Date: Sun, 16 Nov 1997 22:14:14 -0800
From: flamingoslim@delphi.com
Subject: Who are we???

Carol's note about where do we all live got me to thinkin'.  
<runnnnnn!>

I was going to suggest this the other day, but I was afraid it 
was just going to stir up trouble.  Still, here goes.  (I just 
don't know how to behave if I'm not stirring up trouble!!)

We have (I think) about 80 members, but most of them were on 
board before I showed up, so I never got to see any intros, just 
the one's Robin sent me.  

Maybe twice a year or so, we should do *brief* intros again, just 
so we can try to figure out who's who...or is this a terrible 
idea?  I'll go first so you all know where to throw the rocks! ;-
)

My real name is Kathy, and I write Miami Vice and S&H slash under 
the name Flamingo.  I don't know how long I've been on VP because 
I can't tell time and I rarely know what day it is.  But I am 
totally committed to the betterment of the world through Starsky.  
That's for sure!  

Pleased to meet'cha!

Flamingo


Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 17:32:55 -0400
From: flamingoslim@erols.com
Subject: Re: [VP]: Slash ponderings Part 1

Karen wrote a terrific letter, which really needs to be addressed 
on several levels.  Let me take this piece by piece, since this 
whole topic is especially fascinating to me for several reason.  

By the way, timid lurkers please take note: we have Audrey to 
thank for bringing this very interesting topic up, yet I know she 
was terribly hesitant to even say anything on the list because of 
her "newness" to the whole scene.  And yet, we've now stumbled 
across this universality of experience because she brought it up.  
I hope this might encourage some of our other neighbors who are 
also shy about responding or saying what's on their mind.  And I 
hope we can maintain our openness to all these different -- yet 
in someway similar -- experiences.

Karen Mann wrote:
> When I was first
> introduced into fandom three years ago, S&H slash fandom was 
still pretty
> much underground, and if you didn't know somebody who was 
already "in", it
> was not easy to get your foot in the door. 

This is so interesting to me, because I know S/H has been around 
since -- when?? Ruth, can you give us a year?  I know the first 
slash SH zine which was (I believe) Code 7 #1 came out I think in 
'82.  Can someone confirm that?  (If I'm ever gonna get this 
historical archive together, I'd better get my dates down, huh?)  
By the way, for all our European friends, I should remark that 
I'm only talking about fandom in the US.  I'm not sure how things 
progressed in Europe, and someone from across the big water will 
have to fill us in on that.  

I've been told there were very strong anti feelings about the 
development of SH slash, that most of the SH fans came out of 
Star Trek (a moment's pause out of respect for the First Fandom) 
and of course, there'd been a lot of resistance to Trek slash.  I 
understand that the shit really hit the fan in the letterzines 
about this topic and people got very passionate about it.  So 
much so, that people threatened to send Code 7 to the Spelling 
folks (I assume in the hopes that Spelling would sue or 
something).  So the people putting out Code 7 had to go 
underground, and that zine came out with no authors on the 
stories, no editor's names, a last-minute made up name for the 
press, etc.  And in fact the zine was pretty much handed off 
person to person and there is an admonishment in about the 
reader's responsibility to keep it safe and secret.  So, I guess, 
the tight security that came up around that first zine 
contributed to that feeling of slash fans against the universe, 
which made it hard to get in.  I'm a little surprised to realize 
that it was still hard to find your way in as little as three 
years ago, though, especially since slash is pretty much out 
there in other fandoms and not quite the dirty little secret it 
was back in the early 80's.

> I'm not accusing anyone and can
> understand the caution, I'm just very pleased that new fans are 
not having
> as hard a time finding S/H fanfic and fans as I did. The 'net' 
has made
> things a lot easier for new fans to find S&H - obvious thanks 
go out to many
> hard working *generous* fans far too numerous to mention by 
name.

Y'know, Karen, I'm not sure it's all *that* much easier to get 
in.  When Robin (the Good Mom) established VenicePlace as a 
closed slash list, you had to know another slash fan to get in. 
When Robin handed VP over to me (Bad Mom) I had to ask her what 
to do about people writing me cold from the Archive.  (Remember, 
the Archive hasn't been around that long, the list was here 
first.)  Some of these people were on other closed slash lists, 
which I could confirm, but some of the folks, like Audrey, were 
discovering fandom through the archives, through searches.  They 
didn't know anyone in fandom, they never saw zines, they'd never 
been to a con, but they were obviously fans, and many of them 
were slash fans without any connections. What should I do about 
introducing these folks to a closed list?  Robin said use my own 
judgement.  SCARY!! ;-)  

So, when people write to me via the archive, as Audrey did, I 
send them a chatty letter and see if they write back.  Usually 
the letter exchange goes back and forth a few times, and finally, 
if the vibes are good, I open my trench coat and say, "Hey, 
little girl, wanna join a slash list?"  But I always worry about 
it.  So far it's worked out great, but....  I've seen other lists 
totally destroyed by one nut case.  

Karen, do you think it took you longer to find your way in 
because you were "connected" to such an anti-slash crowd.  Fandom 
is a small world, and I've heard people say, "So-&-So is 
interested in slash but she hangs around with XX, and you know 
how *she* is!"  Ultimately, I know on the part of slash fans 
there's some concerns about having to deal with the anti crowd.  
I'm just wondering. 

Yep, I think that's enough for part 1 of this fascinating topic!

Flamingo


Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 18:33:29 -0400
From: flamingoslim@erols.com
Subject: Re: [VP]: Slash ponderings Part 2

Warning: this is way longer than I intended -- sorry.

Karen Mann wrote:
> I had no ideas of "sexual"
> slash between Starsky and Hutch when I first watched S&H in the 
70's - 
> All my fantasies were of the Mary Sue variety,  I usually ended 
up
> either helping S&H or needing to be rescued by them, and there 
were scads of
> scenarios with the guys in h/c situations. 

This was almost word for word my life as a 15 year old, Karen, 
only the show was Man From U.N.C.L.E. I wrote an epic on-going 
novel that killed a million trees about those two guys and me and 
my best girlfriend. Your writing about this reminds me that I was 
forever nursing Illya through some mortal wounding, which is 
funny, considering hurt/comfort does nothing for me now and I 
really don't "get it."  As I've mentioned, I felt quite 
proprietary toward Illya and nearly flipped 30 years later when I 
discovered they were slashing him and Napoleon.  I thought slash 
was fine, but NOT MY ILLYA.  I can read MFU slash now, but it 
almost never does anything for me and I never believe it because 
somewhere inside me I know Illya and I lived happily ever after, 
had a million kids, and a very full life with incredible 
adventures. :-)

I watched S&H in first run on and off, maybe I saw 20 eps tops.  
Starsky broke my heart, but I was between the ages of 24 - 28 and 
frankly, I was more interested in actively breaking real hearts 
myself.  I spent very little time watching TV and the only reason 
I watched what I did was because my "very best friend in the 
whole world" was suffering from depression from getting dumped by 
a guy and I couldn't get her away from the tube or out of her 
house.  So while I was trying to get her out somewhere where she 
could meet some other guy and get laid and forget the loser who 
dumped her I watched a lot of TV with her since she was totally 
addicted.  The Gillian episode and JoJo are the only ones I can 
really *remember* seeing.  

And Hutch made such a non-impression on me (he was just too good 
looking, and that always bored me) that 20 years later when 
forced to read S/H slash stories by a fan friend I absolutely 
could not remember which of the guys was which and was constantly 
asking my partner, "Which one's the blond?" to which she would 
exasperatingly yell, "HUTCH!" but I couldn't get it straight and 
had to reread many stories because I had envisioned the wrong one 
as the protagonist, etc.  I could remember that the dark one had 
that great ass and crotch, THAT I remembered -- I doubt if I 
looked any higher, and I was totally unaware that either had blue 
eyes and was frustrated to learn they both did since that didn't 
help me keep the characters separate.

I'd already been introduced to Trek slash which I thought was 
fun, provocative and sexy, but I wasn't a fan.  It never occurred 
to me to consider slashing any other characters, but it never 
occurred to me to consider writing anything about TV characters 
because all my writing was focused on getting published in 
mainstream publishing.  

I was primarily living a hetero life (to the max) and had a very 
hetero point of view about the world, fictional characters, and 
real people, however, I was a product of the sexual revolution, 
so baby, if it felt good, do it.  What they say about the 60's & 
70's is true, if it stood still, we fucked it.  So, every now and 
then I had this tendency to meet some woman who would knock me 
for a loop and I would develop this huge desire for her.  It was 
invariably a close friend, and I knew that even mentioning it 
would put a serious damper on the friendship, (even though I was 
a child of the 60's and loving one another was supposed to be 
cool, that kind of thing was much easier to explore in the hippie 
world of New York that I'd come from than in the much more 
conservative world of southern Maryland).  So I knew typically 
hetero people could develop these kinds of feelings for one 
another, and that I did, even if I didn't act on them (the term 
bisexual was rarely heard), but it never, ever occurred to me to 
fantasize about anyone else doing that, especially not two men.  

Karen says:
> I have
> always been attracted to close male partnerships - in movies, 
TV, books and
> real life - but guess I wasn't ready for the actual sexual 
aspects of a m/m
> relationship till I was older. 

I have never ever been attracted to close male partnerships -- in 
fact, they bored me.  Actually, men bored me.  I liked having 
them around for sex (assuming they were any good at it, which 
usually they weren't), but if I had to spend a lot of time with 
them I grew incredibly impatient and lost interest.  Oh, I fell 
in love with them on occasion, a couple of times real seriously, 
but I was always more comfortable with relationships that 
guaranteed there would be no permanency and not a whole lot of 
togetherness, because that would interfere with all the things I 
really wanted to do, which I didn't see any man being any part 
of.  Like hanging out with my best friends (all women), reading, 
writing, etc.  Men got in the way of this.

The male-saturated media where men were (and still are) 
constantly portrayed as the Be-all and Doers of All Things 
Exciting and women as this helpless passive minority has pissed 
me off all my life.  So TV didn't mean much to me.

I did love the whole idea of slash because it was uniquely a 
product by women for women, which was something I could support a 
hundred percent, because it was about sexual freedom and freedom 
of choice, something I've espoused since I discovered it, because 
it was anti-establishment, and it was politically dangerous.  
That just about covered all my philosophies.  However, since male 
partnerships bored me, I couldn't get into reading it, just 
supporting it philosophically.  This is why when I fell into 
Miami Vice fandom and started getting into slash my friends 
thought I was having a nervous breakdown.  

But here comes TRUE CONFESSIONS, guys.  I only really started 
writing slash because no one would read or publish my straight 
adult or straight/slash mixed stories.  I was much more 
interested in writing a sort of pan-sexual erotic fiction than I 
ever was with slash.  There were no women in slash.  This bored 
me.  I love women.  I live with women.  All my life my very best 
and closest and most interesting associations and relationships 
have been with women.  And the lack of women in slash and the 
absolute intolerance for women characters in slash made me veer 
away from it.  But no one would read my straight or mixed stuff.  
Editors wouldn't even look at it.  So I wrote slash because I 
could not imagine writing something that had no market at all.  I 
wrote slash because that was the market, and because I had 
learned early on in my writing career that marketing was 
everything.  I got used to writing slash (in Miami Vice), even 
though I never believed a single word I ever wrote.  I wrote 
Crockett/Tubbs at first, but no one would read *that* so I gave 
that up and wrote Crockett/Castillo, the most unbelievable 
pairing I could conceive off, because that is what people would 
read.  You must write for the market, first rule of writing.  

So that's my true confession.  I really don't buy into the slash 
scenario hardly ever even now (which is especially weird 
considering that I've been living with a woman for 16 years) and 
I always have to work to make it "plausible" to me.  I don't 
always succeed and have written many stories with a slash premise 
that I didn't believe in because I knew readers would.

I certainly never saw S&H as a slash pairing when I watched them 
in first run.  Hell, I was watching this Gorgeous Ass and the 
Invisible Man and if I'd had anything to say about it, the GA was 
gonna me mine and my best girlfriend could have the Invisible Man 
since he was more her type.

I will admit it's a lot easier for me to write S&H slash and to 
*see* S&H as a slash couple, because their relationship reflects 
the one I have with my partner.  They were best friends who (if 
you're writing a slash scenario) cross this line and fall in 
love.  My partner and I were both dating men when we met, and it 
was years before our friendship developed into a romantic/sexual 
relationship, though in all honesty I had major plans for her 
from the moment I laid eyes on her, it just took me a longer time 
than usual to brainwash her.  She's the more intellectual, quiet, 
introspective one.  I'm the one who looks before I leap.  Yeah, 
she's Hutch, I'm Starsky.  I've even got her seeing it now.  So I 
have a tendency to "believe" more of what I write in SH than I 
did in Vice, but...frankly, if there were a *real* market for 
straight erotic fiction in fandom (a real market, not a little 
tiny one that I know is there) I would probably still be there 
writing more of a "Pan-sexual" stories than what I'm doing now.

My reason first SH slash story, Crystal Blue Persuasion, is so 
interminably long is because I really didn't believe much of it, 
and I had a hell of a time getting the guys together in the first 
place.  (I'd seen 6 episodes.)  Hutch's reluctance is clearly a 
psychological replay of my partners, and I really didn't believe 
much of that story as I wrote it.  I labored over it intensely 
since I couldn't buy into the scenario.  I didn't see how anyone 
else could believe it either.  I remember Rosemary saying to me 
in dismay, "You got Martin Castillo, the most reticent character 
in television, to practically hang from the chandeliers with 
Sonny Crockett, and you can't believe that these two guys who 
couldn't keep their hands off each other don't end up in bed?  I 
don't understand you."  Eventually, I did what I always do -- I 
made it up.  That's the truth.  I'm still amazed that people like 
it as much as they do, since basically, I don't think it's very 
believable.  And it's too long.

So, like, now that I've confessed...do y'all still love me??

Flamingo

a bird of a different color

From: Flamingoslim@delphi.com
Date: 19 Jan, 1999
Glorug wrote:
> My husband had been totally cool about the whole thing. He 
never batted an eye
> when I finally got up the guts to tell him what I had been 
reading and
> writing.

Boy, this bring back memories.  Yeah, my partner never batted an 
eye either -- her eyes were WIDE open, stuck like that, they 
couldn't blink.... I'm kidding.  But she was startled.  ;-)

I've always been fascinated with how spouses (male or female) 
react when they learn that the person they thought they knew has 
developed a...different hobby.  The first time I started writing 
my first slash story (Anne's been sort of around Trek fandom for 
years so she knew about slash) it was a Deep Dark Secret which is 
hard to keep in a tiny house when you share the same office with 
your lover.  I'd sneak in and type furiously while she was in the 
shower only to have her sneak up on me (i.e.walking barefoot on 
carpet) and scare the shit out of my by asking, "What are you 
writing?"  (Previous to my slash obsession this was considered a 
Normal Question in our house.)  I'd yell, "NOTHING!!!  NOTHING!!" 
and throw my body across the screen.  Uh-huh.  Guilt are us.  

(Funny, this was the same reaction I had when the nuns would 
catch me writing my [straight but sexy] Man From UNCLE stories in 
high school Latin.  The nun would start walking up the aisle, 
threatening, "Well, it better be spelled N-O-T-H-I-N-G, young 
lady, or...." and I'd be considering how many pages of the 
written word I could rip out and consume before she got to me.)

Eventually, the truth came out.  Anne's biggest concern?  I kid 
you not.  She was worried that I'd meet some hot, sexy Lesbian 
fan and leave her. :-/  It was my turn not to bat an eye.  "Huh?" 
was my intellectual response as she got all anxious and teary-
eyed.  My next response was, "Forget it.  Nothing's worth your 
crying over it.  Let's go burn all the zines and tapes right now 
and forget this shit."  And I meant it.  Here I'm totally 
consumed with plotting how Sonny Crockett is gonna get somebody's 
pole up his wazoo and Anne's thinking fandom is some incredible 
hotbed of romance, lust and intrigue.  For all I know it might 
be, but I got all I can handle at home.  Once I made the burn the 
tapes remark, she was all grins and stopped worrying and we lived 
happily ever after, or we did until Starsky showed up.  Anne 
loved Vice.  She thinks S&H are "too goofy" to be considered 
romantic.  And she *really* gets pissed when I get all glassy-
eyed and insist, "But, honey, they're *us* -- you're an up-tight, 
anal-retentive pain in the ass just like Hutch and I'm carefree 
and fun-loving and a risk-taker just like Starsky."  Too bad I 
don't have his ass.  Anne has great legs like Hutch.  Somehow, 
she doesn't find this very complimentary.

But I know we've been living together too long (17 years just 
this Sunday) when I find her making S&H references to something 
*we're* doing.  It scares me.  The other day she actually quoted 
a show.  I'm making her watch them too much.  Guilt R Us.  It's 
okay.  She still thinks they're goofy.

> The best had to be recently though. I have a Sentinel zine that 
has been on my
> coffee table on more than one occassion and  features a naked 
Jim ass. My
> husband once remarked upon coming back from a trip "Ah, that's 
how I know I'm
> home...there's naked men's asses staring up at me from my 
coffee table"

This was so funny!! The things our poor spouses have to live 
with!  Like calendars of naked or near-naked men, zines with 
graphic art (Anne enjoyed threatening the painters with those) 
and other interesting items.  "My parents are coming.  You didn't 
leave that zine in the bathroom, did you???"  We have to have 
"substitute" art that fits over the pictures that are too sexy to 
let the housesitter see.  

The other day Anne noted that one of my co-worker was "hung like 
Starsky" and made soda go up my nose in a major way.  You have to 
understand that Anne looks at men's genitals probably as often as 
Glo's husband looks at men's butts.  It is like the most 
*disinteresting* part of a disinteresting organism for Anne.  
That's okay.  She's right about the co-worker, who always looks 
like he's got a watermelon in his pants.  (I've noticed this so 
much that I failed to notice the same co-worker wears glasses and 
I've worked with him for 10 years.)  But as I pointed out to her, 
"Yeah, he's incredibly hung, but he's built like a toothpick and 
you can't drive a 10 penny nail with a tack hammer."  Made beer 
go up her nose on that one.

> So anyway, he had apparently been looking at this ass more 
closely than even
> he realized. One day we are watching something on HBO which 
showed a man's
> naked ass. My husband, before he even seemed to realize what he 
was saying,
> quite casually said to me "Hey that looks like Jim's ass"
> You know you have a great slash tolerant marriage when your 
husband is picking
> out the asses for you off the TV
> And this guy on the TV DID have a great ass <g>
 
I can just hear him saying this!!!  Especially since Glo's 
husband has this marvelous, deep, rich, voice.  This must've been 
a riot!!

They deserve an award, the spouses of slash fans.  I came up with 
one and called it: S.L.U.R.P. -- Slash Lovers Understanding and 
Responsive Partners.  But that was too wimpy for Anne.  She came 
up with her own: S.P.E.R.M. -- Slash Partners Energetically 
Remaining Mundane.  We call it the more militant branch of the 
Slash Partners Affiliation.  (No, you don't want to put those two 
awards together, trust me. :-P )

Flamingo
