Susie Bright's Journal

Poke the Doll— And Then What?

Many of you may have heard that the very first Sex in Videogames conference was held in San Francisco last month, bringing together a couple hundred game designers, erotic futurists, and pornographers, into the same room.

The special economies of porn design vs. game conception were one hot topic, according to the Wired story I've linked above, but my friend Neil added to the story: "I find it interesting that they are (accurately) able to point at the porn industry for lacking a sense of adventure in sex. Prudes."

My friend Tony, who attended the conference, told me it was interesting and full of information... "though it became a bit grating after a while. I heard one spiel too many about the hard-wired differences between men and woman. Many— like women are not "visual"— are complete bullshit, imho.

"Most of the games being developed by porn people are of the 'poke the doll' variety," he said. "I'm not convinced there's much of a future there.  The real excitement is in massive multiplayer games and environments like Second Life and RedLightCenter, that are open-ended. Again, my opinion."

I'd never heard that expression "Poke the Doll," before, and it made me laugh. We've all done our fair share of poking and prodding in our toy-life history, I imagine.

I remember having someone bring the earliest title of this kind into the On Our Backs office in the 80s. It was a black-and-white game for the Macintosh called MacPlaymate. She was a hand-drawn, b/w cartoon, a heavily pixelated naked woman who lay on a bed. You moved your mouse around her pussy, to arouse her to orgasm. She responded by writhing and moaning.

I was startled that she turned me on at all, but she did. What was it? I finally decided it was her incredibly sexy voice. You would just keep mousing away at her forever to hear those moans. I called up Mike Saenz, her creator, and he said that yes, he really did luck into "Rachel," his impromptu voice talent.

But I forgot about her after a few days. What a cad.

With my taste in story and dialog, if I did follow a game, it would because there was suspense, conflict, occasional ecstatic relief, and a real investment in character. A little poking now and then would be fine too, but in the excitement of those contexts!

I grew up with the first generation of boys who played Dungeons and Dragons. I always wondered how come that world wasn't sexier. My own version of Dungeons and Barbies certainly had the erotic suspense element.

What do you think? Did you or do you ever play a computer-origin game that feeds your inner horny dragon? Did any of you go to the conf and come to other conclusions?

Strip Tea Party

You know how hard it is to get good service nowadays. Chivalry is a corpse, discretion is unheard of, and elegance—elegance is currently defined by advertisements for discount furniture.

A wellbred woman might spend her entire maturity never once hearing the words "May I be of service to you?"—although she may spend her life waiting on others, particularly children and men. Such a predicament could make strong women weep and gnash their teeth, but when the going gets tough, the tough throw a party. A very unusual party.

It all started when I received an invitation to attend a salon of women artists. We were offered an occasion to read aloud, sketch, and indulge ourselves in a proper High Tea. Most intriguing of all, the invitation promised we would be served our scones and punch by naked slaveboys who would not speak unless spoken to. The aspect of social nudity was of course titillating, but would ordinary men actually keep their lips buttoned for an approximately five-hour affair? That had to be seen to be believed. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

Upon arrival, I was indeed greeted by a nude doorman who took my coat. Alas, he was the only servant in sight, and in the meantime, guests were arriving by the score. What a delightful group of invitees they were, too. If I had been able to get a simple cup of hot Earl Grey, my afternoon would have been complete.

But unfortunately, although the company was sublime and the concept impeccable, only two slaveboys were on hand to provide services, and despite their best intentions, I don't think either of them had ever so much as poured a cup of decaf.

The guests were uneducated in the fine art of being served. Though a couple of us were dressed in literary salon frocks, some came in sweatpants. One lovely woman offered to get up and fetch me a scone, and when I gently reminded her she was a guest, she pleaded with me, "It doesn't matter, I'm a bottom in real life." Ah yes, but real life was what we were trying to escape.

The ultimate affront was the vision, midway through the party, of an attractive girl on her knees, giving a "slaveboy" a neck massage!

I departed with my friend, Laura. We reviewed the afternoon and agreed it had been a wonderful, yet insufficient, experience. Wouldn't it be perfect to have a party like that in a grand mansion, with slaveboys who looked like Greek gods and served like altar boys?

"I'll dream of it," I told her as we parted, but Laura wasted no time in wistfulness.

The very next day, she called me. "My friend Amy has a beautiful home in the Berkeley hills, and she would love to hostess the kind of tea party we have in mind. The living room is Byronic, and there are even special servants' quarters."

I blinked. The first hurdle, getting out of our filthy, tiny, crime-ridden neighborhood apartments, had been overcome in the twinkling of a phone call. Now where on earth would we find the slaveboys?

Laura was an editor of local weekly paper at the time, where personal ads of all persuasions abounded. She agreed to place an ad for four weeks, but I had my doubts about getting much of a response to anything so bizarre. I was more confident that in my Rolodex I would find lots of liberated men who would love to serve us tea.

Little did I know the raw nerves our search would scratch. I got my first glimpse of the reaction during a trip to my mechanic. "Look what I'm up to," I said, pulling into the garage and waving my carefully typed personal ad:

Genteel and Bohemian gathering of women writers requires comely slaveboys to serve at our tea party. You will serve nude and will not speak unless spoken to. Standards are high. Food and beverage experience a must. No sex. Please send photo and qualifications to Madam Tea Party.

"What the fuck do I want with waiting on a bunch of broads?" asked Tom, leaning against his desk. "You're not paying anything for this? No way."

Some little lost feminist emotion in me snapped. "Women have been waiting on you from the time you were born," I said. "And you can't imagine switching sides for a couple of hours?"

The next week, I saw Tom again, and he asked how my search was going. The ad had not yet appeared, and I was getting nowhere.

My gay friends said they wouldn't have any fun waiting on women. "Why not?" I asked. "Whatever happened to your sense of classic theater? This isn't a pickup scene, it's the tea to end all teas!"

My straight friends, even the most sympathetic, went into a panic about penis size and fantasized far more permanent humiliation than anything I had in mind.

All my reassurances were in vain. But fate was about to turn her head. The Wednesday paper hit the streets. I was so pessimistic I didn't plan to check the answering service or the mailbox for a couple of days. But Laura called me only hours after the paper hit  the stands. "Get your pen ready; you've got to call these two. The first one's a European model and the other one works at the Fairmont Hotel."

"We got two calls?" I was stunned.

"We got six calls," she answered, "but the others sounded like geeks." She rattled off the promising phone numbers.

We got over one hundred calls and letters in two weeks. The photos and descriptions offered a textbook case in broken stereotypes. Car dealers from San Mateo, computer millionaires from Marin, professional leather slaves who could only be contacted through their mistresses, and surfer dudes who could only be contacted though their bartenders. Punk boys, bus boys, sailor boys, and above all, would-be, wanna-be, I'll-do-anything-TO-be-your-ever-lovin'-slaveboys. Wow. Now we had to interview them.

My partner in the highly sensitive interview process was our fourth hostess, Lisa. She was brave enough to offer her living room for our onsite questioning, and she made no bones about the necessity of nude auditions.

"But how do we even bring it up without sounding like sleazebags?" I asked. I could not see past the embarrassment.

But I did know who to ask, someone who specialized in frequent nude auditions, and with that in mind I headed over to the Mitchell Bros. O'Farrell Theater to see (the late) Vince Stanich, who managed the dancers' schedules. He was completely laid back.

"It's simply professional, like a casting call," he said. "You ask them all your questions first, then you tell them you'd like to take a Polaroid of them undressed, and that's it. Tell them to put their clothes back on after you take the shot."

I hadn't even considered that it might be harder to make them get dressed than undressed. If our attitude was the key to smooth interviewing, I decided we should prepare a few questions on a form and devised the soon to be notorious Slaveboy Questionnaire.

Do you have experience serving tea?
How about hand or foot massage?
Brushing hair?
Painting nails?
Building and tending fires?

The applicants were informed that the costume would be a simple bow tie, black shoes and matching socks.

Of course, we were interested in why a man would want to serve at our party.

The most common motive expressed by the men was the excitement of being chosen to please a special group of women. For some, the idea that we were all writers was especially glamorous. One restauranteur recalled that he had seen a zillion parties where naked girls danced for Shriners, but never the other way around—it bothered him a little. However, guilt was not typical of our interviewees.

One particularly frank applicant, a sixty-year-old merchant seaman, said, "I have been a male chauvinist all my life. In recent years I have come to acknowledge that women are humanoidal types as well, with the same needs and desires as anyone else...." However, in his same letter, he stated, "There is no greater turn on to me than a buxom, dominant woman."

Of course, we had to remind our potential slaveboys that our guests were not necessarily dominant, or buxom, or in need of anything besides a piping hot cup of tea, served with quiet elegance.

For this, we had a disclaimer: "This is not a play party, nor a professional group. We are not interested in disciplining, humiliating, or topping you at the party. If you find yourself uncomfortable at the party, you may speak to one of the hostesses and make a quiet departure."

The boys were then graded on Face, Body, Grace, Service Experience, and that ever-important swing vote, Personality.

I never realized before this process that I have the unfettered ability to judge people solely on their looks. It is a form of discrimination I have avoided my whole life, and yet here was a case where, in selecting a man who would not say anything more than "Cream or sugar?", I had to pay as much attention to his pecs as I did to his poise.

The men we met in this situation, were not the least bit abashed to apply for the job whether or not they they were physically attractive. One man wrote that the most that could be said for his appearance was that small children did not run from him screaming. Unfortunately for him, his honest and amusing qualities were not enough to overshadow our search for the perfect Adonis.

Two men got erections during the interview, and with our standard tea mistress composure, we paid no particular attention to them. Three slaveboys came in French maid outfits, which were quite precious, but we were very strict about our Boys-Only policy.

One brought roses (extra points), one whined that he didn't see why he had to provide his own bow tie (immediate reject), and one had a résumé with the most impeccable statement of purpose: "An emphasis on service that puts your needs, not mine, uppermost in my mind." Music to our ears.

In the end, we picked the following six:

K. was a Bon Jovi lookalike, the only one who had been "around the scene," as he put it, familiar with the nuances of submissive etiquette.

P. was our dining room dream come true, an Italian-American who served at one of the most luxurious restaurants in town.

T. was indisputably the most charming man we met, with a Welsh accent that made us want to give him special dispensation to say a few words.

J., my only personal friend to respond to the call for comely menservants, had excellent massage skills, sure to compensate for what he lacked in scone service.

R. was Hawaiian/Chinese, one of our youngest servers, and won our hearts in his interview when he turned his chin up and closed his eyes for his interview photo. "Just like a choirboy," I exclaimed.

"I was a choirboy," he said. Instant winner.

Finally, S., our blond, tan L.A. kid, who won his place only because he wrote a followup letter saying he would be the best slaveboy ever, summed up his interest with the thought that it would be a "real trip."

Now that our slaveboy acquisition was complete, I faced an unexpected problem: our two dozen guests were not exactly RSVPing en masse. Now mind you, I only asked women writers of the finest bearing and Bohemian, openminded standards.

But when I called a close friend whom I expected would be picking out her hat and gloves as we spoke, she surprised me with the awful truth. "I don't know about this kind of treatment," she said. "I would never approve of naked women waiting on men, so why should I care to endorse the reverse?"

"Believe me," I told her, "these fellows applied only out of the most fervent self interest.... I'm not asking you to kick them; I'm asking you to enjoy a cup of tea without having to lift a finger!"

If there ever were a case to prove how ridiculous the idea of reverse sexism is, this kinky tea party was it. Women are utterly unaccustomed to having their needs anticipated, and their desires understood and attended to without speaking a word. Amy told me afterwards that even though she grew up in a very wealthy and doting family, she had never before experienced being waited on hand and foot.

Now, many men will protest that they have never had this experience either, but only because they take service for granted. Who cleans their houses? Cooks their favorite meals ? Imagines what they'll feel like when they come home? How they would like to be touched? Very likely someone feminine, as that is what femininity is bred for—nurturing and forethought.

For the sexes to turn the tables on this state of affairs doesn't result in an equal reversal. In their new positions, men and women do not imitate their original role models, but rather wonder and wander in the extravagance of changing hats.

Others of my peers were more blunt and less politically correct about their fears. "What if one of them hands me a cucumber sandwich and I'm eye level with his ding-dong?"

"The attention is not on them," I insisted. "The attention is on the women, who—if they follow the dress code to the letter (dresses or tuxes only)—should be far more stimulating to your eyes."

Another vexing query came from a couple of my lesbian friends, who failed to see how being waited on by nude men would be anything less than a snooze.

"This is not a party about erotic preference!" I repeated. "If it were, I would be the naked slavegirl and all the women would be in cowboy boots. This is a radical social event," I continued. "These men will certainly not be eyesores and, as for cruising, you won't find a more intoxicating gathering than the guest list we have drawn up."

Indeed, the sixteen women who did attend were all beauties, intellectually and visually. Rupa arrived as Cleopatra, with a golden snake headdress and sandals. Lily wore a corset laced over the most mind shattering body ever sprung from the foam. Honey Lee were a tuxedo like she was born to it, and Susan's creamy curves spilled out of a purple patent leather strapless. I myself started out in a black leather skirt that laced up the back, but ended up in nothing but my slip and my straw hat with the yard of veil. I got awfully hot.

My friend Tom O'Connor made the most exquisite feast for us: lox and strawberries and madeleines and nouvelle sandwiches and three different kinds of scones.

Photographer Michael Rosen turned Amy's upstairs library into a Victorian portrait studio. Any exhibitionist could take a slaveboy in tow and sit for a formal photograph, her hands clasped primly and her feet kissed with appropriate photogenic fervor. I asked that Michael be nude too, but I drew the line at the cook—the position of ultimate dominance.

I believe our finest hours were the literary review, where several of our poets stood before the fire and burned suitable verse into our ears. Much of it was so erotic that I could barely concentrate on the lovely slave loosening my stockings from my garter. He rolled them down to warm my bare feet with oil, and my toes grazed the soft hair on his chest as he rolled and squeezed them. Very distracting.

My hair was brushed until it shone by our blond S., who unaccountably disappeared two thirds of the way through the party. In a shocking kitchen gossip revelation, J. later told me that S. "didn't think the babes were hot enough." All I can say is that he combed my every strand with utmost sincerity.

At one point R. came up to me in distress; beneath the kitchen window, he'd spied a group of men scrutinizing the house. "Oh them, they're just architecture students," Tom said. But the postman was another story. He took one look, then another, then ran as fast as he could.

I don't think I really relaxed until the end. No matter how many massages or sips of brandy laced tea, I didn't feel I could take my skirt off until the final hour, when we toasted all the company, particularly the servants, and went upstairs for a final hostess/slaveboy photo.

"Do you think you could all lift me up, like a human cradle?" I asked my five remaining angels. And to P., at my right, "Could I claw at your chest just for the camera?"

I collapsed as beautifully as possible into their ten strong arms. What a day. The youngest and the oldest guests left with the words that they had never been to such an elegantly wonderful party in their lives. How silly were those who rejected our invitation in fear of sexual pressure or humiliation! Has everyone but we sixteen souls forgotten the meaning of style? The meaning of fabulous? How was the Bay Area supposed to keep an avant garde reputation if a few enlightened perverts didn't work their fingers to the bone?

I called my dear friends, Laura, Lisa and Amy, the next day. "I have only one regret," I said. "Right there at the end, when all of the boys held me up to the camera? I changed my mind about our rules. I would have loved a bit of sex right then."

"Strip Tea," from Susie Bright's Sexual Reality. Photo by Michael Rosen, of Susie and dearest chef and friend, Tom O'Connor, most dearly missed.

The Erotic Photographer Unmasked

I'm "in bed" this week to interview my old friend, photographer Phyllis Christopher, one of the original genies of women's erotica.

Phyllis is the evil mastermind who took the famous picture of me a mud mask and curlers, tied to the bed, surrounded by dirty magazines and god knows what else.
We had so much fun making a pictorial of "A Day in the Life of a Sexpert." (See below in the left sidebar for the photo!)

In Bed with Susie Bright 255: Sexy Stuff with Phyllis Christopher

Phyllis eventually became our photo editor at On Our Backs, in the early 90s, but I remember the first time I received a package of mysterious S&M photos from an unknown woman in Buffalo, more than two decades ago.

In this interview, we talk about what inspires her, from butch goddesses to unrepentant women dropping their drawers in public places.  You can check out her erotic photography  at your leisure so you can see what I mean! Her work takes my breath away.

Finally, I asked Phyllis to help me take on a tough letter from a listener who wants some advice on getting over the death of his loving and sexually adventurous partner. I greatly appreciate receiving that question, because I always wanted to talk about that particular taboo: grief and sexual yearning.

Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, and requests for Susie's girly cards to susie@susiebright.com. (Episode 255, June 30, 2006)

The G Spot Fraud Detection Squad

A few weeks ago, my friend Jared Rutter, editor at AVN, asked me if I would look at a series of porn movies about prodigious female "squirters"— wall to wall girl-flooding features. He said he had a hard time believing they were real, and he wanted my expert opinion. I decided to devote my new radio show to the discovery process!

In Bed With Susie Bright #254: G-Spot Fraud Detection Squad

I quickly assembled a screening in my living room, inviting my pals Jackie and Shar from SIR Video to be part of my examination team.

So why did Jared think I'd be so proficient at discovering a hoax? I'd love to brag that I was "The Queen of the G.," but personally, I'm not. However, when I edited On Our Backs, we broke the G-spot story, twenty+ years ago, with a series of articles and book reviews in the 80s that redefined the clitoris. My, how time flies.

My publishing partner, Debi Sundahl, discovered her own shooting abilities during a shift at the Ultra Room, and was so excited about the whole thing that my ex, Honey Lee Cottrell, shot Debi's tsunami orgasm in one of the first  movies we made, Clips. We were shocked to find that porn distributors across the country refused our video, because they said it was "water sports," illegal by their community standards.

The female ejaculation became a feminist cause for us: this is how women come, buddy, not some fetish sport for you to make legal decisions about about whether it's an "obscenity."

Meanwhile, the Mitchell Bros. made a widely seen spoofing comedy about the whole phenomenon, called The Grafenberg Spot, which DID use turkey baster bulbs to simulate ejaculation, and Debi and I were both extras in the film.

Jim and Art show you their little bit of "stage magic" in the special features at the end of the movie— it's all a goof. The movie promoted mega-porn stars Ginger Lynn and Traci Lords at the time, (Traci's stuff is now excised b/c she was underage) but none of the actual juicy women in the Mitchell's strip club, who jacked off every night on stage, were part of the footage!

In other words, the dykes were the only ones promoting it for real, and everyone else was questioning its authenticity or having a laugh at the whole notion. But that was the 80s, and in the twenty years since, the  debunking crap fell by the wayside, women are squeezing out Kegels like there's no tomorrow,  and heterosexual porn now looks upon "rain-women" as a hot fetish.

It's this latter trend that  has a whole series of super-squirter movies coming out from  a company called Elegant Angel, which has as one of its company mottoes: "letting the girls cum too."

"Letting?" Ugh. Carpe Diem with a gusher is more my style. Their patronizing sentiment gave me the willies.

I don't even like the term, "squirt," because it reminds me of "Little Squirt". Do we talk about men porn stars dribbling, squirting, leaking, holding up teaspoons? Swallow My Dribble! No, if you're going to promote women's jacking talent, call it a flood, call in Moses, prepare the ark!

So, with all my doubts and outrage, I settled in with my giant projection screen to watch "Swallow My Squirt 3." [If you type "squirt" in E.A.'s search box, you'll see all their titles on the subject).

Holy Hellcat!  Yes, this is real. It is also extraordinary.  These women are on a mission, and they keep themselves pumped up, pulsating their clits and masturbating with "no fake about it" intensity, coming again and again and again and again. And again.

(You can see the preview on the link I provided. You have to register with a name and password first, but no big deal. The preview shows a lot more cock and blow job action than are actually in the movie. It's 80% women getting themselves off).

Their clits are so engorged that their whole pelvic area swells up with definition. The room is soaked. They roar like lions and shoot like geysers. Camille Paglia with her "arc of transcendence" notion about male pissing contests really needs to see this.

Now, before you watch the clip, let me tell you: this is not fancy-pantsy, Playboy-Channel porn. No fashion models here. The men who function as "stunt cocks"  are homely and look like they're going to have a red-faced heart attack from all the Viagra they're on. There's a kitchen funnel involved at one point... It's "tasteless," in-your-face porno, without the slightest middle-class affectation.

They also have no intention of being feminist, yet the very nature of this soak-a-thon, with women running the fuck, is a spectacle that kinda gives new meaning to the tired phrase "women doin' it for themselves." 

You know, femmes have often criticized the amount of goo men shoot off in typical porn movies. The whole plot is about the guys climaxing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's been comically one-sided, and dyke-made porn was the first to challenge that paradigm.

But what I observed with the Swallow My Squirt, is that yes, indeed, watching women come repeatedly, with force and authenticity, made me want to come— it made all of us totally aware of our cunts. My g-spot is permanently enlarged from the experience. It was that visceral a viewing— even at the same time that we were laughing and criticizing various details.

Jared told me that the mastermind behind these tapes is not the directors listed, but a woman named Tiana Lynn, who starred in all the girl-jack features and is now Elegant Angel's Sales Manager, behind the scenes. She was born the year before we published On Our Backs' first issue!

SB:    How do learn/train/whatever to squirt multiple times? Does doing anything beforehand help?

TL:    I usually build up my juice by using a pocket rocket [vibrator] at least for a half an hour before a scene. I use it to get almost to my peak and then contract my muscles to control my orgasm.

SB: I noticed that some of your actresses used their hands on the outside of their clit to keep hard and jack off, and others needed to have something inside them to squirt...

TL:    Well usually, it's best to stimulate the clit, then get some good hard lovin' inside, and soon as you're ready to release, stimulate the clit to pulsate the muscle and to keep stimulated for a longer, harder orgasm.

SB:    For you, what's the difference in how you feel between ejaculating WITH an orgasm, and ejaculating without one?

TL:    Ejaculating during orgasm is more like a rough romp sort of reaction. When you do the whole thing nice and slow, you feel like you want to blow, but you have enough time to let it seep out— as opposed to blowing it as quick as you can—to get to the next one.

SB:    The guys you worked with made me laugh a lot of times, b/c they were so red, or sometimes they were completely off camera, and it was just so NOT about a romance or interaction with them. What kind of guy likes to work in these pictures?

TL:    I like to work with guys that are submissive to my needs, the ones who dive for the girl juice, and furiously work hard at making me explode over again. The guys I choose for my films, get excited when I'm excited.

SB:    Does it help if they're a bottom? [I recognized one of the fellows from several S/M movies]. Is there a certain kind of guy who wouldn't do this sort of picture?

TL:    There are guys who are intimidated, and there's even girls who aren't okay with letting their sexuality overcome them.

SB:    Would it have been easier, for the movie, to use hands and dildos?

TL:    Sometimes it is easier to just stop and stimulate yourself, but if you can find a nice, warm and hard to do it for you, (so your hand doesn't cramp) I say, go for it.

SB:    How did you discover your own jacking capacities?

TL:    I honestly just practiced. I based it on what I felt when others did it to me. I focused on finding that same feeling, and once I did, I didn't let it go.

SB:    Everyone was really vocal in the movie, which added to the sense of intensity.... was that all for the entertainment of the movie, to make it more exciting, or do you think jacking off is impossible to do quietly?

TL:    It's pretty impossible to do quietly. Even being next to it you find yourself groaning just in the thought.

SB:    What would you say to women who come, but don't ejaculate and wouldn't know where to begin?

TL:    Get a Kegelmaster [dildo-like toy you squeeze your kegel muscle on]. Go to the bathroom first so there is no bladder pressure, nor confusion. Take yourself to another level, starting with your mind, because once you let your mind go, the juices will flow.

SB: The Kegelmaster??  I'm always dubious about stuff that's expensive and tries to make you feel like you need some esoteric initiation...does this PARTICULAR toy do something that you can't do just squeezing your PC muscle on its own, or any old dildo you might like to put inside you?

TL:    That works too, the only thing special about this toy is it measures your strength, so as you get stronger PC muscles you can see the progress.

SB:     How the hell did you get everyone (both women and the man) to come at the same time? Did you really shoot that at the end?

TL:    Actually it seems to be easier to do it all together. You can feed off of the others' orgasmic energy which speeds things up, or even cause a simultaneous eruption. All of it is filmed as it goes, no order. The second one person might feel pooped,  the other person's energy brings you back up.

SB:    One last thing: I love that you perform wearing your glasses.

TL:    Well, I do need them to see, otherwise I just kind of aim to the black blur. Once the action gets started, I can see what's in front of my face. Most of it I can do better with my eyes closed anyways ;-).

Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, and requests to get Susie's "girly card" to introduce your friends to my show for free— by writing susie@susiebright.com. (Episode 254, June 16, 2006)

The Best She Ever Had

    I asked Jeff to tell me more about Carrie. The wind carried voices from the cafe brunchers onto our beach spot, but I could pull another towel over my head and listen only to him.
    “Well, she said a lot of nice things about me— she’s... complimentary.”
    “Like what?” I imagined what she might say— “Mister, you have a very nice cock.” That’s what I would say to Jeff if I’d just had a one night stand with him: nice cock, beautiful hair.
    “She said... okay, this is embarrassing— she said, I was the best lover she’d ever had!”
    “You’re kidding!“
    “Yeah, incredible as it may seem...”
    “You know I don’t mean— ”
    We both buried our heads in the beach towel and laughed.
    “Yeah, I know what you mean,” he said, and nudged my crotch with his toe.
    I sat up in the sand so I could see him better. We were both struggling with  our straw hats in the wind.
     I decided to speculate. “Maybe what our friend said about her being so sexually inexperienced is true.”
    “But she’s thirty-two!”
    “Thirty-two-year-old sex today is what sixteen-year-old sex was in our day— just creeping out of their egg.”
    “Is it really that bad?”
    “Yeah, well think about it— if she was holding out through high school, and then ‘playing it safe’ in college, that doesn’t leave a lot of time for sodomy and wasted nights.”
    “That’s a shame... but then what about all those blow jobs she talked about? I guess it fits  though, doesn’t it?— She’s afraid of everything else.
    “Tell me that part again, about her first boyfriend.” I dug my toes into the sand until they hit the wet part.
    “She said she just broke up with her first real boyfriend, and that when they got together, she promised him a thousand blow jobs. She got up to seven hundred and forty-nine in three years.”
    “Seven hundred and forty-nine!" 
    "Yes!"
    "Now that seems like a magic number. Like, we'll never forget it now, and we've only heard it once. But I don’t see how she managed to keep track... I mean, I tried to do that, when I was first fucking, but every time I went to bed with someone new, I’d change my idea about what good sex was, or what love was, and then my old system didn’t make any sense.”
    “Well, maybe it’s easier with blow jobs, if that’s all you’re doing.”
    “But she didn’t come, going down on you, did she?”
    “No, of course not! It was hard for her to come, she kept trying to block me. She couldn’t believe I wouldn’t try to fuck her, trick her, and afterward she said she didn’t want to do that— and then when I went down on her, she didn’t think I really wanted to eat her— and she kept not believing, not believing, and all that made her orgasm  remote.”
    “I bet the women who actually get off giving head don't count the number... If you want to swallow cock all the time, if that makes you come, you aren’t competitive about it, you’re just hungry, right? I mean, who keeps track of how many times they eat their favorite meal?”
    Jeff dropped his voice. “She was kind of rare, you know— she swallowed everything, every drop.”
    “Oh god— that makes me feel like such an asshole— Jeff, that’s not so rare, I’ve just brainwashed you. I’m terrible.”
    “Is that so? You're the only one who's not swallowing? You should repent, then.”
    “I can’t, it’s too late. You know I don’t give a shit about blow jobs. But don’t you remember, when we were first together, I did the whole deep-throat number, sucked it all down, blah blah blah. That’s part of the BJ-macha thing, to show a guy what you’re made of."
    “I don’t remember any of that!”
    “See? I told you I was mediocre at it. Well, I didn't do it for that long, ‘cause we got so comfortable, and if you really only wanted blow jobs from me, the whole thing would have fallen apart after two dates.”
    “What did I want from you?” Jeff turned around and started tracing a circle in the small of my back.
    “You wanted me to be a good girl and come really hard for you!”
    “You’re such a good girl, then— ”
    “And you like to show me,  don’t you?
    “Is that rare?”
    “No! No! It’s not, it’s what practically everyone feels, and if they weren’t so insecure and doing their stupid little dance maneuvers, everybody would just take it for granted."
    I pulled off my sunhat and ducked my head against his chest. I didn't know if he could hear me talking into his heart. "When you fuck me, you know I feel it, and I know you feel me giving it up to you, and that’s what it’s all about; it’s not so complicated!”
    He lifted my head up. “Do you want to stamp your foot now?”
    “I’m going to stamp it real hard!”
    “You don’t have to get mad at Carrie— ”
    “I’m not, I’m practically praying for her, it’s just the whole thing that makes me mad—all these BJ queens who can’t come, won’t come. One day they’ll wanna have a baby, and after that, all their competition and affection will go to their children and they’ll never wanna have sex again. The blow-job queen of today is the celibate of tomorrow. You better teach Carrie something about her sexual self-interest before it’s too late.”
    “You could teach her, too— ”
    “She’s not attracted to me!”
    “You don't  know that— ”
    “Oh c’mon! Yes I do, she’s not the least bit queer. And if she ever does anything with a girl, it’s going to be with another little flower like herself, not some predatory old bag.”
    Jeff leaned over and bit my ass cheek.
    “Ouch! Fuck you! You know what I’m talking about. I am not convincing some squeamish straight girl into accepting my ministrations. Talk about humiliating.”
    “You’re making an awful lot of assumptions.”
    “Yeah, well, tell her I want the, uh, two hundred... and fifty-one blow jobs she forgot to give her ex. I’ll strap on my biggest tool.”
    “But I wanna do that part.”
    “You’re a greedy little pig. What I wanna know is, when are you going to see her next?”
    “I don’t know, I can’t see her this week, and she can’t see me next week, and I don't even know what week it is after that, but she really wants to get together.”
     “That's so crippled! When I found anyone who qualified as the ‘best lover I ever had,’ I was driving all night to see them after a twelve-hour shift, I was hitching rides, telling lies, Jesus Christ! If she’s telling the truth, you’re in for it.”
    “That’s right, you used to drive to Nevada from San Francisco to see me.”
    “Every week, then every three days— ”
    “Every day you weren’t working.”
    Well, that’s what I mean, why can’t she just come up and see you for one fucking night? She only lives an hour away, and you’re the one who has a kid and a day job. Is she afraid of meeting me?”
    “That’s probably part of it.”
    “Have you told her we lead the life of polyamorous luxury?”
    “I think this openness is sort of new to her. She asked what it would be like.”
    “And what did you say?”
    “I said she might get devoured like a little bunny.”
    “Oh my god, did that make her scream?”
    “Yes!”
    “You shouldn’t do that— ”
    “But it’s her not-so-secret secret fear!”
    “Well, I prefer to play hard to get. I prefer to demonstrate that I don’t give a shit! You should really tell her it’s like having a friend over that you spend some time alone with.”
    “Well, that is what it’s like, exactly, but I can’t just convince her of that by saying it, she has to be here for a few minutes and see for herself.”
    “Christ, I feel like the Addams family sometimes... 'Good evening, we’re non-monogamous... Can Pugsly get you a drink'?”
    I pushed my glasses up my nose; they kept slipping. “I’m getting burnt— we have to find some shade.”
    “You can have my shirt.”
    “Baby...”
    Jeff covered me in a white surfer competition T-shirt that said Stand Tall, Be Proud.
    “I'm embarrassed to be seen with this kind of propaganda on my chest. I wanna replace this slogan with something like, Lay Down, Seek Humility.”
    “How about Lay Down, Deliver 749 Blow Jobs?”
    “I can’t get over what a magic number that is! It’s because it ends in nine, I think; it sounds like something unfinished.” I pulled the sweatshirt hood over my face.
    “Maybe seven hundred and forty-nine is just approximate.”
    “I don't think so— I think she has a feeling for numbers, and for signs, and even when she has more sexual experiences, she’ll still have an intuition about the cycles of things, the beauty of repetition.
    "Jeff, when you were in your twenties, who would you say was ‘the best lover you ever had’?”
    “Why my twenties?”
    “Because I’m not trying to be coy, and that was before I met you. I want you to think back to that point; what would you have said?”
    “The best lover... that’s really hard.”
    I poked a hole in the sand with my finger until I hit the a piece of glass. It was hard to think about. I flipped through my own memories like a fan of cards that I couldn’t pick from.
    Jeff said something first. “You know, even though Marie was my first lover, in junior high, and we didn’t have intercourse, she was really into sex, and we had a lot of it.”
    “I know, I can't believe the things you guys did under the guise of protecting her virginity.”
    “Everyone was Polish Catholic, you know why. We were so in love, and it was so intense, I didn’t even go out with another girl for the rest of high school after she dumped me.”
    “You know what?" I held up the piece of  green glass like evidence. "I think that when you’re young, the first time you have sex, when it doesn't hurt, and you actually come— which is more of a girl thing, I know— and there isn't some awful black cloud hanging over you— that sex automatically becomes ‘the best sex’— ‘the best lover’ you ever had. The fact that it’s even reasonably good is incredible when you’ve never known that feelings before. When you get older— especially as you get older—  the memory just gets more golden.”
    “That’s what I’m saying, that even though I had a lot of deep experiences, and more variety, later— ”
    “Exactly, but it’s not the same then, you’re not thinking, ‘Oh, this is the best,’ because  you’re in the moment, and it’s unique, and it's not fair to make comparisons anymore.
    "I remember when I first had two boyfriends at the same time, and they both blew my mind, and I felt so guilty at the time, because I couldn't decide who was the ‘best.’ They both were my mentors; I loved them— I couldn't give either of them up.”
    “Are you talking about Sam?”
    “And Cary, both of them... I was seventeen! When I met Sam, he was the one who said, ‘Go ahead, play with your clit'— and of course I came really hard, and then I asked him, ‘Are you mad at me?’ and he laughed, like the kind of laugh with tears in your eyes, because it must have been so endearing. That was my first inkling that my lover would get off because I was hot, not because I was making him hot. Sam was the ‘set your chickens free!’ type. He'd say, ‘Oh, stop shaving your legs, Susie,’ and sometimes he’d even get annoyed with me, like ‘Hey, you’re seventeen-year-old cherrycake, everyone wants to fuck you no matter what you look like.'”
    “He was jealous of you, then.”
    “You’re right, he was, because he used to hustle himself, and he was so matter-of-fact about what men are looking for, and he felt like he was already past his prime at twenty. Men are so much harder on other men, when it comes to sex. Like, they’d fuck any old girl, but another man has to be perfect.”
    “Maybe women are already perfect.”
    “Yeah, right, we all bathe in seven-hundred-and-forty-nine-like luminescence. It wasn't like that. My other lover, Cary, was so different— he didn’t say a lot, but he just ate me up with a look. He seemed to read my cunt, or maybe I just didn’t realize that all my secrets weren’t so unusual.”
    “What secrets?”
    “You already know them, too, it’s just knowing what happens when a woman gets aroused, when you can torture her... just starting to push your cock in, and then pull it back, and feel her with your fingers, how she’s getting puffier and puffier.”
    “Like a little catcher’s mitt—”
    “Yeah, and then her clit head starts to disappear up her pussy lips, and the cream is just getting creamier—”
    “And then you nail her.”
    “Finally, yeah. God, just talking about it, my cunt is spreading rings— no, no, don't check me, trust me, I wanna finish telling you this, because I’m just figuring it out now.     "I didn't realize that Cary had learned from a lot of women; I thought it was all about me and him. Because he said so little, I thought he’d made up my whole orgasm all by himself, whereas Sam made me talk to him, which shamed me but kind of liberated me in the next five minutes, if you know what I mean.”
    “So did you ever give one of them up ?”
    “No, I didn’t, because at that time, everyone was non-monogamous, and we were all fucking other people, and we were all fomenting a revolution, and I just thought we’d always keep coming back together. When Cary didn't follow me to Pittsburgh, and Sam moved to Seattle and got on his high horse about a new girlfriend, I was really shocked. And I had such bad sex in back East, I started to wonder if everyone was a lost cause past Barstow.
    "My heart just broke one day, and I think that was the moment—that was it—that was the first time I ever said to myself, ‘That was the best sex I ever had.’ I cried my heart out. I only said it because it was gone, it was over, and I was just left a wreck. Maybe the 'best lover you ever; had is the first one who makes you wanna die.”
    “Like Marie with me.” Jeff looked kind of crinkly.
    “Oh, baby, don’t... I bet she’s the one crying now.”
    “I wouldn’t want her to cry, she’s had such hard time.”
    “Well, now she’s a Born-Again.”
    “I wish you could meet her.”
    “I wish I could meet Sam and Cary again. I did see Sam a few years ago, at a wedding, and it kind of freaked me out. He acted scandalized by me, like I was some kind of freak, and it took all I could do to bite my tongue and not spoil that little reception by saying, ‘Hey Sam, do you ever miss your old days whoring on Dupont Circle?’ Damn it, I thought he'd always know more about sex than me.”
    “But you grew up ...”
    “Yeah—Into an old bag that knows more than he does!”
    "Shut up!"
    “An old bag with juicy fruit inside?”
    “Let me taste it.”
    “It’s got sand in it now.”
    “You’re fussy.”
    “You’re a slut. Call Carrie; tell her time waits for no blow-job queen!”
    “Are you going to be jealous, after all this?”
    "Maybe I will— just for the hell of it, just to see if it still has some bite.”
    “Sometimes your jealousy gets you in trouble.”
    “That’s the reckless thrill of it, but I haven't been swept out to sea yet.”
    “You know you are the best lover I’ve ever had.”
    The tide was coming in.
    “You don’t have to say that!”
    “But it’s true, you are.”
    “I love you—”
    “Shhhh... pick up the blankets.”
    “I do, you’re the something I’ll always have, I’ll always feel you inside of me, like nine million, nine thousand, ninety-nine, nine to infinity.”
    We kissed with our mouths open, and the sunblock on our faces stuck together. The water came up fast and pooled up around my ankles; I coudn't see if the towels were floating away. Jeff pushed aside my shirt and sucked one of my nipples like a caramel. I stared up at the sun and felt the whole bag of everything go pop— and disappear up, all the way up, into the sky.

Adapted from Mommy’s Little Girl, Thunder’s Mouth Press.

My Erotica Pulp for Next Year

I don't mean to torture you in advance, but I just got a look at the cover for Best American Erotica 2007, and I want to share:

Book covers are so controversial for publishers and authors, as I discused in an interview with Bookslut last winter. You get one shot to grab readers' attention, and yet it seems unbearable to distill an entire book down to one image.

Here at Erotica-R-Us Headquarters, it was pointed out to me that one of the lovers pictured in this photo is sporting a wedding ring. So does that mean they're cheating, or is this a scorching scene from a marriage?

Particularly with BAE, there is so much diversity in the anthology you can never do the whole thing justice. I ask the designer to come up with soemthing that vibes candid sex and edgy storytelling, an arresting image that will make people look twice.

The most common complaint I get about BAE is that the reader is not "prepared" for what they find inside. But how could I portray that on the cover?

"Queer alert on Chapter Five!"
"Code Red: Tragedy Foreshadowed."
"Kinky Paragraph Looming."

Sometimes I wonder if I'm suppose to put a little yellow sticker on every paperback that shrieks: Warning: This May Blow Your Teeny-Weeny Mind. Especially the two pages of experimental prose I stuck in there.

The dilemma is that I'm stuck in very old, very tired debate.. whether art can be erotic, and vice versa. I was once beautifully disparaged in Esquire for being the kind of girl who "mixed scotch with chocolate syrup." The critic was quite clear that effective stroke material is strictly below the waist, and to get your head involved just gives everyone a stomach ache. Similiar reviewers feel like if a story gets them off, it's gotta be right out of San Fernando Casting, a soupcon of Penthouse Letters with a cherry on top.

I am all for every man having his sundae pleasures. But if all I ever printed were line readings of Nympho-Housewife-Meets Pizza-Delivery-Boy, I would've bored everyone to extinction years ago. BAE's longevity is due to its memorable, timely, surprises.

Next year, I'll be publishing stories from:

Matthew Addison, Vanesa Baggott, the late Octavia Butler, Marie Lyn Bernard, Alexander Chee, Dennis Cooper, Jessica Cutler, Susan DiPlacido, Alicia Erian, Daniel Duane, —(yes, that Daniel Duane, surf fans) — Lauraleigh Farrell, Sera Gamble, Shanna Germain, Kathryn Harrison, P.S. Haven, Trebor Healey, Nalo Hopkinson, Nicholas Kaufman, Tsaurah Litzky, Peggy Munson, Nikki Sinclair, Susan St. Aubin, and Kim Wright.

More teasing will be in order as we get closer to the debut date. The introduction I had to write for this one was the most challenging yet, because writers everywhere are taking down the most difficult taboos to date, with no apologies. I'm thinking of showing you my draft here, so we can get the arguing in early!

If you ever read anything you think is outstanding, would you let me know about it? Be an erotic word talent scout! Send me your recommendations to susie at susiebright dot com, with BAE Nomination in the Subject Line.

Dead Tree Erotica Speaks Out!

This week I enjoyed a good interrogation with writers at Desdemona's Fish Tank, an erotic author's discussion group. (You have to register/login to access link).

Desdemona is part of Ruthies Club, an illustrated erotic story site, where I have found some remarkable talent, on the side of both pen and paint. The Ruthies' editors take stories they want to publish and match them up with artists who they think will have a good feel to illustrate the story.

Here's some excerpts from the interview...

D:     What are the main differences you have found between stories by professional writers of erotica and stories by gifted amateurs?

S:     Consistency. That, and the ability to perform on demand. But many a gifted amateur will learn those things quickly given the opportunity!

Do you think adult erotic fiction should make an effort to be sexually stimulating to readers?

If that question is as mechanical as I think, the answer is no. Erotica must be compelling, yes. But it’s not a dildo, it’s a work of art. Who knows what makes people beat off? If the author writes in that fashion, they’ll write in clichés.

How far outside the traditional short story form do you like to see writers go?

Everywhere. Please transgress my boundaries.

How do you feel about reality vs. the happy ending?

Oh, I like them both. —Wouldn’t want to be pushed into either corner.

Where do you think the genre is heading in the next couple of years?

Wherever taboo and anxiety dwells, that’s where literary fiction and erotica is magnetized to.

You are best known for being the champion of American erotica.

But I've snuck in so many Canadians! —Australians, too, and anyone who’s published in the English language. Believe me, I’m no nationalist.

What do you think differentiates American erotica from the rest of the world? Are there typical American themes? What would you like to see more of?

Our politics, our ongoing puritanical nightmare. But also our American sense of individuality, rebelliousness, and confrontation.

Do you choose stories you think people will masturbate to?

Some people will masturbate to the Jello Pudding commercial. Okay, maybe I have.

Masturbation, and orgasm fantasy is so unique, it’s so based on people’s life history and memories. So I can’t guarantee that experience for anyone, we're not producing appliances.

But if you mean, "am I impressed with stories that are arousing?"— do I realize they're capable of arousing others— yes, of course. I look for stories that have emotional impact, and part of that impact has to be the sexual heart of it.

There isn’t some  gadget that that measures hard-on material. It’s like being any other kind of art collector/editor ... you gather wisdom, intuition, and a “feel” for things through a lifetime of exposure, and you bring it all to bear on your view of a new story.

How do you decide if a story has enough erotic content?

i’I've struggled sometimes with that, especially if i love the story "as a story," but it’s  light on sexual content. Still, a little can go a long way in the right context!

For example, in the next BAE, I use an excerpt from Jessica Cutler's The Washingtonienne, about being an “intern” in Washington DC and fucking her way through the corridors of power. The language and description are not daringly explicit ... but the whole situation is outrageous, and she was so deft with the comedy of it all, that it stuck in my head. She created an erotic, if comical, picture that stays with you.

I see you as a kind of crusader for sexual openness and freedom. If this is true, how does that affect the way you pick stories for your anthologies?

Just in the obvious way... I’m not going to be shocked by anything erotic, or run screaming from the room. I appreciate and am delighted by all kinds of sexual expression, not just my own little turn-ons.

Your Best American anthologies always seem to have a broad range of stories. Do you use some kind of quota system, or does it just fall out that way naturally?

I do look for variety, a sense of this place in erotic time. Some years, for example, lots of writers might be on a vampire kick, but I won’t publish five vampire stories in one BAE... I just try to pick the one that is emblematic. In that sense, it’s not a sociological survey. But I don't have a strict quota for anything.

Does editing anthologies take time away from your own writing?

Yes.

How do you find a balance?

I don’t. HELP ME!

How much time do you spend promoting your books?

Endless, more than ever. Reading books for pleasure has become an esoteric activity. "Dead tree" artists are hanging on by their fingernails.

Interview: The Bettie Page Story

I was first introduced to the radiance of Bettie Page in 1983, by the editors of a gay leathermen's magazine. They lent me a VHS bondage tape of Bettie modeling from the 1950s which was so insanely cute that I played it continuously during Thanksgiving dinner that year. It was the beginning of a devoted affair.

Miss Page has come a long way in American limelight from the time her pictures were the subject of a full federal obscenity investigation, intent on saving juveniles from the depravity of smut. She became a Christian missionary and no one thought they would ever hear from her again.

But Bettie's story was different from the average Suicide Girl. She was doing fetish photography when the subject was completely removed from any sense of camp or fashion. The closet was shut so tight not even a filament of sex-positivity could be imagined. The damnation she faced must have been entirely without context to comprehend.

It is this history that's the focus of director/writer Mary Harron's new movie, The Notorious Bettie Page. Mary was the director of my episode on Six Feet Under last year, and after meeting her, I marveled, "Wow, a feminist is making the Bettie Page biopic, I can't believe it."

I asked her to talk to me more about her adventures with Bettie...

SB:  When I first was introduced to Bettie, it was within the milieu of gay life, the counter-culture that existed in San Francisco and New York. She was like the post-AIDS pin-up girl, a little ray of sunshine in an otherwise bleak period. 

It was the same time when bondage and fetish were entering fashion trends, again fueled by gay and punk culture. What do you make of such an unusual rebirth?

MH:  It's interesting that gay men and young women have been the twin engines of the Bettie cult. I wonder if her original gay cult had something to do with the ironies inherent in her image, as well as her innate fabulousness as an image. 

The Bettie bondage shots are filled with contradiction: her sunny smiles and cheesecake poses are at variance with the pictures' supposed message of dark S&M. 

She was the first person to do bondage as fashion, because for her it really was all about dressing up. And there is a camp element in the Bettie catalog: the bondage shots next to homely wallpaper and living room furniture in the Klaw pictures, the leopards with leopard-skin bathing suits in the Bunny Yeager shots.

SB:  Bettie went beyond the usual "photogenic" description. What kind of beauty does the camera love like this? What made Page's image so spectacular?

MH:  She knew just how to position her face and body for the camera. More importantly, she was so relaxed. One of the secrets of being a great photographic model, as it is for a great film actor, is that you let the camera in. It's an intimacy that the model or actor creates with the lens, that then transmits itself to the viewer.

SB:  You point a finger, without drawing a thick line, at her history of sexual abuse, incest, — and  her survival of sexual assault, a gang rape. How do you think women recover, sexually, from situations like that?

MH:  The abuse by her father was the most damaging, because she was still a child. She was a traumatized person, but she did have an active sex life. Billy Neal, her first husband, told me they had a great sex life and I believe him— it was clearly the motor in their relationship.  Sexually abuse, or rape, is  an awful trauma but it doesn't mean you will never enjoy sex—  although it may mean you become more sexually-identified, as the careers of countless porn stars will attest.

Many men who've seen the film complain that Bettie doesn't react much to the sexual abuse: she doesn't show more rage or grief.  But most men have no idea how much sexual shit women go through, how many of their female friends, relatives, and co-workers have been raped or abused in some way. They don't know about it because the women don't talk about it, and just get on with their lives, as Bettie did.

SB:  My own personal interpretation of Page's "naivete," and her various personalities as model, missionary, etc., is that she was genuinely crazy, and coping the best way anyone does when they are suffering from mental demons.

But if she had been homely and crazy, or even just plain, what would have happened then? So often it seems that sexual allure is both the salvation and damnation of people who need to be seen more deeply than the surface....

MH:  If she had been homely, her mental problems would have been spotted earlier.  The people I talked to who knew her in the Fifties all talked about how sweet, friendly, unassuming she was— but at the same time, no one seemed to know her intimately.

Even her first husband, Billy Neal, found her a mystery. That suggests to me that she  had sealed herself off: there was something blank and inaccessible about her. She was always late, often hours late, which implies that she would just space out. 

Someone can be mentally ill, but if they are young and beautiful and their life is going well, people don't notice because at that point the cracks are almost imperceptible. I think it's significant that Bettie's breakdowns happened in her middle age. 

There were a lot of things going wrong for her by then. Her fourth marriage had collapsed, and with it her hopes of happy family life. There were the demons from the past, her father's abuse and the gang rape.  You can't discount the traumatic effects of aging. By now she was a middle-aged woman, and she had spent her whole adult life as a beauty.  Her identity, her finances, her social life, her sense of herself: everything depended on that, and it was gone.

Bettie's "naivete" in the film should have quotation marks around it. It was deliberate.  She had sealed herself off in some protective way from what disturbed her— not an uncommon mode among 50's women— and lived in her own bubble.  She had all the evidence in front of her about what the fetish photographs were for, but she chose not to examine it.

Mary Harron's new film project is a script, written with her friend Frances Liscio, based on the book Please Kill Me, about New York punk rock in the 70s. Thanks to Mary, Joe Westmoreland, John Rowberry, and all my collector friends, for the photos and Bettie memories.

The 13th Step

Bianca James surprised the hell out of me by appearing at my Andrea Dworkin memorial this past weekend... it's not often I meet Best American Erotica authors at these wear-all-black occasions. She told me how much she liked my "homage de overalls," and I got to tell her how much I loved reading and squirming to her new story in BAE 2006, "Paradise City":

...Narcotics Anonymous beat the crap out of the regular lesbian support groups [I'd been to]: tales of blow jobs for heroin, cocaine binges, marriages torn asunder by perversity. The scruffy and dejected women of NA exuded a raw, predatory sexuality I found oddly appealing.

Karla was the token butch in the group, clad in parachute pants, combat boots, and a camouflage crop-top muscle shirt that exposed a tasty pair of brown biceps. She had a shaggy black rock star mullet that hung down over searing blue eyes and a hard, mannish face.

I got wet listening to tales of dishonorable discharge from the military for lesbian sex and methamphetamine possession, stories recounted in a voice like a rusty razor blade.  She had been clean and sober for two years now, and drove a forklift in the receiving department of Home Depot. Karla wasn't anything like the other girls I'd dated, but I knew I wanted her from the moment I saw her.

It took me three meetings to work up the courage to ask her to be my sponsor. I went to Karla's apartment the next night. I wore my white trash finest in the hopes of a tawdry hook-up: mounds of cleavage courtesy of a push-up bra, gaudy crucifix jewelry bobbing on aforementioned cleavage, and fishnet tights under a little black dress.

Karla served me dinner from Burger King. The savory animal grease wiped the taste of [my last p.c. lover's] latex-covered cunt clean from my memory. 

Karla insisted we listen to a Metallica tape while we talked about our recovery: I fabricated a story about being a divorcee three months clean from a Valium addiction.

Once we had exorcised our personal demons, Karla had slipped off my fuck-me pumps and tied me to her bed with my own fishnet stockings. She was very particular that I leave my dress on while we fucked, but removed my panties, and pushed my bra down to expose my nipples.

I suppressed a giggle as Karla began squirting K-Y jelly all over a huge strap-on cock she'd been hiding under her baggy pants. The whole scene seemed absurd, but I stopped laughing once she eased the slippery dildo deep into my cunt and proceeded to fuck me.

I moaned and growled as I felt months of sexual frustration released every time Karla’s thick cock pushed against my G-spot. I slammed my hips against hers, starved for dyke cock, my wrists straining against their fishnet bonds as Karla rubbed her wet thumb on my clit while pinching and twisting my nipples above their dainty little bra-shelves. The sensation was so intense that I came within a few minutes— I couldn’t control it, the orgasm that ripped through my body left me feeling completely drained.

Karla wasn’t content to finish so quickly— she fucked me deep and slow for an hour straight until my pussy was swollen and sore. She had positioned her cock so it bumped against her clit with every in thrust, and I felt her come against me time and time again as she fucked me.

This sort of behavior is known colloquially amongst friends of Bill W. as "The Thirteenth Step," as in, "Step Thirteen: Fuck Another Twelve Stepper."

Karla pulled her drenched cock out of my cunt, untied my wrists, and gave me a quick kiss before reaching for her cigarettes. I collapsed on the bed, utterly ravaged but good. We didn’t talk; Karla just lay beside me smoking cigarettes and absentmindedly flexing her abs, finally drifting into a deep sleep punctuated by loud snoring. I rested my head on Karla’s buffed arm and pulled the covers over us before falling asleep...

It's very titillating to "live a lie"... to have a great sex life while keeping a dangerous secret from your lover.

I'm actually terrible at this sort of thing in real life. I'm more likely to destroy my relationships with too much honesty rather than deceit.

But it works well for dramatic effect. I'm a big fan of R. Kelly's "Trapped In The Closet" saga:

Here I am quickly trying to put on my clothes,
Searching for my car keys trying to get on up out the door.
Then she stretched her hands in front of me,
Said, “You can’t go this way—”
Looked at her like she was crazy,
Said, “Woman move out my way.”
I Said, “I got a wife at home,”
She said “Please don’t go out there.”
“Lady, I’ve got to get home.”
She said her husband was coming up the stairs—
“Quiet, hurry up and get in the closet.”
She said, “Don’t you make a sound or some shit is going down."
I Said, “Why don’t I just go out the window?”
“Yes, except for one thing, we’re on the 5th floor.”
Think, think… “Quick, put me in the closet.”
And now I'm in this darkest closet trying to figure out,
Just how I'm gonna get my crazy ass out this house.
And he walks in and yells, “I’m home!”
She says, “Honey, I'm in the room.”
He walks in there with a smile on his face saying, “Honey, I've been missing you”
She hops all over him and says “I've cooked and ran your bathwater.”
I'm telling you now this girl is so good she deserves an Oscar.
The girl’s in the bed he starts snatching her clothes off,
I'm in the closet like man, what the fuck is going on?
You’re not going to believe it but things get deeper as the story goes on—
Next thing you know a call comes through on my cell phone.
I tried my best to quickly put it on vibrate,
But from the way he acted I could tell it was too late.
He hopped up and said “There’s a mystery going on and I'm going to solve it.”
And I'm like, “God, please don’t let this man open his closet.”
He walks in the bathroom and looks behind the door,
She says, “Baby, come back to bed...”
He says, “Say no more.”
He pulls back the shower curtain while she’s biting her nails,
Then he walks back to the room— Right now I'm sweating like hell.
Checks under the bed,
then under the dresser,
He looks at the closet,
I pull out my Berretta.
He walks up to the closet,
He’s close up to the closet,
Now he’s at the closet,
Now he’s opening the closet—

Your story pokes a lot of fun at AA-style meetings. How do you see the whole clean and sober scene affecting lesbian's love lives?

I was dragged to these meetings all the time as a kid, so I have a bit of a cynical eye towards them.

I once had a girlfriend who would use her meetings as an excuse to avoid problems in our relationship,  and it seemed like a new kind of addictive behavior. I'm sure the benefits outweigh the costs for most people, though.

The butch in your story, "Karla," is the steadfast good soldier; the femme is a dangerous minx. What is it about the masculine character who's a mensch, yet who is lied to every step of the way?

A few months ago I started performing as a drag king after being high femme for several years. And all of the sudden I was getting these femmes who wanted me to carry their bags, or do their dirty work. I was, like, "Don't try and pull that shit with me, I used to be a femme!"

Femmes sometimes manipulate butches through sex appeal, and the same pattern exists in hetero relationships as well. The femme in my story exploits class differences to take advantage of Karla.

Your sex scenes are cathartic... tell me about writing them.

If I'm not turned on by the end of my own sex scene, I haven't done my job. I write characters that I would want to fuck in real life, and draw on my own sexual experiences. I could very well end up being the femme in that story if I met a dyke like Karla.

MILF's Be Damned...

Kweli Walker is beyond MILF. Her story, "Drunkie's Surprise," is not for the lavender-tea set— unless they want it spiked. Ms. Walker may grow old and wear purple, but somehow I think feathers might be involved, and maybe a little coconut oil.

Put aside your preconceptions, and see what a way-older woman has to offer...not to mention her own discrimination's. Let me share a bit of her BAE 2006 story with you:

At fifty-something, Missy Jenkins decides to solicit the help of an older stripper to seduce handsome young drunks as they stagger away from The Chocolate Bar, a strip club across the street from her house.

Every day when she passed my place, Atlanta would yell over to my porch, "What you cookin'? Sho' smell good!"

I'd yell back, "Fried chicken!" or "Pork chops!" Or whatever I was cooking. We done like that for months until I got the idea to take her a plate and ask her 'bout all them fine young men that be comin’ to The Chocolate Bar.

When it got close to the time she came to work, I dished her up a platter of fried turkey thighs, potato salad, mustard greens, and two big fluffy scratch biscuits. When I handed it to her, I said, "I need to ax you some'n!"

She lifted up the foil and said, "Ax!" I told her what I needed and she told me how to get it. Later that night she brought a handsome little drunk over to my place.

Well, while he was passed out on my sofa, she asked me what I thought about him. I told her he was handsome, but I really like big men. She told me that she'd teach me how to come to the bar and pick the ones I like.

She said she picked a short man, 'cause short men try to make up for being short… in bed. When he come to, she went to work on him while I watched. When I got the hang of things, I jumped on in.

I was right in the middle of tryin' to give my first head job, when my teeth come loose and started to wobblin'.

Atlanta said, "You got false teeth?"

I nodded.

She said, "You need to pop 'em on out, girl. Don't be shame! This mutha fucka's drunk. He don't give a fuck what you look like. Try it with 'em out!" I spit 'em out and started sucking him like I saw Atlanta do.

"Un-unh! Missy, you goin' too slow! she said. "That'd be okay, if he wasn't so drunk.You got to suck fast and hard to get the blood down there, on a drunk."

So, I speeded up and Atlanta goes, "Awww, yeah, now you suckin' dick! See it's getting' hard again. He's almost cummin' too. You better stop while you can. When he get where he can talk, that's when you ax for your dick."

I go, "Just come right out and ask?"

"You better, or you can just keep suckin' until he cum in yo mouth. What do you get outta that?"

"What if he too drunk?"

"Sometimes that's even better. When they drunk like that, you just lay his ass out on the floor, get that dick hard as you can, and slap a cock ring on it, and ride it while you get yours."

"What do I do when I'm through?"

"Shit, wake that fool up and get him out your place. You don't want no strange man up in your house, while you sleep, do you?"

I shook my head.

"Then, you don't want him there when you wake up, either..."

Kweli Walker, excerpt from "Drunkie's Surprise," from Best American Erotica 2006.

Young people often have a hard time imagining their "parents" getting it on, let alone Grandma. How did you make the leap?

As I got to be Grandma's age and my libido didn't take the 'predicted' dive— and in fact strengthened— along with my sense of adventure, I figured, "Ha! Another fuckin' myth about women."

I know many women who are aging who have strong desire. In "Drunkie's Surprise," I wanted to playfully explore the adventure of an older woman who was confronted with an 'off the chain' libido.

You wrote an interesting side character, the stripper who found good marks for your horny heroine to make her moves on. Do you think women, in real life, do enough for each other to help find good sex?

Unfortunately, many women, because of religion and capitalism, highly restrict themselves to the idea of one mate/per woman. Capitalism doesn't lend to the idea of sharing.

Oddly enough, as the STD statistics display, many of us are sharing out of both panty legs, just in the least dignified and principled ways imaginable. Go figure.

What we really should be doing is first taking all our partners to be tested, and insisting on very real communication between all involved partners.

When women openly share quality men, as an alternative to traditional marriage, it cuts two apples with one knife --  everyone gets what they crave without so much friction of daily life. This gives everyone involved more time to pursue other aspects of their lives -- like writing books,  doing art, reading, social volunteering, research, exercise, etc. I am currently writing a novella called, Delah's Day, that explores the many advantages of principled mate-sharing.

Ten years ago, it was unthinkable for black women to write their erotica... Women confided to me that they'd love to do it, but they didn't want to shame their family and friends, or have a larger (white) audience  come to unwarranted conclusions about black women's sexuality. One writer said to me, "I'm already exoticized enough, just flippin' burgers."

It's a legitimate concern. Black women are often viewed in strictly sexual terms. I believe this is the vestiges of African enslavement where we were raped and bred on the whims of white men. When we were allowed to read, it was the Bible.

These two occurrences alone are responsible for many black women being deeply out of touch, and in the closet about our actual sexuality. It will be a long process to stop from seeing ourselves  as eternal whores or asexual saints, or as people who must prove to the dominant society that we aren't strictly sexual.  But the journey to our 'real' selves is soooo worthwhile.

I hope that as we (blacks) become more in touch with our actual sexualities, we will become more accepting of ourselves and the wide sexual diversity in the larger society — more experimental and less judgmental.

Kweli, your advice is well-taken by anyone... see ya at the Chocolate Bar, cher!

Searching for The One That Got Away

Dear Bookworms and Short Story Lovers,

I'm about to sink into the blood and guts of selecting the final stories and novel excerpts I want to use for the next Best American Erotica— 2007, that is.

The 2006 edition, as you know, has just come out, but I am busy editing the next.

If there is any author, or any story, that you read in the past year— who you think deserves big kudos and a nice reprint fee— please do send them my way!  If there's someone who's inspired you, I'd like to know about them!

The rules are simple:

It has to have been published in the US between Jan 2005 and this March. It can be a short story or an excerpt/scene from a novel. And it has to be erotic, which of course, is entirely subjective. If you're read BAE before, you know that it's literary fiction of all kinds.

Please email your suggestions to me, to susie at susiebright dot com.

In the subject line, write: "BAE Idea."

Include the author, title, and publisher if you have the cite.

Some of the best stories we've published in BAE have been because of personal suggestions, from ordinary readers, about stories that never got a lot of fanfare or press.  Also, sometimes a well-known author will include an erotic passage in their latest novel, and yet it is overlooked, or even hidden, by reviewers. It's funny how that works.

Thanks so much for your recommendations... I look forward to your letters!

Best,

Susie

Memoir from The Floating World

Best American Erotica 2006 is out! Let me introduce you to one of my favorite new authors in the book, Donna George Storey, who wrote the story "Ukiyo":

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...”

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. 

My sense is that inner reaches of this world are mostly still off-limits to foreigners (they’re so big and hairy and their behavior is still so unpredictable), except perhaps through the introduction of a native with proper connections.  This makes it all the more alluring to us. 

But while we Westerners keep chasing the image of the geisha, expecting to pick up some esoteric sex position or exotic, mind-blowing variation on fellatio, what a geisha really sells her clients is an illusion, the chance to be part of a bygone age for a few hours. Perhaps this is true of the sex industry everywhere, but the fantasy is more important than the actual physical act.

“The Floating World”

The floating world was also the heart of Japanese literary and artistic culture for three centuries, the only place where the Japanese could really escape from a politically repressive society.  Even today, it remains a sort of parallel universe where a man who burdened with work responsibility by day can relax and be indulged, like a child. 

That’s another point Westerners tend to overlook, probably because our culture has tried its best to separate the maternal and sexual natures of women, but the dynamic between a bar owner/hostess/professional dispenser of handjobs and her client very often has strong whiff of mom.  While fresh, young faces and bodies are always in demand, a skilled older woman can be even more appreciated by the connoisseur (and in fact, most geisha, especially today, are middle-aged).

The Japanese Man's Sexual Persona

A lot of American men sprain their shoulders patting themselves on the back for being the most evolved and enlightened males on the planet and point to the Japanese as the most boorish. All stereotypes have some truth behind them, but the buck-toothed, tour-guide-following Japanese male of our popular imagination can be quite a different fellow on his home turf. 

We have to remember that for the magic to work at all, the geisha’s performance requires the proper audience, a man of courtliness, discernment and wit.  Toshiro Mifune aside, we just don’t have many models of this sort of charismatic, confident Japanese man here in America—and they definitely exist, especially habitués of the elite levels of the water trade. 

To get personal for a moment, it’s hard to pass up the chance to say that I was equally surprised by my (admittedly less-than-exhaustive) experience with Japanese boyfriends.  Every one had a certain gentleness and sensitivity in intimate encounters, a lack of raw ego that was so much a part of my relationships with Americans.  Every one knew what a clitoris was and where it could be found--the same, alas, could not be said for my American partners! 

I am married to an American, and I have no complaints at all, but I did want to point at that it’s hard to base a fascinating erotic tradition on the charm and skill of one gender alone.

(Just in case anyone is interested in further information, two of the most educational works of nonfiction I’ve read on Japan’s “night side” are Anne Allison’s Nightwork and Nicholas Bornoff’s Pink Samurai: Love, Marriage and Sex in Contemporary Japan.  Both authors did extensive up-close and personal research and the results are entertaining as well as enlightening.)


SB: Do you think many geishas are lesbians in their private life, just as many American "courtesans" are?

DGS: Again, I don’t feel qualified to present an expert’s answer here--this is more of a conjecture on my part--but since a woman working in the floating world is playing a role, it does make sense to me that it would easier to do this night after night when your real life and your real desires are something rather different. 

There is no question that Japanese society in general and the geisha world in particular is more rigidly gendered, so in that sense, everyone in Japan has more experience of a homosocial nature.  This is part of the foundation of the gender-bender theme of my story, “Ukiyo.”

What “Foreign” Women Get Away With.. And What They Can’t

Foreign women do occupy an interesting “in-between” position on the gender spectrum.  As outsiders we have a certain freedom from the limitations of proper feminine behavior (At least at first.  The longer I stayed, the more my friends tried to encourage lady-like propriety, like carrying a handkerchief and making sure my toes pointed inward when I was sitting on a chair).  It’s not unusual to have a Japanese man to take a foreign woman around to bars and clubs and give her the sort honored treatment that is not much different from they way they’d treat a male foreign guest.

On the other hand, I did get to experience an intimacy with the female side of Japan that would make any Japanophile man jealous. The Japanese like cute, young things, be they Pokemon or women, and I was well spoiled.  Being dressed up in kimono (as I was many times as part of my study of traditional Japanese dance) is a very sensual thing, all of these hands wrapping and binding you, pushing scarves into the sash which sits right at breast level.  The  ladies’ side of the public bath is a steamy world of dreams, all of those naked women languorously soaping their bodies.

Still as a woman I couldn’t experience certain things—the evening that is the basis for the first part of “Ukiyo” was spent in company of the fairly wealthy husband of one of my students.  He and his colleague sent me home in a taxi around eleven and went off somewhere else—I’ll never know what they did (ah, the power of mystery again) and if I were male, I might have been invited along.  Or maybe not.  But it was this “pleasure crawl” that intrigued me and led me on my own journey of the imagination.


SB: What do you think contemporary Japan thinks of American sexuality? What are their stereotypes about us? How do they relate to puritanism?

DGS: American society certainly does have a glaring strain of Puritanism when it comes to sexuality (I mean this in the popular sense of the world, not the more interesting historical Puritanism of premarital “bundling” and other such customs). 
Western religion reaches right inside the individual to exert a very effective form of control--take natural instinct like sex and set up all kinds of limitations, like masturbation is bad, and someone will always be breaking them and feeling guilty about it!

From personal experience however, I’d say the Japanese seemed to have the impression that Americans are more highly sexed and animalistic in physical matters, and that we’re all having the kind of gorgeous, rollicking sex you see in Hollywood movies.

It seems to be a universal that other cultures have better sex than our own.  We think Europeans and Asians are more sexual and they think we, especially women, are loose and easy targets.  Again, the stereotype may have some validity.  People who travel abroad tend to be interested in adventure, and sex is always an adventure, if not always a happy one. 

The Occupation still casts a shadow over U.S.-Japan sexual relations.  One friend reported in all seriousness that the Occupation soldiers introduced homosexuality to Japan.  This flies in the face of much historical and literary evidence stretching back the tenth-century masterpiece, The Tale of Genji, but he seemed to believe it. 

Study English, Study Sex

I’ve also noticed that many of the erotica anthologies that include my work are listed in the catalogs of Japanese bookstores.  I know erotica is a popular way to “study” English.  Back in the eighties when I lived in Japan, you could count of a big stack of copies of 9 1/2 Weeks in any English language section of a bookstore.  So, for what it’s worth, a good portion of foreign fiction read in Japan is erotic fiction and I’m sure that influences their perception of us as well.


SB: I love your description of how the Japanese don't "come," they go. I'd love to hear any more Japanese erotic expressions  or slang that have captured your imagination.

DGS: I’ve always been intrigued by the reversal of “come” and “go” and I was glad to have a chance to use it in a story!  This is reflected in the common usages of the verbs as well. 

In Japanese you only say “come” to refer to movement toward the place where you are located right now.  If you were about to visit a friend, you’d say to her, “I’ll be going right over in five minutes.”  I’m not sure if this suggests the Land of Orgasm is an otherworldly, foreign visit for Japanese and a homecoming—or the end of a race—for us.  It might be interesting to do a comparison of expressions of orgasm the world over in mental geographical terms (a future research project, perhaps!)

Peachflesh

I have a couple of other favorite sexual images, one being the use of the word “momo” or peach to describe female genitals.

I’d heard the term before I went to live in Japan, but the aptness of the description didn’t strike home until I tried a fresh Japanese peach, which has pinker flesh than the yellow cling peaches of my youth, and is far softer and very juicy and messy to eat. 

Another term I like is an old fashioned term for shunga, or “spring pictures,” Japanese traditional pornography, which is “laughing pictures.” 

A slang term for masturbation was “laughing,” which gives the act a merry, jolly quality we don’t seem to be able to allow in our culture.

Ladies Comics

Another fascinating window into the Japanese erotic imagination are the pornographic comics.  In the early nineties a subgenre called “ladies’ comics” came out, the target audience supposedly being women.  A colleague interviewed a few ladies’ comics artists and was amused to find dainty housewives in Hello Kitty slippers answering the door. 

As a dainty housewife who just got a Hello Kitty thong for Christmas, I’m not so shocked.  Anyway, I was struck by a number of fantasies that just never showed up in American erotica. 

One “telling” example that I’ve seen several times involves a man overpowering a woman in a vulnerable position—for example hearing his co-worker peeing in a coed restroom gives him license to enjoy her sexual favors—then after some foreplay, forcing her to describe her aroused genitals.  The act of speaking the unspeakable in a culture which prizes wordless communication, forcing a woman to describe the pink color and soft texture and the fact her vulva is wet with desire, etc, engages a powerful taboo.

The implicit acknowledgment is that the woman has examined herself and knows herself sexually to that degree.  Not that such a scene has never appeared in American erotica, but the repetition in Japanese porn is an interesting window into the culture.


SB: You're studied erotic writing, and writing in general. What have you gained from those experiences, whether intentional or inadvertent, good or bad?

DGS: I’ve been writing for about eight years now and there’ve been times when working with a teacher has been just the right thing for me to be doing and times when I’ve needed to be off on my own to listen to the voices in my head without the interference of any “shoulds” no matter how helpful.

In my erotica writing class, we had an assignment to write about the last time we had sex, and I was surprised at how powerful it was for me, a fiction writer, to try creative nonfiction.

I also took away a nice collection of tools for working at the basic level of language.  Vivid, specific descriptions are always preferred, but erotic writing is one place where you have to be judicious.  In my early work I was always mentioning that it was the fingers of his left hand squeezing her right nipple.  Since the class, I’ve realized that “fingers” and “nipple” alone will give the necessary effect far more elegantly.

But a class can’t do the deep work for you.  In looking back, I realize that the stories I’ve written that have been most successful in terms of publication and audience reaction are those that draw on memories and obsessions that have been with me for a long time. 

The Beginnings of This Story

“Ukiyo” began to take shape twenty years ago on a magical evening in 1984.  I copied the menu from my journal, but I didn’t need any notes to remember the hostess in the red bar touching all of her orifices for the benefit of the drunken client.  It’s also interesting to see that my Japanese stories all have a similar theme, the foreigner’s inability to connect with the culture as intimately as she desires.  This makes writing better than therapy, in my opinion, and based on my less inspiring classes in college, I could see where a workshop environment with the wrong set of critics could crush the life out of your fiction. 

A class or two helps a lot along the way but the only opinion that matters is the writer’s own, and she has to keep her fingers crossed an editor and/or publisher will see the merit of a piece.


SB: In my intro to this BAE edition, I noted that I turned in my manuscript the day the Andrea Dworkin died.  With hindsight, what, if anything, of Dworkin's influence made a difference with you?

DGS: I’m forty-four now, which puts me at the end of the baby boom generation, old enough to remember the excitement of “women’s liberation,” but not lucky enough to have been in the thick of it.  I consider myself a feminist, but I always felt a little behind the curve.

I picked up a copy of Dworkin’s Intercourse in Japan in the mid-eighties (which was stocked for English conversation study and I’m sure most of the guys who bought it were pretty disappointed!)  I remember being impressed at her boldness, although I did not agree with all of her points, as I was just learning to appreciate the enjoyable parts of intercourse.  But I agree that Dworkin and Kate Millet and Robin Morgan and all feminist writers who pushed the envelope gave the rest of us an exciting sense of possibility of what we could think and say.

The repressive anti-porn phase, where Dworkin climbed into bed with moral majority right wing types, was useful in a different way because it helped me to articulate, at least to myself, why I wanted to be part of an open dialogue on the erotic.  I believe that the only way for women to become empowered sexually is for them to take an active role in creating the images and the fantasies that express our desires and experiences—that is, talking back to the traditional porn industry. 

The Perils of Erotic Writing

The other day at a holiday party I was telling someone about my forthcoming story in Best American Erotica 2006 and he said, “Well, I hope you don’t get type-cast as an erotica writer.” 

I was dumbstruck because this seems like such an outdated response.  The existence of BAE, going strong after more than a decade, is itself proof that erotica is taken seriously as literature. 

But to be realistic, I’m sure many more people out there still consider sex as unworthy of intelligent and serious (which can also be playful) attention. 

I disagree, and that’s why a nerdy, voted most-likely-in-the-class-to-become-a-librarian, good girl like me feels inspired and compelled to write on sexual themes.  Whether Dworkin’s ghost would allow it or not, I believe any man or woman who “speaks the unspeakable” and tests taboos is carrying on the spirit of feminism and helping women claim their power.  Really.

Donna George Storey’s website

BAE 2006 is yummy, demanding, magical, and eloquent— Yes, I know I'm the editor, but it's true anyway. I asked several of  this year's authors for an interview, and was delighted how many responded. Each week for the next couple months, I'll be publishing one of our conversations— I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Ukiyo-E images from Jim Breen's Gallery, with much annotation.

When Butter Won't Melt In Your Mouth

Katherine Gates has a way of talking me into anything. —Even neo-cannibalism.

In her new story, "Eat Me," Gates explores the world of "gourmet cannibals"— foodies who like to slather their lovers with honey, tie them up with kitchen twine, and stuff an apple in their mouth. Baste me and turn me over, darling! Actually, I think I'd like to be a pudding for Boxing Day.

Gate's subjects represent the ultimate slow-food orgasm, since the entire spectacle is the preparation, without digestion.

The cannibal crowd go to great lengths to explain that they are NOT Jeffrey Dahmer, and that this is all in good fun and delectable taste. But I think the photos speak for themselves. —So funny and titillating at the same time. If the subscribers to Cooks Illustrated saw this, I don't think there'd be any turning back.

Katherine Gates is a sexual anthropologist, whose book Deviant Desires transformed my idea of "fetish." Or, as Katherine would say, the "ongoing metamorphosis of how we understand the human sexual imagination."  In her book, I found myself absorbed in her interviews with pony girls and balloon-blowing enthusiasts, furverts and clown orgies, all the while thinking, "I could do that, I would do that!"  She talks to so many REAL people, (as many women as men), that it breaks through all the stultifying porn clichés about what is normal or extreme. There's a little bit of a "plushie" in everyone, don't you think?

I once was shot by Vanity Fair magazine as the centerpiece of a large oyster and pearl tray. I was surrounded by oysters, seaweed, and jewels. I didn't like the photographers, who treated me like a clam shell, but the props were really arousing. It was like taking that "peel me a grape" meme one step further.

Edible sex can definitely go wrong, of course. When I was young and naive, I tried some of those "chocolate-flavored" erotic oils... BLECH! It was like "Deep Inside Robitussin."

Here's decent alternative for the fledgling "cannibal": Pour on the Hershey's syrup and forget all the phony stuff. Better yet, melt some real Ghirardelli's. Real food is soooo much better than anything you can find in those "flavored lube" disasters. Coconut oil, almond oil, apricot...yum. And there's nothing like a real whipped cream party. I guess I'm just more of the candy thermometer type.

Photo from Mukis Kitchen

That Boy They Couldn't Forget

Every era has its beauty— the sex symbol who takes lust and awe and squeezes just a little bit tighter than anyone else would have dared.

Because beauty is so ephemeral, many of our most-admired sex symbols have only become "legends" through savvy marketing,  rather than through their native merits.

Take Bettie Page, for example— she was always extraordinary, but it was only after decades of cult worship, that she ascended to the Pantheon.

Male beauties have the hardest time making a mark in American pop culture, because their value is measured largely through teenage girls. James Dean may be the only American masculine beauty icon who "crossed over"— as much a legend to gay audiences as he is to straight ones, desirable to every genderation.

I'd like to nominate a new godhead. You may not know Peter Berlin's name, but you know his face and body as surely as you have walked down the street and a hot summer's day and had your head turned by a young man who looked like he was made for sexual worship.

If you lived in San Francisco in the 70s, you must have seen Peter, on a daily basis, roaming the streets in the most eyepopping outfits ever designed for the male body. He MADE those clothes. These were jeans tailored for his cock, his ass, and ripped to perfection. The leather jacket hung on his V-frame like Superman's cape thrown over his shoulder. He had long, shaggy, angel-blond hair, and a face that could might bring almost anyone to their knees.

I thought Peter was a cartoon the first I saw him— Jessica Rabbit. When he opened up his mouth and the German accent came out, I was shocked, because it made him human. My first impression was that he was the most outlandish male hooker I'd ever seen in my life. But I was quickly schooled.  I learned from my betters that Berlin was the creator of two unique porn films, his own portfolio, and that he invented, stitched, and lit every aspect of his sexual persona. Mapplethorpe shot him. Warhol filmed him. But no one could craft Peter as well as Peter himself.

Everyone complains about narcissism, but really, how many times do we see it produced on a grand scale? Peter Berlin is the Greta Garbo of the Castro, the ne plus ultra of homoeroticism. He is Tom of Finland come to life.

He was so successful in his self-design that although the straight world remained  ignorant of his name, they have been as influenced by his image as they were by disco, leather, and every other 70s gay popcult invention. Before there was Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Berlin was the progenitor of the young, the hung, and hot.

Producers Jim Tushinski and Lawrence Helman have made a documentary, That Man, about Peter Berlin, that inspires my review. In addition to their biographical feature, they have also re-released his most famous movie, That Boy.

That Man, as you might guess, is largely being discussed among gay men, including people like John Waters who practically weep at the mention of Peter's name. However, I would recommend the movie to anyone who takes an interest in sex symbols, and the archetypes of masculine eroticism. It's a revelation from start to finish.

I had no idea Berlin was still alive. Much to my amazement, he has outlived virtually everyone he ever cared about, and carries on a life of creative and philosophical determination matched by few. His take on the 70s, AIDS, drugs, and being the only one of his peers left standing is unsentimental and unrepentant. By the end, I saw that the most bracing part of Peter's beauty, so clear in his old age, is ramrod dignity. You don't  see that very often in a pair of tight white pants.

 

 

Suicide Girls First To Jump Over Fed's Porn Prosecution

From Today's Mailbag:

Dear Susie:

Ars Technica reports that the FBI is being paid to surf the web for porn.

Already, sites such as Suicide Girls are self-censoring photo albums containing bondage, while the Religious Wrongs are crowing their satisfaction...

Susie, here we go again. They're publicly targeting s/m, how much longer before they target same-sex porn as well? Please tell your readers to fight back by contacting their Congresspeople and Senators.

Yours in free speech,
Chris/Bifemmefatale

Chris, I've been covering the new Gonzales Porn WitchHunt on my Audible show, and the tremendous amount of derision and exasperation it's received both in the media, and in the FBI itself. Apparently rank and file G-men are loathe to take on this assignment— it's the kind of thing you really want to assign a Brownie to— i.e., Michael Brownie.

However, as you point out, it's going down already, and I was amazed to see Suicide Girls, of all people, taking the first steps to remove pictures... mild bondage photos, in their case.

I wrote an email to SG's staff, asking them for more details, because the page you directed me to, had only Olivia "bumming out" about their decision, as if Dad had taken away a set of car keys.

Suicide Girls is a significant adult business, not a pouty teenager. I want to know if they were contacted by the Feds directly, or they are simply reacting to the press releases with fearful anticipation. If they were contacted, I want to know what was said, and how their attorneys are responding.

From observing federal obscenity prosecution in the past, porn vets have seen that the gov't specifically targets materials that combine kinky, or what they imagine is shocking behavior (anal sex, "inter-racial" sex), with hardcore imagery.

For example, many companies who issued fetish films over the years took care that their fetish films never included intercourse, oral sex, or any kind of penetration.  It's been a surreal body of work, to be sure, because in real life, lovers often like to combine their fantasies with actual intercourse, masturbation, oral sex, etc.  And yet this was the "workaround" to facing obscenity trials.  Porn has been retarded, literally, for decades, because of these dodges.

From what I see, Suicide Girls is softcore, right? Or the public pages are, in any case. I've never been a member to see what's behind the curtain! Which brings up another issue: why would the Feds go after subscription-only hardcore?  The bondage photos I've seen in on SG's public pages are  similar to what you could see in a lot of fashion, music, and art photography zines. If  SG is self-censoring softcore bondage, that's a huge leap in defensive action, and that's why it would be worth it to know the details.

I haven't heard from SG yet. I  hope they come out with an ADULT, as in GROWN-UP statement about this. It's no time to be cute.

The Portable Girlfriend

I've discovered a new writer I really like. George Saunders had a story in the August 1, 2005 issue of The New Yorker called "CommComm, " and I fell in love with it. It's one of those stories that's set  ever-so-slightly in the future— but you can imagine, all to well, every catastrophic turn of lifestyle.

I wrote the author, and asked him if he had ever written any erotic short stories, because I would love to take a look at them for Best American Erotica possibilities.  He found my query  amusing, since erotica is not exactly his beat!  But he was glad to find a new fan, in any case, and I'm eager to spread the word.  I have to say, he's a sensual and evocative writer— if he ever does write something on point about sex, it's going to be a knock-out.

I realized that his protagonist in "Comm-Comm" reminded me of a story I published in Best American Erotica 1996, which may be my favorite anthology I've yet published. The story was by a scientist/computer engineer named Doug Tierney, who only published this one story, in the now defunct, but fabulous, Paramour magazine.

Here it is:

"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.
    In the car, Bo pulled out the 'Face and wired the first disk he pulled from his bag without looking at the title.
    Do you want me? The woman, a brunette with huge conical breasts that defied gravity, appeared where the dashboard had been a moment before. She gave Bo a heavy-lidded look of lust with her wide brown eyes. Through her left nipple, Bo saw the hubcap of a passing truck. He popped out the disk and saw that it was a piece of AIC barterware he'd picked up in trade a few days before. Cheap, low format, look-but-no-touch kind of thing, even slightly transparent. Masturbation material, if you kept the lights down low.
    For the second disk, he made sure he picked his only MASIC tri-disk. Full-sensory including tactile, capable of carrying on a conversation, it remembered you from one session to the next. The sim-called "Carson," for Kit, not Johnny-lived on a thick black-and-green MASIC wafer chip sandwiched between magneto-optical disks. The startup reminded him of the prairie, the sound of wind in the grass and the smell of rich black coffee and dirt. Across the bottom of his vision, the 'Face captioned in bright red script:
    Warning: License period expired. Three (3) days remaining in renewal window. Proceed at your own risk? [n]
    He chose to go ahead. Bo had gotten the Kit Carson sim free with the 'Face, but like everything, it's only free until you're hooked. The renewal would cost most of his savings, and he'd planned something else for the money.
    Hey, pardner. You got an upgrade code for me? Kit shimmered into existence in the back seat of the Saab, dressed in red plaid and dusty chaps. He smelled of gunpowder and horse, chewing tobacco and leather. Kit slapped Bo on the shoulder, a warm, friendly gesture they'd both grown accustomed to.
    "No, I guess not. I just thought you might want to bullshit for a while," Bo offered. Ron sat in the driver seat, oblivious to the silent conversation taking place beside him. Bo turned to see Kit better, and the sim shuddered when Bo jerked the power cord between the 'Face and the battery pack. "Heading to work, and the yup’s not speaking again."
    Well, ole’ pal, Id like to stay and talk. Kit flickered, and suddenly he wore a business suit and tie. But as you know, it’s against the law to access unlicensed MASIC media. He blinked back into his chaps and cowboy hat. So until you get off your cheap ass and pay the renewal fee, I've got nothing to say to you, low-down, software-rustling loser.
    He flicked Bo's ear with his finger, an electric shock that ran down his neck to the shoulder. Cheapskate son of a bitch, pay for your software. Kit's fist almost connected with Bo's jaw before he popped the sim out without powering down. The cowboy dissolved with a squeal, and Bo tossed the disk out the window.
    "What was that?" Ron snapped, looking back.
    "Bad disk," Bo said and rolled the window back up. He considered throwing the AIC vixen after the MASIC hombre. Then he thought about how short he was on licensed softsoft, and decided against it. He knew where he could get a black box to defeat license protection, but if he had that kind of money, he'd go ahead and buy the house and the Ferrari instead.
    Ron dropped him off at the gate of the auto plant, where he worked for just above the minimum outrage, running a robot welder. His workstation sat like a slick green throne in the middle of a scrubbed concrete assembly-line floor. The whole building echoed with its own between-shifts silence while Bo inserted the manipulator probe like an IV into the socket in his right arm and keyed the machine to life with the magnetic tattoo on his thumb.
    The work was on the level of autonomic, barely a conscious effort in the whole process, just a well-practiced dance of fingers flexing, pointing, gripping, rolling, until all the parts were fixed together. Unable to read or wire up while working, he'd once tried masturbating and had arc-welded the trunk lids shut on three sedans by mistake. He could only sit and doze and wait out the shift, gripping a soft rubber ball in the working hand.
    Everyone got paid at the end of the shift, and Bo wired up to check his bank balance. With the automatic deposit, minus his rent, he finally had enough. He'd saved up his money for months, socking away spare change, skipping meals whenever cigarettes alone would get him through. It was time for Jack Bolander to go downtown to find himself a date. Not just any woman, though. He had someone special in mind.
    The last several weeks, she was all he'd lived for. He rode the bus into the growing Boston gloom, knowing he'd have her soon. The excitement of it was an electric pulse down the inside of his thigh all the way to the knee. When he noticed he was tapping his foot, he tried to stop, but it didn't last.
    The dark seemed to flow up around the windows of the sick yellow and stained white bus as the driver pushed his way through traffic to the core of the city. Darkness up from the sewers, sticking the sides of the glass and concrete towers, turning the streets into a sodium-lamplit tunnel. The bus hit a pothole so hard the windows jarred, and Bo nearly fell off his seat.
    "Fuckin' streets," the driver muttered. "As much money as this city makes offa parking tickets, you'd think they could repave this place once in a while." He hit another crater, so hard it could only have been intentional. "Like fuckin' Beirut."
    "It's more like Goradze." A suit next to Bo spoke, a comment meant to open a conversation.
    "Before or after the Ukes carpet-bombed it?" he asked. The other man either missed or ignored his sarcasm. Bo checked the guy over and didn't know which to hate more: the euro-styled hair or the entrepreneurial smile. Bo decided on the smile.
    "During," the man said. He pulled back his mop of blond hair and revealed a teardrop-shaped scar running from the corner of his left eye back up over his car. He'd had an ocular enhancement removed. Another wired-up vet. "Forward observer."
    "Three-thirty-second Mobile Artillery," Bo replied. He peeled back his sleeve, a ritual showing of scars. "Gunner. Still wired. You probably called in fire for us."
    "Many times. That was the shit, wasn't it?" He shook his head. The bus's brakes squealed and Bo felt it in the base of his spine. The man pulled out a business card and passed it to him. "I'm Scott Dostoli. Listen, I'm starting up a consulting firm with a couple other wired vets. The pay isn't great, but it's better than that workfare bullshit the VA keeps pushing."
    "It beats jacking off a robot all day."
    "Without a doubt," he said and stood up. "I get off here. Give me a call, okay?"
    "You got it." Bo smiled and threw him a lazy salute. When the suit stepped off the bus, Bo threw the card on the floor and went back to watching out the windows. "Fuckin' Spyglass johnnies," he muttered. Several minutes later, the bus turned onto Essex Street.
    "This is my stop," Bo said. When the bus didn't slow down, he yelled, "Hey, asshole, this is my stop." He stood up, catching himself on the worn aluminum pole as the bus swerved to the curb. The brakes sounded even worse up front. Bo shouldered his green canvas rucksack and brushed his greasy brown hair from his face.
    "Ring the fuckin' bell next time." The driver cranked the door open and yelled, "Essex Street! Change here for the Orange line."
    Essex stank of rotting fish and urine in the gutters. Bo had forgotten how bad it could be in July. The summer heat blew up the alleys from the South End to mingle with the thick brown smell of the Chinatown dumpsters, the reek of stale beer, and the Combat Zone's lust and cigarette ash. Bolander breathed in short, tight breaths through his mouth as he shuffled down the street, trying to look as if he were going somewhere else, shoulders hunched, weaving between refuse, trying without success not to make eye contact with the dealers and junkies haunting the corners.
    "Hey, my man, you look like you're after a date." The pimp stood a head shorter than Bolander, but his arms were thicker, his chest broader. Muscle didn't mean much on the streets anymore, not when any punk or junkie could afford a gat or a taser, but it never hurt to look the part of the tough. He wore a tight black Bruins T-shirt and a black Raiders cap, and he smelled like cheap musk cologne. "Got a nice Asian girl, big ol' tits, just waiting for you. Guarantee you'll like her."
    "Not interested." He tried to push past the pimp or to outpace him, but the man stayed with him, shouldering him toward the plate glass door of a cheap hotel with red and gold Chinese screens in the lobby. The sign over the desk advertised hourly rates.
    "You like a white girl, izat it? Stick to yo' own kind?" He angled so he was chest-to-chest with Bo, backing him toward the doors once again. As Bolander spun right, away from the hotel, away from the pimp, the yellow light of the street lamp glinted orange off the metal stud on the back of his head, between his brown hair and the gray collar of his fatigue shirt. The pimp saw the wire port, and Bo saw the pimp seeing him.     "Oh, so that's how you play. Hey, I can set you up with some softsoft, good shit, straight from Japan."
    "Not interested. Back off." Something in Bo's voice, a hot edge, like bile in the back of the throat, made the pimp take several steps back, hands raised, the pale palms ghostly and disembodied in the shadows and uncertain light.
    "Hey, wirehead. You just gotta say so." He stepped back a few more paces before turning his back to Bolander. "You a wire freak," he muttered, still loud enough to hear. "Don't fuck wit' no wire freaks."
    Bo pulled his collar up over his port and covered the rest of the distance to the shop in strides lengthened by both adrenaline and anticipation. He glanced around once to make sure no one was watching before he ducked through the door of Abbe's Cellar. As far as it went, the Cellar was about the norm for the Zone, the usual stacks of porno movies and erotic magazines in their stiff shrink-wrap, glass display cases of adult toys of every improbable shape and size, a lot of B&D leather and masks, as the store's name implied. Unlike the other places on the street, though, it was a little darker, quieter. It had more atmosphere, and their prices kept the lowlifes out. Instead of being a poorly lit supermarket for human lusts, they catered to the desires, the fantasies.
    Their clientele were businessmen on their way home to someone, picking up a gadget or a piece of silk that would repaint the faded colors of a lover's smile and restore the sharp-edged, naughty gleam in a wife's eyes, the look that used to say, "My parents are going to be out all night ... I'm so glad you stopped by." Abbe's also took pride in being on the cutting edge. Softsoft, ROMdolls, network services.
    Bo didn't bother to sift through the collections of paraphernalia in the front. He didn't even consider the bulletin board where swingers posted their parties. What he wanted— who he wanted— was in the back room, waiting, sleeping, ready to wake up to his kiss on the back of her neck. Maybe she'd been waiting as long for him as he had been for her. The further back he went, the less the cellar looked like a shop. It came to resemble a basement or a lonesome middle class attic full of boxed history and old thoughts, faded and threadbare as the clothes that hang in the back of a closet. The leather harnesses and silk bonds didn't glare with the orange and blue scannercoded tags like they did up front. Some didn't even have tags at all, hanging like personal mementos in the owner's den.
    It was hotter in the back, where the air conditioner didn't quite reach. Bo shifted his pack from one shoulder to the other as he shrugged out of his gray and black field jacket. He knotted the sleeves around his waist, feeling self-conscious of the hardware and of his small tank-gunner's flame. He felt bigger with the jacket on.
    "Help you find something?" Abbe came out of the store room, a can of diet-something in his hand. He was a bit shorter than Bo, close to two hundred pounds, balding on top, but making up for it with facial hair. He wore a white silk bowling shirt with red trim and sweat stains under the arms. His name was embroidered in red over the pocket, and somehow, he smelled clean. Not clean like showered, or clean like Boston air after a summer thunderstorm when the sun finally comes out. It was clean like skinny-dipping in an icy spring-fed pond in the hills. His smell made Bo comfortable and took the nervous edge off their conversation.
    "I've got something particular in mind."
    "Okay, that's a good place to start." Abbe dragged a wobbly barstool from behind the curtain and offered it to Bo. When he declined, Abbe grabbed a magazine from the shelf and tossed it to the floor to prop up the short leg. "What exactly is it you'd like, and we'll see if we can hook you up." He struggled up onto the chair, still not quite on eye level with Bo.
    "I'm looking for a girl." Bo was surprised to realize that he was embarrassed. He'd been chewing his lip, and his voice caught like dust in his throat. "I'm looking for a particular girl."
    "You look like a smart kid," Abbe said. "You go to Tech?"
    "No," Bo said, looking around at the low glass cases that lined the walls. Somewhere, in there, she was waiting for him. "I'm not in school anymore." He wondered if he should really be so nervous. His knees felt warm and weak. "She's on MASIC format."
    "'Tri-disk. I figured you for the high-end type. That's Mil-Spec hardware, isn't it. Not that cheap Japanese entertainment-only shit. Hold on, Colonel." Abbe leaned back through the door to the back room and called to someone named Janet. Bo couldn't hear her reply, but her voice was like speaker feedback. "Just get out here and help this boy. When I wanted your opinion, I'll start paying you for it."
    "You watch your mouth, you old bastard." Janet stepped through the curtain, and the first thing Bo saw was her eyes, huge and brown and slightly bulging. With her combed-up puff of mousy brown hair and her slightly puckered mouth, she had the inquisitive look of a large rat. Her tight blue and tan shirt showed off her small, slightly sagging breasts. "What can we do you for, son?"
    Bo hated it when anyone called him son. Even his own mother had called him "kid."
    Janet waited, and her attention made him sweat, as if she were waiting for him to name some wild and illegal perversion, or perhaps to run away.
    "She's got long, wavy black hair and blue eyes. Slender. She looks Black Irish, if you know what I mean." Bolander looked around, as if invoking the description might cause the package containing her to stand tip of its own volition, call to him, plead to be taken home. "I saw her here once before, but I don't remember her name."
    "I know what you're talking about. There's only three on tri-disk, and the other two are blondes." Janet slipped into the back room before Bo knew she was leaving. There was nothing mousy about the way she moved. She was quick and lithe, and when she returned, she seemed to glide to a stop in front of him, the package in her hand waving under his nose like the bough of a tree in a breeze. "This her?"
    Bo tried to speak, but only managed to mouth the word, "Yes."
    "Cash, or can we debit it discreetly from your personal account?" Abbe asked. Bo handed over the tightly rolled wad of large bills he'd picked up at the bank. Abbe unrolled the money and handed it to Janet. "Cash customer. The mark of a real gentleman. Always deals in bills."
    "There's only eight thousand here," Janet said after counting the stack twice. "Perpetual license is fifteen."
    The words made Bo go cold, the way looking into the rearview mirror and seeing police lights turns flesh to gel. He couldn't wait long enough to save up another seven. Not after coming here and seeing her up close. If he left without her, he'd lose his nerve, probably spend most of the cash on booze, trying to forget about the whole thing.
    "What can I get for that?" he asked, his voice dry and cracked.
    She thought about it several seconds. "One year unlimited usage license, renewable or upgradable at added cost."
    "Whatever. I'll take it." Bo didn't even have to consider the options. He could come up with the other seven in a year's time, maybe. What mattered was having her, now. Janet filled in the license agreement and coded the init disk while Abbe bagged the purchase. Somehow, Bo had imagined her coming gift wrapped, not tucked into a brown paper bag. Seeing her face there, shadowed by the coarse, unbleached paper, a touch of reality tickled at the back of Bo's mind. After all, she was just a program...
    "Good call, kid. You'll like her. She learns how to be the lay of your lifetime. Anything you want, she does it. Here you go." Abbe handed him the bag, and the clean smell of him broke the morbid spiral of Bo's thoughts. He took the bag and left, glancing back once to wave, awkwardly, at Janet and Abbe, deep down, perhaps, wondering what they thought of him.
    Outside, in the fading heat, he turned down the block to avoid the gauntlet of pimps and pushers. A bus was just pulling to a stop at the corner, and he dashed to make it, slipping through the doors as the old diesel groaned away from the curb. He ran his pass through the reader and slipped to the back of the bus. He was alone there except for a small, slightly heavy blonde woman in a business suit and white sneakers, who was reading a self-help guide to AIC interfacing. She didn't even look up when Bo collapsed to the seat across from her.
    It was as dark as Boston ever gets at night, the humidity like a curtain dimming the streetlights. All the lights were out on the bus, but Bo could still see to read. He pulled her package from the bag and started going over every detail, the specs on the back, the advertisers' pitch on either side. He'd seen it all in the magazine ads. Then, on the front, he stared several long, breathless seconds into her eyes.
    I'm just going to read the documentation, he swore to himself. Just the docs. He slipped the tip of his pocket knife into a crease in the cellophane wrapper, slit it all the way around the bottom, and pulled the top slowly off the box. A breath of flowers, gardenias and lilacs, rich but too sweet, drifted up to him from the perfumed papers inside. Bo would have thought it tacky, had he not been so thoroughly enthralled.
    Wrapped in another cellophane bag, tucked under the curled and creased paperwork, she was there. Not much to look at, just a shiny gold and green ROM disk and a plastic-coated magnetic RAM, sandwiching a thick black MASIC wafer. The plastic mounting piece was the same color as the ROM. Without a second thought, he broke his oath, reached into his canvas bag, and pulled out his 'Face.
    The slim black case was no thicker than an old cassette player, with one slender wire that snaked back to a power cell in Bo’s bag and another thicker wire with a gold, brush-shaped probe attached to the end. Bo pulled aside his hair and flipped open the cover of his jack with the same quick, casual ease as someone pops out a contact lens. An electric tingle ran across the base of his scalp as he slid the probe in and secured it with a half-twist.
    Being wired was like being inside the TV looking out, like being the electron, fired toward the phosphor screen and becoming part of the image. Being wired was visual, aural, olfactory, tactile. So wonderfully tactile. Even the startup routine was a caress that ran the length of his body, the tender touch of a friend that would have tickled if it hadn't felt so good. It was the breath of a lover on bare skin, a mother touching the cheek of her sleeping baby.. All by itself, it was worth the risks of wiring, worth the loneliness of nights lost on the net, the madness, the days when the headaches made his vision turn red.
    Bo ran his imprinted thumb over a hidden sensor, and a panel slid away with a barely audible sigh. He fit the media into the slot, and the gold plastic mounting clip came away in his hand. He fed the thumbnail-sized init disk into another slot and waited. Words in red floated in his lower peripheral vision, seen as if through the lens of tears.
    Configuring to Aminoff-4 interface...stand by...
    Then she was beside him, quiet and prim, reading a book of poetry. His eyes wandered over her, soaking in the details of her smooth, pale wrists, the thick tweed of her skirt, the blue-black sheen of her hair. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, and she smiled.
    Hello? Her voice was much lower than he'd imagined, and soft as a down comforter. There was more, though, a depth of understanding and a predisposition to laughter.
    "What are you reading?" He became self-conscious about trying to look over her shoulder and scooted away, putting most of a seat between them. His eyes fixed on a blemish in the blue plastic of the bench where he'd just been sitting.
    It’s Rimbaud.
    "Oh." One of the hot bands on the club set was making fistfuls of loot reading Rimbaud's poetry while playing ragged jazz and electric guitar solos. Bo thought they sounded like posers, so he never listened. But he still recognized the name.
    I'm Sarah-Belle. I prefer just Sarah. Her voice drew his eyes up from the seat to her own, and something passed between them, some exchange of trust that Bo knew, deep down, was simply excellent programming. It caught him off guard, and he opened up to her without another thought. He smiled, for the first time in longer than he could remember.
    "My name's Jack, but I go by Bo."
    Voulez-vous etre mon beau? His 'Face subtitled it for him in yellow, just below her lips.
    "Don't speak French," he said. "I don't like the way it sounds." There was the barest pause, a slight flicker around the edges of her cheeks, a minor realignment of her straight, dark brow. Bo glanced down, and her book was Donne instead.
    "Make love to me." He said it almost before he knew he was going to. The look on her face was an intermingling of amusement, interest, indignation and irritation. He felt somehow he'd broken the rules, and even after he consciously realized the rules were his to make, he still felt uncomfortable under the study of her clear blue-gray eyes.
    Here? I don't think that’s a good idea.
    "Yes, here." He'd said it, and though he wanted to back down, he couldn't. He wouldn't be chastised by a circuit board, even if it was a Turing chip and probably smarter than he was.
    Here? she asked again, teasing him with the unspoken promise in her voice. She ran one finger down the side of his neck, and with the other hand, she began untying the sleeves of his fatigue shirt. Right here? Are you sure? I've never done anything like this before.
    In the lower left of his vision, a single pale icon appeared, pulsing every several seconds, DaVinci's Balanced Man, an indication from his 'Face that he'd entered a much deeper level of input, direct to the tactile centers of his brain. Everything that happened, while it was lit, would be confined to the spaces of his mind, every spoken word, every touch, every kiss. Like a dream, but a dream that paralyzed his voluntary nervous system. His awareness of the world faded to peripheral. Only a few telltale twitches betrayed the activity taking place in the small black box and in his mind.
    Bo started to speak, but Sarah silenced him with a kiss, and her lips were forgiving. She had the kiss of someone who smiled often, a kiss that gave way under his, that parted for him and drew him in deep, the softest, most passionate kiss he'd ever had. It relaxed him and drove him to the edge of panic all at once. His pulse pounded, but he felt secure, warm, content. The kiss said she loved him.
    Without breaking the kiss, she slipped onto his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck, ran her fingers through his hair, across his cheek, down his chest. She touched his thigh, tingling where in reality he had only numb scar tissue. Her fingers walked up the front of his jeans to the zipper, teasing and finding. She pressed her hand against him, squeezed him through the ragged denim. Bo felt release at last, and he let out a small whimper.
    Sarah broke the kiss, pulled back enough she could see his eyes. Her smile was sly, but her eyes were delighted. With her fingertips, she stroked him firmly, and he tried to smile before embarrassment got the better of him.
    We're going to have to do something about this, she said, and burst into laughter as he rolled his eyes. Her laugh was like sunshine after a cloudburst, but at the same time just a bit silly, and heartfelt. It reassured him, told him she was not laughing at him but because he made her happy. Bo melted into her laughter, closed his eyes and savored the sound as much as the sweet taste of her mouth lingered on his lips.
    She unzipped his jeans with both hands, took care that nothing caught or snagged. She spread her skirt over his lap and settled onto him, unbuttoned her white blouse, and revealed small, round breasts, pale as clouds, and peach nipples. Sarah paused when she saw the expectant, frightened, slightly horrified look on Bo's face. Sarah winked and smiled a slow easy smile.
    Hey there.
    "Hey." He smiled back and knew he was ready. She threw her head back and slid onto him with a pleased moan. A tingle ran down the length of Bo's body, arched his back, tightened every muscle. Microcurrents ran the length of his body, analog touch poured directly into his brain. Her scent drifted up to him, floral and spicy, enticing. She was there, and she was wonderful. Sarah rocked back and forth, smiling, eyes closed. Bo found the pleasure she took from him more erotic, more stimulating, than the feel of her. She made love to his ego, and it drove him over the edge. She collapsed onto him, her head on his shoulder, and kissed his neck. Sarah kept him afterward, squeezing him with quick, tight squeezes that sent a wave of endorphins flushing through his body.
    Finally, she sat back, let Bo look at her, let his eyes and his mind drink in the woman who had just made love to him. Her hair cascaded around her shoulders like dark silk. For the first time Bo touched her face, found It warm and smooth, her hair soft as cashmere. Sarah turned to kiss his palm before she spoke.
    Isn't your stop soon?
    "I think we passed it."
    Oh. Sarah gave him a quick kiss on the lips and winked out suddenly, reappearing beside him prim and immaculate once again. The thin volume of Donne lay beneath her folded hands, and she looked exactly as she had before except for the sated smile and flirtatious wink she gave him. The DaVinci icon faded, and Bo was free to move once more.
    He got up and felt the slick, sticky wetness soaking through his jeans. Blushing, he pulled his rucksack across his lap, hit the bell and yelled for the rear door.
    "You said it was a bad idea, didn't you."
    It’s okay. Sarah caressed his shoulder through the thin cotton of his t-shirt. She broke into a broad, enthusiastic grin and rolled her eyes. Okay? It was great! They both laughed as the bits squealed to a stop several blocks west of Bo's apartment.
    As he bounded down the steps and into the damp Boston night, Bo heard the blonde woman mutter, "Wire-head freak." Her epithet drove home the reality to him, that Sarah was just a program, that he was a loser stuck in a fantasy. Then Sarah took his hand, and they walked home together, strolling like long-time lovers. By the time they reached his place, he'd made the unconscious decision that whatever they had together beat the hell out of his reality apart.
    "Gotta turn you off," Bo said when they reached the door. "Ron goes batshit if I wire in the house, and we've been fighting all day." Before she could speak, he thumbed the power stud and unjacked, then stuffed the 'Face back in his rucksack.
    The apartment was nearly empty when he opened the door. —A couple pillows on the floor and milk crates used as a table. All of Ron's AV gear was gone, as was his computer and the beatup brown sofa where Bo sometimes fell asleep. Bare hardwood floors littered with empty fast-food drink cups and microwave burrito wrappers informed him that something was very wrong. He checked the door again to make sure it had been locked. It was.
    "Hey, Ron?" Bo checked his room, found it as he'd left it, then checked Ron's. The futon was still there, but the tangle of silk sheets was gone. The house plants and bookshelves no longer filled the corners. Bo's footsteps echoed off the hare plaster walls. "That bastard."
    He found a note on the refrigerator. "Bo, gotta jam. Moved in with Elisa. Later." He'd emptied the fridge, too.
     Bo went to his room and curled up in the pile of blankets on his bed. He didn't feel like changing clothes or showering, just sleeping it off and worrying in the morning. Worry refused to wait, and after staring at the water marks on his ceiling for almost an hour, he reached for his ruck, for the comfort of her company.
    Hey, tiger.
    Sarah wore a white silk camisole that reached mid-thigh and fell across her breasts. When she dropped to her hands and knees to kiss him, it dropped away from her, and Bo saw all the way down the pale, tight curve of her belly. Her body stirred something inside him, but instead, he said, "Can we just talk?"
    What’s up? She flickered at the edges again before settling down beside him in a half-lotus. She wore an I-Love-NY nightshirt which she pulled down over her knees.
    "Ron moved out. No notice or anything." Bo pulled a pillow into his lap and hugged it tight. "He was a real shit, but at least he was company. And I needed him to pay the rent."
    Well, we can find you another roommate, right?
    "I hope so." For a while, Bo just stared off across the room, realizing after a while he was gazing at the stacks of AIC and MASIC disks piled in a milk crate in his closet. He could sell off most of it and pay for another month, if he got ten cents on the dollar for his original investment. He'd have to find a real sucker to pay those prices for unlicensed disks. He considered selling his 'Face and paying for a half-year, in advance, or taking Sarah back and using the cash to get out of the city, move some place cheaper. He regretted throwing the suit's business card away, even though he could probably find the guy again if he tried.
    I'll help you find something. In the morning. Come to bed with me, Bo? You need rest.
    "Sarah, why are you so good to me?"
    She didn't answer for a while, long enough that Bo wondered if he'd hit a glitch in the softsoft. You make me laugh. I like being with you. I don't exist without you. She took his hand in both of hers, her touch warm. She made him feel needed.
    "I guess you don't." Somehow, her need for him felt like a responsibility, a reason to work it out. He knew he'd been smudging the line all evening, and finally physical reality was merging with volitive reality somewhere in the wire. He knew better than to lose touch, but in the end, it didn't matter to him all that much. "I'm really screwed."
   We'll come up with something. I'll help you. You have unlimited usage, remember? I'm not just some AIC-format slut. I think. And I'm clever. She kissed his neck, insistent. Come to bed?
    Suddenly, physical and emotional exhaustion pulled at his limbs. "You're right. I need to sleep."
    He rolled over and reached for the power stud on the 'Face black box, but Sarah stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. No. I don't like it when you turn me off, she said. She curled up tightly beside him, and the DaVinci icon faded into his vision. Leave the power on. I need to think.

Nerve Lovers in Uproar

Have you ever posted a Nerve personal? I did once, maybe five years ago, for a story I was writing. I had to do it for research, sure, but I also wasn't adverse to having fun.

I remember feeling awkward about the age and weight questions... you're supposed to lie, right? No one on the site appeared to be over 35, or 130 pounds. That's the Law of Personal Ad Illusion.

But Nerve had some relief; they posed some fun questions to answer, about my taste in books, movies, politics, and the worst lies I've ever told. I typed merrily away.

Then there was the photo. I wanted to put up something sexy and exciting, and I have a few of those. I picked one from the Bound set, where I'm in a latex corset, my makeup is done right, and my hair is like Brigitte Bardot.

But this is not what I look like when I might show up to meet someone for coffee. I don't go to the post office in latex.. well, not often. I don't put on makeup unless I am on a movie set! So even though I picked a photograph that was absolutely me, with no retouching, I still felt like I was spoofing.

I was inundated with replies. I was surprised how many men wanted to know if I wanted to get it on, in say, the next ten minutes. Could I meet them at the airport? The Olive Garden bathroom?

I failed to see why I would be motivated if they told me nothing about themselves, and there was no picture to even get my juices flowing.  For the right glint in the eye, I might show up at the Olive Garden... but ya gotta give me something.

I kept thinking I was missing some crucial understanding of how this was supposed to work. Should I have published a more modest picture of myself, to receive more genuine replies?

Then, the "Nerve" thing happened. I got a letter from a woman in Sacramento who replied to what I said about myself, not the photo. She was similarly candid. She was funny. She was insanely smart. She had unruly red hair. She had a playful feel for sex, and even though she was mischievous, she was kind. Her realness was so refreshing. I had discovered my first real Nerve Personals Pal. I even let her see me out of latex.

I came to realize that in New York City, and a few other big cities, this Nervy sexual friendship circle was huge. They prided themselves on the iconoclastic triumph of defeating the normative cynicism and fakery of Personal Ad Hell.

Well, these very same Nervy Activists are up in arms these days, because their playground has been sold to a new personal ad corporation, called Adult FriendFinder, who are known on the Internet as a black hole of sleazebags and spammers.  As my friend Jamey reported on his blog: Nerve personals have gone bunk.

Nerve, the online magazine itself, is still the original McCoy, with stories, essays, and pictorials that make you sit up and take notice. I think they publish some of the best new fiction online, of any genre, and they've been absolute pioneers showcasing erotic digital photography. I mean, where would we be without Siege? He's down in Mississippi right now, with his smithereen'd family, and we're getting to see another side to his beautiful vision.

But the new personal ads— you have to remember, this was the most popular part of the site— do indeed look different. The photos of the prospective girl-dates look like porn stars posing as the peachy girl next door, with sayings like: "Why you should get to know me: My goal is to become an international human rights lawyer." Yeah, right. As soon as you can finish paying your plastic surgery bill.

After my brief foray, I didn't keep up my personals interest. I'm all but married, and  I'm in Santa Cruz, where we have the same cruising scene at the Farmer's Market.  But I have empathy for the death of something that was literally "too good to last." Because it was a commercial enterprise, it was inevitably going to be sold to the highest bidder.

According to Jamey, some compromises have been made since the outcry, and there is also an alternative universe springing up on LiveJournal. Get those Phoenix ashes stirring!  Have any of you been a Nerve aficionado? Have you bonked any international human rights lawyers lately? Inquiring minds want to know!

A Sexy Witch is Good To Find

  “So I can have anyone I like?”
   “You don’t have to like them.”
    “Ah. Like, uh . . . like that black woman with the braids?” David pointed across the crowded hotel ballroom.
    “Sure, if you get off on fake breasts.”
    “They’re fake?”
    “You can have whoever you want. However you want. Whenever you want.”
    David’s grin broadened. “OK, I’m impressed. That is one of the all-time great pickup lines.     "Now, what do you really do?”
    “Exactly what I said. Look, here’s my card.”
    “Mm. Melissa Natrova, Witch. Spells, charms, sundry magick . . . witches have web sites?”
    “Fax machines, too. Does my offer interest you?”
    David examined her. She was petite and pretty. Her unlined face was bordered with copper-red hair that brought out the fire in her amber eyes. “You don’t look like a witch.”
    “When I come to these things as a 112-year-old hag, I don’t get hit on nearly so much.”
    David blinked. He would have taken her for 30, tops. Her butt didn’t look a day over 28.
    “Why does a witch come to a singles night?”
    She shrugged. “Same reason lawyers gather at a train wreck. I probably do two-thirds of my business at events like this.”
    “People actually pay for your help?”
    “People pay for this.” She swung her arm to indicate the awkward attendees, the faux-hip banners, the busy cash bar. She looked at him. “You, for instance. Surely there’s some more entertaining way you could be spending this evening.”
    “What’s wrong with pleasure?”
    “Nothing’s wrong with pleasure. What’s wrong is wasting hours here, hoping to find someone drunk or desperate enough to take you home. Why not use my services? You can skip the deep discussions — just tell ’em to bend over. And forget about these leftovers.” She waved her hand dismissively at the crowd. “You can have anyone: your neighbor, your neighbor’s daughter, your boss. Your wish is their command.”
    “My boss is a man.”
    “Sex is sex.”
    “Let me rephrase that. My boss is a bipolar egomaniac who reads Dilbert for management tips.”
    “Fine. But do you take my point?”
    David couldn’t hold back a sheepish smile. “Yeah, I take your point. But how do I know you’re a witch?”
    “The business card didn’t do it? I had those suckers printed in four colors.”
    He looked at her.
    “OK, OK. One free spell coming up.”
    She closed her eyes. Something fled her face and, for an instant, he could see a century in her skin. She took three slow, deep breaths. She murmured half a dozen words that weren’t anything like English.
    “Oh.” David stiffened, then stood statue still, the warmth of the sensation surging, spreading.
    “Sweet, hey? Imagine if that was a real tongue.”
    A minute drifted past. The witch spoke three short words and opened her eyes.
    “So, David. Would you like to sign up?”
    A shudder slipped through David’s body. He rubbed the back of his neck gently. His eyes met hers.
    “What’s the price?” he said warily. “My soul?”
    “There’s six billion people in the world nowadays. A soul goes for thirty-five bucks, give or take — one of those supply-demand things. I work for real money.”
    “What’s real money?”
    “The standard one-day all-you-can-eat package is yours for just four thousand.”
    “Dollars?” He sensed heads turning. The witch nodded cheerfully.
    “Do the math. A good call girl will run you three hundred an hour in this city. That’s twenty-four hundred a day, for one person in one room. I offer you everyone in the world, everywhere in the world. Plus exceptional customer support.”
    He realized he believed her.
    “I don’t have anything like four thousand in cash.”
    She grinned and straightened up, suddenly more businesslike. “Who does? I take credit cards, EFTs, checks written on major in-city banks, and stock held in your name. Oh, and bullion.”
    “Visa OK?”
    “Absolutely. Here’s a contract. It covers the details of what we’ve been chatting about.”
    David laid out the pages on a nearby table and started to read. Several clauses later, he looked up. “What do I do to put a spell on someone?”
    “Ready? Make fists, then stick out your index fingers. Put your left index finger between your lips, touching your teeth. And put your right index finger in your ear. Perfect.”
    “I have to do this every time I want sex?” he mumbled.
    “Oh, no. You do this when you want to amuse me. For sex, you need a talisman.”
    David slowly lowered his hands. “Does your smartass attitude ever cost you customers?”
    “Not so’s I’ve noticed. The service basically sells itself — men’ll do anything to avoid foreplay.”
    She searched through her portfolio. “Ah, here we go.” She produced a small cloth bag, blue as an August sky. It glittered in the incandescent light. She loosened the drawstring, reached inside, and brought out a green sphere a little larger than a marble. She placed it on his palm.
    He saw that the charm’s surface was rough, pocked, cratered like the moon. He turned it slowly in his fingers.
    “Keep that close by. When the mood strikes, hold it and say avrat taldor. Whoever hears will mind your words.”
    “Avrat taldor?”
“Close enough for magic. If you forget the phrase, just remember it’s ‘rodlat tarva’ backward.”
    David pushed the charm into his pocket and went back to the contract. He read slowly, keeping place with the edge of his hand. When he was done, he said, “Diseases?”
    “Two fifty gets you the STD rider, which keeps you, and anyone involved with you, safe from bugs. No pus, no fuss. The rider also includes PPP — Pregnancy Protection for Partners.” She handed him another page.
    He read it carefully. “Looks OK.”
    “Good. Fill in your personal information here and here, and sign here. Give me your card and I’ll run it while you finish off.”
    “Do I need to sign in blood?”
    “No, it photocopies poorly. Here’s a pen...”

From "Charmed, I'm Sure," by Eric Albert, in my new collection of erotic novellas, Three Kinds of Asking For It.

Eric is going to be reading from his story— and taking all comers, as it were— at the wonderful sex toy shop,  Grand Opening!, in the Boston Area this weekend. The address is 308A Harvard Street, Brookline, on Sunday, September 25th, 5:30 - 7:00 p.m.

Afterwards, he'll will be dining at Jae's Grill, and he loves company for dinner. No, Eric won't eat you, unless perhaps you beg, prettily. For more info, check out his web site.

I love to ask Eric his opinions about sex and erotica and porn, because he is a man of defiant opinion!

SB:  Readers consistently vote your erotic stories among their favorites. What do you think is the source of your popularity?

EA: My quick, warm grin.  Seriously, I'm surprised how many sex books aren't that sexy. I want my reader's pulse to quicken. If they read with one hand, if they call in their sweetie from the other room -- that's a great review. I add to that, build on it, by showing real people with real feelings, by having an honest-to-God plot, and by mixing in a good helping of warm humor.

SB: Your novella has a lot of sex in it, much of it unconventional, some nonconsensual. Do you approve of the things your characters do?

EA: No, characters don't need my approval.  My story isn't peopled with stick figures acting out a simple morality tale. Readers apprecation vivid, messy lives in all their contradictions, including the sexual parts. Sex hits people hard. You're overwhelmed, break all the rules, do hurtful things, lose your bearings, find yourself. I've been there, and I'm back to report.

SB: You use a lot of four-letter words in your story. Some people feel coarse language detracts from genuine eroticism. What are your thoughts?

EA: Fuck 'em. Writers should use appropriate language. When it's soft and silky, that's lovely. When it's heated and heavy, that's great, too. In my novella, the narrative voice is neutral— no strong flavor, no dirty words. But when characters dialog, they say what they say. Some are shy and euphemistic; others are frank and filthy. It's never gratuitous, it's just who they are. Real eroticism comes from real people in believable situations. And one aspect of real people is language.

SB:  Do you feel an erotica writer has an obligation to portray sexuality in a positive way?

EA: A writer has an obligation to portray life in an honest, meaningful way, to create what John Gardner referred to as "moral fiction." But within this constraint, anything goes. The Scarlet Letter is a great, sexual book, but it's certainly not an example of positive sexuality.

SB: You've claimed erotica isn't a real genre. What do you mean by that?

EA: Sex makes people in our culture nervous, so it's often marginalized. Any writing that includes explicit sexual activity gets labeled as "erotica."

But genre isn't primarily about content; it's about how content is used. A horror novel scares readers; a humorous novel makes them laugh. What's erotica's goal? "To arouse" seems an obvious answer, and is the one I insist on for my own work. Yet many erotica collections are stuffed with stories that fail this standard. Instead, you see a regular Western that happens to include some explicit sex, a romance with some sex, a mystery with some sex. "Erotica" has become a catchall, a ghetto; that's a disservice to writers, to readers, and to sex.

SB:  How is your fictional writing about sex affected by your actual sex life?

EA: I have a rich and varied sex life, and I draw heavily on that in my writing. One result is I get the little things right. My novella has a multi-page cunnilingus scene that's packed with descriptive detail; it's easier to write with that kind of nuance if you've engaged in an activity several thousand times. A broader benefit is I know my characters. They're not whole-cloth fantasies -- they're based on flesh-and-sweat people I've been intimate with.

SB: A Raymond Chandler quote is taped to your computer monitor. What's the connection between hard-boiled detective fiction and erotica?

EA: Chandler wrote, "There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that." His point was, it's not genre that creates or facilitates good work -- what's key is what the artist does with the genre.

SB: You've said it's almost impossible to review erotica well. Why's that?

EA: 'Cause it's tough to type with one hand! Seriously, the central function of erotica is to excite. But mainstream reviewers aren't allowed to feel those feelings, at least in print. Imagine if a reviewer critiquing a Stephen King novel couldn't reveal whether his books were scary! Yet critics of sexual material must constantly tiptoe around this elephant, and focus on style, or plot, or politics. No wonder so many slip into an amused, above-it-all stance. But great reviewing can't come from irony or disdain; it must come from the passion of connection.

Teenage Suburban Splendor

 

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. 
        Just me and my butt, hard against the wall, and all I can think is please don’t let the rough part make the butt of my bathing suit even worse, make the rough part pill up.  This is my favorite bathing suit.
        He is against me; I’m a little trapped. His bathing suit happens to be trunks and the fabric is big and filled with air, how silly, I think. He reaches down and holds open the elastic part of his trunks, but knowing me, I’d rather not look down there.  He takes my hand and reaches into down his pants.  There. 
        Where is he looking?  Doesn’t he have eyes anymore? He looks at my hand, only my hand, and positions it, as if there’s an exact manner he’s needing and it’s up to me to do it.
        Now my hand is “in there” and he presses himself against the whole sandwich of us— him, his penis, my hand, me, swimming pool wall.  We smash there for a moment, then a few moments more, smashing sandwich of all of us.
        The smash keeps going; we all press.
        Still pressing.
        Smashing; then he moves away.  This back-float kick thing that propels him.
        I am just left there, leaning against the wall.  A small snake of white, which I know to be his sperm, floats right in front of me.  I get out and use the towel Judith left for me, and ride home, fast as fast can be, in my wet bathing suit, carrying my shorts, carrying my t-shirt, carrying my shoes. Stopping in front of the mailbox to put both shoes on my wet feet...

This is an excerpt from "Jodi K.," Jill Solways first novella, in my new book, Three Kinds of Asking For It.   

I asked Jill how she manages to get inside a high school girl's head so well:

Q.  How is Jodi K different from Young Adult fiction?

A.  It's really not. I've always wanted to write YA and even have a secret plan to run away to a cabin and work under a pseudonym- something like Shoshana River. Or maybe Shira Wolf.

There are two main differences, however. The first is the irony. Jodi's voice is ironic to me. The innocence with which she views the Holocaust, and her intentional misuse of language are all funny to me.The other difference is the tradition of Girl-Hearts-Man literature of punishment.

There are many novels where a man takes advantage of a young girl's innocence and they fool around after protracted yearning. It was important to me in my story that the man not get found out or punished.

That's because this isn't his book, it's Jodi's book. In all of the other books the man's punishment is seen as retribution for him falling into the lusty trap set by the unknowing girl. But no one ever gets found out in this book. That's something I did on purpose, because even if Jodi is never punished but the man is, Jodi would still experience it as punishment for herself. This is just a story, not a tale with a moral.

Q. How is writing from a 14-yr old perspective different from an adult perspective?

A. The "teen girl voice" comes naturally to me and I could do it forever. I can write vigorously and with confidence, not worried about whether it sounds good or not, because that's what the fourteen-year-old in me was like.

Q.  What do you and Jodi have in common?

A. At fourteen, I was so confident and bold and talky and happy. As I started to see myself through men's eyes, I shrunk and twisted myself into someone trying to be beautiful, lovely, soft, unthreatening. By seventeen I had lost my voice. I have only been recovering it over the past five years. When I recognized the amount of instant power I had from male attention, I ditched everything just to get it. My desire to write, to create, to be heard, to be loud, all disappeared. All I wanted to be was cute.

"Jodi K" is written from that place when I still had my own desire, my own gaze, before I turned it back onto myself and saw myself through the prism of men's eyes.

Q. Who do you want to read your novella?

A.  Women, girls.  College chicks, high school chicks- if it's not too dirty. It's probably not dirty at all to them, actually, it's probably very innocent. I don't write full-on moist, flowering, hot horny erotica very easily. Even "Courtney Cox's Asshole," my short story Susie published in Best American Erotica, was, to me, “Neurotica." It's easier for me to write about the fear and frisson and textures of wanting. The actual doing I leave to other people.

Q.  As a  screenwriter, do you hope to adapt Jodi K? What would be the challenges?

A.  I would love to. Again, I promise you, the "no-punishment" aspect would be a big problem for anyone paying money to see this as a movie or TV show. A happy ending to most producers would involve the man being found out and tried in some way, legal or social. I don't want to add to the canon of work about how women's sexuality gets everyone in trouble.

Jodi K is a very simple coming-of-age piece for me, something that answers the basic questions: What does female desire look like for a young girl, the first rumblings? What did it feel like and look like for me?

If you have your own questions for Jill, post them here this coming week and I'll ask her to drop by and give you her feedback! 

Make Mine "Crappy"

I cry at the drop of a hat. I take everything a bit too hard. I’d join one of those groups for overly-sensitive people but I can’t imagine anything more taxing.

And yet, I have a rather goofy reaction to the literary hate letter.The following letter in my postal box today gave me a giggle fit:

Dear Ms. Bright:

I am an avid reader of erotic fiction.
I found the stories in Best American Erotica 2005  to be a load of ‘crap.’
I found quite a few of your ‘erotic’ stories to be quite ‘smutty.’
As I bought your book through my book club, I felt quite cheated, and unless you can show me otherwise, I will not be purchasing any further books through my club. You can contact me.

Ms. B.C., Australia

I will forward B.C.’s letter to Jane Smiley, Mary Gaitskill, Bernice McFadden, Nelson George, Carol Queen, Simon Sheppard, Bill Noble, Thomas Roche, Cecilia Tan,  Greta Christina, , and all those other clowns in BAE 2005 who thought they were writing... something.

Every author— no matter how many decades they’ve put into their craft, no matter how many accolades they’ve received—  still has that voice that wakes them up in the middle of the night and whispers, “What if you ARE just a load of crap?”

Ms. BC has cut right to the quick!

I’m impressed that she wrote me from overseas, and spent the considerable postage to administer her spanking. BC seems to hope that I’ll write her a letter back. I will; I’ll direct her to this post.

Her missive is actually the filled-out copy of a reader survey I’ve put in the back of BAE for the past 15 years. I’ve often wondered if I should stop including it, because the results have been predictable since the first edition. People rarely write when they are satisfied or impressed. They WILL write when they are pissed off.  Especially when it comes to sex, they cannot wait to tell you what they don’t like.

When I teach porn analysis classes, I often ask the students to write down something they LIKED about the film we’ve just screened, no matter how small or fleeting—Just a moment that appealed them aesthetically, sensually— some kind of sense memory. You’d think I asked them to remove a nail.  Everyone is champing at the bit to tell you what sucks— it provides so much cover.

But does it really? It’s much more powerful, in sexual matters,  to admit that you are turned-on, even if it’s only that soft place under the knee.

I am in recovery myself from the cult of naysaying. Being on the receiving end of the Great Offended has revolutionized my practice. I now give praise and encouragement to  strangers who make life amazing with their labor. It’s nothing short of a tonic.

BC didn’t tell me any book she’s ever fallen in love with, or any author she admires. Her sexual and literary preferences remain an enigma. Her disdain is supposed to reveal— what?

It would be awfully fun to send her letter on to the folks who wrote me and said that BAE‘s problem is that it is in dire need of smuttiness.  I’m dying to match these people up.

When I did the first issue of On Our Backs in ‘84, we were greeted by five distinct kinds of mail:

• This is not remotely erotic. If you want to see an example of a sexy girl, get a copy  Penthouse. (This was written by lesbians, by the way).

• This is so naughty and shameful I can barely handle it-- Enclosed is my phone number.

• I know I should admire women-created, noncommercial porn, but instead I feel guilty and anxious. What if your centerfold is a racist? What if that girl on page six wears dead animals? What if the story on the last page was written by a bisexual?  I can’t deal with the dread that it’s all going to turn out badly, and you’ll only regret you did this.

• You are a bunch of wusses and if you want to see hardcore, come over to my house.

• Sex is a beautiful thing and you’ve ruined it.

The reaction to Best American Erotica has been pretty much the same.

For a certain amber population,  the standard of great erotica is Penthouse Letters. When I was nine years old, I felt the same way. I can still summon the nostalgia, but I can’t live on it. It’s rather incredible that Penthouse has virtually gone out of business when as far as mainstream Boomer America goes, they epitomize the libido in word and photo. Bob should just keep printing the same Canonical Pizza Boy & The Nympho story until it becomes as rote as the Pledge of Allegiance. Needless to say....forever and ever... Amen.

The biggest critical group after the Penthouse fans are the people who want a book called, "Best American Erotica Except for Homos and People Whose Freak Makes Me Feel Funny in My Pants."

Unfortunately, this accolyte is going to have to make a special edition just for themselves, because no one else is privy to their latent treasure chest. Let Miss BC lead us to her temple!

The hardcore critic— and this type seems to get the most lucrative assignments to go public—  is the one who’s appalled that sex has been infiltrated by literature. Their oath: if it makes me hard, it’s not art. They don’t want a Masterpiece to give them a Stiffy.  If it gets him off in a giant spurt, he can proclaim it a fine piece of filth, but don’t go asking for respect, because that would RUIN it.

Dammit, I really am going to yank that survey. I started out laughing about BC’s airmail, but now I’m hot under the collar. I've been reading this same letter for more than a decade, like an earnest kindergarten aide on a field trip who tries to keep plucky no matter how many kids throw up in the pool.

Thank you, Miss Down Under Dom, for bringing me to my senses. I am laying down my load of crap. The coup-counters will have to find themselves another feather.

Heat Sufficient to Melt An Ice Floe

Today is the debut my new book, Three Kinds of Asking For It— a trio of erotic novellas by three of my favorite authors. Would you like to read an excerpt?  Here is the opening of "Bending," by Greta Christina:

"She loved being bent over. More than any fiddling that might precede it, more than any fumbling sex act that might follow. The moment of being bent over was like a sex act to Dallas, like foreplay and climax blended into one swooning, too-short moment. A hand on her neck, pressing gently but firmly downward, felt like a tongue on her clit; a voice in her ear, telling her calmly and reasonably to bend over and pull down her pants, felt like a cock in her cunt... "

You can see why this grabbed my attention!  You can read the rest of Greta's opening chapter here, and I hope you will be stunned enough to demand the rest of the book.

Here's our latest praises:

From Publishers' Weekly:
Susie Bright Presents: Three Kinds of Asking for It
by Eric Albert, Greta Christina and Jill Soloway

Who needs a beach for this summer treat? Bright's imprimatur guarantees heat sufficient to melt an ice floe. As her editorial picks generally do, these novellas deliver not just heat but laughter, poignancy and even the occasional deep thought.

"The world is full of emptiness; without it there'd be nothing left": thus does a witch console a client left empty after a phenomenal sex spree in Albert's "Charmed I'm Sure."

And so it goes with Christina's heroine, Dallas, whose obsession is the eponymous "Bending." When an Internet find, Betsy, arrives to fulfill Dallas's submissive fantasies, it's "the best thing, ever"-except instead of satisfying Dallas, it seems to rob her of her defining passion.

Clever Bright saves dessert for last: Soloway's hilarious and sweetly lubricious confessions of 14-year-old Jodi, who has a mad crush on her best friend's father. Written in teen talk, "Jodi K" sometimes has the awkwardness of a translation. But it's enriched by fully realized portraits of family function and dysfunction, and even while sending up teenage erotic confessionals, it feels written from the heart as well as other regions of the body.

I'll be running excerpts from Eric and Jill's stories in the next couple weeks, as well as interviews with all three of the authors. If you have a question for Greta, Eric, or Jill, please do send it my way, and I'll put my editorial thumbscrews to them and extract the answer!  Actually, I bet it will be very easy...

Here are bios & photos of Jill, Eric, and Greta.

Here are some of the reviews  we've received from by Annie Sprinkle, Francesca Lia Block, Kirkus, Dossie Easton, Alan Ball, Sarah Silverman, KRK Ryden, and more...  I'm so proud of these authors; they deserve every word of this praise.

Those Bahraini Lesbians Make Me Scream & Shout!

I frequently get letters from writers seeking publishing opportunities, but this one made my day:

Hi Susie,

I am 30, male, and Lebanese. I work at one of the leading national newspapers. I bought "Best American Erotica 2005" from the Virgin Megastore in Beirut and really enjoyed reading it.

I write short stories as a hobby and I have seen, and been in, a lot of sexy, weird and erotic situations here in Lebanon and in other Arab countries. You, and I am sure many other Westerners, would be shocked to know what happens behind closed doors in Arabia. Arabs are  intense when it comes to sex in private. There are Saudi Sheikhs with billions who suck the toes of Russian prostitutes in Dubai and get whipped on the ass— princes who have four wives and ten lovers and fuck the Fillipino maid on the side— horny Lebanese girls who live on Acid and orgies— Kuwaiti she-males— Bahraini lesbians who come to Beirut in the summer to taste teenage Lebanese mountain girls— Egyptian bellydancers who fuck corrupt politicians— women shrouded in black who are married to Islamic fanatics but fuck their Pakistani drivers. Though sex is taboo in public, in private the possibilities are unlimited.

So, I would like to know if I can contribute to your coming series as a writer and if yes, how.
I would really appreciate a reply. Thanks.

Monsieur A.

Of course I sent him my guidelines— and my regret that hypocrisy is the same the world over! I'm embarrassed he thinks that I'm one of those "Westerners" who has their head in the sand. Our reputation is so wretched.  But have to admit, I didn' t know about those Lebanese Mountain Girls, so he's got me curious...

By the way, I changed some of the details of his demographics, so don't try to unmask the dude!

Barbie Digs Me

I just got the most wonderful present in my email today:  a special portrait of a Barbie Doll in nothing but French lingerie and a cowboy hat reading MY book, Sexwise!

The photo was sent to me by an admirer in Vermont named Sensuous Sadie, who is also an author of a book called It's Not About the Whip: Love, Sex, and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene.

I ended up spending about an hour exploring her site, which is full of interesting things to read and look at.  She has created AMAZING kinky Barbie pictorials, including Miss B in authentic Shibari Bondage, or "ShiBarbie" as she calls it.

I can't tell you why Barbie gets me where I live, but she does. I have my childhood Barbie posing, in her original bathing suit, on a wooden chest among my collection of sex and book awards. She's their keepmistress.

Romancers and Raincoaters

Last month I attended a Romance Novel convention is St. Louis, called “The Romantic Times.” I joked that I was going where pornographers fear to tread— but I was closer to the truth that I suspected...

I was asked to speak about erotica, an unprecedented invitation. Even though Romancers know that their genre is soaking in sex, the public impression is that romance is for ladies, while “erotica” is for hussies.

But the Romantic Hussies are getting brazen. Sex IS what drives the Romance field. That’s where I came in.  I was on a panel with Robin Schone, M.J. Rose,  Jacqueline Deval, and Laurel K. Hamilton.

Before I arrived, I quizzed Robin to explain the Romance jargon to me. They have dozens of words to describe their sub-genres. There’s “sizzling,” “spicy,” “sensual,” and “sweet,” — to name a few— which have just as distinct meanings as Gonzo, Pro-Am, and Classic porn.

Because Romances are written so tightly to genre, and the predictability factor is so important to their buyers, they can’t overhaul their image that much. The explicitness of the sex scenes is the only wiggle room they have. Now that every sexual taboo has been broken, they’re a little anxious, because if they add any note of realism or literary feeling, they won’t be “romances” anymore, and the genre will crack. It already has.

When a woman buys a traditional Romance, it’s like a hardcore porn fan buying a XXX video. She wants her money shot. She does not want distractions. She wants familiarity, to connect with "the childhood masturbatory feeling," as my friend and offbeat Romanticist Pam Rosenthal so perfectly described to me. I say this with utmost sympathy, but fans would probably feel exposed by that description. Still, I believe romances are stroke books— they are not so much read as used.

The tension between Erotica vs. Romance isn’t sex, it’s writing style.  Romance publishers are dishing out hardcore. They have fisting scenes and gay couples as major characters.  They are overt about interracial sex, rape, S/M, incest,  and every other top ten American taboo. Harlequin and the others are not shy about finding out exactly what their readers want; they’re notorious for their focus groups.

Let me examine one of these desires as an example: Inter-racial relationships. Even though they are an exploding statistic in American life,  they are still frowned upon- to say the least. There are few places that discuss these relationships outside the alternative media.  In the mainstream, there's nothing except a few Hollywood celebrities who are held up as a lofty ideal.

In real life, when it’s happening to YOU, there are confrontations with various racist hysterics and ultimatums among your family who  swear they’ll never accept you, never speak to you again, etc. etc. Of course,  sometimes it  works out for the best, but those of you with multicultural families know what I'm talking about!  We are not supported by the mainstream media or institutions.

However, in "Romance World,"  everyone is likely to be in bed with someone of a different “color” than themselves. White women with black men, and black women with white men, is a hot ticket. This year, "Mr. Romance" was black, and most of the attendees were white. The specialty line of Romances marketed to black women is also filled with these couplings that would be a total scandal in black literary circles.  Like all Romances, these love couplings completely unrealistic, stories in which the beauty and nobility triumphs... aided by pots and pots of juicy lust.

Another Romance fetish is overt bondage, and domination/submission. Rape/forced sex is de rigeur.

By comparison, “porno” has becom more politically correct over the decades. The mainstream stuff that you see on cable TV avoids the above-mentioned taboos, and the videos that focus on such material keep as low a profile as the naughty romances do.

The next time you are prepared to be scandalized by a  degrading bimbo fest in a X-rated DVD, please consider that the exact same thing is being described, from a female perspective, in Romances.  It’s just that the objectification happens in the opposite direction.

You know how women’s bodes are the ones that always have to be perfect in porn, even if the men are kinda droopy or overweight?  It's the same with romance, in reverse. The men’s bodies are all PUMPED— the women can be whatever. Her imperfections are irrelevant or sympathetic; the hero has to be an oiled stud muffin. Fabio is Jenna is Fabio.

The biggest difference between my Best American Erotica and one of the “Sexxxy” Romances isn’t the sex... it’s the style of the writing (genre vs. literary fiction). Every romance has a ‘happy, monogamous ending” while  BAE stories are more diverse, without that guarantee.

In the same way that sci-fi and mystery novels historically became more psychological and complicated, the same thing is happening to romance, which has been the infantile genre the longest. The women still love their romances-- like loving their Barbie Doll-- but they’re buying other things now too.

Romance readers are not remaining “monogamous;” their reading interests are diversifying.  Even the Inspirational (i.e., Christian) Romance readers read the sexy titles, too.  Romance is losing readers to Chick Lit, and mainstream women’s fiction. Those readers are the types who are likely to like erotic literary fiction as well.

Military, thrillers, mystery/PI/Cop  stories, are making a big splash too—another example of fusion. The most interesting group of writers I interviewed were all female Vietnam vets  who’ve become writers.  There were  lots of PI’s, cops, retired cops, cops’ wives, etc.

One  exception to the Dowdy Look was the goth-vampire crowd, which is openly into S/M. They were small in numbers, but visible.  Laurel Hamilton personifies this group. She appeared in a corset, with bodyguards who were also in corsets. She offered sex-positive encouragements one minute, but then made protective, conservative warnings in the next. She is in favor of S/M explorations, but against what she called “casual” sex. She was delighted to investigate kinky practices for her stories, but she warned her fans not to look at the web pages she’d devoured in her research.

I’ve never heard an author try to protect her fans like that before, while simultaneously titillating them. You’d never hear John Grisham tell his fans, “You’d better not look at the legal files I’ve seen, they’d be too much-- but wow, I can’t wait to show you my racy version.”

We had no dispute about sex— I appreciate their unapologetic fantasy life. It’s funny, no one finds it “dangerous” when women have taboo fantasies, only when men do. There’s this sense that women have realistic boundaries, no matter how cockamamie their fantasy life may be. But if a man reveals a taboo fantasy, everyone assumes that he’s about to run out and perform it.

No, what I found myself advising was rather contrarian— about writing, not about sex. I urged the authors with doubts to abandon ship—  to abandon genre-writing altogether.  When these writers find themselves in struggles with editors and agents over “formula,” I'd ask them to realize the stakes.

If they break formula, they’ll be a better writer. There is no literary future in subservience to cliches.  The commercial choice, to go with formulaic demands, may or may not prove to be a money-maker. You can’t count on it. I don’t know what the path to superstardom in Romance is, frankly.

I do know this:  if you write authentic, emotionally truthful, graceful prose, you won’t experience a moment of artistic regret— and you’ll have a reputation you won’t have to put a corset on to defend!

The Queen of Mean Gets Her Bottom Tapped

My friend Jack Boulware sent  me this erotic satire about Ann Coulter, the savage kitten of the right-wing nutbox.

Mean —  but  funny.

This fantasy about Miss Ann has driven me over the edge of my usual kindly manners.   Has anyone begged for more ridicule in recent memory? I'd love to hear your historical comparisons!

A Public Sexual Health Announcement:

While people can and will enjoy getting buggered throughly, no pleasure can be derived from anal intercourse without lubrication (lots of it) and relaxation (take all the time in the world). That's when the pleasure become possible, and the mystique of getting "plowed hard" becomes something that makes any kind of erotic sense.

But you already knew that, right?  It's just fun imagine "CoulterGeist" getting some retribution, at last!  What I wouldn't give to really understand her sexual motivation...

The stunning patriotic poster I've posted here is from The White House.

Old School Erotica Treat

One of my favorite erotic filmakers is Radley Metzger, who created The Opening of Misty Beethoven,  and Therese and Isabelle, the1967 feature that took Violet LeDuc’s novel and brought lesbian sexuality to the big screen for the first time. Radley made several classic erotic films released before X-rated cinema became the cookie-cutter scene we know today.

Metzger is a beautiful cinematographer; that’s one of the things that keep you riveted to his pictures. To my delight, it seems a contemporary porn artist, Clayton Cubutt, has taken some stills from one of Radley’s old movies, “Barbara Broadcast,” and turned them into web-based art installation. They're mesmerizing, and I’m very grateful to Jonno at Fleshbot for turning me onto the site. Here’s what Jonno wrote:

If you've never seen "Barbara Broadcast," the delightfully surreal 1977 classic directed by Radley Metzger, we're not sure photographer Clayton Cubitt's visual synopsis of the film would be the best introduction; after all, he compresses the action into a mere 31 vidcaps, concentrating more on the formal aspects of the cinematography than on the film's narrative or cast, which includes legends Annette Haven and Constance Money. However, as the latest artsy example of his "visual research in porn aesthetic", we think the project is pretty darn brilliant. And even those 31 caps look a hell of a lot more interesting than most of the hardcore stuff being shot today."

My Favorite Wicked Story from Best American Erotica

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 this year’s BAE 2005 is "Surviving Darwin” by Alicia Gifford.

Why do I like this story so much?

For one, it’s told from the point of view of a very wicked female character, a rather unusual naughty nurse. As a recovering Catholic, I can’t resist voicing her amoral thoughts.  It’s a noir story, with no golden heroes to applaud, and a lot of suspense... it’s a kinky crime story, actually.  The explicit sex passages are brief, but in her case, understatment packs a whallop.

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 Ecstacy party ever.

It’s never too late, whereever you are, to check out a copy!  If you read Alicia's story, or any of the others, I'd be interested to hear what you think.

Porn Exasperation Clearance Sale

I have been excavating my office this week. Going through it with a shovel. I've had it, I tell you, I'm ready for a bulldozer.

In my dig, I've found 20 hardcore XXXX-rated videos or DVDs that I have no interest in keeping. Are they bad? I have no idea. I had no time to watch them. I have no room to archive them. I am tired of living in a warehouse of unwatched, unread, unexamined erotica!

These movies are all state-of-the-art San Fernando Valley Porn of the first water, released this past year. Definitely a year's worth of enthusiastic masturbation of some kind. Want'em?  Write me. I'm having my first blog sale.

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I don't really know how to have a blog sale... I'm motivated by impatience. I do not want to drive to San Francisco for four hours to sell them at The Magazine, (920 Larkin St, 415-441-7737) as wonderful as they are. I don't want to patiently photograph them and write sales pitches on E-bay. I don't want to make hors d'oeuvres for a party to offer them as favors. My new auto mechanic doesn't take them in trade for labor like the last one did. I just want them OUT.

Make me an offer!  I want to mail a box of porn to you... what's it worth? You tell me.

Also, in my "everything must go" sale:

I have a box of 50 sex magazines, mostly Playboys, On Our Backs and AVN.  A few of In Touch. Also some of those valuable Adam erotic film directories. All from the past year or so. I want to send someone the whole box. Name your price! 

Isn't this fun? I'm like the Priceline of Pornography. I only wish William Shatner would come and transport it all out of here. I need room to move my chair.

Finally, the weirdest item:  Audio Erotica. Yes, on cassette tapes of all things! And even some CDs. I have Herotica, Herotica 2, Herotica 3, Cyborgasm One and Two, and a whole bunch of  cassettes of the talk I gave with Harriet Lerner and Mollie Katzen called Food, Sex and Relationships.  It was a big hit on NPR a few years ago. I want to put them all in a box and send to some needy family. Make me an offer!

What I DON'T want to do is separate my items into little piles and ship them out one at a time. My previous attempts to act as a shipping department are legendary for their lack of enthusiasm. At Xmas-time, I can barely get the presents out, not because I'm Grinchy, but because going to the post office drives me to the edge of despair.

If you're interested in one of my boxes of interesting sex stuff:  be it movies, mags, or audio, please write me!  My email address is over there on the right sidebar.  You make me any funny or reasonable offer and I will take it.  Feel free to make as much profit, hay, or orgasms as you wish with it.

Behind the Scenes at the Best American Erotica Factory

Today, I caught up with about a hundred manuscripts that I needed to respond to:  people who sent me stories they think might be good for next year's Best American Erotica. I send everyone a little letter that says, "I got it! You are not being ignored!"

This is a good time to tell you that the best time to send me your suggestions or manuscripts is before this Xmas. You can send it or suggest any story that has been published in from March 2004 to March 2005. It can be a short story or an excerpt from a novel--- really anything except poetry. I love poetry but that's not what this book is about

As for its erotic content, I entirely leave that up to you. Surprise me. I am not a big rule-maker. I'm interested in how what's "erotic" keeps changing its meaning in the times we live in. And what persists, year after year.

Most people send me something of their own, and I wouldn't expect anything less. But I am very touched by people who suggest an author that they read this past year that truly moved them, someone they don't know personally at all. My dad always does this. So does another one of my favorite writers, Susan St. Aubin. And they both have excellent taste. They nominate the stories out of pure admiration and delight.  I encourage all enthusiastic readers to do the same.

Here are my BAE  little guidelines: where to send, what to send, blah blah. I won't you bore you  with the details here.

But for fun, I'll tell you the top reasons people's manuscripts end up in the wastebasket instead of the "oh wow!" pile:

--- No address, no email, no phone. If your name is Joan and your wrote about a black poodle in 1996 please contact me.

--- Submissions from people who have clearly never read B.A.E. in their lives and would probably hate it if they did. You can tell they sent they same exact cover letter and story out to ten different people they saw listed in Writer's Digest.  Erotica is their latest cookie-cutter get-rich scheme. Boy, are they in for a surprise.

See, I'm not that fussy. One time I almost threw out all the manuscripts that weren't typed and double-spaced, because they are so hard to read— but then I relented and found a couple of diamonds. I don't think virgins should be punished for not typing in well-spaced rows, but they better learn quick.

The new BAE is coming out on Valentines Day. I turned it in over the summer. I'm bowled over by it. I would like to pound my shoe on the table and say that this is probably one of the best short story collections coming out next year, bar none, erotic or not. Sex and death are where the most creative expansion is going on right now... and short stories are where it's exploding.

Tell It Like It Is: Will We Ever Have Sex Again?

I’m pleased to announce my first blog book review of a book that I admire. I’ve felt a little guilty that my first literary reviews were examples of books I felt needed to be debunked and spanked on a hard surface.

You see, I’ve been on a mission of late to see if any of the recent Ultra-Hyped Sex Books have anything to offer besides Celebrity Powder Puffing. Most of the headline-grabbers are being published by ReganBooks. The one debut that has grabbed my admiration is written by a woman who is quite unknown: Jennifer Lehr.

Lehr is a performance/visual artist in LA who has written a memoir called Ill-Equipped for a Life of Sex. The book opens as she is about to become engaged to a man she adores, but with whom she shares a terrible sex life.

The little lovebirds rarely do it, and then only under duress. John, her object of desire, wants sex much less frequently than Jennifer does. You listen to her describe their excruciating un-erotic rapport, and fairly scream at the pages, “Oh my god, don’t do it, don't go to the altar like this!” She is so unstintingly honest about topics that most people would rather die than admit to, that it’s quite bracing. The book is actually a suspense novel, because you can’t believe that any two people this bad in bed would go ahead and tie the knot. (I know, I know… you’re saying, “It happens all the time.” I’m naive and unmarried).

This memoir is more informative about what happens in couples therapy than 90% of most self-help therapy books. You really do find out why they don’t fuck—and it’s not a facile Hollywood story.

No, it’s that “tangled web we weave” kinda-thing which Lehr describes with remarkable articulation. You find out why he’s fucked up— you find out why she’s fucked up. She doesn’t ask for pity; she doesn’t take it easy on herself when she’s faced with some tough realizations. Between the two of them, I think they cover all the main reasons why otherwise devoted couples find themselves in a libido lockdown:

    Not wanting to belong to any club that would have you
    Genuine depression
    Physical and drug-related ailments
    Fighting about money
    Unexpressed differences in your class background
    Unrealistic expectations, glaring assumptions
    Gender role straitjackets
    Only being able to fuck your brains out with those you’ll never see again

Reading my list sounds rather dry, but Jennifer’s book is soaking wet. I screamed, shrieked, and bit my fingernails. She’s  laugh-out-loud funny. I got furious at her, and then was supremely touched. She has remarkable powers of self-observation. It would be difficult for most people to be this candid without self-pity or defensemanship. And her husband… my god, he’s a saint for letting this be published:  a true artist’s supporter. He surely has his own entirely different version of their affair.

If you’re a writer, you’ll especially like this book because it’s about writing as well as sex. —Especially about writing for yourself when no one else gives a hoot. This woman was living off her parents, piling up credit card debt at designer shoe stores, and about to have her fiancé give her the boot because she was incapable of making an income. She knows she’s spoiled, inexcusable, and pathetic— and yet, she keeps writing— and by golly, look at her now. She wrote something really good and thank god she found an agent who recognized it.

Next time I buy a pair of shoes when everything is going down the toilet, I am going to take heart from Jennifer Lehr. I envied her family’s wealth, but it was nightmarish to witness her at their beck and call. Now she can, hopefully, make more independent decisions— and I am positive that such self-determination can only help her get laid.

God Gets Behind The Erotic Memoir

I received a copy of The Surrender in the mail yesterday . I  ran over to the cafe across from the post office, where I do all my speed reading, and ordered a cocoa and peanut butter cookie while I checked out the “most talked-about anal sex memoir of the year.”  I invite you to giggle like a twelve-year-old as you digest that proclamation, because I certainly have. There is something supremely silly about all the hype.

As I mentioned in a previous entry, Surrender has received remarkable reviews in prestigious periodicals, and is penned by a famous retired ballerina, Toni Bentley. It is impossible not to think of the author’s fame as you read her before-and-after anal diary. Her pretty portrait is blown up on the back cover, so there is no way you could avoid recognizing her if you you bumped into each other at the supermarket— you’d have every right to exclaim, “Heavens, aren’t you that lady that wrote the “buttfucking-is-next-to-godliness” book?”

Let me be blunt and get this out of the way: You can have incredible sex without sensing God or falling in love. You do not need romantic or spiritual experiences to justify your pleasure and relaxation. You can buttfuck and simply say, “Gosh, that was fun! Let’s do it again sometime!”  You can have a delicious nap, a warm embrace, blow smoke rings, and carry on with your life without getting married or joining a cult. And in fact, this is what most people do.

The Surrender, however, is about a spiritual and romantic experience that revolves around anal sex. For that alone, I don’t fault her. But it raises the bar very high. My frustration comes from my awareness that mainstream publishing demands this kind of “higher, nobler cause” scenario when untraditional sex is involved. It’s become a cliché, and most authors are not up to the task of defeating the banal expectations.

You know what I’d love to see? Some chick lit book, some Bridget Jones/Carrie Bradshaw -type gal, who goes out on a date, and has really good anal sex— no pain, all orgasm. I’d like to see her resolve to add her newfound knowledge to her sexual repertoire, and leave it at that.  She’d relish her moment of new erotic insight, but it wouldn’t be the central metaphor for everything that subsequently happened to her.

However, if “anal awakening” is the central plot to one’s story, you  need to make the drama bigger. You have to reach Story of O heights, you have to reach for  Georges Bataille, Jean Genet. And not to be too French about it, I’ll throw in Charles Bukowski. The Surrender doesn’t hit those notes.

Do you know what  moved me more about anal sex than anything else I ever read?  A personal letter I got from a girlfriend, Sammy, when I was in college. She was in love, writing about  her new affair, glowing right off the page. Sammy and her guy had just had anal sex for the first time the night before, and she told me that “if everyone experienced buttfucking like I did last night, there is no doubt in my mind that we would have world peace.”  She was deadly earnest, and I quite agreed with her! It was poignant, a letter between two good friends who could share a confidence.

It’s true that anal penetration does require deep relaxation, a leap over taboo and inhibition. It can inspire a feeling of great relief, fullness, and generosity. Surrender is literally sweet; it feels so good to give it up.  Outside of sex and creativity, "giving it up" usually means humiliation. In anal sex, that experience gets turned on its head.

Any kind of sex can inspire feelings of great peace and ecstatic submission. You could achieve the same effect with cunnilingus. But anal penetration demands submission and reciprocation. If you don’t profoundly relax, it hurts like hell.  With vaginal penetration, by comparison, a woman can go through the motions. If her hymen is no longer intact, she  can pretend. It’s not fun to pretend, she’s not doing herself any favors, but it’s possible. Anal sex is more physically demanding; it’s hard to cheat.

This physical requirement has an effect on people’s emotional interaction, of course. If you’re holding yourself back a little, testing the waters— you’re probably not reaching for the the buttplug. Anal sex happens most often between partners who are already familiar with each other, or in the case of one night stands, lovers who have overwhelming chemistry .

What about people who are already experienced in anal intercourse? Do they keep up the same insatiable pace as these awakening stories? Actually, no. Unless anal sex is the only way you can come, you probably don’t do it every time you hit the mattress. You probably like variety, and sometimes you have questions like,  “Do we have enough time?” or “Are our children going to be pounding on the door anytime soon?” You have to be in the mood. Sometimes just having your butt paid attention to, without going for the Full Cleveland, is perfectly satisfying. It’s also true that one can  get bored or frustrated in any relationship, no matter what great bouncing bottom techniques they’ve perfected. It’s not a panacea, an ultimatum, or a prayer.

The Surrender’s greatest strength, then, is the audaciousness of the author’s honesty, in her public position. She is willing to be the anal sex go-to ballerina, and I admire her fearlessness.

But I fear for her publishing career. I fear for her because the only way she is going to survive in the prudery of the literary world,  is if her writing is superb. And in this book, it just isn’t.

She has many lovers in her story, but only one character developed, herself. If you’re a fan of plot and character, you’ll be disappointed. It’s more like a list of realizations. I believe her words, but they don't sweep me away. I know it’s hard to write about spiritual  and sexual awakenings— it’s actually more difficult than having them. 

There’s lots of short little chapters throughout the book. This is all the vogue in literature right now— the new product for Americans’ short attention spans. It’s like everyone has ADD so you have to coddle them before they turn on their video game. That annoys me.  She’s no Richard Brautigan.  My god, I wish he’d lived long enough to write about anal sex in short chapters... now that would be a spirit-awakening, red letter day.

In short, if you are a literature fan, you’ll be disappointed in The Surrender. You’ll find yourself, like me, trying to think of who has  written a truly great anal sex memoir that we could hold up as the definitive comparison. I’m still mulling it over, but I’m almost sure it won’t be authored by a woman. Maybe that’s the problem:  women are just beginning to write about anal sex. Maybe we just need time.

If you are curious about buttsex, and that’s your main motive, you’ll definitely have your interest piqued by The Surrender. If you fall into that category, I implore you to get an actual how-to book or video, (By Tristan Taormino or Jack Morin) because this author doesn’t  teach you anything... it’s not her intent.

Some of you porn dogs may ask, “But does it get you off?” Since I read it in a cafe with cookie crumbs falling on the pages, I perhaps am not the right person to ask. I certainly didn’t feel like I had to run to the lavatory for a few moments of private satisfaction, no. When she writes the sex scenes, they don’t build for very long; she cuts them off. There’s little bits and piece everywhere, but they don't sustain. By the time you finish, you’re in sort of a mild lather, like baby shampoo, but you  need something else to take you up the mountain. I found that I kept drifting to my own memories, or that letter my girlfriend wrote me, which were more arousing.

The moral of this story is that anal drama needs a demanding editor. Ms. Bentley could have used an editor much like her favorite lover, who  insisted on her submission. Someone who would say, “You HAVE to build character, you have to deepen and sustain these bedroom scenes— or I won’t let you come.” She could have met the challenge... she’s intelligent, sensitive, competent... but no one made her bend over her desk and really apply herself.  If only someone had given me a call!

Now go ahead, I dare you:  who has written the greatest anal sex ephiphany scenes of all time?

Bush Girls Will Talk Dirty to You Over the Phone!

I can't stop laughing over this:
a web site devoted to phone sex ...
with deluded  patriots!

What It's REALLY Like to Get Reviewed in the New York Times

Books live and die by critical reviews. And when they die, the author often wants to jump on the pyre, too.  S/he feels like the pretty pony who got trucked over to the glue factory by some tragic mistake.

Word of mouth, of course, is the gold standard, but the only way you can get more than a handful of mouths flapping is by receiving press in a big-time media outlet. Now, in terms of sheer numbers, that means places like USA Today or Regis and Kathy. The most hokey mention in Family Circle could sell thousands of your title, but that's not what authors crave.  What they yearn for is a New York Times Book Review.  It's the ultimate trophy that you can send to your ma and say, "I done good."

Even if the NYT review is critical, it's considered an honor just to be taken seriously. Even if the freelancer they hire to review your book is a stringer for the National Enquirer, you feel like you've been handed your tweeds and pipe. You have arrived.

I grimace as I describe the mythology to you, because as you might anticipate, the glory of your NYT appearance is a bit anticlimactic. I know it from both sides. I've written reviews for the Times and also been reviewed a few times.  My first assignment for them was the most fun: I got to excoriate an erotic art history book, The Art of Arousal, bizarrely authored by Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who knows as much about art history as a bucket of cement.

Dr. Ruth's book had pretty pictures, and I delighted in encouragine people to skip her comments and drop to their knees in awe of the pictures like Courbet's "Origin of the World," perhaps the greatest painting of what lies between a woman's legs ever imagined. Painted in 1866, and no one's  matched it.

I  also favorably reviewed an  essay compliation by Dorothy Allison, after she became famous, so I don't think my rave provoked a turn in her career. Neither did I stop the meteoric rise of Dr. Ruth in the advertising world.

But my last review, of a women's erotic photography book called The Erotic Lives of Women
by Linda Troeller and Marion Schneider, was more telling. This book is remarkable and you've probably never heard of it. Toss all those Taschen fetish books in the trash and spend a few hours with this masterpiece. These two women created an erotic porfolio that is  raw and intimate and candid and gutsy. 

I sang the praises of the author/photographers. They were thrilled, and they probably did up their hair and lipstick, waiting for the phone to start ringing off the hook. And waited. And waited. They got a rave review in the Sunday New York Times Book Review, and although that probably sold a few hundred copies for them, that was the end of the line.

They never told me they were disappointed, in fact they only wrote to thank me.  But I could hear the disappointment in their voices. I could hear it in their "hello," because I recognized the same experience I'd had myself.

The frustrating truth for book authors, is that even with credible reviews in prestigious places, the truth of bookselling is that only a handful of books receive million dollar publicity campaigns each year, and those few books vary widely on their merit.

I mean looking back on it, can you believe that people like The Rules Girls were promoted-- at all?  Or what about the guaranteed unreadable Life of Catherine M. that migrated to its American edition from France last year? It was reviewed in all the "best places," I myself received five review copies from the publisher, and it was the absolute pinnacle of shit on a stick.

This year, the NYT is going wild by addressing quite a few books about sex, and the phenomena of erotic bookselling in general. This is after years of holding their nose. The booksellers demand it: they can barely sell a book that isn't on the subjects of sex, get-rich-quick schemes, or diet cures.

Books about making money are treated with respect, and so are serious recipe collections. But not sex. The Times is conventional among Eastern media traditionalists in their habit of rolling their eyes and making witty disdian of the baser instincts of sexual desire and erotic expression. In this sense, my devasting review of Dr. Ruth fit right in, because I roasted her.

A couple weeks ago, they ran a review by Amy Sohn that discussed a hodgepodge of books about sex, from dildo instruction manuals to novels about women who haven't been laid in a year. She engaged the traditional cynic's tone of "I wonder what the sex people doing today..." as if they were a band of Smutketeers who have little in common with normal readers and intellectuals. It's not necessarily mean, it's just... at a distance.

(To be sympathetic with Sohn's task, there are so many ridiculous, corny, crap-for-brains sex books published today to exploit the prurient interest, it's hard to avoid kicking a few when you get a chance. Most of them ARE stupid, and anyone who buys a book called "How to Give the Best Blow Job Ever and Make Your life Complete" really does deserve a good pinch).

The recent compliation of novellas that I edited, Three the Hard Way, was remarked upon at the end of Amy's review. She wrote that "Susie Bright has made a career of publishing high quality smut... one handed reading if you will..." 

My editor wondered if I wanted to use that line to promote my next book, but I said, "Why? It sounds like an insult. It's like saying I've made a career of producing  first-rate garbage. It's so inconsequential you can read it on the toilet with one hand on your dick— Now I can die happy." I guess you could say I didn't like it.

My mother didn't read it, but my softspoken next door neighbor greeted me in the driveway the next morning, saying, "One handed reading, huh?"

Sohn's review was tricky, though. After she introduced my reputation, she went on to say that she had become captivated by at least one of the stories, so much so that she had to tip her hat in respect and say that it was, after all, "two-handed reading."  Well, aren't we proud!

You know, compared to the other "sex books" she rated in her review, Three The Hard Way received glowing praise. Amy herself has written breezily about sex for years in  New York periodicals, reguarly being labeled a slut and a smutmonger by angry letter writers. She's recently written a breezy guide to the "Sex and the City" television show, so questions of "one- vs. two-handed reading"  could all be taken with a grain of salt.

But I still cringe at her backhanded compliment. I would have preferred the more forthright, "I thought Susie Bright was just a porn hack, but once I read one of her books, I realized that she cultivates some writers of uncommon talent and grace. Boy, was I wrong about my stereotypes..." 

The author she singled out, Greg Boyd, who wrote the second novella in Three the Hard Way, called "The Widow," if a freakin' genius. He can write better than me and Amy Sohn hogtied together to a desk.

But meanwhile,  a new erotic book has appeared on the NYTimes erotic horizon. It is called The Surrender, and it is the anal sex awakening memoir of a former NY City ballerina.

I just burst out laughing writing that!  If I'd known that I had  become a member of the ballet corps to get respect for my own anal sex epiphanies, i would have paid a lot more attention to my toe shoes all those years ago.

This book is a big deal for the prestige book review troops. On the surface, the subject is something they'd normally  ridicule, or  more likely, ignore. Apparently the prose quality of this book is mixed-- I can't wait to read it myself. But what's obviously more important is that the publisher of this novel, Judith Regan at Harper Collins, has pulled out all the stops to make this book essential media fodder, and it's going to be treated with gravitas, dammit! 

Charles McGrath, one of NYT's most sage reviewers, opens his critique by saying,"Every now and then, there's a dirty book so literary, or a literary book so dirty, that it becomes a must read or at least a must-discuss among the sorts of people who would never let themselves be seen hanging around the porn shelf."

Yes, those "sorts of people" have been a real pain in the ass, haven't they?

"The porn shelf", where apparently you must be an utter toilet of a character to enjoy, is exactly the place where Henry Miller, Pauline Reage, D.H. Lawrence and every significant member of the Beat Generation found their books shelved for decades. It's the only corner that gay and lesbian writers could be found for many years. It's certainly the place that my books are often sold, and my god, if you could only imagine the ballerinas and anal sex artistes I've collaborated with over the years!

The "porn shelf" of today's bookstores was literally nailed together over the past fifteen years by unheralded artists who insisted sex was a drama worth writing well about. We sold enough copies, despite every snubbing, that dilettantes in a high places finally cried out, "Hey, let's get my neice/secretary/mistress to write one of these smutty lit things, and make some money!"  The very people who disdained the new wave of erotic lit are now in charge of mentoring the nouveau mediocrity of erotic talent that you will soon see flayed in every glossy magazine.

You're not seeing the best authors in these publicity campaigns, you're seeing the best publicity campaigns, generated among people who have frequented the requisite chattering class parties. Their sex lives are now yours to consider.  I'm sure some of them are quite worthwhile.  I will try to ferret the best of them out for  further revew, and if I love The Surrender, I will join in the chorus with The New Republic, of all places.  I think anal sex needs all the sensitive appreciation it can get.

But if you want to read great erotic literature, the first thing you have to do, as a critic, is to stop being ashamed of sex.Even if your shame masquerades as smugness. Wby not expect, and demand, literary merit  from sexual lyric? Until I hear that note, of great expectations, I'm won't be finished with my high quality, glorious "smutty" career.

Jenna, We Hardly Knew Ye

I was just talking about Jenna Jameson's new "bestselling" memoir on my In Bed show... I ordered it for a lark, and was prepared to savage it, but then found I was spellbound for the two thirds. Mad at the last act, though, a definite cop-out.

The most emotional details about this book are not about sex... at all. It's about her mother's untimely death and her gradual, and then gruesome addiction to methamphetime. The drug parts really have your hair standing on end. Real Valley of the Dolls drama, and I mean that in a good way. Neely, move over!

The other tidbit, that is my own analysis rather than Jenna's admission, is that she is what I would call a "working lesbian." Her most compelling sexual and romantic liasons are with women, but because she makes her living from fucking and teasing men, she is invariably involved with a string of would-be Daddys and pimps.

I doubt she thinks of herself as a dyke except in really private moments. She hasn't "come out," except in that gratuitous "porno bisexual" way. But I am expert in reading between the lines, because Jenna's situation is so common, in the most tragic way. Aside from San Francisco and Amsterdam, I don't know of a single town where a lesbian sex worker can get queer support and understanding for who she is... everyone else just gets suicidal about it. This girl needs dyke therapy... actually, any kind of therapy would be okay... she's been through a lot, and I don't buy the book's premise that her sheer spunk is going to heal all wounds.

The b.s. with the book's final act is that Jenna overnight becomes "clean," her family is cheery, and she has a new husband who's just such a doll! It was so unbelievable that it became an instant bore.

The final mystery to me is her celebrity. She is not the first pretty blonde porn star with a lovely figure and angelic face. Really. She's about number 405. Her movies are not remarkable-- people won't be talking about them years from now. So why has she crossed over? She doesn't have the underage/FBI bust/John Waters type story that Traci Lords had... and Traci was an incredible sexual performer. So I am honestly bewildered.

Nina Hartley, the first porn star/red diaper baby to bring unabashed feminist activism to porn sets, and porn to the N.O.W. convention, is writing her memoirs. I'm very interested in them. She has a cousin.. now be patient as I explain this... who was a member of the same Trotskyist sect that I was in in the 70s, and he was, to my mind at the time, one of the biggest prudes I ever met. He "industrialized" in coal mining, which means he got a job in the mines deliberately to be a socialist agitator. I spent some time with the UMW crowd as well, and this particular cousin was so dour I just didn't think he could keep up with the party aspect of being a miner. Of course, I was 17 at the time, and Dear Cousin was much older.. maybe I was in my "Don't bother with any over 30" stage.

Anyway, years later, when I found out that he was related to Nina, I just flipped. Her family has so many prominent and dedicated radicals. Nina is remarkable because of her background, and because she lasted and created a place for herself in a world that usually goes through female performers like Kleenexes.

I look forward to her book, and I can't wait to hear the REAL Jenna Jameson story as it inevitably spills out in the real news.