Rachel Kramer Bussel's Blog, page 118

Sex, sex, sex

Check out the New York magazine sex issue, which includes a married couple's he said/she said sex diary. I don't have anything in it, but it's full of interesting reads, and of course the weekly sex diaries that I edit, and please let anyone who might be interested across the United States know I'm looking for sex diarists for the weekly series and the 2013 book! Email sexdiaries at nymag.com and tell me why you'd make a good anonymous sex diarists. Thanks!

I'm sorry, do you still like me?

When I was little—I don't remember the exact age, but probably 6 or 7—there was a long period where I went around asking, "I'm sorry, do you still like me?" I could've done something wrong, or not; the first part of the sentence mattered far less than the latter. I wanted everyone to like me, and would do pretty much anything to make that happen. Flash forward about thirty years and I haven't changed all that much. That wanting people to like me is what stops me from, I'd estimate, finishing at least 50% of the pieces I start writing. What if someone thinks I'm ____, where ______ could be an endless array of epithets?

I am so often so willing to bend over backwards, so afraid of bad things happening, I ignore the fact that sometimes it's better to have someone dislike you for who you are than like you for who you're not. Sometimes this dynamic gets played out in heightened ways, and I got a huge reminder of that yesterday. I answered an email that, in hindsight, I should've waited to reply to, but I'm kindof like Pavlov's dog with this person, and decided to rush off with the first thing that popped into my head. That's what I always used to do—I had no filter whatsoever—and I found that the first thing that popped into my head was this heightened deference built on that very same fear. I was more spineless than Anastasia Steele, because I was so sure that one misstep and I'd be banished. It's laughable and ludicrous and I can't get into all the details here but suffice it to say, the idea of worrying about whether that person likes me is so beyond the point, because there's nothing I can do at this point to control that outcome, and even if they did "like me," on a practical level, I don't think it would look that different from its opposite.

But more than that, it epitomized the way in certain relationships, for me, power pervades that connection so deeply that I start serving any scrap of mine up on a platter. I'm the one who wants to take it away, to be someone so consumed with agreeing with anything they might suggest that I will go out of my way to suggest those shortcuts to powerlessness first. I'm not going to lie—for a long time, that was sexy to me. It was part of a give and take. I wanted to be that girl because there were rewards attached to being her. But that's ancient history. The me I am now, or am trying to be, isn't looking to be friends with anyone who only likes me because I'm that girl constantly looking for an approval fix.

It amazed me that I could so easily fall back into that routine; it was so ingrained that even a year later, there it was, waiting for me. It was such a marked contrast to the relationship I'm in now, where we have our moments, and I certainly have my times where I'm not on my best behavior, but I never feel that rock bottom sense of If I'm not good enough, this will all slip away. I do say I'm sorry, but it's never followed by that keening, childish neediness, because I know he likes me, loves me, and I know that's not going away. I know it so deep inside that it wouldn't ever occur to me, consciously or subconsciously, to try to second guess what might make me look cooler or better.

Frankly, that impulse scared me; it made me wonder what other hoops I might randomly make up and try to jump through, to no end. I'm not chasing the high of whatever pot of gold at the end of the rainbow I thought was there anymore, at least, not actively. I would hope I'm not chasing it at all because I know myself, and I know I would fail at it. And yet, clearly, there was a part of me that even for two seconds thought, Go for that pot of gold. Score some points. Ignore all the things vastly wrong with this situation so that you can look so selfless and calm.

That's great, if you're a robot. If you have no feelings. If you don't care about someone who seems to have everything they could possibly want in this world assuming they can control you too. That's a story for another time, but it's funny because I tried to tell myself that just by nature of being me, I was wrong and they were right. I tried to tell myself that of course that person should get what they want. Yet it started to eat at me, to sink under my skin and settle in, this sense that I'm weak and oh so willing to scrap carefully laid out plans, in this case not even to get someone to like me, but because I spent such a long time assuming that by simply being who they are, which is instantly, always and forever, better and more worthy than me, they automatically get what they want.

If there's anything that instantly presses all my buttons it's being told what to write or do or how to think. It's the idea that we don't get to decide for ourselves. I fully admit that there are times when I don't want to have to make decisions for myself, but I guess the difference is that if I'm going to give up any part of that decision-making power, I want it to be because I chose it, not because someone else stamped their foot and threw a hissy fit and decided for me. It reminded me, too, that as much as I don't want to be who I was in that moment of instant kowtowing, I certainly don't want to be on the other side of that equation. I'll leave that to those who enjoy it. Instead, I want to work on purging that small but clearly potent part of me that remembers in her bones, "I'm sorry, do you still like me?" The part that's so sure nobody will like her unless she asks that she devalues herself before anyone else can even try.

Talk and travel therapy

This week I went back to therapy for the first time in almost a year. I've definitely missed it, and the main issue has been money. Full-time freelancing means no cushion, and often means I'm lucky to have rent money. My therapist was never covered under my insurance, so that's not really a huge issue. Anyway, I managed to catch her up on a whole lot of changes and yet even though a lot had happened, big and small, from trips to tattoos to work and my relationship, it felt like picking up right where I started. I also started journaling again, a practice I'd put off with the fake excuse of "not having time." Especially as stupid drama tries to encroach its way into my life, sometimes succeeding, I'm glad I have those outlets. I am sure someday I will write about some of it, but probably in fiction, in disguise, where I can say the things I need to in the most honest way I know how, with some distance. It's very odd to be so sure you mean one thing to someone, and then the next day not be sure at all. My own reactions surprise me, and give me hope that maybe I'm a teensy tiny bit more mature than I was. Or not. I don't really know, I just know that whatever was going on last year wasn't working.

But that's a story for another time. I wanted to talk (write) about, well, talking. I spend so much of my time alone, trying to puzzle over words, to make them come out the way I want them to, to try to sound as knowledgeable on the page as I want to in my head, that sometimes I forget that I don't have all the answers, that asking for help, or just admitting the things I fear, is okay. My boyfriend and I had a big talk today and it's not like we mapped out the rest of our lives in an hour, exactly, but I found out some things I was, frankly, afraid to ask about, because if you don't ask, you can fill in the other person's answer with whatever you want it to be.

That's one of the things I like best about our relationship is that we can talk about anything. I don't feel like there's anything I can't say, so even though my default is still figuring things out in writing, I am working on using my words out loud. It's pretty much the perfect counterpoint to the other situation, where talking was not really on the table and that led to a lot of times when I just kindof filled in the blanks of what I thought was going on. I'm doing my very best to move on from that behavior.

I do have plenty of times when I don't want to talk, to anyone; I need time on my own to sort things out. It's part of why I love the solitude of travel; you're on a plane for a few hours, you're in a hotel, you're exploring with GPS and walking and wandering and soaking up new surroundings and you're not obligated to talk unless you want to. That's it's own form of therapy too. I'm have trips planned for each of the new few months, some by car, some by plane, national and international, business and pleasure and a mix of both. I'm excited about those possibilities, and the more I've started to talk about them, the more they've started to sound like they are actually doable. It's a fine line, though, because I have a lot to get in order before I hope on a plane (or rather, multiple planes) to Dubai.

Audio version of Best Sex Writing 2012

Heads up that the audio edition of Best Sex Writing 2012 , along with various anthologies I've edited, is for sale

diving into the umpteen stories of the wreck, and the mythology of the truth

Last weekend, twice, I saw my boyfriend's production company put on After Ashley by Gina Gionfriddo. It's an often over-the-top play, where I was trying to catch up with the plot, and sometimes it was hard to take the relationships in it seriously because there was this backdrop of absurdity, but there's a moment near the end that struck me both nights. It was this moment when Justin, trying to rectify what he sees as a false image of his murdered mother, quotes Adrienne Rich's poem "Diving into the Wreck." He says he wants to show "the wreck" and "not the story of the wreck," and reads a passage from tehpoem that includes these lines: "the wreck and not the story of the wreck/the thing itself and not the myth" and then proceeds to serve up a videotape as evidence that the story being put forth is false, and his is real, true, honest.

I don't know enough about the poem or poetry in general to do the poem justice, but I couldn't get that image out of my head, nor the idea that any of us can separate ourselves from our story, which is really "stories," that there is ever "the thing itself" sans mythology. Please show that to me, that person or thing or place that exists without a story, without a mythology built up around it. Of course I understand his impulse; he wanted to right what he saw as an injustice, an untruth, and I don't mean to imply that he was making something up. But the idea that because you have a history, a memory, or a tangible item, like a videotape, and that therefore you are free of mythology, free of the framing of the story, is, to my mind, false.

I thought about so any stories I've told myself, about my body, my heart, my home, my relationships. I would imagine that Rich would agree, given this bit from her poem "On Love:"

An honorable human relationship-- that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word "love"-- is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.

The story of the wreck, which, again, is an ongoing one, especially when it comes to our fellow humans (and ourselves), is indeed a constant refining. It's informed by so many things, and the idea that we know someone else, whether they are dead or alive, in the best and clearest and most correct way, is one that is easy to be seduced by. Who wouldn't want to claim that they have this clear insight, this omniscient vision of "the wreck?" I thought of that when I read the Wired cover story that purported to be about Steve Jobs, but was much more accurately about Steve Jobs, the Walter Isaacson biography. Indeed, Isaacson is interviewed as are many businesspeople who've read his book. This same assumption Justin makes in After Ashley is right there in the title of Ben Austen's story: "The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale?" (Italics mine)

I was fascinated by the way Isaacson's story was taken as fact, rather than a very popular 600-page biography informed by facts, but at the end of the day, a story. I almost wrote "like any other," which I admit isn't accurate; Isaacson had an immense amount of access to Jobs and those surrounding him. But the idea that he has written the forever definitive story, one that is so singularly truthful and decisive that no other even gets mentioned, is telling, even as the story purports to be about Jobs as multifaceted angel/devil.

It's been this wonderfully eye-opening lesson for me, to see where I am too much like Justin myself, where I want to fit people into the story I think they'd wear best, tailoring my own visions around them, rather than letting them dress themselves, shucking a coat here, wiggling into a pair of jeans there, coating themselves in all manner of disguises. Are their (dis)guises "true" simply because they picked them out of the closet? Not necessarily, but I also know that neither is mine; we are all entitled to our story, our viewpoint, no matter how much other people might disagree. There was a moment, when I wasn't blindfolded, during Taylor Mac's show on Monday night where he had an audience member come up and peel the liquid latex off his face, and it was hilarious but also shocking. You've started out in a mask--what else is artificial? All of this?

I am more cautious, in some ways, than I have ever been. I am always looking for the stories that aren't being told, the hidden language of silence, deliberate or not. I am looking for the stories of wrecks and successes in equal measure. I know that the stories we present, conscious or not, are just as important as the "truth," if such a thing exists. When I was in the middle of that spectacularly bad romance, I told myself the most vicious stories, ones that built me and that relationship up in ways that could only leave me with absolutely nothing. For a long, long time, I blamed other people for that failure, for my own lack of insight, for my lack of seeing what was literally right in front of me.

I was, in a word, angry. I hated that I was that fallible, that gullible, that stupid. I hated that part, in some ways, more than the hurt. I hated that I had fallen for my own mythology of what was happening. And it's not like all of a sudden I love that I did that, but I know it was something I had to learn from, knowledge that I could, hopefully, put to use in the future, to ask when I wasn't clear, to not elevate myself to that pedestal I'd put myself on, but also not let myself think so little of myself that I'd accept the things I did. It's more complicated than that, of course, and I think it would've been unfair in the thick of it to expect myself to see any more clearly than Justin. Do I sometimes wish I could go back and be different, better? Of course, but I also know that I was playing a losing game from literally day one. That story was right in front of my face, surrounding me, but I didn't want to see it, I pushed it away at every turn, shut anyone up who wanted to tell me their version of the truth of that story because I wanted to be special, exceptional, worthy. I don't want that any more, from that person, but it only takes an instant to embody that girl who did. I still have days when I wake up and think that maybe I could, I don't know, erase that history and hurt and indeed be worthy, for a few seconds, for the span of a conversation. Then I shake the silliness out of my head and proceed into real life, which is much messier than my flighty fantasies. There's a lot of be careful what you wish for in there too; fantasies are stories that can veer on dangerous.

That so-often fine line between story and truth, especially the ones we tell ourselves, is a space that fascinates me. I want to use it to learn how to undo some of the most damaging stories I've told myself; that I shouldn't bother starting, because I will fail, that I'm not worthy, because someone else decreed it, that the world is more limiting than limitless.

I think we all have, to one degree or another, a desire to control the story. It's a primal sort of self-protection, and I get it, I really do. Of course we want to dictate what others think of us, and in some cases, what others do. I am grateful that I am making hesitant, tiny baby steps toward recognizing that that's not something I can control. I still hate it, but I also know that the more you try to exert that iron fist of control, the more damage you do.

There have been so many times in the last year and beyond, specifically last week, where I was in such a dark place, I literally couldn't see anything else. Somehow, certainly despite myself, rays of positivity forced their way in, forced me to see that that dark story I was telling myself wasn't so much false, as temporary. Even if it's just a coping mechanism, a story I have to tell myself to get up in the morning, I do believe that every day is a new opportunity, not to undo the past, but to reframe the present, to live up to my own expectations for myself, and to force myself to keep looking for the false notes in the stories I tell myself. It makes teasing out the truth more challenging, to be sure, but I would like to think it makes me more empathetic, to be less like Justin, myopic in that search for justice, and more aware of the fact that even Ashley herself didn't have a monopoly on the "story" of herself. All we have is our own version, however twisted, subjective, loving, hateful, flawed and beautiful, that is.

Former porn star Jennie Ketcham talks sex addiction, masturbation and healthy relationships

I interviewed Jennie Ketcham, author of the new memoir I Am Jennie and formerly known as porn star Penny Flame, about sex addiction, masturbation, reality TV, healthy relationships, female friendships and more at The Daily Beast. Here's one of the questions she answers: "Your recovery process for sex addiction included not masturbating, and making a masturbation trigger list. Why was that one of your rules?"

I'm editing the Sex Diaries book and looking for diarists from across the United States

Here's the announcement that ran in Publishers Marketplace about the book version of the sex diaries I edit. I'd love it if you'd let anyone you know who might be a good fit, especially people not in NYC or SF or LA, people who are over 40, anyone with an interesting sex life, to read a few diaries so they know what we are looking for and then contact me about this at sexdiaries at nymag.com - tell me why you'd make a good sex diarist and I'll send you more information. Thank you!!!

New York Magazine's THE SEX DIARIES, based on the magazine's online column of the same name, which has been profiling the sex lives of average New Yorkers since 2007, and comprising 50 original entries from diarists ranging from young to old, conservative to liberal, coastal to middle American, impoverished to affluent, for a peek behind America's closed doors, to Jenny Wapner at Ten Speed Press, by David McCormick at McCormick & Williams Literary Agency.

Blah blah blah

I wish I had something fun and perky and cheerful to say, but I don't, though there are Fifty Shades of Grey cupcakes and a cupcake Snuggie, both of which I was excited about posting. Lately I've been pretty down, and one way I know that is that I haven't even been cupcake blogging much, something that takes minimal effort. That along with everything else seems scary and overwhelming, like why bother starting when I know I'll never finish. That's how I feel some days about getting up, and part of why I booked a few flights this week, including my first visit to the Minneapolis State Fair. I'm plotting international travel pitches and finishing anthologies and hopefully some fiction, and trying to cheer myself up. Hopefully there will be something to share soon. Also next Wednesday I'm giving a free mini erotic writing workshop at Babeland in SoHo at 7 (43 Mercer Street), and August 1st Liar's League is presenting one of my stories.

BDSM book BOGO offer through July 22nd for Anything for You: Erotica for Kinky Couples

From today, July 16th, through July 22nd, if you pre-order Anything for You: Erotica for Kinky Couples, I'll send you a signed copy of any of the following: Suite Encounters: Hotel Sex Stories, Going Down: Oral Sex Stories, Irresistible: Erotic Romance for Couples, Curvy Girls: Erotica for Women or Passion: Erotic Romance for Women. US addresses only. Just forward your receipt to kinkycouplesantho at gmail.com with "BOGO" in the subject line. This applies to ebook purchases as well (though I only have hard copies to send out). Thank you! And stay tuned for news about how to get a free copy of my next anthology, Cheeky Spanking Stories.



Order Anything for You: Erotica for Kinky Couples from:

Amazon

Kindle edition (ebook) (pre-order for August 14th)

Barnes & Noble

Nook (ebook) (pre-order for August 14th)

Powells

Books-a-Million

IndieBound (search for your local indie bookstore)

Cleis Press

Introduction: As Kinky as They Want to Be

Like Riding a Bicycle Lisabet Sarai
Borrower Beware Heidi Champa
Anything She Wanted Neil Gavriel
Tails Deborah Castellano
Teppanyaki Janine Ashbless
Greasing the Wheels Madlyn March
Interview Talon Rihai and Salome Wilde
I Tend to Her Justine Elyot
Apple Blossoms Emerald
Big Night D. L. King
The Guest Star Sinclair Sexsmith
Exposure Elizabeth Coldwell
New Games on a Saturday Night Teresa Noelle Roberts
Notes from Her Master Kathleen Tudor
Lap It Up Kay Jaybee
What If Angela R. Sargenti
Petting Zoo Rachel Kramer Bussel
Normal Charlotte Stein
Everything She’d Always Wanted Ariel Graham

Introduction: As Kinky as They Want to Be

“My wife is on her knees.” That is how the first story in this book, “Like Riding a Bicycle,” by Lisabet Sarai, starts off, and in some ways, it’s why I don’t think I even need to introduce these stories, although I am about to. What I like most about this book is that its authors, in each of these nineteen titillating stories, assume that the reader is already aware of the world of BDSM. That’s not to say that if you’re a curious newcomer to the world of bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism you shouldn’t keep turning the pages, but just to point out that there is an ease with which these couples embrace their love of kink, in its varied forms, even when they are uneasy about the particular acts they are about to engage in. That push/pull, love/hate relationship with what turns us on is part of the beauty of BDSM and is a recurring theme here. In the course of these erotic vignettes, you will indeed learn about why, say, someone would want to be “forced” onto her knees, or bent over a bed or used as a plaything.

In these stories, you will find pain, and pleasure. You will find service and devotion. You will find Masters and Mistresses and curious onlookers⎯and so much more. You will find a dinner party where food is used for foreplay, and learn what CNFM stands for (hint: Clothed Female, Naked Male). But more than any particular scene or setup you’ll read about⎯and they are quite dazzling in their ingenuity⎯what stays with me the most from these stories is the longevity of the couples, the way they can read each others’ moans and sighs and screams so well, discerning a lover’s desires based on years of practice.

One of my biggest pet peeves about BDSM erotica is when a story leaps too quickly into the “action” and doesn’t give enough insight into who the characters are, what makes them tick, what makes them want to be bound, gagged, stripped naked, exposed, ordered around⎯or be the one doing those things. In every one of these imaginative, racy stories, you will find out why each part of the couple is there, what they get out of their relationship, what pushes their buttons, what animates their kink. You’ll find anal penetration, asparagus sex, an interview with a Mistress and her most eager slave, role-playing, spanking, bondage, exhibitionism and much more. Fantasies are fulfilled, sometimes on command, sometimes in ways their creators never could have foreseen. Most of all, though, what comes through is the passion, caring, and commitment these couples have for one another, the love behind (and alongside) the lust, which is what enables them to do all the wild, wanton things they do.

In the closing story, “Everything She’d Always Wanted,” by Ariel Graham, you will see the word fear over and over; the protagonist, Gwen, also experiences her share of panic. Her journey deep into the world of a Dominant/submissive relationship is captured in expert prose. Graham writes, “She’d adapted quickly, something in her recognizing what she’d been searching for.” When I wrote earlier that there’s a comfort with the topic of BDSM, what I meant is precisely what is shown so dramatically and beautifully in that story. What happens in it is Gwen’s idea, as the title suggests, but she is still nervous, wary, uncertain if her biggest fantasy is actually one she is capable of going through with. It’s this very fear that drives her, that arouses her, that pushes her to keep going. The only thing you have to listen to is David, Gwen thinks to herself at one point. She has to take a leap of faith to get from here to there, and when she does, a whole new sexual world opens up for her.

The same could be said of the other characters, men and women, tops and bottoms, you’ll read about in these pages. In a sense they all have to take a leap of faith and trust their partners to guide them, whether it’s Dan in D. L. King’s “Big Night,” who gets a very special fortieth birthday party, or the narrator of Sinclair Sexsmith’s, “The Guest Star,” who watches as her girlfriend takes a new lover, or Jack in “New Games on a Saturday Night” by Teresa Noelle Roberts, who is used to girls who know their way around the business end of a paddle, but has what he thinks he knows turned on its head by a novice, Serena. For him, “the turn-on wasn’t so much giving the pain as being trusted to give just the right amount of pain.”

I hope these stories will move you as deeply as they’ve moved me. They are rich, varied and incredibly naughty. Many of them have made me wish I could slip inside the body and mind of a given character and act out his or her devilishly dirty delights. All of them have shown me just how powerful a force kink can be, how it can bring couples closer together and show them the true depths of trust and desire they can plumb.

Rachel Kramer Bussel
New York City[image error]

Wanderlust

It's one of those days when I'd rather be anywhere else, at least, that's what I tell myself, but the truth is I'd rather be anyone else. I ogle travel sites for new places to go but, sadly for me, I'd have to be the one to hop on those planes and trains. And I will, to NJ and DC and Martha's Vineyard and San Francisco and Long Beach and Texas and Philadelphia and Scottsdale and, if I'm damn lucky, Alaska. Some of it is exhausting sounding in my head, a failure to live up to my promise to myself to travel to new place sand be a businesswoman, not someone who is so easily flattered she says yes to expensive trips because she thinks it's cool to be invited anywhere. I won't lie, though--I am flattered, and wish I were rich so I could actually afford all those trips. Instead, I will have to figure out a way to afford them, and rent, wherever I wind up paying it. It could be anywhere and right now I am pretty over this same place, this same everything, even though NYC still enchants me, when I let it. I don't know if I deserve to go to all those places, but I also know that without those chances to escape, I would go even madder than I am. Maybe that's circular, but it at least staves off not so much monotony, as feeling like I'm going nowhere. My life may be going nowhere, but my body can take off, and maybe the rest of my life with it.

Last night I lay in bed and listened to fireworks going off in what sounded like the street right outside my window. Tonight, over the sound of Rebecca Gates, I hear thunder and, when I turn around, beneath the mangled, broken blinds I occasionally consider replacing, lightning. Part of me never wants to leave, even though there's bingo and steak and friends and theater to see this week, but when I get so stuck like this, where all of the words seem stupid and meaningless, The End some empty, faraway place I will never reach, I can't fathom actually getting excited about what's outside, because I know I first have to get excited about what's inside. I'm hoping to find that again, so I can bring something more than a hollow brain and body to all these cities I want to visit. I will have to just sit with that feeling, awful as it is, while a large part of me wishes I could start over, from the very beginning, erase all my sins and misdeeds so I wouldn't have to see them right in front of me, blockading the words I'm trying to get to. Since I don't think I'll be lucky enough to get that to happen, I will do my best to explore what I can here in my home, which is like a treasure trove of either junk or delights, or both. Funnily enough, I'm supposed to be working on a project about that "junk" that I have conveniently set aside because while I momentarily had the audacity to send a sparkly, bold pitch, I now fear I have nothing to say. And maybe I don't, but or maybe what I have to say and do about all the stuff will surprise me.