The end of the Lusty Lady column in The Village Voice

I got a call yesterday morning from David Blum, the editor-in-chief of The Village Voice, saying that my next Lusty Lady column will be my last. They are hiring someone else to write a column is the impression I got. He mentioned the life span of a column like mine, and I guess mine lived out its welcome. He did leave the door open to continue writing for the Voice, but I think I'm ready for new venues. So, if you hear of anyone looking for a sex columnist, let me know. There's a part of me, though, that even though I'll miss my favorite writing job ever, will not miss the baggage that comes with those two words. I won't miss being introduced as a sex columnist to people and seeing how their expression changes instantly, seeing the leering assumptions spring to life. I won't miss the ways I sometimes went out of my way to live up to them even when I wanted to be as far from every stereotype that implies as possible. I'll be thrilled if no one ever makes a totally lazy, ridiculous Carrie Bradshaw comparison ever again. Make no mistake - I'm going to miss writing the column, but I'm on the lookout for new venues, new ways to make sex writing fresh for me. I'm honored that I got the chance to cover so many topics, for the opportunity granted to me by Doug Simmons, for the chance they took on me based largely on a poem (and I am not a poet), on the very thorough editing I received, especially from Elizabeth Zimmer, who taught me to spare the "that"s and to tease out what I was really trying to say.

I log into my gmail chat on my laptop to see the words "grateful grateful grateful" taunting me. Yes, I wrote them, and a friend immediately asks what I'm grateful for. My mind is a blank, that day's daze still blurring any coherent thoughts I have as something so important to me slips away. I don't want to be grateful at this moment. I'm not gonna lie, I want to be sad and angry and petulant. I'm going to miss writing the Lusty Lady column for the Village Voice very much. Not only because my friend Alex used to bring me back the Voice from her music classes every week, where we'd scour the classified ads and think we were the height of sophisticated artiness at our suburban NJ high school. Not only because I was able to cover such a vast range of topics and had several more fun ones lined up, ones I'll be looking for new homes for. Not only because of the incredibly feedback, on both sides, I got, feedback that taught me just how wide a readership the paper has and taught me the value (and the disdain) for which readers have for writing about sex. It's all those things, but I think most of all is that at first I had no idea what I was doing. I wrote about myself and then my friends and then gradually learned to incorporate both myself and the world around me.
1. So, grateful? So much so that I am absolutely bowled over by what Violet Blue had to say at her blog. Thank you to Gawker, Babeland, and Viviane for your public well wishes, and everyone who wrote to me, especially those I don't know what well who saw it on Gawker. I'll be fine and already have a few possibilities for what I will do next with all the ideas I've cooked up and been plotting about for a while. I'm grateful that I know what I don't want to do - cheap, easy sex, where everything is photo-finish perfect, where the goal is not to think but only to feel, or look, or keep up with the latest big thing. I got to write about the simply fun to the intensely personal, utterly explicit and the utterly political and the moments where those collided and those are what I want to pursue. There were times when I was petrified of writing about me because, while cathartic, there is a point where people seem to read too much into those writings, thinking they know me, literally, inside and out. I struggled with that because while it's a compliment to the writing, I wasn't sure I could deal with all those expectations, which blended into my personal life.

I've changed a lot, too, since October 2004. My goals, what I want out of sex, out of writing, out of life, have changed. Sometimes, to myself, I think of it as babies over blowjobs, even though I know it shouldn't have to be such a stark choice. I just told someone who I had what is very likely the hottest sex of my whole life that I don't want to see them again, even though my body is berating me for that choice because I will miss the jumping-off-a-cliff sensation of entering into a sexual world with this person that feels so sensual and just a little scary all at once. It's the right choice for me, because they're not looking to be in a relationship right now, and while I wouldn't say I'm "looking," I know that that arrangement isn't suitable for where I'm at in my life. Alas. It's a shame but also a sign to me that I can make those hard choices when I need to. And a reminder that I deserve hot sex like that, not lackluster sex just for the sake of being with someone. It's those tough decisions, along with the thrill of discovering new things about my own turn-ons even after I've been having sex for 14 years, that keep me going, that make me know there will always be things to write about, though most likely I will be doing a lot of that in fictional form, where I can really get to the heart of the beauty of that kind of totally transformative sex.

I'm sad that I didn't get any warning. I'm not going to go back and berate myself, but in the future, I will give it my all, I will write from the heart and the brain and the pussy all mixed together, because they are. What I learned from the Girl With a One-Track Mind saga is that none of us only have pure one-track minds, though existing in that heightened state of sexual arousal, of pure, all-consuming lust, of desire heightened to the nth degree, is delicious. I applaud that, I'm not knocking it, and yes, I want it for myself. But there are other things I want and if I'd been giving a little notice, I certainly wouldn't have ended on the note that I did - the next one's about Dana DeArmond, which is fine, but just not what I'd have ended on, but I can only go forward, not backward. I might have written something like this (though fyi, this is totally stream of consciousness, first draft, what you see is what you get, blog style, but I think that quality, of me not always rushing back to sound more erudite, of not erasing the things that sound perhaps dorky or earnest or silly, is what many liked about my column. "Human" was a word I got a lot, which I'd brush aside, because aren't we all? but now I say thank you, I'm grateful for that too):

I love sex. A lot. But maybe not in the ways you think. I love sex because it's so versatile, it's seemingly everywhere and yet so many of us are looking for it, begging for it, confused about it. It can take us so long to figure out who we are sexually, what we want, and then comes the hurdle of finding someone (or someones) to share that with. And not just share, but exchange, know, submit, get lost in, transform. The best sex I've had is not just the kind that leaves my body aching for more, but that changes me from who I was before. I was just reading an article about CAKE by Virginia Vitzthum where she posits that instead of looking to outside entertainment for sexual empowerment, we should look to having sex, to the power of experience to teach us and pleasure us.

I think it's not an either/or situation. Some of us may learn by doing, some by watching, some by listening. I've learned not to knock anyone's preferred mode of sexual rapport, even if I can critique it and maybe find it offensive or icky or strange on some level. I can do that while also respecting their desires. I've had to think about ways of getting off that might never have occurred to me, and those fascinate me. That's why I was planning to write about hair color fetishes (from wigs to brunettes) and accents (from the non-sexiness of the Boston accent to someone who gets wet just hearing a British one). Those are my favorite kind of stories because they turn sex on its head and are not about anything that's fed to us as "sexy" but stem from a variety of sources.

I will still sit around at parties and talk about what turns people on. I will still be eminently curious about what makes someone an "ass man" or a "breast man." I will still listen with bated breath as friends grab my hand and whisper in my ear and ask questions. I will still smile when people write to me asking about spicing up their sex lives, or when my 70+ year old relative confesses that she and her husband read erotica to each other.

I said I love sex in the first line, but I don't even know how to define it exactly, and that's okay. Sex is everywhere and more power to those who find it in the offbeat, in the places they were once ashamed or afraid of. For me, sex is and has been so many things and I've learned so much about myself through sex, the doing and the writing. I'm the kind of person who overthinks everything, who's liable to live so inside her head and analyze encounters so minutely I almost take the fun out of them, and sex is one area where I can often let go of those overly analytical ways. Sure, they come back with a vengeance when I'm done, but it's led me to moments of both awed discovery and utter heartbreak.

Sex, I've learned, is saying yes, and saying no. It's getting turned on by the sound of someone's voice when they have no idea their tone is making you touch yourself. It's getting slapped across the face and being so completely aroused you want more and more and more. It's watching a madly-in-love couple screw themselves silly right next to you and looking on proudly. It's watching your lover sleep and debating whether to wake them with kisses or just admire their resting form. It's lusting after bulging breasts even when all you want to do is bury your head between them. It's ordering someone to jerk off in front of you and having them instantly leap into action. It's making out on the street and getting catcalled. It's figuring out just how far you'll have to go to get that person into your bed. It's wrestling with the fantasies running amok in your head, the ones that are scorchingly hot precisely because they don't make sense. It's crushing out in a way that makes your whole body come alive. It's dirty emails that promise so much more than they can deliver, except then they do.

But it's also the downside - it's being told not to talk in bed, it's being told not to write about the things happening in your life, it's discovering your lover's been cheating on you through the most rudimentary uses of technology, it's people not wanting to use condoms, it's "dates" that may or may not be, it's lovers who don't reciprocate, it's the growing threats to reproductive rights, it's getting carried away and trying to bring yourself back to the brink.

I love sex because as a topic it never gets old, and not just because my Google news alert tells me so every day. Even though part of me wonders if this is not an opportunity to find new topics to cover, and makes me fervently hope I am never again looked to as a "sex expert," because I'm the farthest thing fromt hat you could get, I know I won't be able to stay away. I want to write about former dykes, sex and cuddling, hotel room sex, accents, nerds, hair color, vacation sex, sex addiction. I want to write about Plan B, Steinbuch v. Cutler, anti-vibrator laws, sex work and submissive men.

I wouldn't have room to recount the absurd assumptions people have made about my work and about sex, but I will say that it never gets old not because "sex sells." It never gets old because no matter what your personal proclivities, we're all interested in what sex is and what it can be. Not just "More Orgasms! Harder! Faster!" as a publisher once wanted me to write a book about, but how sex changes us and how truly complex it is. I think we like to put people in little boxes, like the Weeds song says, as a way to write people off. You're kinky, you're not. You're straight, you're not. You're married, you're not. You're a woman, you're not. And by making these demarcations disguised as definitions, it's easier to look at people as one-dimensional, to think you've got them figure out in the blink of an eye when, chances are, you have no idea what their sex life is like. I was always a fan of the "hidden" sex people, the ones who I both admired and envied, because you can't Google their kinkiness. You don't see it in their clothes or demeanor. You have to dig a little for it. You can to be patient and listen and ask to find out where they're willing to go, or want to go.

So I'm not going to stop writing about sex. Or thinking about it. Or, despite a half-joking New Year' s Resolution to myself, doing it. I can't stay away. I'm horny for more because there is always more. And just as I've learned not to make predictions or presumptions about my own sex life, I can't make any about the future of my sex writing career. I cover lots of other topics, too, but sex blasts everything open. I think sometimes people think maybe I'm "just into spanking," but the truth is, I'm so open. I want to find out what turns me on that I would never know about until the right person came along. I want to know if being pregnant will put me in the mood (in a few years). I want to know what it's like to go farther than I ever have. But I also still want to hear from you. Yes, all the "you"s who've contacted me over the last two-plus years, from such farflung places as Turkey and Israel and even Wisconsin. I'm so much the better for knowing your takes on things, for reading even when I can't offer any advice. For knowing where I've gone astray and where I've fed the kernel of an idea that made you look at a given sexual topic in a new way.

I will share my 13 (a random number, just the ones I wound up picking) favorite columns, and I assume they will continue to be archived online:

Spanking Jessica Cutler

Meet the Boobiesexuals

Fucking and Feminism

Spanker's Delight

Long Live Blowjob Nation

I'm Pro-Choice and I Fuck

Sex Lives of Comedians

Like a Virgin

USC's Topless Professor (in part cause it got linked by Instapundit)

Casual-Sex Myths

Gay Until Penetration

Cock Size Obsession

Hot Sex With a Porn Director