Susie Bright's Journal

The Bathroom Sex Sex Survey

Okay, you asked for it!

What is your gender, at least at the moment?

Have you ever had sex in a public bathroom? What did you do? (Define "sex" as you like).

More than once, several times, every day?

Did you have your t-room sex with a man or woman?

Did you know them, or were they a stranger to you?

Have you ever had sex in a "private" bathroom— but one which wasn't at your house?

Have you ever had sex in your own darn bathroom?

Have you had bathroom sex fantasies, never acted upon?

Have you ever run into anyone having bathroom sex, while you were just "doing your business?" Have you ever been propositioned and turned someone down? Was it hard to say, "No, thank you?"

Have you ever run into a high level Republican pol having bathroom sex?

Are you gay? (Just kidding).

We'll make this easy. I'll go first, with my answers in the first comment.

You don't have to use your real name in the comment form.

Just post a fake name and a fake email (like [email protected]) if you want to keep your privacy.

Of course, you're welcome to take complete and honest credit, as well!

I await your complete and candid disclosure!

Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)

Why is it— that the worst prudes have a secret contradictory sex life— that, as Henry Higgins said, would make a sailor blush?

Is it, as Doug Henwood posited in yesterday's comments, that you can't fill your shoes as a full-size prig, until you have the requisite naughty secret?

That's the question on every lover's lips this morning. We lie on our beds, reeling from the latest domino spill of gay Republicans who can't seem to get enough rough trade in-between roll call votes to crucify homosexuals.

These people defy rationality.

So what is their motive? Even after they're caught with their hard-on in the noose, they still rebuke the notion that they are anything but  a traditional, heterosexual, monogamous married man— you know, with a "wide stance."

Social psychologist Dr. Elliot Aronson, and his colleague Carol Tavris, have devoted their lives to such motives, which they call "cognitive dissonance."

Their new book, with the irresistible title: Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me: Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, is all about how everyone has moments when they rationalize behavior that conflicts with their beliefs about themselves.

It can be as humble as the reasons why people excuse their cigarette habit, or as jaw-dropping as when a president ignores the terrible truth of a war he never should have started. Cognitive dissonance is at its highest conceit when The Emperor Dons New Clothes.

We can't rid ourselves of cognitive dissonance— it's part of our humanity— but we can become aware of its nature, and learn how to bring it to the curb.

I asked Elliot if he'd talk with me about  Cognitive Dissonance Poster Child, Senator Larry Craig...

SB:  How does this guy manage to face the camera, not to mention his wife, and deny such egregious behavior?

EA: If there is one thing I have learned from doing experiments on cognitive dissonance it's that the human mind is infinitely flexible.  People can find a way to justify almost anything.

SB: Why do they so often get a free pass? Polls are showing that these sex scandals barely make a dent on electoral support.

There's plenty of voters who "hates gays," and  vote for this sort of bigot. Yet after their boy gets arrested for illicit gay sex, the same voter still hates gays, and still votes for the hypocrite. What is going on?

EA: Without the theory of cognitive dissonance, these behaviors would seem incomprehensible.  Even WITH the theory, they're not easy to explain— but the theory provides us with a few insights.

In our book, we make the statement that everyone can spot a hypocrite except the hypocrite himself.  We should expand that to include those who are deeply committed to the hypocrite.

SB:  Break it down for me; how do people's brains react when they get caught doing one thing they've forbidden to everyone else?

EA: Most of us are pretty good at compartmentalizing. So, for example, if a man grows up thinking that homosexuality is sinful and evil, and then begins to feel an attraction to men, he, at first, denies, it— even to himself. 

He gets married, has children, so as to convince himself that he can live a "normal" life. 

Then, if he has a few adventures (say, in a notorious airport men's room), he convinces himself that even though he did that, he is not REALLY a homosexual, he's just having a little adventure— in much the same way that an alcoholic convinces himself that he simply "likes to drink," and could give it up anytime if he wanted to.

SB: A lot of public health issues relate to this...

EA: Yes, a couple of decades ago, when the AIDS epidemic was just getting started, I was trying to find effective ways to get sexually active people to use condoms. 

In the early days, a great many people believed that AIDS was a disease confined to homosexuals.  The people who were most difficult to convince to use condoms were men who believed it was a homosexual disease AND who believed that they themselves were NOT homosexual, even though they occasionally engaged in sex with other men.

That dissonance-reducing belief was so powerful that guys were risking their lives to hold onto it! 

(If I hinted at the fact that engaging in occasional sex with other men put them at risk of getting AIDS, they got  angry and threatened to do me harm— because they felt that I was insulting them).

SB: But back to the politicians—

EA: They are examples of true compartmentalization: 

When YOU do it, it's homosexuality, but when I do it, it's just an adventure. 

This not only allows Craig, (and the others), to continue to engage in these behaviors from time to time, but it also allows him to continue to speak out against gays and against gay marriage, etc... with a clear conscience. 

He has effectively reduced dissonance— until he gets caught. 

But even when he gets apprehended, he can continue to hold the belief that he isn't really a homosexual. It is important to understand that, in most cases, the guy is not simply trying to pull the wool over OUR eyes; rather, he has succeeded in pulling the wool over his OWN eyes.

SB: Doesn't he ever have a Come-To-Jesus moment where he realizes what a fraud he is?

EA: If that self-deception begins to fray. and becomes untenable to himself— he can fall back on the position always available to religious fundamentalists— that he is a good person, but the devil made him do it.

If he prays hard enough, and seeks forgiveness, that the Lord will forgive him and cleanse him.  And, if the Lord can forgive him, he expects the rest of us to forgive him also.

SB: Yeah, and then they send out a fund-raising letter...

Is There a Republican Senator Who's NOT Having Bathroom Sex?

This has gone from novelty to nausea.

The names change, but the story's the same.

This time it's Senator Larry Craig of Idaho. In a Minneapolis Airport Bathroom Stall. With Colonel Mustard.

Fuck you, Larry.

Fuck you Bob, David, Tom, Harlan, Randall, Al, Duke, Jeff, Ted, Joseph, Mark, Edward, Jim, Matthew, and all the rest. I don't have time to list all your names and details, but other people do.

From now on, as far as I'm concerned, every single Republican legislator is a Reeking Freak Closet Case until proven innocent.

These men wouldn't know "safe, sane, and consensual" if you tied it to their weener with a red flag. I won't call them "gay" or "kinky" because that would be an insult to the healthy spectrum of human sexuality. Instead, they're the worst face of sexual repression, because they don't care who they hurt, or how many lies they tell. Their whole life is a SHAM.

The GOP Narcissists aren't the exception to the rule— they ARE the rule. They personify the very sexuality they campaign against. If they vote against gays, we know they're queer. If they're hopped up about "child porn," we can guess their internet habits. If they hold up monogamous marriage as a Christian ideal, we know they're adulterous, blasphemous fools.

Here's what they all have in common; They pretend it didn't happen. They try to buy people off to shut them up. They cry that they've been victimized. And then they continue to persecute everyone else by:

Voting YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage.
Voting NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes.
Voting NO on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation.
Voting YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage.
Voting NO on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation.

They generously fund the coffers of the vice squads and the surveillance creeps— the very people who later catch them in the act. And who wants to repeat all the disgusting insults and conceits they proselytize in public?

I can't take it anymore. I could spend seven days a week on this blog reporting what new dirt bag has shown his ass on the public square. But I'm fed up. Worse, I'm exhausted with the elected "liberals" and self-proclaimed "feminists" and Democrats who share offices with these pathological liars— and just bury their heads in the tearoom bowl.

There's not one prominent legislator in this country who's stood up against sex phobia, who's led a campaign to take victimless sex laws off the books, or to protect citizens' privacy. Not one. Are Hillary, Obama, or Edwards going to say one word about this hypocrisy? No.

How many repulsive liars does it take before the mainstream media, the voters, and what's left of political leadership say, "Mind Your Own Fucking Business?"

Apparently, Puritan America has infinite tolerance.

As long as they condemn their "inferiors," elitists can do whatever their budget affords. Democracy is just not as thrilling as witch-hunting.

The religious conservative voters, rather than doubt the wisdom of their biblical values, will continue to believe that they need to find one pure man to lead them. They'd rather believe in sin than sanity. Some of them even think this plague of gay GOP locusts is a "Democrat conspiracy."

I predict record highs of apathy in 2008. The common man thinks this game's a lousy racket, and he's right. There's no one to cheer, no one who brings integrity and sexual honesty to the table.

The mainstream media will treat each scandal as  another unfortunate lapse in judgment, an individual crushed by forces one can barely understand.

Bite me.

No, this is the instant snapshot of American democracy. This is what we look like; this is our Kodak Moment.

UPDATE: In a GOP love triangle gone bad, three Miami men have died in a suicide/double murder. Two of the men, "longtime roommates," were MAJOR Republican political ops— one of them the former head of the Georgia Republican Party who delighted in demonizing gay men in campaigns all over the South.

Apparently they had a third "friend," who flipped out, killed them both, and then shot himself.

This is all over the gay political blogs tonight, and I missed the breaking headline because I was so busy writing about Senator Craig's toiletries. What on Satan's great earth am I missing as I'm writing THIS?

Pastor Ted Chooses Money Over Sex

We here at Bet on Ted headquarters are very disappointed. Pleasure seekers and sinners everywhere are feeling a little sullied.

We've waited so patiently for Ted to fall off the gay-rehab wagon into hitherto unknown hedonistic palaces of sin— and it turns out all he cares for is the cash.

The latest news about Pastor Haggard is that instead of getting a full-body massage or doing a few toots, he's sent out a letter to everyone on his mailing list— asking them to send cash, and lots of it, to help his family continue their ministry.

The weird turn in his appeal, aside from its sheer audacity, is that he directs all donations to be sent to a Colorado address that turns out to be a shell for fellow comrade and convicted sex offender, Paul Gerard Huberty, who promised he would process the payments in return for a little off the top.

That's not very sexy, Ted.

We placed all our bets on you dropping your drawers again, not reaching into the till. Your crass materialism is harshing our buzz.

Nevertheless, I  got another letter today from a sensuous risk-taker who said he'd like to put $5 on Ted getting nasty on Christmas Day. Good choice, brother! Holidays, especially religious ones, are a good bet for acting out one's true nature. One too many eggnogs could push Ted right over the edge.

The "Bet on Ted Pool" gave ourselves until next February 6th— (the anniversary of Haggard's pledge that he was "100% het" and that his "dark and repulsive" life was behind him)— to place wagers on when he would disgrace himself in flagrante delicto once again.

But if no one hits the mark, we're still winners— we're donating the proceeds to LYRIC, the best queer youth organization in the whole Wild West.

 

Bet-On-Ted rules, fascinating explanations, and how-to here....

Susie Interviews The D.C. Madam

When the D.C. Madam calls and says she wants to talk, who wouldn't want to listen?

Today, my special In Bed audio interview is with Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the escort service proprietor whose phone records have set Washington DC on fire.

She's not done with them yet. Whoever decided to take on Ms. Palfrey had no idea what they were in for— she is not one to tremble or apologize.

I don't think Jeane has ever been interviewed before by someone from the sex work field before, as much as some network anchormen may protest.

Listen to Susie's interview with Deborah Jeane: LINK

Read the interview transcript at 10ZenMonkeys: LINK

Listen to the whole show at Audible.com: LINK

Get the show free for a month: LINK

And as if that wasn't enough excitement, in the Try This at Home mailbag, a listener asks: "I'm a woman who just rolled out of bed with my best gay male friend— how rare is that?"

Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, and requests for free show girly cards to [email protected] (Episode 308, August 24, 2007)

Simone de Beauvoir Gets Dressed

I went to Chicago this summer to a feminist blogging convention— but the most aesthetically memorable part of my trip was when Marie Kuda took me for a visit to the Art Shay photo exhibit at the Chicago Historical Museum.

The exhibition, which I wish I could show you in every detail, features this candid photo of Simone de Beauvoir getting dressed in the bathroom for a day's outing. I swooned.

The philosopher, at the time, was lovers with Shay's best friend, Nelson Algren— the author who wrote The Man with the Golden Arm.

Most of Shay's prints in the show are not published in a book or catalog, which I tearfully found out when I pounced on the museum bookstore.

The originals are so beautiful— such an incredible look at working class Chicago, the adult side of LIFE magazine Americana, and bohemian culture before the word "beatnik" was even popularized.

Shay (who's very much alive!) is an adventurer, someone whose heart is always on his lens' sleeve.

If anyone wants to know what I want for Labor Day, it's one of Shay's prints! You can see a lot more at the gallery site which represents him...

Art Shay, Simone de Beauvoir in Chicago, 1952 | Gelatin silver print | 8.5 x 5.75 in.

Tristan Takes Me Off the Bottle

This week on my In Bed audio show, I talk with award-winning author, columnist, and pornographic film director Tristan Taormino.

Smart Ass Productions, Taormino's sex film company, has a new sex education series that Tristan is proud to say breaks every rule.

Like... a cunnilingus movie that actually does that one thing: going down, and how to do it.

I know this may shock Captain Obvious, but there has NEVER been a sex-ed movie like this. Every other "eating-pussy" how-to has thrown everything in but the kitchen sink because they couldn't figure out how to creatively and expressively pay attention to this. one. thing.

Tristan and I also talk about how to make an education film that doesn't look like an industrial short, female squirting, and what's happened to gay literature since we first started reading it.

In Bed with Susie Bright 305: Author and Anal Sexpert Tristan Taormino

Listen to the interview: LINK

Listen to the whole show: LINK

Get a month free of my audio show: LINK

 

Then, in the Try This at Home mailbag, I respond to a listener who asks: "How come I only have the hots for the certifiably insane?"

Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, and requests for girly cards to [email protected] (Episode 305, August 17, 2007)

Photo by the illustrious Paul Sarkis, who has a couple other websites where you can see the more "fun" photos he partner and his partner take, and to learn about his Porn Star Couples photo project.

Make Punk History With Your Own Hands

My friend Jack Boulware,  a fellow underground San Francisco journalist and editor who helped my words get banned at Safeway— a girl never forgets a gesture like that— is co-authoring a book with Silke Tudor on the Bay Area punk scene.

He has interviewed: everybody. He knows where the bodies are buried and which ones are still in the freezer, along with all the lyrics, Telegraph Ave. acid, and sex toys.

However, Jack has one problem. His audio transcriber (that's a person, not a thing) disappeared into a wormhole. It's really rather shocking, but there's no time left to file a lawsuit or hire an assassin. These interviews need to be spun from audio straw to golden text pronto!

Are you an excellent typist? Do you love punk? Are you a Bay Area freak-fan who would love to be in on one of the most insane adventures ever told?

Then please email  Jack and make a little history together. Here's his plea, verbatim:

Local authors desperately seek transcribers for an extensive punk oral history project which will be published as a book in 2008. Fascinating, harrowing and hilarious tales of punk life in the Bay Area from mid-80s to mid-90s.

Audio interviews with musicians, skaters, squatters, hedge-divers, zine writers, shit workers, and activists need to be translated into text as soon as possible.

All files are .wma audio format, can be converted to mp3. No cash available, but copies of the book with your name in gushing acknowledgments is guaranteed.

This is an opportunity to contribute to the first comprehensive history of the punk generation that changed it all.

Speaking of brilliant audio transcripts, 10ZenMonkeys has transcribed my In Bed audio interview with Chelsea Girl of Pretty Dumb Things:

Deep Throat, Big Brain. It's a gas to see it in print.

Susie's Last Waltz at Best American Erotica

Next year’s edition of The Best American Erotica series, BAE 2008, is its fifteenth anniversary.

It’s also the last edition of the series.

Since 1993, I’ve edited and published 281 authors in BAE, 450-odd stories, as well as six erotic novellas. I feel like I owe all my writers and readers a personal letter!

I’ll start with this post and my appreciation for my authors' beautiful writing.

I get letters every week from readers who’ve discovered a story that may have been published years ago. They are memorable.

The earlier editions have not gone out of print, and I still enjoy recommending them and rereading them myself.

Recently, Audible has released audiobooks of most of the BAE editions, and they’re reaching a whole new audience who are appropriately “blown away—” as one listener wrote me just yesterday.

I know for some of the writers, BAE was just a fleeting pleasant moment to get a licensing check— and for others, it’s been a major creative forum to express their views about sexuality, race, class, politics, family, or one's quixotic state of mind. For many of us, it’s been a great excuse to begin a lasting friendship.

My interest in editing and working with erotic fiction hasn’t waned— far from it. As I write this letter, I’m negotiating a new project, and as soon as the ink is dry, I'll be eager to tell you the details. But I didn’t want to delay this post, because news travels so fast.

I don’t know what Simon & Schuster’s plans are for BAE. (The title belongs to them). However, if you ever have a question about BAE from 1993-2008, you can always count on me to act as editor and advocate.

In any case, I have a continuing relationship with S&S and their network of distributors and booksellers for the fifteen volumes we’ve published already.

BAE 08 will be out February 14. It includes the names of every author who’s published in the BAE series, a directory of the most influential editors and publishers of English language erotica in the past fifteen years, and interviews and stories from many of our favorite veterans. Not to mention the new innocent talent...

More Big News:

I’ll be launching a web site for BAE authors, fans, and family next February, so we can celebrate the 15th anniversary and continue the series’ legacy. I’d like to create an outstanding resource and community for the erotic word.

I’m at the beginning of designing the site right now. If you have any advice or wishes about what it could be like, or how it could benefit BAE authors or readers, I’m all ears.

So far, I’m planning on including excerpts from BAE,  audio samples, interviews with the authors, reader letters and surveys, an author directory, profiles of authors’ works and links, classes and editorial consultation services offered by authors, and... who knows what else we’ll come up with!

As you can see, this is not a retirement, so much as a launch into a new galaxy. But it is the end of an era. As much as I’m champing at the bit to start the new projects, there’s some sadness at saying goodbye to a series I’ve loved so much.

Thanks to the authors, once again, for their imagination, skill, and tenacity over all these years— not to mention that certain je ne sais quoi— I couldn’t have done it without you.

To infinity, and beyond,

Susie

Many of my BAE authors have changed their address since we were last in touch. If you're a BAE author who hasn't heard from me personally, as of today, please email me, so I can answer any questions you may have, and stay in touch for future projects. Plus, you never know when a check's going to show up in the mail...

John Scalzi on The Stupidest Cocksucker in the GOP

Let's turn to... the story of Florida state legislator Bob Allen, who was recently arrested for soliciting sex in a public restroom— specifically, that he offered an undercover cop a Jackson if he'd let the legislator blow him.

This was not a smart thing to do.

But having been caught doing something stupid, Allen, who is a pudgy white fellow, [no, it's worse than that; he's Jabba the Hut - SB] has decided to double-down on his stupidity by offering what is a truly, spectacularly -- indeed, magnificently— dumb reason for soliciting another man for sex: Fear of a Black Planet!

"When Stupid People Do Stupid Things— And Then Do Even Stupider Things," reprinted with much thanks from John Scalzi's marvelous Whatever blog

"This was a pretty stocky black guy, and there was nothing but other black guys around in the park," said Allen, according to this article in the Orlando Sentinel.

Allen went on to say he was afraid of becoming a "statistic."

Now, if you go to either Josh's site or the Sentinel article, you'll see that according to the officer (who, incidentally, was not there originally to entrap pudgy white state legislators in public restrooms, but was instead staking out a burglar at a nearby condo), it was Allen who initiated the contact. [The cop, btw, is drop-dead handsome - SB].

So let's think Allen's rationale through:

Allen, during the middle of the work day, was at the park, just minding his own business, enjoying the Florida sunshine, when he suddenly noticed that the park was full of black men. Fearing for his own personal safety, he decided that the best course of action was to go into the public restroom, peer over a stall— twice— to locate a black man, and offer that black man $20 and a blow job if he'd just leave him alone.

Which leads me to ask: What, is this like a Florida thing?

For generations, have the white men of Florida pulled aside their sons and passed along the secret knowledge that the best way to avoid racial conflict with a black man is to offer him pizza money and a hummer? Is this part of a whole slate of intergenerational Floridian white man knowledge, up there with how to wrassle a gator and the best way to get James Baker to handle your recount?

Clearly this all needs to be bound up in a book: Everything I Ever Needed To Know About Being a White Man in Florida I Learned in a City Park Bathroom Stall. I, for one, breathlessly await its publication.

What I find rather interesting is that Allen must believe, in some dim fashion, that people will actually buy this, and more than buy this, agree with it, which is to say that Allen believes that the average Floridan would think to himself or herself, "Why, yes, when confronted with a park full of black men, a white man turning himself into some sort of ATM/suction device combo is an entirely rational response."

Now, I fully admit to not being an expert on Floridians, so maybe this does make sense to them. You hear so many strange things about Florida; Hell, it's got its own tag on Fark, for crying out loud.

Having said that, I would like to believe that the vast majority of Floridians see this for what it almost certainly is: idiotic nonsense. The only real bit of news out of all of this is that Allen would rather be seen as a terrified racist than as someone willing to solicit strangers in a public restroom to get some man-on-man action.

Well, here's the thing, Mr. Allen: Clearly, you can be both. There's a statistic for you.

You can read more John Scalzi here, and I'd especially recommend his classic essay on "Being Poor."