She’s relentless. That’s what they say about her. She makes a choice and she follows it through, with the determination of a Rottweiler, whether she’s going after a john, casing a pimp out of her territory, or getting the girls who walk her streets to get their shit together. Usually they call her a bitch, but she laughs it off because, well, she likes the violent connotation.

She fucks for money. She never much liked the word prostitute, it sounds like a ‘social disease’ that some stuffy shithead in a suit attributed to ‘fallen women’ and no one has said anything better. She knows the activists are using the term ‘sex worker’ and she’s okay with it. It applies too, but if you ask her, straight up, she’ll say she fucks for money. Whore is a sacred word, to her, and one only a couple of people get to whisper to her in the heat of passion.

She works the streets because she likes to catch the violent johns off guard and take them out of the equation. Six years ago she got caught cutting a guy’s cock off and feeding it to him. She found a ACLU lawyer just as crazy as she was and they got the charge reduced no nothing. She spent six months in prison. In that time, she became a sort of martyr. Wherever people were demanding rights for sex workers, they held up pictures of her, even if she did kill someone in cold blood.

Sometimes she still feels things. She’s not a sociopath, so far as she can tell, but she can turn it all off when she needs to. But that whole ‘hardened’ thing is bullshit. She just chooses when she cries. And that isn’t often. She hunts so long as she’s still physically able to, and after that, she might take those activists up on their regular requests to come help them out. For now, killing fuckers who go too far is more useful than shouting at congress. She fucks way too many congressmen to think they’ll listen. Yet.

News people, good detectives, vampire hunters, all sorts of people come looking for answers about what’s going on in her turf. Even the werewolves won’t move in where she’s working because they think she’s crazier than they are dangerous. Or maybe it’s the same thing.

They say crazy. She says empowered. But that’s a debate for college students and bloggers.

She’s not a junkie, she fucks because she likes to. Men tend to be more trouble than they’re worth, so keeping them emotionally at arm’s length is the way to go. She doesn’t like junkies working in her turf. Too dangerous. Raises the risk of disease. But she’s got contacts in programs. They might help the junkies, she can’t. They may just get them out of her hair, and that suits her just as well.

She’s proud, dynamic, and aggressive in her sexuality. She fucks who she wants and doesn’t do anything she doesn’t want to. She’s arrogant, sometimes, and she rubs people raw. They either lover her for it or hate her, but in the end, they don’t walk on her. A poet she’s fucking calls her a ‘force of nature’ and pities anyone who tries to tie her down. She burns copies of ‘Pretty Women’ at protests and can quote Veronica Franco when it suits her but she never finished high school.

She’s been raped, she’s been beaten, but so have plenty of suburban housewives, if you ask her about it she’ll remind you.

She’ll deck you if she has to, but she’s rather hold you tight and kiss you till you shut up and do what she wants.

You can’t stop her, you can only survive her. She’s not a victim of the patriarchy, she’s the reason they’re afraid of women. And one day, she’s coming for them.

So yes, this is a highly idealized situation. Many sex workers in the US are beaten down, abused, and unable to stand up for themselves like this. I don’t think that’s the way it has to be, and I CERTIANLY don’t think it should be that way. That’s another post, however. Point is, you don’t want to play the millions of boys who go off to war and just get killed, you want to play the hero of war. The one who gets through the gritty reality and becomes a legend.

I want the same thing.

I don’t want you to punish me with STDs, even if that’s realistic, because I’m playing a sexually liberated woman who uses her talents (not just her body) to make herself powerful within her society and subculture. I don’t demand your war hero have crippling PTSD or life threatening cancer, because this is fantasy.

I don’t want you to punish me with pregnancy because that is not a story I want to tell with this character. (Unless I’ve told you otherwise.) I don’t want you to punish me with pregnancy because I think it’s sick to treat the creation of a new human being as a means to subjugate another human being. I have heard, in some form or another, GMs actually say, “ha ha, I’ll show that slut. I’ll just have her get pregnant and she’ll have to stop playing the character.” Worse still, then they hold the threat of ‘murdering the baby’ over my head if I play the character any way. Anything, in their sick little world, could result in miscarriage. It’s cruel and it’s weird and I want you to stop and think before using a creation of new life as a ‘consequence.’ Think about what that says to the people at your table. Think about what that means. It is not a thing than would ever be used to stop a male character, and so it’s an inherently unfair punishment for, frankly, something that doesn’t need to be punished.

In this particular fantasy, this woman has killed to avenge herself or her friends, but she isn’t a professional killer any more than your super hero who hunts down serial killers. And considerably less than your badass mercenary. There is a revenge element in this part of my fantasy that isn’t necessary for every sex worker character or even a majority of them. In that case, the violence free sex worker whose only crime is controlling her sexuality and making it work for her instead being a victim to it should be treated the same as your musician who entertain audiences and should be seen as more noble than your gun runner or your drug dealer.

That said, it’s for a contest, so you can all go there and blame Chuck Wendig. So without further ado, I give you,

I Wanna Do Laser: A Flash Erotica

By Filamena Young

He was a hairless gorilla, frankly. A Neanderthal who shaved is chest and plucked his eyebrow. Women said they found him attractive because he was athletic but ‘clean cut.’ Really American.

I knew better. Women found him attractive because on some level, most of us want to be fucked by a caveman at least once in our lives.

It was a tradition at this point, I’d wait outside the locker room to try to get an interview or a post ‘game’ wrap up.

(This was not my idea of journalism, mind you, but it was a paying job and there was no serious work for pretty young journalists right out of school, so you take what you can get. I’d report on the injustices in Gaza and the poverty of Haiti when I could afford the shots to travel and maybe get myself one of those really good digital video cameras. Independent, fierce, in-demand and passionate, that would be me.)

Instead, I’m getting paid to pretend to be a sports journalist and wait for ‘the scoop’ outside of the men’s locker room. He passes me and smiles without looking me in the eyes, it’s tradition, you see, he won’t acknowledge that I’m there until after he’s had a shower. ‘I’ve got to cool down afterwards,’ he’s told me in a candid moment last month, ‘for your sake.’

But today it was different, he passed by and smiled without looking, but I felt his hand pass like a ghost past my shoulder, flicking my hair so that it fell back and away down my back; like he wanted to expose my neck. He was already headed into the locker room, but I watched his meaty shoulders rise and fall as if he were taking in a tremendous breath.

I talked to the rest of his teammates. They were thrilled to talk, still jammed from their matches of the day. I made it quick, eager to get rid of them so I could get out of there, get away. Like I needed to get away before he finished his ‘cool down,’ though to this day I couldn’t tell you why I felt that creeping sense of panic.

When I was done getting my quotes for the show’s producers tomorrow, I turned to leave, and got three hurried steps down the hallway before I felt a weight on my shoulder like a bear paw. I turned, sharply, and found myself face to face with him.

“Jim, what are you doing?” We’d been friendly, conversational, but he’d never gotten this close, he was in my personal space, toe to toe with me, and breathing down into my face. I couldn’t look past his eyes, wild and unabashedly intense.

“You’re a good girl, Tracy; a nice girl who wants to do big things someday. I like that about you. That’s why I’ve been trying so hard to ignore it, ignore the thing you want between us. I don’t want to ruin your life.” There was sadness there, too, behind the intensity, like a force of nature with a conscience. “But I can’t ignore it anymore, the way you smell.” He took in another deep breath and cupped my shoulder. “I can’t ignore your desire.” He tilted his head to the side and leaned in as if he was going to kiss me, but instead nuzzled his face into my neck and shoulder. His other hand slipped behind me and lifted me. He pressed me, off the ground, into the wall supported by his one thick arm.

“Jim,” I asked again, “what are you doing? This is… I don’t even like you. You’re a meat head.” I put hands on his shoulders and managed at least to get him to move back enough to look him in the eyes, even if I was still held up against the wall.

He searched my eyes; they were different tonight, not just in intensity but also in color. Golden, luminous, and catching the cold florescent light so that his eyes seemed to glow. “I think you know I’m more than that. I don’t know if you know it in your conscious mind, but I think you know in that repressed brain stem of yours just exactly what I really am.”

Visions of ancient woods, of strong-bodied wolves hunting and howling, eating and fucking passed through my mind’s eye, and I felt his arms tighten around me. I mouthed ‘werewolf’ but could not say it aloud.

He nodded once. “I don’t want to do it, Tracy, but neither of us can escape fate. Maybe, instead, we can just try and… enjoy the ride?” Without ceremony, he dropped his after-show sweatpants to the ground and I could feel the solid force of his erection against my thigh. Apparently, it wasn’t steroids that made him so muscular. I grinned without meaning to.

“What do you want me to say? Jim? You say this is fate? I think you’re a creep, but you just,” I breathed in and felt a rush of endorphins. “You just smell so good.”

He nodded in understanding, using his free hand to push up my skirt and toy with, before simply pushing my panties aside. “Just say it.”

“Say what?” I tried to stare him down, give him the full brunt of my disgust for him, but it was a lie. I knew what he knew; I could smell destiny and sweat mixed together in his skin.

“You know what to say.” He grinned, all teeth, and pushed my knees apart.

I did. “Damnit. I wanna to do Laser!” I tossed my head back into the wall as he forced himself up into me, grunted, and dug his teeth into my throat.

-Fin

That said, today, I wrote such a peace in response to a contest about geektatude. You can read it here, and see the photo that inspired the totally-true-if-not-for-the-made-up-parts account that explains why JR Blackwell dances with Stormtroopers. I’ll let you decide for yourself which parts are made up. (Hint: Not Much.)

This is not a challenge to Mrs. Blackwell, as I know well and good that the Missus is far geeker than I. Still, it had to be done.

PS. Yes, there are better ways I should have spent those thousand words, but not many.