Susie Bright's Journal

Big Sex (Little Death) for Professors - Exam and Desk Copies For Your Perusal

To My Friends and Colleagues in the Academy:

My memoir, Big Sex Little Death, is now available in paperback, available for the Fall 2012 semester.

You may request exam or desk copies here, at PerseusAcademic.

Many of you have asked me if the paperback would be available for your upcoming reading lists. It is! — and also in Kindle. Please pardon the publicist-patter, but here's the summary:

Bright is a pioneering theorist and activist who co-founded On Our Backs magazine, launched an erotic literary fiction movement (Herotica, Best American Erotica)—and broke new ground in the 4th Estate and the University on the politics of erotic representation.

Now in her 50s, Bright’s memoir lays out how she came to be in the center of the most difficult and violent debates of the sex wars— and why she still finds herself on the cutting edge of sex, gender, and culture.

Her insights into lesbian history, the feminist sex wars, the politics of sexual outliers, the origins of "sex-positive feminism," crusades against pornography and sex work— all amount to a living history of sexual knowledge and politics. 

The daughter of two of American’s first generation of modern linguists, Bright became a full-time activist in her teens— a FBI-targetted socialist, a labor organizer, and on the ground floor of women’s liberation of the early 70s.

 In the wake of the New Left’s collapse, Bright joined the gay and lesbian forces who mobilized in California in 1978 and changed the course of gay politics....

  

During my (hardback) campus book tour last year, I discussed our mutual and evolving coursework in the history of sexuality Those conversations were all too short, and I would love to continue them, at your leisure!

 

All best,

Susie Bright

 

The Hippest Conversation You've Ever Heard About Porn. Yes.

 

Mike White interviews Susie Bright on the The Projection Booth about vintage porn and her new book The Erotic Screen, Volume 1.

It was such a treat to talk to Mike, who's eminently knowledgeable  about the erotic and indie movie history.

Listening to our interview three months after our first meeting,  I'm taken aback: this is the most frank and wide-ranging conversation I've ever heard about sex movies, from anyone, anywhere. 

Listen to us get down and detailed about our favorite classic XXX films, early erotic video innovation, legendary erotic directors and actors, including:

Greg Dark's Let me Tell Ya Bout White/Black Chicks era, 

Rinse Dream (aka Steve Sayadian) with Cafe Flesh and Nightdreams,

Veronika Rocket's Smoker,  

Pirates, and why it was produced for Disneyland lovers

Radley Metzger's Score,

Joyce Snyder's Raw Talent, ("the Portlandia of Porn!")

Kink.com,

Directors Michael Ninn, John Stagliano, Andrew Blake,

Jack Baker,

Porn theaters in Detroit and London,

Stalag porn that flourished in Israel in the 50s/60s,

Segregation and race tropes in porn, ("people would talk to me, a reporter, as if it was Pig Night at the Ku Klux Klan rally"),

Bernard Purdy's Lialeh, 

The G-spot Fraud Detection Squad,

The veracity of the letters I got to my Penthouse in-box, (all real, handwritten or typed and snail-mailed--- and more than I could ever answer),

Edward Penishands and other porn satires ("It's the same whether it's Catherine the Great fucking her horse or the GOP primaries"), 

What it takes to cut it as a Woodsman, ("Viagra doesn't make you come on camera... it's a very particular kind of 'hitting your mark.' To hell with the drugs...There's always been a million ways to hide the soft sausage.")

How the best films of the Golden Era got literally cut to shreds by their own copyright owners, ("You're dealing with IDIOTS"),

And what really matters to me in sex cinema:

"You know how I am, Mike. The girl's gotta come, and I've gotta know it."

 

Illustration: The cover of Mike White's must-read cult film book, Impossibly Funky: A Cashiers du Cinemart Collection. White is a writer for CinemaScope, Paracinema, Detroit's Metro Times, and Detour-Mag.com. He's jury-served at Slamdance, Cinekink and MicroCineFest, and been featured in the documentaries David Goodis: To a Pulp and The People Vs. George Lucas.

What Do You Call "The Bits?" -- What Children Need to Tell Parents About Sex

 

What to call the bits? Teaching children only the anatomically correct names may cause some difficulty for them on the schoolyard.

Interview by Katherine Holland, Vitamin Daily

I like "bits." I wish Americans knew that one— it's egalitarian.

Your family will have humorous and pet names for "penis" and "clitoris"— that's the nature of language and the most familiar parts of our lives. Your kids will also bring home schoolyard inventions you couldn't dream of. Enjoy the learning curve.

It's all good, as long as they feel free to ask "What does ______ mean?" and know that you'll have a curious and forth-coming attitude, a context to put it in.

Why are couples' libidos so affected after having children? Is it hormonal? Sheer exhaustion, shifted priorities, or something else? What can help to snap out of it?

The answer is a), b), c), and all of the above.

There is no snapping out or into it!

It's more like careful stitching. Turn to your adult wisdom— put the knowledge you have into practice.

Set up regular babysitter dates, ahead of time. 

Money isn't the issue, planning is. Set up multi-family childcare nights where one set of parents hosts the all the kids for pizza and movie while the other parents get to do WHATEVER THEY WANT.

 

 

Shar Rednour is hands-down the most brilliant writer on this subject: How Great Sex Made me A Good Mom.

Read her entire blog on the subject and weep with gratitude.

Your children catch you in the act— now what?

It's not: Now what?

It's: So what?  

Good-humored non-chalance is the desirable reaction. It's a moment to reinforce a privacy lesson, not a sex lesson. 

"Are you ok?" you might say. "Good. Close the door and always knock before you barge in."  

Answer questions later, when you're spending time with them, not during private time in your bedroom. The same goes for whether you're jilling off, reading a book, daydreaming, or writing in your journal. Privacy is so important for them, for you. Be a consistent role model on both sides of the door.

At what age do you do what? I would be hard pressed to say at what age kids are starting to have sex.

When do you need to have a proper heart-to-heart with them to discuss the responsibilities?

Are you encouraging them or pressuring them if you introduce this topic too early? Or, is it worse to approach it too late? 

There's no numerical answer to this— we all develop differently. We're born with sexual curiousity and sensation— there isn't one talk or one moment that defines us.

Sex is about a lot more than pregnancy and disease-prevention. My favorite book in that regard— the only sex book for young people about the other parts of sexuality— is A Kid's First Book About Sex by Joani Blank.

If your family is committed to fact-based education, you're already miles ahead of the superstition that plagues most sex education.  

 If you talk about current events and pop culture in your family, what's going on in the natural world around you; if you have intimate and wide-ranging conversations at the dinner table, in the car, fooling around— these conversations will come easily. Sex is an integrated part of life— it's not the bogeyman.

When parents finally get a night to themselves without the babes, I feel like dinner is the easy choice. "Let's go for dinner, honey!"

Screw dinner. What's the sexiest thing parents can do on date night, and how often should it be scheduled?

Go straight to your bliss, whatever that may be.

What makes you feel sexy again is having fun. Fun leads to enjoyable sex; hormones and exhaustion be damned. I don't know what your idea of fun is, but you need to make the empty space where it can happen.

Variety is everything. You may plan your escapes on the calendar, but what happens each time is part of the fun. Whether it's careful maps, spontaneous inspirations, or surprises— you've set aside the time to find out.

"Date night" for the two parents enjoying each other's company isn't the only date you need.

You want "alone time," dates with dear friends, as well as escapes with your lover.

All pistons firing is what makes life sexy. Maybe you crave a nap; maybe you want to make out in the back of the car— you'll find out soon enough if you make the time. You'll be such a better, more patient, nurturer for your efforts!

 

Illustration: from my favorite 20th century sex manual, "Is Sex Necessary?" by James Thurber and E.B. White.

How A Teenage Femme Snuck Her Way Into the Mineshaft— NY's Legendary Men's S/M Club

 

 

The "Meatpacking District" in New York City was once ironic shorthand for the patch of West Village blocks, centered roughly at 14th Street and Ninth Avenue, to which countless visitors flocked, seeking the alternative sexual universe that existed there before the invasion of slumming heterosexual tourists looking for Stella McCartney's latest couture designs.

At the height of the feminist, gay, and sexual revolutions of the 1960's and '70s through the mid-'80s, the Meatpacking District was home to the city's thriving and mostly queer S/M and sex club scene.

from: "Losing the Meatpacking District: A Queer History of Leather Culture"

by Abby Tallmer

from Best Sex Writing 2012 

Far from being a desirable destination, the Far West Village, as it was known back then, was unknown territory to most New Yorkers except for butchers, neighborhood residents, and the select group of queer and kinky people who roamed the streets and filled the clubs there in the late-night hours, staggering home in the early morning as the sun was rising and most others were heading off to work. During the day, strong men dragged animal carcasses through the garbage-filled streets. It was an area reserved for those with iron stomachs, given the stench of dead flesh and rotting trash that permeated the air.

Growing up in the neighborhood, I was ashamed to invite my grade-school friends over for fear they would think I lived in a garbage dump.

But at night, the place came alive and the unlit, otherwise desolate streets became filled with other men, also tough-looking, but clad in leather chaps and motorcycle jackets with hankies protruding from their rear pockets and keys dangling from their sides. They lingered on street corners, purposefully eyeing one another, striking up conversations, offering each other a light, and often disappearing down mysterious alleyways or spilling into or out from unmarked but much-trafficked doorways.

There were other characters as well— adventurous male/female couples; groups of nervous young gay men and women clearly new to the area and intent on a mission, most often clad not in leather/fetish gear but in "regular" clothes; and the ever-present trans hookers, most, but not all, of whom were black or Hispanic.

 

“Never take your present for granted, because there’s no telling how quickly and how thoroughly it will be erased.”

 

Many of the hookers almost completely passed as women, most of them as stunning as they were scantily dressed. They could been seen most often awkwardly climbing into and out of the limos and trucks driven by the married men from Staten Island or New Jersey who traveled there just for them.

In the early 1970s, I lived five blocks north of Christopher Street and three blocks from the Hudson River. I was then about nine years old, a queer kid waiting for the right time to spring this news on my parents. I was raised in a very permissive household and often walked the streets alone even after dark.

Needless to say, the night action in my neighborhood hardly went unnoticed by me and, in fact, served as the object of much curiosity.

I remember riding my bike around the neighborhood, making special trips past the piers and the bathhouses and through the deserted side streets west of Greenwich Street, and down 14th Street and the short blocks just below. Though I wasn't quite sure what exactly went on behind these hidden and locked doors, I knew somehow— God knows how— that whatever it was had something to do with being gay, with being sexual, and even with a particular form of gay sexual expression that I gathered was considered in some way shameful.

The very same men who cheerily said hi to me in my building's elevator usually looked more horrified than happy to see me when I greeted them from my bicycle as they loitered, regaled in leather, in alleyways or in front of dimly-lit clubs or bathhouses.

As I would learn later, the unofficial center of all of this action was the "Triangle Building" on 14th Street and Ninth Avenue, which now houses Vento, a popular Italian restaurant opened in 2004, but was then the site of some of the most notorious leather bars in the city.

 

Entrances to a stunning array of S/M and sex clubs and backrooms lined both the Eighth and the Ninth Avenue sides of the Triangle. Those directly on the Triangle included the nationally known Hellfire Club, the Vault, J's, The Man Hole and many others. 

Queer clubs within strolling distance included the notorious Mineshaft, the Anvil, the Asstrick, the Cellblock, the International Stud, the Glory Hole and, later, the Lure. Many patrons migrated back and forth all night long, every night of the week back when sexual freedom defined an era.

Nearly all of these clubs, except for the Hellfire Club and the Vault, were predominantly gay, though a few stray women here and there could at times be spotted in some of the less strict men's-only clubs.

The Mineshaft's door policy, however, was notoriously strict, and many gay men were turned away each night for violating its strict leather/macho dress code. That didn't keep some inventive women from testing whether it was foolproof.

I know this to be true firsthand, for one night just after I turned 18, my best friends, Saul and Brian, decided that it would be fun to dress me up and sneak me in with them.

...continued in "Best Sex Writing 2012"

Rape Scenes: Anatomy of Forced Sex Fantasy Vs. Reality

I remember the first time someone stuck his hand down my pants when I didn't want him to.

My roommate and I were mugged and molested on Page and Ashbury while walking home from a movie at the Red Vic. I must have been twenty.

"Rape Scenes" from Susie Bright's Sexual Reality

What I remember most was that my assailant was a full head shorter than me. He looked to be about fourteen, and he had the tip of his knife pushed against my breastbone. I was scared stiff, unable to move, pleading.

Our two mugger boys were so inexperienced that one of them handed my roommate's keyring back to her so he could use both hands to unfasten her pants. She blew the silver whistle that hung off her keys— and as if she had fired a warning shot— the armed and dangerous brats ran like rabbits.

It was over. I felt like shit, and I continued to feel like shit for months. I moved out of the neighborhood.

I  also remember the first time I had a forced-sex fantasy. I was quite young and had gotten my hands on a naughty book, one of those "pseudo-textbooks" in sociology. It featured “true tales of juvenile delinquency,” and I found it in the library, mis-shelved.

I had never seen the word “delinquent” before, and it sounded pornographic to say the word out loud.

One story described a teenage girl pinned to a cross, just like Jesus, on a grassy hill outside her suburb; all the boys in her school had their way with her.

Another story was about a little girl who didn't obey her parents' warnings not to talk to strangers. She was kidnapped walking to school by a couple who sequestered her in their apartment and introduced her, day by day, to various sex acts which she first resisted and then (of course) became addicted to.

I was attending Catholic school at the time and my head was already filled with stories of romantic martyrdom and the wages of sin. The juvenile delinquents' dramas played over and over again in my head at night as I rubbed myself through layers of sheets, pajamas and underwear, always coming very hard. I never left that neighborhood.

I didn’t acknowledge having perilous fantasies until I was in my twenties. In a women’s studies college course, our teacher asked us if we had experienced arousing “rape fantasies.”

One girl tearfully raised her hand and said this was true for her. My heart beat so fast it was all I could do to stay put. I was just as ashamed as she of these fantasies, but I would never have admitted them. Our professor was quite kind to her, if misinformed.

Our professor comforted the girl by saying that, as women, we had been brainwashed by the patriarchy to eroticize our subordination to men. She said these fantasies were very common, which is true, and that we could "overcome" them by exposing our fantasies to feminist analysis and by our increasing self-esteem.

She was wrong on that count. In fact, I knew she was wrong later that same night...

Continued in Sexual Reality, "Rape Scenes"

Hasbian Pride, Worn-Out Sluts, and Bisexuality

 

Susie, I want to interview you about your bisexuality.

In your memoir, you mention a little girl in day care whom you had a crush on when you were two. Your romantic fantasy was that she was Rose Red and you were Snow White. You were already queering fairy tales, in daycare. What do you make of that?

Interview by  Sheela Lambert

 

Snow White and Rose Red seem like an iconic coupling: twins, lovers, best friends, opposites. Jungian soul mates. I also always got the feeling Snow was the virgin and Rose was the wise whore. 

 

Your girl-crushes obviously started early. When was the first time you had a crush on a boy?

Hmm… good question. I became aware that it was “cool” to have crushes on boys by sixth grade— as opposed to hating their guts, the previous playground protocol.

The boys I truly adored were The Beatles. I broke with the Church over them. I wouldn't burn my albums. 

Kids were so segregated by gender in my day. I never went to birthday parties or events that weren’t “girls only.”

In 6th grade, Tony Bauer (how on earth do I remember these names?) asked me to dance at a school event. The song was "Venus" by the Shocking Blue. He told me I “danced good”— which thrilled me to death. 

I didn’t have much feeling for him, but the compliment made me woozy.

Junior high school upped the ante on flirting. The boys would chase the girls on the ice, the frozen lakes— and I loved “the chase.” But again, I didn’t fix my hormones on them. I had fantasies about both men and women, older men and women, not kids my own age. I was like the girl in the "Sound of Music," Looking for Someone Older and Wiser.

Your question makes me realize I was a late bloomer. I didn't appreciate pure masculinity, sexually, in men or women, until after I'd had more sophisticated lesbian life in my 20s. 

 

When did you realize that not everyone has such wide-ranging attractions and that bisexuality was frowned on by many? What was your reaction to that?

I came of age in a political, “start the revolution”-type atmosphere. I thought that if everyone would just relax and liberate their minds, they would realize they were truly bisexual and non-monogamous... LOL.

I’m poking fun at myself saying this. But I also viewed society with critical eyes, as any puberty-struck individual does. I knew most people weren’t anywhere close to living their sexual potential, and that’s still the truth!

My family and best friends at school-- we were on the same page. My parents knew a lot more gay and bi people than I did; they’d been in gay intellectual milieus (Berkeley, Venice, Hollywood etc) since the 1940s. No one I loved was going to condemn me for bisexuality, far from it. 

My bisexual higher education came from becoming familiar with the Kinsey scale. I realized that liberated or not, people would always have their druthers. Sexual life is a lot more complicated than it looks on the surface.  

In your book, you don’t describe any coming out process and it appears that you always accepted yourself. Was it because of the era of free love and the sexual revolution? 

Yes!

 

Or are you just braver or more matter-of-fact than most people?

The feminist and gay liberation movement made me even braver and blunter, but those are probably typical characteristics of mine.

 

Bisexual people are often assumed to be gay or straight, depending on the gender of our partner. Have you experienced this? How has it affected you?

Oh sure. A little less than most people, because my reputation precedes me. 

Now that I’m in my fifties, sexual invisibility is the greater issue, rather than everyone imagining what a hot chick I am in either direction.

Fretting over people getting my label right seems dewy and fresh-faced to me from my older vantage point.

As one ages and fucks around, you and your peers realize that anything, at any time, could be possible with the right social lubricant. You have been around the block... no other label needed.

The peculiar thing I see as a public figure— and many activists know it well—  is that when you take an aggressive stand for gay rights, if you champion dyke culture and politics, journalists and scholars will call you “that lesbian So-n-So” for years to come. 

One is happy to be associated with dyke-identity. I don’t want to "correct" them if they think I am “shying away” from lesbianism… quite the opposite!

The journalists and scholars who make this error tend to be conservative in their thinking. I’d secretly pleaesd they assume everyone different from them is homosexual and let them stay awake at night, trembling with latent sweat.

But then, LATER, a critic who’s touchy about the INTEGRITY of my bisexuality will come up to me and say, “Who are you to be calling yourself Miss Lesbian in this article?”

They think I am trying to “wear the crown” without earning it.

Well, lesbian activists all over can tell you the “crown” is no ring of gold. We get used for target practice, mostly. I’m happy to be thought of as “dyke” for any and all waving banners and political agendas. I am one. In my personal life, though, like everyone else’s, things are more unexpected and un-label-able.

 

Having a child was a turning point in your life. You say it forced you to take better care of yourself, because of your motivation to protect your child. What things in your life did you change as a result?

Number One: I stopped parenting "surrogate adult-children." Who has the time when you have a real baby? 

Suddenly Real Grown-Ups seemed SO sexually attractive to me-- a first. This was a bigger deal than being bi-sexual. I got out of the Peter Pan playground.

 

I was shocked to read that, when you made the decision to leave On Our Backs, which you co-founded; you were sued by your partners, who were also your close friends. 

Yes, I was shocked too. I hope I conveyed that disbelief in Big Sex Little Death. It was shattering.

 

Obviously, they thought you were irreplaceable and were afraid the magazine would go under without you.

No…  that’s not true. That wasn’t the language or the feeling of it. 

My business partner had been my best friend. I was the "little sister" to her. She didn’t think I was especially irreplaceable... it was more like, “What is Susie trying to pull?”

She didn’t believe my reasons for wanting to transition… my infant, the financial strain, my feeling that something “had to give.”

Debi Sundahl hired a new editor for OOB, sold it, it went on for years without me.  A different creature, to be sure— but still meaningful to readers and contributors.

It was terrible that seemingly overnight, we felt estranged, as if we'd never known each other well. It made me doubt myself more than her!

That’s the kind of blindness I was eager to recover from. It was the beginning of real therapy for me. I never want to have a friendship again where the important things remain unsaid, forever. I didn't want to be afraid of my loved ones.

 

I was mystified by their demand you couldn’t write or be published anywhere else, when you had been freelancing the whole time you worked there. 

You’re trying to be logical. None of it was rational. The lawsuit failed; it was a nuisance suit. Famously, anyone in America can sue anyone for anything.

 

After you had your daughter and left On Our Backs, you wound up partnering with a man. Reading the book, it seems as though you were lesbian-identified at the time….Did you surprise yourself? Was there any backlash from the lesbian community about that? 

It’s funny you said “partnering…” like it was premeditated and constructive.

I was lovers with several people, as usual. I had friends and sweethearts, and I didn’t think of any of them as my “partner.” Oh no. Some were good friends, which seemed to be as much as one could ask for.

I still feel that way. I don't feel like I've "wound up" anywhere except what's happening today. The story ain't over yet!

As time went by in the early 90s, my friend Jon and I spent more and more time together… it happened slowly, without precision. I wish I could remember what day we first kissed, or went to bed, or decided to mostly live together, and then to “really” live together. It all happened in such an unfixed fashion, I don’t know any of those dates! We are sadly without an anniversary date.

I was not surprised to love or be in love with a man; I had been in love with men before.

I WAS surprised to get along with anyone in a house together, day after day, that’s what I was surprised at. To have love's endurance instead of love's drama.

I wrote a lot about the the backlash you speak of in astory called “BlindSexual.” That IS my Bisexual RANT TO END ALL RANTS.

I quote Roland Barthes:

"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."

 

According to your book, there was a time that all your relationships were open. Now that you’re living with a long-term partner has that changed? 

Nope. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

I know bi-sexuals are under some conformist pressure to proclaim that they can be "monogamous" lke anyone else... but that isn't me, nor does it speak to most sex lives looked at over the long haul.

My first sexual experiences were in groups, with more than "2" -- that's what felt normal to me. It still does. And it feels natural to be attracted to more than one person at a time, and to act upon that feeling.

It doesn't change my loyalty to my friends and family. I am bewildered how the two get confused.

 

Did you ever tell your father about your mother’s suicide attempts and abuse? 

Later, to a certain extent. Once I moved in with him at 14, he realized I was afraid of her. It made him feel so bad to know the details, it was like torture to put him through it. We both were happier to focus on "making it better now."  And for the most part, that was the right choice.

 

How did you recover from that emotionally?

a) I didn’t

b) Writing and the life of the mind

c) Therapy

d) Raising kids and breaking the cycle

 

I noticed that in your section about your time with On Our Backs, you mostly used the word “lesbian” instead of “lesbian and bisexual.”  Did you identify as lesbian at that point? I’m wondering, as a bi woman writer, why you didn’t try to integrate that more in your wording?

I know this isn’t going to answer your question, but I still feel like a dyke. Hasbian Pride.

Most of the lovers in my life are gay or bisexual, regardless of their gender. There really isn't a button big enough to explain the whole thing.

When I was editing OOB, it was no secret I was bi, or femme, or had varied sex with all kinds of people--- but what was the point of mentioning it like a social security number on every page?  

I was publishing a bohemian lesbian magazine. That’s what was the center of my life. We didn’t have conventional sex lives. Most of the lesbians I worked with were whores and strippers and butches. It was beyond lesbian, bi, or any acronym you can think of.

There were squares, the “civilians,” and there was us.

OOB ran thoughtful stories about transsexuality, bisexuality, married lesbians, sex worker dykes, all sorts of things, and in those situations, we were detailed in our descriptions. But I wasn’t going to print "LGBTFXXXXX" every time I touched the keyboard. We were artists, not sloganeers.

It was a given, if you embraced our philosophy, that we were the worn-out sluts, the unapologetic freaks, the whore diaspora.  For awhile, that’s why saying “queer” was a real relief. Then even that became politically correct. 

 

What is your advice to bi writers who want to write bi-themed works and get published?

I think the best bisexual stories I read now are just honest deliverance, no agendas. They may not even use that word; they just tell the tale. Don't try to win the community's approval; it's impossible. 

There's so many moments of bisexual life that no one talks about. It doesn't have to be Some Great Rant, although that's tempting. Take a day in the life and tell it well. 

Your subject is not a liability, at all.

Read American's greatest authors. A majority of them, I'm sure you notice, were and are bisexual.

 

Photo: Jill Posener 

 

 

 

 

The Beginnings of the Adult Industry and of Adult Film Criticism

 

When Susie Bright was hired by Penthouse Forum in 1986 to write a monthly column about X-rated movies, she had a secret that she didn’t dare tell her editor: She’d never actually watched an adult film.

 

an excerpt from The Gilded Age,

a story and interview with Susie Bright by Lynn Comella

 

Bright’s new e-book, The Erotic Screen Volume 1: The Golden Hardcore & the Shimmering Dyke-Core, is a collection of her Penthouse Forum columns from 1986 to 1989. In it, you’ll find vestiges of a bygone era, when adult movies were still shown in public theaters, and the women’s market for pornography was in its infancy.

According to film scholar Constance Penley, Bright’s Erotic Screen is an “astonishingly original archive of this period.”

“It’s a firsthand account of a writer with such an insightful, quirky voice,” Penley says. “It’s also an account of the beginnings of the adult industry and of adult film criticism.”

LC: Writing about porn meant you followed the action, which brought you to Las Vegas for the annual adult entertainment trade show. What was that scene like in the ’80s?

SB: It was as surreal as you can imagine. The “porn” part of the CES show was sequestered at the Sahara Hotel, and not officially acknowledged in the CES literature. It was truly a ghetto, a glittering, glorious slum.

Porn director Bobby Hollander came up to me in a silk shirt, unbuttoned to reveal copious chest-fur and gold chains, and put his hand between my trouser legs: “So do you want to be in the movies, sweetheart?”

“No, I’m here to write about you, Bobby.”

Actor Ron Jeremy proposed marriage, but I said the diamond wasn’t big enough. I hung out in the ladies' john at the Sahara and gave out copies of [lesbian magazine] On Our Backs to all the porn stars who came in to powder their nose. Of course, these women were overwhelmingly dykes in their private lives.

And there was a lot of powder going on, too.

I also met the brand new “amateur” folks, like Homegrown Video, and others, people who never shot on film, who were as invested in the Internet underground as I was...

Read the rest of the story here.

And if you have an interest in vintage erotic film, golden age porn, or the last of the great indie movies, do check out The Erotic Screen! 

Lynn Comella is a Women’s Studies professor at UNLV who writes a regular column on sexuality for the Las Vegas Weekly.

 

Blind-Sexual: The Bisexual Manifesto

The bisexual dream: a lover in perfect harmony with the duality of human nature; sensitive to male and female desires, basking in the sensuality of each sex.

From Susie Bright's Sexual Reality.

*free on Amazon this weekend

That's what I believed when I first considered my bisexuality. I was sixteen; I had just been kissed, and in my case, it was a two-headed introduction. Sitting on the next-door neighbor's bed, I kissed my best girlfriend, and then, turning my head to the other side, I kissed him. Then all three of us made love. I was so pleased with myself you'd have thought I'd just baked two perfect cherry pies.

My first time was very much in sync with my political ideals. I thought that if everyone would get into a big waterbed, smoke a joint, and rub noses, we could live in peace, tranquillity and a perpetual state of arousal— my solution to world strife. This was before I had my own nose rubbed in that jealous, selfish pot of piss called human nature.

I came out as bi before there was a "bisexual movement" as such, before the B-word was attached to the Lesbian and Gay Freedom Day parades, community centers, and racquetball clubs. When I was sixteen, I would have gleefully joined them all and been pleased to find a political program that matched my bedroom behavior. 

You've heard what the bisexual movement has to say about "bi-phobia." Behavioral scientists know that human sexuality spans a spectrum from very homo to very hetero, and most folks fall down some weird crack in the middle. Accused of being infantile, or "fence-sitters," described as traitors by the gay world and perverts by the straight one, bisexual activists have told the status quo on both sides of the argument to grow up and get real.

Fifteen years after my coming out, when the banners started waving for bisexual recognition, I nodded my head in robot-like agreement with the ten and twelve-point programs, but I didn't join up. You didn't see me in the contingent; I wasn't on the float. The bisexual movement, as such, leaves me cold, as does much of the political gay movement it comes from. How can this be?

When I first proclaimed my bisexuality in the early seventies, I was very intimidated by my lesbian elders who pointed a blunt finger at my transgressions, damning me to the Judas seat of heterosexual privilege. I hadn't even had the "privilege" of having a relationship with anyone yet, and I had only had sex a dozen times. Yet I was loyal to the principles of feminism and gay liberation. It tore me apart to think that I would ever do anything to hurt our cause, in or out of bed.

I look at my sexual history today and see that my relationships have more often than not been with people who were secretly attracted to my bisexuality rather than repulsed by it. Some of them were leaders and some of them were led by me. I was intimate with people who wanted understanding for their capacity to love more than one person at the same time. I was cherished by men who desired other men and who desired their own womanliness. I was treasured by women who valued my appeal to men, because those were the same qualities that moved them as gay women. My lovers have been butches, perverts, bohemians, philanderers and Johnny-come- latently bisexuals themselves.

I used to get in a tizzy because I wanted a written proclamation from gay society saying that bisexuals— in fact, all sexual deviants— were welcome and considered family. I even wrote a platform statement expressing those sentiments for a gay convention, held in 1980 to fight the Moral Majority. I was all but thrown bodily out of the room.

Guess what? No one gets a proclamation. If you want to be in the gay life, then you sit your ass down in the middle of it, and you don't just get up and move because someone doesn't like you. Gay life isn't a cherry pie; it's a fire walk.

The political urge to wed gay rights to the rights of sexual minorities in a genuine sexual liberation movement has made for strange bedfellows. It's straightforward enough to ask for an end to prejudice. It's preposterous to ask sexual beings to stuff ourselves into the rapidly imploding social categories of straight or gay or bi, as if we could plot our sexual behavior on a conscientious, predictable curve.

A true sexual liberation movement does not simply deal with pride. Sexual liberation challenges our hearts with unbearable feelings that no one is proud of: jealousy, sexual shame, and the uncontrollable attraction to risk. Bisexuality adds a brutal twist to these subjects only because it confronts all the prejudices between and among men and women. 

Don't talk to me about gay pride or bi pride. Love has no pride— that's the banner the real world marches under. When I was young, I was very hurt by political ringmasters who said they wouldn't talk, fuck or work with me because I was bisexual. Now that I've worked, fucked and talked with them all, I'm not hurt anymore, because I knew their secret. They desire what they condemn.

The first time I spoke to a group about my bisexuality was in 1978 in a Cal State/Long Beach class called "The Lesbian." My hands shook as I addressed the circle of twenty young women. The Cal State Marching Band played "America the Beautiful" on the quad just outside our door.

No one said anything after I finished my speech. Finally, the most articulate student in class, "The Lesbian" to end all lesbians, a redheaded grad student with peerless feminist credentials, raised her eyebrow, and delivered my death sentence:

"How do you justify giving wimmin's energy and lesbian knowledge to our oppressors," she asked, "and then expect any principled lesbian-identified woman to trust you?"

I stared at her like a rabbit caught in the middle of the road. I did not know the answer to that question. Tears came to my eyes. I didn't expect anyone to trust or love me. My sexual confidence was all on paper. I had only been to bed with plain ole teenage girls, who probably thought I was the only principled lesbian feminist between us. When we made love, my mouth was full of their honey, wet from their lips and their cunts. The world of our affection and romance seemed very distant from this fluorescent-lit inquisition. 

I could not have predicted at the time that one day I would be a lesbian sex expert and that this very same redhead would be living with her husband and two kids in a suburb outside of Chicago.

My politics at the time did not allow for the most important principle of all: Shit happens.

As wounded as I was by gay accusations, I was sensitive myself to the daily grind of heterosexual arrogance. I never liked to tell people that I was bi. Straight men took it as a come-on line, an advertisement. Better that they should have seen my dyke button a mile away. Dykes took it as an indication that I was playing games. Wrong again. Latent lesbian girls took my bisexual admission as some sort of invitation to them to rag on about how repulsive real man-hating lesbians were.

"Oh, I'm sorry," I wanted to say. "You misunderstand me. I'm a man-hating bisexual. " 

But I didn't say that. I told all but the most sincere that I was gay. It hardly seemed to matter. For ten years, my live-action sexual encounters with men were few, far between, and rather odd. One time, I fucked the Christmas UPS man who made deliveries at my boring job. Another time, I spent the night with one of my childhood political heroes, an old man of sixty-eight who once led a waterfront strike, but as an old man, had heart trouble anddiabetes. He couldn't get an erection and felt very badly about it.

"It doesn't matter," I told him. "I'm a lesbian, I don't expect it... I just want to be with you." His intimacy was a privilege for me.

I understand now that a mouthful like "heterosexual privilege" doesn't have anything to do with the luxury or honor of bedding down with my oppressor— or my mentor. It's just an academic way to describe the flat-out devastation of losing your woman to a man. I've played every humiliating soap opera scene in that book. I've woken up next to women who couldn't look me in the eye after clinging to me all night, and I've watched them run to their boy friends so fast they tripped over their shoelaces.

One memorable evening at a drunken party, I watched my lover, Sherry, disappear behind a bedroom door with one of my roommates, a big blond man a foot taller than me. I pressed my ear against the door and blocked out the B-52s album blaring in the background. I heard him humping her. I couldn't believe it.

Why don’t you dance with me? The B-52's were blaring through the house speakers.

I was so shocked that I was bold enough to open the door and walk in. "Sherry?" I called out to the long hair trailing over the bed. Her tiny body was covered by his. I was so close to them, it was remarkable they didn't notice me at all.

I finally left them, closed the door, and resolved to wait there, all night if necessary, to confront her when she walked out.

At 4 AM, some fresh arrivals rolled in the front door with a new keg. "Hey, your girlfriend just jumped out the bedroom window," one of them said to me. "What's her problem?"

I ran outside, but the only bit of Sherry I found was the soft spot in the grass where she'd landed.

Everybody goes to parties, they dance this mess around....

Nowadays Sherry is a butch working on the Manhattan stock exchange, and she has lived with the same woman for ten years. But that was one bad night.

I need to find the redhead, "The Lesbian," and tell her this story. Sherry betrayed me, not homosexuality, not the lesbian empire. She spread her legs for that man; I stood motionless and watched them; she flew out the window; I cried, and then we started all over again. We are capable of every betrayal and every forgiveness that follows.

I pick up my bible, Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse, or "Lovers Disco," as I call it. 

"The sentiment of amorous suffering explodes in this cry: 'I can't go on...

But you do.

"Nothing works out, but it keeps going on."

I did not imagine I could go on after Sherry left me. Losing a woman to a man is as close to the burning sensation of childhood ridicule as one can experience. You feel incompetent, unable to compete, yet it makes you sick to even think of comparing yourself with that... thing. Not even that thing between his legs, but that thing between his ears that makes every man think that he's God. 

When *I* left *my* girlfriend because I fell for a man, the harshest thing she said to me was an accusation thrown at my back, screamed as I climbed up the hill to my car filled with my half of the household furnishings.

"Have you fucked your boyfriend yet?" A direct hit.

Yes, I had fucked him, and I would do it again and again. I wanted to yell back, "You don't understand, you'll never understand."

Had she never been engulfed with desire so extreme as to spit in the face of all her principles, beliefs, morals? Of course she had. She was twelve years older than me. She understood, but I didn't.

To submit to lust is to declare a panic, a state of body emergency. My shame at leaving my girlfriend, who had fucked me in the ass with her arm, who had tasted every fluid in my body, who had brought me to the brink again and again and loved me so well— how could I do this to her?

Just watch me— and then watch yourself follow in my footsteps, the steps that lead so faithfully into every dark alley we take such pains to shun. I did not want to be straight. I had been content with my bisexuality only as long as men were tangential to it. When I fucked this man, it was an act of greatest perversion.

In my shame I picked up Lovers Discourse once again and sat down on the toilet:

"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."

Intellectually, we always favor those of our own sex, even if they're not our sexual partners. Bisexuals are the same as everyone else in this regard; we just get more opportunity to view the spectacle. To be with the opposite sex is never "better;" it's a classic compromise, however compelling.

Some think that it is "feminism" for women to prefer women and "chauvinism" for men to prefer men. But the prejudice is older than that. You are always a little disdainful of your opposite. I am capable of believing in love, certainly lust, but never in equality between the sexes.

Jealousy, however, is the great equalizer. Security and exclusivity— promises broken as often as they are offered— are high on every lover's list of demands. I despise jealousy. I control it only with discipline; it is like a skin I cannot shed.

I search for the lovers who won't consider my bisexuality a de facto threat, who will not fear that to love me is to be in perpetual competition with their sex. That fear is the true reaction to bisexuality, not political epithets. Accusing a bisexual of being a traitor reveals one's desperate, and quite human, fear of rejection. I can barely accept that feature in myself.

Let me be honest with you, and let me be shameful, as it seems so essential to my discipline: I don't want to hear that you’re "bisexual" either, especially just after you've fucked me blind. Don't tell me who you are. I'm a mere mortal, jealous and vulnerable, and I might fall for you in a big way. Show me what you can do.

If you succeed in blinding me, I will follow you, potentially into loss, betrayal, into the fire walk. It will be personal; it will not necessarily be principled. In the moment after orgasm, this is what is memorable— and for many moments after.

From Susie Bright's Sexual Reality, free on Amazon this weekend

 

Photo: A Place in the Sun, Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift 

Strip Tea Party: A Ladies' Literary Salon with Six Naked Silent Slaveboys

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.

"Strip Tea" from Susie Bright's Sexual Reality

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... 

Continued in Susie Bright's Sexual Reality, "Strip Tea"

 

Photo: Michael Rosen, of the late Tom O'Conner, our chef for the Tea Party, and Susie Bright

A Brief History of On Our Backs, 1984-1991

A History Of On Our Backs: 

Entertainment for the Adventurous Lesbian

 The Original: 1984-1990

 

January, 2009: I wrote this very brief history because when I checked online for a history of On Our Backs, there was nothing at all. 

OOB was an influential and remarkable part of lesbian, feminist, and publishing history. I had to cobble something together, and this was a start.

I was the editor in chief from our first year, 1984, until early 1991.

The magazine itself has been long out of business. It had two owners and several staffs after I left. Hopefully, others will write their story someday!  

There is a complete set of On Our Backs magazines at Brown University library, available to scholars to review at the library.

 Update, 3.25.11: I have written a more complete and intimate history of my time at On Our Backs, called “Big Sex Little Death.”

For a photographic history of OOB, I'd suggest the book Jill Posener and I edited, "Nothing But the Girl."

Update, 9.1.11: OOB staffers, models, and contributors, from 1983-1991:  We have created a private Facebook group. Please contact Susie or Lulu or Nan, at their FB addresses, if you would like to join us.

 If you know of any other histories of On Our Backs in print, please contact me at susie@susiebright.com.

  

I moved to San Francisco in 1980, where I  lived the life of the femme diva starlet in an anarchist commune in the barrio. In other words, typical City living. 

One night, I read a poem comparing fisting my girlfriend to quantum physics at Modern Times bookstore in their newly title queer poets series.  Queer was a subversive word at that time. Afterwards, this blonde chick with a pageboy slipped me a personal letter. She said she loved my poetry, and invited me to be a part of the first issue of On Our Backs, "entertainment for the adventurous lesbian." 

 If anyone has ever been seduced by the mere title of a promise, that was me. I had been a voracious teen reader of OFF our Backs, the feminist newsweekly, and it had broken my heart when their staff turned so viciously against sexual liberation.  This new magazine offered the perfect antidote.

That blonde with the blunt cut falling over her eyes was Myrna Elana, one of the cofounders of On Our Backs.  Her "work wife" and partner in crime was Debi Sundahl-- they worked in the peep shows and strip clubs of the Tenderloin district, and shared a Victorian in the Haight Ashbury with Debi's lover, Nan.  

In the beginning, i was just a contributor waiting for the bells to go off. But after several months of silence, I sought out these mysterious OOB girls. When I found them, I told them I had been part of a high school underground newspaper, and I could perform any shit work connected with getting a magazine out--- what could I do to help?  I could see they were overwhelmed. 

The main problem was... you guessed it... money.  They asked me to be the "Advertising Director," which if you knew my communist past, was a real laugh. But I worked at Good Vibrations at the time-- in fact, I was the only employee at Good Vibrations. 

I earnestly called all the vendors  I did business with, and asked them to take out little $25 and $50 ads in our debut issue. Hey, buy the whole page for $100! I remember our two big advertisers were Last Gasp Comix-- Ron Turner told me it was a "fine lesbian humor magazine" and just handed me cash-- and the Mitchell Brothers Theater-- Debi, as well as many of our first models, all worked in their sex club, or starred in their movies.

Kathy Andrew of Stormy Leather, the first woman to tailor leatherwear for women, was another one of our first advertisers. Kathy had an antique sewing machine that she  operated like a crazed elf in a leaking basement on Sanchez St.  Gosnell Duncan, who invented the silicon dildo, paid  us to do a crazy beach/mermaid photo shoot with his "products". It was the first national advertising for dildos, and every issue he let us do another “campaign”, culminating in our Mapplethorpe-esque Perfect Moment where we modeled his favorite item, "The Susie," with a callalily and a beautiful round mirror.

My lover Honey Lee Cottrell, shot most of our first photography for the first issues, including those ads for Gosnell. When I think back, she might have worked harder than any of us-- the photo shoots were so hard to arrange, and then there was endless printing in the Harvey Milk public photo labs.  She and HER ex-lover, Tee Corinne, had literally invented lesbian erotic photography in the 1970s. Morgan Gwenwald in New York was another pioneer.

You look at the first lesbian sex books, "Sapphistry" by Tee and Pat Califia, and "Coming to Power" by the Samois collective, and there you’ll find the first lesbian women opening showing their bodies and their sexuality. 

 It was no coincidence that the S/M, punk-era women were the first to show their faces to the public... they were the first to have the nerve. It was as if you had to be a  career whore, a dedicated outcast, to show your face in a lesbian  magazine... let alone your pussy. 

When OOB debuted, some readers complained that they wanted to see vanilla, "bank-teller" type babes in the pictures.  We replied, "Well, come on down and let us shoot you!"  ---Because the punk strippers didn't want to put on bank teller outfits, they wanted to express themselves.

I'd like to mention some of the models that changed the way lesbians think about themselves:  Terri and Caerage--- the most beautiful punk /butch -femme couple  ever. Rachel and Elexis-- who turned the black lesbian community upside down. Kitty Tsui did the same in Pacific/Asian dyke culture. Pepper, and  Rock ‘n’ Roll Ramona were the darlings of the first lesbian burlesque--- the girls would drown them in flowers and shots.  Cassie and Raven, both now deceased, ( breast cancer and suicide, respectively)  were the sexist women I ever laid eyes on. They started the first women's escort service and without a doubt could make ANY woman’s dream come true between the two of them.  I haven’t seen such sexual charisma since.

I'm not kidding about the revolutionary effect they had on strangers lives. ONe woman told me she took one look at the OOB cover of Rachel and Elexis, packed her bags in Minnesota that evening, and moved to California. That story was multiplied many times.

Expressing yourself was what it was all about. I look back on that first year and just sigh at all that talent, and the rage that had pent it all up. Dorothy Allison, Joan Nestle, Pat Califia, Sarah Schulman, Sapphire, myself--- we couldn't be published in the lesbian presses because of our politics and sexuality, and we couldn't be published in the mainstream world because of its overt homophobia and misogyny.  These were some of the best American writers of their generation!

Honey Lee and I were very close to Nan and Debbie, like a little family. There weren't a lot of butch femme younger couples at the time— in fact, we felt like the new demonstration. Even though Honey and Nan weren't technically "editors" they worked on the magazine all the time. When Nan got mildly injured at her day job  we were  delighted, because she got disability leave, and she never went back. She took over magazine distribution and embarked on the first lesbian porn video production with Deb.

Myrna and Debi had a falling out after the first issue, and I honestly don't know to this day what it was all about. I could see that Myrna was not into working 24/7 on On OUr Backs like the rest of us, which in hindsight, might have been wise of her!  But she dropped out, in any case, and I became editor.

I remember writing my first sex column “Toys For Us”-- that was fun. Those columns eventually became the basis for “Susie Sexpert’s Lesbian Sex World.”

In my first paragraph, I tried to convince dykes to get over their sex toy phobias, especially about penetration.  I said, "penetration is only as heterosexual as kissing is".  I teased everyone about how they could revolutionize their sex life with a little humor and playfulness.  My sentiments were quite spontaneous, but I realize now it was a novel approach. People had been SO GRIM about vibrators and sex toys-- they were called "marital aids,"  at the time, as if they were some kind of awful crutch. Only hookers and sex workers called them “toys!”

 

 Everyone thought sad, dirty old men were the customer base for such “aids”.  I had lesbians come into my sex toy shop and actually start CRYING about how they worried that they were going to be kicked out of the gay universe because they wanted to get fucked.   No one would believe it now.

The early OOB writers came from a few places, including a lot of classified ads we placed around lesbian journals that would take us. We inherited the Samois mailing list, which was huge at the time. Even though Samois was a lesbian S/M group, it ended up attracting every kind of women who was into sex on any level, because there was nowhere else to go! Plus, it was stuffed with intellectuals and artists.  The east coast counterpart was in New York, the Lesbian Sex Mafia (LSM).  

The gay men who edited Drummer were our mentors in many ways. John Rowberry, John Preston, Jack Fritscher.  They had patience and wisdom for everything from printer nightmares to diva models who suddenly acted like they were going to run for Miss America.

The magazine started out with three pieces of fiction, one major feature, a few columns of advice and reviews, and three pictorials. Just like Playboy! We even had a "Bulldagger of the Month" in our first issue.

We were so controversial in the beginning, it completely defined us. There were about three women's bookstores in the whole country who would sell us. Instead, we were distributed by gay men’s bookshops, anarchist/commie bookstores, the underground comix people, and a few old porn purveyors who thought we were a kick in the pants. Prominent women's bookstores either banned us, or carried one copy with a big sign on it about how treacherous and gynocidal we were. Just try and ask them for a copy! 

 It was bittersweet when I watched all those same bookstores go out of business  as the years went by. Part of their misfortune was tied to the overall demise of independent bookstores --- but to some degree they had alienated their natural audience by being such elitists and censors.  They never relented.  I loved the stubbornness of lesbian separatism, I even miss it now, but the anti-sex germ within it was nothing but pure destruction.

We thought our scene was awfully smart. I remember composing an ad for UTNE Reader, which read: "The most intelligent sex magazine in the world just happens to be lesbian."  That was truly our point of view. We were witty and incisive and outrageous. The men's' sex magazines were a torpid bore, straight women hadn't crawled out of their egg yet, and the academics were only talking theory while we were DOING IT.  We attracted subscribers from a new hip strata of the counter culture.

Here's another marvel:  On Our Backs is the first-- the very first-- national magazine produced with desktop publishing. Debi was the Mac visionary. She though Steve Jobs was  a genius and bought us their first personal computer. I remember SOBBING because I thought I wouldn't be able to operate it because I was no good at MATH!  That makes me laugh so hard now. We used PageMaker 1.0 to design and typeset the magazine. It had TWO fonts, HElvetica and Palatino.  It just cracks me up to think of our design disadvantages.  But there was no way to pay the printer bills otherwise. But Apple put us into the nascent geek world, and as everyone discovered, geeks were very sex-positive, in fact, they came up with the word.

Nowadays a gay or sex magazine can make credible ad sales. But in the early 80s, it was like soliciting charitable contributions. No one except the old school porn boys were making any money in the sex biz and they didn't understand our audience or mission.  We got most of our content for little or nothing. I worked for free until the very end. We all made our nut in other ways. 

But because it was a sex magazine, we had to pay a premium to find a printer who would take us. This is the most clear example of how sexual expression is suppressed--- he who owns the press makes the rules. We had to pay 5-10 times the amount a normal magazine would pay who didn't have "dirty pictures." I am still furious about this discrimination to this very day.

The printers were afraid they'd be closed down by the federal government if they printed porn. In truth, they hadn't been bothered since the early 60s. It's just that the same old farts ran the place, like elephants, and they never got over the McCarthy era. Never.  I found that being treated like a pariah as a pornographer in America was very much like how I'd been treated  as a socialist in America.

I still remember a few other benchmarks...  one was that that we were the first lesbian press of ANY kind to run a real article about AIDS, and its risk to lesbians. The leading lights of the lesbian movement had their heads in the sand when it came to this disease. The standard issue was "lesbians cant' get it." Period.  What did they know?  

I can't believe how irresponsible they were. AIDS also inspired great dread among dykes because it exposed the fact that  the majority of lesbians had had some intercourse with men since the epidemic started. In fact, lesbians at that time were more likely to have sex with "high risk men"-- ie, gay or bi men-- than exclusively straight women were. (This was before AIDS became such a big issue for hets as well).  

Anyway, we ran the story that no one wanted to tell. ANother instance of speaking the unspeakable was something a bit more fun. At the end of the 80s, I met a number of dykes who told me they liked to watch gay pron. Funky!  I thought it was a hoot, since I'd never tried it.  But when I started talking about, I found that many lesbians thought this was another new low in dyke aesthetics. We decided to do an article about dykes digging gay porn, and Honey Lee shot our first pictorial with a real PENIS... two gay guys doing it on the floor while Kitty and BC watched. 

Not long after that story, we ran the first lesbian story  about female to male transsexuality, and Loren Cameron and Justin Green posed for Honey Lee again. I had no idea what a huge story that would end up being... how many women would be inspired and touched by their words.

On a more practical level, I would easily claim that On Our Backs created the first mainstream acceptance of "women's erotica', the practical steps to finding one's g-spot, and having a free 'n' easy attitude toward dildos and vibrators. We taught the world how to use a strap-on. We made sex fun and smart for women, something that was entirely in a female self-interest. It went way beyond homosexuality, it was really feminist sex liberation.

Lesbians have often asked me if I have any regrets about On Our Backs, and why I ended up leaving my work there after 6+ years. 

My regret is that very subject, the leaving. It was brutal. I couldn't' read On Our Backs at all for a few years after I left, it made me so upset. They might have been great issues, btu I was still heartbroken.

In retrospect, I see that when I had my daughter in 1990, even though I planned to go right back to work, I was naive about how my life would change, as many new moms are. 

I had a real baby on my hands, and yet OOB had always been my “baby” as well. It was really rough to divide my time without feeling like I was l was an utter failure at both responsibilities. 

At the same time, my business co-partner, and best friend, Debi, was going off in her own new directions. At the time I would have told you, “She’s nuts, she’s inside her office screaming about wallpapering her bedroom!”-- but nowadays I wouldn’t presume to judge. 

We were all way overdue for a first-rate nervous breakdown. The entire lesbian establishment hated our guts. Mainstream publishers and pornographers ignored us or cheated us. The money pressure was hideous and any moment I expected to be taken away to debtors prison. We had  a couple thousand starry-eyed fans who had no idea what kind of trouble we were in, and we didn’t want to spoil their illusion. The reality of our impossibility was devastating, and it didn’t help anymore to hear we were “ahead of our time.”

When I decided I needed to change the balance of my tightrope act in favor of Mommy-ness, Debi hit the roof. She hit the roof, of the roof, of the roof. If only I had let her wrap herself in wallpaper first, maybe I could have avoided the whole thing!

Debi served me with a subpoena for subordinating my corporate responsibility. She had a meeting with me and a lawyer where she said she wanted me to pack my bags in a week (I had in mind a yearlong, find-the-new-editor process) and she wanted a stipulation that I could never write professionally again, at least without paying a hefty portion of my income.   

To this day, I have no idea why she went so vengeful I walked out with nothing but my baby in my arms, but that was the reason I had to leave anyway.  I don’t regret it, because my motherhood improved about 5000%-- I actually took care of her and saw her little face when I wasn’t one my way to or from work, crabby and exhausted.

But my OOB breakup was gutwrenching. We really did love each other, and I guess that was what made it so bewildering. If everyone had taken a chill pill, I would have loved to work 20 hours a week and find the next new hottie editor. My only solace when I look back on this nightmare is that I hear many other creative teams have had similar fireworks when they broke up. So we were not unique!

Debbie got married to a man, then divorced, and continued to promote her Female Ejaculation video along with other sex education and spiritual projects. She had always wanted the magazine to make money-- real money-- and it must have galled her to ultimately sell the whole operation for a pittance. She realized that videos were where the profits were. I never saw her again after the lawyer nonsense. 

Nan got a new girlfriend and moved to Minnesota, working at one of the women's bookstores that used to be a hard ass about On Our Backs, but then changed their ways!  She looked me up one year a decade later and when we reunited, we hugged each other for an eternity. She and her lover Christi Cassidy, run Fatale Video, still the original lesbian video company.

Nan and I, along with Debi and Honey, are the only ones who truly know the hair-raising, insane stunts we pulled, day after day, to put out our beloved bit of revolution. 

Honey Lee and I broke up after 7 years, and subsequently I was a most fickle and gadabout gal about town for a few years before I settled down with my current lover, Jon.  My “baby” is now a grown-up artist herself. and her godmother, Honey Lee, taught her a great deal about photography and film, just as she did with me.

 I’m very close to many of the artists I met through OOB-- they’re my family. Aretha has shown photo prints from the early On Our Backs to show her classes. I’m so touched she sees the beauty and authenticity in those things that made me feel so powerful in the very beginning.

 

Photos, top to bottom:

Phyllis Christopher, Honey Lee Cottrell, Honey Lee Cottrell and Tee Corinne, Honey Lee Cottrell, Cathy Lee Prochazka, Jill Posener, Jill Posener, Tee Corinne.