Best Sex Writing 2009 by Rachel Kramer Bussel Read Free Book Online

within a fiction and no one can see us blush. But with that distance comes a space which allows strangers to pass judgment.
    Here are a few things that have been said about me. I mean, about my books:

    Most of the sex scenes are degrading—not arousing.

    Great if you like the idea of being humiliated and called slut etc., not so great if you don’t.
    Ilya is a man who truly doesn’t respect Beth in the least, doesn’t even like her.

    You would think that an erotic fiction book would be at least a little bit sensual.

    I pitied Beth more than I wanted to be in her place. One of the worst Black Lace books I have ever read. I found some of the BDSM disgusting.
    Nothing against a kinky read but I don’t like mental abuse in erotic books.

    Ouch!
    My grumble isn’t really with negative comments; I think it’s par for the course when you’re a writer. And, I’m pleased to report, they’re vastly outnumbered by the very many positive, insightful, considered reviews my work has received over the years.
    No, my problem is with the way erotic humiliation is so fre- quently misunderstood, reviled, and marginalized. I write a lot about women who get off on being used, degraded, and verbally dominated; about rape fantasy; about discomfort, conflict, fear. Pain isn’t my kink. Spanking is off my radar. Rough stuff and psycholog- ical humiliation is more my theme although, of course, the physical and the mental don’t form neat parcels for anyone. When I write about this and someone says “Ew! Gross!,” they’re saying that what turns me on is wrong.
    An editor once reminded me that erotic fiction needs to focus on pleasure rather than be a vehicle for dysfunction. I was so stunned by this I didn’t eat worms for the rest of the week and almost quit
    my basket-weaving. I am not dysfunctional. I am not damaged. And what on earth is “pleasure” anyway? It sounds suspiciously like scented candles to me. The notion that female erotica should be softer and more romantic is wildly offensive. Ditto the implication that a woman who wants to be dominated by a man must be lack- ing her own mind. She doesn’t want it. She’s merely a victim and it’s her damaged, self-loathing psyche talking. Oh, puhlease.
    I get a lot of pleasure from unpleasure, from being made to squirm, from hating it and loving it all at once. All those who are with me, say “Ay!” One of the most moving erotic scenes I’ve ever read is in Stephen Elliott’s My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up . The narrator, a male submissive new to the BDSM scene, after hours of being tied, gagged, hurt, and demeaned is fucked with a strap-on. Elliott writes:

    I had never been entered before. She leaned across my back, wrapping one arm around my chest and gripping my neck with her other hand, occasionally squeezing my windpipe so I couldn’t breathe for a second. I cried again, but it was a different crying. I was very comfort- able. I don’t think I had ever been comfortable before.

    “Comfortable” might seem an odd word to use in this context but I think it’s perfect. For me, it’s that sense of dreamy, egoless relief that arises in the tension between pleasure and unpleasure. Subspace, to use the jargon.A lot of my characters (jeez, I can’t think who they’re based on) get off on being treated badly,on being distressed,reduced,shamed, and scared. They’re not screwballs, nihilists, emotional masochists, or lacking in self-worth. It’s a sex thang.They can still function.
    Beth, my central character in Asking for Trouble, is a woman ex- ploring her taste for sleaze, danger, submission, and humiliation. Ilya
    is the enigmatic stranger she’s newly involved with. She confesses her fantasies to him: “I just like picturing things where I’m being used, objectified, degraded, that kind of stuff. It’s liberating. I’m in someone else’s hands. I’m not being me.”
    Once upon a time, academics wrote about Black Lace books and the new