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From: "H. Jekyll" <h_jekyll2000@yahoo.com>
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Subject: {ASSM} [deirdre fest]   "A Portrait of deirdre"  (essay)
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Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 08:10:01 -0400
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Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories
Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d

"A Portrait of deirdre"

(essay)

by H. Jekyll

* * * * *

Copyright 2006 by H. Jekyll. All rights reserved. Permission is granted
to the "Journal of Desire" to repost. Any others, please ask permission
first. 

I appreciate comments and inquiries, even criticisms, and I absolutely
promise to respond to them. Please send them to: h_jekyll2000@yahoo.com

* * * * *

Who is deirdre? 

She's a mysterious figure in the world of sex stories. 

That's part of her allure. But can we cipher out much about her? Yes we
can. She actually left clues about herself, enough that a dedicated
data miner might make some progress in identifying her - if, say, the
National Security Agency were interested in tracking down retired
sex-story authors. Many people wanted to communicate with her, to talk,
to share, but she rebuffed them all. She was "too chicken" she said.
One would have to go against her wishes to find her. I'm not dissuaded,
though. The "Hyde" side of my persona led me to look for her. And I
finally found her.

She's Mrs. Mildred Anondot, of 65862 E. Penet Drive, Hoboken, New
Jersey.

No. Of course not. I didn't, and wouldn't, and probably couldn't find
deirdre. She doesn't have to worry about the knock on the door, not
that I would know of, but I was serious about the clues, and I'll share
those in a few moments. For now, though, it's enough to know that she's
one of us. And she is special.

She's one of us in many ways. She loves sex stories, loves to read
them, loves to write them. She posts under a nym, as do most of us. Of
course those things don't make her `special.' Thousands of people write
and post sex stories to the Internet every year. Perhaps millions read
those stories. Those alone don't hint at her special something.

Throughout the years she posted she was much more reclusive than most
of us, and that itself gives her a mystique. She wrote that she never
spoke with anyone via email, and that emails sent to her would not
arrive. She seems not to have sent any text to a.s.s.d., or to any
other discussion site on Usenet, at least not under her deirdre nym.
You'd think she wasn't there at all, except that she posted 156 stories
through the most famous anonymous remailer in Internet history:
anon.penet.fi. When Penet closed down, she did too, though of course
she didn't tell anyone if that was the reason. 

She'd left once before, in June 1994, five months into her gig, that
first time with a good-bye statement that mentioned a threat to her
anonymity as a reason. There was wailing on the alt.sex hierarchy, and
people posted offers to help with her privacy issues. Then, a few
months later, she returned with no fanfare, as though she'd never been
gone. Two years further down the road, though, it was different. Poof!
She went without warning, after mentioning in a late post that she had
three (unnamed) stories in the pipeline. By late August 1996 she was
without her long-time Penet email addy, but she'd had a couple of
months to make a transition, had she wanted to. People begged her to
return. No good.

The reclusiveness isn't enough, though, is it? A great many people post
a few stories but are never heard from directly. There must be more,
and there is. Of course there's the number of her stories, and then
there is their quirkiness. Unlike almost the whole of alt.sex.stories,
deirdre didn't dwell on body parts or fluids or the sounds people are
supposed to make during sex. The stories aren't even about the sex by
itself. They are about what goes on inside the narrator, a rather bland
person who fits into the stereotyped `good' suburban life, when she (or
he, or they) stumbles onto a vast sexual underground and is overwhelmed
by it. 

Reading her is like running across little David Lynch vignettes. Life
is as it appears in promotional brochures, ordinary, quiet, frankly
pretty meaningless, though mindlessly `happy.' Then someone lifts the
curtain and you see your next door neighbor whipping his sexy wife, and
nothing is ever again the same. Sometimes - often - deirdre's narrator
doesn't even join in the activities, but thinks about it while she
masturbates, over and over. It's enough that now she *knows*.

The narrator and all like her are so innocent, so blind to
alternatives, so convinced that middle-class normality actually
describes the real world, that that they don't know what to think when
they get their first glance through the looking glass. Throughout her
stories, deirdre uses *asterisks* to give emphasis to statements of the
astonishment they feel [read Please Cain's essay for more on that].
It's a terribly trite phrase, today, but I'll use it: when I see
deirdre's asterisks I think of the eyes of deer in the headlights,
about to encounter a force they could never imagine. Every time.

That's special, folks. But wait! There's more!

It isn't just that deirdre gave us this picture of the world. It's who,
or more accurately `what' deirdre herself is. She's someone from that
bland, middle-class world. She's the person no one would ever consider
to be the author or those fantasies, the shy housewife and mother, a
virgin when she met her husband, one hundred percent conventional,
everyone's icon of conservative sexuality: the good, little, white
girl. 

For those of you of a certain age, she's Laura Petrie, Mary Tyler
Moore's role on the old "Dick Van Dyke Show." Most sitcoms of the
mid-60s were aggressively sexless and played out 1950s issues of
getting along in the organizational world, which meant suppressing and
concealing anything that might make them seem different from other
people. Laura was certainly lovely in her Capri pants, and she and her
husband Rob kissed and hugged, but they slept in separate beds. She was
the helpful wife who worked very hard indeed to fit into the
neighborhood and their social circle, to not cause waves, not bother
people, to be friendly and helpful and agreeable, to help her husband
Rob's career, to appear to be what people (including her husband!)
expected. Now imagine this: what if she was secretly fantasizing that a
strange man was tying her up and spanking her? What if, off camera, she
was masturbating to the fantasy? That's deirdre in real life. 

What if a strange man really *was* spanking Laura? That takes us into
deirdre's story land.

Still more: deirdre's stories don't concern sexual interludes,
good-little-white-girl sex. It's not sweet, vanilla lovemaking for
deirdre, almost ever. That's not what drives her. It's sex as its own
driving force. Over and again in her stories sex forces  a couple apart
- but the lust is so overwhelming they often don't care. It's all about
crossing over, being swept away by a power one scarcely knew existed,
giving in to desire and pleasure, leaving the humdrum, daylight world
of Rob and Laura for one that is darker and much more interesting. And
it's all about sex. That's what gives deirdre's stories staying power.

*****

How can I make these statements about deirdre? How does one know
anything at all about her? 

Well, to begin, she wasn't as silent about herself as you'd think, for
someone who in some ways seemed as solitary as an oyster. She actually
talked. Oh, how she talked! She began making little comments as
introductions to stories a few months into her career, and these
blossomed almost immediately into monologues. They were written in a
different voice than that of her narrators. Read them. She's chatty,
warm - hell, she's even arrogant!  While she *says* she's a chicken,
her introductions are written by a person who is in control, relaxed,
comfortable in her milieu, and on equal terms with other netizens.

What did she write about? Many of the same things other people write
about on discussion groups such as a.s.s.d.  She reviewed stories: "To
Joy: They've Got the Sheryl Crow Nude Pics (I don't remember the
author). Celeste didn't give it a 10, but by the end of it, I was
rolling on the floor, laughing. It gets a 10 from me. - Deirdre"

[NOTE: the author was our own Please Cain]

She talked about the need for anonymity, hers and others': "As I've
said before, I've got things set up so all mail to me is erased before
it reaches me: though I treasure feedback, I treasure my anonymity even
more and go to ridiculous lengths to guard it."  

She talked about her need for feedback: "So I live on the feedback that
comes over alt.sex.stories and alt.sex.stories.d and Celeste provides
almost all of that." And, "I have to admit that I live for Celeste's
reviews." And, "..I love the reviews! Yes, yes, yes, thankyou,
thankyou! We writers are *desperate* for feedback-we *thrive* on it."

She could be introspective: "I feel compelled to comment on the recent
posts regarding Ann Douglas.  The announcement that she had left us hit
me very hard: I found myself thinking about her numerous times over the
next couple of days, then only to read Ann's explanation as well as
that her identity had been revealed, which is my own very worst
nightmare."

She reviewed her own stories: About `Field,' she wrote: "This is a
strange and silly story-a little fantasy about a woman who discovers a
*real* stud." Another of her stories, she said, was "obviously inspired
by some of our fine a.s.s.d. reading."
She could be miffed about story codes: "I offer no labels this time: a
preachy and slightly inaccurate FAQ Memo on the subject made me feel
sufficiently contrary to refuse...."
She wrote to give advice about how to write, in a little essay about
"how to effect prolificacy."

She even addressed people directly: "And a note to Kateri/Mary Anne
[Jekyll note: that's Mary Anne Mohanraj]: your public appeal for my
address almost induced me to write to you directly, but I chickened
out." Or: "And a note to Celeste who went on and on (and on) on the
subject of bisexuality..."

*****

So she was quite the chatterbox. Amongst all that, she talked a lot
about herself. What did she tell us? Some of it was extremely personal.
This has always been awfully interesting to me. Her stories are so
minimalist that it's as though she deliberately obscured herself, but
then she suddenly couldn't seem to keep from telling the reader about
her innermost being. If you join these with elements that come up in
her stories over and again, you can almost see her. I think she
experienced a conflict common in sex-story land: a fear of disclosure
and a desire to be able to tell people about oneself, to disclose. In a
few cases a story actually has features that are virtually identical to
things she said about herself in her introductions, which I think
document the "autobiographical," or even confessional, elements of the
stories.

So what did she deliberately tell us? That she had been a virgin until
she met her future husband. That she'd had one lesbian experience as a
young adult, where she got to second base, and she considered herself
both bisexual and monogamous. That she read her husband's "Penthouse
Variations" and "Penthouse Letters." That she had favorite writers
on-line (e.g., Parker, J. Boswell), and favorite books in print ("The
Story of O," "Beatrice"). That even her husband knew nothing of her
stories.

Other things were more demographic. In Spring 1994 she was 43 years
old, married, with two kids, was college educated, worked in an office,
had cable TV that got the CNBC network, had reading interests that
suggest a Lit major (e.g., "Candide") but was tech-savvy enough to have
been accessing unconventional sexual material on Usenet since at least
1989 (when "Perverts' and Weirdoes' Digest"  folded and "Cindy's
Torment" -  the first story ever to be censored by Usenet - was
originally posted), and to find and use an anonymous remailer.

Then there was the information that she didn't tell the reader
directly, but that you can glean from reading her stories. 

About  herself:  Her narrator often isn't "bad" looking but isn't a
knockout either, and is often almost pathologically shy and unable to
assert herself against even outrageous demands by acquaintances. She's
jealous of and fascinated by women with Hollywood bodies, especially
their breasts. Again and again, we're told the narrator or someone else
often would be really good looking if she lost just a little weight. 

She posted one story that is completely different from anything else:
"Fashion." It's a sexual romance, in which the narrator, a man, married
to a woman who looks perfect, has pity sex with a good friend, a plain,
somewhat ungainly woman with too-small breasts and too-large hips, and
straight brown hair she doesn't do anything with. He falls for her
because she loves sex with him so much and has more personality than
his wife, and she wins him in the end. This has the feel of deirdre's
view of herself.

I went back through the stories to find what other sorts of things she
mentions over and again, versus what sorts of things never get
mentioned. So some of this is a picture that emerges if you stand back
a ways and make your eyes all blurry.

Let's start. The one state specifically mentioned as a living place is
California. She mentions moving "out West," and traveling from "the
coast," and flying across the country. Stories mention NYC, Boston, San
Francisco, and Hawaii (this one, just for a honeymoon; likewise Aruba,
and St Thomas). One couple lives on the route to a cottage on the
Atlantic coast. In one story the male narrator *had* been in Atlanta at
a trade show when the real action was happening back home. Otherwise
deirdre is bicoastal as well as bisexual. She shares the fly-over
prejudice that is so common among people from the West Coast and the
Northeast. She's certainly not from Des Moines or Dallas.

The stories are overwhelmingly about white folks. There's one, hot
story about an Asian family. There's a very, *very* occasional black or
Latina. deirdre has one black woman who's name is "Letty," a name that
probably hasn't been used by an African American since, oh, 1930. This
lack of ethnic diversity is the one thing that keeps me from simply
concluding that California is her home. This is more like New York
outside the city, or Greenwich, Connecticut, but it could easily be one
of those white enclaves in California, north of Los Angeles.

Her outdoor scenes fit the places she favors. She often has events
occurring in forested hills, around lakes, or on beaches. She mentions
pines and hardwoods, but not firs. Could that be meaningful? Let's not
take too big a step.

The stories are thick with college students, dorms, sororities, best
friends from college, children coming home from college, houses with
rooms let out to college students, and fun with professors and deans.
She sets stories on small, liberal-arts colleges in the woods,
sometimes marked with more lakes.

Many stories have apartment settings, but others are set in clearly
suburban, sometimes obviously upscale, neighborhoods. There are often
swimming pools - in the narrator's yard or next door - privacy fences,
barbequing, working in the gardens, weeding, raking the leaves, or
washing the car. These being quiet suburbs, people can peak into
windows or have sex outside at night without too much risk of getting
caught. 

The working world is meaningless, a succession of office jobs for
unnamed firms that are notable mainly for the fact that they provide
opportunities for bizarre sex. The off-work world is more developed,
consisting of that stereotyped `ideal' middle-class life I mentioned.
People belong to clubs or spas. They have friends over for dinner and
parties. They go shopping with friends or meet them in bars or
restaurants. They seem to drink a lot. Wedding parties are in large
hotels. People vacation at Mexican resorts and honeymoon in the
Caribbean. If they have money they buy houses on the beach. They don't
go to church, except for the old one that has a basement suitable for
doing stuff to sex slaves. They watch a lot of TV and keep the VCR
stores afloat.

One odd thing is that she is silent on computers, though she lived with
them and wrote her stories on them, in a non-DOS based Word Processing
system.

Overall, though, what does all this suggest about  deirdre? Now - fair
warning! - here I'm talking about textual analysis, the sort of thing
that can be so misleading that it lets people claim that any one of a
dozen or more people other than William Shakespeare *really* wrote his
poems and plays. With that in mind, let me tell you about her. I'll
make it sound like I'm certain about these things, though I'm not.

She's a white, non-Hispanic American, from the Northeast or California,
in a mid-sized city or suburb, near a college or university campus. She
works, or worked, in a  university (possibly a large, research-oriented
one, where she would have had early internet access) but not as a
professor. There are both forested hills and beaches within easy drives
of her home - it absolutely isn't Omaha. Her family is "comfortable,"
meaning they have enough money to occasionally travel to foreign
resorts and they live in an upper middle class community. It wouldn't
surprise me if since her retirement they've moved to one of today's
ubiquitous and boring gated communities. She prefers mixed drinks. Her
parents could afford to send her to a private, liberal arts college.
I'll go further. In for a penny ... The author is a tad above middle
height, with brown hair, a little plump, and not terribly
large-breasted - say a B cup. Her family background was fairly
conservative (I tend to see her parents as conservative Catholics - a
wild guess), but she and her husband aren't very religious. 

Some of these are easy guesses. For goodness sake, I could guess that
at her current age she's plagued with hot flashes and night sweats, and
may even have libido issues. I can't be proven wrong. But the guesses
are frankly as boring as Laura Petrie's life. I'm not tracking her
down, and whether she lives in the Hudson River Valley or the Napa
Valley is pretty unimportant. The important thing is what  goes on
inside her. It's her humanity, the person, someone you want to get to
know. I too am taken with the mystery, and behind it I find a sadness.

What I mean is this: when I read deirdre, I find myself feeling sorry
for her, which might seem odd, given how sexed up her stories make me,
and how successful she was by the standards of Usenet. There's a degree
of sexual loneliness to her, something experienced by everyone who has
to closet themselves, but that's not the whole story. She's also
socially alone. She has to hide the very things that make her so
interesting. She knows she's good, that in her stories she was able to
tap into aspects of desire that most others missed, and to do it over
and over. She knows how much people on the newsgroups talked about her.
My goodness, we're doing a festival in her honor a decade after she
left, and Usenet's memory is almost nonexistent! 

She could be famous - but no. No she can't. She can't ever tell anyone
in her perfect community, can't take credit for her accomplishments,
certainly can't let people touch her secret self. Can you imagine her
having a good, serious conversation with someone about her sex-story
career? I hope after all these years she has a best friend she can
confide in, but I doubt it. I'm afraid she really is trapped in that
Laura Petrie world.

Or maybe I'm wrong. Your imagination can play tricks on you. It can
take you unawares to mythical places. So I imagine that deirdre goes
through her ordinary days, working in some office with white ceilings
and beige carpets, shopping for shoes and day-planners, driving through
rush-hour traffic, all the while desperately playing back the scenario
in which her best friend's teenage daughter seduces her and makes her a
plaything. Thoughts have many sources and are not to be trusted. It's
likely that my imagination is like Henry Ford's view of history: bunk.
Most people are reasonably happy, even those with secrets. Laura Petrie
can be happy too.


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-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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