Lematya Lessons

Fanfiction
Title:	Lematya Lessons
Author(s):	S.R. Benjamin
Date(s):	2002
Length:
Genre(s):	slash
Fandom(s):	Star Trek: TOS
Relationship(s):	Kirk/Spock
External Links:
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Lematya Lessons is a Kirk/Spock story by S.R. Benjamin. It was the winner of a Philon Award.

It was published in the print zine Beyond Dreams #4.

Summary

"After his aborted pon farr, Spock is forced to admit to Kirk about the bond that is growing between them so that both can decide on their next course of action."

Reactions and Reviews

2002

As always with the stories I choose to LOC this story had me still thinking about it the day after I read it. I know some people generally don’t like first person stories but I find that I often do, and this story is no exception! Though we only get half the story through Spock’s eyes this adds to the interest of piecing together what is actually happening. The idea behind T’pring’s challenge is not one I have heard in exactly those terms before but I found it very convincing. There are several humorous moments in the story which I am slightly uncertain if I like or not, they certainly made me laugh but I felt they sometimes didn’t quite match the tone of the piece (a pretty personal judgement). It is only fair to try and explain why I felt this... I felt the dry humour of Spock’s thoughts worked every well indeed, Spock does find things funny and I can share that joke with him. An example of the humour that works for me is Spock’s description of his mother telling him Fairy Tales with ‘articulate animals that lived in unsavoury conditions around sharp objects and spent their days exchanging thinly veiled social commentary.’ Here where the story asks me to laugh with Spock I do and enjoy doing it. However, in the scene where Spock is asked to leave a genetic sample, where the humour came more from outside the story, I more cringed than laughed and spent some time wondering that they didn’t have a more efficient method of doing this in the 23rd century. Though to counter that I loved Spock’s wry thought ‘I do not possess the playful sexuality of humans’. I guess I’m saying Spock’s internal thoughts and dry humour work very well for me, but the things that happen to him in the name of comedy distract me a bit from the story. However overall I loved the story so please consider this a very positive LOC. Jim’s portrayal seems very convincing to me even though I only see him through Spock’s eyes I can understand his motivation. The memory of the Lematya’s worked well as a kind of framing story and I found Spock’s memories of that particularly vivid. Love how the sex scene is pervaded references to the original series, this really works for me, I like to see the connection between their friendship on screen and their romance in zines. Spock’s thought beginning ‘This is the logical extension of everything we are. It is on a deeper level the same rhythm with which for years we have walked ships corridors at night. ...’ Those lines are beautiful and exemplify what I love about K/S, thankyou for this story I will leave you with that thought.

"Lematya Lessons" is seven pages long. It is a wonderful story, and I love it. It is one of the best stories I have read recently.

When I read it in Beyond Dreams 4, even though I still had the next five stories to read I knew that this one would be my favorite of the zine and it was. It is first person Spock, and I normally hate first person stories even though I have heard that writing in first person is a popular trend in some fandoms these days. However, in this case, the story has to be first person because you need to know exactly what Spock feels and is thinking.

The story is extremely well written and has a very distinctive Spock, although a highly poetic one with an elaborate descriptive style. But the characterization runs true to what we already know about Spock. This is a great story, and I congratulate the writer.

2005

‘‘Lematya Lessons’’ by S. R. Benjamin, which is written from Spock’s point of view, mingles homosocial images from the series with homosexual images as Kirk and Spock make love, thus highlighting how the dominant homosocial decodings of Star Trek might be re-shaped into a K/S decoding:

He calls my name, breathlessly. I grasp his shoulders moving against him. This is the logical extension of everything we are. It is, on a deeper level, the same rhythm with which for years we have walked ships corridors at night. Or the way we moved, pacing each other, on Organia. And my hand against his elbow, urging him on, as we raced along the embankment on the shore leave planet, where a golden-haired girl and a white rabbit had become the least of our concerns. (Benjamin 2002, 56)

This passage makes particular reference to the ambiguous gestural codes I highlighted in Star Trek; the particular moments referred to can be seen in Figures 8 and 9.

By having Spock remember moving with Kirk in a non-sexual way while moving with Kirk in a sexual way, S. R. Benjamin encourages the reader to look back at those ambiguous gestures and decode the homoerotic connotations within them. Both these two writers are offering their own interpretation of their recognition of the ambiguities within Star Trek.

2006

This one was a fairly short but enjoyable follow-on from Amok Time told from both Kirk and Spock’s point of view. The unusual title comes from Spock’s comparison of his feelings for Kirk with his first encounter with two L’Matyas in the Vulcan desert when he was a child. Although nothing new or groundbreaking here it was nevertheless a well written and enjoyable piece, with Dr McCoy providing the stimulus which brings them together.