Mary Anne Mohanraj's Stories -- the 1990s

1999

• Minal in Winter: "Dear Raji Aunty, I hope you and Vivek Uncle are well. How is the painting going? The painting you sent on my birthday -- of the women bathing at the waterfall -- hangs over my bed. I think my mother would be shocked, but my roommates are very impressed that I have an aunt who paints such things. The women in their bright saris remind me of home..." All my letters to my aunt start like that, and never finish. I have written twenty or thirty of them in the last week. Words and lines and paragraphs of politeness, all true and all lies. I cannot write what I am really saying. I cannot write that I am in terrible trouble, and I don't know what to do...

• Seven Cups of Water: My brother's wedding day. The feasting lasted long past dark, and I went to bed exhausted. I first peeled off my sweat-soaked sari, rinsing my body with cool well water before changing into the white sari I wore to sleep. The old women had consulted the horoscopes of my brother and his young bride, had pronounced that this day, in this month, would be luckiest, in fact the only day that would not bring down a thousand curses on the young couple -- never mind that it was also one of the hottest days of the year. There was no flesh left on the old women's bones, nothing that could drip sweat; I am sure they enjoyed making the young ones miserable...

  1998

• And Can This Ever End? (a cyclic tale): Rosa. Rosa in the afternoon, sitting in the window with her hair falling down, hair so pale, so fair, a white waterfall cascading down and down and he loses himself in it, in this girl sitting in the window, reading a book with her eyes half-closed and her legs pulled up and the light behind her so she is only a shape at dusk, in the town library, a curving shape with white water falling behind...

• Esthely Blue: My toes curl and release. I am lying with my back against his chest, with my ass against his groin and him slowly going limp inside me. I am catching my breath, slowing down, listening to my heartbeat fill the room. I am waiting for the right moment to shift away; though it would be nice to cuddle, I'm dying of the heat. Yes, long enough, and in one movement I slip a little forward and he slides out and only our toes are touching now, way down at the bottom of my bed. And I look down the curve of my body, smiling, down the faint moonlit bed, down my thighs to knees and calves, looking for my toes -- they are not there. Ankle, heel, and emptiness...

• Johnny's Story: It was the summer before I started college. I was working in the factory and living with my family, saving up the money to buy my books and pay my rent, 'cause even if I had gotten a partial scholarship, it wasn't going to be near enough by itself, and my poppa didn't have anything to spare. Though he was proud, I think. None of the men in our line had ever even finished high school before. Just my momma's sister, who married the doctor, and Cassie, of course. Though it's not like Cassie's really my sister. She's just the daughter of the woman my poppa married after my momma took off. She doesn't look anything like me; she's little, y'know? Little like a bird, a little chocolate stick of a thing...

• Kali: So you're walking up and down Telegraph, up and down, trying not to look like the new dyke in town, trying not to telegraph that you are fresh off the boat, innocent new meat just in from Indiana, come to the big city. Actually, the small city, to Berkeley in fact, because San Francisco is a little intimidating to start off with if you're a twenty-two-year-old dyke who just came all the way to California to get laid because you have just been dumped by the only other lesbian in Franklin, Indiana and you just can't take it anymore...

• The Survey: So this guy walks up to me on the street, at something like 8 p.m., on that deserted stretch over by the park, y'know? I'd be scared, except he's just a kid, and he says, "Hey, you wanna do this survey?" And I say, "What's in it for me? I'm a busy woman?" And he says "Five bucks -- and if you answer the long form, fifty..."

1997 - 1993: Highlights

• A Jewel of a Woman -- this is my favorite story to read aloud; it's short, silly, and a lot of fun. It started from a discussion on the EROS workshop, on all the different terms there were for female masturbation.

• Mint in Your Throat (original) -- I've actually reworked this to include in my dissertation collection; I wrote this version during the six weeks I spent at the Clarion writing workshop, and almost started a fight in class with it. It's still one of the most controversial pieces I've written, and one of my personal favorites.

• The Adventures of Gorgeous Gracie -- okay, so please be assured that I, as an ethical English instructor, would never ever treat a student this way. No, really.

• Feather -- my Catholic background emerges in this brief piece; I always thought it was unfair that angels were so often portrayed as essentially sexless.

• Blind -- many consider this my hottest story still, which may tell you more about them than about me; my first foray into writing about S/M.

• Fleeing Gods -- my most-reprinted story -- there just isn't a lot of funny erotica out there, I guess. Also fun to read aloud.

• Jinsong (with Cecil Williams) -- this is one of the stories that got me noticed in the early days of the net; back then, incorporating e-mail into a story was still a new and exciting concept. :-) I never did manage to track down Cecil Williams, who wrote me the poem incorporated into this story. Cecil, if you ever find this, drop me a line, okay?

• Season of Marriage -- this story became the seed of my dissertation book, though I don't think it'll actually end up included in it. Readers liked it so much that I started thinking about writing more stories linked to it -- I wrote "Minal in Winter", focusing on the niece of this story's protagonist, and then the rest grew from there.

• Chantelle -- another controversial one; this one got me some angry letters from lesbians who felt I was misrepresenting them. All I can say is one character does not a representation make.

• American Airlines Cockpit -- this one is embarrassing, but in the interests of historical accuracy, here it is. My first story. Forgive me -- I was very young.

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