Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

FETISH SEX: An erotic Guide for Couples, by Violet Blue

This is a review I did for EdgeBoston.com.

Are you a guy who secretly longs to don a nurse’s dress and raise your lover’s blood pressure? Are you a woman who masturbates to thoughts of being a baby in diapers? Ever found yourself paying inordinate attention to someone’s stocking seams? Are you startled at how your heart thumps every time your partners wiggle their naked toes? Sounds like you’ve got yourself a fetish. But then, don’t we all?

Violet Blue is a renowned writer on all things sexual and this is her lucky 13th book on the subject. Her columns, blogs and podcasts are a popular source for all those looking for fresh ideas and sex-positive educational information. This book is directed towards couples who are new to the world of fetish-based love-making, but who are curious to experiment.

Blue entitles her Introduction: Confessions of a Fetishist and then reveals the development of her own fetish for corsets. But how does she define this phenomenon?  “Simply put,” Blue explains, “a fetish is placing greater meaning on something that it might have to someone else.”

The context is sexual, the focus is often specific and the excitement is higher than for any other activity. As a result, she writes, “The intimacy and sexual closeness found in fetish play is very arousing for many people; this intimacy can be a very powerful aphrodisiac.”

Her chapters take couples from the revelation of their secrets to each other, through the shared exploration, past role-playing (teacher/student; nurse/patient; guard/prisoner) and onto gender play. So many fetishes cause people excruciating embarrassment, so Blue tries to help them to make the distinction between fantasy and reality. The whole point of fetish play is that it is play, it is fantasy. So even the most taboo ideas – from pretending to be of another gender, another age or another body – are legitimate material for arousal.

There are undeniable social problems. “Unfortunately,” Blue writes, “until now, fetish for the most part has been stigmatized; sexually it’s the last frontier.” Between a loving couple, however, honesty and consent should provide some relief from this discomfort of finding appeal in something – like excretionary fluids – that other’s might find a real turn-off.

To concretize her explanations and exercises, Violet Blue invited the erotica writer Thomas Roche to add illustrative short stories at the end of each chapter. It is a nice mix of fiction with her non-fiction and augments her down-to-earth, sensible and informed approach with some sexy scenes. The final chapter, “Resources,” provides a helpful list of books and websites for those who want to pursue their kinky education.

My last word goes to Daedalus Publishing Company which was bought in 2001 by Stockroom.com (one of the premiere sex toy online stores) and is dedicated to bringing out books on alternative sexual practices. In a difficult time in publishing, where consolidation of houses has brought damaging conservatism, Daedalus are to be congratulated for giving us what we need.

Criminalizing Desperation

Boston.com reported this week that Amber Abreu, a teenager who immigrated from the Dominican Republic just over a year ago, was charged with “procuring a miscarriage.” For the crime of trying to end a presumably unwanted pregnancy, this 18 year-old could get seven years in jail. Even more horrifying, prosecutors are considering changing the charge to homicide. Apparently, in Massachusetts abortion is illegal for a fetus over 24 weeks, so the prosecution is conducting an autopsy to see if they can nail this young woman for murder.

Abreu took a drug developed to treat ulcers, probably because she could neither find nor afford an abortion. There is anecdotal evidence that this drug, which costs only $1 per pill, is widely used in the Dominican to bring on contractions during an unwanted pregnancy. She gave birth in a hospital and the baby died four days later. It turns out that all of her relatives say they did not even know she was pregnant.

Here is a girl trying to make a new life for herself, working at Macy’s. We know nothing about how she became pregnant, but apparently she didn’t feel able to tell a single person. And how was she to find a legitimate abortion? They’re not too easy to obtain in these reactionary times. Most medical schools are not even teaching doctors to perform abortions. My friend Lucky pointed me to a curriculum mapping project by the Medical Students for Choice that “found that, on average, more class time is dedicated to Viagra than to abortion procedures, pregnancy options counseling, or abortion law and policy. This glimpse into U.S. and Canadian medical curricula reveals that abortion is not a standard component of preclinical education.”

I sent the article to some close friends who have a long history of reproductive rights activism. Sue wrote me, “I can't stand this sort of thing. It's totally uncalled for. The girl needs help and counseling, care and concern, not a criminal case brought against her.” Rayah had a similar reaction: “What a dreadful story, and what a loaded headline [Alleged Bid to Abort Leads to Baby's Death], constructing this young girl as a murderer. No mention of the risk to her health. Where is the girl getting support from?” A third friend answered that the ACLU has joined the girl’s team and that some women activists helped her family post bail.

These men who value fetuses so much more than they value women have managed to transform their fundamentalism into legislation. First they terrorize abortion providers and then they criminalize desperate young people like Amber Abreu. So what’s it all about? I was in a wonderful London group through the 90s called Women Against Fundamentalism. Our position was that every type of fundamentalism is, at its core, about the control of women and reproduction. I’d rather be wrong, but these right-wingers prove us right, again and again

Outbursts: A Queer Erotic Thesaurus

   I reviewed this cool book for EdgeBoston.com

OUTBURSTS: A QUEER EROTIC THESAURUS by A.D. PETERKIN

If you were ever proud of how well you talk dirty, this thesaurus can be humbling indeed. There are 145 pages of words for every organ and every attitude embraced by the ideas of queer and erotic. “Penis” alone rates 10 pages, with a special section for “Penis, large” – itself broken down into “well-endowed” and “circumference.” Are you gagging to hear a few? For well-endowed we have ankle slapper, donkey-rigged and baby’s forearm. Superior circumference is thick as a wrist or just like a coke can. Continue reading down the page and you’ll encounter such lyrical terms for “Penis (circumcised)” as peeled queen, low neck and kosher meat.

It is an intelligent, informed thesaurus, providing some sense of how queer vocabulary developed – partly from hetero insults and partly from secret terms invented to promote mutual recognition between queers in the pre-Stonewall days when everyone was in the closet. Gender differences are fascinating: “Pubic Hair (female)” gives us (among dozens) assbeard, twat fuzz and the always polite muff; “Pubic Hair (male)” offers fewer choices, but includes the adorable fuzzies, gorilla salad and treasure trail.

OUTBURSTS spices up the classic idea of the thesaurus by adding vintage photographs, mostly erotic, as well as contextualizing our terms within the homophobia of their development. Polari, the secret language used from the 1930s by London’s gay men, “contained some 500 words about sex, the body, physical appearance, meeting places, straights and gays,” Peterkin tells us in the Introduction. That’s where we got such terms as “cottage” and “trade.”

He outlines some of the differences in usage of the same words – not the least “butch” and “femme.” He makes the insightful point that when lesbians talk about a “butch,” they’re referring to someone who wears her queerness in a way that challenges traditional femininity, and when gay men call someone “butch,” it may well describe someone who passes or who plays up traditional masculinity.

If ever there was a perfect bathroom book to dip in, this is it. Toss your Farmer’s Almanac and place this nicely in reach. That way, the next time you need to urinate (drain your radiator or kill the grass), you can use the time to brush up on your erotic vocabulary and improve your own self-image by learning 60 words for pervert.

8th Fetish Fair Fleamarket

Once a year thousands of New England kinksters and over a hundred sex-related vendors from across the country converge on the weekend-long Fetish Fair Fleamarket (FFF©). This edgy event offers its sex-toy and fetish clothing supermarket, a bondage university and a Masquerade Ball to benefit the Network/La Red nonprofit working around domestic violence issues among lesbians and transfolk.

“Time for some education,” we say on seeing the list of classes in the program. We start with “Creating a Spark: Electrical Play.” BDSM (Bondage/Discipline, Dominant/Submissive, SadoMasochism) focuses on intense sensations and some people find those thrills through toys that produce a spark jumping to the skin. The presenter British Lucky Paul is a self-admitted electricity freak who claims that his skilled use of the edgy tool, the Violet Wand, leads to lots of “shagging” with attractive women. Charmingly disheveled and disorganized, but utterly immersed in this perversion, Paul gives us the history (the Violet Wand was used by quacks as an all-purpose medical treatment), the international context (USA electricity at 110 volts is a wimp compared to European voltage) and, most of the all, the safety instructions. Don’t use it near metal jewelry, it burns holes in latex (be careful of condoms) and keep away from the eyes and pacemakers for starters.

His assistant (subject? victim?) Kristina is a 21 year old friend of the presenter who, until the night before, had never experienced electricity play. So why did she volunteer? “I don’t like to leave anything unexplored,” she explains to me later. However, this young nubile is no kink virgin: she teaches an intro to fetishism at her college in NY. Her throaty moans and sexy writhing add immensely to the entertainment. When she puts her clothes back on, her T-shirt reads: “Pain is necessary. Suffering is optional.”

The other class we attend is taught by the well-known bondage expert, Midori. We would enjoy the lesson on creating a Body Harness from rope a lot better if we had remembered to bring rope. However, it is so simple and clear that we are able, hours later, to reproduce the knots and wrappings at home. Midori, too, emphasizes safety, under the teasing slogan: Dead bottom, Bad bondage. I like the way she recognizes the variety in the room by referring to “domestic units,” – acknowledging that the terms couple, family or even tribe aren’t broad enough to embrace our combinations and desires.

We don’t make the others classes – from Sensual Tickling to Canes and Caning, from Role-Playing in Scene to SM & the Law. The latter is always relevant to this event, which has been forced to move from hotel to hotel. Vivienne, Chair of the sponsoring organization New England Leather Alliance, attributes this to “antiquated zoning laws, small-minded politicians and conservative zealots trying to tell us what we can and cannot do in private surroundings.” This, despite bringing in over a million dollars of business in just a weekend.

There is a further problem, Vivienne tells me. “We’re really saddened that the juried art show, Seduction, which consists of museum-quality photographs and drawings, had to be censored.” When I visit the show and see the ridiculous pieces of black tape put over representations of nipples, pussies and cocks, I am appalled. Making women’s nipples – and only women’s – into something that needs to be hidden from view is simple misogyny.

But on to the shopping. First we head straight to the world-renowned local leather maker Danny who has invented some of the most popular restraints and toys. Rummaging through his generous sale container produces a couple of fabulous hand-held leather slappers. Further along, John Miles from Georgia patiently straps me into a waist-cinching corset. I sample some thumping dungeon music from the ever-amazing Butt Boy and some classic erotica from David Moynihan of Disruptive Publishing in Maryland. Rick Savage, one of the best kinky filmmakers, offers some new DVDs – I’ll unwrap them when I finish this review.

Year after year NELA manages to create a welcoming atmosphere at the FFF© for people across the spectrums of gender, sexuality, age and race. There are gender free bathrooms, a page on etiquette towards transgendered people in the program and instructions on respecting the privacy of all attendees. Besides all the slender, young beautiful perverts, it is inspiring to see kinksters in their 50s, 60s and 70s slutting around in latex and lace, to see fat people flaunting their wonderful curves in leather and satin and to see cross-gender players mixing it up. The FFF© is the melting pot in which sex-positive queers, straights, freaks, pervs, tops, bottoms, switches and voyeurs keep alive a boiling hot New England tradition.

Wordsmith and Rebel

My books are available on Amazon here or for an inscribed copy, write to Con[email protected]. Enjoy all of my low-priced books:

A Raisin in My Cleavage: short & shorter stories

Lillian in Love (a novel)

Lillian's Last Affair and other stories.

I'm available for interviews, readings, visits to book clubs, being the entertainment at your party, talking about senior sex at your senior center, talking about love in senior housing, and any other creative ways to get the word out about my work.

Some of these stories are 5,000 words long, some of them are 100 words exactly. Some protagonists are old and some aren’t.  Several stories feature gay men or lesbians, while several do not. So what unifies this collection? It is the interplay of heart and smart, facing off against the dangers of a viral wedding smooch, a scary staircase, a runaway supermarket cart, a disastrous online date, and a stolen sausage. Of course, you'll also learn about the raisin that falls where it shouldn’t.

Lillian’s life at 84 is tumultuous. She is moving to Manor House to be near Sarah, abandoning the demands of her own home, which has been colonized by her children. How will she and Sarah deal with the reactions of relatives, ex’s, and neighbors to their romance? How do two old women negotiate new love? Will slow-dancing, vibrators, and pot brownies help smooth the way?

 

“If I’m going to go after one more affair of the heart at 84, I’d better get my ass in gear,” says Lillian, speaking for all the characters in these six stories.

Ruby has a run-in with a waterbed and Catherine tokes her first joint in the bathtub with Victor. Elegant Anna’s introduction to kinky sex is bittersweet. And then there’s the neighbor with the strange attachment to the grocery cart. Sue Katz’s hilarious, tender, and impeccably written stories confirm that age fails to erode our eccentricities or dull our ardor.

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