Sober Stories at Queer Memoir 7/24

Posted on July 19, 2010 in events | No Comments

My Sideshow co-host and co-producer Cheryl B. is guest curating for another New York City queer literary reading series, Queer Memoir. Queer Memoir is a bit different than Sideshow (or In the Flesh or Red Umbrella Diaries or Drunken! Careening! Writers! or the Bluestockings Poetry Jam & Open Mic) as it features people who are not necessarily performers or professional storytellers sharing their lives and stories.

Cheryl’s guest theme is Sober, and it happens this Saturday, the 24th of July at the Queers for Economic Justice performance space in Manhattan. Come! I’m going to do my best to make it, and then likely go to Butch Burlesque at Dixon Place later that same night.

Guest curator and host Cheryl B. presents the sober-themed edition of NYC’s premier queer storysharing show, Queer Memoir, starring: Joshua Bastian Cole, Cora Leighton, Katie Liederman, Melissa Febos, Sophia Pazos, Terence, & Tina Goerlach

Queer Memoir: Sober
July 24, 8pm
QEJ Perormance Space
147 West 24th Street, 4th floor
$5 suggested donation (no one turned away)
http://queermemoir.com
Facebook Invite

About the storytellers …  Read more

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Wave Your Freak Flag at SIDESHOW! July 13th

Posted on June 28, 2010 in events | No Comments

Hey! Guess what! It’s that time again, folks: the July SIDESHOW is just around the corner.

This time, we’ve got an amazing selection of poets, performers, and writers, and we’re going to be flying our freak flags high in honor of the flag day that is the American independence day. This is our kind of national pride, I suppose: freaky and queer and feisty and loud-mouthed, and proud of it.

Come out for a great night of performers and readings in New York City!

Sideshow: The Queer Literary Carnival
Hosted by Cheryl B. & Sinclair Sexsmith
July 13 @ the Phoenix
447 East 13th Street @ Avenue A, New York City
Doors, 7:30pm. Reading, 8pm.
Free

This month’s theme is FREAK FLAG, starring:
Sassafras Lowrey (Kicked Out)
Vittoria repetto (Not Just a Personal Ad)
Thad Rutkowski (Tetched)
Charlie Vazquez (Contraband)

Sassafras Lowrey is an international award winning author, artist and storyteller. Ze is a genderqueer identified high femme with a complicated gender history.  Sassafras is the editor of the ‘Kicked Out’ anthology which brought together the voices of current and former homeless LGBTQ youth, and hir stories have been published in numerous anthologies including: Visible: a Femmethology, Gendered Hearts, Gender Outlaws: The Next Generations.  Ze teaches storytelling workshops at colleges, conferences, and community centers across the country. You can learn more about Sassafras online at www.PoMoFreakshow.com

Vittoria repetto has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies such as Mudfish, Voices in Italian Americana, Rattle, Lips, The Paterson Literary Review, Italian Americana, Unsettling American: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry, Identity Lessons: Learning American Style, The Milk of Almonds: Italian American Women Writers on Food & Culture among others. In 1995, she published a chapbook entitled Head For the Van Wyck (Monkey Cat Press) and in 2006, Guernica Editions published her first full length poetry book, Not Just A Personal Ad; one of her reviewers noted “Poems of intense sensibility and gorgeous imagery are a rarity these days; but this book of verse by a distinctly working class, distinctly lesbian, and distinctly Italian American voice is a must for all readers of good poetry.” Vittoria repetto is the vice president of the Italian American Writers Association (IAWA) and the editor of the monthly newsletter. She has been hosting the Women’s & Trans’ Poetry Jam at Bluestockings Bookstore since its opening in 1999.

Thaddeus Rutkowski is the author of two innovative novels and has read his work widely–recently in Hong Kong, Paris and Budapest. He is a one-time winner of the Nuyorican Friday slam, the Poetry vs. Comedy slam, and the Syracuse slam. He teaches fiction writing at the Writer’s Voice of the West Side YMCA and world literature at City University.

Charlie Vázquez is a radical writer of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent. His fiction and essays have been published in anthologies such as Queer and Catholic (Taylor & Francis, 2007) and Best Gay Love Stories: NYC (Alyson, 2006). His writing has also appeared in print and online publications such as The Advocate, Chelsea Clinton News, New York Press, and Ganymede Journal. Charlie hosts a queer monthly reading series called PANIC! at Nowhere in the East Village, which focuses on original fiction and poetry. He’s a former contributor to the Village Voice’s Naked City blog and a retired experimental musician and photographer. His second novel Contraband was published by Rebel Satori Press in April 2010, and his third, Corazón, is wrapping up for future publication.

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The Great LGBTQ Photo Show Opens Next Week

Posted on June 11, 2010 in events | No Comments

The Great LGBTQ Photo Show
June 16th to July 10th, 2010
Opening reception Tuesday June 15th, 6-8pm
Leslie Lohman Gallery
26 Wooster St (btwn Canal/Grand) in New York City

This exhibition features works by, among 80 international photographers, Velvetpark’s Editor in Chief Grace Moon and Sophia Wallace.

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“You Move Me,” A New Butch Buddy Movie

Posted on May 18, 2010 in events | 2 Comments

So … remember The L Word Serenade, the L Word rap that Rebecca Drysdale did a bit more than a year ago? I love it so much, it cracks me up every time. Go watch it and come back, I’ll wait, I promise.

Well, Drysdale has teamed up with Drae Campbell … wait, what’s that? You don’t know Drae’s work? Here ya go:

(You’re welcome.)

So, back to my point. Drysdale and Campbell have teamed up and have made a short film called You Move Me which Campbell said is “a lesbian, dare I say a butch Buddy Movie, comedy. Written by and Starring Drae Campbell and Rebecca Drysdale as the buddies, Tru and Dex. I don’t want to give too much away, but there is a U-Haul, a strap-on and a dog named Elaine Stritch. The basic premise is Tru has just broken up with her girlfriend and needs to get her stuff. So Dex and Tru rent a truck to get the stuff when they think the girlfriend is not home. Hilarity ensues. It’s called You Move Me, directed by Gina Hirsch.”

Iit will be at Frameline in SF on June 26th at the Castro at 345pm, Gay pride weekend, and in NYC at NewFest on Sat June 12th at 1pm at SVA.

Just in case the “butch buddy movie” and Drae and Beck’s hotness wasn’t enough, here’s some still photos from the film.


Find out more information and follow along as the short film gets released on the Facebook page for You Move Me.

Can’t wait to see it.

2 Comments | Category: events | Tags: , , , , , ,

Casting Call: S.I.R. Productions

Posted on April 26, 2010 in PSA | 2 Comments

I am quickly interrupting your Anal Week posts to tell you some very exciting news!

This note comes from the Femmepress Shar Rednour herself, who wrote to me to let me know that S.I.R. Productions—Shar and her partner Jackie Strano, the amazing butch/femme couple who brought you Sugar High Glitter City, Talk To Me Baby, Hard Love/How to Fuck in High Heels, and Bend Over Boyfriend—is casting for a new film!

Read on for the details, what S.I.R. is looking for, and how to contact Shar if, perhaps, you’re interested:

Hey Sugarbutch: thought you should be the first to know that over here on the west coast, [S.I.R. Productions is] casting for a new movie. We did a general call a couple of years ago to see who was out there and interested. We got some hot and fabulous people. But the time just wasn’t right for us personally to make a movie.

Now we are ready and randy to go.

NOW: specifically we need a super hot in love in lust butch femme couple. NO EXPERIENCE needed. not at all. Jackie and I really like to work with people who are hard-workers, fun, NOT wendy-whiners, way into sex and bodies and love and lust and truth and art and feminism and beauty. Furthermore we would love to take your fm virginity. in the end though virgins or pros, just in love and hot. You do NOT need to live on the west coast. I would love nothing more than to cast fabulous folks from anywhere.

NEXT: we are collecting resumes and contact info for people who want to be in our next movie in general. again. NO EXPERIENCE necessary. What we have always done is putting puzzle together-finding the people who really fit a role in the script.

We are casting for a dyke movie and we always are on the lookout for the next Bend Over Boyfriend 3, so tell your freaky-deaky het friends.

And last but not least, I am the wife to Jackie Strano the C.O.O. of Good Vibrations and they are casting as well for Pleasure Ed. I help them out when I can too, passing on a contact that I like or think is appropriate. They are looking for super hot couples with one person who G-spot ejaculates.

So please, Sugarbutch, can you tell your peeps to email SharRednour [at] comcast.net, or befriend me on Facebook, with a note telling me you are interested in casting..

Anything for you, Shar. Hey peeps: want to be in a porn film? Are you a butch/femme couple in love and lust, or do you know one?

And Shar … if you ever want to swap for an evening, I know, ahem, Kristen’s got a mad crush on Jackie.


Shar & Jackie from March, 2004 (D. Ross Cameron/The Oakland Tribune)
via Flickr

2 Comments | Category: PSA | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Anal Scenes in Queer Porn with JD Bauchery

Posted on April 26, 2010 in sex | 3 Comments

I’ve been compiling and asking around about the best anal scenes in queer porn, and I’ve got a bit to report.

If you’re one of those folks who thinks that lesbian porn is generally oriented toward men as viewers and producers, I encourage you to think again. Yes, there is plenty of bad lesbian porn, but the amount of queer and feminist porn that is getting made these days is a bit mind-boggling. Personally, I can’t keep up. I’ve got a long list of films to watch that I still haven’t seen, and directors like Courtney Trouble and Madison Young and producers like Good Releasing keep making films faster than I can keep up.

I asked JD Bauchery over at Hot Movies 4 Her for some of her personal recommendations for butt scenes in queer porn, since she is WAY more of a pro at queer porn than I am.

And here’s what she recommends:

Which of these have you seen? Any in particular that you recommend?

3 Comments | Category: sex | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

So What’s Next?: McMillen’s Fake Prom

Posted on April 7, 2010 in activism | 15 Comments

While I was kind of slow to follow the story, mostly because I thought, okay, wrong-doing that has made national news, clearly everybody else is going to jump in and take care of this and I don’t really have to, I’m kind of outraged by the recent update on Constance McMillan’s fight to go to her high school prom. She was told there was a prom, showed up with her date, where there were only 7 students, and some faculty and teachers. The location and time of the “real” prom, privately held, was kept from her.

You’ve probably already heard this. Jesse James had a nice post on it, Dorothy Snarker posted something too.

I can kind of comprehend that that happened. I mean we’re talking about a school district, a small town, a state, which denied her access to the prom in the first place because of her sexuality and gender expression (with her request to wear a tux). I am not too surprised that they would hold another prom, that students—her peers and classmates and (supposedly?) friends—and parents would deliberately deny her access.

What I can’t comprehend is the shock of it all. Because when something like this happens, the experience of realizing reality isn’t quite what you expected it to be is what is shocking.

She won her court case. She was told there would be a (private) prom she could attend. She walked in, expecting that to be the case (at least, from what I can tell in the statements released so far, she expected that), only to find that she had been cast out, ostracized, again. That is such a shock for a person to sustain.

It’s like losing your job or having someone break up with you—you might think, yeah, we weren’t really that good together, but just the act of NOT SEEING IT COMING can make you feel nutso, and that reality somehow didn’t line up with your expectations is enough to make you lose your mind, just for a few minutes. But the recovery from that momentary loss can really be difficult. Because hey, if you didn’t see THAT coming, what else won’t you see coming? What else is going to just blindside you completely unexpectedly? And of course there’s no way to prepare for that kind of thing, but the mind doesn’t really comprehend that, only that if it happened once, we can learn from it, and prepare, in case it does happen again.

Here’s my question, now, though: what the hell can we do about this? What is the piece of adequate activism here? My first thought is that they MUST be doing something illegal, they must be crossing some line or committing some act of discrimination, because HELLO, they so clearly are.

But they threw a “prom.” Teachers and school administrators showed up at it, so it was a “real” event. That all the other students went somewhere else doesn’t have any legal ramification, somehow, right?

Because it is TOTALLY LEGAL to hold a separate prom. It is totally legal for people to hold private parties and not invite certain people, regardless of whether it is due to their gender identity, sexual orientation, race or ethnicity, or if you just simply don’t like that person. This is, in my understanding, how many of the segregated proms still exist and operate in the South: because they are private. And of course these events are products of a culture that makes it normal to have a segregated prom.

Okay, so: if the students were all making a fuss about this, if the students were saying, “we don’t want two proms, of COURSE this really outta-sight gay lady is included, we all want to go to the same prom, yay differences!” then perhaps we would have one prom, yeah? But the students aren’t really going to do that when it is their parents who are throwing the separate prom in the first place. The kids of those parents are probably elite, privileged, and have, to some degree or another, grown up with discrimination in the water, in the air they breathe. They are probably not very likely to stand up and support Constance.

So what next?

No I mean really, what the hell can we do about this, given that technically, TECHNICALLY, somehow, even though it is so fucking obvious that it is blatant discrimination here, technically it seems to me that they have done nothing wrong. Technically they “threw” a “prom” and invited McMillen, and therefore did what they were told. And given that the students are blaming McMillen (I have heard about that terrible Facebook group, blaming her for ruining their “best high school memories,” nevermind that a) those for whom prom is their “best high school memory” are those who are the ones running the school, in a privileged, elite, and often very hierarchical system that discriminates and puts down others, and b) usually, those for whom prom is the best thing that ever happened to them end up stuck in their own home town, with kids and mortgages and dead-end jobs instead of attending colleges. Not always, of course, but often), they are not going to stand up for her.

So what next? How does the queer community rally around her? This is the time when Kristen and others I’ve been talking to all say, Constance, GET OUT. Leave your teeny little narrow-minded town, like we all did, come to the liberal havens, come to the gay meccas, come find your people. You got handed a nice fat check on the Ellen show and now can go to college wherever you want. Or you could harness this opportunity and make a documentary out of your hardship and ride on this ten minutes of fame all the way to a job in the gay-for-pay queer nonprofit world.

If I had her address I would say that we should all send loving letters of support, signed, your queer family, the one that awaits you and already embraces you. And while it might be comforting to Constance to know that there are people who support her, what about the other students (who will be voting adults soon enough), what about their parents, what about the school officials, what about the school board? What about the town who is blaming her for such an OUTRAGEOUS attempt at doing something like dancing with her loved one at a school dance oh mah gawd what is she thinking!

Is there anything anyone can do about the homophobia that is so clearly deeply embedded in them all already? Aren’t there more options than her just up and leaving?

This is where the question of education comes in. How on earth can one—or, more accurately, can this movement of queer activism—possibly continue to chip away at bigotry and hatred and homophobia? Is it actually possible to reach people, to help change their minds?

Generally, activists say no. Activists aim at that same populace as politicians: the Movable Middle, who could kind of be swayed either way, depending on the day or what they had for breakfast or what was on Oprah yesterday.

Thus this is the part where I vow to continue to do the kind of activism I do, and where I continue to encourage the kind of activism you do, in whatever way you participate in the queer community, even if it’s just by being out and keeping your private life private. Perhaps especially then. Perhaps it really will trickle down, that the general culture will disgrace and shame homophobia such that, at least, it can no longer be done openly, and there will be consequences.

On the good days, I believe we’re already there, or at least got quite a good map and we’re in a nice easy stretch of open road. But on days like this, with news like this, my jaw just drops a little, and I wonder what can we do? What can I do?

15 Comments | Category: activism | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Introducing Sideshow: The Queer Literary Carnival

Posted on March 20, 2010 in events | No Comments

You may have heard me mention the queer reading series that Cheryl B. and I are starting in New York City. Well, it’s official—it’s starting April 13th at 7pm at Sapphire Lounge in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Sideshow: The Queer Literary Carnival
Hosted by Cheryl B. & Sinclair Sexsmith

Premiere Event April 13 @ The Phoenix
447 East 13th Street at Avenue A, NYC
Doors, 7pm. Reading, 8pm.
Free! $4 beer/well drinks special
RSVP on Facebook!
Follow us on Twitter! @sideshowseries

This month’s theme is SECRETS, starring:
Kate Bornstein
Sam J. Miller
Seth Clark Silberman aka PhDJ
Kathleen Warnock
Read more

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Lambda Literary Nominees Featuring “This One’s Going to Last Forever”

Posted on March 16, 2010 in swag | 1 Comment

The Lambda Literary Award nominees were announced today, and as usual I’m making a checklist of ones I’ve read, ones I’d like to read, and the ones I think will win be finalists. And, as usual, the only transgender content is in the specific “Transgender” category, though the “Bisexual” category has split into fiction and non-fiction because, it seems, there are finally enough nominees to warrant it. Are there really that few books on trans and bisexual issues? Puzzling. Overall this year, there are 112 finalists in 23 categories. I’m sure there’s got to be a book or two or five in there that you’d love to read. Check it out.

Special congratulations to Nairne Holtz, whose book This One’s Going to Last Forever (Insomniac Press) was nominated in the Lesbian Fiction category. Holtz has a short story called “Bait and Switch” in Best Lesbian Erotica 2009, an anthology in which I also have a story, and when we were both in New York City at the end of 2009 for the annual Best Lesbian Erotica reading at the Drunken! Careening! Writers! reading series at KGB bar, hosted by Kathleen Warnock (who is coming to read at the very first Sideshow!), and I have had a chance to read This One’s Going to Last Forever. It is a collection of short stories and a novella. Here’s the description:

This One’s Going to Last Forever reflects both the naive optimism of those who have yet to learn about love and the cynicism of those who feel that by now they should know better.

Clara, a university student working at the McGill Daily, discovers that in love and politics, commitment is often more imagined than real. Kelly and Sonya share a bond that has less to do with love than with their dependence on each other and a succession of friends who supply them with heroin. A middle-aged man who performs drive-through weddings dressed as Elvis realizes, as he marries his first same-sex couple, that the only domestic partner he is ever likely to have is his ailing father. But when he ends his latest relationship, an unlikely friendship results.

The characters in these darkly comic stories and novella may be searching for love in all the wrong places, but they are also able to find love in the most unexpected places.

The Lambda Literary Foundation recently relaunched their website and it’s quite spiffy, by the way.

1 Comment | Category: swag | Tags: , , , , , , ,

New Book! Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch Femme Erotica

Posted on February 5, 2010 in swag | 5 Comments

Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch Femme Erotica Edited by Tristan Taormino is due out February 16th, and I have a story in it! (I believe it is The Diner on the Corner, also published in Best Lesbian Erotica 2009.)

There are very few books exclusively focused on butch/femme erotica—Back to Basics edited by Therese Szymanski is the only one I can think of—and I’m thrilled to see another one come into print. Cannot wait to get my hands on it!

“Butch/femme is erotic iconography. Butch/femme is bulging jeans, smeared lipstick, stiletto heals, and sharp haircuts. It’s about being read and being seen. Sometimes it’s about passing or not passing. It’s about individual identity and a collective sense of community. It’s personal, political. It’s a sexual electricity and power exchange. It’s the visceral space between the flesh and the imagination.” — from the introduction by Tristan Taormino

From Cleis Press’s page about the new book:

Does the swagger of a confident butch make you swoon? Do your knees go weak when you see a femme straighten her stockings? In Sometimes She Lets Me, Tristan Taormino chooses her favorite butch/femme stories from the Best Lesbian Erotica series.

Even if you think you know what goes on in the bedroom between femmes and butches, these 22 stories will delight you with erotic surprises. In Joy Parks’ delicious “Sweet Thing,” the recently arrived town librarian shows a butch baker some new tricks in bed. On a chase through the woods, the stud in “Tag!”, by D. Alexandria, find her baby girl by scent alone. And the girl in a pleated skirt gets exactly what she wants from her Daddy in Peggy Munson’s “The Rock Wall.”

Includes contributions by Alison L. Smith, Joy Parks, S. Bear Bergman, Amie M. Evans, Samiya A. Bashir, Rosalind Christine Lloyd, Kristen Porter, Tara-Michelle Ziniuk, D. Alexandria, Anna Watson, Shannon Cummings, A. Lizbeth Babcock, Sparky, Elaine Miller, Isa Coffey, Skian McGuire, Jera Star, Toni Amato, Peggy Munson, Sandra Lee Golvin, and Sinclair Sexsmith.

Tristan Taormino is an award-winning author, columnist, editor, and sex educator. She is the editor of Hot Lesbian Erotica and fourteen editions of Best Lesbian Erotica series as well as the author of The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women. Tristan is a former columnist for the Village Voice and currently has a column in Taboo; her writing has appeared in Velvet Park, Vibe, Spectator,The Advocate, and more than 15 anthologies. She has been featured in more than 200 publications, including the New York Times, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Entertainment Weekly, Details, New York magazine, Men’s Health, and Playboy. She has also appeared on CNN, MTV, Oxygen, the Discovery Channel, The Howard Stern Show, Real Sex, The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, Scarborough Country, and over 50 radio shows. Tristan directed the adult videos the Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women, Tristan Taormino’s House of Ass, and the Chemistry series. She lives in upstate New York. Visit Tristan at www.puckerup.com.

5 Comments | Category: swag | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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