DAY ONE
Traveled through time today. Not quite sure how it happened, but here I am.
Have decided to remain faithful to my husband, David.
DAY TWELVE
Three of the rough-around-the-edges prospectors here have volunteered to guide my coach back to the Colorado River and perhaps, from there, civilization and the chance to return home. At various points throughout the evening, each one of them pressed a copy of their room key into my hand and intimated that I would be welcome to bed with them for the night.
One of the men, Daniel, has eyes that are strangely like my disappeared husband’s.
Slept alone tonight, as there is no reliable form of birth control in this timeline.
DAY THIRTY-SEVEN
A group of shirtless Highlanders have gathered outside under my window and are in the process of greasing one another up and shouting “PRIMA NOCTE” at me.
I told them that modern scholars agree this idea is historically inaccurate.
DAY NINETY-EIGHT
Today I learned that my mock Handfasting ceremony with reclusive laird Duncan MacDuncan during the Misrule Festival was in fact legally binding, a fact neither of us knew until after the ceremony, when a capering fool revealed the truth in front of the highest lords and ladies of the Greensward. If we do not consummate our marriage in three days on the highest hill on the Summer Isle, he will be bound with stag antlers and dismembered, to ensure the coming harvest.
Laird Duncan MacDuncan has eyes of cornflower blue. He will be missed.
DAY TWO HUNDRED
No sex with anyone today.
DAY TWO HUNDRED AND THREE
A group of men came up to my room and told me they were agents of Prester John, who was responsible for bringing me to this point in time to serve as his Prime Consort and stop the greatest massacre in history from taking place. They showed me signs and signals that no one could possibly have known, unless they came from the same place and time as myself.
I told them I would gladly accompany them to Chronos, but upon meeting Prester John felt no sexual attraction to him. He has waited a thousand years for me, so I was as gracious as possible in turning him down.
It turns out the massacre was scheduled for an alternate universe, so it was all all right in the end.
DAY FOUR HUNDRED AND THREE
A man wearing strange clothes appeared in my bedroom last night. He told me he is the last surviving member of a family whose menfolk have the power to travel through time, and that the two of us have loved one another in seventeen successive generations. He offered to take me to a place “beyond Time” and attempted to remove my blouse.
I declined. Seventeen generations seems like more than enough.
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Tags: humor, sex, time travel
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“Slept alone tonight, as there is no reliable form of birth control in this timeline.”
Sums it all up for me, really. Keep your historical sperm away from me, dudes.
Not to mention the historical STIs, the effects of which on a human born untold years or centuries removed from those strains are unknown.
ESPECIALLY since this is PROBABLY pre-penicillin.
Oh, Gabaldon…so much to answer for
As much as I love a good fictional timey-wimey romp, this is hysterical. Bless you, Mallory.
Also important – the likelihood of sex being inadvertently had with a direct line ancestor. This is a definite concern for me in my genetically rather limited small northern european country of origin, where most of my family back as many generations as we have record of have come from.
Also the past is horrible, full of racism and ignorance, and death stalks the land via simple infections or cholera or hypothermia (main concern if you are thinking of travelling back in time to Scotland in your negligee or somesuch)
Yep- if at all possible, you should avoid doing the nasty in the past-y.
But… kilts.
Mal, you kill me.
Related point: there are no antibiotics in this timeline
did you know antibiotics are the real magic
antibiotics are the real magic.
We thought it was love but FUCK NO IT WAS ANTIBIOTICS WE FUCKED UP
Yes x100. Did you step on a sharp stick and have a small puncture wound in your foot? Great – it is likely the wound will become infected and you will die. Did you get strep throat? Awesome! You have a pretty decent chance of it progressing into scarlet fever and you may die. Did you eat some slightly bad food and now have a bacterial infection in your gut? Great news! You could suffer for weeks with intense bowel pain then die.
The past is a nightmare-scape. Bacteria everywhere and you have to rely on your flimsy immune system to stop them!
I busted my knuckle the other day on a friend’s banister (a surprising amount of blood for such a small and painless wound) and now I am paranoid that I will get tetanus and it will be all my fault for having refused the tetanus booster shot last month at my annual checkup.
I got a truly disastrous case of strep throat last year. The first rapid test I took turned up negative, so I spent eight days getting progressively sicker and sicker. By the time I got properly diagnosed, the entire back of my throat and mouth were covered in what I will delicately refer to as “gunk”, and I couldn’t eat or drink because of the TERRIBLE PAIN. 12 hours after my first dose of antibiotics, I was nearly back to normal.
The lesson I learned from this is that antibiotics are the greatest thing to ever happen to humanity, and that I probably would have died or somehow been permanently disfigured or damaged if I had gotten this case of strep while magically stuck in one of my beloved trashy Regency romance novels. Kind of put a damper on all the historical romances I read.
but does she see her husband again?? (i am now emotionally invested in this woman and i want her to live happy ever after)
Me too.
I’ve definitely thought about birth control with regard to sex after time travel. That may or may not be part of why I got a copper IUD. 10+ years reliable BC I don’t have to mess with. I’m ready for anything(, baby).
More than enough, indeed.
And it’s finally appropriate to reveal that as a 13-year-old I had a very erotic dream that I went back in time to Little House on the Prairie times but was somehow able to smuggle a pack of The Pill with me so could have sexy times with everyone, Almanzo included.
Your 13-year-old dream-self has good sense.
Seriously. Let us not forget that the real Manly Wilder could GET. IT.
I’ve had long, long, detailed imaginings of my life with Manly, and never seen this photo (mourn for those of us who grew up without the internet!), and I have to say: yep. Living up to the dreams, there, Manly. Carry on.
Goddamn. Hats off to your 13-year-old self.
At this point any mention of Little House brings to mind 1. Yes, “Scrooged” but 2. also Celia Rivenbark talking about her grandma or aunt who was sad about how “that poor girl went blind, and she had that good lookin’ husband!”
Yes. Scrooged.
Laird Duncan MacDuncan has eyes of cornflower blue. He will be missed.
This whole thing was great, but this killed me.
I’m not saying I’m going to make an emergency time travel sexin’ kit with BC, antibiotics, soap, toothpaste, and mouthwash, but I’m not not saying it either.
“Fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all this stuff!”
You’d also have to bring enough toothpaste (and toothbrushes) and mouthwash for your partners too and convince them to use it. (I would suggest gum, but they would almost definitely swallow it.)
I swallow gum and I am almost definitely a person from the present time.
my brain was like ‘but you can’t take liquids through tsa….oh wait’
Remember the olden times?
CONDOMS, DON’T FORGET CONDOMS.
CONDOMS, ROSE! CONDOMS, CONDOMS, CONDOMS!
Both our narrator and David read the “Cast Away” article already. “Look, this whole world is wild at heart and crazy on top, so let’s nail this down, okay? Plane crash/interdimensional vortex/extraterrestrial abduction…shit happens. We need to trust each other, we’ve seen how it ends up! The other person always shows up in the end. Pissed.”
Look, nobody is ever going to convince me that some smelly 18th-century blockhead is a better choice than modern medicine and civil rights. Dick is abundant and low-value and gets old, but antibiotics and suffrage are forever.
Can I get that last sentence on a bumper sticker?
I was thinking a nice cross stitch pillow.
For real.
Amen!
…except superbugs!
Right?? We’re stupidly playing fast and loose with that whole “antibiotics are forever” idea…
I always thought there needed to be more time travel romance where the person from the past thinks the future sounds groovy, what with its medicine and stuff, and they settle down there instead of in the past.
Dae ye ken that ye don’t need “antibiotics” if ye have a bit of botanicals. Some root and lavender and ye can have the kilted cock.
I have definitely considered this benefit of my having had laser eye surgery on numerous occasions.
“Have sex? With you? And die during childbirth? I think not.”
Then there’s the whole “YOU KILLED HER” guilt trip the dude would give the kid. No one wants that.
It might be a fair argument if he screamed it at his dick.
i love this
My father’s name is David, so I read this in my mother’s voice and was rather reassured by her fidelity.
The key is, I think, to go back to a time where there’s lots of orgies so you can watch and jerk off but never catch horrible venereal disease or a baby.
which is of course, and thank god, the reason they make the tv and fiction series!
This is super delightful.
Where’s Marty McFly and that dang DeLorean when you need it?
As the mom of a son who perhaps might be named Duncan Mcsomething, with deep blue eyes that high school girls are swarming over (he may have disrupted English class yesterday by allowing a girl to polish his fingernails), I’m deeply conflicted over the loss of the Laird.
Well, as long as you don’t decide move to a remote Scottish island or tiny farming community where people cryptically mutter things about a ‘Wicker man’ or ‘Lottery in June’, I think your bases are covered.
Prester John! I want a Crazy Old Maurice about Prester John now! I’ve been obsessed every since reading Cat Valente’s books about him.
Right?? We're stupidly playing fast and loose with that whole "antibiotics are forever" idea…
Did we watch the same episode? I remember him being kind of sad bookworm who never gets the chance to read. Wiki says: Bemis's angry boss, and later his nagging wife, both complain to him that he wastes far too much time reading "doggerel". As a cruel joke, his wife asks him to read poetry from one of his books to her; he eagerly obliges, only to find that she has inked over the text on every page, obscuring the words.
hmm. I may have conflated them, since my annual new year's marathon courtesy of the scifi channel does tend to blur every episode together. There are so many post-apocalyptic episodes.
AHA!
I was. The one I was thinking of was "A kind of a stopwatch".
This looks like a job for…time traveling lesbians~ Effectively negating the main worries of time-travelling erotica, pregnancy with future ancestor, and possible death from birth of same
For real.
Great article Mallory Ortberg. Both our narrator and David read the “Cast Away” article already. “Look, this whole world is wild at heart and crazy on top, so let’s nail this down, okay? Plane crash/interdimensional vortex/extraterrestrial abduction…shit happens.