by Jean Roberta
Sexy stories about first-time hookups are exciting not in spite of, but because of the possibility that something could go wrong: two people who don’t know each other well could misread each other’s signals (hence the need for safewords), or one of them could have horrifying intentions.
Even when two potential playmates are introduced by a mutual friend, that doesn’t guarantee that they will be compatible.
Here is the opening scene from “A Bushy Tale,” my lesbian story from Best Lesbian Erotica 2004.
“Louanne and Thomasina (who could stand being called Tommy but not Tommy-girl) were getting acquainted over leisurely cups of coffee on the patio of Café Mocha. They had been introduced by their mutual friend Mick, a dyke d.j. who enjoyed watching women on a crowded dance floor, and occasionally tried to match them up.”
Tommy explains that she rescues injured animals. Louanne says she can understand why that would be satisfying.
[Louanne says:] “I’ve been a volunteer counsellor on the sexual assault and abuse line for a few years. Dealing with women who’ve been abused is hard, but it’s good to see them getting their lives back, little by little.”
Tommy responds politely.
“You sound like a good counsellor,” remarked Tommy, thinking that some delicate flirting would not be taken amiss. She noticed that Louanne’s face was classically beautiful, and almost innocent of makeup.
Louanne looked charmingly abashed. “I just listen,” she explained modestly. “That’s all we can do. I just wish there wasn’t such a need.”
“I bet your clients are glad they have you to talk to. Do you have any other job?” Tommy persisted.
This implication that Louanne had no income and was looking for a Sugar Mama made uncomfortable prickles rise up her neck. “I’ve worked in the library for eight years,” she snapped, sounding colder than she intended. “Books are my life,” she added. “I love helping people do research. You never know what you’ll find when you start digging for information.”
“I’m sure,” laughed Tommy, stretching. She had an easy, contagious laugh which she sometimes used to hide her quick, contagious temper. She had heard the chill in Louanne’s voice, and wondered if the book-lover thought the animal-lover was stupid. Tommy hated being patronized.”
Notice how easy it is for both women to hear negative subtexts in each other’s comments.
“She [Tommy] reached for the front page of the local newspaper, which lay neglected on an adjoining table. “What do you think of this?” Tommy asked Louanne, referring to the headline about government cutbacks to libraries and educational institutions.
Louanne took the paper from Tommy’s hand, letting her fingers linger. Tommy was slightly surprised, and looked thoughtfully at the other woman’s dark, clouded eyes.
Louanne was looking at the front page. “Aggh,” she sputtered. “The case of the South End Rapist. He’s only being tried for the latest one, but we’ve heard about him for years. The cops are idiots.”
“Have you met the victims?” asked Tommy. This was getting so interesting that she was only vaguely aware that her words might be politically incorrect.
“Not the one he’s being tried for,” sighed Louanne. She couldn’t take her eyes off the article. “Who writes this stuff? Everything he did is described. He tied her up and forced her to – there was vaginal and anal.”
“Male bastard,” Tommy remarked calmly. “Why they like to do it without consent is beyond me.” Louanne noticed that she had the bright blue eyes and freckled face of a healthy farm girl, but her energy was edgy and urban. Louanne decided not to think about consent.
“She’s a teenage girl who met him in a chat room on the internet,” Louanne pointed out. “When will women and kids learn how dangerous that is?”
Tommy decided to play the devil’s advocate. “Do you really think that’s more dangerous than finding a pen pal through a club that’s been set up to bring people together, or even meeting someone at work or through a friend? Reaching out to a stranger always involves a risk because ya never know. And no one can promise you that someone else is perfectly safe.” She paused. Everyone wants something,” she mused.
“Everyone,” asserted Louanne. Tommy noticed a trace of bitterness in the set of her mouth. “But not everyone is an asshole.”
“Doing it to someone who doesn’t want it seems stupid to me,” she assured her companion. “I can’t see what guys get out of that. But desire isn’t a simple thing. Sometimes people don’t know what they want until they see it, feel it, taste it.”
The two women looked at each other for a heartbeat. Tommy reached for Louanne’s hand, and it was not pulled away. Tommy heard a soft, answering sigh. “But don’t some things, uh, hurt no matter what?” asked the librarian. She wanted to know.
“Some things,” agreed Tommy. “But some kinds of pain are good, you know? And some – activities just need lots of good will and lube.” She licked her lips. “And natural wetness. Encouragement. You gotta be willing and eager.”
Louanne’s eyes flashed, showing a mixture of feelings. “Eagerness isn’t always appreciated,” she countered. “Willing women get called some ugly names.”
Tommy turned and squeezed Louanne’s hand. “I have the greatest respect,” she assured her, “for sluts.”
Louanne boldly asks Tommy to take her home, where the surroundings aren’t exactly welcoming.
“Tommy drove Louanne to an old brick apartment building that had a certain period charm. Tommy parked in her space in the parking lot. She helped her date out of the car and herded her, with a warm hand on Louanne’s lower back, up a short flight of concrete steps to a heavy wooden door with the name “Fairfield” on it.
In the tile-floored entranceway, Louanne faced a flight of wooden stairs which were graced with a curved black banister. Grasping it for support, she found it slick with layers of old shellack. Louanne was reminded of the 1940s detective novels that she had read as a teenager.
On the first landing, Louanne paused to catch her breath. Tommy circled her waist and pressed her crotch into Louanne’s jeans-covered butt. “Need a rest?” Tommy chuckled.
“Just – for a minute,” gasped her guest. Embarrassed by her weakness, Louanne moved forward as soon as she felt she could tackle the next flight.
Tommy’s apartment was on the third floor, and Louanne was relieved when the number on the door came into her view. She stood still, trying not to gasp for air. She didn’t want to give the impression of being helpless or out of control.
“Why, babe?” Tommy asked. She smiled coolly. “Why did you climb up all these stairs with me?”
Louanne was taken off-guard. “You asked me,” she exhaled.
“So do you accept every invitation you get from people you hardly know?”
Louanne filled her lungs, clutching the railing. “Well, you don’t seem dangerous.” With alarm, she noted the common sense in Tommy’s question. Louanne didn’t like to consider herself a risk-taker.
“Because I’m a woman? Does that make me trustworthy?” Tommy barked with laughter. “Is that what you believe? Or maybe you think you’re safe here with me because it was really your idea.”
Tommy stayed behind Louanne, holding her by the waist so that her guest couldn’t see her face. “How many times have you advised other women to avoid rushing off into the unknown?” she taunted. “Are you sure you could outrun me if you wanted to?”
This question sounded rhetorical, and Louanne didn’t answer it. “Now you’re here,” Tommy reminded Louanne, her mouth close to her guest’s ear. “You’ve worked so hard to get here that I bet you’d like to stay awhile. Welcome to my cave, honey.” Tommy smoothly unlocked her door with one hand and pushed Louanne forward with the other.
Tommy closed the door behind her and ran a hand through Louanne’s silken hair. “I like reckless women,” Tommy purred. “They’re usually bitches in heat.”
Of course, things heat up from that point on. Louanne and Tommy discover that they share a common interest, something which is probably not quite a fetish. Tommy loves working with real animals, and Louanne, the librarian, loves children’s books about anthropomorphic animals who usually appear in charming illustrations wearing clothes from a bygone era.
Louanne consents to be Tommy’s bitch, so to speak, at least for a day. It’s a new experience for both of them, and they’re both surprised and thrilled at how well their role-playing works.
Role-playing is something we all do so often that our roles seem to merge with our personalities. Several of us here at the Grip play the role of teacher when we’re not writing. We also play roles in our relationships: parent, son or daughter, sibling, Significant Other.
Wanting to be free of our usual real-life roles and try on different ones is probably a major motivator for actors as well as writers. In our imaginary worlds, we can be anyone. We can try on different names, and see if they make us feel like different people.
Underneath our social trappings, we’re all really Anonymous.
------------------
NOTE: "A Bushy Tale" was illustrated when it appeared in an on-line subscription website, and the artist gave me permission to reuse his drawing in any way I want, but it's a PDF, and therefore it can't be posted here.
Showing posts with label Best Lesbian Erotica. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Best Lesbian Erotica. Show all posts
Friday, October 26, 2018
Friday, August 3, 2018
Summit Meetings
by Jean Roberta
Here are some definitions of “flirt,” according to the on-line Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
1) To behave amorously without serious intent, e.g. He flirts with every attractive woman he sees.
2) To come close to reaching or experiencing something, e.g. They were flirting with disaster.
Skimming through the stories in my “Documents” on my home computer, I noticed that clear examples of flirting are hard to find, possibly because I’m well aware of that last definition. Too much of what seems like harmless (i.e. non-sexual) flirting to one person can look like a serious invitation to another. When I was just old enough to date, my father warned me that girls can “get themselves” raped by “leading guys on,” which sounded to me like flirting.
I was tempted to avoid speaking to any man I hadn’t known for years, lest guys read too much into expressions like “How are you?”
The answer might well be, “Horny, as usual. And since you asked, you have to do something about it.”
As a long-term volunteer on the local sexual assault line, I’ve heard too many stories of conversations that quickly led to physical assault by an angry man who told a woman she was “asking for it.”
On the other hand, I’ve written many dialogue scenes that could be described as negotiation, which seems to me to be more serious than flirting, even if the conversation sounds deceptively casual. I actually wish more people would bargain honestly with each other for the kind of relationships they want, even though some personal negotiations could go on for days, like the kind union-management meetings in locked rooms from which spokespeople from both sides emerge looking haggard, and the media reports that “no agreement was reached.”
The following is from my shockingly heterosexual story, “The Trickle-Down Effect” (currently in an erotic anthology with a breast-feeding theme, The Milk Round, from Xcite Press in the UK).
Dee is on maternity leave from her job after having her first baby. She lives with Brian, the baby’s father, who wants to marry her. Despite what her mother taught her, she doesn’t think marriage should be every woman’s goal.
Without disturbing the baby, he managed to hold my chin so that he could kiss me.
“Honey,” he told me, “we need to talk about why you don’t want to get married.”
“We need something to eat,” I answered. “Let’s go into the kitchen.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “But we’re also going to talk.” I envied the baby, who had no idea what was going on between her parents, as far as I knew. But then, I thought, even babies are probably more complicated than we think.
I pulled on a bathrobe, and we all went to the kitchen, where I busied myself making toast and scrambled eggs. Brian helped, finding every excuse to touch me. When I needed both hands free, he gently pulled the baby out of my arms.
“Mamas and papas are usually married to each other,” he pointed out.
“Marriages end in divorce,” I responded.
“Not all of them! Fuck, Dee. Anyway, relationships end too, but not ours.”
“Point for me,” I told him. “If a thing isn’t broken, it doesn’t need to be fixed.”
“Are you afraid of what could happen to us?” His voice sounded unbearably gentle.
I considered his question for a minute. “Yes, honey. Aren’t you?”
“Yeah, okay, I’m scared. I’ll admit it. I know you don’t want to be trapped in the house, and I’m afraid you’ll blame me for throwing a monkey wrench in your career. I’m afraid I’ll come home one day and you’ll be gone with Shannon, and I’ll have to fight you in court just to see either of you again. That would drive me crazy, Dee. I mean really.”
I saw his point, and I felt like holding him and kissing away his fear. I even wanted to sing him a lullaby to convince him that I wasn’t planning to leave him for the sake of one stupid job. Jobs can be replaced.
I offered him toast instead. “Brian, I’m not planning to leave you. I love you.” This was a word we rarely used, since we both agreed that there are better ways of expressing love. Expression,* as I knew, could take different forms. “I don’t think we should make it legal just because we have a child. I don’t want us to fall into a rut. I don’t want you to start taking me for granted.”
---------------------------------------------
*Earlier, Dee “expressed” her milk by squeezing it out and storing it while the baby was sleeping.
---------------------------------------------
Eventually, Dee agrees to marry Brian, which she likens to jumping off a cliff with him without knowing whether they will land in refreshing water or a pile of rocks. She warns him that if he doesn’t keep his promises, she will demand everything she can get in the divorce. He accepts her terms.
******
Negotiations in lesbian relationships often take a very different form, or at least they did when same-sex marriage wasn’t legally possible in any country. (Note that Gertrude Stein famously asked Alice B. Toklas to be her “wife” in a metaphorical sense in the early 20th century.) Closeted lesbians have traditionally referred to their Significant Others as “friends,” and the boundaries between actual friendships between women (which might be flirtatious and/or emotionally intimate), hookups, friendships-with-benefits, and the kind of Passionate Love Affairs that drive the plots of operas have always been slippery.
In my story, “Naming It” (in Best Lesbian Erotica 2015, edited by series editor Kathleen Warnock and guest-editor Laura Antoniou, from Cleis Press in the US), Tam is comforting her old friend Deirdre the morning after a messy scene in the local lesbian bar. Deirdre was planning to move in with her girlfriend, a notorious flirt named Paulie Diddle, then discovered Paulie getting too close to a new acquaintance in a cubicle in the women’s washroom.
Tears welled up in Deirdre’s eyes. “Jesus, Tam, do you think I’m a complete fool?”
This was clearly a time for diplomacy, but it was also a good time to seize the moment. Tam gathered Deirdre into her arms and rocked her. “Honey,” she said into the fine, wavy, honey-colored hair that grazed Deirdre’s shoulders. “Paulie’s the fool, not you. She’s the one who lost out.”
To Tam’s delight, Deirdre didn’t slither away, as she usually did. “Thank you,” she said, nestled against Tam’s collarbone. “For not saying you told me so. I know you thought I should go slow, and I didn’t. I wanted a home and a serious relationship, you know? We’re not kids any more.”
While Tam was still gathering her thoughts, Deirdre shifted her position so she could look her old friend in the eyes. “Did you call me honey?”
Tam saw her dark eyes and strong features reflected in the troubled grey pools of Deirdre’s. “I did, and I could call you other things too: sweet thing, baby, angel-face.”
Something rippled through Deirdre’s supple body. “Always joking, that’s you,” she said. “That’s why we could never really be an item, even though you’re my best friend. Sometimes I wish--.”
Deirdre’s phone rang for the sixth time that morning. She glanced at it, saw the name “Paula Diddle” once again, and made a visible effort to ignore the sound.
“Good girl,” said Tam. She tightened her embrace and kissed Deirdre on the lips before she could pull away.
“Ummph,” said Deirdre. Tam held her close and slipped the tip of her tongue between Deirdre’s lips.
Deirdre broke the kiss. “What the fuck, Tam?” she asked. Tam knew how Deirdre sounded when she was really angry, and this question had a different tone. She was curious, even intrigued.
“What do you think, baby?” responded Tam the seducer. “Let’s try it.”
“You’re my friend, Tam,” explained Deirdre as though explaining the incest taboo. “Who will I turn to if you let me down?”
------------------------------------------
In her current state of distress, Deirdre lets herself be seduced, but then tells Tam that this event was a fluke, a lapse from the status quo of their relationship. Deirdre says they should agree to stay apart for a month, but Tam negotiates this period down to one week. They agree to meet in a popular coffee shop for a summit meeting on a particular date.
Over cappuccinos, the friends discuss the terms of their new relationship, which Tam calls a “love that was meant to be.” Deirdre considers it a reckless experiment because if Tam is promoted to the role of Lover, Deirdre will have no emotional backup in the form of a best friend. Nonetheless, she admits that she has loved Tam for years, and she agrees to name the connection between them for what it is.
So now the negotiations in this post have probably gone on for too long, but they have led to hard-won agreements. I love it when that happens.
-------------------------------------------
Here are some definitions of “flirt,” according to the on-line Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
1) To behave amorously without serious intent, e.g. He flirts with every attractive woman he sees.
2) To come close to reaching or experiencing something, e.g. They were flirting with disaster.
Skimming through the stories in my “Documents” on my home computer, I noticed that clear examples of flirting are hard to find, possibly because I’m well aware of that last definition. Too much of what seems like harmless (i.e. non-sexual) flirting to one person can look like a serious invitation to another. When I was just old enough to date, my father warned me that girls can “get themselves” raped by “leading guys on,” which sounded to me like flirting.
I was tempted to avoid speaking to any man I hadn’t known for years, lest guys read too much into expressions like “How are you?”
The answer might well be, “Horny, as usual. And since you asked, you have to do something about it.”
As a long-term volunteer on the local sexual assault line, I’ve heard too many stories of conversations that quickly led to physical assault by an angry man who told a woman she was “asking for it.”
On the other hand, I’ve written many dialogue scenes that could be described as negotiation, which seems to me to be more serious than flirting, even if the conversation sounds deceptively casual. I actually wish more people would bargain honestly with each other for the kind of relationships they want, even though some personal negotiations could go on for days, like the kind union-management meetings in locked rooms from which spokespeople from both sides emerge looking haggard, and the media reports that “no agreement was reached.”
The following is from my shockingly heterosexual story, “The Trickle-Down Effect” (currently in an erotic anthology with a breast-feeding theme, The Milk Round, from Xcite Press in the UK).
Dee is on maternity leave from her job after having her first baby. She lives with Brian, the baby’s father, who wants to marry her. Despite what her mother taught her, she doesn’t think marriage should be every woman’s goal.
Without disturbing the baby, he managed to hold my chin so that he could kiss me.
“Honey,” he told me, “we need to talk about why you don’t want to get married.”
“We need something to eat,” I answered. “Let’s go into the kitchen.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “But we’re also going to talk.” I envied the baby, who had no idea what was going on between her parents, as far as I knew. But then, I thought, even babies are probably more complicated than we think.
I pulled on a bathrobe, and we all went to the kitchen, where I busied myself making toast and scrambled eggs. Brian helped, finding every excuse to touch me. When I needed both hands free, he gently pulled the baby out of my arms.
“Mamas and papas are usually married to each other,” he pointed out.
“Marriages end in divorce,” I responded.
“Not all of them! Fuck, Dee. Anyway, relationships end too, but not ours.”
“Point for me,” I told him. “If a thing isn’t broken, it doesn’t need to be fixed.”
“Are you afraid of what could happen to us?” His voice sounded unbearably gentle.
I considered his question for a minute. “Yes, honey. Aren’t you?”
“Yeah, okay, I’m scared. I’ll admit it. I know you don’t want to be trapped in the house, and I’m afraid you’ll blame me for throwing a monkey wrench in your career. I’m afraid I’ll come home one day and you’ll be gone with Shannon, and I’ll have to fight you in court just to see either of you again. That would drive me crazy, Dee. I mean really.”
I saw his point, and I felt like holding him and kissing away his fear. I even wanted to sing him a lullaby to convince him that I wasn’t planning to leave him for the sake of one stupid job. Jobs can be replaced.
I offered him toast instead. “Brian, I’m not planning to leave you. I love you.” This was a word we rarely used, since we both agreed that there are better ways of expressing love. Expression,* as I knew, could take different forms. “I don’t think we should make it legal just because we have a child. I don’t want us to fall into a rut. I don’t want you to start taking me for granted.”
---------------------------------------------
*Earlier, Dee “expressed” her milk by squeezing it out and storing it while the baby was sleeping.
---------------------------------------------
Eventually, Dee agrees to marry Brian, which she likens to jumping off a cliff with him without knowing whether they will land in refreshing water or a pile of rocks. She warns him that if he doesn’t keep his promises, she will demand everything she can get in the divorce. He accepts her terms.
******
Negotiations in lesbian relationships often take a very different form, or at least they did when same-sex marriage wasn’t legally possible in any country. (Note that Gertrude Stein famously asked Alice B. Toklas to be her “wife” in a metaphorical sense in the early 20th century.) Closeted lesbians have traditionally referred to their Significant Others as “friends,” and the boundaries between actual friendships between women (which might be flirtatious and/or emotionally intimate), hookups, friendships-with-benefits, and the kind of Passionate Love Affairs that drive the plots of operas have always been slippery.
In my story, “Naming It” (in Best Lesbian Erotica 2015, edited by series editor Kathleen Warnock and guest-editor Laura Antoniou, from Cleis Press in the US), Tam is comforting her old friend Deirdre the morning after a messy scene in the local lesbian bar. Deirdre was planning to move in with her girlfriend, a notorious flirt named Paulie Diddle, then discovered Paulie getting too close to a new acquaintance in a cubicle in the women’s washroom.
Tears welled up in Deirdre’s eyes. “Jesus, Tam, do you think I’m a complete fool?”
This was clearly a time for diplomacy, but it was also a good time to seize the moment. Tam gathered Deirdre into her arms and rocked her. “Honey,” she said into the fine, wavy, honey-colored hair that grazed Deirdre’s shoulders. “Paulie’s the fool, not you. She’s the one who lost out.”
To Tam’s delight, Deirdre didn’t slither away, as she usually did. “Thank you,” she said, nestled against Tam’s collarbone. “For not saying you told me so. I know you thought I should go slow, and I didn’t. I wanted a home and a serious relationship, you know? We’re not kids any more.”
While Tam was still gathering her thoughts, Deirdre shifted her position so she could look her old friend in the eyes. “Did you call me honey?”
Tam saw her dark eyes and strong features reflected in the troubled grey pools of Deirdre’s. “I did, and I could call you other things too: sweet thing, baby, angel-face.”
Something rippled through Deirdre’s supple body. “Always joking, that’s you,” she said. “That’s why we could never really be an item, even though you’re my best friend. Sometimes I wish--.”
Deirdre’s phone rang for the sixth time that morning. She glanced at it, saw the name “Paula Diddle” once again, and made a visible effort to ignore the sound.
“Good girl,” said Tam. She tightened her embrace and kissed Deirdre on the lips before she could pull away.
“Ummph,” said Deirdre. Tam held her close and slipped the tip of her tongue between Deirdre’s lips.
Deirdre broke the kiss. “What the fuck, Tam?” she asked. Tam knew how Deirdre sounded when she was really angry, and this question had a different tone. She was curious, even intrigued.
“What do you think, baby?” responded Tam the seducer. “Let’s try it.”
“You’re my friend, Tam,” explained Deirdre as though explaining the incest taboo. “Who will I turn to if you let me down?”
------------------------------------------
In her current state of distress, Deirdre lets herself be seduced, but then tells Tam that this event was a fluke, a lapse from the status quo of their relationship. Deirdre says they should agree to stay apart for a month, but Tam negotiates this period down to one week. They agree to meet in a popular coffee shop for a summit meeting on a particular date.
Over cappuccinos, the friends discuss the terms of their new relationship, which Tam calls a “love that was meant to be.” Deirdre considers it a reckless experiment because if Tam is promoted to the role of Lover, Deirdre will have no emotional backup in the form of a best friend. Nonetheless, she admits that she has loved Tam for years, and she agrees to name the connection between them for what it is.
So now the negotiations in this post have probably gone on for too long, but they have led to hard-won agreements. I love it when that happens.
-------------------------------------------
Monday, October 30, 2017
The Trouble with Triumph
Sacchi Green
Triumph is closely identified with winning, defeating competitors, or odds, or one’s own self-doubts. Scoring high in a marathon, for instance, could involve all three. There’s nothing wrong with triumphing, especially if what you’ve won, like a political position or a job advancement, puts you in position to accomplish worthy goals, which would be further triumphs.
But while some people handle triumph well, even gracefully, some get addicted to it. Going from one triumph to another can be fine for a while, but letting triumph itself become the whole point can do tremendous damage. Think, for instance, of people triumphant in terms of wealth who are driven to accumulate more and more, depriving others of resources they really need, because they’re addicted to playing a game where money is the fuel of triumph, and of power, and therefore of a sense of self-worth. The worst of these addicts play not only for wealth, but for the joy of defeating others. It’s not enough to win; someone else must lose, and the more painfully, the better. I don’t know whether there are many who feel this way, but we happen to have elected one of them who sees life in terms of “negotiations” that he feels must result in triumph for him and loss for someone else. Sort of the zero-sum equation.
You knew I was going there, didn’t you. And you probably see where I’m going next. That same addict to triumph hungers for power and prestige, and has, to even his own surprise, achieved what might be the pinnacle of both, but without understanding the responsibilities involved. He loves to stage rallies with his rabid supporters, and promise them anything, but has no idea of how or whether those promised could ever be kept. He doesn’t understand the way the government works, or what the consequences of his actions or inactions can be. He needs continual assurance of approval, even adulation, without knowing how to earn those. He may not aspire to be a military conqueror along the lines of Alexander the Great, who went from victory to victory, conquering much of what was seen at the time as the known world and is often ranked among the most influential people in history, but then again, he may not know enough history to have heard of Alexander. If he has, he certainly wouldn’t want to be personally at the head of his troops in warfare as Alexander was, and has used every means possible not to serve in his own country’s military when he was the appropriate age. He does, however, want to use the military power of his country to achieve some kind of personal glory and a sense of triumph.
Enough of that. Things are what they are, and we do all we can through voting and activism to work toward our own vision of political triumph. But as writers, on a personal level, we’ve all have our few moments of triumph and of loss. I felt something like triumph when I sold my first story for publication and for real (though scant) money. I actually sold two at about the same time, but I think the first to see print was in the long-gone Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine. Other modest sales in fantasy and science fiction were thrills, but the first, I think, was the closest to triumph. My first erotica sale, though, to Best Lesbian Erotica 1999, felt like a triumph all over again. So did my first contract to edit an anthology, and later my first contract from a more established publisher, one who’d ignored my anthology proposals before even though I’d had many stories in their previous books, but eventually called on me because they’d had trouble with another editors and people I’d worked with by then had recommended me as someone who could handle the administrative part of editing. I guess triumph is measured by what you feel more than by any other criterion.
I’ve had what I’ve perceived as triumphs again from time to time in the way of awards for my anthologies, two of them Lambda Literary awards and five Golden Crown Literary Awards. I admit that I enjoyed the hell out of going up onto the stage to accept the Lambda awards, but with mixed feelings. One reason for that was that those awards were for my contributors, not for my own writing. Once a collection of my own work was a Lambda finalist, but otherwise I was just the name on the cover, the administrative editor, which was fine, but not exactly a cause for triumph. Another reason was that there were never as many entries in my category of Lesbian Erotica as there were in most other categories, so “triumph” didn’t mean as much.
Still, I admit that I became an awards junkie in a small way. I’m trying to get over it, and pretty much succeeding. For one thing, erotica in general is becoming less and less well-regarded. Maybe the dross of lowest-common-denominator schlock available has driven out the questionable gold. The Lambda Awards have now combined the Gay and Lesbian erotica books into one category, and the list is still pretty short. Calls for Submissions for erotica anthologies are few and far between, also reflecting the lack of interest in short stories as opposed to novels. I’ve been told that the Golden Crown awards committee is having a very hard time finding judges willing to read erotica. Sigh. Sic Transit Gloria…um, what’s the Latin for Erotica? Maybe just Eros?
Well, there are other times for triumph. Such as, finishing a novel. I’m slogging away at coping with an experienced novel editor’s edits of a novel I’ve more or less written, and when I’ve finally finished, I’ll think I’ll feel some degree of triumph mixed with the relief of being done with it, and, most likely, never get involved in novel writing again. When I think of all the short stories I could have written, wanted very much to write, in the time it’s taken me to wrestle with this 65,000 word document, it’s downright depressing. If there’s a moral to all this, it’s something similar to “choose your fights,” but more like, “choose the kinds of triumphs you can love to aim for.”
(I hope it's okay to add that I do, in fact, have a new Call for Submissions out in the usual market listings, including the ERWA one, for what should be called Best Lesbian Erotica 2019, but under new management is titled Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year Volume Three. And my Volume 2 is coming out next month.)
Triumph is closely identified with winning, defeating competitors, or odds, or one’s own self-doubts. Scoring high in a marathon, for instance, could involve all three. There’s nothing wrong with triumphing, especially if what you’ve won, like a political position or a job advancement, puts you in position to accomplish worthy goals, which would be further triumphs.
But while some people handle triumph well, even gracefully, some get addicted to it. Going from one triumph to another can be fine for a while, but letting triumph itself become the whole point can do tremendous damage. Think, for instance, of people triumphant in terms of wealth who are driven to accumulate more and more, depriving others of resources they really need, because they’re addicted to playing a game where money is the fuel of triumph, and of power, and therefore of a sense of self-worth. The worst of these addicts play not only for wealth, but for the joy of defeating others. It’s not enough to win; someone else must lose, and the more painfully, the better. I don’t know whether there are many who feel this way, but we happen to have elected one of them who sees life in terms of “negotiations” that he feels must result in triumph for him and loss for someone else. Sort of the zero-sum equation.
You knew I was going there, didn’t you. And you probably see where I’m going next. That same addict to triumph hungers for power and prestige, and has, to even his own surprise, achieved what might be the pinnacle of both, but without understanding the responsibilities involved. He loves to stage rallies with his rabid supporters, and promise them anything, but has no idea of how or whether those promised could ever be kept. He doesn’t understand the way the government works, or what the consequences of his actions or inactions can be. He needs continual assurance of approval, even adulation, without knowing how to earn those. He may not aspire to be a military conqueror along the lines of Alexander the Great, who went from victory to victory, conquering much of what was seen at the time as the known world and is often ranked among the most influential people in history, but then again, he may not know enough history to have heard of Alexander. If he has, he certainly wouldn’t want to be personally at the head of his troops in warfare as Alexander was, and has used every means possible not to serve in his own country’s military when he was the appropriate age. He does, however, want to use the military power of his country to achieve some kind of personal glory and a sense of triumph.
Enough of that. Things are what they are, and we do all we can through voting and activism to work toward our own vision of political triumph. But as writers, on a personal level, we’ve all have our few moments of triumph and of loss. I felt something like triumph when I sold my first story for publication and for real (though scant) money. I actually sold two at about the same time, but I think the first to see print was in the long-gone Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine. Other modest sales in fantasy and science fiction were thrills, but the first, I think, was the closest to triumph. My first erotica sale, though, to Best Lesbian Erotica 1999, felt like a triumph all over again. So did my first contract to edit an anthology, and later my first contract from a more established publisher, one who’d ignored my anthology proposals before even though I’d had many stories in their previous books, but eventually called on me because they’d had trouble with another editors and people I’d worked with by then had recommended me as someone who could handle the administrative part of editing. I guess triumph is measured by what you feel more than by any other criterion.
I’ve had what I’ve perceived as triumphs again from time to time in the way of awards for my anthologies, two of them Lambda Literary awards and five Golden Crown Literary Awards. I admit that I enjoyed the hell out of going up onto the stage to accept the Lambda awards, but with mixed feelings. One reason for that was that those awards were for my contributors, not for my own writing. Once a collection of my own work was a Lambda finalist, but otherwise I was just the name on the cover, the administrative editor, which was fine, but not exactly a cause for triumph. Another reason was that there were never as many entries in my category of Lesbian Erotica as there were in most other categories, so “triumph” didn’t mean as much.
Still, I admit that I became an awards junkie in a small way. I’m trying to get over it, and pretty much succeeding. For one thing, erotica in general is becoming less and less well-regarded. Maybe the dross of lowest-common-denominator schlock available has driven out the questionable gold. The Lambda Awards have now combined the Gay and Lesbian erotica books into one category, and the list is still pretty short. Calls for Submissions for erotica anthologies are few and far between, also reflecting the lack of interest in short stories as opposed to novels. I’ve been told that the Golden Crown awards committee is having a very hard time finding judges willing to read erotica. Sigh. Sic Transit Gloria…um, what’s the Latin for Erotica? Maybe just Eros?
Well, there are other times for triumph. Such as, finishing a novel. I’m slogging away at coping with an experienced novel editor’s edits of a novel I’ve more or less written, and when I’ve finally finished, I’ll think I’ll feel some degree of triumph mixed with the relief of being done with it, and, most likely, never get involved in novel writing again. When I think of all the short stories I could have written, wanted very much to write, in the time it’s taken me to wrestle with this 65,000 word document, it’s downright depressing. If there’s a moral to all this, it’s something similar to “choose your fights,” but more like, “choose the kinds of triumphs you can love to aim for.”
(I hope it's okay to add that I do, in fact, have a new Call for Submissions out in the usual market listings, including the ERWA one, for what should be called Best Lesbian Erotica 2019, but under new management is titled Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year Volume Three. And my Volume 2 is coming out next month.)
Monday, August 7, 2017
The Taboo of Growing Old
Sacchi Green
Getting old is taboo in erotica. Not in the sense of being forbidden—no one will stop you from writing about characters advanced in years, and every once in a while an editor will talk a publisher into backing an anthology of stories where all the characters are over—shudder—50. Or sometimes even ust over 40. The horror! And you can occasionally place such a story in other anthologies. I’ve done it a few times myself. Yes, I admit that “taboo” is an overstatement in this context.
Still, in erotica, as in most forms of entertainment, pretty much anything goes except being physically unattractive, in terms of what’s generally considered attractive in one’s particular time and culture. In our culture, that tends to be youth-centered. Fortunately, even within a culture tastes do vary, and a good writer can make a case for one character being attractive to another even when one or both of them fall pretty far outside the norms, but most erotica seems to toe the mark of what’s commonly considered youthful movie-star looks.
Speaking of toeing the mark, I’m not very familiar with toe fetishism, although I know it exists. Do toes need to be “’cute” to be fetishized? I rather suspect not. There are certainly some exceptions to the necessity of exceptionally attractive characters in erotica, and we humans being as contrary as we are, there are probably some who fetishize dramatically ugly characters, or parts thereof. And there may be those who prefer to read about older people having sex, for various reasons, not necessarily kinky ones.
Aging is a complex issue in our society in ways that go beyond the matter of looks and therefore desirability, although those are the prime counts against it. Getting old is a challenge to the young’s sense of immortality. There seems to be a feeling that those who grow old must somehow deserve their fate. They should have known better. This attitude isn’t quite as pernicious as the one that sees poverty and ill health as the fault of those who suffer them, or possibly a just punishment from God, but the two are similar.
What set me off on this tirade isn’t the fact that I’ve somehow allowed myself to get to an age that’s considered old. I am as good as anyone else of my generation in defining “old” as some years older than wherever I am now. But I’m annoyed by the click-bait headlines I see again and again online, the ones about “So-and-so was gorgeous in such-and-such TV show back in the 70s, 80s, but you won’t believe what they look like now!” You know, the ones interspersed with “Celebrities who have to work at Regular Jobs!” and “So-and-so Lost 100 pounds and Looks Like a Model!” There seems to me to be an underlying motif of, “Ha ha, they got old!” I have to admit that I don’t click on those, so for all I know they show pictures of celebrities who have managed to stay gorgeous, but I still think they’re intended to appeal to people who want to see the formerly beautiful and famous brought low by aging.
When it comes to averting the eyes (and mind) from images of old people having sex, there may be some connection to the possibly universal distaste for thinking of one’s own parents (or grandparents) in sexual situations. I suppose this is to be expected when the parents have been responsible for such oppressions as toilet training. And I suppose that thinking of grandmothers as hyper-prudish seems reasonable from the perspective of the grandchildren, who can’t imagine that anyone that old was ever young, or sexy. Every generation thinks they invented sex, or at least sex with the lights on. I guess they never heard of the 60s, and Free Love, back when I was their age. Granted, not all of us had the luxury of being hippies, but we paid attention.
But back to erotica. I have an admission to make. What really got me thinking along these lines is wondering whether I’ve included too many stories about older people in my next anthology. Wondering about that, of course, makes me guilty of seeing erotica with old people as slightly taboo, too. Will readers complain? Will it affect sales? Well, screw it all. The book is Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year Volume 2—how I miss the days when it would have been titled simply Best Lesbian Erotica 2018!—and it just happened that among the stories I considered the best, there were more than usual with older protagonists, and fewer with young ones. Maybe this is a trend. Most of them were younger than what I consider old, but there are several over 40, and one lovely piece set in a geriatric psych ward.
Hmm, as I look again at my Table of Contents, there isn’t really as big a percentage of older-folks stories as I’ve been thinking there was. More indication of my own unexamined bias. It’s like the study that shows that if twenty percent of a group is female, the males will be sure that the females constitute an overwhelming majority. I’ll stop obsessing about it. You know, I think the reason I feel like there are too many of those stories is just that they’re so good, and stick in my mind.
So I guess I’ve been attacking a straw man. Or straw woman. Like beauty, taboo is in the eye of the beholder, and if I think growing old is taboo, that says more about me than about our youth-oriented, celebrity-obsessed, fat-phobic society.
Getting old is taboo in erotica. Not in the sense of being forbidden—no one will stop you from writing about characters advanced in years, and every once in a while an editor will talk a publisher into backing an anthology of stories where all the characters are over—shudder—50. Or sometimes even ust over 40. The horror! And you can occasionally place such a story in other anthologies. I’ve done it a few times myself. Yes, I admit that “taboo” is an overstatement in this context.
Still, in erotica, as in most forms of entertainment, pretty much anything goes except being physically unattractive, in terms of what’s generally considered attractive in one’s particular time and culture. In our culture, that tends to be youth-centered. Fortunately, even within a culture tastes do vary, and a good writer can make a case for one character being attractive to another even when one or both of them fall pretty far outside the norms, but most erotica seems to toe the mark of what’s commonly considered youthful movie-star looks.
Speaking of toeing the mark, I’m not very familiar with toe fetishism, although I know it exists. Do toes need to be “’cute” to be fetishized? I rather suspect not. There are certainly some exceptions to the necessity of exceptionally attractive characters in erotica, and we humans being as contrary as we are, there are probably some who fetishize dramatically ugly characters, or parts thereof. And there may be those who prefer to read about older people having sex, for various reasons, not necessarily kinky ones.
Aging is a complex issue in our society in ways that go beyond the matter of looks and therefore desirability, although those are the prime counts against it. Getting old is a challenge to the young’s sense of immortality. There seems to be a feeling that those who grow old must somehow deserve their fate. They should have known better. This attitude isn’t quite as pernicious as the one that sees poverty and ill health as the fault of those who suffer them, or possibly a just punishment from God, but the two are similar.
What set me off on this tirade isn’t the fact that I’ve somehow allowed myself to get to an age that’s considered old. I am as good as anyone else of my generation in defining “old” as some years older than wherever I am now. But I’m annoyed by the click-bait headlines I see again and again online, the ones about “So-and-so was gorgeous in such-and-such TV show back in the 70s, 80s, but you won’t believe what they look like now!” You know, the ones interspersed with “Celebrities who have to work at Regular Jobs!” and “So-and-so Lost 100 pounds and Looks Like a Model!” There seems to me to be an underlying motif of, “Ha ha, they got old!” I have to admit that I don’t click on those, so for all I know they show pictures of celebrities who have managed to stay gorgeous, but I still think they’re intended to appeal to people who want to see the formerly beautiful and famous brought low by aging.
When it comes to averting the eyes (and mind) from images of old people having sex, there may be some connection to the possibly universal distaste for thinking of one’s own parents (or grandparents) in sexual situations. I suppose this is to be expected when the parents have been responsible for such oppressions as toilet training. And I suppose that thinking of grandmothers as hyper-prudish seems reasonable from the perspective of the grandchildren, who can’t imagine that anyone that old was ever young, or sexy. Every generation thinks they invented sex, or at least sex with the lights on. I guess they never heard of the 60s, and Free Love, back when I was their age. Granted, not all of us had the luxury of being hippies, but we paid attention.
But back to erotica. I have an admission to make. What really got me thinking along these lines is wondering whether I’ve included too many stories about older people in my next anthology. Wondering about that, of course, makes me guilty of seeing erotica with old people as slightly taboo, too. Will readers complain? Will it affect sales? Well, screw it all. The book is Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year Volume 2—how I miss the days when it would have been titled simply Best Lesbian Erotica 2018!—and it just happened that among the stories I considered the best, there were more than usual with older protagonists, and fewer with young ones. Maybe this is a trend. Most of them were younger than what I consider old, but there are several over 40, and one lovely piece set in a geriatric psych ward.
Hmm, as I look again at my Table of Contents, there isn’t really as big a percentage of older-folks stories as I’ve been thinking there was. More indication of my own unexamined bias. It’s like the study that shows that if twenty percent of a group is female, the males will be sure that the females constitute an overwhelming majority. I’ll stop obsessing about it. You know, I think the reason I feel like there are too many of those stories is just that they’re so good, and stick in my mind.
So I guess I’ve been attacking a straw man. Or straw woman. Like beauty, taboo is in the eye of the beholder, and if I think growing old is taboo, that says more about me than about our youth-oriented, celebrity-obsessed, fat-phobic society.
Monday, January 9, 2017
The Truth about True Stories (#Lesbian Sex Stories #Lambda Awards #Calls for Submission # Best Lesbian Erotica)
Sacchi Green
Very soon I’ll be sending around a new call for submissions, but much to my relief, it won’t be like the one I wrote in 2012 for Wild Girls, Wild Nights: True Lesbian Sex Stories. After several years of resistance, I’d finally given in to my publishers’ plea to do an anthology of true stories. The first time they’d ever contacted me for editing, that’s what they’d wanted, but they’d put up with my reluctance through five other books, and this time, I knew, it was true stories or nothing. One of my anthos had tanked, saleswise, and I think they only kept putting up with me because that one hadn’t actually been my idea. I’d done it, with reluctance, as a favor when the boss’s wife had said a lesbian cops theme would be great (and the boss sent me a photo of the them doing a cops scene for Halloween.) It did, in fact, turn out to be a great book, and was even a finalist for a Lambda award, but apparently most folks who wanted to read lesbian cop stories didn’t want to pay for books, and I doubt that they wanted the kind of complex, well-written, non-cartoonish stories my writers provided. (Annabeth’s was truly outstanding.)
But back to Wild Girls, Wild Nights (a title I’d proposed for an adventure-themed book that was turned down) and the true stories. Yes, I keep almost saying “true” stories, but I was determined to do all I could to make the “true” part true, at least for some values of the truth. Here’s how I began my guidelines for ubmissions:
You put something of yourself into everything you write. You know you do. Now it’s time to take a deep breath, go that extra step, and write an erotic story firmly grounded in truth. Real encounters, real emotions, real sensations, real people, drawn from memory and transformed by your art into real stories as gripping as any fiction.
Some degree of poetic license—or erotic license—is all right. Memories are inevitably filtered through time and experience, and telling a story can sometimes reveal the inner truth of feelings and actions better without a precise list of actions or a verbatim account of conversations. In the heat of the moment—and I do want the very hottest moments—certain parts stand out so vividly in your mind that everything before and after blurs and must be imagined. Combining events into a shorter time span can make the overall effect more intense. Pseudonyms are fine, and even if you use your own name, you must use fictional names for any other characters in order to maintain some degree of privacy.
Then I went on to list the kinds of stories I want for any of my anthologies.
The response was wonderful, but the responsibility weighed on me. How could I claim that everything I chose was truly true? Several of the writers were familiar enough to me that I knew something about their lives and backgrounds, enough to know that their stories were, at least, plausible, and a few I knew well and was sure they were telling the truth, or close enough. Some others told me details that were convincing; one writer from Germany wrote two stories, set in different periods of her life, and told me she’d been wanting to share them for a long time but hadn’t felt she could trust anyone before me to do them justice. Okay, I’m a sucker for that sort of flattery. In any case, I was reasonably sure that each story was “grounded in real life.” There was another writer, too, with more than one story worth telling—Giselle might know something about that. In both cases they used pseudonyms for at least one of their pieces;
I was even more sure after the book came out and I organized a “blog tour” for each writer to discuss her story. In fact I was amazed at what came to light. There was a lovely story about a bittersweet romance between a mid-30s-ish woman going back to college to earn a degree in education, and a very young student who pursued her. The author revealed in her blog that she herself had been the younger girl, long ago, and she’d reversed their roles to tell the story from the viewpoint of the older woman, the age she herself is now. True enough for me. And there was the young writer who had trespassed into her older partner’s computer, misunderstood a search item she’d found, and ended up being firmly spanked—and enjoyed it so much that as soon as she could she went online to tell her close friends about it. I believed her. There were other writers who made me realize that their stories were even more true than I had thought they were, and several who had been wanting a way to tell their stories (under pseudonyms,) including one who didn’t want her grown kids to know she’d written it.
The best story-about-the-story, though, concerns a submission that I didn’t accept at first because I really couldn’t believe it. There was a humorous orgy party involved, and animal-ear hats, and it took place in the San Francisco area. I had to drop one story I’d accepted (co-written by a couple who’d met recently, and broke up soon afterward) so the publisher asked if I had something else to fill in with. I explained my doubts about the orgy story, sent it in—and discovered that several of the young staff members in the publisher’s office (in Berkeley) had actually heard about that party, and it was, in fact, pretty much true. How could I have doubted it?
So that’s my true story about wrangling true stories for an anthology (which, in fact, won that year’s Lambda Award for lesbian erotica.) I don’t plan on doing that kind of thing ever again, but one never knows. Meanwhile, I do have a new anthology in the works—Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year Volume 2 (actually BLE 2017, but they’ve tweaked the title) with my call for submissions coming up soon, but unless I get some submissions within the next two weeks, I don’t think I can work that into the upcoming What Are You Reading topic. Sad.
Very soon I’ll be sending around a new call for submissions, but much to my relief, it won’t be like the one I wrote in 2012 for Wild Girls, Wild Nights: True Lesbian Sex Stories. After several years of resistance, I’d finally given in to my publishers’ plea to do an anthology of true stories. The first time they’d ever contacted me for editing, that’s what they’d wanted, but they’d put up with my reluctance through five other books, and this time, I knew, it was true stories or nothing. One of my anthos had tanked, saleswise, and I think they only kept putting up with me because that one hadn’t actually been my idea. I’d done it, with reluctance, as a favor when the boss’s wife had said a lesbian cops theme would be great (and the boss sent me a photo of the them doing a cops scene for Halloween.) It did, in fact, turn out to be a great book, and was even a finalist for a Lambda award, but apparently most folks who wanted to read lesbian cop stories didn’t want to pay for books, and I doubt that they wanted the kind of complex, well-written, non-cartoonish stories my writers provided. (Annabeth’s was truly outstanding.)
But back to Wild Girls, Wild Nights (a title I’d proposed for an adventure-themed book that was turned down) and the true stories. Yes, I keep almost saying “true” stories, but I was determined to do all I could to make the “true” part true, at least for some values of the truth. Here’s how I began my guidelines for ubmissions:
You put something of yourself into everything you write. You know you do. Now it’s time to take a deep breath, go that extra step, and write an erotic story firmly grounded in truth. Real encounters, real emotions, real sensations, real people, drawn from memory and transformed by your art into real stories as gripping as any fiction.
Some degree of poetic license—or erotic license—is all right. Memories are inevitably filtered through time and experience, and telling a story can sometimes reveal the inner truth of feelings and actions better without a precise list of actions or a verbatim account of conversations. In the heat of the moment—and I do want the very hottest moments—certain parts stand out so vividly in your mind that everything before and after blurs and must be imagined. Combining events into a shorter time span can make the overall effect more intense. Pseudonyms are fine, and even if you use your own name, you must use fictional names for any other characters in order to maintain some degree of privacy.
Then I went on to list the kinds of stories I want for any of my anthologies.
The response was wonderful, but the responsibility weighed on me. How could I claim that everything I chose was truly true? Several of the writers were familiar enough to me that I knew something about their lives and backgrounds, enough to know that their stories were, at least, plausible, and a few I knew well and was sure they were telling the truth, or close enough. Some others told me details that were convincing; one writer from Germany wrote two stories, set in different periods of her life, and told me she’d been wanting to share them for a long time but hadn’t felt she could trust anyone before me to do them justice. Okay, I’m a sucker for that sort of flattery. In any case, I was reasonably sure that each story was “grounded in real life.” There was another writer, too, with more than one story worth telling—Giselle might know something about that. In both cases they used pseudonyms for at least one of their pieces;
I was even more sure after the book came out and I organized a “blog tour” for each writer to discuss her story. In fact I was amazed at what came to light. There was a lovely story about a bittersweet romance between a mid-30s-ish woman going back to college to earn a degree in education, and a very young student who pursued her. The author revealed in her blog that she herself had been the younger girl, long ago, and she’d reversed their roles to tell the story from the viewpoint of the older woman, the age she herself is now. True enough for me. And there was the young writer who had trespassed into her older partner’s computer, misunderstood a search item she’d found, and ended up being firmly spanked—and enjoyed it so much that as soon as she could she went online to tell her close friends about it. I believed her. There were other writers who made me realize that their stories were even more true than I had thought they were, and several who had been wanting a way to tell their stories (under pseudonyms,) including one who didn’t want her grown kids to know she’d written it.
The best story-about-the-story, though, concerns a submission that I didn’t accept at first because I really couldn’t believe it. There was a humorous orgy party involved, and animal-ear hats, and it took place in the San Francisco area. I had to drop one story I’d accepted (co-written by a couple who’d met recently, and broke up soon afterward) so the publisher asked if I had something else to fill in with. I explained my doubts about the orgy story, sent it in—and discovered that several of the young staff members in the publisher’s office (in Berkeley) had actually heard about that party, and it was, in fact, pretty much true. How could I have doubted it?
So that’s my true story about wrangling true stories for an anthology (which, in fact, won that year’s Lambda Award for lesbian erotica.) I don’t plan on doing that kind of thing ever again, but one never knows. Meanwhile, I do have a new anthology in the works—Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year Volume 2 (actually BLE 2017, but they’ve tweaked the title) with my call for submissions coming up soon, but unless I get some submissions within the next two weeks, I don’t think I can work that into the upcoming What Are You Reading topic. Sad.
Monday, November 2, 2015
Why Is Infidelity All About Sex?
Sacchi Green
“Oh Come All Ye Faithful.” “Faith of Our Fathers.” “Semper Fidelis.” “Keeping Faith.” “Full Faith and Credit.” The notion of “faith” generally involves commitment to religion, or patriotism, or trustworthiness. But “unfaithful” and “infidelity” always seem to refer to matters of sex, specifically sex outside of an existing marriage. The standard (but not legally required) marriage vows include “forsaking all others” in the list of promises, which is understood to refer to sex, but why do we reserve “infidelity” for sexual transgressions even though failures of the vows to love, comfort, honor, and keep, for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, may be even more harmful to one or another partner?
Just a rhetorical question. Never mind. We all know that anything that can possibly be sex-centered will be sex-centered.
I don’t suppose there’s any way to tell whether the notion of sex-exclusivity began when our pre-human ancestors figured out how babies are made and the males wanted to be sure which kids were their own—all kinds of variations between monogamy and non-monogamy can be observed in other species with whom we share this earth—but until fairly recently women were more restricted than men, and even now some major cultures allow multiple wives or concubines, as long a man can afford them. The wives in such cases are, of course, severely restricted.
Most of us would agree, I think, that extramarital sex with the willing permission of one’s spouse isn’t exactly infidelity. The “willing” part is the catch. Sex is so central to relationships in our culture, so tied into our sense of self-worth, that for a partner to have sex with someone else, to seem to prefer someone else for sex, however briefly, feels like rejection. If it’s not all that brief, a fear of abandonment is likely to enter into it. The emotional pain isn’t about sex itself, but about what it’s come to signify.
Full disclosure—well, more like partial disclosure. Several years ago, when I was well past the age when procreation entered into it, I went a bit wild. I caused someone emotional pain and fear of abandonment, even though there was no actual break. I dabbled in the world of kink, joining a club (more as a voyeur than anything else) where everything was theoretically okay as long as you called it “play.” It seemed to work for some people I knew, but it also, eventually and painfully, tore apart some couples I counted as friends. When no one felt devalued, it worked; when someone did feel threatened or neglected, it didn’t work. Those feelings were what counted, more than whatever sex occurred. I did learn a great deal of value to an erotica writer, but it wasn’t my personal cup of tea, and after a while I moved on, or away, or maybe back, whatever way you look at it.
We’ve been discussing whether readers of erotica should be forewarned when a story involves infidelity. I haven’t made up my mind. In general I’m against warning readers about much of anything, but I do understand that infidelity is a hot button for people who like to immerse themselves in a story’s characters without too much risk of emotional pain. I suppose a writer whose story claims to be “erotic romance” might be wise to warn of infidelity issues, while outright “erotica” shouldn’t require that. On the other hand, for erotica, where themes perceived as transgressive can be a plus, a hint of infidelity might be just the thing to hook a reader.
I’m editing the next volume of Best Lesbian Erotica (now titled Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year for possibly misguided reasons), and I’m expecting some flack about a story I chose that included infidelity. It’s beautifully written, by one of the very best authors in the business, but quite a few readers are going to have a hard time sympathizing with the main character who just wanted to try it once, to see what being with someone else was like. Even if, or maybe especially if, they’ve felt that way themselves. But am I going to warn readers? Hell no. Not unless they read it here, at least. Don't tell anybody, okay?
“Oh Come All Ye Faithful.” “Faith of Our Fathers.” “Semper Fidelis.” “Keeping Faith.” “Full Faith and Credit.” The notion of “faith” generally involves commitment to religion, or patriotism, or trustworthiness. But “unfaithful” and “infidelity” always seem to refer to matters of sex, specifically sex outside of an existing marriage. The standard (but not legally required) marriage vows include “forsaking all others” in the list of promises, which is understood to refer to sex, but why do we reserve “infidelity” for sexual transgressions even though failures of the vows to love, comfort, honor, and keep, for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, may be even more harmful to one or another partner?
Just a rhetorical question. Never mind. We all know that anything that can possibly be sex-centered will be sex-centered.
I don’t suppose there’s any way to tell whether the notion of sex-exclusivity began when our pre-human ancestors figured out how babies are made and the males wanted to be sure which kids were their own—all kinds of variations between monogamy and non-monogamy can be observed in other species with whom we share this earth—but until fairly recently women were more restricted than men, and even now some major cultures allow multiple wives or concubines, as long a man can afford them. The wives in such cases are, of course, severely restricted.
Most of us would agree, I think, that extramarital sex with the willing permission of one’s spouse isn’t exactly infidelity. The “willing” part is the catch. Sex is so central to relationships in our culture, so tied into our sense of self-worth, that for a partner to have sex with someone else, to seem to prefer someone else for sex, however briefly, feels like rejection. If it’s not all that brief, a fear of abandonment is likely to enter into it. The emotional pain isn’t about sex itself, but about what it’s come to signify.
Full disclosure—well, more like partial disclosure. Several years ago, when I was well past the age when procreation entered into it, I went a bit wild. I caused someone emotional pain and fear of abandonment, even though there was no actual break. I dabbled in the world of kink, joining a club (more as a voyeur than anything else) where everything was theoretically okay as long as you called it “play.” It seemed to work for some people I knew, but it also, eventually and painfully, tore apart some couples I counted as friends. When no one felt devalued, it worked; when someone did feel threatened or neglected, it didn’t work. Those feelings were what counted, more than whatever sex occurred. I did learn a great deal of value to an erotica writer, but it wasn’t my personal cup of tea, and after a while I moved on, or away, or maybe back, whatever way you look at it.
We’ve been discussing whether readers of erotica should be forewarned when a story involves infidelity. I haven’t made up my mind. In general I’m against warning readers about much of anything, but I do understand that infidelity is a hot button for people who like to immerse themselves in a story’s characters without too much risk of emotional pain. I suppose a writer whose story claims to be “erotic romance” might be wise to warn of infidelity issues, while outright “erotica” shouldn’t require that. On the other hand, for erotica, where themes perceived as transgressive can be a plus, a hint of infidelity might be just the thing to hook a reader.
I’m editing the next volume of Best Lesbian Erotica (now titled Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year for possibly misguided reasons), and I’m expecting some flack about a story I chose that included infidelity. It’s beautifully written, by one of the very best authors in the business, but quite a few readers are going to have a hard time sympathizing with the main character who just wanted to try it once, to see what being with someone else was like. Even if, or maybe especially if, they’ve felt that way themselves. But am I going to warn readers? Hell no. Not unless they read it here, at least. Don't tell anybody, okay?
Monday, September 7, 2015
Erotic Addiction
Sacchi Green
Why write erotica? Well, my best guess as to why I do it is that I’m a short-story writer by nature, and pretty much the only markets for short stories are in the genres of erotica or science fiction/fantasy/speculative fiction (which is where I got my start, and where I still dabble from time to time.) Even my sf/f stories tended to have an erotic subtext, so when I discovered that there were markets for specifically erotic short stories I was off and running.
True as the above may be, I realize that we’ve been discussing erotica on more complex or abstract levels that have nothing to do with short stories versus novels, and raise many more questions than we can find answers for. Let’s skip over the question of “Why write fiction at all?” and move on to “Why write stories with explicit sex scenes?” Which, of course, raises further questions of how much sex a story needs to qualify as erotica, whether a story with romance gives up any claim to being erotica no matter how much sex it includes, and, more important from a literary point of view (if one cares about such things), whether the sex is “gratuitous” if the story would be complete without it.
I’m of the opinion that explicit sex is a great revealer of character and mood and is often essential to the plot or story arc, but even when it's not, it adds color and intensity. Still, as an anthology editor, I prefer erotic fiction that’s about something besides sex, which usually means that the sex itself is about something besides sex. (Outstanding writing, of course, trumps all other concerns.) I’ve edited a dozen anthologies marketed as erotica, and, while I’ll freely admit that not all of the stories would qualify as erotica rather than erotic romance to real sticklers when it comes to sexual content, I’ve never had any complaints on that score that I know of. Maybe working in the sub-niche of lesbian fiction helps—I’ve had reviewers rave about how kinky a book is when I didn’t think there was much that was all that edgy in that particular book. I guess just having LGBT themes is enough to qualify as kinky to some folks. In fact, way back when I was writing sf/f I had an editor turn down a story because it was “porn”, when there was almost no actual sex portrayed (except, apparently, in his own mind when he read it.) To be fair, these days the better sf/f publications are begging for “diversity”.
My editorial choices these days are greatly influenced by originality, maybe to the detriment of the sexual content. Okay, I’m getting jaded, and I have to remind myself to use at least a few stories (as long as they’re well-written) that will appeal to new readers who haven’t seen it all before. Fortunately I see more and more writers with originality and skill to offset the many beginners who think they should write things just like what they’ve read for free online. For Best Lesbian Erotica 2016 I’ve chosen some work more because it interested me than because I expect it to turn readers on, and I may well get complaints. One story set in a London bomb shelter during WWII takes a necessarily long time to get to the necessarily somewhat muted sex. In another, the streets of Liverpool in 1961 spawn a rock band of rebels, with a whole lot more story than sex, but what there is, is choice. Then we have Miss Scarlet from Clue hustling a female cop in the New York subway system, also with a great deal of story before getting down to fucking. Outstanding stories, as are the rest, and sexy. But a few may be erotica mostly because I say they are. (Well, the Miss Scarlet one is reprint, so clearly others accept it as erotica, too, and it's had rave reviews.)
Looking at things from the “gratuitous” point of view, some of the pieces I chose would be excellent as stories without the sex being as explicit, but the sex makes them even better. I don’t have final approval yet from the new Cleis publisher, and I have no way yet to judge her taste, or that of the new owners, so the contents may change. That’s the way it goes. The ground, as the other bloggers here have pointed out, is shifting under our feet.
I’ll probably keep on writing and editing stories that pass as erotica, whether or not they sell much, but now I’m wondering how much of my own writing would be just as well off without the explicit sex. Here’s an experiment. My piece “The Outside Edge”, an Olympic figure skating story, was published in my first anthology for Cleis Press, Girl Crazy, and reprinted in Best Lesbian Romance 2010 after some debate about whether it might be too erotic for romance. It’s heavy on the story aspect, so I’m wondering if the actual sex scenes are essential, or gratuitous. I’ve posted some of them here before, and probably linked to the whole story, but I’ll repeat myself now, with just a taste and then a link to the whole story, free on my personal blog. It occurs to me now that I should have used a different example, but it’s too late, and I’m too tired.
Here’s the taste, by no means the only sex scene. Try skipping the parts in brackets. Does the story make just as much sense? Is it better with or without the sex?
__________
Medaling as a long shot had condemned me to a TV interview. The reporter kept her comments to the usual inanities, except for a somewhat suggestive, “That was quite some program!”
“If you liked that, don’t miss the exhibition tomorrow,” I said to her, and to whatever segment of the world watches these things. When I added that I was quitting competition to pursue my own “artistic goals,” she flashed her white teeth and wished me luck, and then, microphone set aside and camera off, leaned close for a moment to lay a hand on my arm. “Nice costume, but I’ll bet you’ll be glad to get it off.”
Suli was right on it, her own sharp teeth flashing and her long nails digging into my sleeve. The reporter snatched her hand back just in time. “Don’t worry,” Suli purred, “I’ve got all that covered.”
Don’t expose yourself like that! Don’t let me drag you down! But I couldn’t say it, and I knew Suli was in no mood to listen.
I was too tired, anyway, wanting nothing more than to strip off the unitard and never squirm into one again, but Suli wouldn’t let me change in the locker room. Once I saw the gleam of metal she flashed in her open shoulder bag—so much for security at the Games!—I followed her out and back to our room with no regret for the parties we were missing.
The instant the door clicked shut behind us she had the knife all the way out of its leather sheath. “Take off that medal,” she growled, doing a knockout job of sounding menacing. “The rest is mine.”
I set the bronze medal on the bedside table, flopped backward onto the bed, and spread my arms and legs wide. “Use it or lose it,” I said, then gasped at the touch of the hilt against my throat.
“Don’t move,” she ordered, crouching over me, her hair brushing my chest. I lay frozen, not a muscle twitching, although my flesh shrank reflexively from the cold blade when she sat back on her haunches and slit the stretchy unitard at the juncture of thigh and crotch.
[[[“Been sweating, haven’t we,” she crooned, slicing away until the fabric gaped like a hungry mouth, showing my skin pale beneath. “But it’s not all sweat, is it?” Her cool hand slid inside to fondle my slippery folds. It certainly wasn’t all sweat.
Her moves were a blend of ritual and raw sex. The steel flat against my inner thigh sent tongues of icy flame stabbing deep into my cunt.]]]
The keen edge drawn along my belly and breastbone seemed to split my old body and release a new one, though only a few light pricks drew blood. The rip of the fabric parting under Suli’s knife and hands and, eventually, teeth, was like the rending of bonds that had confined me all my life.
[[[Then Suli’s warm mouth captured my clit. The trancelike ritual vanished abruptly in a fierce, urgent wave of right here, right now, right NOW NOW NO-O-W-W-W-W! Followed, with hardly a pause to recharge, by further waves impelled by her teasing tongue and penetrating fingers until I was completely out of breath and wrung out.
“I thought I was supposed to be storing up energy,” I told her, when I could talk at all.
“Jude, you’re pumping out enough pheromones to melt ice,” Suli said, “and I’m not ice!”
It turned out that I wasn’t all that wrung out, after all, and if I couldn’t talk, it was only because Suli was straddling my face, and my mouth was most gloriously, and busily, full.]]]
The chill kiss of the blade lingered on my skin the next day, along with the heat of Suli’s touch.
__________
After trying the test myself, I have to finally admit why I write erotica. I'm addicted. I write it because I love to do it. Because that’s what I write, where my characters want me to take them, what makes the writing worthwhile, and maybe, just once in awhile, makes the prose sing, even if I’m the only one who can hear the music.
But I still haven’t learned what constitutes dirty erotica, much less filthy, and they say that’s what sells these days.
For the entire story “The Outside Edge”: http://sacchi-green.blogspot.com/2014/02/free-lesbian-ice-skating-erotica.html
Why write erotica? Well, my best guess as to why I do it is that I’m a short-story writer by nature, and pretty much the only markets for short stories are in the genres of erotica or science fiction/fantasy/speculative fiction (which is where I got my start, and where I still dabble from time to time.) Even my sf/f stories tended to have an erotic subtext, so when I discovered that there were markets for specifically erotic short stories I was off and running.
True as the above may be, I realize that we’ve been discussing erotica on more complex or abstract levels that have nothing to do with short stories versus novels, and raise many more questions than we can find answers for. Let’s skip over the question of “Why write fiction at all?” and move on to “Why write stories with explicit sex scenes?” Which, of course, raises further questions of how much sex a story needs to qualify as erotica, whether a story with romance gives up any claim to being erotica no matter how much sex it includes, and, more important from a literary point of view (if one cares about such things), whether the sex is “gratuitous” if the story would be complete without it.
I’m of the opinion that explicit sex is a great revealer of character and mood and is often essential to the plot or story arc, but even when it's not, it adds color and intensity. Still, as an anthology editor, I prefer erotic fiction that’s about something besides sex, which usually means that the sex itself is about something besides sex. (Outstanding writing, of course, trumps all other concerns.) I’ve edited a dozen anthologies marketed as erotica, and, while I’ll freely admit that not all of the stories would qualify as erotica rather than erotic romance to real sticklers when it comes to sexual content, I’ve never had any complaints on that score that I know of. Maybe working in the sub-niche of lesbian fiction helps—I’ve had reviewers rave about how kinky a book is when I didn’t think there was much that was all that edgy in that particular book. I guess just having LGBT themes is enough to qualify as kinky to some folks. In fact, way back when I was writing sf/f I had an editor turn down a story because it was “porn”, when there was almost no actual sex portrayed (except, apparently, in his own mind when he read it.) To be fair, these days the better sf/f publications are begging for “diversity”.
My editorial choices these days are greatly influenced by originality, maybe to the detriment of the sexual content. Okay, I’m getting jaded, and I have to remind myself to use at least a few stories (as long as they’re well-written) that will appeal to new readers who haven’t seen it all before. Fortunately I see more and more writers with originality and skill to offset the many beginners who think they should write things just like what they’ve read for free online. For Best Lesbian Erotica 2016 I’ve chosen some work more because it interested me than because I expect it to turn readers on, and I may well get complaints. One story set in a London bomb shelter during WWII takes a necessarily long time to get to the necessarily somewhat muted sex. In another, the streets of Liverpool in 1961 spawn a rock band of rebels, with a whole lot more story than sex, but what there is, is choice. Then we have Miss Scarlet from Clue hustling a female cop in the New York subway system, also with a great deal of story before getting down to fucking. Outstanding stories, as are the rest, and sexy. But a few may be erotica mostly because I say they are. (Well, the Miss Scarlet one is reprint, so clearly others accept it as erotica, too, and it's had rave reviews.)
Looking at things from the “gratuitous” point of view, some of the pieces I chose would be excellent as stories without the sex being as explicit, but the sex makes them even better. I don’t have final approval yet from the new Cleis publisher, and I have no way yet to judge her taste, or that of the new owners, so the contents may change. That’s the way it goes. The ground, as the other bloggers here have pointed out, is shifting under our feet.
I’ll probably keep on writing and editing stories that pass as erotica, whether or not they sell much, but now I’m wondering how much of my own writing would be just as well off without the explicit sex. Here’s an experiment. My piece “The Outside Edge”, an Olympic figure skating story, was published in my first anthology for Cleis Press, Girl Crazy, and reprinted in Best Lesbian Romance 2010 after some debate about whether it might be too erotic for romance. It’s heavy on the story aspect, so I’m wondering if the actual sex scenes are essential, or gratuitous. I’ve posted some of them here before, and probably linked to the whole story, but I’ll repeat myself now, with just a taste and then a link to the whole story, free on my personal blog. It occurs to me now that I should have used a different example, but it’s too late, and I’m too tired.
Here’s the taste, by no means the only sex scene. Try skipping the parts in brackets. Does the story make just as much sense? Is it better with or without the sex?
__________
Medaling as a long shot had condemned me to a TV interview. The reporter kept her comments to the usual inanities, except for a somewhat suggestive, “That was quite some program!”
“If you liked that, don’t miss the exhibition tomorrow,” I said to her, and to whatever segment of the world watches these things. When I added that I was quitting competition to pursue my own “artistic goals,” she flashed her white teeth and wished me luck, and then, microphone set aside and camera off, leaned close for a moment to lay a hand on my arm. “Nice costume, but I’ll bet you’ll be glad to get it off.”
Suli was right on it, her own sharp teeth flashing and her long nails digging into my sleeve. The reporter snatched her hand back just in time. “Don’t worry,” Suli purred, “I’ve got all that covered.”
Don’t expose yourself like that! Don’t let me drag you down! But I couldn’t say it, and I knew Suli was in no mood to listen.
I was too tired, anyway, wanting nothing more than to strip off the unitard and never squirm into one again, but Suli wouldn’t let me change in the locker room. Once I saw the gleam of metal she flashed in her open shoulder bag—so much for security at the Games!—I followed her out and back to our room with no regret for the parties we were missing.
The instant the door clicked shut behind us she had the knife all the way out of its leather sheath. “Take off that medal,” she growled, doing a knockout job of sounding menacing. “The rest is mine.”
I set the bronze medal on the bedside table, flopped backward onto the bed, and spread my arms and legs wide. “Use it or lose it,” I said, then gasped at the touch of the hilt against my throat.
“Don’t move,” she ordered, crouching over me, her hair brushing my chest. I lay frozen, not a muscle twitching, although my flesh shrank reflexively from the cold blade when she sat back on her haunches and slit the stretchy unitard at the juncture of thigh and crotch.
[[[“Been sweating, haven’t we,” she crooned, slicing away until the fabric gaped like a hungry mouth, showing my skin pale beneath. “But it’s not all sweat, is it?” Her cool hand slid inside to fondle my slippery folds. It certainly wasn’t all sweat.
Her moves were a blend of ritual and raw sex. The steel flat against my inner thigh sent tongues of icy flame stabbing deep into my cunt.]]]
The keen edge drawn along my belly and breastbone seemed to split my old body and release a new one, though only a few light pricks drew blood. The rip of the fabric parting under Suli’s knife and hands and, eventually, teeth, was like the rending of bonds that had confined me all my life.
[[[Then Suli’s warm mouth captured my clit. The trancelike ritual vanished abruptly in a fierce, urgent wave of right here, right now, right NOW NOW NO-O-W-W-W-W! Followed, with hardly a pause to recharge, by further waves impelled by her teasing tongue and penetrating fingers until I was completely out of breath and wrung out.
“I thought I was supposed to be storing up energy,” I told her, when I could talk at all.
“Jude, you’re pumping out enough pheromones to melt ice,” Suli said, “and I’m not ice!”
It turned out that I wasn’t all that wrung out, after all, and if I couldn’t talk, it was only because Suli was straddling my face, and my mouth was most gloriously, and busily, full.]]]
The chill kiss of the blade lingered on my skin the next day, along with the heat of Suli’s touch.
__________
After trying the test myself, I have to finally admit why I write erotica. I'm addicted. I write it because I love to do it. Because that’s what I write, where my characters want me to take them, what makes the writing worthwhile, and maybe, just once in awhile, makes the prose sing, even if I’m the only one who can hear the music.
But I still haven’t learned what constitutes dirty erotica, much less filthy, and they say that’s what sells these days.
For the entire story “The Outside Edge”: http://sacchi-green.blogspot.com/2014/02/free-lesbian-ice-skating-erotica.html
Monday, May 4, 2015
Over the Hill on the Slippery Slope
Sacchi Green
When I was in college, very long ago, a respected professor said that my work was a “tour de force” even though it didn’t really have anything to say. That was perfectly true. It was many years before I got down to serious attempts at writing for publication (well, not counting that one early sale to a “true confessions” magazine, and that time I did have something to say, however mundane.)
Even though it sometimes seems as though I only began writing yesterday, I was, in fact, writing for publication so long ago that I had to use a typewriter, and mail my submissions on paper, including a stamped, self-addressed envelope so that the editor/publisher could mail back a rejection or rare acceptance. If we wanted our actual manuscripts returned, we had to send a bigger envelope with the proper postage. It’s a good thing we’d progressed a bit past the chiseling words in stone era, or the cost of postage would have been astronomical.
In any case, my early stories were mostly fantasy, with a little science fiction tossed in, and here we discuss erotica, so it makes the most sense to consider how my erotica writing has changed over the years.
My general feeling is that I plateaued several years ago, and may even be sliding downhill. My best ideas may have been used up, or even overused. When I see a market I’d like to write for, I find myself going back to characters from previous stories and giving them sequels of sorts, or even prequels. In a couple of cases I’ve even written entire stories that filled in parts of previous stories that I’d just mentioned in passing the first time because I had so much more to say. Maybe that’s my subconscious trying to make up for the fact that I don’t write novels, but mostly it’s laziness, or, even worse, a failure of the imagination.
I do think my writing has changed over the years. The technical changes came pretty early, as feedback from editors pointed out my beginner’s faults such as overuse of ellipses, and repeating words too often—“Do you really need to say ‘I’ five time in one paragraph?” and such glaring lapses. As an editor now myself, I pass along this acquired wisdom. But I’ve changed in other less definable ways. When I made my first sale to Best Lesbian Erotica, very nearly my first foray into erotica, the editor phoned me and told me that she loved my story because it was so different from what she usually saw. She was actually calling me about making some major changes, which were justified, but for a couple of years I kept getting the “so different” reaction from other editors. I think this was mostly because I’d started out in fantasy and science fiction, where story structure and plot were absolutely necessary. These days, as an editor, I look for the “different” work, too, but so much more erotica has been written by now, and so many good writers have been doing it, that the bar is set much higher. On the other hand, so many not-yet-good writers have been flooding the genre with work that seems intent on perpetuating the worst banalities of what they read that the bar seems to be set lower, as well. A conundrum.
In any case, (uh oh, I used that phrase three paragraphs upstream!) I think my best writing, or at least my best ideas, may be in the past. Once in a while sparks will fly, but they may not be as bright. Or original.
I’ve been puzzling over what examples to use. It’s not that I can’t juggle the words well enough to keep them spinning in the air, but that they don’t say anything new. Well, the best thing I can think of the moment is to show you a bit of a story I wrote back in, oh, 2001, fourteen years ago, and then a bit of one I wrote just last year that filled in a part I’d passed over in the first one.
__________
Bull Rider [This first part is just included because it’s my very favorite piece to read out loud for an audience.]
Amsterdam.
Am-ster-god-fucking-damn!
Sin City of the 70's, still sizzling in the 80's. Cheap pot you could smoke in the coffeehouses, but that's not what lit my fire. Sex shows and leather-toy shops? Coming a whole lot closer; but what really ignited a slow burn low in my Levis were stories of the working girls displaying their wares behind lace-curtained windows. Something about the dissonance between elegance and raunch struck a chord. "Fine old buildings," ice-maiden Anneke had told some of the Australian riders, with her slight, Mona Lisa smile and a sidelong glance at me. "Many visitors tour the Red Light district just to view the...architecture."
[Quite a bit snipped]
"On the house, Honey." Her nametag said "Margaretha," but her accent said New York. "You look like you might liven this place up. Ever ride one of those?"
I followed the jerk of her head. Through a wide archway I saw, rising above the sawdust on the floor like some futuristic mushroom, a mechanical bull just like the one Travolta and Winger rode in Urban Cowboy.
I wiped beer foam from my mouth. "You mean, does my ass live up to the advertising of my Levis? Lady, you have no idea."
"Don't bet on it, darlin'." Her assessing look assured me that one way or another, a good time could definitely be had. Much as I appreciate older women, though—hell, one saved me from fratricide—my hopes for something else grew. If it wasn't the police she'd called, who on this continent but Anneke would have described me to her?
"Yeah," I said, "I've ridden those, and the snorting, stomping, shitting versions too. For another beer and some of those hefty pretzels, I'd be glad to demonstrate."
"Wait a while." She refilled my stein and slid me a bowl of pretzels and cheese-flavored breadsticks, and I did my best not to stuff myself. Some things are better on a less-than-full stomach. Bull riding is only one of them.
"So, where are you from, Toby?" she asked, chatting me up while keeping a close eye on the door.
"Montana." I definitely hadn't told her my name.
"They let women ride bulls in rodeos there?"
"Not yet. Not officially. Except at small local shindigs where anything goes." I paid close attention to my beer and pretzels, not wanting to talk much about it. But there was no way I could keep from remembering the surge of wild triumph when I outrode them all, even my brother Ted. The pounding of my blood—the pressure building until I had to explode or die—and the revelation that, to achieve explosion, I needed to wrap myself around Cindy's full, smooth curves.
Back when we were twelve, Cindy hadn't minded a little mutual exploration. She'd been away for a few years, though, and this time, as I tried to pull her close, she twisted loose and ran around the grandstand to throw herself on Ted. Another revelation, that life was a bitch, seared me. No matter how much I could work like a man, even beat the men at their own games, their rewards were officially off-limits to me.
I was young and naive, and the shock filled me with rage. I leapt for my brother, and only the intervention of Miss Violet Montez, sultry lead singer for the intermission entertainment act, kept me from killing him.
"Hey, Tigrina, come with me." She pressed herself against me as Ted struggled to get up. "I have what you need. And what you don't even know you need." And she surely did, or close enough.
When I rode back to the ranch at daybreak, too drained to sort out the remnants of pleasure and pain and smoldering resentment, Daddy was waiting in the barn. He couldn't quite meet my eyes. "Looks like maybe you'd better go East to school the way your Mama always wanted."
__________
Now for the newer story, filling in that particular interlude.
The Bull Rider and the Bull Whip
“Let me handle her, boys. This calls for a woman’s touch.”
The calloused cowboy hands trying to hold me back dropped away. Slender satin-clad arms wrapped around me, long dark hair smelling of sweet lemons brushed my cheeks, and my face was pressed against a scarlet blouse that barely covered the peaks of a magnificent pair of breasts. I had the sense to stop struggling.
“Come along with me now, Tigrina,” Miss Violet Montez, lead singer of the intermission entertainment act, murmured into my ear. “I know what you need. And what you don't even know you need."
And, as it turned out, she surely did.
Her trailer was dented and cramped, but I saw right away that it had a narrow built-in bed. She saw me eyeing it.
“Not yet.” Her voice turned stern. “Wrangling a bull is one thing. Treating a lady right is something else. Especially your first time.”
Well, there wasn’t much I could say to that. In fact, I couldn’t think of anything to say, and, while I surely knew some things I’d like to do, I didn’t know how to go about them with a gorgeous worldly woman like Miss Violet Montez. I’d seen her before at rodeos and such-like gatherings, and fantasized a bit like I did about movie stars and photos in the kind of magazines cowboys tucked under their mattresses in the bunkhouse, but never imagined I’d get this close. “Yes Ma’am,” I said, trying to sound polite with just a hint of cocky, but it didn’t come out right.
“You sit down in that folding chair and don’t stir while I change into something more comfortable.” I perked right up at that, but then she added, “and while you wait, give some thought as to whether you want things sweet, spicy, or downright nasty.”
I knew my preference, even though I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant, but I’d got my brain working enough to know the right answer. “Whatever a lovely lady like you wants is what I want, too.”
“We’ll just see about that.” She scooped up some clothes from the foot of the bed and edged into the tiny bathroom, leaving the door open. I knew better than to get up from my chair, but I did crane my neck to see what I could see. It wasn’t much.
The low-necked satin blouse sailed out through the bathroom door, followed by her voice. “Never came across a girl bull rider before in a regular rodeo. Things must be changing for the better.”
"Not yet,” I admitted. “Not officially. Except at small local shindigs where anything goes." And where my dad was the biggest rancher around and chief sponsor of the rodeo association, but I didn’t say that.
Her short black satin skirt with rows of gold spangles followed the blouse, and so did her high-heeled sparkly cowgirl boots and a pair of nylon pantyhose. I wriggled in the chair to see if I could hook that last with my foot, with no luck, but I did get a glimpse of a bare shoulder through the door.
“Well, you can sure handle a bucking bull, but you need to work on self-control, ” she said over that shoulder. “And it remains to be seen how much else you can handle.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” It seemed like the safest thing to say. Now I could see that she was shrugging into a blue-checked shirt, which didn’t fit much with my hopeful notions of “something more comfortable.”
I looked idly around the trailer. It was dented and shabby, but with colorful pictures on the walls, mostly old rodeo posters, and some fancy duds hanging on hooks, along with…
I only just caught myself from bolting straight up. On one hook, coiled neat as a rattlesnake, hung one of the longest bullwhips I’d ever seen. I looked wildly around again at the posters, and there it was, in a corner of what looked like the oldest one: “Miss Violet Montez, Queen of the Bullwhip.”
__________
Well, I don’t think I made any particular point here. The character from the first story is strong enough to carry the last one, and in both cases I did have quite a bit to say. The idea carries through, but it was born a long time ago. It’s harder these days to come up with new ones.
Or maybe I should just buckle down and write novels with my favorite characters.
[Bull Rider was originally published in the anthology Body Check from Alyson Books in about 2002, reprinted in Best Lesbian Erotica 2003 from Cleis Press, and reprinted a few more times. The Bull Rider and the Bull Whip was originally published in She Who Must Be Obeyed from Lethe Press and reprinted in Best Lesbian Erotica 2015.]
When I was in college, very long ago, a respected professor said that my work was a “tour de force” even though it didn’t really have anything to say. That was perfectly true. It was many years before I got down to serious attempts at writing for publication (well, not counting that one early sale to a “true confessions” magazine, and that time I did have something to say, however mundane.)
Even though it sometimes seems as though I only began writing yesterday, I was, in fact, writing for publication so long ago that I had to use a typewriter, and mail my submissions on paper, including a stamped, self-addressed envelope so that the editor/publisher could mail back a rejection or rare acceptance. If we wanted our actual manuscripts returned, we had to send a bigger envelope with the proper postage. It’s a good thing we’d progressed a bit past the chiseling words in stone era, or the cost of postage would have been astronomical.
In any case, my early stories were mostly fantasy, with a little science fiction tossed in, and here we discuss erotica, so it makes the most sense to consider how my erotica writing has changed over the years.
My general feeling is that I plateaued several years ago, and may even be sliding downhill. My best ideas may have been used up, or even overused. When I see a market I’d like to write for, I find myself going back to characters from previous stories and giving them sequels of sorts, or even prequels. In a couple of cases I’ve even written entire stories that filled in parts of previous stories that I’d just mentioned in passing the first time because I had so much more to say. Maybe that’s my subconscious trying to make up for the fact that I don’t write novels, but mostly it’s laziness, or, even worse, a failure of the imagination.
I do think my writing has changed over the years. The technical changes came pretty early, as feedback from editors pointed out my beginner’s faults such as overuse of ellipses, and repeating words too often—“Do you really need to say ‘I’ five time in one paragraph?” and such glaring lapses. As an editor now myself, I pass along this acquired wisdom. But I’ve changed in other less definable ways. When I made my first sale to Best Lesbian Erotica, very nearly my first foray into erotica, the editor phoned me and told me that she loved my story because it was so different from what she usually saw. She was actually calling me about making some major changes, which were justified, but for a couple of years I kept getting the “so different” reaction from other editors. I think this was mostly because I’d started out in fantasy and science fiction, where story structure and plot were absolutely necessary. These days, as an editor, I look for the “different” work, too, but so much more erotica has been written by now, and so many good writers have been doing it, that the bar is set much higher. On the other hand, so many not-yet-good writers have been flooding the genre with work that seems intent on perpetuating the worst banalities of what they read that the bar seems to be set lower, as well. A conundrum.
In any case, (uh oh, I used that phrase three paragraphs upstream!) I think my best writing, or at least my best ideas, may be in the past. Once in a while sparks will fly, but they may not be as bright. Or original.
I’ve been puzzling over what examples to use. It’s not that I can’t juggle the words well enough to keep them spinning in the air, but that they don’t say anything new. Well, the best thing I can think of the moment is to show you a bit of a story I wrote back in, oh, 2001, fourteen years ago, and then a bit of one I wrote just last year that filled in a part I’d passed over in the first one.
__________
Bull Rider [This first part is just included because it’s my very favorite piece to read out loud for an audience.]
Amsterdam.
Am-ster-god-fucking-damn!
Sin City of the 70's, still sizzling in the 80's. Cheap pot you could smoke in the coffeehouses, but that's not what lit my fire. Sex shows and leather-toy shops? Coming a whole lot closer; but what really ignited a slow burn low in my Levis were stories of the working girls displaying their wares behind lace-curtained windows. Something about the dissonance between elegance and raunch struck a chord. "Fine old buildings," ice-maiden Anneke had told some of the Australian riders, with her slight, Mona Lisa smile and a sidelong glance at me. "Many visitors tour the Red Light district just to view the...architecture."
[Quite a bit snipped]
"On the house, Honey." Her nametag said "Margaretha," but her accent said New York. "You look like you might liven this place up. Ever ride one of those?"
I followed the jerk of her head. Through a wide archway I saw, rising above the sawdust on the floor like some futuristic mushroom, a mechanical bull just like the one Travolta and Winger rode in Urban Cowboy.
I wiped beer foam from my mouth. "You mean, does my ass live up to the advertising of my Levis? Lady, you have no idea."
"Don't bet on it, darlin'." Her assessing look assured me that one way or another, a good time could definitely be had. Much as I appreciate older women, though—hell, one saved me from fratricide—my hopes for something else grew. If it wasn't the police she'd called, who on this continent but Anneke would have described me to her?
"Yeah," I said, "I've ridden those, and the snorting, stomping, shitting versions too. For another beer and some of those hefty pretzels, I'd be glad to demonstrate."
"Wait a while." She refilled my stein and slid me a bowl of pretzels and cheese-flavored breadsticks, and I did my best not to stuff myself. Some things are better on a less-than-full stomach. Bull riding is only one of them.
"So, where are you from, Toby?" she asked, chatting me up while keeping a close eye on the door.
"Montana." I definitely hadn't told her my name.
"They let women ride bulls in rodeos there?"
"Not yet. Not officially. Except at small local shindigs where anything goes." I paid close attention to my beer and pretzels, not wanting to talk much about it. But there was no way I could keep from remembering the surge of wild triumph when I outrode them all, even my brother Ted. The pounding of my blood—the pressure building until I had to explode or die—and the revelation that, to achieve explosion, I needed to wrap myself around Cindy's full, smooth curves.
Back when we were twelve, Cindy hadn't minded a little mutual exploration. She'd been away for a few years, though, and this time, as I tried to pull her close, she twisted loose and ran around the grandstand to throw herself on Ted. Another revelation, that life was a bitch, seared me. No matter how much I could work like a man, even beat the men at their own games, their rewards were officially off-limits to me.
I was young and naive, and the shock filled me with rage. I leapt for my brother, and only the intervention of Miss Violet Montez, sultry lead singer for the intermission entertainment act, kept me from killing him.
"Hey, Tigrina, come with me." She pressed herself against me as Ted struggled to get up. "I have what you need. And what you don't even know you need." And she surely did, or close enough.
When I rode back to the ranch at daybreak, too drained to sort out the remnants of pleasure and pain and smoldering resentment, Daddy was waiting in the barn. He couldn't quite meet my eyes. "Looks like maybe you'd better go East to school the way your Mama always wanted."
__________
Now for the newer story, filling in that particular interlude.
The Bull Rider and the Bull Whip
“Let me handle her, boys. This calls for a woman’s touch.”
The calloused cowboy hands trying to hold me back dropped away. Slender satin-clad arms wrapped around me, long dark hair smelling of sweet lemons brushed my cheeks, and my face was pressed against a scarlet blouse that barely covered the peaks of a magnificent pair of breasts. I had the sense to stop struggling.
“Come along with me now, Tigrina,” Miss Violet Montez, lead singer of the intermission entertainment act, murmured into my ear. “I know what you need. And what you don't even know you need."
And, as it turned out, she surely did.
Her trailer was dented and cramped, but I saw right away that it had a narrow built-in bed. She saw me eyeing it.
“Not yet.” Her voice turned stern. “Wrangling a bull is one thing. Treating a lady right is something else. Especially your first time.”
Well, there wasn’t much I could say to that. In fact, I couldn’t think of anything to say, and, while I surely knew some things I’d like to do, I didn’t know how to go about them with a gorgeous worldly woman like Miss Violet Montez. I’d seen her before at rodeos and such-like gatherings, and fantasized a bit like I did about movie stars and photos in the kind of magazines cowboys tucked under their mattresses in the bunkhouse, but never imagined I’d get this close. “Yes Ma’am,” I said, trying to sound polite with just a hint of cocky, but it didn’t come out right.
“You sit down in that folding chair and don’t stir while I change into something more comfortable.” I perked right up at that, but then she added, “and while you wait, give some thought as to whether you want things sweet, spicy, or downright nasty.”
I knew my preference, even though I wasn’t exactly sure what she meant, but I’d got my brain working enough to know the right answer. “Whatever a lovely lady like you wants is what I want, too.”
“We’ll just see about that.” She scooped up some clothes from the foot of the bed and edged into the tiny bathroom, leaving the door open. I knew better than to get up from my chair, but I did crane my neck to see what I could see. It wasn’t much.
The low-necked satin blouse sailed out through the bathroom door, followed by her voice. “Never came across a girl bull rider before in a regular rodeo. Things must be changing for the better.”
"Not yet,” I admitted. “Not officially. Except at small local shindigs where anything goes." And where my dad was the biggest rancher around and chief sponsor of the rodeo association, but I didn’t say that.
Her short black satin skirt with rows of gold spangles followed the blouse, and so did her high-heeled sparkly cowgirl boots and a pair of nylon pantyhose. I wriggled in the chair to see if I could hook that last with my foot, with no luck, but I did get a glimpse of a bare shoulder through the door.
“Well, you can sure handle a bucking bull, but you need to work on self-control, ” she said over that shoulder. “And it remains to be seen how much else you can handle.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” It seemed like the safest thing to say. Now I could see that she was shrugging into a blue-checked shirt, which didn’t fit much with my hopeful notions of “something more comfortable.”
I looked idly around the trailer. It was dented and shabby, but with colorful pictures on the walls, mostly old rodeo posters, and some fancy duds hanging on hooks, along with…
I only just caught myself from bolting straight up. On one hook, coiled neat as a rattlesnake, hung one of the longest bullwhips I’d ever seen. I looked wildly around again at the posters, and there it was, in a corner of what looked like the oldest one: “Miss Violet Montez, Queen of the Bullwhip.”
__________
Well, I don’t think I made any particular point here. The character from the first story is strong enough to carry the last one, and in both cases I did have quite a bit to say. The idea carries through, but it was born a long time ago. It’s harder these days to come up with new ones.
Or maybe I should just buckle down and write novels with my favorite characters.
[Bull Rider was originally published in the anthology Body Check from Alyson Books in about 2002, reprinted in Best Lesbian Erotica 2003 from Cleis Press, and reprinted a few more times. The Bull Rider and the Bull Whip was originally published in She Who Must Be Obeyed from Lethe Press and reprinted in Best Lesbian Erotica 2015.]
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