Women I’d Break the 7th Commandment With

I saw a recent post at Pajiba.com titled “2008’s Most Bangalicious Celebrities” and well, I guess Pajiba is frequented by many more women and gay men than heterosexual guys, because only three out of the ten are women. Not that I have any quibbles with their male picks from an objective standpoint, but I was left hanging. Sort of the same worked up and frustrated feeling one gets going to a strip club (hmmm…maybe my next sex post should be on that entertainment venue). To show you all my very flawed human side, I will admit that there exist certain celebrity women who could easily make me stray from the marital straight-and-narrow. In the interests of getting some “bangalicious” women out there for those of you who are interested, but mostly for entertainment purposes, here are my top ten women who could make me break the 7th Commandment in a heartbeat.

For the record, there are male celebrities that my wife has admitted could not only make her stray but probably make her leave my ass entirely. So far, that list is small, Benicio del Toro and Rick Fox, but considering she’d leave me for one of them, I don’t feel too bad having ten ladies that could make me take a weeklong vacation.

I may have some favorites in this list, but I’m not going to reveal them in “top ten countdown” style; just going to do this alphabetically.

Angela Bassett

It’s a shame that this very talented actor has been reduced to some semi-schlock-ish movies lately. She’s got brains, style, panache, talent and beauty for miles upon miles. She’s been given some good roles even in recent years, but too many people are enraptured by Halle Berry’s unearthly physical beauty that they let that trump that fact that Angela has much more talent and is only marginally less perfect physically. There have been many places I’ve looked at her and longed for her, but I think it was 1995’s Strange Days in which I was totally captured by her mix of tough and sexy. The movie was forgettable; she was not. And in What’s Love Got to Do With It? she almost made a better Tina Turner than Tina did, and that’s saying a lot.

Catwoman

Hey, I never said I was going to limit myself to real people. And as far as fictional women, particularly in the comic books, none is sexier to me than Catwoman, the chick that even Batman digs, and you have to imagine that he’s pretty hard to impress. In movies and TV she’s been pretty damn sexy too, from the ’60s-era version played in the campy Batman TV series by both Julie Newmar and Eartha Kitt and clad in spandex, to the Batman Returns movie with Michelle Pfeiffer giving her a latex-clad upgrade in 1992, this is a bad girl who could make be bad too. I wouldn’t even kick the silly Halle Berry version from the Catwoman movie out for eating catnip in bed. In short, Catwoman can wrap her whip around me, purr in my ear and use me as a scratching post all night long.

Rosario Dawson

Between her turn in Clerks II with an on-screen personality that screamed sexy-witty-smart geek goddess to her role in Sin City as a tough-as-nails gun toting lady of the night, what more could I ask for? OK, she’s got gorgeous eyes too, and a face that can sometimes be sexy and sometimes just plain cute. Nice smile too. She may not have the raw acting power of some her fellow Hollywood peers in this list, but she ain’t bad in her acting skills, and she once dreamed of being a marine biologist, so I’m going to bet good money she has a very nice brain in that head, too.

Linda Fiorentino

I understand she is a bit of a pain in the ass for directors, which suggests to me she might be a pain in the ass in general, but I’ve had it for her since the first time I really noticed her, in the movie The Last Seduction in 1994. That is a character that is so self-assured, so sexy and so raw in her sensuality that I would bed her even knowing in advance that she would probably do me as wrong as Peter Berg’s character Mike in the film. She hasn’t had as many roles that were so stand-out as that one, but I still liked her more sedate character in Dogma and was glad to see her in a role that didn’t completely waste her talents, as did the movie Men in Black. And it wasn’t until years after The Last Seduction that I re-watched 1985’s film Gotcha! and realized I had already fallen in lust with her once before when I was still in high school.

Scarlett Johansson

Look, I’ll be honest. I don’t know squat about Scarlett aside from having seen her in the fantastically sedate but gripping comedy Lost in Translation and having seen her on the cover of DVD cases for The Black Dahlia and The Prestige, neither of which I have seen yet, though I plan to. I admit that she’s a sexy woman, but I wouldn’t normally have put her in this list. However, my son insists that if a celebrity should ever steal me away from home life here for a lascivious vacation from my normal life, this should be the woman to do it. Basically, he’s in lust with her and he’s projecting, but I also respect his taste, so I won’t disrespect him by leaving her off this list.

Angelina Jolie

The sexy woman who’s also a bit crazy is a draw for many men. I’m not entirely immune. Angelina has settled down a bit in recent years but I still sense there’s a bit of slightly scary in her psyche. She’s become too thin lately, and really needs to gain back about 10 or 20 pounds, but still, that face, those eyes and, most particularly, those luscious, full, mesmerizing lips—I wouldn’t leave my wife for her, but I’ll be the Mr. Smith to her Mrs. Smith (without all the gunfire, I hope) for a couple nights if she wants. Also, anyone who can make a video game character (Lara Croft the Tomb Raider, for those among you who aren’t geeks) pop in not just one movie but two—I mean, video games don’t translate well to the screen—hell, that gives me mad respect for her right there.

Avena Lee

OK, look, it should be clear from my “Porn Again” posts that I’m not a stranger to porn movies (not exactly part of my daily diet either, mind you), so I had to include at least one porn star. In my childhood and much of adolescence, the Asian women were the ones who got my heart to pumping hardest, so it’s also important that at least one Asian represent in this list. Simply put, this woman has one of the finest bodies ever seen on any Asian woman, and she has eyes that seem to dig right into your soul. My wife, Mrs. Blue, is the only woman I’d rather spend hours staring into the eyes of. Scrumptious! I don’t know if there’s any other reason to be attracted to her beyond the physical, but don’t I deserve at least one entry in this list for pure eye candy value?

Michelle Pfeiffer

I’m really not that partial to blondes, I have to admit. Nothing against them; it’s just that brunettes have always been more my style. But Michelle Pfeiffer seems to retain her beauty, perhaps even grow more gorgeous, the older she gets. I’ve also liked her in most of the films I’ve ever seen her in (in terms of talent), from The Fabulous Baker Boys to Dangeous Liaisons and Ladyhawke to Batman Returns. She is radiant and I would gladly let my retinas burn gazing upon her from close up.

Soledad O’Brien

I’m a writer and editor by trade, and trained as a journalist. No media woman combines personality, intelligence, competence and sexiness in my opinion better than Soledad. If anyone should be gracing an evening news anchor desk after doing time on a morning show, it should be Soledad and not that annoying perky-yet-bitchy Katie Couric. In Spanish, her first name means “loneliness” or “solitude.” Well, my fair lady of the morning news, if you ever feel either of those emotions, let me know and I will ease your mind for a short time at least.

Gwen Stefani

Yup, another blonde, despite my obvious preference for dark hair. And finally, an entertainment celebrity who isn’t an actor. Gwen can rock a dance club party girl look or a 1940s glam look with equal aplomb, and that’s pretty freaking impressive right there. She can be perky without a hint of being annoying. She can express deep melancholy in some of her songs without dragging down your mood. She can project depth and playfulness at the same time. You don’t have to change your hair color for me, Gwen. Call anytime and make me forget all those brunettes forever, except for Mrs. Blue, of course. I do have to go back home to her sooner rather than later.

(OK, I got the alphabetical order messed up with Michelle Pfeiffer and Soledad O’Brien, but after finagling the text and photos already, I ain’t switching their order now and messing this all up now…)

Two-fer Tuesday: Sex! by Deacon Blue

Well, haven’t had a post on sex for a while, so why not make it up to you by making it our “Two-fer Tuesday” topic this week. Of course, with an open-ended topic like this, where to start? Well, how about with some of the open ends we use during sex.

Your Mouth

Look, if you want thoughts on oral sex, go to this post; that’s not my topic here this time (Oh, calm down you horny folks out there…I’m sure I’ll come back to the subject again one day). No, there are two other things you should be doing with that mouth that I think are perhaps more important.

First, talk to your sexual partner (spouse, ideally, but I know all you single people ain’t virgins, Christian or otherwise). Tell that person what you like and tell them, most importantly, when they are doing something really right. Let them know right then and there. But also, just be willing to talk. Be willing to joke, even. Haven’t all of us had awkward moments in bed or failures to “be all that we could be?” Don’t make flub-ups a big deal. Keep it light. Sex is serious business, but if we get too serious about how we do it, we’re going to screw all the fun right out of it.

Second point about the mouth: Kiss, damn it! Kissing is important. It’s important day to day, it’s important for the warm-up routine before you really hit the sheets, it’s just really important. And let’s hear it for good oral hygiene, folks. Bad breath might be one of the surest ways to make your partner think you’re taking him or her for granted. And never start thinking that kissing is some simple activity. Much like the full-monty kind of sex, there are a lot of things you can learn about kissing, no matter how long you’ve been doing it, from new places to kiss to new ways to kiss those places.

Your Tunnel of Love

I would urge women to stop douching the hell out of their holiest of holies. Cleanliness is next to godliness, but your parts are mostly self-cleaning, thank you very much. Minor manual cleaning is all you should ever need. Men, stop making the smelly fish references to women’s parts, too. If there’s truly a bad smell, that’s a personal thing and maybe that woman needs some medical help. Women don’t smell like wharf-side food stands in general, so let’s stop with the tuna comments, OK? And if you don’t like the natural smell of a woman, take up celibacy.

Your Pocket Rocket

OK, the penis doesn’t have much of an opening, but he is an open end. He’s also an open book. Few things telegraph a man’s feelings more honestly and more unforgivably than a boner. Sadly, this eager muscle also has a tendency to let men down at inopportune moments. Ladies, a few things you need to realize if you haven’t figured it out already. First, sometimes, the equipment just lets us down by being too eager or just not doing anything. That’s nothing personal; it’s just a cruel joke on us. Second, I think we men should be able to let you admit that often, you do think that size matters. Just don’t get caught up in thinking that’s all that matters. A good driver in a compact car is always way better than a bad one in an SUV.

Your Derriere

Look, folks, this is not an all-or-nothing affair here. There are many ways the hindquarters can come into play in sex, whether for teasing or more aggressive activities or something in between. I’ll pretty much stop there because I know I have some squeamish readers. Just  keep an open mind. And keep it clean down there, just in case, OK. (All right, I’ve said too much now, haven’t I?)

Your Ears

Oh, you need to get your mind of the gutter on this one. I mean, really! OK, yeah, this can be an erogenous zone but please, don’t do anything there that will mess up the works, all right? That’s all I’m going to say on that, because people can do some crazy shit sometimes. Do please nibble, suck, lick and kiss them with abandon though.

But seriously, your ears need to be one of the most open parts of your anatomy if you want good sexual relations in your relationship. Listen to your spouse. More than that, really hear the person you say you love. Sometimes, that means picking up cues and realizing what they haven’t said or what they want to say. If your spouse says, “No, that’s OK, I’m fine.” It may really mean that he or she is trying to be nice to you, and maybe the nicer thing would be to spring a little sexual surprise on that person. Likewise, your man or woman may say, “let do it” but if those eyes are telling a different story, maybe the best thing would be to do it another day. Ask questions. Answer honestly.

Also, feel free to whisper some sweet nothings in those ears or even talk some of that dirty stuff. Good sex means bringing all the senses along for the ride.

(For Miz Pink’s take on sex today, go here.)

Two-fer Tuesday: Sex! by Miz Pink

Ya know, I’ve read some on this idea of what is it, 30 days of sex or something along those lines? The notion that you, as a couple, make a decision that every day, for a whole month, you will have sex. I’m a’thinkin that a lot of women are thinking “oh no” and a lot of men are thinking “oh yea” right about now. I don’t know how I feel about this.

On the one hand as a Christian wife I think it’s kinda cool as a concept and as a relationship experiment. Husbands and wives aren’t supposed to deny themselves to each other so go all out for a month (or a couple weeks or a few months or whatever y’all decide amongst yerselves) seems like it could be a good idea. A crash course, a boot camp of love. Mashing yourself together so that you become truly one unit.

Then there’s the part of me that thinks: Boy that’s contrived. Every day? Isn’t that forced? Isn’t that expecting too much of any relationship?

For me and Sir Pink, we have another kind of plan in place. Something that we want to do every day (excpet in cases of illness or geographic separation). Instead of sex every day for a period of time, intimate contact every day for at least five minutes.

C’mon, you know how busy our lives get. How easy it is to forget with the kids and the jobs and all that to just sit down and snuggle. Or kiss. Or just tease each other knowing that you won’t actually do full on sex for another day or two?

What’s lacking in too many relationships these days is intimacy. We love each other. We care about each other. We enjoy each others company.

But we don’t talk often enough about our feelings and desires. We don’t just spend time basking in the glow of the other person. We don’t just spend time listening or shutting up and holding the other person. We don’t connect.

I think a 30-day challenge can do a lot to encourage connection. But after that 30 days of daily sex, will you simply have had a wild and fun ride or will you still be feeling connected a month later? I think maybe all of us should try a 30-day thang at least once in life. But I encourage you to spend five or ten or fifteen minutes every day for closeness with your lovey dovey partner and see what that does for you.

(Deke’s post on sex is over here)

Pain or Suffering?

I know the usual phrase is “pain and suffering,” but I’m going to challenge all of you with the title of today’s post to shed that notion. To embrace the idea that they don’t have to go together and you can make a choice. I would further put forth to you that you while you should realize that you are going to experience pain that you purposefully try to steer clear of suffering. Jesus promised us that we would, as his followers, experience tribulations (pain), but he died and suffered so that we wouldn’t have to—so that we can turn to God and tap into the Holy Spirit to get through pain and bypass (or at least drastically shorten) the suffering part of things.

I was inspired to talk about this today when I saw a statement on a Christian issues-oriented blog by a commenter that went like this:

In life pain is inevitable, suffering is optional

Now, ain’t that a kicker? I’ve heard a lot of aphorisms before, but never that one. I did some Google searching and it seems it’s a Zen and Buddhist philosophical statement. I found a lot of stuff related to that phrase, but here are a few things that expound upon it a bit: a sermon here from a Unitarian-Universalist church, a blog post here, and a post at a grief discussion group here.

Let it never be said that I don’t tap into non-biblical sources for my inspiration. Zen Buddhist folks can teach a lot about life and how we view it. The key is to remember that we have another life beyond this one and we have to tie the two together. This aphorism about pain vs. suffering seems key to me in understanding what kind of bullet Jesus took for us and how he would want us to conduct our lives when the defecation hits the rotary oscillation device.

The Human Stain

If you’re reasonably well read or have seen CSI or Law & Order or some similar show on TV at least once, you porbably know that something like a blood stain on a wall can tell forensics experts a lot. It can tell you from what direction a shot was fired, from what angle, from what height, from what distance, and all sorts of other good stuff—or, well, bad stuff…but useful stuff all the same.

Simpler stains can tell us things, too. A big old coffee stain on that important signed paperwork on your desk may be a sign that you need to be less sloppy or start keeping your coffee and your papers on separate surfaces. An ink stain in your shirt pocket is a good sign that you need a new pen. A lipstick stain on a collar all too often tells a wife that her husband ain’t doing right while he’s outside the home. A pee stain on the carpet tells us either the new puppy needs a bit more house training or that someone in the house has taken serious leave of both their senses and their bladder control.

We need to look at our stains.

What stains have we left in life? Why? Where? Who is affected by them? Whom have we stained directly? What can we do about them or what should we do about them?

Obviously, I’m talking metaphorical stains now. And I mention them because when we look ourselves and what we do in life, we generally give ourselves a pass. I examine myself and my motivations and I see a guy who’s in the right. You do the same thing, probably, most of the time. Truth is, we are usually pretty poor at locating and recognizing our own worst faults. Even the worst villains in the world still generally believe that they are doing what is right and proper, if not for society than for the most important people in the world: Themselves.

I say that we need to look at the people around us and see if they are stained. And then we need to establish if that stain was our fault. And if so, fix it.

If your child is suddenly acting odd and not speaking right and seems nervous around you, maybe it’s time to evaluate whether you’ve been putting undue pressure on that child or being rotten to that child or perhaps not spending quality time with that child.

If your co-workers seem to get quiet when you enter the room or don’t seem to want to socialize with you, maybe you should ascertain whether or not you are a jerk at work.

If your spouse is emotionally distant maybe you need to examine if you’ve been open enough emotionally and whether you are doing right by your spouse.

It might turn out that you aren’t the problem, or at least that perhaps you’re only part of it. And even if you aren’t the problem, identifying a stain on someone’s life presents you with an opportunity to help that person get past it and clean one piece of crap off their life’s problems. Bonus karma!

But it may also turn out that you have to admit you’ve done wrong, and realize you aren’t always such the good person you think you are.

The problem is, we’ll seldom see our failings in the mirror. The best place to see them is often in the behaviors and actions of those whom we interact with daily. Those people are the mirrors we need to look into.

Look deep.

Sweet Talk by Miz Pink

We do like it when people tell us what we wanna hear don’t we? We say we want good plain straight talk but we rarely really do. For one thing, once we get it we usually realize it’s mostly double-talk or empty talk in the end (John McCain has really hit that home for me these days; yeah, Barack Obama, too a bit but he didn’t ride in on the “straight talk express” like ole John but on that change thang instead…so at least changing his tune is themetically straight.)

Whoops! Waxing political there. Let’s get back on track.

People love to have their egos stroked. So most of us would rather go to places where people tell us humans are basically good and certainly God will let most folks into heaven based on good deeds and other such dangerous talk. Heck I’m amazed at the Unitarian-Universalist church down the street and its sizable attendance. And why not? It’s church without Jesus. Its religion with almost no rules. It’s a congregation that tells you everyone is right when it comes to that “higher power.”

People also love to be entertained. Who doesn’t like a preacher or priest to get behind that pulpit and tell us some good tales and maybe get us to laugh a bit. Most of us don’t care whether he or she mentions God much…or Jesus for that matter…or the Holy Spirit. They just get in the way, right? Who wants to think about someone watching over us and watching what we’re up to?

As a woman, I know all too well how much my sisters in the world want some guy to whisper wonderful things in their ears and make us all gooey inside. Doesn’t matter if he’s good for us if he just makes us feel good for a while and tells us nice things. Then when he dumps on us later and smooths it over with more sweet words, it’s all good right? I’m sure men aren’t immune to this either. Lord knows I’ve sweet talked Sir Pink into some stuff he probly shouldn’ta ougtha done.

But let’s look at this… 

1 And when I came to you, my brothers, I did not come with wise words of knowledge, putting before you the secret of God. 2 For I had made the decision to have knowledge of nothing among you but only of Jesus Christ on the cross. 3 And I was with you without strength, in fear and in doubt. 4 And in my preaching there were no honeyed words of wisdom, but I was dependent on the power of the Spirit to make it clear to you (First Corinthians Chapter 2)

Paul valued straight talk and I respect that ish even if I don’t always agree with him. We need fewer honeyed words and more of them that maybe make us pucker up a bit.

If you just want to feel great about yourself, go for Oprah and the self help section of the book store. If you want to have a better spirit and be in touch with God, expect to hear and read some things that you might not like. But much like medicine, even if it goes down rough, youre usually better off in the end for having taking it.

The Hand That Flew

Well, I’m in a confessional mode this week; twice in two days. This time, though, my wife isn’t the person I’m feeling I might have let down. It’s my little girl.

I’m bigger on discipline (raising my voice, taking toys away, etc.) than is my wife, but I’ve never been keen on using physical force. I’ve never ruled it out (see Miz Pink’s post “Beat Down” because I agree with her 95% on that post) but I don’t like it, and there are other people in the blogosphere who have spoken eloquently on the pitfalls and uses of corporal punishment (Blackgirlinmaine recently in her Spare the Rod… post, a more light-hearted one at this blog, and a more academic take here.)

Last night, I smacked my little girl across the thigh. Didn’t leave a mark, but it still left her crying for a long while.

Now, I know that many readers will roll their eyes and say “Big frickin’ whoop!” You didn’t smack her multiple times, you didn’t hit her across the face, you didn’t use a hanger or something, so what are you whining about? And I know objectively that I didn’t do it out of anger so much as surprise, because my hand flew a split second after my little girl unexpectedly chomped down on my left nipple.

But the fact is, my hand flew.

And it didn’t need to.

I should be able to take the pain of a bite from a three-year-old. I should be able to control my hand. I don’t hit my wife. Never have, never will (unless she gets homicidally psycho on my ass, which is highly unlikely). I don’t get into fights now and I never have in the past.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not some hippie milquetoast here. Call my wife, daughter or son a certain epithet that rhymes with “chigger” and I’ll put your face into the pavement. Sexually assault my daughter, at any age, and there will be a body buried in the woods shortly thereafter. Try to attack me physically, and I will work on the assumption that you mean to kill me and respond with appropriate force. I have a very forgiving temperament and a very, very slow and long fuse. But push me too far and you could really regret it.

But what exactly did smacking my daughter accomplish that couldn’t have been accomplished just as well by yelling or throwing out one of her DVDs? What galls me is that my mom only had to spank me twice during my whole childhood. I don’t like the thought that my hand might fly faster than my reason or common sense can stop it.

I don’t fear that I’ll become an abusive parent; that would just be silly logic. That’s not the kind of person I am.

But I don’t like that a girl who doesn’t have a chance against me bit me, and probably had no clue how much that would hurt me, and I hit her. Doesn’t matter where and it doesn’t matter how minor the hit; I hit her and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry, honeybunch, I really am. And I apologize to Mrs. Blue as well, even though she’s already long over it (and so is the little girl).

Now I just have to get around to forgiving myself.

Bonus Feature

I started work on the second chapter of my blog novel Cleansed by Fire, and I had only intended to get a start on it and then finish it by next week for my usual weekly posting, but I couldn’t stop writing, and now I have a finished part 6 already ready to post. In fact, I did post it, right before this post. I know the last installment was just a couple days ago, but I couldn’t help myself. So, if you’re following my first foray into novel-length fiction or would like to start, scroll down my main page or, if you came to this post directly from somewhere else, click here for part six of my novel.

Cleansed by Fire, Part 6

For the previous installment of this story, click here, or click on the “cleansed by fire novel” link under the Tags heading for this post (or click here) for a complete listing of installments. 

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 2, Women and Children

Daniel Coxe always thought it was a dubious distinction to be one of the only licensed divorce attorneys—quite likely the only one, in fact—in the Vatican’s LPA region. Awkward as hell, but it made for great cocktail party conversation sometimes with the unaware, given that divorce was absolutely prohibited in all Vatican-held nations. But the Vatican was always interested in acquiring good talent from abroad, and he had been paid an obscenely large amount of money to leave the comfort of Britainnia based solely on the fact that he had never come out on the losing end of any case he had ever led.

Someone up high thought, and rightly so, that his skills would translate well in the Vatican’s Contractual Law Department in the Ministry of Trade. Daniel had negotiated the hell out of every deal the Vatican put in front of him. Somehow, that had caught the attention of someone in the Ministry of Advanced Automation, who hired him away thinking that he would serve them well in getting artificial intelligence units to comprehend issues of deal-making and law.

And so the divorce attorney because a conceptual system programmer. And he programmed the hell out of every project put before him. Most of the AIs he had worked on could have out-argued half of his law professors.

Someone in the Papal Advisory Council figured that someone of Daniel’s unique skills would be perfect to monitor the health of the most complex and largest AI in the world—the Godhead—and they were right. That was three years ago.

Now, Daniel sat at his lightdesk dejectedly, going over thirteen anomalies that apparently no one else had ever thought to associate with one another. This was the tenth time he had done it. And the ninth time he had come up with the exact same calculations.

What Daniel wanted most in the world right now was to divorce himself from his own life, because he wasn’t quite sure how to handle the knowledge that the Godhead had at some point, without notifying anyone, spawned a smaller AI program and sent it into the world. He wasn’t sure whom he should tell.

He wasn’t sure if he would survive long after the telling.

He now wished very much that he hadn’t been quite so fond of money, because he was now wholly convinced that the Vatican was full of nothing but nutters and the Godhead was the biggest nutter of them all.

Immaculate AI conception or bastard autonomous program? Daniel sighed. This was definitely something they didn’t teach you in any of the family law curricula.

* * *

You learn a lot of things in seven years of seminary, Paulis Amaranth Dyson mused. How to apply just the right amount of blunt force to the human skull with a punchglove just wasn’t one of them.

It was, of course, something you could learn in a crash course in field combat at any of Europa or Old Africa’s military academies—and Amaranth had attended several such courses—but theory was always so much easier than execution. She had only intended to render the guard insensate; instead, it looked like he was going to need reconstructive surgery for his cheek and jaw.

But having only narrowly escaped an attack in Uhuru ten days ago that was either an assassination attempt or the most brutal apprehension plan she had ever experienced, Amaranth was feeling that overexuberance was the better part of valor these days. Too much subtlety and the UFC might be shopping among the single theologians for someone to wed her widowed husband and prevent an early leadership change.

Yet again, she found herself wondering how St. Paul himself would have viewed the job of Paulis in the UFC. One-third wandering evangelist, one-third diplomat, one-third commando. Evangelism and diplomacy had taken a back seat since Uhuru, though; all Amaranth wanted was to get back home to Mars and replace her slipship, apologize to the families of the two team members she had lost on this mission, and sleep for two days straight—preferably with Greg’s arms around her.

Sadly, she and her team were forced to flee southeast instead of north from Uhuru, putting them into long-held Vatican territory. Amaranth had gotten four of her five surviving team members onto a passenger vessel heading to Mars yesterday. That was the easy part; they didn’t have faces that were instantly recognizable by every Vatican security post on the face of the Earth.

With the guard continuing his enforced nap, Amaranth slipped into the medtech lab, snatched up a box of inactive nanobots designed for dental work and another box of nanos designed to treat acne and herpes—then grabbed several other boxes of nanos and numerous very expensive and highly abusable drugs to cover her tracks.

An hour later, she was at the rendevous point to meet the last remaining member of her team, her personal bodyguard—who still seemed to be chafing at the fact that Amaranth had insisted on splitting them up to gather what they needed. If Boris could have had himself surgically attached to Amaranth’s hip, he would have done so long ago.

“You have what we need to fake the IDs?” Amaranth asked.

Boris grunted and nodded.

“Don’t be so surly, Boris. You’re certain you can reprogram these nanos?”

Boris tilted his head and squinted in a manner that would have curdled milk.

“Boris, please try to remember that I’m your boss.”

The big man shrugged. “I can reprogram. Your new face I hope will not scare your husband too hard. I plan to make myself more handsome but you need much more plain. Won’t hold more than four days though.”

“We’ll be back on Mars tomorrow, or we won’t make it at all.” Amaranth set down her bags and tied back her black hair. “Be gentle, Boris. It’s my first facelift.”

* * *

Hasty decisions made in anger and with too little sleep are probably not the best ones, Maree sup-Juris noted mentally as she hung in her living room between the iron-hard grips of two men who not only were solid muscle naturally but also boasted light exoskeletons to give them an added edge. I figured Stavin would come here, or send someone here, within minutes after receiving the report of the slipcar driver.

I never expected that someone would already be here when I walked through my front door.

They hadn’t hurt her yet, but it seemed likely that wasn’t going to last, given the look on the face of the third person in her house, who had greeted her with icy silence and obviously was the brains of this trio. He had retreated to her kitchen moments ago, and after some rattling around in her cabinets, he returned with a slotted spoon.

“I understand that your rank in the templar makes you ill. I understand that the things you have had to do since taking your vows are sickening to you,” the man said softly. Without warning, he stepped up, grabbed a fistful of her bobbed hair, yanked her head back and thrust the spoon down her throat.

If she hadn’t been retching so hard at the time, Maree might have been impressed with how smoothly and quickly he stepped back to avoid being sprayed by the remains of the dinner she’d eaten before leaving Templar’s Tower.

“Yes, I see it has made you very sick to your stomach indeed. I’m so sorry.”

Maree’s throat was in no condition to fashion a surly reply. Nor was her brain fully recovered to think one up.

“I also understand that broken fingers and collarbones are something that appeal to you aesthetically.”

Shit. Not only were they waiting for me, they were monitoring my conversation in the slipcar the whole time I was coming here.

The man stepped nimbly around the puddle of vomit on the floor, broke one of Maree’s little fingers and then shoved the stunrod he had been carrying on his belt sideways into her mouth to stifle her cry of pain.

“I’m sure you can explain away the finger as a home-based accident. A broken collarbone would be too hard to explain, of course. Still, fair is fair, so let me improvise.”

He shoved the business end of the stunrod against her left shoulder and pressed the trigger. Maree had only been on the receiving end of a stunrod three times in her career, and always with templar armor to severely blunt the effect. Even with the excrutiating pain she now felt, she noted with some small clinical detachment how amazing it was that the stunrod robbed her of the ability to scream even as it made her want to do little else but. The fact she wasn’t unconcious meant it was, at best, set to one-third power.

“You never did specify whether you intended to break both sides of his collarbone or just one. I’m afraid that professional ethics demand I be thorough.”

With that, he jammed the stunrod against her other shoulder and repeated the process. He waited. It was more than three minutes before Maree regained the ability to audibly pant and gasp. She might have groaned but suspected that would only earn her an extra couple blasts with the stunrod. At a signal from the man, her two captors dropped her unceremoniously into her own vomit.

The stunrod now back in its holster, and Maree quite certain that she would be able to wrest it from the man if he would only give her an hour or two to lie there first, the man dropped to a squat in front of her and cupped his hands together.

“I’m Stavin. How very nice to meet you in person, Maree. I probably should have introduced myself years ago, but you can imagine how busy it gets running one of the biggest cells of Secular Genesis.” He paused and looked thoughtfully off into the distance for a moment. “You know, I would have expected someone who’s worked this long at the Vatican to be familiar with a phrase about pride going before the fall.”

“Pleased to…meet you…too,” Maree managed through clenched teeth, though she was bitterly disappointed when the last word came out a mousy squeak. “Is this…a morale…building…pep talk?”

“Maree, Maree. Please don’t try to speak. If you give yourself a couple hours sleep and don’t force me to use the rod again, you’ll be able to talk normally by the time you go back to work.”

“You have…got…to be…kid…”

“Shhhhhh. Maree, you are going to go back to work tomorrow, you are going to re-enable all four swiper apps on your chair before you leave for the day, you will drop that sniffer device of yours at the caff shop on your way home tomorrow night, and you shall patiently await either your discovery as a plant or the fruition of our plans, either of which will enable you to stop serving the interests of the Vatican. Which, I am sure, will help settle that sour stomach of yours.”

“And…if…”

“You don’t? You still have two cousins living nearby. I normally don’t like to create collateral casualties, but these are irregular times and I am forced to extreme measures. If necessary, this cottage will burn, and your cousins, their husbands and their children wide awake along with it.”

Carrying the Load

Today, I need to get something off my chest, but it’s not a rant like my July 14 “Stealing Time” post. I find myself thinking about stress a lot, and how it dovetails with faith (or sometimes lack thereof). And I’m thinking about it a lot in terms of my marriage.

I’m pretty laid back most of the time. I do get stressed over things, but it rarely lasts long. I sleep fine at night, I don’t have high blood pressure, I don’t get anxiety attacks. Mostly, I trust in God to deliver me from crap. And I daresay that Mrs. Blue and I have more crap to deal with than 90% of the people in our socioecomic cohort. For the most part, even when I feel a vague sense of unease, I mostly feel OK about life in general. Now, conflicts with people I love and who are close to me, those can mess me up, but most stressors in life just don’t knock my ass to the ground. I don’t think of myself as particularly strong in and of myself; I credit God for giving me much of the resources that I have to weather the storms.

And yet.

Mrs. Blue also has normal blood pressure and she maintains a pretty chipper face to people outside our family even when the stresses are high in our life. But she does get anxious and bummed and this translates into aches and pains and lack of sleep and sometimes just really, really bad moods. I realize there is nothing necessarily odd about this, nor is it bad per se that my wife and I operate differently in how we respond to stress. With me, it seems to roll off more; with her, it seems to stick more, and often build higher and higher with little relief.

My wife is no less faithful than I am. One could argue she is more so, I suspect. She prays more and she is in the Bible more often than I am. Yet she ends up with the greater stress.

And I wonder, is it my fault? My wife has always been the more organized of the two of us. I joke that she is the CEO and CFO of this family to my president and chairman of the board. She had always had more aptitude with figures and planning and dealing with people that we have to deal with. I’ve always been better doing my work, which at the moment still earns most of the money in this household, in supporting her in her work by being her sounding board and proofreader, and in accommodating our little girl’s most outrageous physical and emotional demands so that mommy won’t have child clinging to her every moment of the day.

And yet.

Have I dropped the ball? In thinking that my wife and I simply deal with stress differently and in thinking that we have an equitable split of the household duties, have I intepreted things wrong?

We are comparable in our faith in God and in our willingness to turn things over to God and ask for strength and help in times of trouble. Yet I seem to be the one who is least stressed.

Have I, through lack of action or lack of awareness, saddled Mrs. Blue with too much of the administrative work in this family? Is she so laden with having to look at the problems that we face that she can never look away from them? Does she lack for sleep and peace of mind because she just cannot let go of the stress and because there are just too many stressors that hit home for her…or is it because I’m not picking up some kind of slack?

I don’t know the answer. Once Mrs. Blue reads this, I don’t know that she’ll know either. I’m sure we’ll talk about it. Maybe we’ll even find answers. Maybe I’ll discover there is something I can do better.

We husbands and wives are supposed to be helpmates to one another. I think that too often, it’s easy to get caught up in ourselves and not be there as much as we should for the other person. That’s not the way it should be. Those of us who are married and who, I presume, still love our spouses…we need to do better to be there for them. Even when we think we’re doing enough, I suspect that most of us on both sides of the marriage still aren’t doing enough.

And if we don’t challenge ourselves and accept that fact that, “I might be the problem” instead of saying “I think you’re the problem” we are going to be very poor helpmates indeed.

Cleansed By Fire, Part 5

For the previous installment of this story, click here, or click on the “cleansed by fire novel” link under the Tags heading for this post (or click here) for a complete listing of installments. 

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 1, Requiem for the Red Pope (continued)

By the end of the day—a day that had stretched well into the evening hours, in fact—Lyseena’s three admin officers were as exhausted as if they had run a marathon in full templar armor. Tomorrow promised more of the same, if not worse, and all three of them were ready to put the Templar’s Tower behind them for a few hours at least. Maree, Paulo and Kevan paused at street level, gave each other weary—and wary—nods, and set off their separate directions.

For Maree sup-Juris, her destination was fraught with contradictions and even heresy. I am about to continue a path of betrayal in the shadow of the Lamb’s Tower, she thought. Perhaps I’d be better to shit on the keystone altar at St. Paul’s Cathedrium, record it and put it up on the grid, and be done with everything.

But in the end, duty was all she had—duties by day and duties by night that could not be reconciled and which were mixing and churning together with increasing regularity. And that growing regularity was something that she was about to confront with a certain someone in mere minutes.

She was acting outside of normal protocols, but she had minimal fear. If anything, being caught at this point would be a relief in some respects. But everything had been too well-crafted, for too many decades, for something like this to derail the situation. That nonsense with her slipchair this afternoon, now that was something else entirely. I don’t fear death, or even torture, but out of professional dignity, I shall not simply be put in jeopardy merely for someone else’s convenience.

Maree was known among the templar to be a creature of habit and of very particular sentimentality. That is why no one made a fuss about her desire to still use the twelve-year-old slipchair she had received when she was promoted to man-Juris, even though that model had been discontinued long ago and at least four new technological advances had been made to the Templar slipchairs since then. And her regular visits to the nearby park beneath the Lamb’s Tower for a quick stroll, particularly after a busy day—which gave her separation from her colleagues and allowed her to order up a livery slipcar—were nothing of note. Her desire to often stop midway between the park and the nearest slipgate and have the slipcar wait for her while she bought a cup of caff, and sometimes drop a piece of memorysheet in the wastebasket while she ordered, was likewise of no consequence. Even the fact that she lived in a small cottage several towns outside the city proper—a fact that made it logical for her to order up slipcars instead of standard livery groundcars in the first place—was nothing strange, as it had been left to her by her grandfather.

These things had been a part of her character and routines for the nearly sixteen years since she took her vows with the Office Templar and went from being logistical officer Maree Duvalle to senior officer Maree Juris, and then on to Maree man-Juris and now Maree sup-Juris. For most of those sixteen years, she had done nothing untoward during her forays. And if agents of the Office Inquisitorial had ever been watching her, Lord knows they would have given up out of boredom after the first few years. So the past six years of subterfuge gave her little worry. Even the way she was being used now still didn’t worry her.

But it was insulting, and she was angry.

Her stroll was brief, and she called up a slipcar from a local livery service from her linkpad. Minutes later, it slid quietly up to the curb and she stepped in. The driver turned his head slightly, “Where to, ma’am?”

The man had a very small brown mole on his right earlobe. Such an inconsequential thing that hardly anyone would notice. Maree’s eyes drifted casually to his right hand, where she saw a simple silver ring on the middle finger. Two simple things, hardly of note to anyone, but of course not something that many people would have, certainly not in combination. Only from slipcars from this livery service. And even then, only on special occasions. The face was always different, and the gender and ethnicity varied from ride to ride.

Normally, these rides would be in silence. Data would be transmitted to the vox in her pocket, so that she could listen to it at her leisure between music and news feeds the next time she slipped the vox onto her ear. Or data would be pulled from the vox on rare occasions.

Silence was the order of the day on these rides.

Being unobtrusive was the standard goal.

This was not a normal day.

Maree cleared her throat and said, “910 Sweetser Lane, Astoria.” She paused as the slipcar pulled away from the curb and headed toward the slipgate station several miles away. “Are you Stavin?”

“Of course. That is who you stated you needed to speak to. Quite irregular, but these are irregular days.”

Maree snorted. “Not that I’d know what Stavin looks like, of course, or what he sounds like. And I sincerely doubt Stavin would actually put his ass in this slipcar and expose himself to a very potential risk that he was entering a trap. But I’ll pretend for the moment that you really are him. If you aren’t, you’d better have both a very good memory and ample knowledge of operations. Because I want my words to get to him exactly as I speak them, and I expect responses from you that are appropriate for someone who knows what is going on. If I find that I am getting neither, particularly that second part, you will be trying to figure out how to drive this slipcar away from Astoria with a broken collarbone. Do I make myself clear?”

“Very clear,” the man said mildly. “I wasn’t aware that you were in a position to dictate orders, but you are very clear.”

“Good. I want to know why the fuck you have accessed my slipchair so frequently lately. Are you trying to get me executed? The holo emitter has flickered three times in the past week!”

“The flash-dump of data requires a bit of energy. The security protocols we have in place are very good, but speed is of the essence. We have to get as much data as feasible from your storage cells in a very precise amount of time and the lightdesk holo will flicker. It is an unavoidable consequence and precisely why you have held onto such an old slipchair for so long. A small glitch like that would not be unexpected from time to time.”

“Three times in the past week,” Maree said with a growl slowly slipping into her words. “Do you think Lyseena xec-Juris became commander templar of this region by lacking an attention to detail? At best, she will become annoyed and make me replace the chair soon. At worst, someone will poke around and find your…additions.”

“Look, Maree…”

“Admin Officer sup-Juris if you will,” Maree interrupted fiercely. “Don’t try to get buddywise with me tonight, or I’ll get a start on that collarbone right now. I’ve earned my rank in the templar, even if it makes me ill to have it.”

“…Admin Officer sup-Juris, the protocols in your chair are entirely random. We do that precisely to avoid patterns. A random process, by its nature, means that the data dumps will not be at regular intervals. You were bound to get a slight cluster at some point. Putting you in jeopardy is hardly a value proposition. We would not…”

“A slight cluster?” came Maree’s savage reply. “Three times in five office days that my chair has randomly initiated flash-dumps to you? Three times in that week, around the same time as the Red Pope’s death and days before the the Fourth Millennial Celebration? Do you take me for an idiot?”

“Officer Juris…”

“Admin Officer sup-Juris, you piddling stand-in for Stavin! Don’t make me reach across your seat and break one of your fingers as a prelude to your shoulder. My family has given its years, its legacy and now my life to your cause. If I am taken prisoner in doing my duty, I will accept that. But I will not be taken advantage of. If I die in the course of my actions, I accept that. But I will not have my life thrown away casually.”

“Admin Officer sup-Juris, no one questions your loyalty, your attention to duty under very trying circumstances and your irreplaceable value…”

Maree’s hand shot out with a tiny leafblade between her thumb and forefinger. She held it to the driver’s ear firmly. He said nothing, but she could feel the tension. She was more certain than ever that not only wasn’t this Stavin, it wasn’t even one of his lieutenants.

“Look, you baseline operative, I will remove your fake mole by relieving you of your ear if you try to smooth my grade with psych bullshit one more time. There is nothing random about my slipchair’s flash-dumps now, if there ever was. You are planning something very large, you are planning it soon, and you desperately want data from my chair in the hopes that you can get something that will be of use to you in keeping the templars off your neck.”

“You are keeping me in the dark about it,” she continued, “I am willing to bet good debits that the frequency of my little holo flickers will increase, and you plan to get as much as you can, and you know that I will probably be revealed as a spy before the millennium arrives. I have not spent this many years rising in the ranks of the Office Templar on behalf of the Secular Genesis—having to pretend loyalty to the Vatican and do things that still make me sick—just so that I can be used like a common tripslut.”

Though the man clearly wasn’t a high-level member of the Secular Genesis and was probably a hair away from pissing in his trousers, Maree was at least impressed that he was still driving straight and at a constant speed. He might have potential if she didn’t do anything too obnoxiously detrimental to his body.

“What do you propose, Admin Officer sup-Juris? If what you accuse us of is true, what do you suggest we do? These are, as I said, irregular times. Field operatives are often in jeopardy. Even operatives as valuable as you. Do you expect to be given less risk? Do you expect operations to be cancelled for your benefit?”

Maree released the driver’s ear and settled back into her seat. She was calmer now. Physical threats against another could be very cathartic, particularly when they were justified.

“What I propose is that you tell Stavin I want him at my cottage tonight. I want to know what I am part of and I wish to be an active part of it; not a pawn or a tool. I will have my skills put to work on something more than just pretending to be a loyal templar and waiting for an inquisitor to haul me away. If Stavin doesn’t come himself—or even worse, if no one comes at all—I swear to you that not only will I turn myself in, I will personally hand my slipchair over to Lyseena xec-Juris.”

The driver sighed. “Look that won’t accomplish anything productive, even for petty revenge. Any tinkering with the chair’s modifications will activate a…”

“…swiper application that I located and disabled two days ago. The three backup apps as well, which were very well hidden, I must admit. Plus, I have a data sniffer hidden away that has monitored every one of your flash-dumps for the past year, and might therefore help Lyseena triangulate the position of some of your data posts. I think that would be very inconvenient for the Secular Genesis. Particularly in such irregular times as these.”

Silence reigned for the last minute or so of the drive. The driver eased the slipcar into an open collar at the slipgate terminal and began the slipspace calculations for Astoria station. “I’ll tell Stavin myself. And I have an eidetic memory. I’m not some mere flunky.”

Maree wasn’t sure if that was meant to reassure her that nothing would be lost in translation, or be a thinly veiled threat that he wouldn’t forget this night, or combination of both. And frankly, she didn’t much care.

“Glad to hear it,” she said as the slipgate hummed with its power-up protocol and a vague sense of ghostly pressure began to exert itself against her skin and even her thoughts. “You made good time to the station. I can almost guarantee there’ll be a nice tip on your account when we finish up the debit at my home. And you probably won’t even need to spend it on first aid for your collarbone.”

(This marks the end of Chapter 1. To read part 6 of this story, which begins Chapter 2, click here.)