Best Sex Writing 2012

by Rachel Bussel

  Pottymouth

  Kevin Sampsell

  You can’t judge a mouth by the shade of its lipstick. Sometimes the girls you imagine would talk the dirtiest in bed turn out to be the most offended when you grunt something about how they should push their tits together, while it turns out that nice girl who always wears the long-sleeve turtleneck wants you to “spray it” on her face. I like girls who break the stereotype in that way—the bad good girl. But whether you’re dating a girl or merely adding to your booty-call roster, you must scramble to adapt to their semantics. Their love language.

  After years of research, I have compiled some case studies.

  The girl who ran away from home as a teen, whose father is a cop, and exhibits reckless behavior: Christy introduced me to the concept of oral sex; I was ignorant of the possibility that men could go down on women until I was 18. We woke up together at a friend’s apartment. She asked if I wanted to eat her out. Flustered and grossed out, I said no, thanks. The next time we were together, she stole a line from Prince and said, “I sincerely want to fuck the taste out of your mouth.” I was intimidated by her and almost lost my erection, even at an age when it was impossible for me not to have an erection. “Fuck me harder, baby,” she said, in an attempt to soothe and encourage. A few minutes later she lost patience and screamed, “Pound my fucking twat!”

  The girl who is still close to her parents, has various pets that sleep with her, likes to imagine that she is “one of the boys,” but often kills the mood when she’s around: Beth said she would leave me if I spoke the word cunt in front of her. I asked politely if I could say pussy, but she didn’t like that either. We had our sex in silence. Once, when I tried to add even the blandest vocal dynamics, mid-fuck—“Does that feel good?”—she had a meltdown and asked if I was trying to humiliate her. She also would not let me pet her animals unless I was clothed.

  The girl who is too self-involved to ask you about yourself, dances ballet but likes angry rap music, joins organizations like PETA and Greenpeace but loses interest in them quickly: Whitney never once mentioned my cock or my eagerly darting tongue, but focused on her own goodies whenever we screwed around on her ridiculously large bed. “Doesn’t my pussy feel good?” she would ask me. “Yes,” I would pant, trying to fuck her good enough so she’d notice me. “I’m the best fuck in the mall, ain’t I?” she’d query (we were working in a mall at the time). Once, in a moment of generosity, she said, “If you make me come, I’ll make you come, too.” She must not have realized that I already came and was merely working overtime until some tension left her body. “Feed on my titties,” she said. “I wanna hear you slurp.”

  The girl who doesn’t own a television, likes (and understands) poetry, sometimes gets blind drunk and loses her cell phone at lesbian bars: Jen was basically a sex machine who would suck or hump anything that limped. She had a loud voice and talked constantly, even with her mouth full. She would suck my cock first thing in the morning while talking about her fucked-up dreams. Strangely, she always referred to our body parts in proper clinical terms: “Your penis turned into a hammer (lick, pause) and you were nailing me to a cross, and then (suck, head twist, lick) your hands turned into penises and you fucked my vagina (lick, pause) with your left hand while titty-fucking me (suck) with your right.” When she got drunk, she liked to turn the tables. “How’bout I fuck you tonight?” she’d slur. “I got a strap-on with your rectum’s name on it. You wanna be my sexy bitch tonight?”

  The girl with enormous breasts whose parents were hippies: When I first slept with Blossom, she told me that sex was the best drug, the “highest high.” She would move up and down on me, making wild animal noises, as I lay on my back. Then she’d laugh unselfconsciously and raise her arms as if she was worshipping some wacky moon goddess. She smelled like cinnamon and said things like, “When you come, it’s like you’re painting my soul.” And I would try to match her with my own woo-woo hoo-ha: “Your tits are like beautiful planets that I want to explore and write poems about. Your pussy is the most delicious pomegranate.”

  The just-divorced girl with an exotic accent: I wasn’t really sure where she was from (maybe Australia, maybe Oklahoma), but the sound of her voice made me hard in my pants, even when she was talking about how she and her ex-husband had sex every day for nine years. Sometimes more than once. Before she moved “back home” (wherever that was), she spent her last night in town at my place. She called me by her ex’s name a few times but didn’t apologize (she had downed the last of my liquor). She wanted me to speak Spanish to her but I didn’t know any. She told me a few key phrases: Se siente rico: “That feels good.” Te voy a echar de menos: “I am going to miss you.” Ajustado culo: “Tight ass.” I wanted to impress her, but I was saying the words wrong and then I ejaculated too soon. “I’m sorry,” I told her, “that wasn’t my best.” I felt like an athlete who had just choked in a winnable game. “It was good,” she said. “You fucked me good.” We were drunk and falling asleep but I felt bad. “You’re just saying that,” I said.

  About the Contributors

  RADLEY BALKO is a writer and investigative journalist in Nashville, Tennessee. He now writes for Huffington Post, formerly for Reason magazine. Balko’s reporting is credited with freeing a Mississippi man from death row. In 2011 he was named the L.A. Press Club’s Journalist of the Year.

  GRETA CHRISTINA is one of the most widely read, well-respected bloggers in the atheist blogosphere. She is a regular atheist correspondent for AlterNet; she has been published in Ms., Skeptical Inquirer, the Chicago Sun-Times, and more; and she has been writing for her own Greta Christina’s Blog since 2005. Find her at www.freethoughtblogs.com/greta.

  TRACY CLARK-FLORY is a staff writer at Salon.com, where she covers sex, love, and relationships. Her personal essay “In Defense of Casual Sex” was selected for the anthology Best Sex Writing 2009.

  A biomedical engineer by training, ADRIAN COLESBERRY works in pharmaceutical manufacturing by day and, in the evenings, writes dirty, funny, dirty books and does stand-up comedy, proving again the age-old formula: corporate drug manufacturing + time (approx. 2 hours) = comedy.

  AMBER DAWN is a writer, filmmaker, and performance artist based in Vancouver. She is the author of the novel Sub Rosa (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2010), editor of the Lambda Award–nominated Fist of the Spider Woman (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2008) and co-editor of With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2005).

  CAMILLE DODERO is a staff writer at the Village Voice.

  TIM ELHAJJ’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Brevity, Guernica, and other publications. He edits the online journal Junk: a literary fix. Tim’s first book, Dopefiend: A Father’s Journey from Addiction to Redemption, is forthcoming from Central Recovery Press in October 2011.

  ELLEN FRIEDRICHS is a health and sexuality educator (and mom) based in New York City, where she teaches high school and college classes and runs About.com’s GLBT Teens website. Ellen has contributed to previous editions of Best Sex Writing, and has written for Alternet.org. Nerve.com, Babble.com, gURL. com, the Jewish Daily Forward, and Nature Medicine. Find her at www.sexEdvice.com.

  ROXANE GAY’s writing appears or is forthcoming in Best New Stories from the Midwest 2011, NOON, Cream City Review, Black Warrior Review, Brevity, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Rumpus, and many others. She is an HTMLGIANT contributor, co-edits PANK, and her first collection, Ayiti, will be released in 2011. She has a website.

  LYNN HARRIS (www.lynnharris.net) is an award-winning journalist, author, and novelist, as well as co-creator of the award-winning website BreakupGirl.net. She is now the communications specialist for Breakthrough, a transnational organization that creates pop culture to promote human rights.

  DR. MARTY KLEIN is a licensed marriage and family therapist and certified sex therapist. He is the author of six books about sexuality, including the award-winning America’s War on Sex and the forthcoming Sexual Intelligence: What We Really Want from Sex, an
d How to Get It. He blogs at www.MartyKlein.com.

  AMANDA MARCOTTE is a writer, prominent citizen of the Internet, and feminist gadfly. She has written for Slate, The American Prospect, Bitch, The Nation, and Salon, among other publications.

  JOAN PRICE (www.joanprice.com) is the author of Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex after Sixty and Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud about Senior Sex, both from Seal Press. Visit her award-winning blog about sex and aging: www.NakedAtOurAge.com.

  TRACY QUAN’s latest novel is Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl. Her debut, Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, is an international best seller. A frequent contributor to The Daily Beast and other publications, she offers advice about love at ExpertInsight.com. Her website is www.TracyQuan.net.

  THOMAS ROCHE’s first novel, The Panama Laugh, is a noir-themed zombie apocalypse. Sadly, his political commentary strays far too often into the same territory. He is a member of the training staff at San Francisco Sex Information. His recent writing can be found at TinyNibbles.com, Techyum.com, Wri-teSex. Net, Night-Bazaar.com, and Thomasroche.com.

  KEVIN SAMPSELL is the author of a memoir, A Common Pornography (Harper Perennial) and the story collections Creamy Bullets (Chiasmus Press) and Beautiful Blemish (Word Riot). He lives in Portland, Oregon, and runs the micropress Future Tense Books.

  HUGO SCHWYZER teaches gender studies and history at Pasadena City College. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, Jezebel, Alternet, the Los Angeles Times, The Frisky, and at the Good Men Project. He is co-author, with Carre Otis, of Beauty, Disrupted: A Memoir. He blogs at www.hugoschwyzer.net.

  KATHERINE SPILLAR is a founder and executive vice president of the Feminist Majority Foundation. Under her leadership as executive editor of Ms. (www.msmagazine.com, published by the Feminist Majority Foundation), Ms. increased its investigative reporting, winning the prestigious Maggie Award for its investigation into the network of antiabortion extremists connected to the murderer of Dr. George Tiller.

  CHRIS SWEENEY is a freelance journalist who has written for the print and digital versions of Playboy, Wired, Popular Mechanics, and DVM Newsmagazine, among others. He was awarded a 2011 U.N. Foundation Global Health Journalism Fellowship, and holds a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University.

  ABBY TALLMER is a freelance writer from New York’s West Village. “Losing the Meatpacking District: A Queer History of Leather Culture” is dedicated to the memory of Abby’s good friend Saul Rubio, to the many others lost in their prime to AIDS during the first terrible decade of that disease, and to the memory of a New York City that artists could afford to live in.

  RACHEL RABBIT WHITE is a New York City–based journalist writing in the beat of sex and gender. Follow her at http://rachel-rabbitwhite.com.

  LIDIA YUKNAVITCH is the author of three books of short stories and a memoir, The Chronology of Water (Hawthorne Books, April 2011), as well as the forthcoming novel Dora: A Head Case. She has written for The Rumpus, PANK, The Nervous Breakdown, as well as regional and national literary journals and anthologies.

  About the Editors

  SUSIE BRIGHT (www.susiebright.com) is one of the world’s most respected voices on sexual politics, as well as an award-winning and best-selling writer who has edited hundreds of the finest authors working in American literature and progressive activism today. She was a screenwriting consultant on Bound, Erotique, and The Celluloid Closet, and hosts the show “In Bed with Susie Bright” on Audible.com. Her most recent book is Big Sex Little Death: A Memoir.

  RACHEL KRAMER BUSSEL (www.rachelkramerbussel.com) is a prolific author, editor, and blogger. She has edited over 40 books of erotica, including Best Bondage Erotica 2011; Gotta Have It; Obsessed; Women in Lust; Her Surrender; Orgasmic; Bottoms Up: Spanking Good Stories; Spanked; Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z 1 and 2; Fast Girls; Smooth; Passion; The Mile High Club; Do Not Disturb; Tasting Him; Tasting Her; Please, Sir; Please, Ma’am; He’s on Top; She’s on Top; Caught Looking; Hide and Seek; Crossdressing, and Rubber Sex. She is the series editor of Best Sex Writing and winner of six IPPY (Independent Publisher) Awards. Her work has been published in over one hundred anthologies.

  Rachel wrote the popular “Lusty Lady” column for the Village Voice and is a sex columnist for SexisMagazine.com. Rachel has written for AVN, Bust, Cleansheets.com, Cosmopolitan, Curve, The Daily Beast, Fresh Yarn, theFrisky.com, Gothamist, Huffington Post, Mediabistro, Newsday, the New York Post, Penthouse, Playgirl, Radar, the San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out New York, and Zink, among others. She has appeared on The Martha Stewart Show, The Berman and Berman Show, NY1, and Showtime’s Family Business. She hosted the popular In the Flesh Erotic Reading Series (www.inthefleshreadingseries.com), and speaks at conferences, does readings, and teaches erotic writing workshops across the country. She blogs at www.lustylady.blogspot.com.

  Reprint Acknowledgments

  A version of “Criminalizing Circumcision: Self-Hatred as Public Policy,” by Marty Klein, was originally published at Sexual Intelligence (sexualintelligence.wordpress. com). “The Worship of Female Pleasure,” by Tracy Clark-Flory, was originally published at Salon (Salon.com), May 21, 2011. “Sex, Lies, and Hush Money,” by Katherine Spillar, was originally published in Ms., Summer 2011 issue. “The Dynamics of Sexual Acceleration,” by Chris Sweeney, was originally published in Playboy, January 2011 issue. “Atheists Do It Better: Why Leaving Religion Leads to Better Sex,” by Greta Christina, was originally published at Alternet (alternet. org), May 17, 2011. “To All the Butches I Loved between 1995 and 2005: An Open Letter about Selling Sex, Selling Out, and Soldiering On,” by Amber Dawn, was originally published in Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme, edited by Ivan E. Coyote and Zena Sharman (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011). A version of “I Want You to Want Me,” by Hugo Schwyzer, was published at The Good Men Project (http://goodmenproject.com/), February 2011. A version of “Grief, Resilience, and My 66th Birthday Gift,” by Joan Price, was originally published in Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud about Senior Sex, by Joan Price (Seal Press, June 2011). “Latina Glitter,” by Rachel Rabbit White, was originally published at SexIs Magazine (sex-ismagazine. com). “Dating with an STD,” by Lynn Harris, was originally published (as “Life with an STD”) at Salon (www.Salon.com), January 17, 2011. “You Can Have Sex with Them; Just Don’t Photograph Them,” by Radley Balko, was originally published in Reason, February 28, 2011. “An Unfortunate Discharge Early in My Naval Career,” by Tim Elhajj, was originally published (as “An Unfortunate Discharge”) in Guernica, August 2010. “Guys Who Like Fat Chicks,” by Camille Dodero, was originally published in the Village Voice, May 4, 2011. “The Careless Language of Sexual Violence,” by Roxane Gay, was originally published at The Rumpus (www.therumpus.net), March 10, 2011. “Men Who ‘Buy Sex’ Commit More Crimes: Newsweek, Trafficking, and the Lie of Fabricated Sex Studies,” by Thomas Roche, was originally published at Tiny Nibbles (www.tinynibbles.com), July 20, 2011. “Taking Liberties,” by Tracy Quan, was originally published in Marie Claire Malaysia, June 2011. Reprinted with permission from Marie Claire Malaysia (www.marieclaire.com.my/). “Why Lying about Monogamy Matters,” by Susie Bright, was originally published in Susie Bright’s Journal (susiebright.blogs.com), March 8, 2011. “Penis Gagging, BDSM, and Rape Fantasy: The Truth about Kinky Sexting,” by Rachel Kramer Bussel, was originally published at SexIs Magazine (sexismagazine.com). “Adrian’s Penis: Care and Handling,” by Adrian Colesberry, was originally published in How to Make Love to Adrian Colesberry, by Adrian Colesberry (Gotham, 2011). A version of “Love Grenade,” by Lidia Yuknavitch, was originally published in The Chronology of Water, by Lidia Yuknavitch (Hawthorne Books, 2011). “Pottymouth,” by Kevin Sampsell, was originally published in Fanzine , 2010.

  a Contrary to popular belief, it’s not me. [January 7, 2009]

  Copyright © 2012 by Rachel Kramer Bussel.

  Foreword copyright © 2012 by Susie Bright.

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

  Published in the United States by Cleis Press Inc.,

  2246 Sixth Street, Berkeley CA 94710.

  eISBN : 978-1-573-44771-3