Best Women's Erotica 2001, page 1
BEST WOMEN'S EROTICA 2001
Edited by
Marcy Sheiner
Copyright © 2000 by Marcy Sheiner.
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in the United States by Cleis Press Inc.,
P.O. Box 14684, San Francisco, California 94114.
Printed in the United States.
Cover design: Scott Idleman
Text design: Karen Quigg
Logo art: Juana Alicia
First Edition.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
eISBN: 978-57344-868-0
"A Girl's Gotta Have Friends" was published in Australian Woman's Forum Erotica, Issue 3. "Branded" was originally published in Viscera: An Anthology of Bizarre Erotica, edited by Cara Bruce (Venus or Vixen Press, 2000). "Hair" has appeared in Zaftig! Sex for the Well Rounded. "The Language of Snakes" was originally published on erotasy.com in 1999. "Rope Burn" was originally published in Clean Sheets in Summer 2000. "Sukreswara" was originally published in Exhibitions: Tales of Sex in the City, edited by Michelle Davidson (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2000). "Tic Sex" was originally published in the premier issue of Blue Food, Spring 2000. "Wages of Faith" was originally published in Viscera: An Anthology of Bizarre Erotica, edited by Cara Bruce (Venus or Vixen Press, 2000). "Waste" was originally published in The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order (Viking/Penguin, 1999).
In memory of Barbara Fichtel
Introduction:
Shadows and Light
I confess: I have a fondness for stories that reveal the darker side of sex. By "darker side" I mean sex that isn't always an expression of love, but that might be laced with anger, grief, revenge, and other emotions not usually considered "nice"---certainly not culturally condoned motivations for lovemaking. In fact, sex stories that deal with dark themes frequently come under vicious attack.
If you think I'm exaggerating, let me tell you about a recent incident that occurred at a bookstore reading of the first edition of Best Women's Erotica. Cara Bruce read her story "Lita," in which the female protagonist witnesses the death of a neighbor who falls through a plate glass window while making love. Days later, the surviving partner comes to visit the protagonist and they engage in grief-laden, cathartic sex, with the narrator pretending to be his dead lover. After the reading we invited questions from the audience. One man accused Cara of being misogynistic: he was disturbed, as were several other members of the audience, by a story he saw as somehow condoning the death of a woman. That the story was fiction didn't seem to matter. (Nor that women are knocked off in droves in mystery books, horror flicks, and made-for-television movies on Lifetime.)
The truth is, in real life, complex and ambiguous emotions are frequently expressed through sex-though many people are afraid to write about it, publish it, or just plain admit to it. This is particularly true in the realm of women's erotica, where a kind of political correctness subtly encourages stories in which sex is an expression of love, or at least of kind feelings between partners. Another PC notion is that the woman's pleasure should be central to the story. Well, I don't like shoulds, particularly since they leave little room for exploration.
These kinds of constraints were to be expected ten or twenty years ago, when, merely by publicly revealing our fantasies, desires, and experiences, women proclaimed ourselves no longer "nice girls." It was a daring act to sign one's name to a sex story, then as now, and many of us hid behind pseudonyms (a porn tradition that continues to this day). But the genre of women-authored erotica has evolved, and I think we're ready to take the next step: not only to proclaim ourselves as sexual beings but also to tell the truth about the darker side of our sexuality.
As philosophers from Freud to Foucault have pointed out, sex is more than an expression of desire; it is an arena where we human beings confront our shadow side. Some of us run from it, some of us deny its existence, some of us keep it secret. Some people, like the audience at the bookstore reading of Cara Bruce's story "Lita," fervently wish we'd keep it secret. Sorry, folks: Best Women's Erotica celebrates both the shadows and the light.
After I confessed my affinity for dark-themed stories in the introduction to Best Women's Erotica 2000, word spread like wildfire along the sex-writer grapevine. Writers whose Macy Sheiner dark stories were languishing in their "rejected" files dusted them off and sent them to me. Others who had wanted to delve into this territory but were afraid of alienating editors felt encouraged to take the plunge. Thus the submissions I received for this second edition were staggeringly weighted in that direction and Best Women's Erotica 2001 includes a proportionately large number of such stories---sprinkled with stories of old-fashioned love and lust, which I hope will never go out of fashion.
These stories depict sex as an expression of rage ("The Survey"), grief ("After Loss," Climbing the Wall"), and a hefty dose of revenge ("Infidelities," "Jack," "Pilegesh," "The Best Revenge"). Complex emotions and circumstances permeate "The Language of Snakes" and "The Mark." "Waste" and "Branded" dare to talk about highly unorthodox sex acts. "Rope Burn" is fraught with otherworldly mysticism and obsession. "Wages of Faith," while not overtly sexual, portrays the eroticism that seeps through religious sacrificial rituals.
I'm an advocate for people with disabilities, about whom I frequently write, so the freshness and honesty of "Tic Sex" just about knocked my panties off. "Tic Sex" turns a socially embarrassing disability into a sex toy, irreverently smashing tired old stereotypes.
Several of the stories inhabit a kind of gray zone between pure romance or lust and darkness. "Contented Clients" buzzes with humor, "Hair" deals with a benign fetish, and "Devotion" and "Sukreswara" defy traditional notions of religious sanctity-an old theme with new twists.
For a healthy dose of what's considered healthy sex, there's "The Heart in My Garden," "A Girl's Gotta Have Friends," "Tara's Stew," and "This Old Bed." Even these stories, though, defy taboos of one kind or another, and reveal insights about the complexities of human sexuality.
If I was thrilled-and I was-by the first edition of Best Women's Erotica, I'm beyond ecstatic over this one. Many of these stories delve into territory that's long fascinated me: the connection between religion and eroticism, the desire to be fully possessed by a lover, the sex-death connection, and, perhaps most of all, the ways in which sex is used to exact revenge on a partner who's "done ya' wrong."
If the series continues to embarrass audiences, shock readers, and elicit more daring stories from writers, I'll be delighted. Erotica is supposed to titillate and to serve as a catalyst to real-life sex-and these stories do. But if they also provoke readers' thinking and encourage greater sexual honesty, Best Women's Erotica will have served an even more important purpose. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "A man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimension."
Marcy Sheiner
Emeryville, California
August 2000
Infidelities
G. L. Morrison
How did I know he was unfaithful? I knew it because I was his second wife. He'd been unfaithful to his first wife-with me. I remember the excuses he gave her: working late, "business trips" we took together, absurdly frequent engine trouble or flat tires.
"She didn't fall for that?" I asked him. He assured me that she believed every word.
I now know that she didn't. I don't. I am just too amazed at his audacity to argue. Now I also know what I didn't know when he and I were making love for hours, pretzeling into impossible, playful, passionate positions and then sleeping, twisted into each other's arms in a borrowed apartment of a friend who was out of town for the weekend while Stephen was supposedly on one of those "business trips." I know that Stephen had sex with his wife, though he told me he didn't. I know it because he is still having sex with me. Tender, guilty, exhausted sex.
Now, six years after our illicit affair has been legalized, sanitized into a state of respectability, I am twice wounded. My husband is cheating on me with another woman. And all those years ago my lover, the same man, was cheating on me with his wife. I don't know which betrayal I resent more. I should be angry. I should resist the seductions and cut flowers, as short-lived as his excuses. But I don't, because Stephen's a really great lover. I don't know where he finds the energy. Does it excite him to crawl into my bed with the scent of another woman still clinging to him? To kiss me hungrily?... Yes, Jennifer. He does still kiss me hungrily.
The other woman's name is Jennifer. Stephen crawls into my bed as little as fifteen minutes after leaving hers. She lives only a few miles away from us. I've never met her. But I know where she lives. Does it excite him to rush into me after making love to her? To twine his tongue around mine so that I can almost taste her? So that the smell of her cunt, still wet on his chin, overwhelms me. It excites me. It doesn't lessen my jealousy, but it excites me. When his kisses have inflamed me enough, I push his head down. His rough tongue patiently tickles the inside of my thighs.
"Quickly," I hurry him. I want some of her juice still on his tongue while he's licking me. Is it me he's thinking of while his tongue wriggles into the muscled cave of my cunt? Is her cunt lightly downed as mine, the hair thinned with age, or is she young and rebelliously shaved smooth? I read
his diary but he leaves out details like these. "Jennifer," I heard him say into the phone as he hung up very quickly. (Jin his diary.) There were only two Jennifers in his address book. One of them I recognized as an eighty-year-old great-aunt. I wrote down the other's address and phone number. Sloppy, Stephen. Very sloppy. Which is how his first wife caught us. I wasn't surprised his habits hadn't much changed.
I didn't call her. What would I have said? I've driven by her house, hoping to catch sight of her. My jealous curiosity drew me there. One day when I knew him to be on a real business trip (Let this be a warning to you, Husbands of the World. It is not that difficult to check.) I stopped. I got out of the car. I rang her doorbell. She could just as easily have been on the trip with him. She wasn't.
Twenty-something with red braided hair answered the door.
"Hello," I said, cold and defiant.
"Hello," she said sweetly.
"Do you know who I am?" I demanded.
She looked puzzled. She shook her head apologetically. "I haven't lived here very long."
I didn't know what to say. This interview wasn't going at all as I had imagined it.
"I'm Karyn," I said. "Karyn Feinberg."
Her red braid bobbed amiably.
"Stephen Feinberg's wife."
She didn't bat an eyelash. Not a flicker of recognition.
"Are you Jennifer?" Maybe I was at the wrong address.
"Jennifer Reidenbach." She shook my hand politely.
I felt a little foolish. I kept waiting for Rod Serling to step out from behind a well-manicured bush. Should I ask her, "Are you having an affair with my husband?" Should I demand to smell her pubic hair? Would it be the same saltysweet I licked off his cheek some nights?
Jennifer Reidenbach was looking at me kindly. "Can I help you?" she asked.
"I've lost my..." (Mind. I've definitely lost my mind.) "...my puppy. Have you seen him?"
"What does he look like?"
Like every other imaginary pet. "Brown, furry. About this high. Comes to the name of Romeo."
"That's a funny name for a dog."
"Isn't it?"
Jennifer Reidenbach shook her red braid. "No. I haven't seen him."
"Maybe your husband has seen him."
"I'm not married."
"Can I use your phone?" I asked.
"Sure," the fly said to the spider.
She led me to a kitchen phone. I stared at her pointedly.
She left to give me privacy. I hit each of the auto-dial numbers programmed into her phone. One of them was certain to be Stephen's office number or my home. I hung up whenever anyone answered. I didn't hear a voice or message machine that I recognized. That doesn't prove anything, I told myself.
The walls of the kitchen and hallways were covered with snapshots. I looked for pictures of him, of them together. They were all of people I didn't know. I took in as much as I could of her apartment. "Are you a photographer?" "I wish," she said wistfully. "I mean, yes, I am. I'm trying to be."
In spite of myself, I liked her. I went from room to room, looking at the photographs; looking around for some evidence, some telltale sign of Stephen.
"Maybe Romeo will come home on his own," Jennifer suggested.
"What?"
"Your dog. I hope you find him."
"Oh, him. He's the wandering type, seems like he forgets where home is."
"You should have him neutered," Jennifer said.
"That's a good idea," I agreed. Then I saw it-a picture of Stephen, a Polaroid of the two of them at the County Fair. Last year's fair!
"Who is this?" I tapped the photo.
"That's my boyfriend, Mark."
"Mark?"
"Uh huh."
"He looks familiar," I told her. My teeth felt sharper for saying it.
"Does he? He lives in Philadelphia."
"Philadelphia?" I choked.
"Yes, he calls me when he comes to town. He comes here a lot on business. But not often enough. You know how longdistance relationships are."
"No...why don't you tell me?" So she did. Every word she said made my eyes a little wider. She was a very young, very beautiful, very gullible girl. He'd told her his name was Mark Smith.
"Smith?" I said. "You must be kidding."
She laughed, a completely guileless laugh. "That's what I said when he first told me. But somebody has to be named Smith, right?"
"Right."
She made me coffee and told me how they met, the last time she'd seen him, every implausible word he'd ever said, how fervently she believed them all, and of course, what a wonderful lover he was. I ground my teeth silently.
"How do you know he's not married?" I asked her.
"Oh," she shrugged the idea off. "I'd know. I want to show you something." She took me by the hand and led me to her bedroom. The bed was covered in tie-dyed silk. The walls were crowded with pictures. Here was Stephen. There was Stephen. Stephen everywhere. It was a temple. The walls were altars and Stephen's face blazed like a candle in every corner.
In one he held his hand out in protest. No more pictures. Another was clearly taken in the garden of his mother's house. (What had they been doing there? Where had his mother been? Whose house had "Mark" said it was?) Every piece of the puzzle fragmented into more questions. I was more confused than ever. More pictures were of him sprawled on her bed, this very bed. I looked at the rumpled sheets, smoothed them with my hand. In some he was naked. In some, sleeping. In some he was looking out at her with undisguised lust. It was odd, since he seemed to be looking right out of the picture at me. He seemed to be saying I want you. Now. Although I knew it was not me he had been wanting, my clit leaped like a candlewick under the familiar attention of a match.
Jennifer grinned like a child sharing a secret treasure with a friend, which is in fact what she was. I ruffled her hair.
As I was leaving, Jennifer hugged me earnestly. "I hope you get Romeo back. I know how terrible it is to lose something you love."
"Thank you," I said.
"Please come back again."
I grinned wickedly. "I will."
After that, I did what any vigilant dog-owner would do. I kept my husband on a tight leash. I made plans to do things in the evening, couple things, command-performance things like dinner at his mother's. I became good friends with the boss's wife. We had dinner with them once a week. I'd have finagled more if I could but it was difficult to wrench the boss away from his mistress-a girl who worked in the office and looked no more than sixteen. I dropped in at Stephen's office unexpectedly "to have lunch together." I was suspiciously romantic and spontaneous. Stephen retaliated by varying his lunch hour erratically and saying, "If I'd only known you were coming," hoping to force me to call and announce my surprise inspections. It was a statistical certainty that one day I would be arriving as he was leaving. That day came. He didn't see me, so what choice did I have but to follow him? What would I do if he led me to her house? Would I burst in on them, catch them in bed, wipe the lust and bliss off their amazed faces, while the lustful, blissful photos stared down from the bedroom walls at us-a jury of our peers? Would I sit frozen in the car while they made love inside? What if I rang the bell and no one answered? Who would untangle her limbs from her lover to answer the door? Leave him for Jehovah's witnesses, Girl Scout cookies, or pseudoneighbors' lost dogs? And when they didn't answer the door, what would I do? Crawl in a window? Break down the door? Call 911? Help. My husband is making love to a beautiful woman.
I shouldn't have worried. He didn't go to her house. He went to a restaurant. For lunch. Not a terribly suspicious way to spend one's lunch hour. And oh, how fortunate for me...to be able to "surprise" him here. "Honey, what a nice surprise!" I'd exclaim brightly. I could feel the leash tighten. I hid my face behind a menu and sauntered toward his table. But the chair across from him wasn't empty. Jennifer's hair fell around her shoulders in tight, red curls. They framed her face like a halo. I sat where I could watch them. I ordered something. I ate it without tasting it. I watched "Mark" and "his girl." Jennifer fed him cheesecake with her fork. I noticed she saved him the last bite. Neither of them saw me. Neither of them looked in my direction even once. They left separately. On a whim, I decided to follow her.
