Susie Bright's Journal

Aprés Le Book Tour: Gratitude and New Ideas

Hard to believe, but I've dismounted from my Big Sex Little Death book tour. I am now having a quiet, discreet little nervous breakdown but it's really not that bad— I still have a smile on my face.

It all began in Detroit on March 16th and culiminated with my Grand Marshall cape flying, at the SF Pride Parade on June 26th. 

Here's the reviews my memoir has garnered, if you'd like some critical snap! 

Like any author who undertakes a massive book tour, I relied on the kindess and euphoria of strangers who hosted, promoted, fed, bathed, and delighted me all over the country. And, to all of you who subscribe to my blog— without you, this financially would have been impossible. Thank you so much.

I am so grateful to all of you— please consider yourself welcome at my house anytime. The chili is ON.

Aside from the sheer "animal husbandry" of keeping a touring author alive, the conversations, books, and political insights I shared with all of you are a valuable book in themselves.

*Thank you, ALL OF YOU, so much. 

 

So What's Next?

I'm writing an illustrated guide to the erotic, political, pharmaceutical, and culinary highlights of my tour— details to come. I hope to publish that by August.

 

Upcoming Tour Dates

I'm doing a couple college lecture and book club dates in October this year— I have a two dates left on the calendar if you're interested. I'll post the plans by Labor Day.

There's so many places I didn't get to; like Canada, for instance.

Or Miami, Austin, New Orleans, Portland-Maine, Denver-Boulder, San Diego, Kansas City— I've received all your letters and I am pining as much as you!

My plan is: Let's plan a spring tour, next April-May. This is the time to start scheming, because it takes money, brilliant scheduleing, and willpower to pull it all off. 

 

The E-Book, The Audiobook, The Theme Park

Do I have an e-book of Big Sex Little Death?

Yes! I have editions ready for you on Kindle, Nook, and from indy bookshops, the generic E-book.

Do I have an audio version? Of course! I even have a new page on Audible with all thirty+ my books listed.

 

Sex-Positive Parenting

What about my sex-postive parenting workshops? Well, for those of you who were there, I think we all left in a little bit of a daze— it was unforgettable. You could have heard a pin drop the hours we spent together. I definitely want to write about this: how raising kids changes your sex life and foretells/impacts how their sex lives will develop.

If you were there, I  need your help! If you attended  one of my workshops, can you remember what you said in our discussion? Send it to me!

Do you remember some of the other stories you heard? Email me what stuck in your head!

I tried in vain to remember everyone's history, but as we weren't recording or taking notes (which I'm glad of) my recollections are incomplete. 

Many of you asked if I've written about motherhood and sex before— yes. See "Egg Sex" and pick up a copy of Mommy's Little Girl. 

 

True Grit

The most unexpected inspiration I had on the trail was my night-time comfort. Every evening in a strange bed, to get to sleep, I'd read, or play an audiobook, by Charles Portis.

Portis wrote True Grit, which was remade into a movie by the Coen Brothers last year— a revelation to me!

I listened to Donna Tartt read aloud that glorious prose more times than I can count. I also dived into his other classics like Norwood, Dog of the South, Gringos, and Masters of Atlantis. I can't stop re-reading and re-listening.

I began to daydream my own version of a Portis novel, an homage to his great narrators.

In my pass, the first-person is going to be a cranky bulldagger of the first water— on a great improbable journey, of course.

If you know Portis' work, I can imagine you're cackling with glee at the prospect; if you don't know what I'm talking about, just pick up a copy of anything he's written and hang on to your hat.

I realize I've been living among Portis-heads all my life and didn't know it. I once cared for a quixotic cat named "Norwood" without knowing his credentials. Hunter Thompson used to quote entire Portis passages to me, laughing up his nose, and I didn't realize he wasn't quoting himself! Okay, the jig is up, you sneaks; I'm in all the way now.

 

* My Special Thank You's

Detroit: Mary Lee Hannington, Leopold’s Books, Jane Slaughter, Mimi Gonzales-Barillas

Ann Arbor: David Halperin, Terri Torrko, Rohstem Mesli, Common Language Bookstore

New York: Devera and Michael Witkin, Beth Anderson, *Everyone* at Audible, Veronica Vera and Candida Royalle, Bluestockings, Kate Black, Erica Jong, Doug Henwood, Michael Letwin, Strand Books, Wil Snape and Jennifer Bassuk, Barbara Winslow

San Francisco: Martin Cate and Smuggler’s Cove, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Modern Times, Femina Potens Gallery, Carole Deutch, City Lights Bookstore, Small Press Distribution and The Bee-In

Marin: Book Passage, Jonathan Freiman, Christina Amini

Oakland: Diesel Bookstore, Ari Levenfeld and Leonora Willis

Santa Cruz: My dear neighbors, hometown friends, and Bookshop Santa Cruz

Los Angeles: Richard Olsen, Book Soup

Chicago: Rebecca Weaver-Gill, Jessica Peterson, Women and Children First, Linda Bubon, Driftglass and BlueGal

St. Louis: David Wraith, Blue Jones, Left Bank Books, Sex-Positive St. Louis

D.C./Baltimore: Tristan Taormino and Colten Tagnomino, Holly Fogleboch, Jacqui Deegan, MomentumCon, Bluestockings 

Atlanta: Phillip Rashoon, Outwrite Books, Maital and Anne

Portland: Andi Zeisler, Venae Rodriguez, LiveWire Radio, BITCH, She-Bop, Powell’s Books

Seattle: Babeland, Elliott Bay Book Company, Village Books in Fairhaven

Minneapolis: The Smitten Kitten, Steve Harsin

Tucson: Chris Tanz and Jean-Paul Bierny, The Pima County Library, The Loft Cinema, Antigone Books

Pride Parade, San Francisco: SFPride.org, Marsha Levine, Veronica Garcia, Jay Remick, Honey Lee Cottrell, Closet Capers,  and everyone who voted for me for Grand Marshall, what a great people's parade it was! PHotos here.

Everywhere and At All Times: Eva Zimmerman, Donna Galassi, Brooke Warner, Everyone at Seal Press, Worley-Shoemaker Management, Jon Bailiff, Jennifer Taillac.

 

PHOTOS: Honey Lee Cottrell, SF Pride Parade, 2011. The last photo is me in front of the staff door in City Hall that Dan White used to sneak in and kill George Moscone and Harvey Milk.

 

Tristan Taormino: The HBO Lesbian Strap-On Sex Party

 

 

 

"I was the subject of a 13-person all-anal gang bang— but the most degraded I've ever felt in my life was working in mainstream television."  

 

from Susie Bright's Big Sex Little Death book tour

TRISTAN: 

"To this day, people see the lesbian party-strap-on episode for the very first time and write me an email and they're like, how can I get to one of these parties?  I need to go to one of these lesbian strap-on parties.  I need to go there now.  I need the address."

 

SUSIE:

"I think when people say I want to go, I want the address ... When people would say that to me, about something they saw that I was up to ... it was this joie de vivre that they felt ...that there are people and when they get together they're just so compassionate and excited and funny and open to sex with each other.  Where's that??  Even if had just been the cunnilingus party... or the soft feathers and food-fight party... it's just that there's a place where people are playful and funny, not this 'you slut you cheated on me it's over!'  You know, a relief from that."

 

 

Footage shot and edited by Jacqui Deegan, from the Momentum Conference in Silver Spring, MD, April 3, 2011:  "Making Waves in Sexuality, Feminism & Relationship Through New Media."

Susie's attended the con to talk about scenes from her memoir, Big Sex Little Death 

This is the final keynote speech with Tristan Taormino and Susie Bright which we called, "Multi-Gen Feminist Pornographers Speak Out."

 

A Bad Day at the Porno Shoot— & The Freudian Catholic Slip

 

 

 

 

Susie: Why do people worry about what's going on "behind the scenes" on porn shoots when they never feel guilty about any other kind of film shoot?

If you want to fret about something, question whether every TV and film you see runs a union crew. Do they have a grievance procedure? I don't care whether they're shooting a sex scene, an animation, or a battle sequence.

 

from Susie Bright's Big Sex Little Death book tour

****

Tristan compares what a "bad day" looks like at the old porno 9-5, when compared to a bad day at any other kind of office.

****

Susie: The NFL breaks down people's bodies more than porn could ever imagine, but you don't hear anyone who's retired from professional football too ashamed to tell you what they did for a living.

*****

Freudian Slip of the Day:

"I was raised guilty. — I mean, Catholic!"

 

Footage shot and edited by Jacqui Deegan, from the Momentum Conference in Silver Spring, MD, April 3, 2011:  "Making Waves in Sexuality, Feminism & Relationship Through New Media." 

This is the final keynote speech with Tristan Taormino and Susie Bright which we called, "Multi-Gen Feminist Pornographers Speak Out." Susie was reminscing about her memoir, Big Sex Little Death.

 

Feminist Queer Porn: Does the Transman Have to Drop Trou?

 

 

 

Tristan talks about how transmen and gender-queers pushed the envelope at On Our Backs. So did the issue of whether models HAD to take their clothes off— when "nudity," per se, wasn't their way of getting it on. 

How Hard it Was to Find Contributors and Models in the Beginning:

"I never told anyone how many pseudonyms I used at OOB, just to fill the pages."

 

 

TRISTAN:

The roots of how I direct porn for straight people was really in On Our Backs.  Like, what do you want to do?  Participate in your own representation!  We want to know what kinds of things you want to do and how you want to do them and how you want to look.  These were basic fundamental things.... this is the legacy.  

 

These are real couples, they have real chemistry, they really fuck.  We're not hiring models.  It's had a lasting impact on me.

 

One of my biggest challenges when I was at OOB: a transgender or genderqueer came to me who wanted to pose in the magazine and I thought, oh this is great.  And the Publisher was like, oh hold it, that's a man and we're not making a magazine for or with men.  

 

So I was like, we have to have this sit-down and talk about this because our readers want to see genderqueers or transguys.  

 

But then came my first photo shoot with one couple who came in with their clothes on and kept them on.  The publisher said, These people aren't naked, you know, 'porn.' Naked people fucking. What definition of porn do you have?"

But this is their sexuality and their sexuality isn't about being naked and I think this is hot and I think it's still porn.

SUSIE:

I was thrilled with people who pushed the envelope.  

If somebody said "the models have to have white teeth and they have to smile and they have to be cute," I would just go "bleechh!"  I didn't want to do that. There was the rock 'n' roll part of me, the art school drop-out part, not to mention socialist worker/Emma Goldman part.  I liked doing it "our way," and because I was part of On Our Backs  and only the outliers wanted to participate anyway, I got to do lots of it.

 

In the end, we did hear from all  those bankers and secretaries we never thought we'd hear from... they changed. They changed a lot.  

 

 

 

Footage shot and edited by Jacqui Deegan, from the Momentum Conference in Silver Spring, MD, April 3, 2011:  "Making Waves in Sexuality, Feminism & Relationship Through New Media." 

This is the final keynote speech with Tristan Taormino, which we called, "Multi-Gen Feminist Pornographers Speak Out."

 

The Delicious— but Unsubstantiated— Rumor of an "Usher Sex Tape"

 

 

 

 

TRISTAN: 

No one has found or published celebrity sex tapes accidentally. The way the world works, is that before anyone puts out pictures of you having sex, they have to have from you, on file, a signed model release and several forms of paperwork proving that you're over 18.  The most important thing you can do in porn is the paperwork.  Because that is where the government will fuck you first. Not on obscenity, not because "he pissed in her mouth." It's all about the paperwork.

 

TRISTAN: 

I said to Steven Hirsch, the head of Vivid Entertainment, "I need you to promise me we can do a video on straight men and receiving anal pleasure."

And he said "Okay, it just can't be one of the first four."  So it was the fifth.  

Then he called me up: "Tristan we have to talk about your next movie and based on sales reports I would like it to be about... pegging."

 

 

SUSIE:

Yep, that's just one of those sweet scrapbook moments.

 

 

Footage shot and edited by Jacqui Deegan, from the Momentum Conference in Silver Spring, MD, April 3, 2011:  "Making Waves in Sexuality, Feminism & Relationship Through New Media." 

This is the final keynote speech with Tristan Taormino, which we called, "Multi-Gen Feminist Pornographers Speak Out."

 

 

The Pauline Kael of Porn— and the Break-Up of "On Our Backs"

 

 

 

"People ask me if I've ever done a degrading, objectifying 'I-felt-oppressed-as-a-woman'  photo shoot.  And I said, yes, "Vanity Fair."  For the guy who shot that gig, I may as well have been an eggplant.  It didn't matter what I wanted or who I was. My POV had nothing to do with the shoot."

 from Susie Bright's Big Sex Little Death book tour

****

 

"What dominates pop culture in terms of women is still the most backward, false-consciousness, Cosmo baloney ever. That what's held up as female sexuality. I feel like I'm at the dawn of 1970s, saying, 'this is all garbage, this is lies, it isn't real women, and it isn't real sex.'"

 

 

 

 

"I wanted to be the Pauline Kael of porn.

 

"Hardly anyone had a VCR when I started; you went to theaters to see sex movies. I took the subway to the Pussycat Theater, and I remember being a little nervous that somebody might try to molest me... but in fact the men just cleared away from my path like I was a Pinkerton Detective. 

 

"Here I was, worried that I was going to sit in a seat full of come, but then I became aware that no man in there cares what the movie is— they're all just fucking each other."

 

****

 

How I convinced the owner of Good Vibrations to let us carry dildos in addition to vibrators:

 

"Look, I know that that the straight women need to get over the penis-vagina intercourse fundamentalism— but the lesbians are already over it, and they just want to fuck, so can we please have a few purple dildos?"

To read more of Susie on the history of porn before the Internet, check out her book: 

The Erotic Screen, Vol. 1: The Golden Hardcore and the Shimmering Dyke-Core 

 
Available at Amazon, B&N, & Smashwords. Here's the whole Table of Contents.

Interviews with and stories about legendary artists like Russ Meyer, John Leslie, Sharon Mitchell, Jeannie Pepper, Christopher Rage, John Holmes, Marilyn Chambers... and many more.

 

Footage shot and edited by Jacqui Deegan, from the Momentum Conference in Silver Spring, MD, April 3, 2011:  "Making Waves in Sexuality, Feminism & Relationship Through New Media." 

This is the final keynote speech with Tristan Taormino and Susie Bright which we called, "Multi-Gen Feminist Pornographers Speak Out." Susie is recalling scenes from her memoir, Big Sex Little Death

 

 

Tristan Taormino: On the Importance of Real Chemistry in Porn

 

 

 

TRISTAN:

One of the first things that my [gf] Liz said to me was, "I'm so excited; I'm bringing my icon to campus.  Susie Bright!"  

And I was like, 'Who's Susie Bright?"  

She said, "You're going to have to read her book and I'm going to have to witness that you've read every single page of it because you can't be my girlfriend if you don't know who Susie Bright is."

TRISTAN:

The film they were screening [at my college porn show function] was the Fatale movie, How to Female Ejaculate.  All of these women are sitting in a room and they start jerking off,showing each other. Instead of someone getting up to get a refill of guacamole, someone will just squirt...

 

 

Footage shot and edited by Jacqui Deegan, from the Momentum Conference in Silver Spring, MD, April 3, 2011:  "Making Waves in Sexuality, Feminism & Relationship Through New Media." 

This is the final keynote speech with Susie and Tristan Taormino, which we called, "Multi-Gen Feminist Pornographers Speak Out."

 

Susie at the Sex Bloggers' Convention, Part 1

 

"As soon as I said the word, "menstruate,"  I watched the [school principal's] face change violent colors.  It was the first time I've ever seen a man be affected by female sexual power...  I didn't even understand it but I won, I escaped the Detention Room... he just backed away... I thought, 'How intriguing.'"

 

****

 

"...I showed him the piece I wrote that I was being crucified for, and my dad said: 'Everything these people are saying about you and attacking you for, is what they said about homosexuals when I was a young man in the 1940s, to all my very best friends. It's every single lie and it's all the same baloney.'"

 

 

Footage shot and edited by Jacqui Deegan, from the Momentum Conference in Silver Spring, MD, April 3, 2011:  "Making Waves in Sexuality, Feminism & Relationship Through New Media." 

This is the final keynote speech with Tristan Taormino, which we called, "Multi-Gen Feminist Pornographers Speak Out."

 

Doug Henwood Interviews Susie Bright @ The Strand: The Video Archive

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doug Henwood, publisher of Left Business Observer and contributing editor of The Nation, interviews Susie Bright on March 31, 2011, about her memoir Big Sex Little Death, on the Strand Stage. The Strand is the famous "18 Miles of Books" bookstore in Manhattan's lower east side.

Stickin' It To the Squares: Interview with Rachel Kramer Bussel

 

Why was now the right time for you to write your memoir, Big Sex Little Death?

 

I always had an autobiography on my mind. If you’ve read my books over the years, you could say it’s been one long saga in progress!

Mommy’s Little Girl was about my first years as a parent, Susie Sexpert’s Lesbian Sex World was about the dyke orgy era, How to Write a Dirty Story was my professional memoir and how-to.

Once I committed with Seal Press to do BSLD, the reason to nail it, to sprint to the finish line, was because, today,  the rewriting of the feminist and queer sexual revolution by conservatives, centrists, and shame-gloaters is REVOLTING. 

It’s Revisionism Uber Alles.  

Someone has to set the record right...  More than one someone, actually.

I want every woman who’s had an abortion without falling to pieces, who has no regrets in her sexual imagination, who’s raised strong capable children without superstition, who’s shared comradeship with lovers and relished the poetry of erotic illumination— I want all these women  to start typing… NOW.

You dropped out of high school to live on your own and be an organizer—working, having sexual relationships, and getting involved in activism that at times was extremely dangerous.

Did that feel natural to you to be taking a route that was very much off the beaten path? 

 

The crucible of Vietnam and civil rights movements— on every front— made my path more than natural, it was fundamental. 

Besides, 17-year-olds are capable of anything; they can stay up all night…I am perplexed by the infantilization of young adults by the leisure class. 

 

I thought some of the most interesting parts were about the death threats and hate mail you got while at On Our Backs. They reminded me of the Dorothy Allison poem “The Women Who Hate Me.” 

 

Ha! That’s funny, I had Allison’s poem on my night table for many years, as did many dyke-outliers. 

When I started my memoir I wrote Dorothy and told her I was thinking of quoting her poem. But it was really her title that most unsettled and captivated me. I ended up just letting it work on my dream life, and it did its best work there. 

 

The vitriol you faced seemed, at first, more unexpected than some of the opposition you got as a socialist organizer. Was it more painful to face that kind of hostility from women you’d expected to be on your side? 

 

I never had a reasonable expectation that the Democratic-Party-leader, courtside feminist establishment would be on my side.  Since when, historically, has there ever been any illusions about peace, love, and harmony in feminist movement? As a group, we’ve been fighting about “free love” since DAY ONE.

But, yes, it was still shocking to be the target of their infantry’s violence. The sex war scene  was all very “Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” where the charismatic professor gins her “special girls” up into a frenzy to go off and join Mussolini. 

I wouldn’t compare it as being worse or less than what I faced in the labor movement, or as a Red. There were too many guns, knives, heavy objects and flushed-face freakouts all the way around.

I remember well the psycho in Kentucky who pulled up in his car as I handed out a flyer about “maternity leave contract issues”-- so wholesome!-- in front of an auto plant employee parking lot. He pulled up close, lowered the window, and I drew near, because he had a big grin in his face. "Finally," I thought, "someone nice enough to talk to." When I was right up next to him, he drew a pistol, stuck it  in my stomach, and said, “Get your nigger-loving communist ass off this lot.”

—Different style than the bomb-making, knife-wielding womens’ studies students. Everybody’s got their personal nut on.

By the way, Rachel, since we both have worked for Penthouse magazines, I have to tell you,  I wrote that Kentucky story for my 1980's Penthouse Forum column and my editor changed the phrase to “liberal-leaning communist ass” because he said we couldn't’ say “nigger-loving communist ass”!   

 

A them I noticed was this "casting out"— whether by your mother, the I.S., or the women with whom you started On Our Backs. You were accused of being the betrayer. Do you see a connection between those actions? 

 

“Everybody’s out to get me!”  God, I hope it isn't that bad.

My mom, who died in 2004, isn’t the same as Gloria Steinem or Andrea Dworkin— she loved me unconditionally. The dangers she placed me in were only the same as she put herself.  

Even though Gloria and I share the same birthdate, I don’t think she loves me ! ;-)

Politics is a different matter. The struggle to name a solution, to lead, is fierce. Plus, every group who’s been marginalized by oppression has a nasty cannibalistic streak. We scrounge over crumbs.  We always tell ourselves, “stay tight, don’t  let The Man divide us,” but the internalized madness is quite daunting.

You know, everyone’s history has bitter stings, everyone gets thrown out of paradise. They are formative experiences, and certainly part of any narrative.  But they aren’t the only climaxes. The embraces, the deep loves and kinships are just as powerful. I hope that comes across in my story!

 

You started a print magazine in 1983, just as personal computers were becoming popular— and before internet publishing.

There’s a moment where OOB co-founder and publisher Debi Sundahl tells you that Steve Jobs is frightening the horses by putting the means of production into individuals’ hands. But you faced many financial hurdles simply because you were publishing a sex magazine.

I understand the moral opposition, but on the business side, money is money. Why were business so threatened by the magazine?

 You have to mention the part in the story where Debi talked about Steve so much, that I was under the impression he was one of her clients at the O’Farrell theater! That was a lovely naive fantasy. She was the original Apple early adopter when it came to publishing.

Back to your question:

Extreme male chauvinism in publishing and magazine distribution was one heavy issue. They could only see us “girls”  as something to exploit, or to punish/save. It was their knee-jerk  Madonna/Whore reaction THEN, and in many ways, it still IS. Look at the position of women in journalism. NAU-ZEE-ATE-ING.

Secondly, corruption was rife in magazine printing and distribution. We could’ve laundered our way in and out of many difficult situations, but we didn’t always have the cash. People have no idea how sleazy this business is.  --Or maybe they do, and I was just the last to know?

 

I’m curious about your book tour audiences. Is there a typical Susie Bright fan? Do you feel this book is more geared toward those who lived through the seventies and eighties along with you?

 

An enthusiastic reader just wrote on my Facebook Wall, “Keep stickin’ it to the squares, Susie!” -- that cracked me up. 

It’s amazing how untypical my readers are; I never know who’s walking through the door. It’s anyone who’s ever had a searing moment of self-contemplation, who’s ever laughed in bed, who’s ever sat down in street and said “ENOUGH!”  

A lot of people who come to my memoir events want to talk to me about their place in my memoir— it's like everyone is a chapter I need to read.  I just met a woman in DC who was raised by evangelical Christian missionaries, traveling the globe, and as a teenager, she kept my copies of my books locked in a file drawer that her parents had no idea about. —All these years later we're having kim chee and Korean BBQ together.

As for generations, of course if you were “there,” it’s one thing, but young people are always looking at the primary sources of history, particularly those revolutionary times which are freighted with mythology, like the cultural revolution of my generation. I always have looked into the past for answers, myself.  

 

What advice do you have for those who want to go into the field of sexuality?

Is there a certain personality type that’s best suited to facing the kinds of sex-negative slings and arrows that come with it?

 

Well, I'm so ridiculously over-sensitive that I’d say the door is wide open for all kinds. Big crybabies and people who pee in their pants laughing are welcome. Empathy is all you need.

 

Has American culture become more knowledgeable and open-minded about sex? In some ways we have, but in other respects we're regressing. Are you optimistic?

 

Better? Yes. Worse? Yes. To quote my favorite Roland Barthes exclamation:

 

"I am reduced to endurance.... I suffer without adjustment, I persist without intensity, always bewildered, never discouraged. I am a Daruma doll, a legless toy endlessly poked and pushed, but finally regaining its balance, assured by an inner balancing pin.

"But WHAT is my balancing pin? The force of love?

"...Such is life, falling over seven times and getting up eight."

Obviously, “optimism” isn’t what’s required. Activism is.

 

What’s next for you?

I'm working on a book with you!  

I get to be the "guest judge" on your edition of Best Sex Writing 2012. I can't wait to see the finalists you're culling right now.

(Deadline for submissions— non-fiction personal essays and reportage on the current sexual zeitgeist— is May 1, and you can read all the little details here._

For myself, I have a new Sex Journal out, a "guided," not-so-blank book for people who have always thought it would be interesting to write down their sex history. 

I'm beginning a book which only has a nickname so far: Mom’s Sex Diary. It’s about how parents evolve sexually from their own  pregnancies to witnessing their childrens’ puberty. Raising kids changes your sex life... and foretells their future love lives. Lots of ground to cover! I'm doing workshops on that very subject right now, just to hear what's on people's minds... here's the schedule so far.

Then, of course there’s  a second memoir, more dirt. I’ll call it, Sticking it to the Squares, Part Deux!

 

Rachel Kramer Bussel is the Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations, sex columnist for SexIs Magazine, and has edited 38 anthologies, including Gotta Have It, Surrender, Best Bondage Erotica 2011, Orgasmic, Fast Girls, Spanked, Bottoms Up and Best Sex Writing 2008, 2009 and 2010. 

Parts of this interview, and Rachel's review of Big Sex Little Death, were first printed in SexIs

Photo Credit:  Stacie Joy.  Rachel and Susie from RKB's legendary "In The Flesh" series in 2009, at the Happy Ending Lounge, in NYC.