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Exhibiting the following journals with one entry excerpt feels
a bit like splitting a person in half. All of these journals belong
to writers who work in sexuality and have radical sexual lives:
a feminist pornographer, an adult site reviewer, two well-known
erotica and sexuality authors and editors, a gay male pornographer,
and a women's sexuality site operator. And all of us may appear
in our entries to be two separate people if you aren't used to
folks like us. One day an entry may be about shopping for fall
clothes for the children, or a meditation, or world events; and
the next day one may find a very hot and graphic account of sexual
activates from the night before.
But you see, this is how we are: sex is as much a part of our
life as any other part, and when sex is all or part of your living,
it can take on as much ease and normalcy as grocery shopping.
I have found that some of the most honest, visceral daily writing
out there happens within this group, likely because once you're
used to talking honestly and without shame about sex in public,
it's far easier to talk with candor about everything else. As
you may or may not expect, some of the most honest, straightforward
and least salacious writing about sex also happens in these journals.
Sex writers do tend to talk about sex -- sometimes haunting, sometimes
funny, sometimes so personal it hurts -- but not always.
So it is with the entry below from David K, who operates Nightcharm, one of the most trafficked gay male sex sites on the Net.
"I value, too, the concept that it's important to embrace awareness
and wakefulness and to make efforts in those directions -- and,
hopefully, the ideas I share (and write from) embody a spirit
of inquiry that impresses others, should they feel inclined, to
do likewise. 'Waking up' implies not only shaking off the slumber
that dulls and automates one's private life, but also cutting
through the fog and stealth that hinders one's ability to see
clearly the time and place they are living in. If the process
of awakening is a series of steps, then the very first one that
a person can embark upon is peering through political/religious
veils. And doing this means discriminating what is false from
what is true. It's futile to think there could be an absolute
solution to the riddle of politics and religion (I mean, it's
been asserted -- unsolved, repeatedly, in various garb, since
time began -- study the Palestinian situation if you want to steep
yourself until you drown), but it is the effort that counts. And
that is tantamount to wakefulness."
Sexual politics are often at the forefront of the minds of sexuality
workers. And often, when sexual politics are a topic of discourse,
it is with an intimate knowledge, not just of one's own politics,
but of the sexual experiences and ideologies of the readers, clients,
or coworkers one hears from each day, as shown below in both Lydia (a lesbian pornographer), and Sabrina's (a women's sexuality site operator) entries, respectively.
"I want to find an understanding of my identity, of sexuality
in general that draws a circle that includes those who have customarily
excluded me. That, to me, is the most radical act imaginable.
And it's a first giant step toward healing things that have nothing
to do with what you or I or our neighbors down the street do together
naked.
"I want to commit radical acts in service to radical goals. For
instance, I need to listen to het women who don't do pain or domination
talk about what they feel and what they want. I need to listen
to het men. I need to listen to people who cringe at BDSM: They
are not bigots, and it would be bigoted of me to mistake different
tastes for oppression. I need to shut up and try to understand."
"Fascinating to note that American Heritage, in defining 'slut'
as 'a sexually promiscuous woman; a slattern,' does not deem it
offensive slang as it does dyke. I'm not sure if that's because
American Heritage doesn't think there's anything wrong with being
sexually promiscuous, or if they don't think there's anything
wrong with calling a sexually promiscuous woman a slut, but there
you have it.
"Although I wouldn't call myself sexually promiscuous (I've had
only one partner for the past five years), I am absolutely fine
with my status as a slatternly woman."
Because in our work we often deal with the integration of body
and mind, the flesh itself is a common recurring theme, approached
with realism and a poignant earnestness, as in erotica author
and editor Debra Hyde's entry here:
"My body's almost a decade older and two children wiser than [Marilyn]
Monroe's was, so I have bit of a belly and more sag in the flesh
than I care to detail, but, essentially, my figure isn't all that
different than Monroe's was. It sure startled Tomboy me, who now
figures she better do a major adjustment to that inner vision.
I can't be androgynous in body, it turns out, only in mind.
"And I'm starting to understand why I sometimes attract attention.
"In fact, maybe that's what drove me towards androgyny? Maybe
I find comfort there because it doesn't demand I be the breathy
beauty, complete with affectation of a wholesome naivety while
sex smolders beneath the surface. Maybe androgyny allows me to
escape all things feminine for a safer ground that allows men
in, but not by virtue of utterly feminine wiles."
And sometimes -- as is often the case of nearly any diarist --
the entries are pure sexual description. But when they are, as
in the entry below from Peter Throckmorton, an adult site reviewer and a polyamorous top, you'll find some
of the most natural, fluid, cohesive and diverse writing to be
found about sex on the web today.
"Saturday night Chloe asked me if I'd go into what she termed
White Trash Wife Beater mode. I started to think on what sorts
of things could go into a scene if I were living in a single-wide
propped on tilting cinder blocks, failing the tooth-to-tattoo
ratio, and aspiring to someday appear on the Jerry Springer show.
Oh - and then she asked if I'd mind if she fought back. This isn't
gonna be pretty, folks.
"I was wearing a pair of those too-blue cheapo blue jeans, white
socks and black shoes, with a flannel shirt worn sleeveless and
open like a vest, over an olive drab tank top that said PIG in
nice bold letters across the chest. Backwards on my head was a
dirty baseball cap from a 'Dunny's Drive In - Nooksack WA,' obviously
a national cultural landmark. She was kicking and yelling and
fighting and struggling and scratching and all that stuff, right
from the git-go all the way through. The DMs had been warned,
Georgette egged us on, Panther and family had helped distract
her, and apparently we had a good sized audience. I guess that
kinda added sterno to her flames when I got her secured to the
wall kneeled down to sort through my toy bag ... and pulled out
a bag of fried pork rinds to sit and munch on. Good lord, but
that girl got steamed."
More often than not, what you find at diaries like ours is a bit
of all the above: what we know and learn about sexuality each
day, both personally and professionally, and the subtle (or blatantly
obvious) ways it colors the way we view and experience the world
in our daily lives. How everything becomes integrated. In my opinion,
that is what makes these journals so fantastic and so multifaceted:
the integration of body and mind, of work, of love, lust and plain
old daily living that may take a bit of getting used to for those
outside our experiences, but which offers a vantage point which
is unique and a pleasure to read, and which often bypasses the
seeming strangeness of what we do for a living. Sometimes, our
work speaks best for itself of all this. In a voice that is ours
and not ours, and perhaps, most universal, it speaks on its own,
as it did for my business partner and the brilliant erotica and
sexuality author, and Scarlet Letters co-editor Hanne Blank in the voice of her muse in this entry.
"I am pleased when you find me still penetrating your flesh, I
am satisfied to remain undisturbed by your impulsive hands. And
we are both satisfied when I curl up to dream and you remember
again -- and always as if for the first time -- that that this
is why you bother, why you keep close to your pen, why I let you
rail at me, why you let me into your clean-floored rooms with
my filthy boots, why you let me probe your softest hidden parts
with my philandering Damascus-steel tongue, why you don't change
the sheets when they're rank with our rut.
"You know my breath is sweeter than white peaches. You know that
the sweat you lick from the fur of my belly is the antidote to
all the slow poisons they try to use against you. You are a woman
in love, and it is maddening, dissonant, but constant as the moon.
That's why you do this. Because that's enough."
Want some more excellent journal reads from sexuality writers?
Check out:
(This article was first printed at Diarist.Net, Fall, 2001) |
