sex with aliens
Aug. 23rd, 2003 01:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ursulaIn which we cross our fingers and hope my boyfriend's father doesn't really read my journal.
I've read a lot of sex-with-aliens in my time. I realized recently, however, that most of it has been fundamentally straight; though of course there are exceptions (Octavia Butler, for example), ordinarily a straight human imagines the alien as a human of the opposite sex, with some interesting cosmetic differences. This doesn't mean it isn't weird enough; try White Queen, where the (male) human gets it wrong and ends up raped, or the more-straightforward People of the Sky, in which saving the world requires sex with giant parasitic butterflies. Still . . . If you're having sex with an alien anyway, isn't there room for a bit more variety?
***
Sara wanted women she could imagine being. No vast differences, not for her; just the straight hair curling right above the shoulders, or a half-smile she might have practiced in the mirror for hours, back when she was twelve and thought if she looked right, everything would follow. A little bit angrier, a little bit more certain . . . Or even freckles scattered across the nose, where she would burn. All terribly ordinary.
Though they said you didn’t end up in the Bureau of Alien Affairs unless you were one already, and Sara had, so how ordinary could she be? Especially to end up on this planet. Somebody somewhere had thought she’d fit, some psych profiler with a safe little computer in a safe dry ship up there in the sky. It rained here, a lot. It was fundamentally moist. And they touched you. They were always touching, all the time, it was how they communicated, slinking around you in families and clans and unmapped intergenerational tangles. You couldn’t stop them, they had to run their hands over your hair, your breasts, slip stiff tentacle-hairs in between your fingertips. Your hair was damp and your hands were clammy but they curled on top of you, not breathing, just inhaling somehow, dragging water and life through their pores, like plants. Sara tried not breathing, tried shrinking in, shaving her head and her hair and showering until she was smooth. Clean through every cranny. That was what human showers were for, separation.
And then the damp got into the lock and their liaison had squirmed into her room before she’d unwrapped herself from the towel. What do you do then? Hook yourself into a bra and assorted feminine armor before a curl could slide around your nipple?
What do you do on your six-month leave, when the psych tells you, of course you'd like it, you had obvious gender abnormalities?
What do you do when an alien moans she loves you?
I've read a lot of sex-with-aliens in my time. I realized recently, however, that most of it has been fundamentally straight; though of course there are exceptions (Octavia Butler, for example), ordinarily a straight human imagines the alien as a human of the opposite sex, with some interesting cosmetic differences. This doesn't mean it isn't weird enough; try White Queen, where the (male) human gets it wrong and ends up raped, or the more-straightforward People of the Sky, in which saving the world requires sex with giant parasitic butterflies. Still . . . If you're having sex with an alien anyway, isn't there room for a bit more variety?
***
Sara wanted women she could imagine being. No vast differences, not for her; just the straight hair curling right above the shoulders, or a half-smile she might have practiced in the mirror for hours, back when she was twelve and thought if she looked right, everything would follow. A little bit angrier, a little bit more certain . . . Or even freckles scattered across the nose, where she would burn. All terribly ordinary.
Though they said you didn’t end up in the Bureau of Alien Affairs unless you were one already, and Sara had, so how ordinary could she be? Especially to end up on this planet. Somebody somewhere had thought she’d fit, some psych profiler with a safe little computer in a safe dry ship up there in the sky. It rained here, a lot. It was fundamentally moist. And they touched you. They were always touching, all the time, it was how they communicated, slinking around you in families and clans and unmapped intergenerational tangles. You couldn’t stop them, they had to run their hands over your hair, your breasts, slip stiff tentacle-hairs in between your fingertips. Your hair was damp and your hands were clammy but they curled on top of you, not breathing, just inhaling somehow, dragging water and life through their pores, like plants. Sara tried not breathing, tried shrinking in, shaving her head and her hair and showering until she was smooth. Clean through every cranny. That was what human showers were for, separation.
And then the damp got into the lock and their liaison had squirmed into her room before she’d unwrapped herself from the towel. What do you do then? Hook yourself into a bra and assorted feminine armor before a curl could slide around your nipple?
What do you do on your six-month leave, when the psych tells you, of course you'd like it, you had obvious gender abnormalities?
What do you do when an alien moans she loves you?
(no subject)
Date: 2003-08-25 04:30 pm (UTC)I like the prawn idea, though-- except prawns are kind of scaley, and I was definitely heading more in the squishing direction.