Writing Choli right now, after leaving it on the backburner for years. It’s pretty different from what I planned, perhaps a little less deep as well. The focus has shifted, as there’s hot lesbian booty action going on. Unexpected, but very very interesting, if I say so myself. This is cool, because I’ve never really gotten the hang of writing FF erotica before – perhaps I was a little more conservative before. Or MM erotica, come to think of it. I should address that. I would love to write a really good man-on-man love piece.
Just a note to say I’m protecting mostly posts with old stories which need drastic revision. I’m keeping them here just as extra backup copies.
And yes, not much erotica is going to be written for the next few months while I focus on my “non-slumming” projects.
Another story retrieved from the binary graveyards! Huzzah!
(C) A.L. Nathan
Retrieved! I found it on a CD I had burned aeons ago!
So, I get to share it now 
It’s final. The old version of Courtly Love, He said – RIP.I’m actually not as sad as I thought I would be. Room for improvement is always good.
Deleted the epistolatory fragments. That was just spew I needed to get out of my system first. Now, I’m planning a project of twin pieces. An article (I’m thinking of submitting to Nerve, may be the best place. Names and scenarios will be changed to protect the not-so-innocent, but I know what I want to write about. A meditation on the human condition and the neediness, not for sex but intimacy, which leads us over the textual edge) and a story. They will cross-refer. Can’t let all the data go to waste.
I have other stories to write. I’d love to write about sexuality from a more postcol/orient-based perspective because it is so underrepresented. When we are portrayed, we are often, very often exoticised. Perhaps sometimes it seems the lines are drawn very strongly here, but in fact, even more ambiguities exist. I am a walking ambiguity and testament to that. Writing here is my assertion that even if I do not cross a certain line in reality, I am not denying my inner, sexual self. But there are other lines to be drawn, even then.
My other stories that I should try to complete sometime this century, even if my main writing profile/portfolio takes up most of my time (what little is not dominated by academic pursuits):
(1) Not Without Giovanni! (still doing research for historical inaccuracies)
(2) The Piano Story (interstitial/erotic work which deals w/ my favourite theme, the ambiguities of internet interfaces and eroticism)
(3) Touch (A story that has haunted me for years and which I originally planned to submit to Nerve)
(4) Choli (A nice little academic romp amongst diasporics, looking forward to writing this, someday)
(5) My hybrid story, crossing two cultures. This one had a RL inspiration, a cook in a restaurant I’d been eyeing for years 
I decided to turn him into something else.
(6) Courtly Love, He Said (I’ve said enough about this loss)
(7) Elementals Quartet (Dare I rewrite this? I miss Water. That was the most acutely erotic piece I’ve ever written. And the most shocking.)
(8) My Library Story. I miss this one the most. Lost it during a computer crash sometime in `98 and it nearly made me weep. That story is the reason why I am writing erotica today. I’ve tried to duplicate it, but can never achieve the precise mixture of emotions, sensate and synaesthetic poetic detail which was in that piece. Perhaps it is because I have not been that unhappy, and I should be glad for that. The mixture of Joyce and classical literature and Yeats and so many others, however, the significances of what happened – well, duplicating this will be 100x harder than reconsitituting Courtly Love, He Said.
And I thought I could give up my erotica portfolio? Ha! Barely scratched the surface.
I received news from the people at the Storytime listserv that it will be quite hard to track the one possible place the story could be. I’m kicking myself all the way to forever at the loss. It’s my fault, I should have made more backups.
So, it’s past midnight and all I can do is try to write down the words I remember. I memorized it once upon a time, loved reciting it with vengeful pleasure. Now, from 99 words, we have 27. And yet, the story still gets told. So, I’m posting the 27-word MAJOR flasher version of the story first. It may be fun to flesh it out later, a 100 word flasher, and then a full-fledged short story. Here it is.
Courtly Love, he said
(the express edition)
(c)Anna L. Nathan, 2003-2006
Courtly Love, he said. Souls touching, never skin. So I married my fuck-buddy instead. Twenty-five years of heat. My courtly scholar’s in the obits today. Damned Coward.
I’m mourning the loss of Courtly Love, He Said, a story I shared on the ERWA listserv some years back. It was the first, and only piece of flash fiction I ever wrote, and had some special significance for me in what I was trying to achieve within 99 words.
I could re-write it now if I wanted to. I still remember a decent amount of it, but I am afraid it would change too dramatically, the essence of the original “from the womb to the tomb” kind of message I wanted to convey. On the other hand, I will have ample opportunity to change the one line I always wanted to change.
“So I married my fuck buddy instead.”
Which is just ridiculous, actually. Even in my limited worldly experience I know this. Perhaps, 20 years ago it may be different, but not in these millenial times. Then again, the persona was writing this after 25 years of marriage. So perhaps she married her fuck-buddy sometime in the `70s? Perhaps they were both high on something when they got hitched? Perhaps my persona was a flower-child in love with a courtly scholar. Who knows? The possibilities are endless. And now I start wondering if I shouldn’t just turn 99 words into 9 thousand words.
But then I wouldn’t have the succinct edge of the last line. And it wouldn’t be as cool to recite as 99 words.
I have lost other stories as well. I mourn the loss of the Raoul and Aryadnie stories, as well as the Elementals Quartet. I never got around to writing Fire and Earth, but Air and Water took a lot of work and research. Particularly Air, which required me to read up on sky-jumping as well as on homoerotic fiction. My first and only attempt at homoerotica, unfortunately.
My friend and soul-sister (or perhaps soul-mother, would be more accurate), disagreed when I told her I should write these things again only after 20 years or more, when I’m old, married or a mother. I think she’s right. It’s necessary for my sanity right now, in more than one way.
