Rachel Kramer Bussel

This week clearly wanted me to learn some lessons. I’m still learning them but the biggest one that kindof walled right into me is that this too shall pass. I had to look up some old emails and I won’t say I felt nothing but I saw the giddy excited girl in them and was happy for her. She was a very different person than me today in some ways, more reckless, impulsive, drunk, bit that heart that was/is so open, that’s still there. And it’s funny because the pain of that time really is gone. I remember where I was and where I went with tears streaming down my face but like that happened to someone else. The good parts still made me smile and if you’d told me way back when I wouldn’t have believed it. Last night this Lammy award winner said, “Suck it, fate,” but maybe fate is all we have. Not the most comforting thought to a control freak like me but almost every day this week was about the things and people and circumstances that are not in my control, for better or worse. So yeah, I’ll take that, and I won’t laugh at or mock or feel sorry for the girl in those emails because I still believe. In love and other idealistic notions.

I’m blown away by Running The Dusk by Christian Campbell, just out from Peepal Tree Press. I’m so glad I got to hear him read some of these at AWP because it’s like I can hear his gorgeous voice in my head as I read. Also an excellent example to all about how to be inspired by other artists AND credit them, creating a hybrid piece of art that is all the more haunting for its history. The language and subjects and imagery are mesmerizing.

In August I’m going to do another virtual book tour, this one for Fast Girls: Erotica for Women. All info about the book is below. If you’d like to be on the tour, send your URL and mailing address to fastgirlsantho at gmail.com with “Book Tour” in subject line. You will get a free copy of the book and will post about it, either a review, interview, excerpt or musings, and will post the cover, Amazon link and blog link. Click here for an example of how it works. Looking for a range of blogs, and men/non-female identified folks are welcome. The cover says “Erotica for Women” but really it’s erotica for everyone, by female authors, with female protagonists. Anyway, email if you’re interested. Books will be sent via media mail in mid-June.

If you don’t want to be on the tour (or you do but also want this) and want a Fast Girls postcard, send your US mailing address with “Postcard” in the subject line to fastgirlsantho at gmail.com - those will go out as soon as postcards arrive!

Fast Girls: Erotica for Women is edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel and will be published in July 2010 by Cleis Press

Pre-order Fast Girls: Erotica for Women from:

Amazon.com

Kindle edition

Bn.com

Borders

Powell’s

IndieBound

Cleis Press

Table of Contents

Introduction: Fast Is a (Sexy) State of Mind (see below)

Temptation Kayla Perrin
Waxing Eloquent Donna George Storey
Five-Minute Porn Star Jacqueline Applebee
Winter, Summer Tristan Taormino
Playing the Market Angela Caperton
Panther Suzanne V. Slate
Communal Saskia Walker
Fireworks Lolita Lopez
Flash! Andrea Dale
Waiting for Beethoven Susie Hara
Confessions of a Kinky Shopaholic Jennifer Peters
Let’s Dance D. L. King
That Girl Cherry Bomb
Oz Isabelle Gray
Married Life Charlotte Stein
Princess Elizabeth Coldwell
Chasing Danger Kristina Wright
Whore Complex Rachel Kramer Bussel
Lessons, Slow and Painful Tess Danesi
Speed Bumps Tenille Brown

Introduction: Fast Is a (Sexy) State of Mind

I like the fast girls best/they do whatever they wanna do. —Sarge, “Fast Girls”

I named this book after a song called “Fast Girls” by an indie pop/rock band called Sarge*. That song is a feisty, punk-rock ode to a hot girl who is captivating in all kinds of ways.

I’m sure you know a girl like that. Or a woman. Or a lady. Or a butch. Or a femme. Or…you get the idea. She’s the kind of babe who takes no prisoners, who owns her life and her sexuality and not only doesn’t apologize for them, makes sure you notice her and what she’s all about.

Two definitions of “fast,” according to Merriam-Webster are “wild” or “sexually promiscuous,” and while that is the seed of what I was angling for here, I didn’t just want to read about slut after slut after slut. I wanted to read about women who in some way defy the conventional norms-whatever those are in this day and age. That doesn’t mean being shocking for shock’s sake, but following their passion, seeking out what it is that they need to be truly pleasured.

What I love about these fast girls is that even as they are bold, daring and dynamic, they have a thing or two to learn about sex and themselves.

Consider Susie Hara’s fifty-one-year-old protagonist in “Waiting for Beethoven” as she gets it on with a younger man. In current pop culture terms, she’s the cougar, the aggressive older woman seeking her sexy prey. But she is actually nervous and uncertain, as well as aroused. “And now there was no point in telling him she wasn’t going to come when she could already feel a wave of pleasure rolling inside her, kind of a pre-coming feeling, but different than usual; she couldn’t really tell what was her clit and what were the walls inside her and what was contracting and what was releasing and then she realized she must be coming because her body had taken over and been taken over in this luscious finger symphony so she just gave in,” writes Hara, in a description of female orgasm that I think will be familiar to many.

In this book, fast is as much a state of mind as a state of motion. It’s not about trying to slut it up to impress anyone, but about finding what works for you. I was intrigued to find that playing with prostitution, or whoring, came up as a theme in many submissions, as did threesomes with one woman and two men. It makes sense that fast would be associated with women who mix cash and sex, as happens in Angela Caperton’s “Playing the Market,” where the new economy mixes with the world’s oldest profession. In my “Whore Complex,” whoredom is more a state of mind, a go-to fantasy that leaps from the bounds of dirty talk to real life with some unusual consequences. There’s also exhibitionism, such as in Jacqueline Applebee’s “Five-Minute Porn Star,” and submission–there’s a lot of very hot female submission and BDSM play in this book.

These girls are fast when they want to be…and slow at other times. They want to crack their lovers’ secret codes, find out what makes them tick, as happens in Charlotte Stein’s “Married Life.” I like this story because the wife is not just passively accepting her humdrum sex life, but she doesn’t want to have an affair or get a divorce. She wants her husband, the man she loves, but she wants him openly, honestly, freely and when they both give a little of themselves and bravely bare their souls, they find true happiness.

These girls don’t give it up for just anyone. Even the ones who get around have a reason for choosing their lovers, and it’s those reasons, those images, that resonate with me. Here’s Tristan Taormino in “Winter, Summer,” rhapsodizing about the woman she’s about to seduce (or perhaps, who’s about to seduce her is more accurate):

She’s the boy I have dreamed about and jerked off to too many times to count. The one who won’t leave my fantasies, who cruises me in my bedroom, who seduced me months ago in another lifetime with her voice, who plays pool and drinks beer, who grabs my ass in crowded bars just to fuck with my boundaries and catch me off guard, who makes my brain get wet and my pussy explode.

Exactly. Though there are women on the prowl here, women who go after younger men, women who pounce, women who pursue, there are others who are excited about being the object of another’s affection, lust and desire. For them, being fast means courting the man or woman (or more than one person) they are searching for.

These fast girls speak to me on many levels. I admire them, respect them, marvel at them, raise my eyebrows at them, want them. But most of all, I’m excited that they’ve broken free of whatever messages we all receive about how a woman is “supposed” to act and instead they are bent on acting however they damn well please. And that’s my personal definition of a fast, not to mention foxy, girl.

Rachel Kramer Bussel
New York City

* To hear more of Sarge, click here.

I will have more to say but today was so wonderful to be surrounded by authors and book lovers, to see tons of talented people like Debut Fiction Award winner Rakesh Satyal and Bob Smith at the Lambda Literary Awards, to chill with my Cleis Press publicist Brenda Knight. It was overwhelming in some ways (especially to my shoulders) but it was also freeing and refreshing. I ran into someone who taught me a lesson I so needed and never could’ve predicted I’d learn in that manner. I am so ready for this weekend to ponder this crazy week and get some quality time with my computer.

I’m reading Bill Clegg’s memoir Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man. It sucked me right in, into that state that’s part horror, part wish I could be that self-destructive. On the surface it seems so alluring. Fuck job, relationship, life. Let’s get lost/high/gone. I can fantasize about that cause I’m too chicken to ever do it.

Anyway, in a scene where he’s 5 and he can’t pee and his penis is bleeding, his mother yells “Billy,” his father “Willie.” Those stood out against what I’ve already come to think of as his “real” name. Sometimes that tiny reveal, the nickname, or the proper name, is enough to reveal multitudes.