Until very recently, we at FLAPPERHOUSE had no idea that the mating practices of hyenas were so subversive and transcendent. If you’d like to learn more, allow j/j hastain to explain it all to you in “Copulatory Lock”, one of the four lyric mini-essays by j/j that you can read in our Winter 2015 issue.

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SEXUAL INTIMIDATION DOESN’T HAPPEN IN HYENA CULTURE. If it’s not consensual then it simply is not– end of discussion.

Based on the location of her masculinized genitalia (shaped like a penis, but hanging flaccid between her legs) he literally has to squat and dance behind her, moving into her squat, in order to even penetrate her penis with his. Her sexual center is pointing ahead; his follows from behind, into her and through her to the degree that she wants it. She is the stipulation here. She is his direction.

Aware that some gymnastics are required in order for mating to occur, if the female is keen on him, she will lead him up the hill or out to the brink where there is the most likelihood for safe copulation. He follows her to their spot. At the moment of intromission the hyenas’ bodies literally lock in order for exchange to occur. This locking makes fruition and impregnation possible at the same moment that it dramatically increases the risk of the two being seen as a lager body of flesh and then eaten with excitement: a predator’s conglomerate meat.

As the lion nears he does not have a choice. His hormones are raging in response to their hormones raging. With doubled flesh before him, he rushes the magic to engorge on something more integrated than yin and yang. Yin and yang have that curved line between them, indicating their difference. The hyenas’ copulatory lock means, in her choosing to let him, they have found their way beyond the line.

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j/j hastain is a collaborator, writer and maker of things. j/j performs ceremonial gore. Chasing and courting the animate and potentially enlivening decay that exists between seer and singer, j/j simply hopes to make the god/dess of stone moan and nod deeply through the waxing and waning seasons of the moon.

j/j hastain is the inventor of The Mystical Sentence Projects and is author of several cross-genre books including the trans-genre book libertine monk (Scrambler Press), The Non-Novels (forthcoming, Spuyten Duyvil) and The Xyr Trilogy: a Metaphysical Romance of Experimental Realisms. j/j’s writing has most recently appeared in Caketrain, Trickhouse, The Collagist, Housefire, Bombay Gin, Aufgabe, and Tarpaulin Sky.