Non-smutty short story: Fish Face

 

Fish Face

I want to scream.  Since the first day of class – exactly 42 school days ago, during which time the salmon have been jumping and I have not been photographing them or writing about them, because my dissertation is done – I have been out of my depth.  

It is Jared who in this moment is making me want to scream.  He is making his fish face at me.  He had me pegged from day one, but who in this building didn’t?  I read 36 Children when I was in seventh grade.  To Sir With Love came next.  Up the Down Staircase.  And the movies, oh my god, the movies. Stand and Deliver.  Dangerous Minds. 

I became a teacher to save all the underprivileged students, like the heroes in those books and movies had taught me I was supposed to.         

Does Jared want saving?  Mostly he seems to want attention.  Laughter.  Adulation.  From his classmates, I mean, not from me.

This is what I have learned this year:  1.  There is no end of paperwork.  2.  I do not create lesson plans, I carry them out.  3.  If I deviate from the lesson plans, the class falls behind.  4.  If the class falls behind, Assistant Principal (“the assistant principal is not your pal!”) Agnew sits in the back of my classroom and takes notes.  5.  Assistant Principal Agnew’s notes create more work for me. 

This is what I have not learned this year:  1.  Whether Jared wants saving.  2.  What Jared might need saving from.  3.  Why Jared is standing inches away from me, sucking in his cheeks and moving his lips up and down, making an inside-out kissing sound. 

I push him away.  It is instinctual.  Just a slight tap on his shoulder with the palm of my hand.     

He probably would not have even noticed if I had not frozen. 

I have laid hands on a student.

A 6-foot tall, 180-pound 11^th grade student who has me beat by six inches and 40 pounds.  The thought flashes through my mind that it is racist for me, a white teacher, to think that about him, a black student.   

“Ms. Green,” he says in a fake shocked voice, spreading my name into three syllables, and for a second I think that he has read my thoughts about racism.  But no, it is the touching thing.  I flinch, and then he knows he has me.  He turns and saunters out of the room, leaving the door to the hallway open behind him.

I turn to the rest of the class.  They know something is up but most of them had not been paying attention to the interaction. 

Charlotte raises her hand.  She is pretty, with delicate features and skin that is just a little darker than mine when I am tan.  She has new extensions and her braids go down to the middle of her back.  I nod at her.  “Is it almost the end of trout season?” she asks. 

Naturally word has gotten around all my classes that I am easy to distract, especially with questions about salmon.  Does Charlottes say trout on purpose, or does she truly not make the distinction?  Another question I will probably never know the answer to.

I ignore her and point at the frog poster.  I was relieved when I learned that the kids in my classes would not do actual dissections.  When I was in tenth grade I refused to dissect animals, and spent the time shelving books in the library.  Of course, my school had a library.  And funding for dissections.  

Today’s lecture is on the frog’s abdomen area – the intestines down through the cloaca.  Since the cloaca involves both pee and sex I think the class might find it interesting.  But most of the students are texting under their desks; the rest, doodling.  Then suddenly they are all looking behind me, at the door.  Assistant Principal Agnew stands there with Jared.

This is it.  I’m going to get fired.  I am an incompetent teacher who can’t stay up with my curriculum, who causes more work for the administration, and who doesn’t have the sense not to bop a student on the shoulder.

Behind Assistant Principal Agnew Jared makes the fish face again.  Suddenly I no longer want to scream.  I am no longer fed up.  I am no longer embarrassed.  I am just curious.  “Jared,” I say, “Why do you make that face?”

 

Review of fabulous romance Something Fabulous by Alexis Hall

 

Something Fabulous by Alexis Hall is a very sweet romance set in Regency England.  Note I'm carefully not saying it's a Regency romance, as it does not follow the tropes of the genre.  Less a paint by numbers story that mixes and matches characters in specific life situations (unexpected virgin crosses wits with billionaire smuggler; or scarred hero can't resist working class girl with naturally refined taste) and more of a comedy of manners.  But, like traditional Regency romances, this tale resides in a fantasy of 19th century England. 

Hero number 1, Valentine, is the mirror world hot, insanely rich but disdainful duke (based on Jane Austen's Darcy in Pride and Prejudice).  Yes, he is all those things, but he is also miserable in a hopeless way that is too dark for even the  Napoleonic war veterans suffering from PTSD that inhabit some Regency romances.  

The book opens with Valentine making a half-hearted effort to follow through on an engagement set up for him decades ago by his late father, to his younger next door neighbor Arabella.  There are several problems with this scheme.  One is that Arabella is so overwrought at the thought of marrying Valentine that she runs away.  

Hero number 2 is Bonny, Arabella's very swishy twin brother.  Bonny does not have an equivalent in your typical Regency romance.  His archetype may appear as a very minor character now and again -- a fun uncle or a servant who is the magical gay who talks sense into the hero. 

All kinds of hijinks ensue when Bonny talks Valentine into pursuing Arabella, to prevent her from abandoning Bonny.  Valentine learns that there is such a thing as gay men, and that he is one.  He learns that Arabella is bisexual and that her lover Peggy is genderfluid, and that the sweet ladies whose door he happens to knock on when he is in need of help are lesbians, and that his annoying acquaintance who he keeps bumping into is gay, as is every stable boy and blacksmith he ever meets.  His mother, who appears at the end of the book, is the only straight character, but she subversively enjoys much, much younger men.  

In short, this book is set in a Regency England where everyone is fucking everyone, and poor Valentine is the only one doesn't know it.  Luckily, in this England there does not appear to be any sodomy laws, or accidental pregnancies, or anything that would prevent every single day from being a giant, joyous gay pride parade.  It's impossible not to smile at the thought. 

In Anita Kelly's modern romance novel Love & Other Disasters, reality TV is where you go to make friends

 

 

 

Spoilers in this review.

 Here's one:  Love & Other Disasters by Anita Kelly is a terrible book.

The plot:  Dahlia and London are contestants on a reality TV cooking show.  They fall in love.

The conflict:  None.

The characters:  So bland they barely exist. 

My biggest criticism of this book is that is just so fucking lazy.  I know I'm going to sound like an old coot here, but when I started writing my smutty, dark dystopian novel, Mindgames, the internet barely existed.  When I wanted to figure out what plants my healer character Gabriel would use for particular ailments, I bought books on herbal medicine.  And I used them.  Before I finished the novel Google had come along, and when I had questions about how some of the characters would take care of horses I researched it online, which was a lot easier even if potentially inaccurate.

The amount of research done by Kelly, apparently:  None.  Not a single google search.

Here's an example:  Dahlia grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts.  New Bedford is a city I happen to know something about.  It's a working class fishing town with a large Portuguese-American population.  (Back in the day it was a whaling town, and the opening of Moby Dick is set there.)  Dahlia would not be from New Bedford.  The journey she and her high school sweetheart, now ex-husband would have had to have made from a New Bedford childhood to a college-educated adulthood as yuppies living in Maryland would be an interesting story.  But in this book it didn't happen.

And there's this:  Dahlia makes her mark on the cooking show by being really good at scaling and cooking fish.  That makes total sense: a kid growing up in New Bedford would definitely be great with fish!  Not only is New Bedford a fishing town, but there are a lot of people there who really love cooking.  Phenomenal Portuguese bakeries.  Three deckers where the owners cultivate grapes in the backyard so they can make their own wine.  It all fits.

Except:  Dahlia did not learn how to prepare fish in New Bedford.  She took a class -- a single class -- on it in Baltimore.  And she doesn't even like fish.  Yet, somehow, after this one class after which she probably did not practice, she is somehow one of the best fish cooks in the country, or at least in the world of reality TV.  That's offensive to people who actually work at being good cooks.

London is similarly a magically good cook.  London's back story is that they are a rich dilettante who enjoys cooking but whose heart is really in music.  Or in opening a summer camp for queer kids.  Or whatever, it doesn't really matter, they're rich.  But somehow they are the best cook on the show.  We are never shown this, but we know it is true because we are told over and over what a great cook they are, and then they win.  (Not that they care, the $100,000 prize is nothing to them.)

And speaking of reality TV:  C'mon.  The contestants go home when they are eliminated.  Do you know long it took me to confirm that eliminated contestants don't go home for the obvious reason that then everyone would know that they had been eliminated?  Three seconds.  I timed it.  I googled: when you get kicked off a reality TV show do  you go home?  Nope.   

A major plotline of the book involves the show starting to air before taping was completed.  That makes no sense whatsoever.  How would the producers be able to put together the major arcs of the show if that were so?  Also, again, three seconds to google: do reality shows air before taping is completed? Nope. 

Let's talk conflict in this book:  Let's see:  London lives in Nashville where they grew up and loves it there and does not want to leave.  Dahlia lives in a boring suburb in Maryland that she does not like and where she has no connections, and is unemployed.  Oh no, however will they decide where to live?

London is non-binary.  Dahlia is a cis woman who had been married to a man.  But she identifies as queer and is completely open to dating people across the gender spectrum.  Oh no, how will they overcome this hurdle?  

I must also complain about Kelly's use of they/them pronouns in this book.  I am old enough that when I was young I knew only a small handful of trans people and none well.  I never to my knowledge met a non-binary person until I was well into middle age.  I learned about proper use of pronouns from my kids and their friends, and I continue to make pronoun mistakes, and I feel bad (and am berated by my kids -- but not their friends, who are nicer to me) for not trying harder.

So when I kept stumbling over Kelly's use of "they" in referring to London in this book, I assumed it was me.  But after a while I realized it was just sloppy writing.  

If I have a sentence about two people who use she/her pronouns that says "Tonna and Alice went to the beach," my next sentence will not be, "She forgot her sand toys."  I will refer to the person who forgot the toys by name, because otherwise the reader will not know who I am referring to.  Even if I clear it up in the next sentence, it's bad writing.

Similarly, if Tonna and Alice use they/them pronouns, my next sentence should not be, "They forgot their sand toys."

But Kelly does this constantly.  Here's a quote I pulled out at random:  "[Dahlia] hoped it wasn't too obvious, the fact that all of the blood in her body was rushing toward specific places.  It felt like it had been ten years since she'd last seen them."  (The "them" in this sentence refers to London, not to Dahlia's toes or whatever "places" to which her blood was rushing.)  (As a smut writer I found this entire passage horrendous.) 

My hatred of the book continued through the very last passage.  Dahlia is cooking and pulls an onion from the refrigerator.  Here's the entire quote that ends the book:

Dahlia opened the fridge again and rummaged through the vegetable drawer.  Ah, there.  All the way in the back. She grabbed the onion and brought it over the the cutting board, its paper skin already starting to unravel.

And then she picked up her knife.

Is this supposed to be symbolism?  Some kind of metaphor?  If so, of what?  Or is it the preface to the next book, which will be a horror story?  And why in the holy hell would two people who are supposed to be tremendous cooks store an onion in the refrigerator?  (Do I really need to google proper onion storage for you?)