Table of Contents
Title Page
Foreword
Introduction
GIRONA, 1960
IN THE SAUNA
JUBILEE
SWEET TOOTH
BLOOD TIES
HE - SHE ON THE TRAIN
LIVES OF THE SAINTS
SEXTING: ONE SIDE OF A TWO - WAY
THE RENDEZVOUS SERIES
I - Midnight Rendezvous
II - Afternoon Rendezvous
III - Sunset Rendezvous
AMY’S FIRST LESSON
SHAMELESS
FLICK CHICKS
THE PURPLE GLOVES
THE KITCHEN LIGHT
UPPERCASING
PINUP
SELF-REFLECTION
BRUSH STROKES
FROM THE HALLS OF MONTEZUMA
TASTING CHANTAL
RIDDEN
THANKSGIVING
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
ABOUT THE EDITORS
Copyright Page
FOREWORD
I’ve never written a foreword before, but I’ll stick by a rule of thumb that works well when giving speeches: start off by saying thank-you, and meaning it. Tristan Taormino gave birth to, and grew, a great, important series in Best Lesbian Erotica; it’s helped define a genre that has grown exponentially in the last decade or so, and Tristan has been one of its guiding hands (sometimes holding a whip). She’s handed off a strong, fertile garden of delights for me to keep tending and nurturing. Our publishers at Cleis have made a commitment to keeping this series active and influential when its founder moved on.
How did I get here? I knew Tristan when we were both starting out as writers, and on the downtown New York City queer and women’s rock/literary/whatever scenes. I bought copies of her ’zine Pucker Up, and thought I might try to write some of that lesbian erotica stuff (of course, I had to come out first). Eventually I did (come out and start writing erotica), and started publishing it in Best Lesbian Erotica.
In that monumentally creative downtown scene, I sometimes ran into Tristan at a popular lesbian rock party called Fragglerock, where woman-fronted and all-girl bands were featured, and fabulous musicians played in all-star pickup bands, doing tributes to their musical godmothers and godfathers. One night, I watched Elizabeth Ziff of the band BETTY lead a Queen tribute that included about forty people doing a cover of “Bohemian Rhapsody” with a full chorus. People held up tinfoil stars, stood on benches at the side of the room and sang their hearts out.
BETTY was another longtime favorite of mine: I’d first seen Alyson, Amy and Elizabeth in the late ’80s, and they seemed to be wherever there was something interesting going on: at Fragglerock and Squeezebox, playing for marches on Washington, and always touring, singing in that tight harmony that’s their trademark.
Smart women, I thought—talented, serious and fun. I read Elizabeth’s review of Tipping the Velvet in Bust, so I can thank her for introducing me to the work of Sarah Waters. When I interviewed BETTY for ROCKRGRL magazine, they told me they were working on a musical. I got to see the development of the show, and even though they didn’t use my title (“BETTY’s Big Bang”), I was thrilled to see “BETTY RULES” receive a strong reception off-Broadway and continue to live as a touring show.
When I was asked to assume the position…of editorship of Best Lesbian Erotica, I thought about who to bring in as guest judge, and wanted to start with someone who had the mad intuitive skills and taste to judge both what is hot and what is well-written, and maybe from a slightly different point of view, genre-wise.
Songwriters have the task of telling a life or a moment in a couple of dozen lines. It’s a form that requires form, as well as style, craft, tempo, rhythm and talent to pull off successfully. So I approached Elizabeth (who had moved on to work on a television show you may have heard of: The L Word), and she told me she was being treated for breast cancer, and recommended her sister, Amy. And, well, if you’ve got Elizabeth and Amy, you’ve got to have Alyson.
So the power of three, which is about the power of ten thousand when those three are BETTY, dove into the manuscripts and came back with a remarkable array of choices. Together they cover the waterfront (and then some) of what lesbians are longing for and coming over, the things we are both afraid of and attracted to simultaneously.
Of the many manuscripts that poured in, I noted a strong international wave of submissions this year: this volume contains the work of writers from Ireland, Australia, Sweden, France and Germany (as well as from someone who lives in my neighborhood). There are some familiar voices from previous editions, as well as a few writers who are publishing for the first time. I also solicited (in every sense of the word) artists who hadn’t yet written erotica, but whom I thought could make something hot happen. I’m proud to say that a playwright, a travel writer, and a sci-fi writer/blogger who accepted my challenge to submit something made it into this book. I’ve got my eye on a few other writers in different genres for next time, so consider this your notice, you poets, memoirists, and menopausal stoners.
I’m also pondering who I might ask to be next year’s judge.
So, you know, expect the unexpected.
Enjoy Best Lesbian Erotica 2010.
Kathleen Warnock
INTRODUCTION
did you tell her about us
did you tell her what we did
did you tell her i talk dirty
did you tell her that you screamed
did you tell her we went somewhere dark so we couldn’t be
seen
did you tell her about us
did you tell her what we did
did you tell her i got nasty
did you tell her you got wild
did you tell that we came, and stayed for awhile
did you tell her about us
did you tell her what we did
did you tell her i was cool
did you tell her you were hot
did you show her all the things we used, and how to tie a knot
did you tell her about us
did you tell her what we did
did you tell her what i asked you
did you tell her you said yes
did you tell her you got on your knees and begged me for
less
did you tell her
well, don’t you think you better?
—from “Did You Tell Her,” BETTY
I.
Everyone has a pet peccadillo, caged or free-range. I have yet to meet a woman—gay, straight or otherwise—who didn’t admit to even the teeniest fantasy that swelled beyond the rim of a 100 percent pure vanilla encounter. One of the more titillating aspects of working as a traveling musician is having strangely intimate conversations with people all over the world. Quite often, the stories shared by strangers are laid bare, stripped by the demands of time and airline departures to their most compelling facts—desire and fulfillment. That fascinates me.
After a BETTY gig in Atlanta, I sat alone under the stars on the outside deck of a dance club, happy to nurse a beer in a slight breeze with the faint scent of distant flowers. A woman sitting nearby sighed. We started chatting and within a very short time I was glad we were outside in the dark because I was blushing inside from her story. If she had seen me squirm, I’m sure she would have stopped talking, but I didn’t want that. I was captivated.
I am definitely the most old-fashioned member of my band. I am the product of the Karilagan Finishing School and endless diplomatic functions with my parents at which the raciest remarks were wrapped in so much innuendo and clever wordplay that it wasn’t until much later that juicy gossip could be deciphered. I assume that’s why I choose to work with t
wo women who speak their minds loudly and proudly about everything, even intimate details. After two decades, Elizabeth and Amy Ziff can still shock me, and delight in doing so. Luckily, I enjoy it as well, being unwilling to speak so nakedly.
Would an audio voyeur be called an Auditeur? I guess that’s what I am. Like Scheherazade’s King, I am a glutton for delicious stories.
The woman in Atlanta lowered her head as she told me about her Daddy. She loved her new girlfriend but couldn’t give up the woman who made her sigh in the humid Georgia night from unappeased need. She knew that her ex-Daddy was a dead-end road, but she couldn’t move past her dangerous desires into the simple, open arms of a new love. I sat in the crackling campfire of her story, asking honest questions and having my mind blown.
On the flight back home, I wondered if her story could ever be mine. I cast myself in the various roles of her drama to see which would be the most authentic. One scenario turned into another as the miles passed. By the time we landed, I had a new song, “Georgia.”
One of the most gorgeous aspects of humanity is the ability to create lush, amazing lives within. The human imagination is capable of so much more color, texture and possiblity than ordinary life can provide. The more we hear, read and learn, the richer our inner worlds become. Like children playing make-believe at an age when castles and dragons are thrillingly real, so can we layer our daydreams with exciting options.
So many great ideas were submitted for this collection, from all over the world. The stories I selected dove deeper into the realm where fantasy comes to life. Each of them has a twist that slides sweet Alice through an inviting hole into her own particular wonderland, with details vivid enough to melt the walls around the reader for an even better view.
Some took me beyond my comfort zone into dark places I don’t wander, but felt compelled to include for those who do, including sad-eyed Georgia girls torn between a rock and a soft place. These stories plunge into a moist landscape where each sentence is another slippery step deeper into a breathless, throbbing world where…well. You’ll see.
Read on.
—Alyson Palmer
II
Is there anything better than curling up with a good book?
Maybe.
How about a good book that succeeds in curling you up… from your hair down to your toes?
Imagination and sex go together like peanut butter and jelly. (Hey, that just gave me a couple of good ideas!)
Anyway, what a treat it was to go through these stories and make suggestions and choices for the final release, keeping in mind, of course, what kind of outcomes you all might enjoy to achieve your final releases. These authors conjure up a gaggle of gals in some truly delicious situations.
So, relax, and start turning those pages.
Enjoy a story or two by yourself, with a friend or a lover.
And when something or someone doing something or someone really special gets you going…if you want to thank me later, I bet I can think of something special I might like.
Oh, and that can be our little secret.
Bon appétit.
—Amy Ziff
III
I’ve been sexually aggressive most of my lesbian life. It’s fun: I get off on getting girls off and I have no hang-ups (thanks to my parents’ openness and my mother’s rad feminist politics toward our bodies). It’s been fun. And sometimes one gets tired of that. I mean, flip me. I’m good at being a bottom. Don’t wait until you’re wasted to make the first move. Laugh about it. Share your fantasies. Get crazy. Not to say that I’m always Charles in Charge, cause how fucking boring is that? It’s nice to see that Lezbo erotica is getting betta and betta. That’s a great sign that we’re making choices for ourselves and we’re not afraid of what turns us on. Reading through some of these diverse and hot stories was fun, and some of it was a turn-on, which is sort of the whole point, right? I have to say, after dealing with breast cancer and heavy-duty treatments for the past two years, it takes quite a lot to get my juices flowing. But I’ll get better and my van will be rocking again soon. And some of the images from this collection will be right on the tip of my…well, you get the idea. Read on, and get off.
Love and sex,
—Elizabeth Ziff
GIRONA, 1960
Stella Sandberg
It was in the Pyrenees that Jamie met another lone biker. She rode up next to him, making her engine purr suggestively, and he was in on it at once. They raced each other on narrow serpentine roads with the mountainside to crash into on one side and the cliff to tumble over on the other. The challenge made Jamie feel euphoric.
She’d been driving for days, farther and farther south, without being able to shake off a long winter’s restlessness. Now she realized this was what she needed: to push herself and her bike to the limit. She’d been driving fast—others might call it recklessly so—but she’d known what she was doing. She’d kept within her limits, not taking any risks, just riding as if going somewhere—as if she had a place to go where the feeling of freedom would await her. But that feeling could only be reached on the road, when she was riding for the sake of riding, not for the sake of getting somewhere. She’d almost forgot.
She felt some respect for the stranger racing her. He knew what he was doing too, didn’t risk his life with any crazy chances but maneuvered skillfully on the narrow road. His engine was weaker than her NSU Max. When he wasn’t breathing down her neck anymore she cast a glance over her shoulder and saw that he’d given up and slowed down. She stopped by the roadside, waiting for him to catch up with her, and he came and stopped next to her.
He wore one of those old-fashioned leather helmets with goggles, like a pilot. Jamie had only her dark shades, and her black hair so greased and slicked back the wind couldn’t touch it. He removed his goggles and met her gaze. She noticed he was fair and that his face was delicate and ridiculously well sculpted, like one of those Greek statues, an Adonis or Hermes or something. Either that, or…Katharine Hepburn in Christopher Strong.
“You too!” she exclaimed, the surprise making her voice lighter than she normally let it sound.
“Oh, I thought you a Spaniard.” the other butch replied, amused at the double coincidence.
They exchanged disbelieving grins and firm handshakes.
“Jamie.”
“Charlie,” the loser replied, adding cockily. “I’d beat you on my own bike. This one’s borrowed.”
She caught Jamie’s interest: “Oh, yeah? What’ve you got?”
“A BMW R24. Terribly outdated by now, I guess.” Charlie blushed, as if she was someone used to having the latest.
“That’s not all that matters,” Jamie said. “If you know it…”
“I know it!” Charlie asserted, “That is, I knew it…It was a long time ago.”
“You never lose it,” Jamie reassured her, thinking of how she knew her NSU Max, how she could read every change in its sound, every vibration under her palms and between her thighs.
While they spoke Jamie rolled a cigarette, which she offered to Charlie. Charlie accepted it and Jamie lit it for her, before rolling one for herself. The chivalrous gesture made Charlie blush again.
“If I’d met you when I was twenty I’d have become that way straightaway!” she exclaimed.
Jamie raised an eyebrow. “I hardly thought you were twenty now.”
“I’m thirty.” Charlie laughed, and the fine lines around her eyes supported her claim. “When I was twenty I thought girls were awfully silly. I had a crush on a young bloke with a motorbike, though I suspect it was mostly the bike I lusted after…. Had it been you with that bike I’d have realized one or two things….”
“Ten years ago I was just a boarding school tomboy,” Jamie said, trying to conceal her embarrassment.
She was surprised Charlie was hitting on her. She hadn’t even known two butches could get together. Though perhaps Charlie wasn’t all butch…. Her former crush on a man suggested she might not be. As fo
r Jamie, she’d never felt the slightest attraction for a man, no matter how hotly she desired his bike. She wanted to be the Brylcreemed bikers, and steal their girlfriends. But she couldn’t, even though the girls seemed keen enough, because what would they think when they found out she wasn’t really a man? She’d let them think she only cared for hot driving, that girls were beneath her.
But this Charlie, who had seen through her right away because she was the same, seemed to want her all the same. This was new to Jamie. She’d always been the pursuer, never the pursued. She’d thought she wanted it that way, or rather, she’d never really thought about it at all.
They smoked their cigarettes in silence. When they’d put them out, Charlie asked Jamie where she was going. Jamie shrugged—truthfully.
“Me too!” Charlie said. “Fancy company?”
“Sure.”
Jamie didn’t mind. She put on her black leather gloves and the shades she’d kept hanging from her belt and they kick-started their bikes again. Jamie led the way to Girona. For some reason—it was too late in the afternoon for siesta—the town was completely quiet. They had trouble finding an open grocery but finally got hold of a few bottles of beer to wash the road dust from their throats. The yawning, balding, middle-aged man behind the counter stared but made no enquiries as to their sex or business in town.
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