WisCon. I will be there. You can come here my talk. Or read. Or pontificate. The last is like talking, but with more authority.
Here’s my schedule:
So, Your Character’s A God…
Friday, 1-2:15pm. Conference 4
Sometimes characters have strong beliefs in gods, and sometimes characters ARE gods. These can be anyone from omnipotent gods distanced from the people to gods casted out of their lands and forced to live as wretched beings. Sometimes there are whole pantheons of gods, and sometimes there’s just the one. What does it mean to have a god as a character? What are the potential pitfalls in using a real life religion as your fictional playground?
Alex Gurevich, Natania Barron, Anaea Lay, Gabiann Marin
Worldbuilding Justice And Injustice
Saturday, 9-10:15pm. Assembly
Questions of justice and injustice very often lie at the core of SF/F stories. As writers, how do we construct societies where these conflicts work well? What worldbuilding tools can we use to portray justice systems and their systemic – and often problematic – consequences in a society? How can we show those consequences in the actions and language of our characters?
K. Tempest Bradford, Charlie Jane Anders, Jennifer Marie Brissett, Anaea Lay, Juliette Wade
Snuggles, Rainbows, and World Destruction
Sunday, 2:30-3:45. Michelangelo’s
Stories of wonder and weirdness, rainbows and apocalypse. Come for the cuddly monsters, stay for the end of the world!
Cislyn Smith, Anaea Lay, Vylar Kaftan, Elizabeth Shack
I’ll also almost certainly make an appearance for the end of the Strange Horizons tea party. Also, there’s going to be a spontaneous programming item about Project FAD, including the reveal of it’s not-temporary, actually-quite-permanent new name. Make sure to look that up once it gets scheduled.
This is going to be simple and short. If you know anything about me, you know that it must matter a whole lot if I managed to make it short. Ready? Here it is:
I hereby formally and publicly announce the launch of an endeavor currently code named Project FAD. This endeavor will, at a minimum, launch a contest for beginning writers of science fiction and fantasy with a prize meant to bolster and nurture their nascent careers. That’s the very small, pragmatic elevator pitch.
I’m not feeling small or pragmatic. I’m not planning to limit this endeavor to writers. The field is so much bigger than that, and the value in supporting creators across the field so much more vast. Artists, editors, (podcasters?), teenagers, marginalized folks, people who bleed across the margins with a hunger to hone their craft, you name it, I mean for this to be a thing they can latch onto and find support, resources, and a chance to grow.
I’ve already got enough people volunteering to help to count by dozens. That’s only a start. We’re going to need so much more.
Like you. Interested? Sign up. Let’s make this happen.
Yeah, I’ve used that title before. And you’re the second one to get called Erasmus, too. Get used to it. You’re in for a lifetime of being the second one to get things.
I’d have written this sooner, but it’s been hard to figure out what to say. I was pretty enthusiastic about your mom having a first kid. I was pretty against her going back for more. She didn’t like being pregnant, or giving birth, and taking care of a baby wasn’t her cup of tea, either. I’d have been perfectly happy to be an only child, and I’m sure the same is true for your sibling. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I care about your mom miles and miles more than anybody else, including you, especially when you aren’t even alive yet. There didn’t seem to be any point in putting her through all that again. But she didn’t listen and guess what: so far, you’re way worse than your sibling was. Cut that out once you get here, okay?
All the things I said about intentions and childhood and whatnot in the other letter apply to you, too, of course. But I remember your mom being annoyed by hand-me-downs so I don’t want you to get a hand-me-down letter. I still had my own room in your mom’s house until she started prepping for you to show up, and now I have to stay in the same guest room everybody else uses. That’s on you, kid, not your sibling. An affront like that deserves a personalized response.
Everybody in the family, possibly the whole world, knows your mom and I are very close. That’s a big part of why she didn’t listen to me when I told her to stop at one child; she wants her children to have the kind of relationship we have. But that’s exactly what’s made it hard to figure out what to say to you, and what made the prospect of her having a second child distressing to me in a way the first wasn’t. We’re as close as we are in large part because of how we grew up, and you’re not going to have the same experience. Your mom is good at being a mom. She listens, and thinks of your sibling as a person. Even when he can’t communicate what’s happening, she tries to figure out what’s going on inside his head. I don’t know where she learned how to do that. And I dunno, maybe she’ll lose track of doing that once you come along, but I don’t think she will. She and I are as close as we are because we had to be. That won’t be true for you.
Part of me hopes you and your sibling like each other but, ultimately, you’re more indifferent than not. That you get along fine as children but go on to be adults and live your own lives and you chat amicably a big family events but that’s all. That if you are close, it’s the same as when people stay friends with the people they met on the school bus in kindergarten, instead of the kind where the first time you move out, you’re a little bit glad you had to go back because your younger sibling doesn’t know how to cope with life without you and you need to teach them as quickly as possible before you go for good.
As charming as it is that your mom is nudging your older sibling into Little Mermaid fandom to make him like me, I don’t want either of you to take after me. Or her. Even if you do things that are similar in shape or effect, I don’t want it to be for the same reasons. Childhood intrinsically sucks, but yours is going to be better than ours, and I want that to matter enough that you come out different.
Yes, part of me will be deeply satisfied if you’re neurotic, co-dependent, clingingly lonely, and constantly bite the shit out of your mom. She deserves some time on the other side of that. It’s okay if you do some or all of that. It’s okay if you don’t. Just like it’s okay if both you and your sibling decide to get married and have kids, or neither of you do. At least one of you should be loudly and abrasively sarcastic, but that’s just because loud and abrasively sarcastic people are good to have around, not because you’re destined to iterate generational patterns.
I do have this for you, and just for you: don’t let being younger define you. It’s just chance that you’re the second and not the first. It’ll have an impact – your parents are not going to be the same parents for you they are for your sibling. That’s how time and experience and humans work. That’s not on you, so don’t take responsibility for it. And don’t ever, for even a second, give credence to anybody who sets you up to compete against your sibling. Friendly rivalry is fine, that’s not what I’m talking about. But the moment somebody says, “If you were Neil…” or, “The way Neil’s better than you…” just stop listening. It doesn’t matter how much better you or they think he is compared to you on any given thing. The premise is nonsense, and the person spouting it is, at best, being temporarily stupid. Don’t put up with it. (Neil, if you’re reading this, you have your Aunt’s permission to take a swing at anybody who tries this on either of you. Don’t embarrass me if you do.)
You’re already the kid who made your mom give up sweets while pregnant. You hit rock bottom for popularity before you were born. It’s all uphill from here. You’ll be fine.
My Grannie was born in a house next to a graveyard. The graveyard wasn’t there yet, but it wasn’t long in coming. The land the graveyard is on was their orchard. But the town needed a bigger cemetery, so her daddy sold the land and in exchange had a job as its keeper.
She’s Grannie because I’m her oldest grandchild and I said so when I was five and learning to spell. ‘Y’ is a letter you can’t trust, but you can trust Grannie.
According to her, there were three things Grannie wanted to accomplish in life: build her own house, visit England, and have babies. Babies are an obsession of hers. She worked on the church nursery so long that a significant number of the people you run into in town, when they find out who my grandmother is, go, “Oh, Sara Foy! She changed my diaper.”
As long as I’ve been alive, she’s been a white haired old lady. The kind of stereotypical grandmother who thinks astonishingly ugly sweaters are just what you want to wear, who clips on flimsy sunglasses over the large, clear plastic frame of her eyeglasses when she drives, who will not let her purse out of her sight because that’s where her lipstick lives and a woman should always look her best. It’s easy, if you don’t pay attention, to think “traditional fifties housewife, cliché in all the ways except playing bridge.”
I must have been seven or eight when, one Sunday at the dinner table, she scolded me to take my elbows off the table. “Grandaddy has his elbows on the table,” I protested.
“That’s okay for him. He’s a man,” Grannie said.
“Then I’m a man, too.”
Years later, when I’d ask my sister about a strange interaction I had with a cousin, my sister would answer, “Oh, that cousin just didn’t get the memo.”
“What memo?” I asked.
“That you’re a man.”
I hadn’t noticed. But she was right. I’m pretty sure “Take your elbows off the table,” was the last time Grannie chided me to be more ladylike.
In 1998, when Gone With the Wind was briefly rereleased in theaters, Grannie took my sister and me to see it at the artsy theater in Richmond. We’d seen it already, on two VHS tapes we watched on successive nights in her living room, but this was an occasion. We’d been to that theater before, too, but never with her. Never with somebody who remembered when they still had the organ the play the music along with the movie.
She had a copy of the book, too. I borrowed it from her the summer before I started college. It was old, the binding cracked, the pages yellow and disintegrating. The dust jacket was more dust than jacket.
When I was in Richmond at the beginning of November, Grannie was looking everywhere for her copy of Gone with the Wind. She couldn’t find it. “It’s probably disintegrated,” I said.
Grannie loved working in the yard, going to historical society lectures, listening to opera. She organized the local seniors social group until she was in her eighties. She was the oldest person in the group when she retired from doing it. They disbanded rather than find somebody to replace her. Until three years ago, she sang in the church choir. She couldn’t read music. She did it by ear. She loved to sing lullabies, because she loved babies, and music.
“I think I’d like to see my great-grandchildren,” she told me once. “So hang around and see them,” I said. Another time, “I want to live until I see you girls settled.”
Then, when my sister got engaged, I told her, “You know, Grannie’s waiting to see her great-grandkids. If she waits for me to give them to her, she’s going to be immortal. If you settle down and do the marriage and kids thing, you’re basically killing her.”
“That was incredibly mean, even for you,” my sister said.
Grannie was thirty-nine years old when she had her first child, my uncle. In 1959. She’d just about given up on having children. The medicine she was on for the rheumatoid arthritis she had in all her joints interfered with fertility.
“I had a terrible time getting pregnant. But once I did, everything was easy. I loved being pregnant. And I loved being a mother. Being a mother is the best thing.”
“If you say so, Grannie.” She never once, not a single time, asked me when I was going to get married or have children. She never referred to male friends I introduced her to as my boyfriend. She never demanded anything from me beyond, “When are you going to write a best seller? You should get on that.”
Three years ago, just before Thanksgiving, Grannie fell on the walk in front of her house. She broke her arm and hip, had to have surgery to repair them, and lived in a skilled nursing facility for rehab until the following February. My sister had just given birth to her first child. I’d already planned a long trip to Richmond to help her cook and clean and wrangle her infant. Instead, I spent hours a day with Grannie.
For about a year after, when I’d call on Sundays and we’d talk about that time, what Grannie would remember and comment on was visits from my sister and her precious child. Who was just the most adorable thing. My sister is such a good mother. Don’t I think she’s a good mother?
It stung. But Grannie loves babies. She was in pain and on drugs most of the time I was there. She’s still fairly sharp, but her memory isn’t what it used to be. Mostly I’m glad she remembers good things from then. The rest of me is glad that, “She’s seen the next generation, and now she’s fallen,” wasn’t a portent.
I don’t know what changed, whether somebody mentioned something or the memories reshuffled in her head or what, but one Sunday she goes, “You spent an awful lot of time with me when I was in there.”
“I did. I was there and I could.”
“That was so nice.” And then, because she’s still sharp, but her mind does wander, “Do you remember when I took you to see Gone with the Wind?”
When we were kids, Grannie took my sister and me to Lurray Caverns. And Monticello. She drove us down Skyline drive and told stories about visiting the mountains when she was younger. We learned to navigate by road atlas and highway markers. She’d take us to Jamestown and Williamsburg. To the Science museum in Richmond, and to Maymont. We’ve watched the park at Henricus change from just a park to a reenactment site with a working model village on it, because she’s been taking us there since we were small. She’ll tell stories about having picnics with the people who lived in the house there, where all that’s left is the ruined foundation.
Out to lunch with Grannie and my sister and her child. The child is two, has made an unholy mess, his face covered in his lunch. “Neil,” Grannie says, “You should kiss your mother.”
I glance at my nephew. At my grandmother. At my nephew. “Grannie, you’re a terrorist.”
She shrugs. “You have to spread your wings.”
I mentioned to a cousin a while back that I was planning to, someday, move back to Chicago. That cousin mentioned this to Grannie.
“Where’re you?” Grannie asked right away, when I called her the following Sunday.
“In my living room?”
“Where are you living? Haven’t you moved?”
I silently cursed myself for opening my big mouth when I shouldn’t have. “No Grannie. I’m in Seattle.”
“But you are moving.”
“Someday. It’ll be a while.” We did this every week for months.
My last trip to Richmond, after the great search for Gone with the Wind came up empty, my sister and I made the rounds of used book stores. I picked up copies of The Illiad and The Odyssey to give Grannie as Christmas presents, because she mentioned that she wanted to reread them, she hadn’t read them since she was a teenager, but she couldn’t because she didn’t have copies. We looked for copies of Gone with the Wind, too, but didn’t find any suitable ones.
“Would you like your Christmas present early?” I asked her on my last day of the trip.
“Oh, yes!” I gave her the books. I hadn’t bothered to wrap them. She lit up, excited to have them. “Have you read these? I don’t remember anything about them.”
“I have,” I assured her. “All you need to remember is that one is about how you should never get between Achilles and his boyfriend, or his girlfriend, and the other is about how you shouldn’t keep a plate warm for Odysseus.”
“Was he late for supper?”
“Very.”
Grannie is where I get my interest in history from. Her interests are fairly narrow: all things Virginia, and all things England, with dabbling in Scotland and the rest of American history, too. She will tell you, repeatedly, about how they had the first Thanksgiving in Jamestown two years before there was anybody at Plymouth. Her stance on Civil War monuments was, “If they want to take them down, just take off the people and leave the horses. I like the horses and they didn’t hurt anybody.”
She wasn’t a housewife. She loved being a mother, it’s the best thing in the world, but she worked. She spent years working for a lady doctor. The doctor’s husband had died, leaving her with a little boy to raise on her own. Grannie thought that was tragic, but it’s one more baby in her life. The boy is all grown up, older than my parents, living in Oregon. Grannie is what he has for family. He surprised her by flying out for her 95th birthday party. She was flabbergasted and charmed for months after.
At Christmas, she made gingerbread and iced sugar cookies. The Joy of Cooking recipe for applesauce cake was her standard cake to have on hand or take to potlucks or send home with you. She stopped cooking after she fell, when my uncle moved in with her to take care of her so she could live at home. But she still loved ice cream and lemon chess pie. If you asked what she wanted for dinner, she’d lean toward you and confide, “Oysters.” Then grin, because she knew you weren’t going to do it.
Last time I cooked her dinner, I made a stir fry with oyster sauce. One smart ass deserves to be answered by another.
“You know, Sara’s doing very well,” my other grandmother said. “I really think she might live to be a hundred.”
“She has stomach cancer. I’m crossing my fingers that since my sister’s pregnant, she’ll hang on to see the new baby.” That’ll get her to late March, just past her next birthday. She’ll be ninety-seven.
“I was telling one of my friends that you want to move back to Chicago,” Grannie was telling me. “And she said, ‘Oh, but that’s a terrible place! Why would she do that?’ And I just told her I figure you can take care of yourself.”
“You should have told her she didn’t know what she was talking about,” I said.
She shrugged that off. “Have you seen my copy of Gone with the Wind?”
My sister found a good copy a week after I left. She was bragging to me about how the wrapping paper she keeps is actual brown paper, and her ribbons this year are thin and ropey, so all of the presents under her tree are going to be brown paper packages tied up with strings.
“She won’t stop asking about Gone with the Wind,” my sister said.
“She’s got books on her mind lately. She keeps telling me how excited she is to reread The Illiad and the Odyssey,” I replied. By the end of the phone conversation, Gone with the Wind was wrapped.
Last Thursday, about an hour after I first woke up, I got a text from my uncle. “Call me. Mom isn’t doing well. I’ve had no sleep.”
He hadn’t called my sister yet. He didn’t want to bother her at work. I called her for him. “What you’re saying is, I need to take the babe and go see her tonight?”
“It might be nothing but, yeah, I think so. And this might be silly, but take over the rest of her Christmas presents, too.”
Sunday a week ago, when I talked to Grannie, she was sharp and animated. She was hungry. She’d been to church that morning, even though she’d had some stomach troubles the day before. Generally when she has stomach troubles on a Saturday, she doesn’t go to church the next day. And generally she protests that everybody is forcing her to eat too much, she doesn’t want to get fat. (Grandaddy’s mother got fat, and he never liked that, so she doesn’t want to.) This sounds really promising to me.
“They talked about your Granddaddy at church a few weeks ago. About how he’d do anything they asked of him, and what a good man he was. I was really glad I got to hear it.” This is the fourth or fifth week she’s told me about that service. “What have you been doing?”
“I got a job. I’m moving to Chicago. I’ll be there in January.”
“Oh, good. I know you’ve been wanting that.”
“I have.”
There’s this problem with just taking your white-haired old lady grandmother at face value. Even when she loves babies. It’s that you make the wrong assumption about what she means when she says “settled.”
My Grannie died in a house next to the woods. Out back a bridge crosses a small creek, on a path that leads up to an abandoned garden patch with a shed that used to be a pony stable. In front is a red maple that just finished dropping its leaves, and the tallest magnolia tree you’re likely to see anywhere.
She never unwrapped her new copy of Gone with the Wind.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to go back to the place that crushed all your dreams, physically shattered you, and betrayed the covenant you made for their lasting survival? Wonder no more! PodCastle has published “Emshalur’s Hand Stays” with a very fine reading by Cian Mac Mahon.
It begins like so:
I returned to Irishem with three sources of power: a letter from Kelian, a clear memory of why I left, and the space between my hands. The letter proved my right to enter as a citizen at the outer gate. It also got me past the boy keeping Kelian’s door when I arrived, though the house was closed for the evening. “Sealed save for family and Emshalur,” go the ritual words of denial.
If audio isn’t your preferred consumption format, they also have the full text of the story up.
When last I posted, I announced the schedule for my WorldCon programming and promised stories. What gentle, naive times those were.
I was already en route to Helsinki when I made that post. I was, in fact, hanging out in Manhattan after an overnight flight from Seattle, waiting to meet somebody for brunch, and generally looking forward to passing a long layover before catching another overnight flight to Helsinki. The day was, in fact, lovely. Unrelatedly, I did not catch that overnight flight.
After getting bounced back and forth between Finnair and American Airlines on the phone trying to fix flight problems, then the same at the airport, then Finnair vanishing and turning into Qatar airlines while I was in line to talk to their people, I finally got the chance to rebook my flight. Which prompted the following conversation with my roommate:
Me: I’ve had a bad feeling about this trip for ages. I’m thinking this is an omen.
Uni: It’ll be fine.
Me: I’m serious. How sad would you be if I just came home? I’m thinking of cutting my losses now while I can.
Uni: You’ve spent the last two months learning Finnish.
Me: That was fun on its own.
Uni: You can’t come home. I’ve got dibs on your favorite mug for the next two weeks.
You can’t argue with that. I pushed on to Helsinki.
Instead of getting a direct flight to Helsinki through Finnair, I wind up on a British Airways flight to Heathrow, then a Finnair flight to Helsinki, which put me in Helsinki just in time to have missed all of my WorldCon programming. Without my luggage. This last bit didn’t surprise me. When I tried to check in for the BA flight, their gate agent nearly had a meltdown, began railing against American, then hustled me to a back room where I got a special private check in desk and very gentle security procedure. As somebody with a mild allergy to security theater in general and TSA bullshit in particular, I was pretty pleased by this.
But I made it to Helsinki. The people I was sharing lodging with very kindly left my set of keys at the registration desk so that whenever I got my luggage or was inclined to see where I was sleeping for the duration of the con, I could pick them up and do that. I got registered, and met up with many Strange Horizons folks, most of whom I hadn’t met before, and we ate delightful Nepalese food and chatted. Then I unabashedly followed them to the barcon bar and we showed up before anybody else did which, I believe, means we founded the party. Mind, I was wearing the same clothes I got onto the plane in Seattle wearing, and had only washed in various airport bathrooms, but I was definitely one of the cool kids. Trust me.
When that broke up and it was time to head home, several of the people I’d been hanging out with very kindly and English-ly refused to go on to their hotel before making sure I could find where I was staying, despite my insistence that this was unnecessary. The joke was on them, though, because I managed to have a fail-tastic adventure anyway. You see, I knew the address of where I was staying, and I had the keys for getting in. What I didn’t have was the apartment number. In a building with eight floors.
“No sweat,” says I, as I examine the doors. “I spent the last two months learning Finnish, and I am in Finland. This means I’m prepared for everything. For example, I know the note on that door says ‘No housekeeping.’ I will deduce my way into the correct unit.”
My plan was, actually, quite brilliant. There were 4-5 doors on each floor, and seven floors with doors. I had a key, and all of these doors required a key to be opened. So all I had to do was put my key in each door, turn it, and when it worked, Boom! Destination located. The next day I’d file the paperwork to change my name to Anaea H. Lay, and tell everybody for the rest of time that the H is for Holmes, because I’m humble.
I was not staying on the first floor. Cool. Six floors to go.
I was not staying in the first unit of the second floor. Or the second. The third, however…the third opened.
Onto the foyer of a studio. (Weren’t we in a 1-bedroom?)
A studio with a bed taking up most of the space beyond the foyer. (There’s definitely supposed to be a sofa. I’m sleeping on it.)
A bed with a very confused looking white and black pit bull stretched out on it.
Not actual dog. Actual level of dog-alertness. though.
On second thought, repeated counts of attempted breaking and entering is probably not the best way to get a good night’s sleep in a foreign country. But hey, Helsinki is generous with their public wifi, so I high-tailed it back to internet land and used slightly less deranged methods of figuring out where to go.
(The next morning I called T-mobile via my web browser to ask if they could maybe fix the thing where my phone wasn’t behaving like it should. “We’re stumped. I’ll boot this up to the next tier of support and call you back with the answer,” they said. “You can’t call me back, my phone isn’t working as a phone.” This confused them. They wanted to know how I was calling them, in that case. VIA A WEB BROWSER BECAUSE THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY WHY IS THIS HARD JUST SEND ME AN EMAIL WHEN YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO. But hey, when I finally made it back to the US, I had three very helpful voicemails from T-Mobile telling me how to fix my phone…)
Friday I actually got a full day at the convention. More exciting, I wasn’t wearing the exact same clothes I left Seattle in; one of the people I was staying with kindly loaned me a pile of clothes to wear. So I was wearing her running shirt. Reader, I have never before in my life worn running clothes. I sincerely hope to never wear them again.
I had make-up lunch with somebody I was supposed to have had lunch with on Thursday and we had a good chat. At one point a complete stranger sitting next to us interrupted to say, “I’m sorry, but ‘don’t break the spreadsheet’ is a good motto for life.'” It was that kind of conversation.
I went to a panel to watch Amal Al-Mohtar be adorable and squee about Steven Universe, and got exactly what I expected from it. I went to another panel about interactive fiction and continued the process of slowly realizing I have no idea what I’m doing there and have, possibly, made questionable life choices. I stalked the web status page for my luggage in the hopes that it would arrive in time for me to change before the Hugo ceremony.
You see, I packed a dress. And heels. And basic grooming items for looking like a professional adult who wins things on the off chance that, you know, I won a thing. During the second panel, I get the notice that my bag is in Helsinki. There was hope!
Cue me, somewhat sheepishly, walking up to the support counter and asking if anybody there knows a way for me to get my hands on a phone that can make a local call. My phone is refusing to be a phone, you see, and I would very much like to call the Helsinki airport. Because I would very much like to wear anything other than jeans and a borrowed running shirt to the Hugos. (I am convinced, at this point, that if Strange Horizons does win, I will never, ever win a Hugo again, and for all time I’ll be the person who accepted a Hugo in borrowed running clothes. I cannot think of a story I’d want to be associated with less.)
A guy at the desk took pity on me, whipped out his phone, and called the airport on my behalf. It’s all Finnish, all the way down, but he was able to give them a phone number I could receive texts from, because it gets automatically forwarded to my email address. And fortunately, I catch it when he reads my chicken-scratch zero as an eight. “You speak Finnish?” a lady nearby asks, clearly surprised.
“Not really, but I did spend the last two months studying it. I am super prepared for everything!”
The Helsinki airport has no idea where my bag is. It might be in Helsinki? They aren’t sure. They’ll call me with an update.
I was, at this point, feeling a bit of strain, so I went for my default coping mechanism, and started hunting down tea. There was a lovely cafe in the convention center, full of lovely pastries, and I’m told the coffee was lovely, too. I hate coffee, but they had a chai latte on their menu and I am down for that, so I order one. And walk away. And take a sip.
And then I’m back at the counter going, “I’m very sorry, but I ordered a chai latte.”
“Yes,” the girl at the counter says.
“This is coffee.”
“Yes,” she repeats. “That’s what you ordered.”
“There’s coffee in your chai latte?”
“Yes.”
You know I’m dedicated to keeping displays of grief private, because I did not at that moment collapse onto the floor sobbing. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid we’re having a cultural difference. Is there something on your menu I can order that doesn’t have coffee in it?”
This became the second in a long string of conspicuous kindnesses punctuating the trip, because not only did she direct me to a safe way to order coffee-free tea, she refunded me the €1.20 difference between the prices in the drinks. I’d expected her to charge me for the additional drink since she had, in fact, given me exactly what I ordered.
I went to the Hugos reception in jeans and a borrowed running shirt. And the ceremony itself. Strange Horizons didn’t win. (Never have I been so happy to be in second place.) Then the losers party, which also marked the first time I did anything in Helsinki proper the entire trip. The steampunk gin bar is not messing around about its steampunk, or its gin, in case you were wondering.
Saturday, I gave up on the concepts of luggage, worldly possessions, or hope. It was very freeing.
If you ever get the chance to hear Ken Liu talk about translation, take it. He’s as good at deadpan and wry when lecturing as he is in his prose. I also stalked more panels on interactive fiction, and continued to nurse my suspicion that maybe before taking on major projects that look like fun, I should first have any idea what I’m doing. There were several games of Werewolf, and a fantastically brutal thunderstorm during dinner, and I back-pedaled on giving up on my luggage enough to abscond with somebody’s phone and spend some time talking to the airport about whether maybe I would ever see my bag again. (It was definitely, absolutely, certainly not in Helsinki, and never had been. They weren’t sure where it was, though.)
This was also about the time Nazis were marching practically next door to where my baby sister lives, so, you know, there was some muttering about how maybe when I was thinking this trip was cursed and I should cut my losses and go home that was absolutely the right idea.
Sunday was more meeting people for meals. I had learned to order hot chocolate, because it never comes with coffee. I had shared my traumatic chai latte experience with absolutely everybody, including strangers on street corners. I’ve had confirmation from a buddy who lives in Helsinki that of course chai lattes have coffee in them. If I ever return to Helsinki, they will greet me as the girl perpetually wearing the same shirt who would not shut up about accidentally ordering coffee and then ask whether maybe I wouldn’t like to visit Sweden. But, I had hope, because the Strange Horizons tea party was Sunday, and I was going to get myself some tea at the tea party. I spent the entire morning inviting people to the party and positively gloating about my inevitable tea. (I’d packed tea in my luggage. With a brewing thermos. This was not supposed to be a problem.)
The tea party was great. It was packed. We embarrassed Niall, which I shouldn’t be so pleased by because he’s English and therefore an easy mark, but I am. People told me they liked how I read their stories and that was really great since I sorta assume everybody just cringes in a corner and quietly hates how I say their name, and deliver their favorite line.
Of course, they ran out of tea before I got any. What sort of curse would I have if I’d been able to get tea at a tea party?
But, but, but, something magical happened. I got an email. From Finnair. MY LUGGAGE WAS IN HELSINKI. This was particularly great since the next day I would cease to be in Helsinki, and I sorta wanted to have my luggage with me.
I hopped on a train to the airport, fetched my luggage, hugged it a lot, hopped on a train back to where I was staying, hugged my luggage some more, and changed my clothes. Then made some tea. With my tea. Which I had packed to ensure I wouldn’t be the tea-obsessed American traumatized by a coffee culture. Then I hugged my luggage more, just for good measure.
Also, I put every pin I’d intended to decorate my con badge with on the collar of my shirt and shamelessly wore them to a bar, dinner, then a bar, while hanging out with people in Helsinki. My favorite moment was probably when I passed people I’d met two days before and was greeted with, “You’re wearing different clothes. You got your luggage!”
This ends the part of the trip I’d characterize as “frustratingly inconvenient.” Let’s move on to the “Estonia is magic” portion.
Estonia is magic, y’all. First off, everybody in the entire world was taking a ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn on Monday, and I was the only one who didn’t miss the ferry. Yes, whether you remember it or not, on August 14 of 2017 you tried to take a ferry to cross the Baltic Seat from Helsinki to Tallinn, and you failed. On the one hand, I felt very keenly for the travel woes of everybody else, and the people who were trying to coordinate plans around them. On the other hand, vindication is sweet and even though this had nothing to do with the frustrating inconvenience of the trip so far, I felt vindicated.
Also, Tallinn is charming. Everybody says this. They are speaking truth. I have no pictures with which to prove this but believe me; if I weren’t clinging to my pants in a defiant refusal to be separated from my luggage ever again, they’d have been charmed off.
I was staying in the apartment behind the kitchen of a yoga studio that had the Icelandic and Spanish consulates as landmarks for finding the building. (See, charming!) This was just far enough outside of Old Town for me to walk along and go, “Yeah, this is pretty nice, classic compact European city with a nice…holy medieval times, Batman!”
Not my photo, but a very accurate one
There’s nothing quite like being an American from a family with pretensions about having ties to old things, then running into actual old things as if they’re nothing special. It should have stopped working on my be now, but I think living on the west coast, land of everything was new this morning, has made me soft.
Met up with people to hang out over drinks and snacks in a pub. Not just any pub, but a pub in the basement of a medieval building with walls thicker than me in the morning. (Actually, in Tallinn, that probably is just any pub.) I had a fantastic salad, enjoyed samplings of the peppered lard on toast, and tried not to take it personally that while wifi in my apartment at home needs constant coddling, I was getting fantastic signal and connectivity while in the basement of a building that was old when my distant forebears arrived on the continent of my birth. I was not bitter.
How can you be bitter after eating this?
One of my dinner companions, as we were preparing to pay and depart for dinner, moaned about how the magical pay-by-waving-your-phone-at-a-thing limit was too low to cover most bills so they were stuck using antiquated chip reader technology. “You mean the chips that weren’t even ubiquitous in the US until a year or so ago and that most places still can’t handle?” I asked. Yeah, that’s what she meant.
I had my luggage. I was charmed. The waiter had fetching shoulders and nice hair. So I still wasn’t bitter.
Then we started planning the part of the next day that would involve riding the driverless bus.
Reader, I have complaints about the graceless collapse of empire, and how it directly applies to my quality of life.
The next day featured the accidental discovery of a bakery with amazing hot chocolate, eagerly following the coattails of a masterful social engineer by the name of Ellen Kushner, who enthusiastic-harmless-curiosity-seeker’d her way into two different hotel rooms that weren’t hers just to check out their views, marzipan gawking, market browsing, dumplings to die for, and tea. A lot of tea. Estonians, by the way, are as horrified by the Finnish approach to chai lattes as I am.
This is marzipan, from one of the two places claiming to be a marzipan museum. The other place was a lie.
There’s definitely a lot of Tallinn that is there entirely to cater to tourists, and I definitely didn’t spend enough time there to scratch very deeply beyond that, but I’m up for fixing that any time. Have I overused the word “charming” yet?
Wednesday brought the ferry back to Helsinki and, consequently, the most actually gawking at Helsinki I did the whole trip. Mostly I wandered around and looked at things. The Botanical Gardens are quite nice for walking around. So’s most of the central city, actually.
Never tell me why these three naked men are standing around an anvil.
By this point I’d chilled all the way out and started actually taking pictures of stuff. There were many nice things to take pictures of.
I also may have made the ill-advised decision to walk from the central city, where I had dinner and did my wandering, through this place that looked like a nice park, on my way back to where I was staying. I had to be out around 4am in order to catch a stupid-early flight, so rather than get wrapped up in something that might keep me out, I planned to meander bed-ward and catch a bus or trolley or cab or anything practical when I got tired.
I didn’t check to make sure there were buses, trolleys, or cars along the route first.
For the record: this wasn’t even the dumbest walk I’ve taken this summer
I did get back, and crash into bed, and get up very, very early. I made it to the airport with no trouble and plenty of time to spare. My flight was on time, I finished my souvenir shopping, got on my plane and…
…embarked on the spectacularly disastrous part of the trip.
This picture is just here to be misleadingly cheerful.
My first layover was in Paris. Not the good kind of layover where I could leave the airport and actually see Paris, but hey, so long as I get a croissant between flights, it’ll be worth it, right?
Spoiler: I did not get a croissant in Paris. Not even at the airport.
What happened instead is that I beelined across the airport to get to my gate, assuming that I could fetch a croissant once I knew I was in the right place and all was well. This was good, because they were extremely prompt about boarding; already well underway by the time I arrived, even though I arrived 45 minutes before takeoff. (Cut-off: 30 minutes.) I scan my boarding pass and…get told I’m not allowed to board.
I’m unsurprised. I missed my flight on the way out, and even though they assured me this wouldn’t cause any trouble on my return, I didn’t believe them. Here was my vindication. Or so I thought at first.
Actually, it’s not that at all. It’s worse. The gate agent is refusing to board anybody from my flight out of Helsinki, even though there were several of us. She didn’t like how the connection was done. No, she won’t help me rebook, this is Finnair’s fault. “But I booked the itinerary through American. That’s you,” I say. See, I’d just gone down this road a whole lot not ten days before when trying to fix my departing flight. Finnair can’t do squat for me. American is refusing to board me, American is the source of the booking, American is who I need help from.
American sends me back through customs to Finnair. To the completely wrong place. So I go back. They send me somewhere else. Also wrong, but this time it came with a bonus trip through security. (I love airport security, remember?) I finally find a Finnair employee and explained to her what’s happened. Her eyes get big and she goes, “But I can’t help you. American has to…wait, how did you get here?”
That’s a good question, since the boarding pass I hold is for a flight that has, at this point, long since left, and in a completely different terminal. “I’m very charming when I want to be, and security thought I was harmless. Please don’t make me go through that again.” (Fun Fact: Charles de Gaulle airport has, as a normal presence, uniformed soldiers with machine guns. Ask me how I know.)
The very nice Finnair employee proceeds to get on the phone to somebody and freak out in a long string of French from which all I understood was, “Ping-ponging passengers,” because the only French I know is useful for eating, and getting laid. (I mean, if you’re only going to speak a little French…) She then apologized profusely, but I was going to have to leave the secured portion of the airport to talk to somebody else. No really, she’s very sorry, but she literally cannot help me at all, I am in utterly the wrong place. The place she’s sending me isn’t the right place either, because I was in the right place when I was talking to American, but they’ll help me anyway.
Finnair’s umbrella company then, on behalf of me and two other people American had done this to, called American to fight with them and get us rebooked. It took a long time. I wasn’t shouty-angry like the first guy who was so furious that he was going to arrive in New York three hours later than he meant to that he missed the first flight they rebooked him on by yelling at them over how unacceptable the situation was, and didn’t have a wife and three kids stuck on the other side of security waiting for me to return with their passports, I volunteered to be the back of the line. I could see the writing on the wall already and wasn’t inclined to fight my fate.
Finnair’s umbrella company, while calling American on my behalf to make them rebook my flight, bought me lunch in Paris. I got a sandwich on a baguette and chocolate mousse. I looked, but I couldn’t find a croissant.
Tangent: back in February, as a reward to myself for something I was smug about, I did something I almost never do and bought myself an item of clothing I didn’t desperately need. Specifically, this item of clothing. I packed it, thinking it would make a good shirt to wear for the very long flight home. My sister begged me to change my mind. I considered her perspective. Then Charlottesville happened.
In addition to having uniformed soldiers carrying machine guns, Charles de Gaulle airport is full of people who will compliment you when your shirt says:
I love this shirt entirely beyond reason.
I did not expect an anglophone American wearing jeans and a t-shirt to get consistent sartorial compliments while in Paris, but there you go. We live in interesting times. Also, the attention made up for the lack of croissants.
Eventually I got booked onto an Air France flight. Getting back through security and whatnot when my bag was MIA and my itinerary was a shambles was a unique and interesting challenge, but one I navigated just fast enough to keep from missing my flight. Let me say this about Air France: fucktons nicer than American. More room, better layout, better amenities, better food, and a movie collection that clearly came from a culture of film snobs. They weren’t super big on saying things in English, but I’d entered the zone of travel purgatory, so I didn’t want to know what was going on anyway; it would have just depressed me. It was a thoroughly pleasant flight experience, and I don’t think I’ve said that about a flight this century.
Of course, my bag didn’t actually make it onto the flight, and I missed my connection at JFK as a result. But customs was too busy being confused about why I didn’t have my bag to care about my shirt, so hey, I got away with that.
“Why did you miss your connection?” the American agent asked me when I finally got to the desk.
So I told him the story, complete with, “but since American weren’t the ones who did the rebooking, the people who did couldn’t give me a boarding pass for this flight, and by the time I got here, I was five minutes late for the self-check in, and now I’ve waited in line for a human so long the flight is gone.”
There are no more flights tonight. He books me on a flight 5am tomorrow, layover in Charlotte, that’ll get me back to Seattle. Great, whatever, I don’t believe in home as a concept anymore and if I get stranded in Charlotte, I can rent a car and drive up to see family for the weekend. This becomes my official plan when I see the actual itinerary. “This is a 30 minute layover,” I say.
“It is?” he asks. Then he looks into it. “The gates are right next to each other. You’ll walk off one plane and directly onto the next.”
“Have you seen the luck I’ve had? There’s no way I’m going to succeed with a 30 minute layover.”
“There are more flights to Seattle from Charlotte than here anyway. It’s a better place to be stranded.”
Actually, New York is a significantly better place to be stranded, but whatever, I already have my stranded-in-Charlotte plans worked out in my head. I crash into a hotel to get a few hours of sleep before coming right back, and leave it at that.
(He gave me vouchers for food that were good at the hotel and the airport. So I tried to order food at the hotel, even though I was much, much too tired to be hungry. There was literally nothing on the menu inexpensive enough to be covered by the food voucher. The lady who took my order took pity on me, rang me up for half a salad, then gave me the whole thing. Saint.)
“I’m not even surprised,” I say when, at 3:30am the next morning, the self-check in thing can’t find my itinerary and won’t let me get my boarding pass for my flight. Instead, I go wait in the long-ass line to speak to a human representative of American.
“Oh, your flight out of here was delayed and you were going to miss your connection,” the agent says when I get to her. “They’ve already rebooked you. You’ll be leaving from La Guardia and connecting through Dallas.”
“No.”
She hesitates, then goes on. “This is actually a better itinerary because…”
“No.”
“It’s okay. We’ll get you a cab. You have plenty of time.”
“You can put me on a direct flight. You can put me on a flight that connects anywhere on the east coast between here and Charlotte, or either of the Chicago airports. I will not accept any other itinerary, and I am not leaving here to go anywhere other than back to the hotel I just checked out of, unless it’s by plane.” The poor agent looked to be at a sincere loss. “There’s a direct flight out of here at 5pm, and another at 9:30. Either of those will do.”
“But they’re so late,” she says. “You could have this other flight…”
“No, that other flight will get me stranded in Dallas. I dislike Dallas. I’d rather be here. Worst case scenario, if I’m still here on Monday, I have a meeting that I can show up in person to instead of taking by phone.”
“I’ll get you set up.”
While she does that, I called the hotel and un-checked out. It was very nice of them to let me do that. (There were a lot of people who were very nice to me, in case I’m not highlighting that enough.) (I was still wearing the Nazi punching shirt. I suspect this helped.)
As she wraps up, I start to suspect that maybe, in my deranged, sleep-deprived state, I’ve been a little too harsh. “I’m sorry if I’m cross. I’m just very tired, and very angry with your employer. I know it’s not you, and I appreciate how helpful you’ve been,” I say.
“Mama, I saw your itinerary history. If I were you, I’d be sobbing or screaming. You’re fine.” Take that, people who think getting icy under stress isn’t healthy.
I returned to the airport with plenty of time to spare, so I visited baggage claim. No, of course my bag isn’t somewhere sensible like JFK. It’s totally still in Paris. I mean, they were going to send it to the right continent, but then I changed my itinerary to connect through Dallas…
“Stop there. I didn’t make that change,” I said. “They didn’t even tell me about that change until I was already here trying to complete the itinerary before that one.”
Doesn’t matter. The last flight from Paris for the day has already left. They aren’t going to schedule my bag for another itinerary until I’ve arrived at my final destination.
I don’t think she understood why I asked whether it mattered which part of Hell I was in, or could they deliver the bag regardless.
Of course, my 5pm flight was already delayed to 7:40.
Let’s skip several hours involving a gate change, a mechanical problem, and a weather delay, and get to the point, now after 9pm (you better believe I was wondering about the state of the 9:30pm flight) when I scan my boarding pass to finally! board! the final! flight! and instead of getting a beep and a “Thank you, Miss Lay,” the console flashes bright red with a “DO NOT BOARD.”
“I’m sorry about that. You’ll need to talk to the gate agent.”
“That’s okay. I no longer believe in a universe outside JFK. Though I dimly recall that I did once hold such a belief.”
There’s confusion. Minor mayhem. (We’re technically still having a weather delay, but trying to sneak out during a break in the lightning.) The gate agent cannot figure out why the system won’t let me board. “I’ve probably had my itinerary changed too much and tripped some sort of anti-terrorist algorithm,” I say, while wearing my nazi-punching shirt.
“What sort of changes?” the agent asks. Then she looks up my itinerary history.
And looks at me.
And at my history.
“Are you cursed?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Go take your seat. There’s not anybody in it. I’ll figure this out once you’re in the air.”
She did not have to tell me twice.
Hilariously, there was a guy in my seat. Did I mind? He wanted to sit next to his wife and their toddler.
No guy, I do not mind fleeing from the prospect of six hours in an overheated tube with your toddler.
It was Wednesday in Seattle when I boarded a flight in Helsinki under the naive delusion that I’d completed a trip which, while off to a bumpy start, ultimately smoothed out and turned quite pleasant.
It was Saturday when I finally got there.
What have we learned from this adventure? A few things:
Dark premonitions should be heeded.
Estonia is magic.
Advertising your predilection for Nazi punching causes people to be nice to you.
These are valuable lessons for everyone, and I hope my experience will allow you to benefit from sharing in my hard earned knowledge.
Maybe I should mention that I’m going to WorldCon? Yeah, I should definitely probably mention it. Since the convention starts today, and I’m getting there tomorrow, perhaps I should have even mentioned this before now. Possibly?
I’ve made the best plans for this. Two overnight flights with a twelve hour layover that gets me to the con a day late, just in time to rush to the only two panels I’ll be on for the duration. I’m going to be at my utter cleverest, let me tell you.
I may just do my best to tell the truth for the duration of this one. Between jet lag and no sleep, I’ll be so divorced from reality that’s probably the best way to get a good lie in.
Darkness at the Heart of Original Folktales
216, 16:00 – 17:00
Delia Sherman, Linn, Anaea Lay, Michael R. UnderwoodFolk tales have recently got fairly dark retellings, but of course they were very dark originally as well. The panel discusses the dark origins of folktales.
Maybe I’ll share my favorite version of Snow White. It’s the one where she nopes out of eating poisoned things, then goes back to the palace with her new allies, kills everybody, and becomes a benevolent ruler. That’s a real version.
After the con, I’ll be darting over to Tallinn for a few days. I have tales to tell and plan to tell them when I get back.
The scene: It’s early March of this year and I’m sitting in a doctor’s office for the third time in three weeks and we’re talking about surgery. Specifically, we’re talking about her performing surgery on me.
Doctor3: The good news is that this surgery has the highest patient satisfaction rate of just about any procedure. The bad news is that it has one of the hardest recovery periods.
Me: I know. I’ve talked to a lot of people who’ve done this.
Doctor3: It takes about two months before you can return to your normal activity levels. And many find the recovery very painful.
Me: I’m not really afraid of pain. I’m in pain all the time. That’s why I’m here.
***
The scene: I’m twenty years old and standing at the registration desk of a pediatric hospital. I’ve got an overloaded backpack hanging off my right shoulder, ratty cargo pants hanging off my hips, and I’m looking a bit fuddled because I don’t exactly wander off to children’s hospitals in the middle of the day as a normal thing.
Receptionist: Where’s the patient?
Me: Right here. It’s me. I’m the patient.
Receptionist: (Clearly skeptical) Oh. Are you sure?
Me: Pretty sure, yeah. I don’t think I had a kid and forgot about it.
***
The scene: I’m thirteen and meeting physical therapist in their professional capacity for the first time. Other recent firsts? That chronic nagging pain I’ve had in my left shoulder since I was seven turning into my entire left side locking up so badly I can’t turn my head or torso. Also, adults believing me about there being something wrong with my left shoulder. That’s new, and also exciting.
Physical therapist: Your problem is probably that you carry your backpack on one shoulder.
Me: No, that is not the problem.
PT: I know you kids want to look cool, but it’s terrible for your back.
Me: I started carrying my backpack entirely on my right shoulder in fifth grade because my left shoulder was getting so bad I wanted to take the strain off. How I carry my bag is a response, it did not cause this problem.
The physical therapist gave me a lot of exercises. I did them faithfully for about two weeks. I also had muscle spasms for the first time. Every day for two weeks. I decided the PT didn’t know what she was talking about and stopped doing the exercises. The muscle spasms went away. My left side still locked up on occasion, but not often.
***
The scene: Me at 20, having successfully checked in for an appointment at a children’s hospital and convinced not one but two receptionists that yes, I am the patient and yes, I do know what kind of facility this is and yes, I am aware that they generally don’t see people over 18, but this is who the orthopedic referred me to when I pointed out that her diagnosis didn’t account for any of my actual symptoms so yes I would, in fact, like a second opinion. The specialist I’ve been sent to is a very nice older man with a salt n’ pepper beard and a teddy bear hanging off his stethoscope. He’s been chatting with me about my symptom history while he twists my hands and wrists and fingers.
Dr. Teddy: I bet you can put your hands flat on the floor without bending your knees.
Me: Well, yeah. I do martial arts and I am, in fact, baseline physically fit.
Dr. Teddy: That’s not baseline. Not at your age. You are abnormally flexible. I’m going to describe some things. Tell me if this sounds like you.
Then he proceeds to tell me the story of my life.
Turns out my ligaments don’t do their job very well, so my joints are constantly sliding out of place, and the surrounding muscles take a beating as a result. Usually it hits people in their knees and hips first, but shoulders aren’t unheard of, especially not since kids started carrying such heavy backpacks. But, my ligaments will naturally tighten as I get older, so I’ll age out of it. Eventually. Probably.
My hips started to go the next year.
I can’t do martial arts anymore.
***
The scene: I’m coming home from sixth grade. That’s after I adopted single-shoulder carry but before I visited the PT. It was hot. My shoulder was in the “sentient-knot” stage, so I dressed accordingly. I walk into the house and mom has just taken her first look at me for the day.
Mom: You will not ever leave the house like that again. Do you understand me?
***
The scene: I’m getting my third ever massage. I’ve got nifty health insurance that’ll pay 50% once a month as a perk, and I basically can’t stand up straight or walk anymore, so massages are great. Also, they’re undoing a lot of the perma-locking most of my muscles have settled into.
Massage Therapist: What was that?
Me: My rib just slid back into place.
MT: Did that hurt?
Me: Yeah, but it feels better than having it out of place. Thanks.
MT: Does your bra do that to you?
***
The scene: Last Monday. Pre-op appointment with the doctor.
Doctor3: Nothing that raises your heart rate. Nothing that will raise your blood pressure. Don’t drive. Don’t sign contracts. Don’t…
Me: I’m a real estate broker.
Doctor3: Don’t give people advice about contracts. You can resume a desk job after two weeks. Maybe one if you’re doing it from home but don’t count on it. Don’t lift anything that weighs more than ten pounds. Don’t submerge in water.
Me: I’m getting to be a fanatical swimmer. It’s about the only thing I’ve found that helps with the pain without also damaging something.
Doctor3: Don’t submerge in water.
Me: (Aside) I’m going to die.
***
The scene: I’m 25 and following a friend who has gotten a little fanatical about a new shop she’s found. We go in, and the place is depressing. Like, clinical depressing. It’s that way on purpose. Among other things, they do specialized bras for mastectomy patients.
Shopkeeper: You’re wearing a 36DD from Victoria’s Secret, aren’t you?
Me: Yes? That’s my size.
Friend: (Who is significantly more endowed than me, sniggering) They told me that, too.
Turns out 32J is a size. Mine, specifically. And they start at $60/each.
But hey, now my ribs only slide out of place some of the time.
***
The scene: In a senior in high school, getting fitted for a costume. I’m playing Louisa May Alcott which is hilarious because Little Women was the very first book I ever put down with no intention of picking it back up.
Costumer: Good god, your tits are huge.
Me: Yes. I know. Everybody has been telling me that since sixth grade. (Especially my mother.)
Costumer: Yeah, but they’re bigger than I realized. You carry them well. Do you like them?
Me: I guess? I don’t know. They’re fine. If they get any bigger though, yeah, I’m cutting them off.
***
The scene: Very early March, a week before meeting with Doctor3. It’s the same meeting, but at a different hospital with a different doctor. This is the first time I’m talking to a surgeon about this and I’m not sure it’s a good idea, or that my insurance will pay for it, or that doing a thing that will inevitably mean being couch-bound for at least a month, and maybe two, in the middle of the summer is a good idea for somebody who makes her money selling houses.
Doctor2: What is your goal for this surgery?
Me: I would like to not be in pain all the time. But I’m concerned about losing sensation in my nipples, and generally suspect my expectations might not be reasonable.
Doctor2: And it would be nice to be able to wear button down shirts.
Me: Uh…yes? What? Were you listening when I mentioned that the ribs under my bra strap slide out of place and my shoulders frighten massage therapists?
***
The scene: The week before Sasquan. I’m the only one from Strange Horizons who’s going to be there and we’re up for a Hugo, so if we win, I’ll be on stage. Which means I should wear something nice. I’m trying on a dress I haven’t worn since high school.
Me: Hrm.
Roommate: What? Does it not fit?
Me: No, it fits. Except it’s mashing my boobs.
Roommate: You’re probably wearing a different style of bra from what you wore then.
Me: I am. But this is more mashed than that.
It would be hard to find a clearer practical demonstration for “yes, your boobs have gotten bigger than when you were Louisa May Alcott.”
***
The scene: I’m rambling at my poor, put-upon roommate after meeting with the first surgeon. They’re nodding supportively and periodically grunting to indicate attention.
Me: And then he was all, “But if I get you on the table and decide that won’t look good, we’ll do something else,” and I’m a little bit, “Er, no way do I want to be unconscious while you’re making those decisions.” Also, this is probably incredibly shallow of me, but the look of him was disconcerting. His hair was too perfect, he was tanned suspiciously well, and I’m pretty sure he’s had his coworkers doing work on his face. Are surgeons like drug dealers, where you should avoid the ones who use their own product? I dunno. I shouldn’t even bother. I don’t have time to do this anyway.
Roommate: Are you ever going to have time?
***
Weird facts about me and my boobs:
Contrary to the story I tend to tell, I did not in fact go from 0-massive overnight. I had about eighteen months at “small enough that nobody but me has really noticed” and then sprouted to massive in about six months.
My parents started telling the family not to talk about my boobs because I was self-conscious about them. I wasn’t self-conscious. I was just confused about why anybody was talking about my boobs, let alone all the time, and why it was suddenly gross for me to leave the house without wearing a garment nobody could see and which was extraordinarily uncomfortable. My problems with puberty weren’t so much the changes in my body, but the changes to how everybody else thought I should exist in my body. Also, everything started to hurt more.
I get hits to my website from people searching anaea, boobs, without having blogged about my tits. This is monumentally strange since the most common anaea other than me is a kind of butterfly and invertebrates don’t have tits.
I’m weird for getting a breast reduction in my thirties; too old for the women who got too big during puberty and too young for the women who got too big after having children, or have put it off until they were done breast feeding, or had to get over baggage around appearances. Which I guess makes sense since I’ve met a metric ton of women in their forties who’ve said, “Best thing I’ve ever done. Wish I did it ten years ago.” Hi. I’m ten years ago.
I would cut both tits clean off, myself, then joke about Shylock, if it meant my shoulders stopped knotting up so badly that I routinely traumatize massage therapists who haven’t had a patient like me before.
Almost every fucking thing on the internet about breast reduction surgery is obsessed with talking about how much better you’ll look and the scarring isn’t so bad, really. WHO CARES? (Everybody, apparently.)
***
The scene: Back to the pre-op appointment last week. This doctor is a pretty big contrast to Doctor2. She doesn’t tan, or wear makeup, or bother to smooth her hair to prevent flyaways. (Me either!) She started the interview by asking for a pain rating and a symptom history, and other than calibrating how much of a reduction I want (as small as you can go without significantly increasing the risk of nipple damage) hasn’t talked about the aesthetics at all.
Doctor3: Doom, gloom, disaster, misery, and three days after the surgery we’d like you to start taking frequent short walks.
Me: (perking up) Wait, stop. That’s the first good thing you’ve said this entire appointment. I must be misunderstanding something. Please define “short walk.” Is that, “Three blocks to the library?”
Doctor3: Around your living room.
Me: No really, I’m going to die.
***
Which makes this the world’s longest out of office note. Surgery is tomorrow. I’m told I’ll be out of commission forever. I don’t believe them. But I am ignoring everything that isn’t critical day job stuff, a book, or DVDs of The Americans, until after Memorial Day.
It’s spring, the season where plants fornicate with everything and in revenge we cut off their sex organs as tribute to the dinner table needing sprucing up a bit. You should honor the season with checking the Overcast’s production of A Long Fuse to a Slow Detonation, a happy story about dead people and blowing up space ships.
I did too just use the word “happy” correctly. This story is as happy as spring and sunshine are great.
Last year the Overcast did a great production of Turning the Whisper, so if you remember that, you have some idea of what to look forward to. And if you want to read along, you can see the text for Fuse where it was originally published in Waylines.
May you derive comfort and entertainment in this time of pollen.
When I moved to Seattle I set to work right away on ensuring that I met one of my most important priorities: finding all the good tea shops. And Seattle is rich in options for public consumption of tea. But after a few months I noticed a certain trend amongst my fellow patrons. It’s something that has taken on the weight of quintessential-Seattle for me. So much so that I chose to immortalize it in fiction.
The resulting story such a perfect encapsulation of my deep and nuanced feelings about the culture of my current stomping grounds that I’m going to overthrow my normal custom for public readings. Next week at Two Hour Transport (happening at Cafe Racer, a noble Seattle institution if ever there was one) I shall treat the audience to a dramatic reading of “For the Last Time, It’s not a Ray Gun.” Normally I’d let the audience choose what to hear, but in this case I didn’t want to give them the chance to make a bad choice. There’s a joke about Portland in it. You should come.
Event details, including the bio for my fellow invited reader, here.
I also may have made the ill-advised decision to walk from the central city, where I had dinner and did my wandering, through this place that looked like a nice park, on my way back to where I was staying. I had to be out around 4am in order to catch a stupid-early flight, so rather than get wrapped up in something that might keep me out, I planned to meander bed-ward and catch a bus or trolley or cab or anything practical when I got tired.
It’s spring, the season where plants fornicate with everything and in revenge we cut off their sex organs as tribute to the dinner table needing sprucing up a bit. You should honor the season with checking the 
When I moved to Seattle I set to work right away on ensuring that I met one of my most important priorities: finding all the good tea shops. And Seattle is rich in options for public consumption of tea. But after a few months I noticed a certain trend amongst my fellow patrons. It’s something that has taken on the weight of quintessential-Seattle for me. So much so that I chose to immortalize it in fiction.
Anaea Lay 