August’s masthead is up. Late, I know. I’ve got some more elaborate ideas for photos that I really want to feature, which go with particular quotes, so I kept putting off updating the masthead thinking that I’ll actually take those photos, but now it’s been a week and I just dug through some old shots. This one was actually taken while I was in Mexico with Datedyke, and shows off the cufflinks Colleen gave me.

I’ve still go to finish “What happened in July,” too - that’s coming. This weekend, probably.

I was just this morning on my commute into the city thinking about my former relationship, the one I was in when I started Sugarbutch. We were together four years, and over the last two we had sex five times. Seriously, I started counting. And I, well, I have a little bit of a sex drive.

So one of the reasons I started writing erotica was to have a release for all the sexual energy and frustration I was feeling. And to continue my writing practice, in general. Go figure, there’s actually a lot of craft that goes in to writing erotica - character, dialogue, rise & fall of action.

I used to always get stuck at the part where the characters are having sex, going all hot & heavy, and then they’re just about ready to orgasm and have the whole scene end. I’d get so stuck there. Finally, Jesse James and I were talking one day, and she said, “well yeah, of course that’s the hard part, because you never really know how somebody comes until they do it, do ya?”

Reminds me of that scene in Amelie where she thinks “How many couples are having an orgasm right now?” And there’s a great montage of climaxes. [Can anybody find that clip on Youtube?] Here’s the clip (thanks Sun! I couldn’t access youtube from work). Each one is different.

I’ve been working on finishing this Sugarbutch Star chapbook lately, I’m getting it ready to be handed out at the Femme Conference next weekend, and I’ve also been thinking about how this used to be a major goal of mine - writing smut to get people off. Specifically, to get lesbians off. Even more specifically, to get lesbians to go fuck their girlfriends and to talk to their girlfriends about sex and to get more of what they actually want out of their sex lives. Sometimes I think Lesbian Bed Death perpetuates the prudish idea that women can - or want to - transcend those silly sexual relations and have some sort of deep, meaningful emotional connection, that that’s all that “really” matters.

Well duh, deep connection is important, but sex is important too. I gues that’s one of the differences between male & female sexualities, though, is that for women it does actually seem to be a case of “use it or loose it,” where the more we have sex, the more we want to have sex - as opposed to men, who while many have fluxuations in their sex drive, still tend to have sex drives independently of however much sex they are or aren’t having. I’m sure this isn’t true for all men or all women, but it tends to be true in many cases. (Y’all know of any sources on this? I’ve looked for articles but haven’t located any yet.)

What I’m trying to say is:

1. Still, one of the highest compliments folks can pay me about my smut writing is that they had to go get off after reading it, but also, that it made them want to go play with their partner or girlfriend or random first date or stranger or whomever. I love getting those emails or comments, thank you for that. Let’s make lesbians in future generations ask, “what is this ‘lesbian bed death’? Lesbians didn’t like having sex? They weren’t the most highly sexual creatures on the planet? I don’t get it!”

and 2 … Got ideas for stories you’ve always wanted me to write? The Sugarbutch Star contest is launching again. More details to come.

Today celebrates the second anniversary of the beginning of Sugarbutch Chronicles. Two years ago, I was stuck in a Lesbian Bed Death relationship and felt like I was withering away - we were together four years, and we’d had sex five times during the last two.

That relationship is why I started writing smut. I had to do something with all the sexual energy built up, so I decided I’d either a) write it down or b) go to the gym, and while I did develop a nice workout habit, the smut started growing more and more.

This is how Sugarbutch Chronicles began -discussing  Bed Death, Standard Variety:

What I’m trying to say is this: I’m not getting the sex that I want. No, scratch that: I’m not getting the sex that I need. My basic human needs, basic woman needs, basic self needs, include sex. If asked, I would say at least three times a week, though I can be a little flexible about that. I understand, having had some experience as a couple, that that can’t always happen. But I also know that it can, and does, when both people make the effort.

I’m not exactly sure how I let it get as far as it did - I can’t ever imagine letting it get to that place again.

It wasn’t until Callie came along that I was shocked out of my complacent unfeeling depressed stupor and back into a sensual, feeling reality. I’ll always be grateful to her for that. For the six months Callie & I were together, this writing project turned into two main things: writing about the sex Callie and I were having, and then processing through the difficult emotional “conflicts” that kept coming up. I didn’t have community in New York when we were together, so I had very few friends to go to and talk to about her. Sugarbutch became a major outlet for my psychological explorations of our relationship.

But after that ended, it became something else: exploration of my single sex life, mostly. And as that has developed into something more intentional and less, uh, free-for-all, I’ve been writing less about my own personal dating and sex than I am about gender and sexuality in general.

Going into Sugarbutch’s third year, that’s the general direction I’m going to continue to aim. I’ll still going to write about my own personal processes and developments, but I’d like to focus on more personal essay styles with distinctive reoccuring features (like eye candy) and, of course, smut.

Is there is anything specific you’d like to see more or less of? What’s most useful to you here? What’s least useful? What do you love, what do you skip over without reading? If you have ideas, if you have general praise or critique, I’d love to know.