The Vampire Priest and his Nemesis in "Thirst"

Vampires have historically been considered evil, but fictionally they are currently not considered 100% bad. If you add a bit of trendy perversity, perhaps even martyrdom, to the mix you might get an instant hero, or the 20th century equivalent – the antihero.

Antiheroes are the ultimate outcasts, and if they are self-loathing, that’s even better: the romantic, but evil, protagonist is born . . . or reborn. Who better to personify those attributes than the modern fictional vampire? In Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook's "Thirst" the vampire hero is a priest whose intended martyrdom gets undone by an accidental transfusion of tainted blood.

There are no Van Helsings in this story, no tortured explanations of what could possibly be wrong with Father Sang-Hyeon, no stakes, crucifixes, or fangs. He knows he’s a vampire, and he also quickly figures out the disfiguring facial blisters which continue to plague him can only be cured by a fresh infusion of blood. So vanity, and self-preservation, inspires his thirst, which leads to the bloodsucking, and as a kind of afterthought, the sex.

Nemesis was the Greek goddess of indignation against evil deeds and undeserved good fortune, and the good priest’s nemesis is introduced in the form of Tae-ju (Kim Ok-vin), an innocent, possibly abused young wife. She walks and acts as if half-asleep, in a surly don’t-wake-me-up doze. She’s subservient, wounded, her lips pouting like a baby waiting to suckle. Only when Tae-ju runs barefoot in the night do we see a semblance of the quiescent strength roiling like lava inside her. The Father takes her in his arms and they take flight, hopping buildings like the superhero he is in her eyes. Who could resist such a savior? Certainly not Lois when Superman carried her aloft.

"Vampires are cuter than I thought," she says. This could have been uttered by the besotted teen in Twilight, but with this actress the action takes a decidedly adult turn. More Lilith than Eve, this isn’t about love, at least not in the beginning. She wants to consort with demons, and relishes her newfound freedom, strength, and ability to break the bonds and bounds of her marital, and human, slavery. Not since Claudia, the ancient child vampire in Interview with the Vampire have we been treated to such anger, brutality and guiltlessness. And we love her for it, as does the Father.

Hero and heroine cover their secrets . . . scarred and bruised thighs. Both are self-mutilators, his arrived at in an attempt to drive away his demon erections, and hers a deliberate attempt to manipulate the vampire into a bit of husband killing by making him believe her spouse is abusing her.

All it takes is the vampire’s blood to uncap the volcano within her.

He does not seduce like Dracula, turning virtuous Mina’s into tarts. The priest is seduced, but even then he seems more interested in biting her than in intercourse. A disconcerting slurpiness saturates the soundtrack where even kissing is treated to the same absurd sound effects as ravenous bloodsucking. This is part of the humor in the film, and pokes fun at not only the genre, but also the sexual fetishes that are part of it.

The underlying BDSM inherent in most vampire films is highly pronounced here. For me, this was relieved by the blood appearing too thin and watery, like the sweet syrup it probably is. Still, there’s plenty of it for you connoisseurs, and it’s often associated with sex.

The French title for the movie translates as the liturgically evocative "This Is My Blood." The body and blood, as well as the prayer for martyrdom recited throughout the film, (“pull out my nails, so that I may grasp nothing") strikes at the heart of this morality tale and the vampire/superhero mythos.

Where to Get a Good Bite

Let’s start with vampire bats. These creatures are so cool in all their creeping stealth. In full frontal photos, they look like mini Nosferatu's caught by the paparazzi.

They nip the flesh, usually around the lower leg of an animal, and then lap it up. They are all about sneaking up on a sleeping animal, not disturbing it, having their meal, and getting away asap so they can return and feed another day, I mean night. Their method does not require a vein or an artery, which is where we enter the realm of the undead.

The classic vampire of fiction and film traditionally prefers the neck, and more specifically the jugular vein. Dracula just wouldn’t have the same cachet if after gazing deeply into Mina’s eyes he then bypassed her creamy neck and heaving bosom to lift her skirts and bite her on the ankle. Hmm, actually now that I think of it . . . . so many places to bite, so little time.

The undead are obsessed with the jugular, but their knowledge of human anatomy may be limited. The carotid is located on both sides of the neck and right next to the jugular. It’s the artery in the side of your neck where you take your pulse. Only a true artiste in bloodsucking could narrow their bite to pierce one and not the other.


Since the carotid is a part of the aorta, the usual six- foot stream of blood would be apparent, not all of which the vampire could swallow. A huge mess would be made. More than likely the vampire wouldn't drain a victim. They need to hide things a little better. How do you explain a corpse with no blood left in it? You don't. Assuming discretion is somewhat important in the vampire world, the undead might take a few lessons on tidiness from the vampire bat.

Folktales suggest vampires bite above the heart, or between the eyes (Ouch! On the temple, maybe. Very thin people sometimes have visible veins there, some even look knotted and throbby.)

Other places to get a bite:

The median cubital vein-- This vein is the one in the elbow where, if you've ever had blood drawn, that is where they stick you.

The ulner artery-- This is the artery in the wrist. After the neck it seems to be the second favorite place for vampires to bite.

The greater saphenous vein-- This vein runs along the inside of either thigh. The vein is large and deep; it would take a big bite to get down into it.

The femoral vein-- This vein is the one at the back of the knee. It lies close to the skin and is an easy bite if you have a victim face down and not kicking.

I think the big toe would be a good source. Earlobes are full of blood, and erect penises. The list goes on.

I've squeezed the bloody pulp out of bloodsucking, but please comment if you have some juice to add.

Circe: A Reinterpretation

This is a mischievous rendering of the goddess Circe. She had a wicked sense of humor, and used her magical powers with an ironic twist. Yeah, she turned her bff Scylla into a sea monster, but the girl was always stealing her lovers and bragging about it. She’d slap her ass and say, “They can’t get enough of this, but it's head the homeboys want.” Then she’d tilt her neck back, suck in her cheeks and in a grotesque mime pump her closed fist in front of her mouth.

So Circe made a magic potion which gave Scylla six heads, each with three rows of teeth, and banished her to the sea. Naturally, this put Scylla in a very bad mood and she became a peril to all sailors who passed near her. Whenever a ship passed, each of her heads would seize one of the crew. They truly received head.

Back to Circe. Besides Scylla, she got a bad rep in The Odyssey. The sailors had been at sea for a very long time. "Let's party!" Circe said, "your vice is my command." They heard the word vice, and acted like pigs at a trough party, and presto chango! can you say oink oink? It was all a huge misunderstanding and Odysseus and his men returned to normal and spent a year with Circe, long enough for her to get knocked up.

She had a kid with Odysseus, Telegonus. Like any single mother, she didn’t stop him when he wanted to meet his dad who was back in Ithaca. He got there okay, but Whoops! accidentally killed his father. It happens. He brought the body back to his mom and took Odysseus' widow Penelope and son Telemachus with him. Circe made them immortal and married Telemachus, while Telegonus made Penelope his wife.

Shite sometimes works out.

LitCrawl 2017: Nerds* On Surfboards and in Bikinis* Read Their Prose.

I'll be reading at the Kahuna Tiki (link below) along with some great talent.

Malibu Writers Circle | A Cool Buzz and Some Tasty Words

•   By infolosangeles@litcrawl.org

Date/Time
Date(s) - 10/25/2017
8:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Location
Kahuna Tiki

11026 Magnolia Blvd - Los Angeles

*I am a nerd

*My bikini is in the shop

The Road Taken: Marriage

In her New York Times article, Married (happily) With Issues , Elizabeth Weil wrote about her marriage and the journey she and her husband took through various forms of marital counseling.  Ms. Weil was thorough and revealing about her experience, and I felt like I was in group therapy again.  Only in group therapy can one participate as the lowest common denominator of lurker, and still come away with a sense of well-being, consoling oneself that at least you're not as crazy as those other people.  I read Ms. Weil’s piece with a growing sense of her frustration with her spouse, smug relief that my husband wasn’t such a nut, and the sure knowledge that my marriage would never survive such close working conditions as she described.

The article hit all the major pulse points of marriage, including the thrombosis-ridden, blocked arterial passageway of Passion and Intimacy.   In Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel, the author says that passion lives at the crossroads of stability and adventure, “Every person and every couple needs to find that balance."  I imagine an algebraic equation wherein two individuals, each with their own personal intimacy lexicon are juxtaposed (divided? integrated?) with the entity they agree upon to arrive at Couple:

  i+ i   = C
E   

Oh hell, I’m not a mathematician.  I’m an independent and solitary person who never expected much from marriage, certainly not that it would last as long as it has.  Perel says that intimacy doesn’t always lead to good sex.  Then is the opposite true?  My sex life with my husband seems to prove the point that good sex is possible without feeling especially close or in alignment with your mate.  We're going for more these days, bang or bust.  Allowing intimacy into my life in the form of my husband has been and will always be an ongoing experiment: we've never quite worked out the definitions of being a couple.  He said recently that he was committed to our marriage.  I'm not sure that's the same as being committed to me.

Intimacy at this point in our marriage is like coming out of heavy fog and seeing the true lay of the land. I’ve stayed on the road, but can’t help narrowing my eyes and trying to see what might have been at the end of the other path through the woods.

 Currently I like being married, but that hasn't always been the case.  Divorce seemed like the easy out in so many ways, but I like doing things the hard way sometimes.  I stayed in part because I was raised by a single mother and didn't want to follow her path.  What were the other parts?  The kids, good sex, autonomy.  Also, I married a decent man.

I hoped that someday the layers of resentment and defensive posturing would fall away, and that we could just love each other for the real people that we are.  That means the individual, not the couple, I think.

He says he doesn't like change. I'm more open to it. My openness had led to some risky adventures in my past. I treasure the memory of some, others not so much. He had a terrible case of kidney stones a few years ago, and all our intimate routines came to a halt. The "routine" aspect had been the cause of a bit of chagrin on my part, but with its total absence I reconsidered. I don't want to lose him or his sometimes perverse intractability. Rather than rail against that part of his personality, I now find it amusing and do what I want anyway.  I'd done this before in our marriage, but did it ferociously, justifying my actions with bitter anger.  Which took some of the fun away. Fun and laughter are important to me and I like a belly-laugh. He never engages in deep laughter, I'm not sure he knows how. There have been some changes: he seems to laugh more - with me, at me, I don't care.  

Change is in his nature no matter what he says. We're both the eldest child in our natal families, and we both fled our hometowns. We arrived in L.A. within a few years of each other, met and bedded, and the biggest adventure began: marriage.

CYBERNATION: SEDUCTION & FLIRTATION

 

Technology and flirtation have been in the news over the past several years. A congressman's career crashed because of sexts in 2011, but his weinerisms remain ensconced on a Wikipedia page. 2015 brought a noted 60 Minutes journalist's sexts out in the open, but it appears he was more embarrassed over the messages where he bragged that he was Obama's "go to" interviewer. Humiliation seems to be oh-so-over as popular culture celebrates the "accidentally" released nude photos of various actors. The Washington Post published an article last year on how to sext safely. Adolescents are not exempt from the sexting phenomenon. They think it's just flirting.

The first text was sent in December 1992. By 2010, various sites were alive with cybering (cybersex). Sexting is short form. Cybering is long form. More emphasis on body parts and visuals for the former; context, and even scene, is significant in the latter, although erogenous zones are not ignored.

In one of my first writing groups, 4 out of 5 of us had never cybered or sexted. That 5th person was a woman in her 30s. She gave us a play-by-play that sounded crude in a hastily made porn way, all slavish adoration of male and female body parts. Not a whole lot of creativity. We laughed and squirmed and made disgusted faces during her unblushing recitation. I left the meeting knowing that I had to try it, even though my marriage was twenty-five years deep.

The question: is cybering and sexting about sex or is it the new flirtation? People used to flirt in bars, or at parties. I know this not so much because I did it, but because I watched my parents do it in bars and at parties. Usually one or the other would get jealous, and a fight would ensue. The key in this scenario is knowing when to stop, not crossing over that invisible line to adultery. Neither of my parents seemed aware of any lines anywhere. As a result, I grew into a straightforward non-flirter; if I wanted to have sex with you, you'd know it. That was in college and grad school. In the business world, sexual harassment was the byword and flirting was discouraged. Fine with me; I needed to focus. When my writing career began, an experimental and adventuresome side to me reawakened.

Usually Eros as Cupid is represented flying around or sneaking up on two human lovers with his quiver of arrows. Below is a rare print (in my experience) of Cupid kissing. Perhaps he has already shot himself in the foot and she is Psyche.

Is the shot in the foot the essence of Seduction? There are risks, to be sure, especially for married people.

I'm nothing if not goal oriented. In a chat room, a few men and one woman appeared to flirt with me. Presumably they were the gender claimed, but it didn't matter much to me: I wanted to play with words in a sexually explicit and creative manner.

Was this flirtation or seduction? During these provocative flare-ups, I liked myself very much. It was fun. The conversation nourished me in ways I hadn't acknowledged were important in my life. Reciprocity was key. So was good spelling.

But if one flirts, does that mean they are open to seduction, and more importantly, can we want what we already have? Which brings me to the subject of my husband, who sat across from me in the den with his own laptop, listening to me laugh and type. Did he wonder what the hell I was doing? I figured there was no wondering or even thinking about me. Except for sex, he'd long ago dropped any pretense of trying to please me. That narrow focus was enough for a very long time.

I didn't stop to consider what effect cybering might have on my marriage, but it certainly was an aid in writing the erotic passages in The Sandoval Sisters' Secret of Old Blood. Writing is all imagination and so is cybering. This is not a recommendation for writers or anyone to immediately start sexting. It's my experience. More on this after Mother's Day.

Also at Huffington Post.

Buick Sundays

 Sundays were always special because mom didn't work on that day.  She was tired from six straight 10-hour nights of waiting on tables.  No one could blame her if she didn't feel like cooking, cleaning or driving.  She'd let me drive the old Buick my Grandpa had given us, and by old I mean made of steel and without power steering.  Driving to Louie's Drive-In to pick up tamales and comic books was my job.  I was twelve and very responsible, but in my mother's mind I think that meant I was thirty-two.

It was fall in Santa Fe, a frosty nip in the air, but no snow on the ground.  My brother was only five and stayed with Mom and was totally not my responsibility for that one day. Everyone stayed inside, but my hangout on Sunday was the Buick I'd managed to park safely in our narrow driveway (there was a telephone pole planted right in the middle of the entrance).  I made the car cozy with pillows and a comforter.  It took on a greenhouse effect with all that New Mexican sunshine filtered and magnified through the windows.  I left them cracked, and the scent of pine and aspen wafting down from the Sangre de Cristos was a welcome counterbalance in my little hothouse.

Stuffed with spicy tamales, I'd snuggle down and read Superman, The Incredible Hulk, The Fantastic Four, Wonder Woman, Tales From Beyond, and something called Classics, which was a retelling of stories like Romeo & Juliet in graphic form. When I'd finish my series, I'd take them inside and exchange with Mom who'd been reading Batman, or Silver Surfer. We were getting along in those days.

That night Mom might cook a one-dish meal like macaroni made with Velveeta Cheese. The nights were cold, but we were warm and full.  Mom sometimes sang and danced when she cooked.  She teased and complimented me.   We laughed and I remember distinct happiness.  On Sunday nights, I went off to bed and read some more, only books this time, and the house was quiet.   I was fed on multiple levels.

Mom began to come home late.  When you get off at 3 a.m. late is arriving home at dawn.  I was worried, upset, angry . . . and curious.  I began to wake up in the middle of the night and wait for her.  She was full of excuses:  she'd gone out with the girls for breakfast; there was an after work party; her car broke down; her girlfriend's car broke down.  I was furious and jealous and possessive, and suspected sex was happening, but only in an amorphous, nonverbal way that made me afraid of losing my mother.

I was afraid of a lot of stuff in those days.  I was almost thirteen and hadn't yet started my period.  Every one of my girlfriends had breasts and had been menstruating practically since birth.  They were short and curvy and cute, and I was not.  Mom and I began to fight everyday, and I missed a lot of school because I overslept.  

"Aren't you going to school?"  I wanted her to make me go, but Mom couldn't even make herself come home after work.  On some days, she didn’t make it home at all.  The Sunday I gouged out a hunk of my thigh in a bicycle accident I needed stitches, but didn’t tell Mom about it when she finally came home.  She didn’t notice anything until years later when she asked about the huge scar on my thigh. 

I passed thirteen and we fought and I challenged her and we fought some more.  I was angry all the time and mean to my little brother.  On Sundays Mom was exhausted and withdrawn.  She cooked, but there was no laughter.  I stopped reading comics in the Buick, but read Dostoyevsky by the light of a little portable electric heater bedside until Mom’s car entered the driveway.  I’d quickly shut my book and pretend to be asleep.  We didn’t talk until I decided to go live with my Dad in Texas, and then I slept with her and my brother every night until the day arrived for me to leave.  It was my last belonging.

For the year that I was gone, we remained close.  Her letters were long and full of love and trivia.  When she called long distance, she’d ask if I wanted to talk to my dog and cat.  Long distance was expensive in those days and the gesture meant a lot to me.  She was home, she was family, and my dad and his new wife were not.

I returned to New Mexico carrying the secret Mom had shared with me in her last telephone call: I now had a baby sister.  Dad squeezed his Caddy between the telephone pole and the wall and made it down our narrow drive.  Before he’d turned off the motor, I’d jumped out and entered my mother’s waiting arms.  She looked tired and ill.  She’d had to stop waitressing as her pregnancy advanced, and had taken a babysitting job for a family that lived in a trailer park on the outskirts of Santa Fe.  There was a real outdoor swimming pool there, and my brother and I swam everyday under our mother’s watchful eye. 

My dad wept when he found out about my sister.  He begged me to return to Texas with him and warned me about the bad boys who would swarm all over me when they found out about Mom.  He frightened me, but not enough to endure my stepmother again.  Winter and high school and bad boys were months away.  Mom was resting and getting well and eventually she’d return to night work.  In the meantime, those days at the trailer park pool were like a summer full of Buick Sundays. 

Revelations

My bro and me alongside Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Posted this on Facebook in 2009:



1. I like to drive in heavy weather: heavy winds in Texas, blizzards in New Mexico, sandstorms in Arizona, tooley fogs outside Fresno.

2. Before I could drive I’d sit on our swing set during electrical storms in New Mexico daring the lightening to strike.

3. In an outdoor swimming pool I dove under the water during a storm to see raindrops hit the water. Beautiful. Muffled screams from adults and a deep angry thunder rumble added a thrill.

4. My mom let me drive by myself when I was twelve.

5. My dad bought a yellow Cadillac once. It had fins and leopard skin seat covers.

6. He taught me how to swim by tossing me off a boat into a lake. He’d been drinking. I sunk to the bottom and saw a big catfish. It had long whiskers and didn't look surprised to see me.

7. Dad wouldn’t let me have cats, so when my parents divorced Mom let me have as many as I wanted. Six was my max.

8. I’d babysit my cousins and tell such terrifying stories that I scared myself and made them sleep near the edge of the bed so the monster underneath would reach around and grab them first.

9. I initiated the game of doctor so often as a kid, I feel like I should have an M.D. after my name.

10. Felt guilty about all my lascivious thoughts so went to extra religion classes and began to bathe in Lysol.

11. Went through a stage in h.s. where I stopped wearing short skirts, and dropped the length of everything to mid-calf. Boys still liked me, but the girls bullied me.

12. Stopped going to dances and stayed home and read more.

13. Stopped going to school and stayed home and read more.

14. Got a random obscene phone call one night and stayed on the line with the guy for an hour. Very satisfying. Knew I was doomed to hell.

15. Moved out of my mother’s home 5 times between the ages of 13 to 17.

16. First time lived with my dad and stepmother. When she’d leave the house, I’d pour a shot of bourbon down my throat, strip off my clothes and run around naked. I especially loved rubbing my butt all over her velveteen couch and throw pillows, which were normally off limits to the dog and me. When I heard her Oldsmobile round the corner, I’d get dressed and set everything right, sit at my desk and do my homework.

17. Even though I rarely went to school, somehow managed to graduate and through sheer serendipity got into college where I discovered that I was smart.

18. Enjoyed being smart so much stayed in school for as long as possible.

19. Began to embrace my doom more. Invited the devil to just take me and get it over with.

20. Still had a hard time with boys my age; dated a man 14 years my senior. We’re still friends.

21. In graduate school experimented widely and wildly: physical, mental and sexual possibilities and limits.

22. Started a business.

23. Never wanted to get married or have kids.

24. Got married, had kids. Thought I could have it all.

25. Very hard to have it all. Did it until I thought I was stupid for falling for that crock. Became a writer. Happy.

The Rendezvous Motel: Part 1

Lydia’s back was to the couple, but she watched their pre-coital flirtation in the reflection of the sliding glass window.

The woman got out of the Jacuzzi and sat cross-legged, a petite Buddha, and looked down at her husband.  The cigarette she popped into her mouth looked large and fat in her tiny hands.  When she puckered her lips to hold it, her eyes rounded, too, Manga style. The visual was fellatic.  Her husband stared up at her, worshiping his baby wife. 

More young couples joined them for breakfast.  Lydia closed her eyes and savored the energy. “Everyone here has had sex in the last 24-hours,” she said to her husband.

He snapped his head up, looked around. “Probably more than once.”

“The men are quiet, almost deferential.”

“Safer that way,” her husband said.




Photo by S. Ramos O'Briant

Book Club Love Letter

Bookclub in Manhattan Beach Sunday night, and The Sandoval Sisters was the book.  Trepidation, thy name is Sandra because this wasn't any old bookclub, but the most fun, wild, and critical book club on earth where for decades these women have read, and sipped wine, laughed uproariously, shared feelings, and opinions . . . on everything.  We usually eat and drink and weave in and out of our book discussions, and this was no different, although they seemed a bit in awe of my work.  Not sure if I should be insulted or complimented.  I guess I come off kooky (read: outrageous) sometimes, but with this book not only is my inner nerd on display, but also my latent romanticism (tinged with tragedy and irony, of course).  They seemed relieved that the sex in the book was palatable, and when it turned edgy, they just rolled their eyes, and thought, “That’s our Sandra!”  Our hostess, who is an outstanding chef-mom-businesswoman, served spicy posole with sweet potato, and stuffed peppers, and a pimiento cheese dip.  Delicious!

*original sketch above found on Google images by Moore.  Only one I could find featuring wine and not coffee.  Can't fathom drinking coffee at bookclub!

Sex and Death

Beardsley, "Climax"

In 2012, my birthday falls on the launch of the Chinese New Year, and I'm happy to report that I've maintained the positive attitude toward aging that I wrote about in 2009. While I regret the loss of certain parts of my youth, namely the snap back from physical injury (I'll never jump off a 17-foot-high cliff into a river again), I'm enjoying the flow into my demise. I credit my husband for making the transition easier. We didn't do a lot of things right in our marriage, but the sex has only gotten better.

Circa 2009, I wrote the following:

Sex and death seem to be team players in literature, in movies, and with dangerous people we all know.

Never quite made the connection until this past weekend. Had a major birthday on Friday the 23rd. Been railing against it for over a year, resenting any indication of being assigned to the crone heap of outdated thinking, and wondering if my options in life were inescapably narrowing.

My friends refused to let me forget my birthday. I made a breakthrough, past resistance, past resignation and arrived at rejoicing. Spent the weekend in Palm Springs with my husband, ate lightly, made love deeply --- part calisthenics, part practice made perfect. Add imagination, resourcefulness, humor, and finally that rare ingredient missing from my youth: recognition of death. Specifically, my own. For the first time, I let it play a part in my life, especially my love life.

Many older couples weekend in Palm Springs. I like looking at the affectionate ones, their veiny, blotched hands intertwined, wrinkled faces smiling at each other, still engaged with the personality of the other. I wonder if they see the wrinkles?

I never thought I’d live this long, certainly never thought I’d stay married this long. My adolescent self was sure death would prevail, and tragedy, dark and merciless, would snatch any joy right out of my grasp. Back then I focused not so much on real death, but on suffering since that’s where the drama is. It’s also part of my birthright; all the females in my family suffer.

Thought I’d cast that emo teen out of my life long ago, but she’s still there, lurking along the edges of what I’ve done in my life. She’s the sadness in Sandra, the underside of what I show the world. I’ve learned to treasure her pain, it flavors my writing, and it sometimes makes the world an exquisitely beautiful place to be. Recognition of death’s nearness made every moment of my birthday weekend special.

Sex and death, oh yeah, baby. Now, I wear my cronedom like I wear my halter-tops, with cleavage showing. If you’ve got it, flaunt it.

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson: Punk Meets Pedophile

In Larsson’s first book, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, we’re introduced to one kickass heroine in the form of the petite and punked-out Lisbeth Salander. She returns in the second book sans one tattoo and her nose ring, but with breast implants.

Larsson underlined her boyish appearance in the first book, and the sadistic pedophiles she attracted because of it, so the new boobs are a dramatic departure. On the other hand, they may just be another couple of piercings for her. We are meant to see a softer side of Salander, but don’t let her new toys fool you. Once she takes them for a test run with a new guy and an old girlfriend, she’s still the same feisty-cum-deadly adversary we’ve grown to love.

Her bisexuality fits right in with the popular freewheeling stereotype of Sweden, but homophobic cops do not, nor do the unequal treatment, sexual harassment, and brutalization of women, especially the psychiatric professionals who have “a state-endorsed mandate to tie down disobedient little girls with leather straps.”

In addition, while Blomkvist, the other central character in both books, is fine with his primary lover, Erica Berger, being married, and she admits to enjoying the occasional ménage, even he would never consider a three-way with she and her husband. That just doesn’t seem Swedish, if you know what I mean.

In Larsson’s first book, each chapter was introduced with a statistic of the abuse women suffer in Sweden at the hands of men. Indeed, the original title of that book was “Men Who Hate Women.” In The Girl Who Played With Fire, big money criminals, petty thugs and a corrupt SAPO (Swedish National Police Board), collide with a thriving sex trade. If sex is so freely available in Sweden, how do prostitutes and their pimps thrive?

Larsson gives us a birds-eye view of ordinary middle class people living conventional lives. The other lesson is that purchased sex comes with permission to be brutal, and therefore attracts a certain brand of customer. With the former, we indulge in one of the primary pleasures of foreign fiction – a glimpse at how other people live their lives, but with the latter we get the author’s point-of-view through both Salander and Blomkvist.

“What’s right,” is something both characters contemplate. Loyalty is at the top of the list for each of them, and Salander is learning about friendship. A major turn for Lisbeth is her growing ability to trust men. Frequent coincidence is an all too convenient authorial device to move the plot forward. Both the police and a private detective agency are a bunch of inept bunglers, but I ignored them because I wanted to find out what happened next.

I was hoping that Salander would mete out her particular form of punishment to the bad guys with a full charge of her taser. I was not disappointed. Even without that charming bit of modern technology, Lisbeth is a quick thinker, lithe, and she fights with everything she’s got. The girl has suffered plenty in her life, and it’s payback time moderfokker!*

*contrived reviewer Swedish slang

First appeared in Blogcritics Books http://bit.ly/af5kTm

shame

Paulo Coelho

“The secrets we take to the grave are sexual in nature.” Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology.

I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea.

I don’t think my kids would be surprised at learning - if they don’t know already - that I celebrate my (past) sexual experience. I wish I had a youtube of my memories.

Revelation, not discretion, is our pop goddess and public mea culpas and apologias are so in vogue, and yet so tiresome.

What shames me more is revealing fear and vulnerability. Don’t care who knows it when I’m dead, it’s the here and now of it that’s more frightening.

What’s Wrong With Being Girly?

New Line Pictures and Wendy Finerman Productions are co-producing Jill Smolinski’s

The Next Thing on My List. The announcement was made by Gregg Goldstein in The Hollywood Reporter yesterday, and also by Jessica Barnes in Cinematical.

In Smolinski’s story, her heroine’s life changes forever when she decides to complete a list started by a new acquaintance who dies next to her in a car crash. The list includes simple acts like going braless all the way to the hard stuff like pitching a new idea at work and on to the monumental — changing someone’s life. It’s written in a straight-forward, witty style with a momentum that carries it swiftly forward.

Barnes says ". . . List will be joining a growing slate of so called 'girly' films that New Line is scheduling for the coming year." She also refers to films for those of the "female persuasion."

In my opinion, there’s enough buddy love in the film industry for every man, woman, child and dog in the country. Dubbed bromance, the category includes films such as 300 and Superbad (both of which my son strongly urged me to see; think he went with a buddy), and practically every film Owen Wilson has been in (even when he has a girlfriend, his buddy is usually just as important).

Girly stuff is not frivolous, it’s fun. We can be serious and deep, but we also like to be silly. I’ve tried to get my significant other to be more girly when we watch television together. I can leave it off. He can't. I don't even want to go into the dynamics of remote-control-dominion.

I'm way past the stage where the shallower aspects of girliness consume me. It's just a part of the package. Girly has morphed into woman into the outer reaches of crone. So call me girly, click your tongue and yell out chica. Yeah, baby, that's me.

Back to watching TV with my man. I throw out one-liners which he ignores. My gf’s would never do that. They’d laugh, rebut, rejoinder or all of the foregoing. It’s always fun.

"Pretend we’re really close girlfriends who like to laugh and chat when we’re together," I suggest in my endless-yet-futile effort to make television watching more interesting.

His response: "Are we bisexual girlfriends?"

So, that girly gambit didn’t work the way I’d hoped. He needs to read Jill’s book. See the movie when it’s released. It’ll be a date movie, for sure, and we all know what that means.