I love sex and I love kink. But sometimes I come across things that don’t sit quite right, in ways I can’t put my finger on. There are moments when I feel like “your kink is OK” doesn’t quite capture the nuances of sexuality, or when something bothers me about how the world of kink seems irrevocably tied to the world of consumer products. Costumes, equipment, jargon, seals doing tricks. And yes, plain old sexism.
In my own sex life I lean towards the submissive end of the spectrum, but she makes female dominance sound incredibly sexy. And most hetero women need reminders now and then that enjoying sex and being sexy are not one and the same.
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.
For me, sex still exists at least partly in the shadows, in the bad old days of repression and shame. Stealing my brother’s copies of Maxim and my mother’s romance novels; feeling an erotic thrill when the 1920’s movie heroine is kidnapped; operatic tenors singing “come to the window” when they mean “come to my bed”; the brown-papered windows of the adult video store…
Despite all the liberation and feminist consciousness and purchases of vibrators in garish colors, when I think “sex” (not the concept, but the things that make my stomach tighten) I think of that closed-off, simmering world, where the door is cracked open just enough to glimpse one fishnet-clad limb. Which doesn’t mean I think about it any less, or with any less authenticity, or that I think that door needs to stay closed.
So sometimes I read the work of sex bloggers and think I could never possibly fit in. I’ve had a limited number of crazy adventures, I’ve got a limited selection of toys in the nightstand, and in the end I’m not convinced that toys or fetish outfits or even specific acts are especially interesting compared to all the just-beneath-the-surface tensions. Occasionally I wonder if the toys and the outfits are just a crutch, a shorthand for sexuality, a way to keep things interesting on the surface because something is deadening underneath. And then I wonder if that makes me sound like a conservative.
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
Many of the problems Rollertrain has with mainstream lesbian porn are also present in mainstream pornography in general - the emphasis on display for the camera over good sex, the uncomfortable positions, the affected moaning.
It led to an interesting conversation wherein we wondered why, in mainstream pornography, the performance of pleasure from the women involved is so important (moaning obligatory) while pleasure itself is shunted to the sidelines. The traditional feminist explanation might chalk it up to power, saying that we demand the porn actress make a show of enjoying herself in the same way we expect the waitress to smile at us and act cheery even when we know very well that she is probably counting the minutes until the end of her shift.
It’s also possible that the display for the camera is simply more important to the average viewer than the experience it depicts. What other explanation exists for the dearth of breast-fondling and head-burying?
Also, pornography where the actresses are clearly bored is very boring to watch.
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