Reeling from all the stuff.

OK, first off, Kristin, I'm with Cindy in wanting the final paragraph to be concise and unsentimental. And I've got no strong feelings about the title, which means that, in my head, it's probably fine. My friend Ellen Sussman - she wrote a very good weepy novel called On A Night Like This) - had a My Turn piece published. It was gut-wrenching, talking about when she was gang-raped, beaten and left to die, and how she deals with it in her writing and in talking to Sophy and Gillian about it (her daughters). This sounds like a perfect piece for them; I was thinking about submitting a piece myself, but not for awhile yet. Also, I couldn't find their submission guidelines anywhere. Can you link?

erika, this one's really coming together. Some minor stuff:

Something doesn’t fit or is uneven, she can train it back or trim it, squirt it with water or product, something.

This stopped me, because the phrasing sounds like a positive statement: Something doesn't fit. I know it's purely stylistic, but I really think you need to open that sentence with a conjunction or an adverb or something to qualify it: If something doesn't fit or When something doesn't fit. The first half of that sentence is a cause, the second half is a resulting action. Right now, it reads like two separate statements, so I got thrown.

This floored me:

It’s not hard to get stuck in the past in this salon...salon being a gross overstatement. This is an old-school beauty shop, not one of those sybaritic temples to Paul Mitchell promising coconut-scented hairgasms.

This:

She can see the sigh over her head in a balloon like in her kids’ comic books.

Needs a bit of restructuring. Maybe something like "She can see the sigh, in a balloon over her head, like something in one of her kids' comic books." Also, I'd break the paragraph after "books".

Because I’m not fucking dead, Pete.

I'd italicise that, since it's a response in her head, and it ought to be visually broken out from the narrative.

As much as I love "her husband would do more than make lovesick faces at the Nancy Spungeon wanna-be next door.", I'm not sure how many of your readers would know she was Sid Vicious' girlfriend.

I'd suggest a slight rephrase here, to make it flow: "Then, she is touched by the trust." Simply "She's touched by Lynda's trust", to take away the sense of a clock ticking.

And one more thing - when she's commenting on Lynda's good bones, and she says "under all that", I somehow saw Cousin It, face entirely obscured by hair.

(and since I hate the name Lynda, with that spelling, because that was Nicky's miserable life-ruining wife's real name, I feel all noble for not letting it get in my way...)

Speaking of which...

Inverted

My first impression of him is not nearly so important to me as his of me.

Mine: a thickening of blood, a sense of urgency, need, want, something beyond words. Physically there were long beautiful fingers, brown eyes taking up half his face, thin chestnut-blonde hair, a voice I would never lose again, a smile that owned my heart.

His: I know because, shameless and young and insatiably curious, I asked him. Tell me what you thought, that first time you saw me? Please?

He smiled, and brushed his lips against my hair, and told me. I thought, here comes something different.

TEPPY: what's wrong with the livejournal GWW? It's been giving me "no posting in here, read only" for a good 45 minutes now.

quasi-Orwellian numberslut

If they had been girlfriends and eavesdropped on “Soul Train” together, she might have said “Ain’t no thing.”

This line is brilliant. The idea of "eavesdropping" is a perfect kind of nod/way to call attention to appropriation: sharp, but not crass.

I often wonder how one sticks to their politics in fiction... I stuggle with it, especially in humorous pieces --my humour is decidely non pc-- but ultimately the risque joke seems to quash my pocofemsensibilities.

For those writers on lj, a new community where you can ask those nagging questions of what's possible and what can I get away with. Looks like it could be very useful.

[link]

Thanks, skipper.

My mother still says that and "copacetic" sometimes from her Don Cornelius phase. My writing always has political messages in it, sometimes when I don't think I want them.ETA: Whew, just under the limit...anybody want to beta...if you can do it in the next few days, mind you, because it's got to have time to be fixed and get to the City of The BrokenHearted by mail. But I don't mind telling y'all that I am most impressed with myself for even having a mostly-finished story this length in this time frame, coming from nothing just a few days ago. Right this minute, I feel like I rule.(Won't last, that's why I'm documenting it.)

erika, send. I'll do my damndest to get to yours - and Susan's - later today, after my neuro appointment.

OK... Didn't want to strain the marriage. I think it's almost there, though, the story.