But Gary and Shealyn stayed where they were, silent, in the dark, with shells chambered. "We have a good place here. There's food, and beds, and a doctor will see you. It's going to be okay."

"But my baby."

"It's going to be okay," Bee said again, but hollowly.

"No, you don't understand," the woman said. "She's here."

Then Gary heard it. The familiar groaning, but quiet and higher pitched, coming from a smaller throat. The mindless shuffle of little feet. And into the light stumbled cute little Ellen. Her eyes lolled crazily in their sockets. Blood was smeared across her face and her teeth were bared like an animal's. She looked dully at her mother and Bee, looked right through them and held out her arms, grasping at them.

Bee and the woman ran to the back of the corral and Bee shoved the woman over the back fence, boosting her up and letting her fall on the ground outside. Then she turned to face the little girl. Slavering, the girl grabbed Bee's jacket, but Bee was already in a fighting stance. Without even changing her expression she braced herself and flipped the girl over her hip. Fifty pounds of tiny zombie hit the dirt with a very small thump. "Let's do this like usual, folks," Bee said, and that was the cue.

Gary and Shealyn slammed the gate shut and vaulted themselves into the corral. The zombie righted herself and snarled. Gary realized that her hair was still in pigtails, tied with little pink beads on the elastic. Bee made a little clicking sound, almost smiled, and they moved as a team. Shealyn grabbed the girl's right arm. Gary grabbed her left. Bee pulled her legs out from under her and the four of them went to the ground.

Little Ellen's head rolled crazily and she snapped and gnashed her teeth. She clawed and thrashed with the strength of the undead, the strength of a creature that knows no pain. It took everything Gary had, both hands and a knee and all the blind stupid courage he had in him, just to hold one of her arms as it became wild and clawed. If the fight went on she would literally tear herself apart.

With the practiced moves of a woman who had done it a hundred times and still not learned to swear properly, Bee released the girl's legs from her hands and in an instant trapped them again under her knees. She pulled a syringe from her back pocket, yanked the cap off with her teeth and spit it aside, and darted it into the girl's buttock, right through her pants. Bee jammed the plunger down fast and had the needle out before the girl's struggling could break it off. "Okay," she said when it was done, and the three of them released the zombie and ran for the fence. They were over it before the zombie could regain her feet.

Then it was just a matter of waiting. And of telling the mother that it was just a matter of waiting. The girl snarled and paced in the corral, clawing uselessly at the fencing. In a few minutes she slowed, then crumpled to the ground, seemingly asleep but for the lack of breathing.

It took a moment. Not seconds but minutes. Then the little girl's chest heaved, once. The mother put her hand to her mouth. Another long moment, thirty seconds, or twenty. Another breath. And then another. And then the girl's eyes were open, not blank and wild but bright and clear. Shakily, she sat up.

This was why they built the trap. This was why they left the safety of the Fortress to come out there every night and bait it with their own bodies. It was times like this, watching the little girl be a little girl again, watching her get up and walk, unsteady but alive and human, so beautifully human in her every movement, and run over to reach out to her mother through the fence. Her hands, now that they were no longer claws, were so tiny. Her mother grasped them and kissed them.

"Mommy?" little Ellen said. "Why are you crying, Mommy?"

Energy.

I'm in the home stretch now. Only six shifts left. I'm so glad. Getting off work at 7 AM, getting home at 9 AM, having far less than eight hours of highly fragmented sleep, and heading right back at 10 PM--it's wearing a lot off of me. (I worry that it's wearing a lot off my writing too. I still try...) I'm on three hours of sleep right now. The last post was written on zero. I haven't reread it, so I, uh, hope it's in a language used on Earth. I've made that mistake g'Pawwta wraragh.

This chronic exhaustion hasn't killed my sex drive. I still get horny, I still masturbate even when I'm half-asleep. I have less time for sex than I'd like, but when I have the time, I take it. (I might be on the bottom with a glazed look in my eyes, but I'm still enjoying myself, I swear. Besides, I do that anyway.)

What it has killed, or at least dampened horrifyingly, is my kink drive. I find that BDSM takes tremendously more energy, mental and physical, than simple sex. Taking a punch is physical work, taking pain is mental work, and taking domination is emotional work. Wonderful and rewarding work, mind you. At its best, kink makes me feel strong, loved, fulfilled, and whatever the adjective form is of "coming my brains out." But it's hard to feel strong when you aren't strong because you used all your strength wiping diarrhea off a 300-pound end-stage-dementia patient at 4 AM.

I still have fantasies. I still want to get thrown against the wall and punched and kicked like I lost a fight. I still want to get tied up and fucked like he wouldn't fuck me if I could get away. I still want to be called all those words you're not ever supposed to use on a woman and made to gratify whims from "get me a beer" to "no, on second thought, shove the bottle up your pussy." I still want to feel the fear of a knife against my skin and the horror and relief of it just barely breaking through. I still want to feel the limits of my body and mind, the things I'm capable of and the things I'll sink to.

I still want, maybe more than anything, to dabble in "defilement" and discover thereby that I cannot be defiled--that throw anything you want at me, in the morning I'm just as smart and strong and goofy as I ever was. To make over again that wonderful discovery that to be humiliated is not to be lessened, but to become ever more beautifully aware of my own inner strength.

I still want to not just throw out "oh yeah, I'm kinky" as some informed attribute of my sex-positive street cred, but to live it in the most visceral and sick and joyous ways I can.

I just need to sleep for like five weeks first.

Snow.

There was a house fire in my neighborhood a little ways back. The family in the house was killed.

You can't really tell which house it is from the outside--it didn't collapse or char, and there's no police tape left. But all the other houses in the neighborhood have the snow melted off the top of them because of the heat running inside.

This house, standing empty and cold, is the only one covered in snow.

Do you scream?

You're a girl. You're youngish, smallish, and while you're certainly not helpless, your assertiveness skills are only medium.



Guy grabs your breasts. Do you scream?
"GET OFF ME YOU CREEP!" Hell yeah you do. He just assaulted you and you have no shame about shaming and repelling him and letting everyone know.



Guy starts talking to you, and you don't find him attractive, and he's giving you kind of a weird vibe. Do you scream?
Of course not. He's only talking to you. You can't make some crazy rule that only people you find acceptable are allowed to talk to Her Highness, for chrissake.

Guy starts complimenting your appearance, again sort of heavy-breathey. He's kind of persistent in talking to you and you can't--or don't, at least--find a polite way to say "it was nice to meet you, bye now." Do you scream?
Of course not. It's a compliment. And if he's still conversing with you, that's half your doing, isn't it?

Guy touches your arm. You really don't like him and it gives you the screaming willies. Do you scream?
No. It's just your arm. And you were talking, and he was being friendly, and touching friends on the arm isn't so weird. If you screamed you'd just look crazy.

Guy gives you a hug. Do you scream?
Talk about crazy, again. Screaming because someone hugged you? Especially when you were already being friendly and touching, it's only natural that someone who sees you as that sort of friend might hug you.

Guy grabs your breasts. Do you scream?
Suddenly it's tougher. I mean, you did lead him on this far. You gave him every reason to think it was okay to flirt with you and touch you and hug you--can you totally blame him for taking that wrong and trying to make a move? Screaming will make him feel angry, make a big dramatic deal with you at the center, put your actions up for judgement. Maybe if you scream people will think you're the crazy one. Maybe you really aren't justified in screaming. Maybe it's best to very very quietly and politely let him down. Or just shrink away silently. Or to just put up with it.



And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why "women should just stand up for themselves when guys are inappropriate," while certainly not wrong, is not always simple.

The Money Is Not The Problem Economic Theory.

I'd apologize for going off topic, but people never seem to mind--in fact, seems like I get more "ugh, sex again?" mail then I get "hey, stick to the sex!" So if you want your underinformed economic opinions from your kinky sex blogs, read on. (I did take a semester of Econ, but only because I was already buddies with the professor and babysat her kids so I figured easy A... but in the end the "oh god, I can't embarrass myself by turning in junk to my friend!" shame made me work harder. I did get an A though.)

My personal macroeconomic theory is that Money Is Not The Problem. Money is a symbol. A symbol that can mean a lot microeconomically--how much of it you have, or how much your business has, sure feels like it matters--but on the scope of a nation or the world, money isn't the cause of most problems. Goods and services are.

For example, healthcare. The reason healthcare sucks in America is because we don't have enough doctors, nurses, hospital beds, or medications. In the hospital where I work, we often have people stay overnight in extra beds at the back of the ER when they should be admitted, because there isn't a single empty bed upstairs. We also suffer from frequent shortages of medications as basic as morphine. These aren't money problems, these are stuff problems. Declaring morphine free wouldn't make poppies grow any faster.

And I think this is the problem with attempting to address income inequality by redistributing money. If the things to be bought with that money don't change, then socioeconomic classes don't change. If everyone can afford a mansion, but your city has one neighborhood of mansions and ten of run-down high-density apartment blocks... run-down apartments get a whole lot more expensive. (In theory, who lives in the few available mansions could change, but history says good luck with that.)

The problem a society has to solve if it wants everyone to be wealthy, or at least everyone to be doing okay, is how to get everyone good stuff. Money is a small piece of that puzzle. Technology is a much bigger one, as are education and entrepreneurship.

There aren't any doctors sitting around idly in empty offices wishing someone could afford them. You want better healthcare in America? Train more doctors and nurses. Open more hospitals. Make more drugs. What they cost will be a whole lot easier to sort out--in fact, may work itself out--once there's actually enough of them. When you're trying to feed fifty people with one pie, don't waste your time thinking up wacky schemes to cut it just so; go bake a bigger pie.

And this is why I don't buy organic.

Dyspraxia.

I guess I haven't posted about this before. It's sort of a weird topic, because it's something that on the one hand I consider "minor," not worth making any big kerfuffle about, and on the other hand it affects me literally every day. I have Developmental Dyspraxia.

For me, this mostly means that I have tremendous difficulty thinking about spatial relationships, including the ones relating to my own body. I walk into doorframes because I don't know how wide my shoulders are. My handwriting and drawing are terrible because I can't figure out which way my hand should move to make the shapes I'm thinking about, and I have to hold my pen a weird way. I am absolutely useless at any form of sport or dance, and I... kinda walk funny.

Mentally, I can't estimate the size or distance of objects. I mean, I can tell the difference between a skyscraper and a pencil, I'm not The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, but I can't necessarily tell three feet from six feet. And I have some sensory weirdnesses; certain sounds and textures give me an intolerable case of screaming meemies for no good reason. (The worst thing: chewing gum. Ugh. I freaking hate gum.)

All this was a lot worse when I was a kid. Back in elementary school I would freak out or even throw up when I couldn't handle certain situations, and my lack of coordination was to the point where my ability to stay upright was pretty tenuous. If I was startled or upset or even just laughing too hard--hello, floor. I couldn't really handwrite until about fifth grade.

I'm better now. I had some occupational therapy, and a lot of practice just learning to exist in the physical world. I don't have grace--I'll never have grace--but I do fine at work and at most of the activities I want to do, and the impacts on my daily life are more of the "gosh I'm clumsy and quirky" variety than anywhere in "oh crap I'm disabled" territory. (While I was writing this post, I got up to get some milk out of the fridge. I tried to open the wall next to the fridge. Oh well, quick readjust. I probably shouldn't be a surgeon.)

Maybe the only weird thing is how other people perceive me. If someone pays attention, they can tell that I'm a little different, but they don't usually make the "oh, this is an actual disorder" connection. More often they characterize it as a part of my personality--positively that I'm silly, or negatively that I'm careless. Much as people tend to perceive my frizzy hair as some statement that I'm wacky and free-spirited, instead of just being the way it grows, people perceive me walking into stationary objects as some strange form of self-expression. The idea that I'm just, you know, the goofy absent-minded walking-into-tables type seems to characterize me. And I don't usually bring up that no, I really wasn't able to tell that I was going to hit that table. Most of the time I'd rather be a doofus than a special-needs kid.



In terms of sex, it hasn't been that big a deal, since by the time I was old enough to have sex I was compensating pretty well for the major stuff. It would certainly be nice for certain activities to have a better sense of rhythm and coordination, but I do okay. Likewise I might be attractive to more people if I could present my body in a less flailing manner, but there's more than enough people who are indifferent to or charmed by a little flailing.

Also, if you tell me your penis is twelve inches long, I'll have no way of knowing that it isn't.

A bittersweet emergency Christmas.

I drove an ambulance for two years. No one ever died in my truck. Not one. Plenty of people were dead when we found them, and a few died before we could load them, and I'm sure many died shortly after we dropped them off.

The one who came closest was D. We picked him up at a nursing home, to take him home to die. When we got there he was already doing that fish-breathing dying people do, those desperate irregular gasps like each breath is a load they can barely lift. His son was by his side, holding his hand.

My partner mouthed to me, "Let's move quick. He's CTD." Circling The Drain. Ha ha! Like in a potty! We are monsters because if we were human we couldn't help people. Have you ever had to pick up human fingers and put them in a bag? It's a lot easier to do if you're a dumb callous jerk.

So we were monsters, and loaded the truck fast, and drove to his home. The whole way there D gasped, on and off, sometimes stopping for a long moment and seeming still but then finding the strength for one more breath. He reacted to nothing in the world, not sound nor sight, but when his son held his hand, D held it back. Weakly. And he held on. For fifteen miles, with my own breath held at every traffic light, he held on. We got to his home. His whole family was there. They were all around him, in his own home where he'd raised his children and played with his grandchildren, when he finally stopped gasping.

We put him in his own bed, and washed his face, and pulled the sheets up nicely. We made him look okay, look comfortable. He'd made it home.

---

M was the very opposite. We came to take her from her home so she could die in a hospice. It was better for her there--she'd get more care, be kept cleaner and medicated more consistently, and the burden would be off the family. It made sense. But it wasn't her home.

M wasn't old, but she had cancer. When we came into the room and saw her, she was, like D, seemingly unaware of anything. She did not look at us, did not move when we said her name. But when we got ready to take her out of her bed, before we had even touched her, she stopped breathing.

I touched her neck. I felt her heart beat a few times, weak and irregular, and then just a thready little thrill, and then nothing. For long enough to be sure, nothing at all. The family looked at me expectantly. "She's gone," I said. It felt like a stupid cliche, but I couldn't think of a better way to say it.

Her husband lost it. He forgot we were there, forgot his own family even. He just crumpled and sobbed. It wasn't dignified in any way; he wailed. He kissed her and kneeled by the bed and bawled until snot ran down his face. We let him be. I went into the living room and made calls to our dispatch, the hospice agency, and the funeral home. We realized we'd left our jump kit in the bedroom, and I snuck back in as unobtrusively as possible behind the husband to grab it. I needn't have bothered. I could have set off a grenade behind him and he wouldn't have known.

She had to die sooner rather than later to do it, but M, like D, didn't die alone and she didn't die in a strange sterile place. Although both of them seemed to know nothing of the world, I think they knew when they were home.

---

R didn't die in front of me. We came on the same mission as M, to take her from her home to a hospice. Her home was nice--not fancy, not big, not in a nice area--but nice. It was clean and calm with art on the walls and her bed was was big and old and looked comfy. The place we were taking her was also clean and calm, but the art was all generic soothing landscapes and the beds had plastic mattresses. This was her last moments in any place that was home.

Her husband, quite elderly and moving slowly, followed us out. He wasn't coming in the ambulance. Presumably he later came and visited her in the hospice, but this was the last time he would be home with her. In the parking lot, before we loaded her into the ambulance, we paused so he could say goodbye to her. He didn't say anything. He bent down, slow and unsteady, and kissed her like no one was watching.

---

We were cleaning a corpse, once, at the ER. Like ya do. The girl helping me clean him was kind of a sensitive type, definitely not a subscriber to the "I'm frivolous and callous because I care" philosophy, but she was holding it together okay. He was on the older side of middle-aged, not really old enough to die, but he'd been obese and a lifelong smoker and heavy drinker and that helps us make it okay in our minds. If someone didn't take perfect care of themselves, you know, that means they sorta deserved it and we shouldn't feel so bad. It's not that we're evil, it's just that we'll believe anything to not feel so bad.

But we took off his shirt and suddenly the girl started sniffling and holding back tears. I looked and I knew why. He had a tattoo that read, "If love could have kept you alive, you never would have died." Underneath was a picture of his daughter.

---

There are two paintings hanging on my wall. They're from a woman I cared for, way back when I worked at an assisted living facility. She had to leave the facility when she broke her hip and her health got worse, and she gave away most of her paintings--there were dozens--to the aides. One of the paintings is from long ago, back when she was healthy. It's an exotic market scene, rendered in blue and gold with wild, abstract brushstrokes, with birds in cages and vaguer figures suggesting hanging fruit and gourds.

The other painting was from after she suffered the brain injury that put her in assisted living. It's clumsy and simple, painted with the brush held in a twisted, contracted fist. But what's more noticeable is that it's an entirely literal, dead-center and unembellished image of some nice flowers in a pot. All of her paintings after the injury were like that.

But she never stopped painting.

Tales from the set.

Before I was an EMT, before I was a sexblogger, but considerably after I was a pervert, I spent several months working as propmaster and assistant art director on an independent horror film. A very independent horror film. (Because I'm about to dish dirt, some of which may be of dubious veracity, and because my real name and the real names of the dirted are in the credits, I can't post the title. Just think of it as Evil Dead, only without the breakout success or the Bruce Campbell.)

----

It was shot in northern Washington State, up near the Canadian border. Two of the producers, a couple with Actual Hollywood Experience, housed me in their guest room and took me under their wing as a sort of surrogate daughter--a sometimes cluelessly awkward daughter, but a dreadfully earnest and energetic worker with an almost puppylike devotion to my surrogate producer-parents.

The other producer--let's say "Muffy"--was woman with extremely rich parents whom she still lived with, and it was their money she put into the project. She even made her mom cook most of the "catering" for the crew. (At other times, we were fed by a real catering company--which gave us the leftovers from various weddings and events.) She also cast herself as the female lead, and pushed for the script to be the Muffy Story Featuring Muffy.

Other characters on the film:
-The director, who used a pseudonym comparable to "Robert Nightshade" and insisted that it be used exclusively on the set, although his actual name was more like Bobby Shmuckler. He was most notorious for asking the camera operator to widen out a bit on a bikini shoot, because, well, "Uncle Bobby likes the feet." He was also notorious for... I'll get to that.
-A Big Name Hollywood Actor from a very famous TV series who made our lives hell by being usually stoned, sometimes drunk, and constantly obnoxious. No-name community theater actors would painfully and precisely soldier through take after take until he finally deigned to say something sort of close to his lines. Midway through the production he unexpectedly shaved his head, which created a serious continuity problem for us. We solved it by painting his head brown.
-An endless supply of identical blonde Canadian model-actress-whatevers, who showed up, cried about having to do a nude scene, did a nude scene, died, and went back to Canada.
-Our "stunt coordinator," who ended up doing more security and general grunt work than stunts, and was a Special Ops veteran and Hell's Angel (I'm still fairly convinced he really was both) who had a lot of stories about killing people. Once we were startled by a sudden noise outside, and he leapt to the window, literally growling and pacing like an animal.

---

Fully aware that he had neither a great story nor lush visuals to sell, Bobby Schmuckler wrote in plenty of lush visuals of the other kind. There were a lot of nude scenes on the film. On one of them, we were between shots and the Canadian model-actress-whatever was wandering around in that fluffy white bathrobe that signifies "nude scene" in the movie world.

We were shooting in an actual abandoned asylum. A small corner of it had been niced up and secured for production purposes, but the rest of this vast building was empty and crumbling. Excursions through it always brought up surprises--a huge number of dead cats (one with three eyes), an operating room where lobotomies were performed, squatter nests, places where the walls were entirely broken through and plants grew into the building, and for some reason, one room with a giant knee-deep pile of broken glass. It was also so thoroughly, so blatantly haunted as to make me believe in haunting. But although this building was abandoned, two other facilities were still active on the campus: a center for troubled youth, and a Level 3 sex offender facility.

During filming, one of the sex offenders snuck into the facility kitchen, covered himself entirely in aluminum foil, and escaped. He was later caught on the other side of our set, still foil-wrapped for freshness. Not one of us had noticed him.

Anyway. Back to this nude scene. The lights for the next shot were taking a while to set up, and the model-actress-whatever wandered off in her bathrobe. She went to the fence of the sex-offender facility, where the guys were out in the yard, and gave them all an eyeful.

And that's how our movie production caused a prison riot.

The model-actress-whatever was sent back to Canada and our makeup artist was recast in the part.

---

As propmaster, I had many... unique... tasks on the film. One of my favorite was being asked to craft a realistic poop ("get me some Taco Bell and I'll craft that for ya"), then being asked to make it edible. Tootsie Rolls and some patient, truly loving sculpting saved the day.

There was also the problem of a tunnel that was supposed to be yards and yards long, but was, in reality, maybe fifteen feet. We put up pipes in the background and rearranged them for each shot, so the actress ran past the same wall with different pipes three or four times. It kinda worked.

Our best props failure came when it was time to kill off one of our favorite actors, a local theater guy who'd always been exceptionally helpful and decent to the crew. As our twisted way of giving him a good sendoff, we resolved to give him the messiest, nastiest death in the movie. We decided to use a cannister of compressed air and literally gallons of fake blood to create a spectacular arterial spray. On the second try, the rig worked perfectly and the spray was enormous, ceiling-staining, red-raining, beautiful.

On the first try, during testing out in the parking lot, we over-pressurized the cannister and it exploded. No one was seriously injured, but boy, did it look bad.

---

Another casting problem concerned the main monster of the movie, an evil female ghost. Our first actress disappeared. Our second actress drunkenly climbed a lamppost and swung from the top, then disappeared. (I mean, not immediately. But like the next day.) Our third actress disappeared. At his wits' end, or maybe just seizing the moment, Bobby Schmuckler decided to cast the only performer he could really rely on: himself.

He took this role very seriously. He got fitted for a bra. Although the ghost only appears in shadows and flashes and wears a floor-length dress anyway, he demanded the makeup girl shave his entire body. (They later ended up dating.) With a flowing wig, ruby red lips and pale cheeks, and long acrylic fingernails, he made a darling ghost. Although it could be hard to take him seriously when he directed in costume.

---

Places we set off fire alarms on this movie: the asylum, the public library, the best hotel in town at midnight, and the producer's house. But the only one that we actually set on fire was the asylum. It didn't burn down or anything. It was just, you know, a little bit on fire.

---

Amazingly, the movie was finished and distributed and I now own the DVD. Muffy took over the editing (via the editor's penis, you heard it here, folks) and it was made into the Muffy Story Featuring Muffy, but there's still plenty of drag-monster action, Canadian titties, and for me, so many happy and strange memories. It's kind of a terrible and nonsensical movie, but even to an outsider it has that wild, improvised, 3 AM, let's-put-on-a-show spirit in it, and I love it.

Rat race.

I wish I'd done a lot less homework when I was a kid. I'm glad I went to school--knowledge is both practical and wonderful and I wouldn't have just learned it all on my own--and I know that some homework was necessary to drill the knowledge in. But there's also huge amounts of work that I did just to get a grade. Either I already knew the material cold, or I did the homework without genuinely learning--often not out of apathy but out of a fear that if I challenged myself I would miss a deadline or get wrong answers, so doing problems by rote or writing papers on topics I already knew was safer for my grade. I wish that I'd used school to learn things I wanted or needed to know, instead of letting it push me into an arrangement of trading gruntwork for grades.

This is my roundabout way of saying that I hate my job and want to quit. I won't, because I don't have another income source lined up right now, but I want to. Ever since I was sick myself, I can't stop seeing the fact that I'm not working for the patients--I'm working for a monstrously ugly and dim-witted system that treats patients as cogs at best and obstacles at worst. We end up more concerned with shutting people up than with comforting them, better at filling out forms than at relieving pain, more motivated to clear beds than to fix problems. It's not something I want to be a part of any more. Especially since I'm a cogstacle myself--I don't fit into the workplace culture at all and the requirement to constantly work harder not smarter showcases my worst qualities and makes me look mediocre among people who read Twilight unironically. I'm bright and responsible, dammit, I'm just not motivated to spend my downtime washing things that are already clean so the boss doesn't see me sitting down.

Saying you're so super smart doesn't mean much if you are nothing more than a mediocre night tech, though. Going on about "brain the size of a planet, and here I am emptying bedpans" is just entitlement and arrogance if I don't find my own way to stop emptying bedpans. So my next project is to find a way to make money without being a cogstacle. (This doesn't mean I wouldn't be an employee, only that I wouldn't be an employee somewhere that's only hiring me because robots are expensive.) I don't particularly care how much money as long as I can pay my basic bills; I do care that my answer isn't "be a cogstacle somewhere marginally nicer."

The problem is that I don't have a lot of prerequisites for a "brain the size of a planet" job--no advanced or specialized education, decidedly unslick people skills, no business or financial expertise, a messy and unimpressive resume, and the only thing I'm worse at than looking "sexy" is looking "professional." (I have a sneaking suspicion that if I could fit into a suit without looking like a kid in Mom's clothes and say phrases like "proactive teamwork on the development taskforce" with total sincerity, I could make $50K without trying. But alas, I am peasanty of face and sardonic of manner.)

What have I got? A bachelor's degree in film (and rhetoric! ask me about Quintillian's canons of oratory, kids!), above-average writing skills, computer competence but not expertise, specialized knowledge in the fields of human biology, filmmaking, and sexuality, a tremendous amount of creative enthusiasm, the ability to pick up new skills really fast, tons of connections in the kink and sex-positive worlds, and a not completely broken work ethic.

Wow does that all lead up to one thing when I lay it out like that.

I should get me one of them home businesses with the cosmetics and hosting the little cosmetics parties.




I know it sounds like I spelled out "porn," and maybe I kinda did, but I was actually thinking more like "sex toy business." The idea is far less than half-formed, and the competition is certainly fierce and well-established, but I feel like I could actually do something new with the "sell things for people to touch their genitals with" concept. I'm most interested in showcasing unique and unusual toys, with providing a lot of information on the products, with making things previously only available from obscure kink artisans more available, and with trying to appeal to people's sex-nerd "oh I gotta try that" enthusiasm rather than their crotches.

It's a "also I'll have a pony" dream at this point, and I've had a lot of those that didn't pan out. Also a lot that did. It's worth working on.




Welp, off to go empty bedpans.

Healthcare, autonomy, and no easy answers.

When I went to the ER a couple weeks ago with a high fever and severe abdominal pain, they did a pelvic exam and a vaginal ultrasound. These were absolutely necessary to rule out life-threatening conditions--I could have had an ectopic pregnancy or an ovarian torsion, and no one wants me to die because they were too demure to check out my no-no places.

But I was sick to the edge of rationality and had been given a combination of medications that were extremely sedating and confusing. I was in and out of consciousness, and when I was conscious it was in a numbed, blunted, incoherent sort of way. It was not a condition in which I would customarily be able to consent to vaginal penetration. Not that I was really asked; the conversation was more like:
"This is going to go in your vagina now. Scoot down a little."
"Mmmrf?"
"Nurse, scoot her down a little."
"Mrrf."

In the world I normally live in, "mrrf" is not considered enthusiastic consent.

Medicine isn't subject to the same rules as sex, and for good reason. The doctor wasn't doing this for his personal enjoyment, and my life was potentially on the line. The medications weren't given to make me more malleable but because I was crying and puking. Messing with the vagina of a confused sick woman isn't an evil scheme but an unfortunate necessity in a bad situation.

---

My least favorite thing to do when I'm working in the ER is restraining children for catheterization. It's not so bad with babies, but with kids who are old enough to say "no, no," it makes me fucking hate myself. I don't think "sometimes you can't stop strangers from holding you down and doing painful things to your genitals, and your parents will just sit there and watch" is a message I ever want to send to a kid.

I can't even always play the "but it's necessary" card on this one, either. Most of our child catheterizations are not because the kid can't pee, but because the kid can't pee on command and we need a urine specimen. A lot of the time with some patience the kid probably could pee in a cup or stick-on external bag. Or, very often, we find the kid's problem by other means and it has nothing to do with their urinary tract, and if we'd waited thirty minutes we'd have known we didn't need to catheterize. So we're not doing this stuff because it's fun, sure, but we're doing it for convenience, not necessity.

I've considered refusing to participate in this sort of thing, but then someone else will just do it, and what the hell difference does that make? If I made a big enough stink I'd get fired while someone else went on and did it anyway.

---

Later in my hospital stay, I started feeling much better. Not great, sure, but no longer dependent on hospital services. My problem had been diagnosed, I could walk, and I could take adequate fluids by mouth. I asked to leave.

And I was told "well, we'll see about that." The nurse and the first doctor I asked told me it was simply out of their hands, so sorry, but they'd try and pass it along, the whole "competent non-criminal adult would like to leave" thing. I thought about removing my IV since it was very uncomfortable and I knew I didn't need it, but I was afraid that being a competent non-criminal troublemaker would lose me what little respect I had.

Of course, I could have walked out the door and nobody would have physically grabbed me, but there's this thing called "AMA." Against Medical Advice. If you leave AMA--without your doctor's permission and all the proper paperwork--your insurance doesn't pay. So sure, you can have your freedom, as long as you've got twenty thousand dollars handy.

Four hours after I asked to leave, the correct doctor came and talked to me. He told me he wanted to keep me another night just to be safe. I begged to go. I negotiated. I felt scared as fuck because he could have said no and that would have been it. My freedom was up to this stranger's personal opinion. In the end, though, I managed to plead my way out. Five hours after that, the correct paperwork was done and I was allowed to leave.

---

My second least favorite thing in the ER is dealing with psych patients. If you walk into an emergency room of your own free choice and tell us that you are having hallucinations or you feel suicidal, we will take you back, take away and lock up your clothing and possessions, and tell you that you cannot leave. If you ask to leave, we will first calmly explain that you cannot, then badger and condescend to you, then threaten to physically restrain and forcibly medicate you.

Policy states that if someone attempts to leave non-violently, if they simply walk toward the door, we should try to talk them into staying but not lay hands on, and call the police when they cross the property line. (The police, of course, will lay all the hands they need to, as will we when we take the patient from the police and throw them in restraints.)

This policy is not followed. If you are deemed a psych hold and you walk towards the door, several burly men will throw you to the ground and hold you down. A bed with straps will be brought. You will be taken to a private room ("private" from the public, not from the five or six strangers in there with you) and have psychoactive medications injected into your buttock. They will then secure you spread-eagle to the bed. With good behavior you might be released in as little as an hour. Acting upset or angry about being restrained, or being aggressive in your requests to be released, are not considered good behavior.

Of course, most of the people we do this to really are completely psychotic. They really wouldn't be safe out on the street and they might be a threat to others as well. Of course you can't let a guy who randomly attacks people at Satan's behest just walk out because Satan told him to. But far too often we restrain people who talk to Satan but don't hurt anyone. Once someone gets the label "crazy," all's fair. And if they don't like it that's just evidence of how damn crazy they must be.

---

Like the title said, there's no easy answers. Healthcare can't follow the same rules as casual social interactions. Procedures on the genitals aren't sex and keeping someone until their safety can be assured isn't kidnapping. A healthcare system that made it easy for patients to opt out of everything unpleasant would be up to its ass in corpses and lawsuits within a week.

But a healthcare system that makes it difficult or impossible for human beings to opt out of pain and confinement is... it's enough to get me reading the "Help Wanted"s again, I'll tell you that.

Slow recovery.

Lying down: "This is ridiculous! I feel totally normal! I'm strong as a horse! I should get up and run!"

Standing up: "Ooog... I should lie down."

The Two Most Fatuous Conversations I Had In The Hospital.

Doctor: "I see you have this rash here, it looks like an allergic reaction."
Me: "I've had that on and off since I got sick."
Doctor: "Do you have any pets at home?"
Me: "I have guinea pigs. But I've had them for years and this rash started exactly the same time my fever did."
Doctor: "Look, I can't force you to get rid of your pets, I'm just saying..."


Nurse: "Any questions before we discharge you?"
Me: "How can I avoid giving this to my boyfriend?" [slight simplification of truth]
Nurse: "Stay away from him!"
Me: "Well yeah, but..."
Nurse: *laughing* "ABSTINENCE, GIRL!"
Me: "Forever?"
Nurse: "...Um, no. For about two weeks or til you feel better."


(Same nurse: "You're not working or going to school right now, right?" What, do I have a particularly unemployed-looking face?)


So at least the nurse eventually gave me useful information. I cannot say the same of that doctor. He's the same one who wanted to keep me in the hospital an extra day just so they could do another blood test, and it took considerable debating and heel-digging-in to point out that I could just come in and get my blood drawn without needing to spend the other 23.75 hours in storage for their convenience.

HOME!

I am home. I am still sick. But at least I get to be sick in peace and on my own terms.

More than anything--more even than that shower that I really need right now--I just want to sleep. In the hospital there were so many nighttime tests and botherings that my sleep was terrible and I think that impairs healing worse than anything.

I'll shower in the morning. Afternoon. Whenever I get up. It's my own fucking decision for once.

I'm so glad to be home.

Frustration.

I don't know if I'll go home today or not. I desperately want to. The first night here I needed the hospital, I needed my fever and fluids and pain controlled continuously. And I was so sick and medicated that I wasn't all that aware of things anyway.

The second night was a maybe. I was still having a bit of pain, and one spike of fever.

But now I'm awake. I'm walking. I'm hydrated. I haven't had narcotics in 14 hours and my pain is entirely manageable. And I still don't know if I'm going home.

All the hospital is doing for me at this moment is running a very slow IV drip when I'm taking plenty by mouth, and making me spend most of my time in a bed that wasn't comfortable two days ago. Obviously I don't want to go home and get sicker, but I hate it here. I can't bend my right arm because of the IV and I have to drag the stupid pole everywhere and I can't wear normal-person clothes and they make me save all my piss and they keep doing painful things to me without even warning me and I can't fix my hair.

At least I have wonderful friends and lovers. Jack and Sprite and Rowdy came up last night and it made all the difference in the world. I was pretty strung out but I got to feel like a human being--emotions and sense of humor and outside life and all--for a couple hours. People dance the Macarena, they fold origami dinosaurs, they draw silly cartoons, they make filthy jokes, they bend the rules and they poke fun at each other. Instead of just having to sit in the back of my head like I was at a "while-U-wait" repair shop for my body.

I'm not 100% better. But I'm okay. I want this IV out of my arm. I want to wear jeans. I want to walk around on the street even if it hurts. I want to pet my guinea pigs. I want to fucking masturbate, for Chrissakes, I can't even get that done properly in here.

Maybe it'll be today. They're saying maybe. I'm really really hoping. I just want my body back.

Mono.

So I have mono. I have it like bad--the fever has been going way out of control, I've been getting dehydrated despite being on my fifth liter of saline, and my liver function is all screwed up. I'm going to have to stay in the hospital at least one more night, and might be kinda crappy for a couple weeks.

Oh, uh, if you've exchanged saliva with me recently... I'm really sorry. If you feel sick in the next couple weeks you're probably gonna want to get tested for mono. (Most people have actually had it and didn't know, though, and you can't get it twice. It's one of those diseases that is less severe if you get it at a younger age. So odds are good that even if we've swapped spit you'll be okay.)

At least I have a good hospital room. It's private and shiny-new and there's a nice view. The nurses and doctors have been very kind to me too. Although a bit obfuscating; it's weird that when I'm at work I have instant access to a patient's lab results and med list and care plan and progress notes, and when I'm the patient I barely know what they're injecting into me right now. I've literally learned more about my condition by overhearing conversations about me than I've had directly addressed to me.



My cellphone is dead, so please email me to contact; I have a hospital phone number I'll give out by email. I'm mightily bored and would love visitors; the hospital is close to a T stop in Cambridge.

Moving.

For the third time in sixth months, I'm moving. This is the least painful move--it's less than a mile and my new place is on the first floor (which in Somerville is still up a flight of stairs, but only one; my current room is up three flights)--but it still hurts. I moved a ton of crap today and I still have a ton of crap left to move.

If you have a thing for sweaty, smelly, grouchy girls then I guess I'm going to be pretty sexy for the next couple days.

Wages of sin.

Oh shit. It looks like a whole bunch of people who were at the party have contracted a disease. It's viral, it can be treated but not cured, the effects are uncomfortable and embarrassing, and it's highly contagious. Even condoms don't stop it from spreading.

Yeah... we've got the flu.

(I am still making it to Dating While Feminist! I may come with an oxygen mask and IV drip, but I'll be there!)

Not dead!

Okay, it's definitely not appendicitis and it's most likely not Flesh-Eating Parasitic Hellbeast Disease either. Probably a kidney infection? Which is bad, but not surgery bad or "set your affairs in order" bad. I'm still waiting on lab results for a definitive diagnosis but the doctor assures me that I am not dying.

Whoo.

----

EDIT: "Abdominal pain, cause unknown, call us if anything changes." Fuck! It's equal parts aggravating (thanks for the help, guys) and embarrassing (they presumably think I'm a crazy drug-seeking hypochondriac now).