Wishing on a Blue Star

by Kris Jacen

  So to recap and wrap up, you’ll see me occasionally in Twitter or on the groups when I have the energy or when I am not trying to write. If I’m not there, it doesn’t mean I don’t want to be, trust me. :)

  Think good thoughts I can find a way around the chemo brain thing, because all the stories are still there, but they don’t have a convenient outlet right now, and I’d love nothing more to get them on paper and into your hot little hands. :)

  Cheers all!

  Love,

  Patric

  Friday, October 23, 2009

  Chemo, second treatment.

  I really wish Google allowed it so you could open two different blogs at once. Grr...

  I have to post something here so folks coming in from the “big announcement” will find a destination...

  So, second treatment. Mildly sick, not tired (Wasnt tired the day after the first treatment either!) Got the damn hiccups though. Partly a result from the last treatment and the erosion, and partly as a side effect of this treatment. As I said, I get unusual side effects. Meh.

  Still forgetful, of course. Short term memory seems the most affected. Gah. PITA!

  Oh, and here’s a new thing. My taste buds are shot. I have no idea what thats all about. Time for more research!

  I havent put chemo brain to the test yet. Havent tried to write. Wanted to get the blog posts up first, because it took like four hours to answer all the messages. Hopefully the post, and these updates will answer enough questions that when I do feel like writing, I’ll actually have time!

  The kids came over to shave my head. Let me be the first to say that shedding worse than the cats sucks, hard, and doesnt buy breakfast afterward! Gods. I know that coughing spate the other night was me sucking stray hair off my damned pillow!

  Ok. Head shaved. Looks odd, but no where near as strange as I thought. I’d been ramping up for it anyway, cutting my hair shorter and shorter. This was the last logical step. What I didnt expect was how velvety my scalp feels. So strange. No wonder everyone always wants to rub the dang thing. Heh

  Cute guys get it for free. Everyone else pays a quarter. lol.

  Ok, thats enough for now.

  Thanks for the good thoughts and well wishes!

  And remember please... I am good with whats going on, and you should be too. To make a really BAD pun, “Don’t cry for me, Argentina.”

  Lol

  Saturday, October 24, 2009

  I’m touched, though not in the head. :)

  Thank you everybody, for your thoughts, wishes, prayers, and comments. To say I am touched by them is a massive understatement. Flabbergasted might be closer. :)

  I havent written (yet) today, but I did manage to get some chores done which have been nagging at me. We live on a couple of acres, and tradition holds that it is my job to “button us up” for the coming winter. Last winter we lost chunks of several trees due to ice and storm, and the resulting wood laying around got split with the help of a neighbor and a nifty machine. I want one!

  The drawback of course was doing something with it, so some friends came over and stacked it for us. I remember a time when I could move that fast, for that long! :)

  What was left was a bunch of twigs and limbs that would cost more energy to cut up than they would produce, so it got put into the burn pile. Or rather, added to an existing burn pile. (I was working last year and missed burning season.) Today, finally, I got caught up. Remember, after twenty five years of doing this, the habit is strong, and it was nagging at me. I blew a wad of energy, and it took all bloody day, but it’s done!

  Just a few more minor chores, like making sure the generators run properly and draining the irrigation lines for the garden, and I’ll have nothing but drugs to distract me from writing. Whoo hoo!

  Oh, I found out that it’s the Vincristine that’s probably responsible for the loss of taste. This is a new side effect for me. I was fine the last time around. I guess that means Papa has to do the cooking still. I can just imagine HIS face if *I* were the one to season the chili. :)

  Lets see, last bit of news. I got a bit more than 500 words written last night. Pure crap when you consider I used to get 5,000 or so in a day, but words is words! I probably would have gotten far more if I hadnt written the blog stuff, but that was sort of important. I’ve lost a huge sense of guilt from not being able to answer emails as fast as usual, and thank you all for accepting the admittedly odd request I made. It truly does help a great deal. :)

  Now see? Didnt I warn you that these updates would be boring? Laugh. So just for fun, and for taking the time to slog through this nonsense, here is a random bit from the story I am currently working on. It’s the opening to an adventure-ish thing that I started as a lark. Often times, since I am pure crap at outlining (Shh... Trade secret there!) I woll start with a single sentence. In this case, it was a single word. At the time, I was having rather severe chills, so the word made perfect sense to me. :D

  1

  Snow. Miles of the stuff stretched out before him like a vast white ocean, broken only by a small dark hump already half buried by the constantly moving drifts. That dark shape was Merrick’s destination, and it would be home until this latest storm blew over. The sheer immensity of the sky overhead, a leaden gray-white in the afternoon light, seemed to bear down on him as he pulled the zipper on the small tent’s forward flap.

  “Jeez. How far do did you have to go? Katmandu?” Dale Andressen chided Merrick as he hunched himself inside and zipped the flap shut.

  “Just a few yards out,” Merrick replied. “I dug out a small nook to get out of the wind.”

  “You should have just peed in the bag. That’s what it’s for, you know.” Dale scowled at his partner, but the expression on his face was as loving as it was severe.

  “I know, I know. I just hate dragging the damn thing around. Besides, you can’t write your name in a bag.” Merrick grinned as he pulled off his gloves and outer jacket. The snow already packed up against their small tent was a perfect insulator to catch and retain the heat from their small stove.

  Dale frowned. “You freeze that thing off and you won’t have anything to write with.” He pushed one of the laden packs aside to make room. “Come over here and warm me up.”

  Merrick quirked an eyebrow and knocked the snow from his boots as he took them off. “Is that all you had in mind?” He left his boots and jacket, and as much of the snow that had been clinging to his pants as he could brush off, in the outer vestibule and crawled further inside. The wind rattled the outer flaps as he zipped the inner flaps closed and scooted across the small space to lean against Dale, careful not to upset the stove. “Sounds like it’s getting worse.”

  “It probably is,” Dale said. “And when the sun goes down it’s going to get a helluva lot colder. We may have to share body heat to survive.”

  Merrick laughed. “Ha! I knew you had an ulterior motive.” He cupped his hand behind Dale’s head and leaned in for a kiss. As always, the flare of passion that enveloped him, despite the rough stubble on both their faces, warmed and thrilled him in equal measure. Dale hummed as he opened for his partner and as always, the sound went straight to the base of Merrick’s spine, pooling there like molten silver. Merrick tilted his head slightly and dipped his tongue beneath Dale’s, finding and capturing that faint flavor that was the very hallmark of his partner’s identity. Dale obliged by lifting his tongue to caress the roof of Merrick’s mouth, still humming faintly. They separated when their mutual need for air overcame their desire and they laughed breathlessly.

  Thanks again for all the comments!

  Patric

  Saturday, October 24, 2009

  Busy night with the kids.

  Honestly, how can I possibly grump about not getting anything written when the kids come over because they decided they wanted to carve pumpkins?

  And of course, their daughter, Princess Leaks-a-Lot is forever a charmer, and I can never turn down an opportunity to snuggle the baby.


  I can always write tomorrow, right? :)

  Just Being

  Jaime Samms

  On the television screen, the six-legged, pink-freckled creature with three eye stalks reared up on its back legs, tromped onto the enemy critter and promptly collapsed. The game Spore was nothing if not an exercise in the absolutely ridiculous. I couldn’t explain why I loved it so much unless it was maybe because I could create anything at all, and no matter how foolish or impractical, it would excel at some part of the quest I needed it to fulfill. If only life could be like that.

  But life is not a Wii game and being afraid of it is a little like not being able to breathe properly. Worrying about who you are and if people will like you tightens the screws and closes bands of fear around you until you forget what it ever felt like to breathe clean air or expand your lungs. I spent a long time squeezing myself into a box and shutting out the fresh air. Years and years, a little bit at a time, putting up the walls and locking the doors and being very careful not to take any chances.

  Staring at that foolish pink critter on the screen, watching it hop and dance on command, the sounds of the game disappearing under the wail of my roommate Kennedy’s horrendous violin playing, maybe I just got tired. Maybe I was more afraid of suffocating than I was of poisoning myself with risk.

  So I decided. I stopped holding my breath.

  I just let it all out in one big sigh, and the best part about it was that, for once, Kennedy, stopped his incessant violin playing.

  He played all the time. Badly. Really, really badly. And by all the time, I mean all the time. You have no idea. I thought I was used to it, but when he suddenly stopped for a minute the silence was so loud I didn’t even notice he was staring at me.

  “Skippy?” his eyes, big, brown and doe-like behind his glasses bugged a bit more.

  “Dude, you seriously have to stop calling me that,” I snarled at him as I came back to myself.

  “Sorry.” Though the way he said it told me he wasn’t sorry at all. Probably the grin gave him away. “Are you okay? You look a little…flushed.”

  “I-I’m fine. I just…”

  He stood there, violin dangling, bow poised out from his body like he intended to use it as a rapier any moment. The sight, coupled with his skinny frame and shock of red hair, registered as hilarious and the final stick in the dam snapped. I rolled onto my back laughing.

  He came over as my hilarity slowed and died and poked me with his bow. “That’s fine? I’d hate to see hysterical.”

  I lay on my back looking up at his concerned face, wondering when he’d grown out of the geeky floppiness he’d had since college. “Why do you play the violin?”

  “Um.” He tilted his head at me. “Hello, random.” He sat on the edge of the couch beside me and alternated fiddling with the hairs on his bow and glancing at me. “Because. I like it.”

  “You suck. You know that.”

  I braced for him to get mad, but he just nodded. “I do. In more ways than one.” He never failed to grab an opportunity to remind me how very much he liked cock. This time, I found myself fascinated by his lips as he spoke. “I can play when you’re not here, if you want.”

  “No!” I sat up, alarmed by the speed with which my mind fell into his gutter trap. I did imagine him playing, all alone in the house, but his violin never entered my mental picture. Heat flashed up to my hairline and he gave me a lascivious grin.

  I pushed myself back to get a better look at him. He was always so calm, so still, and aside from that huge, knowing smile, he still watched me from a pool of steady patience. Of all the people I’d ever known, he was definitely the most geeky, the most ill fit to blend into society. And the most unaware of his awkwardness. I know I’d always felt on the inside the way he looked on the outside, but he never showed the first sign of caring what anyone thought.

  I swallowed, unsure where all this deep analysis was coming from. “No. Don’t stop playing on my account. Lord. Six years. I barely hear it anymore.”

  “So. What was the sudden gasp and abusing the game equipment all about?” He bent, picked up the Wii remote and handed it to me.

  As my fingers brushed over his, all that sudden, illuminating freedom rushed like a retreating wave back inside and I clamped my lips shut.

  For a long moment, he watched me, his gaze searching while I held my breath and my tongue. He sighed.

  “You know, Skippy, after six years, you might not hear my playing, but I can hear what you’re not saying.”

  “Yeah?” The room spun around me a bit, my vision narrowed, and there was Kennedy’s face at the center of it, a bad b-movie special effect.

  A light, secretive smile crossed his face and he stood as he spoke. “I didn’t agree to share this house with you just for the cheap rent.” He swished a bit, letting the violin bow swing from thumb and forefinger as he walked away. That shouldn’t have made me do a double take, but I was so busy watching his ass swish lightly down the hall I almost missed the kiss he blew over his shoulder.

  And that was why I held my breath so much of the time. After six years, how did I say ‘I’m not really as straight as I’ve been letting on—exactly’, to the guy I wanted to nail? The guy who’d patiently watched me burn through one girlfriend after another and likely even made tea and cookies for them when I was too busy being a jerk to notice they needed the attention.

  “Kennedy?” I’d followed him after a few minutes, and stood outside his bedroom door. He’d left it open a crack and I could hear him putting away his instrument.

  “Come on in.”

  I pushed the door open with two fingers, watched him setting the case on the shelf above his desk. His room was immaculate. He had a ton of stuff. Every bit of it was neatly stowed on the bookshelves around the room. One thing I always associated with him was this endless array of shelved stuff. Books and hobbies and clothes and things that mattered to him; so much of it and he never lost track of anything.

  Turning toward me with a smile and a speculative look, he reminded me why I’d waited so long. Here was the one person in my life I could not risk. Better to hold my breath, keep my dubious peace, than to risk.

  “You’re still not ready?”

  “Ready for what?”

  There went the room again, spinning, and him at the center. I reached out a hand to steady myself, and, oddly, it landed on his chest. Flat, a little bit boney, it didn’t feel like…

  He smiled, and I realized I was fondling him, flexing my fingers against the soft flannel of the over shirt he always wore.

  “Then again, maybe you are.” He layered his hand over mine, held it there. He was so warm. So close.

  “Breathe, Skippy.”

  “Can’t.” I managed to lift my gaze from my fingers curled around soft plaid to his lips. Almost to his eyes. It took his fingers under my chin to get that far.

  “Let go.”

  “I–”

  His thumb touched my lips, quieting me. “Breathe.”

  “How?”

  “Just let it come naturally.”

  “I don’t know what’s natural anymore.” It felt good to have his hand on the side of my face, though, and to feel his heart beating under my palm.

  “This isn’t hard.”

  “Uh–speak for yourself.”

  He gave that brilliant comment the eye-roll it deserved.

  “You’re not behaving like this is a surprise to you,” I said, wondering if I’d been hiding only from myself after all.

  He stepped back a bit. “I’ve known you for six years.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t–”

  “Know?” he tilted his head. “Really?”

  “Well.” I tried to get annoyed, to be angry at him for being so matter-of-fact. “I don’t…know.” I could feel the clamps tightening again. The old habit of backing away, of telling myself no, surfaced and shuffled me backwards toward the door. Being afraid was what I knew.

  “What do you think will happen if y
ou let go?” he asked, like he was simply curious and not at all like he was trying to force the issue.

  I opened my mouth.

  He touched my lips with his fingers to stop me answering. “If you say ‘I don’ know,’ I’ll have to kiss you to shut you up.”

  I closed my mouth again and for the first time, his eyes narrowed, his pale cheeks went a little paler. His bottom lip quivered up between his teeth and he let it go again.

  “I’m scared,” I whispered, wondering if I was echoing his own feelings right then.

  “Of a kiss?” his fingers on my face were gentle. “Don’t think I didn’t notice how you did that, making it look like you’re opening up, but still avoiding the inevitable.”

  “Which is?”

  He lowered his lashes and stepped out of reach.

  “Wait. Wha-what are you doing?”

  “I’m being responsible, Skippy.”

  “Why?”

  He sighed through a smile and sat on his bed. “Because this is important, and you might want to talk it through before you jump into sex.” He looked up at me and I saw exactly what he wasn’t saying. He didn’t want to get hurt.

  “Well. No. I mean. Wait, sex?”

  “Not that I’m easy or anything, Skippy, but six years.”

  “Stop calling me Skippy.” I plopped onto the bed next to him. The air this close was thinner, easier to process.