by Carol Queen
How is the Erotic Reading Circle part of your writing process? The ERC is a special place where I meet and hear voices that are at the edge of my usual circles, which I love. The range of flavors of erotic experiences presented on any given evening is inspiring, intriguing, and mind-and body-tingling. I only wish I could attend more often.
Do you write under your own name? Why or why not? Do you have any concerns about publishing erotic work? I use a pen name for erotic work mainly because it frees me to share some very personal experiences and feelings while protecting both the innocent and the less-so.
Gift
Christine Solano
You’re the gift
I stole
wrapped between my legs
I tied you up
licking
each salty drop
I tell myself again
this is the last time
again
wondering why
in German
“gift”
means “poison”
Ordinary Time
Christine Solano
Afterwards
a measure of peace
our skins cooling, my hand
counting your heartbeat
slowing down
we share a beer,
we tell jokes,
like friends would
I wipe away
the taste lingering
from your last kiss
that chilling flavor of
so long
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“You were once wild here.
Don’t let them tame you.”
- Isadora Duncan
Tori Adams
Bio
Tori Adams is currently a doctoral student in Gender & Women’s Studies. Her work focuses on stigma and violence surrounding abject identities, and looks towards popular and visual culture for points of analyses.
Mini-Interview
How did you start writing about sex? How does it differ from non-erotic writing? Back when I wrote this story, my writing predominantly took on a confessional, private tone. Almost everything I worked on was true to my life and experiences. I realized people accessed these writings with their own arousals and histories, and began to play up the erotic aspects of these memories. Perhaps surprisingly, I find myself toning down or taming erotic writing in contrast to non-erotic in order to make pieces easier to engage with sexually and politically.
How is the Erotic Reading Circle part of your writing process? The Erotic Reading Circle and the Center for Sex and Culture are both supportive environments for discovering your own creative and sexual expressions. Receiving feedback from others working within the erotic genre was helpful in the ‘telling a story’ vs ‘telling my story’ distinction; the Erotic Reading Circle helped to make my writing consumable. Regular writing groups take the distance between stories and their writers for granted, and may not provide the same feedback necessary for this type of work. Additionally, the parts that improve a non-erotic story often differ widely from that which could better an erotic story.
Do you write under your own name? I am writing under my own name. Though I do have privacy concerns with current and future sharing, both the span of years and amount of personal progression that have occurred since writing this piece makes it feel more protected.
What’s the inside scoop on your story? The person I wrote this story about and I are still close friends, and recounting this vignette is one of our favorite party tricks.
Red Paint
Tori Adams
Two women toy with power and calculated edge play in the form of fingerpainting July 2010
She smiled at me. The corners of her teeth poked from her lips, almost hidden in the flaking dryness, her thin blood pressing out. Watching me watch her lips, she slowly, slowly, put her pen down. I could hear both ends hit the table. She tucked her hair around her ear to pinch the cigarette that I hadn’t noticed, and drew it down to her lips. I wondered briefly if she had just done a magic trick, pulled it out from the nowhere space behind her ear. She sucked on the cold paper, not lighting it. The blood on her lips smeared around the white. It was grotesque; she was beautiful.
I stood to move closer. She shrieked a bit, “Sit down, I didn’t tape you!” I ignored her. Of course, I wasn’t ignoring her; I don’t think I have or really ever could. I moved to her, knelt down in front of her. See, I thought, I’m still yours completely, I’m not disobeying. That’s really how things were, and how I felt.
“What would you do if I died?” she asked me. I shook my head. “No, really. What if I just—” She looked around. “—what if I drank this jar of paint?” She plucked the glass up and held it in front of my face. “I could.”
“You couldn’t.”
Had I really said that? Hadn’t I known that was a dare?
She smiled at me. It wasn’t a sweet glance, it wasn’t gentle. She unscrewed the cap like she was fucking it, without ceremony or preamble, finger rubbing the rim like it was hot, breathing flesh. I gasped a bit. The cap was off. She was still rubbing along it, sometimes dipping her hand in. We both watched it come up bright red. In flagrante delicto. It all looked too familiar. She brought her fingers to her lips, and I thought for a moment she was going to put it along her wet slices of mouth. I saw images of little kids playing adult, tubes of pretend lipstick, of how these accidental poisonings happened. She knew better than that. She opened her mouth, not wide enough to distort her face (she was still play-acting here), opened just an inch, maybe less. She stuck her painted finger in her mouth, rubbing it clean along her gums, and pulled it out with a smack- pop sound. She licked her tongue against the next one, easing it slowly into her mouth, twirling her tongue on the stiffness. She pulled both fingers out clean, and looked at them triumphantly. I didn’t move. She picked up the jar again, not even glancing at the inside. She raised it to me in mock toast, and then paused, tilting for a second. She was waiting for me to stop her, but just a slight moment. I didn’t. She leaned her head back and started pouring the red paint into her mouth. She made circles with her hand. I didn’t see her grimace, not once. She swallowed easily and looked at me. She had a small drop of the paint on her chin. I rose and moved towards her. I wiped it off with my hand, rubbing it onto my skirt. I didn’t know what to say.
When she smiled again, red streaked her teeth in a way it never did when she sucked my cunt. I smelled no iron or natural scent, and the way the red bled to pink against the white was stiff and hollow, like flicking a nail against bright plastic. I moved closer, holding her mouth on mine; her tongue seemed to fall into me, slight but forcefully. I could feel the paint, wondered at the toxins pinching my taste buds. I heard the pen she’d still held hit the floor. She twisted her arms above her head, and I slipped onto her. Though she was without any doubt the dominant one, it was me who stayed busy when we’d fuck; she’d laze with seemingly melting bones and I’d sometimes feel like I was fanning her, dropping grapes into her waiting teeth, always a slave, while still my fingers curved almost violently inside her, thumb tapping and yanking at her clit, fingers twined through rusty hair to pull her head back further.
Today, though, I moved slower, more languorously. I crouched comfortably between her thighs, feeling ready heat from her pussy. My teeth went from the skin below her breast up to around her flushed nipple, leaving small pale divots; they gaped like jaws. She moaned with extra air, staying in control with firm hands on my shoulders, inching towards clasping at my neck. “Hands,” she sighed out, and mine went to her. I held the wide bones of her hips as I dragged her closer to me, moving fingers to smooth open her warm lips. We shook the table, knocking wooden legs, and the almost-empty jar spilled over. Red flicked against us like spittle. I changed my pace, the quickening of her breath kept my speed. My mouth met where her hands were teasing; I flicked my tongue over her curly hair, and flattened it to press her open. She parted slightly, lips keeping a secret. I lapped at her, letting my teeth
catch intentionally. When my nose touched against her clit, I paused; bringing my hand closer to strum at her, I stuck my other fingers to my mouth. I spit onto them, dragging nails into the warmth of my closed lips coated with her wetness, making them slippery like her, for her. “Girl, girl, sweetheart, bitch.” She mumbled out endearments like an incantation, she said my name like it was a command. I leaned so she could thread herself onto me as I met her with shaking hands.
She came silently with her mouth and eyes open; they were colored the same red.
She rolled away from me, and I thought about taking her to the hospital, maybe the emergency room. I could imagine how they would see us, wide-eyed and wild, dripped with red, fingerprints and nail digs marked against our smeared sweat. She’d walk in first, me guiding her; they wouldn’t know what to make of us, which part to fix first. It wasn’t what she needed. I stopped her then. With my hand reaching around her back, I mouthed against her ear.
“Kate,” my tongue tapping at the coiled skin, “let’s play nurse, ‘kay?” She let me take her into the bathroom.
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Vince Clarthough
Bio
Vince Clarthough (not his real name) is a programmer, statistician, and writer of erotica living on Oakland, California. The die rolls described in the story were generated randomly by a computer program, for added verisimilitude.
Mini-Interview
How did you start writing about sex? How does it differ from non-erotic writing? I started writing about sex because it seemed low-pressure compared to other forms of writing.
How is the Erotic Reading Circle part of your writing process? I would not feel comfortable reading my erotica to a “normal” writing group. I enjoy seeing the variety of erotica that different people in the group have written; it reminds me of the many different ways people experience sexuality.
Do you write under your own name? Why or why not? I do not publish under my own name and I’m sad that I can’t brag on Facebook about getting published. :(
What’s the inside scoop on your story? I don’t remember how the original idea for “The Long Odds” came to me, but mostly worked out the details while my mother was visiting and I had to drive her to and from San Jose several times. I decided to make it an experiment in realism by generating all those hundreds of die rolls from a computer program and basing the history of the couple around those results.
The Long Odds
Vince Clarthough
Lauren has two sixes. She squints over her glasses and wrinkles her nose to show me how serious this is.
I snicker, just to piss her off. It works. “Laugh while you can, doucheface.”
She grabs for the die, but I catch her hand in mine. She grabs with the other and I catch that, too. Her anger dissolves into horny submission, and she barely struggles when I take her ponytail in my fist and force her to kiss me. When I’m done, I slap her, just to remind her I can.
She whimpers and does her little girl voice.
“Oh, Master. You’d better hope I don’t get lucky tonight, or you’ll be in big trouble.”
She mocks me, but the odds are still five-to-one in my favor. It’s been two hundred and sixty-nine days since we last switched, and this is the seventh time she’s rolled two sixes in one night. Last time that happened was fifty-nine nights ago. She was so hungry for the third six that time; I guess she thought fate owed her.
She’s hungry for it now, too; plain as vengeance in her eyes. She makes me wish I believed in fate.
We’ve been playing this game for longer than three years now—one thousand, five hundred and eighty-five days, to be exact. Back then we were both curious about dominance and submission, but neither one wanted to be the top. So we flipped a coin. She’s got an old Eisenhower dollar we use for things like that. It turned up heads, so I had to boss her around for the night.
Speaking of which.
“Go wash the dishes, slave. You can throw your last die after you’re done.”
She starts to roll her eyes, but catches herself and gets up to do what I told her. Like a good little slave girl.
She sways her hips for me on the way to the sink.
That first night was clumsy, but we liked it enough that we flipped the coin again the next night. I won that toss, too, with tails. She won the third and fourth nights, and by then we were addicted. I came up with the game on the fifth night. She agreed to play, and I won the coin toss to see who started on top.
Every night the bottom rolls a die. If she gets a six, she rolls again. If she gets a second six, she rolls a third time, and if that one comes up six, we switch. Every night there’s one chance in two hundred sixteen that power changes hands.
But Lauren started with a run of bad luck. I stayed on top for two years, exploring my power, making her worship my cock, bake me cupcakes, change the kitty litter, whatever. I wasn’t creative back then.
Lauren was creative, though. After eight hundred and five days she finally got her third six, and she put me through six months of creativity.
She bought me panties, schoolgirl-plaid, and made me wear them to work under my suit. Sometimes when I got home, she’d make me mix her a Brandy Alexander and she’d sip it while I ate her pussy, or else she’d make me dust the Venetian blinds wearing nothing but those panties. Other times she’d sit in my lap and tell me about the skinny hipster chick she used to make out with in grad school, while forbidding me from touching myself.
These thoughts excite me, so I go behind Lauren and molest her while she runs the hot water. I pinch her nipples and rub my cock on her thigh through my jeans, and she squirts more Joy into the water than she meant to.
On the one hundred and nineteenth evening of her reign, I rolled lucky. She got fucked three times that night, and not once gently. We got married in April of that year, and I got her a leash and a collar with steel O-rings. Garish, I suppose. But then, who needs subtlety when you can make your wife beg for anal sex?
To love and to cherish, and all that. I whisper hot breath in her ear. “One in six. You’ll never make it.” She flips me the bird.
“Asswipe.”
But she only half means it. I reach under her skirt and finger her while she scrubs the forks, and she’s absolutely filthy-soaking wet. Probably she’s thinking about what she’ll do to me when she rolls that last six. She’s not the only one who gets turned thinking about that.
Three hundred and fourteen days into my second run as top, she won the roll and I had to wear the collar. Naturally, she wanted to pay me back by fucking me in the ass with a strap-on. So she started me with a little butt plug, and then she moved me up to a bigger one, and then she never got a chance because six days later I rolled three sixes and put the collar right back on her.
Not fair in the least, but that’s the kind of world we live in.
She’s a good sport, which is fortunate because in total I’ve had the power something like seven times as long as she has. I’ve explained her about probability theory and independent events, the ex post facto fallacy and how the human mind insists on seeing false patterns in the outcomes of random processes, but Lauren still thinks the Fates are supreme bitches.
Once she’s finished the dishes, I can’t justify making her wait any longer, so I let her roll.
She stares bullwhips at me and cups the die with both hands. If she wins, she won’t risk waiting even a single night before having her way with me. Not this time.
She tosses the die. It skitters across the table, bounces off the pepper mill … and comes up a four.
The End.
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Anaín Bjorkquist
Bio
Anaín Bjorkquist is a writer, speaker and wellness coach who helps women develop their subtle strength by teaching them when to turn on and when to let go. She also loves to titillate readers of her monthly newsletter, “Sex Love Joy Uncensored,” by including an erotic story. Find more at anainbjorkquist.com.
Mini-Interview
How did you start writing about sex? When my marriage began to fall apart, I started writing about sex publicly. At first it was extremely scary to hit publish on essays that detailed my sexual trials and triumphs, but quickly it worked better than therapy. The only difference between my sex writing/erotica and my non-erotic writing is the lack of sex. The inspiration for all my writing is my life; there are always pieces of me in every piece I pen.
How is the Erotic Reading Circle part of your writing process? Reading pieces in writing groups usually is intimidating for me but reading in the Erotic Reading Circle is absolutely liberating! Nothing compares to bringing sex scenes alive by speaking them aloud in front of other erotica writers who eagerly await with nonjudgmental ears and succulent constructive criticism.
Do you write under your own name? One of the first things I did on the road towards defiantly cultivating my own expression of womanhood was to start writing online without hiding behind anonymity. Being able to share my experiences as both a woman of color and a mother, knowing people knew who I was, helped me be more honest with myself and others.
What’s the inside scoop on your story? This story was inspired by reality. Although not all the action in this story is true, what is absolutely TRUE is that Tina’s “bag of tricks” exists and often claims victims in sunny South Florida.
My Desire for Women
Anaín Bjorkquist
My cunt has never led me astray. She usually speaks more clearly than my heart. The lovers who she doesn’t like my heart also eventually grows to dislike. So, I knew that if my cunt desired women then I should follow her lead. Was I bisexual?! I didn’t know, but I experimented with it. I thought that, just like with men, when the right “one” broke the dam in my cunt the truth about my sexuality would spill over. It was then that the Celestial Planning Goddesses sent Tina my way.