"On my 31st birthday, I gave my boyfriend two blowjobs..."

Hear me read what comes next in my essay "Where Sluts Fear to Tread" from Lisa Solod's forthcoming Seal Press anthology Desire: Women Write About Wanting at True Sex Confessions Night, April 18th, 2007, at In The Flesh Erotic Reading Series. I've pulled out a few choice lines here, and will of course remind you when the book comes out (I'm assuming later this year or early 2008)). For now, we have this video excerpt.



Does it mean I’m not marriage material if I’ve not only given many blowjobs, but enjoyed most of them as well?

Sometimes I do things "for my career," or whatever. This is one of them. I'll be adding some of the others' videos once I get their approval. It's really, really surreal to hear and watch myself like this, reading a piece that I have no problem seeing in print, one I wrote during the last few weeks of my last relationship. But I'm putting it up despite whatever embarrassment I may feel both as a way to promote In The Flesh, as a way to give myself an accurate sense of how I speak in public. I know I shake, my voice is higher and squeakier than I think I normally sound. I know I get nervous, and I was really uncertain while reading this, trying to read it with the same passion that I wrote it, but knowing that was impossible. I'm different, my life is different, but that's the thing with writing...it's momentary. The minute you put words down they change, and you change. They change you. That's the beauty and also the...darkness. It's why, say, a blog, is so of-the-moment. It's ephemeral and yet eternal (thank you, Google). It's important to me to capture those moments even if, I'll admit, there's plenty of my words online and around that I wish I could erase, not so much because of the writing quality, as because I'm not there anymore. But I was, and to me, this kind of personal writing remains powerful becaues it captures feelings that really only stood out to me as I fleshed them out in writing. It was this a-ha moment of weirdness. A sex columnist in a monogamous relationship worried about being too slutty? WTF?

...'If you seem like a pro, you might be a ‘ho.’”

But, and there's always a but...that was/is me. It's a line I (and, I'm sure, plenty of other women) walk and the reason I think that essay resonates, for me anyway, is that it's not about him, but about me. It's about issues that I have with my sexuality, it's about an uncertainty I certainly still face, perhaps even moreso now than then. And for me it's pretty new; I think in some ways I was more carefree about sex in my twenties and now sometimes I want to act all "Sex? Me? What? I'm all about cupcakes and babies." Okay, not really, and my writing career is infinitely sluttier than I am, but it gets confusing, especially with lovers you want to impress, lovers you want to feel the same way about you as you do about them. I have my own inner good girl who sometimes dukes it out with the more real me. I wish I could say I never think about these things, but I do.

...there are slutty demons that lurk in the far reaches of my mind, waiting to capture me in their clutches.

I threw out on here that it was about "blowjobs and nipples," and yes, on the surface it is. But what it's really about is sexual freedom and the tricky ways that freedom plays itself out, the ways women judge ourselves, our bodies, our sex lives, the really insidious roots of the word "slut." It's about wanting to be passionate but not being sure how. It's about showing love and lust and not knowing what you'll get in return. I'm not going to say it's universal, but I know it's not just me and it's not that it's an altruistic thing, it's more of a "throw it out there and see what happens" thing.

I don’t necessarily think of it as a skill like typing 100 WPM or being a whiz at Boggle.

That being said, taking a reading out of the context of that bar, that audience, the food, the crowd, the atmosphere, means it's lacking. Those readings are special in part because of the attentive audience, the energy in the room, the eager anticipation which, I've been very pleased to say, isn't pervy so much as curious, friendly, fascinated. I have no idea what the YouTube crowd will make of it. I have my own qualms but it's worth it, I think. I hope. Let me know what you think. I almost wrote "be gentle," but I'm a big girl, I can take it. More YouTubing from True Sex Confessions Night TK.