Less Than One Week to Help Xan West

Friends, I know I've been talking a lot about this—on Twitter, here, in my newsletter—but the reason for that is that I care. Xan West (AKA Corey Alexander) means a great deal to me, as both an author and a person, and our help is needed.

I know these are tough times. I feel like every day there is some urgent demand for my attention, my energy, my (limited) funds, my power, my love. I often feel exhausted by it all, and there are some things I don't feel able to get to. So I completely understand if you're tapped out or tired. I am, too.

This, though... So much right now is big and overwhelming. I often feel tiny. I'm often not sure if I can help or how to try. In times like that, it helps me to bring my focus to a smaller scale, and maybe that's another part of why I'm here. Xan West is one person, and I know I have the power to offer direct benefit in this case, with money, with energy, with attention.

But ultimately, it's not about me. It's about helping Xan live in safety. And one part of why I know this matters (other than the worth of every single person, no matter what), is that Xan's being and work have so often sustained me, and I know I'm not the only person for whom this is true. Xan's writing has given me joy and healing. Xan's presence is kind, thoughtful, and encouraging. Xan gets on Twitter and shares coping strategies right when so many of us need them. I want Xan to receive just as generously as Xan gives.

There's less than a week left on this YouCaring campaign, and I'd like to offer you three ways to help:

1) Give directly.



2) Buy a copy of Xan's book, Show Yourself to Me.

(Until the campaign is successful, Xan's publisher, Go Deeper, is giving Xan 100% of the proceeds from this book that are purchased from the Go Deeper website. You will find the website here.)

Honestly, if you haven't read Show Yourself to Me yet, I'm a little jealous. It's so revelatory and exhilarating.

3) Spread the word.

Share links to the campaign I embedded above. Share links to the page for Show Yourself to Me. Share links to Xan's Twitter feed. Everything matters.

<3 <3 <3

Thank you so much for reading this.

Xan West

I want to talk to you today about Xan West (AKA Corey Alexander), an incredible erotica writer and one of the most thoughtful, kind people I know.

Xan's work touched me long before I communicated with Xan directly in any way. It was a representation of BDSM that was incredibly sexy, incredibly edgy, and psychologically astute at the same time. As I involved myself in erotica writing and the kink scene, some writing began to seem less relevant to my experience. There were stories that were hot but that didn't sit right with me anymore because of the ways I am and have been wounded. Xan's work, however, only glowed more brightly with time. Xan's writing fiercely defends sexuality while being absolutely sensitive toward the human beings coming into sexual situations. It gives me hope in so many ways.

You can read me saying similar things in the introduction to Xan's book, Show Yourself to Me—I felt so privileged to be asked to write it.

The point of talking about Xan West today, though, is that this wonderful person is in need of help right now, and I so want to see all the help and good things directed toward Xan.

You can read the details here, but the short version is that Xan is in danger of becoming homeless. There's a campaign on YouCaring, designed to help Xan survive until SSDI kicks in. I'm embedding the widget below, and you can use that to give to Corey directly.



The other thing, though, is that the incredible people at Go Deeper Press (Xan's publisher) are currently giving Xan 100% of the proceeds from Show Yourself to Me. My friends, I honestly want to press this book into the hands of every person I meet. It's that good. It soothes my soul and turns me on, even at times when I think my soul can't be soothed or I can't be turned on. I would tell you to buy it anyway, at any time. But right now would be a particularly great time, because it will help Xan deal with this difficult situation.

I highly recommend you read this brave and moving post by Go Deeper Press co-founder Jacob Louder if you'd like to know more about the book. Then, please consider heading over to the Go Deeper Press website and buying a copy.



Finally, it really helps to spread the word about these efforts. Please share the links to Go Deeper and You Caring, and think of Xan when you are on Twitter or your own blog. You can find Xan/Corey's Twitter stream (which is always full of amazing links and thoughts as well) here.

The Pain-Studded Absolution of Those Boys

"I will set you free, but I won't let you go."

Rarely have I read a more shiver-inducing statement of what BDSM is all about. That sentence I quoted has plenty of impact on its own, but it's got even more embedded in the yearning, emotional, dead-sexy "Those Boys," Alison Tyler's latest novelette from the fabulous Go Deeper Press.

Readers of the previous novelette, "Those Girls," will welcome the return of Sandy, the cocky but not too perfect bisexual dom who starred in that outing. We've also been treated to the return of Vanessa, the titular girl.

The new addition is Rem, a silver-haired, tattooed, Western-shirt wearing rocker who Sandy sums up this by telling us what kind of boy he is. Rem, Sandy says, is one of "those 'I need your approval of my outfit, and it will take me six hours to choose a shirt' boys."

What ensues when these three collide is a tale of desire. Sandy wants Rem, Rem wants what Sandy can give him, and Vanessa wants to enjoy them both. With everyone wanting so much, the reader might ask what holds them back from satisfaction—but where sex comes into play, the answer is all too clear. What holds many of us back from satisfaction is ourselves, and that's no less true for the conflicted Rem.

The emotion between Sandy and Rem is intense, and the sex scorching, but I especially love that Tyler doesn't neglect Vanessa. Her relationship with Sandy remains nuanced, and is advanced by the story, and there is palpable chemistry between her and Rem.

I've read dozens of Alison Tyler's BDSM stories, and Those Boys delivers what fans of those stories are looking for—heat, attention to the psychology of BDSM, the search for an understanding of this drive but an ultimate refusal to apologize for it.

As she's discussed on her blog, Those Boys is different in a very important way—she's writing from the perspective of a male dom rather than the semi-autobiographical female "I" that's common to much of her other work (such as Dark Secret Love). That girl is still present in Those Boys (Vanessa, like many Alison Tyler narrators, has a preference for diaphanous dresses and a love of anal play), but it's fun to see her from a different perspective. And it's exciting to read the flip side of Tyler's kinky world. Sandy delivers the sure sexiness of a dom without becoming so certain of himself that he turns into a caricature (I feel as if I said something very similar when reviewing Those Girls, but it's true in both novelettes). His desires are front and center, and they're interestingly distinct from those of his subs.

Tyler's general exuberance about BDSM is on full display here, as fresh and strong as if this were the very first story she'd written. And Sandy's voice has a breathtaking intimacy to it. He speaks of his own desires, but he knows his subs so well:

"I know that a real, true sub requires more than pain. There's the understanding that accompanies the desires, absolution above all else."

I might appropriate that sentence to describe what I need as a reader. I want the pain and the sex, but I also need the panoramic view of kink that I've gotten from this series. I need to travel into Sandy's mind because I need that absolution, too. Tyler has said that she's at work on a prequel called Those Days, where we'll be introduced to Sandy's origins.

I am one of those boys. I am one of those girls. I can't wait to travel back with Alison Tyler to those days.

(Disclaimer: I received an ARC of Those Boys in exchange for an honest review. I have also written for Go Deeper Press and Alison Tyler. I've also spent untold sums of my own money buying books from both sources...)

Writing Erotica Forces Me to Think About Society

Erotic writers have a reason to be social activists too, especially if they are any shade of queer. Freedom to tell the truth about feelings and lifestyles can’t be completely separated from freedom to live honestly. In some ways, however, writing is exactly opposite from social action. Writing is usually done best alone, in a quiet room. Public displays of protest or solidarity require groups that grow into crowds. Filling the streets in support of an idea is a statement in itself.
-- from "Politically Incorrect" by Jean Roberta

I've been mulling over this quote for several days. More and more, my work has made me realize that I can't separate writing from social action. The deeper I delve into erotic questions that interest me, the more I find myself forced to take positions on issues I've spent a lot of my life afraid to speak up about.

For example, I'm genuinely and truly interested in characters who are seeking sexual autonomy—people who are developing a sense of what they like to do in bed and who they want to do it with. Often, this involves a difficult learning process of speaking up about discomfort or becoming aware of how it is that they came to be adults without learning this. Or it involves some sort of radical action (or at least action that feels radical to the characters) to claim their sexuality as their own. But this often leads me to larger societal considerations.


I'll use an example from a very short story of mine, "Too Much to Give," published in Go Deeper Press's Dirty Little Numbers.

Raul bought me a butt plug because he wants to fuck my ass. In that final frontier of male fantasy, he sees a chance to gain indelible proof that I love him.

As far as he knows, I’ve never even dared to remove the toy from its silk drawstring bag. To him, it’s as untouched and virginal as my asshole.

In fact, Raul's impression of the situation couldn't be more wrong. The narrator of this story loves ass play, but she does it on her own, in secret, with the defiant declaration, "My ass is my own."

I felt bold when I wrote this story because I was claiming ass play as something a woman would do for herself. To people immersed in erotica, that might not sound radical because we're surrounded by sex-positive refrains and stories that focus on female pleasure. I can tell you with authority, however, that in my own life, given the way I was raised, among the people I've known, in the relationships I've experienced, that is a radical, radical idea. My first experiences with anal sex were about coercion, trickery, pressure, and various men demanding love be proven to them. The story isn't autobiographical in a direct way, but it's certainly drawn from autobiography. I am incredibly aroused by anal play, but most of it is masturbation because I'm still feeling the echoes of all that coercion. And it's taken a lot of exploration to be able to claim this sort of play for myself, to make that part of my body feel as if it really belongs to me.


But here's where the story starts to widen into social action. Sure, I could tell this in a personal growth frame, talk about getting over difficult memories, or my own journey into expansive sexuality. But as I've explored this subject in this and many other stories, I come up against something bigger than me or individual players. There are fantastic books out there about anal sex and how it can and should be pleasurable for everyone involved (I particularly love The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women by Tristan Taormino). I've read plenty of articles about how commonly couples enjoy anal sex together. On the other hand, that's not the mainstream narrative I hear. I often hear anal sex brought up as the punchline to disturbing jokes, the threatened fate for a criminal sent to prison, the thing a woman has to do to keep her man, and more stuff I can't really bring myself to repeat. Books like Taormino's (or Rachel Kramer Bussel's collection of anal erotica, Baby Got Back) are an important counterpoint to the mainstream narrative, but when I was growing up, the idea that anal sex was something a woman might herself enjoy and do because she wanted to—well, that didn't even exist on my horizon.

The idea of sex as something enjoyed by both parties, the idea of enthusiastic consent, the idea of being able to withdraw consent in the midst of a sexual act—those are all things I've learned by reading "radical" books as an adult. And I don't think this is ultimately just about sex. I think it's about the seemingly radical idea that every person should have dignity and choice. I think it's about the need to get out of tired narratives about how "men only want one thing" and what "nice girls" do and don't do. I think this world desperately needs a broader understanding of gender and sexuality (because if you start reading stuff about gender theory and start to really understand where phrases like "all genders" are coming from, that's going to blow huge holes in gender essentialist ideas absorbed from society like the ones I just listed).

For me, on the tail of those realizations, I started to want to speak up and make change. I listen to the radio or watch television or read a book or play a video game, and I cringe at all the poison being transmitted. I'm sure I'm still believing some of it, or transferring some of it myself, but I want to do better.

So, what's happened to me over time as I write is that I'm feeling Roberta's point more and more. I started out as an erotica writer by playing with my fantasies, claiming personal power, working out my own questions, and thinking about what I might enjoy. Then I came up against all the places I don't let myself look, and I started to notice how fenced in I'd gotten over the course of my life, and I started to think about why that is. As I tried to free myself, I found that it's not just about me. I want a different world. I started to understand and have more compassion for struggles other people are having. I started to realize that I can't stand by.

I've noticed that it's more comfortable to talk about these stories individually, as personal narratives only, as things I need therapy for. But that's part of what I've started objecting to. I don't think it's an accident that most people will recognize the phrase, "Men just only want one thing," and I think we all need to be thinking about why that is and the damage that belief is doing to people of all genders.

This is only one example of the path my writing has taken me down, and perhaps it's a clumsy one. But I've got a bunch of these. Writing erotica and really thinking about it (and also reading erotica and really thinking about it) has forced me to consider race, class, gender expression, sexuality, ideology—a huge list of social issues, basically. I never wanted to be a social activist—I don't like confrontation and I'm often afraid to speak up. I went to a protest in college once and left because I got scared.


The ideas are showing up, though, more and more—my zombie erotic romance, Run for Your Love, turned out to be about pacifism, domestic violence, and class warfare. Untouched, the book I just wrapped, could be described as a story about how one woman claims her sexual desires and needs as important and valid in their own right, even when they go against the desires of her super-hot, approved-by-society boyfriend (and if you'd like to have a very long conversation with me, sit me down and ask me why that was hard to pull off).

Whenever I talk this way, I'm afraid that readers will think I'm abandoning hotness for politics and that my work is going to become a series of treatises. That's not what's happening, though. As I explained in my post about revising for emotional honesty, this stuff is making my work hotter, more honest, more urgent. What's sexier than rebellion, after all? What's sexier than doing the forbidden, transgressing the rules, breaking out of what's always been and forging a path into something new, scary, and exhilarating?

I'm sure I'll be talking about this more, but for now I want to end with the question I've got about Roberta's quote. She contrasts writing and social action, saying writing is done alone and social action is often accomplished by filling the streets. But I find myself seeking community lately, discussing politics with other writers. I find myself wanting to fill the shelves with the sort of resistance I'm describing. I want to see a bunch of us writers making books that demand new and different cover art—people with different body types, people of varying races, people doing all sorts of things with all sorts of different people. Yes, I have to spend time alone to get the words down, but I've been wondering lately if writers ought to be gathering in groups more somehow. Should we be taking a page from social action?

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.