Following up Episode 1, “I Want to be Taken”, Kristen and I answered another question for y’all, this time about threesomes.
Raven asks, “Any advice for occasionally bringing in a third? While still maintaining full commitment to one another and with no one getting hurt?”
Hope it’s useful!
A few years ago, a girl I dated wanted me to slap her. To hit her face. She asked for it specifically, I still remember the conversation on the subway and the precise way that she looked over at me and said, I want you to hit me. Something big swelled in me and I wanted to, I wanted to feel the sting of impact on my palm and see her recoil, to do it again before she was ready, to push something so sensational onto her experience that she was jolted to the edges of her skin and had to feel, to feel herself, to feel me, to be fully present.
This girl and I had already done some other light percussion play, using my hand, or even a paddle, me hitting her ass and thighs, the fleshy parts that I couldn’t possibly do damage to beyond some light bruising. She liked it, we both did. It made sense to escalate, at the time, to something new; we were deepening both our romantic relationship – our trust in each other – and our power dynamic, and it was time to push a little, to see where we could go.
I was terrified. After she asked, after we talked about it extensively, I even tried, a few times, when we were in bed and she said, hit me, now, please, and I couldn’t, I’d bring my hand up and chicken out.
I was terrified of what it would mean for me, as a masculine person, as a butch, to be more dominating in bed. To like it. To like to cause someone pain. To like to cause a woman pain. To hit someone in the face. To hit a woman in the face, to sexualize that act and that power dynamic specifically.
I was paralyzed by that terror – I wanted to do it, the idea, the very thought of it, the discussions with her, turned me on, the girl I was dating wanted me to do it, but I couldn’t.
Beyond wanting to do it, this was the kind of sex act that was in the sex life I was dreaming of having. This was what haunted my fantasies and what I looked for in porn that I watched and erotica that I read. And I was on a very serious quest to figure out how to have the sex that I wanted. I’d just gotten out of a bed-death relationship. I was committed to studying sex hard, to figuring out: what I wanted, how to get what I wanted, how to build a relationship with that as an element, how to maintain something sane and hot over a long period of time. That’s precisely why I started Sugarbutch.
I now know that I’m a sadist, and a top. That means I like to dominate. And already there are conclusions being drawn by some of you out there who think well of course you like to dominate, you’re masculine, and that’s prescribed for you or in other words you misogynistic asshole, I already knew you were one of “those” butches who needs to make up for your inadequacies by dominating women. Because that’s what we think, isn’t it? Maybe not consciously, but a little bit, somewhere in our brains, we associate these particular identity alignments – butch equals masculine equals top equals dominating equals men’s prescribed gender role. We’re relieved when they line up how we think they will, or maybe we are challenged and uncomfortable – though perhaps in a stimulated way – when they misalign.
There’s something supposedly anti-feminist about wanting to dominate. There’s something in the feminist rhetoric which says we are all equal especially in bed, so that means I-do-you-you-do-me, or that means we have sex neither above nor below each other, and with no reproduced heteronormative misogynistic patriarchal power dynamic.
But I didn’t want that. I’d had that, with other girlfriends, but it didn’t keep things hot enough to sustain a relationship. And secretly, I wanted to top and control and hit and demean and humiliate and restrain and force and take.
Power dynamic theory—stick with me for just a paragraph here—has many similarities to gender theory. Like the gender identities of butch and femme are not reproductions but pastiche copies at best of prescribed societal gender roles, putting on and taking off power roles in power sex play is a pastiche reproduction of power in our lives, of which there are thousands of examples of interaction on a daily basis. And when we can put on and take off these roles intentionally, the act of adopting becomes further proof that the power positioning in our lives is not inherent, or “real,” or immobile, or prescribed, or “normal,” but part of a hierarchical society of social power that can be deconstructed. In that, we can more easily have more power and control in the beneficial ways, and less power and control in destructive ways, as we play with it and engage with it.
As in my experience with coming to a butch gender identity, when I finally came to a power identity that really deeply aligned with something inside me that just clicked and make sense, I felt like I was coming home to myself in a way I hadn’t experienced previously. Through my personality and tendencies and psychology I have my own set of quirks and workings and functions, and for whatever reason, it makes a lot of sense to me to let out some of my power and control issues in the bedroom by being dominating. It is deeply satisfying the way a glorious meal or a delicious book is satisfying, one of my life’s greatest pleasures. I’m not sure I understand why I like what I like, but what I like does not harm others, and is consensual, and I know myself well enough to accept what I like as what I like – and to let that be a simple truth.
How did this change for me? What happened between the time when I was terrified to slap a girl in the face and today, now, where I am fairly comfortable in my identity as a top, and even as a sadist, as someone who enjoys causing extreme sensation (aka hurting) someone else?
Little by little, I had lovers who pushed me, lovers who were more experienced as bottoms than I was as a top, lovers who wanted more from me and who could take more than I was able to give who made enough space for me to walk into a bigger version of myself and occupy it, try it on.
I did come to a reconciliation with my feminist self and my top self. Phrases like men should not hurt women or rather masculine people should not hurt feminine people, or even more broadly that people should not hit each other and violence is bad bad bad … I had accepted those phrases as Ultimate Truths, and I started to understand deeper the ways that sensation was not violence, and hitting was a way to be sparked into the present moment, to release whatever our musculature was holding onto, and to deepen trust between people and in a relationship.
I didn’t realize how little trust I had in others until I started playing deeper with BDSM. Because I would tell myself, it’s okay, she wants to do it, but then I would think, does she really? Maybe she wants to because I want to. Maybe she wants to because society tells her she should want to. Maybe she wants to for fucked-up reasons, like she thinks it’s okay for her to feel humiliated and less than me because of her own internalized misogyny … but that was me not trusting that what she said was true. That she wanted me to hit her face. And that was me, further controlling both myself, her, and our relationship, in unhealthy ways, because I didn’t trust her.
This was an issue of agency, in feminist terms – my not trusting my lover to communicate with me what she wanted, to explain to me how far I could go, and my not trusting that she would let me know if I was going too far or too hard, either with her physical communication or her words or both, was me not trusting in the agency of my lover. I have to trust that she will tell me, she will let me know, if I am going too far. And I have to listen, apologize, understand what I did, and trust that she will accept that it was an accident, a mistake, and that I’ll do whatever she needs to feel safe again.
When I started playing out my control issues in BDSM, in the bedroom, in sex play, the control issues I had in my relationships began to heal.
In learning my way into being a top, I had many, many conversations about consent and intention and communication, I talked to my lovers when things broke down or didn’t seem to work and I learned more about my own tendencies when things went well. I figured out that sometimes, it was really hard for me to be with someone who bottomed so well, and who I trusted so deeply, that I did harder, scarier, bigger things with them that took me even deeper into my topping and dominance and sadism and power, and sometimes that meant I needed to be comforted afterward, to be told I liked that, and that wasn’t too much, and you didn’t hurt me, and that was what I wanted and thank you. Hearing those things is always a relief.
(I give good aftercare too, of course. But top aftercare is less common in the BDSM world – we don’t frequently talk about the toll it takes for the dominant to dominate.)
I practiced, a lot, to be bold and trusting through my topping. I tried scary things and it turned out they weren’t so scary, they were in fact incredibly hot. I got to know myself, and I learned more about the things I wanted to play with, and I talked to smart people whose experiences were similar to what I was going through and who assured me it was possible to come out the other side of it a masculine, queer, butch, sadistic, feminist top.
This piece is slightly updated from the December 2009 version, about reconciling the identities of feminist and butch top, and what it means to be a masculine person who is also dominant. It is relevant as ever and I still struggle with the intersection of these identities.
Warning: This story contains some references to Daddy/girl, because that is what we usually call each other while playing. The story before the cut is an explanation and example of the three minute game, something the Body Electric School explores in their workshops, and does not contain the specific Daddy/girl words; the Daddy/girl play is behind the cut.
I returned home from LA, from four days with Rife, and I was ecstatic to see Kristen. She picked me up early, early at the airport on the red eye, and we fell back asleep at home for a few hours, made some lunch, talked about what we’d been doing.
In the afternoon, we returned to the bedroom.
I know when I travel it’s best to come back to her sweet and slow, and even more so when I’ve been off seeing my lover. I was turned on (she felt so good in my arms, under my hands, her feminine curves, her sweet soft skin) and had some ideas, but we needed a way to reconnect playfully, slowly, first.
“Want to play the three minute game?” I asked.
“Okay,” she said brightly, smiling like I’d offered to make her favorite meal for dinner. “But remind me of the rules?”
“Each of us gets a turn, and each turn is three minutes, carefully timed. There are two turns, so—four rounds. The first is, ‘this is what I would like to do to you for my pleasure.’ Then, ‘this is what I would like you to do to me for my pleasure.'”
“Got it.” We’ve played before, but only a few times, and the last time didn’t go so well—she’d asked me for some touch around my chest and we both got uncomfortable and had to stop, but neither of us handled it well. I hoped we wouldn’t do that again.
“You go first,” I said (being a top is useful sometimes).
“Alright … for my pleasure, I would like to sit on your lap, and for you to kiss my face and neck and suck on my nipples.”
“Mmm, I’d love to,” I said. “Take off your shirt.” Part of the point is to respond well—with eagerness, or with suggestions of something else related if you are uncomfortable with what they request.
I shifted up to the head of the bed so I could support my back against the wall, and Kristen curled up over my lap. I set the timer on my phone for three minutes.
At first, I barely made contact. I let her feel my breath and nose and the heat of my skin; I closed my eyes and remembered the contours of her jaw and cheek with the tiny invisible hairs on my face. Then I let my lips touch her, just brushing, gently, gently, as light of a touch as I could manage, as slow as I could tolerate. Feeling her weight on my thighs and the curves of her waist and back and spine in my hand made me want her, but I resisted.
I traced her jaw, cheek, throat with my mouth, kissing now, using the soft insides of my lips, keeping my mouth supple. She made that soft mewling moan that slays me and a shiver ran down my spine. I kept going, working that spot on her neck by her earlobe that she loves, then where her neck and shoulders meet, and down to her collarbone. I kissed along the curves of the tops of her breasts, making my way between the cleft of them, down to one nipple and then the other, sucking them into my mouth, teasing gently with my teeth and tongue, suckling, nibbling.
Just as I was getting into it, drawing her closer to me with my arms around her back, burying my face in her, just as she was starting to drop her head back and thrust her tits forward, the timer went off, and we both laughed.
I shifted my position a little and she sat more on the bed than on my lap. I kissed her lips. She said, “It’s your turn.”
“For my pleasure …” I swallowed. “I would like you to kiss my feet.” We’ve played with this a little. It is only recently that I have admitted how much I like it—to myself and others—enough to actually experiment with the sensation. It makes me nervous to ask for. But that is partly what this game is for, and it’s only three minutes. I can do just about anything for three minutes.
She nodded, looked at me a little coyly, chin down eyes up lips parted, and said, “And suck your toes?”
My breath caught. “Yes,” I think I managed to say. I think it was audible. So nervous. And it’s something that I wanted to feel, so much.
I set the timer again and she slid down the bed on her belly to take my right foot in her hands and deliver a sprinkling of kisses along the top of it. She ran her tongue along the instep, the most sensitive part, and sucked gently with her lips. She tongued the crease between my big toe and second toe before sliding the larger into her mouth.
I groaned. It is so vulnerable and makes me so nervous to give over, to feel her mouth in that way. The sensation is so close to tickling but is ecstatic, and so close to getting my cock sucked but is very different. She worked her mouth over all the crevices she could reach. She sucked and licked, moving her tongue up and down, holding my heel and ankle in her hands.
Then she switched to my other foot.
(It is so hard to write about this! And words like toes and foot seem so inherently unsexy, somehow—but I know the feeling absolutely turns me on. I don’t think I’ve written about it here before. I don’t know if I want to, except that I like to challenge myself to make myself vulnerable, to Kristen and to myself and in this writing project, and this feels very edgy.)
Those three minutes felt like an hour. I lost myself in the sensation, but I didn’t lose my body: moreso the opposite. I felt my whole self down to each toe, where so much stimulation was concentrated. I felt my cock quiver and my nipples harden and my throat go dry as I tried to swallow. I watched her mouth move and lips darken with blood and sensation and she smiled and giggled a little as she showed me what she could do. My eyes rolled back. My wrists went slack. I almost begged for her to stop, almost begged for more. I was overwhelmed and ecstatic and so turned on.
The timer went off and I breathed out, both a sigh of relief and disappointment that it was over. “For your pleasure, what would you like to do to me?” I asked.
She rose to her hands and knees and crawled forward toward me on the bed. “I would like to suck your cock.”
“Mmmm, gladly,” I said, and swung my legs over the side of the bed. “Give me just a minute to put it on.” I slid my jeans and briefs off, tossed my tee shirt into the laundry basket, pulled on my cock and harness from the small jersey bag I tend to keep it in, and returned back to the bed. She crawled over me. I barely had time to restart the timer before she had my cock in her mouth, tongue eager again, her lips soft and sucking me down. It’s a big cock, the Maverick, my favorite one, the one I use only with her.
She’s still warming up, but I want to push her. Continue reading →
Kristen and I attended the Lammys on Monday night, the Lambda Literary Awards ceremony to celebrate excellence in LGBT literature. I’ve attended the past four years and while neither book that I edited was a finalist this year, I hope Say Please will be next year!
And, in addition to attending and being a judge, which I was last year also, I presented the erotica category with Emmanuel Xavier, and got to rip open the envelope and pronounce the winner of the Gay Erotica category. There were beautiful speeches by Kate Millet and Armistead Maupin, who were awarded the lifetime achievement award, and by Stacey D’Erasmo (one of my favorite writers ever) for the mid-career award. I was thrilled to celebrate Tristan Taormino’s anthology Take Me There, which I have a story in, that took home the Lammy for Transgender Fiction, and I was sad to see Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme not win.
Some notable winners:
I tossed ’em into my Amazon store if you’d like to sort through them over there:
I am really excited to read these. I’m thinking I might make it a Lammy summer and just go for it. I’m definitely going to send this list to my book group and see what interests them.
It felt a little different this year … it was sold out, I think there were more people in attendance, and I think there were more trans folks, genderqueer folks, and people of color than I’ve seen at previous Lammy ceremonies. I hope that’s true. It also seems like the Lammys are getting way more press than they used to. The first year I attended, I went online after to confirm my notes and couldn’t find any article covering it from any publication, and now there are quite a few online publications covering them. They have definitely stepped it up and it seems to be paying off.
As a former bookseller, they have always been on my radar, but I think they are getting a little more widely noticed. Or maybe I’m just more and more involved in the queer literary scene? That could be true too. Regardless, I had a fantastic time, it was great to run into friends and to meet authors I didn’t know of before.
Here’s a full list of the winners, and I’ll keep an eye out in case they post more photos.
Three trailers have come through my inbox recently, and they have piqued my interest enough that I thought you might like to see ’em, too.
HIT & MISS, from Paul Abbott, creator of Shameless and State of Play, is a high concept and ambitious new series that follows Chloë Sevingy as Mia, a contract killer with a secret: she’s a transgender woman. Mia’s life is sent into a tailspin when she receives a letter from an ex-girlfriend dying from cancer revealing that Mia fathered a son eleven years ago. Faced with a difficult decision, Mia becomes the guardian to a new family forcing her to mix her killer instincts with her newly developing maternal instincts. HIT & MISS tells the story of a lethal killer at the heart of a troubled family and how all of their lives will be dramatically changed forever.
I’m pretty skeptical, but I love Chloe Sevingy and I’m kind of a sucker for contract killer shows (Alias!), and I am curious about this. Will they pull it off? How awful will it be? And ethically is it a good idea to cast a cis woman as a trans woman? I don’t know. But I’m glad something like this exists, because it’s encouraging these questions if nothing else. We’ll see how long it lasts.
Gen X filmmaker Phoebe Hart always knew she was different growing up—but she didn’t know why. This award-winning documentary traces Phoebe’s voyage of self-discovery as an intersex person, a group of conditions formerly termed hermaphroditism. Learning only in her teens that she was born with 46XY (male) chromosomes, Hart now seeks to understand her own story and the stories of others affected by this complex and often shameful syndrome. Learn more about ORCHIDS here.
It premieres tonight on Showtime! Looks like a pretty intense undertaking, from the trailer, and I’m curious what it’ll add to the intersex discourse.
Ten year old Laure isn’t like most girls. She prefers football to dolls and sweaters to dresses. When Laure, her parents and little sister Jeanne move to a new neighbourhood, family life remains much the same. That is, until local girl Lisa mistakes Laure to be a boy. Indulging in this exciting new identity, Laure becomes Michael, and so begins a summer of long sunny afternoons, playground games and first kisses. Yet with the school term fast approaching, and with suspicions arising amongst friends and family, Laure must face up to an uncertain future.
This was released last fall, but was just released by Wolfe video on DVD and I’m excited to see it.
Come see D. L. King and Friends at Bluestockings in NYC
Wednesday, June 6! 7pm
Details on Facebook
D. L. King, Sinclair Sexsmith, and Rachel Kramer Bussel will read some of their hottest works to date, all from The Harder She Comes: Butch Femme Erotica.
They will be joined by Sacchi Green and writers Cha Cha White, Jennifer Baker and Dena Hankins reading from Girl Fever: 69 Stories of Sudden Sex for Lesbians.
In the immortal words of Sinclair Sexsmith, “Is it getting hot in here?”
I’ll be reading my story in the book, “Good Girl, Bad Girl,” which you can read an excerpt from here on Sugarbutch.
Transmography: Thirteen Fairytale Portraits of Queers Beyond the Gender Binary
by Molly Crabapple and Najva Sol
Transmogrify, Verb: To transform, esp. in a surprising or magical manner
From poets to porn-stars, computer nerds to community gardeners, artists to activists: these portraits capture some of the real gender warriors today. They are trans, genderqueer, or just gender-fabulous, and they deserve their own magical realm.
Each portrait was shot by Najva Sol with a lomo camera, then embellished by Molly Crabapple. Show sponsored by Lomography.
Show Opens At Lomography stores in New York AND San Francisco
Thursday, June 7th, 6-9pm
New York Lomography Store
41 West 8th Street
Manhattan, NY 10011
212-529-4351
San Fran Lomography Store
309 Sutter Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
415-248-0096
Queer Memoir: Butch/Stud Through the Years
Friday June 8th, 8 PM
Queers for Economic Justice
147 W. 24th St., 4th Floor,
New York, NY 10011
5-10 bucks no one turned away
RSVP/More info/Updates on facebook
Queer Memoir: New York’s award-winning LGBT storytelling series is breaking their usual “no shows in the summer” tradition in order to produce this special event. We’ll be hearing stories from butch/stud identified people of different queer generations, including a special reading from West Coast’s Jeanne Cordova and her award-winning memoir, When We Were Outlaws.
With
JEANNE CORDOVA
LEA ROBINSON
SINCLAIR SEXSMITH
RYANN MAKENZI HOLMES
JAY TOOLE
HOSTED BY KELLI DUNHAM
Warning: This story contains lots of elements of BDSM, including swearing, consensual violence, face punching, forceful cock sucking, punching, and ass fucking. The first scene (before the cut) is mostly orgasms and ass fucking, and the second scene (if you click through) is a heavy punching scene with a forceful blow job.
This scene occurred at IMsL in April 2012.
I started slowly. He was stripped and bent over the rickety—there’s no other word to describe it—massage table with metal legs and no cross-bars, as far as I could tell. I was packing my medium-sized dick and planned to plug his ass before I fucked him.
This was warm-up.
But when I got his clit nice and hard, when his hole was dripping, when I lubed up my fingers and went for his asshole, he was open and easy, eagerly swallowing down one then two then three fingers, and I knew I could actually fuck his ass, and that I wouldn’t have to start with the butt plug.
He’d never had his ass fucked. Six months of dating this little faggot and he had just revealed that little tidbit. It’s one of my favorite things anyway—that his ass was virgin was a bonus.
I growled at his ear, “Stay there,” and went for a condom. His arms were gathered under his chest almost as if hugging himself, a sweet position that made me want to plow him even more. Rubber tight rolled down and more lube and my cock head pushed open his asshole, slid inside with only a little force.
He moaned into his hand, fingers against his teeth as if I wouldn’t notice how he wanted something in his mouth. His knees buckled. Thighs quivered and tightened. I held him by the scruff of his neck, soothed in his ear, his back against my chest: “Shh, little faggot. It’ll only hurt for a minute. Relax your ass. Come on, give it to me.” He let up a little, I could feel the tension ease off my dick. “Good. Open up for me. C’mon, take it like the faggot you are, I know you like it.”
I slid in a little farther and he whimpered, gasped, sighed as I pulled out and began thrusting. I reached around for his clit and flicked my fingers over it. He came almost instantly. I didn’t back off, slid in deeper, but was met with more resistance. For a moment I was unsure if he could take this cock, unsure if I’d be able to fuck him properly, the full long strokes in and out, but as he relaxed and came—three, five, I don’t know how many times, quickly, in succession—I knew he could do it. My fingers left his clit and I gripped his hips, thrusting harder.
“That’s it,” I encouraged. He brought his arms up to grip the side of the massage table and began to push back into me, taking me deeper. “Nice. That’s good, little faggot. That’s what I wanted. Nice.” He moaned and shuddered, squirting this time, I could feel it on my legs. I pushed him back up on the table to try to keep him on his waterproof blanket.
I took him by the back of his neck again and started pumping harder. “I knew you would take it like a faggot, dirty boy. I knew you’d like it. You like it, don’t you.”
“Yes—yes,” he managed, breathing out the words hard, eyes closed as I pulled his head back, my hand reaching around for his throat.
“Say it.”
“I like it,” he barely whispered.
“What?”
“I like it.” A little louder.
“You like it, what?”
“I like it, Sir. I like it. Ohhh …”
“You like what, boy? Say it.”
“I like your cock in my ass. I like it. Please, Sir, fuck my ass. Please please please.” His pleading cries became whimpers and I groaned, my hips jerking hard against his in response.
“Good boy,” I muttered as my cock slid in and out. I wrapped my arms around him, held us together, breathing hard, and brought my hand between his legs to his clit again, thrumming it gently, sensitive now. “Mmm, fuck, you feel good. Your ass is nice and tight, feels good on my cock. I like to fill you up. Squeeze me harder, let me feel how tight you are, that’s it, yeah.” He came again, squirting, I could see it darken the blanket as his body thrust forward in contractions.
“Just a little more. Then I’m going to beat you.” I slid in and he moaned deep. He whimpered and shook, straightening his body upright until I pushed him back onto the table.
“Take it,” I growled. “Just a little more. Take it like a faggot. You can do it. Come on, dirty boy, I know you like it.” He didn’t stop shaking, barely holding himself up on his legs, and I thrust in again, and again. I rambled on as I worked up a slick sweat. I wanted to wear him out, warm him up before I started beating him. “Do it for me again, faggot. Come on, boy, come on my cock while I fuck you. Do it. Do it for me.”
He gasped and shuddered again, pitched forward, slammed his hand down into the table, and pressed his ass back against me, shaking, quivering, words pouring from his mouth, “Ohhh fuck, please please please, thank you Sir.” I held him close to me, twisted our bodies to kiss him.
Written by Kristen. Follow her on Twitter @kitchentop.
I love getting marked up. I love the little dark fingerprints that fade to yellow on my upper arms, the purple signs of a shoulder bite, the teeth marks on my inner thighs. I don’t crave pain the way some masochists do. I like rough sex and I like when Sinclair brings it all to me, when they hold down my chest with all their weight while their cock’s inside, when they pin my arm behind me without worrying about whether they’re yanking too hard. I like deep, hard punching, especially across my wings, my shoulder blades and upper back, and I like a spanking, and I like when the feeling of floating, when I know I can handle more.
But what I really like are the bruises, bigger and more colorful in the light of day. I like the memory of what we did last night blooming on my skin as I strip for the morning’s shower. I like a big bouquet of them, spread across my shoulders and neck and thighs, proof that someone wanted me so badly they had to grab and bite and sometimes break skin. I like to show them off; when we lived apart, I would text Sinclair pictures of my bruises and we’d both shiver a little at the memory, and sometimes they post them here for the rest of the world to see.
There’s a funny competitive thing among kinky people – “Look how badass I am! I can take more pain than you – just look at the bruises!” – that I sometimes fall prey to. But it does feel like a badge of honor, a symbol of how far I went, how difficult it can be to let your mind go so that pain and pleasure meld and you can’t tell the difference anymore.
And for me it’s something more: yes, I chose this. My feminist boyfriend gave me bruises because I explicitly consented to them, because they made us both feel good, and I am allowed to choose that if I want to. In fact, with informed, aware consent, I can choose whatever I want. It might not be something you would choose for yourself, but that’s real choice, isn’t it? If I can choose to satisfy my desires with freaky shit you’d never want to do, or get a full-sleeve tattoo or plugs in my earlobes, I’m actually thinking through what I want – and getting it – instead of going along with what the world says I should want.
Bruises take work, to give and get. That giant purple mass on my upper arm required consent, negotiation, and enough endorphins (probably generated by some orgasms) that my body was primed to receive pain, courage, and hard biting. That splay of dark angel wings on my back probably took an hour, strong arms, a carefully timed warmup, and significant exertion. They are not evidence of anger or victimhood; they are evidence of skill.
I’ve been searching for The Perfect Harness for a long time.
I think at a certain point I gave up, and gave in to the fact that there’s no one singular perfect harness, and that I’ll just have different ones for different things or for different cocks. I haven’t been reviewing harnesses as much lately (though I do still try to keep up with what’s new out there).
Recently, though, my beloved Jaguar G harness reached its last days, and I replaced it with two other harnesses from Aslan Leather. I know some folks really don’t like leather because it is an animal product, and as a former vegan I understand that, but as someone obsessed with the best possible materials I can find, I just haven’t found anything better—or even comparable. There are quite a few vegan options for Aslan harnesses, for the record, and I do really like the Slick G.
And while I love Outlaw Leather and many of the other companies who make great harnesses, I think Aslan is the best, hands down. Their leather is buttery and feels already broken in, and so easily becomes a second skin, conforming to the heat of my body and wrapping me in it so I can barely tell I’m wearing anything at all.
The Jaguar is one of their most popular harnesses, and I would say is one of the most popular harnesses period, based on the dozens of Cock Confidence workshops I’ve conducted and based on a totally informal survey of everyone I meet who partakes in strap-on sex. It comes in various colors—like white, black, and cherry.
I prefer the Jaguar G, the g-string one-strap version (because of the way the one strap hits my clit while I’m fucking). But there are many variations to the Jaguar, and I bet you can find one that is perfect for you.
I frequently go back to my Leather Pleasure Harness, which I also frequently recommend to folks who are starting out with strap-on play because it easily converts from a one-strap to a two-strap and back, so you can experiment with both and see which one you prefer, and because it’s relatively affordable, much cheaper than a lot of the other fancier leather harnesses anyway.
I’m not sure how many of these harnesses I have basically worn through in the last five years or so. Three, four, maybe? Maybe it’s because I don’t know how to take good enough care of my leather—but I clean it with saddle soap, have experimented with mink oil, and nothing I do can quite make it waterproof enough that eventually, it doesn’t end up soaking into the leather and unable to come clean. I’m the kind of person who will use a thing until it is pretty much unusable, I wasn’t exactly raised middle class, maybe more like upper-working-class or lower-middle-class or with middle class aspirations, so it sometimes pains me to retire one of these harnesses, but I care a little bit more that my sex toys are attractive and safe to share, and after a certain point, my leather harnesses are neither.
So this time, when I asked Aslan to send me a new Jaguar G, I also asked for a new Leather Pleasure Harness, but this time with the leg straps in rubber instead of leather. Because that’s the piece that gets all … beautifully juiced up, anyway, that’s the piece that becomes uncleanable after a while.
And I couldn’t be more thrilled. I love this new harness, and it is so much easier to keep clean. I’ve reviewed the Leather Pleasure Harness before, so check that out if you want more details about the harness specs.
Between the Jaguar G and the Leather Pleasure Harness, I think my search for The Perfect Harness might be over. If nothing else, any other harness definitely has a lot to live up to. Thank you, Aslan!
Aslan Leather sent me the Leather Pleasure Harness and Jaguar G for review. Pick it up over on Aslan’s site, or at your local independent feminist queer sex toy store.
So Kristen and I have a new experiment …
I’m no longer writing an advice column for acompanythatshallremainnameless, so I have this spreadsheet full of questions (65 of them at the moment) and nowhere to really put the answers. Sometimes I run them by Kristen before I write about them, or just to spark casual conversation, and we have fun bantering about the advice that we’d give. So at one point we thought, hey, what if we do a little video recording of these?
In this episode: Emma asks, “I’ve just started dating someone new, and at the same time I am figuring out that I might be submissive. How do I let her know that I want to be, well, taken? Thanks.”
References from the video:
Mollena Williams
The Topping Book & The Bottoming Book (weren’t actually mentioned but I meant to suggest them)
Savage Love
PS: Isn’t Kristen pretty?
PPS: Bonus photo outtake:
Since I haven’t been able to get a calendar update up on Sugarbutch the last two months in a row (!), I’m throwing up this event info individually instead so you can know what I’m up to.
Much of my college workshop traveling is done, but I’ll still be traveling a bit this summer, attending a few different leather gatherings and heading to Atlanta and hopefully Chicago to do readings for Say Please.
There are some great events in New York City that I’m taking part in, too! Hope to see you there.
Queer Memoir: Butch/Stud Through the Years
Friday June 8th, 8 PM
Queers for Economic Justice
147 W. 24th St., 4th Floor,
New York, NY 10011
5-10 bucks no one turned away
RSVP/More info/Updates on facebook
Queer Memoir: New York’s award-winning LGBT storytelling series is breaking their usual “no shows in the summer” tradition in order to produce this special event. We’ll be hearing stories from butch/stud identified people of different queer generations, including a special reading from West Coast’s Jeanne Cordova and her award-winning memoir, When We Were Outlaws.
With
JEANNE CORDOVA
LEA ROBINSON
SINCLAIR SEXSMITH
RYANN MAKENZI HOLMES
JAY TOOLE
HOSTED BY KELLI DUNHAM
Do you remember the Impossible Couture series, where Najva Sol took portraits and Molly Crabapple added embellishments? Najva did another series of portraits, this time genderqueer (mostly) nudes, and Molly did another series of drawings over them.
The result is Transmography: Thirteen Fairytale Portraits of Queers Beyond the Gender Binary, and I’m one of the models in the show. I might have gotten naked on my rooftop in Brooklyn. Maybe. Just sayin’.
The show opens next week, Thursday June 7th, from 6-9pm in New York and San Francisco Lomography stores.
Transmography: Thirteen Fairytale Portraits of Queers Beyond the Gender Binary
by Molly Crabapple and Najva Sol
Transmogrify, Verb: To transform, esp. in a surprising or magical mannerFrom poets to porn-stars, computer nerds to community gardeners, artists to activists: these portraits capture some of the real gender warriors today. They are trans, genderqueer, or just gender-fabulous, and they deserve their own magical realm.
Each portrait was shot by Najva Sol with a lomo camera, then embellished by Molly Crabapple. Show sponsored by Lomography.
Show Opens At Lomography stores in New York AND San Francisco
June 7th, 6-9pmNew York Lomography Store
41 West 8th Street
Manhattan, NY 10011
212-529-4351San Fran Lomography Store
309 Sutter Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
415-248-0096
I’m going to do my best to at least stop by the New York show, though it does make me a little nervous to see myself (naked!) on a wall. But the shots I’ve seen so far are stunning, I love that one above. Can’t wait to see them all.
Kristen turned 29 years old yesterday.
We both attended a Body Electric workshop over the weekend—I’m completely wiped and Kristen is energized and tender, so we kept it pretty low-key. We had a very small gathering of a few folks over for cupcakes and champagne and fancy cheese, Kristen received a few sweet gifts, and generally enjoyed ourselves and each other’s company.
There’s a love letter coming, but meanwhile, I want to say happy birthday to my amazing girlfriend. I love that we get to explore and experiment together, and I feel so lucky to have found someone so willing to love well, work well, and grow well with me.
I love you Kristen, thank you for sharing these beautiful years of your life with me. I wish you big dreams and explosions and fireworks in your 30th year around the sun, and I’m so excited that I get to be there with you, here and beyond.
Sugarbutch & Raquefella Present:
DIRTY QUEER SEX TOUR: BUTCH EDITION IN LA
For the release of SAY PLEASE: LESBIAN BDSM EROTICA, come join us in LA for dirty readings from dirty butches, including Jeanne Cordova, D’Lo, Ian Harvie, [rife], Claudia Rodriguez, Sinclair Sexsmith, AJ Stacy, and MC Angie Evans.
ABOUT SAY PLEASE
In Say Please, Sinclair Sexsmith presents a cornucopia of queer kink—tantalizing tales rich in variety and saucy details of girls put in their place—and held there firmly. Whether readers dream of surrendering to a lover or of taking control, Say Please offers plenty of erotic inspiration and gives readers exactly what they want! Come hear authors from the book read their stories and celebrate the release of this kinky queer collection.
ABOUT SINCLAIR SEXSMITH
Sinclair Sexsmith runs the award-winning personal online writing project Sugarbutch Chronicles: The Gender, and Relationship Adventures of a Kinky Queer Butch Top at sugarbutch.net. With work published in various anthologies and websites, including Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica, she is the guest editor of Best Lesbian Erotica 2012, and her first full-length erotica anthology, Say Please: Lesbian BDSM Erotica, was published by Cleis Press in April 2012. Mr. Sexsmith writes, teaches, and performs focusing on the subjects of sex, gender, and relationships. More information on her at mrsexsmith.com.
The event will be Friday, May 25, 2012, 7-9pm
at The Pleasure Chest
7733 Santa Monica Blvd, West Hollywood
http://www.thepleasurechest.com/losangeleshours.htm
Light refreshments will be provided
ABOUT THE READERS
Check out the hot sex scenes in rebel activist JEANNE CORDOVA’s latest memoir, When We Were Outlaws, on sale now at amazon.com. Other sex writing include essays in award-winning anthologies like: “Conversation With A Gentleman Butch” in Dagger: On Butch Women, “Cheap Gold, a Seduction” in Hot & Bothered 2, “The Mantra of Orgasm” in Viva Arts Quarterly’, “The New Politics of Butch” in Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme, and “Butches, Lies & Feminism” in Persistent Desire: A Femme Butch Reader.
D’LO has performed and/or facilitated performance and writing workshops extensively (US, Canada, UK, Germany, Sri Lanka and India). D’Lo is also the creator of the “Coming Out, Coming Home” writing workshop series which have taken place with South Asian and/or Immigrant Queer Organizations nationally (LA, NY and SF). D’Lo’s work has been published in various anthologies and academic journals, most recently: Desi Rap: Hip Hop and South Asia America and Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic (co-edited by Sharon Bridgforth). D’Lo holds a BA from UCLA in Ethnomusicology and is a graduate of New York’s School of Audio Engineering (SAE).
Equal parts candor and deadpan humor, IAN HARVIE’s distinctive matter-of-fact delivery and almost surreal anecdotes about the intricacies of his exceptional life are so full of humanity that they become universal. Ian’s observations about gender-specific societal codes, privilege, coming out twice, and learning new bathroom etiquette, will have you peeing your pants and wanting to check your neighbor’s pants to see what’s inside. He’s the world’s first FTM transgender comic, put in context; make his anecdotes about his own phobia of public restrooms all the more side-splitting. Ian’s performance makes you think and wonder, but most importantly, it makes you laugh. Ian just filmed his first one-hour standup comedy film for cable television and was Executive Produced by iconic queer Comic and friend, Margaret Cho. He’s also been seen on ABC’s Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen and LOGO’s One Night Standup. Follow his ramblings on Twitter @ianharvie or check out his tour schedule at www.ianharvie.com
[rife] is a genderqueer leatherboy from Texas. They work as the lead artist for the GENDER book project, which is a visual primer on all things gender. When he isn’t doing that, he can be found doodling, pulling prints, welding, walking in the woods, or getting flogged by some butch hottie. Mel has a BA in studio arts from Rice University and even though he’s a recent transplant to Oakland, he will always be a cowboi at heart. Follow his work at www.thegenderbook.com or see more of rife’s art at www.rowdyferret.com.CLAUDIA RODRIGUEZ, writer, organizer, performance artists and AIDS activist is from Compton, CA. She received her MFA in creative writing from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Claudia’s play “Cosa Rara” was a semi-finalist in both the Asuncion Playwrights Project national competition out of Teatro Pregones in Bronx New York and the Sherwood Award sponsored by the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles. Most recently Claudia’s work has appeared in Baby Remember My Name: An Anthology of New Queer Girl Writing edited by Michelle Tea. Claudia received the Emerging Lesbian Writer award from the Astraea Foundation in 2001. She is also a founding member of Butchlalis de Panochtitlan, a Los Angeles-based multimedia performance ensemble renders cartographies of desire, identity, and localized histories on the bodies they walk in as they perform themselves, each other, imagined characters and caricatures.
If you’ve been lurking around Sugarbutch for a while, you know who Syd London is.
Syd has taken many of the most significant photos of me and my events in the last few years. She is an incredible photographer, hard-working and frequently nearly invisible at events, sneaking in to get just the right shots without interrupting the performers or the vibe of what’s going on (which is not true of all event photographers, just sayin’).
The first shoot that Syd and I did was a solo shoot of me, in slightly industrial Brooklyn, so early in the morning that I look kind of tired in some of the shots. But you probably recognize at least this one:
… because that’s the shot I used as a headshot for a few years. More from that photo shoot are on Syd’s flickr stream … I especially like this one.
Then Syd shot me and Cheryl the night that we started Sideshow.
You’ve seen many of these shots, too, because I used them as promo images for the series while it ran for a year and a half. There are many, many more shots of us from that night, together and separately, and the colors are amazing, and Cheryl looks so serious and dark and her usual self, and then sometimes one of us made her laugh and we got this rare shot of her smile. I’m so glad we have some photos of us together. Syd took hundreds of shots that night, and made us both look incredible.
She also snapped a few quick shots of me and Kristen, including this one, which is one of my favorite photographs of us together that we yet have:
And just, wow. I love that photograph.
Syd went on to photograph Sideshow for Time Out New York a couple different times throughout the series. How else would I have these amazing shots, capturing what it was like to be there for the first time? I was so nervous. Cheryl was buzzing around but kept a completely cool head, as she did. Kristen was beautiful and welcoming and warm, as she is.
And Syd captured it all.
Syd went on to photograph the Butch Voices NYC Regional Conference, for which I was on the steering committee, and snapped more shots of me, the conference in general, and Kristen and Cheryl as part of the volunteer committee that baked for the butches.
Syd also got shots of the Sideshow/Queer Memoir Butch Voices Mashup and the Speed Friending/Speed Dating opening night social. I’m on the Butch Voices national board now, have I mentioned that yet? I should make a formal announcement about that, I (we, the board) haven’t yet.
… And then Cheryl was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Syd took the photos of Cheryl’s old fashioned lesbian head shaving ritual, and one of the photos made it into the New York Times “Lives They Lived” series and was featured in the NYT Magazine.
Syd’s shot became Cheryl’s icon on WTF Cancer Diaries.
Kelli & Cheryl had their own shoot before we did the head shaving, so these are some of the last shots of Cheryl with all of her hair.
I love the love in these photographs. They were so good together, and loved each other so well.
Syd went on to photograph Nerd Love, the Valentine’s show that Kelli and Cheryl did together with some friends, as well as Fuck Your Health and Butch Burlesque and Butch It Up and dozens more community events.
And then Cheryl died. And Syd photographed the last Sideshow, just like she’d photographed the first one, except without Cheryl. And Kristen and I tried not to cry all night, and I put Sideshow on hold.
And a month or so later, Syd photographed Cheryl’s memorial.
… and I don’t even know what to say about that. It was a beautiful, important night, and one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
So basically, Syd London’s photography tells many the stories of my life for the past two years, from formal headshot photoshoots to community events to private rituals to memories that I am so blessed to cherish in images. I didn’t really realize that I’d be doing an overview of my successes and lows and family, but well, that’s what I’m doing.
The point is, Syd London needs a camera.
She’s been doing all this work borrowing camera equipment, and needs her own in order to continue capturing the community events that she’s been doing for many years, not just the last few that I’ve been working with her. She’s touched many, many lives of artists and activists in this community.
Here’s the video version of this request:
And here’s what Syd has to say about this campaign:
My name is Syd London; I’m a Brooklyn based, self taught, professional photographer and photojournalist. Until photography I struggled since the age of 9 with my soul question; how can I use my life as a tool? Baring witness, documenting and story telling through my photography while working to get those stories out there have become my answer. However, the professional grade tools which enable me to do this work are extremely expensive. I haven’t had my own digital camera since August 2010, when my camera was broken beyond repair. Since then I’ve been working on borrowed and rented equipment. Skyrocketing rental costs make it extremely difficult to continue and impossible to save for the needed equipment. I don’t want to wear my welcome out from relying on the incredible generosity of friends for camera loans. I never know what I’m going to work with or how/if I’m going to get a camera for the next gig. I’m especially concerned about the continuity of my work dedicated to social justice; licenses to these photos are frequently donated to organizations doing social justice work at a grass roots level such as Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, the Audre Lorde Project and Queers for Economic Justice. A professional grade camera rig of my own would enable me to continue my ongoing documentary about the LGBT community in NYC “Taking Back the Streets” (started in 2007), to continue to donate to magnificent organizations and artists as well as enable me push my work to the next level, something I’m starved for.
If you’ve got any extra money and you’re capable of giving a donation to her campaign, I urge you to do so. For selfish reasons, I want to keep working with Syd, and I want her photographs to keep being amazing. And for more community reasons, I know Syd’s work makes a huge difference, and I know how important it is to have not only a record of our communities, but a way to show us off in the mainstream that is accessible, beautiful, and moving.
Thank you, Syd, for all the incredible work you’ve done. I hope it’ll continue for a long time.
And the winner is …
Commenter #48, Jen!
Jen, I’ll send you an email—just need your size preference and mailing address, and RodeoH will send that right out to you. Thanks, RodeoH!
I’m part of the virtual blog tour for The Harder She Comes edited by DL King which just came out from Cleis Press. It’s a butch/femme anthology specifically, which to my knowledge is the first one released since Sometimes She Lets Me, also from Cleis. There aren’t very many butch/femme erotica anthologies out there (is Back To Basics the only other one?), and this adds an excellent new addition to one of my favorite little teeny subgenres.
Here’s the description of the book:
What is it about a pretty girl in a tight skirt bent over to adjust her stockings? Or that hotter-than-hot butch, swaggering into the bar like she owns it, eyes undressing every pretty girl in the place? Some butches worship at the altar of their femmes fatale and many little girls have a need to serve their big, strong daddies. In The Harder She Comes, we meet girls salivating at the sight of well-filled and packed jeans and bois dreaming of having a beautiful girl’s red lipstick smeared across their mouths. D. L. King has curated a singular set of stories filled with sexy sirens luring unsuspecting butches to their demise on the rocky shores of love and hot, confident women in silk and lace during the day who will do anything to serve their daddies’ needs at night. The Harder She Comes is great writing with characters that will stay with the reader for a long, long time —sometimes sweet, always sexy, often romantic, and more than a little dangerous.
I would love to tell you what I thought about each individual story, but sadly I have no time to put that together. I’m at a training all weekend and writing this while I should be sleeping. So please accept my apologies, and here’s an excerpt from my piece in the book, a story called Good Girl, Bad Girl.
Part I.
Sometimes, I am a Bad Daddy: I hate it.
I hate it and I want it and I crave it and I hate that I want and crave it, this, this girl, this way that I use her, this way she uses me. Sometimes I resent it. Her, me, my own desires. Why do they run this way? Where did these wounds come from, or are they scars now?
I have to remind myself not to ask myself too many of those questions. That it’s okay to want what I want. That after the flash of feminist guilt, as Karlyn Lotney once wrote, it is quite the handy little fetish.
And it is a fetish, or maybe rather it is many fetishes wrapped up and tied with a big pretty satin red bow. Power. Gender. Age.
I hate it, but I have never loved any play more.
This is what happens.
I sit on the couch reading a book and drinking tea after the dinner she made. For me. She finishes the dishes, brings her book out too, sits next to me. I don’t watch her as I take another sip of my tea. This is what I practice: Not paying attention. But in not paying attention I still pay attention, I just don’t let her know that I’m paying attention. When I notice I’m focused on her, I try to turn the focus inward. What do I want right now? And I feel something stir.
She inches closer to me. I turn a page. She sighs inaudibly. I turn my eyes to the pages of my book, move them along the words, not reading.
“Daddy?”
I don’t look up, yet. “Yes?”
“Can I …”
“May I.” I correct.
“May I … sit on your lap please?” It comes out in one quick string.
I pull the bookmark out of the back of the book and slide it in between the pages, close the book, set it on the coffee table, look up at her. Her eyes gleam gently. Hopefully. Like she just asked for candy at the grocery store. Her dress is pushed up from how her legs are crossed on the couch and I can see a hint of her inner thigh, and I want my cheek on it, want to bite it, want to feel her squirm and hold her there between my teeth as I leave marks. I breathe in. Keep it under control.
“Yes, sure darling.” With the Good Daddy voice.
She climbs over, sits sideways on my lap, knees bent over my thighs. Wraps her arms around my shoulders and her face buried into my neck and collarbone. Her hair smells faintly of shampoo, clean and bright with a gently fruit-flavored hint. It’s soft and thin and I bring one hand up to the back of her head, play with the gentle curls there.
She settles in and drops one hand to my chest, resting it on my waist. I shift a little, a growl rising in my belly. My arms fold easily around her. I don’t notice the sigh I let out, a low hum, the precursor to the growl.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, darling.”
“I like to sit on your lap.” She snuggles a little closer. I can feel a tightness spreading in my groin. I don’t say anything. “Do you like it?”
“Yes, darling.”
“Does it feel good?” Her voice drops softer.
“Yes.”
“Does it feel good …” she’s whispering now. “In your pants?”
I stir. My cock stirs, jumps. The growl grows. My arms tingle and tense, a sensation I want to let out with a fist. “Yes.” I whisper too. Our mouths are close.
I am a Bad Daddy. I want my girl to do dirty things; I want to do dirty things to her. I know she’d let me if only I asked, but sometimes the desperation is more fun. The arguing with myself. The attempts at holding myself noble, resisting her sweet girlish body. Feeling dirty for wanting it so much that my palms ache.
There are a lot of Daddy/girl stories in this book in particular … the original title was Daddy’s Little Girl so it drew a particular, um, flavor. So if that’s your particular flavor, you’ll find plenty of it in this collection. It’s definitely worth picking up.
Here’s the rest of the blog tour, check it out:
May 1 D. L. King http://sacchi-green.blogspot.com/
May 2 Anna Watson http://dlkingerotica.blogspot.com
May 3 Evan Mora http://donutsdesires.blogspot.com/
May 4 River Light http://sapphicplanet.com/blogtour_sapphicplanet.php
May 5 Sinclair Sexsmith https://www.sugarbutch.net/
May 6 Crystal Barela http://kathleenbradean.blogspot.com/
May 7 CS Clark http://bethwylde.wordpress.com/
May 8 Valerie Alexander http://pomofreakshow.com/
May 9 Andrea Dale http://lulalisbon.wordpress.com/
May 10 Beth Wylde http://adrianakraft.com/blog/
May 11 Kathleen Bradean http://cyvarwydd.blogspot.com/
May 12 Teresa Noelle Roberts http://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/
May 13 Shanna Germain http://lantoniou.blogspot.com/
May 14 Charlotte Dare http://madeofwords.com/posts/
May 15 Rachel Kramer Bussel http://lustylady.blogspot.com/
Pick up The Harder She Comes edited by DL King at your local feminist queer bookstore, or over on Amazon.
You are invited to … A night of DIRTY QUEER SEX!
Featuring readers from the SAY PLEASE: LESBIAN BDSM EROTICA anthology released by Cleis Press in April 2012, and many special guests! Performers include Miss Indigo Blue, Amy Butcher, BB Rydell, Lydia Swartz, & Elaina Ellis. Hosted by Sinclair Sexsmith, writer of the Sugarbutch Chronicles and editor of Say Please & Best Lesbian Erotica 2012.
In Say Please, Sinclair Sexsmith presents a cornucopia of queer kink—tantalizing tales rich in variety and saucy details of girls put in their place—and held there firmly. Whether readers dream of surrendering to a lover or of taking control, Say Please offers plenty of erotic inspiration and gives readers exactly what they want! Come hear authors from the book read their stories and celebrate the release of this kinky queer collection.
Sinclair Sexsmith runs the award-winning personal online writing project Sugarbutch Chronicles: The Gender, and Relationship Adventures of a Kinky Queer Butch Top at sugarbutch.net. With work published in various anthologies and websites, including Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica, she is the guest editor of Best Lesbian Erotica 2012, and her first full-length erotica anthology, Say Please: Lesbian BDSM Erotica, will be published by Cleis Press in April 2012. Mr. Sexsmith writes, teaches, and performs focusing on the subjects of sex, gender, and relationships. More information on her at mrsexsmith.com.
8pm, Wednesday May 2nd
Babeland, 707 East Pike
Seattle, WA
RSVP on Facebook
RSVP on Fetlife
ABOUT THE READERS:
Miss Indigo Blue is reigning queen of burlesque, Miss Exotic World 2011, and a Comic Queen of the New Burlesque Dancer, Teacher and Strip-Tease Artiste. Miss Indigo has performed across the globe, is a three-time award-winner at the annual Miss Exotic World competition, and currently holds the First Runner Up title from the Jenny Lee Tassel Twirling. Miss Indigo founded BurlyQ Queer Cabaret in 2002, which now has outcroppings in New York and London. Miss Indigo currently performs as a soloist *and* with the Emerald City All-Stars and the Atomic Bombshells, to be one of the most sought-after performers in the Northwest. Miss Indigo Blue is also the President and Chief Twirling Officer of TwirlyGirl.net, creating exquisite pasties for discriminating nipples, and the founder and Headmistress of the Academy of Burlesque in Seattle. She has teaches Tassel Twirling and Teasing techniques in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London and Seattle. Miss Indigo Blue is based in Seattle, WA. http://www.missindigoblue.com/
Amy Butcher is exactly that and when she isn’t wrestling with the responsibilities of that twist of nomenclatural destiny she writes, facilitates workshops and does massage in San Francisco. Her murder mystery Paws for Consideration will be published in 2012. Find her at amybutcher.com
Elaina M. Ellis is a poet, based in Seattle. In January 2010, she quit her day job. She full-time writes to worship, to recover, to seduce, to fight back, to play, to confess, and to make messes. http://www.elainaellis.com/
BB Rydell promotes queer visibility, expression and grass roots community building through writing, filmmaking and performance. This native New Yorker co-produces “Seattle Spit,” Seattle’s longest running monthly queer spoken word event, and is a member of the Producers Collective, an intentional artist and producer community that values social justice, camp, and diversity. BB is published in Tales of Travelrotica: Volume 2 and Penetalia, and has two self-published zines.
Lydia Swartz is a flaneur, novelist, pornographer, poet, performer, & hardcore introvert. She crafts idiosyncratic interactive pieces & lurks near mics toting grocery bags bulging with props. She was on the 2011 Seattle Erotic Arts Festival Literary Arts Jury & only wanked 3 times. In vanilla life, she is a propaganda minister for safety net health care. She lives with her wife of 12 years & a fucking menagerie.
April’s Say Please virtual (blog) tour has come to an end. Thirty posts in thirty days across many different blog platforms, group blogs and individuals, filled with praises and critiques. It’s been fascinating to read all of them and I highly recommend reading through them.
(I’ve been trying to keep up over at the Say Please blog, but I’m behind. I’m working on it!)
Viviane at The Sex Carnival
Rachel Kramer Bussel at Lusty Lady
Giselle Renard at Donuts & Desires
Evoe Throw at Whole Sex Life
Liz at Alpha Harlot
Roma Mafia at RomaMafia.com
Daniela at the CSPH
Sinclair (me!) at Sugarbutch Chronicles
Dede at Deviantdyke
Helena Swann at Cuntext
Kim Herbel at Butchlesque
Kelli Dunham at KelliDunham.com
Lily Lloyd at The Black Leather Belt
Lyzanne at the Sex Positive Blog
Lula Lisbon at LulaLisbon.com
Ali Oh at Made of Words
Jameson at FTM Butch Dude
Charlie Ninja at CharlieNina.tumblr.com
Meredith Guy at MeridithGuy.tumblr.com
Wendi Kali at A Stranger In This Place
Lolita Wolf at Leather Yenta
Audrey at Babeland
Seth at Smoke Belly’s Corner
Danika at the Lesbrary
DL King at DLKingErotica.blogspot.com
Kyle at Butchtastic
Kiki Delovely at KikiDelovely.wordpress.com
Dilo Keith at DiloKeith.wordpress.com
Xan West at TG Stone Butch
Thank you all, so very much, for being part of this! I am so glad you enjoyed the book and thank you for your comments.
Next up for Say Please: Mini-interviews with the contributors! I’m excited to showcase their thoughts about their stories, and will be posting them throughout May and beyond.
I hope you have had a chance to get a copy of the book and to start reading through the stories, and if you haven’t yet, I’m still on tour and will be visiting Seattle, Portland, Atlanta, Chicago, and Toronto this summer and fall.
It’s Sugarbutch’s 6th anniversary! So let’s have a giveaway.
The RodeoH brief harness has been hugely popular since it was released last year, and they’ve just released a grey boxer brief, too. They are comfortable, easy to pack with, machine washable, and pretty fucken adorable, so it’s no wonder that everybody loves them.
Want one of your very own? Leave a comment with one blessing for Sugarbutch’s anniversary or one thing you love or your favorite post or something you’d like to see me write about or a comment with something else entirely to enter the contest. You must leave a legitimate email address in order for us to contact you to get your mailing address and boxer brief size.
I’ll pick a winner from the comments at random on Monday, May 7th.
Thanks, RodeoH!
Sugarbutch turned 6 years old on Sunday, April 29th. It was in 2006 at a corporate office job I’d just started, after obsessively reading every sex blog I could find for about a month, that I started publishing my own sexy fantasy writings.
I’ve told this story many times over the last six years, but here’s how it started. I was in a bed death relationship with my college girlfriend of four years, meaning for about the last two years of our relationship we had sex maybe six times (a few of which were when we almost broke up). I was going nuts, tearing my hair out, getting off multiple times a day. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had stopped writing for a long time because all I was writing was about how I wanted to get out of that relationship, and that was a reality I wasn’t quite ready to face. So I decided that every time I wanted to have sex, I would either go to the gym, or write erotica, and I ended up writing a lot of erotica (and not really going to the gym much—this was before my gymbunny days). I started liking some of the work I was writing, and I went back to a medium that was one I had relied upon for many years: the online writing project, aka the blog.
I had kept personal writing projects online since 1996—for the last sixteen years, now—in various states of anonymous or semi-anonymous, but this one was the first one that grew to this caliber. Sugarbutch was completely anonymous for a few years, but as it grew, my identity became less and less hidden. (It’s not exactly anonymous anymore, it’s only been semi-anonymous for a few years now, and then I came out on Coming Out Day in October of last year.) I’ve had to deal with writing about the people I slept with without them knowing—and what to say when they later found out, and now I’m a lot more open and always get permission before I write about someone here.
So it started out as a place for me to get out of my bed death relationship, and quickly became a chronicle of that relationship ending. When it ended, I realized that I thought I knew what I wanted in a relationship, I thought I knew what my gender was and who I was attracted to, I thought I knew the kind of sex I wanted to have, but none of that had worked out. So how did I get that? Who was I, and how do I date the girl I want to date? How do I have the kind of sex I want to have? Can I really be who I am and get what I want?
These became the central questions I was exploring—and still explore—on Sugarbutch. It’s always been a personal exploration. As the blog grew, much of the more personal explorations have been put under a password (which you can get if you sign up for the mailing list—the idea is that you can see the more personal things in exchange for interacting with me with integrity).
The initial focus on this blog was where the subtitle of “kinky queer butch top” came from: a) my gender identity (butch), b) my sexual orientation (queer and attracted to femmes) and the process of seeking a serious partnership with someone, and c) exploring my kinkiness through my particular power orientation of masculinity and dominance. I wanted to figure out who I was in those contexts, who I would be to a partner, who I was in the butch/femme world, how I could continue to grow and push myself sexually, and how I could maintain all of those dynamics over a long-term relationship and not fall into another bed death situation.
The first three years of Sugarbutch were a lot of exploring and a lot of rebuilding myself. Early readers will remember the difficulty I had getting out of my relationship with The Ex and the box of darkness gift that one particular rebound relationship gave me.
Then I started dating Kristen, and the last three and (almost) a half years have been exploring with her. Having a steady partner meant that I had a steady sex life that I could explore, and I stepped up the product reviews. It was so much easier to review products frequently when I had a steady partner, it was much harder when I’d bring a new harness to someone that I hadn’t slept with before to try to figure out whether or not it worked for me and us (for example, was it the harness? Or was it the newness of the sexual partner that meant that I wasn’t getting off or fucking comfortably?).
It also meant that we could look into some new things we wanted to experience, like nipple clamps or anal play, and go deeply into those explorations.
Product reviews, of course, get old pretty quickly, and I never wanted this place to turn into an all-product blog. I’ve scaled back on products significantly, though I’m still interested in keeping up with the strap-on hardware that is being released.
Kristen brought some new sexual explorations, too. It was with her that I started exploring this Daddy identity of mine, a new space that I didn’t really see coming but that fits very well. We’ve also been exploring D/s and pushing our BDSM play to new places, and in the last year or so we’ve been deepening our relationship to the leather communities, being more involved with leather and BDSM retreats and culture. It’s been incredibly rewarding.
And for the past seven months, Kristen and I have been navigating non-monogamy in practice since I started dating rife. It’s been a challenge for our relationship, and while Kristen is totally behind this shift in our relationship (and recently wrote here about her thoughts on non-monogamy), it has not been without difficulty. It’s been very hard to write about because it’s been painful—for both of us—at various times, and it’s been hard to reveal the mistakes I’ve made, the pain it’s sometimes caused, and the ways that we are trying to move forward. I know there has been judgment about that decision from readers, too, so that’s made it harder to write about, but I’m trying to continue to stay open to chronicling my journey—our journey—as an open couple.
So while Sugarbutch used to be an exploration of gender (specifically, how I would be butch), sex (and getting the sex life that I wanted), and relationships (finding a girl to explore and deepen with), the edge now that I’ve been writing about has been non-monogamy (and I’m sure there is tons more to write about that as this expands), Daddy and D/s dynamics, and our deepening relationship to the BDSM and leather worlds.
Those explorations are my personal explorations, my personal edges, my personal work. I know many readers aren’t following me into these worlds, not only because they are edgier, but also because those aren’t as reflective of what you’re going through personally, and it’s harder to follow and relate to. I know many of you don’t agree with or understand what I’m doing (and you’ve said so in comments and emails frequently), and I’m going to continue to do my best to explain what I do and how it comes from a feminist, open, consensual perspective, but I know sometimes those things are just beyond grasp. I find it fascinating to continue to reconcile feminist politics with heavier BDSM theory, and I hope that I can keep writing about that in ways that incite curiosity rather than judgment and hateful comments.
Of course, Sugarbutch is still an exploration of those things that sparked it—sex, gender, relationships. In fact, as I’ve been teaching more and more, leading workshops and writing advice columns and learning more about how to counsel people one-on-one, I am surprised at how much comes back to those three things. They are not simple, after all. Figuring out who we are in the world and what we want are basic, on one level, but they are also Our Life’s Work, and they are not small. Plus, they are ever in flux, constantly changing.
That’s the other major thing that Sugarbutch has evolved into over the last six years: It’s now more than just a place where I go to work out my own shit, it’s also a platform for my work. I’ve turned it into my full-time job (which still scares me), and so part of what happens here is promotion for my books (!), workshops, travels, appearances, retreats, and writing elsewhere.
As I’ve had more of a position of teaching, I’ve been going back to those basics—”basics”—of sex, gender, and relationships, and the things that I’ve learned through this journey to know myself, over and over. I have come to all of this work from a very personal perspective, never assuming that I know what’s best for anyone else, only putting forward what has worked for me and what I’ve discovered—through reflection, writing, and various research—with the hope that something in there might be helpful to you, too. I don’t expect 100% of what I do or say or write to apply to you. Hell, even I don’t agree with 100% of what I’ve said. I revise my ideas constantly, or sometimes someone will ask me, “You just said ___, what did you mean?” at a workshop and I’ll have to backtrack and say, “Yeah, I didn’t mean that at all.” (Or, more likely, “I didn’t articulate that very well, let me explain what I meant.”) I am in a constant state of revising how I understand myself and my relationship to the world, and how I understand all of this work.
These topics are huge, and central, to all of us.
(I debated saying “almost all of us,” but in actuality, I think those issues affect all of us, every one of us, whether we are aware of it or not.)
I have some goals for this sixth year: I want to publish an ebook (or maybe more than one). I want to keep working on my finances and figure out how to be able to afford this patchwork freelance life. I want to get my Cock Confidence Product Guide up and running (I was working on that over the winter but the release of Say Please has pushed it back). I want to continue to collaborate more with Kristen, since her voice hasn’t been heard much here and I hope to do more of that (we have some ideas about what she might do). I want to keep writing elsewhere, and keep publishing my own short stories in anthologies, and hopefully do another erotica anthology soon. I want to keep writing about the things that are pushing my own edges, the non-monogamy and the BDSM and the D/s and Daddy play, even though it is not always well received. I want to keep teaching and doing workshops. I want to keep traveling, and to figure out how to travel better so that I’m away from my girl less and so that my recovery time is easier. I want to write here more, which is frequently a challenge because of the challenging feedback and the personal reveals and the traveling that gets in the way, but I want to keep it up.
I am thrilled to be doing the work that I’m doing. I love that my personal explorations have turned into lessons and guides and ideas for other people to learn more about their own lives, their own genders and sexualities and sexual satisfactions, and I still sincerely hope that what I put forth can help, in any way whatsoever. I am so grateful that you are reading and listening and buying my book and attending my workshops.
Thank you.
Thank you for reading over these last six years, thank you for commenting, thank you for your emails and your questions and your praise and your critiques. I couldn’t do this without you, and I am so grateful that I get to keep doing what I’m doing.
Some of the other anniversary posts:
A piece by Kristen about our open relationship, dating other people, sex, a leather family vision, and BDSM. Follow her on Twitter @kitchentop.
You know where some of my fear came from when we dipped our toes into polyamory last fall? That Sugarbutch readers would make all kinds of judgments about me, think I’m some kind of doormat, judge our vision and our path for our relationship. But we came to poly from a place of deep strength, not out of weakness. That isn’t to say it hasn’t been difficult; it’s been very difficult, but that’s because we’re intense people with high standards for our lives and big dreams. And what makes it the hardest is not jealousy, it’s that there’s little support for dating other people while you have a long-term partner in this culture. We have to build on the narratives that people before us have created—and create our own.
And in fact, as soon as I looked around, I saw examples of sparkly poly couples—many of whom we already knew—who quietly date multiple people. And I probed deeper, and I realized there’s an entire network of kinky queers who fuck each other and each other’s friends, if you just look below the surface. Sinclair sent me a link about cabins to rent in New York, and I got a vision of five or six or seven of us, cooking and fucking and lazing around near a lake, and I thought, “Maybe that’s what people mean by ‘leather family.’ That’s the kind of adulthood I want.” Because for many of us, that white picket fence—even a gay white picket fence—just isn’t in the cards.
And y’all, I like sex too much to limit myself. I love fucking. I LOVE it. It keeps me grounded and helps me fly all at once, and I can’t really imagine fucking one person the rest of my life, as amazing as the person I spend most of my time fucking is. You’ve met a few guest stars (there have been about eleven in the last three and a half years, not counting erotic energy retreats) – and I would like to continue doing that. I was surprised, yes, when Sinclair’s interest in rife expanded beyond a one-time fuck, and I was even more surprised when that connection went beyond a sexual one. But it’s been just over six months since we had that first conversation, and I’m sold. The details are complicated, and the growing pains have been difficult, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t choose poly. What it actually means is that we are so steeped in monogamy in this culture, and the cultural walls around monogamy are so rigid, that it took me months (and fucking someone else, if we’re gonna be really honest here) to feel really solid.
We need MORE support around this, not less. Think about when you came out: I, for one, had many years of culture telling me queer was wrong, and I needed backup from homos around me reminding me it was okay to be a big dyke. After a few years, it was no big deal, but I teared up at my first pride parade. Maybe I should go to poly pride. Or maybe I should just have a lot of poly sex and I won’t need a parade. Or maybe after I have poly sex I should wave my hands around spirit fingers style and give myself a parade.
So what’s it like? It still feels sort of dangerous, honestly, because I still have a little bit of this “traditional relationship” lens that tells me fucking someone else is cheating. But it’s not—it’s consensual—and it’s incredibly exciting. What’s fun? I flirted before, but flirting with the possibility of actually playing with someone else is different. It challenges me to see myself more independently than I did before, and that’s both fun and nerve-wracking. (It’s much easier to fuck someone else when your Daddy arranges it for you than when you’re in a bar with your friends and you have to make the first move—or when you’ve played with someone once and you want it to happen again.)
Here’s the other thing: before I met Sinclair, dating was a lot more desperate, because I have a really high sex drive and I wasn’t getting fucked especially well. Now that I’m dedicated to my boyfriend but looking for people to play with, I can be very selective about who I choose, and I’m much narrower in what I’m looking for. I’m not going to go home with someone randomly because they’re the best option and I want to get laid, I’m going to hone in on exactly what I’m looking for and see what I can do to find that. I have much, much better boundaries, and I’m able to fuck friends or become friends with someone I’ve fucked (Hi Gabrielle … and the rest of y’all). Part of that is just maturity, but it’s also about a redefined vision of relationships. We don’t have to love everyone we fuck, or maybe we do, but it’s a different kind of love. Love is bigger than “date them fuck them live together get married pop out babies.” Sometimes when I’m feeling stuck between two options, Sinclair tells me, “There are always more than two choices.” This is a lovely example of that concept. There are always more ways to live than you might think. And it is so fucking beautiful that we get to redefine how we love. Our relationship gets to evolve, and we get to go through the hard stuff together, and we get to play with space and restrictions and sex and pain in a conscious, consensual way—which is far beyond what I’d ever imagined.
P.S. The BDSM in our relationship is a slightly different topic (and an old conversation), but rest assured, our relationship is consensual. For what it’s worth, I love getting punched, and that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with me or us. It comes from a place of very deep trust.
I have been so busy telling you all about Say Please that I have barely even mentioned some of the other recent notable books I’ve picked up. All are fantastic reads and have plenty to offer for the novice or the very experienced kinkster.
Ecstasy is Necessary by Barbara Carrellas I’ve already mentioned on Sugarbutch, but it’s worth mentioning again if you haven’t read it yet. If you’re interested in exploring your own sexuality, getting closer to your own desires, having a lovely introduction to some tantric explorations, or taking a good, long reflective look at your sex life and relationship/s, this is an incredible place to start.
Queer & Pleasant Danger by Kate Bornstein is a beautiful, stunning memoir about Kate’s time as a scientologist (!), then being excommunicated and losing her family, then transitioning and coming out as a kinkster on the West coast, and finally moving to New York. It’s an incredible story and I loved every page.
The Ultimate Guide to Kink by Tristan Taormino really is the Ultimate Guide to Kink. There are essays in here from all sorts of mentors and experienced authoritative kinksters, and the book covers all kinds of fascinating topics. I’m especially excited about Barbara Carrellas’s chapter on kinky tantra, the age play chapter, and the “inside the mind of a sadist” chapter. I haven’t finished it yet (I’ve barely started it, actually) but I’m already thrilled. Cleis Press is contributing amazing things to the kink and sexualities worlds and I’ll read anything they put out.
Mind-Blowing Sex: A Woman’s Guide by Diana Cage might look like some basic women’s sexuality book, but it isn’t. It’s a complex commentary on our sexual culture and includes tons of ideas, exercises, and prompts to get you digging into your own sexual self. Kristen read it cover to cover and pronounced, “I’m going to send a copy to my sister.” It’s the kind of book that all our younger sisters should have (after we finish reading it).
There have been so many great books released this spring! I’m also really looking forward to Are You My Mother by Alison Bechdel and Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson. I haven’t been all the way through the Lambda Literary finalists, though I like to pick through that list because they are often the best of the best. And of course I’ll be at the Lammys this year! Very excited to continue attending and being involved.
What have you been reading lately? Anything good?
As of 7/28/15 This product is no longer available at Babeland
I kind of hate the word “dildo.” But I didn’t let that stop me from checking this one out, after I heard that it’s extra-flexible—flexible enough for packing and playing, maybe?
Available exclusively at Babeland, the Double Agent is ready to go anywhere, anytime. Made of premium-grade silicone and harness ready, this flexible dildo is designed with a firm base and silicone core that runs up a third of the shaft. The realistic phallus delivers a feeling of fullness during penetration and is flexible enough to bend into truly twisted and unexpected positions. The Double Agent is designed for both packing and strap-on sex. Available in one color, more colors coming soon.
See that part about how it’s “designed for both packing and strap-on sex”? Intriguing, I thought! But in practice, it has the same problems as both the Goodfella by Vixen and the VIP Supersoft by Tantus, which is that when it is bent to one side or the other, which is required in order for it to be pack-able, the base of it really digs into my pubic bone because of the pressure.
It’s a good size, though, and great materials, decent shape I think. The Double Agent would be great for putting on before a play party when I know I’m not going to be wearing it (in my zipped-up pants) all night, but I wouldn’t put it on to go to dinner and dancing and be ready by the time I got home after the date. For that, I go back to the Silky, which still is my go-to cock for packing.
Though it seems like all I’m doing right now is touring and releasing a book, I’m actually doing a lot of other things, including coordination for the Body Electric School, an erotic energy retreat organization with which I’ve been working for about twelve years. So much of what I know about sex, consent, embodiment, being in my body, being in touch with my gender, asking for what I want, sadism, masochism, my shadow side, breathing, and millions of other things comes from my experiences with these teachers and within the container of exploration that is these workshops.
I cannot recommend them highly enough, and I’m so thrilled that the organization is starting to open up and move beyond the ‘men’ and ‘women’ workshops into some genderqueer and trans focused territory. The new director of the school, Tom, even recognized the team of teachers and staff I’ve been involved with in creating and supporting this new Boxes workshop at the staff retreat in December.
We’re breaking some serious new ground here, and if you have any interest in being more in touch with your body, exploring your own desires, getting what you want, and doing it in a queer environment, this is an amazing opportunity.
I am so in love with this work, and I’m thrilled to be bringing it deeper into my community.
Want to come? It’s time to register. I’m glad to chat with you more (gchat, email, on the phone, skype) and tell you more about my experiences with these workshops, what it’s like, what to expect, and answer any questions you might have.
OUTSIDE THE BOXES: CELEBRATING THE QUEER BODY EROTIC
May 18-20, 2012, in New York CityYour gender. Your body. Your energy. Your beautiful self. How often has the world tried to force you into the gender binary, asked you to assure it that your pronouns matched what it saw rather than what you felt, required that your genitals conform to expectations, demanded that you deny the complexity of all that is you?
What if you could come into a community in which all expressions were possible? Where gender, sexuality and expression were aligned according to your truth? Where no one assumed what parts would go where? Welcome to Out of the Boxes: Celebrating the Queer Body Erotic!
Come explore your erotic potential through the mind, the body and the heart using conscious breath, movement, process work and massage. Awaken the erotic energy that lies within all of us. Through a queer tantra lens, explore archetypal masculine and feminine energies and the myriad ways they can be expressed. Break down silos of gender and sexuality.
This workshop focuses on the entire body and is conducted in a container that is playful, safe and reverential. Using carefully designed experiential embodiment practices participants will:
- explore the innate wisdom of your body
- expand awareness, sensation and pleasure through conscious breath, movement, touch, and communication, where each person’s choices and rhythms are honored
- learn how to more deeply tune in to your body, mind, heart and spirit
- to receive more fully from yourself and others, and to give without losing yourself
- learn to give and receive full-body massage and to focus on the healing potential of sensual/spiritual energy
- learn from your own and others’ unfolding, and feel awed witnessing and supporting our uniqueness and commonalities
Out of the Boxes: Celebrating the Queer Body Erotic is a 2 1/2 day workshop (Friday evening, all day Saturday and Sunday), often clothing-optional, for those who are ready to vigorously explore new levels of feeling and aliveness, both within themselves and within a community of queers.
NOTE: Couples are welcome to attend Out of the Boxes: Celebrating the Queer Body Erotic and have the option of working together or with the other participants.
Tuition: $150-495
Full tuition is due two weeks before start of workshop.
Now that Say Please is officially out in the world, and you know that you can get your copy from many different places, you might be asking, how do I get a signed copy?
You’ll have to get that directly from me, I think, considering I haven’t exactly signed a backstock of them for Barnes & Noble (yet).
So here’s the info. The books are $15 and flat rate US shipping is $4, so $19 will get you a signed book anywhere in the US. If you’d like two books to the same address, save the shipping and I’ll send ’em for $30. Outside the US, shipping is a bit more, so that total is $23.
When you pull down the option you want it’ll give you an option to “add a message to the seller”—that’s where you put the inscription you’d like, if you want me to make it out to someone in particular, or say something special (like “thanks for last night” … ).
If you’ve already purchased a copy of the book, I can send you a Say Please postcard that I’ve signed if you’d like to use it as a bookmark, or a bookplate that you can paste into your copy. Email me, mrsexsmith (at) gmail.com.
Of course, you can always attend one of the in person release party events and get your copy signed there!
There’s a release party for Say Please this Friday … this week is super busy, I know, but I’m really thrilled to be showing off this collection and I’m excited to read with all these fabulous folks. Vie La Guerre is coming all the way from Chicago and I haven’t ever met Elizabeth! I don’t think Miss Kitchentop will have any time to bake anything delicious, but I will probably pick up something awesome for us to nosh on while we are squirming in our seats.
Thank you Cleis, thank you Bluestockings, thank you contributors for helping to make this happen. Now all we need is the audience!
Dirty Queer Sex Tour: New York City
at Bluestockings, 172 Allen Street, Lower East Side
New York City
7pm on Friday, April 13th
RSVP on Fetlife
RSVP on Facebook
Sinclair Sexsmith presents a cornucopia of queer kink—tantalizing tales rich in variety and saucy details of girls put in their place—and held there firmly. Whether readers dream of surrendering to a lover or of taking control, Say Please offers plenty of erotic inspiration and gives readers exactly what they want! Come hear authors from the book read their stories and celebrate the release of this kinky queer collection.
Featuring Dusty Horn, DL King, Vie La Guerre, Sassafras Lowrey, Miriam Zoila Pérez, Elizabeth Thorne, and Xan West, hosted by Sinclair Sexsmith, writer of the Sugarbutch Chronicles and editor of Say Please & Best Lesbian Erotica 2012.
Sinclair Sexsmith runs the award-winning personal online writing project Sugarbutch Chronicles: The Gender, and Relationship Adventures of a Kinky Queer Butch Top at sugarbutch.net. With work published in various anthologies and websites, including Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica, she is the guest editor of Best Lesbian Erotica 2012, and her first full-length erotica anthology, Say Please: Lesbian BDSM Erotica, will be published by Cleis Press in April 2012. Mr. Sexsmith writes, teaches, and performs focusing on the subjects of sex, gender, and relationships. More information on her at mrsexsmith.com.
ABOUT THE READERS:
Dusty Horn’s erotica has been published by Cleis in Orgasmic and Best Bondage 2011, her sex culture reportage on CarnalNation.com, and her critical theory of sex work in AORTA magazine. A BDSM professional, queer pornographer, kink educator, social worker, and rocknroll exhibitionist slut, Dusty is (in)famous for her spanking booths.
Editor of Carnal Machines, Spank, The Sweetest Kiss, and Where the Girls Are, D.L. King has contributed short stories to Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Women’s Erotica, Girl Crazy, and Broadly Bound, among others. She’s published two novels and edits the erotica review site Erotica Revealed. Find her at www.dlkingerotica.com.
Vie La Guerre is a femme wordsmith who lives in Chicago with her kittens, Foxy Brown and Zora.
Sassafras Lowrey (www.PoMoFreakshow.com) is an international award–winning storyteller, author, artist, and educator. Sassafras is the editor of the Kicked Out anthology, which brought together the voices of current and former homeless LGBTQ youth. Her prose has been included in numerous anthologies and she regularly teaches LGBTQ storytelling workshops at colleges and conferences across the country. Sassafras lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family.
Miriam Zoila Pérez (www.miriamzperez.com) is a Cuban-American writer, blogger, and reproductive justice activist. She is the founder of RadicalDoula.com and an editor at Feministing.com. Her essays have been included in various anthologies, including Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme. Pérez lives in Brooklyn.
Elizabeth Thorne began writing erotic stories when she was working in a place known as The Sex Lab. It was an act of desperation since, ironically enough, studying sex kept her too busy to meet anyone larger than a mouse… and unlike Cinderella she doesn’t actually swing that way. These days, Elizabeth spends her time sitting around in her PJs writing popular science during the day and erotic romance at night. She has contributed to more than a dozen anthologies of erotica and erotic romance and is proud to be the author of “The Gingerbread Dungeon,” a collection of pansexual BDSM fairy tales. You can find her online at withbatedbeth.com.
Xan West is the pseudonym of an NYC BDSM/sex educator. Xan’s “First Time Since” won honorable mention for the 2008 NLA John Preston Short Fiction Award. Xan has appeared in many anthologies, including Best SM Erotica 2 & 3, Best Women’s Erotica 2008 & 2009, and Best Lesbian Erotica 2011.
Today is the official release date for Say Please: Lesbian BDSM Erotica! Between a few Amazon reviews and various folks on the virtual tour, there are a lot of comments about the book coming my way, and it’s been so fun to hear what y’all think about it.
Say the magic word and fulfill your deepest desires for discipline and surrender, domination and submission, and the heightened sensations of BDSM play. One request opens up a fantasy world of classic dungeon scenes, bondage and restraint, floggers and spankings, sadism and masochism, very hot sex and so much more. True to form, Sexsmith queers classic gender dynamics, with a femme daddy in Alysia Angel’s “Feathers Have Weight,” and genderqueer bois who earn their right to flag black in Sassafras Lowrey’s “Black Hanky.” In “The Cruelest Kind,” Kiki DeLovely’s naughty narrator gets her just desserts from her butch in a back alley. D.L. King’s top makes her submissive strip before an unseen audience in “A Public Spectacle.” Face slapping can be a hard limit or the most delicious craving, as Rachel Kramer Bussel’s protagonist finds out in “A Slap in the Face.” Whether you dream of surrendering to a lover or of weilding your power, Say Please to the erotic inspiration within.
Some current praise from the book tour:
“Each story has a different kink and a different bit of style. Every time the page turned, I got more wet.” —AlphaHarlot
“”Unworthy as I am” [the last story in the book] is a gentle wrap up of the book. Well, not gentle in the play, as you follow caning, piercing, and various delicious forms of torture. But the end of the story, with the collaring scene, can almost bring tears to your eyes, as you feel that this collar is for each submissive in the book, a honor of completion.” —Nina
“The stories were detailed enough to get you into it (soo into it!) but also left somethings up to your own imagination. The stories are hot, and makes you want to try more and more kinky things.” —skysbirdsnplanes
“I was delighted by the wide swathe of kink that this literary erotica cut through my imagination. I’m always interested in the myriad ways that gender expresses itself and Say Please is full of variety. The BDSM quotient zoomed through all of my favorites (except CBT, for obvious reasons) and right into areas that pushed my comfort levels. In other words, it was so hot to read that I had to get myself off.” —Evoë
“Despite the impressive amount of silicone being used to tease, tantalize, and teach lessons in this collection, it remains exceptionally diverse. Though the authors had to conform to the theme of “lesbian BDSM”, both of those labels were interpreted in a variety of ways, loosely and enthusiastically. In “Say Please,” there are no baselines, no stereotypes, and certainly no “scissoring.” As the coquettish narrator of August InFlux’s “Counting Love” assures us when telling us to leave the candy hearts at home, the best acts of love are not universal. To me, “Say Please” is a beautifully structured vessel carrying creative, courageous, highly individualized demonstrations of respect and admiration.” —Roma Mafia
“Let me tell you, I said please more than once to this lovely little book…. These contributing writers had me on edge – on the edge of mental orgasms too which are just lovely!- so many times that I felt myself slowly submitting to the conditions and quality that came along with this well endowed book.” —DeDe Delynn
Have you picked up your copy yet? What do you think? I’m dying to know. What’s your favorite story? Which line just really got to you? Which author do you adore and are you going to look up all their other stuff?
Buy it on Amazon
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So I have really a lot to say about my experience at the International Ms. Leather contest in San Francisco last weekend—about how it was pretty phenomenal to be in a hotel space filled with leather women (and those who love them), about the BDSM & anal workshop that Tristan Taormino led, about the 10 rules for happy non-monogamy workshop that Andrea Zanin led, and the single tail workshop that had me inspired, and the “parade of colors” and the leather sashes that made me, from the audience, go, “oh my gosh this is such a thing,” the royalty that leather title holders have, the awesomeness that are our new titleholders: the butch from Texas is our new IMsL and the femme bootblack is the new IMsBB! I’m thrilled that they’re representing this community and I wish them so many amazing adventures and fun travels.
And I kind of don’t know where to start, with what to tell you. I am extremely crunched for time these days (turns out, the week that your book comes out is kind of busy, who knew) and I don’t want to just give you a play-by-play (though you might be interested in that, I know, ya pervs).
So instead, I just want to send lots of love to IMsL and IMsBB 2012, KD Diamond and Sara Vibes, with this shot of them I snapped while Sara was feeding KD peeps off of her knife.
And yeah, this is just the kind of thing that happened, right in front of me, when I didn’t even expect it, all weekend long. If you’re kinky and queer and into women, this is one of those gatherings you don’t want to miss. You bet your ass I’ll be there next year.
Yesterday marked the first event in the DIRTY QUEER SEX BOOK TOUR for Say Please at Good Vibrations in San Francisco, and I had a great time. My buddy Butcher and I both took quite a few photos, and as soon as I get those off the camera I’ll post ’em.
I’ve returned from IMsL (whew! What a whirlwind! More about that soon) and the next Say Please event is in New York City on April 13th. But meanwhile, the Virtual Tour for the book kicked off yesterday too, and you can follow along as writers from all over are sharing their thoughts on my new book.
I am so excited to introduce to you the 27 writers and blogs that will be hosting the Say Please Dirty Queer Sex virtual book tour this April. I hope you have a chance to check out their posts about Say Please as well as their other work. The first post is up already (thanks Viviane!) and there are many more to come. Thanks to all who have agreed to host and participate in this tour with me!
April 1 Say Please release party in SF
April 1 Viviane http://www.thesexcarnival.com
April 3 Rachel Kramer Bussel http://lustylady.blogspot.com
April 4 Giselle Renard http://donutsdesires.blogspot.com
April 5 Evoe Throw http://www.wholesexlife.com
April 6 Liz http://AlphaHarlot.com
April 9 Roma Mafia http://www.romamafia.com
April 9 Daniela http://www.thecsph.org
April 10 Official release date! Sinclair https://www.sugarbutch.net
April 11 Dede / deviantdyke http://deviantdyke.blogspot.com/
April 12 Helena Swann http://www.cuntext.com
April 13 Kim Herbel http://www.butchlesque.com
April 13 Say Please release party in NYC
April 14 Lily Lloyd http://theblackleatherbelt.com
April 15 Kelli Dunham http://www.kellidunham.com
April 16 Lyzanne http://sexpositive.tumblr.com/
April 17 Lula Lisbon http://www.lulalisbon.com
April 18 Ali Oh http://www.madeofwords.com
April 19 Jameson http://www.ftmbutchdude.com
April 20 Rhys http://girlfriendjunction.org
April 21 Charlie Ninja http://charlieninja.tumblr.com/
April 22 Say Please release party in Boston
April 22 Meredith Guy http://meridithguy.tumblr.com
April 23 Wendi Kali http://astrangerinthisplace.blogspot.com
April 24 Lolita Wolf http://leatheryenta.com
April 25 Audrey at Babeland http://babeland.com/blog
April 26 Seth B http://smokebellyscorner.wordpress.com
April 27 Danika http://www.lesbrary.com
April 28 DL King http://dlkingerotica.blogspot.com
April 29 Kiki http://kikidelovely.wordpress.com
April 29 Kyle http://www.butchtastic.com
April 30 Dilo Keith http://dilokeith.wordpress.com/blog-2/
April 30 Xan West http://tgstonebutch.livejournal.com/
May 2 Say Please release party in Seattle
Thanks, Tomcats, as usual, for the ability to not really think that hard about my hair and still have it look good.
So I’m in San Francisco this week! I was at Mills College doing a Radical & Responsible Gender workshop last night (hi Colleen! Hi Jack! That was fun!), and this weekend I’ll be at the International Ms Leather contest and conference, and I’m really stoked to be here. I’ve never been before but it’s been on my radar for many years. I’m really looking forward to many of the workshops (and who knows, maybe I’ll discover some new presenters who might want to come do some things for the Lesbian Sex Mafia in New York City?) and to the social time too, hanging out with the incredible folks who are going to be here.
I’ve got some copies of Say Please hot off the presses! And I’m doing a reading at Good Vibes (Polk Street) on Sunday at 5pm if you’d like to come to that—in addition to me, it’ll be readers from Say Please, Best Lesbian Erotica 2012, and Salacious Magazine’s Leather issue. It’ll be debaucherous and fun. I’m now calling the whole Say Please tour the DIRTY QUEER SEX TOUR, and still working on dates (Chicago! Portland! Hi I want to come visit!) and hope I can get out to many more places this summer and fall.
The virtual Say Please DIRTY QUEER SEX book tour kicks off on April 1—more info on that shortly.
If you’re at IMsL and see me, say hi!
I caught Lindsay Fuller playing with Amy Ray a few weeks ago at Housing Works in New York City, and they are both on tour now supporting Amy’s newest solo album Lung of Love and Lindsay’s album You, Anniversary which comes out today.
Ever since seeing her in concert I have been eagerly awaiting this album, especially so I could hear the title track again, which is based on a WS Merwin poem “For the Anniversary of My Death. The idea is that every year, we pass the date of our death, but we won’t know what day that is. Her chorus repeats, “Ohh, when’s it gonna be.”
Speaking of her voice, I really love it. She sings on four tracks on Amy’s new album, but I’ll admit I’ve been listening more to Lindsay’s back catalogue than to Amy’s newest. She’s got this great low southern croon, and she was so sweet and fantastic on stage. She had a few other songs that she gave us the backstory to, based on I already pre-ordered You, Anniversary on Amazon and it’s only $5.99 for the mp3 download, and out today. I also found it streaming on soundcloud if the title track above didn’t already convince you.
Murder, or regret.
That’s how the majority of pop culture refers to abortion. I have noticed this distinct lack of range depiction, not just because I was a women studies major for whom reproductive justice was a constant teaching and learning, but also because I had an abortion in the year 2000.
I was twenty. Unlike what Ani sang, mine wasn’t a “relatively easy tragedy,” it was just relatively easy.
I worked at Microsoft at the time, and my insurance covered it. I made the appointment from the phone in our lobby, which was the most private space, filled with large indoor house plants someone would come around and water twice a week. Plants so generic in an office building that they become wallpaper after the daily/yearly commute.
I remember I had to buzz into the clinic and identify myself. I remember that they wouldn’t allow anyone in the room for the procedure. That the partner (the guy) in the waiting room may be coercive, and as such the women who came in for such procedures were asked the same questions in and out of their escort’s presence. I remember the room was the same as a room for pelvic exams, with the same landscape poster on the ceiling, but for the machine they wheeled in on a cart. I remember it didn’t hurt much, just a click click whirr and then over. I remember I bled for days, but the bleeding was such a relief.
I had been full for weeks. Never so aware of my uterus. I mean, think about it: can you feel your organs? My college girlfriend could feel her kidneys, because she had a kidney infection that put her in the emergency room, and she probably still can. I can still feel my uterus, still remember that rubber ball-sized solid object lodged in my pelvis that showed up without my asking, without my request.
I was trying to leave him at the time, my ex boyfriend. We’d been together five years. I was trying to leave him because I was queer and that was easier than to leave him because he was abusive. Mostly he was abusive because he suspected I was queer, which I’d told him was true since we met on the internet when I was 14 and my interest in ladies was a turn-on, but five years later was a threat.
I wrote a poem about this abortion, a heavy-handed lyrical thing that I won’t share because it’s bad writing, though not because I disagree with anything I wrote. The one line I remember, without looking it up, is “this is how sure I had to be in order to be the me I was meeting in dreams.” Getting pregnant meant I needed to be that much more sure that I was queer. This is how hard it’ll be, the universe told me, to stop being heterosexual. You can have this partner and this baby, if you want it. Are you sure?
Yes. I was that sure.
The cells they removed from me were more an infection than a child, more an unwanted mutation than a new life. It was not murder and I do not regret it. It was a decision that took me on a path here, and musing about the idea that I could have a twelve year old right now is as useful or relevant to my life as musing where I’d be if I’d married my first girlfriend or gotten into a different college or not quit that job.
I make a thousand decisions daily and they have brought me here, where most days I am wildly happy in my queer, kinky, working artist, open, exploratory life.
A big ol’ box of Say Please: Lesbian BDSM Erotica edited by ME and published by Cleis Press has arrived on my doorstep! I am so thrilled to hold this book in my hands and pet it and flip through it, after more than a year of working on it behind the scenes, on my computer, alone, jerking off in bed with the manuscript I mean uh, editing and copy editing and re-editing.
And now … comes the exciting part! The birthing it into the world part! The part where I figure out how to get it into your hands and on your nightstands and between your boxspring and mattress and on your kinky bookshelves. So I’ve got a few things up my sleeve, including six inches a virtual blog book tour and some extra copies for reviewers.
The official promo blurb:
Say Please: Lesbian BDSM Erotica is a fiction anthology edited by Sinclair Sexsmith, to be published by Cleis Press in April 2012. It is available for pre-order at Amazon and will be available for the Kindle and Nook. Email lesbianbdsmerotica at gmail.com if you have any questions; to request a review copy, email Brenda Knight at bknight at cleispress.com. For more information about Say Pleaes series, visit saypleasebook.wordpress.com.
Apparently, book sales on Amazon set the standard for many other buyers these days, and reviews on Amazon (even clicking “like” on Amazon) make a big difference in possible sales. So I’ve got 20 copies of the book to give to folks who are willing to write a review on Amazon. To do this, you must: have an Amazon.com account you’ve made a purchase from, have a US mailing address, promise to review it by April 31st and actually follow through. Will send one to the first 20 people to request it. Email lesbianbdsmerotica at gmail.com with “Amazon” in the subject line, your mailing address. I’ve got more than enough Amazon volunteers! Thank you!
In April, surrounding the book’s official April 10th release date, I’ll be conducting a virtual blog tour for the book! That means: If you are a blogger, and you’d like a copy of the book to review on your blog on a particular day of the tour, I’ll send you one in exchange for your participation. To participate, you agree to post on your corresponding day; posts can be your thoughts about the book, an excerpt, or an interview with me or another contributor. Email lesbianbdsmerotica at gmail.com with “Blog tour” in the subject line, and include a link to your blog and any pertinent information about the site you run. Deadline is March 31st, but I will fill it as I go, so please email me asap.
If you do plan to buy it, as with all books, pre-ordering them has a dual impact on the book’s sales, meaning your sale counts not just for one book, but means that the bookseller your purchasing from will stock extra copies. All sales are great, but pre-orders are extra special, a heads up as a way to support your favorite authors.
I am trying to get all over the place to read from this book … I still hope to visit Durham, Chicago, and Portland, and possibly Philadelphia and DC. If you’re a coordinator or event producer in any of those places, or in a different place!, and you’d like to help me with a reading, I’d love that. Get in touch.
Here are the current planned dates:
April 1 5pm, San Francisco at GV (with Salacious)
April 13 7pm, NYC at Bluestockings
April 22, Boston at a bar (with The Femme Show)
May 2, Seattle at Babeland
November 29, Toronto TBA (Facebook invite to come)
I am beside myself with curiosity about how this book will be received. What do you think of it? What is your favorite story? Which lines stand out? Which authors were particularly impressive, whether you’ve read them before or will seek them out to read again? What themes did you love (or hate)? What did you wish there was more of? I would love feedback about this. After all, it’s the first anthology that is wholly mine, cover to cover, and I would love to do more of these in the future (hope hope).
I hope you’ll find a way to get in touch and tell me your thoughts, I am so very curious.
March was supposed to be a low-key at-home month, where I could focus on a couple of new projects that I’ve been hoping to finish and birth into the world, but the quick travel home and now this readjustment are a bit in the way of that. I’m still trying to have a really low-key month in my routines, grounded and home. But I do have some exciting things coming up toward the end of the month, and then the Say Please Dirty Queer Sex Tour kicks off on April 1st in San Francisco and continues in New York, Boston, Seattle, and Atlanta (so far).
| Thursday, March 22, 7pm | Queers Heart Abortion: Fundraiser for Chicago Abortion Fund. Have you ever wished you could do more to help people access safe abortions? How about actually *paying* for their abortions? Well, now is your chance! Readers include: Heather Acs, Drae Campbell, Kelli Dunham, Melissa Gira Grant, Jessica Halem, Aimee Herman, Buster Katz, LeRoi Prince, Sinclair Sexsmith, Jami Smith, & Ariel Speedwagon. RSVP at the Facebook event. Did you know I had an abortion in 1999? I even have a piece about it, from about 10 years ago, but I’ll be reading a new piece about it being ten years ago.
Doors at 6:30 pm, Show begins at 7 pm, Show ends at 9 pm. $5-$10 sliding scale (no one turned away) |
UC Lounge, 87 Ludlow St, NYC 10002 |
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| Saturday, March 24, 11am-5:30pm | Rainbow Book Fair! The longest running LGBT book fair in the US, which includes exhibitions from publishers, poetry readings, performances, workshops, panels, and more. I’ll be there as part of Cleis Press’s booth—come get a copy of Say Please hot off the presses. rainbowbookfair.org | The LGBT Center, 208 West 13th Street, New York, NY |
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| Sunday, March 25 | Rutgers Sex, Love, & Dating: Your Guide to Everything Intimate Conference. I’ll be doing three workshops, Fucking With Gender, Combating Bed Death in Long Term Relationships, and Making Queer & Kinky Relationships Work. | Rutgers University Busch Campus, Piscataway, NJ |
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| Wednesday, March 28, 7pm | Radical & Responsible Gender | Mills College, Oakland, CA |
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| Sunday, April 1, 5pm | Dirty Queer Sex Reading: Say Please release party! Featuring August InFlux, Amy Butcher, Andrea Zanin, Ashley Young, T.R. Moss, and rife, from Salacious Magazine: Leather issue; Say Please: Lesbian BDSM Erotica; and Best Lesbian Erotica. Join us for an evening of debaucherous, dirty smut written by and for queers. Take a sexy break from a whirlwind of delicious leather, kink, and sex to additionally stimulate your … brains.
Hosted by KD Diamond, editor of Salacious Magazine and International Ms Bootblack 2011, & Sinclair Sexsmith, writer of the Sugarbutch Chronicles and editor of Say Please & Best Lesbian Erotica 2012 |
Good Vibrations, 1620 Polk Street, San Francisco, CA |
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| Friday, March 16, 8pm | Lesbian Sex Mafia: Giving Good Chair You’ve attended a “Bootblacking 101” class, or two. You’ve sat down with your Daddy and learned the basics of a spit shine. You’ve interrogated your bootblack friends about what Huberd’s really is. Or maybe you haven’t done any of these things. Regardless of what you know about the process of bootblacking itself–the technicalities, if you will–this workshop won’t cover any of those things. This workshop will cover the nature of “giving good chair” in three parts: 1. The Basics, 2. Upping the Ante, 3. Fucking Without Sex. Start off by learning how to be attentive and a great conversationalist; move on to engage in sensual physical contact; and leave them wanting more with boot worship. | LGBT Center, 208 West 13th St. (7th/8th Ave), Manhattan, NY |
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| Saturday, March 24th, 10pm | Submit Party, submitparty.com, a BDSM play party for women and trans folks only. $15 before midnight, $20 after | Brooklyn, NY. For exact location call 718.789.4053 or email Red@submitparty.com |
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| Thursday, March 29, 7-10pm | Girl Talk: A Trans & Cis Dialogue. curated by Gina de Vries, Elena Rose, and Julia Serano. Queer cisgender women and queer transgender women are allies, friends, support systems, lovers, and partners to each other. Trans and cis women are allies to each other every day — from activism that includes everything from Take Back the Night to Camp Trans; to supporting each other in having “othered” bodies in a world that is obsessed with idealized body types; to loving, having sex, and building family with each other in a world that wants us to disappear.
Girl Talk is an annual spoken word show fostering and promoting dialogue about these relationships. Trans and cis women will read about their relationships of all kinds – sexual and romantic, chosen and blood family, friendships, support networks, activist alliances. Join us for a night of stories about sex, bodies, feminism, activism, challenging exclusion in masculine-centric dyke spaces, dating and breaking up, finding each other, and finding love and family. |
San Francisco LGBT Community Center – Rainbow Room 1800 Market Street between Octavia & Laguna, San Francisco, CA Tickets: $12-$20 (no one turned away) WEB / TIX (We strongly recommend that you get tix in advance – we sold out very fast last year.): |
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| Thursday, March 29 to Sunday, April 1 | International Ms. Leather! That’s right, I’ll be in attendance this year, and I’m really thrilled. I don’t know all the details, but I’ll be around in general and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone. Say hi, if you see me. | San Francisco, CA |
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| Thursday, April 5, 8pm | Red Umbrella Diaries, www.redumbrelladiaries.com | Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, Manhattan, NY |
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I’m still booking a few more gigs for the spring, though my travel schedule is really full! I’d still like to get to Chicago, Portland, and Durham, so if any of you are in those cities and would like to help me get a gig, I would be oh so grateful.
Any events I missed? Add ’em in the comments.
IMsBB 2011 & Sugarbutch Present:
Dirty Queer Sex Reading
at Good Vibrations, 1620 Polk Street, San Francisco
5pm on April 1, 2012
Featuring August InFlux, Amy Butcher, Andrea Zanin, Ashley Young, T.R. Moss, and rife, from Salacious Magazine: Leather issue; Say Please: Lesbian BDSM Erotica; and Best Lesbian Erotica. Join us for an evening of debaucherous, dirty smut written by and for queers. Take a sexy break from a whirlwind of delicious leather, kink, and sex to additionally stimulate your … brains.
Hosted by KD Diamond, editor of Salacious Magazine and International Ms Bootblack 2011, & Sinclair Sexsmith, writer of the Sugarbutch Chronicles and editor of Say Please & Best Lesbian Erotica 2012
The fabulous readers:
Amy Butcher is exactly that and when she isn’t wrestling with the responsibilities of that twist of nomenclatural destiny she writes, facilitates workshops and does massage in San Francisco. Her murder mystery Paws for Consideration was published in 2011. Find her at amybutcher.com
Andrea Zanin, a.k.a. Sex Geek, wears glasses when she fucks. For over a decade, she has been teaching about queer sexuality, polyamory and BDSM/leather for universities, colleges, sex shops, community groups and conferences in Canada, the States and internationally, and she takes an anti-oppression approach to all her work. Andrea is pursuing a PhD in women’s studies at York University with a focus on Canadian leatherdyke history. She writes about alternative sexuality for numerous newspapers and magazines, blogs at http://sexgeek.wordpress.com/, and pens erotic fiction (recently appearing in Tristan Taormino’s “Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica”). Andrea co-organizes the annual Canadian leatherdyke weekend An Unholy Harvest, runs a pervy book club called The Leather Bindings Society and judges the occasional leather contest (including IMsL 2009). She lives in Toronto and enjoys doing yoga, cultivating M/s relationships with exceptionally high-quality individuals, eating fine dark chocolate and wearing really nice shoes.
August InFlux (augustinflux.wordpress.com) is brand-new to the wonderful world of writing. By day, she wanders around San Jose State University (California) campus as Big Queer Activist. By night she hides in her Bat Cave and homeworks it up until the wee hours of the morning. On weekends, she dons the guise of a housewife and bakes up a storm in her apron and high heels. She loves being femme, as a boy or a girl, and thinks monogamy as it relates to her is silly.
Ashley Young aka Indigo is a sex blogger, educator and smut writer. She is the creator of Indigo’s Theory, a blog about her experiences as a poly queer black women navigating the BSDM/Kink Community in New York City and beyond. Indigo also writes a column called “Indigo’s Poly Beginnings” for Fearless Press, an online magazine about the intersection of life and sex. Her column focuses on the development of her polyamorous relationship with a partner Sara Vibes – International Ms Leather 2011, as well as her experience in the leather women’s community. Alongside her partner, she has taught workshops on sexuality and BDSM practices at Dark Odyssey: Fusion, International Mr. Leather 2011 and the LGBT Center in New York City and is a faculty member for Kink Academy, an online education resource for the BDSM community. Indigo’s erotic writing has been featured in Salacious Magazine Issue #2 and she is a contributor to “The Perverts of Color Anthology” to be published in 2012.
T.R. Moss’s erotica has appeared in various publications including Best Lesbian Erotica anthologies and most recently, Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch Femme Erotica.
[rife] is a genderqueer leatherboy from Texas. They work as the lead artist for the GENDER book project, which is a visual primer on all things gender. When he isn’t doing that, he can be found doodling, pulling prints, welding, walking in the woods, or getting flogged by some butch hottie. Mel has a BA in studio arts from Rice University and even though he’s a recent transplant to Oakland, he will always be a cowboi at heart. Follow his work at www.thegenderbook.com or see more of rife’s art at www.rowdyferret.com.And your hosts:
kd, International Ms Bootblack 2011, is equal parts bootblack to artist. The very nature of leathercare, leather worship, and leather community are all similar and connected to the core of being an artist. kd uses her art as a platform for conversation and education, and similarly uses her bootblacking as a means to support her community, open up dialogues about leather, and get her hands good and dirty. kd is also the creator of SALACIOUS, a queer feminist anti-racist sex magazine, looks to meld high art, stunning visuals, and written erotica. www.salaciousmagazine.com.
Sinclair Sexsmith runs the award-winning personal online writing project Sugarbutch Chronicles: The Gender, and Relationship Adventures of a Kinky Queer Butch Top at sugarbutch.net. With work published in various anthologies and websites, including Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica, she is the guest editor of Best Lesbian Erotica 2012, and her first full-length erotica anthology, Say Please: Lesbian BDSM Erotica, will be published by Cleis Press in April 2012. Mr. Sexsmith writes, teaches, and performs focusing on the subjects of sex, gender, and relationships. More information on her at mrsexsmith.com.
