My story “Opera Gloves”, which was originally to appear in the canceled Alyson Books anthology Second Skin, will be appearing in the upcoming anthology Dirty Girls: Erotica for Women, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel. It’s scheduled to be released April 2008, with parties and readings in New York and San Francisco, and the cover is extremely hot.
“Opera Gloves” is about a lesbian sexual encounter in a box at the Wiener Staatsoper, and features a pair of very long, very shiny black PVC gloves.
Last night’s In The Flesh was a lot of fun. It was my first time reading any of my writing — let alone sex writing — in public, so I was nervous going in, but once I began reading and the audience started responding, I really started enjoying myself and everything went smoothly.
It’s always like that with “public performances” for me - the piano exams, the debate tournaments, the class presentations. A sense of general nervousness leading up to the event, that intensifies into a knot in the gut just before going on…and then the knot immediately releases once the performance actually starts and everything from that point on is bliss.
The other readers were great - all very different and intriguing and funny. I was delighted to meet some new people as well.
With any luck, photographs will be forthcoming. Stay tuned.
This will be the first time I read my writing publicly. The last few weeks were spent picking out an already-published story to read while simultaneously hoping I could write a new and better one. Although the new story is taking shape nicely, I’ll be reading an excerpt from my story Can I Help You? which appeared last year in Sexiest Soles: Erotic Stories about Feet and Shoes.
The other participants look very interesting and I’m looking forward to the entire evening, so be sure to come out!
WEDNESDAY, JULY 18TH at 8 PM
AT HAPPY ENDING LOUNGE, 302 BROOME STREET, NYC
(B/D to Grand, J/M/Z to Bowery, F to Delancey, http://www.happyendinglounge.com)
Admission: Free
Happy Ending Lounge: 212-334-9676
July heats up with a mix of today’s hottest erotic writers delivering sexual demons, erotic fairy tales, and other naughtiness. With Louisa Burton (House of Dark Delights), Myriam Gurba (Dahlia Season), Aimee Herman (If These Thighs Could Talk), Lillian Ann Slugocki (The Erotica Project), Maddy Stuart (Sexiest Soles) and host and curator Rachel Kramer Bussel (He’s on Top, She’s on Top). Free candy and cupcakes will be served.
In the Flesh is a monthly reading series hosted at the appropriately named Happy Ending Lounge, and features the city’s best erotic writers sharing stories to get you hot and bothered, hosted and curated by acclaimed erotic writer and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel. From erotic poetry to down and dirty smut, these authors get naked on the page and will make you lust after them and their words. Since its debut in October 2005, In the Flesh has featured such authors as Laura Antoniou, Mo Beasley, Lily Burana, Jessica Cutler, Stephen Elliott, Valerie Frankel, Polly Frost, Gael Greene, Andy Horwitz, Debra Hyde, Maxim Jakubowski, Emily Scarlet Kramer of CAKE, Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Edith Layton, Logan Levkoff, Suzanne PortnoySofia Quintero, M.J. Rose, Lauren Sanders, Danyel Smith, Grant Stoddard, Cecilia Tan, Carol Taylor, Dana Vachon, Veronica Vera, Susan Wright, and many others. The series has gotten press attention from Escape (Hong Kong), Flavorpill, The L Magazine, New York magazine, Philadelphia City Paper, Time Out New York, Gothamist, Nerve.com and Wonkette, and has been praised by Dr. Ruth. This is not Amanda Stern’s Happy Ending Reading Series.
Rachel Kramer Bussel is Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations, conducts interviews for Gothamist.com and Mediabistro.com, and wrote the popular Lusty Lady column for The Village Voice. Her erotic stories have been published in over 100 anthologies, including Best American Erotica 2004 and 2006, and she’s edited numerous erotica anthologies, most recently He’s on Top: Erotic Stories of Male dominance and Female Submission, She’s on Top: Erotic Stories of Female Dominance and Male Submission, Caught Looking: Erotic Tales of Voyeurs and Exhibitionists and Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z 2. Rachel has also written for AVN, Bust, Cosmo UK, Gothamist, Mediabistro, Metro, New York Post, Punk Planet, San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out New York and Velvetpark. www.rachelkramerbussel.com
Louisa Burton is a novelist and the author of the Hidden Grotto series of epic erotic fantasy, in which the beings mythologists call “sexual demons”—incubi, succubi, satyrs, and the like—have lived among us for thousands of years.. The series grew out of Louisa’s fascination with Victorian erotica, history, and mythology. House of Dark Delights, which was released in February 2007, is also being published in Germany. The second book in the series, Bound in Moonlight, comes out in December, and Louisa is currently writing the third, Whispers of the Flesh. www.louisaburton.com
Myriam Gurba is a high school teacher who lives in Long Beach, California, home of Snoop Dogg and the Queen Mary. Her first novel, Dahlia Season, was published recently by Manic D/Future Tense Books. She graduated from UC Berkeley, and her writing has appeared in anthologies like Best American Erotica (St. Martin’s Press), Bottom’s Up (Soft Skull Press), Secrets and Confidences (Seal Press), and Tough Girls (Black Books). www.dahliaseason.com
Aimee Herman has been described as Woody Allen with a vagina. No subject is too risque for her to write. She currently has two chapbooks of poetry out (tastes like cheesecake, if these thighs could talk) and recorded a spoken word CD available through cdbaby.com/AimeeHerman. She does not believe in warnings or disclaimers. All words are meant to inspire/offend/induce perspiration nausea/ and indigestion. Comments, questions, and suggestions for new sexual positions may be sent to:
writerslashpoet@aol.com
Lillian Ann Slugocki, an award winning feminist writer, has created a body of work on women and their sexuality which includes fiction, non-fiction, plays and monologues which have been produced on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway and on National Public Radio. Her work has been published in books, journals, anthologies, and on-line; including Salon.com. She has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Village Voice, Art in America, The New Yorker, The Daily News, The New York Post, and recently in London; Time Out, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The London Sunday Times.
Maddy Stuart paints and programs computers in a cold Canadian city. Her writing has appeared in Sexiest Soles: Erotic Stories about Feet and Shoes and Secret Slaves: Erotic Stories of Bondage, both in the Fetish Chest series. www.maddystuart.com
So I had a lovely day at the Word on the Street today. Queen’s park road was closed off from car traffic for the day and the park itself was full of cool people doing cool things.
The main reason I went was to see Katrina Onstad read, whose book How Happy To Be I read in just one sitting yesterday. It had sounded just like the kind of book I would enjoy - a cutting, satirical look at the Toronto media scene around the days of the Film Festival, circa 2001 - and enjoy it I did.
I have a strange nostalgia for the early days of the National Post - where Onstad used to write movie reviews - even though its political slant was too conservative for my liking. I loved that their culture articles were cheeky and interesting and full of wit and insight, I loved that there were little expressive line drawings of the smirking authors above the bylines instead of self-conscious photos, I loved the pretty fonts and the punchy layout. But eventually all those writers with the expressive line drawings left the paper, including Onstad, and I stopped reading. The paper may now be using photos above the byline instead.
So seeing her name on a book, a book promising a satire of that newspaper for which I have this strange nostalgia, was exciting, and I picked it up and devoured it in just one day. And yes, I loved it.
But what really thrilled me was how much I loved Word on the Street. My usual instinct at street festivals is to avoid talking to the people sitting in the booths behind piles of merchandise, but today my overwhelming response was yes, please tell me all about your literary journal/Marxist press/artistic association. I collected bookmarks and buttons and back issues and marvelled at how everyone seemed to be so happy and engaged despite the drizzling rain, how many interesting things are going on in the city that I had no idea existed, how many books there were to read and authors to listen to. I guess, being from small towns and small cities, I’m not yet used to this kind of thing being on my doorstep.
And yes, I heard Katrina Onstad read and got her to sign my copy still fresh from yesterday’s fevered page-turning. I also saw the Long Pen (although not in action). And I think What We All Long For (Dionne Brand) must be next on my list.
In my last post, I mentioned that I had a few misgivings about The Warrior Prophet (and the book that precedes it in the series, The Darkness that Comes Before). First among them was that the feminist in me wondered why every female character was some form of prostitute.
I can understand why The Whore is so appealing to authors. Her profession offers the thrill of the illicit and forbidden; it speaks of the demi-monde, the underground, the bohemian. She can be exceedingly glamorous or exceedingly downtrodden (or both), and it’s easy to give her a dark or mysterious past. She has more mobility than the housewife or the schoolteacher; the better to accompany the men on their epic treks or high-stakes adventures. She usually has the opportunity to bed every male character of note, a handy plot device indeed.
As a love interest, she is ideal. Since she is sexual, she is probably beautiful (when it comes to books, a woman is seldom the former without also being the latter). She is physically available for plenty of sex scenes but her emotional inavailability, as well as the presence of her customers, provides conflict and tension. Living in a society that exploits and shames her has given her a tough and cynical exterior but preserved the vulnerable interior - she desires True Love (and possibly babies) but has seen too much of men and the world to believe it is possible.
Of course, I have nothing against characters who are prostitutes. I loved Esmenet in The Warrior Prophet, even though she embodies many of the tropes above. But it bothers me when characters like this come up again and again as the primary - or only - representation of womanhood in novels where the male characters are interesting and diverse.
As a young girl my favorite genre, both for reading and writing, was fantasy. I had no idea that stories about magic and unicorns were silly, and loved drawing maps of temples, caves, cities, and mythical continents. As I grew older, however, I read less and less of it, concerned with how my reading choices would reflect upon my intellect and cultural acumen. By the time I reached my late adolescence, the books I read were either well-established literary classics or those likely to be approved by my McSweeney’s-revering friends.
But, let’s face it, I was never and never will be cool. So, it’s been a relief and a rediscovery to once again sink my teeth into a fantasy series, albeit with no unicorns. I’ve just completed the second book of the Prince of Nothing series, by R. Scott Bakker.
Of course, it isn’t “just” fantasy - it’s smart, philosophical, and literate, with an eye towards human history, philosophy, and the functioning of complex societies. There is much more depth, and much more fodder for analysis, than in most of the fluff fantasy I read as a young girl. I covered my copy of “The Darkness that Comes Before” with notes and charts and tables detailing my thoughts on the various themes and motives, usually while in a state of giddy elation.
To tell the truth, I don’t think I’d have been satisfied with fluff. But it’s a wonderful feeling to be pulled along by the author, not just by well-crafted prose or psychological insight but simply caring about the characters and wanting to know what happens to them. When one becomes focused on ‘literature’, sometimes reading-for-pleasure falls by the wayside, but with the best books, one not need be sacrificed for the other.
I did have misgivings about the book, but I will speak about them in a different post.
edited by 
, edited by 
