My weekend in keywords: cleavage and cupcakes

rkb with cupcakes
Originally uploaded by cheryl_b.

My weekend involved porno cupcakes, kinky Jews, unexpected orgy action, squishy flip flops, dr. sketchy's, the gym, proofreading, baking coconut cupcakes from the Barefoot Contessa, and catching up on my sleep. Also: marking up books with tons of those see-through colored tabs, I love those, gotta invest in some more. They rock, I think soon all my books will be filled with tabs. I rarely "feel" like a writer, even when I'm actually writing, it always feels like a fluke or a hoax or a one-shot deal, but when I'm putting sticky tabs in my books, then I really feel like a writer. Hopefully before this month is out I will have some time to put all the tabs into action because I'm finding some great material as I dig through the endless book swamp for research. Also, you probably know this, but if you go to NYPL.org and put in your library card number and password, you can request whatever books you want and they'll email you when they have them, then you go pick them up. It's like magic. Finding time to read everything is a different story but I am totally obsessed with the library. If my book ever sees the light of day, they're getting a huge thank you.

Lots of fun though am madly catching up. There was also some unearthing, but there's some of that every day in casa RKB. Back to the catching up. Next week I am gonna try to figure out my fall travel plans, trying to go to SF/LA or SF/Portland in October but I'll have to see how it works out, may just do a long weekend in LA to see friends/family and then later plan some readings.

Stephanie Klein interview about Straight Up & Dirty

In my attempt to write about or interview everyone in this New York magazine article, I've now interviewed Stephanie Klein about her memoir Straight Up & Dirty. (Actually, I just wanted to interview her.) I saw the final version of the book at Borders over the weekend, in the self-help section, and I have to say, Regan Books put together a really beautiful looking booking. The photos on the cover are part of the glossy hardcover, with a white jacket with holes in front wrapped over it.

What did I think of it? I liked it more than I thought I would. I didn't love every part, and some I couldn't relate to at all, but some of it I totally could, and that's the reason I wanted to interview her and why I kept turning the pages so quickly. Lately I'm so much more inclined to focus on the things that do intrigue and interest me, the things I do share with even people I disagree with. I'm trying to use my creative energies to focus on my book(s), my life, and bettering myself, rather than tearing other people down. I'm not saying anyone else has to, I just have spent so much of my life, especially the last few years, being angry at people or hating them because they did x or y to me or whatever, and I realize that I just have to let that go. Especially because I'm thinking so much about the future and want to be a good mother someday, hopefully someday soon, it's that much more important. But it's also important because I would find myself so mired in that vicious cycle ("what if I'd done this? why can't they like me instead of her?), instead of working to make myself into someone I can like. Not an easy task by any means, but the only thing I really can control. So that's what I'm up to these days, and it involves a lot of solitude and I have to say, I love it. There's room for the occasional debauchery and I can even enjoy it, but especially these next few months I'm just keeping my eyes on the prize, and while I may not relate to everything Stephanie Klein writes about, I do admire her for getting her words out there. I think there are so many people who say they want to write and never do, and that's okay, I just sometimes feel myself slipping into that mindset, and I want to live up to my own expectations, not anyone else's. On that note, I finally, in dreadfully late, overdue, typical fashion, finished an esasy I am okay with for the fabulous Diane Mapes. Still proofing, writing intros, reading submissions, and doing research along with the usual round of freelancing goodness. And babysitting. And just trying to take everything one day at a time. When I finally got the words down, it really helped me clarify for myself a lot of things, and to realize that it's okay to want to be alone, that I don't need to try to fill any voids with people, especially in the really self-destructive way I tend to do. I think this way I can better appreciate the time I do spend with my friends and take things at my own pace and try to trust myself a little more and just stay focused on what's important to me and forget about what's not.

Sugasm #40!

My Sugasm debut, woo-hoo! And so many fabulous sex blogs to check out at some point. I get so many ideas from Sugasm and learn so much from all these blogs, it's amazing. I'm not really a sex blogger but sometimes I throw some stuff up here that might be relevant. For once, I actually have a juicy story, but gotta see how much I can share. Apparently, there was a hickey involved.

This week’s best of the sex blogs by the bloggers who blog them. Want in Sugasm #41? Submit a link to your best post of the week using this form. Participants, repost the linklist within a week and you’re all set.

Mr. Sugasm himself

The New Wave of Porn Star Hookers (http://www.sugarbank.com)

BDSM and Fetish

Sweet Torture (http://xantasia.blogspot.com)

Sweet and Dirty (http://tangysweet.blogspot.com)

A Spanking Interlude (http://www.spankingwriters.com)

Spanked Again! (http://everythingoze.blogspot.com)

Punishment vs. Discipline (http://www.alternativealbany.com/bdsm/)

A Lesson in the Fine Art of Whipping (http://designingintimacy.blogspot.com)

I feel slightly better and get the brush and the paddle… Hmmmm (http://spankingkatiespades.blogspot.com)

A Gift (http://thebinside.blogspot.com)

Frugal Kink: The $25 Toy Bag (http://www.dangerousfemme.com)

D is for Daddy (http://redvelvetropeburn.com)

Carol’s room (http://assistantmistress.blogspot.com)

Erotic Writing and Experiences

What a girl has to do… (http://dawnndirty.blogspot.com)

Virginal Cherry (http://femmefataleteen.blogspot.com)

Touched, for the very first time (http://faltenin.blogspot.com)

Surprise (I) (http://junohenry.wordpress.com)

Sunday Confession (http://wetbeyondbelief.blogspot.com)

Sexual Exploration (http://sexyukgirl.blogspot.com)

The Return of the Lawyer (http://www.suchnonsense.com)

Outside (http://bdsmlover.blogspot.com)

More Sugasm

Join the Sugasm

(Sugasm participants should re-post all the links above. The following links may be excluded as long as you include all the above links.)

Not Too Tired After All (http://masterenigma.blogspot.com)

The Morning After (http://ellabeecoquette.blogspot.com)

Married By Slut Puppy (http://fourstate.blogspot.com)

Hunger no more (http://xxgraciexx.blogspot.com)

Elegant Backstroke in a Shot Glass (http://theholidaylife.blogspot.com)

Come again? (http://orgasmcurious.blogspot.com)

The Celebratory Wank (http://wanklog.blogspot.com)

Annual Check Up (http://gentlygently.blogspot.com)

7/23 by Roxy: Make it a Double! (http://rexandroxy.blogspot.com)

NSFW Pics

Prime Cups (http://www.internetisforporn.com)

Multiple Choice (http://tgp.com)

Memory Lane (http://www.seska4lovers.com)

Sex News

New Blogging Designs Added! (http://tarasnaughtyshop.com)

Avery Score Takes Us Down Rainbow Road (http://sugarjoy.com)

Sex Work

Playing the Repentant Ex-Wife (http://radicalvixen.com/blog)

Any volunteers? (http://kyliecallme.com/diary)

Thoughts on Sex and Relationships

Reader Question - Unfaithfulness (http://shayssexcolumn.blogspot.com)

Panties or Knickers? (http://gentlebutfirm.blogspot.com)

In Search of the City’s Hottest Stripping and Swinging (http://www.taratainton.com)

Exploring Alternative Relationships (http://www.seskuality.com)

The Dangers of Cybersex (http://myhotbox.blogspot.com)

Coffee and a spanking with Master R tonight (http://darkside-journey.blogspot.com)

Beginner’s Fun with Role Play (http://cuntinglinguist.blogspot.com)

“Are You a Ho or Do You Just Want Others to be?” (http://lustylady.blogspot.com)

Thanks to Sex with Rex and Roxy for the Samantha Wolov photo.

Hear my story "Spike" on Violet Blue's Open Source Sex

Her fabulousness, the lovely and luscious Violet Blue (whose new book The Smart Girl's Guide to Porn is an excellent read for anyone looking for porn recommendations or who just wants a primer into the world of, well, smart girls who watch porn) reads my female domination story "Spike," from her Best Women's Erotica 2006, on her podcast Open Source Sex. Here's Violet's description of the story:

A quickie: explicit female domination that centers around a Goth punk girl, her macho boyfriend, and a sexymean pair of pointy black high heels.

Check it out!

Best. Steinbuch v. Cutler. Sentence. Ever.

I will elaborate about this article and case and privacy more later, but for now, I present the best sentence ever written about Steinbuch v. Cutler from Dahlia Lithwick in her Slate piece, "Private I's?"

In the short term, Steinbuch's suit has only added buttercream frosting to the cake of humiliation Cutler baked him.

This is actually a topic I deal with all the time, not in relation to blogging so much as my writing my column. In fact, I am going to email some people I met last night and basically ask their permission to write about them, but I believe wholeheartedly that free speech means we have the write to tell our life stories, to talk about what has happened to us. Greta Christina commented on this on Susie Bright's blog recently, about balancing her interests with her lovers. And I think these are certainly important things to consider, but by us, not necessarily by the law. I, and Jessica Cutler, and any blogger or writer, should have the right to write about their life, including their sexuality.

What Lithwick and this case is basically asking is, "Is sex always on the record?" Well, I guess that would depend whether you think life is always on the record. The fact is, blogging has changed those stakes. "The media" is not just an elite group, but anyone, anywhere, on blogger, typepad, Livejournal, Myspace - look at any of those and see countless, often anonymous, posts and blogs about sex. If Cutler is found guilty, then every single sex blogger or anyone who's ever written about their dating or sex life needs to seriously be worried. I just don't understand how that's different from, say, Stephanie Klein's book, or Catherine Millet's, or Tucker Max's. In fact, Max won his lawsuit against Katy Johnson, (note the ACLU amicus curiae brief mentioned in the Wikipedia entry) about his right to relate his side of their encounter. I don't think there's any new facts in the Slate article, and the links are all things I've seen before, but that buttercream sentence is just way too priceless.

More erotica brilliance from Stan Kent

Ultimate Undies: Erotic Stories About Underwear and Lingerie

Stan Kent is offiically my new favorite erotica writer. He is so smart and witty and sexy in his stories. I just reread, for probably the fifth or sixth time, "Solemate" from Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z 2 last night (out in September) and it's still fucking brilliant. I'm nominating him for every Best Of book out there. Anyway, he also was kind enough to let me publish his "9 to 5" in Ultimate Undies - here's an excerpt:

A sip. A swallow. A sigh. Her words flow steely into the speakerphone, but I sense her satisfaction. Her legs inch apart. I breath. She approves of the coffee. I smile, knowing I have given her the first of today's many satisfactions. I kneel on my strategically positioned cushion. My head bows. She inches forward to the edge of the chair. Her hand cradles my head, toying with the short hairs on my neck as she pulls my face deep into the warmth of her thighs.
Above the muffle of her limbs, I hear her antique clock chime nine.
My work day has begun.
Through demanding sentences punctuated by sips of my lovingly made coffee she dictates terms and conditions to her telephonic audience as she pulls my head under her Versace skirt and washes my face against the taut Wolford nylon cloaking her mound. She makes unflinching financial demands of her buyers as static charges prick my skin. I inhale the damp of her pussy. An amorous cocktail of sex juice and perfume waft into my brain, firing all the right synapses. I am delirious. There is nothing like the penetrating odor of feminine lust through pantyhose early in the morning. It speaks of licentious nights and crack-of-dawn sex raining down a sweet deluge of sticky juices. She is all pantyhose, pussy, perfume and power.
She pushes my head from her lap and presses my face to her knees with a brusqueness I find addictive. She does not deny my craving. Her firm hand grips my neck, guiding my lips from one knee to another in dizzying circular motions of my head. I plant kisses, lingering long enough to soak her skin through the tightly woven fibers of her Wolford pantyhose. The dampened Lycra sticks to my face as she turns my head to a fresh, dry patch of stocking. She pulls me higher, her hand and thighs funneling my tongue back to her sex. Like a cat cleaning its fur, I drag my tongue across the shining nylons, relishing the luxurious texture.

on the verge

From the brilliant Daily Om:

Losing It
You Are Not Crazy
Most of us feel a little crazy from time to time. Periods of high stress can make us feel like we're losing it, as can being surrounded by people whose values are very different from our own. Losing a significant relationship and moving into a new life situation are other events that can cause us to feel off kilter. Circumstances like these recur in our lives, and they naturally affect our mental stability. The symptoms of our state of mind can range from having no recollection of putting our car keys where we eventually find them, to wondering if we're seeing things clearly when everyone around us seems to be in denial of what's going on right in front of their eyes. For most of us, the key to survival at times like these is to step back, take a deep breath, and regain our composure. Then we can decide what course of action to take.

While they go on to recommend talking to a therapist or trusted friend, my solution, especially now, is to hibernate and walk and write and think and be totally alone with no plans. Or cry, that's always good. Deep breaths too. Other than that, must find way to invent more hours in the day or get by on way less sleep, or just get more shit done. That's my plan, anyway, for the next few months to power on through and make 2006 (and 2006) happy and productive.

Yay!

Trying to stave off a nervous breakdown with happy news - my story "Animals" will be published in Best Women's Erotica 2007, edited by the fabulous and mulit-talented Violet Blue. It comes out in November from Cleis Press.

Best Women's Erotica 2007

Lusty Lady column, "Panty Play for Men and Women"

Lusty Lady, "Panty Play for Men and Women"
Keep your undies on for a hotter time in bed (Be sure to click through for the sexy photo of Laura Leu's Underdares undies, complete with a cute saying)

Here's a different Underdares photo and please do check out what Laura had to say about underwear being underappreciated:

Two porn stars' gubernatorial campagins

"Pursuing Their Naked Ambition," The Hartford Courant

The gubernatorial campaigns of Melody "Mimi" Damayo and Mary Carey could be seen as dirty politics, but their experience and exposure in adult films gives them some advantage, political pundits say.

"The whole notion that campaigns are supposed to rip off the veneer of a candidate - most porn stars leave very little hidden even before they get into the political arena," said Walter Shapiro, Washington bureau chief for Salon magazine.

"The porn star could say that although certainly interested in [fornicating], at least he or she isn't interested in [despoiling] the country, like most of the politicians who already are in," William Bike, author of the book "Winning Political Campaigns," wrote in an e-mail. "Or, the porn star could say that electing him or her would protect the little guy - after all, who knows more about protection?"

Damayo, a former adult-film actress with the stage name Mimi Miyagi, is running for governor of Nevada. Carey, who is still active in the porn business, finished 10th among 135 candidates in California's 2003 gubernatorial election.

Dan Savage's $2,100 check returned by Casey campaign

It seems that sex columnist and The Stranger editor Dan Savage is putting his money where his keyboard is to defeat Senator Rick Santorum, but his check was returned, even after he was thanked by the Casey campaign. Interesting. Good thing I'm broke for the next few years paying off student loans, because I have a feeling that I might be one of those people with an "unsavory background."

Philadelphia Inquirer, "No thanks, Casey donor told"

Democrat Bob Casey Jr. needs all the contributors he can get to unseat U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum - except Dan Savage, apparently.

The Seattle-based syndicated sex columnist who minted a raunchy definition of "santorum" and assembled a Web site to share it with all the world tried channeling his distaste for Pennsylvania's junior senator with a $2,100 contribution to Casey's campaign.

But six weeks after receiving a thank-you call from a Casey staffer and an invite to his Seattle fund-raiser, Savage learned this week that his money wasn't necessarily welcomed.

Not directly, at least...

Campaigns routinely vet their donors, looking to weed out people with unsavory backgrounds or anything else that could cause the candidate embarrassment down the road. Add sex columnist to the list of apparently questionable characters.

Then again, Savage isn't just any sex columnist. His anti-Santorum Web site is the No. 1 hit on a Google search of the senator's name, spawning a pop-culture reference used by the likes of liberal activist and actress Janeane Garofalo. (bolding mine)

See also: Spreadingsantorum.com

Thanks to Jolene Siana

Huge thanks to the fabulous Jolene Siana for putting on last night's reading at Think Coffee. Everyone read really interesting pieces and I can't wait to read Jolene's book Go Ask Ogre: Letters from a Deathrock Cutter. Think Coffee was really great too, with huge couches. And as long as they have non-coffee beverages too, I look forward to hanging out there.

Fuck-me feminism, various viewpoints

I found this very interesting post from Saucebox about "fuck me feminism" from February 2006. I'm still swamped with deadlines and frantically trying to meet them all so am just going to link and will fully comment if I ever have time, but I'll definitely be addressing this issue in my book Sexual Freedom for All, though I think sexual freedom goes far, far beyond feminism. I don't think it's as either/or as Saucebox and others have painted it; be for sexual choice OR be against sexist sexual practices, but I do think there's much food for thought here, especially this idea that women are supposed to simultaneously be ladylike and chaste or else we're sluts, while also being slutty and available to men. I guess, to summarize very very briefly my reaction to some of the commentary online recently, I don't think the proper response is to attack what other women want to do in bed, whoever you are doing the attacking. I don't think that furthers women (or men) exploring their sexuality in an open, nonjudgmental way.

Saucebox on "fuck me feminism:"

As women, we are taught to feel guilty for “giving it up,” to feel shame for having sex for the sake of sex instead of for some other more noble “female” reason like love or reproduction. We are taught that our sexual gratification and fulfillment (i.e. orgasm) are so much less important than those of men that the two activities which are most likely to give us orgasms (manual stimulation and oral sex) are generally not even regarded as “actual” sex at all. We are taught that women who openly want sex, pursue sex, have sex and enjoy sex without regard for the proper cultural standards of how many men it is acceptable to have sex with or how long is acceptable to wait before having sex with one of them or what kind of relationship should be established prior to having sex with them are somehow less deserving of respect and less human than the rest...

I can’t say I blame fuck me feminists for being pissed off about all of this. I myself am extraordinarily pissed off and tired of it. A big part of FMF is about saying “whoa, hold on a second. This ain’t cool. We want sex just as much as men and moreover, we demand the right to enjoy our sexuality in any way we deem fit without being made to feel fucking guilty and shameful about it. We’re claiming that right whether you like it or not, so you can fuck me or you can fuck off.” And I fully support that. (Please go click and read the whole thing, there was so much good stuff but you should read it where it was originally posted. That also might be an intellectual property lesson to all the people who didn't even link or mention The Village Voice and reprinted my entire column on their blogs or MySpace pages. While of course I'm glad to have people read my work, a little credit and at the very, very least, a link to the original source, would be nice. Oh, and legal. Or do we just say "fuck fair use" cause it's the Internet? A question that I have no idea of the answer to, actually.)

Ada Calhoun's Austin Chronicle review of Gynomite: Fearless, Feminist Porn:

Fuck-me feminism burst onto the scene in the early Nineties, a camera-friendly movement of well-coiffed feminists lounging in the pages of Esquire. The riot grrrls' fuck-you feminism, on the other hand, was less luxuriant and substantially more fun. Still, both sex-positive schools, aided by sexperts like Susie Bright and Annie Sprinkle, paved the way for a new millennium in which the pronouns have canceled each other out, leaving simply a call to fuck. Meet Gynomite. This feminist spoken-word movement has been around in various forms for the past few years, but seems to have hit its stride since a 1999 Houston revival led by Liz Belile. In Texas, where firearms are more available (and more legal) than vibrators, this story compilation marks an important stage in Gynomite's mission to liberate women "one orgasm at a time."

September 20th = "Revenge of the Sex Columnists"

(I may be adding one or two people to the lineup, but these are all confirmed. I'm trying to get Grant Stoddard to read too so if anyone knows him, please tell him to return my email! Otherwise maybe I'll snag him for my memoirists night and he can talk about his upcoming memoir Working Stiff.)

IN THE FLESH EROTIC READING SERIES
REVENGE OF THE SEX COLUMNISTS!
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 at 8 PM
AT HAPPY ENDING LOUNGE, 302 BROOME STREET, NYC
(B/D to Grand, J/M/Z to Bowery, F to Delancey, http://www.happyendinglounge.com)
Admission: Free
Happy Ending Lounge: 212-334-9676
http://inthefleshreadingseries.blogspot.com

Hear your favorite sex columnists tell all—from horror stories to hate mail to come-ons and sexcapades! With Julia Allison (“The Dating Life,” AM NY), Erin Bradley (“Miss Information,” Nerve.com), Ellen Friedrichs (Teenwire.com, Rutgers University), Laura Leu (“Sex Diary” in Penthouse), and Jamye Waxman (Playgirl), and your host, Rachel Kramer Bussel (“Lusty Lady” in The Village Voice). Books and magazines, as well as mini cupcakes, will be given away.

Rachel Kramer Bussel is a New York City-based author and editor. She is Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations and a Contributing Editor and columnist for Penthouse, writes the Lusty Lady column for The Village Voice, and conducts interviews for Gothamist.com and Mediabistro.com. Her erotic stories have appeared in over 60 anthologies, including Best American Erotica 2004 and 2006, and she’s edited her own collections, including Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z 1 and 2, Up All Night, First-Timers, Glamour Girls, and the forthcoming Ultimate Undies, Sexiest Soles, Secret Slaves, and Caught Looking: Erotic Tales of Voyeurs and Exhibitionists. Rachel has also written for AVN, Bust, Metro, New York Post, Punk Planet, Time Out New York and Velvetpark. www.rachelkramerbussel.com

Julia Allison is a writer and columnist, best known for her weekly column, “The Dating Life,” in AM New York, a daily Manhattan newspaper that reaches more than 320,000 readers. She got her start as a now clichéd college sex columnist at Georgetown University, but since then she has written for Cosmopolitan, New York, COED, Teen Vogue, Seventeen, Capitol File and Men’s Health, among others. In addition to a regrettable stint on Elimidate, America’s #1 cheesiest dating show, Julia has been featured in The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Fox, CNBC, CBS and NPR. She appears regularly on Fox News as an entertainment pundit. www.juliaallison.com

Erin Bradley is writer living in New York City. Erin is the author of Miss Information, a weekly sex
and dating advice column, and Girlgonemad, an online dating
blog, both appearing on Nerve.com. Originally from the Midwest, Erin is a graduate of Michigan State University where she earned a degree in Human Resources (don’t worry, she doesn’t know what that means either). When she’s not writing freelance for various entertainment and tech publications, Erin can be found working on her screenplay and watching television documentaries with Creature, her morbidly obese cat.

Ellen Friedrichs is a Brooklyn based sexuality educator. She holds an MA in health and human sexuality education and started her career in sexuality at Manhattan's Museum of Sex. From there she became the behind the scenes expert for Planned Parenthood's teenwire.com website answering hundreds of thousands of sex questions from information starved teens. Currently, she teaches sex education to teens in the South Bronx and human sexuality to biology students at Rutgers University. She also runs sexuality workshops and writes about the subject when she has a chance. These days she also hangs out with her baby. More information about Ellen can be found at her website: www.sexEdvice.com.

Laura Leu writes a monthly column for Penthouse called "Sex Diary." She has also written for Maxim, Stuff, Shock, Sync, Riot,Match.com and contributed to the book Naked Ambition: Women Pornographers and How They Are Changing The Sex Industry. As a sex and relationships expert, she has made several TV appearances and does a weekly sex segment on Maxim Sirius Radio. She recently launched a line of underwear, which can be found at www.UnderDares.com.

Jamye Waxman has been called the nexxxt generation of sex educator (Wired.com). With a Masters in sexuality education from Widener University in Pennsylvania. She currently writes three sex columns: "Sex Ed" for Playgirl Magazine and two dating and relationship columns for Steppin' Out Magazine and The Philly Edge. She is also the co-writer and producer of the latest Candida Royalle feature, "Under the Covers," (Femme Productions) and is currently working on her first book, entitled Women loving Women (Quiver Press, Spring 2007). Jamye also teaches classes on all things sex both privately and for the popular website/social calendar Moxieinthecity.net. Waxman was a producer of the popular Metro TV show Naked New York. She is president of the national organization, Feminists for Free Expression. www.jamyewaxman.com

Cupcakes Against Domestic Violence interview

I interviewed the women behind Olympia-based Cupcakes Against Domestic Violence over at Cupcakes Take the Cake

Kinda overshadows the Go Fug Yourself deal

From Publishers Marketplace:

Unanimous's I HATE ANN COULTER, a manifesto against all things Ann Coulter, to Jen Bergstrom and Patrick Price at Simon Spotlight Entertainment, with Jeremie Ruby-Strauss to edit, in a nice deal, by Dan Strone at Trident Media Group.

Clearly, I need to study up on my platforming. I HATE SHMULEY BOTEACH, maybe?

"Are you a ho or do you just want others to be?"

(FYI, this is part of this freewriting I'm attemping to do every day. So far, in July, I think I've done 4. Won't be posting them all but on occasion I will be. Hopefully it'll get me at least writing something every day. I also took a cue from probably my favorite piece of writing by Tristan Taormino, this old Boston Phoenix "Rear Guard" column entitled "Shocking the unshockable," about going on Howard Stern.)

Johnny emailed me on MySpace not once but twice yesterday to ask me “Are you a ho or do you just want others to be them? While I know I should probably ignore anything that comes into my MySpace inbox, I feel compelled to answer. My first thought was an indignant “no,” and of course, that’s the easy answer. Does he mean “ho” as in “slut” or “ho” as in “whore?” The first is debatable, the second, well, no. But not only are some of my best friends whores, who have taught me so much and who struggle with issues I’ll never know, but we’re meant to protest, to deny, to distance ourselves so far from “those women.”

But if he means “ho” as in “slut,” well then, there’s another unanswerable question. There’s no winning that game, despite what The New York Times might say, because people are going to make up their minds and answer that for themselves no matter what. There really is no magic formula to become a slut, and it’s not just about numbers. Look at the scorn that was heaped upon Monica Lewinsky—and she could at least say she did it for love! But still, under the desk? Flashing her thong? One can be a virgin and still get labeled a slut, yet many women still try to win at that game, to protest against the slur rather than the question and the division.

We all have to draw those lines for ourselves and figure out what makes us feel good about ourselves, what our goals are, and when and how we want to have sex. It’s been a huge learning curve for me, especially in the last two years; trial and error, emphasis on the error.

As for the second part of the question, I don’t want anyone to “be” anything or do anything sexually—other than what they want to do. That’s what I’m going to look at in Sexual Freedom for All, in terms of how people’s sexual options are constrained, whether legally, through laws banning owning a given number of dildos or vibrators and the inherent anti-sex nature of our obscenity law, which puts “prurient interest” on such a low rung it may as well be “murderous interest,” to social shaming and other ways in which we don’t promote a truly sexually free society. I don’t think defending the right to make our own choices regarding when and how we have sex means that I’m necessarily saying that people should have a certain amount of sex or with a given number of partners. But, for instance, the practice of sleeping with exes solely to keep one’s “number” down, I do find that sad, because it’s playing right into the hands of a question like this.

It’s letting others dictate how you perceive yourself. The problem is, though, they very likely have already decided. So yes, I’m a slut in that I’ve had sex with probably more people than this person would find “acceptable.” You can find naked photos of me online. I’ve written about sex acts I enjoy. But do I feel like a slut? Most of the time, no, and when I do, I try to watch whether it’s in a good or bad way. I can get off on “acting slutty” when the circumstances are right, but most of the time, I’m not dating or having sex and right now don’t plan to for a long while, so no, I don’t feel like a slut at this very moment in time. And what I’ve had to grapple with on a personal level is the consequences of “acting slutty,” and those have given me a lot of pause. Poor choices have meant that I’ve slept with some people who make my skin crawl, who make me want to vomit, who make me want to die. Who make me wish I could be anyone else than the girl who slept with those people. But I’m not and I can’t change the past, only the present.

I might turn the question around to him though. “Do you feel like a ho or do you just want others to be them?” Because I think men rarely ask themselves any of the questions that I’m pretty sure most women grapple with at one time. It’s not just guilt, but confusion, because on the one hand, we are often rewarded for “looking” or “acting slutty,” but on the other, we are castigated. I have a chapter about Monica Lewinsky and Jessica Cutler (and other women too) which will explore this in more depth. There’s that cultural fascination and yet revulsion, within the same breath practically. And from their former lovers, even quite explicitly; one need only look at the responses of Bill Clinton and Robert Steinbuch to see the allure of a girl who wants them and then their quickness to distance themselves.

So my real answer is not that it’s none of your business, but I don’t know, but I can’t live my life in such a way as to try to escape the slings and barbs of someone who’s already predisposed to judging me, because I’ll always lose that game. I could very likely never have sex again and go to a sperm bank and become a mom, and truly, if I had the money, I might do that right now (well, maybe not never have sex again). But there’s no way to “atone” for one’s sluttiness; it’s a mark that stays with you forever, and I think the answer has to be deciding for ourselves whether we will let the word or the judgments matter, whether we will try to live our lives for other people, or for ourselves. That doesn’t mean there aren’t countless factors to consider when deciding whether to have sex with someone; sometimes I’ve ignored every one of them and just jumped in headfirst, and now I probably err on the opposite side. But those are such personal and complex decisions, ones that nobody can dictate for us.

Reading

Brief snippets as I'm beyond behind:

A funny cartoon by Carolita Johnson

Sugasm #39 (Fabulous sex blog roundup, submit to #40 here)

The new issue of $pread with Buck Angel on the cover and a Lily Burana interview inside

Dirtyspoke

Audacia Ray's porno preparations ("The shopping list includes cupcakes, viagra, pool supplies and enemas.")

This is very old, but it amused me: "The Porn Fork" at Fleshbot

Pub Rants, which I've now become totally obsessed with

This one's more to look at - the cover for Melissa P.'s second novel, The Scent of Your Breath. Haven't read it yet, and thought 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed was pretty good but not necessarily worthy of the phenomenal attention it got, but anyway, this cover wowed me:

The Scent of Your Breath

An excerpt from my intro to Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z 2

I'm proofing the manuscript for Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z 2 (as with everything else, it's overdue, I'll be done very soon, I promise, Alison, sorry!), getting to know my red pen very well as I keep having to edit manuscripts and story submissions, and was rereading my introduction and had totally forgotten what I'd written since it's been over a year. So here's a little teaser, more details when the book comes out in September:


Spanking means countless things in this anthology—love, anger, sublimation, awakening, desire, fulfillment, foreplay, fun, prodding, patience, surrender, exhibitionism, demand, pride, want, lust, punishment, reward, humiliation, power, surprising, daring, learning, lessons, teasing, nad goodbye. I’m thrilled by the heady mix of emotions I can feel when I take or deliver a firm spanking, and even more thrilled that these powerful, erotic stirrings, the kind that can bring tears to your eyes, a smile to your lips and a prolonged stirring t your nether parts, are so beautifully, touchingly and wonderfully represented here. These teasing troublemakers, vamps and vixens, horny housewives and husbands, mean bosses, powerful masters and mistresses, sassy spankers and adoring ass worshipers get what’s coming to them and much, much more. The wilier and sneaker they are in concocting schemes to get spanked, the worse (or, really, the better) it is when they actually get their much-needed and well-deserved smacks.

Please xxxxx me

Best sentence I read last week:

"I go wild when a girl xxxxx the xxxxx of my xxxxx while running her nails xxxxx." (Wonkette via me via AVN)

This week

Am actually going out a bit this week:

Tuesday I'm taking a baby to Boggle

Wednesday I'm reading right near where I used to live when I tried to be a law student (I lived at 240 Mercer, the dorms, best thankfully forgotten time of my life):

The reading will be at Think Coffee, 248 Mercer Street between 3rd and 4th
http://www.thinkcoffeenyc.com/
on Wednesday July 26th. Reading begins at 8:00. There
is a $3.00 cover but those who attend the reading will
receive 20% off of coffee/cafe drinks.

Cheryl B.

Cheryl B. is an award-winning poet and writer. Her
work appears in dozens of print and online
publications including; BLOOM, The Guardian, and
Pills, Thrills, Chills and Heartache. She has received
a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts
and has been a resident at the Virginia Center for the
Creative Arts. She is the creator and producer of PVC:
The Poetry vs. Comedy Variety Show. She lives in
Brooklyn and online at http://www.cherylb.com.


Rachel Kramer Bussel

Rachel Kramer Bussel writes the Lusty Lady column for
The Village Voice, is Senior Editor at Penthouse
Variations, and hosts In The
Flesh Erotic Reading Series. Her many anthologies
including Naughty
Spanking Stories from A to Z, Glamour Girls,
First-Timers, Up All Night, Ultimate Undies, Sexiest
Soles, Secret Slaves: Erotic Stories of Bondage, and
Caught Looking. Her writing has been published in over
60 anthologies, including Best American Erotica 2004
and 2006, as well as in AVN, Bust, Cleansheets.com,
Diva, Mediabistro,Metro, New York
Post, On Our Backs, Oxygen.com, Penthouse, Playgirl,
Punk Planet, San Francisco Chroncile, Time Out New
York, Zink, and others.
www.rachelkramerbussel.com
http://www.myspace.com/rachelkramerbussel

Kate Hall

A former poetry editor of Stirring: A
LiteraryCollection, Kate Hall's poetry and stories
have appeared in such journals as the Antioch Review,
In Posse, Mudlark, Big Bridge, Disquieting Muses,
Poetry Magazine, The 2River View, Perihelion,
Mississippi
Review, Zuzus Petals Quarterly, Mr. Bellers
Neighborhood and Rattle. She was awarded the Robert
Frost Poetry Prize by Kenyon College where she
graduated Magna Cum Laude and went on to earn a
J.D.from the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill

Lori Jakiela

As a native Pittsburgher, Lori Jakiela (rhymes with
tequila) has a weakness for gigantic deep-fried fish
sandwiches, thinks slippy is a real word, and
sometimes drinks Iron City Beer for sentimental
reasons.

Her hometown, Trafford, PA, is widely thought of as
the birthplace of the chocolate-covered pickle.

Jakiela, who once had a great fear of flying, worked
as a flight attendant at a major airline for six
years. She is currently on leave from the airlines.
She now spends her days on the ground, teaching at The
University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, where she is
also director of the writing program.

Miss New York Has Everything (Warner Books) was
published in January 2006. The first chapter, "I Am
Not a Zombie But I Played One on TV," was nominated
for a Pushcart Prize. Jakiela's essays and poems have
appeared in DoubleTake, River Styx, Creative
Nonfiction, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, The Chicago
Review, 5 AM, Nerve Cowboy, Tears in the Fence, Chiron
Review, Slipstream, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, The
Regulars -- a collection of poems and essays – was
published by Liquid Paper Press and was awarded first
prize in Nerve Cowboys 2001 chapbook contest.
www.lorijakiela.com
http://www.myspace.com/lorijakiela

Jolene Siana

Jolene Siana is the author of Go Ask Ogre: Letters
from a Deathrock Cutter (2005, Process Media). She is
an advocate for raising awareness of self-injury and
healing through art and writing. Jolene lives in
Brooklyn and spends her time writing, painting and
photographing people.
http://www.myspace.com/jolenesiana


Sherry Wood

Sherry Wood is a writer from North Carolina. She moved
to New York three years ago to find an agent. Her
first publication was a monthly column, Undecided
Virgin Times, for Qbliss. Qbliss is a nonprofit online
magazine for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and
transgender community.
Sherry openly discussed her experiences living on the
streets during 1996 in
Chicago, and her emotional relationship with a street
hustler. Those same experiences are now shared more
extensively in her recently published novel, Everyone
Is Chuckers. Following her column, she wrote a short
story, My Fake Messed Up John Cusack
Interview,published in the literary magazine for
women, Betty Magazine. She also interviewed once
believed street hustler, JT LeRoy, for a Bronx
periodical, Dialect.
Sherry is currently working on a new novel, Mary Jill
Matters, which takes place in 1994, about a troubled
teenage girl learning to deal with the intense
obsession her best friends stepfather develops for
her.


Saturday I'm taking someone (me!) who can't draw to Dr. Sketchy's

Porn sale at Chicago's Early to Bed

Chicago's fabulous, feminist sex toy store Early to Bed, where I was lucky enough to read with GirlyNYC in 2004 when we were there for BEA, is having a porn sale - a bunch of VHS videos are only $5. Mail order or in person. They're also (but of course) on MySpace.

The fake book bibliography

Even though I've been telling more and more people, I still feel like a pretentious ass saying "I'm writing a book," because I'm not. Not yet. But maybe this year I will be. Well, a book proposal. But I can't work on it yet because I have other busywork going on, but I did start a preliminary bibliography so I could remember what I want to say in it if I ever do actually get to the writing. It's also going to hopefully be a way of purging the books I have in my apartment - part of the bibliography? It stays. Not at all helpful? It goes. Surely much more will be added, but right now it looks a little something like this:

Lauren Berland and Lisa Duggan, Editors, Our Monica, Ourselves: The Clinton Affair and the National Interest
Kevin Bleyer and Lori Gottlieb, I Love You, Nice to Meet You
Violet Blue, The Smart Girl’s Guide to Porn
Shmuley Boteach, Hating Women
Lily Burana, Strip City
Maria Elena Buszek, Pin-Up Grrrls
Patrick Califia-Rice, Sensuous Magic
Ayn Carrillo-Gailey, Pornology
Paul Coughlin, No More Christian Nice Guy
Maureen Dowd, Are Men Necessary?
Dawn Eden, The Thrill of the Chaste
Danielle Egan, Katherine Frank, Lisa Johnson, Editors, Flesh for Fantasy
Jonathan Franzen, How To Be Alone
Nancy Friday, Her Secret Garden
Fiona Giles, Editor, Chick for a Day, Dick for a Day
Siri Hustvedt, A Plea for Eros
Jason Illian, Undressed: The Naked Truth About Love, Sex, and Dating
Merri Lisa Johnson, Editor, Jane Sexes It Up: True Confessions of Feminist Desire
Erica Jong, Seducing the Demon
Joan Kelly, The Pleasure’s All Mine
JD King, Beyond the Down Low
Anne Kingston, The Meaning of Wife
Laura Kipnis, Against Love, The Female Thing
Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs
Cara Lockwood, Pink Slip Party
Tucker Max, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell
Mandy Merck, In Your Face: 9 Sexual Studies (especially "Fuckface")
Cristina Page, How The Pro-Choice Movement Saved America
Gail Parent, Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living In New York
Pamela Paul, Pornified
Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic
Virginia Postrel, The Substance of Style
Scott Poulson-Bryant, Hung: A Meditation on the Measure of Black Men in America
Amy Raphael, Grrrls: Viva Rock Divas
Carol Queen, Real Live Nude Girl, Exhibitionism for the Shy
Carol Queen and Lawrence Schimel, Editors, Pomosexuals
Laurie Seale, The Questions to Ask Before you Jump Into Bed
Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty
Jill Soloway, Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants
Jillian Strauss, Unhooked Generation
Lauren Winner, New Sex

Articles

Liz Phair interview by Gail O’Hara, Time Out New York
Lisa Dierbeck casual sex article, Oprah
Colette Burson interview, Salon.com
Michelle Malkin, “The Skanks of Capital Hill”

Summer strategy

The quick, feel-good edition of how I will be spending the rest of my summer:

Working as much as humanly possible
Mastering the dreaded to-do list
Sending huge checks to Sallie Mae
Writing
Reading
Throwing shit out and filing what's left
Playing board games
Visiting babies
Being a homebody
Wearing dresses and pretty shoes
Trying to get over my fear of success
(Fingers crossed) Writing a book proposal

Random one-off events

Making a cupcake-eating porno cameo
Attending a lingerie Shabbat dinner
Attending a comedy wedding
Booking a West Coast vacation

Goals

No more library or video store late fees
Start/finish book proposal
See my name in Publishers Lunch
Saying no to invitations
Learn to make one tasty and healthy dish

Diana Cage in action

_DSC9658
Originally uploaded by brianvan.

Diana Cage read from her forthcoming novel at In The Flesh and had everyone awed by her tale of road trip sex. My favorite line was:

"I sprayed like the fountains at the Bellagio all over the windshield of the rental car."

Look for her novel hopefully sometime in 2007 or 2008. You can read her story "Sugar" in my book Glamour Girls: Femme/Femme Erotica. She's now a New Yorker, after many years in San Francisco, editing On Our Backs and various other smutty things like that.

Photo by Brian Van

August, September, October and November In The Flesh lineups

I'm so excited about all of these nights - really, you are in for a treat - Lily Burana! Shari Goldhagen! Laura Leu! Julia Allison! Jamye Waxman! Mo Beasley and Urban Erotika! Christen Clifford! Jami Attenberg! Adira Amram! Jessica Delfino! Todd Levin! Baron Vaughn! Sara Jo Allocco! And so many more - truly stellar talent you don't want to miss. Lily Burana will be doing her first reading of a sex scene EVER on August 16th! I would imagine it's hard to rattle this brilliant writer so come to chear her on! Plus one of my dearest friends, Shari Goldhagen, will be reading some of the naughty parts of her fabulous novel Family and Other Accidents. See my interview with Shari here and see YOU on August 16th! Yes, there will be cupcakes. And candy. And free books. And smut.

August 16, 2006, 8pm

In The Flesh Reading Series, Happy Ending Bar

With Lily Burana (Try, Strip City), Shari Goldhagen (Family and Other Accidents), Caridad Piñeiro (Sex and the South Beach Chicas, The Calling Vampire series), Shane Luitjens (Revolutionary Voices, Suspect Thoughts), Marie Lyn Bernard (Cleansheets, Best American Erotica 2007), Riain Grey (Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, Scarlet Letters), and Lisa Montanarelli (Whipped!, Strange But True).
Free refreshments will be served.
302 Broome Street, NYC

Directions: B/D to Grand, F to Delancey, J/M/Z to Bowery

Free.

September 20, 2006, 8 pm

REVENGE OF THE SEX COLUMNISTS!
In The Flesh Reading Series, Happy Ending Bar

With Julia Allison (AM NY dating columnist), Laura Leu (Underdares, Penthouse "Sex Diary" columnist), Jamye Waxman (Playgirl sex advice columnist), Ellen Friedrichs. Rachel will also be celebrating the release of her new anthology Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z 2.
Free refreshments will be served.
302 Broome Street, NYC

Directions: B/D to Grand, F to Delancey, J/M/Z to Bowery

Free.

October 18, 2006, 8 pm

In The Flesh Reading Series, Happy Ending Bar

With Jami Attenberg (Instant Love), Mo Beasley and Urban Erotika, Christen Clifford (17 Guys I Fucked, Baby Love), and P.F. Kozak (Sins and Secrets). Rachel will also be celebrating the release of her new anthology Caught Looking: Erotic Tales of Voyeurs and Exhibitionists.
Free refreshments will be served.
302 Broome Street, NYC

Directions: B/D to Grand, F to Delancey, J/M/Z to Bowery

Free.

November 15, 2006, 8 pm

Comic Sex Night at In The Flesh Reading Series, Happy Ending Bar

Funny sex stories from some of NYC's funniest comedians. With Sara Jo Allocco, Claudia Cogan, Jessica Delfino, Todd Levin, Mindy Raf, Baron Vaughn, and musical guest Adira Amram.
Free refreshments will be served.
302 Broome Street, NYC

Directions: B/D to Grand, F to Delancey, J/M/Z to Bowery

Free.

The MILF Anthology at SMUT on Monday

The MILF Anthology

Monday, July 7th, 8 pm - 10 pm
SMUT Series

An evening devoted to the future and past of sex with the contributors to Sex in the System, a new collection of erotic science fiction from Thunder's Mouth Press, and The MILF Anthology (Blue Moon Books)

Featuring:

Shariann Lewitt, author of Interface Masque, Rebel Sutra, and Memento Mori

Sarah Micklem, author of Firethorn and Wildfire

John Bowker, graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction Writers program

Cecilia Tan, author of Black Feathers, The Velderet, and Telepaths Don't Need Safewords

Stacy Brown, contributor to The MILF Anthology

Door prizes will include copies of the book Sex in the System, The MILF Anthology and the newly released Erotic Writer's Market Guide

Galapagos Art Space
70 N 6th St
Brooklyn, NY 11211
L train to Bedford Avenue

I think this photo really epitomizes my daily look

_DSC9698
Originally uploaded by brianvan.

Photo by Brian Van. Bags by Duane Reade, H&M, and Betsey Johnson (though I think the latter two aren't so visible).

oh my darling Clementine

Clementine has arrived
Originally uploaded by rkb1.

I got home to photos of two-day-old baby Clementine last night and they made everything else just slip out of my head. I can't wait to meet her. Congratulations to her fabulous parents!

In The Flesh in Hong Kong magazine Escape part 2

In The Flesh in Hong Kong magazine Escape page 2
Originally uploaded by rkb1.

See previous post for details - from article in Hong Kong magazine Escape about In The Flesh and my writing.

In The Flesh in Hong Kong magazine Escape

In The Flesh in Hong Kong magazine Escape page 1
Originally uploaded by rkb1.

In The Flesh and my writing were profiled in Hong Kong magazine Escape by Nan Hie In. This is part 1, part 2 to follow - working on making these into visible images, but if you're dying to read it, email me at rachelkb at gmail.com and I'll forward it.

Also - if you want a seat (and/or a cupcake), please get to Happy Ending early tomorrow! Between The New Yorker listing, past turnout, and an ad I've taken out on Publishers Marketplace, I expect it to be packed!

Thanks also to the very funny Eliza Skinner at the appropriately named Hello Hilarious for her post "Dirty Words, Tasty Cakes." That's what it's all about at In The Flesh!

Come for the cupcakes, stay for the smut (or vice versa)

Lily and Molly really like cupcakes
Originally uploaded by rkb1.

Photo of Try and Strip City author Lily Burana (who is reading at In The Flesh on August 16th, her very first time reading a sex scene) and Molly Crabapple, who drew the lovely logo of me with cleavage and cupcakes, by Brian Van - taken at our true confessions night.

"Cupcakes will be served." The New Yorker, July 24, 2006 edition, page 18! Be there - tomorrow! I will also be giving away a big stack of books (not mine), and one copy of your choice of the three Fetish Chest books Ultimate Undies, Sexiest Soles or Secret Slaves: Erotic Stories of Bondage.

Unrelated to In The Flesh, but New Yorker fans might enjoy the blogs Newyorkette and Emdashes, both inspired by the magazine, Daniel Radosh's weekly New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Contest, and the weekly (for the summer) Rejection Show at Mo Pitkin's, featuring a rotating lineup, always with rejected New Yorker cartoons.

IN THE FLESH EROTIC READING SERIES
WEDNESDAY JULY 19 at 8 PM
AT HAPPY ENDING LOUNGE, 302 BROOME STREET
(B/D to Grand, J/M/Z to Bowery, F to Delancey, http://www.happyendinglounge.com)
Admission: Free
Happy Ending Lounge: 212-334-9676
http://inthefleshreadingseries.blogspot.com

Take a break from the heat with sexy words and yummy cupcakes. With Desiree Burch (SMUT Series), Diana Cage (Box Lunch, Bottoms Up, On Our Backs Guide to Lesbian Sex), Zaedryn Meade (Covet, Valence, For the Record), Doreen Orsini (Hunting Diana, Tanner’s Angel), the co-editor of The MILF Anthology, Cecilia Tan (Circlet Press), along with contributors Elspeth Potter (Tough Girls, Best Women’s Erotica) and Stacy Brown, along with host Rachel Kramer Bussel. Free candy and mini cupcakes will be served. Various erotic books, including The MILF Anthology, will be raffled off as door prizes.

In the Flesh is a monthly reading series hosted at the appropriately named Happy Ending Lounge, and features the city's best erotic writers sharing stories to get you hot and bothered, hosted and curated by Village Voice sex columnist and acclaimed erotic writer and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel. From erotic poetry to down and dirty smut, these authors get naked on the page and will make you lust after them and their words. Future themed nights include Revenge of the Sex Columnists (September 2006), Comic Sex (November 2006), and erotic memoirs.

Mediabistro interview with Paul Stevens, Associate Editor, Tor/Forge

Mediabistro From the Editors interview with Paul Stevens, Associate Editor, Tor/Forge - He's Polly Frost's editor on her amazing short story collection Deep Inside: Extreme Erotic Fantasies, out next summer. I'll be sure to post more about it - I blurbed it, it's sci fi/fucked up/crazy smut, and for me to like anything sci fi/fantasy means it really grabbed me, because I'm usually way too logical for that. Plus he's interested in all sorts of off-the-beaten path writing generally.

The hottest erotica story I've read all year

I just turned in my proofs for Caught Looking: Erotic Tales of Voyeurs and Exhibitionists and not only is it the hottest book I've ever worked on, some of the stories are just about the hottest erotica stories I've ever read. Maybe it's the nature of exhibitionism and especially voyeurism; it gives authors a chance to really slowly detail every nuance of what turns them on. My absolute favorite story, which I will be nominating for all kinds of "Best Of"s and reading to anyone who'll give me the chance, is Stan Kent's "My Finest Hour." Taking a cue from a Blondie song, his narrator elaborates on watching his girlfriend get off in the shower. It's an absolutely perfect story and I got all turned on and kinda proud reading it again. Plus, how fucking cool is Stan's bio? He really is a rocket scientist! And an amazing erotic storyteller - another person I want in all my books!

Stan Kent is a chameleon hair colored former nightclub owning rocket scientist author of erotic novels. Stan has penned nine original, unique and very naughty works including the Shoe Leather series. Selections from his books have been featured in the Best of Erotic Writing Blue Moon collections. Stan has hosted an erotic talk show night at Hustler Hollywood for the last five years. The Los Angeles Times described his monthly performances as “combination moderator and lion tamer.” To see samples of his works and his latest hair colors, visit Stan at www.StanKent.com.

Pornopolis, kinky sluts, blowjobs

Fleshbot's been all over The Denver Post series about porn. Again, there's an idea put for that you're either with us (fucking) or against us (not). Can't we all just get along?

Right now in America, it's fabulous to be a SuicideGirl, splendid to dabble in stripping, OK to seek quick, anonymous sex through Craigslist.

"It's just not OK to be nonsexual," says Meika Loe, a sociology professor at Colgate University in New York who wrote the 2004 book "The Rise of Viagra: How the Little Blue Pill Changed Sex in America."

"You're not really a full human being, you don't have full personhood, if you are not a sexual being."

Also, regarding the massive response to my "Fucking and Feminism," column, I also wanted to add that I fail to see what the difference would've been if I'd linked to, say, Pussy Worship. But for those critics who were bothered by the submissive woman tone of the column, try that one: "the temple of pussy worship! a blog about a mistress and her pet." Is that the preferred form of feminism? It's all good feedback because it makes me realize how much the phrase Sexual Freedom for All really means. It does NOT mean, to me, at least, enforcing a hierarchy of sexualities, where one is "better" or "more feminist" or "more enlightened." How is the answer to sexual inequality enforcing more sexual inequality?

Mistress Matisse kickstarted an interesting thread at The Stranger's The Slog about "Kinky Sluts vs. Feminists" which has delved way beyond the confines of my column.


Again, though, it's a false between all empowerment, all the time, and all submissive drudgery, all the time. Here's a comment from Salon about the feminist blowjob debate:

I absolutely love giving a good blow job!

I haven't had the chance to read the actual blogs yet, just your round-up Rebecca, but as a flaming liberal and ardent feminist I'm baffled as to how giving blow jobs has turned me into a subserviant and brainwashed idiot.

The truth is, as a generally orally fixated person I just naturally tend to love giving head as well. Granted, if the guy hasn't showered recently I doubt I'd do it but that has rarely ever been a problem. It doesn't even enter my mind that the guy pees out of the thing since all I'm getting is the cum. Oh yeah, I swallow as well. Less mess, less fuss. I didn't even realize NOT swallowing was an option until I was 27 and listening to some high-maintenance women talking about needing a napkin to spit in. I would think the act of holding it in your mouth, then letting it travel back out onto a towel or something would actually increase the contact with the cum as opposed to just letting it go down the throat as it comes. And no, I don't deep throat so it has nothing to do with that. As for pulling your head away as the guy comes, that also seems pointless because now its getting everywhere I probably don't want it to. Once again, less mess, less fuss and I've rarely tasted bad cum.

There was more, too, but see, I realized that I should've perhaps picked other examples because the reason we should have the right to give blowjobs is not because we have to "love" it, but because it's our choice. We may sometimes love it, sometimes hate it, hate it but do it anyway, which I think I said before - we shouldn't have to be obsessive about something to defend our right to do it. I think it's just easier to come to the defense of a sexual act you yourself partake in. As for me, yes, I like spanking and getting spanked. No, I don't have rape fantasies, but I, along with women like Lisa Carver, Jill Soloway, Siri Hustvedt, etc., recognize the importance of giving women room to own our sexuality - yes, even if it happens to coincide or overlap in some way with what the dominant/male culture wants us to do/say/think. And just to be clear, I'm pretty fucking sure that at least some aspects of my sexuality would be "considered a threat to this society." But why wold you want to base what you do, something that is, to many of us, so vital and life-affirming and personal and moving, on whether or not it may be some abstract "threat?" Those were examples, but I would think that the larger point of my column is that for adults, whether feminists or not, to tell other adults how to conduct their sex lives, especially in the name of "helping" them, is not treating them as people capable of making those decisions for themselves.

The topic of sexual freedom is much broader than blowjobs, casual sex and rape fantasies; those were three examples where I continue to see these acts being denigrated and treated like they are causing the downfall of society. Especially casual sex. I've learned a lot of fascinating things over the last few days, not the least of which is that Wendy Shalit interviewed Lux Nightmare, formerly of ThatStrangeGirl.com, and Melinda Gallagher and Emily Scarlet Kramer of CAKE for her book Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It's Not Bad to Be Good. I also learned that there's a class at Harvard Law called "Power, Beauty, Sex, & Violence" (the closest NYU ever had when I was there was "Sexuality and the Law") and that Female Chauvinist Pigs was assigned reading. And not really related to this but just something I'm looking forwar to reading that arrived in my mailbox over the weekend: Laura Kipnis's The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability.

See also: Greta Christina's "Oral Arguments" (or, "A Dyke's Defense of Blowjobs")

Also, the cause for some spitting (of my soda): Violet Blue's "Personally, I prefer my empowerment one thick swallow at a time."

I think I can safely say my column about panties will not be as controversial. There, too, I am learning: in this case, all about panty selling.

And now for the part where I geek out: GirlyNYC and other baby-haters, stop reading now: An adorable photo of Asia Carrera's daughter Catty with her little swimming fins (not sure of the proper name for them). If you haven't been following, ex-porn star Carrera is 8 months pregnant and was recently widowed. I don't really have much else to say except that my heart goes out to her and it's good to see her feeling more positive about her son's impending birth. It's a pretty tragic situation and I'm never good with "saying the right thing" about death. Perhaps no one, save Joan Didion, is, so there you go. That was meant to end things on an uplifting note. I miss the Smush and can't wait for him to come home so I can take him to the park, when it cools off a bit.

From "Unlocking" by Zaedryn Meade in Secret Slaves: Erotic Stories of Bondage

This is just a teaser from Zaedryn Meade's exquisite story "Unlocking" which opens Secret Slaves: Erotic Stories of Bondage. The best part is after this, so come to In The Flesh on Wednesday and hear her read more, AND get a chance to win a FREE copy of your pick of the 3 Fetish Chest books!

From "Unlocking" by Zaedryn Meade

Her wide brown eyes flash gold and reveal her obvious interest. “I’ve never been handcuffed before.”

I don’t miss that invitation. “Would you like to be?”

Her hips switch and tilt. Oh yeah, she wants to be. Possibly even by me. “I don’t know,” she says slowly, placing herself closer to me with every imperceptible movement. Her fingers are still in my belt loop and she’s pulling at the circle around my hips. I’m leaning back into it and making her lean into me. She tilts her face up toward mine, a good four inches shorter than my not-so-tall five foot six, and does that doe-eyed under-the-eyelashes look of girls who want to be kissed. I reach behind her to set my glass on the tall table, changing places with her. She turns too and now her back is to the wall. She leans against it and hooks both thumbs into her pockets, holding her bottle of Corona by the neck in her left hand. Only the lime at the bottom is left.

I take the bottle out of her hand and use that as an opportunity to touch her skin. I pass the bottle to my other hand and set it on the table next to my empty glass, barely looking to see where it lands, eyes locked on Maya’s dark thick eyelashes and smoky makeup. She’s biting her lip. I have the back of her hand in mine and press her palm with my thumb. Her fingers are a little colder than her wrist. It’s a little cool out on the back patio tonight, but we’re both beginning to sweat.
My thumb and forefinger circles her wrist and I squeeze, just a little, enough pressure to let her feel restricted. I take her other hand, notice that she’s already reaching for me, and do the same. She breathes in, a little surprised at the sudden movement. I press her wrists back until they touch the wall and see the tension in her shoulders. Her breasts are offered up to me like fruit to suck on in order to bring out the flavor of the whiskey, and she knows it, sees me considering her and arches further. I want to press my palm into the ripeness of her chest and feel the flesh pushed between my palm and the wall. I want to take a bite of the taut muscles of her neck. I want to run my tongue from her chin down past the collar of her thin cotton blouse and into the V of her neckline where she has one too many buttons undone.

I don’t do any of these. I keep my eyes on her face as she tells me what she wants, what she’s afraid to give away, what she wishes I’d keep doing to her, without saying anything. Maya’s mouth makes a sweet, high whimper that is quickly cut off by my own mouth pressing into hers. She pushes her hips into mine and made a move in to kiss me that was more sudden than I expected, and I almost lose my balance and my grip around her wrists. I pull her hands behind her back and they touch easily; her wrists are thin enough to get both locked in one of my hands, so I bring my left hand to the back of her neck, along her spine and under her long dark hair. Her body arches and she kisses me harder, her tongue beginning to feather my lips. I open my mouth, catch her swollen bottom lip between my teeth gently, then pull away and touch her lips as lightly as possible. She’s pressing toward me for more but I’m holding her back by her wrists. She struggles against my grip and almost gets one wrist free before I catch it in my left hand. She smiles against my mouth, I feel the corners of her mouth turned up and laughing. She flexes her fingers and stops struggling.

I pull back and she’s still smiling. I let go and she brings her hands between us, touches one wrist with the other, then pulls on my keys again.

”Take me home with you,” she says. I grin. Circling her right wrist with my left hand, I lead her back through the pulsing bodies on the dance floor, and out the front door of the bar.

Sexual Freedom for ALL

I'm working (very, very, very slowly, yes, but I am working on it) on a book proposal called Sexual Freedom for All. There will be 13 chapters about everything from casual sex to reproductive rights to chastity, submissive men, sex workers, love and romance, fantasies, ages of consent, defending the prurient interest, and more. I was going to post the chapter titles but they may change and I won't really be digging into it all until August, but my favorite one so far is: "Hot Bi Babes, Gay Tit Men and Other Queer Pioneers: Broadening the Sexual Spectrum." Yes, many topics will have been hashed out briefly in my Lusty Lady columns but I will be doing lots of original research for the book if I ever sell it.

But the reason I used submissive women as an example, is because a) sometimes I am one (I guess I could be called a switch, but I don't really identify that way because I don't switch with a given person, if I'm kinky with them, it's either as a top OR a bottom, but that's really a moot point at the moment) and b) because I think female submission is often one of the most misunderstood sexualities.

I may not be an "actual" feminist according to Pandagon, but the reason I quoted Boteach (for the record, I hadn't seen the Feministe post and came across his book at Barnes & Noble - another aside - I haven't read all of Hating Women yet but I see very, very little difference thus far, aside from their backgrounds/motivations, between Ariel Levy's Female Chuavinist Pigs and Shmuley Boteach's Hating Women aside from the fact that Ariel Levy sees Judith Regan as a "female chauvinist pig" while Boteach is published by her) is because I'm not only interested in looking at what feminists think about sex or the sex lives of feminists. I'm interested in sexual freedom much, much more broadly, which is why there will be a chapter about chastity. And there I will be quoting things like this Pandagon commenter who wrote:

Would you buy a car without test driving it first? Seriously. (And yes, I’m talking about this from both a male AND a female perspective. Why should a woman be stuck with a man who can’t make her orgasm?).

Before ANYBODY gets married, they should damn well fuck like rabbits, to make sure that they are sexually compatible. And if they are, the “boredom”, that usually leads to adultery doesn’t happen nearly as much. That boredom is usually just incompatibility. Or one person being a selfish greedy asshole.

That's not the "freedom" I'm in favor of.

As Siri Hustvedt writes in A Plea for Eros:

Although feminist discourse in America understandably wants to subvert cultural forms that aren't "good" for women, it has never taken on the problem of arousal with much courage. When a culture oppresses women, and all do to one degree or another, it isn't convenient to acknowledge that there are women who like submission in bed or have fantasies about rape. Masochistic fantasies damage the case for equality, and even when they are seen as the result of a "sick society," the peculiarity of our sexual actions or fantasies is not easily untangled or explained away. The ground from which they spring is simply too muddy. Acts can be controlled, but not desire. Sexual feeling pops up, in spite of our politics.

Dental bondage from Secret Slaves: Erotic Stories of Bondage

L. Elise Bland is one of my favorite erotica writers. I want to put her in all my anthologies and routinely beg her for stories, like now as I finish up She's on Top and He's on Top. This "sadistic Southern belle" is fascinating, sexy, super smart, creative, gives a mean spanking, and her story from Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z called "Every Good Boy Deserves Favors" got picked up for Best American Erotica 2006.



Her bondage story is called "A Tooth for a Tooth" and is also quite fabulous. (Reminder: You can hear Zaedryn Meade read from her story "Unlocking" from Secret Slaves: Erotic Stories of Bondage this Wednesday, July 19th at 8 pm at Happy Ending Lounge at my reading series In The Flesh.)

"A Tooth for a Tooth" by L. Elise Bland


"OK," I said. "You can teach me, but only if you can pin me." With those words, I threw her down on the bed. I had an unfair advantage with my height and weight, but she was a little spitfire. She kicked, flailed, and tossed me on my back. But in no time, I had flipped her back over.

I held her wrists and kissed her. She closed her eyes and turned her head to one side. I could tell she was already giving in, but then I realized she was more than I could handle. I had no idea what I was doing. When I worked for the oral surgeon, bondage was a piece of cake. The slender arms of the dental chair made it easy to restrain somebody and the Velcro snaps were quick and foolproof. No hooks or snaps required. The thigh restraint went all the way around the bottom of the chair, encompassing both legs at once. With the new-fangled bondage, I would have to learn everything from scratch. I didn't know what to do with non-medical restraints. How would I attach them to the bed? With ropes? Chains? Where was the rest of her equipment? And what was I supposed to do with her once I had her in place? I was more scared of looking stupid than I was of getting tied up, so I released my tension and let her overpower me. Alissa laughed, not realizing that I was playing possum. She straddled my chest and gritted her teeth into an insane grin, her pink lipstick streaked across her cheek like femme war paint.

"You win," I said. "Show me what you've got." Out came two more restraints for my ankles and before I knew it, I was butt naked and strapped to the bed. Even though the restraints didn't hurt, I was uncomfortable at first. I felt like a freak. We were being total perverts smack dab in the middle of the day, the bright sun screaming through the window panes at our bare skin and loud busses plowing into our private lives. Alissa didn't seem to mind, though. She knelt in between my thighs, her chest still heaving from the exertion. I was definitely a tough cookie to crack. My frame was downright burly compared to hers, but she had plenty of tricks up her sleeve. As if by magic, a tiny rubber whip appeared that twirled and bounced between my thighs.

"You thought you were just going to lie back and get fucked, didn't you?" she asked as she brought the demonic little toy closer and closer to my pussy. "Now that I have you where I want you, I can do anything I please." I felt the first sting on my leg and jumped up against the restraints. I tried to close my knees, but my ankles were spread too far apart. The whip was moving so fast, the falls had become a tornado of red rubber that moved slowly but surely towards my most delicate body parts. The buzz sent my lips fluttering like a vibrator, but unfortunately not strong enough to get me off. I wiggled down and shoved my pussy towards the toy in hopes of more pressure. Instead, I received a single sharp jolt from the whip, right on my clit.

Buy the book to keep reading!

Wanderlust

I know my desire to visit a given city should ideally be about the people there or the sights or activities, but can it also be about the food? This menu makes me hungry. I have so many places I want to visit - Santa Fe, LA, SF, Portland/Eugene, Seattle. I'm not going (back) to Cali in August but am thinking about the fall, maybe to coordinate and do some readings for Naughty Spanking Stories 2 and Caught Looking. And, like, a vacation. But while I really do want to visit those places, part of me wants to just book something somewhere, anywhere, with my frequest flyer miles and huddle alone in some nice hotel room and wander and roam and not know or care where I am. Maybe Glamourcon in August in Chicago, but only if I can feel up Justine Joli and hang out with The Reputation. I don't know where I'll go, maybe nowhere, but after the loveliness of Costa Rica, I do realize I need way more downtime. Thankfully, I am trying to stay home as much as I can cause I'm just not all that social of late. Going to In The Flesh and Boggle (yes, brave girl that I am) and a few readings and things but other than that I really want to have a lowkey summer and get a lot of writing done and just work on my head and my heart, and my student loans and apartment and boring stuff like that, with maybe a long, lazy weekend away thrown in for good measure.

"Fucking and Feminism" feedback

Lots of linking and commentary on the new column, "Fucking and Feminism." A brief overview:

Beyond Your Peripheral Vision has some really fabulous analysis and I wanted to add something I think I forgot to say in the column. Porn, stripping, bikini waxes, blowjobs, etc., whatever sex or sexual act you want to talk about don't have to be empowering in order to be a valid choice for women. It seems like we want to say it's about empowerment vs. exploitation - what if it's just about choices? I think this goes back to the idea of whether we want feminism to bring about equality or special status/pedestal/paternalism a la Shmuley Boteach (not saying he identifies as a feminist but did write a book called Hating Women) who explicitly says we need to put women back on a pedestal. Part of being rational, intelligent, autonomous adults is making decisions for ourselves. OF COURSE those will not all turn out to be good ones. Who could possibly think they would be? For me, the problem is when anyone, from a feminist viewpoint or not, tries to dictate what's good for all women (or all men) - how can one possibly know that? You can't. But I don't think the proper response to attacks on, say, blowjobs, is just to say "I like it" or "it's empowering to me." You know what? You can not like it and have done it, you can do it and decide you don't like it, you can do it as a quid pro quo, you can do it for money.

It's a red herring for it to have to be about empowerment and this all ties back into what I am going to write about, at some point, about casual sex and sex generally. There's this idea out there, I think, that if you're a woman and have casual sex and get hurt then you'd be better off not having done it. Certainly, I'm in no position to say "rah rah, casual sex is always great." These are arguments and situations reminiscent of what 60's feminist said about that sexual revolution - that it only worked towards the betterment of men and their sexual options. Not getting into every nuance here but firstly, I don't think sex is about a war between men and women and don't want to foster that mentality, because it's dangerous and can so easily descend into stereotypes. Part of why my book and my recent writing is hopefully going to focus on men as well is because I think it's a problem when they're always painted as the villains. I'm not saying men are perfect, nor are women, but it's disingenuous to further the alienation of men and women around sex. I would much rather look at ways for us to learn from one another and bridge the gaps that are there.

Okay, rant over, some other links, some, like Hit and Run (which must get a gazillion hits cause I've gotten so much traffic from them - thanks Julian, and Nick) and Feministing, with extensive comments sections (86 in Hit and Run as of this posting).

Feministing

Hit and Run

Salon's Broadsheet

One commenter at Hit and Run basically said that sexual freedom isn't, or shouldn't be, a feminist issue. First of all, sex has been a feminist issue since the time of Victoria Woodhull. Secondly, here, as in the blowjob column, I'm largely responding to other people's assertions about what's acceptable sexual behavior. That's something that's been said to everyone from Susie Bright to Betty Dodson to Nina Hartley and it's just a way to ignore debate about sex. It's very tricky and complicated - of course, sex is political, but I don't think that means that there is therefore a politically correct way to have sex or that one way is necessarily "better" than another. What you see or think you see or think about a certain act is not necessarily the way it feels to someone else.

I'm not quite sure why so many people can't offer suggestions for positive action without tearing other women and their decisions down in the process. Firstly, scolding, harping, and haranguing aren't going to make anyone change. Telling women essentially that they're big sluts for how they dress, act, or think really just serves to try to induce guilt and shame and I don't want any part of that.

There is actually a pretty interesting thread about Pink's "Stupid Girls" video at ModestyZone - yes, I'm linking to ModestyZone because it fascinates me and also because, especially in this thread, I don't think there are easy answers. About any of this. I'm not anti- modesty per se, or chastity, or any choices women want to make, but again, what I am against is the pitting of women against women, the sluts vs. the prudes, or however you want to designate that. I think that's the result in Shalit's A Return to Modesty and Shmuley Boteach's Hating Women when each suggest, basically, that any women who sleep with men before marriage are ruining things for the women who don't do so. Shalit urges women to form a "cartel of virtue" and Boteach I've already quoted here; that's what I object to categorically, not the notion that for some women, waiting to have sex would be a good idea.

Again, I think that there are no easy, one-size-fits-all answers to so many of these questions. Which makes it tougher for me to formulate my book proposal, but I'd rather grapple with the tricky areas than just dismiss anyone who doesn't agree with me. I think that's what happened with Sara DeKeuster; people just didn't want to hear that some women (actually, many women, I believe) have rape fantasies. That could not and did not compute and they just wanted her to shut up, and basically accused her of enabling rapists by encouraging men to think all women want to be raped. If you can't tell the difference between "rape" and "rape fantasy," well, sorry, you are not paying attention because obviously they are two completely different things. Related in the sense that the latter is a fantasy about the former, but to act like anyone would actually want to be raped for real is just ridiculous and pretty much impossible according to the definition of rape. But it's much easier to claim that no woman would really want to: give a blowjob, engage in a rape fantasy, have sex on camera, wear revealing clothes, etc. than to admit that some of us might enjoy, or at least do, these things on some occasions. Tying this together to the beginning, it's not imperative that we enjoy or be empowered by these things in order to choose to do them.

Magazines' sex issues??

If you work at a magazine or happen to know when any magazines (local or national) are doing their sex issues and could let me know (and I'd be extra grateful if you know who's handling it), that'd be fabulous. rachelkb at gmail.com

I'm trying to drum up some publicity for all the books I have out this year, which kinda makes my head spin: First-Timers, Glamour Girls, Ultimate Undies, Sexiest Soles, Secret Slaves, Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z, and Caught Looking. (Yes, I'm a little nuts, the schedule will not be so packed going forward.) Speaking of which, my edits are overdue so I must go work my red pen and then I can settle in and write some more smut, perhaps while I watch Julie Johnson, which I just rented.

The Advocate's sex issue

I haven't seen it yet, but apparently The Advocate's sex issue is out - check it out to read about my top 3 female celebrity crushes (they are all very different and are not all queer but all fascinate me). I actually had to call the reporter back and think about it for a little while. I will say that of the three, I have met one, interviewed one by phone, and listened to the music of another. Sorry, Monica Lewinsky is not on the list - I'm kindof over her (not that I'd be averse to meeting making out with her or anything, she's just not in the top 3 anymore).

Is a rodent up the ass "stomach-turning" in a romance novel?

And other complicated publishing matters I won't get into here. I should be proofing my manuscript and many other things on my to do list, but this intrigued me:

Alison Kent ponders whether writing a scathing review of a fellow romance author's novel on Amazon skewers your chances of ever publishing with the editor of said novel.

She also posts an excerpt from the novel, Jennifer LaBrecque's Highland Fling, about a patient with a rodent up his ass. LaBrecque responds to the review by saying "I Swear I Didn't Pay Her," and offers a cash refund to the reviewer as well as claiming the review has helped spike sales.

I think there's one thing to be mindful of what you write and obviously know that anyone can read it and quote from it so you really should be happy with what you've written and able to stand by it and own it (I will be posting soon about seeing Dawn Eden at the Gawker party and what I'm thinking about her forthcoming book The Thrill of the Chaste and casual sex and other topics - am reminded of that because I found out she quotes me in it, but that's all I'll say for the moment - my point was, I'm quoted in her book, which I just found out.) I think it's fine for this author to have said what she truly thinks about another author's book, but by doing so on Amazon, of course the author and her fans and anyone else may read it and form judgments about the person writing it, as with anything.

I don't think one should be inhibited from commenting on books you've liked or disliked; certainly, in my situation, I've criticized books very recently by publishers I tremendously respect and admire (and even aspire to publish with someday), but it's unrealistic to think I'd like every single book they publish. That being said, going out of your way to write an ad hominem attack probably isn't ever going to be all that productive. I do try to keep that in mind, even when I write about books or articles I truly hated. Having been on the other side plenty of times, I know it's all too easy to make many assumptions about people based on a single piece of writing. The challenge for me as a writer is to say what I have to say in a given amount of space and hope I get my point across. Sometimes, I find out later that I haven't. That what I intended in my head is not what's being perceived, and then I have to figure out how to ameliorate that.

I think, too, though, that blogging is so immediate and I'm quite enthralled by it because it gives me a chance, in real time, to sort out my thoughts and write about current events. I don't have to wait for some interminable lead time, and don't have to wait until my writing sounds stale and dated even to me. That's not to say I don't have many goals in the writing arena, but I realize upon rereading some older work, especially lately, that the writer I've become even in the last two years is far different than the writer or thinker I used to be. Yet, those words still exist and are pretty much immutable. Some are online or in books or magazines or whatever, but life moves too quickly to stay stuck in that, which is why the bulk of my research for Sexual Freedom for All is coming from more modern sources. More once I manage to catch up a bit. For those like me who make endless to do lists, submit them to Sasha Cagen (Quirkyalone) for her book on to do lists: See Todolistblog.com

The art of the erotic cake

Jessica Cutler posted a hilarious phone call about ordering an erotic cake from Masturbakers. They have some great-looking ones - I like the dommed-up one and the nippled ones. I think I've had ass cakes from them at 2 of Tristan Taormino's movie release parties (see one of them above, that photo by Paul Sarkis).

But for me, when I need/want a dirty cake, I go to Moist and Tasty. Or even a non-dirty cake. She's so creative (Depends and a disco ball and so much more - check out her site for all the pretty, yummy pics) and fun and is pretty kick-ass in many other areas too. And now she has a blog called Where The Hot Boys Are! Not sure if it's okay for me to snag it so click here to check out some boob-on-boob-cake action.

The real question is...who's making erotic cupcakes??? I'd obviously be first in line to buy them!

Double dose of bondage story excerpts

Secret Slaves: Erotic Stories of Bondage

Want to be tied up with tantalizing tales of beautiful bondage? Do handcuffs have a trusty place next to your bed? Does a coil of rope or the crack of a whip make you quiver with desire? Here are thirty sizzling stories to satisfy your desires.

Buy the book to read the rest of these hot stories!

From "Knit One and Tie Me Up, Too" by Kristina Wright

Becca squirmed and panted under my gentle touch, trying to maneuver so I would touch more. "You're making me crazy," she said, her voice heavy with a mixture of arousal and annoyance. "Touch me."

I smacked the inside of her thigh and she gasped, more from the surprise of the contact than any real pain. "I'm in charge, remember?"

"Yes, ma'am," she breathed.

"Good girl."

If I'd had more self-control, I would have continued teasing Becca for a while, but I wanted to touch her as badly as she wanted to be touched. Still, it wouldn't do to give in too much. I knew I could get her off quickly, and myself, too, but I wanted to build the anticipation. For both of us.

I leaned over her, running my fingers along her lips. She kissed my fingertips eagerly. "Suck," I said, sliding my index finger between her lips.

Obediently, Becca sucked. I slid my middle finger into her mouth and she kept sucking. I pulled my fingers free from her mouth and ran my wet fingertips over her nipple. She gasped and arched her back and I did the same to the other nipple. Back and forth, I stroked her pale pink nipples until they were hard and she was whimpering.

"More," she whispered. "Please."

"More?"

She nodded.

---------------------------------------------------------------

From "Prix Fixe" by Riain Grey

My slave is so beautiful, kneeling in front of me, but I try not to let her know it. I just take the drink and give her my cock to suck, her face wild, her hands fluttering to stroke my thighs and balls. I let her suck for awhile, knowing the pleasure it brings her, before moving my attention to the fat dildo she has in her ass, the base peeking out shyly.

She jumps a little when I address her, lost as she is in the moment. I can tell how uncomfortable she is, and yet how excited, how proud she is to be owned this way and to do as I bid her. I pitch my voice as softly as I can while I torment her with hard truths about herself, watching her wriggle and writhe in dismay. Funny that this foreign thing, this plastic device, could have such power, and yet we are both swept away by it.

I grab the dildo, forcing it into her again and again as she cries out beneath me. Her ass is hungry and offers no resistance; as I fuck her I listen to her mews of delight and feel almost dizzy with my own lust. I want to put my cock there, instead, and spurt my come into my slave, my darling girl, my most precious possession.

When she starts to come, when her whispers become grunts, I am ready. She doesn't see the bowl I slip under her, so that her boy-come squirts into it hot and slick. She bucks and squirms, her face glorious and her mouth making words she hardly knows she speaks, begging to be fucked and filled, taken and torn. The words twist in her mouth, fierce and enraged with her need. She gives a final gasp and I whisk the bowl out of her sight.

Thongrotica

black thong
Originally uploaded by Mathieu D..

Ultimate Undies: Erotic Stories about Underwear and Lingerie

Does her teddy make you want to do anything but sleep? Do his boxer briefs bulge in all the right places and tell a story about what he'll do to you in bed? Is her lingerie enough to land her any girl in the room? Here are thirty sexy panty play stories that won't disappoint.

From "Thong Appeal" by Paul Chambers in Ultimate Undies: Erotic Stories About Underwear and Lingerie.

She wore the thong strategically, so that even if she wasn’t bending over, I could still see it peeking over the edges of her pants. Even just the teeniest glimpse of its piercingly bright fabric made me think about the rest of it—the way it nestled snugly in her asscrack, the tiny triangle covering and clinging to her pussy lips, the straps expertly curving around her hips. Somehow, the thong is the perfect embodiment of the phrase “less is more.” It shows that the girl wears underwear, but suggests that she longs to take it off. Certainly, from the minute I saw this girl, before I even knew her name or anything about her, I wanted to see her ass bared in only that thong. I wanted to bring her thongs to try on, I wanted to watch her work a stripper pole, thumbs snagged around the edges of that thong. I wanted to watch her put it on and take it off, wanted to trace my tongue along the skinny line as it wedged itself into her asscrack. Mostly, I wanted to get to know a girl who flaunted her thong so boldly, who dared everyone in the office to look at her and get a hard on before she walked away with her nose in the air.

Porn title most likely to make me spit out my Diet Coke

Cream on my Camel Toe

Should I write a book called Doll Parts?

From Publishers Marketplace this week:

CHILDREN'S: YOUNG ADULT
World Fantasy Award winner Elizabeth Hand's first YA novel WONDERWALL, in which we meet the 16-year-old French poet Arthur Rimbaud, and a runaway American teen Meredith, in a Washington D.C. which we know and yet..don't, to Sharyn November at Penguin for Firebird, by Martha Millard at Martha Millard Literary Agency (NA).

Deadspin blogger Will Leitch's COME AS YOU ARE, the follow-up to CATCH, about an alienated teenage boy, obsessed with Nirvana, who plans to follow in Kurt Cobain's footsteps, to Kristen Pettit at Razorbill, by Kate Lee at ICM (world).

Congratulations to Will and also to Tracy Quan: (interestingly the listing says UK Non-fiction but I believe this is fiction)

Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl and Diary of a Married Call Girl author Tracy Quan's DIARY OF A TRANSATLANTIC CALL GIRL, to Essie Cousins at Harper Perennial UK, for publication in 2008, by Katinka Matson at Brockman (UK/Commonwealth).

New Lusty Lady column, "Fucking and Feminism" (and panties)

My latest Lusty Lady column is about "Fucking and Feminism" about many of the topics tackled here lately

Also, found more panty-related blogs:

Pretty Panties ("Pretty Panties is all about the sheer delight of a pretty, fresh pair of panties on a lovely girl.") and Lingerie Dreams

This is your brain on panties

If anyone like this guy who wrote to Julia Allison about panties wants to tell me about your panty fetish for my Voice column, please do (deadline is Friday at 5 pm) - rachelkb at gmail.com - thanks! Also, who knew there was a blog called In My Panties? News to me! There's also a panty blog called The Top Drawer. The only other one I really know about is the late Hottpants but if you know of any other panty blogs, I'd love to hear about 'em.

aren't they cute?

_DSC9232
Originally uploaded by brianvan.

Goddess (Susannah) Perlman and Claudia Cogan, aka The Beauty Queens of Comedy

Photo by birthday boy Brian Van

Excerpts from Secret Slaves: Erotic Stories of Bondage

I have a bunch of stories I'll be excerpting from Secret Slaves: Erotic Stories of Bondage - here's my co-editor Christopher Pierce's introduction and some sexy bits from the book with many more to come. You can also hear Zaedryn Meade read part of her brilliant opening story "Unlocking" a week from today at In The Flesh. She's one of those writers I was so thrilled to find and hope to publish many more times in future anthologies.



Secret Slaves: Erotic Stories of Bondage

Want to be tied up with tantalizing tales of beautiful bondage? Do handcuffs have a trusty place next to your bed? Does a coil of rope or the crack of a whip make you quiver with desire? Here are thirty sizzling stories to satisfy your desires.

Giving It Up (an Introduction) or To the Infinite Power (an Introduction)
by Christopher Pierce

In 1992 a man I was dating asked me if he could handcuff me before we had sex.

It was the first time such a question had been asked of me.

I said sure, what the hell? And he did. Then he fucked me.

The experience was a revelation for me.

You see, I hate reality.

It started when I was a kid. I hated the humdrum world of school, church, Boy Scout meetings, swimming lessons and Monday Night Football. It was all so ordinary. I knew I was destined for greater things, and I found them in my imagination. Dinosaurs, flying saucers, monsters from the deep, robots from outer space, handsome knights, fairy princesses, ray guns, swords, sorcery, good and evil! Now those were worlds I could get excited about. Stimulated by books, TV shows and movies, I found the excitement and adventure so lacking in my everyday life. The universes created by Walt Disney, Ray Harryhausen, J.R.R. Tolkien, George Lucas and others showed me there was more to life than turning in your homework and going to Sunday school.

I felt the same way twenty years later when I graduated from college.

Sure, coming out to my friends and family was an amazing, soul-nourishing milestone in my life, and finally having gay sex was great, but there was something missing.
Some spark.

I found it that rainy day in 1992. And the fire it started hasn't gone out since.
Our modern world in some respects is so safe. With tolerance and understanding forging a better future for us all, sometimes it leaves our present world a little too cautious. With the devastation of AIDS has come the restriction of spontaneity and the need to negotiate with our sexual partners. Now don't get me wrong, I can enjoy a nice quiet evening of traditional missionary position sex (or what passes for that for gay men) as much as the next queer.

But where's the spark, where's the fantasy, where's the danger?

Bondage is all about danger.

Because it is also about power.

Having it, taking it, giving it up, surrendering it, offering it, exchanging it.

Bondage takes the emotional, internal aspects of sex and externalizes them, making them undeniably real.

You say you trust me?

Prove it.

Let me blindfold you, tie you up, throw you over my shoulder and carry you to my bed where I will do exactly what I want with, when and how with you.

No? "Too kinky?" Guess you don't really trust me, do you?

You say you want me to be yours?

You say you want me bound and gagged, helpless and at your mercy?

Prove it.

Show me in actions that you will not harm me, that the ability to render me powerless is a gift you want given willingly. Earn my trust, and I'll have myself wrapped up and delivered to your door over the shoulder of one of those handsome men in brown uniforms whose shorts are always a tiny bit too tight.

Besides power, bondage introduces something frequently missing in sex.
Fantasy.

Fantasy makes the real surreal and makes the ordinary extraordinary. Corny? Perhaps.

But I'll tell you one thing.

I never knew what Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire was talking about when he whispered to his wife about the "colored lights" they got going when they had sex—until the first time I got tied up and fucked. (I hope somewhere Tennessee Williams appreciates that.) The same thing happened the first time a guy let me blindfold him, gag him, cuff his wrists and ankles and gave himself to me. Bondage elevates sexplay out of the everyday world and into one where you can be anyone you want to be, where the possibilities are unlimited, and where raunchy wet dreams comes true.

The world of 9 to 5 jobs, grocery shopping, income tax and jury duty need not be your only world. Just add bondage, and you add spark, you add danger, you add power.

I hope you like the stories.

If you get a third of the enjoyment out of reading these as we did finding them you're in for one hell of a time.

From "Obedience" by Tanya Turner:

The back is just a warmup for what I consider The Real Thing. While the flogger can feel soothing against my back, like a kinky deep tissue massage, on my ass, John's anything but gentle. He rears his hand back and lets fly, the suede strips slamming against one cheek and then the next. My body gets pushed against the wood, and I revel in the impact, the force, the feeling of the flogger hitting my skin but then going deeper, its dual impact walloping me through and through. In this process, we meld into one, joining forces as he lands each blow as if offering me a bit of himself. It's beyond the ache for his cock inside me, beyond the rush of pain and heat, beyond the ropes chaining me to the wood. The details stop mattering the more I skid against my restraints, the more I succumb utterly and fully to these urges that take me higher and higher even as they literally keep me securely in place, for what they are really doing is letting me take flight. If you've never truly been tied up, never been fastened snugly like a baby, grounded so all you have left is your own desire, you may not understand the sheer bubbly joy his beating brings me. I am at his mercy, should he choose to pause or stop, choose to lance me along the backs of my legs, or turn me around and beat my breasts, making pinpricks of blood form along my chest. I am his and only his, the only one I'll let strap me down like this, the only one who can do it and give me such euphoria, because I know he knows precisely what it means when I do.

He waits until I am frantic, on fire, going mad, until I could both stay in this position forever and am clawing at the wood, giving up on my manicure to dig my nails into anything they can reach—the X, the rope, my skin, in order to reach down and touch my most sacred place. Only when I am that frantic, that far gone, does he relent. The blows get softer, maddeningly teasing as the suede lightly brushes me, like he's dusting me off, polishing my pink skin. Then he drops it on the floor, where it lands with a solid thud.

This is when, were we in another sort of position or location, he'd tell me to spread my legs—but they already are, wider than I normally make them. His fingers find what they are seeking, then tap against my open pussy lips. I am exposed, my cunt his for the taking as he taps away, his fingers thudding harder and harder against my sex until I almost want to cry. He switches hands, using his left for my pussy and his right to smack my ass, the noises and sensations tipping me over the edge. I've given up clawing, struggling, moving, and just wait for him to do whatever he's going to do to me, my body ready to please.


From "Two Mistresses Are Better Than One" by Marina Saint

Coral stood in front of him and slowly unzipped her catsuit, fondling her nipples, and I sidled up between her and Mark and began to suck on them. My ass, covered in a plain black skirt—I was going for a schoolteacher look—was right in front of him, but he couldn't touch me, could only moan as he watched us get off. "You better be quiet, my friend, because I have ways of shutting you up," Coral promised, and I had no doubt it was true.

But suddenly I became much more interested in playing with her beautiful breasts than in simply tormenting my horny boyfriend. He'd get an eyeful either way, and would certainly learn to be carefully what he wished for. Coral dragged me over to the bed and ripped the little pearl buttons from my blouse as she tore it down the front, scraping my skin with her claw-like nails. I shuddered beneath her, my own dominance giving way to my natural submissiveness, a side I only really bring out for very special people. Mark had never seen me give myself over to someone like this, but I'd never before been with a curvy woman in a catsuit determined to make me heed her commands. I shuddered as her tongue roamed all along my skin, leaving trails of wetness as she licked. I chanced a glance back at Mark, who was sitting there, eyes bulging, cock erect as her mouth made its way down, down, down until she had my skirt up, stockings off, and pussy lips spread wide open to her tongue's ministrations. She licked me expertly, but just as I was about to come, she turned me over onto my stomach. I pressed my greedy clit against the cool sheets, and she got up. "Stay right there," she warned and I did, my head pressed against the sheet, my body on fire. I was no better than Mark, no more able to control my urges, my needs, my submission.

She returned and I heard a loud thwap, peering behind me to see that she was holding the very paddle I'd bought to use on mark! The sound seemed to take on a life of its own, ringing in my ears and making me tighten my ass, even though I wasn't afraid of it. It was a welcome sound, one I'd remembered from long ago, a distant, welcome recollection. Then I heard another, a snipping, and saw she had a sharp, new-looking pair of scissors in her hands. "You don't mind if I borrow some of this, do you, Mark?" she asked rhetorically of my bound boyfriend as she snipped off just enough pink rope to tie my wrists together. Part of me wanted to protest—hey! I'm supposed to be running the show too!—but I was too turned on. This unexpected turn of events had my pussy thrumming, and when she did take that paddle and slap my ass, scorching my padded behind, I gasped loudly, already craving more. She delivered it, with whap after solid whap to my ass and upper thighs, before turning me over and hitting my breasts. No one had every done that before, and at first, I was horrified, but moments later I noticed my nipples tingling, the reddened skin of my tits straining for more. When her free hand swept along my slit, I melted against her, letting her fingers easily slip inside. She didn't let up on the spanking, and my wrists were chafing against their bonds as I struggled in vein. Every time the pink bonds rubbed against me, I clamped down more tightly around her until I was coming, the tremors rising up through my body as I crushed her fingers so tightly I thought I might hurt her. She gave one loud, strong, final smack that made me open my mouth wide but no sound commensurate with the pain could come out. Finally, her fingers slid out of me and she untied me. I sat up, dazed and disoriented, looking around.

My poor boyfriend's mouth was wide open as he stared at us. She pulled me close, kissing my cheek, bobbling my breasts as she stood, taking me with her. "Well, Mark, what do you think? Are two mistresses better than one?" she asked, "Even if one of them's getting smacked silly?"

Interview with Molly Crabapple about Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School

I interviewed Molly Crabapple for The Village Voice website about Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School (there's on this Saturday, see the interview for details)

My favorite part:

Why contests? ‘Cause they're fun! Especially the drinking contest, invented by my wino friend Leavitt, where the "winner" downs a double shot of chartreuse to the sounds of ecstatically whooping art monkeys. Leavitt's as sadistic as Gawker.

And thanks to Fleshbot for already blogging about it before I'd even seen it (I love being called a lady of pleasure!)

ah, illogic

From "Not-So-Free Love" by Lisa Fabrizio, The American Spectator (I really think this speaks for itself but let's just compare Fabrizio's "women who have become the very sex objects they despised" with Ariel Levy's definition of Female Chauvinist Pigs: "women who make sex objects of other women and of themselves." My whole next column is devoted to this so I won't belabor it here, but could all this be because . . . there are circumstances where women want to be sex objects? Oh, no, the HORROR! We hate ourselves sooooooooo much, don't we? That must be it! Or maybe, applying an ounce of reality and common sense to the situation and realizing that "women" is a pretty useless category in terms of describing the behavior/desires of millions of vastly diverse people, it's just some women who hate their fellow females and the ways they want to live out their sexuality, perhaps? My money's on that. But then again, maybe I just want to make a sex object of myself and then despite myself - or both at once. That's probably it, my bad. Time to put on my burlap sack because clearly, wanting to look good is not okay. Back to my lovely enslavement - and yes, if I ever actually write my book Sexual Freedom for All, I will be using that line for sure.)

Kinsey's report reduced human sexuality to that of brutish beasts; unrestrained by passe marriage vows, more like animals than civilized men. Hefner packaged the concept that separated sexual pleasure from love and marriage, and sold it as entertainment. It is no coincidence that when he launched his empire, its symbol was a rabbit.

The results? The quest for sexual "freedom" has enslaved many millions; women who have become the very sex objects they despised, men who are in the clutches of pornography addiction, and children who are now the sexual targets of the monsters created by the free-love Frankenstein.

Thanks to the great liberation of the sexual act from religious, marital love, we have mothers killing their unborn children, fathers abandoning many who survive, sexually-transmitted diseases and now, a movement telling us that more rampant, procreation-less sex should be recognized as marriage.

Promoters of gay marriage are fond of touting the current divorce rate in defense of their claim that their particular idea of matrimony couldn't tarnish it any further. As if sex-for-its-own-sake is the cure for the dissolution of marriage instead of one of its root causes.

So many men in underwear . . .

Hazel Motes's Underwear Party
Originally uploaded by Motes, Hazel.

corselet + fishnets

corselet
Originally uploaded by Sir Stephen.

What happens when you join a flickr group called "Apple Bottoms"

Originally uploaded by billbaty.

Don't expect an end to the panty and shoe blogging for a while! And remember, I still need your answers (through Friday) about panties for my Voice column - send to rachelkb at gmail.com and go as long or short as you like:

I'm doing a column on "Panty Play for Men and Women" -
basically, why are panties/underwear (including anything from
boyshorts to jockstraps to crotchless panties to granny panties -
whatever turns you on, or no panties) sexy - do you wear particular
pairs when you know you have a date/to get yourself in the mood/to
show off by peeking out of your clothes? Which kinds are sexiest/not
sexiest? Do you do anything erotically with panties during sex - like
tease someone with them, tie someone up with them, etc.? Especially looking for crossdressers/people with a particular preference/fetish.

Also, if you don't wear underwear, or sometimes don't - why? How does that make you feel? The above questions are really just starting
points - I'm looking for all genders, all sexual orientations,
anything that's about panties/sex/lust, etc.. My wishlist of people to
talk to includes:

someone who sells their panties
a male crossdresser
someone who uses panties/underwear during sex
someone who only gets turned on when their partner is wearing a
particular kind of undies

Sexiest Soles excerpt: "Stella and the Silver Stilettos" by Tenille Brown

Another excerpt from Sexiest Soles: Erotic Stories About Feet and Shoes, this one from Tenille Brown's "Stella and the Silver Stilettos." I'm reading all about leather, latex, rubber and PVC right now for Second Skins and despite the hot weather it's making me want to don my red latex dress, which I haven't worn in years. I think the next latex purchase, if there is one, though, will be a skirt. Or maybe a thong! Though there's always a spanking dress (I can't find the link to my favorite one, but it's black and red and basically has a strategically cut-out hole, some of the other ones I hesitate to call "dresses" and are more like latex aprons with the whole back showing) - when I win the lottery or sell a big book and actually have someone to spank me, perhaps that will be my present to myself. That's all just a silly fantasy though, I am much more likely to blow tons of cash on onesies and silly little toys for all the babies in my life, though I am getting more and more jealous of all the mamas by the day, I've got to say.

Anyway, back to the excerpt - from "Stella and the Silver Stilettos" by Tenille Brown:



Stella lifted her legs, then placed her feet on the edge of the bed. And then Seymour looked down and saw them, the silver stilettos that had haunted him, had mesmerized him since she first put them on her feet. She had left them on, dear God she had left them on. She lifted and pressed one foot against his chest, the sharp heel grazing his nipple ever so sweetly.

Seymour held the stiletto in his hand, rubbed his nose along the toe, then placed her leg over his shoulder. He fell to his knees and crawled forward, his face finding the mound between her legs. He tasted her. His tongue traced a path between the folds of Stella's cunt. He felt the heels at the back of his neck, her ankles holding him still and drawing him in. Her body squirmed on top of the sheets and only when he felt the warm quiver against his lips and felt the groan that worked its way down her throat and through her body did Seymour rise and sink between her legs.

His cock was swollen with the need to be inside her. He rested his head against her calf, inhaling the scent of her skin, the scent of sweet, sweet leather as he found his way inside.

A silver clad foot dangled over his shoulder and he stroked her tongue with his own. The feel of the silver stilettos against Seymour's back caused his legs to tremble, threatening to give way. The need for her, the need to be covered by her warmth, washed over him in waves.

Want these cupcakes?

Cupcakes from sugar Sweet sunshine
Originally uploaded by rkb1.

Well, not these specific ones cause they'd surely be stale by now. But if you come to In The Flesh next week, we are getting cupcakes delivered from my favorite bakery, sugar Sweet sunshine, so a little break from the mini Whole Foods ones. I know that'll tempt you . . . plus we have fabulous readers and book giveaways. And a little birdie told me it's going to be listed in The New Yorker next week! You can also chow down on free sugar Sweet cupcakes tomorrow at 7:30 at Mo Pitkin's at Chicks and Giggles and after that you may want to swing by Rififi for a super-fun new comedy show (I'm pasting the entire email cause the signoff kills me):

To Whom It May Delight:

Please join us for the unveiling of The Beauty Queens of Comedy, a new comedy show combining looks and laughs. Co-hosts Claudia Cogan & Susannah Perlman present stand up, variety and beauty tips in one exquisite head to toe package. Our picture perfect line up this week:

Moody McCarthy (Last Comic Standing)
Susan Prekel (Comedy Central's Live At Gotham)
Charles Star (Stay Free! Magazine and just featured in the NY Post) Carolyn Castiglia (Style and Oxygen Networks, Blogger Extraordinaire) and music from the womyn of
Free To Be Friends (NY Fringe Festival)

Tuesday, 7/11
10 PM
@ Rififi, 332 E 11th between 1st & 2nd Ave $5.00

Sparkles to you all!
Claudia


Been insanely busy, was in Westchester most of the weekend at the fabulous Ellen's shower pre-baby party, which featured tons of yummy snacks, rock climbing (!), lacrosse, this game Sticks, and all sorts of awesome people who know many other people I know. Then I got to see my dad get married in a very small, sweet ceremony on a gorgeous day overlooking the water. Now I am madly playing catchup as I finish a bunch of stuff.

You can STILL tell me about your panty lust! Until this Friday. My new column's about . . . "fucking and feminism."

Brain's on overdrive so that's about it. Been writing some new smutty stories and have had a few acceptances for later this year/early next:

"Tourist Attractions" will be in Ultimate Gay Erotica 2007

"Hands Free" will be in Best Lesbian Love Stories: New York City

"Two Strippers in Love" will be in Iridescence

"Paradise" will be in Drag King Erotica

and "Spike" will be in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, Volume 6

Am kindof drowning in smut as I read and sort through dozens of anthology submissions and coax more out of my favorite writers. Very excited about my first In The Flesh as a 31-year-old, all the way in November (the 15th, to be precise), which will be on the theme of "Comic Sex" with music by the lovely and talented Adira Amram, and funny sex stories by Claudia Cogan, Mindy Raf, Todd Levin, Baron Vaughn and the adorable Sara Jo Allocco.

hot hot hot!

Cu 008
Originally uploaded by Nandito2005.

I found many panty groups on Flickr - this comes from one of them. And I switched things up so now I can take your panty answers through next weekend. A real update, with photos from Costa Rica, the "pre-baby party" and both weddings . . . someday. Hopefully this week but it may be next weekend. Had a great time at everything but am absolutely slammed.

Lots of shoe lust

I finally got a very overdue pedicure last night and it felt wonderful so I can wear my new gold shoes this weekend to Ellen's baby shower and my dad's wedding. Was also hoping to make it all the way out to the Kinky Jews clothing optional pool party to cover it, but I don't think that's gonna happen with being gone all weekend. Big Happy Birthdays to the new big-time-employed-doing-comedy Sara Schaefer and Michelle Collins. Very sad to miss their joint birthday party, but they'll be 26 and 29 next year too. Plus, I think last year at Michelle's was wear I drank so many yummy Dove cocktails I wound up snarfing fries and dipping my fingers in cheese sauce on the way home, and I drank at least my monthly allotment of alcohol in Costa Rica.

I spoke a little prematurely about trying to work on The Book (Sexual Freedom for All) - Lots I want to research and write for it but first I have a bunch of interviews, proofing Caught Looking and Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z, my panties column, reading endless porn submissions for Second Skins, He's on Top, and She's on Top and trying to kick my own ass to write an essay about being single. Plus some erotica stories and whatnot thrown in. After that I can dig into Eric Maisel's How To Write a Book Proposal and get going, hopefully all this overdue stuff will be turned in by the end of this month. Plus a trip to Berkeley which I think I'll be able to pull off with frequent flyer miles. This week kindof got lost on me, I felt so exhausted for most of it, so I'm very much looking forward to the solitude after Thursday. Gotta see my mom off to Italy and some other events this week and then I am gonna revel in my dumpy but all mine apartment.

I realized I really like that solitude, having nights and weekends to sort out however I want, but I also can't really do any work in 2 hours. Sometimes, but I sortof need 5 hours to get 2 hours worth of work done, just the way I do things. Once I get caught up in a given project, I can get lost in it, but usually as soon as that happens I have to leave, or I wind up distracting myself with my messy brain, thinking of something else I have to do, so sometimes it feels like a miracle when I finish any single piece of writing. And if that's true for silly little erotica stories or 1100 word columns, it's obviously times some huge number for writing this book proposal, but I will do it, I will. Even if it takes many trips to Barnes & Noble and the library and much cobbling and reading and Googling and all of that, I just can't do it with all this other stuff hanging over my head. So that's pretty much it, very boring. Been too tired to be horny but I do wish I were living in the same city as the person I'm seeing, but there will be time for all the cuddling, making out, backrubbing and dirtiness I could want in a few short weeks, I'm sure.

Found some awesome shoes I'm coveting from Pinup Girl Clothing:

Why we heart the burlesque

chica's turn
Originally uploaded by ChrisB in SEA.

See more of ChrisB in SEA's burlesque photos

asses + undies

Originally uploaded by Undies.

From the fabulous Flickr underwearblog courtesy of Freshpair.com

Tell me about your panties!

Panty Party
Originally uploaded by joshbousel.

(See joshbousel's whole panty party photo set)

I'm doing a Village Voice column on "Panty Play for Men and Women" - basically, why are panties/underwear (including anything from boyshorts to jockstraps to crotchless panties to granny panties -
whatever turns you on, or no panties) sexy - do you wear particular
pairs when you know you have a date/to get yourself in the mood/to
show off by peeking out of your clothes? Which kinds are sexiest/not
sexiest? Do you do anything erotically with panties during sex - like
tease someone with them, tie someone up with them, etc.? Especially looking for crossdressers/people with a particular preference/fetish.

Also, if you don't wear underwear, or sometimes don't - why? How does that make you feel? The above questions are really just starting
points - I'm looking for all genders, all sexual orientations,
anything that's about panties/sex/lust, etc.. My wishlist of people to
talk to includes:

someone who sells their panties
a male crossdresser who wears women's panties/lingerie
someone who uses panties/underwear during sex
someone who only gets turned on when their partner is wearing a
particular kind of undies

I need answers to rachelkb at gmail.com by Sunday, July 9th at 4 pm EST. You can use a pseudonym (will be first names only), just let me know what name to use. Brief anecdotes, short answers, long stories - as long as it's about underwear and sex, I want to know. Thanks!

Bondage Bliss

Bondage
Originally uploaded by k_turbo.

Click through here for some info about bondage.

I also made a really fun Amazon.com list promoting Secret Slaves: Erotic Stories of Bondage called "Bondage! Bondage! Bondage!" featuring all sorts of fun things you can do with someone who's bound - think candle wax, stuffing panties in their mouth, teasing, tickling, spanking . . .

more sexy shoes

Sexy Shoes
Originally uploaded by Jessica Shannon.

And I made an Amazon.com Listmania! list of "Summer's Sexiest Soles" - well, the ones I like best, though there are umpteen more to check out.

And, of course, if you've read (or do read) Ultimate Undies, Sexiest Soles, and/or Secret Slaves and like them, I'd really love it if you let Amazon readers know that. I'll also have books for sale at the next In The Flesh on July 19th which I'll be signing - I'll even do lipstick print kisses, if you'd like. Been busy busy busy with umpteen projects - realized I was a bit premature in thinking everything would be done by July 4th and I could focus on Sexual Freedom for All, but by end of July most of this stuff should be sorted out, with hopefully a new project or two to keep me busy, and then I can dig into all this research I want to do and get to writing.

Considering that it's a blog and all . . .

Wouldn't it have been nice of Barbara Ehrenreich at The Huffington Post to actually link to the Ana Marie Cox review of Katha Pollitt's Virginity or Death! she's critiquing? Then again, maybe that's asking for too much.

Because there are never too many cute photos of Justine Joli

picture-17.jpg
Originally uploaded by Britphoto.

See more at JustineJoli.com (NSFW) and TGP.com (also NSFW)

Casual sex and its detractors

Casual sex is probably one of the toughest, and touchiest, subjects I’m writing about in Sexual Freedom for All. When I wrote that column way back when, it seemed so simple and non-controversial to me, but I got a lot of criticism (praise too) about it, and since then I’ve seen casual sex attacked all over—and not just from conservatives. Last weekend, while talking about Sex and the City, someone, who was clearly a fan of the show, followed up quoting it by saying, “They were all sluts anyway. I mean, they had all those one-night stands.” My jaw did not literally drop, but I basically felt like I’d just been called a slut. Not that I really care and most of the time I really don’t mind, but I know this person would not have called me a slut to my face. And once again, it’s women policing women’s sexual behavior.

But joy! It’s not just women who are jumping on women’s case, telling us we’re causing the downfall of society and, even more gallingly, the downfall of feminism. Over and over and over, like they all drank the same Kool-aid, we see writers compare the gains feminism made to the gains in sexual opportunities women now have, and conclude that Jenna Jameson trumps Hillary Clinton. Shmuley Boteach’s Hating Women: America’s Hostile Campaign Against the Fairer Sex, on only a cursory reading, is like the slut comment times infinity, and one of the most insulting books I’ve ever skimmed through—will be reading it ASAP. He suggests that women are increasingly bi-curious because they want to “get away from men,” urges a “casual sex freeze-out” (at least half the book seems to be things I read in Wendy Shalit’s A Return to Modesty dressed up in different language, not to mention at least half a dozen other recent books all pointing to casual sex, basically women being slutty, as the absolute nadir of everything female), and points to Natalie Krinsky (former Yale sex columnist), and pretty much any woman who’s ever taken her clothes off, for money or not, as the absolute downfall of feminism. Part of the problem is—whose feminism? Victoria Woodhull’s? Nina Hartley’s? Mine? That would be a no. Boteach is literally asking for women to go back up on the pedestal, mistakenly thinking that’s what feminism ever was all about:

No single factor has led to the greater debasement of women than the widespread availability of casual sex. If a man can get a woman without having to earn her, what incentive does he have to try to become a gentleman? And men want sex more than anything else. He’ll take the easiest path to get it if that is what is offered to him. (emphasis mine)

The problem I’m seeing with this new strain of feminism and protectiveness toward women is that we want women back up on that pedestal. We see the ways sexuality works against women, and instead of fighting for equality, we’re fighting for superiority.

Casual sex is not a panacea. Like abortion rights, arguing in favor of choice does not mean one is in favor of casual sex per se. It doesn’t mean advocating having as much sex as you can, as often as you can or that every time you’ll come, or that it will lead to blissful relationships, or that you’ll never walk away from it miserable. But it’s almost as if because

As the headline to a recent Germaine Greer piece in The Times of London goes, “I never said the sexual revolution would be pretty.” That seems to be the crux of the problem—we now say “slut” in new ways like “women are having sex like men,” by which we assume too that men are totally happy with the sexual status quo. News flash: not all men are. Men’s sexual options are limited as well, but the answer is not to narrow those options even further, but to expand them, and truly expand them, not just nominally say, “okay, you can do whatever you want,” but secretly we’ll be judging you.

Arguing in favor of the right to have casual sex, to have sex “like men,” if you will, even though that whole phrase is horribly offensive, is one part of the freedom I’m talking about. With freedom comes autonomy and responsibility. I’m purging old magazines around here and just read an article by Linda Fairstein about women who make up false rape accusations—some, she wrote, wanted revenge, but some felt guilty about having casual sex.

I would be absolutely hypocritical if I tried to say that whenever I’ve had casual sex, it’s been fabulous. Certainly in the last year or so, a lot of it’s been quite awful. I’ve wanted to walk away from those situations thinking all men are assholes, and I had to realize, no, just those particular guys, especially the ones dressed up as “nice guys.” But the point is that I had to figure out my comfort level with casual sex for myself. I also had one of the hottest, best, most healing sexual experiences of my life with a one-night stand, one that was all-out dirty, but also very sweet in its way, and helped me get over someone else.

But we can’t have it both ways. We can demand sexual equality, or we can demand chauvinism, as it were. We can ask that no one ever ogle us, we can pretend that our sexuality should be tucked away in our boxes and only brought out under special, mysterious, and certainly only marital circumstances. We can pretend we, as women, are better than men, thereby keeping all of our nasty stereotypes of brutish male sexuality intact.

Sadly, it’s just not that simple of an equation to say breast implants, pussy waxing, pole dancing and casual sex are either liberating or destructive. I’m not gonna lie and say either. They’re choices. Whenever women write about their abortions with anything but utter glee, anti-choice folks jump all over it—see? Abortions are hard, it’s not as easy as the pro-choice literature makes it sound. But they confuse, again, the right to do something with its consequences. All actions have consequences, and often come with a mixed set of emotions. In my case, I’ve often skipped home or to work under a walk of shame cloud, bursting with happiness, a la Valentine’s Day, only to realize that my expectations and the guy’s were so divergent we might as well be on Mars and Venus. And if I’d known that, I never would’ve gotten into their bed. But how can I be omniscient? I can only use those lessons and apply them in the future. I started reading a book by Laurie Seale called The Questions to Ask Before You Jump Into Bed: What to Bring Up Before You Get Down precisely because I do want to learn from my mistakes, I want to know what I can do better in the future, but she too falls into the trap of denigrating sex itself in order to make her point.

Almost all of this applies to the chapter I’m writing called “Dangerous Fantasies: Rape and Other Taboo Topics.” Women aren’t supposed to have rape fantasies because people see them as negating all the hard work Take Back the Night marches and date rape awareness have done, but what we fail to understand is that our brains are murky and complex. When given free reign, they may come up with some disturbing, scary, complex fantasies, ones that scare us even as they turn us on. But to say, “No, no, just shut up, you’re not a real woman if you believe or do ____” (or a real feminist, or a real man) is not helping anyone. It’s not just women who are scared of their fantasies. In the last month, a man came up to me in New York City and wanted to know how he could bring up getting fucked in the ass with his partners. He was worried that the women in his social circle would laugh at him. This is but one variant on thoughts so many people have, and what we do with that is lash out at others—oh, you’re a slut, but I’m pure, I’m good, I’m okay.

The easy answer is to say, casual sex is wrong, casual sex is bad, I once did it, now I’ve learned my lesson (as an O article by Lisa Dierbeck basically said). But we all have to learn our own lessons, which for some may mean no sex until marriage, for some it may mean an avid fantasy life, for some it may mean discovering our bodies and desires through sex. Again, like abortion, I think people are upset because women and men are having sex for various reasons—because they’re in love, in lust, they’re horny, or maybe drunk, bored, curious, sad, lonely, angry, want connection, have low self-esteem, etc. But the minute we start putting qualifiers on your reasons, and say you can only do it because of X, or in these circumstances, we’re taking away your decision-making ability, infantilizing you.

Same exact thing with abortion—you can’t argue in favor of women’s right to choose and then say those decisions were wrong. It’s a lesson we all have to learn and I’m not against giving or getting guidance, but we can be so heavy-handed about it, so harsh. All this talk of a “casual sex freeze-out” also posits the idea that it’s men who want sex, and women who go along with it, that women have sex for reasons that only have to do with getting ahead, pleasing other people, or conforming to what the culture wants. It’s the same arguments about all these topics, and the reason women get pissed when you tell them not to get their pussies waxed, not to give blowjobs, not to pose topless, not to have casual sex, is not necessarily because they have the time of their lives doing these things, but because feminism’s ongoing legacy has been that we’ve grown up thinking we can (shockingly) make our own decisions. We DO take that for granted. And call me crazy, but I think that whole wacky thinking for ourselves thing is good on many levels. Not envying other people’s sex lives or drives or actions, but figuring out how you can optimize your own happiness, sexually and otherwise. This is really not a feminist issue, which I mean facetiously, because it’s not just a “women’s” issue. It’s not about Hating Women, it’s about hating sex, it’s about blaming sex for the ills of society when it’s how we react to sex, what we do with it, that ultimately shapes who we are.

a sexy shoe and a sexy foot

sexy foot
Originally uploaded by uridev.

Beautiful!

See uridev's whole set of 54 gorgeous feet photos.

fireworks!

_DSC8588
Originally uploaded by brianvan.

Photo by Brian Van

They look so abstract like this. My favorite are the ones that shimmer down in really tiny bursts, like super fine glittery eye shadow. I watched from my comfy couch - had no idea I'd have such a fabulous view all tucked away like that.

As Allison said, "Don't talk when your mouth is full of cupcake"

cupcake interview screenshot 1
Originally uploaded by alizinha.

We really were on NBC and may be on other affiliates soon - also, coming to Youtube soon.

In The Flesh is in 2 weeks!

IN THE FLESH EROTIC READING SERIES
WEDNESDAY JULY 19 at 8 PM
AT HAPPY ENDING LOUNGE, 302 BROOME STREET
(B/D to Grand, J/M/Z to Bowery, F to Delancey, http://www.happyendinglounge.com)
Admission: Free
Happy Ending Lounge: 212-334-9676
http://inthefleshreadingseries.blogspot.com

Take a break from the heat with sexy words and yummy cupcakes. With Desiree Burch (SMUT Series), Diana Cage (Box Lunch, Bottoms Up, On Our Backs Guide to Lesbian Sex), Zaedryn Meade (Covet, Valence, For the Record), Doreen Orsini (Hunting Diana, Tanner’s Angel), the co-editor of The MILF Anthology, Cecilia Tan (Circlet Press), along with contributors Elspeth Potter (Tough Girls, Best Women’s Erotica) and Stacy Brown, along with host Rachel Kramer Bussel. Free candy and mini cupcakes will be served. Various erotic books, including The MILF Anthology, will be raffled off as door prizes.

In the Flesh is a monthly reading series hosted at the appropriately named Happy Ending Lounge, and features the city's best erotic writers sharing stories to get you hot and bothered, hosted and curated by Village Voice sex columnist and acclaimed erotic writer and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel. From erotic poetry to down and dirty smut, these authors get naked on the page and will make you lust after them and their words. Future themed nights include GLBT stories, porn star night, and erotic memoirs.

Rachel Kramer Bussel is a New York City-based author and editor. She is Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations and a Contributing Editor and columnist for Penthouse, writes the Lusty Lady column for The Village Voice, and conducts interviews for Gothamist.com and Mediabistro.com. Her erotic stories have appeared in over 60 anthologies, including Best American Erotica 2004 and 2006, and she’s edited her own collections, including Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z 1 and 2, Up All Night, First-Timers, Glamour Girls, and the forthcoming Ultimate Undies, Sexiest Soles, Secret Slaves, and Caught Looking: Erotic Tales of Voyeurs and Exhibitionists. Rachel has also written for AVN, Bust, Metro, New York Post, Punk Planet, Time Out New York and Velvetpark. www.rachelkramerbussel.com

Stacy Brown is an adjunct professor at a major New York college and a contributor to The MILF Anthology.

Desiree Burch is a writer, comedian, actress and New York NeoFuturist, and host of the SMUT Reading and Performance series, Monday nights at Galapagos Artspace. Her solo work has culminated in full-length solo pieces Sit-Down, Careless and Greatest Hits. Her solo work and stand-up comedy have been featured at CenterStage NY, Dixon Place, The Marquee, Manhattan Theatre Source, Mazer Theater, P.S. 122, Carolines on Broadway, the NY Improv, New York Comedy Club, Boston Comedy Club, the Producer's Club, the Comedy Social, Chicks & Giggles, the Mae West Fest in Seattle and the New York International Fringe Festival. http://mebigyoulittle.blogspot.com

Diana Cage is the author of several how to books on sex, most recently Box Lunch and Threeways: Fulfill your Ultimate Fantasy. She's currently at work on a book called Girl Meets Girl: a Dating Survival Guide, due out next year and a novel called Connections on I5. www.dianacage.com

Zaedryn Meade is a queer poet working for subversion and joy. She believes in social change through encouraging the sharing of marginalized peoples unique voices and stories. Her work has previously been published in various literary magazines and a few anthologies, and she has two chapbooks, Covet and Valence, and one spoken word CD titled For the Record. Originally born in Juneau, Alaska, she is now living in New York City. www.zaedryn.com

Doreen Orsini loves breaking rules, especially when writing books filled with romance, suspense, and erotic interludes. Highly acclaimed by reviewers and readers, her book No One But Madison takes the reader on an erotic journey, as a strong-willed undercover reporter risks her freedom, heart, and life while investigating abuse in a New York City BDSM club. With Hunting Diana, an erotic paranormal, due out in July, Tanner’s Angel, an erotic contemporary, set for an August release, a monthly column in SUITE e-zine, and four kids, Doreen still finds time to write articles for www.AsTheGroveTurns.com, in various RWA publications, and on author sites.
www.doreenorsini.com

Elspeth Potter lives in Philadelphia. Her erotica has appeared in Best Lesbian Erotica 2001-2004, Best Women's Erotica 2002 and 2005, Tough Girls, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, Vol. 5. She is also a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Cecilia Tan is a happy smutmonger based in the Boston area. Susie Bright recently called her "simply one of the most important writers, editors, and innovators in contemporary American erotic literature." She has edited dozens of anthologies for Circlet Press, Masquerade Books, Thunder's Mouth Press, and Blue Moon Books. Her own writings regularly appear in Best American Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, and other places. www.ceciliatan.com

Free wireless on UWS?

If anyone knows of any good cafes or other places with free wireless internet access on the Upper West Side (near 86th/Broadway), can you let me know at rachelkb at gmail.com (not for me)

Sexiest Soles excerpt: "Magic" by Donna George Storey

An excerpt from Sexiest Soles: Erotic Stories About Feet and Shoes from the story "Magic" by Donna George Storey

"Four minutes to go."

"You bastard. You know one of us has to rub my clit if I'm gonna make it in time."

"I certainly won't. And if you do, the foot rub stops."

Images somersaulted through her head, their bodies twisted into odd positions so he could continue to caress her foot while they fucked. That would certainly take his mind off of the silly time limit. She saw him kneeling between her legs, holding her foot to his chest, or her on top as he reached down to glide his thumb over the new hot spot. But somehow she understood it was best this way, her body displayed to his eyes, with one single magic point of contact. For in the end, it took so little—the dance of his thumb on the arch of her left foot—to make her into a sweating, writhing slut who was begging for it. That is what she was, what she'd always been.

His scolding continued, his voice soft and teasing. "Now that I know about you, I'm going to use your little secret against you. We'll be sitting in a nice restaurant, and I'll slip my shoe under yours and lift it up, and I'll reach under the table and take your foot. You'll know what I'm going to do, but you'll be powerless to stop me. I'll slip off your shoe and the soft flesh will be moist and swollen and ready. Then I'll start rubbing you through your pantyhose. Slowly at first. But that will be enough to make your cheeks pink and your breath come fast. You'll try to hide it, to keep talking about what's new with the cousins or the Ryder account, but I'll feel your leg trembling, and I'll see the sex rash rising on your neck, and we'll both know you're going to come from what I'm doing to you. You're going to have a big, bad orgasm right in the middle of the restaurant. Or will you chicken out and run to the ladies' room to masturbate in the stall?"

She was clenching her buttocks now and pointing her left toe, then flexing it, pushing herself higher. "No, no, I'll stay," she babbled. "I'll let you do it to me there in the middle of the restaurant."

Sexiest Soles excerpt: "Bastinado" by Teresa Noelle Roberts

Sexiest Soles: Erotic Stories about Feet and Shoes

From "Bastinado" by Teresa Noelle Roberts

She set down the slapper and picked up the fiberglass cane again.

She came close, reached out, laid it across my feet.

I yelped.

Then we both laughed, first me to release the tension, then her in wicked amusement.

It hadn't been a blow—she'd literally brushed it across my arches, tickling a bit, but not hurting—but I'd been so primed, so expectant, that I'd cried out anyway.

She set it down and picked up a light, short bamboo cane.

She positioned it carefully, said, "Are you ready?"

I nodded. My mouth was too dry to speak.

The lightest of taps on my arches sent fire through me.

Another. And another. And another, this one a bit harder.

It felt like nothing I'd ever felt before. Stinging, but not searing. Curiously intimate. Frightening, because with each blow, careful as she was being, I was intensely aware of all the fine bones there, all the ways this could go terribly wrong with someone who didn't care as much as Jeannine did.

And because of all that, it was very hot.

I could feel my pussy getting slicker.

Back in NYC, back to work

Got in late last night, helped along by many laugh-inducing comments from Ms. Cogan, will have photos as soon as I find (yes, again!) the cord to transfer the photos but much to do today. I made this massive to do list on the plane and got home and realized I have some other tasks as well but I actually wrote a tiny thing when I got home late last night and just finished a story called "Dorothy for the Day." But anyway, gonna try to wisely use this rare day off. Fun summer reading: Meg Cabot's Queen of Babble, which I started on the plane though should have been reading by the pool:

I wanted to know if they've got any diet Coke," I say.

Dominique makes a face. "Of course not. Why would you want to put those kinds of terrible chemicals in your body?"

Because they're delicious, I want to say. But instead I say, "Oh. Okay. Then . . . nothing."

(As an aside to that, Nichelle just told me that at a Burger King in NYC a woman requested half diet Coke and half regular Coke - that's just wrong on so many levels. Pick a side, lady, pick a side!)

And as soon as I find that cord I shall post many lovely photos of the hotel and my friends and us being silly.

My pretty harsh female domination story "His Just Rewards," inspired by someone I met what feels like ages ago but was only three years ago during the madness of 2003, is in the lovely Alison Tyler's new anthlogy Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z 4. That's about it, back to my Word docs and then a visit with my adorable baby cousin.

Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z 4

I have the silver ones

I also got these awesome Steve Madden gold shoes (no back!) to go with my gold Forever 21 dress that I wore last night. More shoe porn TK but for now:

Cupcakes and bondage

Cupcakes and bondage
Originally uploaded by rkb1.

Photo by Paul Sarkis

Maybe we'll do some cool new photos for Sex and Candy, or just for fun. I need to get one taken of me in my awesome new cupcake panties. And my "spank me" panties. Maybe in California, home of many kinky photographers. We shall see.

Guanabana, airport, etc.

I'm at the airport with funnylady Claudia Cogan (when I offered her the uneaten part of my muffin this morning, she was like "Are you giving me the muffin ass?") using the free wireless when not snacking on chocolate-covered passion fruit. We just discovered a treasure trove of fast food that we're about to explore. I'm excited to get home though could've used a few more days in the sun - the heat was so different from back home, not sticky and muggy, even though it was humid, it was just hot and beautiful. Today I ran around taking a ton of photos that I will post soon. That's about it, still recovering from last night and trying to get back into the many documents I have open, I got ideas for a bunch of smutty stories while I was away but want to bang them out so I can work on some other stuff that's more pressing.

I may even hit up another beach this summer, if only to wear my bathing suit again - normally I wind up going in the water about once a summer. So all will be well once I stop my perennial bad habits and start focusing a little bit more. One day at a time and all of that. The problem for me is not so much coming up with ideas as executing them and not quitting in frustration. For now, I just want to get home and sleep in my own bed/couch and surroundings but I had a fabulous time and was truly honored to share the weekend with everyone.

An aside - we had this fruit juice made from guanabana - it was SO good (see also Wikipedia and Flickr). The juice was white and totally sweet naturally - a lovely way to start our day, along with a bunch of other fruits, including "the fruit of love," these little round orange things. Plus fresh omelets and fish every day - I had some awesome tuna - delicious! So yes, a few days of hot sun, swimming, a big, comfy bed, and my friends was quite refreshing and will hopefully help me get through the summer. The only thing that could've been better were if the boy were there with me, though to be honest, I probably would not have been as social if I was wanting to pounce on him all the time. I'll save that for my Cali trip!

Making sense out of chaos

Or at least, I will be trying to between now and September 1st as I write the proposal for Sexual Freedom for All with the help of Miriam, umpteen scattered notes, blog posts, columns, Google, the stacks of books toppling over in piles at home, and this book:

The Art of the Book Proposal

I have to keep reminding myself that nothing else matters. Well, that's overstating it, but all the little projects I worry over are ultimately meaningless if I never get this damn book done. I am just going to try to remember that when I wake up and go to bed every day this summer to keep myself focused on actually writing something coherent.

Teaser from "Toe Job" by me

Sexiest Soles: Erotic Stories about Feet and Shoes

Delight in that delicious touch of steely stilettos...delicate arches...black motorcycle boots...sweaty size twelves. Whether it's the gentle massage of a foot rub, the suckling of tempting toes, or a very private pedicure, this naughty collection of fetish erotica has no trouble putting its best foot forward. Both risky and risque, Secret Soles will make more than an imprint on your desires.

I don't personally have a foot fetish, though certain people's shoes and feet do get me going. I actually consider it a good thing when I can write about things that aren't my particular fetish. Anyway, I wrote this story a while ago, it was published in 2004 in BUST and then I put it in Sexiest Soles cause it fit. Here you go - I may read it or another of my stories from these books at the July 19th In The Flesh:

When my shift ended, I pulled him into the now-empty coatroom where I again sat in my chair and motioned for him t kneel down in front of me. Poised above him, I thrust my foot out, commanding him with my eyes to show me what he could do. John ran a hand up my leg, from the sole of my foot up my calf, then my thigh, then pressed it against my cunt, sending waves of desire through me. He fondled me for a moment through my panties and stockings, caressing me with his thumb, before gliding his hand back down to lift my foot to his mouth. He licked and sucked my toes and the bottom of my foot, but it felt like my whole body. It was the most delicious foreplay of my life, and I was definitely ready for more.

The whole train ride to his house, he whispered into my ear all the things he wanted to do to me, and to my feet. When we finally got to his place, he knelt in front of me again and gently unbuckled each shoe as his cock twitched in delight. He drew his hand over and around each foot, stroking the exposed top and the leather before sliding his fingers between the sole of my foot and the inside of my shoe. It tickled slightly, and when I moved my foot to try to escape, he grabbed me more tightly, determined to have his fun. I don’t often like to admit it, but I enjoy being manhandled on occasion, just as much as the next tough gal. I shivered as he took charge, nuzzling and biting at my feet, obviously in some kind of sexual heaven. We played footsie for a few more minutes until we were both so ravenous for each other we couldn’t’ stand it. I thought he’d strip me bare, but he re-buckled my shoes and pushed me back onto the bed, only pushing up my skirt and pulling down my panties and stockings, the minimum clothing removal necessary.

Enough with the niceties and foot fondling, I thought, as he spread my legs wide open, lapping at me in wide, delicious strokes. He pushed a lone finger into me, teasing me as he moved it back and forth. It felt good, but by then I was ready for more. The buildup had been too much, and I was ready for whatever he had to offer me. He continued to stroke me for several minutes, adding more of his meaty fingers until I thought I would explode. My toes, my legs, my cunt, my head, my whole body tingled with anticipation and arousal.

Blowjobs, interrupted

More on the great blowjob debate of 2006 from a friend:

Even the women you've quoted and linked to who love to give head seem
to say it has to do with power and giving pleasure. And sure, that's
fun, but doesn't anyone besides me just love the actual sucking of the
actual cock? Penises are nifty. When I see a nice one, I just wanna
lick it. No one says that guys suck on nipples just to give the woman
pleasure; they do it because they dig boobies. Same phenomenon. You
know when a guy takes off his shirt and he has a beautiful body, or
awesome sixpack, or perfect little happy trail, you wanna lick it?
Right? Not for him, for you. I dig cocks. They are nice and I like to
lick them.

Fetish Chest books are out!!

My 3 Fetish Chest erotica books are all finally on sale at Amazon! I'll be posting Christopher Pierce's intros and story snippets from authors soon too, plus a sneak peak at a very special shoe-themed photo shoot.



Ultimate Undies: Erotic Stories about Underwear and Lingerie

Does her teddy make you want to do anything but sleep? Do his boxer briefs bulge in all the right places and tell a story about what he'll do to you in bed? Is her lingerie enough to land her any girl in the room? Here are thirty sexy panty play stories that won't disappoint.



Sexiest Soles: Erotic Stories about Feet and Shoes

Delight in that delicious touch of steely stilettos...delicate arches...black motorcycle boots...sweaty size twelves. Whether it's the gentle massage of a foot rub, the suckling of tempting toes, or a very private pedicure, this naughty collection of fetish erotica has no trouble putting its best foot forward. Both risky and risque, Secret Soles will make more than an imprint on your desires.



Secret Slaves: Erotic Stories of Bondage

Want to be tied up with tantalizing tales of beautiful bondage? Do handcuffs have a trusty place next to your bed? Does a coil of rope or the crack of a whip make you quiver with desire? Here are thirty sizzling stories to satisfy your desires.

Lovely

The wedding was beautiful in every way, photos TK. I even danced, which is about it for 2006 - I think last time was at Loreley. Broke my nodrinkingness and had some champagne and then rum punch. Everyone, from the bride to the bridesmaids to the guests, looked totally wonderful. I got to say hi to a baby. What could be bad? Have to steal the last few minutes of sun that I can and then pack and get ready to go.

The time has come . . .

For me to stop being a disorganized slob. Aiming for an organized one first, then the bags, then the apartment, then maybe moving out of it. But one thing at a time. So anyway, I know nada about Palms, PDAs, etc. so any advice would be much appreciated.

Basically, I write things on my hands, email reminders to myself, make daily to-do lists, and still forget things I have to do because there are just too many of them, so I want to find whatever's the cheapest, most efficient, and most effective way to keep track of all my tasks. I am also going to try to implement the whole 43 Folders thing but mainly I need something to help me remember everything, and then maybe will do that to keep track of all the paper these books, assignments, etc. seem to generate. Because what ends up happening is I carry around multiple copies of the same thing, and still can't find it, and everything just gets messy and I freak out, so anything to save time. I'm gonna be spending at many nights and weekends as I can pecking away at the keyboard but even then, I just seem to lose track of all these things. So that's it in a nutshell - any recommendations would be much appreciated (rachelkb at gmail.com) - a one time cost, versus ongoing, is preferable. I will probably still have to email reminders to myself, and part of the problem is I rarely complete my tasks so I have to keep emailing drafts to myself, so the idea is also to actually finish some shit sometimes to have less to remember. Even if this is all a pipe dream, which it very likely is, it makes me feel good to think about it and at least attempt to visualize order and productivity in my life. Then, next time I go away, hopefully to California, I can just be calm. Or, calmer. Which I really have been while I'm here,

I feel like I've been gone for a week, but just making the to do list is freaking me out and that's not good. So maybe it's not so much remembering what I have to do as figuring out how to make myself do it. I had a friend who hired a friend of hers to come sit in her office with her and basically make her get her work done - I don't think I'm that far gone yet, and my attempt at an intern kindof imploded cause I am a control freak who can't delegate, so I think that option's out, but I am also looking for ways to force myself to do this thing I supposedly love but often hate, writing. I like it when it's easy, but really despise it when it's not, or when things go awry, but I think I have to realize that it's not about loving or hating it, it's about sitting down and getting it done, no matter what. Off to a wedding now though, just some thoughts as I come off a little writing blitz, got about half an erotica story done.

Sirens mag on lingerie, espadrilles, etc.

Sirens Magazine (which now also has a blog), has new articles up of relevance to my new books Ultimate Undies and Sexiest Soles:

Laren Stover's "Lingerie: Who's It For, Anyway"

and

Love espadrilles, hate toe-loop sandals

Ultimate Undies teaser

Ultimate Undies: Erotic Stories about Underwear and Lingerie



In addition to photos, I'll also be posting story snippets from the Fetish Chest book. Here's a tiny bit from my story "Choices" in Ultimate Undies: Erotic Stories About Underwear and Lingerie:

She rubbed herself aggressively, wrapping the turquoise around her slim body, teasing her nipples by pinching them in turn between the softness as she got wetter and wetter. She longed to lift the sip above her head and slide it between her legs, let it sop up the wetness she’d been building, but she waited for Nick, even though part of her knee she was ruining the garment with her clawing and grabbing. She didn’t care, and as her breath fogged up the mirror even more, she leaned against it for comfort, coolness, support, fucking herself twofold as she finally shut her eyes and relented, gave herself up, wholly and fully, to her own urges, no one else’s. She forgot about the baby, forgot about her husband, forgot about the store and the weather and dinner. All Amber knew was the ache deep inside, the raw need to be filled, full, fucked, and she crammed a third finger inside, maneuvering her thumb to get at her swollen clit.

“Yes,” she whispered, then said it louder, her lips brushing the mirror as she spoke, the tiny word growing bigger, bolder, having greater purpose the more she spoke it her “yes” traveled from her lips on down, resounding along her flushed chest, her proud nipples, past her stomach to where she needed it most. The “yes” seemed to slip onto her fingers, to become something more than three little letters as she kept saying it over and over as her fingers merged with her flesh, wet and urgent until they homed in on what they needed. “YES,” she finally cried out, the noise coinciding with the crash of the open door as Nick walked in. He heard the finally cry, but couldn’t quite figure out what it meant.

Cheap flights from NYC to SF??

Does anyone know of any good deals, sites, or airlines to fly from NY (any of the 3 airports) to Oakland or SF? It would be for a Friday-Monday. I've been trying Expedia, Orbitz and Jetblue and the cheapest flights I'm seeing (this is 3+ weeks in advance) are $375/$400, which I could do, but would love to find something cheaper so any suggestions are greaty appreciated - rachelkb at gmail.com

I have go visit the boy so I can do things I can't on the phone, like wash his dishes.

Costa Rica is quite lovely, yesterday we saw muchos monos (photos TK) and went to the beach, it's bright and early (8 am) now and I'm off to the pool. I'd thought I had forgotten my digital camera but it was in my bag. I did manage to lose a black hoodie on the plane and forget to return a towel yesterday to the tune of $25, but I so don't even care at this point. It's truly like paradise here and the pool goes on and on and on. And I think today I will get to play Boggle. I finally bought my own set so I can play whenever I want!