Ye olde mockery

So years ago, at my old writing group, a friend (we will call her Camille) revealed that she had actually written a YA unicorn novel. Another friend, Garth, joined me in mercilessly pelting her with affectionate mockery. I don’t even remember what we said to her, just that she accepted all this mild-yet-intense jibing with a bashful “Come on you guys” rearrangement of her bangs and sweet chair twisting that let us know she was amused, flattered, and exasperated to be receiving this much attention.

I can see her in my mind’s eye to this day. We adored this woman and she is one of the most talented people I have ever known. The only thing to do with all the admiration and affection was to torment her, as if we were grade school boys bullying a crush. It went on and on until Garth and I finally let her go.

But that was not the end of it.

Camille was a slush reader for a fantasy magazine that was always open to submissions. So Garth and I both made throwaway email addresses (yes, addresses that referenced unicorns) and sent in submissions to the magazine. I don’t remember what Garth sent. I sent Camille short story called “The Last Virgin in New Orleans.” It was an extended conversation betwee two male fantasy writers in a bar in NOLA, who both wrote the kind of novel I was tired of seeing back in the 2000s.

This was a particular time in fantasy/science fiction when, in the name of “inclusion,” straight white men wrote a lot of books about lesbian women of color who wore leather pants and brandished weapons in between bedding every woman they could find. Very much a male fantasy of what being a woman would be like, in other words.

Both of the main characters in my story wrote that kind of book and felt good about their work for BIPOC inclusion in the sf/f literary world. I can’t remember the entire plot, but a unicorn came into the bar in search of a virgin’s lap in which to lay its horned head. It had no luck with most of the patrons, including members of a bachelorette party. But then, of course, it indeed found two authorial laps upon which to rest its pretty white head.

I also used the email address to send this poem:

“Unicorn Delight”

Ah, magnificent mythical creature of palest white!
How thou prancest and dancest with otherworldly delight,
weaving a magical spell of tapestried splend’r!
Eftsoons, thou will seeest fit to set thy canter to a canticle,
as thy flowing ivory locks cascade along the length of thy delicate neck.
Thy strength is the strength of maidens, the chaste and pure,
conserved in the name of Time’s immemorial virginity.
Thy beauty, thy purity, thy contained, bashful beauty of
flashing pearly hooves, twisted nacreous horn, and lashes long as Garth’s.
Dance, Unicorn! Frisk, gambol and caper! We will watch,
transfixed, transported, and anon, transformed.

The trouble was, Camille thought that was a sincere attempt to submit to the magazine (until she got to the part with Garth’s eyelashes). And somehow, that was the funniest part of this entire unicorn interlude, even funnier than the poem’s title, which (as I noted back in the day) sounded like a dish for an elven casserole.