This Modern Writer: Stephen S. Mills

Sometimes Sex Is Just Sex

My conservative aunt once asked my mother, after reading one of my poems, “Why does he always have to write about sex?” My mother, trying to smooth things over, responded, “Sometimes the sex isn’t about sex. It can mean different things, like getting screwed by the government.” I appreciated my mother’s attempt, though I don’t think it made my aunt feel any better (at the time, under the Bush administration, my aunt trusted the government quite a bit and couldn’t imagine it screwing her). In many ways, both my aunt’s and my mother’s responses were typical. We often feel the need to question all sexual content or to justify sex by making it about something more. But what if the sex is just that, sex? Is that so wrong?

A few years ago, I would have bought into that need to make sex into some metaphor or symbol for something “grander,” but I’ve now come to terms with the fact that sex is a valid topic on its own and needs no other justification. For anyone who has read much of my work, they will know that I devote a lot of my poetry to examining sexuality. Oh, and did I mention that the majority of the time I’m writing about gay sex? This makes it even worse. Some can handle heterosexual sex, but gay sex just crosses the line. The questions start flying: Why do you have to rub your gayness in my face? Why are you being so graphic? Why are you helping push the stereotype that gay men are sex-obsessed?

I remember in a graduate poetry workshop someone questioned one of my poems by saying it was just trying to be shocking. This is a response many people take to sex in general. If you are showing or writing about sex, you are just trying to shock people. To me this comment says more about the person saying it than the poem in question. Shock is relative. Are you shocked because mass media and politicians have told you that you should be shocked by gay sex? Are you shocked because you are uncomfortable with your own sex life or sexuality? Perhaps this is the point of such a poem: to make you think.

Being gay you quickly learn that no matter what you do you will shock people. Once you accept this you suddenly stop caring and are truly free. You realize it doesn’t matter if you are cautious or not, you will still make people uncomfortable, so you might as well go full force. I write openly about gay sex because so few do. Even other gay poets often refrain from dealing head-on with the intimate details.

I’ve been with my partner for six years now and I love examining, in my work, the ever-changing elements of a relationship and of a sex life. This is something I haven’t seen that much of in gay poetry, or really even in straight poetry. In the gay world there are many “hook-up poems,” or “club poems,” or “let me compare you to a Greek god poems,” but very few, what I call, “ever-after poems.” What happens after you meet the man of your dreams? This is what I try to examine in all my work and part of that examination is sex based. Sure, sex is hot the first time, but how do you maintain that good sex? Yes, many are turned off by it. But I refuse to write any differently.

A few weeks ago I had two poems published in Velvet Mafia, which is an online queer magazine that seeks alternative gay work and erotica. I found the site months ago, but hesitated to submit. I kept thinking do I want my work associated with an erotica-type publication? As someone who has been academically trained, I had that feeling of not wanting to associate myself and my work with something “low-brow.” Of course, I eventually came to my senses and realized nothing on the site is any different in quality than the work I write. Many would try to classify some of my poems as erotica, though most are not written with the intent to get you off.

In this situation, I had to confront my own stereotypes and ask myself why do I deem erotica as something less? It’s just another form of writing and has just as much place in the world as any epic poem does. I’m not saying all erotica is well-written, but not all poetry is well-written either. I also made myself admit that the poems that are posted on Velvet Mafia will probably get more readers than my poem published in The Antioch Review, which is a well-established and respected literary magazine. That is not saying anything against The Antioch Review, but it is putting it all in perspective. People may be shocked by sex, but secretly they love to read about it.

I’m a firm believer in writing those poems that are hard to write. The poems some will never respect or understand. These are the poems that need to be written. I always tell my students if you are scared to write it, or scared of what others might think of you, then that’s the thing to write. As for my aunt, she might never appreciate a good gay sex poem, but I like to think just maybe I’ve made her think.

Stephen S. Mills earned his MFA from Florida State University. His poems have appeared in The Gay and Lesbian Review, Hoboeye Online Arts Journal, The Broken Bridge Review, PANK, Velvet Mafia, The New York Quarterly, The Antioch Review, Redheaded Stepchild, and the anthologies Poetic Voices Without Borders 2 and Ganymede Poets, One. Others are forthcoming in Knockout, Limp Wrist, and Word Riot. He is also the winner of the 2008 Gival Press Oscar Wilde Poetry Award. He currently lives in Orlando, FL with his partner and his dog. Website: http://joesjacket.blogspot.com/