I started writing about sex when I was a teenager, when I dreamed of being a writer, and also, well, some other things adolescent girls dream about. I wrote sexy stories about celebrities, weird sci-fi tales of procreating aliens, and hormone-ridden scenes involving people I had crushes on. I never showed them to anyone. At the time, I figured I’d grow up to write something “respectable” and socially acceptable, like science fiction or literary fiction, and that all the sex stories were just a phase I was going through. I knew many people in society would consider erotic fantasies to be the least important of all possible topics I could explore in my writing, and some would outright condemn it.
Through college I concentrated on literary topics, but after I graduated and went out into the world, I found myself going back toward those old erotic fantasies. I tried to write some “conventional” fiction; it mostly sat unfinished on my computer. It wasn’t until I went back to writing erotic stories that I caught fire, that I felt as if I was writing something worth reading. This time I did show the stories to people. I shared them with friends and lovers, and on the Internet. These erotic pieces were the first stories that I had accepted for publication, that were praised in reviews, and that I felt made a difference in the world.
That’s when I took a risk and self-published a small collection of my stories dealing with erotic power exchange and role-playing. Even though I identified as a feminist, set my stories on a faraway planet (yup, still hooked on sci-fi), and gave my characters pure-hearted motivations, I was still afraid that people who read the stories would condemn them as antifeminist. I was worried about one feminist in particular, my mom, who had raised me to value equality and freedom, and who I thought might be a bit shocked to read my work. I waited eight months before giving her a copy of the book. At first, I was right; she was a little shocked. But once she understood the concept of erotic role-playing, she agreed with me that both it and erotic fantasy are about building an intimate and special bond between loving partners, and not about oppressing people or infringing on their rights—and certainly not about exploiting women.
One of the early decisions I made was to publish my erotic fiction under my real name. I was proud of my work and wanted to use it to promote a more sex-positive worldview. I wanted to plant the seeds in people’s imaginations that it was okay to want some variation in their sex lives, that it was okay to explore bisexuality, role-playing, sex toys, and the like, and most of all that it was okay to fantasize. I didn’t feel I could stand up and advocate that people be more honest with themselves about their desires if I myself were hiding. So for the past decade, with my real name, I’ve published all along the ideological spectrum, from Ms. magazine to Penthouse. The result is that ever since showing my mom my self-published collection of stories, I have been “out” to all my family and friends about what I do. Now, being “out” as a sex writer is one thing; autographing seventy-five copies of your book of erotica for cousins, childhood neighbors, and your mom’s chiropractor is another. But when my first major book came out from a big publisher, my mom wanted to throw a book-launch party for me; so that’s how we came to have a big striped tent in the backyard, a live jazz combo, and a dining-room table turned catering station. I figured most of the guests would never even look in the book. Then, halfway through the party, Mom sidled up to me and whispered, “Everyone’s waiting to hear you read.”
Oh. I’d done hundreds of readings at that point, at bookstores, at open mikes, on the radio, at conventions. It’s different somehow when people who have known you since you were five are sitting out there, fanning themselves with copies of the book, and smiling proudly at you. I began frantically skimming the table of contents to find a story I could read. Is there a story in here, I wondered, that was funny, not too long, and didn’t have anything too extreme? There was.
Mosquitoes buzzing around the electric lights hung in the tent, I stepped up in front of the group and opened the book.
I felt something hard but gentle draw a line down the seam of my jeans, the motorcycle’s ignition key in her hand, now pointing at that spot where I could feel it most. We didn’t talk after that.
cecilia tan (www.ceciliatan.com), who lives in the Boston area, is the author of Black Feathers (HarperCollins) and the founder and editor of pioneering erotica publisher Circlet Press (www.circlet.com; “Books Celebrating Sexuality & The Erotic Mind”). She also teaches tae kwon do and erotic writing workshops–though not at the same time.
Big Beauty
tess dehoog
When I was feeling especially brave one day, I bought a tank top. Being a fat girl pretty much my entire life, I wasn’t good at wearing clothes that were tight-fitting or revealed a lot of skin. Then one day, it was boiling hot outside. I didn’t own many light summer things, so I headed to the local fat-lady clothing store. It was not a very hip store, though basic things like tee shirts were easy to find there, and that was what was on my agenda, considering the heat. As usual, I found all the tee shirts I needed, but for some reason I kept wandering back to the rack with the tank tops. The saleswoman caught me eyeing them. She encouraged me to try one on. “Why cover what you can’t hide,” she said, and I couldn’t argue with such wisdom.
Inside the dressing room, looking in the mirror, all I saw was the tire around my belly and the flab on my arms. I stared for a while, then decided I might never be brave enough to try it on again and I didn’t want to lose what could be my last chance, so I bought it. Plus, I further convinced myself, no one looks good under fluorescent lights.
I brought the shirt home where it sat in my closet for a few weeks. Sometimes I tried it on but it never left the apartment. Then I went on a trip and brought the tank top along with me. I hoped to work up the nerve to wear it in a city I didn’t live in and where I wouldn’t have to see anyone I met there ever again.
Finally, the day arrived. I wore my tank top outside.
No one looked at me strangely. No one stared and the world did not stop. I didn’t hear a single laugh or snicker. I felt so good and brave, I didn’t care that only the bottom half of my arms were tanned. The first day I wore my tank top I went to a fair. The tops of my arms had never seen bumper cars before. It was awesome to feel so free. I felt naked and even a little sexy.
I love what my tank top has done for me and what I have done for my tank top. My tank top makes me feel more comfortable about my body, more beautiful. And I’ve taken a flat, boring tank top and filled it out quite nicely.
tess dehoog ([email protected]) is a sexy, fat girl from Vancouver, Canada. She’s young, pretty, and intends to make every fat person in the world love his or her body.
First Pride
amanda rivera
Today was the big day, and me and my mom Ingrid led the way. She said there were almost two hundred marchers. Along the road, people were holding up signs saying JESUS OR HELL and NO PLACE FOR DYKES. But there were also people holding up other signs saying THEY’RE PEOPLE, TOO. Besides, we had police to protect us.
Meanwhile, my other mom, Shantal, was walking around, talking, and checking if people were okay. The marchers looked excited and proud. I felt that they were proud of who they were, and so was I. Later we went out for pizza!
This was the first Gay Pride march in my town of Lawrence, Massachusetts.
amanda rivera was eight years old and in the third grade when she wrote this. She is Puerto Rican/African-American and enjoys “reading, writing, riding my bike, and playing board games with my mommies.” Amanda hates unfairness in the world and pollution. She can be contacted via her mom ([email protected]).
Loving w/o Limits
robin renée
Late one Sunday night, I came home from a music conference exhausted and looking forward to a solid night’s rest. However, as a borderline Internet junkie, I was compelled to the computer to checkmye-mail. There I found a message from a friend in Canada saying she had read an announcement that Black Entertainment Television (BET) was looking for
an African-American woman to discuss polyamory on a talk show. It was BET Tonight, hosted by Tavis Smiley. They wanted someone the very next night.
My initial response: Me? A live talk show? No edits? No way.
I imagined a rabid TV audience yelling at me, calling out, “Useless slut!” I didn’t trust myself to speak with clarity in the face of that, in a setting where there would be no changes, no takebacks. Besides, I just didn’t want to. I was weary from having been elected the unofficial sex/relationship/poly counselor and educator of my social circle. The last thing I wanted was to become the National Polyamory Poster Child. I went to bed knowing it wasn’t going to happen.
My subconscious must have had other ideas, because I tossed and turned all night. When morning came, I called.
I left a message for the show’s producer at 11:30 A.M. She called back within the hour. There would be no rabid television audience, she said—no live audience at all, just two other guests and a few phone callers. It was to be a balanced, intelligent discussion on the topic of—I still laugh at her term—“mansharing.” By 3:15 that same afternoon, a car arrived at my house to take me to the airport. By 5:30 I was on a plane headed for Washington, D.C., and my first national television appearance.
The set design attempted to hint at living-room ease, but the BET Tonight logo was displayed so prominently, the stiffness of television land could not be forgotten. I was seated next to one guest, a perfectly placed cup of water in front of each of us. The second guest appeared on a TV monitor via satellite. We watched as she readied herself in San Francisco. Our host was whisked in at the last moment before broadcast and quickly seated across from me.
Earlier, the producer had informed me that the two guests I’d be speaking with were “experts,” one in favor of open relationships, the other against. She was almost right. I was left to converse with two experts who held exactly the same opinion: Women who “share their men” are insecure, confused women who don’t know the potential for depth, security, and connection in a one-on-one relationship. The two Expert Relationship Therapists talked at length about “mansharing” in terms of lying, cheating, and deceit, clandestine phone calls and hidden rendezvous behind other women’s backs. They spoke of it as a situation that only a weak woman with no alternative would accept. They had little concept of a woman who might love more than one partner, of relationships based on complete openness, spiritual love, and balance.
I stayed relatively calm, more so than I had anticipated. I chose not to take the defensive, or to approach the discussion as if it were a debate. In fact, I was surprisingly levelheaded and articulate, given that it was live TV. I talked in general terms about my innate understanding of sexuality as a beautiful experience that may be expressed in a myriad of healthy ways. And I spoke specifically about my experience with Keith, whom I have loved since college. We have had a powerful, dynamic, more-than-ten-year relationship, while simultaneously having other important loves as well. It worked for us. Everyone involved was happy. We respected each other, met each other’s needs, and kept the whole thing remarkably real, loving, and honest. Keith and his live-in girlfriend knew I was going on BET, and they were cool with that.
The show, meanwhile, was a subtle comedy of miscommunication, an understated Who’s On First?
Host: “If I hear what the experts are saying, you are in denial, you have a maturity problem… yet you decide to put your face all over television. Let me ask you, why are you okay with a mansharing relationship?”
Me: “Honestly, I feel I’m more than okay with it; it’s natural for me to be in a state of openness in my relationships.”
Expert #1: “I think you can glamorize that you have commitmentphobia, or other issues, so that even you believe you know what youre doing.”
Expert #2: “There is a price to be paid when you are subjected to the abuse of mansharing, and the price for most women is their self-esteem.”
Host: “Some make the argument that women are involved in this because there is a shortage of available men. Your thoughts?”
Me: “No, it’s something very different from that. This is the organic development of my way of loving.”
Expert #1: “What do you mean by organic?”
Host: “Do you maybe stay with your man because he takes you out, buys you nice things?”
Though it seems we missed talking to each other (and even about the same topic) by quite some margin, I believe we all accomplished what we set out to do. BET Tonight aired a show on a controversial topic that doubtless did well in the ratings. The therapists expressed their opinions and plugged their books heavily. I had the opportunity to articulate something that is rarely voiced: We have choices, actual choices. We can live according to our inner guidance. We can love fully and completely without limitations imposed on us by others.
The final statement by one of the therapists, paraphrased, was, “If you’re sharing your man, you only have a piece of the pie.” I say this: Our emotional/sexual/romantic selves are not pie graphs. By loving, we are not divided, nor are we diminished. To give to one, to give to more, cannot deplete something eternal.
robin renée (www.robinrenee.com) is a poly/ bi/ Wiccan/ Buddhist/ mystic/ singer/ songwriter/ poet/ activist/ writer in the Philadelphia area. From her earliest relationships, she has always loved freely and openly.
Good, Good, Good, Good Vibrations
joani blank
The bell over the door chimes as a woman enters. She’s in her midthirties and dressed in a neat button-up blouse. When she approaches the counter, where I’m busily hand-stamping the words PLAIN BROWN WRAPPER on a stack of grocery bags, she speaks quietly, so no one else can hear: “I’d like to buy a … a vibrator, please.”
My eyes meet hers, then turn to the shelves that line the tiny room I call my store. She follows my gaze and we laugh at the same time. “I guess that’s about all you sell here, isn’t it?” she says in a relieved tone.
“Yup,” I answer, smiling broadly.
I didn’t set out to open the first women-oriented sex-toy store in the country, but in 1977, I wasn’t that surprised to find myself doing it either. I’d worked with the Sex Counseling Program at the University of California at San Francisco for several years. Much of my work was simply teaching women to have orgasms through masturbation, so naturally vibrators were an important part of our conversations. But it was difficult for my clients to make the leap from discussing vibrators to actually getting hold of a real live one to try. At that time, women’s only choices were to order sex toys “sight unseen” from a men’s catalogue or to visit an “adult store.”
Usually located in seamy parts of town, these stores were run and patronized by men. The only women appeared in lurid pictures on the covers of porn videos lining the walls. Even when women from my groups braved this sexist atmosphere, their gutsiness was often met with more intimidation. When one of my clients asked a store clerk if she could examine a vibrator under the glass countertop, he leered in response, “Boy, you must need it bad, lady.”
After I heard that story, I complained to a feminist colleague who was known for her innovative and bold actions: “Toni, you should open a vibrator store for women.”
“Too busy,” my friend characteristically replied. “You do it.”
It made sense. I had recently left my job as a sex counselor, and my living expenses were low enough that I could afford to run a store that just broke even for a while. With full knowledge of the fact that most new businesses folded within a year, I scraped together enough to rent a little storefront on the edge of upscale, family-oriented Noe Valley, and plunged into the risky world of a small business owner. I ordered vibrators from wholesalers and placed a few discreet ads in the local paper, calling my shop Good Vibrations: “A vibrator store and museum, especially but not exclusively for women.” I bought brown paper bags without our name on it, so folks could hide their purchases if they wanted (but for fun we stamped PLAIN BROWN WRAPPER on each bag). I even
put together a catalogue—a crummy little mimeographed fold-over sheet featuring two plug-in vibrators, two battery-operated ones, and a few books: Our Bodies, Ourselves; For Yourself (a masturbation handbook); and the sex workbooks I had written, A Playbook for Women about Sex, and a similar one for men, both published by my own outfit, Down There Press (get it?).
My mission was simple: to encourage women to take charge of and have fun with their sexuality; this in a society that deemed nonsexual women pure and good, and sexual women tramps. I also advocated that men be full partners as their women lovers explored and experienced their sexuality. I planned to exploit people’s interest in sex rather than their anxiety about it.
When I opened the store, I never considered, “What will people think?” I was married at the time, and my father-in-law did seem rather confused about what I was doing. (“What exactly are you selling, Joani?” he asked at one family gathering. “Vacuum cleaners?”) But the vast majority of reactions, from friends and strangers, were supportive or curious.
“And what do you do?”
“I sell vibrators.”
“Oh.” Pause. “I see.” Extended pause. “Great! How’s business?”
Perhaps my bold move did not meet with much resistance because San Francisco in the 1970s was a place of sexual freedom and feminist consciousness-raising. The attitude was “anything goes”—though to protect the privacy of our customers, we placed curtains in the storefront window. What modesty we did have took the form of keeping a few realistic-looking dildos in a wooden cabinet, which customers had to inquire to see. People would look all around and then ask “Do you have anything else?” and I knew that meant dildos.
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