5 new articles on sex and shame, fisting, adult preschool, Mariel Hemingway and Woody Allen and Becoming Steve Jobs

I've been writing a lot, with more on the way. Usually I post them separately, but this week is crunch time so here are 5 very different pieces I published this week:

"Why Do We Feel So Ashamed About Sex?" at DAME, touching on Monica Lewinsky's TED Talk and the recent documentary Inside Her Sex



Fisting for beginners in Philadelphia City Paper

Why I totally understand the appeal of adult preschool at Thought Catalog

And two topics outside my usual wheelhouse, for Salon (one more is coming for them that's about a topic I've been following for a while):

On Mariel Hemingway and Woody Allen and age and consent

Why Apple executives are wrong to insist Becoming Steve Jobs is a definitive biography

Sex diary: The Female First-Time Fistee

This week's sex diary at Daily Intel features an almost date rape (disturbing) and a first-time fisting between a man and a woman. The Female First-Time Fistee.

And if you enjoyed it, I'd love it if you'd like it on Facebook. You can check out prior sex diaries here.

If you’re a New Yorker who’s over 18 and would like to be considered to write a Sex Diary (yes, it pays), email sexdiaries at nymag.com and let us know what types of sex your diary would entail. And please do pass this on to anyone who wants to be an anonymous literary exhibitionist. Thanks!

I didn't title it "Fisting: A Love Story" but I could have

From my story "Espionage" in Best Women's Erotica 2011 by Violet Blue. I used all sorts of devices I don't normally - second person, a tense I'm not even sure what it's called ("In a few minutes, you will emerge..."). It's dark yet it's a love story, for sure. When I'm feeling down about how my writing isn't going as planned, sometimes I pick up this story and reread it. I'm making my way through the whole book, too. It's a keeper, and a great holiday gift for that special someone. Kindof funny because the one I wrote for Obsessed (my 2011 erotic romance anthology) is not this intense at all. It's more lighthearted, fun, but the love is there too. It takes all kinds, I guess, to quote an Aimee Mann song.

You are ready, so, so ready, and you take them in greedily, followed by four. His other hand finds places to pinch you—inner thigh, belly—as you open for him, spreading your legs as far as you can, willing yourself to relax. You—the part of you that makes these decisions—want this, want this final time, this heat, this heaviness, but your body is more cautious, closing around his fingers as the thumb attempts entry. Your body, your cunt, knows he is almost too large to fit inside but you have overruled your body before, turning pain into the most dazzling of erotic highs. This is not like the times he’s held you down and shoved his cock inside you, shocked you with the bluntness of it, making you play catchup. He can’t hurry this along. Instead he rotates his fingers and adds more lube and you grunt and bite your lip and feel him get a little further inside.

He goes in, and in, and in, thumb curled up and then there it is, the ball of his hand, this giant inside you. You’ve heard that the human heart is actually the size of a hand, and wonder if, right now, he is giving you a part of his heart, a part that is only for you, a part you can treasure as you feel its outline pressing the tender, thin walls of your pussy wider and wider. The tears come—of fear, relief, pleasure, love—all at once, and you are grateful for the dark. He can hear them, that’s fine, but seeing them is another story. Seeing them is a little too close for comfort. You lie there on the floor of the closet, stealing more than your seven minutes in a kinky kind of heaven, as his massive heart of a hand reels you in and lets you go. His other hand finds your clit, so hard and aching it could be a cock, and you think you’ll hurt him when you come like that, squeezing so tight, the energy rushing all around, making your fingers tingle and your head so light it could float away. You see stars behind your eyes and have to drop your legs to the ground. His hand makes love to you, makes love appear inside of you even as you know this has to be the end. You want all of him, all the potential he has to love someone, and this is just a teaser.

“I’m going to pull out,” he says after what could be three minutes, or thirty. You want to protest, because once he’s gone, the emptiness will be so huge you know that sex will never be enough to fill it. You reach for his wrist and he lets you take it, lets you half sit up and keep him there. There’s a stillness to this all, a calm, Zenlike focus combined with the way it makes your pussy take over everything. You can feel him shaking, are sure he is sweating, and you take your fill of him, then lie back and let him leave. The silence is not deafening, but awe-inspiring. You break it by leaning against his chest, listening to his heart beat. You manage to block out all the noise outside the closet.

Bluestockings' Sexy Pride Erotica reading was a success!

Many thanks to Brooke at Bluestockings for inviting me to read there. The store is awesome; there were so many books I coveted, but I settled on Ariel Schrag's amazing senior year of high school in comic form Likewise and a copy of $pread magazine.


I bought 100 mini cupcakes from Baked by Melissa for the reading and they were a huge hit, plus I heard about two new (to me) places to get cupcakes, in Queens and Brooklyn.


Bluestockings had a fabulous selection of my and the readers' books


Sinclair Sexsmith read hot poetry (and has a chapbook for sale)


Charlie Vazquez read a hot gay erotica story about street baseball from Fast Balls: Erotic Stories About America's Favorite Pastime


Kathleen Warnock read about old friends who share a very steamy phone call


Bevin Branlandingham read about fisting in the woods (sorry about the blurriness)

Thanks to everyone who came out!

I read my story "Fist First" from Up All Night: Adventures in Lesbian Sex, my very first book (and it shows) from back in 2004. I had brought two other potential stories, but when I saw the book there, I decided to read that. That story is pretty old, and took place in, I think, 2001, but still held up. One woman told me afterward that she related, which made me feel like it had done its job.

It was so strange to see it in the store. I don't blog about it much because I was very naïve and took a $1,000 flat fee from Alyson to co-edit the book with Stacy Bias (though in reality, I did almost all, if not all, the selecting and editing). It was presented to me as a done deal (Stacy had signed her contract that way). In retrospect, I'd be thousands of dollars better off had I taken no advance and asked for royalties, but I didn't know back then. I also have no idea how it's sold...because I don't get royalty statements, though a few years ago I had someone check on Bookscan and had heard via word of mouth that it was doing well.

The point is, I'm so glad I know better now, and that Cleis Press would never think of asking me to edit books for no royalties. (I do get royalties for my Alyson anthology First-Timers, and would on the Fetish Chest series of Ultimate Undies, Sexiest Soles and Secret Slaves...if anyone had bought them. Oh well.) That's why I like editing anthologies, because even if you mess up, there is always a next time, a chance to figure out what went wrong, sales or marketing or topic-wise, and do better.

And even though I only got that measly $1,000, having that book become a Lambda Literary Award finalist and just having it out there helped put me on the map as an erotica editor and get me other gigs, so in many ways, it was worth it, but is a shame and I wouldn't recommend anyone agree to those terms unless it's strictly a work-for-hire type thing, or you don't expect it to sell, or whatever. Also, having someone advise you in those situations (not necessarily an agent for $1,000, that also doesn't really make financial sense), but someone to look things over and point out anything you may have missed in the contract, is probably a good idea too. Said all in hindsight, of course.

I'm working on finalizing a date for a fall reading at WORD in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and would love to teach Erotica 101 in NYC again, if I can find a host. I'm reading at Charlie Vazquez's PANIC! reading series at Nowhere Bar (14th Street between 1st and 2nd) on August 26th too.