Archive for Sex+ Art
The Philadelphia Erotic Literary Salon Rocks!
Anyway, I enormously enjoyed The Erotic Literary Salon and really recommend checking it out and/or attending it in general to all in the Philadelphia area. If I lived there, I suspect I surely would! The Salon is held the third Tuesday of each month, and the press release here contains the details about each month’s upcoming Salon and featured reader. Also, I was really remiss in forgetting to thank the numerous audience member readers tonight once I got to the microphone (an indication of nervousness, I suspect!). As was the case when I attended last month as well, I was deeply impressed by and appreciative of the open-mic readers’ offerings. It was an honor, and humbling, tonight to follow them.
I want to thank once again the founder and organizer of the Salon, Susana Mayer, for inviting me to be the featured reader this month and for creating such an incredible event that so many of the participants seem, in my experience, to enjoy so much. And a big thank you as well again to Jeremy Edwards for putting Susana in touch with me!
I also want to extend special thanks to Erobintica, who was also there tonight (and read one of her flashers from one of Alison Tyler‘s past flasher contests). Tonight was the fourth time Robin has been with me immediately prior to my doing a reading, and each time I have experienced her as exhibiting the same graciousness, patience, and support amidst (and, um, sometimes in response to) my running around like a grasshopper on speed—even the two times she was reading herself at the event in question (and apparently not seeming nearly as frazzled in preparation as I!). I appreciate it very much, and I thank her for not only her support again tonight but also for her presence at the Salon, which she too traveled to attend.
Incidentally, Robin also helped with videotaping my reading, which I plan to put up as soon as I 1) discern or attain help from someone who knows how to discern how to do such a thing, and 2) am not in the middle of packing for or traveling for the holiday season.
In the meantime, happy (slightly belated) Winter Solstice, and lovely Winter in general to all!
Love,
Emerald
-Wang Chung “Everybody Have Fun Tonight”
Only a Week Away!
December’s Philadelphia Erotic Literary Salon is just one week away! I am so excited to be the featured reader at the Salon for December and thank founder and host Susana Mayer again for inviting me (and fellow author Jeremy Edwards for introducing us).
I visited the Salon for the first time last month and read as an audience member—the Salon includes an open-mic segment, and audience members may have up to five minutes to read their own work or the work of others—relaying an edited version of my short piece “Play for Me” (published in 2008 at Good Vibrations Magazine). The featured reader is allotted up to 15 minutes to read, and next week I plan to read my story “Power over Power” from Rachel Kramer Bussel‘s anthology Please, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission.
The Erotic Literary Salon has in the past hosted such featured readers as Jeremy Edwards, Robin “Erobintica” Sampson, and Heidi Champa, and I am delighted to soon be keeping such company. :) Details about the event may be found in the press release here, and of course I’ll post a reminder again next week!
Love,
Emerald
“Well conveniently enough, I want to fuck you too, Jackie,” Dominic whispered smoothly, and my legs trembled. “And I think I know what you want me to do. You want me to hold you down, fuck you hard, get pretty rough with you.” I wondered if for the first time I would come without actually being touched. “You’re looking for power. In your own way, getting fucked rough like that will make you feel powerful. Is that right?” My vision was becoming fuzzy, and I could hardly make sense of the words he was saying.
-from “Power over Power”
Philadelphia Tonight!
Even though I’m just back from my trip to New York for the Passion reading, I am headed right back to the train station today and excited to be attending The Erotic Literary Salon this evening to see Jeremy Edwards and Robin Elizabeth Sampson/Erobintica as the feature readers!
Jeremy will be reading from his comedic erotic novel Rock My Socks Off, which I, given how behind I am on my reading list, am still in the middle of reading (and laughing out loud at!). Robin will be reading a selection of her erotic poetry, including her two poems that were finalists at the 2010 Seattle Erotic Art Festival’s Literary Art Showcase. (I just recommended one of them a few weeks ago.)
I am delighted by the opportunity to support Jeremy and Robin tonight, and I will also be taking the opportunity to read as an audience member (audience members get the chance to read for five-minute increments). In addition, I am honored that The Erotic Literary Salon’s founder and host, Susana Mayer, has invited me to appear at next month’s Salon as the featured reader. More on that to come—in the meantime, if you’re in Philadelphia tonight and want to come out and see us, you can find all the detailshere!
Love,
Emerald
An Invitation (Perhaps a Plea) to Explore…
I recently read on Blogging Censorship, the blog of the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), of two recent cases of proposed or fulfilled book banning in (United States) school libraries. The first was at Sequoyah Middle School in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, in response to a complaint from a parent about the book Shooting Star by Fredrick McKissack Jr. The school board faced a decision in August about whether to allow the book to remain on the school library’s shelves, which it ultimately did. The second case was at Stockton High School in Stockton, Missouri, which a few weeks ago held a public forum about its April ban of the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie from classrooms and the school library.
In the Oklahoma case, a parent complained that Shooting Star used the word “fuck” in the text 45 times.
In the Missouri case, one of the dissenting parents had this to say:
So. “Fuck” and masturbation. These are what we collectively feel so afraid of our children being exposed to, from which it is so important to protect them. A word that has been known to refer to sex and a personal act that involves oneself. Huh.Mike Holzknecht, who has two children in Stockton schools, supports the ban. He displayed several large copies of pages in the book, one of which described masturbation.
“I am proud of you guys for saying no. Here’s the limit,” he said to the board, pointing to the pages. “We’re not going to take it.
“It’s an insult to my son and my daughter to say we have to have stuff like this in our schools to make them read,” Holzknecht said.
Listen, parents who initiated and continued action to have these books banned from school: I am not a parent. I do not pretend to know how challenging and intense being one may be. There have been many times when I have observed something related to children or parenting and recognized and acknowledged that I do not know how I would respond or act in that situation.
It seems strongly evident to me, however, that acting like sex doesn’t exist, or that it’s something scary or wrong or bad, is not helpful. It is not going to contribute to kids’ developing aware and whole perspectives about this intrinsic area of life. It’s not going to help children respect their bodies, their instincts, each other more. It very well may interfere with these things.
What it is more likely to result in is things like the adult services section of a popular website being shut down and efforts to put people in jail for selling products designed to invoke sexual stimulation because so many adults seem so skittish about sex that openness or professional services around it seem to scare them enough to try to pretend it doesn’t exist, at least in ways they feel uneasy about, in adults too.
Another way of putting it is that these adults may have been privy to this kind of sex-phobic teaching as children too.
As has occurred to me many times, what I wish or would prefer is that adults not simply project things onto children because it seems easier (which in a way it almost undoubtedly is, though in another way it results in suffering because it is ignorant) instead of examining themselves. I truly don’t blame people for experiencing issues around sexuality. (In some ways, I may relate.) The society in which we live has seemed to me to act rampantly pubescent and/or puritanical about sex, and it does not seem to nurture an open, aware environment or tendency to nurture those characteristics individually around it. It thus does not seem surprising to me that inner distortions, conscious or unconscious, exist in numerous adults around sexuality.
But that is what they are—they are issues in oneself around this complex and inherent-to-life subject and area of life. Projecting them outward thoughtlessly, especially onto youth, is a disservice to all. Doesn’t that make sense? If you are not examining, and indeed sometimes experiencing the discomfort of, working through your own issues, don’t you see how simply projecting outward whatever you are not facing in yourself subconsciously or unconsciously is perpetuating that cycle? It means the kids subjected to this kind of projection may more likely themselves not learn how to self-examine and may even develop some of the same unconscious and subconscious issues around sexuality that have not been worked through in the adults around them.
In this way, examining oneself may truly be a way to break a lot of cycles. This terminology may be familiar in its usage in domestic violence campaigns—”breaking the cycle” of violence has been spoken of in this context. There are many more “cycles,” phenomena of ignorance and unawareness in ourselves, that are similarly perpetuated, albeit seemingly in not as grotesquely obvious ways. This is one of them. When we aren’t aware of our own unconscious motivations because we have not acknowledged or examined things inside us that admittedly feel uncomfortable, we invite and breed the perpetuation of that unconsciousness and suppression.
In my experience, observation, and understanding, individuals who seem to demonstrate extreme self-righteousness, judgment, or dictatorial tendencies do not do so just because it seems fun. Regardless of whether they are aware of or acknowledge motivations for these tendencies, there is likely a lot of unprocessed pain and/or psychological patterning in them that came at a time when they themselves were children and developed these psychic structures in order to survive. I really do understand that attending to these things in ourselves may be extremely uncomfortable, painful, or even traumatic.
But not examining them is painful in an ongoing manner not only for ourselves but also for humanity collectively. Fearing sex as a subject and our children’s eventual exposure to it as a healthy, intrinsic part of life seems indicative to me of a distortion in perspective. It is not sex itself that is problematic but our fears and issues around it of which we are not consciously aware and/or which we have not worked through, and this seems especially relevant in relation to how we are teaching and the messages we are sending young people about this aspect of life. Especially if we feel a fear or resistance around sexuality, I invite us all to take a deep breath and sincerely examine what is truly there and what resistances or inhibitions we encounter in relation to the subject—and to eventually explore the idea of feeling enthusiastic about nurturing the open, individualized, integrated, authentic, eventual sexual selves of all youth and indeed all individuals.
Love,
Emerald
-The Killers “Sam’s Town”
Just Because
…I find this song ridiculously hot:
Emerald “And I just can’t resist the urge to stand here in the light…I get off on you getting off on me…”
-Halestorm “I Get Off”
The Case for Reading Erotica
A couple weeks ago I read an article in the New York Times that I considered blogging about but ultimately did not find compelling enough to do so. This is not because I didn’t find the article interesting but rather, I think, because I had not read enough of the work the author referenced to find myself relating to what she was postulating.
The article was about sex writing by male fiction authors of today’s and the immediately prior generation. Today I read three pages of letters to the editor in response to it, and those I have found compelling (compelling enough to blog about, obviously). With the qualifier that I have still not read all or even many of the works the author references in her article or the ones mentioned in many of the responses, a consistent theme struck me, and a response began to emerge as I read more and more of the letters.
The summary of the article, written by Katie Roiphe and titled “The Naked and the Conflicted,” reads,
“We denounce the Great Male Novelists of the last century for their sexism. But something has been lost now that innocence is more fashionable than virility, the cuddle preferable to sex.”
The article’s general thesis seems to be that the current generation of male fiction authors are shying away from sex in their work, penning ambivalent, self-conscious sex scenes as contrasted with the previous generation’s works by authors such as John Updike, Norman Mailer, and Philip Roth, about which she says, for example, “There is in these scenes rage, revenge and some garden-variety sexism, but they are — in their force, in their gale winds, in their intelligence — charismatic, a celebration of the virility of their bookish, yet oddly irresistible, protagonists.”
She later laments things like, “But our new batch of young or youngish male novelists are not dreaming up Portnoys or Rabbits. The current sexual style is more childlike; innocence is more fashionable than virility, the cuddle preferable to sex,” and “Gone the familiar swagger, the straightforward artistic reveling in the sexual act itself,” concluding that in the previous generation’s work, ” … there is in these old paperbacks an abiding interest in the sexual connection.”
The letters to the editor in response are varied, of course, but again, as I read them, a similar theme seemed evident to me.
This is an example of one of the responses:
Katie Roiphe’s essay has confirmed my suspicion that I’m not the only one to lament the disappearance of straight male sexual bravado in literature. I’m a feminist, but I still want to see inside the head of a man’s animal lust. Why must every roll in the hay be so ironic and self-conscious that it’s somehow castrated?
Other responses countered Ms. Roiphe’s proposition, but I also saw a few that introduced the idea that the trend she postulated may be resultant of a perceived “hypersexualized” culture and bombardment of messaging, expressed with lines such as, “In a world in which sex has become entirely ironic, and thus detached from real emotion, they find that the most emotional moments are no longer sexual,” and “a passing glance at Internet porn should explain why sexual candor no longer seems like much of a touchstone for artistic ambition.”
Whether the writers of the letters were agreeing with Ms. Roiphe’s hypothesis or expressing disgust or frustration with a “hypersexualized” culture in which explicit sex does not seem a “touchstone for artistic ambition,” the same response arose in me. This isn’t so much a response to Ms. Roiphe’s literary critique of past and contemporary treatment of sex by male authors (nor is it meant to be a discouragement of interpretive critique of literary trends and related societal implications) as it is a practical offering to what so many of the responders (and perhaps Ms. Roiphe herself) seem to be seeking, either overtly or between the lines:
Read erotica. If you’re not finding the authenticity, sincerity, directness, fearlessness, nuance, integration, and variety of sexual exploration and articulation you want to see in mainstream literature, read erotica. Read erotica published by Cleis Press, Black Lace (what will have to be already-published erotica now), Logical-Lust Publications, and any number of publishers listed on various erotica writers’ websites. That’s what the genre is here for, and if you think it won’t be “literary” enough, I am delighted to take the opportunity to direct you to evidence to the contrary.
For starters, pick up Donna George Storey‘s novel Amorous Woman, Charlotte Stein‘s short story collection The Things That Make Me Give In, erotic short stories written by Shanna Germain, Craig Sorensen, Alana Noel Voth, Nikki Magennis, P. S. Haven, to name a very few. That is a wholly non-exhaustive list, of course, but once you’ve delved into such things, you will likely discover a network or references with much more you may find of interest. Because that’s what this is—literary work that doesn’t hide sex, fearfully peeking at it from behind mainstream standards that demand either rebellion against or acquiescence to them. Just integrating sexuality into the work of writing fiction, the same way it is integrated into life.
“Sexual male bravado” and “a man’s animal lust” are not write-able only by males, as the above examples readily evidence.* Further, there are such things as female sexual bravado and a woman’s animal lust that do not seem to be mentioned in either the context of the “traditional male greats” or the supposed watered-down sexual description plaguing contemporary fiction. They are a part of sexuality, however, and may also be found in abundance in the above-cited works.
I have not read all of the referenced authors or work in either Katie Roiphe’s article or the responses to the editor. But I have read the list presented above. And I offer it very sincerely as an antidote to what Ms. Roiphe and her responders seem to lament—from whatever perspective they may do so.
Love,
Emerald
“‘Cause the good old days weren’t always good, and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems…”
-Billy Joel “Keepin’ the Faith”
The Other Dance Seeking Submissions
Several months ago I posted a letter and response to it, neither written by me, that related to openness about sexuality and an elder’s view and experience of sexuality. I did this because I appreciated the original letter and felt extraordinarily moved by the response.
The original letter was from A Pause for Beauty, the email newsletter of Heron Dance, a literary arts and wilderness publication to which I have subscribed for a few years. The founding artist of Heron Dance, Rod MacIver, is currently embarking on a new, additional venture in support of his nude and erotic watercolors (the picture accompanying this post is one of them) which is to include the publishing of an electronic newsletter with short erotic written pieces to accompany his paintings.
The newsletter has been named The Other Dance, and submissions for it are now being sought. The full call and contact information is on ERWA’s Call for Submissions page (note: they are accepting submissions from female authors only), and the website of the project, which showcases some of the paintings that are the impetus for The Other Dance, is EroticWatercolors.com.
Since I am familiar with this venture and have been a fan of Heron Dance for a few years, I wanted to pass the word along. When I posted last year the previously referenced letter Rod wrote for A Pause for Beauty (and the response it received from an 80-year-old woman), I did so because I appreciated the straightforward introduction of the subject of sexuality into the writing he was presenting. The Other Dance seems a continuation of that, and in wholehearted support of open and integrative recognition of sexuality, I wish it all the best.
Love,
Emerald
-Bright Eyes “Bowl of Oranges”
Yellow Lights and Long Summer Shadows
Earlier this week in my Spicy Summer Sundays blog tour post, I talked abut transition. As well I invited readers to talk about it, which they did so beautifully and thoughtfully that it has inspired me to continue to ponder the topic. (It appears I wasn’t the only one — check out the beautiful flash story Craig J. Sorensen created.) Yesterday as I was driving home, I noticed the “long shadows” that Rick had mentioned earlier as uniquely characteristic of evening in late summer. I wasn’t looking for them, but as I looked out the windshield at a large flowering bush, I suddenly did notice a particular kind of light. I realized the lighting appearance was that of the long shadows he had just been talking about — a sign of late summer.
As I mentioned in my poppy seed post, according to Traditional Five-Element Acupuncture we are in the season of Late Summer* — the season of transition. After writing the post and reading the extraordinary discussion that followed, I have been noticing transition more, and sometimes I have been deliberately pondering it as well.
As I noticed these long summer shadows, I simultaneously seemed to feel a quite vague, mysterious, and fleeting yearning. It occurred to me that transition may seem so fascinating to me because historically there has been an orientation in me distinctly disposed to focusing on extremes — a “one or the other,” “all or nothing,” black and white mentality. I remember when I was a kid, long before I learned to drive, I didn’t understand the purpose of the yellow traffic light. Seriously. It seemed to me you either go or stop — what is the in between of the yellow for? After I learned to drive, of course, the purpose of the yellow light made sense, but it seems funny to me that even now I can remember feeling genuinely confused by its existence.
Transition. The yellow light signals transition (interestingly, the color that corresponds to the Late Summer season in Five-Element Acupuncture is yellow). And in a way, transition flies in the face of that focus on extremes that has historically operated in me. Scarlett Greyson mentioned in a comment after the poppy seed post on Sunday the transition of fresh water to/from ocean water — an example I found exquisite, as well as one I don’t ever remember occurring to me. To the historical “extremes” perspective in me, there is fresh water and there is salt water. There are places of each. Somewhere in a cold mountain spring, the water is as fresh as can be. In the ocean, that freshness is nowhere to be seen in the utter saltiness of seawater.
Yet somewhere, there is a transition between. Somewhere, there is a meeting in which the extremes are not yet defined.
I felt actually startled when this relation between transition and non-extremes occurred to me, as I don’t know if it had ever quite occurred to me that way. Unsolicited, different areas of transition began to occur to me, along with how the historical orientation in me toward extremes may have influenced my perspective or experience.
First came writing. For almost as long as I can remember, I have loved the act of writing. Sometimes I have experienced it as evoking a near-euphoric feeling in me. In Jeremy Edwards’s Spicy Summer Sunday post, he asked what readers’ favorite phase of the writing process was. An answer I gave, very sincerely, is that one of my favorite parts of writing a story is when I finish it. I mentioned a possible reason for that as well, and a number of reasons for such have occurred to me before, but this drive yesterday was the first time viewing it in relation to transition had occurred to me.
I have noticed — numerous times — a part of my psyche that has seemed to operate with “the story has not been written yet” and “the story is done” being basically the two aspects it feels aware of or interested in. The middle literally seems like a blank. The act of writing, when I’m doing it, may feel magnificent, but if I am not writing and examining what to work on or do, I have often felt this orientation in me front and center.
As though it looks at the actual writing of the story as a transition. And it does not feel interested in that as per its zeroing in on the extremes — the story is either done or it is not started yet (or barely started during a time of aforementioned euphoria-producing writing but obviously not finished yet).
I wondered as this occurred to me what this part of the psyche in me does not like about transitions. Possible answers came forth again unsolicited. Transition may be a time of uncertainty, of disorganization, of fragility, and perhaps most of all (maybe in part due to those things) of vulnerability. It was not new to me to recognize that a part of me has historically not felt comfortable with those things. It was new to me to consider them specifically in the context of transition.
At which time sex occurred to me. When I was younger, the perspective in me about sex seemed often not interested in transition. In fact, it seemed distinctly opposed to it and wanted to pass over it as quickly as possible/practical. The orientation in me at that time was to literally go from determining the interest in and practicality of fucking someone to the act of doing so in as little time as possible. The area of transition was where things like emotion and, perhaps relatedly, vulnerability could develop. Of course in these encounters I was interested in mutual respect (in fact insisted upon it), connection, and to some degree affection, but serious emotional experience or certainly intimacy (which I’m not sure this part of me even had a conception of) seemed disorienting, frightening, or utterly foreign to this part of me and, according to it, were to be avoided.
When I first became a patient of Five-Element Acupuncture in January 2006, the layout of the five seasons was explained to me (the familiar four plus Late Summer), and it came to light also that each season presented unique offerings and gifts. At the time, I liked summer and that was about it and had found plenty of reasons to disdain the others. During the course of treatment, my acupuncturist presented the different offerings of each season, and a significantly new appreciation for all of the seasons and their incredible respective offerings developed in me (so much so that I was actually just moved to tears as I typed that).
As I write this I feel like the examination of Late Summer has perhaps been the least focused on for me. I’m not sure why — maybe because we haven’t seemed to work as much on that element in me (each season corresponds with an element in Five-Element Acupuncture, which relate to meridians in the physical body), or maybe because its being the transitional season has made it not seem so much like a “season” to me as the four with which I was previously familiar. In any case, the opportunity really seems prominent to me right now for me to appreciate and explore this season of transition. I feel deeply grateful as such.
Love,
Emerald
*I would guess that now we are actually quite close to or even into Autumn according to the Five-Element calendar, which does not follow or coincide with the official Western calendar (e.g., the Western calendar places the beginning of such seasons as summer and winter around their actual solstices, which according to the calendar of Traditional Chinese Medicine is actually their peak).
“And look for the stars as the sun goes down…just sit back…prepare for the best and the fastest ride…everything’s magic…”
-Angels & Airwaves “Everything’s Magic”
