Higher

I’d like to write another story for Best Women’s Erotica; I’d like to publish that story in another edition of Best Women’s Erotica. Over the years, editors for the annual erotica collection have rejected my work once, shortlisted my work once, and published my work twice. Marcy Sheiner and Violet Blue are incredible people. Female sexual activists are always incredible. I don’t think anyone knows how brave a sexual activist is, especially a female sexual activist.

Once a week, I read my friend Emerald’s blog and consider her a sexual activist coming into her own, how convicted she is about the rights of women, sex workers, human beings in general and I think, what a responsibility it is to take that stuff on, to vocalize your opinions regarding sexuality in face of a culture like ours: a mixed bag of prudes and perverts.

Americans are sexually dysfunctional. We loathe women comfortable in their own skins, the ones who open thier mouths, those who defy the Madonna/Whore complex. Meanwhile, no one will know the kind and generous friend Emerald is, how amazing it is she puts up with me, how she encourages me. Emerald encourages humanity as a whole, actually, although most would fail to recognize her advocacy. Most of us fail to acknowledge the selflessness of friends, let alone our sexual activists.

Thinking about Best Women’s Erotica the other day, I began to compose a letter to Keanu Reeves, with whom I had an encounter some years ago, which lead me to recall the steady flame of a man’s gaze and how then I existed.

Last night at the dinner table, as my son and I bantered back and forth in our usual manner I said, “When my novel comes out,” and then caught myself and said, “Hey, I said when not if.”  And felt delighted. I’ll publish my novel then I’ll exist.

What saves us?

I joined the Rumpus mailing list not too long ago and receive daily emails from site founder, Stephen Elliott. Over the last few weeks, he’s struck me as vain. Takes one to know one, doesn’t it? A lot of writers strike me that way. It’s a risk we take. Jesus was an empathetic, sensitive guy, but he was also full of himself; there’s no other way to bear the cross.

Consider what it takes to go stark naked. The point of writing about ourselves is to write from the inside out until we achieve a universal truth. I think Nick Flynn said that or Vivian Gornick. Or maybe it was my friend, Craig Sorensen.

My boss’s life coach addresses the destructiveness of vanity, and I know what he means, but he isn’t a writer.  This is an excuse or a  reason.  Writers say over dramatic things like, “If I wasn’t a writer, I’d kill myself.”  Except seventy-five percent of the time, I’m serious. Last night my son said, “Lots of religious people are too worried about what happens after they die instead of  paying attention right now.”  Writers are in the moment twenty-four-seven, which is why some of us are Atheist.

God doesn’t make you a good person. Get used to it. God is an asshole. Life is ambiguous.

I recalled a day recently when I walked home from a grocery store. I was nineteen and alone. At some point I registered a man tailing me. I wasn’t scared at first; then I was. When I arrived at the house I shared with two roommates, they weren’t home and I locked the door. Within a few seconds the guy tried the front door then the back one too. I heard him going around the house; I watched his shadow pass behind drawn curtains. I heard him trying this window then that one too.

Without second thought, I called my father. Imagine you’re Jesus and your father is God. Doesn’t matter if he’s God or not because our fathers always feel that way to us. I’m a perfectionist because I’m still trying to please him.

Within minutes that day he arrived and saved me. This was a joyous occasion. The bad guy had gone.