Rachel Kramer Bussel's Blog, page 127
March 6, 2012
Yes, I'm speaking at MOMENTUMCON where former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Joycelen Elders is speaking
Crazy, but so is almost everything about my professional life these days, including the fact that I can work from bed in my pajamas (I will be fully clothed when I speak on a panel and teach erotica at MOMENTUMCON though!). See the full schedule here. My events are on Sunday, April 1st, 9:30 am-12:10 pm.
New York, NY – The 2nd annual MOMENTUM Conference (momentumcon.com) will have former U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Joycelyn Elders join its closing keynote plenary on April 1st, 2012. MOMENTUM will take place in Washington DC from March 30th through April 1st, 2012...
In response to the addition of Dr. Elders to the closing plenary, MOMENTUM has extended the regular registration fee of $100 until March 10th. After March 10th, registration will be $150.
MOMENTUM is geared toward anyone interested in intelligent conversations about the influence of new media on sexuality. After a sold out first year in 2011, MOMENTUM has expanded its space, presenters and sessions, with over 40 sessions and 60 presenters. MOMENTUM will cover a wide range of viewpoints on sexuality, and the program is sure to have something of interest to everyone. The conference will be held at the Crystal City Marriott at Reagan Airport. MOMENTUM brings together the best people in their fields of the LGBTQ, sex-work, BDSM and non-monogamous communities. Speakerswill discuss ways to bridge the baffling dichotomies our culture creates around sexuality.
Each participant in MOMENTUM will leave the conference with new perspectives, new connections and a plan to carry the MOMENTUM forward into 2012 and beyond.
Pre-registration is required to attend MOMENTUM. Go to momentumcon.com or http://momentumcon.com/registration/ for registration.
For more information, please contact Tess Danesi
Email: tess@tiedupevents.com. Twitter: @momentumcon
New York, NY – The 2nd annual MOMENTUM Conference (momentumcon.com) will have former U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Joycelyn Elders join its closing keynote plenary on April 1st, 2012. MOMENTUM will take place in Washington DC from March 30th through April 1st, 2012...
In response to the addition of Dr. Elders to the closing plenary, MOMENTUM has extended the regular registration fee of $100 until March 10th. After March 10th, registration will be $150.
MOMENTUM is geared toward anyone interested in intelligent conversations about the influence of new media on sexuality. After a sold out first year in 2011, MOMENTUM has expanded its space, presenters and sessions, with over 40 sessions and 60 presenters. MOMENTUM will cover a wide range of viewpoints on sexuality, and the program is sure to have something of interest to everyone. The conference will be held at the Crystal City Marriott at Reagan Airport. MOMENTUM brings together the best people in their fields of the LGBTQ, sex-work, BDSM and non-monogamous communities. Speakerswill discuss ways to bridge the baffling dichotomies our culture creates around sexuality.
Each participant in MOMENTUM will leave the conference with new perspectives, new connections and a plan to carry the MOMENTUM forward into 2012 and beyond.
Pre-registration is required to attend MOMENTUM. Go to momentumcon.com or http://momentumcon.com/registration/ for registration.
For more information, please contact Tess Danesi
Email: tess@tiedupevents.com. Twitter: @momentumcon
March 1, 2012
Happy birthday, Mary Lou Lord!
Happy birthday to my favorite singer, who has a new album coming out that I am expecting in my mailbox very soon (yay Kickstarter), Mary Lou Lord! Here's her cover of Lucinda Williams' "Metal Firecracker," which reminds me of certain songs of Mary Lou's, and has this way of sounding, to me, new and classic at the same time.
February 29, 2012
But I kill dreams in the chase/I slap love in the face
I buy the MP3 version of Mary Lou Lord's album Live City Sounds so that I can play my boyfriend her cover of "Thunder Road," since we're going to see Bruce Springsteen, and I know he's a huge fan. We'd just been talking about Springsteen's use of plain girl names, and there's one, "Mary." We sit on the couch and listen and then we make out and the album keeps going and it's an effort to keep myself in the moment, because every song is a time capsule of so many moments. Finding her music was this way out of the stultifying life of the law that never fit me well, though New York City totally did.
I'm pretty sure I'm going to treat myself to a day away, an adventure all by myself, to see Shawn Colvin in Wilmington, Delaware. She and I are circling near each other in the Washington, DC area. I'm speaking at MOMENTUMCON, at the end of a busy month that involves SXSW and a family wedding in Chicago and a lot of assorted projects. That need to escape, though, is something I'm not sure I can do in a day. I'm working as hard as I can to be utterly present, in the now, rather than the past, but that trip seems like such a clear marker, of that old me and the new me. Last year I almost didn't go to DC. I had a complete and utter freakout that involved throwing butter in the street and melting down and then while I was on the bus got an email that should've been pretty much the biggest red flag I've ever seen, but instead I pretended that it wasn't, pretended all sorts of things that haunted the rest of the year. I only now am starting to let go of all the emotions that were stirred up then, all the flaws of mine that seemed to glow from my iPhone screen, and continued to as I wandered amongst the cherry blossoms.
I have a date this year for the conference, and the cherry blossoms. There's a part of me that loves the coupley-ness of that, the domesticity that we keep playing at for a few hours or a few days at a time. It's as welcoming and warm as it is alienating and surreal, and sometimes the collision of those opposing forces feels like it's happening inside me. It's not so much a single/couple split but a freedom/anchoring split. There is a part of me that doesn't want to be beholden to anyone or anything, to literally be able to, as the song says, pick a day and be in a new destination, which is what I'm going to do, and have been doing. I know I have a ways to go in terms of easing out of being that girl I was last year, so empty and needy and fearful and eager to please, back when I thought there was some special way I could be or act that would get me what I wanted. I know now more surely than ever that all those things I thought I wanted from the person who sent me that email, who sent me a photo of the cherry blossoms blooming, all that supposed validation, isn't something I can ever get from anyone else, even the kids I dream about. I don't have names picked out, but I have a vision of the life I want. I see it when I hold my friend's baby warm against me, when her daughter points at my computer screen and counts the cupcakes she sees. I see it when I look at the 10-day-old in the photo nestled against another friend, when I send him a stuffed purple block with a cow on it.
Live City Sounds opens with a Magnetic Fields cover, "I Don't Want to Get Over You." Either version, the original, or Mary Lou's, has this almost over joking tone even though it's about that agony of knowing you have to get over someone but you know you're not even going to try because there's no point. It's from 69 Love Songs which featured songs like "I Think I Need a New Heart." For such an awfully long time, I could identify with both of those sentences. My heart was so stuck in the past that every time I tried to yank it into the present, it was stubborn and angry and mocked me, letting me get as far as I possibly could, like a kid on one of those leashes. There I'd be in the present, thinking I was looking and moving forward, when really I was just readying myself for a hard crash back into the past, and we'd collide so hard I'd be useless for days and weeks at a time. Now, I don't think you could pay me to cry on command on a subway train. Well, you could try, but I don't think even conjuring up the darkest moments would do it. It's more a hollowness, a what if, an uneasy truce with the truth of the situation. And sometimes get the fuck out of town, but hopefully manage to keep my dreams within easy reach.
I take too many planes
I know too many names and I
Forget them
I wanted to know if dreams
Would lie
You said they would try and I
Said let them
You just let them
But I kill dreams in the chase
I slap love in the face
Ricochet in time to the music
You just pick a day and I'm in
A new destination
Shawn Colvin, "Ricochet in Time"
I'm pretty sure I'm going to treat myself to a day away, an adventure all by myself, to see Shawn Colvin in Wilmington, Delaware. She and I are circling near each other in the Washington, DC area. I'm speaking at MOMENTUMCON, at the end of a busy month that involves SXSW and a family wedding in Chicago and a lot of assorted projects. That need to escape, though, is something I'm not sure I can do in a day. I'm working as hard as I can to be utterly present, in the now, rather than the past, but that trip seems like such a clear marker, of that old me and the new me. Last year I almost didn't go to DC. I had a complete and utter freakout that involved throwing butter in the street and melting down and then while I was on the bus got an email that should've been pretty much the biggest red flag I've ever seen, but instead I pretended that it wasn't, pretended all sorts of things that haunted the rest of the year. I only now am starting to let go of all the emotions that were stirred up then, all the flaws of mine that seemed to glow from my iPhone screen, and continued to as I wandered amongst the cherry blossoms.
I have a date this year for the conference, and the cherry blossoms. There's a part of me that loves the coupley-ness of that, the domesticity that we keep playing at for a few hours or a few days at a time. It's as welcoming and warm as it is alienating and surreal, and sometimes the collision of those opposing forces feels like it's happening inside me. It's not so much a single/couple split but a freedom/anchoring split. There is a part of me that doesn't want to be beholden to anyone or anything, to literally be able to, as the song says, pick a day and be in a new destination, which is what I'm going to do, and have been doing. I know I have a ways to go in terms of easing out of being that girl I was last year, so empty and needy and fearful and eager to please, back when I thought there was some special way I could be or act that would get me what I wanted. I know now more surely than ever that all those things I thought I wanted from the person who sent me that email, who sent me a photo of the cherry blossoms blooming, all that supposed validation, isn't something I can ever get from anyone else, even the kids I dream about. I don't have names picked out, but I have a vision of the life I want. I see it when I hold my friend's baby warm against me, when her daughter points at my computer screen and counts the cupcakes she sees. I see it when I look at the 10-day-old in the photo nestled against another friend, when I send him a stuffed purple block with a cow on it.
Live City Sounds opens with a Magnetic Fields cover, "I Don't Want to Get Over You." Either version, the original, or Mary Lou's, has this almost over joking tone even though it's about that agony of knowing you have to get over someone but you know you're not even going to try because there's no point. It's from 69 Love Songs which featured songs like "I Think I Need a New Heart." For such an awfully long time, I could identify with both of those sentences. My heart was so stuck in the past that every time I tried to yank it into the present, it was stubborn and angry and mocked me, letting me get as far as I possibly could, like a kid on one of those leashes. There I'd be in the present, thinking I was looking and moving forward, when really I was just readying myself for a hard crash back into the past, and we'd collide so hard I'd be useless for days and weeks at a time. Now, I don't think you could pay me to cry on command on a subway train. Well, you could try, but I don't think even conjuring up the darkest moments would do it. It's more a hollowness, a what if, an uneasy truce with the truth of the situation. And sometimes get the fuck out of town, but hopefully manage to keep my dreams within easy reach.
I take too many planes
I know too many names and I
Forget them
I wanted to know if dreams
Would lie
You said they would try and I
Said let them
You just let them
But I kill dreams in the chase
I slap love in the face
Ricochet in time to the music
You just pick a day and I'm in
A new destination
Shawn Colvin, "Ricochet in Time"
February 27, 2012
"My Date Told Me to Wear More Makeup" - my latest essay at The Frisky
I'm back in writing mode and am hoping to keep having more work to share soon. Here's my latest, from The Frisky, one of my favorite websites: "My Date Told me to Wear More Makeup." With a visual, and both are actually self-portraits. I've been using the one on the left on Facebook and my new Moo business cards:
A snippet:Read the whole thing
A snippet:Read the whole thing
February 26, 2012
Inside Beaner Bar
I pretty much live at Gimme Coffee in Williamsburg (the coffee is so good and has fueled much writing), to the point that I just suggested they sell cupcakes, but I liked the art at Beaner Bar, and it's right near Waffle and Wolf, where I'm still eating my way through my well-worth-it Groupon.
I'm loving the new Georgetown Cupcake in SoHo
And will be checking out their Thin Mint Crunch cupcake on Thursday and blogging about it. Yum! This is their mint cookies and creme. They're located at 111 Mercer Street; my first NYC home was 240 Mercer Street, so it feels kindof full circle.
"Um, Rachel"
I'm sitting in Beaner Bar sharing coffee and catching up with one friend when I get a text from another one. "Um, Rachel" it says. I show it to my friend. "Maybe she's mad at you," she suggests. I wait for the followup, expecting something awful. Instead, she's just telling me that my ex, or rather, the hot genius lady's husband who I used to fuck, is at her place of employment. She is a little freaked out by this, but I'm not. It doesn't phase me; I didn't know, and didn't need to know. I'm not mad, but it feels like I'm watching myself in a movie. I'm so grateful to be with a friend who doesn't judge me at all, who knows how weird this time is, with or without text messages. It's weird too that just as I finally start to get to that place of feeling nothing, I've been given all these wonderful professional opportunities; they feel connected, in some strange way, like a sign that if I grow the fuck up, focus on what I have, what I can produce and be, rather than what I can't, zero in on what I'm meant to be working on, gain the courage to change the things I can instead of chasing after those I spent way too much time wishing they were into me, the universe will reward me.
I'm grateful for how little I felt, ashamed of those moments when I still am too weak, too fragile. I hate myself when that happens, when I can't just roll with the punches. I was glad the text came now, when I'm a little stronger, fiercer, when I'm trying to protect my heart, but not protect it too much. There was a time when I'd have either asked her to do some reconnaissance, or burst into tears. Now, I can laugh, mostly, shrug it off. That's all hers, always was, always will be. It has nothing to do with me. I accept that I'm not as young, pretty, smart, kinky, perfect, and I'm okay with that. All that envy just dropped away; its toxicity was starting to seep into way too much of my life, and for nothing. I have no choice, and rather than wasting time regretting all my extreme idiocy, I'm trying to be in the now, regardless of all the TMI, self-inflicted and otherwise. You could tell me he's running for president, he's in your house, whatever, and I'd be okay. No cause for alarm. I get it.
The part that's harder is, after dating so many people who ultimately just weren't that into me, who found it so easy to walk away, having to realize that not everyone is like that. Some people actually like me for me. They aren't comparing me to someone I'll never in a million years be able to hold a candle to, they're not trying to change me or tell me what to do, they're just themselves. There aren't a million games or hoops to jump through.
I don't know if I'm up to that challenge, for simplicity is its own kind of challenge. I don't fetishize codependency and inseparability; the opposite, in fact. I am very much a loner, and for every moment of sociability, I need its opposite. At the first hint of too much togetherness, I crave nothing more than complete solitude. I miss Hawaii not just for the warmth and the beauty, but the quiet. When shit hits the fan here, I think about whether I could make it there, whether we'd be a good fit. I don't know about me and Hawaii any more than I know about the future of my relationship. One day at a time. I just know that that text felt like at test, like a sign...hopefully a good one.
And not to at all compare a breakup to drugs, but yes, I've written about this a lot, and it reminds me of Cat Marnell's Whitney Houston memorial/drug essay in that I will keep writing about it not because anyone tells me I fucking shouldn't (that's also pretty much a sure way to make me never shut up about it) but because I'm done and truly don't care anymore. I'm working toward getting there, because there are infinitely more interesting topics. I'll move on to those soon. Have a few new pieces in the works that I'm excited about, and lots of ideas percolating. Slow and steady.
I'm grateful for how little I felt, ashamed of those moments when I still am too weak, too fragile. I hate myself when that happens, when I can't just roll with the punches. I was glad the text came now, when I'm a little stronger, fiercer, when I'm trying to protect my heart, but not protect it too much. There was a time when I'd have either asked her to do some reconnaissance, or burst into tears. Now, I can laugh, mostly, shrug it off. That's all hers, always was, always will be. It has nothing to do with me. I accept that I'm not as young, pretty, smart, kinky, perfect, and I'm okay with that. All that envy just dropped away; its toxicity was starting to seep into way too much of my life, and for nothing. I have no choice, and rather than wasting time regretting all my extreme idiocy, I'm trying to be in the now, regardless of all the TMI, self-inflicted and otherwise. You could tell me he's running for president, he's in your house, whatever, and I'd be okay. No cause for alarm. I get it.
The part that's harder is, after dating so many people who ultimately just weren't that into me, who found it so easy to walk away, having to realize that not everyone is like that. Some people actually like me for me. They aren't comparing me to someone I'll never in a million years be able to hold a candle to, they're not trying to change me or tell me what to do, they're just themselves. There aren't a million games or hoops to jump through.
I don't know if I'm up to that challenge, for simplicity is its own kind of challenge. I don't fetishize codependency and inseparability; the opposite, in fact. I am very much a loner, and for every moment of sociability, I need its opposite. At the first hint of too much togetherness, I crave nothing more than complete solitude. I miss Hawaii not just for the warmth and the beauty, but the quiet. When shit hits the fan here, I think about whether I could make it there, whether we'd be a good fit. I don't know about me and Hawaii any more than I know about the future of my relationship. One day at a time. I just know that that text felt like at test, like a sign...hopefully a good one.
And not to at all compare a breakup to drugs, but yes, I've written about this a lot, and it reminds me of Cat Marnell's Whitney Houston memorial/drug essay in that I will keep writing about it not because anyone tells me I fucking shouldn't (that's also pretty much a sure way to make me never shut up about it) but because I'm done and truly don't care anymore. I'm working toward getting there, because there are infinitely more interesting topics. I'll move on to those soon. Have a few new pieces in the works that I'm excited about, and lots of ideas percolating. Slow and steady.
February 25, 2012
Kindle and Nook editions of Irresistible: Erotic Romance for Couples now for sale for $9.99
Kindle and Nook readers, you can now purchase Irresistible: Erotic Romance for Couples for $9.99!
This Irresistible read features loving couples turning their deepest fantasies into reality, resulting in uninhibited, imaginative sex they can only enjoy together. You'll delight in discovering all the exciting erotic possibilities, from serving tea naked to a very intimate massage to a reminder that sometimes best friends make the best lovers. Engage in a little sexting in A.M. Hartnett's sizzling "Safe for Work" office tryst, and follow a kinky candidate for public office—and his lusty wife—in "Hypocrites." Cole Riley's moving "Same As It Ever Was" shows that makeup sex can be worth fighting for. Dirty talk leads to lustful surprises and inspiration for the neighbors in "The Mitzvah" by Tiffany Reisz. As editor Rachel Kramer Bussel notes, the lovers in this daringly romantic anthology are "able to open up in the ways they do is precisely because they have another person to rely on, coax them, challenge them, tease them and seduce them into traveling down a new sexual path. Whether that means outdoor sex, kink, a trip to a strip club or a very sensual massage, we get to see how the layers of trust that have been built up get used to stoke the fire that burns between them."
This Irresistible read features loving couples turning their deepest fantasies into reality, resulting in uninhibited, imaginative sex they can only enjoy together. You'll delight in discovering all the exciting erotic possibilities, from serving tea naked to a very intimate massage to a reminder that sometimes best friends make the best lovers. Engage in a little sexting in A.M. Hartnett's sizzling "Safe for Work" office tryst, and follow a kinky candidate for public office—and his lusty wife—in "Hypocrites." Cole Riley's moving "Same As It Ever Was" shows that makeup sex can be worth fighting for. Dirty talk leads to lustful surprises and inspiration for the neighbors in "The Mitzvah" by Tiffany Reisz. As editor Rachel Kramer Bussel notes, the lovers in this daringly romantic anthology are "able to open up in the ways they do is precisely because they have another person to rely on, coax them, challenge them, tease them and seduce them into traveling down a new sexual path. Whether that means outdoor sex, kink, a trip to a strip club or a very sensual massage, we get to see how the layers of trust that have been built up get used to stoke the fire that burns between them."
February 17, 2012
Bloggers wanted for virtual book tour
Want a free copy of
Best Sex Writing 2012
? If you're a blogger, join the March virtual book tour. Email bestsexwriting2012 at gmail.com with "Tour" in the subject and your URL and mailing address in the body and you'll be assigned a date and sent a book!
February 15, 2012
Watch me on The Morning Blend
I promoted the staycation and other tips on spicing up your sex life and had a fabulous time on Milwaukee's
The Morning Blend
on Friday - click to watch!
