Lucy Felthouse

I thought about the reason why I didn’t want a revealing photo or piece of writing online. It’s because I write under my own name, you see. If I used a pseudonym, a piece of writing would never be linked to me, unless I wanted it to be. And as for a photo, if it didn’t show my face, then nobody would ever know it was me. That’s why I was having so much trouble coming up with an angle.

But now I’ve found it, I’m going to run with it. Even without nudey photos or explicit true-life scribblings, using my own name as an erotic writer exposes me. Not with other writers in the same field, oh no. They get it. They’re a great bunch and it’s a great community to be a part of.

It’s the non-writers, and even worse, non-readers that give me trouble. And if they’re old fashioned to boot, then I’m really in trouble.

As we’ve established, I write mucky stories. I’ve written them on many different themes; sex outdoors, sex in uniform, phone sex, sex with a woman and even sex with a guy delivering grocery shopping. Those who don’t get it assume that because I write all these erotic stories, I must have lived them. They don’t get that it’s possible to have an imagination, know how things work “down there” and be able to put the two together to come up with erotic stories which (I hope) other people enjoy reading.

Of course I haven’t had sex on an army base (more’s the pity). Neither have I had it off with the guy delivering my shopping. And I’ve never dabbled in Sapphic delights. These are all just ideas. That’s all it takes – a little spark of an idea and a story is born. Naturally, some of these ideas may come from real life, but real life is rarely as exciting as fiction, which is why so many people read it in the first place – escapism!

I’ve been asked lots of daft questions to do with my writing – which you can see in more detail here. Luckily, I’m thick-skinned and am able to laugh most of them off. Even more luckily, most of the people I choose to tell about my extra-curricular smut-mongering take it pretty well. That’s probably because I’ve sussed out what I think their reaction will be before hitting them with the news. I suspect many of them Google me the first chance they get and read some of the stuff I’ve posted online. They may even enjoy it. But I also suspect that, however cool they appeared on the surface, some of them probably wonder whether I have lived my stories, where I get my ideas from, and whether I’ve ever written a story about them, or someone we know. To be honest, I don’t mind any more. It’s what I do and the people that do get it are the important ones; the readers. And for those I am thankful.

Long live erotica, I say.

Oh, and though I won’t post a naughty photo, I don’t want my post to just be text. So here’s a photo of me with some books my stories have appeared in. And as to whether the ideas came from real life, well… nobody will ever know, will they?

Anon

Call me Anonymous.

Once upon a time, much of erotica was attributed to ‘Anonymous’, and it continued that way for several reasons, not least the fact that it means than on bookshop shelves books by Anonymous can be most easily found at the beginning of the alphabet. But that’s not the reason I’ve adopted the convenient pseudonym today.

I am a middle-aged male writer of erotica. I have also been a serial adulterer, a liar and a man who leads several lives. I have repeatedly had sex with other women I was attracted to, whether physically or intellectually, against the moral dictates of normal society. I have also had sexual relationships with men, even though I would not normally describe myself as bisexual. When it comes to men, I don’t even remember their faces, let alone even attempt to learn their names, and my only memory is of their cocks and the way they fucked me. But every single woman is etched like a scar in my memory, in my soul. They are all unforgettable, however brief the encounter, the sex.

I have even slept with two female writers of erotica with whom I have shared pages in anthologies. One still is a good friend, even though we only had sex that once; we were lonely, and there was a glimpse of recognition, and we comforted each other one sunny afternoon in New York. The sex was good and she tells me that as a result she felt like a woman again and shortly after left her husband and started her life again. I don’t flatter myself that I was that good a lover; any man right there and then would have helped her unblock the frustrations that were paralysing her life.

The other was someone I had briefly corresponded with, and then flirted heavily with online and we decided ‘what the hell’ and decided to meet. She lived on the other side of the world and we met in a city that was more or less a halfway distance for both of us. The reality was at first a bit awkward but we spent a week and fucked like rabbits in a hotel room. We even had anal sex. After we parted and returned to our realities, we briefly wrote to each other again but it soon fizzled out and it’s now been almost 10 years and we have not communicated since. She no longer writes erotica, to the best of my knowledge.

Why am I cloaked behind the veil of anonymity when all previous participants to F-Stop have not done so? Sadly we now live in a world where Google Alert and search engines can in some instances prove highly dangerous. I have a wife and children and I would rather they stay in ignorance of some of the true facts about my other lives. I wish to preserve a form of status quo and not create unhappiness or at worst incomprehension. Of course they know I write material of an erotic nature. My children seldom read what I write (whether in the erotic sphere or elsewhere) and my wife only does so occasionally, and although I know she must necessarily have some suspicions, she prefers to think I have a valiant imagination, which is both flattering to my ego and reassuring. She is aware of at least one past affair and I long ago resolved not to hurt her and protect her from my terrible wanderlust. Deceit ever eats away at my guts, I assure you but I try and live with it. I am sadly aware how imperfect I am with my ever-growing web of deceits, and ask you not to pass judgement; cast the first stone and all that…

The irony is that I am one of the few male erotic writers (and yes, we are in a distinct minority) who does not use a pseudonym, because I strongly believe that I have to be honest to myself in my writing and not hide behind another name!

Now, this probably means that many of you reading these lines (this confession?) will recognize who I actually am and I will not in any way be ashamed of the fact. But I would ask you, if you feel like making comments, not to mention my real name there; feel free to write to me privately if you wish, that would not be a problem. Add the fact that even though my photographs do not feature my face, some of you who have come across me socially or professionally might recognise my build or something of my appearance even though, with the exception of the two writers mentioned above, they have only seen me clothed! I can just imagine so many of you speculating right now as to who I actually am. You may; it’s harmless, and if it makes you feel like Sherlock Holmes, I’m happy for you.

Why have I supplied some nude photographs to illustrate this article? Again, I strive for absolute honesty.  In life as in my writing. Were I just displaying a dubious touch of exhibitionism, I would have arranged for better photographs or asked someone reliable and more talented as a photographer to take them and make me look somewhat better, or at more flattering advantage. Or waited until after the summer vacations for my skin to be a bit tanned and less white and pasty.

I am no longer young. I carry more weight than I should normally, even though I am stocky by build. But this is me. Neither Brad Pitt nor Frankenstein. These are my hands, this is my chest, these are my arms and my legs. This is my cock at rest.

There is also, I know, something sordid about the sheer everyday ordinariness of the photographs, like some unimaginative pervert who wishes to show himself off on Craigslist or whichever dubious Internet contact site of your preference. That’s the way I wanted it to be.

I find it ironic that for the reasons stated above I should be headless following all the recent controversy about the nudity of women under the male gaze in the debate about headless women on the covers of many of the books we all appear in, so here I am, with a faint smile (of course unseen on the photographs) and not a little trepidation offered to the female gaze, in view of the fact that I am well aware that a large majority of erotica writers and readers are women. These photos are not erotic in any way, just a reflection of reality. Sorry, I am not a hunk (and never was).

The American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, who has always been a great influence on me, literally wrote hundreds of short stories. Scores of them were written for slick magazines just for the money and their quality fluctuates wildly. But, even in his worst efforts, there was always something, a line, a paragraph, a character, a situation that we know was a genuine part of him, a cry for recognition, something that was dear to his heart. Similarly, much of what I write (I’ll leave the quality judgement to readers) contains a part of me and, in my erotica, a window into my other lives and my sexuality. How could it not be?

I don’t mean by this that everything I write is autobiographical.

But neither is it all a fabric of personal fantasies, or wish fulfilment scenarios – like too much of what is written and published these days as erotica.

Not one of my illicit sexual encounters with women was purely about sex.

I swear.

And, thinking back, the fewer ones with men were more about experience, curiosity, wanting to know what it could feel like to be a woman, a paradoxical way to understand women better by sharing their sexual experience, a desperate attempt of sorts to identify with the female side of sexuality. Being me, I one day reached the stage where I desperately wanted to know what it felt like for a woman to suck a cock (my cock) and later to actually be fucked, penetrated. Physiologically, the experience is of course different, but what beckoned me was the psychological, intellectual feeling it would provide me with, the insights it could give me into the minds and hearts of the women I had known and those I would hope to know one day. Hence the fact that when I have been with men, it has always in a way been as object: my only interest in them was as cocks able to fuck me or to suck, I had no interest in them as persons. Do I hear the word ‘objectify’?

Whileas every woman I have been with has been an epiphany, a celebration of the senses and mind, and every single encounter has informed what I write even if the circumstances, the names, the sexual mechanics, the situations have been transformed by the alchemy of fiction.

I love women, i love sex with women, but more importantly I relish the closeness, the words said and unsaid of sex together, the complicity, the raging lust, the emotions shared.

I think it was Bob Dylan who came up with the expression ‘I am what I eat’ or maybe it was said of him. In my case, I am those I have fucked.

Despite my unwitting career of infidelity and sexual dalliances I have never had sex with a woman just for the sake of it. I’ve always wanted more. Much more. Which has been both a blessing and a curse as I have repeatedly fallen in love hard with many of my clandestine partners, thus precipitating a variety of problems and all too often sadly our eventual break-ups. Yes, I might be kidding myself or seeking some form of justification for my actions, when I say that it is possible to love more than one woman at a time. But it’s genuinely the way I feel. Let me expose myself even further: on two occasions, two lasting affairs, I (we?) even reached the stage where I was almost hours or a few days at most away from abandoning my marriage, my life at the time, commitments, job to run away with the other woman involved. In one instance, she was married to another and he found out, which put a painful spanner in the works when he asked her to choose between him and me, between 10 years of marriage and what was still too much of an unknown factor. On the other occasion, I was the one who hesitated too long to fully commit strongly although my heart said yes yes yes because I was crumbling under the weight of our age difference (she was half mine, and so beautifully young…).

And neither am I seeking extenuating circumstances when I say that, as much as I have given in to lust and been with so many women I shouldn’t have, I have also turned down as many opportunities for sex that presented themselves. Because they would have been pointless, or held no promise of emotions, of a connection somehow. Believe me when I say (or believe) that I’m not promiscuous.

So, this far from perfect life I have had has made me the writer of erotica that I am. In every story I have penned there is always something that originates in my life, whether the memories of a body, a smile, a hotel room, a beach, the feel of skin under my fingers, the shape of a breast, the awesome first vision of a new cunt. What I try and write is ever a celebration, however bittersweet, of the fruits my past lust, and the way my heart opened to women.

For several months now, I must confess that I have been celibate–at any rate, in the infidelity stakes. Lack of opportunities, mental tiredness, loss of seductive powers? I still flirt from time to time, in life or online, with a handful of possible female friends (albeit none in the world of literary erotica) with a view to a real life encounter but the will and the energy appear to be fading. Maybe because every new experience takes a lot out of me when the parting has to come, possibly? Too much time for reflection. Which has had a marked effect on what I have been writing. I have written a couple of handfuls of new stories over the past 18 months, which I believe are strong and amongst my best. Inspired by eyes and bodies past, things said and things done with beautiful souls I have now lost forever. But some of these stories are surprisingly extreme, even to me. One shocked me even when I read it on publication earlier this year (it was not actually published as erotica, for all you would be detectives…). Another, which is just about to appear in an anthology this autumn, is contradictorily one of my least autobiographical tales (it’s a first person female narrator) but also one of the most personal, and it scared me writing it. Somehow I just can’t see how much further I can go before I breach good taste, let alone taboos. The editor commented that I had just written the ’Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ of erotica!

So I feel I am at at sort of crossroads.

I have always had a covenant with myself that I would always write with total honesty, not fudge matters when it comes to that confused borderline between reality and fantasies. In a way, all my writing has been a way of exorcising my demons, I suppose, a form of catharsis.

If I can’t write about my reality, there is no point in writing.

Erotica is not just about sex, it’s about feelings.

Wonderful feelings, terrible feelings, important feelings.

The feelings that keep me metaphorically alive.

Maybe this short essay will be my final contribution to the world of erotica. I don’t know. Right now, I feel empty. I recently read again some of the stories I’ve published over the years and some of it fills me with joy because it reminds me of her and her and her and happier times.

Will there be another unwitting muse, another accidental encounter, further adultery and consequently new stories? Time will tell.

These are my naked words.

This is my naked body.

This is me.

Naked.

*

Kirsty Logan: Naked on the Internet

Most people in my life don’t know that I’m naked on the internet. It’s not a big secret – if they were to ask, I’d be honest about it. But they never do ask, of course: I suppose I just don’t seem like the type of person who would have got their tits out on camera. I’m not entirely sure what such a person would be like, but I don’t think it’s me.

When I was 18, I did about ten nude photo shoots over the course of six months. They were pretty tame; art students or amateur photographers rather than porn barons. The photos are probably still out there, but I don’t really think about them. The woman I am now, at 26, is not the same girl I was at 18. I have seen the photos and I know logically that those are my nipples and my ankles and my hips, but to look at they could be any of the thousands of other naked girls on the internet. The only reason I know it’s really me is that the girl in the photos has my face and my tattoos.

I recently confessed all by writing a personal essay about my nude modelling, which you can read at The Rumpus. I linked to it on my website and social networks, which are read by my friends, family, acquaintances, students in my adult learning classes, and fellow writers. It was my ‘coming out’: telling them without having to actually tell them.

The decision on whether to include photos was a tricky one. I wanted to confess; I wanted to show that I had no reason to be ashamed or secretive about this aspect of my past. Including pictures made it seem like I was trying to titillate, but I included them anyway; a decision I’m still not sure about. The photos made me feel naked – not in the sense that they show my skin, but in the sense that I was admitting to the world that I had liked to be looked at, and perhaps I still did. The photos said that this 26 year-old woman wasn’t so different from the 18 year-old girl after all.

Back then, I wanted attention. I wanted people to look at me and think that I was worth their time. Taking my clothes off seemed like a short cut: everyone wants to look at nude 18 year-olds. Now I don’t get naked for attention, but I do wonder whether my writing is based on the same need for recognition. Perhaps I still need people to say that I am worth their time. And because it takes longer to read a story than to look at a photo, maybe I feel that I am progressing.

I am a 26 year-old woman creating worlds with words, and I am an 18 year-old girl with goosebumped skin and a lens trained on my breasts, and I am a child stamping her foot and screaming look! look at what I made! look at who I am!

All of this is hard for me to admit. I am a feminist. I am educated. I am trying to make a living by being terribly clever and writing terribly clever things, and so I do not like to admit that I am just a scared and needy teenager underneath it all. But then, aren’t we all? Everyone is scared that they are going to get ‘found out’. That someone will come up to them one day and say: “You don’t know what you’re talking about, do you?” Because we all do know what we’re doing, but at the same time we have no fucking clue. Life is a series of bluffs.

I admit everything in my writing – everything – because if I reveal myself then no-one can do it for me. If I say: “Yes, I am totally fucking clueless and this whole thing is a just guesswork,” then no-one can catch me out. I confess! My ivory tower is full of empty biscuit wrappers and crumpled pieces of paper! I am a fraud!

It’s all a defence. It’s the strength of walls. I can’t be found out if I’ve already told everything. So yes, I am an attention-seeker. I need people to read what I have written and tell me that it was worth their time. But who doesn’t? Would we really scrawl on the walls of our cells if we knew it was all going to be washed away by the rain before anyone could see it?

I do this for me, and I do this for you. I am building a life, and I am building myself. I do it this way because I don’t know what else to do.

Learn more about Kirsty Logan at http://www.kirstylogan.com/*

Rachel Kramer Bussel

Photo by Laura Boyd

FS: As a long-time columnist, editor, erotica writer and sexy model, you’ve “exposed” yourself to audiences in many media and genres.  Do you find you reveal more about yourself in your fiction or nonfiction writing?

RKB: I’ve always written both erotic fiction and nonfiction about my sex life, and each serve different purposes and roles in my life. There are some ways I can be more honest and open in fiction, especially if I’m writing something based on a real relationship or encounter. You don’t have the same parameters and can also disguise people and work in fictional elements to go along with the “real” story, while in non-fiction you have to stick to the facts. Sometimes that comes off more stilted, though I can offer certain insights in that format, such as in my Secrets of a Sex Writer column at SexIsMagazine.com, that I couldn’t in erotica. I like being able to capture my erotic world in both ways.

Photo by Celeste Smith

You seem very comfortable in front of the camera.  Did you always feel that way or was it a growth experience?

I definitely have not always been comfortable in front of the camera and there are many horrible photos of me as a teenager and into college to prove that. I’ve gotten more comfortable in front of it both as I got more comfortable in my body as well as finding good photographers to work with. So much of it for me is having a positive working relationship with them, and that chemistry is something you can’t plan or force.

Photo by Laura Boyd

Is making a video/book trailer any different from still photographs?

It’s totally different, though for me one aspect that is similar is that neither is my forte (I know almost nothing about photography and nothing about how to shoot video) and that I have to give up control to those who do know better. The way I work with my videographer, who’s made the trailers for Spanked, Do Not Disturb, Peep Show and Please, Sir, is we select a location, get props and invite friends and acquaintances and then shoot as much footage as she thinks she needs. I and others do voiceovers reading from the anthologies and then I give her basic guidelines, sometimes music (or she chooses), and let her work her magic.

I think of my trailers as little movies that give some insight into the particular topic, whether that’s spanking, hotel sex, exhibitionism and voyeurism or BDSM, as well as hopefully enticing people into wanting to read the book. I get to play both myself and “characters” and while it’s somewhat of a tool to sell books (though I’m not sure how successful it is as such since there’s no way to track that) it’s also a component to my online persona that I think adds to my appeal to editors and publishers. It’s also a way for first-time visitors to my site to get a taste of who I am and what my books are about.

Photo by DA Photography

Do you feel that your work as an editor reveals parts of you that your other literary endeavors do not?

I don’t necessarily think my editing reveals something about me beyond the topics I choose to work on with my books. For me as a creative endeavor it’s a huge relief from the pressure of writing and such an educational experience. I love putting a call for submissions out into the world and seeing what authors do with it; their work is so fresh and creative and breathes new life into my simple ideas. I liken editing anthologies to running my reading series In The Flesh, which I hope you’ll attend before we close in December 2010, because it’s an opportunity to collaborate with others and a case where the whole is so much greater than simply the sum of its parts. I think editing is a very social thing, even if it’s all done via email, whereas writing is quite solitary.

Thanks so much for exposing yourself with us at F-Stop, Rachel!

Rachel Kramer Bussel is a New York-based author, editor, blogger and reading series host. She is Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations, wrote the Lusty Lady column for The Village Voice, and hosts the monthly In The Flesh Reading Series, where she’s booked everyone from Susie Bright to Zane. She has written for Cosmopolitan, The Daily Beast, TheFrisky.com, Gothamist, Mediabistro, Newsday, New York Post, Penthouse, Playgirl, Time Out New York, and other publications. Her writing has been published in over 100 anthologies, including Best American Erotica 2004 and 2006, the Best Women’s Erotica Series, Zane’s Succulent: Chocolate Flava II and Purple Panties, and others. Rachel has a fondness for spanking, rough sex, hotels and general naughtiness…when she can tear herself away from her computer and iPhone. She also has an unbridled passion for cupcakes which she blogs about frequently at her popular group blog Cupcakes Take the Cake.

Marcy Sheiner

Open

“Open,” he whispered huskily into my ear, and I obeyed, spreading my lips far apart, arching my neck to demonstrate my eagerness to please the man who was prodding the inner recesses of my body.

“A little wider. A little bit more. Thaaaaat’s it,” he said, as I opened even wider, thrusting my chest forward, hoping to win his approval.

The air felt rarefied, thinner than the air of ordinary existence. I floated in an atmosphere of finer and more frequent vibrations, where my senses tingled and shimmered, where all pain magically vanished. The man continued his agonizingly slow journey, gently caressing my face as he explored territory deep inside me. Music was playing, but it was indistinguishable, the music of the spheres, a series of high vibrations that seemed to both surround and fill my body. I breathed deeply, inhaling the colors of ecstasy.

Suddenly everything shifted: The sweet air thickened, steadily blunting the blissful sensations. The voice of Tammy Wynette, mundane and whiny, screeched from the tinny radio. I opened my eyes and there was my dentist, efficiently pulling instruments and cotton out of my mouth and telling me not to eat for a few hours.

I crashed to earth with a thud. This was not the first time I’d had ecstatic experiences under nitrous oxide in the dentist‘s chair, and it undoubtedly would not be the last. But in between visits to the adorable man who probed my cavities with such tenderness while I greedily snorted nitrous oxide, there would be months of ordinary life to endure.

I’ve had a long history of severe dental problems, beginning in adolescence, that have continued, domino-like,  right through middle age. I’ve encountered every kind of tooth doctor, from incompetents at dental schools to a New Age quack who treats “dentophobes” with hypnotherapy and psychobabble.  The worst was a certifiable sadist who repeatedly struck one of my teeth with an electric prod; as he came at me for the fourth time I kicked him in the balls and was subsequently banished from his clinic.

But this is not meant to be a gruesome tale: the human spirit is remarkable in its ability to adapt, and adapt I did. Some might label me the ultimate masochist for finding an erotic charge in the dentist’s chair, but while I concede that elements of S/M are certainly at play here, it’s not the entire picture. Yes, the pleasure-pain continuum is an obvious factor. And yes, the dentist’s white coat and position of authority puts him in the “master” role.  But more significant, I believe, was my intuitive realization that if I could activate what we now know are endorphins, I could ease the pain inflicted by dentistry. Early on, while prone in the dentist’s chair with my mouth forced open, I closed my eyes and thought about the wondrous source of pleasure I had only recently discovered–sex.

I was, after all, 16 when my career as a dental patient began in earnest, when X-rays revealed that two of my baby teeth had never fallen out and the permanent teeth were impacted. Treatment involved extracting the baby teeth and ripping away the gums in order to pull down the permanent teeth. This was 1962: no nitrous, no sodium pentathol, no ether–just Novocain. Lots and lots of Novocain. Up my nose, down my throat, into my cheeks. The procedure was so brutal that the only way I endured was by taking refuge in “trashy daydreams,” as Joyce Carol Oates calls them, so common to adolescents. During the long ordeal of freeing my impacted teeth I would mentally focus on my latest sexual discoveries with boys, from petting to finger-fucking to oral sex and finally intercourse. This was a two-year process; by the time it was over I was married (no, no, not to the dentist) and a mother-to-be.

“For every baby you lose a tooth” may be an old wives tale, but in my case it proved to be pure science. The two teeth I respectively lost were, of course, the ones that had been forced out of their impacted state –they’d never lined up properly, and rotted away. By the time I was 22 I had two kids and two frontal  bridges; as the years went by the bridges separated and had to be replaced with one six-tooth structure. Enamel behind on either side began to shift and rot, and today I sport a nine-tooth wonder of modern dentistry requiring vigilant care, including a cleaning every three months.

Sex fantasies combined with nitrous oxide have gotten me through all this. The first time I was given nitrous I had a psychedelic experience, with colors swirling behind my closed lids. The second time I had an orgasm.

I’ve had crushes on several of my dentists: It doesn’t matter what he looks like; simply by virtue of using his fingers to explore my mouth while I lie back passively he becomes, to my mind, a sex object. Should I grow bored with the dentist,  I close my eyes and think about everything from my boyfriend’s cock to Dolly Parton’s tits. The tools or fingers inside my mouth become fleshy cocks. The words “Open wide” or “Hold still now” become sexual commands.

These days I eagerly look forward to dental treatments–in fact, they’re the most relaxing moments in my frantic life.  My current dentist is an enlightened sweetheart 15 years my junior who believes that with no pain we all gain. He gives me as much nitrous oxide as I need to rocket into the stratosphere; in fact, the front page of my chart reads “DO NOT TOUCH WITHOUT NITROUS.” (He knows about the dentist I kicked in the balls.) This goes not only for broken fillings, caps and root canals, but for cleanings as well. For the heavier work I get Novocain once I’m high on the nitrous, and if I flinch even slightly, up goes the gas.

With pain removed from the dental situation, my consciousness is fully free to wander. Occasionally–particularly as I get older–I enter a philosophical state where, like William James who regularly used nitrous to explore his psyche, I glimpse cosmic truths. Still, my mind invariably drifts into the realm I discovered early on could save me: not above my head but below my waist.

***

Every serious pursuit, whether it be stamp collecting or scuba diving, involves setting and attaining goals. For years my goal as a dental patient was to repeat my one and only orgasmic nitrous oxide experience.  When it occurred I was stunned: without any physical contact, my cunt spontaneously spasmed. I’ve heard all those horror stories about predatory dentists who take advantage of their zoned out patients, but I’ve never encountered one.  Even high on nitrous, I’m aware enough of my surroundings to know if I’m being fondled; when I climaxed it wasn’t because of any hanky-panky on the part of the dentist.

No, my orgasm arrived unbidden as a blink or a sneeze, the only assistance being a headful of nitrous and sexual imagery. This was all the more startling since I’m one of those women for whom orgasm during sex, whether partnered or solo, is a long hard climb; sometimes I don’t even make it over the top. So this event loomed large in my life as singularly unique–until last week.

It was a big dental day: I needed two caps and a cleaning, so I’d be in the chair for more than an hour. The technician moved the nitrous oxide tank into position, fetched my personal orange mask out of the drawer, and hooked me up. (I’ve come to regard these preparations as akin to primitive pre-nuptial rituals, where the village women prepare the bride for her studly groom.)  Usually I get hooked up, take a few inhalations, and am still fairly lucid when Dr. A. comes on the scene. But today he was having difficulty with another patient, and I was left alone to inhale the holy nectar for what must have been fifteen minutes.

Fifteen minutes on nitrous oxide is a long time. Suddenly I found myself laughing hysterically, with the receptionist and technician on either side of me, frantically removing the mask and asking if I was okay.

Okay? Hell, I’d never been happier; they don’t call the stuff laughing gas for nothing. But the technician told me she would have to lower the gas level.

“What’s wrong with laughing?” I protested.

“We have other patients here,” she said, laughing herself, “and you were really crackin’ up.”

The lower level of nitrous frustrated me, and when Dr. A. stuck his nasty needle full of Novocain into my  gums I let out a howl. He apologized profusely, and agreed to raise the gas, but it was still below my normal level. In a few minutes he began filing or scraping or whatever barbaric method they use to prepare a tooth for capping. I felt the pain, and let him know it with grunts and menacingly jerking limbs. He gave me more Novocain.

The situation was dire; I felt almost as desperate as when my impacted teeth had been ripped from my gums. I closed my eyes and began a steady inhalation; reversing the yogic technique of longer exhalations, I inhaled as much as I could manage and exhaled as little as possible. I conjured up a recent sexual memory and entered into it fully, imagining hands on my breasts, objects in my cunt, words in my ears…

My cunt contracted, slowly at first, then building, spasming painfully around emptiness, but providing exquisite release. I couldn’t stop my hips from bucking slightly, and I must have let out an unusual sound, because Dr. A. drew back, alarmed.

“There’s no nerve in that tooth,” he said, genuinely distressed at having caused me pain. “It shouldn’t hurt.”

“Uuuuuuuungh.” I grunted and nodded, forming an “okay” sign with my thumb and forefinger. My cunt was happily twitching, at the tail end of orgasm.

Dr. A, being such a considerate lover, now turned the nitrous up full force. Since I’d just come, my body was released into an entirely new plane of sensation. As had happened to me before on nitrous oxide, I saw everything in my universe as inextricably connected: pieces of my life flashed before me on a continuum, each event leading inevitably to the next, each a profound learning experience. And every person I’d ever known seemed to fit into this jigsaw puzzle called my life, every one of them there for a reason.

I opened my eyes and benevolently watched Dr. A. as he earnestly worked on my teeth, his movements not barbaric but intensely purposeful and caring. Suddenly I could feel a physical connection similar to the emotional connections I had been seeing: there was a direct line from my teeth downward, through sinew and muscle and bone, through every organ and orifice–including my cunt. No wonder I’d always been turned on in the dentist’s chair! My teeth were connected to my nerves and my cunt, and any stimulation in one part could cause a reaction in another.

Suddenly the song “The leg bone’s connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone’s connected to the foot bone…..now hear the word of the Lord,”  popped into my head, and I began laughing hysterically.

Uh oh. Alarm all around. Down went the nitrous, off came the mask, concerned faces peered into mine. My laughter turned into tears of joy, for I wanted to kiss Dr. A, his assistant, and the whole damn world. Glory halleluliah, I’d found religion and sex as they were meant to be experienced.

But of course I couldn’t tell them; if I did, they’d probably lock me up or, at the very least, I’d never get nitrous oxide again.

“I’m all right,” I assured them in a whisper. In a world where both cosmic visions and sexual responses are seen as signs of mental imbalance, mine must remain secret.

Marcy Sheiner is the editor of a dozen collections of erotica, including Herotica 4-7, Best Women’s Erotica 2000-2005, and The Oy of Sex: Jewish Women Write Erotica. Her sex stories, essays and features have been widely anthologized, and her book Sex for the Clueless was published by Kensington Press in 2001. You can read her at http://www.marcys.wordpress.com and her memoir of mother/daughterhood at http://www.marcysmemoir.wordpress.com.

She also lists her writing and editing services at http://www.marcysbookbuster.wordpress.com.

“Open” was originally published in Guilty Pleasures, edited by M. Christian.

Emerald

Choice and Tyranny

It is not a novelty for a naked picture of me to be on the Internet.  If one knows where to look, there are a number of them out there.  So while I include a photo with this post, it does not represent the “naked” part of this for me.  It is there for illustration, perhaps personalizing the account that follows.

Having worked in amateur porn and as a webcam model, images of my physical nudity may be found in various places.  Displaying physical nakedness has not tended to faze me, and on the contrary I have (for the most part) appreciated the context in which those photos were taken and have been displayed.

Of course, as with most things, there is a reason for that.  It took a while for me to be in a position to make those choices.

***

I was fairly young—about eight—when I was informed that according to “God” it was “wrong” to have sex “before you were married.”  (Lots of quotes in there, I know, but I don’t want to reinforce or give the impression that I condone that which seems dubious to me—which in that sentence includes everything in quotation marks.)  This is not earth-shatteringly unusual, I realize.  I also feel no doubt that my mother imparted this with the best of intentions, as it was what she herself sincerely believed, and I appreciate that she was taking the responsibility to speak with her children about sex.

It happened that for me, that message ended up with implications perhaps more extreme than many may have found in it.

***

I didn’t know that what I had experienced as a common part of life may be categorized as a psychological disorder until I was twenty.  I was taking an Abnormal Psychology class in undergrad, and one day the professor was introducing the five categories of anxiety disorders.  He put an overhead up about obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and started to talk about it.

I had barely heard of OCD, so it had never occurred to me to wonder if it was in me.  The first examples of obsessive-compulsive-related thoughts and behaviors I recall in me were at about age seven, so it might have been the seeming normative experience of them that resulted in my not questioning their implications in such a way.  I hadn’t really known anything different.

In class that day, I looked at the overhead and thought, “Huh.  That is what is in me.  Apparently it’s categorized as an anxiety disorder.  I’d always wondered if other people were doing the things in my head that I was.”  For some reason, it felt that casual.  It was certainly unquestionable—there was no doubt that the descriptions on the sheet reflected what I had experienced.  While I felt surprised and somewhat fascinated, I think it had been such a normal part of my experience that it seemed almost quaint to see it labeled as a disorder.

***

The first time I had sex (by which I mean vaginal intercourse, the phrase “have sex” seeming perhaps ambiguous), I had seen that it was okay to do so.  Despite how simple that sounds, it is so far from a casual statement I hardly know how to describe it.  I had a choice about whether or not to have sex.  That had never been the case before.  The choice had formerly been hijacked and made in me before I even realized there was one.  The day I “lost my virginity,” I chose to—clearly, freely, and comfortably.

I was 25 years old.

***

OCD was about one underlying thing for me: “God.”  What I thought of as God was watching me all the time, always, and the entire focus of watching me was to ensure that I never, ever did anything wrong, and that if I did, I paid for it or was punished.

Potential punishment was simply unimaginable.  For the most part the details of such were kept from my consciousness, their very consideration too traumatic.  “Controlling” thoughts in order to keep such terrifying details from materializing into consciousness was one of the purposes of earnest and obedient repetitions of compulsions.

The other was to avoid said punishment itself.  Generally, I was paying “in advance” to earn the allowance of scathingly horrendous things not happening to me or my family (on whom OCD frequently seemed focused).  Compulsions were demanded to allow the keeping in check of such occurrences, since the chances were I had or would eventually do something “wrong” that would require such obligation.

Appeasement of the orders of OCD (which is to say compulsions) could come in numerous forms—counting, repeating phrases in my head, fidgeting a certain way, saying certain things…an innumerable list of penances that seemed inexhaustible and that I wouldn’t know how to realistically detail in any comprehensive form.  Demands could and often did come at any time, and there was no negotiation involved.

The real, underlying fear—the very thought of which was usually kept from consciousness as per above, so much so that I wasn’t even aware of its being the case for some time—was Hell.  In life too, indeed, I was in (unwanted) control of what happened to myself and my family, but the ultimate responsibility with which I was charged, and for which I was singularly responsible, was to keep myself and my family out of Hell.

I realize such a specter may seem silly if one doesn’t subscribe to traditional postulations of Christianity.  All I can say is that it wasn’t so much a literal belief as the simple vague, indelible, perpetual terror of the threat of the literally most horrifying experience possible.  I use no hyperbole in that description.

If I did or thought something “wrong,” of course, backpedaling in the form of increased compulsion was frequently necessary.  The catch was that, in large part, what was “wrong” was arbitrary.  It was at the absolute discretion of the savage, unrelenting, maniacally tyrannical “God” in my head.

But there was one rule attributed to “God” that had been externally and overtly presented to me.

***

I had not sought any kind of treatment after the realization in the psychology class because I thought, frankly, that the phenomenon that the sheet described as OCD had been in me since I was seven, I was “used” to it, and I could handle it and for whatever reason doubted it would ever become much “worse.”

This assessment was erroneous.  In my early 20’s, I experienced a dramatic increase in the intensity of OCD to a degree that sometimes impeded general functioning.  Around that time I also discovered, through a gradual process, that not having sex before I was married was the pinnacle of OCD in me.  It was the ultimate—the one action that epitomized my responsibility and what I was allowed to do or not do.  This was the thing that, if done, would result in not only me but my family undergoing indefinitely the most horrendous and torturous experience imaginable (or not imaginable).  If I had sex outside of marriage, that result would be entirely my fault.

I could write an entire other post (and probably will sometime on my blog) on how and why OCD has not controlled me for about the last eight years.  I honestly don’t know how to put it succinctly without going into considerable detail, so I will just say that a distinct process transpired that I didn’t even realize was happening at the time that resulted in a shift I hadn’t known or imagined existed.

Over the course of about six months, and in part without my even realizing it, an unimaginable (to me at the time) shift and expansion of perspective occurred in me.  Without my at all “trying” or having such a thing as a “goal” (as again, I was not even able to conceive of it to make it into a goal), this process involved the distorted perception that had hijacked and held hostage my experience dissolving.

That distorted and hijacking perception being OCD.

It is difficult to describe how OCD not controlling me anymore felt.  As I mentioned before, I didn’t really have anything to compare being under its control to since I had experienced it from such a young age.  The shift was like being presented with a new color, one completely unlike those you had known existed, or a new number—0 though 9 are not the only ones.  A whole new one is there, changing the way you have viewed things all your life.

One of the ways I was aware this shift had happened was the seeing of sex being a choice.  Of knowing that how I acted sexually was up to me.  The symbolic pinnacle of the expansion in me was a reflection of the same subject I had experienced as the pinnacle of OCD.

In light of which I said quite literally to the tyrannical authority that had been OCD in me,

FUCK. YOU.

Emerald is an erotic fiction author and general advocate for human sexuality as informed by her deep appreciation of the beauty, value, and intrinsic nature of sexuality and its holistic relation to life.  Her erotic fiction has been published in anthologies edited by Violet Blue, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Jolie du Pre, and Alison Tyler as well as online at various erotic websites.  She currently resides in suburban Maryland where she works as a webcam model and serves as an activist for reproductive freedom and sex worker rights.  She blogs about sexuality in cultural, social, professional, and spiritual contexts at her website, The Green Light District: http://thegreenlightdistrict.org/wordpress/

Gina Marie

I almost got old once. The details of that moment are stark in my mind. In fact, I recall it was a Saturday afternoon at about 3 p.m. about eight or nine years ago. I had my plump ass seated on a beach log at a family picnic. Suddenly, a sick feeling took hold in my belly and I realized what was happening. “This is it. You’re going ‘round the bend.” That was the scariest fucking moment of my life. I was physically unwell. I had quit writing. I nearly quit dreaming. I got off my ass and started running again.  I’d survived long enough to return back to the woods. It felt so good to run through the forest on misty Saturday mornings, leaping over mossy logs, free, alive, mud splashing on my bare legs. It was like going back in time to when I was a kid and gathered polliwogs in the creek and played Indian boy in the woods.

My plot against growing up seems to be working. The other day, buying whiskey, the clerk scowled at me, then said “Holy Cow!” when I gave him my I.D. He looked down at me wide-eyed, this small 4-foot-10-inch person with red streaks in her hair and no makeup staring back with a naughty smirk while handing him my driver’s license: DOB, 1968. “What’s your secret?”

“Well,” I said, standing up a little taller and squaring my shoulders, “My secret is that I drink a helluva lot of whiskey!”

The truth is, I am very much a 41-year-old woman, but am also a 12-year-old kid, and I plan to stay that peculiar mix of ages for a very, very long time.

In the state of Oregon, public nudity is protected as free speech, as long as there is “no intent to arouse.” Well, there was no arousal going on last spring when I stood shivering, in the cool of the evening. I was waiting for a race to start in Forest Park near downtown Portland. The group of runners included myself and five men. There weren’t too many people around, but then a family came walking up the trail with young children. We were about to strip down to running shoes and take off. Should we wait? We let them pass, then somebody said, “fuck it, let’s go.”

Clothes came off and we lined up. The starter blew a whistle or a horn and we were off. It was crazy, silly and fun. Nobody hiking or running in the park would expect a small pack of pale, nude runners to come streaking up the trail in the chill of May….except this is Oregon and wackiness can ensue just about anytime or anyplace. As we cruised up the trail, my skin began to warm and the air felt brilliantly refreshing on my bare skin. I felt so alive and free. We passed the family, exposing them to nothing more than our bare butts. I heard some snickers and giggles as we ran by. Soon, the men were out ahead and it was just me on the trail. I felt like a deer or a bird, flying along. The few people I passed further up the trail just smiled and waved. I’ll admit that it took some bravery to ditch the clothes in such a public setting, in such a small group, and in broad daylight. But it was also incredibly liberating.

I love to fuck in the bushes as much as the next guy (hehe) but I also believe it’s important to celebrate the joy and freedom of naked exploration without the label of “pervert.” There was nothing sexual about that run. In fact, when we returned to the start, the family we passed asked for information about the next race. It turned out that they are naturists and frequent the clothing optional beach on the Willamette River.

Writing, in all of its forms, keeps me young too. It feels like play. It’s fun. It makes me smile. The act of writing scours my brain and makes me feel complete. When I can’t write or am up against a doodywad who thinks writing is a waste of time, I start to feel suffocated. I began writing in journals when I was seven years old. I found my grandpa’s Hustler when I was eight. Hmmmm. And yes, with most of my writing, there is the intent to arouse. I’m drawn to the genre because….like most of my favorite things, it’s FUN.

When I started running again, I also started writing again. And finally, I started playing again.

Last year, my boy Brad and I logged more than 6,000 naked road miles. We did the World Naked Bike Ride and the Original Bare Buns Run in Spokane, WA. We published stories together, blogged together, and explored sensuality on the page together.We danced around nude in the middle of a highway in Nevada. Brad did a naked Chinese Fire Drill while waiting for a train in the middle of the city. (The chicks in the car next to us LOVED it). We soaked in the hot springs, hiked in the mountains, biked around the playa at Burning Man, did some erotic photo shoots, cooked supper, wrote poetry, played Scrabble, made banana bread, crafted smut, watched the news, gazed at the stars…..all of it NAKED. Why? Why not. Freedom, baby! Freedom!

Fuck it! Let’s go!

Naked Whips photo was taken by David Rolin. Used with permission.

Brad Garber

I’m 55 years young; have 65 more to go, based on what an Ouija board told me in 1963, shortly after JFK’s untimely demise. I, like Craig, started running around naked, with a friend, in my pre-pubescent years. There was something adventurous and a little naughty about playing in Buffalo Creek, in the nude, on a hot summer day. I, unlike Craig, did not get caught in my wood-nymph state; rather, I was “caught” mimicking the photographic poses of nude females in the pseudo-privacy of my bedroom. I knew there was something sexy about those females, but I couldn’t quite figure it out. I thought that, if I tried to strike their model poses, I might get something out of it. And, I did. It felt good, to be sitting naked on the floor of my bedroom, my chest out, my shoulders back. When my mother discovered the girlie mag under the mattress of my bed, I was humiliated by my father, and was forbidden to share the company of the friend who had given me the porn. It so happened that it was the same friend who shared the idyllic afternoons with me, in the creek. It was the first time that I experienced a limitation on my expression of sensuality, and it left an impression.

At age 10, I could not figure out how I had hurt anyone by exploring my sexuality on the floor of my bedroom. I was caught somewhat by surprise by the ferocity and artificiality of it all. I complied with my father’s wishes and never shared moments in the sun with that friend. In fact, it was not until years later that I started exploring the sensuality of what is now referred to as “naturism.” (It’s all just plain nudity, to me). As the years went by, I started expanding my horizons. I would lie in the sun nude, run nude, drive my car nude, sit around the house nude, cook nude, ski nude, bike nude and…the best of all things…fuck nude! At age 35, I did my first nude modeling gig, with a photographer who invited several models for a frolic, out on an isolated Oregon beach. The experience was exhilarating. There I was, naked on a beach, exercising my artistic expression at the business end of a camera. I was hooked. I’ll admit, I’m a ham.

My exhibitionist tendencies reached a certain apex of manifestation when I became an art model, at age 40. By age 50, when I decided my degenerative left hip could no longer take the pain, I had modeled for nearly every art department and private studio in Portland. I was in a certain amount of demand, which was gratifying, seeing as how most artists would rather draw female bodies. Being naked, on a stage, in a room full of clothed artists, was a bit empowering. It made me question, even more, how sensual (as opposed to baldly sexual) expression could harm anyone. The more I was naked, the better I felt about myself. It was a win-win situation.

Writing about sex, with sensual elements thrown in to break up the monotony, is something I started trying out in the 80’s, after my first divorce. After all, there is only so much masturbation one can engage in. I had had some poetry and prose published, in the past, so I knew I could write something that someone might take interest in. I didn’t quite know how to go about writing smut, but I’d read some in Penthouse Forum, so I sort of had an idea. I knew porn when I saw it. It was a titillating experience, I must admit, sitting there dreaming up ridiculous sexual scenarios. Thinking about fantasies is one thing; writing them down on paper is another. I wrote and wrote, cataloguing fantasy after fantasy. Oddly, I only tried to get one story published. And it was! To my great surprise, Penthouse Forum purchased one of my stories. Wow! I was hooked. But, job, daughter, second marriage, health, yada yada yada, took me away from writing for a few years.

It was not until I met my soul mate, Gina (you all know her), that the fires were rekindled. Now, not only do I write, I run around naked and model and fuck in the weeds on hot summer days! I have a wealth of experience to write about that, from all current indications, will never end until my bony spent wilted body is burned up and scattered to the four winds. And, so… my story, and some photographic evidence to back up my rambling.

Brad Garber (“BadAss” to his friends and competitors) is a Midwestern transplant who has lived in Oregon long enough to grow moss.  He has had poetry published in Cream City Review, Alchemy, Fireweed and Mercury, and collaborative erotica in Oysters & Chocolate and Clean Sheets under the pseudonym, “Daisy James.”  In 2003, he was a semi-finalist in the USA Songwriting Competition, and was an Honorable Mention in 1980 and 1981.  He has had painting shows in various venues, in Portland, since 1997.  He has been a model since about 1995, and has appeared in erotic photos in Libido and Cupido, as well as print ads for Oocha Brew, Plavix and St. Joseph’s Hospital and video ads for Cabella’s.  His “day job” involves the legal system, in one form or another.  He is in love with Gina, and shall so be, until the shrinking universe undergoes the next “Big Bang.”

D. L. King

Naked on the Page

This is me.  It’s a bit of me, in any case.  It’s a piece of my tattoo.  I was told, when I was contemplating getting one, people become addicted to them and once you get one, you’ll want more.  I love my tattoo and the experience of having it done was—interesting.   I have just the one.  Not because of the pain but, because I always wanted a tattoo.  That’s me.

Like I said, the pain was interesting, but I’m not a masochist.  If you’ve read my stories, you’ve probably figured that out.

The tattoo’s been a part of me for seven or eight years now.  It took a long time to decide to do it.  And then it took a long time to figure out what I wanted to have indelibly etched into my skin.  It took no time to decide where it should be placed—somewhere people wouldn’t see it, just in case.  It’s really beautiful.  Now I kind of want to show it off but even I seldom get to see it.  Pity.

My boyfriend gets to see it.  I think it shocked him, the first time he saw it.  I think his initial attitude was, “What’s a nice girl like you doing with a tattoo?”  Now he knows I’m not really a nice girl.  (But then, if you’ve read my stories, you’ve probably figured that out.)  Now he really likes, perhaps even loves, my tattoo.

Now, don’t think you know me just because you know about my ink.  Here’s another picture.

This is my toy cabinet.  The picture reminds me of a great, if slightly chilly day and a particularly memorable Brooklyn salon. Looking at it makes me want to get back into hosting the salons again this summer.  And, no, the toy cabinet has nothing to do with Brooklyn writers salons.  And yes, these are really my toys—at least some of them.  The rest have other hiding places around the bedroom.

The shelves were awfully neat when this picture was taken, but my house is a wreck right now.  I just looked at the toy cabinet again and it’s not nearly so pristine.  However, seeing the Electrolube gives me ideas…

Yes, I like to play.  I like my sex on the kinky side.  I’m bossy and I like to be in charge but I’m also gentle and kind.  Yes, I can raise welts while being gentle and kind.  I suppose the bottom line is that I like to make people happy.  So just give me the right people and I’ll make them happy—with a paddle or a book.

Does any of this tell you who I am?  The truth is, I’m nobody and I’m everybody.  I’m not particularly exciting; I’m just me.  You’d pass me by if you saw me on the street.  You wouldn’t give me a second look if I stood next to you on the train.  And while I put pieces of myself into everything I write, it’s the story you’ll remember, not the writer.

This is where I work.  It probably says the most about me.

D. L. King is a smut-writing New Yorker. She is the editor of The Sweetest Kiss and Where the Girls Are, Cleis Press, and Spank! from Logical Lust.  She is also the publisher and editor of the book review site, Erotica Revealed. Her short stories can be found in anthologies such as The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, Best Women’s Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Please, Ma’am, Sweet Love, Girl Crazy, Broadly Bound, Frenzy, Yes, Sir and Yes, Ma’am among others.  She is the author of two femdom novels. Find out more at her blog: http://www.dlkingerotica.blogspot.com or at her website, http://www.dlkingerotica.com.

M. Christian

He And I

I know that’s me.  I remember that afternoon: a house in the Sunset District of San Francisco with an intimate playroom in the basement, owned by a friend, since passed away.  The woman was my wife, now ex-wife.

I remember Michael Rosen, the magnificent photographer who took the shot, saying “Open your eyes” over and over again.  I remember she was almost standing on her head, laying backwards on a GYN table with her ass raised high.  I remember the shot took a long time — so long my hand began to cramp.  I remember the day Michael’s sent us a copy of his magnificent book Sexual Art with the photo published in it.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  They say that pictures don’t lie.  They say ‘photographic evidence.’  I don’t know why ‘they’ are, but when I look at that picture I wonder about what’s real and not real, about who that man really is.

He: so assured, so strong, so magnetic.  He looks like he always has that twinkle in his eye, always has that smile on his face.  The kind of guy you know, absolutely know, sings through life, dances through his days.

I: They say that depression is the feeling of being worthless, not valued, ignored, dismissed.  That’s wrong, though.  Depression is actually the absolute, certain knowledge – unshakable – that you’re worthless, not worth paying attention to, are constantly dismissed.  I don’t have good days and bad days, I have bad days and awful days.  Been that way all my life.  It’ a constant struggle.  I’m depressed right now and I was depressed when that picture was taken.

He: a sexual adventurer, an erotic extremist, a howling-boy, a roaring-man, a pierced and tattooed kinky contortionist.

I: I lost my virginity at 22 to a prostitute in London.  I didn’t have sex again until I was 27.  I was married soon after which is when I began to play in the kinky pool: tried bondage, cutting, polyamory, caning, marched in the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay/Transgendered parade, edited a newsletter for an alternative sexuality organization, got some piercings (only my ear and navel) and a pair of tattoos.  Yes, I’ve done all that, plus many other things, but the simple, honest truth is that I’m sexually pretty simple.  I like big beautiful girls – and all I like to do is be with one who wants to be with me.

He: frozen, trapped, in time.  He will always be in his early thirties.  He will always have that body  He will always have all that hair.

I: the big five-oh just hit me … a little over a week ago, actually.  The hair is gone, now I keep it cut very short.  The beard comes and goes – mostly goes — depending on what I’m doing and how diligent I am about shaving.  For the first time in my life I’m beginning to feel … old, and I hate it.  I’ve always pushed myself, have constantly driven myself to do as much as possible and now … now I’m facing the fact that I can’t do things like I used to.

But, you know, looking at the smile on his face, the glee that’s there in that photograph, I wonder if it isn’t a good thing that he’s out there – and that he and I are connected.  I don’t feel it most of the time but sometimes, when the mood is right, when the stars are aligned, I actually see myself in him – and hope that what other people see in that photograph isn’t just a flash of light in the past but is, instead, a frozen part of myself … a part that will always be within me.

M. Christian began his career in erotica, writing under his pseudonym, “M.Christian.” He has established himself as a very prolific, and chameleonic, author specializing in literary erotica, but he’s also been widely published in other genres, which is where he wishes to focus his career going forward. M. Chrisitan’s erotica stories have appeared in every “best” anthology series including Best American Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Bisexual Erotica, 200 other anthologies and magazines –- he’s been published as four best-selling collections: Dirty Words, Speaking Parts, The Bachelor Machine, and Filthy.

He is also an accomplished anthologist, having edited more than 20 books such as The Mammoth Book of Future Cops, and The Mammoth Book of Tales of the Road (with Maxim Jakubowski); and Amazons, Confessions, and Garden of the Perverse (with Sage Vivant). He has recently expanded into mystery, horror, and humor with the novels Running Dry (Alyson Books, 2006), The Very Bloody Marys (Haworth, 2007), The Painted Doll (Lethe, 2007), Me2 (Alyson, 2008), and Brushes. He has worked with many publishers including Carol & Graf, Orion UK, Robinson UK, Avalon, Thunders Mouth, Haworth Books, Alyson Books, and many, many others. His author’s site is at http://zobop.blogspot.com/with links to all my publications.