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From: PleaseCain@aol.com
Subject: {ASSM} [deirdre Fest] Deirdre's Short Attention Span by PleaseCain
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Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 06:10:03 -0400
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Originally published in Mark Aster's Journal of Desire, Spring/Summer 2000.
Look for a new issue of the Journal in 2006.

Reposted for the deirdre Festival, April 15-30, 2006

For a hyperlinked version of this essay, leading to the stories mentioned, 
see
http://members.aol.com/deirarchiv/essay.htm



Deirdre's Short Attention Span: Toasting the Queen of Brevity and Kink
by PleaseCain


"Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head,
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup,
And looking up I noticed I was late.
Found my coat and grabbed my hat, made the bus in seconds flat.
Found my way upstairs, and gasped:
There was my husband and my gynecologist,
Naked beneath labcoats, and plugs in their *rear holes!*
And somebody spoke, 'One sugar or two?'
It was my neighbor Darlene ... in black corset and heels!"

-- "A Day in the Life of deirdre"


During my initial forays onto the Internet in 1994, before the ubiquitousness 
of the Web or anything as ridiculous as e-commerce or spam, the Usenet 
newsgroups had the feel of a wild, woolly frontier, subversive and lawless, 
rambunctious and anarchic, typified by the alt.* hierarchy and newsgroups like 
alt.sex.stories.  Beyond your power button stretched a landscape of erotica, smut, 
twisted humor, technophilia and funky fetishes of stripes I couldn't have 
concocted in a hundred years (yes, Virginia, men will fuck anything that moves, and 
they're seldom that picky).  If "The Story of O" or "9-1/2 Weeks" still raised 
your eyebrows as you were installing your modem on Monday, then by Wednesday 
Pauline Reage or Kim Basinger decked out in strawberries and milk were old 
hat.  Sure, most of it was frivolous crap, but look around you now, Charlie, and 
the same applies, except that the pie is a whole lot larger.  As an accidental 
discovery, however, the bust-a-gut fun of this madhouse was a delight I will 
always remember, like the first time I saw "Blue Velvet," except the 
pottymouth girls and boys of alt.sex.stories gave you the finger without any of David 
Lynch's sour cynicism, Na-na Na-na Na Na!

To this day, when I read a deirdre story I feel the same giddy excitement as 
on those first dalliances on the Internet, as strong a mnemonic trigger as any 
smell or song to have transported me to another time or place. 

Throughout that spring of 1994 deirdre peppered alt.sex.stories with 85 
stories that stuck out from the rollicking sardonic glob of alt.sex.stories like 
the marshmallows in your Lucky Charms.  Her stories exemplified the attitude and 
freewheeling naughtiness of the newsgroup in general, with a wink of the 
subversive and a pinch on the bottom to send you out the door.  There were other 
good writers posting then, but deirdre's stories were structured little gems: I 
would download massive files containing dozens of stories--a grabbag of 
styles and genres, of interesting titles, improbable story codes, clever 
pseudonyms, and whatever else struck my fancy--then sign off and read, read, read.  
Eventually I distinguished one crazy chick from the din, a real daredevil, with 
her one-word story titles and quirky intrigues built into each tale, and when I 
logged on the next time she would have even more stories waiting for me.  Of 
course, that first standout was deirdre, and her stories embodied the hilarity 
of the place, and turned me into a devoted reader.  For this association 
alone, deirdre would be my favorite Internet writer; for many other reasons, she 
was also the best Internet writer.  I'd venture from her perennial popularity 
amongst readers and writers alike that many others would agree. 

According to the prefacing remarks she sometimes included with her stories 
(including notes and disclaimers that her countless re-posters see fit to 
remove), deirdre shared the unremarkable suburban lifestyle of many of her 
characters: she was in her early 40s, married, monogamous, with two children, and a 
vanilla sex life far removed from the trade of her stories.  In fact, her husband 
was unaware of her writings, and she took great pains to hide her identity by 
posting through an anonymous mailer and purportedly establishing some sort of 
circuitous system whereby all fanmail was deleted before reaching her 
mailbox.  Likewise, she wasn't much for PR or self-promotion--I think she would place 
herself in the school of "shut up and write"--and I've known of no person 
carrying on any sort of correspondence with her before her disappearance from 
Usenet.  

Some have remarked their disappointment that the queen of naughty Internet 
should have submerged--Poof!--without a trace, but what's to rag about?  When a 
woman feels confident enough to protect herself and still contribute 156 
stories on the Internet before she decides to retire that particular alter-ego and 
move on, I'd say the system works just grand, and aren't we left with a great 
body of work to boot? 

In the introduction to "Desire" from January 1996, deirdre offered her tips 
on "how to effect prolificacy":

"(1) Save up at least two years of stories before you post any. Then once you 
start posting them, you seem like you're turning them out left and right.

"(2) There's no such thing as a mistake: post your worst story as well as 
your best.

"(3) It's best to have a short attention span: that prevents your stories 
from growing too long, thus you can turn out more. And it definitely saves you 
from dangerous distractions like novel-writing.

"(4) Once you think your reader knows what is going to happen, it's time to 
end the story. No point in actually meeting their expectations: you could be 
working on your next story.

"So you see, you too can be prolific. Happy writing!"

Can I hear an Amen!  That attitude made deirdre such a good writer, and what 
she called her "short attention span" says to me she understood her medium and 
wrote accordingly.  Nowhere is that more apparent than in the length of her 
stories.

A quick spin around shows that many Usenet writers, good and bad, mistakenly 
assume that bigger is better, that sprawling stories loaded with action scenes 
are your best entertainment value.  Do these people have steel rods in their 
necks?  I once slouched before my monitor long enough to read a short 
electronic novel; it was a good novel, and I will never do it again.  It wasn't 
reading, it was more like yoga, and not good yoga.  And this was a professionally 
published novel: nice writing, developed ideas, interesting plot, touching all 
the bases that most amateur stuff doesn't.  For those of human physiology and 
full-time employment, it's just not a great experience.  Likewise, these sexual 
epics on the newsgroups.  After you've slogged through and the payoff isn't 
there, you turn tail and run the next time you see something running 70KB, 
85KB, 100-plusKB.  At this point I get seasick even at series of stories.  Not to 
denigrate the generosity of volunteer writers, but the payoff simply isn't 
there enough of the time to make it worth the effort of reading.

Now deirdre understood that powerful stories aren't necessarily short but 
they are as concise as a punch.  Parse the language, build the story structure 
and get where you're going.  It's harder than it sounds, a skill years in 
developing.  Deirdre pared three-quarters of her stories to 15KB or less, or fewer 
than 2,600 words; one-third were shorter than 1,500 words; and only six 
exceeded 25KB or 4,500 words.  The average length of her stories was only 12KB, 
somewhere south of 1,900 words.  That's how many words you need to write a good 
story.  I realize I'm on a rant about a subject as trivial as sex stories, but 
that's just my point: they need not be lengthy at all, nor should they be.  
Deirdre's stories are 20-minute reads, and still the most memorable you'll 
encounter.  She should have run a writing camp, with a red pen in one hand and a 
paddle in the other.


Having perfected the art of truly short short stories, deirdre could really 
whip them out and build up her numbers.  No doubt the barge of 85 stories she 
posted that spring of 1994 followed from her first piece of advice above, but 
her writing jag hadn't ended there.  Over the next two years she posted another 
71 stories, bringing her total by summer 1996 to an incredible 156 in some 26 
months, real journeyman numbers, and she is the most prolific Internet writer 
I know.

I'm not certain a lot of people remember deirdre for having written so many 
stories, but the fact that she did so allowed that short attention span of hers 
to roam a wide range of genres, and it makes perfect sense that so many 
people include a least one of her stories among their favorites.  Often pegged as a 
BDSM author writing from the perspective of a submissive woman (yes, the 
small "d" is her spelling), deirdre actually wrote dozens of stories with male 
narrators, and numerous others outside the realm of BDSM, including several 
noteworthy romantic stories.  If you think she was a one-trick pony, read "Beach" 
or "Groom" or my favorite, the bittersweet "Fashion," although "Cheerleader" 
may be even more interesting for her trademark mischief on the romantic genre.  
Different again are two of her best, and funniest, stories: "Field" spoofs the 
typical fare found on the newsgroups, including some self-ribbing; and 
"Company" parodies corporate culture.

One common element in her stories is the plot twist, a device honed over the 
course of her writings and employed with whipsaw effect that would have 
delighted Hitchcock.  It's a talent that gives each story a funhouse-like quality, 
with ticklish little boobytraps set to spring from hidden corners, and like 
reading or watching a good mystery, your mind inevitably tries guessing the 
outcome.  Of course, after you've read several you can guess where some may lead, 
and yet deirdre will still throw pitches you won't expect; after you've 
finished the 156th story you will feel a twinge of sadness that you've run out of her 
puzzles. 

Deirdre's plot twists go hand-in-hand with her wry sense of humor.  Irony 
pervades her stories like August humidity.  One of the entertainments of the 
fiction writer must be her godlike power over her characters and their fates, a 
diversion deirdre relished to the fullest; as her unsuspecting characters 
stumble through the mazes of her stories toward their destinies and sexual 
epiphanies, one can detect the tiniest of smirks on deirdre's face.  Like 20-minute 
Greek tragedies (and this is aside from her predilection for rough anal play), we 
watch deirdre lead her characters to their moments of revelation, when they 
discover something irrevocable about themselves at the story's climax.  A 
typical scenario follows the hitherto "normal" person who discovers her submissive 
orientation, as in "Chest" and "Clean," or better yet, the dominant person 
whom fate (read, the author) cruelly twists into a submissive, as in "Big" or 
"Games."  These plots must have presented unique challenges to deirdre as a 
writer, since all but one of the stories is told in the first-person: imagine 
devising dozens of stories in which the person telling the tale (along with the 
reader) is the last person in on the joke.

To serve her subject matter and plot twists, this mischievous goddess cast as 
her hapless pawns characters who are parodies of the suburban mentality she 
herself knew so well.  Seemingly intelligent and well-educated, these 
"ordinary" people -- white suburbanites for whom sex is synonymous with the missionary 
position and best left behind closed doors -- stumble onto dark subcurrents of 
kinky sexuality as onto dens of snakes, accidentally uncovering 
conspiratorial worlds of perversion that move unseen amidst work-a-day society, similar to 
the aliens-among-us themes of science fiction or Anne Rice's subcultures of 
immortal vampires.  These chance discoveries are dangerous not only because they 
involve sexual taboos, but also for what they expose in the startled 
characters themselves.  They react with laughable incredulousness; deirdre had a great 
ear for throw-away utterances to signal her characters' shock at their 
situations, and often dressed their declamations with the nerdy Internet convention 
of the asterisk for emphasis.  Run reel:

"Of *all* things!"

I was aghast!

Gina and I didn't *talk* about such things.

What was I to think!

I couldn't believe it. Sitting here having this conversation. How could 
Brenda do this? 

My jaw dropped. It couldn't be! 

They were *doing it!* It was plain as the nose on their faces. 

I realized that I was getting a little turned on and I struggled to hide it! 
Imagine, getting turned on during a physical examination! 

I could have died right there. Where did she get such ideas? I'd never heard 
of such a thing!

I gasped.

I was staring at them, open-mouthed, wondering what was going on. "Oh, come 
on, hurry!" said the woman. I still didn't approach any closer, and soon I 
realized they were moving toward me. 

And her mouth--what she said to the guys and me! I still can't believe some 
of the nasty things she said!

Such thoughts! I'm married, with no plans of divorce or cheating! It wouldn't 
be the least bit all right! 

"I just can't believe you would be doing this!"

I couldn't believe it. Our Gail! 

(And there is another quote I love, which I haven't been able to locate for 
this article, about a nightclub, to the effect of: "We stopped together for a 
drink at a nice local bar, not that I go there more than once or twice a 
year.")

These set-up lines are the wink-and-a-nudge for an upcoming pratfall, the 
point when you begin feeling sorry for the doomed marionette narrating the story 
(or maybe not, depending again upon the plot twist).  Such knee-jerk 
expressions of exasperation are part of deirdre's schtick, so much so that even the 
abused asterisks become endearing.  We watch her unwitting characters paralyzed 
by their own indecision, like the bird hypnotized by the snake, and the results 
may be entertaining or sensual or shocking, but always deirdre lampoons the 
priggish mores that treat sexuality as a blackbox to be neither explored nor 
discussed.  It is a joke that at least Americans are in on, living in a society 
so squeamish about sexuality. 

I'll guess it also doesn't hurt that deirdre wrote exciting, creative sex 
too, eh, and that her stories are simply fun, apart from any literary or social 
mumbo-jumbo.  And she wrote so many stories that she touched practically every 
base and appealed to every taste.  Judging from the continued re-postings of 
her stories and from comments by readers, deirdre's popularity remains high 
five years after her retirement, no mean feat in the disposable culture of the 
Internet.  While much of her class is gone and forgotten and been supplanted by 
successive waves of writers coming and going, she is still the best known and 
revered writer on the Internet, and has become something of a legend in the 
newsgroups--she's definitely got the Obi-Wan thing going on, as it should be, 
because her stories will be read years from now.  So here's to deirdre's short 
attention span.  If you haven't read her stories, or haven't in a while, go to 
it; this errant essay is longer than a majority of them.  Try "Date" or 
"Closet."  

*Enjoy.*


Find deirdre's complete stories at Transom,
http://members.aol.com/deirarchiv
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