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U.S. $15.95 • Fiction/Lesbian/Erotica B E S T L RAW E S ROMANTIC AND B I From the trembling pleasure of anticipation to A UNFORGETTABLE consummated lust, sex between women has N never been hotter. Curated by Lambda nominee E Kathleen Warnock and judged by literary legend R Jewelle Gomez, Best Lesbian Erotica 2013 is both surprising and intensely delectable. O Sonya Herzog’s younger femme finds her heart’s desire at a multiorgasmic writer’s T retreat in “I Have a Thing for Butches” and the tattoo artist in Nikki Adams’s “Nothing If It I Fades” holds on to an indelibly erotic memory of a beautiful woman she once inked, only to C find her attraction was more than skin deep. A pretty new neighbor has a surprise or two A up her costume sleeve when she turns out to be not-so-submissive in Amelia Thornton’s 2013 “Kitty and the Cat.” Test your erotic boundaries with Best Lesbian Erotica 2013 and let it take you over the edge into a world where fantasies become reality. E D I T E D “Fresh, powerful, erotic as hell, these fictional evocations B Y of lesbian lust, love and lingering kisses couldn’t be hotter K A if they had just been slipped out of the microwave.” T H L —CleanSheets.com E E N W A R N Cleis Press O C 1-800-780-2279 K www.cleispress.com Photo: Phyllis Christopher Design: Scott Idleman/Blink Distributed by Publishers Group West b e s t l e s b i a n e r o t i c a 2 0 1 3 Edited by Kathleen Warnock Selected and Introduced by Jewelle Gomez Copyright © 2012 by Kathleen Warnock. Introduction copyright © 2012 by Jewelle Gomez. All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television or online reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Published in the United States by Cleis Press Inc., 2246 Sixth Street, Berkeley, California 94710. Printed in the United States. Cover design: Scott Idleman/Blink Cover photograph: Phyllis Christopher Text design: Frank Wiedemann First Edition. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Trade paper ISBN: 978-1-57344-896-3 E-book ISBN: 978-1-57344-912-0 “Pool Party,” by Zoe Amos, was published as an ebook on Amazon Kindle (2011); “Daffodils,” by Sally Bellerose, was published in Pillowtalk (Alyson, 1998) and Ripe Fruit (Cleis Press, 2002); “Lessons for Leona,” by Tenille Brown, was published on Oysters & Chocolate (2011); “Stella Loves Bella,” by V. C. Clark, was published on Oysters & Chocolate (2008); “Winner Take All,” by Andrea Dale, was published in The Harder She Comes (Cleis Press, 2012); “Underskirts,” by Kirsty Logan, was published in The Winners Brid- port Prize 2010 (Redcliffe Press, 2011); “La Caída,” by Anna Meadows, was published in Girls Who Bite (Cleis Press, 2011); a flash fiction version of “The Invitation,” by Maggie Veness, titled “Letter Under the Door,” was published in In My Bed magazine (2010); “Crave,” by Fiona Zedde, was published as “Dreamtime” in Best Lesbian Romance 2007 (Cleis Press, 2007). c o n t e n t s vii Foreword • Kathleen Warnock x Introduction: On Our Backs • Jewelle Gomez 1 The Invitation • Maggie Veness 5 Nothing If It Fades • Nikki Adams 17 Cucumbers and Cream • Helen Sandler 29 Anonymous • BD Swain 32 Woman-Time • Rebecca Lynne Fullan 46 Kitty and the Cat • Amelia Thornton 58 She Never Wears Perfume • Sid March 65 Amateur Night • Maggie Morton 72 Crave • Fiona Zedde 79 Stella Loves Bella • V. C. Clark 90 Homecoming • Anamika 103 Pool Party • Zoe Amos 116 Daffodils • Sally Bellerose 124 Winner Take All • Andrea Dale 132 Lessons for Leona • Tenille Brown 143 Morning Commute • Penny Gyokeres 148 Aftermath • Valerie Alexander 157 I Have a Thing for Butches • Sonya Herzog 168 La Caída • Anna Meadows 183 The Horse and Hounds • Rachel Charman 196 Underskirts • Kirsty Logan 207 About the Authors 212 About the Editors F o r e wo r d Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I would like to add that those who do remember it will come up with a great guest judge for Best Lesbian Erotica. Among her many smart decisions, Tristan Taormino, the founder of this series, asked Jewelle Gomez to edit the 1997 volume. It was the second year of Best Lesbian Erotica, and getting Jewelle to select the stories was a major step in the growth and visibility of the book and the genre. This year, when we were discussing possible guest judges, I asked the folks at Cleis: “Could we do repeats?” I’d had a chance to meet and work with Jewelle earlier in the year, when TOSOS (the LGBT theater company in New York, of which I am a proud member) produced a staged reading of her new play, Waiting for Giovanni. It’s a beautiful and challenging piece about James Baldwin, one of our great American writers, by an artist whose own voice is more powerful than ever. So we asked Jewelle to select this year’s stories and were thrilled when she said yes. best lesbian erotica 2013 In the fifteen years since Jewelle last worked with Best Lesbian Erotica, the genre has become a mighty one, evolving into a full-voiced maturity, with a loyal audience, and writers whose work stands with the best in any genre. I was proud to pass the finalists on, and wondered which she’d choose: which writers would have their first story published, which of the emerging ones would keep blossoming, which grown artists would thrill us with a masterful tale. One of the most important things we do as artists, one of our obligations, is to make it possible for others to tell their stories. So each spring when I begin to sort through hundreds of stories, I look and listen hard for the ones that are most necessary. What we do: naming and owning our desires, our loves, our fears, our deepest secrets, is essential. Saying, “No, I am HERE, this is who I am,” is crucial to living when scared, angry people try to erase us, deny us, legislate us out of existence, make us second- class citizens, third-class…nothing. In Jewelle’s beautiful play about James Baldwin, the artist is pressured not to publish Giovanni’s Room: a book about two men, white men, who love each other. His editor begs him to consider another topic; many of his fellow African American writers think he should be writing about their struggle to achieve equality. And finally, Baldwin picks up his papers from the floor and says: …Still, I can do no more than bind my own wounds and remind them that not accepting love is where the end begins. Each book is my way of wringing life from death. And this story is one I…need…to tell and he is the one I wish to tell it. Unknown. Loving with the certainty of the tides. And my life, my needs, my questions are my own viii foreword to be examined by me…read by many. But judgment? In the beginning was the word…words made from the breath of life. It is the same breath whether we are singing a praise song or taking in the scent of our beloved who lies naked beside us. No matter how fierce my need may be; no matter how loud the sound of those who turn away—I am always me…inside here, looking out. Bearing witness. Preaching the word. Kathleen Warnock New York City ix i n t r o d u c t i o n : o n o u r b a c k s Jewelle Gomez Back in 1984, when I was asked to submit an erotic story to the magazine On Our Backs, I’d never written one before. Of course, I had fantasies like most people (I was, after all, raised Catholic!); but as for writing them down—it never occurred to me. As a lesbian feminist of color I wasn’t against erotic literature; I just wasn’t sure how one constructed a juicy story that wasn’t based on exploitation. But I was already formulating the ideas for my vampire novel, a story told through a feminist lens, so I had begun thinking about how to tackle a tradition- ally exploitative genre without traveling down the easy road of tradition. So I figured I might as well give erotica a go, too. The challenge of finding the “sweet spot” while creating engaging, multidimensional women who are not taking advan- tage of each other (unless that was mutual) was a challenge I enjoyed. The other part of wanting to write the story was a response to a call to action by the Feminist Anti-Censorship Taskforce introduction (FACT) which, in the 1980s, was providing a sex-positive polit- ical alternative to the very loud voices of conservative, antiporn activists. Women’s relationship to sexuality was and remains a complex territory. No matter how hip and powerful we feel, women have been and continue to be seen as the sexual recep- tacles for men. Male-produced images in popular culture still define us so narrowly it would be impossible for an extrater- restrial being landing on earth to actually recognize a female unless the being had landed in the offices of a fashion magazine where the women are dress-size 0, wear six-inch heels, and all look white, even when they have brown skin. Female images in popular media are crafted to pique the desire of middle-aged white men. And any women that seem to deviate from that are quickly slapped down—see “journalists’” comments about Kate Winslet or Kelly Clarkson being “fat.” Notice how few African American women with dark skin or Asian American women appear on magazine covers or on television series. This affects how we treat ourselves and our desire. Mainstream pornography simply follows mainstream commercial images to their logical conclusion: women are not people…we’re soylent green. That is—like the eponymous movie—we are a packaged edible, human commodity to be used, abused and discarded at the whim of male consumers. The famous picture that antiporn activists used most often was that of a porn magazine cover in which women were being fed into a meat grinder, legs and high heels the only remaining indication that we were humans. There is no question that these images cause damage. But I’d venture to say that numerically speaking, many more people have their ideas about women shaped by going to auto shows; watching the Kardashians, the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders and children’s beauty pageants; all of the above being alarming cases where women contribute to their xi best lesbian erotica 2013 own objectification or that of their children, usually without a thought about the pornographic quality of their acts. All of it supports the idea that women are disposable and interchangeable items as easily killed off as changing the tires on your truck. That said, it is just as dangerous for women to tamp down our sexuality in response to exploitation, and that is what conservative lesbian feminists of the ’80s were insisting on. Should we don the not-so-gay apparel of the cloister? Never enjoy our fantasies? Never experience orgasm because it frightens the horses? When President Ronald Reagan sent Attorney General Edwin Meese on a fact-finding mission, Meese traveled the country, holding meetings, trying to convince local municipalities to shut down “porn” operations. The commission engaged “experts” who emphatically declared that if we didn’t fight this scourge we were Nazis. A group of us—mostly lesbian—activists went to a court- house hearing of the commission in New York City, smuggling in signs that said CENSORED and we whipped them out at one point, and sat quietly so it would look really bad if they tried to drag us away. The resulting Commission report didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know, and told us a lot that was totally untrue. The result of the Commission, its report and the so called “porn wars” was not a lessening in the profits of porn magazines or increase in the recognition of responsible human beings, but rather the clamping down on and sometimes ban of gay and lesbian literature (erotic and not) crossing borders. I know what it’s like to have female sexuality abused. African women were used by slave masters as if they were one of the mules on the plantation; Native women were raped and eviscer- ated for sport; and every day in the news we see the reports of only a fraction of the rapes and domestic beatings that occur. But women do have a right to sexual expression that we control xii