Rachel Kramer Bussel's Blog, page 122

MetroCard essay, hot bondage cover, and some reading recommendations

I've been a little out of sorts lately, trying to get my writing mojo back. One step toward that was writing this personal essay, "The Carefully Considered MetroCard", for The Billfold, an awesome site about money and finances. I'm working on various projects, including wrapping up Best Bondage Erotica 2013 , which has a very hot cover, as seen below, and Best Sex Writing 2013, both out in December, and reading for my orgasm and anal sex anthologies (deadline is June 1st for those and I hope you will send me a story!). I'm gearing up for Book Expo America and I'm reading on June 6th at Bluestockings for a night of lesbian erotica and my own reading for the just-released Suite Encounters: Hotel Sex Stories on June 8th, which is my latest event a while (upcoming: I'm moderating a panel on sex writing in San Francisco on August). Some of my books have won some awards, which is cool, but I am too focused on what I'm working on right now to post everything. The Curvy Girls virtual book tour has been kicking ass and you can follow the blogs via these links. And you can read my When Harry Met Sally-inspired story "I'll Have What She's Having" completely FREE in the ebook anthology Exposure (free for a limited time) and if you're the writing type, you should check out the Mischief Books calls for submissions (4,000 word or longer short stories).

Hopefully I will have some good writing news to share soon, and if not, I'll keep on writing! Or typing, as they say in the fun, lighthearted YA beach read novel Messy I just read by The Fug Girls Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan. If you're a YA type, that and Kieran Scott's This Is So Not Happening , which deals with teen pregnancy from the point of view of two teenagers whose lives are adjacent to the pregnancy. If you are looking for a traditional romance, try Sarah Mayberry's totally worth it $2.99 e-book Her Best Worst Mistake , which I discovered via this great romance recommendations list. And, of course, I'm food porn blogging away (will be back to my usual speed soon) at Cupcakes Take the Cake, about things like the Mario Tennis Open and Memorial Day.



I've also been cooking a little bit. I made baked kale chips using Smitten Kitchen's recipe and they were delicious, and right now I have an apple crisp in the oven! I plan to check out my friend Emily's recipes at Nomnivorous soon too.


my December bondage book hotness!


how could a messy blogger like me not love a dishy YA novel called Messy about blogging? (Yes, I would love to hire someone to blog for me...probably wouldn't actually do it, but it was fun to read about)

All Fifty Shades of Grey media hits, all the time

I've been posting the most up-to-date tidbits on Twitter (@raquelita and on my Facebook fan page and, of course, bringing it every single day at Cupcakes Take the Cake, but am going to try to catch up here soon. I'm in the midst of a few deadlines and it's been a very last-minute media week, notably an interview on The Tiffany Granath Show on Sirius XM Radio on Tuesday, a quote in The Atlantic Wire and yesterday, an interview on Los Angeles NPR show AirTalk, the latter two all about Fifty Shades of Grey (Tiffany just briefly asked me about it).

Now back to me being the interviewer! Cooking up interviews with some amazing writers soon.

June 1 deadline for my orgasm and anal sex anthologies!

For whatever reason, I haven't gotten as many submissions so far as I was expecting for these 2 anthologies, which is good news because I need LOTS more stories for both of these, the more creative, the better! And remember: 35 of the 69 stories in the orgasm anthology are reserved for authors I've never published before. Hope that's encouragement to submit!

Short Short Orgasm Erotica Anthology Call for Submissions (title TBA)
Edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel
To be published by Cleis Press in 2013

Orgasm…let me count the ways! Editor Rachel Kramer Bussel is looking for short short stories of 1,200 words or less focused on the theme of orgasm. The more creative, varied and hot, the better. While these are extremely short stories, I still expect character development, exciting plots, and as many types of orgasms as possible. Surprise me! (For an excellent example of an offbeat orgasm story, see "Chemistry" by Velvet Moore in my anthology Orgasmic.) Sex toys, group sex, outdoor sex, masturbation, BDSM, roleplaying, dirty talk, anal sex, oral sex, exhibitionism, voyeurism, quickies, vacation sex—the sky's the limit. Orgasm should be either the focus of the story or play a major role. For an idea of the kinds of short stories I enjoy, see my previous anthologies Orgasmic and Gotta Have It: 69 Stories of Sudden Sex . Final book will contain a very wide range of types of orgasm, motivations, scenarios, etc. All genders and sexual orientations welcome. All characters must be over 18; no scat, incest or bestiality. No poetry. Original, unpublished stories only. 3 submissions maximum per author.

How to submit: Send double spaced Times or Times New Roman 12 point black font Word document (.doc or .docx) with pages numbered OR RTF of 1,200 words MAXIMUM. Note that this is a hard maximum and theme of the anthology and stories that are over 1,200 words will not be considered. Indent the first line of each paragraph half an inch and double space (regular double spacing, do not add extra lines between paragraphs or do any other irregular spacing). US grammar (double quotation marks around dialogue, etc.) required. Include your legal name (and pseudonym if applicable), mailing address to orgasmantho at gmail.com. If you are using a pseudonym, please provide your real name and pseudonym and make it clear which one you’d like to be credited as. You will receive a confirmation within 72 hours. I will get back to you by November 2012.

Payment: $20 and 1 copy of the book on publication

Deadline: June 1, 2012 (earlier submissions encouraged and preferred)



Anal Sex Erotica Call for Submissions
To be published by Cleis Press in 2013
Edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel

Editor Rachel Kramer Bussel is looking for hot and sexy anal erotica that will inspire those looking to explore backdoor sex. Everything from intercourse to analingus, strap-ons to butt plugs, bondage, spanking, self-pleasure and more. Stories will range from new practitioners of anal sex to seasoned anal lovers, and recipients of anal pleasure of any gender. Final book will contain a variety of scenarios related to anal sexuality. All characters must be over 18; no scat, incest or bestiality. No poetry. Original, unpublished stories only. 2 submissions maximum per author.

How to submit: Send double spaced Times or Times New Roman 12 point black font Word document (.doc or .docx) with pages numbered OR RTF of 1,500-3,000 word story. Indent the first line of each paragraph half an inch and double space (regular double spacing, do not add extra lines between paragraphs or do any other irregular spacing). US grammar (double quotation marks around dialogue, etc.) required. Include your legal name (and pseudonym if applicable), mailing address, and 50 word or less bio in the third person to analantho at gmail.com. If you are using a pseudonym, please provide your real name and pseudonym and make it clear which one you’d like to be credited as. You will receive a confirmation within 72 hours. I will get back to you by November 2012.

Payment: $50 and 2 copies of the book on publication

Deadline: June 1, 2012 (earlier submissions encouraged and preferred)

Oyster lovers, here's oral sex story "Shuck It" by Dusty Horn

Actually, here's a taste of "Shuck It" by Dusty Horn in my new book Going Down: Oral Sex Stories . The story opens with the line: "If I like food that I have to work for, it’s only because gluttony is my second favorite deadly sin."



Here's a bit from the middle:

Betty and I are armed with shucking knives, small narrow wrenches with curved tips and fat ivory-white handles.

We touch blades like enemies preparing to fence, then turn our weapons on our defenseless little victims.

The little teases don’t stand a chance.

Opening an oyster takes finesse. It doesn’t crack clean like an egg or pop straight into your mouth like a shrimp. Each fat little heart-shaped teardrop shell must be approached with a combination of delicate control and primal urgency. You have to want it, and you have to be willing to work to get it.

The curved end of the knife slides into the teardrop shell’s pointed opening. Then we must wiggle ourselves inside ever so slowly, searching for the muscles that stubbornly attach the meat to its home. Just the right combination of pressure and strength is required to pry off the flat-top, revealing our goal: a slick bowl of pale meat, a slimy sitting duck.

The final touch releases the meat from its last stubborn muscle, stirring it around in its own overflowing juices. Opened and prepared for consumption, our oysters are bursting cornucopias. Holding our liberated half shells aloft, my lady and I clink them together, gazing hungrily into each other’s eyes as if considering consuming each other instead. Salt water sloshes into each other’s shells and we raise them to our lips.

Something between drug and nourishment, an oyster requires a tip of its rough vessel, an open eager mouth, and a highly skilled tongue to guide the poor animal as it falls. We regress to our animal states as we slobber and slurp, touching defenseless flesh to our tongues and allowing it to pass whole into our throats.

Betty squeals in girlish delight.

“I feel so high!”

Normally a committed vegan raw foodie, Betty makes a guilty pleasure exception for her beloved oysters. So our shellfish feasts have both an exultant Bacchanalian ritual vibe and the conspiratorial hush of a shared secret.

I tease her about her weakness and tell her I only allow her to compromise her principals because a vegan woman with a weakness for oysters is so deliciously, appropriately gay.

Keep in Going Down: Oral Sex Stories , also available as an ebook for Kindle or Nook.

Interview with Portland Book Review

From an interview I did with Portland Book Review when I was there. Lots of inspiration this week for new pieces that I hope to have homes for soon! I'm wrapping up some anthologies and hoping that you all bombard me with submissions for my orgasm and anal sex anthologies by June 1st! Guidelines here.

Brad: What kind of challenges are you seeing as anthology editor? Rachel: There’s a lot of great writing on the Internet, but most of that is cut off at a particular word count, it’s able to be read in two minutes. Some of the meatier, “think-ier” pieces that I like, need to be expanded. In a book it may look too light. Or, some things that are published in light of news events, in 6 months will need to have more analysis. There’s also a lot of overlap on what writers are submitting. I will get a lot of pieces dealing with feminism and sexuality. Which are totally valid topics, but there’s a lot of other stuff happening in the culture. There’s a large segment of the population that think that sex is a private topic, that we shouldn’t be writing about it publicly, I think that kind of thinking leads to people feeling ashamed or confused. I think opening up these spaces, real life spaces and on the internet is a positive thing.

Read my When Harry Met Sally-inspired erotica story "I'll Have What She's Having" free

Restaurants and food continue to be a ripe (ha ha) source of inspiration for me for erotica. Restaurants especially, because there's the public nature of them, the opportunities for voyeurism and exhibitionism, for people watching and flirting, for discovering new appetites. I also like combining sex and jobs, as I did in my Suite Encounters story "Special Request," about a professional concierge with a guest who wants her to host, and participate in, an orgy, and my cunnilingus restaurant story "Secret Service" in Best Women's Erotica 2010. So I was thinking about exhibitionism and how to tackle the topic and came up with "I'll Have What She's Having" which, lucky you, you can read for FREE in the Mischief Books anthology Exposure: Those Who Love to Watch and be Watched , which also features outdoor sex, library sex and much more! It's also free on Kindle from Amazon UK.



Here's a little bit of the story:

Some restaurants hire professional greeters, buy advertising, offer two-for-one deals or make outrageous dishes designed to lure in tourists and those craving the latest culinary concoctions. I didn’t do any of those things when I opened Sizzle, but I did hire Pam after watching from two tables over as she dined with her boytoy, Brad, one afternoon over a particularly languorous brunch at a low-key bistro I frequent. It was a holiday weekend and most New Yorkers were away so I got to stare at her as she consumed a meal fit for a king⎯or a person twice her size. A fluffy omelette was brought out, along with a side of bacon, followed by a fruit and cheese plate and waffles. Brad was sipping a cup of coffee and nibbling on a danish, but, like me mostly he was watching Pam. And no, she didn’t go in the bathroom and puke any of it up.

What Pam did was eat her meal with more gusto and sex appeal than I’d ever witnessed anyone consume anything. She had a serene glamour to her, and each bite of every single dish was savored obsessively, in the manner of a true foodie, with her eyes closed, her head tilted slightly, like the food was taking her to another planet, or maybe another dimension. She wasn’t so much ignoring Brad as giving every ounce of her attention over to the meal. The chef in me was riveted, and the man in me was very, very aroused.

I wasn’t the only one staring. Brad, who I’d later meet, eventually gave up on his danish as Pam gave a performance that would’ve gotten Meg Ryan replaced on the set of When Harry Met Sally. Her sleek black bob shimmered in the light playing off her pale skin, her eyes were closed and her head tilted back so we could practically see the food being swallowed. A quick survey of the room proved that many other diners had found their afternoon’s entertainment, right in front of them, at no extra cost.

When Pam paused to take a sip from her lemonade, she used a straw, sucking from it in a way that made her cheeks pull in and intimated what she’d look like with her mouth stuffed full of cock. Whether she was trying to attract attention or not, Pam had almost all the eyes in the restaurant on her⎯I saw a waiter drop a whole tray of empties as he turned back for just one more peek at her.

Sizzle was all about the hot, the new, the now. I not only wanted the food to be spicy, bold, and edgy, but also to have the restaurant itself stand out in any way it could, from the flashing neon pink sign outside to the black-and-white décor inside. I wanted it to be a place where one could see and be seen, where the surroundings were as noteworthy as the food.

I approached Pam when Brad went to the restroom. “Hi,” I said, slipping her a card. “I’d like to hire you to work at my new restaurant.” I put my hand up and cleared my throat. “Before you object, let me assure you I don’t mean as a server or hostess. Those jobs would not come anywhere close to maximizing your talents. I want you to be the centerpiece of the restaurant, a bit of advertising genius. Your job will be to eat, just like you did today. If you didn’t know already, everyone in here was staring at you. They were drawn to you. I want you in my prime window seat, looking sexy and glam and powerful and hungry. All you have to do is eat, slowly and deliberately. Think of it as performance art, if you’d like, and feel free to dine with whoever you like as long as you are constantly putting something in that beautiful mouth of yours. Your boyfriend is more than welcome,” I concluded, even though, if I were to be honest, I already wanted her mouth for myself.

Read the full story in Exposure.

Sexy massages on The Harder She Comes virtual book tour

Today is my day on the virtual book tour for The Harder She Comes: Butch Femme Erotica edited by D.L. King. I was inspired, in part, by a chocolate massage I bought for a chocolate-loving ex many years back. I had so much fun imagining her surrounded by chocolate, and I've always found massage to be a very sensual experience and wanted to write from the point of view of a masseuse. It's a topic I will probably revisit because it seems ripe for all sorts of encounters. Here's the book's official blurb (fyi, if I ran Amazon, every book would have their full table of contents listed there, but I don't - authors, though, I strongly urge you to get that info on all bookselling sites):

What is it about a pretty girl in a tight skirt bent over to adjust her stockings? Or that hotter-than-hot butch, swaggering into the bar like she owns it, eyes undressing every pretty girl in the place?

Some butches worship at the altar of their femmes fatale and many little girls have a need to serve their big, strong daddies. In The Harder She Comes, we meet girls salivating at the sight of well-filled and packed jeans and bois dreaming of having a beautiful girl’s red lipstick smeared across their mouths. D. L. King has curated a singular set of stories filled with sexy sirens luring unsuspecting butches to their demise on the rocky shores of love and hot, confident women in silk and lace during the day who will do anything to serve their daddies' needs at night. The Harder She Comes is great writing with characters that will stay with the reader for a long, long time — sometimes sweet, always sexy, often romantic, and more than a little dangerous.

From my story "Happy Ending" in The Harder She Comes

Marisa decided to skip Em’s glutes and work her way from the bottom up, so she pushed the woman’s legs apart and began with her feet. They were a little rough, but not utterly uncared for, though they were a far cry from her own, which received weekly pedicures and nightly applications of lotion. Marisa heard a noise as she pressed into Em’s foot, and then it pressed back against her in protest. “That tickles,” Em said, the first hint of mirth Marisa had noticed.

She put the foot down and started with the woman’s calf, which was knotted, and clearly strong. “What do you do?” she asked, the question still within the bounds of the client/customer relationship, though Marisa had more intimate reasons for asking.

“I’m a tour guide, mostly upstate, Westchester, sometimes Jersey,” Em said, flexing into Marisa’s touch this time, rather than flinching away from it. “That feels good,” she went on. “Lots of hills, plus I lift weights.”

“Put your head back down,” Marisa said gently and applied herself diligently to Em’s calves, then knees, one by one, until she was at her thighs. She’d had no trouble working on all manner of models, actresses, and generally beautiful women, the kind who spent hours of upkeep on their appearances, who might have turned the heads of each other had they found one another outside the very chic and proper world in which they lived, but who Marisa saw as belonging far from her world. She’d made out with a femme or five, bedded one or two, even, but the women who made her heart pound, who made her catch her breath and go all coy and blushing, were butches. Always butches. Beyond that she didn’t have a single type; some were tall and thin, debonair, almost, while others were stocky and rough. “How would you feel about me taking off your tank top?” Marisa whispered, the tone of her voice possibly betraying her interest. She wanted to touch this woman all over, to see her come alive, to watch her melt, to give her back to herself.

Em opened her eyes and stared directly into Marisa’s; they were a fierce hazel, snapping and sizzling. “Are you asking as a masseuse or as a woman?” she said.

“A woman,” Marisa said. There was no point in lying when she was getting so aroused. “Look, I know this might not be your usual thing, and I’ve never done this before with a client. But I want to make you feel good. I want to give you a happy ending.” She cursed herself for her babbling the minute the words were out; “Happy ending?” Really? What a stupid phrase. It belonged in fairy tales, but as a sexual act it was ludicrous. “I want to make you come on my fingers,” she could’ve said. “I want to make you wet.” Anything else.

Catch up with the tour! (you may have to scroll back a few days since I'm the last blogger)
May 1  D. L. King  http://sacchi-green.blogspot.com/May 2  Anna Watson  http://dlkingerotica.blogspot.comMay 3  Evan Mora  http://donutsdesires.blogspot.com/May 4  River Light  http://sapphicplanet.com/index.php May 5  Sinclair Sexsmith  http://www.sugarbutch.net/ May 6  Crystal Barela  http://kathleenbradean.blogspot.com/May 7  CS Clark  http://bethwylde.wordpress.com/May 8  Valerie Alexander  http://pomofreakshow.com/May 9  Andrea Dale  http://lulalisbon.wordpress.com/May 10  Beth Wylde  http://adrianakraft.com/blog/May 11 Kathleen Bradean  http://cyvarwydd.blogspot.com/May 12  Teresa Noelle Roberts  http://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com/May 13  Shanna Germain  http://lantoniou.blogspot.com/May 14  Charlotte Dare  http://madeofwords.com/posts/May 15  Rachel Kramer Bussel  http://lustylady.blogspot.com/

My erotica on Kindle and Nook and Audible - updated for May 2012

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For those who are into that sort of thing, here's a handy list/links to my erotica anthologies on Kindle. Below are links to Kindle editions, Nook editions and Audible audiobook editions (where available, more audiobooks are coming soon). Visit my website for links to all my books as well as the anthologies my work has been published in.

I'm updating my website's books page so all the links to Amazon, Kindle, B&N, Nook, Powells, IndieBound, Cleis Press, etc. will be just a click away - that is coming soon. When you click through below you'll see that almost all of these have a free sample chapter (usually the first story) you can download to see if you like it, and most of my Wordpress blogs for the books (not linked below but search for the book on this blog for links, those links will be coming soon) have the full introduction and sometimes a story sample.

And when you use the links below, I do get a small fee from Amazon. I have no preference how you read my books.

This story "Fishnet Queen" is only $9.99 (some cheaper)! A bargain, and instantly delivered.


"Fishnet Queen"


Going Down: Oral Sex Stories (Nook edition)


Curvy Girls (Nook edition)


Irresistible: Erotic Romance for Couples (Nook edition)


Best Sex Writing 2012 (Nook edition)


Best Bondage Erotica 2012 (Nook edition)


Women in Lust (Nook edition)


Obsessed: Erotic Romance for Women (Nook edition)


Surrender: Erotic Tales of Female Submission and Pleasure (Nook edition)


Gotta Have It: 69 Stories of Sudden Sex (Nook edition)


Best Bondage Erotica 2011 (Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition


Passion: Erotic Romance for Women (Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition


Smooth: Erotic Stories for Women Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition


Orgasmic: Erotica for Women Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition


Fast Girls: Erotica for Women Nook edition)


Please, Ma'am: Erotic Stories of Male Submission (Nook edition)


Please, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission (Nook edition)


Best Sex Writing 2010 (Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition

Best Sex Writing 2009 (Nook edition)


Peep Show: Erotic Tales of Voyeurs and Exhibitionists
Audible audiobook edition)


Bottoms Up: Spanking Good Stories (Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition)


The Mile High Club: Plane Sex Stories (Nook edition)


Do Not Disturb: Hotel Sex Stories (Nook edition)


Bedding Down: A Collection of Winter Erotica (Nook edition)


Tasting Her: Oral Sex Stories (Nook edition)


Tasting Him: Oral Sex Stories (Nook edition)


Spanked: Red-Cheeked Erotica (Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition


Rubber Sex

Dirty Girls: Erotica for Women


Yes, Ma'am: Erotic Stories of Male Submission (Nook edition)


Yes, Sir: Erotic Stories of Female Submission (Nook edition)

Best Sex Writing 2008


Hide and Seek: Erotic Stories (Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition


Crossdressing: Erotic Stories (Nook edition)


He's on Top: Erotic Stories of Male Dominance and Female Submission (Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition


She's on Top: Erotic Stories of Female Dominance and Male Submission (Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition


Caught Looking: Erotic Tales of Voyeurs and Exhibitionists (Nook edition)
Audible audiobook edition

Fifty Shades of Grey on Long Island

I went to Long Island yesterday and wrote about an $85 per person luncheon for Fifty Shades of Grey author E.L. James for The New York Observer . Check it out, and if you like it, spread the word please (it's my first piece for the Observer, the New York paper where Candace Bushnell once wrote her Sex and the City column). Thanks!

Here are some photos, and more are with the article...there were even cupcakes! I was wrapping up my piece when there was a commotion about the jeans on the couch being taken by someone. That cracked me up.:

Kinky size 16 woman wants to get spanked and take orders in BDSM story "Big Girls Do Cry"

The other night at Bluestockings, before we busted out the vulva cupcakes by Kitchentop Catering, inspired by my friend Diana Cage's reading from her wonderful book Mind-Blowing Sex , I read the first three pages of my story "Big Girls Do Cry" from Curvy Girls and wanted to share it with you because it addressed something that Diana talked about, which I'll paraphrase, which is the idea that sex means what we think it means. We imbue each act with power and meaning and importance, and getting into the particulars of why one person does or doesn't get off on something is part of what, in my opinion, drives erotica. I'm fascinated by the assumptions we all make about people based on their outward appearance and what they're really into regarding sex, as well as the contradictions of what we want vs. what we allow ourselves to do when it comes to sex. Also, an update: I have absolutely no idea when or even if a Kindle and Nook version of Curvy Girls is coming out. Yes, this makes me sad, but it's completely out of my control so I'm sticking to the Serenity Prayer and focusing on things I do have control over (stay tuned for a great BOGO promo and more). As soon as it's available in ebook form, I promise to let you know. It's a juicy book, and I encourage you to check it out; it's got pregnancy sex, butches getting it on with each other in public, "Runner's Calves," corsets, lots of exhibitionism, sex work and so much more. And, obviously, kink. So I do encourage you to buy Curvy Girls and enjoy it. And if I ever get a next time, the one thing I wish this book had were some hot dominant women! I didn't see that in the submissions and it was a curious omission, in my opinion. Speaking of submissions, a reminder that I want your stories for my anal sex and orgasm anthologies by June 1st!

And I wrote what's below well before Christian Grey's contract in Fifty Shades of Grey demanding that Ana go to a trainer 4 times a week and eat only from a given list of foods came out, a part of the book that left me cold. It's not that I don't think obeying orders around food can't be written hotly; see the amazing story "Lunch" by Elizabeth Coldwell in my anthology Yes, Sir for an example of that. But that segment of their BDSM contract is the kind of thing I was referring to in the passage below.



From my story "Big Girls Do Cry" which you can read in full in Curvy Girls.

You would not believe the number of men who think that just because I’m a big girl, a voluptuous size 16 who isn’t afraid to show off all my assets, that what I’m put on this earth for is to beat their bottoms silly. I’m sure there are plenty of women who get off on that—because I’ve seen them in action and heard plenty of stories—but having a naked, eager, collared man at my feet just isn’t for me. I’m not offended by it or anything, it just doesn’t turn me on, just like some people prefer rocky road and some prefer vanilla. I like my road to be rocky—as long as someone else is doing the rocking.

I prefer to be the one on the floor, stripped bare, eagerly waiting for whatever the perfect, sexy, handsome, smart, mindfucking, sadistic dom of my dreams wants me to do. I’ve been like this for as long as I can remember; the rush of having a lover give me even the merest instruction, kinky or not, from “kiss my hand” to “show me your panties,” is enough to turn me into a puddle of mush. When I get like that, all hot and liquid, my body feels, in a way, weightless. Not literally, of course, and a size zero is not something I aspire to; I mean a more ethereal kind of weightless, like I’m floating and then being brought back down to the earth with a loud, painful, delicious smack on my ass.

Yet for all my desires, it’s only happened twice. Only two men have been able to see exactly how I want to be treated and been capable of delivering it. I get that dominance isn’t for everyone—if it were, my attempts to shimmy into a corset and latex skirt and slash a whip in the air would’ve probably either led me to a devoted husband or a career as a dominatrix by now. But for the most part, I’ve spent my time in the kinky world watching and waiting. I’ve always believed that good things come to those who wait, as facile as that might sound. I’m 24, and I’ve been waiting long enough, observing, staring, lusting after those women lucky enough to get taken over a man’s knee, to be tied up to a cross, to have a gag shoved in their mouth while they thrash around, knowing that they can’t escape until everyone gets what they need.

I know what I want—to cry, to scream, to struggle, to surrender, to be “forced” into all manner of degrading scenarios—but I don’t just want it from anyone. That’s why those two brief dalliances were just that; something about what we were doing didn’t feel quite right. The motions were there, sure, but the men seemed to either be taking out some latent anger on me or simply going through the motions. I want a man who means it. I don’t want it from the men in whom lurks an undercurrent of misogyny, who think the scene is a place to let that loose. I don’t want men who’ll try to “order” me to lose weight and think that’s okay because they’re the top and whatever they say goes. I don’t want a man who doesn’t respect every inch of my womanhood, but rather one who wants to top me, torture me, and tie me up because he respects my every curvy pound.

For a long time, I hated this need, and tried to subvert it, going out with vanilla boys who were perfectly sweet, and sweetly perfect, and therein lay the problem. They were too sweet, too soft, and treated me too tenderly, or ones who somehow fetishized my size, turning me into a woman to put on a pedestal and cower under rather than a living, breathing woman. If it weren’t men building me up to an inflated size and importance like in Rene Magritte’s painting The Giantess, they were considering me a cuddly teddy bear of a girl, someone whose cleavage they could nuzzle up to, someone they could stroke and fondle, someone who could mommy them in a sexual way, but never slap and sting. That would offend their principles. I say, fuck principles, fuck propriety. What’s a hot-blooded kinky girl to do with her desire to bend over?

Read the whole story (yes, of course there is spanking!) in Curvy Girls .