Susie Bright's Journal

My Pre-Feminist Paris Porn Collection

Before I left for a week in Paris, I was given the names and numbers of some "fellow travelers" in the French sexual liberation milieu. Of course, I was delighted, and eager to look them up.

I'm always interested in the Franco-American popcult attraction, because we seem endlessly inspired by each other, in ways that neither would recognize in the original. It's this glorious misunderstanding that intrigues me so.

Take The Story of O, for example. From the American standpoint, L'Histoire d'O, is perhaps the most famous "erotic novel" ever written, the epitome of the S/M fantasy. It was written by a middle-aged woman, Anne Declos, to woo her lover back to her, when he appeared to be straying.

It worked.

If you're American, and haven't read the book, thumbed the (French) graphic novel version, or watched the movie, you've missed a milestone. Not only was the title the subject of famous censorship, but decades later, it became an inspiration for the devoutly political lesbian feminist S/M movement. It's safe to say that a radical manifesto like Coming to Power owes a lot of juice to Little Ms. O.

I couldn't tell you what "O" signifies in French culture, but it certainly isn't part of a grassroots feminist radical-sex movement! That's hilarious. Americans imbue erotic liberation with gay and feminist fundamentals, but that's just not the case across the globe.

I've nearly given up telling acquaintances in France I'm a "feminist," because the word is understood so loftily there, I might as well say I'm a devotee of derivative string theory. Feminism in France doesn't signify all the "practical" things I think it means, even though they have a notorious history of feminist rebels from the French Revolution to today.

The disconnect between charismatic figures like Simone Beauvoir, versus the ordinary Frenchwoman going to work, minding her home— I don't get it. The country is as macho a society as any other classic Latin culture you might name. Even though women privately cluck over men's follies, men are so routinely deferred to, and groomed for superiority at every occasion, that it would make a typical working class American woman blow milk through her nose.

I'll give you another interesting example of recent note, that my expatriate friend Maxine explained to me.

Juno is a popular movie here right now, advertised in subways, and of great controversy. But the steam isn't about the abortion dilemma. No, the taboo in Juno is that the lead, played by Ellen Page, is a pretty young woman in her basic assets, yet she doesn't dress up as a "jolie jeune fille" ought to. She does not "adorn" herself, a key to French femininity. Juno's ragamuffin clothes and indifference to her external appearance, is a real shockeroo to  their society. French audiences find Page endearing, and they are blown away that her beauty is "internal."

And I didn't even notice what she was wearing.

In Paris, I also stopped introducing myself as an "erotic" critic, or editor, because I think people imagined I was using a euphemism to express the fact that I was dealing in naughty postcards to fetishistic gentlemen, or... who knows what. I got odd looks.

In France, so much erotic inspiration is mainstream, it must seem extreme to make a point out of it. A new book, a movie, a painting, may examine a sexual relationship, but that's not "erotic," that's just life. It's more realistic to introduce myself by saying, "I'm a writer."

With this background, I was pleased to be given an introduction to the well-known artist, 1960s "Happenings" auteur, and self-described sexual liberation defender, Jean-Jacques Lebel.

Lebel had a new video he showed at the Pompidieu Center last week, called The Avatars of Venus. My partner and I were excited to go, and accepted his suggestion to attend.

Venus uses the technique of morphing— that classic Star Trekkie, music-video sensation, to view a vast erotica collection, all female nudes or pinups, melting from one to another, from every century, every style. It morphs from Willendorf to Jayne Mansfield to an unnamed 70s porn model. The screen is split in two; you watch dueling morph-Venuses in tandem.

Of course it was entertaining. My response was even more acute, since I'm sure I was the only person in the room besides Mr. Lebel to be deeply familiar with all of his images. I've gazed upon each one of these female portraits so many times, with so many questions.

Mr. Lebel's collection displayed women as fetching, fecund, curvy babes who pose to display and invite. They will fuck you and they will cherish you; they will adore you and open their legs. Gotta love'em!

Not present onscreen were prepubescents, androgynes, nor the slightly, or terribly, older. It wasn't diverse in that respect— and no one stipulated he needed it to be— but what "wasn't there" was as interesting to me as what was. 

His video had no women's point of view about her  sexual self interest. Every woman was posed as one would pose an eager pet. Now, this is nothing new; this IS the mainstream of female portraiture— I'm not daft. A lot of people outside the art or political world would look at this collection, and think, "Yeah, that's the sum-total of girlie pictures." It's the canon of celebrity and blockbuster entertainment.

But I can't imagine a contemporary American artist discussing or displaying the female body where the question of female POV wouldn't be addressed. It'd be as if you'd been locked in a bubble for the past thirty years.

It reminded me of the spectacle last year when the Republicans unveiled all their nominees for the next Presidential election, and each one of them was an aged white man. It went beyond quaint, and into the realm of "fuck-you."

Women artists transformed "cunt consciousness" in the late 60s, blew up the Madonna/whore pedestals— and fine art has never looked at female nudes the same way again. You don't have to be a cult fan of Nothing But the Girl to know this.

I puzzled over the girlie spectacle in silence. There was no soundtrack to Lebel's film. At one point, there was a pause, and an image of a veiled Muslim woman appeared, staring out at us with big eyes. I took that to mean, "Women are oppressed when they have to cover up and hide like this!" But I found myself contrarily endeared to this model, because she was the only one not broadcasting, "Hey there, sailor, new in town?"

The last film Lebel showed was a lengthy discourse between him and a critic about his documentation on the "Happenings" scene of the 1960s. The tone elevated each archival photograph of Lebel's events to a totemic level of modern artistic and political action.

True, it was a fond historical document, but it seemed Laugh-In-like chauvinistic to be so grave and unreflective about the nature of these performances... Cuban missile crisis? Show a nude chick. Vietnam tragedy? Parade a nude chick. Stop the bomb? Two nude chicks! Male nudity?— Mais non! The nude hippie girl models were swarmed with men with cameras, reminiscent of Paris Hilton and her paparazzi camp.

Since Lebel didn't take questions at the conclusion of his show, and departed with his companions, we didn't get to ask him, "Are we missing something? Are we blind with ethnocentrism? Has anyone mentioned to you...?"

But by chance, a week later, when we traveled to the South, we visited an old friend who knew Jean-Jacques back in the day. She said, "Oh god, what a hoot. Of course, he's been screamed at by everyone. He doesn't care. It's his 'e-rot-ic-a,'" she said, her lips arching each syllable.

Her laughter, as if to say, "Well, what do you expect?" made me to decide to never again use the word "erotic," in France, with a straight face.

After Lebel's film, there were two other shorts presented at the screening, both with a sexual bent.

The one I could follow was Yoko Ono's film, Bottoms, from 1966. Five and a half minutes. It's a continuous footage of oscillating derrieres, the crucifix of flesh between the buttocks, crossed by the fold where our thighs begin. I loved it.

Yoko and her friends are the anonymous models: men, women, young people, elderly. In many cases, you couldn't figure out, "Is it a boy or a girl?" The audience burst into nervous giggles as the fat bottoms, the saggy ones, made their appearance. No one had made A SOUND in the theater until these images appeared, so that caught my attention.

It wasn't embarrassing that they were nude, but it was embarrassing that they weren't  firm, or lovely? Rather than puritanical nerves jangling, it was the upset of the un-cute.

Lebel introduced Yoko as being a dear friend of his. They both blossomed during the avant garde of the 1960s. He is a "fellow traveler" in the derring-do, the unfettered celebration of the body, but they sure have different exposures to gender politics!

I couldn't get enough of this stimulation. I had to return to the upstairs galleries at the Pompidieu. It is all Modern art, with piles of thrilling masterpieces crammed onto one white wall after another. Your stomach flip-flops because any one  of them could transform your life— and yet the presentation of hundreds of them, in box-shaped rooms, like a demented force-feeding, makes you numb. You have to put on blinders.

Obviously, it's not just a problem at the Pompidieu... this is a sickness of many tourist-packed public spaces. As a museum-whore, fascinated with collections and obsessions, I suffer greatly.

I put on my blinders. I tried to enforce the privacy of my own little ecstatic world, and disappear into a single work for a private meditation. I looked for particular artists who bowl me over.

One of them is Balthus. All of his paintings portray a psycho-sexual story that puts you on the cliff of your own id.

Balthus was controversial in his day, but perhaps even more so today, for his depiction of female sexual urges and frightening childhood bitterness.

Distressed critics said of him, "What a perverted voyeur!" But when you look at the years he painted, you have to wonder what it meant back then, and the way he projected his own life into his characters. If you understand, say, that homoerotic Slash fiction is the invention of mature heterosexual women, it makes all the sense to me that Balthus was, in his imagination, as much one of his girls as he was their observer, or longing admirer.

One of his more straightforward portraits at the Pompidieu is of a woman combing her hair, with her slip falling off, one leg on a chair. It's called "Alice," 1934, after Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

Like all Balthus' work, it places Alice's sexual confrontation, as well as her body, in full view. She's arresting, a little spooky, the kind of work new observers might question, "Why does it feel 'pornographic,' when it's simply a female nude like a thousand others in here?" 

She's not demure. Her sex is not hidden. Balthus was unusual among modern artists to provoke these reactions from the very beginning.

Because I was in France, I thought that the descriptive index card next to the painting would offer a dull blurb on the artist. Most of these "cards" are unfailingly boring.

But instead, this description, and this description ALONE— among the entire third and fourth floor of artwork— was in a state of hysteria. To wit:

This nude is all the more disturbing for its having been painted from a clearly identifiable model, a friend of the painters called Betty Holland. Entirely recognizable then, Betty/Alice's charming face and blond hair are  contradictorily strange and disturbing. As are the outsize breast, the too-narrow waist, the thick legs, the small childish feet, and above all, the distinctly adult vulva on view in the middle of the painting to which ones gaze always returns with the same disquiet.

What horseshit!!

What on earth is a "distinctly adult vulva?" The model was a 23-year-old woman! Are vulvas supposed to be discreet slits that never dare take the center of a portrait? Narrow waists, thick legs, unmatched pendulous breasts— guess what? That's normal variety in female physique!

After all, it's apparently Bettie, and everyone knew it was Bettie, because of those darn thick legs! What on earth is shocking about recognizing a master painter's model? Many were notorious in their own right.

I was so taken aback by this guilty little apology of a rat-card, that I stupidly asked one of the museum "minders" if they had anyone in charge, to whom I could protest! In my worst French, I said, "Why do you show the painting if you're ashamed of it, and sickened by women's sexuality?" (Pourquoi montrez cette peinture si vous ont horrifiés d'elle?)

So, I put it to you... since I have a scattershot knowledge of art history. The one thing I know well is sexual representation. I expected the French museum world to be old-school, but not the least puritanical about a Polish/French legend of modern (or actually anti-modernist) art. What am I missing?

I'll tell you what activity I enjoyed the very most at the Pompidieu. They allow you to take non-flash pictures. Lots of people take out their cell phones/cameras to click away.    

Obviously, you aren't going to get any kind of decent reproduction, but what one discovers instead, is that YOU get to interact with the work by capturing it with various people relating to the artwork, or focusing on some detail, that makes it personal to you. I had a ball posing with paintings and sculptures, or finding perfect expressions of other visitors in action.

I would've given anything to be quick enough to capture the gaggle of twelve-year-old girls who walked up to "Alice," as part of their school field trip. They screamed with laughter and surprise, some half-covering their eyes. The little queen bee among them, braces flashing,  pointed her finger right at the center of the painting, at that "large" vulva, and yelled, "There! Look! At! That!"

"The Avatar of Venus" is available from Re:Voir Video Editions, or email Pip Chodorov.

Photos: Brigitte Bardot, Venus of Willendorf, Bettie Page, Yoko Ono at screening of her "Bottoms," Balthus' "Alice" at the Pompidieu, a man viewing the same, and me with Cy Twombly.

The End of The Best American Erotica - FAQ

Is The Best American Erotica over?

Yes, The Best American Erotica series is having its last hurrah this year.

The last edition, BAE 2008, comes out this month, January. It features interviews with authors on why they wrote their story in the first place, and even a piece by me, "The Story of O Birthday Party."

I'm going on a "farewell tour" to see as many BAE authors, readers, fans and critics as possible. I've never been to Maine before, and it's been ten years since I was in New Orleans. Many miles to be covered!

I've started a BAE web site  to keep our legacy going.

Will there be a new editor next year?

My tenure as editor of the series is done, and the publisher tells me there is no forthcoming book in 2009.

Am I happy about the series ending?

No, I'm sad and distressed about it. But it was my decision, and given the circumstances, the right one, I believe.

What happened? Was it a business spat between author and publisher, or is something harsh happening to erotic literature?

Susie Interviews Jamie Gillis

"A man is as faithful as his options" —  Jamie Gillis

Mr. Gillis is a former mime, Columbia grad, Shakespearean actor, and very nice Jewish boy— and better known as one of the most influential actors and innovators in the history of American blue movies.

He also isn't the type to seek out interviews, or spill his life story, so I was honored to have an interview with the legend who's made his mark in the most memorable porn movie of all time.

I got into porn to support my acting habit...

Sometimes I think of myself as a straight guy who happens to have had more fag sex than any fag I know.

This business is dick-driven...

I was with Long Jean Silver when she said one day, 'Let's find some boys to fuck...'  and they weren't easy to find! ...Finally we found a group of seven, and I said, 'Look, we're not taking seven, pick three.'

The Navy tried to throw a guy out for being in my North Beach [gonzo] and I said, "But he's not even the one that did the fucking..."

No, you can't live with someone who's straight, who's not in the sex business— if it's a 'quote,' normal girl, it's ridiculous.

If you know Jamie's work, I know you're drooling to hear it all. If you've never heard him, you're in a for an education.

Listen to our interview: Link

Get a month free of my audio show: Link

 

Other Notes on this Week's Show:

I couldn't help but sputter my indignation at the Georgia case of Genarlow Wilson, a popular athlete and college-bound senior, who was sentenced to ten years in prison for having blow job with a freshman girl at a high school party.

An appeals judge recently threw the sentence out, after much grassroots outrage (including a plea from Jimmy Carter!)

But get this: the GA Attorney General is insisting that that young man deserved to have his life destroyed and that the sentence be upheld. Let's start taking his life apart, shall we?

Finally, in the Try This at Home mailbag, I answer a letter from a fan of The L Word who wonders if lesbians really do have sex like that.

Reach Jamie at: JamieGillis.com

Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, and requests for free-show girly cards to susie@audible.com. (Episode 297, June 22, 2007)

Bike Ride to Hell

A recent and brilliant Op-Ed in the L.A. Times by Linda Williamson gets my head spinning about the new absurdities of child-predator panics.

Yes, students are now being banned from riding their bicycles to school, to protect them from marauding bands of molestors. Fat chance!

In Bed with Susie Bright 290: Let Kids Outdoors

Then, on the second half of my show, I confess my online blogwriter-crush on MonMouth— a London male escort:

...I wrote yesterday that most of my dates are exciting—

Well, blue skies bring tears. Having just posted the entry, I proceeded to last night's date. The best thing about it was my regular minicab driver who showed me baby pictures on his mobile as we drove to Hammersmith. It was all downhill after that.

I showed up on time, rang the doorbell as instructed, and was greeted by a po-faced maid. A maid! I was surprised she'd let the staff show the rentboy in, but what the hell.

"You M.?" she asked, sneering. I told her that I was, and she conducted me upstairs to madam's room. Suite, more like it. No sign of madam.

"Sit down," the maid said. At this point I had begun to feel like a plumber called in to unclog a particularly stubborn drain.

This turned out to be an accurate premonition.

Madam waltzed in, wearing a pale-pink silk robe, her face fully made up. She was pale and plump, the precise opposite of Thursday night's date, in her 50s probably, and nowhere near as articulate. First thing she says: "Stand up, let me see what I get."

Pro that I am, I stood up, unbuttoned my jacket. "Good," she snaps. "I'm expected somewhere at [time] and I expect to be bored. I need oral, and a good shagging. Can you handle that?"

"Yes," I said, a bit unenthusiastically.

"No touching the face. Just had my makeup done."

The idea of ruining her paint-job by splattering her face with my cum made things just about interesting enough to proceed. She sat down on a couch and opened the robe. Nothing on underneath. I undressed slowly while she stroked herself, then knelt down and worked her pussy over with tongue and fingers hoping that if she'd come often enough like this she wouldn't hold out for the shagging.

No such luck. I only managed a hard-on by concentrating on the memory of Thursday night, and my Asian date's luscious lips sliding over the head of my cock while I stroked her generously proportioned ass, two fingers in her pussy. Madam Pink, by contrast, really made me feel I was at work - even her moans of pleasure (I assume) came out in a tone she could have used to summon the maid.

She came, for the second time, and we were finished at 10 minutes under schedule. She began to dress immediately, in panties and bra while I pulled my clothes on. I didn't even count the roll of bills she handed me, just pocketed it, smiled, nodded politely and left.

I had my regular cabbie pick me up. Waiting for him at a bus stop, I found out she'd paid me almost double what we agreed. Every penny of that felt richly earned. The new dad at the wheel got a sizeable tip too.

Jeff Gannon, take note. Actually, everyone can take a bloody note. You may spend hours reading this fellow's diaries; Monmouth is such a great raconteur. And he talks about all sorts of things— his relationship and  negotiations with  his wife, his day job at "Saltmine Inc.,"  his doubts and wonderings about what all this amounts to.

Here's the link to my entire show: Link

Finally, in the Try This at Home mailbag— an In Bed first!— I read a personal ad on the air from one of our listeners, and ask for likely suitors to step forward.

My photo above is especially interesting today: It's a still from "The Bicycle Ride," an  animation short by David Normal, which is a fanciful depiction of Dr. Albert Hofmann's discovery of LSD. This cartoon was debuted at the "LSD Symposium" held in honor of Albert Hofmann's 100th birthday in Basel, Switzerland.

Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, personal-ad pitches, feedback about the show, and requests for Susie's free-show Girly Cards by dropping a line to susie@audible.com (Episode 290, April 20, 2007)

Shanna Germain's Entry Point

SUSAN AND REESE slow down until they’re alongside us. “Put your paddles up,” Susan says. Then she reaches out to grab the side of the canoe with wet fingers. A diamond flashes on her middle finger, a gift from Reese. No, that’s not right. Susan called it a commitment ring. Like a cross between engagement and marriage.

An excerpt from "Entry Point," by Shanna Germain, in Best American Erotica 2007

We float that way a while, listening. Dark is falling somewhere nearby. You can see it in the way the shadows lengthen on the river, the way the trees darken and reach.

Susan takes her hand off the boat, points to shore. “We’re going to try and camp over there,” she says. “Should be an easy landing.”

It’s not easy, but it’s okay. Reese jumps into the river at mid-thigh, a little splash and sigh, and then she grabs the front of our canoe and pulls us ashore.

Harry doesn’t like that, being pulled to the sandy banks while he’s sitting in the back with his oar on his lap, but he doesn’t say anything. And by the time I’ve got the salmon and corn steaming over the campfire, he’s helping the girls raise the tents. One on this side of the clearing, one on the other.

We eat round the campfire, gobbling in the near-dark. I’m so hungry, I eat the salmon with my fingers, pulling the greasy pink flesh off the bone and sticking it in my mouth.

Susan does the same. “Jesus, Ma, this it the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”

“I agree,” Reese says, her mouth so full of fish the words barely come out. I feel a quick surge of warmth toward her.

After dinner, Harry goes off into the woods to do his business somewhere quiet and I sit on the picnic table, away from the campfire. The dark makes soft edges out of my fingers.

Harry’s footsteps are light across pine needles. He gives my shoulders a quick squeeze. “I’m gonna hit the hay,” he says. His kiss is mint and river water, and somewhere beneath that, a hint of salty, sweet fish.

“’Night.” I sit, watching the trees darken against the sky until I hear the zipper of the tent, the rustle of sleeping bag as Harry settles himself in like a dog. We didn’t bring air mattresses or even good pillows—the canoe space was reserved for food and water and tents—and I imagine tomorrow we’ll both be bent over and stiff from work and wear.

Across the campground, Susan and Reese are still sitting by the campfire, their backs to the picnic table. Together, near the flame, they are dark and light. Together, they should blot each other out. But they don’t. Instead they make each other darker and lighter, luminescent, alive.

I watch as Susan leans in to Reese, holding out a piece of fish between her fingers. Reese opens her mouth, takes the fish and Susan’s fingers inside, holds everything there, her eyes on Susan’s. Susan pulls her fingers out slowly, then she puts her own fingers into her mouth, sucks them the way she used to when she was a child. She’d get so excited by something—the tiger at the zoo, riding in the car, Daddy coming home—that she’d stick her fingers in her mouth and suck on them, just to calm herself.

I don’t believe they are being exhibitionists. They are just in their own world, not even aware that I’m watching.

Reese puts her palm against Susan’s cheek, runs it up into Susan’s ponytail. She pulls my daughter’s face to her own. It is not gentle, and for one moment, I want to stand up, I want to slap this woman’s face, tear her hand from my child’s cheek. But then Susan closes her eyes, leans sideways into Reese’s palm. Between their lips, the orange fire sparks and crackles.

When Susan opens her mouth against Reese’s chin, I know I should turn away, but I cannot.

There is something here that I am coming to understand. Something that is burning its way through my stomach, something that I am afraid of, something that I want. I am afraid that if I step back into the darkness now, that if I close my eyes without seeing my daughter’s joy, if I unzip the tent and slide in beside Harry, that this everything will disappear.

I want to capture this thing like a firefly, to bring it to Harry and say, here, look. To say, please, yes. But I am afraid that it will die between my cupped palms, that I will arrive at Harry’s side with nothing more than a husk of something that was bright and shining....

You can read the rest of "Entry Point" in BAE 07 — it's a wonderful story...

Susie's Interview with Shanna

SB:  I just got asked to blurb a book called How to Fuck in a Tent, or How to Have Sex Camping, something like that. As an outdoorswoman, what are your thoughts on the subject?

SG:  Wow, a book on how to fuck in a tent! I need that, please. I’m always the one who ends up with a rock under my ass.

SB:  You're a poetry editor at The American Journal of Nursing. What do nurses know about sex and the body from their practice that the average "lay person" wouldn't?

SG:  I was a volunteer paramedic and firefighter in college. Later, I went on to get a psych degree with a specialization in post-traumatic stress. I was barely18 when I started running calls and still thought I was invincible. It didn’t take long for that to change.

It changed how I lived my life. I don’t hesitate to tell people how much I care for them. I’m afraid of so few things now. You realize that everything can hurt you, so if you spend your whole life worrying about it, you’ll never do anything.

The body is such an intricate, amazing machine. Working on the ambulance solidified my belief that sex-ed is a must, for everyone. We saw so many patients of all ages who had sexual issues, and didn’t have a clue. It was everything from men and women with HIV and AIDs, to women who didn’t understand how they could be pregnant, to kids who knew they had something wrong, but were ashamed to tell their parents and then they came down with a fever or something else that forced them into the ambulance.

SB:  What kind of "sex education" did you have growing up?

SG:  My sex-education was oddly split. I grew up on a farm which teaches you more than you might really want to know. Our dinner-table conversation was often about which animals were in heat, when the AI (artificial insemination) man was coming, who was due when, who had to be gelded.

From a young age, I watched the AI man come with his long glove and artificially inseminate cows. I waited up in the barn all night so I could be there when the animals gave birth, I handled placentas and helped the babies start nursing. I understood sex as reproduction. —Also, as kind of messy and not all that much fun for the girls.

My parents were very playful about sex, and my mom is one of the most open people that I know. When I was younger, I also understood that there was this other side to sex: a fun, funny, loving side that I didn’t quite understand. My parents never had “the talk” with me or anything like that, but my mom made sure there were always books around, like Our Bodies, Ourselves. And, me being such a reader, I’m sure she knew that I was dipping into it every chance I got.

Despite all of that, there was something missing for me. I liked sex, but I still didn’t quite understand about my own pleasure. Now only how to have it, but also that it was okay for me to ask for what I wanted, to discover what I liked. I didn’t have my first orgasm until I was in my early twenties. And now that I think back, I realize that I thought that just wasn’t supposed to be part of the sexual equation for me. I have no idea where that misconception came from, but I’m so glad that I eventually kicked it.

SB: You're a connoisseur of dark beer and black coffee; you're a coffee trade 'zine editor— so okay, spill. What's the greatest you've had lately?

SG:  With dark beer, I have two eternal favorites: Black Butte porter and McMenamins Black Rabbit porter. I like my beers dark, sweet and chocolately. A hint of smoke or coffee is good too.

As for coffee, it depends on the day. There’s a shop in Portland where you go in and they have twenty-some coffees in stock. I’m always switching it up. I edit a coffee magazine and visit origin countries like Guatemala and Costa Rica quite a bit, so there are some coffees that have personal connections for me. I know the farmers and I had the chance to visit the land where the coffee was grown.

SB:  Do you get aroused from your own work?

SG:  Not typically. I’m very character-driven in my fiction, so my characters are often different from me, as are their fears and desires. Also, I’m methodical about character and plot, and I’m a slow writer. I plod along, change every word and sentence a million times. It’s probably the least sexy thing in the world, the process of me writing.

But… I do notice that when I’m re-read a finished piece, I am surprised by how arousing it is. I think, “Wow, how did all that sexy stuff get in here?”

I do a lot of editing in coffee shops, and sometimes I’ll be in the coffee shop editing something and I’ll realize that I’m sitting all hunched up over my laptop, getting aroused reading my own fiction while guys in suits the next table over are talking about selling insurance. I have this simultaneous response of: “Wow, I have the best job in the world” and “I really should start editing at home. Ideally, in bed with the laptop!"

SB:  Have you had any experiences with prejudice as a writer because of your erotic writing?

SG:  I had that question in my head when I started publishing erotica. I was freelancing for a number of publications at the time, and I used my real name for all of my writing, so I expected that  some of the publications that I worked for would have a problem.

But, no. If anything, I’ve found that my editors were not only completely cool with it, but many of them said something like, “Wow, I wish I had the guts to do that.”

To be honest, my writing has actually been a reprieve from discrimination for me. My experience has been that people take one look at me and write me off as either stupid or as having had some kind of charmed life, because of how I look.

With writing, because you submit work and you publish work via snail mail or email, no one knows (or cares) what you look like. It’s one of the few places where you know that the response you’re getting is based, at least for a large part, on the quality of your work. Either you’re good enough or your not.

The only  “discrimination” I’ve faced, if you can call it that, is people thinking that I’ve done everything that I’ve written about in a sexual sense. That seems to be a particular issue with erotica.

No one asks mystery writers if they went out and sleuthed a case. If you write a novel about being a widow, no one asks you when your husband died. People don’t ask Stephen King if his car came to life when he was a teenager.

But people ask me about my stories as though they’re non-fiction. On one hand, I take it as a compliment that I’ve been able to create something realistic. It offers an opportunity to talk with readers about sex in an open way, but I do find it strange. —Which isn’t to say that I don’t wish I’d done all the things I write about, but if that was the case, I wouldn’t have time to write anything!

Photos: Canoe Porn from a perfectly wonderful fly-fishing blog. And no, this isn't a candid shot from Shanna's last summer vacation— it's  a vintage  Sex in the Tent  shot from ErosBlog.

Three Obscene Phone Calls

My first conscious encounter with the police, in which I knew something "bad" had happened, was over an obscene phone call. I think I was three.

My mother got very upset while holding our heavy black AT&T receiver to her ear.

A few minutes later, there was a pounding at the door, and man in an incredibly pocketed and weighty uniform came in. I remember being curious how his pants stayed up on his waist. My mom got more agitated over his arrival than she had over the phone conversation.

I was eye-level with his long flashlight and gun holster. Could he shine the flashlight into the holes on the phone earpiece and see who was calling?

All of this came to mind as I read one of my favorite stories from Best American Erotica 1999, "Three Obscene Telephone Calls" by Marian Phillips.

In Bed with Susie Bright: "Three Obscene Telephone Calls"

Listen to an excerpt:

Listen to the whole show: Link

Get the whole Best American Erotica '99 Audiobook and Gorge Yourself: Link

 In the second half of my show I discuss a recent British documentary about jacking off elephants that is just so informative.

Finally, in the Try This at Home mailbag, I hear from a man who's starting to become sexually active at age 30, and wonders if what he desires at this point is completely crazy, or even "unmanly."

Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, or requests for Girly Cards (free "In Bed" shows for a month!) to susie@audible.com. (Episode 287, March 30, 2007)

Kathryrn Harrison's Taste of Envy

"Will buzzes in his three o’clock— that is, he buzzes in someone he thinks is his three o’clock but, as announced by her distinctive, staccato ascension of the uncarpeted stairs, it’s the girl.   

It’s been three weeks since he terminated treatment with her– since he told her what she has not accepted. Instead, she’s hounded him with messages and voice mails, some polite and beseeching, a few bordering on abusive. She’s even called his home number, spoken with Carole.

An excerpt from Envy: A Novel, by Kathryn Harrison, in Best American Erotica 2007

 

“You have to leave,” he tells her now. “I’m expecting a patient.”
   
“I have to talk to you.”
   
Will inhales deeply, lets the breath out through his nose. “My– we don’t have anything to talk about. We are no longer engaged in—”
   
“No,” she says, “you don’t understand. I need to talk to you. Please.” The look on her face is one of what appears to be genuine desperation.
   
“Have you contacted either of the people to whom I referred you?” he asks her.
   
“No.  No, I—”
   
The buzzer buzzes, and Will pushes a button by the light switch to release the lock downstairs.  “My three o’clock,” he says. “You have to leave now.”
   
“I’ll wait,” she tells him.
   
His patient starts up the stairs; the girl starts down; as they pass each other, the patient averts her face in the usual manner of an encounter at the analyst’s office: deferential, blind. As Will closes the door behind her, he sees that the girl is sitting on the landing downstairs, rummaging in her backpack.
   
When he looks out his door at 3:50, she’s reading. “What can I say to help you understand that we cannot continue to work together?” he says as soon as his patient has left the building.
   
“Please,” she says, coming up the stairs. “Give me another chance. I don’t know why I pulled that shit. I know I behaved badly, but I promise nothing like that will ever happen again.” Will watches her face as she speaks. Either she’s sincere, or she’s an actress with genuine talent.
   
“It’s best— best for you— to begin over again, with someone else.”
   
“I don’t want to! I can’t. I swear I can’t. Please!” Will doesn’t answer. If only she’d stop saying ‘please’ like that. Mitch could always get him to do anything if he just said please enough times. Will’s impulse— his determination— was always to even things up between the two of them. 
   
“Please forgive me," the girl says, striking at this vulnerability with the accuracy of a mind reader. “We can start over.”

“Our professional relationship has been compromised. Compromised in a way that would lessen my effectiveness in treating you.”
   
“But why can’t what happened be part of what we talk about? Wouldn’t that be, like, useful? Useful in figuring out what makes me do these things?” Will doesn’t answer her, and she throws herself onto the couch. She’s wearing a pair of trousers that are, he guesses, a kind of commentary, or protest. Made of camouflage material in which the army greens and browns have been replaced with bright pinks and purples, their legs are absurdly wide, each one sewn from enough fabric to upholster a chair.

“I don’t get why you’re making such a big deal about this,” she says. “You act like I stabbed you or mugged you or something.” Sitting cross-legged, the girl takes off her pullover the way a little boy might, by grabbing the scruff of its neck and dragging it over her head, making her hair crackle with static. Underneath is one of those sleeveless undershirts commonly known as wife-beaters. Her bra, visible through the sheer fabric, looks like the top of a bikini; it’s striped blue and white. She reclines, arms behind her head. 
   
“Please do not lie on my couch.”
   
“Because I’m not your patient?”

“Yes.” Will turns his back on her, and on the little surge of panic he feels, dismissing it as claustrophobia. Across from his office, someone turns on the light in the dance studio. A few students enter and begin stretching.

Will twists the Lucite wand that adjusts the blind; he turns around to tell her once and for all to go, good-bye, good luck, but what he sees stuns him into silence.

“Put on your clothes,” he says as soon as he’s recovered his voice. “Put them on now.”

Read the rest of the excerpt from BAE 07, or better yet, Kathryn's whole novel!

Susie's  Interview with Kathryn Harrison

S: Taboos intrigue because of  just how "un-taboo" they get can in real life, while still holding up the mantle of their immorality. Why do you think that is?

K: Well, taboos exist for a reason: to prevent behavior that tempts us and can injure us. 

The two greatest taboos are against murder and incest, which are significant, age-old human issues. We live in a violent society— we even condone mass murder for political gain— and because our sexual morés are more limiting than we can tolerate, we have a lot of illicit sex.

Incest is certainly not a rare occurrence. Interestingly, statistics indicate that most murders are committed within families.In other words, it's people who are intimately involved with one another who kill and rape one another. Which makes sense, as we have the strongest feelings about the people with whom we live, and share blood, and while some of those feelings are positive, a lot are not. 

The too-awful-to-talk-about-but-not-too-awful-to-do aspect issues from the failure of taboo to keep lust, or blood lust, reigned in. What can't be discussed is that failure, because it frightens people— the fact that they aren't safe because the taboo isn't a sufficient
deterrent to keep them safe.  So it's alright to keep saying "you mustn't do this, it's a terrible sin," but not alright to acknowledge it's happening anyway.

S: In your web site biography, you write that you met your birth father when you you were 20, and a sexual affair ensued for the next few years, until your mother's death... with grandparents following not too long after.

It struck me that he met and cultivated you when you were the the same age your mother was when he'd impregnated her, and their marriage fell apart. Was he was trying to finish something, or make something work that didn't the first time?

K: I'm sure it had a great deal, if not everything, to do with his very unhappy earlier history with my mother, and with her parents. I'm not sure if it was completing something, as you suggest, or a way of taking revenge on my mother and her parents. Or maybe it was the only means he felt he had of possessing a child whom he didn't raise
himself and whom he felt had been taken from him.  Even before he fell in love with my mother, both of them 17, he had his own family history that, I believe, must have warped and damaged him in some ways.

S: Is your father still alive? Have you had the "orphan" feeling as yet? If he's still alive, what about his being in the world still affects you?

K: He is still alive, and while we are completely estranged from each other, and have been for more than 20 years, I am very aware that he exists, and his death will be an occasion of grief. 

—Not only the loss of him, but I don't want to lose any future chance to resolve or
explain what unfolded between us. It is, admittedly, a fantasy unlikely to be fulfilled— very unlikely— but still, one I hold.

As for the orphan issue, he didn't raise me, wasn't there for the first 20 years, so I'm not immune to that.  I have a piece in an anthology called Only Child, and it's all about that sense of being the sole owner of my history, one no one can confirm.

S: When a woman writes writes about incest— or a vulnerable part of her sexual history—what do you notice about the criticism and review she will attract, as opposed to a man who might write about similar issues? I'm not trying to elicit a feminist party line answer, I really want to know what you've observed.

K: My memoir The Kiss was a controversial book that inspired a lot of acrimony and ranting and a few really venomous responses (mostly from men, but women, too). For better and worse, I'm type-cast as "that woman who wrote about her affair with her father."

A number of reviews of my novel The Binding Chair, which followed The Kiss, responded to the earlier book. The negative reviews of The Kiss focused not on the fact of the relationship, or the crafting of the book, but rather took me to task for choosing to write about incest openly, as memoir. A couple of reviewers who hadn't had the chance to get their licks in when the memoir came out,  then were hard on The Binding Chair for reasons that had nothing to do with it. Even reviews of The Seal Wife, which came out much later, typically mentioned the memoir and segued into commentary about that book. 

In general, I think male writers are congratulated for coming clean, being honest— about their sex lives, even if it entails abuse— and women are punished for revealing what ladies shouldn't talk about.

One of the reviews of The Kiss actually ended with the words, "Shut up," which I found astounding.The publication of The Kiss politicized me as I hadn't been before. All the slurs— that I'd done it for the money, that I must be a terrible mother, etc.— were so predictable, calling me, in effect, a whore, a woman too fallen to raise her children. It showed me a world to which I'd been blind. I was raised by a very forceful woman— whatever failings there were in my upbringing, feeling marginalized or "lesser" as a woman wasn't one of them.  As far as I could tell, women had all the power.

S: In your story, in the scene I excerpted, we see this do-gooder shrink getting sexually cornered, and succumbing to his reckless new patient, who seems like she will do anything without fear, to get her way. 

In this scene, it just seems like "the poor guy" is faced with an impossible situation, that there is nothing he could do to calm her down, back her off. As far as drama goes, it's completely convincing, but don't shrinks face this kind of thing all the time? What are they supposed to do when their patient says,"I'm going to scream if you don't fuck me?"

K: I haven't been presented with that particular disaster. In writing about it, I wanted to correct or complicate the assumption that it's always the shrink who takes advantage of his or her patient. It may be that shrinks are more often the aggressors, sexually and otherwise— they usually begin from a position of psychic power over their clients— but I'm sure at least some of them have been on the receiving end of trouble.

I like turning things on their heads, so to speak, and Envy has a lot of reversals.Will is more stereotypically "female" in that he wants to talk and talk and talk about relationships, feelings, grief, etc. The most tempting reversal of all, for me, was of course allowing the 20-year-old patient the role of seducer/abuser, while the shrink/father figure is helpless against her manipulation. That's the novelist's taste of poetic justice: taking her own past and rewriting it.

Sex and Guts in High School

Very smart nerds, a threesome, with much at stake. In high school, with sex. It could get messy!

This is the territory that Veronica Mars and Buffyness still fear to tread. But not Marge Piercy, one of my favorite authors— who I started reading in high school! Piercy has never been shy of strong, complicated young women with sexual power on their minds.

I'd like to share one of my favorite stories from my new erotic audiobook, The Best American Erotica 2001. It's a chapter called "The New Kid" taken from Marge Piercy's novel Three Women.

It's read by Theo McKell, and is just one of the twenty-four memorable stories in this collection. Yes, the title is "two-thousand-and-one", but it's only this year been released on audio. I'd love to know what you think of it!

Listen to the "The New Kid" (14:24)

Listen to the whole book: Link

If you've never read Marge Piercy, check out her novel that changed sci-fi and feminism forever, Women on the Edge of Time. And, if you're an old fan who hasn't touched base in a while, I highly reommend her memoir, Sleeping with Cats!  Photo: The classic State Records of New South Wales.

The Very Hot Jew: Sera Gamble

"ARI INVITES Cam behind the counter. He explains that he is going to make a stencil and transfer it onto her skin. She nods, watching him closely. She makes him nervous. Pretty girls always make him nervous. He'd rather tattoo ugly people only; less pressure. Also, lately his work has been so-so. He's the only one who notices. Customers always seem thrilled, but he knows the difference between a decent tattoo and a great one. When he started, when he was sixteen, every piece he did had life to it, an energy under the skin. Lately the tattoos are just there.

An excerpt from "Blue Star," by Sera Gamble, from The Best American Erotica 2007

    Cam leans against the wall by the stencil machine. "How old are you?" She asks.
    "Thirty-three," he says.
    "That's about what I was gonna guess."
    Ari is twenty-one. People have always guessed him older. He got his apprenticeship here when he was a few days shy of fourteen, on a fake ID that made him twenty. No one's ever called him on it. Either they all buy it or they don't care. He leads Cam to the chair and asks her to untie her bikini top. "What about you," he asks.
    She tugs the string and catches the cups of the bikini in her hands, holding them over her breasts. The strap has left a ghost of untanned skin. "I'm twenty-five," Cam says. This close to her, he can see that her shoulders are freckled. A fine white down covers the back of her neck where her home-cut hair ends. A few tiny braids tangled in the hair. Boredom braids.
    She pulls the bikini off, then leans forward into the chair, topless. There's a scent under the salt-water dried onto her skin, a hint of sunscreen long washed off, clean sweat, something green like tea.
    Ari explains he must shave her before he transfers the stencil.
    "I'm hairy?" she asks.
    "No," he says quickly. "Just, any hair gets in the way of the ink." He wets a cloth and eases it down her back, then smoothes on shaving cream.
    "Why a diamond?" He asks her as he runs the disposable razor between her shoulders.
    "It's instinctual," she says, after a moment. "It seems like the right thing to get. I've been doodling diamonds since I was a kid, then filling up all the empty space in the middle."
    Ari dries her skin and centers the stencil. She checks the placement in the mirror, nods okay. "This your first?" he asks as he lays out his inks: black, titanium white, three shades of blue, silver and a golden yellow for the glint of the jewel. She nods.
    When Ari tattoos, the skin in front of him becomes his whole world. Skin only looks smooth from a distance. Up close it's porous, shifty, alive; tricky terrain. Some people bleed more than others. Many jerk back from the first sting. Some inch away from the pain. Some lean into it.
    He cups his hand over her stenciled skin. She's warm. Her back is almost as muscular as a man's. A surfer's back. She pulls the bikini off over her head, then leans forward into the chair, now topless. Ari realizes he hasn't seen breasts in months, and the last were those of a fifty-year old woman who was getting a turtle tattooed between them. Cam's breasts are full, pressed into the vinyl of the chair, the outer roundness of them just visible.
    Ari realizes he hasn't even jacked off in days. He feels that dead feeling, the one that’s been following him around, the one that comes up behind him sometimes and throws a black sack over his head. His dick is getting hard now, which only makes it worse. Body waking up, reminding him of his life: coffee-ink-sandwich-TV-bed, his apartment up the block with its big rooms and practically no furniture.
    Ari takes his hand away and snaps on latex gloves, loads ink for the outline. "Ready?" She presses her face into the back of the chair, hugs it with both arms. Ready. He adjusts himself in his pants. Holding the tattoo gun instantly calms him. "First line's gonna hurt," he warns.
    She sits still, waiting. He turns on his gun and presses it lightly to the point of the diamond, then moves his hand away, anticipating her flinch. But she doesn't move. She exhales softly. He stretches the skin with his right hand, inks with the left. "Not a flincher, huh," he says.
    "I have a high tolerance for pain," she murmurs.
    He wipes the blood away with a tissue. "But you're a bleeder," he tells her.
    "Huh. Must be the aspirin."
    "Did you take some today?"
    "I take it all the time," she says, just loud enough to be heard over the buzz of the needle. "I have a headache every fucking day. I thought I had a tumor, but I don't."
    "Does it work?"
    "Does what work?"
    "The aspirin," he says, whipping a quick upward line, then catching the blooming blood in a tissue. She bleeds as much as anyone he's tattooed. The tips of his gloves are red and sticky already. Her odor intensifies, sea and earth mingling with the antiseptic, the latex of his gloves, the ink and blood.
    "Yeah, just taking it feels good. I chew them. I like the taste, now. Oh, that part hurts," she says when he runs over her spine. Then, "But not like a bad hurt."
    "People get addicted." He thinks about how stupid he sounds, spouting the great cliché of tattooing.
    "I'm not surprised," she replies. "I shoulda taken more aspirin, maybe?"
    "It wouldn't help. You'd just bleed even more."
    "I have this monster bottle. My dad bought like twenty of them. His doctor told him to take one every day after he had a heart attack. It's supposed to prevent another one."
    "Did it?"
    "No," she says. "Last year." She holds her voice as steady as her body, but last year is not long ago. Ari knows. When someone is dead, last year is yesterday.
    "I'm sorry."
     "It's okay. I like taking his aspirin, you know?" And then they don't say anything else....

Read the rest of the story in BAE 2007!

Interview with Sera Gamble :

SB: I've been reading you and your friend Simon Glickman's new web site, Very Hot Jews. I was startled when you first sent me the link. VERY HOT JEWS? So disrespectful! I had a shocked mother's reaction. Why do you think a word picture like that incites both humor, and the sense that you're going to get a scolding?

SG: It almost sounds like a porn site, doesn’t it? We felt the title captured something about the blog’s tone: fun, self-deprecating, irreverent. We were out to push those buttons you’re talking about. 

My generation learned that our approach to our own Jewishness must have gravity. Because we were recently the target of the best-organized genocide in history. For people like my parents and grandparents, who actually survived the Holocaust, any brash and colorful declaration of Jewishness caused an involuntary shot of fear. My grandfather was very upset that my parents “risked” giving my brother and me Jewish names. The underlying message I inherited was that if we Jews were too loud, we might bring the next avalanche down upon ourselves. 

But while I understand why they believed that message, I can’t subscribe to it. It perpetuates the notion that there’s something wrong with being Jewish. It just feels like… more punishment. And if my family went to the considerable trouble of surviving the Holocaust, the least I can do is broadcast my own particular flavor of Jewishness for the world to see.

Even sticking “Jew” together with “Very Hot” has inspired a more heated response than we anticipated.  I recently talked to my mother about this. She grew up in post-WWII Poland, often the only dark-haired, Semitic girl in a sea of blondeness. It was made clear to her that it is not possible to be both Jewish and pretty.

I can’t tell you how painful that is to me, to think of her growing up that way. It makes me so angry. 

Though I was born here, where concepts of beauty are more diverse, I think I internalized that lie about Jewish women not being hot. Some part of me believed I could be hot despite being Jewish, but not because of it or including it. 

I was all ready to write my issue off as specific to immigrant families from anti-Semitic countries... but then I just sent around a questionnaire, for a feature we’re going to run called “Profiles In Hotness.”

I sent one to a gorgeous, American-from-way-back friend. She called to say it was the first time in her life she’d had her hotness connected with her Jewishness. She got emotional, because she realized she’d been separating this essential ingredient of herself from the whole. She was like, “I’m a hot Jew! It’s revolutionary!” 

SB: Lately, I guess it's because of things like HEEB magazine, and Sarah Silverman's talked-about projects, there's been a lot of visibility for a biting kind of humor about jewish sexuality and femininity. It's different from Joan Rivers... although it's interesting to think about that lineage.

SG: Joan Rivers did a lot of making fun of herself and her Jewish neurosis. To contrast, I think Sarah Silverman is making fun of other people for buying the story that Jewish girls are frigid JAPS or, on the other end of the spectrum, nymphos. To be in on the joke, you have to agree with her that the stereotype is ridiculous. 

Sarah Silverman posed for the cover of HEEB, wrapped in the mythical sheet-with-a-hole-in-it (the kind that Hassidic Jews of yore supposedly had marital sex through in order to maintain modesty). Simultaneously sending up at least three stereotypes about being Jewish, female, and sexy: awesome. To answer your question, yeah— I like.

But, you know, I’m not really a comedian. I think I’d probably suck at standup. I see myself as part of a slightly different lineage, of women writers. I’ve taken cues from writers like Jill Soloway, who in her essays talks a lot about sex and femininity and being Jewish. (She’s helped me quite a bit in my career, and when I thanked her, she told me she was just doing her part to ensure the continued defeat of the Nazis.)

The difference is that while writers like Jill are funny, their primary goal is tell personal stories and ask hard questions. There’s a vulnerability there. I think we owe something to the Jewish comediennes who came before us, but also to the previous generation of feminists who wrote honestly about sexuality and womanhood.

SB: Many people have told me Blue Star is their "favorite" in BAE, and have said, a little shyly, that it's so romantic, so sad in that way you want to hold onto. What do you think it is, when eroticism and loneliness make such good literary companions?

SG: Maybe eroticism and loneliness make such good buddies because they share the same root: longing.

My own favorite erotic moments in books and movies often spring up out of loneliness.  The moments tend to be quite small. They’re very… un-decadent—born less from desire and more from need. No orgiastic feasts. More like the intensity of a single orange when you’re starving.

“Blue Star,” by the way, is one of the most personal things I’ve ever written. The situation and characters are made up, but when I look at it now I can see that it’s infused with the grief I feel over the death of my father. One of the realizations I’ve come to is that without him, I will feel a deep loneliness for the rest of my life. The hole is unfillable.

But something else has happened to me, too. I’m now able to recognize that kind of hole in other people. We can’t do anything, really, about each other’s pain, but there are occasional beautiful moments where we see each other. I think that’s something I tried to capture, in the way Ari sees Cam. It’s funny—that feeling is not especially romantic, but it evolved into something romantic in the story.

SB: Do you consider yourself a romantic writer? Why do you think there's such a gap between genre romance and literary romance?

SG: I consider myself a romantic writer only in the sense we just talked about— I write a lot about lonely people trying to connect.  The moments when they finally do are sometimes romantic.

Now, about analyzing the gap between genre and literary romance… I should start by saying I have nothing against genre romance. I grew up reading bodice rippers. I still occasionally read them—that’s right, I said it. Nothing like a paperback emblazoned with the image of Fabio naked on a horse to cleanse the palate after, say, The Year of Magical Thinking.

I’m not quite sure what you mean by gap. There’s often a gap in quality, because the market for genre romance is so voracious that publishers race to put out dozens of titles a month.

But if you mean a gap in content… that, it seems to me, springs from a substantial difference in intent. Genre romance runs on an engine of emotional justice. That’s what the readers are after; that’s what scratches the itch. It has a strict set of rules about structure and character that lends itself to this idealization of romantic love as the force that will make everything work by the last page.

And the characters, especially the men, tend to be attractively flawed in unrealistic ways: they’re promiscuous in a way that is curable by true love, and they’re emotionally damaged by their childhoods in a way that is fixable by the heroine.

Those stories often boil down to the hero and heroine saving each other. That’s where they lose me.  I don’t much believe in people saving each other with their passionate love. 

On the other hand, there’s room for a lot more human messiness in literary romance. The best romances in literature are often the most deeply fucked up. That I can get into. Passion that is clumsy and painful, at moments funny, often riddled with mistakes and regret. Madame Bovary and Romeo and Juliet and