Best Sex Writing 2012

by Rachel Bussel

  Sometimes Robert seems to talk to me. I ask him, “Are you really talking to me, or am I making this up?” and he replies, “It doesn’t matter.” As I approach the third anniversary of his death, I receive this message as clearly as if his voice utters it:Baby, when I was alive I wanted you all to myself. I needed reassurance that in loving you so much I wasn’t risking losing myself by losing you. I wasn’t sure I could give you enough to make you happy.

  I can’t make you happy now. I can’t hold you except in your memory and sometimes in dreams.

  You don’t need to ask my permission to live your life fully and zestfully. Or to share that love and lust in you with another.

  You have so much life in you, sweetheart, so much love to give.

  Give it.

  If you need my blessing, you have it.

  Love always,

  Robert

  Although I still miss Robert every time I breathe in or out, I know I’ll have a lover again, and it will be good. I know I can’t replace the love I shared with Robert and I’m not looking for that—but I do need to stay vibrant and alive. Nurturing my sexual self is a part of being fully alive that I will embrace.

  Latina Glitter

  Rachel Rabbit White

  The stars of the oldest Latino drag show in the United States admit that the term drag is a bit of a misnomer for their show—because the queens of this stage are not the usual men in drag you expect to find but male-to-female transgender performers.

  Ketty Teanga is high femme. It was clear from the time she was nine years old, trotting in her mom’s heels. But it wasn’t until age 15 that she decided to embrace being a woman. Ketty was still living as a man, but started dancing in a drag show. It was the 1960s in Puerto Rico. “The shows were spectacular, very famous. But back then it was not femme, you had to take off your wig at the end of the show to prove you were a man.” The climate was rough: “In Puerto Rico, the police would stop you if you were in drag. We would get out at four a.m. from a show, in street clothes, but they would press a napkin on our face to see if we had on makeup. If we did, they would arrest us right there.”

  Hers is a story we don’t often see in the media. When trans people do get a rare spotlight, it’s often the stories of white trans people. Richard Rodriguez, Associate Professor in the Latina/ Latino Studies program at the University of Illinois, explains, “As anyone who grew up in a Latino community will tell you, there are always LGBT people around. Sometimes they are accepted and sometimes they aren’t. What I find, however, is that LGBT Latinas and Latinos may find more acceptance among Latinos than white queers.”

  Decades later, Teanga is still a (transgender) drag performer. Her home is covered in glittering dresses, glossy photographs, and LGBT awards. Teanga started what is known as the oldest Latino drag show in the country, at La Cueva in Chicago, where only Spanish is spoken. But it’s not a “drag show” in the usual sense—all the performers are MTF transgender women. While Teanga no longer performs, she can still be seen at the bar 4:00 a.m., watching the new crop of glitter y performers. “I am gonna die in the show. That’s my life,” she says, her voice hoarse.

  While so much has changed since Teanga’s day, when each performer tells her story, the themes are similar to Teanga’s. “I would play with my sister in Mexico. We played tea party and made cookies with sugar, pretending to be famous sisters and artists. My mom would get mad because I would wear her dresses. That’s how my life started, my different life,” says Vanessa. She writhes around in skimpy dresses onstage, but offstage she is soft-spoken. A fellow performer, Diana, who is animated, with red-streaked hair, agrees. “It never starts as anything sexual, because as a kid that doesn’t make sense. You just know you like girl things, and that you are different.”

  It was in the 70s, in New York City, that Teanga started transitioning—taking hormones. “Back then, you could do your transition and take hormones, but you still had to dress like a man. Only on the weekends could you be a woman—and this is in New York, not even Puerto Rico!”

  Other things have changed, too. On a slow snowy night at La Cueva, two lesbian couples arrive just after midnight to cuddle at dark tables while gay men slow-dance under the disco ball. At the bar, there are a few solo Mexican cowboys. But in the 80s when the show started, it wasn’t as LGBT friendly.

  “Now it is all gay and lesbian. In my day, it was straight men who came,” says Teanga, a little longingly. “I was seen as a woman, so straight men came.” It sounds sort of progressive, but the transphobia was also much higher. “There were a lot of gangsters—they’d throw bottles and shoot at us with BB guns. You had to park your car and run inside,” she says. According to the manager, Ruben Lechuga, the bar itself was feistier, with fewer bouncers and more fights.

  Working at La Cueva makes the performers visible and therefore vulnerable. But the bar is one place offering Latina transwomen work—which can be hard to come by. “I’ve been working for La Cueva for nine years and I never before worked doing what I do now. I worked in other places like restaurants and temp office jobs. But I was frowned upon for applying with a male name but wanting to be a woman. They have issues with you going to the women’s bathroom, things like that,” Paula, a petite performer with chiseled features, says.

  Of course, transphobia is not limited to Latina transwomen, but it can be more intense for them. Rodriguez says, “Transphobia has to an overwhelming degree curtailed the employment opportunities of transgender individuals. Latina transwomen, like African American transwomen, are also subject to racism. But when you add language to the mix, Latina transwomen may find it increasingly difficult to find work.”

  Regardless of the language barrier—which is significant, as the performers only speak Spanish—the United States is where these women can find jobs. “Before this, I worked out in the fields in Mexico, and I always dreamed about working in a place doing what I do now,” Vanessa says. Diana explains it as feeling more safe. “I feel gays are more understood here.” Mexico City may have legalized gay marriage, but Vanessa and Paula assert that homophobia within the community remains. It seems that as gay issues get press, this tension grows. “In Mexico they changed the law to where gay marriages are allowed, but they will still call you out on the street or yell dirty things, much worse than here,” says Paula.

  Rodriguez sees it as a larger problem. “While educating people on transgender lives is key, I also believe there must be a more concerted effort by queers and straight allies alike to advocate for rights and fair treatment for transgender people. Unfortunately middle-class, privileged issues like gay marriage continue to overshadow the blatant racial and economic discrepancies faced by those purportedly accounted for in the LGBT community,” he says.

  But in her 50 years of being out as transgender, Teanga has seen a change in the attitudes of the Latino community toward gays. “Latinos are just becoming more positive and proud of gays, but only somewhat of transgendered people.”

  Rodriguez agrees. “I’m inclined to say the Latino community has become more gay—accepting—but this suggests that Latinos have always been homophobic. This is not necessarily true. While Latino religious and cultural values often stand at odds with homosexuality, many Latino families have accepted LGBT members. We are witnessing more Latino LGBT media representations (Ricky Martin, for example) that are, fortunately, raising awareness and igniting conversation about homosexuality in the Latino community.”

  When I talk to the performers, the importance of their work comes back to community. “We are all Latinos here. You can make friends here, talk, and overall have a good time,” Diana says. “This is a place that opens its doors to the Latino gay community as well as anyone.”

  Teanga pinpoints the moment when things began to change for her, and by extension for all trans performers. “So, the saxophone was playing. And I started to take off my clothes. And my body was curvy from the hormones. That is when the shows changed. It became about femme, not men in drag.”r />
  Dating with an STD

  Lynn Harris

  Susie Carrillo was 21 years old and a mother of two young children when an abnormal Pap smear yielded a triple-whammy nightmare. She was shocked not only by a diagnosis of high-grade cervical dysplasia—a serious precancerous condition—but also by its apparent cause: human papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted infection, or STI, more commonly known as STD, for sexually transmitted disease. A doctor had found it two years earlier but had largely dismissed it, saying, eh, it’ll probably clear up on its own. With no warnings about the risks of cancer, or transmission, Carrillo says she “ just didn’t think about it” and told no one. And that’s what led, in part, to the third and perhaps biggest whammy of all: her husband’s reaction to the cause of her cancer. “He turned it into hell for me. He demanded to know how many people I’d slept with, accused me of cheating, and called me a slut,” she says. Even though Carrillo had never strayed—she believes she contracted HPV from a premarriage ex—her husband’s abusive words began to infect her, too. “I started to wonder if maybe it was my fault,” she says. Ashamed and embarrassed, she went through cancer treatment alone.

  Thankfully, Carrillo was eventually cured: of both her cancer and her self-blame. She ultimately divorced her husband, found support online, and learned, as she says, that she has “nothing to be ashamed about.” But even with its happy ending, her story reveals a troubling reality: While STIs have reached pandemic proportions, the stigma surrounding them remains ugly—perhaps especially for women.

  “You cannot get through a season of Jersey Shore or The Real World without an STI joke implying that the person accused of having one is skanky and slutty, and saying ‘Ooh, watch out, you might catch something,’” says Adina Nack PhD, a medical sociologist specializing in sexual health and author of Damaged Goods? Women Living with Incurable Sexually Transmitted Diseases. “And that person they’re talking about is almost always a woman. There’s a serious misconception that you have to be promiscuous in order to contract an STI, and while men in our culture are rewarded for being sexually active, women are judged.” (Nack cites one woman in her practice who’d never even had sex, but who contracted an STI while—successfully—fighting off a rapist. Even she said, “I feel like a slut.”)

  To be sure, STIs and their attendant stigmas are (as I’ve written elsewhere) no picnic for men, either. But their impact appears to be different, in certain ways, for women. Among the hundreds of people with STIs Nack has interviewed, she says, men tend to be more concerned about medical realities—the best treatment, the best protection for partners—while women focus on much broader, and harsher, implications that strike at the very core of their sexual selves: “Will I be rejected as ‘damaged goods’? ” “Are my dreams for sex, love and happiness over?”

  This is ironic, considering that STIs are now so strikingly common that, as Nack says, “you should go out into the dating world assuming that the person you’re with has already contracted something, even though they may not know it. Even if someone says, ‘I’m clean—I’ve been tested for everything,’ they’re either ignorant or lying, because we don’t even have definitive tests for everything.” STIs are often asymptomatic and frequently go undiagnosed. The CDC estimates that nearly 19 million new infections occur each year. At least half of the sexually active population will contract HPV at some point; 45 percent of women 20 to 24 have it already. It’s so prevalent, in fact, that the medical community considers HPV infection a virtual marker for having had sex at all. One in five adults, whether they know it or not, has herpes right now. In other words, statistically, your date is more likely to carry a sexually transmitted infection than to share your astrological sign.

  Though many STIs are easily and effectively treatable, those who have them still live with threats: of painful outbreaks, other medical complications and (in the case of certain HPV strains) cervical cancer; of straight-up slut-shaming and outright rejection. Given how common STIs are—and despite efforts by, for example, writers at the blog Jezebel to chip away at the stigma by indirectly or directly outing themselves—it’s pretty amazing how much dated stereotype and outright ignorance remains, which in turn can deter people from getting tested. People whom both Nack and I interviewed tell tales of women with herpes who, when actually outed, were told by officemates to use separate work equipment, and by family members to use separate toilets.

  And if people you’re probably not going to sleep with react badly, imagine having to tell someone you like-like. For single women (and of course men) with STIs, the fizzy fun of a promising new date is often flattened, they say, by fear of the looming, dreaded Talk. Michele Bouffidis, 43, of New Jersey, contracted herpes—her “rowdy tenant,” she calls it, though she experiences only rare outbreaks—from an old long-term boyfriend who didn’t tell her he had it until it was too late. Over the next five years, she dared disclose to three men; none stuck around. One, at least, took the time to consider, eventually telling her—gently and thoughtfully—that he didn’t want to take the risk. She totally understood, she says, but it still smarted. Another said, “You seem like a very classy girl—I would never have imagined you having that.” (Translation: “You slut.”) By the time No. 3 rolled around, Bouffidis was dispirited enough that she presented her diagnosis in a negative, “You’re not going to want to deal with this,” light, almost deliberately pushing him away. For three years, she didn’t date at all. “It was because I have herpes,” she confirms. “I didn’t want to deal with the Talk anymore.”

  Kalani Tom, 40, of New York, usually uses email to inform potential partners about her genital herpes (which she controls successfully with medication) to give them a chance to process the information on their own. Sometimes, it goes fine. “One guy said, ‘It’s gonna take a lot more than that to scare me off,’” she recalls. But the more she likes a guy, the scarier it is—and once, when the stakes were high, she choked. “He asked me if I had anything, and I said no,” she admits. “I was a coward. I didn’t want to be judged.” When she finally told him the truth, he was devastated—not just by her diagnosis, but by her dishonesty. (Fortunately, he tested negative.) Another recent prospect just bailed, too, upon hearing the news. But Tom—though quite contrite about her lie—remains hopeful, even defiant. “People may judge, but I know I’m not some repulsive horrible person,” she says.

  Plenty of STI-seropositive men and women—Nack herself included (and Michele, above)—are in happy, healthy relationships with STI-free partners willing to take on the medical logistics of avoiding transmission. “Not all potential partners are going to reject you,” she says. And many women and men with STIs have found support, community, friends—and more than friends—in online communities specifically for them. There’s an interesting, and ongoing, debate about whether dating sites for people with STIs are godsends or ghettos, but experts say they are—at least—great places for the newly diagnosed to get their groove back.

  Kristin Andrews, 30, of Michigan, contracted herpes from an unfaithful boyfriend who, when he heard her diagnosis, called her “a slut and a whore and complained that now it’s gonna be hard for him to date,” she recalls. “For that first few weeks it was awful. I felt like I was one of the worst people in the world, disgusting and degraded and gross.” Then she found MPwH.net (short for Meet People with Herpes), where she got her “newbie” questions answered straightforwardly and reassuringly. Eventually, she arrived at the distinction that our society clearly—and dangerously—still refuses to accept: “I have herpes,” she says. “But it’s not who I am.”

  You Can Have Sex with Them; Just Don’t Photograph Them

  Radley Balko

  In spring and summer 2006, Eric Rinehart, at the time a 34-year-old police officer in the small town of Middletown, Indiana, began consensual sexual relationships with two young women, ages 16 and 17. One of the women had contacted Rinehart through his MySpace page. He had known the other one, the daughter of a man who was involved
in training police officers, for most of her life. Rinehart was going through a divorce at the time. The relationships came to the attention of local authorities, and then federal authorities, when one of the girls mentioned it to a guidance counselor.

  Whatever you might think of Rinehart’s judgment or ethics, his relationships with the girls weren’t illegal. The age of consent in Indiana is 16. That is also the age of consent in federal territories. Rinehart got into legal trouble because one of the girls mentioned to him that she had posed for sexually provocative photos for a previous boyfriend and offered to do the same for Rinehart. Rinehart lent her his camera, which she returned with the promised photos. Rinehart and both girls then took additional photos and at least one video, which he downloaded to his computer.

  In 2007, Rinehart was convicted on two federal charges of producing child pornography. US District Court Judge David Hamilton, who now serves on the US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, reluctantly sentenced Rinehart to 15 years in prison. Thanks to mandatory minimum sentences, Hamilton wrote, his hands were tied. There is no parole in the federal prison system. So barring an unlikely grant of clemency from the president, Rinehart, who is serving his time at a medium-security prison in Pennsylvania, will have to complete at least 85 percent of his term (assuming time off for good behavior), or nearly 13 years.

  Hamilton was not permitted to consider any mitigating factors in sentencing Rinehart. It did not matter that Rinehart’s sexual relationships with the two girls were legal. Nor did it matter that the photos for which he was convicted never went beyond his computer. Rinehart had no prior criminal history, and there was no evidence he had ever possessed or searched for child pornography on his computer. There was also no evidence that he abused his position as a police officer to lure the two women into sex. His crime was producing for his own use explicit images of two physically mature women with whom he was legally having sex. (Both women also could have legally married Rinehart without their parents’ consent, although it’s unclear whether federal law would have permitted a prosecution of Rinehart for photographing his own wife.)