Chapter 7 of Damascus, my smutty novel in progress, "Sex Slave Belinda is Prepared for Anal Sex"

 If you want to read the previous chapters of this novel, click on Damascus under "labels' on the right-hand side of this blog.

And, if you've been eagerly awaiting the next chapter, thanks for your patience.

Without further ado, Chapter 7: 

 

I managed to crawl off Avery and slump onto the bed next to him, my head on the bare pillow.  I was too tired to move any more.  “You did good,” he said, and he rested his hand on my stomach.  But then he rolled away, put on his briefs and undershirt, and picked up his Blackberry.

 

     I’m not sure how much time had passed when I opened my eyes.  Avery was coming out of the bathroom.  His hair was wet and he was fully dressed.  “Are you leaving?” I asked. 

 

     He nodded.  “You can rest as long as you want,” he said. 

 

     “So that’s it?” I asked.  But Avery had already returned his attention to his Blackberry.  He gave me a kind of absent-minded wave as he walked out, turning off the overhead light and shutting the door behind him. I felt stupid.  Of course that was it.  A man didn’t stay and snuggle with a whore, or with a sex slave.  Avery had told me that himself.

 

     I used the bathroom and then crawled back into the bed.  When I opened my eyes again a hazy light was coming through a glazed glass window.  Unsure of what I was supposed to do, I got up and brushed my teeth again. 

 

     The door opened as I was coming out of the bathroom. Kaylee came in, followed by Tonna carrying a tray of food.  “We thought you’d never wake up,” Tonna said. 

 

     “How did you know I did?”

 

     Kaylee pointed to one of the cameras.  “I think Vincenzo was holding his breath all night until Avery finally uncovered the lens and he could see that you were all right.”  She grasped my hands.  “You are all right, aren’t you, honey?  He treated you okay?”

 

     I nodded, but my eyes filled with tears.  “Oh, honey, what did he do to you?” 

 

     “Nothing,” I said, knowing how stupid I sounded. “Nothing bad.  He made me come over and over, and then he had me get on top of him, and he made me come again while he was inside me.”

 

     Tonna and Kaylee both stared at me like I was crazy.  “It’s just, he wasn’t very nice,” I said.

 

     I remembered suddenly what they had said about their first times.  “I know I should be grateful.  It could have been worse.”

 

     Tonna said, “I guess that’s what everyone says – ‘it could have been worse.’  Especially with that man – there’s nothing like a rich sadist.” 

 

     “You know about that?” I asked her.  “Have you been with him?”

 

     Tonna shook her head. “I have,” Kaylee said.  “He knows his way around a woman’s body, how to go just up to the edge of too much.  He hurt me, but he didn’t injure me, and he made me come, which is more than a lot of them do.”  She sighed. “In the end it was just a night’s work.” 

 

     There was a sharp rap on the door.  Vincenzo opened it and stepped in. Kaylee and Tonna exchange surprised looks.  Vincenzo ignored them. 

 

     “How are you doing?” he asked.  He leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms.  I felt warm when I saw him, like we shared a secret.  I remembered him on the stage last night, always hovering just within sight, acting like he was ready to pounce. 

 

     He frowned, and I realized I hadn’t answered his question.  “It could have been worse,” I said, and added, “Sir.”  Tonna stifled a giggle, and Vincenzo glared at her.  He nodded abruptly.  “Make sure she sees the medic,” he said to Kaylee.  He glanced at the tray Tonna had brought in.  “And make sure she eats something.”  He turned abruptly and left the room. 

 

     There was quiet in the room for a minute, and then Tonna and Kaylee burst out laughing.  “He’s always such a charmer,” Kaylee said. 

 

     Tonna brought the tray and put it on the bed.  “You’d better eat,” she said.  “He’ll probably be watching you through the camera as soon as he gets back to his office.” 

 

     I sat on the bed and took a bite of omelet. I was suddenly ravenous.  “Is the food here always this good?” I asked, trying to remember to chew and swallow.

 

     Tonna laughed.  “They don’t starve us,” she said.

 

     When I finished Kaylee said, “You might as well take a shower here.  Have some privacy while you can.”

 

     I suddenly remembered that I was naked, and that Kaylee and Tonna were as well.  I couldn’t believe how quickly I had become used to it.  “Will you wait for me?” I asked, feeling shy. 

 

     Kaylee nodded. “When you’re done we’ll show you around.” 

 

     I showered quickly.  When I finished, Kaylee and Tonna brought me back to Dr. Lorenzo.  He asked me a few questions about how I was feeling and whether I was in any pain.  When I said was a little sore he put me in the gynecological table but barely touched me. “No point in doing any more poking and prodding,” he said.  He seemed more concerned with the cut on my arm that he had looked at the day before.  We were in and out in five minutes.

 

     “Okay,” Tonna said cheerfully.  “Time for the tour.  Let’s start with the dorm.”  She and Kaylee led me up two floors of a fire exit staircase and into a big room with cots lining the walls.  They brought me over to one on the far side. “This one’s yours,” Tonna said.  “Mine’s here,” and she pointed to the next one over, “and Kaylee’s is the next one.”

 

     The cots were cheap metal, like a summer camp might have. A wooden wardrobe was next to each of them.  A combination lock, still in its packaging, was on my bed.  Kaylee picked it up and handed it to me.  “You’ll need to use this if you don’t want girls rifling through your stuff.” 

 

     “What stuff?” I asked. Kaylee opened the wardrobe next to my bed.  The clothes I had taken off in the room when Vincenzo had made me strip were in it.  Tonna picked up my dingy sweater and laughed.  “I think naked is an improvement,” she said.

 

     “Oh, I doubt that.” The woman walking up to us was stunning.  Raven black hair that fell to the middle of her back, a porcelain complexion, and mesmerizing light blue eyes. And her breasts were magnificent. They were large but beautifully shaped, with not a hint of sag. Her nipples were a dusky rose shade, and they pointed at me.  “Some assets should be left—" she looked me up and down—“mysterious.”  I knew she was insulting me but I didn’t really understand what she was saying.

 

     “Ooh, that’s a big word, Amber,” Kaylee said. “Did someone tell you that’s what you were when you were sucking their cock in the ballroom last night?”

 

     Amber flicked her hair over her shoulder. “Screw you, Kaylee.  I see you made a little friend.” Her eyes narrowed, and she said to me, “That was quite a show you put on last night.  We were starting to wonder what Vin would do with you if you never came.”  She said to someone over my shoulder, “Isn’t that right, Heath?”

 

     “These girls giving you trouble, Amber?”

 

     Heath came up beside her and put his arm around her. Amber’s face froze for a second but then she smiled at him.  “They wouldn’t dare, not in front of you.” 

 

     Heath puffed up at that.  “Come on,” he said.  “You’re wasting your time with them.”  Amber’s face took on an almost vacuous glaze.  “And I have time to give you another private lesson.”  He led her out of the room.

 

     “Between the two of them, I don’t know who’s playing who,” Tonna said, shaking her head. 

 

     Kaylee clucked her tongue.  “Amber’s playing herself,” she said.  “Heath is too dumb too know she only chases him because of his uncle, and Amber’s too dumb to know that the Emperor won’t give him the time of day.”

 

     As they were talking a group of five or six girls came up to us.  Kaylee introduced them to me.  I wasn’t quite able to put all the names she spouted – Lori, Vixen, Marjie, Suzette, a couple of others – to the faces.  They giggled around me in an undifferentiated mass.  But when Vixen turned to talk to a girl behind her, I gasped.  Her back had ugly red lines criss-crossing it.  “What happened to you?” I asked.

 

     Vixen turned back to me.  She had marks across her bressts.  “Sadist,” she said with a shrug.  “Means I get a couple of days off.” 

 

     I couldn’t look away. “Doesn’t it hurt?” 

 

     For a moment that same blank look that Amber had had when Heath had touched her flashed across Vixen’s face.  She shrugged.  “Yeah,” she said shortly.  Her eyes filled with tears.

 

     Everyone was quiet for a minute, taking it in.  I was sure that most or all of them had been through the same thing.  And that I would as well. 

 

     “Who wants to give Belinda a tour?” Kaylee asked, a bit too briskly.  Several of the girls joined in, and as a group they showed me around Damascus.  They took me floor by floor through the tall, narrow building.  There were three other living quarters, each with about 25 beds, all similar to ours.  A gym, a couple of rooms with couches and a TV, and several floors with private rooms like I had been in the night before. Throughout, the girls talked and giggled, even Vixen. 

 

     We ended the tour in the cafeteria, which was not that different than the cafeteria at my college – except that the food was much, much better. As I ate my grilled salmon – a food I had not tasted since before my mother died, the girls chattered with each other, sometimes including me. 

 

     Amber came in as we were finishing.  Her eyes were bloodshot but she still managed to look snottier than the snottiest cheerleader in my high school.  She sneered at me.  “Enjoy the buttfucking tonight,” she said as she walked past. 

 

     “What did she mean by that?” I asked. 

 

     The other girls at the table stared at me.  After a moment one of them, I wasn’t sure of her name, said, “It’s your second night in the lottery tonight.  Don’t you know that?” 

 

     “Second night?”  It sounds stupid now, but I actually had not given any thought to what would happen that night.  I vaguely assumed that some man would rent me for the night.  But it never occurred to me that I would be in front of the crowd again. “And tonight it’s not my regular virginity . . . “

 

     Someone stifled a laugh.  “Right, Honey,” Tonna said kindly.  “Tonight your ass will be auctioned.”  I remembered Vincenzo had asked me about whether anyone had ever fucked me up the ass, as he had so delicately put it. I also remembered him putting his finger up there, and that it had felt good when Ricky had touched me there.  But a cock going inside my butthole?  How would it fit?

 

     “She’s gone pale as a ghost,” one of the girls said.

 

     “Will it be bad?” I asked.     

 

     Tonna shrugged.  “Depends on the man,” she said. 

 

     “Oh, hush,” Kaylee said to Tonna.  She glared at everyone around the table.  “Sometimes it can be bad, but it shouldn’t be tonight.  Just like last night, those men will be competing to give you pleasure.  And just like last night, the man who succeeds will get to take you to a room.” 

 

     “Do you think it will be Avery again?” I asked.

 

     “I don’t think so, honey.  He doesn’t usually come here two nights in a row.”  She looked worried.  “Is that okay?  You said you didn’t like him much.”

 

     “No, it’s a relief,” I answered.  “It’s just a lot to take in.”

 

     “Maybe not,” one of the girls said. “They come in all sizes.”  Everyone at the table started laughing.  I joined in, and again wondered how I could be having fun. 

 

     When everyone quieted down I asked, “Are there any other surprises for tonight I should know about?”

 

     “I don’t think so, honey,” Kaylee said.  “It’s mostly like last night.  I’ll do your hair, and you’ll get a massage, and then it’s the show, and then you’ll go to the room with the winner.”

 

     “And after tonight?” I asked. 

 

     “After tonight men will pay for you, and . . .”

 

     I shook my head and raised my hand for her to stop.  I realized I wasn’t ready to think that far ahead. 

 

     A bell chimed. The girls all got up from the table.  “Thirty minutes until opening,” Tonna explained to me.  She hugged me.  “I love you,” she said.  “Everything will be fine.”

 

     I looked after her as she walked away, stunned at her words.  I loved her too, and I loved Kaylee, and a man putting his cock up my butt wouldn’t change that. 

 

     Kaylee led me back to the salon, where she washed and blew out my hair, and then she brought me downstairs.  We went into a different massage room than the one I had been in yesterday.  When the door opened, I looked up expecting to see Ricky.  Instead a middle aged white man walked in. He was tall, with graying hair and a beard that was a bit scraggly. He dismissed Kaylee.  “Don’t feel bad,” he said to me.  “Everyone’s always disappointed when I’m not Ricky.”    

 

     “Where is he?” I asked.  There had been that weird tension between him and Vincenzo yesterday.  I hoped he hadn’t gotten into trouble.

 

     “Working on some other girl.  I’m Erik, but you will call me Sir.”  He cracked his knuckles and waved for me to lie down on the massage table.  He began working on my shoulders, just as Ricky had. His hands were bigger than Ricky’s, and not as warm. He worked his way down my back, and nudged my legs apart.  When he dripped warm oil between my ass cheeks I closed my legs.  “Behave,” he said.  I opened my legs again, and his fingers moved into my crack, spreading lubricant there.  When he touched my asshole a chill ran through me. Ricky had touched me there, but this felt so clinical.  And then his finger was inside me.  My arousal came suddenly. Erik’s bored, disinterested touch was humiliating; my arousal more so.  I tried to hide it.  But he was moving his finger in and out of my butt, and I’d never felt anything like it.  I could feel my juices leaking out of my pussy and dripping down to my clit. 

 

     Erik stopped molesting my butthole.  He quickly rubbed my wetness around my clit.  “I’ve lubed you up,” he said.  “That will make it easier for you tonight.”  He slapped my butt.  “You’re all set.  You can get up now.”

 

     This was so quick compared to the long, sensual full body massage Ricky had given me the night before that it took me a moment to realize it was over.  I sat up.  “Don’t touch yourself,” he said, and pointed to a camera over the door.  Then he left. 

 

     I looked around the room, trying to find something to do with my nervous energy.  I walked over to the cabinets lining one wall and opened a door. It was filled with bottles of massage oil.  The next one had sheets on the bottom shelf and towels on the top.  I was just about to open the next one when I heard someone clear his throat.  I turned around. Vincenzo.  “We don’t keep the amputated fingers in this room,” he said, a glint of amusement in his eyes. 

 

     “Hi,” I said. “Sir.”  Would I ever get used to that?

 

     “Are you sore from last night?” 

 

     “A little.  It’s not too bad.” 

 

     “Erik treat you all right?”

 

     I shrugged  “He was . . . efficient.”

 

     That glint of amusement again.  “Bend over the table. I want to make sure you’re prepared.”

 

     I hesitated for second. “Right now, Belinda,” he said, his voice hardening.  I obeyed him, placing my belly on the massage table.  This was not the first time he had had me assume this position, not the first time his finger had been in my ass. It was just as humiliating this time, but now the humiliation pooled in my groin.  I knew to keep my legs spread for him.  His finger went in and out smoothly.  “Good,” he said.  “If I touch your pussy will you come?”

 

     “No, sir,” I said.  Erik was no Ricky.  But then Vincenzo’s hand went below my pussy, to my clit.  His finger rested there for a second, and then he was massaging me. It felt so good. He put  his other hand on my lower back and pressed gently. I was going to come. “Stop,” I said. “It’s too much.”  I squirmed away from him and stood up.  Would he punish me?  “I’m sorry,” I said.   

 

     Vincenzo stared at me, like he was confused.  “I’m sorry, sir,” I said again. 

 

     “It’s all right,” he said. “You’ll learn control in time.”  He broke eye contact.  “I’ll send Kaylee in for your makeup.” He turned and walked out the door – although if I didn’t know better I would say he scurried.

 

     Kaylee came in a couple of minutes later with her box of cosmetics.  “You okay, honey?” she asked.  I nodded.  “It’s a bigger crowd tonight.  You put on a good show last night and word got around.”  She did my makeup quickly and showed me my face in the mirror.  It struck me as odd that I recognized myself.  Oh, I looked better with Kaylee’s expert artistry on my face than I ever had before I came to Damascus, but I was still recognizably me, Belinda. How was that possible? 

 

     “C’mon, Honey.  Vincenzo told me to bring you out when you’re ready.” 

 

     I took a breath.  “I’m ready,” I said.  And I was.    

 PS from Jasmine Gold:  Just a reminder that if you enjoy my naked sex slave smut, check out my finished novel Mindgames, on Amazon here.  

Review of Netflix confection Senior Year

 

 

 

SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW

I love a cheerleading movie.  Bring on Bring It On!  (And all of its sequels.) (And its musical.)   And I love Rebel Wilson.  (I mean, who doesn't?)  Naturally when you cross the exuberant silliness of a cheerleading movie with the exuberant silliness of Rebel Wilson, you expect a whole lot of exuberant silliness.

So it's no surprise that Wilson's new cheerleading movie on Netflix, Senior Year, is, you guessed it, exuberantly silly.  

When Wilson's character Stephanie wakes up in 2022 after a 20 year coma that began during a pre-prom cheer routine, the movie teases the audience with maybe having something interesting to say.  It almost has a point of view about the difference between teens in 2002 and in 2022, beginning with Stephanie's friends informing her that certain slurs are no longer acceptable.  The movie then tiptoes up to the idea that today high school students are kinder to each other and care less about cliques and popularity.  (Interestingly, the defining moment of senior year for the class of 2002, 9-11, is never mentioned; nor is the defining . . . two+ years for the graduating class of 2022, the pandemic.) And then the movie flirts with the idea that those changes are just cosmetic, and while the ruling cliques may have changed, certain cliques still rule.  Then it steps back into a Britney Spears dance number and a Mean Girls-esque resolution, with everyone a little wiser and a little kinder. (Did I mention that Mean Girls was also made into a musical?)

The movie also lacks the courage of its convictions in other ways.  Early in the movie, when Stephanie wakes up, we are told in no uncertain terms that she is still a 17 year old girl in the body of a 37 year old.  This is the conceit that allows Stephanie to return to high school to complete her senior year and once again seek the prom queen crown.

But this is no Big.  At first the movie does a pretty good job with Stephanie's interactions with her friends who have aged twenty years in her absence.  They are exasperated adults who have moved past teenage concerns and have grown up lives and sensibilities.  Until they don't.  Until the boy -- now man -- who had a crush on her in high school starts dating her.  Um, eww . . . The movie never addresses the grossness of having a 37 year old man date a 17 year old girl (no matter how old her body).  

Maybe they'll make Senior Year into a musical that will keep the exuberant silliness, clean up the plot a tiny bit, and add just a smidge of substance.  Just like Stephanie, a girl can dream.  

Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dark, dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

Review of Sarah MacLean's Regency romance, Wicked and the Wallflower: What is wicked, anyway?

 

A couple of weeks ago I reviewed Sarah MacLean's Regency romance Brazen and the Beast and said that I couldn't wait to read more of her books.  And I didn't!  Brazen and the Beast is the second book in the Bareknuckle Bastards series. I just finished Wicked and the Wallflower, the first in the series.  

Wicked was not quite as charming as Brazen.  The characters were not as well-developed, for one.  Felicity, the wallflower of the title, has little personality beyond a penchant for picking locks -- a hobby with no backstory.  When did she first begin to pick locks?  Why?  How did she learn?  She mentions that her family knows she does this and doesn't approve.  How do they know?  How do they express their disapproval?

My real issue with the book was Devil/Devon, the Wicked of the title. With his brother Beast from Brazen and the Beast, Devil runs an underground smuggling empire that has made them very, very rich.  How rich?  We are told rich enough to buy all of the real estate in the part of London where the fashionable people live.  I'm going to set aside the idea that their extremely work-intensive smuggling operation, in which they seem to be selling one bottle of brandy packed in ice at a time, is unlikely to be so lucrative.  Let's accept that they are the Jeff Bezoses of their time.  They are always bragging about bringing good jobs to the slum of Covent Garden. That's great, as far as it goes.  But instead of amassing huge wealth built on the backs of their apparently blindly loyal employees (who they occasionally kill or at least beat up), couldn't they spread the money around a bit more?  Raise wages?  Build some decent housing for low income people?  Maybe a playground or park or two?  

That said, I did enjoy this book.  I look forward to reading the next installment of the series, about a third brother who inherited a title by betraying the others and has regretted it ever since. 

 

 

Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dark, dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

Review of Bridgerton, Season 2

 

 

Spoilers in this review.

 

The beauty of Season 1 of Bridgerton was that it was so unexpected.  My kids had given me a rare treat on Christmas day a couple of years ago -- I got to choose what we would watch on TV.  When I turned on Netflix and saw there was a Regency romance I think I actually squealed with joy.  And then I refused to give up the clicker for the rest of the day.  My kids drifted away, passing through the living room only to cover their eyes on their way to the kitchen.   

Season 2 was entirely expected and for that reason alone watching it was a calmer experience.  The plot is also more sedate than Season 1.  It took me a couple of weeks to watch it the entire season.  But that allowed me to savor it more.

Like Season 1, the plot is charming, the costumes beautiful, the cinematography lovely.  While I was not entirely convinced by the love story between Anthony (the Bridgerton of the title) and Kate, which seemed to be based more on animal attraction than affection, it was very fun to watch.  I appreciated that Kate's sister Edwina, who Anthony had originally proposed to, went through appropriate stages of ingenue, brat, and older but wiser.  And their sponsor, Lady Danbury, played by Adjoa Andoh, stole the screen every time she appeared.

I enjoyed the subplots and can't wait for Pen -- the Hollywood ugly (she's zaftig and is forced to wear yellow, which actually looks fantastic on her) young woman who writes a gossip rag under a pen name -- to get her own season.  

My major quibble with this season is that Kate and Edwina's upbringing in India, and cultural differences that would come with that, are non-existent beyond Kate's preference for Indian tea.  Their home city (Bombay, maybe?  I can't remember because it doesn't matter) appears to be London's twin.  

My minor quibble is that all the adult Bridgerton brothers look exactly alike.  About three episodes in I was usually able to distinguish Anthony from the others.  But as for the one who paints, and the one who went abroad and takes snuff (or is that the one who paints?) -- I have absolutely no clue how to tell them apart.  

Overall I loved this show.  I hope Netflix survives long enough to bring us Season 3.  

Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dark, dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

 

Review of very fun Regency romance Brazen and the Beast by Sarah MacLean

 

 It's been a minute since I've read a Regency romance.  I've been distracted by serious books, about politics (there was salary discrimination against women in the 1990s), and Western civilization (our culture is now dominant because the Catholic church banned cousin marriage, which made clans less powerful and larger institutions more powerful), and waking up in a different body every day (this one, which I did not enjoy as much as this one).  So I was ready for some fun.  Brazen and the Beast, by Sarah MacLean, absolutely delivered.  

The book opens with heroine Hattie going to a male brothel (why is there not a better word for that?) to divest herself of her virginity so she will be ruined and her father will stop assuming that she will someday marry.  

This brothel sounds like heaven for the women who frequent it.  I hope the employees are treated well.  We never get to find out because Hattie's interlude is interrupted by our hero Whit, aka Beast, who offers to do the honors.  

At the beginning of this scene I was thinking, wouldn't it be nice if Hattie loses her virginity to the gigolo picked out to her specifications by the very, very competent madam, and has a great time.  Then, when romance blooms with Beast she's bringing some experience to the table.  But MacLean wrote the interaction between Hattie and Beast so well that I had a foolish grin on my face the whole time I was reading it.  It was kind of perfect. (Spoiler: it took a few more tries for Hattie to part with her virginity -- and when she did light bondage was involved.)

As in so many Regency romances, Hattie is an anachronism -- an upper class career woman who is very good at her job and wants to run her own shipping conglomerate.  And Beast -- well, he's so secure in his alpha maleness that he's incredibly supportive of that goal.  Not to mention totally hot.  And very, very in to making sure that sex is not just consensual but absolutely welcome.  I think I love him.  I know that I love Sarah MacLean.  I can't wait to read more of her books. 

 

Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dark, dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

 

So a detective and a minister walk into a bar: Review of PBS show Grantchester

 

I don't generally enjoy mysteries in any form, whether book, television, or movie, and my taste is a bit too lowbrow for most PBS shows.  So I can't comment  about where Grantchester, a PBS mystery series available on Amazon Prime, falls in the pantheon.  I can say that it is weird, in a way I suspect but don't know that most PBS mystery shows are, and engaging enough that I watched the whole series and actually paid for the most recent season.

 SPOILERS AHEAD

 

 

The first few seasons follow the adventures of Sidney, an Anglican minister is a small town outside of Cambridge, England, and Geordie, a police detective stationed nearby, in the 1950s.  Sidney is an alcoholic suffering from PTSD as a result of the one battle he fought during World War II.  He pines for a woman, Amanda, who pines for him, but, alas, they are star-crossed lovers.  Amanda is married, and then divorced, and -- despite the entire Church of England having been founded because King Henry VIII wanted to get divorced and remarried -- Anglican ministers are forbidden from marrying divorcees.  So Sidney mopes a lot and drinks a lot.  At one point he tries to quit his job (which he seems to spend very little time at), but his housekeeper, Sylvia, and his curate (assistant minister), Leonard, convince him that his tiny little church cannot possibly survive without him.

Geordie, the detective, is an asshole.  He also suffers from PTSD from the war, and also drinks a lot.  He's married with four kids, and is a terrible husband and father.  When his infant son has a potentially fatal fever, he stays away from the house because dealing with the possibility of his son's death is just too hard for him.  Aw, poor man.  So he leaves his wife alone with their dying son.  

Sidney and Geordie team up to drink and to solve murders -- because, like in all TV shows about cops, in this world police solve murders by actual detective work instead of waiting for a witness or informant to tell them whodunit.  And what a lot of murders there are.  It's like Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Sunnydale around here.  If Sidney and Geordie were not already suffering from PTSD, they surely would be after they realize that every time they go to a nightclub, party, river, or lecture, someone ends up dead.  At some point you would think that someone would realize that they are the common denominator in all these deaths. 

Sidney gets written off the show after the fourth season, in a way that is an insult to his entire character  arc.  Luckily it turns out that his little church can survive just fine without him.  Along comes Will to replace him, another whiny minister who is somehow allowed to ride along on all of Geordie's investigations. Will is different from Sidney because he rides a motorbike and has a family of origin. Also, he likes rock and roll instead of jazz.  And he's hotter.  The bodies continue to pile up.  Leonard, the curate, and Sylvia, the housekeeper and best thing about the show, get some more character development.   

The show is overall very, very silly but also kind of delightful.  And now that I've watched an entire PBS series (thus far), I can stick my nose a little higher in the air.  

Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dark, dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.

Meditation on Mommy blogs, and thoughts on The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

 

 

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson is a memoir that takes itself seriously by a writer who takes herself seriously.  Nelson writes extensively about philosophers and lectures she has attended and given.  This is not the type of book a blog devoted to smut about naked sex slaves (which I write) and Regency romances (which I read) would typically address.

But it's my blog and I get to do what I want.

To the extent that The Argonauts is about anything concrete in terms of plot, it's about Nelson's relationship with her husband, Harry, a transgender man (or, more accurately, a nonbinary person who was born a biological woman and transitioned to a biological male) who started taking testosterone around the same time that Nelson started to take hormones to assist with getting pregnant.  The love story between Nelson and Harry, although not very detailed, is very sweet.  It begins with a Seinfeld-like scene where, for an uncomfortably long time after they start dating, Nelson is not sure what pronouns to use to refer to Harry.  (He/him, she eventually learns.)  In due course they get married, Nelson becomes a stepmother to Harry's son, and Nelson and Harry have a child together.  The book mentions all this, but devotes much more time to Deep Thoughts (which I do not mean snidely).

Nevertheless, many times as I was reading the book I rolled my eyes and thought, "This is a Mommy blog."  Nelson writes about how pregnancy changed her body, about how giving birth was really, really hard, about how special it is to be a mother of a newborn.  All in beautiful prose, but still . . .

Which leads to the question, why do I sneer at mommy blogs?  I myself am a mommy -- well, now that my kids are older a mom (picture this being said with an eye roll by my teen).  I am the category of mommy who was pregnant and who gave birth and thought it was really special to be with my newborn.  

And yet, I have no desire to read about anyone else's experiences with this.  Maybe because it is all so common.  I can compare and contrast Nelson's pregnancy and childbirth experience to my own, but I don't find doing so particularly interesting.  Even though Nelson writes very nice prose, she doesn't have anything new to say about these things.

Does it matter?  I love reading memoirs, but isn't it also true that one person's early years as the child of an alcoholic are pretty much like another person's?  Certainly Regency romances have only a handful of interchangeable plots and stock characters, and I read them all the time.  

I think, in the end, it's part of the human condition that the bond between a mother and her infant is intensely personal and intensely interesting to the mother who is by necessity all-consumed by the bond -- but it is also so universal that reading about the experience is like looking at Facebook pictures of a blizzard.  It snowed!  Yeah, I know, I can look out my window and see that.  

Is this opinion sexist?  Probably, yes.  But the good news is, you don't have to read my naked sex slave smut if you're not interested, and I don't have to read about your childbirth experience if I'm not interested.  To each her own.  

 

Note from Jasmine Gold: As the name of this blog indicates, I write erotica. Check out my dark, dystopian novel about naked sex slaves, Mindgames. Your darkest fantasies, with a phenomenal plot and characters you will come to think of as beloved friends. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited  and in paperback.  Or read my book of short stories about hot, consensual sex, The Mature Woman's Guide to Desire, available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.