Dirty Little Read-through: The Forbidden Wonders of "Oops!" by T.J. Caliber

Here's the fourth story from Dirty Little Numbers, as the Dirty Little Read-through continues.

"...nipples so perfect and pert you just want to give them a kiss and say thank you" -- T.J. Caliber

The language of T.J. Caliber's "Oops!" is so urgent and original that I want to give it a kiss and say thank you. There are so many lines I could have quoted, vivid images of lust and longing.

This story reminded me how wonderful the forbidden can be, and how necessary. It's about looking on Craigslist, finding, wanting, and going after what is found. It's a wild ride, and a brave one, and my heart pounded even though it was short.

I have looked on Craigslist this way, but always chickened out. I remember feeling stifled in my marriage, wanting things that I could barely name, and pointing my browser to Craigslist only to feel overwhelmed by the cornucopia of possibilities. I have never admitted this to anyone before, but I remember what it was like to read through the ads—the wonder I felt, which Caliber captures perfectly, at all these "people who want to fuck right now." I got so aroused by the idea that they might be real—the woman who sounded as if she would allow someone like me to come over just for a few hours, the man who promised he knew how to give a good spanking. These possibly real people affected me so much more than the fantasies I'd been having. I felt a mere breath away from them, and so I closed my browser and fled.

In a post today at Go Deeper Press, Angela wrote, "For me, revealing our darkness is what makes erotica transformative and titillating." She's right, and that darkness is a hell of a scary thrill. I was too afraid to play with strangers years ago, when I hunched over forbidden words on my laptop and struggled to breathe, but Caliber brought the feeling back to me so vividly, along with the exhilarating question, "What if?"

If you'd like to read the story instead of my philosophizing about it, check out the fantastic Go Deeper Press—Dirty Little Numbers and other sex-positive erotic books are on sale there.

Dirty Little Read-Through: The Unapologetic Confession of "Here's My Problem, Dr. Kinsey" by Mia Hopkins

The Dirty Little Read-through goes on—the third story in Dirty Little Numbers comes to us from Mia Hopkins.

"Jim muttered something about eternal damnation, but he did it anyway." — Mia Hopkins

What I like most about this fictional confession is that it's not a confession in the sense of regret. Throughout, the narrator sounds like she knows what she wants and she's not ashamed of anything. Glancing up to the title after reading the story, I get an image of her smirking as she says those words. Maybe the memory of hot sex that she describes in this story has created some problems for her, but I don't think she'd trade it.

I like the idea of a knowing woman who's not out to apologize confessing a dirty secret to Dr. Kinsey who, by the accounts I've read, wasn't out to judge. That's a delightful reversal of the idea of confession.

I go to confession once a year on Good Friday, and I only confess the things I'm truly sorry for. That means I don't often talk about sex, and I also don't stay in the confessional very long. That's not to say that I'm perfect, but I've spent too much of my life apologizing for who I am and everything I do, feel, and think. These days, I try to keep my apologizing to a minimum, and to only do it when it's really necessary.

But church isn't the only place I feel expected to confess. When I got divorced several years ago, I encountered a lot of people who wanted me to analyze for them how my marriage had gone wrong, or why I wasn't willing to work on things any more. It's one thing to learn from mistakes, and another to enact a shame performance, and too many times conversations veered to that latter side of the line.

Erotica has a long tradition of another kind of confession—a sly, sometimes funny revelation of forbidden acts. Books of erotic confessions are sold not to warn people off but to titillate them, and I think this is a needed corrective for the other kind of confession, the one that's all about shame. Hopkins' story is a classic entry in this venerable tradition. The narrator does outrageous things with an ear of corn, cops to a problem that it sounds sort of nice to have, and doesn't say she's sorry for any of it. More power to her!

If you'd like to read the story instead of my philosophizing about it, check out the fantastic Go Deeper Press—Dirty Little Numbers and other sex-positive erotic books are on sale there.

Dirty Little Read-through: "Third-Party Extension" by Jacob Louder

I continue my Dirty Little Read-through with the second story in Dirty Little Numbers, "Third-Party Extension" by Jacob Louder.

“Go on, Scotty,” Erin says. “He’s your present.” -- Jacob Louder

On the surface, this is a hot-as-hell stroke story. Its few hundred words are wall-to-wall sex, and I very nearly chose to quote its opening line up top ("Two cocks in our bedroom and my wife is ecstatic."). Even though I cheated and quoted it just now, I wanted to put that other line first because it's the moment the story took off for me.

In just a few sentences, Louder has established that the wife is ecstatic, but the other cock in the bedroom is a present for the husband, and now we're at the heart of the sex-positivity behind this scorcher.

There are certain fantasies that seem to be both incredibly common and commonly problematic. At the top of my list of examples are threesomes and anal sex (we'll get back to that one). All too commonly, threesomes are portrayed as one person's fantasy. Go to Google and type "how can I convince my girlfriend." The first thing that pops up for me is "to have a 3 way." This leads to a collection of links that I find... problematic. And that's far from the only emotional minefield that threesomes can fall into.

So, hot as threesomes make me (common fantasy, like I said), I'm always a little on edge when I read about them, watching for that tinge of imbalance or uncertainty, that piece of evidence that one or more people are not getting what they need or want out of the experience.

Thankfully, there's none of that here. Louder sells me on how utterly desired this threesome is by all parties. The wife's excitement shines through, as does the husband's aching desire. Even the hired third party gets "the face of a man half his age" at one point (and I love that line also for telling me that the third is sexy as hell and also a bit older). From word one, it's clear that everyone involved is enjoying the hell out of the experience (and enthusiastically consenting to it). All three people are connected and finding pleasure in each other. The wife praises the husband as he sucks the third's cock. The husband fucks his wife and focuses on the feeling of the other man inside her. The third shouts his excitement as he releases cum for the others to play with.

The whole thing glistens with lust, dirty thrills, and genuine, accepting love. That's how to do a threesome, I say.

If you'd like to read the story instead of my philosophizing about it, check out the fantastic Go Deeper Press—Dirty Little Numbers and other sex-positive erotic books are on sale there.

Dirty Little Read-through: The Sexy Eyelashes of "Under Captain Jack" by Kristina Lloyd

I don't want to stop talking about Dirty Little Numbers yet. So here is my plan: a dirty little read-through, one very short story at a time. If you want to join me, you are certainly welcome. I begin with the first story in the collection, Kristina Lloyd's "Under Captain Jack."

"He reached for my eyes with both hands and, carefully, gently, peeled away the lashes. The tackiness tugged on my lids, and the intimacy of his action left me softly shocked." - Kristina Lloyd

What I love about this is that it is an incredibly intimate action being described—and one that wouldn't occur to me if I were making a list of intimate actions. In general, we don't touch each other's faces in society unless something very intimate is going on—a lover stroking the soft hair at the temple, a mother wiping her child's mouth, etc.

I have often bewailed the way that many sex scenes are written as if a woman consists of nothing more than lips, nipples, and clit. This could, of course, be done well, but it is frequently done with formulaic detachment, leading me to scan entire pages of writing that I think were supposed to make me melt and squirm.

My favorite thing about Nicole Holofcener's excellent movie Enough Said was its off-kilter sexiness. At one point, the main female character talks about how there's something sexy to her about the warts-hanging-out middle-agedness of her relationship. There's a fantastic scene of the two main characters in bed together studying each other's teeth, which gave me the same shock of intimacy that appears in Lloyd's story.

These days, I am so hungry for the sexiness of the inner elbow, the back of the knee, the point of the chin. Thank you to Kristina Lloyd for these eyelashes. I needed them.

Dirty Little (Sex-Positive) Numbers

"We’ve been taught for so long that writing stories to arouse a reader—or reading stories to get ourselves turned on—is “tasteless” and “immoral.” So, stories that get to the erotic friction faster, or portray hot moments in less than 500 words, are surely the heart of sex-positive art and the politics that go with it." - Lana Fox and Angela Tavares


Just yesterday, I was talking with a friend about the periodic waves of corporate censorship that erotica writers face. My friend commented that comedians facing censorship have the magic word "satire" on their side—-and wondered if erotica writers have any similar get-out-of-jail-free card.

I said we actually have a disadvantage a lot of times. Porn is often used as a foil for art. There may be sex in a story, some writers say, but it's not for titillation. It's literary, better than that.

I have often wondered what's so wrong about making art that is for titillation, or why it seems to be a common belief that sexually explicit art is only okay if it's not titillating. This of course falls down if you read something like Anais Nin's Delta of Venus and Little Birds—-collections of stories that Nin wrote to arouse a paying customer (famously being paid per page for the porn she produced), and discover how arousing and literary they are.

But we don't need to turn to Nin. There are plenty of erotica writers who are unashamedly out to arouse, and are also producing vital, necessary literature. I may be turning up the vibrator in the moment, but I've got something to think about, too. See, for example, my review of Alison Tyler's Dark Secret Love.

I want to make a stronger statement, though. How about the times when I'm just so turned on by the words on the page or screen that I can't help myself? The times when I don't even care about literary merit, I just have to come? I'll never forget the raging arousal I felt after reading Giselle Renarde's Wedding Heat: Two in the Bush. Jaded me, who these days often finds descriptions of explicit sex repetitive, had to close my laptop and run to the bedroom to bring myself off as quickly as possible, noisily, desperately, as if I'd just discovered masturbation. There is art in that, pure art. Not every sex scene does that to me. There is art in finding and portraying the real heat of a moment.

I agree with Lana and Angela that honoring that art is a sex-positive and profoundly radical act. Their quote above is from the introduction to Dirty Little Numbers, the newest release from the fantastic Go Deeper Press. I've got a story in it, and I couldn't be happier to be part of this.

Writing or reading a very short erotic story might be a small act, but it's a profound one. I don't want to ever forget the thrill and fear I felt the first time I found such a story, magnified the first time I wrote one. On each and every occasion, I was (and still am) claiming another part of my sexuality for my own.

That's so important, and you'd damn well better believe that it's art.

Cover Reveal: Dirty Little Numbers

Pretty, huh? Go Deeper Press always designs great covers, and this is the one for Dirty Little Numbers, which will include my anal masturbation story, "Too Much to Give."

Too Much to Give

My anal masturbation short-short story, "Too Much to Give," will be in Dirty Little Numbers, forthcoming from Go Deeper Press.

I'm thrilled, because I check their e-books page about twice a day hoping I somehow missed an announcement of a new book they've put up. They only have four books out now (they're pretty new), but I loved all four. Go Deeper's crew puts out literary, smart, hot, surprising erotica in beautifully designed books, and I only wish they would do it faster.

I'll have more details when I've got them.