by Carol Queen
Seriously, isn’t he going to want to get off My mind fl to the weirdness of this situation. How in hell did I end up with such … service? Again I remind myself to lie back and just enjoy, wondering why it is so hard for me to be selfish. I turn to my usual technique for dealing with the distraction of my thoughts: I take a slow, deep breath into my core, in the hope of shifting my energy from my mind back down to my cunt where it belongs. I pant lightly, making my diaphragm and pelvis pulse with each inhale/exhale. His tongue is now full-on inside me; this guy seems eager to bring it home. Despite those moments of wandering thoughts, my body knows what’s good, and responds with hot, hungry desire. I want to be fucked so badly—if he’d just give it to me with his fingers, four, or … mmm … oh God … his fists! Are his hands big? I don’t remember. I just want to be filled. Fuck me! I am screaming in my head.
Should I use my fingers inside her? Now that we are in the middle of things I am not sure where the boundaries are. I want to feel all the warmth and wet, but I’d have to take my mouth away and I just want to taste her more. She is humping my face now, her hips off the chair, back arching. I want to get inside, so the hell with it, I just will. Let her slap me if she wants to. I don’t want to be disrespectful, but I want so bad to make her come. Her cunt is wide open; one finger seems lost in there so I go for it with all four. She moans loudly and is fucking my hand, opening more, then contracting around my fingers, tight and hot. I am so hard, so excited, I’d give anything to fuck her, but this is what I asked for and I am getting it good.
I didn’t have to tell him what I wanted, and I glance down to see him seemingly mesmerized by what he’s got going on. I am pumping at his fingers with my greedy cunt and when he leans down to drag his tongue over my clit I go right over the edge. An explosion of color behind my eyes: a psychedelic swirl of vivid reds, orange, purple … I am so close. He gets it and keeps pushing me, licking and sucking while his fingers fill me and I am humping back at him, hard. His thumb is in my asshole now and I push myself up on my hands so I can get more thrust. He comes back at me voraciously, knowing not to let up. My whole body is vibrating and hot, my clit is pulsating, burning. A sound starts to roll through my diaphragm like thunder—I hear it in my head like it is in the distance. I … am … going … to ….
Holy shit—her cunt opens so wide that there is a void around my fingers and for a moment I think I could fit my entire hand inside her. Then, just as suddenly, every single muscle squeezes back down, tight. Before I can think about whether I should pull out, I discover I have no choice. She is coming with a force I’ve only seen acted out in porn. Like a geyser, hot liquid streams from her cunt, soaking my face, my chest. And all this is accompanied by a sound that comes not from her throat, but deeper down in her belly, like the passionate roar of an animal in heat. I am literally floored.
Catching my breath. He is sitting at my feet. Peter. No indication of shock or disgust—bonus points for that. He is caressing my calves, and, after a few minutes says: Should I go? I don’t know what would happen if he were to stay so I tell him yes. You did nothing wrong. Nothing at all, I tell him. I hope he can see that I am smiling – I am exhausted, even the act of turning my lips up at the corners seems to take more energy than I have left.
Is it ok to want more? Practice, I mean. Truth is, I really love my girlfriend. All I want is to make her happy. Is there anything wrong with that? I look down at Maggie, her skirt is still pulled up, and her pubes are all damp and matted down. She seems spent, a little dazed, and I have a pretty good feeling she is satisfied, considering the puddle on the floor. I want to ask when I can do her again, but instead I ask her if I should go. When she tells me I did a good job, it spills out: When can I do it again?
Come back any time, I smile. You definitely need more practice.
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Joy West
Bio
Joy West speaks sex, sensuality, and fluent feline. She writes about salt and thirst, Frida Kahlo’s braids, and the scamper of an armadillo. Her work appeared in Labyrinth, eyelevel and Art Matters; she has been a featured reader at The Last Word and the Painted Bride reading series in Philadelphia.
Mini-Interview
How did you start writing about sex? I write about sex so that I remember I want to fuck. While writing, I find longing and fill my wounds with ink. My libido, my drive for skin and intimacy, is often on a long leash—she wanders off and winds herself around trees. I try to walk forward but she yanks; I hear her yapping behind me, sometimes growling for attention. I wish I could untether myself from this desire beast but she is mine and I am her: lone wolf, Shepherd, and lap dog. Writing helps me face the teeth and slobber of my little Bitch, Libido.
What’s the inside scoop on your story?
About Fern: I had eaten fiddlehead ferns for the first time while visiting Vermont in early May, prime fiddlehead season. It seemed strange and wonderful, to eat this spiral plant that had not yet unfurled. I was taking a class in sustainable treehouse building at a school called Yestermorrow and the cook had carefully foraged for the edible fiddleheads that are not poisonous for us. We enjoyed them chilled in a balsamic dressing in the common kitchen.
About Reading: This poem is based on a real event in which someone I know who is basically kind but who rattles me started talking to me on public transit. I pulled out a book and suggested reading so we wouldn’t have to talk. I had forgotten I’d marked a poem of Louise Glück’s called “Dream of Lust.” We took turns reading aloud and my reading companion proclaimed, “that was great” when we finished. I did kiss her cheek and was charmed that poetry could soften me toward someone I had wanted to dodge. I also wondered if sharing a sexy poem in the public space of a trolley might even turn strangers into lovers.
Reading
Joy West
In the spine
lay the edge of the rectangle
slicing two pages of
DREAM OF LUST, 46-47.
I forgot what I had marked.
We were on the trolley.
Let’s read poems.
I offered
to silence her chatter:
Temp. jobs, overqualified for mailroom,
and what are your plans after layoff?
I move to the back,
so does she.
Let’s read poems. She held the right side
and I the left of the hardcover.
Open to Glück’s dream. Aloud, she read:
unexpected animal …
You are ridiculously young …
People in front but no one turns. This, ours with
… odd lumbering gaucheness
that became erotic grace.
22nd St., 19th., I rush to finish before City Hall
That was great! she said, hug and
I kiss her cheek. Glance mouth, so close.
the human body a compulsion, a magnet.
Indented quotes from Louise Glück “Dream of Lust” in The Seven Ages, 2001.
Fern
Joy West
I eat Spring.
Fiddleheads. Snap
the spirals. Facing
each other but wound,
they grow shy.
Savor this curl.
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“Literature—creative literature—unconcerned with sex, is inconceivable.”
- Gertrude Stein
Gina de Vries
Bio
Gina de Vries is a writer, cultural worker, queer cripple, genderqueer femme, Paisano strega, fat sex worker, and devout pervert born, raised, and currently living in San Francisco. Ze is founder of Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop, founder of the Girl Talk performance series, and on the Advisory Board at The Center for Sex & Culture. Ze’s performed, taught, and lectured everywhere from chapels to leatherbar backrooms to the Ivy Leagues, and hir writing has been anthologized dozens of places. Ze is currently at work on How To Have A Body, a book of experimental prose. Read more at ginadevries.com
&
nbsp; Mini-Interview
How did you start writing about sex? I write for a ton of different reasons, but one of the biggest ones is that writing is a tool that helps me make sense of my life and the world around me. I started to develop an awareness of myself as a sexual being—and, specifically, as a queer sexual being—when I was very young (I came out as queer in middle school). I would say that I started writing about sex and sexuality around that time (pubescent diaries absolutely count, in my book!). So I was writing about sex and desire and embodiment long before I ever actually had sex with another human being, and I just kinda … never stopped. Middle-school diaries that I never showed a soul eventually morphed into embarrassingly earnest queer feminist erotic poetry that I published in ‘zines as a teenager … which eventually morphed into what I do as a writer, performer, and cultural worker today. It’s honestly very hard for me to differentiate between my erotic and non-erotic work at this point in my life. While not all of my work is explicitly pornographic or written to get the reader off, the overwhelming majority of my writing is about sexuality and embodiment in some way, shape, or form. I’ve never for a second been interested in leaving the sex out of my work, or “toning it down” for the sake of some hypothetical conservative audience. I’m gonna end by quoting from How To Have A Body (my current manuscript in progress) here, because it feels relevant to this question, and to how I work and how I understand my artistic vision and process: “I know in my heart of hearts that creative drive and erotic drive are inextricably and undeniably linked. I can’t write if I can’t come. I can’t feel the peak of a story or a poem if I can’t feel the peak of my own orgasm. I don’t wanna write when I don’t wanna fuck, and I don’t wanna fuck when I don’t wanna write.”
Bambino
Gina de Vries
I’d told him to dress like a teenager going on a first date, and he came over that night looking sharp—all James Dean tough and tender. Black curls coiffed into a greaser pompadour, leather jacket and dark jeans and pressed button-down shirt hugging his tall, slim frame. He’d just seen East of Eden, he said. “The hype is real—James Dean really is that hot. I’m kind of in love.”
I grinned. “So that’s why you’re dressed like a greaser!”
He nodded. “Yeah. The movie’s probably better when you’re stoned, because it’s a little slow. But it’s awesome, and James Dean …” His eyes got all dreamy again.
“Do you wanna fuck him or do you wanna be him, Bambino?” “Um. Both.” He blushed.
***
He made me wish I had a record player, that boy. A record player and a clawfoot tub, real silk stockings and a rotary phone. A collection of vintage garter belts and a smart little sixties miniskirt that inched up my thighs slowly when I spread my legs. A dress for him to unzip down the back while I insisted that of course I wasn’t doing anything untoward and really, I was getting tired of him insinuating something. He made me want a beret and a first edition of Howl, a couple of joints and a bottle of red wine to seduce him into the wicked Bohemian lifestyle. He made me want an apron collection, a real kitchen, and a real dining room. A table where I could feed him after-school snacks and help him with his homework, undo his belt while he struggled with a Math problem and tried to ignore how good my hands felt.
What I had to work with was a tiny rent-controlled apartment, thrift store lingerie, and a limitless imagination. We started dating right before I started graduate school and moved into an impossibly cheap in- law studio in the South Mission. The day after our first date, he offered to help me move. He ended up stuck in transit on a trip back from Oregon—never made it to move-in. But five days later, he was the first person I fucked in my new bedroom.
I’d never lived alone before. This was a place with a fig tree in the backyard, an old-school San Francisco Chinese grandmother landlord who offered to let me pay rent in cash, and a sketchy little alleyway between buildings that led up to my doorstep. I wanted to throw him around in that alley, but there was zero privacy—no way to do it without alerting my new neighbors to the intimate details of my sex life. This was a place with a kitchenette table that doubled as a counter, and a main room that just barely held my bed, my bookshelves, my desk, and my clothes. But it didn’t matter that it was tiny—it was mine, all mine. I could put whatever I wanted on the walls, have loud sex without disturbing my housemates, sing opera at three in the morning if the whim struck me. Everything about that month felt limitless, imbued with magic and newness—my new school, my new apartment, my new neighborhood, my new cat. And him.
And I didn’t have an apron collection or a first edition of Howl, so I worked with what I did have. I started scouring thrift store racks, looking for the slips with 42-inch bustlines and lots of give in the tits. I grabbed every H&M size 12 camisole off the rack and stretched them over my curves. I bought $9 stay-up stockings at Madame S and $2 fishnets from MultiKulti Dance Accessories on 16th and Valencia. I justified every new purchase, no matter how extravagant or frivolous, with “Well, I can use it in a role-play, right? This slip is actually a very reasonably priced sex toy!” I started wearing more makeup. Dangly earrings instead of my tough-girl gauged lobes. Flowers in my hair. “Hellfire” from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab dabbed into the sweet spots behind my ears and between my breasts.
I was only a year older than him, but when we went out together, we really did look the part. Me like Mrs. Robinson in my leopard-print skirt and garters and stockings. Him like Benjamin in his pressed pants and shirt, that dark mop of curls, big eyes and pale creamy skin. The adorable jolty way he moved when he was nervous, or excited—so much boy energy to burn. Dimples in his cheeks when he smiled. The tentative, tender, teenage way he’d ask permission to touch me, or lean into the crook of my neck and sigh, so happy.
I was wearing fishnets with stompy boots in the pit at Cypher in Snow shows by the time I was fourteen, calling myself queer and punk and femme even then. Pervert came a few years later, when I was still a teenager. When I met him, I’d been a die-hard Daddy’s girl for years; I’d even been Ma’am and Mistress a few times. But I’d never been in charge all the time. I’d never been anyone’s Mama before.
***
“So much of this,” he said to me, “is about getting to have the adolescence I didn’t get to have.” We were stretched out in my bed, him in his greaser finery, me in my lingerie, catching up on our weeks before we got carried away by sex.
“I thought you might say something like that,” I said. I still didn’t know much about his life, then. But I know what it is to be raised to be a good girl, what it is to be expected to grow into a proper woman; and I know what it is to fail at that. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be held up to the Girl Standard when you’re actually a boy waiting to grow into a man. “You know … It’s like that for me, too,” I said, “When I play Mama with you, sometimes. And when we both pretend we’re teenagers …”
And he looked surprised. “But weren’t you, like, the cool punk girl who came out all early? Like, didn’t you do zines and all this awesome writing and—?”
“Yeah, I mean, I was punk and I was queer, but I was a nerd and I was a fat girl, too. Publishing a zine didn’t get me laid in high school, dude.” And we both cracked up at that.
“It’s funny,” I said, “I mean, I think the kids I went to school with thought I was a slut because I was queer, so, you know, that automatically makes you hypersexual—”
“Right, of course, they always think that—”
“—and, I mean, I dressed the part, and I talked about sex. But I only had sex with one person in high school. I wanted to be slutty, but …” I trailed off. Tried to find the words. “It wasn’t something I had access to. Some of what I do with you, when we pretend like that … It’s about getting to be who I would have been if I’d actually been in my body. If I’d believed I was pretty. Believed I could be sexy like that.”
***
Sometimes I felt myself existing in the timeline of all the chara
cters we played. Not just frozen at that age, but frozen in that time period. So when we pretended I was a bossy riot grrrl and he was the shy, younger grunge-rock boy who was friends with my dorky little brother, it wasn’t 2009 in my studio. It was 1999 at my parents’ house, and I was seventeen, playing him my Bikini Kill 7-inch and inching too close to him on my bed. I knew better than to be fooling around with my kid brother’s friend—it was kinda questionable around the age thing, it was even more questionable when it came to the crowds we hung out in. But it was so much fun to make him squirm and swear him to secrecy, and God, he was such a quick study with that mouth, those hands, that cock.
The night he came over dressed up like a greaser I was in a red slip, fishnets, red heels. A glittery red cloth rose in my hair. Could I be a fifties housewife in this? I thought as we chatted. He was telling me more about James Dean. Maybe. A very seductive one, at least. We were lying on my bed together, close but not cuddling. I caught his chin in my hand and pulled him in for a kiss. He wrapped his arms around me, but he pulled his lips away after a minute.
“We’re doing that thing we do,” he murmured into my neck, kissed it. “Mmm. We’re doing that thing, where we start before the scene starts …”
“Oh, so you wanna work for it?” I grabbed his pompadour and pulled. He winced at first, cried out. But then he giggled. Nodded.
“I wanna work for it. Yes. I want a story.” I let him go. It was hard not to touch him.
“Okay, Bambino … How old do you wanna be? “Sixteen? Seventeen, maybe?”