by Carol Queen
Many times people are bringing, you know, a piece of short fiction, a blog post, a poem, that is a fully contained piece and it’s erotic—that’s part of the point of the story, is that it’s a piece of erotic writing, right? And then other people are working on larger works of fiction and are using erotic interaction as a way to develop their characters, to kind of give us more information about their characters, which I love. It’s such a powerful way to explore more about a particular character. Who are they interested in? How do they have these conversations? There are folks who wouldn’t necessarily consider themselves erotic writers who would be welcome in this space. Maybe they don’t consider themselves genre writers, or erotic genre writers, but still would like to have some space to workshop or engage the erotic content in their writing—there is space for that as well. You don’t have to call yourself an erotic writer to be welcome in the Circle.
What comes of participating in the Circle?
JC: So, if we were going to think about some outcomes, what has been the result for folks of the Erotic Reading Circle? I mean, readers can get some more information about that from [the mini interviews that accompany] each of the stories but there certainly have been folks who come through either the first incarnation of the Erotic Reading Circle or this one, who have moved on to greater heights. I mean Amy, you’re absolutely one of those folks! You wanted to find a place to share your work and then you’ve been published in Best Lesbian Erotica and you have a novel published (award- winning!), and then you have another one coming.
AB: Yes, that true, and I think the confidence I gained from the Circle, and especially around giving voice to what seemed like taboo things to me, that opened up just a whole world of possibility—yeah, I don’t know that I would have done any of those things without the Circle actually, for real. For reals.
CQ: And I’m thinking of my comrades at Perverts Put Out and remembering how many of those regular readers had their moment or two, at least, at the Circle. The person that stands out for me the most as an Erotic Reading Circle alum is Simon Sheppard who has become such an important gay erotic writer, sex essay writer, curator of Perverts Put Out lo these many years. And when Good Vibrations was at 23rd and Valencia, he lived right around the corner and so always, always came to the Circle. And there were a number of gay men in those days who were part of the Circle who sort of drifted away. But one who used to come who we see at almost every Perverts Put Out now is the great Horehound Stillpoint, whose long-form prose poetry is amazing.
AB: The two of you are both quite accomplished, widely published writers—how does the Erotic Reading Circle, as you’re a part of it today, affect your writing? Does it support you in any particular way now?
JC: I have often brought new writing in to the Circle and it’s usually work that I had generated at a workshop that I’m bringing out into a room of new ears; it’s helpful for me [to share the work with] folks who are coming from different experience, different points of view, who are not necessarily like me, who are going to be receiving it from a different point of view. That’s really helpful for me as a writer.
CQ: And I don’t read very often at the Circle any more partly because there are enough people who attend that I don’t want to take somebody else’s spot. And partly because I’m not doing a whole lot of new writing, especially new creative erotic writing myself right now, although the past couple of years, the work that I’ve done that has meant the most to me has either been with Kirk Reed’s Biggest Quake Project, which had a little bit of the Erotic Reading Circle to it in a way. I mean not necessarily mindfully, but he had a group of people who worked together and shared pieces—the greater project was to write AIDS memoir, but we sort of used that group in the way that we use the Erotic Reading Circle sometimes. Also, the piece that I contributed to this anthology is a piece of recent writing that came from a memoir writing workshop that I was sort of co-scheduling along with the Erotic Reading Circle. That’s where this piece was generated, and I polished it at the Erotic Reading Circle. It meant a lot to me to have the space to do that. You know, some of us have gangs of writing buddies, at least sometimes. And I don’t really have that because I don’t have enough regular writing time and space. My world is so full of other responsibilities. So when I do have that, it’s so important to me—I think that I can say my community for writing is the Circle.
Family and erotic writing
AB: So has your Mom read your erotic work?
JC: I don’t know! I have a feeling that my Mom has, my sister might have, and my father [doesn’t]. And I am totally fine with all of their boundaries around my writing.
CQ: My mom died before I got very far out into the world as an erotic writer and so I’m pretty sure that she never did read my stuff. I’m not positive that she never did, though. She could have been a zine subscriber from the adult care center, you never know. You never know until they tell you or until they start acting really weird to you at Thanksgiving.
AB: I had a scene in the mystery novel that’s a tour of a dungeon and when my mother read the mystery novel she called me up and she said, referencing her husband, “Derek was wondering … he found that section a little off-putting, and then he was wondering how it was that you might know about that material.” So I was like, “Well, first of all it’s a work of fiction and a writer must do their research.”
JC: That’s a good answer.
AB: That shut her up at that point, but I actually loved that sort of indirect outing of myself to my family.
CQ: I’m trying to remember where this phrase came from. It comes from my feminist readings from the 1970s and I can’t remember to whom it should be attributed now, I’m sorry person—especially if you ever hear this—but it was, “You must not even think those things.” I think it was in the context of lesbian lives or some sex somethin’ somethin’. Back in that day there were so many fraught topics—of course, it’s not that they’re not all fraught today in many contexts, but, you know, if you’re going to write a piece of erotic anything you’ve got to step across that line and to the degree that there’s a baseline boundary that much of the culture still kind of believes in, at least for some stuff, then [writing sex] takes the bravery of going into the sometimes very un-catalogued space that is the erotic mind. We don’t really get respect for everything being all neat and tidy in there. It’s a jungle partly because the culture wants it to be a jungle because then maybe we won’t find all that stuff. What’s all in there? I think it’s all in there.
JC: I’m excited to read this interview just to have that quote! [laughter all around]
Final question
AB: So, since we’re talking about eroticism: if you were a sex toy, what sex toy would you be?
JC: I can only really think about the small little pocket rocket vibrator that takes one little battery, that goes anywhere, that lasts a thousand years. I can go to all sorts of other exciting, interesting [ideas], but this is sort of foundational, you know: steady, ready when you need her, that’s me.
AB: Love it.
CQ: Designed for pressure point stimulation, but now it comes in pink. And for a minute there they made it with a Hello Kitty! face on it.
AB: Oh, my god.
CQ: I’m not sure if its the exact right answer to the question but I’m just going to go there. And that, of course, is to the Magic Wand. Old school, plug it in, unless the power goes out it’ll keep going. Sometimes it will overheat but you won’t mind. And the other thing I want to say about that is that it’s got two speeds, of course.
AB: Yes, it does.
CQ: So you can do the basic speed and then you can do the rrrrrr higher speed. And I think it helps to have more than one speed in one’s writing. I think there are those moments when you really do want to ramp it up.
JC: Yes!
AB: Lovely, connecting it to your writing. I like that. I believe I would be a butt plug.
JC: Oh, keep going with that.
AB: And I think I
would be a butt plug because it’s cozy—I like containment, that feels good to me, but there’s a way in which it’s so getting to the root of the issue, the unconscious material, the stuff that’s maybe ugly and that we’ve tried to make it go away and just won’t and I think that is an incredibly rich place for writing to begin from, so—
JC: Nice.
AB: —I would be a butt plug.
CQ: Muriel Rukeyser says, “the useful shit that is our clean clue to what we need.”
AB: Aw. Nice.
CQ: Yup. It’s a great poem. “Despisals.” Everybody run, you can see her reading it on YouTube this minute. That’s what’s so good about the future – bringing the past to life on YouTube. Crazy! Who would have predicted it?
AB: Nice. Thank you everybody.
JC: Thank you. Thank you.
CQ: Phew.
[go to top]
“Settle for
Settle for nothing
Settle for nothing less
Settle for nothing less than
Settle for nothing
less than the
object of your
desire.
Desire. The weight of. The weight of our
desire. Then laugh, cry, but laugh
more than you cry, and when you hold
the world in your hands, love Her.”
- Alma Luz Villanueva
The Object (excerpt)
Sinclair Sexsmith
Bio
Sinclair Sexsmith, known as the “kinky queer butch top,” is an erotic coach, teacher, and writer who produces Sugarbutch Chronicles at sugarbutch.net. They travel frequently to perform and lead workshops, and to work with people one-on-one for identity puzzles and sexual experiments. Sinclair’s work is published in more than twenty anthologies, and they edited Best Lesbian Erotica 2012 and Say Please: Lesbian BDSM Erotica. They are an expert of strap-on technologies, a feminist Dominant, an identity puzzler, a classically trained poet, and a sacred intimate.
Mini-Interview
How did you start writing about sex? Writing and sex have always been intertwined for me, probably partly because I came of age sexually in the early 1990s when the Internet was beginning to be more accessible, and because I’m a poet and the exact perfect word for something gives me a serious boner. I only think it differs from non-erotic writing in that it is not afraid to delve into the carnal parts of bodies, desire, and relationships. So much happens in our sex lives that is so relevant to our characters and our story movement forward, so it is often incredibly relevant.
How is the Erotic Reading Circle part of your writing process? Reading pieces aloud always gives me a different sense of how they work metrically, how the meter flows, how the pacing of the paragraphs run, how the sentence lengths vary or are too similar or too different, and of course how actual people react to the content. Are they laughing here, holding their breath there? Having a group that can handle sex and erotic content is key to getting accurate feedback. I’ve taken erotica pieces to writing groups that weren’t explicitly for that content and have received skepticism and giggles and some praise, but not much actual feedback on the craft.
What’s the inside scoop on your story? It was written for a “contest” I ran on my website where readers submitted scenarios for a story (basic characters, plot, setting) and I chose which ones to write up and fleshed them out into full-length stories. This is one of my favorites, one of the “finalists”—and, one of the best-loved erotica pieces on Sugarbutch.net.
Girl in the Red Dress
Sinclair Sexsmith
At first I’m trying to ignore her. I have a good book, Best Lesbian Bondage Erotica; I have my iPod on to some soothing lofi mix; I have lube in my pocket for a quick jerk-off session before we arrive in New York. I need all the sanctuary and release I can get before returning to that hyper- stimulating city.
But she’s making a big show of her many bags, heavy, designer luggage, and she—being a tiny petite thing—seems unable to slip them all into the overhead luggage rack.
The only other person in this car is a man in the back who has been snoring since I got on. I think about telling her to just leave her suitcases on the seat next to her, but her jaw is set, her sensuous mouth twisted in a sneer, and as she begins to climb onto the train seat to reach the rack better, I sigh and, reluctantly, get up to help her.
“Please. Let me,” I say, sliding behind her and putting my hand on her waist to guide her out of the way, then taking the heavy suitcase out of her struggling grip and nudge it onto the metal rack easily. She’s got a great ass in those tight jeans. Her eyes are wide, then she drags her gaze along my arm to my face. I watch her watch me. She looks like Penelope Cruz, all dark hair and big pools of dark liquid eyes.
“Um,” she says. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” I answer, a bit dismissively, now offering my hand so she can get down. The train doors buzz and are about to close, we’ll be in motion shortly. I pick up her other bags and one by one put them up into the rack above her seat. She takes off her thin white sweater and sets it with her handbag next to her, and watches me.
I groan a little with the weight of the last one. She notices. “Thanks again,” she says, and I detect a slight accent, French maybe, though she looks Spanish. Her words are a little airy, already pulling Vogue Milan out of her purse and turning her attention to it, a tiny sideways glance at me to see if I’m still standing next to her, waiting for my good-dog biscuit.
I retreat back to my aisle seat. We are facing each other, opposite sides of the train. She is absorbed in her magazine. I put my feet up and crack open my book, start reading through the bondage stories. She takes out a compact and lipstick and fusses with her mouth, repainting, touching her fingertips to the edges of her lips, then wipes microscopic flecks with a tissue. I don’t watch her, but she periodically sweeps her eyes over to me. I rest my hand on my neat little package as I read through the story by Toni Amato, “A Girl Like That:”
She’s the kind of girl who brings out the worst in me. Coming on all hip and cool and all into sex, rubbing some part of herself all up against me every chance she gets. I’m not saying all the things my people taught me about women are so great, but I’ll tell you what, where I come from, that kind of girl is called a cock teaser.
It’s like there’s this small thing, like those stars they talk about, those White Dwarves, sitting deep and low in my belly, and this girl comes along, doing her number, and that son of a bitch just goes nova.
She makes the worst part of me want to do the best it knows how to teach her a thing or two about fucking.
I’m stroking my cock unconsciously through my jeans when I notice someone looming next to me, and it’s her, she’s returning from the bathroom with a clutch in her hand, I didn’t even notice her get up. The girl smiles, almost, and pushes past as though I am taking up the entire aisle, or maybe to show off her gorgeous ass in those tight, tight jeans.
The train lurches and opens its sleepy doors, the man in the back of our train car is moving at half-speed and makes his way off the train.
We’re alone.
She notices, too. She’s looking out the window but keeps stealing glances at me. The conductor comes through and says nothing to either of us, just takes the small pieces of paper on our seats, the remnants of our tickets.
I go back to my book. I finger the bottle of lube in my pocket and think this would be a good time to go rub one out, then get absorbed in a story about a dyke cop who is passing as male in a straight club, picks up a girl and takes her, handcuffed, out to her truck. I nearly reach my hand into my pants.
“Um, excuse me?”
She’s standing, still in her seat but leaning forward over the seat in front of her, facing me, ass tipped to the side, front of her button down revealing creamy skin, long dark hair swinging. She smiles when I look up, flashes me an intentional smirky pose that she has practiced in the mirror—her seduction look. “Would you hel
p, I have to … I need … something from that bag.” She glances up at it.
I put my book down and tug at my jeans to cover my hard-on.
Clear my throat. “Sure.”
I get up and move toward her. She kneels and reaches for it, her back to the aisle as I come up behind her and reach up.
“This one?” My mouth is close to her ear.
“No, not—yes, that one,” she says as I touch the smaller suitcase. She reaches up to help me, bending slightly forward, as we both ease the weight of her bag down onto the seat. And I swear she rubs right against me, pushing back, just a little. Maybe I’m imagining it. Yeah, sure Sinclair; you just happen to have a boner and this girl offers up her ass on a silver platter.
I back off. Return to my seat. Again. “Um, thanks!” she calls.
I toss a half-smile over my shoulder. “Don’t mention it.” She pulls a bundle of fabric out of her bag and I don’t watch. I don’t pay attention. I can’t see it. I shouldn’t be watching, but I am. It is slinky and red. She finds a few other bits and tucks her hair behind her ear, gathers an armful of clothing, makes her way toward me, down the aisle, to the bathroom at the back of the car.
She’s in there a while. I try to concentrate on my book, to not wonder what she is doing, what she’s slipping into, who she’s meeting when she gets off the train, not to imagine being that somebody so filled with lust and permission that I’d fuck her right on the platform, couldn’t even control myself long enough to wait until we went to dinner, drinks, a show, whatever it is she’s dressing up for. My breath is quickening and my hands are starting to do that aching thing where they are pulsing with grip, wanting to hold push grab press punch slap.