Best of the Best Lesbian Erotica (41 page)

 

When he was Mary there were easier ways to define things, even though nothing was ever simple between us. But we never did the things, or could have conceived of the things, we did last night. After our marathon, I made strong coffee and we stayed up the rest of the night talking, like old friends, which we are. And when we finally settled down for an early-morning nap I wrapped myself around him and kissed the back of his neck for luck, leaving my smile-print on his skin.

 

 

 

 

 

I can't tell stories. we really did those reckless things and we really did try. not to. to undo them. to smooth over the ruptures they caused. we really berated ourselves and shamed each other for the carelessness we shared. we really couldn't stop. we really rented any number of hotel rooms and booked random flights. we really picked up in the middle of our days and lusted into the night. we really drove down winding highways in a drunken haze. we really fucked more than we rode. we really misbehaved in restaurants and theaters and shops. we really disregarded our entire lives. we really called in late or sick or didn't show up at all. we really lost our jobs. we really stopped eating at regular times. we really soiled endless sets of sheets. we really forgot our pets, our politics, our friends. we really jonesed and lied. we really fettered ourselves to our fetishes. we really dressed up to lie down. we really sulked and pouted and whined. we really fled. we really hid. we really walked the streets of your city or mine. we really saw nothing but smut. we really spent all our dollars and borrowed on them. we really leaned, faltered, fell.

I can't tell stories but you were a boy and I was a girl. or you were a man and I wasn't. or you were where and how your cock was hung and I was always low and ready and not dry. you said things, I heard things, we crashed into each other. your body was the same and your mind is different, but we crossed the same lines. you have a fist and I hold your hand. you push and I resist. it doesn't matter what names you call things because you call and I answer. I see you underneath your skin. you take flesh and make it fiction, and I invent what we lack. it doesn't matter what was said or what people overheard. we were there and it will stay. our madness, our pleasures, our trusts. the fissures we played.

 

I can't tell stories but I read myself each night: violence is not just something two bodies commit in the dark. it is a yearning and the danger of desire sitting up between us demanding a fare.

TONI AMATO
is a thirty-one-year old Butch who lives in Boston. She has been a contributor to
Best Lesbian Erotica
1998, 1999, and 2000. Recently accepted to Joan Nestle's transgender anthology,
Our Own Voices
, Amato worships the ground Femmes walk on and firmly believes in writing for the love of a beautiful woman. She is completing her first novel despite these lovely distractions.

 

LAURA ANTONIOU
is the author of the Marketplace series—
The Marketplace
,
The Slave
,
The Trainer
and
The Academy
. She is editor of the
Leatherwomen
anthologies,
Some Women
and
Looking for Mr. Preston
. Antoniou's short stories and nonfiction have been widely anthologized. She is currently working on two more Marketplace books,
The Reunion
and
The Inheritor
, and a new book titled
Serious Player
.

 

ROBIN BERNSTEIN
is an editor of
Bridges
, a journal of Jewish feminist culture and politics; author of
Terrible, Terrible!
, a children's book; and co-editor of
Generation Q
, a 1997 Lambda Literary Award finalist. Her fiction appears in
Friday the Rabbi Wore Lace
,
Hot and Bothered 2
,
The Oy of Sex
,
Women on the Verge
, and
Best Lesbian Erotica
1997 and 2000. In 1999, Bernstein received Honorable Mention in the Astraea Foundation's Emerging Lesbian Writers competition.

 

GWENDOLYN BIKIS
is a white dyke living in Oakland, California, where she teaches literacy in adult schools. Excerpts of
Cleo's Back
have appeared in
The Persistent Desire
,
Close Calls
,
Hers3
,
Does Your Mama Know?
and
Best Lesbian Erotica 1998
. Excerpts of her novel
Soldiers
have appeared in
Catalyst
,
Conditions
,
Sleeping with Dionysis
, and
Sister/Strange.
She is the recipient of the John Hay Preston Erotic Writing Award. She is completing a third novel,
Cleave to Me.

 

LUCY JANE BLEDSOE
is the author of
Sweat
and
Working Parts
, winner of the 1998 American Library Association Gay/Lesbian/ Bisexual Award for Literature. Her work has appeared in
Fiction International
,
New York Newsday
,
Ms.
,
The Advocate
,
Northwest Literary Forum
, and
Pacific Discovery
. She is also the author of three novels for young people. Bledsoe teaches in the Masters of Creative Writing Graduate Program at the University of San Francisco.

 

KATE BORNSTEIN
is a New York-based performance artist and author of
Gender Outlaw
(Routledge),
My Gender Workbook
(Routledge) and the novel
Nearly Roadkill
with co-author Caitlin Sullivan. Her stage work includes the solo pieces
The Opposite Sex Is Neither
and
Virtually Yours: A Game for Solo Performer with Audience
.

 

PAT CALIFIA
is the author of seventeen books, including the Lambda Literary Award finalists
Macho Sluts
,
Doc and Fluff
,
The Advocate Adviser
, and
Diesel Fuel
. Califia also pens a monthly advice column for
Girlfriends
. Califia is a former editor of
The Advocate
, and contributes frequently to
Out
,
Poz
, and
Skin Two
. This prolific author lives in San Francisco with a very cute boy and an armoire full of cat-o'-nine-tails.

 

TERESA COOPER
is a member of the cocksucking, big-dick-swinging, New York-based Back Door Boys drag king troupe. She is a writer whose fiction and nonfiction has appeared in various collections, magazines and journals. Teresa attended Columbia University's MFA program in fiction writing, and she is at work on a novel, but who isn't? Teresa is also the editor/publisher of
The Fish Tank
, which won a 1999 Firecracker Alternative Book Award.

 

BREE COVEN
's essays, fiction, poetry, and smut appear in the anthologies
Best Lesbian Erotica 1997
,
The Femme Mystique
,
Generation Q
,
Pillow Talk II
and the forthcoming
Harrington Fiction Quarterly
,
Between Our Lips
, and
A Doorway, A Dusk: Queer Lives in the Theater
. She originated the baby dyke column in
Deneuve
(now
Curve
) magazine, where she was a regular contributor for three years, and has also written for
Pucker Up
,
Princess
, and
Masquerade
. Bree lives in New York.

 

MEG DALY
is the co-editor with Anna Bondoc of
Letters of Intent: Women Cross the Generations to Talk about Family, Work, Sex, Love and the Future of Feminism
. She is also the editor of
Surface Tension: Love, Sex and Politics Between Lesbians and Straight Women
. Her articles and book reviews have appeared in
Tikkun
,
The Women's Review of Books
,
Newsday
,
The Oregonian
, and other publications. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

 

MR DANIEL
is an African American writer, spoken word artist, and film and video curator and educator. She has curated visual media and performed her work throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Her writing has also appeared in
Hot & Bothered 2
,
Lip Service
, and the magazine
ISSUES: For Lesbians of Color
. Whatever her current coastal location, she remains committed to writing on art, culture and, of course, sex.

 

JEANNINE DELOMBARD
is a scholar, professor, and culture critic whose essays have appeared in
Dyke Life
,
To Be Real
, and
Feminist Theory
. “Steam” is her first piece of erotica. She is currently assistant professor of early American literature at the University of Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest, where she is writing a book on the racial politics of nineteenth-century abolitionist discourse,
At the Bar of Public Opinion: Black Testimony and White Advocacy in Antebellum Literary Abolitionism
.

 

JANE DELYNN
is the author of the novels
Don Juan in the Village, Real Estate, In Thrall,
and
Some Do.
Her collection of stories and essays,
Bad Sex Is Good,
will be published in 1998 by Painted Leaf Press. She has published in
The New York Times, The Washington Post, Mademoiselle, Glamour, The Paris Review, The New York Observer, Redbook, Avenue, Christopher Street,
and
The Advocate.

 

DAWN DOUGHERTY
lives and writes and works in Boston. She tempers her work as a domestic violence/rape prevention trainer with her burgeoning career as a smut writer and belly dancer. On New Year's Eve, the butch of her dreams asked her to get married. She said yes.

 

LUCAS DZMURA
's lesbian erotica has appeared in
Bad Attitude
and
Best Lesbian Erotica 1999
. Lucas lived for a decade in Texas, and earned an MA in Biomedical Media Development. He currently works as an instructional designer in Pittsburgh. Lucas is also an artist whose recent work deals with gender identity, polyamory, pansexuality, and spirit. “Scrimshaw Butch” is dedicated to SAZ, the real-life inspiration for that incredible butch.

 

KELLEY ESKRIDGE
lives in Seattle with her partner Nicola Griffith. Her fiction appears in
Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers
,
Little Deaths
,
Nebula Awards 31
,
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror
,
Flying Cups and Saucers
, and
Women Of Other Worlds
. She has published in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
,
Century
, and
Pulphouse
. Her story “Alien Jane” was adapted for the Sci Fi Channel program “Welcome to Paradox.” Her first novel
Solitaire
is forthcoming (Avon, 2001).

 

SANDRA LEE GOLVIN
is a Lesbian-centered psychotherapy intern, writer, mediator, and adjunct professor at Antioch University. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies including
Opposite Sex
,
Looking Queer
,
Hers
,
Best Lesbian Erotica
1996, 1997 and 2000. A native Los Angelena who lives in Venice Beach, she is currently pursuing her doctorate in Clinical Psychology with a focus on the archetypal dimensions of Lesbian Psyche.

 

GERRY GOMEZ PEARLBERG's
book of poems,
Marianne Faithfull's Cigarette
(Cleis), was a 1998 Lambda Literary Award recipient and finalist for a Firecracker Book Award. She also edited the Firecracker Award-winning
Queer Dog
(Cleis). Her work has recently appeared in
The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry
,
The World in Us
,
Global City Review
, and
Lesbian Fiction at the Millennium
.

 

CYNTHIA GREENBERG
is a displaced California poet and troublemaker living in Brooklyn. She has an abiding interest in activism, literacy, language and bodies of water. Her work has appeared in
Nice Jewish Girls: Growing Up in America
and several volumes of
Best Lesbian Erotica
.

 

KATHE IZZO
is a poet working in many mediums: the page, performance, installation, film, mothering, teaching, community. Her poetry, memoirs and fiction have been published in numerous journals and anthologies including
Outlaw Bible of American Poetry
,
Best Lesbian Erotica
1998 & 2000,
Blood and Tears
as well as others. She is currently completing her first novel,
Hummer
, a fifteen-year-old's contemplation on art, numbness and gender at the turn of the twentieth century.

 

DORIAN KEY
is a nice perverted boy living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has appeared in
On Our Backs
,
Best Lesbian Erotica
1998 and 2000,
Strategic Sex
, and
Wicked Women
.

 

MICKEY LASKIN
is a New York City based teacher, writer, musician and member of the Lesbian Sex Mafia. Her writing career began in academia and journalism, but while enduring a year of unrequited love and lust, she began “writing sex,” thereby transforming her sexual frustrations into virtual orgasms which she shares with her readers. Her writing appears (sometimes under the pseudonym Maria Santiago) in
Venus Infers
,
Bad Attitude
,
Prometheus
,
Heatwave
,
The Second Coming
, and
Leatherwomen-III
.

 

HEATHER LEWIS
is the author of
The Second Suspect
(Doubleday) and
House Rules
(Nan Talese/Doubleday) which won the Ferro-Grumley Award, the New Voice Award, and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Her fiction has appeared in
Living With the Animals
and
Surface Tension
.