Erin's Dream Diary: The Beltane Fertility Dream

The wheel of the year turns to Beltane, the cross-quarter holiday halfway between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice. Symbolically, this is the time of union and consummation between the God and Goddess, representing renewal of the fertility of the Earth.

Bright blessings to you and yours if you're celebrating Beltane or May Day as a Neopagan, Wiccan, or witch.

Maypole dance. Public domain image by KenL

But this is going to be a personal post. I went to sleep on Beltane Eve, and this is what I dreamed:

I was a high school kid. I had a rare blood condition (probably nothing that exists in real life), so every day after school I had to go to the nurse's station in the school basement to get an injection. Oddly enough, there was another kid at the same school who had the same condition. He was Robert Downey Jr., high school kid version. We were friends.

RDJ: representing masculine energy/the God in my subconscious. Possibly because during the day I'd seen a commercial with Blythe Danner, mother of Gwyneth Paltrow who plays Pepper Pots in the Iron Man movies. I had briefly entertained fantasies of Danner appearing in a future film as Tony Stark's mother-in-law. Hence, the image of Downey as Stark had crossed my mind.

In addition to the nurse's station, the school basement contained the cafeteria, some art classrooms, and a staircase that led up to the gym (much like in the high school I actually went to). After our treatment one day, RDJ and I wandered around the mostly-unoccupied basement. He was joking about wanting to have sex with me.

We found an unguarded stash of snacks bound for the cafeteria and snagged a bag of Cheetos. Then we sat on the gym steps, eating our ill-gotten gains, and I joked that I was sexually aroused by Cheetos.

Cheetos. Public domain image by SCEhardt

Well, playful banter and junk food - one thing leads to another, resulting in actual sex. Then, actual sex again on a second occasion.

We were careful and used condoms both times, but not careful enough, because I became pregnant. Nine months later, we had a beautiful baby girl. Miraculously, she didn't even have our weird blood thing.

At first, he was a pretty cool dad. But then…well, let me back up. I was part of a church group that, on very cold days, would give rides to homeless people and give them warm places to stay temporarily. One cold day when the baby was still only a few months old, I was hanging out with a homeless woman who, if I had been awake, I would have said was my dad's late aunt Marcella. We'll just call her Marcella.

Marcella wanted me to go buy her a bottle of liquor. I said no, because A. I was still only 18 years old, not legal to buy alcohol in the United States, and B. I had to take care of the baby. But I did have access to an airplane-size bottle of some kind of alcoholic beverage, which I gave her.

Creative Commons image by Fernando Carrizo

Marcella complained that she did not like the taste. I gave her a can of Pepsi to mix it with. She didn't care for that either, so I gave her an airplane-size bottle of coconut rum instead. Marcella continued to complain and became increasingly disruptive until I asked her to step outside. We tussled. I had to put her in a bear hug so she didn't beat me up.

At this point, RDJ became very, "Oh, fuck this," and had some of his friends come pick him up. They went out and partied. He stayed out partying with his friends for weeks on end, forgoing his familial responsibilities. I figured I was abandoned and a single parent. Depressing, but I had to keep it together for the kiddo.

But as I was about to graduate from high school and planning to go to an art school, he came back. The party-boy phase was over, and he was ready to settle down. RDJ and I got married - and he turned out to be really good at parenting.

Happily ever after. Because those are the kinds of dreams a romance writer has.

Previous Dream Diary Entries:

A Wonderful Vampire Dream
The Adam Levine Dream
The Boy
The Inspirational Zombie Dream
Window Into the Mind of an Erotica Author
Yugoslavia!

Let Me Help You Celebrate National Man Watcher's Day!

What - you've never heard of National Man Watcher's Day?! Jace Shoemaker-Galloway gives a clear description of it in her January 8th Examiner.com article.

Please, allow me to assist you in the fine art of man-watching. Let me take you back to Halloween week, when Pagan Spirits celebrated Werewolf Wednesday:

Back in June, I created one of my all-time favorite posts...but you knew that from my New Year's round-up of my favorite posts from 2012. It was 5 Jewish Dudes I'd Most Like to See Lewd, inspired by Anthony Weiner. This gives us the infamous Adam Levine (one of my Hanukkah Hotties) nude shot.

In Romantic Heroes and the Hotties Who Inspired Them, you get to learn where some of the inspiration for my stories comes from. Some of it comes from Milo Ventimiglia.

Men are fun to watch by themselves, and great when they come in pairs. The fictional should-be couple I keep obsessing about is Qhuinn-Blaylock, J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood series. Conveniently, "Qhuinn and Blaylock should totally get together!" has been shortened to "Team Qhuay." Hotness results.

You can't tell from the above fanfic graphic, but Qhuinn has two different-colored eyes. Just like David Bowie, who turns 65 on this National Man Watcher's Day 2011. He was in the The Prestige, along with the one man you just knew I couldn't go without mentioning, and watching.

The Hanukkah Hotness, Night 7: Adam Lambert

Robert Downey, Jr. is just a straight guy, and Adam Levine is a gay-friendly-but-straight cock tease, but Adam Lambert is an ACTUALLY GAY JEWISH GUY. He's the one who's not a designer; that's Nate Berkus, Michael Kors, and/or Marc Jacobs.

Adam Lambert is a rock star. He has legions of adoring fans, known as the Glamberts. This is my favorite Lambert tune:



His latest song is called "Better Than I Know Myself," but the album won't be out until March, and the official video doesn't seem to be out yet. You can listen to the audio, though.

In some alternative queer universe, as in my dreams, Adams Lambert and Levine are a married couple, I'm just sure of it. No doubt all their tattoos would match.

In this universe, Adam's boyfriend is a Finnish reality TV star named Sauli. They got in trouble the other night for a loud argument (according to some accounts, a physical fight) in a Finnish gay club called Don't Tell Mama. They were detained by police, though not booked or charged with anything.

But maybe it wasn't Adam who did those things. Maybe he has a dybbuk. I just finished reading Chris Moriarty's The Inquisitor's Apprentice, in which a young turn-of-the-19th-century New York Jewish man, Sacha, is bedeviled by a dybbuk set upon him by an alternate-history version of J.P. Morgan. One of the last scenes in the book takes place at the beginning of Hanukkah. Sacha's rabbi grandfather calls Hanukkah "not a real holiday," but it's still one of Sacha's favorites.

The Inquisitor's Apprentice is the first entry in what will be a five-part young adult series, but if you prefer books for grown-ups, you might like The Dyke and the Dybbuk by Ellen Galford, about a contemporary lesbian Jewish woman in London and her encounter with the supernatural. It was published in 1993, and I think it might be out of print now (and, for some reason, not yet published as an e-book), but you can still find copies floating around.

Image: TomDog

Join me HERE on December 28th for a special Hanukkah post and giveaway.

The Hanukkah Hotness, Night 4: Adam Levine

Happy fourth night of Hanukkah! Hanukkah may not require a pine tree, but man, do Israelis love their trees. So much so that they name their kids Ilan, which means "tree." Ilan is one of the romantic heroes in my Jewish-American short story "The Hope." A temple cantor, Ilan's singing voice and look are inspired by Adam Levine.

(Photo by Robin Wong, Creative Commons license)

The makers of “How to Play a LoveGame in 5 Gaga Steps” (okay, it's just me) would like to remind our readers that Lady Gaga is not the only pop star producing ultrastylish videos and songs with not-so-delicately suggestive lyrics. While many male rock stars could play the yin to Gaga’s yang – hell, she can dress in drag and do it herself - we subjectively choose Maroon 5.

L.A.-based band Maroon 5 is five guys: Mickey Madden, James Valentine, Jesse Carmichael, Matt Flynn, and Adam Levine. They are, however, victim to the classic lead singer syndrome, as the most high-profile of them is Levine. He stars with Christina Aguilera, Cee-Lo Green, and Blake Shelton on the musical talent show The Voice.

When the band performed at the 2011 Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, Levine was dating model Anne Vyalitsyna. She’s played the female lead in some of the band’s videos, including “Misery” and “Never Gonna Leave This Bed.” He’s made media waves by posing nude for Cosmo UK, mocking the lack of music on MTV and telling Fox News not to play the band’s music. That last one was a protest against the conservative news channel’s stance on LGBTQ rights.

Heterosexual but not heterosexist, part of the L.A. garage band’s success strategy has been turning out pop-rock hooks – a musical flavor audiences associate with the feminine, according to L.A. Times chief pop music critic Ann Powers. “This decade is a pop decade,” Powers has said. “Artifice and affect are in, roughness and ‘authenticity’ are out.” For Powers, the ingredients of “artifice and affect” include prettiness, dance beats and theatricality – see any Maroon 5 video for examples. It hasn’t hurt the band that when Levine sang a duet with Rihanna, her voice was the lower of the two.

In keeping with that slightly hermaphroditic aesthetic, Maroon 5 can produce lyrics that straddle the line between sweet, heart-felt, soulful and sexy/dirty. ("Dirty" is a bit of a pun; the name "Adam" is derived from the Hebrew word for "earth.") How to play a lovegame in Maroon 5 easy steps:

1. I Want to Make You Feel Beautiful (“She Will Be Loved”)

2. Paint a Picture With My Hands (“Sunday Morning”)

3. Remember How My Body Tastes (“Shiver”)

4. Writhing in a Naked Sweat (“Harder to Breathe”)

5. Pleasure That Made You Cry (“Makes Me Wonder”)

Join me HERE on December 28th for a special Hanukkah post and giveaway.

 

Watch Rihanna’s Emmy winning Savage X Fenty Show Vol. 4 on Prime Video today! - this is an affiliate link

Beauty Queens of Only 18 and Misery

I said that after I finished Justin Cronin's epic post-apocalyptic vampire novel The Passage, my brain would need a break from lengthy dark fiction. It's huge - and only the first third of a trilogy! Cronin, I think, intends to be to scary vampires what James Fenimore Cooper was to American Indians.

I said that my next book would be the more lighthearted Beauty Queens by YA author Libba Bray. Not entirely lighthearted - it does begin with the plane crash that strands the survivors, all contestants in a teen beauty contest, on a tropical island. But there is plenty of lip gloss and stilettos and snark.

About a third of the way in, I love this book. My favorite character may be Adina, Miss New Hampshire, a journalist embedded in the pageant. She's a smart, Jewish feminist - sort of a teenage Emma Goldman. I also like lesbian, comic-book-loving Miss Michigan (Jennifer) and Indian-American Miss California (Shanti). The whole thing is a delicious send-up of pop culture and sexism. The young characters are learning that their bodies are instruments as well as ornaments.

Sometimes when I see the cover sitting on the table, I think of the Maroon 5 song, "She Will Be Loved." Its lyrics begin with, "Beauty queen of only 18..."

Between the link I shared (previous post) about Adam Levine's superhero underpants and snatches of that song stuck in my brain, it's no wonder I had a sex dream about Levine last night. (Plus I dream about Adam Levine a lot, far more than I dream about Christian Bale. It's just like that Maroon 5 song "Can't Stop." I half suspect Levine is my Jungian animus.) Fair warning: I dream dirty:

I (my teenage self, about the same age as the characters in Beauty Queens) was in a sort of hotel that doubled as a 24-hour movie theatre, on a road trip with my Aunt Susan. In the morning, Susan told me to get ready to leave, so I went into the bathroom, and Adam came in after me. Soon we were dry humping - like Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz in Bad Teacher, only face-to-face. I was pleasantly surprised to find out his dick (through his black jeans) felt much, much bigger and fatter than I would have imagined. I told him that when I was home from this road trip (out from under the watchful eye of Aunt Susan, that is), we would have actual sex.

It's not actual sex, but the common consensus on YouTube is that the Maroon 5 video "Misery" is masochist porn.



Some of what the skinny blonde girl (she's Anne Vyalitsyna) does might be acceptable in the context of an S/M relationship. Some of it is just plain mean. I have sorted some of her acts into the categories of Go and No Go. I couldn't decide on one of them.

Go:

-Shoving him up against a chain-link fence

-Lip-biting

-Twisting his arm behind his back

-Ear-biting


Borderline:

-The knife play


No Go:

-Head-butt

-Kick in the face

-Pushing him through a plate-glass window

-Throwing him off the roof

-The shoulder-fired grenade and the Molotov cocktail. I know Israelis use "to take up arms" as slang for sex, but in actual practice, firearms are not sexy. Blades are a little more so.

But that's just my personal comfort level. If you and your partner are comfortable with head-butts and face-kicks, I'm not judging you.

I'm being somewhat facetious, of course. Remember what I said in "How to Play a LoveGame in 5 Gaga Steps:"

"You’ve flirted with the BDSM look; now you might choose to kick the kink up a notch. You could try leather restraints, leashes, a body harness, a straightjacket, or another type of full-body restraint...If you’d like to try restraint play for the first time (or the first time with a new partner), use common-sense safety and comfort measures. Establish some boundaries and agree on a safe word that stops all play, no questions asked. Keep an eye on the person who’s restrained, and never cover up both the nose and mouth, especially when using a gag. Play delicately around the joints, face, neck, and other body parts that can easily be injured, and realize that holding one position for a long time can cause fatigue and discomfort."

Hmm, that gives me an idea. Maybe I should write "How to Play a LoveGame in Maroon 5 Steps."

Literary Links to Love IV + Patriotic/Dirty

Happy Veteran's Day!

Hopping by from the Thanks For the Books Blog Hop? Want to win a box of paperbacks? See the giveaway post here.

This is too cute: the Hokey Pokey, William Shakespeare style (sadly, a dead link).

Two of my favorite subjects: Roy Askham, the author of Edward and the Twisted Queens (historical time-travel BDSM erotica), writes a blog called Sex and the Spiritual Life (defunct).

The female-empowerment blog The New Scheherazades featured a book called What Women Know by Michelle Jackson and Dr. Juliet Bressan. The authors are from Ireland. The book collects bits of wisdom women had passed down from their grandmothers and mothers.

Can I count set photos of The Dark Knight Rises as a literary link? Of course I can - Batman started out as a comic book! Christian Bale looks really hot on a return trip from Starbucks, winter-themed coffee cup in hand. See here.

See also this serious (but very interesting) academic discussion, "Building a Better Batmobile," about how Batman as a fictional character is portrayed between the two poles of the Gothic and Pop Art aesthetics.

I wanted to read Batman Vampire for a long time, but I never did.

Speaking of the Bale-Steinem family, Ms. Magazine founder/feminist icon and incidentally Christian's stepmom Gloria Steinem recently weighed in on the Victoria's Secret fashion show. She says, "Women's bodies are not just ornaments, they're instruments." Read about it at The Cut. I wonder what Steinem would say about this blog post? It features male and female bodies as ornaments.

Speaking of the Victoria's Secret fashion show, model Anne Vyalitsyna, superhot girlfriend of Maroon 5's Adam Levine, revealed an interesting tidbit about her boyfriend: he collects men's superhero underwear. She likes to wear them to bed. This also comes from The Cut. Oh yeah, Levine definitely deserves the top spot on the Jewish Dudes I'd Most Like to See Lewd list - especially if he wears Batman undies.

Image attribution:
Adam Levine by BurtonTedder, Creative Commons License



Veterans Day Pictures Comments - Photobucket



Veterans Day Pictures Comments - Photobucket



Veterans Day Pictures Comments - Photobucket

5 Jewish Dudes I'd Most Like to See Lewd

Am I a little late to jump into the Anthony Weiner fray? Maybe so, but this isn't really about an ex-Congressman with an awesome Muslim feminist wife and a sexting habit. This is book blog, damn it, and the inspiration for this one is The History of Love of Nicole Krauss, a nice Jewish book like your mother always wanted you to read. It happens to be what I'm reading right now.

As you may have guessed from previous blog posts about Hanukkah and "Spicy, Earthy, Sweet," in addition to being Irish on my dad's side, I'm Jewish on my mom's side. I belong to the Templin family, formerly of Warsaw, Poland. That's right, I'm straight-up ghetto. Ethnic Judaism comes to me straight through my motherline: my mother is Jewish because her mother was Jewish, because her mother was Jewish, and so on and so forth.

The History of Love is not my favorite Jewish fiction ever. That might be Nomi Eve's The Family Orchard, Markus Zusak's The Book Thief or possibly Mona in the Promised Land by Gish Jen. I like it, but I don't love it. I understand why my alma mater chose it for the college's first-ever book club selection, because it's well-written and charming, but nonetheless it fails to knock my socks off.

And speaking of socks off...

Call it tribal identification, or simply acknowledge I have widely varying tastes in sexy, but I like the Semitic look. I kinda think Weiner's hot. Jewish Mayhem magazine has the Hebraically hot chicks covered, so this post goes out to the five Jewish dudes I'd most like to see lewd.

1. Adam Levine
Wish granted! The Maroon 5 lead singer took it all off for a Cosmo photo shoot, with only his Victoria's Secret supermodel girlfriend's hands to cover up his junk. Someone on Zimbio commented that this photo makes him look like there's not too much to cover. To that person I say, Israeli-American dudes are internationally world-famous for having not so much the inches, but the fatness. Beer cans are often referenced in comparison.

(In her book Thanks for Coming, Mara Altman went to Israel to test this theory.)

He has a lot of tattoos for a Jewish guy. He was the inspiration for temple cantor Ilan Kauffman in "Bat Mitzvah" and "The Hope."

2. Harrison Ford
I wrote a bit about the Harrison Ford thing already...part of it's historical, left over from the days of Star Wars, part of it is yet another one of my old-guy crushes (cf. Gabriel Byrne, Jean Reno, Liam Neeson), and part of it is, well, he's Irish and Jewish, too. Great combo.

As an added bonus, he's married to Calista Flockheart who, in addition to being completely sexy in her own right, touched her lips to the lips of Christian Bale in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Excuse me if I space out for a few moments thinking about Harrison Ford kissing Christian Bale...

3. Leonard Albert "Lenny" Kravitz
Lenny sings. He rocks out. He looks great with long hair or short hair. Either way, I say "Let Love Rule." Does he not have the most kissable lips?

Added bonus: Neneh Cherry wrote the song "Buddy X" about him, and it's one of the great '90s female anthems.

4. Jakob Dylan
Bob Dylan's blue-eyed baby got the looks and the voice! No visible tattoos on this Jewish rock star, but I'd still like to check.

Jakob Dylan was probably my #1 celebrity crush of the '90s. Guy crush, I mean. Uma Thurman was the actual #1. I borrowed his first name for the husband of my fictional ancestress, the pirate Raven Rachel Templin.

5. Eli Roth
This guy you either love or you hate. I think he freaked some people out with Hostel, which I have not seen. As The Bear Jew in Inglorious Basterds, IMHO he managed to be hotter than Brad Pitt. With that buff body, he looks like a hot Krav Maga instructor.

Honorable Mention: Adrien Brody
Do I hate almost all of his movies? Yes. Cadillac Records especially, as it seemed to hit every Jewish stereotype in the book. He walks around saying, "The money!" like he's starring in an episode of The Jew, The Italian and the Redhead Gay. Written by Louis Farrakhan, directed by Borat? Maybe. Even if he makes me say, "Et tu, Brody?" and makes terrible film choices, I still want to kiss his badly-reset Hebrew nose.

That's my list. Blog symmetry dictates that I go out on the note I came in with. So, for your viewing pleasure, I close with a gratuitous photo of Huma Abedin's dude. Dignified? No, but kinda fun nonetheless.

Window Into the Mind of An Erotica Author

I had a most bizarre and rambling dream last night, parts of which were quite sexy. Some of its influences are easy to spot. For example, when I dreamt I was a young woman, walking down the street with a gaggle of hip friends including Courtney Love, that's because I just finished reading Girl Boy Girl: How I Became JT Leroy. Courtney Love was a JT Leroy fan, as were Carrie Fisher, Gus Van Sant, and other people way cooler than me.

So anyway, I'm walking down a dusty street with my crew and I stop at a little art boutique. On a spinning metal rack out from there is a painting so beautiful I know I have to have it, no matter what the cost. I don't have any money, so I decide on the spot I'm going to turn a trick to get it. (Remember, JT Leroy was purported to be a street hustler.) Fortunately, the shop owner and I are alone. He looks like Adam Levine. I get him in his back-room office and make my proposal, which he gladly accepts on the condition that he be allowed to not wear a condom. I readily agree, secretly thinking that I'm a bit nasty because I prefer the exchange of bodily fluids to the neatness of condoms. I walk away with my treasure.

The appearance of art in my dream is entirely the fault of JD Busch.

Later, the boutique owner reappears at my house, where I've already hung the painting in the attic. There is a lot of wood in this house: the rafters from the attic, the wooden railing of the stairs. He is either drunk or high, swaying where he stands and asking me questions that don't make any sense. He wants to know if we've had sex, and if so, if I raped him. I don't know how to answer. I feel guilty now.

But I know I shouldn't be feeling guilty, because I'm really just remembering an earlier incident which wasn't my fault. I'd been camping in the woods with Robert Pattinson (I'm obviously dreaming this because of writing another article about Twilight on Sunday). Inside our tent, he'd tried to grope me, though I managed to get him to stop. We ended up swimming in the lake, though, and he drowned.

When the boutique owner reappeared later, he was making out with Adam Lambert. (I did hear "Whataya Want From Me" on the radio yesterday.) The guy-on-guy action can be explained by my having received the cover art for Evernight Publishing's Indecent Encounters anthology yesterday.

My menage story "Post Op" is appearing in there, and the cover features a brunette female smooshed between two hot guys, one of whom has a sexy tribal tattoo. I don't know if La Lambert has ink, but Adam Levine does, despite his Yiddish ethnicity. One might equate the forbidden-ness of tattooed Jews with the impropriety of unprotected sex and prostitution. That's what this dream is about, I suppose: the eroticism of the forbidden. So now you have a little window into how my mind works.

Romantic Heroes and the Hotties Who Inspired Them

Today I'm sorta co-blogging with Hunk du Jour, a yummy gay men's photo blog (rated PG; plenty of shirtlessness, no nudity). I provide the romantic/erotic stories, and the HdJ links provide the photos!

Mutari, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Story: "Experimental." Experimental Subject #73, with his Welsh accent and toffee-colored hair, is blinding Tori with science.
The Hottie: Christian Bale

The Story: "Invisible Touch." Invisible man Jason sneaks into the apartment of his super-powered nemesis Fate, only to find himself unexpectedly attracted to her.
The Hottie: Milo Ventimiglia

The Story: "The Hope." At his niece's bat mitzvah, Mark fell hopelessly for the new temple cantor, Ilan. On their first official date, Mark is just hopeless.
The Hottie Who Inspired Ilan: Adam Levine

The Story: "Innocent." In an alternate world where arranged marriages are the norm, college soccer star Zachary meets his bride-to-be, Analiese, for the first time. She's not as innocent as she seems.
The Hottie: Zachary Quinto

The Story: "Homecoming." Patrice is married to Evan. They've agreed she's allowed to have one affair (Evan already had his). Patrice chooses Evan's army vet brother Marcus.
The Hottie: Keanu Reeves

The Story: "Redneck Woman." Stuck in Atlanta on a rainy night, Yankee Vanessa picks up Agatha and her husband Preston.
The Hottie: Adrian Pasdar (and his super-cute wife, Natalie Maines!)

Yes, I was a big Heroes fan. Why do you ask?

Author's Note: Sadly, Hunk du Jour is defunct and links have been removed.