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Smut Writer
© 2001 Lesléa Newman
From a very early age, I knew I would grow up to be a writer. I didn't know I would grow up to be a smut writer. Nor did I know I would grow up to be a lesbian writer. But that's a different story. Or then again, perhaps it's the same story. I started writing poetry at a very early age. When I think about that now, it puzzles me. No one ever read poetry to me, and when I was old enough to read, I did not read poetry to myself. Yet, on some intuitive level, I knew I needed to take pen to paper (or at that time, crayon to black-and-white composition notebook) and express myself through verse. My writing has always been my alpha dog, my teacher, my top. When my writing is kind enough to show up, take me by the hand and lead me somewhere, it is always in my best interest to follow. I did not come out, even to myself, until I was twenty-seven. But looking back at the poems I wrote in my teens and early twenties, I am amazed at how "pre-lesbian" they are. I have always said I write not in order to be understood, but in order to understand. Clearly my writing had a perfect understanding of what was going on inside me, but I was unable to learn what it was so desperately trying to teach me for years and years and years. Consider the following poem, written in 1975 when I was nineteen years old. It was days of the "sexual revolution" and I was an active heterosexual--or so I thought--participant. When We Were Seven
When we were seven
Vicki and I put on
our feet pajamas
and slept
in her big sister's double bed
without touching.
She was the best lover
I've ever had.
When I read that poem now, all I can think is "Duh!" I was slow to learn, though my writing continued trying to teach me. Two years later, in 1977, many boyfriends and no female lovers later, I wrote this poem: A Long Time Coming
Woman, beware of the creature
with subway rumblings in his voice,
with dark hair sprouting from his chin and cheeks.
He will admire your velvet fur.
Beware of the danger between his legs.
He will treat your heart like a pin cushion
and turn your sisters against you.
Your eyes will grow black like the night
when he will try to steal your name.
Woman, throw your birth control pills
to the pigeons of City Hall,
dangle Dalkon Shields from your ears,
Plant morning glories in your diaphragm.
We will find new ways to multiply.
Double duh! Not only was I trying to tell myself I was a dyke, but I was already prophesizing the lesbian turkey baster baby boom! Another sign that clearly shows there was a raging bulldyke inside me just dying to get out, was the number of poems I wrote in those early years that mentioned breasts. In high school, my creative writing teacher told the class to pick our favorite poet and write a poem imitating that poet's style. This untitled poem, written in the style of Anne Sexton, was penned in 1972:
preparing for your hands
to read my body
like a poem
I put on the gypsy scarf
you love to frolic in.
tonight you soared so high
above willows and breasts
you didn't even notice the gypsy scarf
huddled on the ground
among your hyacinths
Another poem, written five years later:
The Gift
Here is a shell
I found this afternoon
over by the rocks.
Take it home
to tuck away
in a drawer among your scarves,
and when you find it again
remember this night:
when the moon rose high
on your cheekbones
and my breasts fell
like two tears
into your hands.
My first response in re-reading these two poems is: what's with all the scarves? And my second response is amusement as I realize that, since I had yet to touch another woman's breasts, I inserted my own in as many poems as I could. (In fact, a male poetry teacher I had in college told me I had "too many breasts" in my poems.) In all the love poems I wrote to men, which mostly recounted experiences of love, loss, pain, anger, and occasionally revenge, I never once mentioned that certain body part my lovers had that I didn't. The first woman I slept with was, not surprisingly, a poet. We both wrote poems about the momentous occasion, and both our poems mentioned breasts. I spoke of "the moon casting shadows of light across my breasts and belly." (Still mentioning my own breasts, I see.) My lover wrote of "dark nights lightened by a lover's nipple" and "a breast beckon(ing) beneath a sweater." Our affair did not last long, mostly because I panicked and ran from her and from my confusion. It took another three years before I had the courage to come out to myself and to the world. And a strange thing happened when I embraced my lesbian self. I started writing prose in addition to poetry. Prose about being a lesbian. Prose that detailed what lesbians do. With each other. In bed. My first published book of prose, written in 1985, was your basic, proverbial, thinly disguised autobiographical first novel. What's interesting to me about Good Enough to Eat is that it is told in two parts: The first part ends with a heterosexual love scene, the second part ends with a lesbian love scene. In the first part of the novel, the protagonist, Liza Goldberg finds herself in bed with her boyfriend, Michael. In the midst of giving him a blow job, her mind wanders: "One, two, buckle my shoe. Three four, shut the door. Five six, bite those pricks." Clearly Liza is not enjoying herself. Luckily for her, Harvey, her gay roommate walks in and knows what's going on because he and Liza have had many frank discussions about her less-than-satisfying relationship with Michael, as well as her growing attraction to other women. Harvey comes to Liza's rescue by asking her what a lesbian is doing in such an uncompromising position. Michael, stunned, asks Liza if she really is a lesbian. Liza's response is, "If you had the choice of having some jerk stick his big smelly prick into your mouth every two minutes, or holding a sweet soft woman in your arms, which would you pick?" Liza's words teach her who she is, just as my words taught me. At the end of the book, after an explicit sex scene, Liza falls asleep with Anemone's breast in her mouth, "dreaming the dreams of one who is at peace, one who, at least for the moment, has everything she wants." The reason I ended my first novel with a graphic lesbian sex scene, was because I simply didn't know any better. I didn't know I was doing something radical, revolutionary and potentially controversial. I was simply being true to my characters and writing a story. And since I have always used writing to explore all aspects of my experience--family relations, childhood memories, my eating disorder, etc.--it never occurred to me not to write about this new, exciting, wonderful part of my life.
After the novel, I continued writing both poetry and prose, and began to create in another form: the short story. The short story had the terseness and intensity of poetry, and the luxurious elbow room of a novel. I wrote four books of short stories between 1988 and 1999: A Letter to Harvey Milk, Secrets, Every Woman's Dream, and Girls Will Be Girls. The difference between the short stories and the autobiographical novels (In 1990 I wrote In Every Laugh a Tear, another novel whose plot closely follows my own life) is that the stories contain a myriad of characters engaging in a myriad of activities, both sexual and otherwise. The challenge of writing over 60 short stories in about a decade was to use my imagination to create a variety of characters and situations, some of which were based upon my own life, but most of which were not. Ironically, in 1988, I met the love of my life, and began an exclusive sexual relationship which continues to this day. Learning to be creative in my own monogamous (and in no way monotonous) sex life taught me to be creative in my sexual writing life. I wrote sex scenes that I had never experienced, coming up with ideas that I wanted (and did) try in my own life. And I wrote about some of my own experiences in some of my fiction, giving my characters the treat of engaging in activities that had given me pleasure. Writing is a very sexy occupation. Writing turns me on. It stimulates my brain, which, as has been said, is the sexiest organ of them all. When I write I feel turned on. I feel passionate, creative, energetic, breathless, joyful, powerful, confident, present, fully alive, and hot. The most important element of a sexual experience for me is whom I am sharing it with. I have to be completely in love with the person I am sharing my body with. I can be in love with her for five minutes or a lifetime. It doesn't matter. What matters is, at that moment, I have to think she is the most fascinating woman in the world, and there is no one else I'd rather be spending my time with. It is the same with writing (or reading) sexually explicit material. What matters are the characters. I have to be hypnotized by them. I have to be mesmerized by them. I have to be utterly captivated by them. I have to feel that there is no one I would rather be spending time with--not other characters in a book, or other people in real life. I have to care about the characters so much that I feel their lust, their passion, their joy, their rage, their sorrow. And in the case of smut, I have to be able to see the blush spreading across a character's heaving chest. I have to be able to hear the exact pitch of her gasps and moans. I have to be able to smell the aroma of her damp underarm. I have to be able to feel the texture of a character's dimpled thigh. I have to be able to taste the luscious liquid between her legs. Otherwise, frankly, I'm bored. To accomplish this, to "make me swoon" as I implore writers who send me stories to consider for my series of anthologies, Pillow Talk: Lesbian Stories Between the Covers, (Volumes I, II and III) one does not have to come up with amazing sexual techniques or scenarios. One has to come up with amazing characters. Maybe it's a female thing, maybe it's a femme thing, maybe it's just a Lesléa thing, but what's most important to me in a sexual situation I am either experiencing, reading, or writing about, is the emotional component. The intimacy. Often I write short stories (whether they are smut or not) in the first person, because I believe the most intimate portrayal of a character can only be accomplished from inside that character's head and from hearing her tell her story in her own, unique voice. Or perhaps I just enjoy fiction writing's biggest perk of all: being able to experience someone else's life from the inside out. In my short story, "Eggs McMenopause" which follows this essay, my narrator couldn't be more different than me. First of all, she's a butch. Second of all, she's a good ten years older than I am. And lastly, she's single, and hasn't had sex in "a long, long time," and like I've already mentioned, my sex life, though monogamous, is anything but monotonous. Without giving too much of the plot away, the reason the story works (in my humble opinion) is because the reader gets inside the character's mind. The reader knows some of the character's history, knows she's in the throes of menopause, a time of great hormones and horniness. The reader also knows the character's yearnings (a good lay), her frustrations (her body's not what it used to be), her insecurities (will anyone ever love me?), her hopes (maybe tonight will be the night), and her dreams (to live happily ever after). And once the reader is privy to these thoughts, the character becomes human, and thus very similar to the reader herself, whom we can assume is also human. Additionally, the character charms the reader (she's a butch, after all), so when the character finally does have sex, in a most interesting and unique way, the reader is right there with her, unbuttoning her lover's sweater, licking her nipples, fucking her with a.... oh, but I don't want to ruin the story. When I sit down to write a story or a poem or a novel, or an essay, I don't know if it's going to be a piece of smut or not (in fact, I don't know if I'm going to be lucky enough for anything to happen on the page). Writing is my master. I am my writing's slave. Writing controls me. I am at my writing's mercy. When I try to take control, to dominate, to make my writing do what I want it to do instead of the other way around, it is always a mistake and I am always more than sorry. When I behave myself, my writing is very, very kind, and rewards me with words that fill page after page after page. When I am bold enough, or more accurately stupid enough to disobey, my writing is very cruel. And though the punishment is always the same, and I always know what it is, it is still utter torture: my writing simply gets up and leaves. And worse than that, my writing doesn't tell me when it will be back. Or if it will be back. All I can do is show up, pray, plead, beg, promise to be good, pick up my pen and wait to see if I am once more worthy of receiving words that add up to something. I must be patient. The tension is excruciating, yet I have to admit, there's something I like about it, too. The release--the flood of words--is exquisite, but it is hardly over before the whole process starts over again. I can be good--I can be very, very very good--for a while, but then, I can't help myself. I have to be bad again. I have to try to take control. To be the master of my master. To top my top. My writing just shakes its head and walks out on me again. So far, my writing has always returned, though the fear that it won't remains (and becomes greater each time). I never, ever, take my writing for granted. And that is the best way I can describe the thrilling, maddening, pleasurable, painful, sexy relationship I have with my writing. I guess--and this will come as a big surprise to my girlfriend--I'm really non-monogamous after all. © 2001 Lesléa Newman |
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