A couple of things have me thinking about the Writer-Reader relationship. Some have been stewing in my head for months, like the above clip of Harlan Ellison talking about how hard it is for writers to get paid.* This article on how hard it is for dancers to get compensated for their work also has me scratching my head. Others are more recent, like this kerfuffle with Nightshade books. I didn’t know what to do with any of these thoughts until recently.

A kindly soul named Massageon left this gem of a comment on my last entry.

I used to read this site all the time, and loved stories about your life and your family.

Okay, I understand different readers want different things, and it’s natural to feel disappointment when you get something other than what you expected. Let’s see where this goes.

They were well written and usually quite funny…

I get a somewhat back-handed compliment, but hey, it’s still a compliment, right?

…but I just don’t like anything on this site anymore. I’m sorry…

I highly doubt that you’re sorry.

…but once in a while I check back here just to see if you’ve written something actually worth reading, but alas the posts are all crap.

Ah… here we are. The retarded spewing of disappointment in hopes of being noticed.

I thought long and hard about pulling this comment up and writing a post around it, even though Massageon has been a total raging bitch before, and I let it slide. After all, don’t I open myself up to this kind of criticism when I whore out my writing? When I prostitute out my life experiences, doesn’t that give my readers the right to act like raging cocks?

Then I remembered, I’m not a whore. I’m a slut. And as a slut, I am fucking outraged.

Dear Massageon,

If you’re fucking me in the face free of charge, don’t start screaming that you’d rather be fucking me in the ass.

Regards,

BC Woods

I have a very large archive filled with stories about my family. You haven’t paid for any of them. Ever. Further, you’ve never attempted to pay for anything. And before you get up in a kerfuffle about how you pay me with your readership, let me go ahead and drop this bomb: Get the Fuck Out.

I’ve intentionally structured my site so I can tell you “Get the Fuck Out” whenever I want, without losing a wink of sleep.

I don’t charge because I’m still exploring the craft. I’m still solidifying what I want to do. And because of that I want to feel free to post whatever the fuck I feel like posting. You coming here and vindictively bitching that I don’t post specifically what you want is like punching your girlfriend in the face because she doesn’t feel like letting you fuck her ass.

There’s a spectrum of slut vs whore of course. Harlan Ellison being on the prim Geisha/Whore side of the spectrum, who will turn a blind eye on you giving yourself a rub and tug through the front of your robe, but only after you’d paid him seven gold bu and listened to him play his harp for six or seven hours. Cory Doctorow occupies the other, sluttier end of the spectrum, with a wild, crazy, no-holds-barred free for all where you can throw a few cum-stained dollar bills at him -or not- so long as you’ve shown up to fuck.

I’m somewhere in the middle of this spectrum, being a self-hating emotional wreck who continually sluts himself out in hopes that maybe once, just once I might feel some glimmer of love. Yes, I will fuck you, but we will only do the positions I want, and I don’t want your money… at least not yet.

Which is why I am even more blown away by the vindictiveness of Massageon’s comment.

Regular Johns come up to me and say “BC, take this money! Let me make an honest woman out of you! I’ll take you away from this hell-hole of free internet publishing! I will turn you into an honest whore and provide for you!” but I’ll just wipe the tears out of my mascara-stained eyes and reply:

“No… you’re too good for me. But maybe one day, after I’ve gotten all of this slutty fucking out of my system, when I’ve learned to suck a dick so well a blind-folded American GI couldn’t tell the difference between my mouth and that of a War-Era Vietnamese village girl whose life depends on it… maybe then I will let you leave a few crumpled dollar bills at my feet.”

Massageon doesn’t even have the quiet, pathetic nobility of these Johns. Instead, as I sit in the dockside tavern that is the internet, batting my broken slut eyes in hopes that someone might give me some useful advice, or even a smile, Massageon kicks down the door, attempts to man-handle me over a juke-box and THEN tries to put her cock in my asshole all the while whispering in my ear, the whiskey-like smell of internet entitlement strong on her breath, that I’ll be a good little slut and fuck however she tells me to fuck.

If a whore wants to get mad at me for undercutting the market, fine. If a John wants to get upset at a whore for not delivering the goods, fine. If someone I’ve fucked says that they’ve been emotionally hurt by my fucking, fine.

But dear Massageon, the one thing you should NEVER EVER do is bitch about a free blow job.

*This is, so far as I have been able to tell (and I gave more than a lazy ass effort), something that Harlan Ellison authorized the Writers Guild to use during the strike a little over a year back, otherwise I would not have included the clip. I will take it down if anyone can provide evidence to the contrary.

A long time ago, when it still wasn’t THAT weird that I had never known the love of a woman, I was attacked by a machete-wielding virgin-hating serial killer. Needless to say, I instantly transformed into a unicorn and used my massive horn to defend myself against her spectacular machete onslaught.

The battle lasted for hours, and silvery sparks lit up the night sky every time her machete made contact with my horn. At long last, I stood triumphant over her, and used my horn to remove her gas mask.

“Why did you attack me!” I thundered.

“Because…” she cried, and for a moment she paused mouth shaking, “you remind me of myself, and I can’t stand it!”

Sulfurous tendrils of air smoked out of my righteous unicorn nostrils.

“This is not a proper way to channel your sexual frustrations!” and I shook my head from side to side so that my mane danced like quicksilver in front of the moon.

“Ugh…” the beautiful serial killer said, “do you have to be… umm… phantasmagorical?”

BCWM: Stands for “BC Woods’ Militia” however, it also stands for “Big Cocked White Male” or even “BC’s White Member”

“Well excuse me for being a fantastical fucking creature! Why don’t you just run up to a black person and say ‘Hey! Do you have to go around being black all the time?’” I wept.

“Hey, I didn’t meant to sound racist. It’s just, you unicorns can get a little bit over the top on the fantastical imagery.” The machete wielder said.

“You know what, screw this. I’m going home. I didn’t come all the way to this volcano in the middle of nowhere to have a sword fight by proxy and get insulted for my sense of romance and wonderment.” I turned around and clip-clopped a short distance away.

“Hey! Get back here! I’m not through killing your yet!” The machete wielder taunted.

At which point, in a bit of my own misplaced sexual frustration, I stabbed the machete-wielder in the chest with my glorious unicorn horn.

“What… what have you done?” the woman said, looking down at her chest and then into my eyes.

“I… I’m sorry! I just got carried away.”

The woman sneered. “I have a secret.”

At which point she turned into a black unicorn….

… and went home to make a chicken sandwich.

The End

Author’s Note: Thanks to the anonymous Virgin Sacrifice, for not only her contribution but for buying her own machete. Both I, and my wallet thank you!

I was beginning to worry, after I sent out all the machetes that everyone who got one suddenly realized “Uh… wow. So I actually have to take a picture of myself with this now?”

And since, while weird, I’m not a pornographer who’s going to shout at someone “Hey listen slut, you took the fuckin’ machete now you take your fucking clothes off and suck that cock!” I was stuck in something of a conundrum.

Little did I realize, given the awesome nature of machetes, that the recipients had merely so incorporated the machetes into their daily lives they had forgotten there was anything remarkable about a machete at all, and simply forgot to take pictures.

Kima shows us a good example of this phenomenon.

At the very start of her day, we see that Kima’s machete has replaced the need for companionship, a gun in her dresser drawer, and also provides the tactile experience of having someone hold your hand all through the night.

I am also told there is some sort of SG-1 reference here. Perhaps to the sarcophagus? The glasses and black shirt do bring to mind Daniel Jackson. However, I’m going to have to do some more digging.

Using the awesome sharpness of her machete, Kima shaves her legs and gets ready to step out of the shower and into her yellow rain slicker, so that she can then spend her day sea-captaining and yelling at land-lubbers.

Finally, after a cold day in the harbor, Kima comes home and eats some tofu and vegetables… which reminds me I need to have some pizza.

Kima, I welcome you to the machete army, and hope you will keep us all healthy in our long war against… well we’ll work on that.

“What would you do if I fell into the canal?” Karen asks, smiling her coy twelve-year old smile, as she tip-toes closer to the embankment. Her shoe sends a few pebbles tumbling over the edge. My mind plays a horror movie scene, in which Karen falls into the canal and drowns.

It’s an effort to keep my hands in my pockets and off her arm, and a greater effort not to tell her to “be careful.”

“I’d jump in and pull you out,” I make a show of yawning, and rub my eyes as though bored. Karen is  pushing boundaries the same as Jacob. She’s waits another beat for me to say something, then pulls back from the canal on her own.

I know better than to think I’ve won. There’s only the next confrontation. The next boundary.

“Well, what if you had to die to save me?” She persists.

I hate thinking about death lately. It’s everywhere I look with the kids growing up.

“Hey, who’s my Angel?” I ask, smiling suddenly.

Karen rolls her eyes. Weird brother, she thinks. Weird brother who has never had a girlfriend, who acts like he’s my dad, and who embarrasses me because people always want to know why he’s dropping me off at dance practice.

I wonder what the hell I’m going to do with myself eight years from now.

“Well, what would you do?” Karen demands.

“I’d jump in and catch you.” I yawn again, this time sincerely. I hadn’t wanted to go on a walk tonight. Work had gone late, but Karen wanted to walk with me, and that’s rare enough now that I can’t say no.

“Even though you’d die?” Karen presses.

I nod.

Karen groans, annoyed that I don’t have the romantic sensibilities to and orate this like Edward from Twilight. Then she dances ahead and runs backward, to show me how dangerous she can be. How wild and uncontrollable she is now that she’s “grown-up.”

I’ll run backwards right next to the canal, she laughs. She gives me a look like she knows she’s getting bigger and that soon she’ll have no need in her life for a weird older brother. She looks at me like I’m a toy from her childhood she’s almost forgotten.

Karen’s eyes gleam like a light bulb just lit up over her head.

“Well, dad said he’d die for me too. So what’s the difference?” Karen smiles at me like she’s caught me in a trap. See, BC? She arches her eyebrow. I’m so big I can even pull a trick on my big brother and make him fall for it.

I stop in my tracks.

My stomach twists at the implication.

What she really wants is to know about what happened two months ago. When her father told her he’d slap her, and she’d run off to school crying. She wants to know why when she came home her father’s eyes were blood red and there were bruises all over his face. She wants to know why the only bruises I had were on my knuckles, and why her father had apologized to her immediately and then gone to his room.

She wants to know why it suddenly seems like I’m the boss.

What she wants to know the most is why, even when I do right by her, it makes her feel worse about our family.

I open my mouth to speak, and then make a few sounds that corpses might make when pressed into odd shapes so that the air is forced out of their lungs.

I want to tell her about a boy her age. I want to tell her about a crazy boy who had loved nothing in the whole world, who fell asleep every night alone and feared that the universe was an abyss without hope.

I want to tell her how that crazy boy had seen a baby girl, and decided that she would grow up to be different. Had decided it so powerfully, that he had not known it for years, and only realized when he looked back at every decision he had ever made and how they all formed a path. I want to tell her about how that boy had feared the abyss so badly his stomach hurt. I want to tell her that he had gone on being afraid right up until he had found a love so bright that the abyss began to fear him instead.

She wants me to sum up in a sentence, the whole  essence of my being.

There is victory in her eyes. The victory an adult feels when they conquer another adult.

I lick my lips.

“The difference… is that I don’t believe in heaven.”

Sometimes I sit down, sigh for a bit, and wonder “What’s the point?”

So then I buy a giant machete for a woman, and think “Ah, yes. This is the point.”

Here we see Blu in her wedding gown, getting married to her brand new machete.

Here’s Blue getting ready for her machete honeymoon, showing, what I can only describe as an “Awesome” amount of leg.

And finally, here is Blu showing that the wood paneling in her house goes for spans of well over sixteen inches. This makes us wonder “Where are the studs? What supports the wall? I sincerely hope it isn’t load bearing, because I have serious concerns about the craftsmanship!”

You’re my boy Blu!