Baaaaaad Sex Scenes

UGH. It's snowing again. And I'm gonna have to drive in it.

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On the bright side, I may have negotiated my way out of a problematic situation with a Remuneration client who has been bawking about paying me half up front. May have, being the operative phrase there.

But that's standard in work-for-hire arrangements, I told him, which is true enough.

Also on the bright side: I slept eight hours last night.

A few days ago, I did something to my back. It was a very weird pain, right between my shoulder blades at the very spot from which my wings would sprout if only I were an angel.

I have no idea what I actually did to produce this pain. And it has partially resolved, but also partially not—now, it's a right-sided ache just below my right scapula with some nerve involvement because I can feel it in my right arm & hand.

It's not heartstoppingly painful.

But when I lie on my right side, it's a dull, steady message from the interior. And I sleep mostly on my right side. So, the ache has been screwing with my sleep. Yesterday, I was absolutely brain-dead but managed to get through the top five items on my To Do List—becawse ya gotta do what ya gotta do. But I didn't enjoy any of it.

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In Work In Progress news, I tried to start writing Part II but failed to make headway.

For this visit, we'd formulated an agenda, I wrote. Storm King for the Calders, Olana for the Persian arches and views of the Hudson River's tidal inlets (this year blooming with algae). Teilhard de Chardin is buried at the Culinary Institute of America—who knew?—so we were going to pay our respects to the Omega Point and afterwards dine on truffle soup and braised cuisse de canard Bourguignon at the student-staffed French restaurant. Mostly, though, we planned to fuck.

I mean, it's a good cheap laugh, and it sets the stage for chronicling Neal's erotic encounters—but it is not grounded in anything that actually happened: Real-life Daria and real-life Neal did not have a particularly workable sexual relationship.

But since I do want this part of the novel to be erotic, I spent some time last evening reading the rather horrible chick lit writer Emily Henry's rather horrible Funny Story. It was loaded with bad sex scenes! This filled me simultaneously with horror—the sex scenes are baaaaaaaaad—but also hope—because Funny Story was a bestseller, and I could toss off sex scenes like that in my sleep. On the nights I get some.