Sex for America: Politically Inspired Erotica

SEX

FOR

AMERICA

Politically Inspired Erotica

Edited by Stephen Elliott

CONTENTS‌

I
NTR O D U C TI O
N
V

INTRODUCTION
‌

The war on sex begins, most likely, with a blow job in the Oval
Office. Monica’s stained dress. The right’s squealish protest, it’s not about a blow job, it’s about lying under oath. Ken Starr’s deci- sion to release the report, a giant mass of political porn uploaded and downloaded to the World Wide Web.

It’s been seven years since the George W. Bush administra- tion moved into the White House following a disputed election decided by the Supreme Court. George W. Bush would win two elections as the anti-sex candidate. He would fulfill his prom- ise—lobbying for a constitutional ban on gay marriage, funding abstinence education across America, keeping condoms out of the classroom, packing the courts in preparation for an offensive on

Roe v. Wade.
Meanwhile, an anti-obscenity squad is formed in the FBI. Resources are pulled from the war on terror and diverted to porn patrol. So while the administration is practicing torture on our behalf all over the world, websites depicting consensual S&M are being shut down at home.

In 2004, gay marriage was a crucial issue on many state bal- lots. The administration sided heavily with the forces against gay marriage. Meanwhile, the vice president’s own daughter was gay. Now you can read Jerry Stahl’s story of his own affair with Dick Cheney, which took place in the back of a gun store in Wyoming. There is something profoundly sexual about campaigning for office. I’ve worked on campaigns where the tension was so tight, the hours so long, that passion was the only release. Every two years, marriages across the country are destroyed by the pressures of campaign season. This tension formed the starting point for

James Frey’s story, “The Candidate’s Wife.”

And it’s not just the campaigns. We eroticize our political leaders. Something about being on the stage, wielding power. They smile at us. They represent our parents and our most base desires and provide targets for our anger. They betray us all the time, and we feel their abandonment, and this, too, needs re- lease. In Charlie Anders’s “Transfixed, Helpless, and Out of Con- trol: Election Night 2004,” we meet a young liberal, devastated by the election returns, surrendering control to a woman she’s just met.

One purpose of fiction has always been to show a deeper truth than can be arrived at through journalism. In fiction we can examine an emotional truth, explore our interior selves. Like Mi- chelle Tea, whose protagonist, a lesbian returned home to Florida,

has sex with an old friend because he has joined the military and will be leaving in the morning for Iraq.

It would be fine to keep sex private, something behind closed doors. Unfortunately, when that happens, the politicians read that as a lack of public support. So now it’s okay to block sex-ed materi- als, to outlaw practices arbitrarily judged obscene. Straight, gay, or kinky, to keep our freedoms, we have to be out of the closets.

In 2008 we’re going to be given a chance to vote on what kind of control over our bodies we want the government to have. We’re going to choose between candidates who believe in honest sex education and abstinence education. Those who believe in equal rights for gays and lesbians and those who believe sex between consenting adults is a sin.

The arts, of course, are on the front line of every cultural war. In this collection, I present you with twenty-four original stories by some of the best writers of our generation. These patriotic men and women are out of the closet having Sex for America.

—S
TE P H E N
E
LLI O T T

LI’L DICKENS
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JERRY STAHL

I did not mean to sodomize Dick Cheney.

I mean, I’m not even gay. Or not usually. But when, to my sur- prise, I bumped into him—literally—at the counter of Heimler’s Guns and Ammo, in Caspar, something clicked. And I’m not talk- ing about the safety on my Mauser.

You see, there’s another side to “Li’l Dickens,” as the VP liked to refer to himself. Or, at least, a certain part of himself.
En privato.
He’s tender. He’s funny. He’s pink. And he’s a gun man, just like me.

But there I go, getting ahead of myself. . . . See, I was in Wyo- ming to pick up some German pistols. Not, you know, that I’m some kind of Nazi gun freak. Not even close. I just like the work- manship. The craft. A taste, as it happens, shared by Mr. Cheney.

“Schnellfeuerpistole,”
he smiled, eyes aglow as he surveyed the weapon.

“Model 1912,” I smiled back. “Recoil, single-action.” “May I?”

He held out his hand. I had yet to recognize him. In his black- and-red hunting cap, flaps down, he could have been any pudgy hunter. Some sneering Elmer Fudd. But his nails were beautiful. Buffed as a showroom Bentley. I slapped the gun into his palm, butt first. “Good heft.” His lips parted—fleshy magenta outside, meat-red within. “What are we looking at, ten inches?”