SUSAN AND REESE slow down until they’re alongside us. “Put your paddles up,” Susan says. Then she reaches out to grab the side of the canoe with wet fingers. A diamond flashes on her middle finger, a gift from Reese. No, that’s not right. Susan called it a commitment ring. Like a cross between engagement and marriage.
An excerpt from "Entry Point," by Shanna Germain, in Best American Erotica 2007
We float that way a while, listening. Dark is falling somewhere nearby. You can see it in the way the shadows lengthen on the river, the way the trees darken and reach.Susan takes her hand off the boat, points to shore. “We’re going to try and camp over there,” she says. “Should be an easy landing.”
It’s not easy, but it’s okay. Reese jumps into the river at mid-thigh, a little splash and sigh, and then she grabs the front of our canoe and pulls us ashore.
Harry doesn’t like that, being pulled to the sandy banks while he’s sitting in the back with his oar on his lap, but he doesn’t say anything. And by the time I’ve got the salmon and corn steaming over the campfire, he’s helping the girls raise the tents. One on this side of the clearing, one on the other.
We eat round the campfire, gobbling in the near-dark. I’m so hungry, I eat the salmon with my fingers, pulling the greasy pink flesh off the bone and sticking it in my mouth.
Susan does the same. “Jesus, Ma, this it the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”
“I agree,” Reese says, her mouth so full of fish the words barely come out. I feel a quick surge of warmth toward her.
After dinner, Harry goes off into the woods to do his business somewhere quiet and I sit on the picnic table, away from the campfire. The dark makes soft edges out of my fingers.
Harry’s footsteps are light across pine needles. He gives my shoulders a quick squeeze. “I’m gonna hit the hay,” he says. His kiss is mint and river water, and somewhere beneath that, a hint of salty, sweet fish.
“’Night.” I sit, watching the trees darken against the sky until I hear the zipper of the tent, the rustle of sleeping bag as Harry settles himself in like a dog. We didn’t bring air mattresses or even good pillows—the canoe space was reserved for food and water and tents—and I imagine tomorrow we’ll both be bent over and stiff from work and wear.Across the campground, Susan and Reese are still sitting by the campfire, their backs to the picnic table. Together, near the flame, they are dark and light. Together, they should blot each other out. But they don’t. Instead they make each other darker and lighter, luminescent, alive.
I watch as Susan leans in to Reese, holding out a piece of fish between her fingers. Reese opens her mouth, takes the fish and Susan’s fingers inside, holds everything there, her eyes on Susan’s. Susan pulls her fingers out slowly, then she puts her own fingers into her mouth, sucks them the way she used to when she was a child. She’d get so excited by something—the tiger at the zoo, riding in the car, Daddy coming home—that she’d stick her fingers in her mouth and suck on them, just to calm herself.
I don’t believe they are being exhibitionists. They are just in their own world, not even aware that I’m watching.
Reese puts her palm against Susan’s cheek, runs it up
into Susan’s ponytail. She pulls my daughter’s face to her own. It is
not gentle, and for one moment, I want to stand up, I want to slap this
woman’s face, tear her hand from my child’s cheek. But then Susan
closes her eyes, leans sideways into Reese’s palm. Between their lips,
the orange fire sparks and crackles.
When Susan opens her mouth against Reese’s chin, I know I should turn away, but I cannot.
There is something here that I am coming to understand. Something that is burning its way through my stomach, something that I am afraid of, something that I want. I am afraid that if I step back into the darkness now, that if I close my eyes without seeing my daughter’s joy, if I unzip the tent and slide in beside Harry, that this everything will disappear.
I want to capture this thing like a firefly, to bring it to Harry and say, here, look. To say, please, yes. But I am afraid that it will die between my cupped palms, that I will arrive at Harry’s side with nothing more than a husk of something that was bright and shining....
You can read the rest of "Entry Point" in BAE 07 — it's a wonderful story...
Susie's Interview with Shanna
SB: I just got asked to blurb a book called How to Fuck in a Tent, or How to Have Sex Camping, something like that. As an outdoorswoman, what are your thoughts on the subject?
SG: Wow, a book on how to fuck in a tent! I need that, please. I’m always the one who ends up with a rock under my ass.
SB: You're a poetry editor at The American Journal of Nursing. What do nurses know about sex and the body from their practice that the average "lay person" wouldn't?
SG: I was a volunteer paramedic and firefighter in college. Later, I went on to get a psych degree with a specialization in post-traumatic stress. I was barely18 when I started running calls and still thought I was invincible. It didn’t take long for that to change.
It changed how I lived my life. I don’t hesitate to tell people how much I care for them. I’m afraid of so few things now. You realize that everything can hurt you, so if you spend your whole life worrying about it, you’ll never do anything.
The body is such an intricate, amazing machine. Working on the ambulance solidified my belief that sex-ed is a must, for everyone. We saw so many patients of all ages who had sexual issues, and didn’t have a clue. It was everything from men and women with HIV and AIDs, to women who didn’t understand how they could be pregnant, to kids who knew they had something wrong, but were ashamed to tell their parents and then they came down with a fever or something else that forced them into the ambulance.
SB: What kind of "sex education" did you have growing up?
SG: My sex-education was oddly split. I grew up on a farm which teaches you more than you might really want to know. Our dinner-table conversation was often about which animals were in heat, when the AI (artificial insemination) man was coming, who was due when, who had to be gelded.
From a young age, I watched the AI man come with his long glove and artificially inseminate cows. I waited up in the barn all night so I could be there when the animals gave birth, I handled placentas and helped the babies start nursing. I understood sex as reproduction. —Also, as kind of messy and not all that much fun for the girls.
My parents were very playful about sex, and my mom is one of the most open people that I know. When I was younger, I also understood that there was this other side to sex: a fun, funny, loving side that I didn’t quite understand. My parents never had “the talk” with me or anything like that, but my mom made sure there were always books around, like Our Bodies, Ourselves. And, me being such a reader, I’m sure she knew that I was dipping into it every chance I got.
Despite all of that, there was something missing for me. I liked sex, but I still didn’t quite understand about my own pleasure. Now only how to have it, but also that it was okay for me to ask for what I wanted, to discover what I liked. I didn’t have my first orgasm until I was in my early twenties. And now that I think back, I realize that I thought that just wasn’t supposed to be part of the sexual equation for me. I have no idea where that misconception came from, but I’m so glad that I eventually kicked it.
SB: You're a connoisseur of dark beer and black coffee; you're a coffee trade 'zine editor— so okay, spill. What's the greatest you've had lately?
SG: With dark beer, I have two eternal favorites: Black Butte porter and McMenamins Black Rabbit porter. I like my beers dark, sweet and chocolately. A hint of smoke or coffee is good too.
As for coffee, it depends on the day. There’s a shop in Portland where you go in and they have twenty-some coffees in stock. I’m always switching it up. I edit a coffee magazine and visit origin countries like Guatemala and Costa Rica quite a bit, so there are some coffees that have personal connections for me. I know the farmers and I had the chance to visit the land where the coffee was grown.
SB: Do you get aroused from your own work?
SG: Not typically. I’m very character-driven in my fiction, so my characters are often different from me, as are their fears and desires. Also, I’m methodical about character and plot, and I’m a slow writer. I plod along, change every word and sentence a million times. It’s probably the least sexy thing in the world, the process of me writing.
But… I do notice that when I’m re-read a finished piece, I am surprised by how arousing it is. I think, “Wow, how did all that sexy stuff get in here?”
I do a lot of editing in coffee shops, and sometimes I’ll be in the coffee shop editing something and I’ll realize that I’m sitting all hunched up over my laptop, getting aroused reading my own fiction while guys in suits the next table over are talking about selling insurance. I have this simultaneous response of: “Wow, I have the best job in the world” and “I really should start editing at home. Ideally, in bed with the laptop!"
SB: Have you had any experiences with prejudice as a writer because of your erotic writing?
SG: I had that question in my head when I started publishing erotica. I was freelancing for a number of publications at the time, and I used my real name for all of my writing, so I expected that some of the publications that I worked for would have a problem.
But, no. If anything, I’ve found that my editors were not only completely cool with it, but many of them said something like, “Wow, I wish I had the guts to do that.”
To be honest, my writing has actually been a reprieve from discrimination for me. My experience has been that people take one look at me and write me off as either stupid or as having had some kind of charmed life, because of how I look.
With writing, because you submit work and you publish work via snail mail or email, no one knows (or cares) what you look like. It’s one of the few places where you know that the response you’re getting is based, at least for a large part, on the quality of your work. Either you’re good enough or your not.
The only “discrimination” I’ve faced, if you can call it that, is people thinking that I’ve done everything that I’ve written about in a sexual sense. That seems to be a particular issue with erotica.
No one asks mystery writers if they went out and sleuthed a case. If you write a novel about being a widow, no one asks you when your husband died. People don’t ask Stephen King if his car came to life when he was a teenager.
But people ask me about my stories as though they’re non-fiction. On one hand, I take it as a compliment that I’ve been able to create something realistic. It offers an opportunity to talk with readers about sex in an open way, but I do find it strange. —Which isn’t to say that I don’t wish I’d done all the things I write about, but if that was the case, I wouldn’t have time to write anything!
Photos: Canoe Porn from a perfectly wonderful fly-fishing blog. And no, this isn't a candid shot from Shanna's last summer vacation— it's a vintage Sex in the Tent shot from ErosBlog.
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