You may be wondering which one.

All of them.

You don’t believe me.  It is not a question, it is a statement of fact.  You don’t because no one does.  In all the stories you’ve ever heard, all the evil that takes place could not possibly be propagated by one being.

But it is.  I promise.  I do it, so I know.

And really, why would I lie?  It just makes me sound worse and I’m actually a pretty trustworthy person when you get down to it.  I don’t have much to lose by telling the truth, most times.

The second thing that I’ll tell you is that it’s not really evil when people want it.  We all have a role to play.  And Cinderella is actually badass and has feet and is perfectly capable of walking away from me, her evil step mother.  And Snow White steals fruit and isn’t really that pretty.  And yes, I enjoy it.  I do.  But so do they.  All the ecstasy that comes with a happily ever after has to come with a few red welts to truly feel like the explosion that it is.  I provide a valuable service.

And if you watch me.  If you watch me do it, watch me grow snaking, piercing vines around a castle to make you bleed and keep the prince out and the princess in; if you watch me keep a rosie-cheeked Rapunzel locked away, tied up, you will see them reflected in my eyes like fire.  You will watch me breathe fast, licking the air so I can taste the tension from my crimes, the need that sweats off the people around me.  The way they love to struggle and be hit and feel powerless.

And I come home to a dark castle, and in the musty blackness, under my heavy sheets, I touch myself thinking about the pleading in Rapunzel’s eyes, the pleading for being held down by me as she watches the muscles work in my arms.  Not the kind of pleading you were expecting.  Or the defiance in Snow White’s face as she bites an apple as red as her lips.  I can still see the spray as she crunches into its skin, the small smile as she knows her bad behavior will be punished.  She knows the way the story is supposed to go, and the thrill of falling will be eclipsed only by the thrill of waking up and wondering what has been done in her absence.

The princes are okay too.  Not my favorite.  Still, their need and want to be submissive is occasionally sexy too, blah blah blah.  It’s part of the job.

Yet as I watch a princess watch the walls of thorns built around her, as wet as it gets me, as hard as my nipples push against the silk of my dress, I do not fall for these people.  I have a role to play.  That’s all.  And then they play their games with their princes, who will be just as kindly cruel to them as I was to deliver them to their saviors.  Aurora pricked her finger on a thorn, sucked the blood, and made herself come.  This I know.  I watched her.  She was beautiful but I was not in love.  I was sad to see her go, but it did not kill me.

I fell for only one person.  Or have fallen.  Still falling, I think.

In our endless repetitions, we waltz around each other often.  I saw her first as the seventh fairy, the being responsible for undoing my spell.  I watch, you know, once I am finished.  I had proclaimed death at the prick of a spindle on her eighteenth birthday.  She changed it to sleep, exactly like she was supposed to.  She looked like a frosted pink cupcake and I didn’t mind at all being outdone by one so pretty.  And when she walked from the castle that day, she turned to where I’d been sitting in a tree, watching, and she winked.

I saw her next as a long-locked fairy god mother.  I did not see her change mice to footmen, but I saw her in a mask at the ball.  My eyes were not on Cinderella, I had my wards to watch her and be jealous.  My eyes were on the pink gown, again, with a pearl mask perched on the end of a pert, freckled nose.  I know she recognized me, though I looked different.  I was playing the part of someone older, someone who’d lost her beauty.  And dammit if she didn’t choose exactly the opposite.  Fairy godmothers can be frumpy, but no.  Not this one.  And she did it on purpose.  She passed me and her eyes stuck to my face even as her head kept facing forward, so she’d know I was looking.  Her gown breathed around her and I couldn’t have cared less about Cinderella, or the girls in the story that were truly mean and who would get their comeuppance.

That little glance over her shoulder.  The way her eyes were veiled so I could just see them rise over the elegant mask like glittering suns.  There was mischief there.  Her hips switched.  And then she was gone.  And I could do nothing, say nothing, without feeling like a lecherous old woman chasing a baby.  She was infuriating.

Then there was a long time where I did not have to pretend to be anything at all.  It was a long story, in which I was myself.

Myself is a perfect example of how rumors gets started.  My castle does not sit on chicken legs; I simply have a lot of chickens.  And I am only old when I want to be.  My name is Baba Yaga and people can’t even get that right: do not confuse me for Baba Roga, she is my sister.  And my skin isn’t black as pitch.  It is green.  My hair, though, that’s as black as pitch.  But that’s how rumors get started.

In this story, from my perspective, there is a lot of waiting.  Followed by a lot of pretending that I’m going to eat a person.  On the rare occasion that they do not do as they should, I certainly never consume their flesh.  I find them much more delicious punishments instead.

And on this particular day, I was feeding the chickens when I heard the whisper of the trees.  She is coming, they said, and the nice part was that I didn’t have to rush to do anything.  This girl, and it was always a girl, needed to be terrorized by Baba Yaga exactly as she appears.  I simply stood–brown sturdy dress, hair down to the curve of my ass and pushed back with a kerchief, sweat beading on green skin that I did not have to hide.  I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand and balanced the basket on my hip.  I held my hand to the air, ready to command the gate to open.

I did not have to.  It burst open of its own accord.  “Your trees are naughty,” she said.  “They grab and slap.”  I think that was how she normally looked.  Her nose and her freckles were the same.  She was blonde.  And she still managed to wear a dusty pink–a ribbon in her hair, letting me know it was her.  She wore pants and a tunic, a far cry from her masquerade finery, and I shivered.

“If you want them to stop,” I breathed and spoke extra slowly, “then you just tie a ribbon around their branches.   You know the story.  You have a ribbon.”

“Actually I don’t know the story.  There are no good witches in this story.  And besides,” she grinned, “who said I didn’t like it?”

I blushed and she laughed.  I tried to think of a witty response, but I couldn’t grab one from the air in time.  She appeared there in a snap.  Right there, in front of my face.  And she inhaled me as she kissed.  I settled into my skin and she settled into hers and the trees chuckled at me because they’d tricked me.  They were delighted to see me delighted.

When she broke away, there was surprise and realization in her wicked eyes, rising above that up-turned nose.  And then she kissed me again.  She bit and I tasted copper and salt.  I felt her thumbs dig into the crooks of my elbows and she slid stoney fingers down to my wrists.  I hoped there would be marks.  I did not get bruised very often.

The trees rose up a cackling, crackling cry.  She’s coming.  She’s coming.  The Good Witch broke away; she heard it too.  I felt the smile slide from my face and fall to the ground as my hands leapt to my head to push the kerchief back into place.  I almost dropped the basket full of eggs and tipped myself over, too.  But she grabbed the basket and propped me up.  I glanced at her face, expecting her to look as panicked as I felt.  Instead her grin stretched wider than I expected her face to contain.  She stared me down.

“Work interfering with play,” she observed.  “Calm down.  She’s not here yet.”

I felt my stomach rise into my throat as I looked at her.  And I couldn’t stop looking.  And I couldn’t say anything.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Baba Yaga.”

“Baba Yaga.  I have two questions for you.”

“Yes?”

“Where will you take this girl when she gets here?”

“The dungeons.”

“Show me.”

I wanted to take her hand but I didn’t.  I couldn’t touch her for fear of getting burned–the energy pushing off her skin told me to ask permission first, but I thought better of it.  I noticed she was not following me and I remembered.

“What was your second question?” I asked.

She held up the basket.  “Where do these eggs go?”

We dropped the eggs in the kitchen with the maid.  I seethed a little as the Good Witch lifted a curl from the maid’s ear and whispered in it.  She straightened and smirked.  “Well.  Show me.”  I turned on my heel.

The dungeons were cold, musty basements.  I had appropriated one entirely for use as a wine cellar.  But the other two were filled with heavy chains and locks that fixed around the semi-willing, half-terrified, hungry hands and ankles of those who would venture here and prostrate themselves before me.  They had the standard instruments of tales.  A spinning wheel, for one.  A weaving loom.  Countless pitchforks and torches that made the shadows dive through each other.

She backed me against that mossy, moldy wall.  And she ran her tongue along my collar bone.  And then I heard before I felt it–the clangy click of metal locking together bounced off the walls and hit my ear drums and when I looked down she was fastening the second cuff around my second wrist.  Goosebumps lit up my skin.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Being the Wicked Witch for once.”

Three knocks shook the walls of the castle and I knew she was here.  The girl I was supposed to imprison and torture until she took her aunt’s advice.  Until she found her way out of the castle with her kindness.

She clicked the last shackle into place around my ankle and I pulled, delighted in my helplessness, having never been in this position before.  “I have a job to do, you know,” I said.

She looked up at me and rose to kiss me.  I pulled a little at my chains.

“If you want to get out and do your job so badly, then why are you smiling?”  She backed away and I saw me.  Black hair to my waist, skin just about glowing and grass-colored against all this grey.  She pushed the kerchief up on my hair a little higher.  “Huh,” she said.  “So this is what it feels like.”  And she turned on her heel and went to answer the door.

“Wait!”  I yelled after her and she stopped and turned on the stairs.  “You don’t know the story.”

She cocked her hip to one side.  “Does she spin or weave?”

I stopped.  “Weave.”

“Great, she’ll do the rest.”  And her feet were light as they skipped up the stairs.

I looked down at me, my body, the real me.  She was a clever witch.  I blended into the wall like a chameleon.  It was perfect, the craggily stone that my skin had become.  I admired her power.  I wanted to reach between my legs, to take advantage of how wet I was.  But I could not reach.  That made it worse.  And there was a twang of rage, far off yet, just above my stomach, that I could not do what I wanted.

I could hear them descending the steps, one echoing foot in front of the other.

“…sent me to get a needle and thread.”

“I know,” she said.  She didn’t, I knew she didn’t.

They appeared slowly, out of the light and into the dark where my eyes could see them.  All the girls in this story looked about the same.  Dark haired and pale, cheeks that pulled a little too tight across their faces from eighteen years or more of abuse, but quick to smile even when they were scared.  They were never dressed very nicely, and they always had a ribbon in their hair and food in their satchel.  I always liked the girls from this one.  They did their research and they were kind.  They were never destined to become princesses or queens or magic.  And they always sweat out fear.  My nipples stood on end.

“So.  Um.  Can I have a needle in thread?  And then can I leave?”

I expected her to do what I did when I first became the Wicked Witch.  Throw back her head and give her best attempt at the most stereotypical evil laugh she could muster.  Instead, she just smiled.

“No.”

“Pardon me?” The girl’s eyes got really wide, her voice very soft.

“I said no.”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“Well,” she replied, “you’re going to sit here and you’re going to weave.  And you’re going to keep going until I tell you to stop.”

The girl sat down at the loom and lowered her eyes to the floor, demure and beautiful.  But her voice was anything but and her smirk revealed spunk that the untrained eye wouldn’t have noticed.  “I have a feeling you’re not ever going to tell me I can stop.”

The Good Witch wound up and slapped the girl across the face.  “You would be correct.  But no back talk.”

The girl’s smirk never went away and my whole body tensed up like a string on a badly-sharp mandolin.  “I’ll back talk if I want to.”  And she raised her face in a defiant smile.

The Good Witch raised her hand again but stopped on the downswing.  “What’s your game?” She asked, suspicious.

“What game?” The girl asked back, question for question.  And they stood, their bodies pressing toward each other like magnets.

“Fine, then I won’t hit you.” And the Good Witch lowered her hand to her side.

The girl’s eyes got longer than her face and her mouth popped open just a little, just a breath.

“Ha!” The Good Witch cried out.  “You want me to hit you.  Why?”

The girl did not hesitate when she answered.  That made me respect her.  “You just don’t look anything like I expected, is all.” I get that a lot.  It made me strain at my chains and melt a little to watch someone take that compliment for me.

“So you think I’m pretty.”  The Good Witch paused.  “And you want me to hit you?”

I saw the understanding creep across her face, as if it spilled somewhere by her eyes and dripped down to her mouth, which smiled.  She knew about the roles, she knew about them as much as I did, she played one too.  But I don’t think she understood the full depth of the Wicked Witch, at least not until then.

She took her time flipping the girl over the bench she’d been sitting on, she enjoyed herself.  And she stood over that girl and with all her weight behind it she came down with the back of her hand.  I imagined each little red welt that would result from each individual knuckle and my whole body stood erect, each muscle tensing and relaxing.

The girl yelped.  The Good Witch looked at her hand and changed directions.  I could almost read her mind, or perhaps I was projecting what I was thinking right into her brain.  She was wondering if she could leave a hand print.  I knew she could.  I’d done it before.

When her hand met that girl’s ass, the girl screamed and spread her legs.  The Good Witch took that as an invitation.  She slapped her thighs and I imagined the red spiders that her fingers would leave there.  The girl gasped and teared and cursed and I expanded my lungs as far as they would go, felt my ribcage part.  I tried to make as little noise as possible.  It was not breathing she heard in the end, but the clink of my chains as I pulled to far, trying to get my fingers to my clit.  I felt the girl’s eyes drift over her shoulder and I felt her not care.  I felt the Good Witch smile and understand what she was doing to me.  I saw the girl reach between her legs and I could not decide what to watch.  “Fuck,” she squealed, her eyes squinted shut, her hand dancing, her ass heart-shaped and straining against her own sensible dress.  Straining to not be quite so sensible.

The last slap made the girl look like she’d been launched from the bench.  She sprung forward and rocked toward the stairs.  “I’ve had enough,” she squealed, face wet from tears and perspiration.  And she turned and ran up each jagged stone step, feet pounding, stumbling as her eyes searched behind her with just a hint of slowness to betray her speeding escape.  And then she was only an echo in a dungeon.

The Good Witch spoke to me.  “What happens now?”

I was breathing so hard I could feel my ribs straining to get away from me.

“Well,” I said.  “She’ll have already oiled the gate.  And given the servant the kerchief.  And the dog some meat.  But being as you were spanking her, she hasn’t given the cat his cheese yet.  I’m sure she’ll have to on the way out, or she won’t get the towel or the comb to throw out behind her to stop me chasing her.  The dog won’t eat her, the maid won’t fetch her back, the gate won’t make any noise.  All because of her kindness.  And then she just has to tie a ribbon around one of the trees for them to stand down and she’ll be home free.”

“But you have to chase her?”

“Eh.  I won’t have to chase her very hard.  This is our favorite story.  It takes very little effort on our part.  We used to go through the motions on our end, too, but we got a little tired of it.  We’ll do it every so often for nostalgia’s sake.”

“Motions?”

“Well I have to go and ask each of them why they didn’t help me keep her here, and they say in all the years they’ve been here I’ve never given them anything, and yet this girl is here mere hours and gives them food and clothes and oil.  And then,” and I looked at the ground, “and then I storm around hitting everyone and give chase.”

Her face cracked into a very wicked smile.

I grinned back, feeling my hot face against the cool darkness.  “Really the only one around here that cares about nostalgia that way is the maid.  Funny how that is.”

“And what?  Are you really so mean that you haven’t given any of these beings in your house food or clothes or anything?”

I raised my eyebrows.  “Have you ever had a dog?  When was the last time a dog was truthful to a human about when he was last fed?”

I thought she was going to extend from her smile into her laugh.  But instead she kissed me.  It wasn’t soft or romantic.  It laughed, though, loud and boastfully, so I wasn’t too far off in predicting her actions.  And her hand was on my leg and moving up, each finger climbing goose bump by goose bump toward where I had been radiating from since she locked me up.  I tried to move my hand to the back of her neck.  From there I would have grabbed the sensitive hair that made such a perfect handle at the base of her head and brought her to her knees.  But my hands would not move farther out than my nose.  For the first time I considered magic, because all I wanted to do was put her on the ground and look at her kneeling.  In front of me.  But then her fingers pinched my clit and I yowled in her ear.

She pulled on me, fingers slick and sliding up and down my clit.  I would have fallen, twitching, if I hadn’t been attached to my dungeon.  She growled in my ear and I would have come, except she said, “Wait.”

I am unused to taking orders.  I’d been doing nothing but taking orders on this day, and the anger at it that I’d felt start in my stomach bubbled up and made me pull against the wall like I had a hope of bringing it down.  But my body obeyed and it waited.  It waited while she looked me over and grabbed my breast.  It waited while she pinched my nipple through my dress.  It was balanced on a wire but it waited, suspended, afraid to move in any direction lest it fall.

It waited when she realized she couldn’t pull my dress off for the chains, so she ripped it.  Starting at the neck and tearing down in a wide, arched question mark between my breasts and down to the hemline.  It made that ribbitting sound that ripping fabric always makes.  She put her hands on my sides and was, only for a moment, soft with me.  With my hips, like she couldn’t believe she was touching them.  And then she wasn’t gentle anymore while each of her teeth was expressly leaving its own mark on green skin, as if wondering what a bruise would look like on this complexion.

My body was teetering on the wire, my entire essence pulsing with the effort of keeping an orgasm in.  The deep, full-throated noises I would have normally made were replaced by delicate whimpers that rose higher and higher in pitch, less and less in volume, for fear of tipping me over the edge with any spot of power at all.  I stood on my tip toes for no reason.  My body couldn’t obey the command anymore, and I give her credit for knowing not to give orders that could not be followed.  Because as she bit and kissed that small bit of hip connecting my leg to my torso, she growled again.  “Okay.  Go.” And then she set her tongue on my clit like a princess setting their finger willfully on the spindle of a spinning wheel.  And my whole body released, my heels hit the floor, my back hit the wall.  And she wouldn’t stop.  My body heated until I thought I would light us both on fire.  I was a long, loud howl.  One tone, a thin line getting thicker.  And then I was nothing but an echo in a dungeon.

She unchained me and we sat, breathing, and squinting in to the dark.

“You would make a really amazing Wicked Witch.  You should consider switching professions.”

She leveled her eyes at me.  I couldn’t breathe.  I just tried to remember exactly what they looked like in this moment.  Full of mirth and a little bit of ridicule.  Yet at the same time cradling and caring.  And clear blue like jumping into the day-time sky of a fairytale.  And she opened her mouth wide and let out a laugh straight from her toes and her soul.  She began to disappear, hair by hair and pore by pore, and I could see through her to the walls and the light filtering down the stairs.  She was just about gone when she said:

“If I did that, Baba Yaga, I wouldn’t get to torture you, would I?”

Thanks so much for hosting my post. I’m Charlotte Dare.

When I sat down to write “The Bucket List” in D.L. King’s The Harder She Comes, my main inspiration was, of course, my own dirty mind. But ever since I took a women’s studies course as an undergrad, a specific group of women always hovers like a gossamer apparition in my consciousness when I write—no, not the delectable array of self-empowered pervs who love this genre (I do love them), I mean a less visible demographic—the ladies who either barely arrived in time for the sexual revolution or had never received their invitation. They are the women of a certain age, products of the Rockwell painting generation who were thoroughly oppressed by America’s post World War II family values ideology long before “family values” became a clichéd conservative catch phrase.

Brainwashed as young girls into believing only sluts had sex before marriage and that sex was a wifely duty that must be performed whether she enjoyed it or not, and if she hoped to preserve her good girl image, she better not enjoy it too much, these girls never had a chance to develop a sexual identity, never mind a lesbian identity. Imagine never having the chance to explore your sexuality, to experiment with what you like and with whom you like it. Often these girls, horny and ashamed, rushed into marriage at 19 or 20 just so they could get laid. How could they figure out they were lesbians being married and pregnant barely out of adolescence? Instead, they suffered in silence for years wondering why they never felt satisfied despite having everything girls dreamed of: a marriage to the high school football hero, a couple of adorable, freckle-faced kids, scraped knees, baseball games, cook outs, camping trips and the rest of the trappings that accompany such domestic bliss.

But the real trouble began once they realized the cause of their discontent. Then they were confronted with the most gut-wrenching of decisions: pursue their own happiness and thus, destroy the family, disappoint everyone they ever knew and bear a soul-crushing burden of guilt by coming out or suppress their feelings and desires and live the lie to keep everyone in their lives happy. Some choice.

It is to these women, the ones who showed up to the ball at last call and the ones who never got to dance, I dedicate “The Bucket List,” a story not only about fantasy fulfillment, but the universal desire to live happily ever after with the person of our dreams. I wish that chance for everyone.

Look for The Harder She Comes wherever books are sold or find it on Amazon or directly from Cleis Press.

The tour’s almost over. Check out Rachel Kramer Bussel’s post on her site next, and don’t forget to go back and read the posts you may have missed.

May 1 D. L. King http://sacchi-green.blogspot.com/

May 2 Anna Watson http://dlkingerotica.blogspot.com

May 3 Evan Mora http://donutsdesires.blogspot.com/

May 4 River Light http://sapphicplanet.com/blogtour_sapphicplanet.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/

May 15 Rachel Kramer Bussel http://lustylady.blogspot.com/

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

BDSM is not always my thing. But good writing is, and this book is chock full of it.

You might be wondering why I read it, if I’m not generally turned on by leather, or pain, or the wide-variety of things that BDSM is.

To be honest, the first reason is that it was edited by Mr. Sinclair Sexsmith. They are like King Midas: everything they touch turns to gold.

The second reason. When I went to the reading, Sinclair said they did this anthology because they still think that there isn’t enough representation of what “we” do in bed. And I entirely agree. There’s a dearth of information about what two queer people do in bed together, especially two kinky queers. Or more than two kinky queers. ;0) In reading this anthology, my eyes were opened up to some of the things we do in bed, some of the things I don’t think about as “BDSM.” When I jumped into this, I expected “BDSM” to mean mostly leather floggers, piercings, and pain. I expected to love the writing, but not really be that “into” it, if you know what I mean. What I got was play with power, gender, play between characters that genuinely trust each other. Some characters, like Sinclair and Kristin, that genuinely love each other. And I did wind up turned on by some of the stories. There is nothing sexier than consent, than characters who are turned on by the people they are playing with. And I know enough to know I don’t know enough–there is always going to be an unexpected moment, something that sends a shiver up my spine, something that makes me wish I weren’t reading in public so I could–well, you get the picture. Some of my favorite moments:

-”I imagine this woman, this young wife. I’ve been thinking about her all day. When my mind turns to consent, misogyny, how fucked up this fantasy is, I push those thoughts aside and remember how hot this makes me. We live in this society every day, breathing in misogyny and homophobia and gender policing with the very air. The least we can do is get off on it.” –Housewife, by Gigi Frost

-”Her body pulses with mine. We fuck like a combustion engine, compressed intake stroke cranking her shaft up and down my connecting rod.” –Call Me Sir, by BB Rydell

-Too much of “Spanking Booth” by Dusty Horn to actually pull a quote from. That narrator just has such humor and wit, she slays me.

So the moral of the story. Even if you’re “not into that,” you should still pick up a copy of this book and read it. It fucks with gender. It turns pain into play, trust into the most important thing in the world. It is both sexy and representative of what we do in bed, just as Sinclair Sexsmith wanted it, I’m sure. So wake up your inner voyeur and take a peek into these character’s bed rooms. No matter what you’re into, you won’t regret it.

View all my reviews

Take a moment to review this book on Good Reads, or buy it on Amazon.  And check out the rest of the Virtual Blog Tour.  Do take note that not all of it is virtual–there’s still two more release party dates–one in Boston and one in Seattle!

The Crash Pad Series website is definitely still full of naked queers, and they have a whole new look to boot.  I spent just a little bit of time (read: a few hours) last week playing in/with the new beautiful site.  The number one thing I noticed?  Things are easier to find.  There are links to the character pages right on the episode page, which is especially helpful for me, as I generally link to characters in my reviews.  It could be especially helpful for you, as sometimes you just need a pinup-style shot of your favorite naked queer.  Or three favorite naked queers.  Or five.  Honestly, why pick just one when you can sigh over all of them?

The second thing I noticed were some really adorable buttons.  For example:

Also, this exists:

And really, the only thing that beats that is the Shine-on-Shine April Fools episode, which by itself is worth a years worth of membership fees.  (Yes, do it, become a member.)

And the last thing I noticed is the major-ness of this overhaul.  As someone who dabbles in the making of websites, this looks like it took eons, tears of joy, and screams of frustration.  And lots and lots of paid hours.  And as much as I like to believe Crash Pad runs on rainbows and orgasms, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.  (This is where you revisit the last parenthetical.  The one that says “Yes, do it, become a member.”)

Because really, who doesn’t want to see this all the time?

Seriously y’all, those legs are so sharp they could cut a bitch.

Are you in New York?  Good.  Do you like the sexy-time stories?  That’s a no brainer, you’re reading my blog.  You should come to The Center tomorrow night, from 6:30 to 9:30 to hear authors read their own Clit Lit.  Readers from Best Lesbian Erotica will be there, as will I.  Tickets are ten dollars and can be found here, at the Center’s website. Spring is in the air–beat the allergies by getting turned on by words.

Address: 208 West 13th Street, New York, NY 10011, between 7th and 8th avenues.

Hope to see you there!

I wasn’t sure how I was going to navigate it. Do I give out that business card that says I’m a purveyor of Clit Lit? Or not? Do I make sure to keep my identity totally separate so I don’t get pigeon holed? So I can still write things that have nothing to do with sex and gender identity, of course.

Then I really realized exactly how much shame that is indicative of and I was horrified. I had to start examining how I felt about the writing that I do. I came to the conclusion that I am really proud to contribute to my community in the way that I do and that smut is valuable. I really knew that before hand, but now I need to start walking the walk and not being a pansy about it.

And here’s why I’m proud. This is not fluff. It’s not a boy-meets-girl romance novel. It’s subversive–my pieces often take gender and queer it up a little, and they certainly depict women and female-bodied people enjoying and expressing themselves without the presence of men. And it creates a mirror for female-bodied queers to see themselves in. Only monsters have no reflections (props to those who can guess which author that idea comes from.)

So, business card out. Hope it was a good decision. On with more writing.

For Museum, it had a kind of reverse effect. They were actually doing very well. With everyone, even well-dressed one percent-ers, who took a fascination with the sights and sounds that were considered taboo in other, more appropriate places. I saw them myself, dressed far more opulently than Museum’s East Village neighbors, the hipsters from Brooklyn, the queers from all over the city that also frequented the gallery events, openings, performance pieces. The first night, the grand opening, you could tell who they were instantly. They were the deep blue cocktail dresses, the plunging necklines, the ties that could buy my groceries for a month, the glittering (but tasteful) diamond studs in ears and on cuffs. And they had flushed, red faces. Smiles straight out of print ads. I could almost feel their heart rates in my own chest–they funded this place, the place with the bondage photographs, the study of clits in various fine art mediums, because here they got something that no where else provided for them. Among the women in dandy button downs and top hats, the men in corsets and heels, those in between wearing thick glasses and converse sneakers, they were alive. And simultaneously they felt better than everyone else. Everyone likes to feel superior, but only to a point. After that, everyone just wants to fit in.

I got to see the slow evolution. The cocktail dresses changed to cuffed men’s shirts, belted at the waste with wide bands of distressed fabric paid for at premium price. The suits changed to sport coats and the occasional eyeliner to match. Nice jeans became ripped jeans, the kind you buy pre-done and call designer. I could still tell the difference, though. In the quality of the clothing. In the wear of it. And in the extreme play acting of it all, the confidence on the part of one percent-ers that they fit in with just the slightest hint behind the eyes that they knew they were playing dress up.

I was at Museum a lot in the beginning. Not as a patron, but as an art piece. Not the artist, but the art. At first I was allowed to just watch. Mostly because the tall, fashionable butch in charge of the place wanted to see how it would be received, first. They had picked their artists based on nepotism and talent alike. And A. knew a lot of talented artists. That’s what they called themselves. A. And A. was best friends with Gail Provokovitch. And Gail Provokovitch lived above the place where I sold coffee. And that’s how I wound up sleeping with her. Just once. We were drunk.

But after that, I knew her, she knew me, and I was accessible being that she spent a lot of time with her sketch book or her camera or what not in the cafe. So I became one of her models. If you had been at Museum on opening night, you may have seen a shot of the Wall Street Bull inserted into a shot of my vagina hanging up on the wall as you walked in the door. The piece sold to a young couple who paid Gail’s rent that August. It was decided on that night that Gail would go through with it. Everyone raved to A. about her and A. gave her the go ahead, tilting their glasses up on their nose like Father Christmas delivering good news to a small child who has walked the line between naughty and nice for quite some time. It was scheduled. October. Halloween. A. knew this was the piece Gail really wanted to do, but since you couldn’t sell it and it was such a public relations risk, there was a lot of waiting to be done about it. In September, the glossy postcards came out. They were sleek, minimalist, the same color white as Museum’s walls. And they read:

Fuck Me.

A sexually explicit performance piece by Gail Provokovitch.

Halloween evening, 11 pm.

This piece is intended for mature audiences only. Must be over 18 years of age to attend. Masquerade is required. Not for the easily offended.

There were no pictures, not even of Gail. But that didn’t stop people from knowing instantly who she was. A. had made the right decision. Mystery. “Not for the easily offended.” Everyone buzzed and chattered and Gail became sought out on our evenings scoping out the crowd, the space. I blended into the background, camouflaging myself against a picture of–myself. In a backbend. Naked. No one actually noticed that I was the person in the photo.

I watched as they built my pedestal. A. did not bother to hide the construction during the early bits of October. And everyone knew what it was for. They kept trying to juice details out of Gail, squeezing her, twisting her, trying to vice her into spilling some secret so that they could be the ones to know, to tell. But she smiled her thin smile and said, “You will see, you will see.” And she tossed her long curtain of ink black hair and I knew she was satisfied. She liked withholding.

The speculation was that Gail was going to get on the pedestal and fuck herself. The list of rumored implements with which she was to do this was fantastic. My personal favorite was a series of vegetables, and then the rumor got started that a salad would be served after the piece. There was a tingling in the weeks before Halloween. Like sweat and kissing before fucking. Like all the patrons from all walks of life were flirting with each other, courting each other. I could see nipples tighten under tee shirts when the piece was even discussed. A shifting in posture. A resettling to make sure the seams of pants were touching genitalia.

And then it was time. My round, white pedestal was finished and it was eleven and everyone that had been filing in was in the most splendid masks, dresses, costumes around me. They looked confused to see me naked, knees to my chest. They had expected Gail. Pretty, skinny, dark haired Gail. What they got was me. I am tall, muscular, and I get my haircut at a men’s barber shop.

They formed a circle, staring at me, the only person not wearing a mask. Gail entered. Naked, strapped on, carrying a box. The idea was that she’d bring everything and use whatever she felt like. I was to go with it as honestly as possible. Behind me there sat a series of white boards with index cards. Everyone was invited to write their reactions, whatever they were, and put them up. Gail loved an interactive piece. This was the part I was most nervous about. Getting sexed up in front of people? No problem. I’m enough of an exhibitionist to make that work. Having direct access to everything the audience thought about it? About me? I couldn’t really think of it without hyperventilating a little. So I didn’t. Think about it, I mean.

Gail started behind me. I still sat with my knees to my chest, I hadn’t moved anywhere. I felt her hands slide over me like I was sitting under warm water. From my shoulders, down my arms. And that relaxed feeling you get under a tub faucet came with them. My knees dropped a little, then more when I felt her lips on my neck. They were wet. I couldn’t believe it. I had thought she’d be just as nervous as I was, but clearly I had underestimated Gail Provokovitch. Her kisses left warm circles on my collar bones and I sighed. It was okay. Really, if this were poorly received, it would be her neck stuck out, not mine.

My knees dropped all the way and my feet touched the floor. Gail circled me until she was facing me and I got to clearly see her choice of cock. She had picked the largest one she owned. I smiled. Leave it to Gail. If she was going to be seen naked, she wanted to have the biggest dick in the room. I also opened. I owned the same cock. It felt like skin on skin and it spread my hips wide. I fucked myself with that cock on a very regular basis. I felt a tug between my legs and that familiar opening ache as the blood rushed down. My hips spread in anticipation. I shifted my seat and felt the bones in my ass solidly on the wood, my clit pressing against the rest of me as it swelled. Everyone behind Gail shifted to see my face, my reaction. A few seemed surprised. I tried to puzzle this out while Gail knelt down in front of my pedestal and kissed my jawline. Did they expect me not to like it? Why?

Gail kissed me on the mouth and the room exploded before me. I had forgotten how much I liked the way she kissed. She pulled so you felt like you were falling into her mouth, falling into her body. And she bit to remind you that you had your own mouth, your own body to worry about. She bit hard enough to make a scream push itself from my lips in surprise, but never hard enough to draw blood.

I grabbed her and wrapped my hands around her back, nails biting her as her teeth bit me. When my legs wrapped around her, I felt the reminder. She was hard against me. I pulled her toward me and she stumbled, giggled. Her hands started at my face. She traced the lines of my eyebrows, the freckles, the crows feet I have from smiling. She held my cheeks in her palms for just a second, then kept moving. I could tell from how long she spent there that she liked how her hands covered my neck, almost like she could snap it if she wanted. Her eyes squinted and the corner of her mouth turned up. Her chin jutted out. Her entire palm engulfed my neck just once, and then she kept moving. Flat palms against my chest so that my nipples stood at attention for her, stood to welcome her to their area of my body. I squealed. My legs kept pulling as she pinched each erect soldier until they were red and smarting. I moaned and she pushed me down, my back flat against the pedestal now, head hanging off the edge so that my audience turned upside down.

Gail pumped lube into her hand and I started writhing. “Please,” I said, and it was only then I realized how silent everything had been. I spoke it into the still gallery and I felt the word splatter on the white walls like ink. Or maybe like come. And the people seemed to stare at the word as it left my mouth. Some looked at the walls where it stuck, or the floor. Those people avoided looking at me. Almost as if speaking were a reminder to them that I was real and they were watching one of the most intimate moments a person experiences. I was a real person. Others were hungry and looking right at my mouth, right at the word’s point of origin. These people were licking their lips. Some had bulges in their pants. They looked greedy. I had a lot more respect for these people. They understood that I was real and they were devouring my experience. Not devouring me. But devouring the word I’d given to them. Devouring the poison apple red of my nipples, devouring the strange linked energy between all of us. They understood the thick feeling in the air, the feeling of the possibility of us all starting to fuck on the floor of this art gallery. They were not afraid of this.

Still. I suppose I should throw everyone a bone. They were watching a two girls have sex in an art gallery. And they were probably going to buy exorbitant amounts of artwork after. Pretty progressive crowd.

There was a slick filling. My legs twitched. I gasped. It was low and from a place just under my belly button. I felt Gail slide into me and I heard the audience around me roar silently. Still my word was the only thing on the wall, but there was a crackle of energy and everyone leaned in and breathed deep. She put her thumb on my clit and my vision frayed, the rope tying me to these people succumbed a little bit and for a while I was only sex. Only the steady in and out, only the fireworks in my chest, the electricity in my thighs, the breathing of everyone together as they got faster and faster. As it became more and more possible that everyone could melt into each other. That everyone could gasp and say please.

When I saw the first card go up, the rope snapped back into place, in perfect condition, and I was back. I was connected with my over-thinking brain. Tied back into reality. It was a woman in a black dress that looked like it had been sprayed on to her body, her black and silver mask so elaborate that I couldn’t see her face. She had heels that looked like stilts and she teetered a tiny bit in them. She posted her card up. I melted with relief. It simply said, This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

After that, the cards flooded up. There was just about a stampede to participate. There is nothing more interesting than being fucked and watching other people’s thoughts about it at the same time. I had been scared of it before I started. But it’s almost like a weird out of body experience. Detached and at the same time deeply personal. I was having these bursts, twitches, welling, flooding moments of pleasure and watching reactions to it. Upside down, yes, but I could still read them. Most were wonderful, like the black-dressed woman. One card read, This has dampened any fear I had of gay women. Another said,This makes me realize that all connection between all people is the same. These were the cards that made me wetter and made me realize just how much I loved New Yorkers. Even the one percent-ers.

Then there were the douche canoes. The terrible people. There were only really two cards I remembered being entirely without merit, compassion, and comprehension of the artwork. One was a fat, greasy man who put up, This girl must be a whore if she’s doing this. A real slut. The second was a stately gentleman with salt and pepper at his temples. He wrote, This girl must be straight because she likes this penis so much. I resolved to spill drinks on both offenders after I was done getting thoroughly fucked. I stopped looking at the cards though. As I read those two, my movements became more stilted, more plastic, and I began to close and hide. Gail grabbed my hips and pierced into me. She knew what was happening. That was her telling me to ignore those guys. I let my head drop back and my eyes focus to the left of the boards. The cards multiplied and covered the board like feathers but I no longer read the words because something else caught my eye.

There was a small woman in a teal dress standing at the very, very back of the crowd, almost behind the boards. She was so skinny and pale it was as if she were part of the wall, or perhaps partially see-through. Her hair was a distinct non-shade of brick brown and she looked a whole lot like everyone else. Her mask was elegant–definitely a one percent-er. Black wire only so I could still see her face. It was her eyes that let me know she wasn’t a ghost or my imagination. She belonged to the second of the two kinds of audience members and her eyes were drinking in each thrust. They were greedy about the way my head draped over the pedestal. She was touching herself through the silk she was wearing. Her lips parted and I could feel the air between them, the soft slight moan that she wanted to let lose into the air, to join my please on the wall, but she couldn’t. People would turn around and look at her. She watched me and I watched her hand. Her face. It transformed and flushed, two doll-red dots, one on each cheek. Her hair seemed to lift into the air like she was generating static. Everyone blurred around her. She was more real than any of them. I looked away. I didn’t want to ruin it. I didn’t want her to feel like art. But I thought she was. She was way more striking than I was, the way she peered around the corner. The way she had a secret.

I came so hard I felt like my body turned inside out, that everyone could see all the organs I had inside me. It had nothing to do with Gail and everything to do with the secret woman. I had wondered before this how we were going to know when to stop. Gail is lovely and all, but she can’t get me off. She’s wonderful in bed and she’s a wonderful artist and this was probably the best idea ever, but I knew as much as I enjoyed myself that we’d probably go for hours and I’d never light on fire the way she was hoping I would. She knew it too, I think, even as she’d asked me to do it. We are not for each other. And the risk, the idea it may not work the way she wanted, I think that’s what gets Gail Provokovitch off about performing. Thank goodness for the secret woman. I dripped down the white-finished wood and I thought, this is it. Everyone is going to turn on each other and rip clothes off. People will bite into each other’s flesh and scream and come. And as Gail pulled out, it deflated. It hung there for maybe thirty seconds, everyone looking at us, at each other. Gail looking triumphantly at me, smiling, knowing something had acted on me. Me sinking into her eyes and rolling around in being a piece of art. Then the Museum became the Museum again. People did not applaud, but the buzz of talking began. It was a quiet hum and people stepped forward to examine the cards. The secret woman disappeared behind the board. Gail whispered to me, “Let’s go clean up.”

I did not wear a dress for the second part of the evening. I was in a button down and tie, short hair spiked away from my face. And I couldn’t vanish into the walls any more. People came up and talked to me, congratulated me. “I’m not the artist,” I would say. “Go tell Gail.”

With a glass of champagne in my hand (free champagne. I am still pretty confident that A. is going to give me free drinks for life) I mustered up the courage to look at the cards without the distraction from their content that I’d had before. There was one, the author of which had traced over each word ten times or more to make it bold. It was my favorite. It read, “I want to fuck everyone!” Silk brushed my arm and I looked away from it, still smiling. It was the secret woman but she didn’t see me. She was on a mission. She found what she was looking for and then dug through her shiny black clutch. She came up for air with a red pen. The card that said I was a slut, that’s what she’d found. She popped the red pen and wrote in loopy, large letters right over the fat man’s sentences.

You’re a dick. She wrote. I snorted into my champagne and spat a little bit back into the glass. She heard and turned, the doll-rouge splotches appeared again and her freckles stood out. Her eyes had lost none of the intensity they’d had while she’d been touching herself. But as soon as they’d found mine, she pointed them to the ground.

“I’d really wanted to put up what was on the first one,” she said. It was soft and retreating. “But someone else beat me to it. So I figured I’d just do this.”

“Gail would say you’re defacing the artwork.”

She jutted her chin out, no more retreating. “The rules were real, honest reactions. That was my real honest reaction to that guy. To that card.”

“But that was his real honest reaction too,” I replied. Then I smiled. “But he is a dick.” She returned my smile.

I paused. “Did you enjoy yourself?” I think maybe it was the way I asked it. I didn’t say, “did you enjoy the performance.” And maybe I raised my eyebrows a little too high. The secret woman looked mortified. Her mouth fell open in an oh, a very different one than I’d seen before. And it wasn’t just her cheeks that were red, but her whole face and her neck too. I’d stepped my foot neatly in my mouth.

“You saw,” she stammered, and she made to turn and flee.

I caught her hand. “Do you want to go grab a drink? Like, with me?”

Her eyes stuck to the floor. I dropped her hand like a hot stone. I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable. We both looked at the ground for a while. I had to try to take my foot from my mouth. “I’d have put what was on the first card up too, you know, about you. Um.” I was probably as red as she was. She didn’t speak and I chanced raising my eyes from the ground. Her attention was still focused there, but she was smiling fiercely.

“Let’s go,” she said, without looking up. And we left through the front door with everyone watching into the sharp air and the East Village bustle. Her eyes were intense like the city street.

Some orgasms come from the fingers and hands of others.  But these orgasms–the ones to which I am referring–come from your own deftness and dexterity and imagination.  Your imagination that imagines you, straight out of a black and white movie and wearing a fedora.  A classy girl in bright red lipstick, reduced to shades of grey, running her hand down the seam of your pants to feel how hard you are.

Some orgasms are had in the car as you drive when the seam of your jeans hugs you, touches you.  And you try to keep a straight face because you are stopped at a red light with a car (and driver) on either side.  The same facial expression can be applied to orgasms had in work meetings, on park benches, at the gym, and during horseback riding competitions.

Some orgasms you learn from–they are like unraveling a mystery.  They provide clues to what makes you tick, hints about your body and your identity, until you scream “Miss Scarlett in the library with the rope!”

Some orgasms are utilitarian and familiar.  They are so well-known, your muscles have memorized them so well, that they are like brushing your teeth, vacuuming your floor, whisking eggs, and checking your email.  Except they are more fun.

These orgasms are not Valentine’s Day extravaganzas.  They are not romantic dinners, picnics with pretty girls, sleeping next to someone every night or only for tonight.  They are also not anyone else’s happiness, pity, or anger.  And no one writes fancy words about them or dreams of them or longs for them, though maybe more should.  These orgasms are not proof of how well someone loves you or knows you.

Some orgasms are a pleasant side-effect of how well you love and know yourself.