Story notes for "Anoint" by Resonant
First posted to SXF in August 1999.
This is the first slash story I ever wrote. Actually it's the first fiction of any kind I ever wrote, if we leave aside some unfortunate experiments with magic realism in the eleventh grade.
Given that, I think it holds up pretty well.
I have to thank Francesca for basically patting me on the head and saying, "Yeah, it's a real story." Because I don't know how I would ever have had the guts to post it if it hadn't been for her reassurance. She had serious problems with the idea of Jim and Blair spending any time at all looking for a hand lotion option -- I think her quote was, "Guys don't give a shit about hand lotion." But since every guy in my office has a bottle of hand lotion in his drawer (and since I couldn't have addressed her objection without throwing out the whole premise of the story), I basically ignored her.
Someone asked me whether I was suggesting that Jim's senses would make him more likely to be allergic to some ingredient in the lotion. Actually not; I just figured that most lotion smells pretty bad to me, so it must smell really bad to him.
And anne pointed out that since olive oil isn't a petroleum product, there's actually no problem with using it with a condom. Um, yeah -- since I've got two stories and a third on the way based on this assumption, I'm going to have to just ask y'all to pretend you don't notice it's wrong, OK?
"Midnight Oil" is the sequel.
Read the follow-up snippets: "Cold Feet"
"Clean"
"Declarations"
"Talking"
"Revelations"
"Listening"