Best Sex Writing 2009

by Rachel Kramer Bussel

  About the Authors

  BRIAN ALEXANDER is the author of several books including America Unzipped:The Search for Sex and Satisfaction, currently out in paperback. He has also written for many magazines and newspapers including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Wired, Esquire, Glamour, Science, and many more. He writes the “Sexploration” column for MSNBC.com, and has made many television and radio appearances.

  VIOLET BLUE is the San Francisco Chronicle’s sex columnist, a Forbes Web Celebrity, and one of Wired’s Faces of Innovation 2008. She is the best-selling, award-winning author and editor of more than two dozen books on sexual health and erotica, with translations worldwide. Blue writes about sexuality for publications such as Forbes and O: The Oprah Magazine, and lectures to cyberlaw classes at UC Berkeley, tech conferences (ETech), sex crisis counselors at community teaching institutions, and Google Inc. Her website is tinynibbles. com, her tech site is techyum.com, and her audio and ebooks are self-published with multiple authors at digitapub.com.Webnation labeled Blue “the leading sex educator for the Internet generation.”

  SUSANNAH BRESLIN is working on a novel based on her experiences in Porn Valley. She has written for Details, Harper’s Bazaar, Newsweek, Salon, Radar Online, and many other publications. Her blog, Reverse Cowgirl (reversecowgirlblog.blogspot.com), was named one of Time.com’s Top 25 Blogs in 2008.

  TRACY CLARK-FLORY is a writer and assistant editor for the online magazine Salon. Her musings on politics and pop culture can be found on Salon’s lady blog, Broadsheet. For more, visit her website, www.tracyclark-flory.com.

  KELLY DAVIS is the associate editor for San Diego City Beat, the alternative newsweekly she helped cofound in 2002. Her reporting focuses on subjects such as homelessness, drug addiction, and criminal-justice policies.

  STACEY D’ERASMO is the author of the novels Tea (2000), A Sea-horse Year (2004), and the forthcoming The Sky Below (2009). She is an assistant professor of writing at Columbia University.

  TRACIE EGAN is an editor at the women’s website Jezebel.com. She lives in Brooklyn with her dog Edie.

  KEEGAN HAMILTON is a native of Seattle, Washington. He is a graduate of the University of Washington School of Communications, class of 2007. He was a recipient of the Village Voice Media Editorial Fellowship and has been a staff writer at the Riverfront Times since December 2007. His work has also appeared in the Seattle Weekly, the Nashville Scene and the West Seattle Herald.

  JAMES HANNAHAM is a staff writer in the culture department at Salon.com. His first novel, God Says No, published by McSweeney’s Books in 2009, contains more than one bathroom sex scene.

  LYNN HARRIS (www.lynnharris.net) is an award-winning journalist and author. Her most recent novel is the satirical mystery Death By Chick Lit. She contributes frequently to Glamour, the New York Times, Salon.com, Nerve.com, Nextbook.org, and many others, and she is cofounder of the venerable website BreakupGirl.net.

  DAGMAR HERZOG is professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author of, most recently, Sex in Crisis: The New Sexual Revolution and the Future of American Politics, as well as two pioneering books, Intimacy and Exclusion and Sex After Fascism, as well as numerous scholarly articles on the history of sexuality.

  TOM JOHANSMEYER is a New York-based freelance writer who covers the adult entertainment industry. In addition to writing AVN Online’s “Money Matters” column, Tom has written several investigative pieces, from debunking the claim that tax stimulus checks were being spent on porn to the confiscation of adult novelty items from civilian contractors serving in Iraq. His work has appeared in Boston magazine, Penthouse, Trader Monthly, and Cigar Report, among others.

  ALAN R. LEVY is a senior associate in the New York City office of Sedgwick, Detert, Moran, & Arnold, LLP and is a member of the firm’s Media, Entertainment, and Sports Law Practice Group. He can be reached at ALevy1@aol.com.

  DAVID LEVY is an internationally recognized expert on artificial intelligence. He is president of the International Computer Games Association and in 1997 led the team that won the Loebner Prize—the world championship for conversational computer software. In 2006, he became the first person ever to present papers on intimate relationships with robotic partners at an international conference. He is the author of Love and Sex with Robots:The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships and Robots Unlimited. Levy lives in London with his wife, Christine, and their cat.

  KRISTINA LLOYD is the author of three erotic novels, Darker Than Love, Asking for Trouble, and Split, all published by Black Lace. Her short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines both in the United Kingdom and the United States, and her novels have been translated into German, Dutch, and Japanese. She has a master’s distinction in Twentieth Century Literature, and has been described as “a fresh literary talent” who “writes sex with a formidable force.” She lives in Brighton on the south coast of England. For more, visit http://kristinalloyd.wordpress.com.

  MISTRESS MORGANA MAYE is an experienced San Francisco-based BDSM professional and sex educator. Her workshops on BDSM have delighted thousands of kink-curious people of all persuasions, and she is the cowriter and host of the instructional video Whipsmart:A Good Vibrations Guide to SM for Beginning Couples. Her writing has appeared in Best American Erotica 2005 and Politically Inspired. Mistress Morgana believes that the current Bush administration is neither safe, sane, nor consensual and could learn a great deal from the ethics of BDSM play.

  DAPHNE MERKIN is a cultural critic who has made a name for herself with her often-unnerving candor and elegantly High/Low reflections on issues of family, religion, psychotherapy and sex. She was a staff writer for the New Yorker for five years, where she wrote a movie column, book reviews and articles about subjects as varying as Marilyn Monroe, Freud, and Bridget Jones. She is currently a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, where she writes profiles and personal essays as well as on topics like the search for the perfect perfume and her obsession with handbags for the Times “T” sections; her work appears regularly in Slate and Elle and in a variety of other publications, including Vogue, Travel &Leisure, and Allure. Ms. Merkin is the author of two books: an autobiographical novel, Enchantment, which won the Edward Lewis Wallant award in 1986 for the best new work of fiction based on a Jewish theme, and Dreaming of Hitler, a collection of essays. She lives in New York City with her daughter.

  New York City-based DEBBIE NATHAN writes a lot about anxieties over boundaries—national, racial, ethnic, and gender-based—and about how these fears often get displaced into sex panics. She’s especially interested in child sex abuse hysterias and was one of the first journalists to critically cover the 1980s “satanic daycare center” panic. She is author of Women and Other Aliens: Essays from the U.S.-Mexico Border and co-author of Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt. She’s currently working on a book about the making of the 1970s bestseller Sybil. Her blog is www.debbienathan.com.

  MARY ROACH is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, and Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. Stiff has been translated into 16 languages, and Spook was a New York Times Notable Book of 2005. Mary has written for Outside, National Geographic, Wired, New Scientist, the New York Times Magazine, and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” She has been a contributing editor at the science magazine Discover, a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, a National Magazine Award finalist, and a winner of the American Engineering Societies’ Engineering Journalism Award, in a category for which, let’s be honest, she was the sole entrant. Read more at www.maryroach.net.

  AMANDA ROBB is a contributing writer at O: The Oprah Magazine, currently at work on a book about the abstinence movement. Her journalism has also appeared in a the New York Times, Newsweek, George, Marie Claire, and More magazines. Robb won a 2008 Sexie Award for an op-ed that appeared
in the New York Times about federal funding for abstinence-only education and a 2003 Writers Guild Award for scriptwriting on the soap opera “All My Children.”Today she lives with her husband and daughter in New York City.

  “JOSEPHINE THOMAS” is the pseudonym of a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Health, Self, Redbook, Marie Claire, Parents, and Parenting. She lives with her husband and two children.

  DON VAUGHAN is a freelance writer based in Raleigh, North Carolina. His work appears regularly in an eclectic array of publications, including Military Officer Magazine, Nursing Spectrum, Heal Magazine, Penthouse Forum, and Mad Magazine. In addition, Vaughan has written, cowritten, ghosted, or contributed to twenty-five books on topics ranging from the Civil War to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. He is also the founder of Triangle Area Free-lancers (www.triangleareafreelancers.org), the largest organization in North Carolina devoted to freelance writing.

  Milwaukee native DAN VEBBER served His Country as one of the first editors of the Onion before writing for Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Daria, Futurama, American Dad, and other such programs catering to the valuable stoned-kids-who-light-their-farts demographic. He currently resides in Development Hell, where his projects include a stapled, Xeroxed packet of his cartoons rejected by the New Yorker, due to be sent to his mother sometime in ’08.

  About the Editor

  RACHEL KRAMER BUSSEL (www.rachelkramerbussel.com) is an author, editor, blogger, and reading series host. She has edited or coedited more than twenty books of erotica, including Tasting Him; Tasting Her; Spanked: Red-Cheeked Erotica; Naughty Spanking Stories 1 and 2; Yes, Sir; Yes, Ma’am; He’s on Top; She’s on Top; Caught Looking; Hide and Seek; Crossdressing; Rubber Sex; Sex and Candy; Ultimate Undies; Glamour Girls; Bedding Down; and Best Sex Writing 2008. Her work has been published in more than one hundred anthologies, including Best American Erotica 2004 and 2006, Zane’s Chocolate Flava 2 and Purple Panties, Everything You Know About Sex is Wrong, Single State of the Union, and Desire: Women Write About Wanting. She serves as senior editor at Penthouse Variations, and wrote the popular “Lusty Lady” column for the Village Voice.

  Rachel has written for AVN, Bust, Cleansheets.com, Cosmopolitan, Curve, Fresh Yarn, The Frisky, Gothamist, Huffington Post, Mediabistro, Newsday, New York Post, Penthouse, Playgirl, Radar, San Francisco Chronicle,Tango,Time Out New York, and Zink, among others. She has been quoted in the New York Times, USA Today, Maxim UK, Glamour UK, GQ Italy, National Post (Canada), Wysokie Obcasy (Poland), Seattle Weekly, and other publications, and has appeared on “The Martha Stewart Show,” “The Berman and Berman Show,” NY1, and Showtime’s “Family Business.” She has hosted In The Flesh Erotic Reading Series since October 2005, about which the New York Times’s UrbanEye newsletter said she “welcomes eroticism of all stripes, spots, and textures.” She blogs at lustylady. blogspot.com and cupcakestakethecake.blogspot.com.

  Copyright © 2009 by Rachel Kramer Bussel. Foreword copyright © 2009 by Brian Alexander.

  All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published in the United States by

  Cleis Press Inc., P.O. Box 14697, San Francisco, California 94114.

  “One Rape, Please (to Go)” by Tracie Egan was originally published in Vice magazine, Vol.14 No.8. “Searching for Normal” by Lynn Harris was originally published on Nerve.com, February 26, 2008. “Father Knows Best” by Amanda Robb was originally published in Marie Claire, July 2007. “An Open Letter to the Bush Administration” by Mistress Morgana Maye was originally published in Sex for America: Politically Inspired Erotica (Harper Perennial) edited by Stephen Elliott, 2008. “The Pleasure of Unpleasure” by Kristina Lloyd was originally published on Lust Bites (lustbites.blogspot.com), October 1, 2007. “What’s ‘Normal’ Sex?” by Brian Alexander was originally published on MSNBC.com, May 22, 2008. “Unleash the Beast” by “Josephine Thomas” was originally published in Over the Hill and Between the Sheets: Sex, Love, and Lust in Middle Age (Springboard Press) edited by Gail Belsky, 2008.“Is Cybersex Cheating?” by Violet Blue was originally published on SFGate.com, July 17, 2008. “Sex Offenders!!” by Kelly Davis was originally published in San Diego City Beat, April 15, 2008.“War Games” by Tom Johansmeyer was originally published in AVN Online, November 2007. “In Defense of Casual Sex” by Tracy Clark-Flory: this article first appeared in Salon.com, August 1, 2008. An online version remains in the Salon archives. Reprinted with permission. “Soulgasm” by Dagmar Herzog was originally published in Sex in Crisis:The New Sexual Revolution and the Future of American Politics (Basic Books) by Dagmar Herzog, 2008. “Sexual Problems…” by Don Vaughan was originally published in Penthouse Forum, November 2007. “Penises I Have Known” by Daphne Merkin was originally published in Playboy, June 2007. “Sex Is the Most Stressful Thing in the Universe” by DanVebber was originally published in Things I’ve Learned from Women Who’ve Dumped Me (Grand Central Publishing) edited by Ben Karlin, 2008. “Silver-Balling” by Stacey D’Erasmo was originally published in Dirty Words:A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex (Bloomsbury) edited by Ellen Sussman, 2008. “Sex Dolls for the Twenty-First Century” by David Levy was originally published in Love and Sex with Robots:The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships (Harper) by David Levy, 2007. “Dear John” by Susannah Breslin was originally published on Newsweek.com, May 26, 2008. “Oldest Profession 2.0” by Keegan Hamilton was originally published in River Front Times, June 4, 2008. “How ‘Swingers’ Might Save Hollywood from a Federal Pornography Statute” by Alan Levy was originally published in Yale Law Journal Pocket Part, April 28, 2008. “Why Bathroom Sex Is Hot” by James Hannaham: this article first appeared in Salon.com, August 31, 2007. An online version remains in the Salon archives. Reprinted with permission. “Kids and Comstockery, Back (and Forward) in the Day” by Debbie Nathan was originally published on Debbienathan.com, June 1, 2008. “The Immaculate Orgasm” by Mary Roach was originally published in Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (W.W. Norton) by Mary Roach, 2008.

  eISBN : 978-1-573-44452-1