Liz Everly's Blog, page 135

Nobody’s Done It Since: How May Day Changed My Game

I thought James *had* met his match. Too bad everyone else thought it was Stacey Sutton.

By Alexa Day

My love affair with James Bond ended when the Powers That Be sent Pierce Brosnan packing. The affair began with Roger Moore. The year was 1985, the film was A View to a Kill, and I was 12.

I think a woman develops a certain affection for her first Bond, but Sir Roger, as much as I love him, is not the reason I adore this movie. For a preteen girl trying to figure out where on earth she belonged and what to make of the world around her, A View to a Kill is all about May Day.

Played by the one-of-a-kind Grace Jones, May Day was exactly the heroine I needed at exactly the time I needed a heroine. She dressed to impress – or at least to be noticed – with bright colors and backless dresses. She knew how to handle her business. She singlehandedly calmed a skittish racehorse, handed Bond’s ass to him on a fishing rod, and jumped from the Eiffel Tower with a stylish parachute, and that was just in the first half of the film.

By the time I was 12, I’d learned a hard lesson of life: The more you can do, the less popular you’ll be. Bear in mind, I was growing up in a world before Buffy but after Cleopatra Jones. In this dark time, a 12-year-old black girl had very few lady bad-asses to admire, and even fewer of those had men in their lives. In the films of my youth, girls like Stacey Sutton (poor Tanya Roberts), girls whose placid minds were untroubled by thought, seemed to get the guy.

It’s a hell of a job, being May Day, but I think I could do it. For a few hours.

But on top of her killer wardrobe and lethal talents, May Day had a boyfriend. A blond boyfriend. And the man doted on her. He kissed her hand while they hung out at the lake waiting for Bond to drown. He watched her get downright giggly over the view from his blimp. They were a well-oiled machine combing his estate looking for Bond and later burning down San Francisco’s City Hall. They were good together.

Okay, let’s stop for just a second. I will acknowledge that Christopher Walken’s Max Zorin was probably not the ideal boyfriend. He was a genetically engineered megalomaniac with pretty deep-seated psychopathic tendencies. I get it. But I challenge you to look at the positives.

Max had his own money. He had his own place, which came with its own servants’ quarters. He was pretty sharp. He had a plan for the future that ostensibly included May Day. I see a lot of non-megalomaniacs out there who can’t manage all that. I would suggest that the megalomania is more of a long-term relationship issue, something to work through as it causes trouble.

Just think about this like a 12-year-old for a second. Max is looking pretty good now, right? I mean, the man had a blimp with his name on the side. That’s pretty persuasive stuff. I was all ready to be May Day.

Admit it. You would love to put this expression on at least one ex’s face.

Even when things went bad between her and Max and he tried to kill her, I wanted to be May Day. A breakup like that might have rendered another woman utterly useless. May Day went out the way every scorned woman dreams of – she became the instrument of her ex’s downfall. James didn’t foil Max’s Master Plan. May Day did. And she made damned sure he could see her doing it.

Today, I’m a somewhat jaded 40something in a world my 12-year-old self only dreamed of, filled with stories where black women kick ass, take names, and get their swirl on, too. I still haven’t become May Day (yet), but I’ve always thought A View to a Kill is very much her movie. Each time I see it, the romance writer in me can’t stop wondering about the doomed relationship between her and her blond megalomaniac. I know May Day got the resolution that was perfect for her. But maybe one day, I can write a better man for another inimitable woman.

Are you following Lady Smut? We don’t have a blimp yet, but I like our chances for world domination anyway.

Sexy Saturday Round-up

By Liz Everly and the Lady Smut bloggers

Hello sexy! Happy Saturday! It’s very, very, very cold where I am. I don’t want to go outside. At all. But as you are reading this, I am off to sell and sign books. I wish I were you, sitting there, getting ready to read some great blog posts. Stay warm!

From Liz:

Madonna, what are you doing?

Dom Drop!

A reverse trend on bikini waxing.

From Madeline:

One woman’s defiance upon turning 30.

A critique over the ever popular “Gay For You” theme in m/m romances.

4 things that apparently we have wrong about creativity.

This from the “What are guys thinking?” dept. Cute vs. Sexy.

Meanwhile, Ask Men has a sensitive, excellent discussion about how to get your partner to open up, experiment –and try anal sex.

From Elizabeth:

This amazing feel good story will keep you warm all weekend. A brain surgeon walks six miles through the snowstorm to save a patient.

The Sochi Olympics starts on Friday. Meet the hottest guys competing for gold.

Hot hot hot! Only Lovers Left Alive, scorching vampire love story, with Tilda Swinton! Tom Hiddleston! What more do you need? Here’s the sexy trailer.

The world’s most sophisticated sex stimulator for women.

From C. Margery Kempe:

Win gifts at the Heroic Valentines Giveaway.

Armed clown hunted by police O.O

And everyone in Scotland is still chuckling that haggis was confiscated by suspicious airport security.

Stay Hungry,

Liz

P.S. Please don’t forget to subscribe to Lady Smut.

Only Lovers Left Alive

 by C. Margery Kempe

“This is your wilderness? Detroit?”
“Everyone left.”

A couple of people left midway through the advance screening we caught. Perhaps they were expecting Thor pyrotechnics. Already a fan of Jim Jarmusch’s work, I knew the sort of film I’d be getting—in fact, I was eager for it.

Only Lovers Left Alive hooked me from the opening notes of Wanda Jackson’s ‘Funnel of Love’ played at a slightly slower pace with a looping crackle of vinyl sound, the swirling 45 alternating with swirling images of Tilda Swinton’s Eve in Tangier and Tom Hiddleston’s Adam in Detroit. The circular, swirling images repeat throughout the film and heighten the impression of the circularity of time for the long-living vampires. Even at the start of the film, we see things from Eve and Adam’s viewpoint, looking down at the world below.

The music drives the film from Adam’s morose soundscapes created with his treasure trove of antique guitars and classic Premiere drum kit. Jarmusch’s own band, Sqürl (I laughed out loud at the name) and Jozek van Wissem have created a wonderful soundtrack that I can’t wait to get. It has the same feel of swirling spirals that the narrative evokes.

Vampires offer a way to see the world over a long period of time. You can get the maudlin world-weariness of Anne Rice’s Louis or the hedonistic heedlessness of the teens in Lost Boys. Mia Wasikowska’s Ava seems to embody the latter with a great sense of puppy-like fun. Hiddleston’s Adam rises above the breast-beating self-pity some vamps have (cough *Angel* cough) despite his nigh on suicidal depression. This is in sharp contrast to Eve’s joi de vivre (or would that be mort?); she asks him at one point why he doesn’t just dance. She fills her suitcase with inspiring books—from Orlando Furioso, where she pauses to look at an illustration of the creation of Adam and Eve to Don Quixote and even the hipster’s handbook Infinite Jest)—in fact Eve fills her days with wonder and beauty.

Adam’s depression is not the usual “I’ve lived too long, seen too much” vamp sob, but the pain of the creator. That’s what Jarmusch is really after: reigniting that spark. Adam has a familiar desire to get his work “out there” but to resent the “zombies” (as they all call humans) having access to it. His pet zombie Ian (Anton Yelchin) warns him that his reclusiveness only makes him more interesting, but he can’t see that. The jokey part of this is that he of course wrote many famous pieces but gave the credit away to others.

The agony of influence is a big part of that (and inevitable for a vampire film). When Eve refers to his heroes, Adam angrily spits back “I have no heroes!” Yet the wall of his room has (seemingly signed) portraits of many friends and influences from William Blake, Mary Shelley and Oscar Wilde to more modern folk like Iggy Pop. John Hurt’s ‘Kit Marlowe’ (yes, this movie is just full of things that delight me) clearly has a career beyond that particular name, but after centuries he’s still writing and has a devoted apprentice, Bilal. I can easily imagine continuing to write for centuries, reading all the time, but it seems music requires more outside input and hearing new people to spark ideas. Playing the same old vinyl seems to increase Adam’s depression. When he sees people actually enjoying his music, it affects him.

Detroit as a golden wreck, preserved like a fly in amber at its apex of dissolution. It feels more like an art installation than a rapidly imploding city. The destruction is clear, but also held at a distance, as the Ren Center appears almost as a ghost in the distance of one shot. Apart from the hospital where Jeffrey Wright’s “Dr. Watson” works, it’s also a remarkably white city, which jars. Mostly it’s empty; coyotes wander the streets and out of season amanita muscaria grow, in contrast to Ava’s L.A. which Adam dismisses as “zombie central” (heh).

I don’t want to say too much about it. I was grateful that all I knew was the cast and it was about vampires, which turns out to be a motif rather than a subject. I love the music, the imagery and the completely realized world Jarmusch has created (the Thousand and One Nights café!). I love the little rituals of normalcy for them, such as the politeness of asking to remove their gloves (they glean so much from touch) or waiting for an invitation to cross a threshold. I know I’ll want to watch it over and over just to admire the set decorating and costumes.

And the music: that I’m already listening to now. The cast of course is superb. Even small roles are perfectly cast. The film is beautiful, intoxicating and mesmerizing — and very sensual. I recommend it to anyone who usually enjoys this kind of immersive film experience. Dive in.

[Big tip o' the hat to Jay for alerting me to the preview tickets via Total Film]

Disturbingly Sexy…

by Madeline Iva

Long live perversity! I’ve been snuggled up this January indulging myself with some really perverse and interesting books.  Feeling satisfied after devouring my pile, I wanted to share with you these disturbingly sexy reads.

Mary Burton – NO ESCAPE

Burton’s writing just keeps getting better.

Her books are generally disturbing – as any serial killer book should be. Mary loves/does nothing better than show you a helpless woman realize these are her last few seconds of life – and then she dies.  The mangled desperation abruptly cut off gets to me every. damn. time.

NO ESCAPE has a second layer of edge for me.  Burton paints a portrait of our hero–a Texas ranger–in very realistic colors–as a young shit in the past.  Flashbacks reveal how incredibly awful he was to his then-pregnant child-bride.

While hero and heroine work together to process the tragic past, and catch the bad guys in the present, the heroe’s past callousness kind of echoes off the serial killing.  I found myself wondering if Mary was placing the violence men perpetuate towards women in a wide spectrum ranging from merely brutal to totally evil.

Which is not to say hero and heroine don’t have great chemistry when they meet up again.  He’s changed, but something about the edge to that relationship and the general creepiness of the serial killer stuff–a guy who buries women alive—made this suspense book more chilling for me than usual.

Creepier still (but in a good way you know,) is sitting next to Mary during a book event in December.  She looks like anybody’s perfect TV mom, and even brought delicious lemon cookies for everyone to try.  At the same time she described how a reader complained that her books had too much blood.  Well, Mary cackled, this latest book showed that reader.  Given that being buried alive is for me the most horrible method of death to contemplate (next to underwater spelunking) you can imagine how every hair on my neck was standing up on end.

Yet overall, the sexiness between hero and heroine was p-r-e-t-t-y hot, Mary. I have a feeling that if Mary Burton ever decided to write erotic romances, she’d kill it.

The next mystery I enjoyed to the last drop was by author Denise Mina: GARNETHILL.

Not Garnett Hill the catalogue of bed linens, but an actual hill in the city of Glasgow, Scotland – home of my favorite accent in the world.

What’s disturbing about this book is that the main character’s inner frailty springs from being found in the cupboard by her family when she was little.  She was in a semi-catatonic state and with blood between her legs.  Clearly her father did something horrific to her – and later when grown she has a major breakdown that leaves her patching together spotty memories of past abuse during a rocky recovery.

But her disturbed family, led by her mother, has come around to the idea that  she made it all up.  They insist they don’t remember any such thing actually happening.   Along with this horror comes the murder of her boyfriend—and the suggestion (again from her family) that maybe she did it—maybe she’s crazy.

Nothing like the black fuzzy flocked cover to bring on those 70′s flashbacks.

Yet Maureen is a very sexy.  Though rather a hot mess, she’s also brash and clever, fast on her feet, and she finds herself one step ahead of the police in solving the murder.

Brimming with a kind of hard-knocks acceptance of the world, Maureen in all her rumpled n rowdy glory stands for all things Scottish and Glasgawegian.  Great book.

The sequel starts off with her shagging a guy, and I have to say I was not surprised.

Turning more towards disturbing sex and away from mystery entirely—I read a very twisted little book called TAMPA by Alissa Nutting.

Here we have Lolita in a contemporary setting with reversed roles.  The main character is a woman trolling for 14 year old boys.  She strikes gold when she lands a job as a middle school teacher.  Yet life is not easy for this attractive sociopath, and soon she is facing potential exposure.

I have a feeling that this original cover was a little too vag positive for some, given the content of the book.

There is much about our culture that novel is satirizing.  From how we identify only women as objects to our ‘boys will be boys’ attitude, Nutting skewers the complacency of men when it comes to women and sex.

I found Nutting’s protagonist subversively appealing.  She is straightforwardly bad and makes no excuses.  She knows all too well how sexism in our society can cut both ways, working to render the exploitation of male children invisible, portraying any and all actions of hot n attractive women as harmless and insignificant.

A conscienceless murderer who knows she’s going to get away with it, Nutting’s anti-heroine leaves us with the feeling that not only her, but society is to blame.

Finally, for a taste of illicit longing there is MRS. POE by Lynn Cullen.  While I find it dis-satisfying to put down a historical book where all the characters are dead from tuberculosis within a decade of the main action, I’ll admit that this period account of forbidden love has a certain evocative charm.

The author Lynn Cullen knows just how to present that stream of obsessive behavior brought on by forbidden attraction.  She shows how the (fictional?) attraction between Poe and a well-known poet of the day, Frances Osgood builds and how their inner desires distort their view of the world around them. Virtue is muffled and clarity lost.  Smoldering uncertainty is the food for artistic inspiration–which when published becomes a rout for their exposure.

Poe and Osgood walk about 19th century New York city, ravenous with hope for their passion while mired in a hopeless situation.  If the forbidden love of adultery is the most unsatisfying of fruits, even so Cullen has found a way to seduce her readers into tasting it.

Have you sampled any disturbingly good reads of late? Hope you will share below in the comments section. (Especially if they are erotic romance.)  And please subscribe to our blog by pressing the follow button to your right.

Skipping Over The Sex Scenes

By Elizabeth Shore

Do you remember the first time you ever read a sex scene? I sure do. The book wasn’t even a romance, in fact it was a murder mystery, but there was a brief scene between two characters meeting for a secret tryst in a snow- covered woodsy cabin. There’s a bit of naughty phone talk as they arranged for the rendez-vouz, and – never having read anything like it before –  what a scorcher it was for my virginal eyes! From that moment on, I was hooked on sex scenes.

Years after that steamy introduction, I’m like a hardened street cop who’s seen it all. Groups, couples,  ménage, straight, gay, bi, every orifice we have, every curious position we can think of, I’ve read it in an erotic romance. It’s a positive advance within the genre that writers have gained acceptance in introducing all kinds of different scenarios in their books. Readers can now step up to the erotic romance buffet table and choose just what they want.

“I’ll take a paranormal with inter-racial shapeshifters, group sex, and some m/m, please.”

“No problem, ma’am. Any light bondage on the side?”

“Sounds great. Thanks!”

Yet despite our vast array of choices in erotic romance – including how many or how few sex scenes we want – I’m still see seeing readers commenting on how they “skip over the sex scenes” when they’re reading erotic romance. At first take, it seems like an odd thing to do. Wouldn’t it go to reason that the desire for a hot, descriptive book is what prompts a reader to seek out erotic romance in the first place? So why skim over the very scenes that were wanted to begin with?

There are a number of reasons I can see, number one being that some books just have too many of them. It’s like dessert overload. As much as you love it, eating twenty pounds of chocolate in a single sitting is simply too much chocolate. Reading an erotic romance in which long, drawn out explicit sex scenes go on for three quarters of the book is simply, at some point, just too much sex. It’s not hot anymore. It’s not titillating. It’s doesn’t thrill and excite and make us tear through a book at the expense of all else. It’s just . . . meh. You start flipping over those scenes as you wonder to yourself, “does anything else happen in this book?”

Another sure incentive to skip the sex scenes is when they’re so badly written that they become either really irritating or inadvertently hilarious. The purple prose debacles of the 80′s have largely gone the way of ripped bodices, but there’s still bad writing a’plenty out there, and it doesn’t make at all for a hot read. Scenes become mechanical, pronouns and nouns are highly overused, and the result is a sex scene with as much passion as a dead fish.

Lots of erotic romances could be improved with the help of a good editor, but the demand to get books out quickly before on to the next  puts unrealistic expectations on editors. It’s far too time consuming to work with writers crafting and refining sex scenes when the conveyor belt of books to be published is coming at editors with the speed of a bullet train. It’s too bad, too, because I think there are lots of erotic romances that could go from good to great if only someone with desire and experience had the time to make it so.

As an erotic writer myself, it’s a bit crushing – to say the least – when I hear readers talk about skipping over the very scenes that I take pains to imagine, write, edit, re-write and refine to make them really and truly hot and exciting. So what gives? What gets you to stop and read the sex scenes versus rolling on by? We writers would like to think that if we write it they will come – literally (ha!) – but only if the scenes are actually read.

Sound off in the comments below and don’t forget to follow us here at Lady Smut. You’ll never want to skip what we have to say.

St. Lucia–Beaches, Mountains, and Chocolate

We’ve sort of written a lot about the “romance of place” on Lady Smut. There was Alexa Day’s post on hot airport sex and then Madeline Iva’s post on hotel sex,  just to name a few. I wrote a post not too long ago about Ecuador and recently realized that I promised to write a little about St. Lucia, the other place that CRAVINGS is set. How about hot tropical sex? Beach sex?

Photo by Magnus Braith

Besides the tropical climate and lush scenery and fabulous beaches and sunsets, ( I could go on a bit), Saint Lucia is a huge cacao producer. But one of the things that took hold in my mind when I was researching for CRAVINGS was the chocolate-themed resorts on Saint Lucia. Several high-end resorts are built around that chocolate theme. If that’s not paradise, I don’t know what is.

There is the Boucan resort, which is set on an old Cacao plantation (the Rabot Estate), which has been refurbished into a new plantation, where visitors can participate in the farming.  They call it the “tree to bar experience.: Their website says “The experience starts with a walk through the estate’s cocoa groves, selecting ripe cocoa pods to cut from the tree and ends  making chocolate bars themselves. The tour includes all the fascinating stages in between – from seedling nursery, fermenting room and sun-drying station to grinding, mixing and lots of tasting!”

If that doesn’t sound like your idea of a vacation, well, there’s always the spa, which has everything from cacao facials and detox body wraps to manicures, pedicures and cacao reflexology. Sounds like a kind of cacao heaven.

And then there is the food. Here’s just a few items from their menu:

Cacao Gazpacho
Lightly Curried Coconut & Cacao Chicken

Tomato, Chilli & Cacao Ravioli

Cacao Crème Brûlée

Rabot Estate Molten Chocolate

Truth be told, I understand the allure of the food and the spa, more than I do the beach. I’m not into the sun. I love listening to the waves, though. But I think it would nice to be on a beach with a hot guy under an umbrella or two. A couple of colorful drinks, with pretty little umbrellas in them, and we are good to go. I

In Virginia, right now, the cold has lost it’s charm. My family and I have had plumbing problems, days off of school and work, and it’s just not been pleasant. Daydreams of St. Lucia might be just want the concierge ordered.

Don’t forget to subscribe to Lady Smut. But the way, check out my book CRAVINGS if you are at all interested in Saint Lucia—along with a few “other” things. Wink.

You Haven’t Come Such a Long Way, Baby

by Kiersten Hallie Krum

I love the movie Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Beyond the delicious meta trip of wondering exactly what parts of the interactions between John and Jane Smith are characters in a movie and which ones are the on screen courtship of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, it’s a great action adventure movie that is, at heart, a romance about a marriage in trouble.

Sexy south of the border

Spies John and Jane Smith first meet when each spontaneously uses the other as a cover to avoid arrested post-assassination by South American police. Sexual attraction and personal compatibility is immediate and they eventually marry without revealing that they are each expert spies for rival agencies. Midway through the movie, they realize the true identity of the person each has chosen to marry, so, naturally, they try to kill one another. It’s only after their real identities are revealed that they are able to realize they inadvertently fell in love with their perfect mate even while pretending to be other people. Along the way of lying and deceiving each other all these years, they just happened to chose the perfect partner.

By the end of the movie, they realize that, together, they’re a matched set, a truth never more evident than in the climactic shoot out when they move in tandem, silently communicating need and solution, instinctively covering each other’s weak side. 

John never denigrates Jane as less skilled a spy because she’s a woman. He never holds back during their knock-down, drag-out hand to hand combat when they beat the holy hell outta each other. She’s an opponent; that she’s also a woman has no bearing on how he treats her in a combat situation. It’s one warrior battling another equally skilled opponent.

I swear I turned the stove off

Later, when John hands Jane the smaller gun and she objects, “why do I get the girl gun?”, after an initial incredulous “are you serious?!” he switches guns with her. It’s immaterial to him; he handed her the gun because it was the first one he grabbed and he trusted her to defend them, not because it was the smaller, less manly gun. It’s a partnership and one of the rare movies that depicts a warrior woman who not only does not emasculate the man to prove her skill, but also isn’t regulated to diminished status by the man himself. When she does trumped him or him her, it’s because their styles and strengths are different not a result of their genders.

Except when it comes to the sex.

There’s a scene where John and Jane meet at the restaurant where John had proposed to Jane. Jane thinks she’s killed John already but when he shows up to the contrary, they have a barbed tet a tet that’s essentially their idea of instigating foreplay, so naturally they tango. Literally.

Tango done right might kill you

Any scene that involves a good tango has my immediate attention, but this one also crackles with sharp, loaded dialogue and delivery. They don’t know what a lie and what is truth but, for the first time in years, they are fascinated by each other and frankly are having a great time sizing one another up anew.

During the dance, they systematically disarm one another, showing the first signs of a genuine understanding of the other’s true nature. At one point, Jane’s goes down…into a crouch to retrieve the pistol hidden in John’s sock. John looks over at an elderly couple who are watching in shocked horror and grins smugly as he nods. That’s right. That hot piece is going down on me right here in the middle of the dance floor.

Seriously. Hot.

Later, John and Jane beat up on each other—again, literally—as the second stage of their extended foreplay. But at the killer moment, neither can take the shot and they finally knock all pretense aside, and have wild, violent, seriously hot, passionate monkey sex. There’s a moment when John lays Jane back on the table, still in her black halter dress, to go down on her and boy does she enjoy it. It’s seriously hot and a visceral example of John perspective of Jane as an equal, professionally, emotionally, and sexually. It’s also a moment that is cut from the theatrical version of the film (it can be seen in the extended “unrated” cut.)

This bugs me. A lot.

I look for this moment every time the movie comes on. At first, I thought it a cut made for the basic cable showings, even though the blow job insinuation remains for those showings. But no, it’s only found on the director’s cut of the film. Because a hot woman with a gun doing battle needs to pay up even if only by insinuation. But a hot man giving said woman sexual pleasure solely for her own sake without a guaranteed return is a no no. I love a lot about this movie, but that always pulls me out every single time. Heh. Unintentional pun is its own reward.

I guess it shouldn’t surprise me at this point. In 2010, Blue Valentine, starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams was given an NC-17 rating specifically because the filmmakers refused to cut the scene where Ryan’s character lovingly performs oral sex on Michelle Williams’ character and she dares to enjoy it! But it struck a chord this weekend when I absently watched it again, tuning in from my laptop for my favorite parts, like the minivan car chase. I had just finished the movie Hitchcock (well, most of it at least) about Alfred Hitchcock’s journey to make the movie, Psycho. The rampant sexism and pervyness of this depiction of Hitchcock was a reminder of how far we’ve come as far as the depiction and treatment of women in films and in the making of them. The scenes in which the Standards and Practices committee censors the film line by line were borderline ludicrous. Most of their complaints about what they deemed to be lewd and filthy images focused more on how much of the naked Janet Leigh appeared on screen than any objections over the level of blood and violence. Whether or not a naked nip made the cut was far more important than the fact that she was being hacked to bits in the shower by a man dressed as his mother.

I’m not surprised by such conservative, backward thinking among the conservative, backward censors of the 1950s, but I’m continually surprised when it pops up in modern culture. As Mr and Mrs Smith quickly reminded me, we haven’t really come all that long way. Jane Smith is every inch John Smith’s equal and he’d be the first to agree. And yet of the two depictions of oral sex, only the insinuation of the woman performing fellatio on the man (and it being some sort of proof of his masculinity) made the final cut of the film. Apparently, women’s bodies and their blatant, shameless enjoyment of the pleasure that can be enjoyed in those bodies is still verboten or, at the very least, only for the unrated edition.

In Mrs Henderson Presents, a charming film about a wealthy woman of a certain age who galvinates her newly found widowhood by running a bawdy burlesque review in World War II London, Mrs. Henderson is meeting with the cultural minister to get permission for her lady performers to be nude on stage. Stuttering about for the proper words to discuss what to him is a “disagreeable and somewhat sordid” topic, he is shocked and embarrassed by Mrs. Henderon’s blasé use of the word “p*ssy” and begs her to refer to “the disputed area” as “The Midlands”.

Cheeky at every age

“Oh dear,” she coos, deeply amused, “You men do get into such a state about ‘The Midlands’, don’t you?”

 

Even in today’s rapaciously sexual media, when it comes to The Midlands, we still can’t see the foliage for all of the trees without making disagreeable and somewhat sordid, like, say, the sexposition that has become such a staple in the series Game of Thrones. 

Look, I’m not banging my drum for more depictions of fellatio or cunnilingus in movies or appropriate television shows solely for titillation’s sake. Nor do I think some poor sod of an intern should sit there clocking the seconds of each scene to make sure they each get equal screen time (though I’ve met a few interns who wouldn’t mind the task.) Merely that when a movie designed around the fact that the hero and heroine are matched equals in every realm designates the scene of the woman’s solo sexual pleasure to be “unratable” it only perpetuates the fallacy that such pleasure is somehow still as sordid and disagreeable as it was seventy years ago. She can hit and shoot and blow men up but dear Lawd dont show her coming from oral sex. The heavens themselves will quake.

Give me a break. Surely by now we’ve come a long way from that. Baby.

What say you?

Follow Lady Smut. Our disputed areas are all kinds of sordid in the very best of ways.

Next Stop on the Career Path: Part-Time Superheroine

By Alexa Day

Those of you who aspire to the writing life, take note. You’ll be told you need many things, but the most important, by a country mile, is a group of non-writer friends who will cheer you up when your dream job is trying to kill you. The other day, my crew was trying to lift my spirits by reminding me that I have a secret identity, a separate life shrouded in shadows, but in a cool way, like a superhero.

I don’t think I’m doing it right, though. See, if I were really committed to doing the secret identity/superhero thing right, I’d still need quite a few things. For our limited purposes, let’s focus on the three most important.

Oh, the cape — mustn’t forget the cape! Image by Vegas Bleeds Neon.

A sexy yet practical costume. I honestly think that if superheroes could fight crime in sweat pants, they would do it. At the very least, they’d choose yoga pants. Unfortunately, society demands more from its superhero costumes. I understand why – no one wants to be identified as “some chick wearing yoga pants and a Princeton sweatshirt with some Dansko clogs” when people could be saying, “She was a redhead with this really hot indigo catsuit with thigh-high boots.” (Trust me. The indigo and red will work together. It’s not business casual; it’s superhero professional attire. It’s meant to be seen.) Of the available options for superheroines, which seem to be catsuit, bustier and panties, and minidress, I think catsuit is the most comfortable. It offers the full range of motion (because you will not be jumping or reaching in a bustier, friends). As a former varsity field hockey player, I can vouch for the freedom of movement a miniskirt permits – tough to find a more comfortable way to run! On the other hand, I imagine I’m going to have to fight crime in inclement weather, and while I relish the chance to bare my legs, the catsuit will keep them warmer.

Spectacular transportation. Being a superhero is not about getting from Point A to Point B. It’s about escape. Pursuit. Inspiring awe and envy in nemeses. Driving through brick walls. My regular reliable vehicle, much as I love it, is not going to get the job done. Not on any front. Besides, my regular transportation has an identifiable license plate. Supervillains are going to have that traced right to my home. But what to drive? I don’t have the resources necessary to accommodate aircraft, sadly, so I think I’d have to choose between motorcycle and souped-up automobile. Right now I’m leaning toward the motorcycle. It’s smaller and louder, and I can probably get up to mind-bending speeds in seconds. Most importantly, there’s room for recently rescued dudes on the back of the bike. It’s always wise to get to know citizens personally, right?

Yes, I can read and fight crime at the same time, thanks for checking. Image by Thibault fr

A super-secret dedicated workspace. I’m torn between something like the Batcave and something like the Fortress of Solitude. The Fortress of Solitude gets better light, and it is really secluded. I mean, you *know* there’s probably no cable and no cell signal at the Fortress of Solitude. I’d probably get lots and lots of writing done while I was waiting for some erotica-related emergency to arise. But with the Batcave, I’d get proximity to a major metropolitan area (and the grocery store), I’d also get staff, so that when I need groceries, or dinner, or someone to tell me to stop watching TV and get to writing, someone will step in and handle the business so I don’t have to. I don’t see trusted staff members commuting to the Fortress of Solitude. Advantage: Batcave.

So what does a day in the life of an erotica-writing superheroine look like? Hard to say. Racing around town on the Eroticycle. Running in slow motion. Yanking copies of certain best-selling Twilight knockoffs out of people’s hands and giving them S&M 101 by Jay Wiseman instead. Auditioning hot shirtless sidekicks on the casting couch in my super-secret dedicated workspace.

Hmm. This is already looking like a viable career change. I’d better get to work on the sexy but practical costume and some calling cards with my superheroine logo on them. Unless there’s some other super-essential item I’m missing – what do you think?

And be sure to follow Lady Smut. ‘Nuff said.

Sexy Saturday Round-Up

Hello, Sexy! Welcome to Saturday, where the long day stretches before you with countless possibilities. The Lady Smut Bloggers are hear for you. We’ve combed the Internets and are bringing you some fun and informative posts.

From Liz:

Need help starting your sex toy collection?

Sex and the plus-sized gal.

Ten things I hate about sex scenes.

From Madeline:

Heroes & Heartbreakers presents you with a list of romance books just published in January.  Fun!

A movie review of her that unfavorably compares one subversive romantic hipster movie to another subversive romantic hipster movie.

Why do Eastern Europeans fall in love more quickly than us?

From Elizabeth:

Want fabulous hair? Stop shampooing it. What one woman learned after ditching shampoo for three years.

A guy’s perspective on the problems with online dating.

Want to touch your partner but he’s in another state? Don’t worry – you still can! Check out these sex toys of the future.

Gigolo Vin Armani says that in his profession, it’s not all about the sex.

From C. Margery Kempe:

For no reason at all: stormtroopers twerking (thanks, Kem)

20 Things that Make a Man a Gentleman

Don’t worry: people still read print books

Stay Hungry.

Liz

P.S. You don’t want to miss a post, do you?  Subscribe today!

Inspiration: Jacqueline Susann

by C. Margery Kempe

When I was growing up, there seemed to be a lot more writers on television. Not tucked away on obscure cable channels (ah, terrestrial television!) but on the chat shows like other important people. Back then people didn’t only appear to plug things — or if they did, they bothered to be charming not just bored and hitting all the release dates.

Surely one of the most alluring of the public writers — i.e. people knew by name on sight — was Jacqueline Susann. She started out thinking she might want to be an actor, but found the endless casting calls a drag. She amused herself writing letters “from” her poodle Josephine to her friends and when one said she should write a book as Josephine, the penny dropped.

Every Night, Josephine! was the kind of novelty book that didn’t especially suggest a career ahead, but Susann was an ambitious woman and thought about what would sell. The dishy gossip she heard hanging around Broadway with her tony friends and her experiences trying to break into acting gave her oodles of material for her big break novel Valley of the Dolls. For the first time in mainstream bestsellers, the sex was explicit. She was talk of the town and the rest is history (read the scandalously breathless [and speculative] biography Lovely Me by Barbara Seaman or the trashy but heartfelt bio pic Scandalous Me with Michele Lee if you can find it).

What Susann totally changed was how to promote books and, ever the control freak, she took a  lot of the process into her own hands and made herself a success. She was witty, charming, stylish and tireless. With grim determination she fought back  a few times against the cancer that eventually took her life.

From her I learned things like signing your books meant the bookstore could not return them. Susann would bring coffee and doughnuts to the teamsters who were delivering the boxes of her books, because it helps if your merchandise arrives in good shape.

Some people sneered at her books as “trash” but that never daunted Susann. She “had something to say and said it” in her books. Damned by would-be highbrow interviewers, Susann never backed down and always remained proud of her work. Although she wrote about the glitterati, they always ended up badly because she thought her readers would appreciate their own lives that much more.

What did I learn from her? Do what you want, don’t apologize for your work, laugh at those who sneer and laugh all the way to the bank. I haven’t had that much to put in the bank yet, but I’m already laughing.

Jacqueline Susann: one of a kind.

Here’s a new BBC radio adaptation of Valley of the Dolls.

Susann on ‘What’s My Line?’

As a young wannabe actress:

Her classic novel as camp (and groundbreaking) Hollywood film with a fabulous cast including Patti Duke, Susan Hayward, Sharon Tate, Martin Milner and look for fledgling actor, Richard Dreyfuss, near the end as well as the author herself in a cameo as a reporter:

Supposedly Harold Robbins impression of Susann’s life: also known as one of the worst films ever made.