Entangled Lives
Introduction
by Marilyn Jaye Lewis
“And that which hath been done is that which shall be done;
And there is nothing new under the sun.”
--Ecclesiastes, Chapter 1, Verse 9
Writers who earn their livings, or at least subsidize their livings, by writing erotic fiction are rarely called upon to write true exposés of their own sex lives, especially these days, when erotic anthologies celebrating the most niche-marketed fetishes imaginable abound in the bookstores and so many of us have scrambled to find enough time to contribute stories to each of them. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for erotic nuance in our work. And while there is almost always a kernel of truth in most fiction of any genre, it is hard to believe that erotic writers are plagued, en masse, by so many extreme fetishes in their day-to-day sex lives.
Ah well, it’s a living. And yet… Back in 2005, I was perusing the latest offering of adult comics over at LastGasp.com, when I happened upon the True Porn series of comic books, edited by Kelli Nelson and Robyn Chapman (Alternative Comics). I was immediately intrigued; true porn -- it sounded so refreshing. I like adult comics specifically because the sex depicted in them goes over the top. Things happen in comics that are often physically impossible -- or at the very least improbable -- in actual adult sex and for me, all that physical improbability makes the images intensely erotic. Comic book sex is often visceral sex that is at once both shocking to look at and satisfyingly filthy; the best of all mind fucks for a rather introverted, anti-social erotic fiction writer such as myself.
However, the thought of cartoonists throwing open a perhaps cautionary door on their own intimate sexual encounters, giving us the real goods -- well, as Daniel Robert Epstein of SuicideGirls.com comments in a review of True Porn, “cartoonists have the most fucked up sex lives.” It promised to be a remarkable journey into the human sexual condition.
That’s when it struck me: why aren’t erotica writers asked to openly delve into their own sex lives more often? A healthy number of the erotica writers that I personally know have rather interesting and active sex lives -- to put it politely. It would make for great reading, I thought, and for a nice change of pace from the endless short story collections of improbable fetishes that don’t really allow the reader access to the writer as a human being.
Privately, I had begun making notes for my own full-length erotic memoir back in 2005. In fact, a few of the chapters were already in first draft and I had quickly discovered while writing it that it was a simultaneously daunting, emotionally exposing, and above all, joyful feeling of release, putting the facts of my erotic life, and not the fiction of my erotic mind, on paper at last. And not just in another essay on some particular sexual peccadillo I might be guilty of, but really taking into account the people I had been involved with, who they were as living human beings and as sex partners, how I responded to my sexuality, what were my regrets and what felt like my triumphs?
I wondered if the other erotica writers I knew, the ones who primarily wrote fiction and had been doing so for years, would share my enthusiasm for pulling back the metaphorical curtain for a change and reveal the beating hearts lurking beneath all those fictional erotic tomes.
I wondered, what about an anthology of true erotica then? What might that tell us about the human sexual condition?
To my delight, the writers I queried were gung-ho to find out, even though all of us were laboring under the same overloaded writing schedule already and I was asking for contributions of a somewhat hefty word count. It seemed that the lure of getting personal, of focusing on our own libidinous natures and taking center stage in our own work for a change, had an uncanny way of making room in those crammed schedules. Most of the writers said, in fact, “I know just the thing I want to write about.” And every one of us was still scribbling feverishly at the already-extended-deadline’s 11th hour.
There is no shortage of erotic memoirs in Western literature, of course. In any given year, someone will be shocking us, at least here in the United States, with some steamy tell-all in hardcover. Erotic memoirs of a more literary nature, however, tend not to make it to these shores except by way of the small presses and then in trade paperback, but still, they do eventually surface and a number of them find a healthy-sized audience. What sets Entangled Lives apart from the multitude of erotic memoirs, though, is that these are memoirs written by, as has already been established, popular erotic fiction authors, men and women who are published extensively in the GLBT market, and the memoirs are brief enough to be collected under one cover and thereby falling under the currently trendy banner of “erotic anthology.”
Another somewhat unusual thing for an erotic memoir is that all the writers included here are writing under their given names. You can read the unabashed accounts of our sexual insecurities as well as our over indulgences and detailed exploits. Then you can perhaps spy us in the local bar and gawk and point. We aren’t camouflaged at all -- except for the mysterious 8th contributor, known here as Adam Greenway.
Adam’s bio at the back of the book assures us that we are more than likely familiar with his work. That he is, in fact, “one of queerotica’s most lyrical authors” and that he’s a “poet, writer, and quiet enigma” who has “published work in numerous anthologies and online venues.”
Adam comes to us by way of the sexually open marriage of Greg Wharton and Ian Philips. The mere title of their joint memoir, “Threeway,” enlightens us as to the nature of Adam’s entrance into our collective entangled lives. He came to our project almost by way of a side entrance and yet wound up contributing a voice, however quietly --Adam’s reluctance to make so much as a groan during sex is expounded upon at length in these pages by both his lovers --still, in print he expresses the same questioning vulnerability, the same ache and unfathomable need to feel sexually satiated, to understand his own sometimes unsettling desires as the identifiable contributors here.
When Ian and Greg alerted me that their memoir would tell the story of a threeway that was currently unfolding in their marriage, and that the third man in question, who was also in publishing, had agreed to be part of the memoir under a guarantee of the strictest anonymity, I at once donned my detective’s cap and tried to figure out who the mysterious Adam Greenway was. After all, who among us can resist the temptation to solve that salacious a puzzle? I had my suspicions and eventually learned that I had guessed right. And while I was eager to read the final Rashomon-type tale, where each man gives his take on what really happened while the three were courting, seducing and then ultimately fucking each other, I wasn’t prepared for how moved I was going to be reading it.
Not knowing Adam personally but knowing his work and his reputation in the industry, I was not only honored that he was contributing to my erotic memoir project but, while reading it, I was also touched by his willingness to be so candid, so matter-of-fact about his own particular vulnerabilities and desires.
Indeed, that was what struck me most profoundly about every memoir submitted here. I’m not going to be coy about it. As the deadline drew nearer and I knew everyone’s contributions would soon be landing on my desk, I was more than a little voyeuristically gleeful with anticipation. After all, my colleagues, who are all known for their abilities to write intensely erotic stories, would soon be regaling me with all the prurient details of their own private lives -- who wouldn’t welcome an opportunity like that? The project was by far the easiest editing job I’d ever undertaken. The high level of professionalism among the writers had a lot to do with it. But more than that, I was so absorbed by each of these memoirs while reading them that it was hard to believe I was getting paid to essentially just sit there and read. I had expected this particular group of writers to approach the topic of their own sex lives with sincerity and an almost brutal honesty -- these were the qualities I already appreciated in their fiction. Yet I still wasn’t prepared for the other key ingredient underlying each of these memoirs: trust. Each writer’s trust in me as the editor to approach what they’d committed to print with a suitable level of appreciation and respect; trust in you as the reader to risk seeing yourself reflected, to whatever extent, in each of these confessions.
Hadn’t I gone on at length in various interviews over the years about how trust was, in my opinion, the most erotic element of sex? That without trust, sex is merely sex, or perhaps even a stymied, or even a mortifying, emotional experience? And still the truth of it struck me anew while reading these memoirs. The details in these pieces are often not only sexually graphic but also emotionally raw. I felt nothing less than honored by the high level of trust my colleagues had placed in me by opening the door to the inner workings of their hearts and minds, not to mention libidos, as wide as they did.
Lest I gloss over it, I should mention that I also contributed a memoir to this collection. I wrote it expressly to be included here; it wasn’t one of those chapters from my full-length memoir that was already in first draft back in 2005. This piece, I knew, would have to be a final draft, that it was going to print. So I knew from experience what the mental processes were, what the potential stumbling blocks might be, in exposing the intimate details of one’s private sexual world to the faceless world-at-large. Two of the primary thoughts that played devil’s advocate with me were: “do people really want to know this stuff about me?” and “once this is in print, people are going to know this stuff about me.”
I have my own vulnerabilities and insecurities. I’m still not completely convinced anyone does want to know the secret machinations underlying my intimate relationships, my sexual fetishes, or my exhausting erotic obsessions. I pushed on, though, until I had finished my piece, at least convinced, as I always am when writing something sexual, that somebody somewhere will relate to it in a positive way, that readers might read what I’ve written and find a reason to rejoice in their own sexual identity, flawed and inexplicable as our sexual identities might sometimes seem.
The truth of my conviction stared me in the face again and again while I read these collected memoirs. I can’t say for certain if my own contribution achieved its goal of inalienable validity for readers, I can’t really be impartial about my own work. But I can testify with confidence that my fellow contributors achieved the goal in spades. Time and again, I felt as if what was being said by another writer could have easily come from my own insecure (often rambling) inner erotic monologue and the fact that the given writer sallied forth, regardless of the insecurities, into the tumultuous fray of his or her own “sex life”-- well, perhaps you get the picture. As I quoted from Ecclesiastes at the opening of this introduction, “There is nothing new under the sun.” But I take that idea as a joyful, unifying element of all humanity. At our cores, we are unique, but are we really that different?
How we do differ is what excites me most about our uniqueness: our voices, what we choose to experience and then how we express it. I like to think of these writers here as my comrades. Most of us have met at various professional functions, or even gone out and gotten a little too drunk together. We are familiar with each other’s work and careers. And it still didn’t fully prepare me for the stories each of these writers would choose to tell.
A case in point being Rob Stephenson, a writer I first knew as TruDeviant. It was a moniker that served him well and gave the reader fair warning about what type of erotic story they would soon be encountering. I have now known Rob for several years. I was half-expecting his memoir to be a disquieting affair, perhaps a sadistic account of some hapless Chelsea boy forced into the face paint of a clown and a degrading piece of women’s lingerie…I couldn’t have been more wrong. I learned more about Rob Stephenson from his piece included here than I’d ever learned from going to lunch or dinner with him, or out to some bar in Chelsea, or in various conversations we’ve had over the phone. I didn’t know him when he was young. He was already 40 years old when we met. But suddenly I saw him as a young man, vulnerable, questioning, and searching, undertaking his first serious gay relationship, staking out his sexual identity through frequently unsatisfying trial and error.
It’s his story to be sure, but so many parts of it are my story and I suspect, if you’re old enough, parts of it are your story, as well.
I knew before hand that Bill Brent’s piece was going to be taking us to some dark places. I knew a bit about what he’d been experiencing over the last few years, hooked on meth and caught in that stranglehold of constant tweaking and extreme sex. Not everyone comes back from that trip, although so many people these days have embarked on it.
I was very familiar with Bill’s strength as a writer, though. I knew he would be relentless in his mission to record his experiences as accurately as possible. The honesty and the anguish come together here to paint a picture we all have a place in: where it is our insecurities lead us and how we learn from that place and find our way back.
It’s interesting to note that the three women contributing to this collection, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Amie Evans and myself, wrote memoirs from the perspective of being bottoms, of being sexually submissive females. This was something I hadn’t expected. It took me by complete surprise since all the memoirs, in a sense, landed on my desk on the same day. It was too late to run out and round up a last minute contribution from a Domme, or from a woman who was neither a top nor a bottom. I wondered if this sudden situation would perhaps throw the overall tone of the collection off balance. But I don’t think it does. Fortuitously, each of the three pieces underscore the most salient issues of being a bottom -- the hypnotic allure of pain and the depth of arousal a woman’s body reaches when it is natural for her to submit sexually to the will of another.
In the case of Amie Evans, there doesn’t seem to be a moment of doubt that bottoming is an exquisite sensation to be explored as fully as possible. That giving in to the inconquerable dual wills of her clit and her vagina is a type of surrender that makes her feel not just sexually, but also spiritually whole. Indeed, her submission to her body’s voluptuous demands is the underlying constant in a healthy relationship and professional collaboration with her life partner.
My twenty-five years of experience of being a sexual submissive has certain similarities to Amie’s regarding how my body responds to it, but psychologically, we approach it from near opposite perspectives. I have rarely felt completely comfortable embracing my sexual masochism, in part because of the era I came of age in, where women were socially discouraged from any supposed anti-feminist modes of sexual behavior. For instance, my unflagging desire to be bound and disciplined by older women meant I might be single-handedly undermining the liberation of women everywhere. It took years for me to learn how to boot the world out of my bedroom and simply let my sexuality be what it needed to be.
Rachel Kramer Bussel’s significant body of nonfiction work--her magazine articles, her interviews, her essays, and her past Village Voice columns--perhaps mislead us into thinking that we already know what goes on her private life. She is the first to admit that much of her fiction already heavily relies on fact. If you are familiar with Rachel’s work, however, what you will find written here will surprise and, probably, delight you. As I did, you might recognize some telltale experiences that wound their ways into Rachel’s most popular stories. Yet here, in these pages, we get the other half of the equation: what really happened, how she came to be in the company of these people we’ve read about, be they casual strangers at play parties or intimate lovers. More importantly, we learn what she was thinking and feeling, and sometimes struggling with, as she spread her sexual wings and became the writer, the sex chronicler, that she is today.
So there’s nothing new under the sun. There’s nothing we do with our bodies or with each other that hasn’t been done by countless others -- with widely varying degrees of legality or social acceptance -- for thousands of years. On one level, it’s a comforting thought: it’s a relief to simply be human when the smoke and mirrors are put away. On another level, it’s humbling: what was the big brouhaha all about if, in the end, it was only lust? But on still a third level, new or not, sex is about life and life is what we all share. Lust is a sacred tool that teaches us how to rejoice as much as it teaches us about the perils of excess or the emptiness of fear. We experience our sex lives as individuals, certainly, but there is an area of human sexuality where all our secrets remain the same and in that secret exchange we validate ourselves and the ultimate joy of our existence.
Share with me now the smart, adventuresome and, above all, entertaining memoirs; the 100% true erotica that has resulted in this, our entangled lives.
