Best American Erotica

Scooter Libby's Erotic Writing Tutor

All across the country, people are asking, "Why didn't Scooter Libby take some erotic writing advice before he wrote his dirty novel?"

I know, I know— the damage is done. Now when The New Yorker reviews his torrid oeuvre, they can be cruel:

While one critic deemed [Libby's] The Apprentice reminiscent of Rembrandt, certain passages can better be described as reminiscent of Penthouse Forum.

Ouch. That was so unnecessary. I'm listed, after all. When you're the Vice President's Chief of Staff, don't you owe it to yourself to have the very best counsel?

To start with, Scooter could use a good spanking with a hardcover edition of Strunk & White's Elements of Style. His most grievous challenge lies in composition and command of the English language.

We should've smelled a rat when Libby first wrote that note to Judy Miller that sounded like a Harlequin blurb:

Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come  back to work— and life.

I have to admit, that caught my attention. Those lines are near lavender with Bronté-itis. I thought, "Those two must be carrying on a platonic infatuation— if they were fucking, he wouldn't be this overt. Either that, or the man is in love with the sound of his own voice."

Well, if you can't get a decent book doctor the first time 'round, you can always learn from your mistakes. Let's do a "clinic" on where Scooter went wrong. I'm going to use my book, How to Write a Dirty Story, as our textbook.

Scooter writes:

He could feel her heart beneath his hands. He moved his hands slowly lower still and she arched her back to help him and her lower leg came against his. He held her breasts in his hands. Oddly, he thought, the lower one might be larger. . . . One of her breasts now hung loosely in his hand near his face and he knew not how best to touch her.

This passage violates one of my cardinal rules, outlined on p. 130 of HTWDS:

Love Scenes Are Not Operating Instructions

Erotic scenes are acts of passion. You don't want to reduce body parts to a running diagram of measurements and traffic signals:

"Licking my way three inches up her left knee, I felt her ejaculate splatter my right cheek."

This unerotic attention to the wrong details is what is known as "mechanical" sex writing, and you want to rid yourself of the neurosis at its first showing.

The Business of Erotic Writing

I recently got interviewed for a book trade magazine on the subject of the business of selling "erotica," and it aroused my... suspicions.

I knew that past couple years, all the major romance imprints have taken an X-rated turn, and their combined marketing muscle was creating a mini-boom in advertising and seemingly "spontaneous" media stories about erotica for women.

There's lots of talk about how the TV show "Sex in the City" created women's erotica from whole cloth (hand me the barf bag)— and plenty of discussion about the differences, or perhaps the collapse of difference, between romance and chick lit.

For this story in Publisher's Weekly, I did an interview with Bethanne Patrick, the book review editor for AOL.

The "Forbidden" PW Erotic Romance interview

Bethanne Patrick: Why is romance as a genre already cracked, if not downright broken into pieces?

SB: It may be cracked, but it's still in business. If Romance publishers didn't change with the times and their community, they wouldn't exist as a genre anymore.

You may say, for example, that the Western is pure— but it's dead as a contemporary book genre. Horror nearly went belly up; science fiction would have curled into a historical corner if it wasn't for the Internet crowd that created a resurrection.

Five Dimes by Anita Melissa Mashman

"You want me to do what?" I asked surprised, looking down at the silver coins on my naked stomach.

Patiently he explained again.

"Stand in the middle of the room, with your legs spread. Then put your hands together, over your head, palm to palm, with a dime beteen each pair of fingers and your thumbs."

Pulse beating fast, I thought, what interesting little game does he have in mind this time?"

from "Five Dimes," by the late Anita Melissa Mashman, in Best American Erotica 1993

Listen to the whole story, read by Saint Teresa Stone: Link.

After you peel yourself off the floor, I think you'll want to hear the rest!

Best American Erotica '93 was my first collection in the BAE series, and it's so good sometimes I wonder how I had the nerve to try another.

Audible now has the whole original audiobook for you to download: Link

Other authors include: Blake Aarens, Greg Boyd, Pat Califia, the late great Bob Flanagan and Ronald Sukenick, Lisa Palac, Carol Queen, Trish Thomas, and Carter Wilson, among others. (Trish almost got taken away by Katrina but we're still holding onto her!)

The actors, like Miss Stone, who recorded these erotic stories, are veterans of audiobook recording. But this is a BIG departure for them. They would love to hear what you think! You can send any fan or feedback letters to me and I will respectfully forward it to them.

Yes, that's Miss MoneyPenny, from James Bond's early incarnations.

A Devil's Argument Against Publishing

If you write an erotic story — or any story, for that matter — and never publish it, you will have done a very good thing. If it stays in a box for you to cherish, if it is passed between you and your lover, shared among friends, or circulated on a private e-mail list, ypar ou will have accomplished something quite wonderful.

By writing privately, you will have expressed yourself intimately, and communicated with exactly who you wanted to speak to in the first place. You will have the primal satisfaction of an artist: your imagination fulfilled. You’ll have confronted the challenge to be authentic, to dream aloud, to take yourself over the falls and climb back out, soaking wet and ready for the next round. Congratulations, you are a true writing hero!

By not publishing in the public world — with the mediation of publishers, distributors, and retailers — you will remain unsullied and unembittered by the publishing process, which is not unlike being dragged naked inside a barrel filled with nails.

No one will put a price on you, no series of twits will be the final arbiters of your value. Your writing will not be lost in the shuffle, or ignored, or insulted. It won’t find itself in the hands of the indifferent and indignant. You won’t be told you’re a superstar, but neither will you ever be called a has-been, a one-shot wonder, or a fraud. You will not be betrayed by strangers.

When I read stories by unpublished writers that deeply affect me, I am torn. My first impulse is, “They are so incredible, they must be read by the rest of the world. How can I get their work in print?” Yet the other side of me says, “They are so dignified in their publishing innocence, their uncompromised integrity. How can I seduce them to what I know is a miniature version of hell?”

My advice to unpublished writers is this: There is nothing like the thrill of reaching new readers with your work, the people who resonate with your creative ideas and want to share their own inspirations with you. There is nothing like hearing a total stranger say, “Your story changed my life.” Some of those strangers will become your dear new friends, future collaborators, lovers, and comrades.

However, in order to reach those new friends, lovers, and comrades, you are going to have to go to The Market. The Market is not “your friend”; The Market does not have your self-interest at heart. It can be an intoxicating place — the money changing hands, the competitions, the auctions, the promotions and premiums — but it isn’t a place that puts art first, or people first. It puts money first, and that requires a measure of illusion and exploitation that must be endured in order to reach your desired audience.

Interviews Where I Might Have Said Too Much

An interview with Susie Bright, on The Best American Erotica series, from
The Boston Phoenix:

Q:  Are there ever writers who don’t want to be included in BAE?

SB:  At the very beginning.I remember asking John Nichols if I could reprint a story of his that I liked very much, and he said, "You want to reprint it in what? Best American what?" It was like I had just invited him to join me in my trash-trailer-park cheese-ball orgy or something. I sent him a copy and he said, "Okay, it’s not as bad as I thought, but people just don’t realize what you’re doing. It’s a very valiant effort, but no thank you." Then a couple of years later he sent me a note that said, "That was so dumb. I really wish I’d been in your book."

Nowadays, no. I almost wish somebody would get upset! It’s much more commercial. It’s like, "Well, how much are you paying?" Believe me, I’m all for writers getting paid, because I certainly include myself among them. It’s just interesting that there’s not a sense of putting yourself in danger or ruining yourself.

It used to be erotic writers were kind of presenting sexual lifestyles and behavior that maybe you hadn’t heard about before. It was like— "Wow, fisting? You’re kidding. Jell-O orgies? Never heard of them! Transgender — what’s that?" There was this sense of opening the curtain and showing things. Now, you’re not going to surprise people with sexual behavior, you really have to go deeper into the character and suprises of human nature....

The SFist

Q.  You've been writing, editing and critiquing erotica for years now.  Would you mind introducing our readers to some classics of the genre?

SB :  I think everyone has their own personal history of the books they first read that they realized were "hot." I remember a copy of The Godfather that was being passed around my seventh grade classroom with the "dirty parts" marked in turned-down pages. When I got older, I went back to look at what was so "dirty' and I just had to laugh-- it was Mario Puzo's version of The Farmer's Daughter, a bawdy story with no shortage of purple prose.

I also remember the first time I read erotic stories that I realized were being told with a degree of insight and depth that took them into another dimension. They were "hot," but they also were profound on other levels. I remember John Updike's  "Couples" and Charles Bukowski's "Notes of a Dirty Old Man." I remember taking "Story of O" on my first major backpacking trip into the Sierras for  a month of bushwacking. I remember how spooked I was that the two books I packed:  "O" and "Gravity's Rainbow," Both ended with unfinished sentences.

My introduction to "plain brown wrappers" came much later. I picked up a hitchhiker on Valencia St., which much have been the last of his kind in the 1980s, and he left a brown-bag covered paperback in the back seat when he left, titled: "Dueling Lesbians in Bondage." What a treasure...

Surviving Darwin, by Alicia Gifford

Every year I publish Best American Erotica, I always pick one story that I especially like to read aloud at book events. Usually, the first time I read it, it’s in bed with my lover, because I get so inspired I have to try it out on him.

My favorite “read-aloud” story in Best American Erotica 2005 is "Surviving Darwin” by Alicia Gifford.

I asked Alicia if I could offer you a reprint of the story here on my blog, and she kindly agreed. Other authors in BAE 2005 include Mary Gaitskill ("The Ugly Cock Dance") and Nelson George "(It’s Never Too Late in New York") as well as Steve Almond remembering the best Ecstasy party ever.

The Portable Girlfriend, by Doug Tierney

"HEY, WIREHEAD, wake up."

    Jack Bolander felt the vibrations through the floor as his roommate pounded on the bedroom door. The sunrise coming through his window turned the yellow painted-over wallpaper a sick orange color, the color inside his head when he wired in without any software in the 'Face.

Ron pounded the door harder. "You're going to be late for work again, asshole. If you get fired, I'm kicking you out in the street."   

"Yeah, yeah, I'm up." Bo had been lying awake for a while on his bare mattress, staring at the water-damaged ceiling, drawing pictures with the rusty brown splotches, and trying to forget his dreams. Unconsciously, he stroked the inside of his thigh, but he stopped when kicked the door again. "I'll be out in a minute."

"I'm leaving in two minutes, with or without you."

"I said I'm coming." He dressed without looking down at his body, without glancing down at the lacework of shrapnel scars that ran from his right leg, across his crotch, to his left hip. He stuffed the 'Face and wires into his rucksack along with a couple disks before he pulled on his boots and his field jacket. He didn't bother to tie the boots; he'd do that in the car.

Stepping out of his room felt like stepping into someone else's house. Ron had furniture and house plants and cats. Bo had a mattress on the floor, piles of clothes, and milk crates of software. Sometimes he slept in the closet when he couldn't stop dreaming about the war.

 

Jodi K.'s Diary, by Jill Soloway

 

Me and Todd are in the pool.

He’s this way, I’m that, like flying fish but underwater, graceful and around.  It’s the middle of the hot summer, like, bake. I move my Speedo strap, and the elastic of it hurts on the new red skin already. 

Judith is in the kitchen, a lady with a straw in her Tab.  There is so much light sunny tension in the summer afternoon air that I am able to even hear the bendy in her straw.  Todd dives underwater, comes at me, grabs both ankles, lets go, swims away.  I look around to find out, where’s Judith now? 

She’s gone.

Ooops, I mean she’s standing above us.       

Todd is holding onto the diving board with two long-muscled arms.  Slight youthful hair under his arms is all I can see in the moment.       

“I’m going down for a little nap.  Jodi, hunny?  You see your towel?”

Judith goes back in to the house, closes the screen, then closes the slider.  Todd’s hands are on my ankles again.  He pops up, flips his hair so it goes just right when it’s wet, not funny.  His hair has a little roll on it, up by his hairline, like George Washington from the olden days.       

Staring at the way his hair rolls.       

Down to his eyes, brown.      

His lashes take a quick flick look at me for the first time ever, and for a mini-millisecond in its entirety, all four of our eyes are in contact.         

Now he comes up close to me.  CLOSE. His nose is big.  He kisses me on the lips fast and dives away again.       

I haven’t kissed a lot of people. This kiss was about half-way between a French and a Not. It was real, it was fast, but it certainly had the openness of his mouth involved.  The openness of his mouth that scared me but felt sweet all at one time.

Now I go under, swim off, loving the pool.  I love the light blue blueness and the rough on the bottom. My palms go flat, hello pool floor, did you know me and Todd are two separate fish?  Where did he go?

THERE! His face right in front of mine, water streaming from each nostril. His hands on exactly where my waist goes in, sqeezing, then he lets go.  We both pop up.  If he could say “Hi,” right then he would.

And now, I find myself at the edge.  The edge right under what we both know is Judith’s bedroom window so if she were to look out right now, she would see nothing but nothing.  Just pool, I tell you, because we are directly under her.  Which means we are secret, and the secretness of it causes a tiny tensing thing like a whoop-de-doo down there. Something that says, what’s going to happen, with a tightness in my thing. And I am against the wall. 
      

Ukiyo, by Donna George Storey

"Yutaka pours more cold saké into my cup, a small work of art in itself, with frothy air bubbles suspended like jewels in the depths of the thick glass. 

”What other pleasures shall we rediscover tonight?  We’re in the right part of town for it.”

“I don’t know. How about one of those image clubs where I can play company president and screw my ‘secretary’ on the desk? Or maybe a soapland. How much would it cost to have two or three naked woman soap me up with their bodies?”  The saké is clearly taking effect.

He laughs.

“Gion is for men,” I remind him. “Rich men.”

 “Perhaps, but foreign women are the ‘third sex.’ Legend has it you possess magic powers...”

"Ukiyo" by Donna George Storey, from Best American Erotica 2006

 

SB: Apropos of the success of books and movies like “Memoirs of a Geisha”— What do you think Americans miss, from these portrayals of erotic traditions in Japan?

DGS: I’m by no means an expert on geisha or Japanese prostitution, but I have spent a few evenings at fine restaurants and hostess bars in Kyoto’s Gion and have read a lot on the topic both as part of my graduate work and for pleasure—the floating world plays such an important role in Japanese literature, it’s hard to avoid it. 

What Geisha Means

Most people probably already know that geisha means “artist” and geisha in Kyoto and Tokyo (as opposed to the downscale hot spring variety) are not prostitutes.  They may indeed have a rich patron on the side, but their professional duties include dance or musical performances and a sort of stilted flirtation that, even for those fluent in Japanese, is an acquired taste. 

Westerners who’ve experienced an outrageously expensive geisha party are invariably disappointed.  Yes, geisha can tie cherry stems into interesting shapes with their tongues, but the word most use to describe the games and banter is “childish.” I think the reason anything with the word “geisha” sells so well in the West is that for us it is shorthand for the floating world (“ukiyo” or the more contemporary term is the “water trade”), which includes all possible varieties of the exchange of sexual attention for money, from the expensive smiles of a lovely young hostess to a hot-towel handjob in a pink salon. 

Fairgounds, by Peggy Munson

Author Peggy Munson has written an erotic story about a serious freakshow: “Fairgrounds”— her contribution to Best American Erotica 2006.

In her story, a queer femme with some serious sex hungers gets a tour of the seamy side of the Midway by her “Daddy” dyke lover, and finally hooks up with a crippled “boi” who works the fairgrounds:

Daddy stopped to buy me funnel cakes so I’d get powdered sugar on my hands and then he licked it off while passers-by clucked meddling tongues.

"I need it Daddy, please," I whispered in his ear. 

He got distracted and stopped to try and cop some plush by throwing rings at a grid of Coke bottles.  I saw the Octopus Man skulking by, but the crowd was cheering as Daddy got a ringer.

"We’ve got a sharpie!" the Carnie yelled, pulling down a giant blue bear with his shepherd’s crook.

Daddy told me I could put the bear between my legs at night when I was waiting up for him. He said the bear was wicked just like me— and liked rubbing up against the Coke bottles while Carnies slept. He asked me if I would like to feel the Coke bottle inside his pants.

I grinned and said, "Yes, Daddy, please."  I loved it when he let me know my waiting time was up.  He led me back behind the line of game booths where the narrow alley filled with aromatic funnel cake exhaust.

SB: The way you describe kinky sex at the Midway reminds me a lot of how gay life used to be described in pre-Stonewall pulp novels, where everyone is crazy and dangerous— all with tremendous allure.

PM: The carnival is a place that once recruited people whose very physicality made them social outcasts. Freaky outsiders could always flip things around, prey on rubes, and create a magical alternate reality— like queer culture. 

But truthfully, I often go to a magical place full of bearded ladies when I write.