Occasionally I cross-post small things on social media (Facebook and Mastadon). I’ll mirror everything on this long page for easy reading. Most recent stuff appears on top. Pay attention to how I label things. Some things are more NSFW than others. This post collects older stuff all the way to May 2023.
LATE DISCOVERY 1: Michael Perkins‘ The Secret Record : Modern Erotic Literature is a great analysis of 20th century erotic literature. His remarks about Marco Vassi were great, and this book provides a great overview of authors who tackled erotic themes in their fiction. It is both amazing and refreshing that 20th century US literature has addressed sexual themes so openly and diversely.
Here’s a reading of my story “Yes, I’m Beautiful Too” from the EXISTENTIAL SMUT ebook. Beautifully read by Jill Brumer. Enjoy.
Here’s my essay about erotic author Marco Vassi (which appears in the EXISTENTIAL SMUT 1 book (PS, hope someone enjoys the yellow-colored blockquotes!). OTHER HAND CLAPPING is Vassi’s masterpiece — although ironically it is the least explicit. Enjoy!
Happy to report that Existential Smut 1 is for sale at Amazon. (Oops, spoke too soon. Apparently Amazon blocked it — read the details here).
Someone asked where to find quality erotica writing. Dig up anthologies from previous decades — esp. Mammoth anthologies edited by Maxim Jakubowski . Just search for “Mammoth Book” and “erotic.” They sell as ebooks for practically nothing; they’re transgressive and perhaps too arty. (Also: Susie Bright softcore anthologies if they ever go on sale) To my surprise I have been genuinely enjoying the silly & hedonist “Letters to Penthouse” (also titled “Penthouse Uncensored”) — but buy only when on sale! The Mammoth Book series is more likely to contain stories by established writers.
Now reading Octavio Paz‘s DOUBLE FLAME: LOVE AND EROTICISM — a great and broad literary analysis. I’d also enjoyed his earlier anthropological essay, CONJUNCTIONS AND DISJUNCTIONS (which is available as an ebook)
One of my favorite podcasts (SEX & PSYCHOLOGY) has a great talk with Katherine Angel (author of TOMORROW SEX WILL BE GOOD AGAIN, which I highly recommend). Many topics come up, including the complexities of giving “consent.” How does know what one is really consenting to beforehand? Also, it can mean different things depending on the situation. It is not always absolute or unambiguous & does not always bring sexual ecstasy. Stimulating discussion by Justin Lehmiller. I might review Angel’s book later, but I highly recommend it.
This rare & remarkable & purposely misnamed 20 minute video features an 1982 interview with US erotica author Marco Vassi (Start at 1min). Vassi had just published the great s.s. collection EROTIC COMEDIES in the previous year and about 10 other novels by that time. He is reserved + cocky + amused + quite satisfied with his position in life. Alas, he had no inkling about AIDS, the disease which would eventually fell him. (Start at 1:00 minutemark)
Daniel Bergner on What Do Women Want? (Book Excerpt) A journalistic account of sex research. This contains research by Chivers about how females often misreport states of arousal in sex research and a discussion of the possible evolutionary advantages of that phenomena.
I only bought the book when it was on sale, but Best American Erotic Poems from 1800 to the Present (Edited by David Lehman) is a gold mine of stuff. If you are searching for cheaper stuff, look at Ovid‘s Love Poems (Translated by A.S. Kline). It’s also a free download!
Wittiest Sex Quotes Ever. My favorite: “Sex on television can’t hurt you, unless you fall off.”
“The only purpose of college was to reduce the amount of time you thought about the other sex from eighty to sixty percent. ” (Classical Scholar John Finley)
Late Bloomer (short video on YouTube directed by Craig MacNeill, written by Clay McCleod Chapman). Here’s a dark & Lovecraftian dramatic monologue taking place inside a 7th grade sex education class (!) (NSFW because of subject matter, not because of language or explicitness). It shows the crazed & almost horrifying attitudes that people have towards sex when they first learn about it. Funny & horrifying.
Mark Twain’s lecture, “Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism” (viewable online as a PDF brochure).
Ogas & Gaddam are neuroscientists who recently published a book on Internet and sexuality. A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the Internet Tells Us About Sexual Relationships. Lots of data diving, although I have to wonder whether they read too much significance into casual Internet searches.
Premarital Sex in America by Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker (Author (Book Review) By Evan Hughes.
Interesting feminist response by Natasha Vargas-Cooper to the reality of contemporary porn. SFW (barely!). (Paywalled)
“I was walking along on this f**king fine morning, f**king sun f**king shining away, little f**king country lane, and I meets up with this f**king girl. F**king lovely she was, so we gets into f**king conversation and I takes her over a f**king gate into a f**king field and we has sexual intercourse.” [cited in Ashley Montagu, The Anatomy of Swearing, U. of Penn. Press pp. 314-315]
Bad Sex Awards: “The presenters of the Bad Sex in Fiction Award gleefully seize upon their targets’ most outlandish metaphors; Somerville compared a nipple to the “nose of the loveliest nocturnal animal, sniffing in the night.” Yet perfectly serviceable, if disreputable, four-letter words risk turning a scene, in the words of one commentator, into something “perilously close to erotica, with its cheapening effect of sexual arousal.”
First Love, Love Island, 1975 Great comic audio story by Meg Wolitzer about a teenage girl trying to figure out whether she wants to “go to 3rd base.” In my teenage years, I had no idea what the bases were!
“Everyone has bodies that serve them well, that carry them through life and give them pleasure and work hard, but somehow we’ve fallen into the trap of idealizing such a specific set of features that we spend most of our lives lacking the proper appreciation of them, in part due to the way the advertising and pornography industries work to promote a standard and punish anything outside that standard with neglect. This is another reason to avoid “NSFW” images — not because they’re unsafe for our eyes, an absurd concept already, but because we need to rebel against the homogenization of beauty.” (Biologist P.Z. Myers)
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