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Monday, April 6, 2015

Blog Tour Kick-Off: Giveaway, & Excerpt from Best Sex Writing Volume 1 edited by Jon Pressick!


Title: Best Sex Writing of the Year: The Year's Most Challenging and Provocative Essays on the Subject of Sex
Author: Jon Pressick
Format: Paperback, 256 pages
Pub. Date: March 17th 2015
Publisher: Cleis Press


Book Description:


This first volume of Best Sex Writing of the Year features a number of significant bloggers and some of the most important stories of the past two years. Alexandria Goddard is the blogger who made the important connections in the historic Steubenville Rape Case; Epiphora is the most renowned and saucy sex toy reviewer who has legions of dedicated followers; Lux Alptraum has recently sold the wildly successful Fleshbot and taken an editorial position at Nerve. These contributors (and many others) know the words that sell online, and their presence in this collection will carry tremendous weight with readers.

At the same time, this anthology features topics that have not received as much attention in previous editions. Jiz Lee raises exasperated hands to the ongoing ban of fisting in porn. Internationally acclaimed musician Ember Swift recounts her sexual appetites while she was pregnant. David Henry Sterry remembers his experience as a sex worker providing service to an 82-year-old woman. People — including those beyond the sex community — are learning to consider sex from many different angles, and this collection covers a great number of them.



Excerpt:


I'm happy to share an excerpt with all of you lovely readers! This excerpt is taken from "Oops I Slept with Your Boyfriend" by Charlie Knox.



I think of myself as a woman of integrity, a lady of honor, an upstanding broad. If you had asked me when I was in high school if I’d ever sleep with a man I knew was otherwise entangled, I would have given a proud and emphatic, “No way, sister.”

But as I got older, this view of relationships, among other things, got complicated. I’ve been married, separated, divorced, monogamous, polyamorous, celibate, and in recent years I’ve once in a while been the “other woman.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going out looking to fuck guys who have girlfriends. And when someone tells me they have a girlfriend, I never pressure them to sleep with me. I don’t even disregard their relationship with some sort of “I don’t care if you don’t care,” or “She’ll never know.” Usually I ask them what her name is and how they met. Sometimes they show me pictures.

The few times I’ve found myself the mistress, we have had deep, real, meaningful conversations about their relationships and their commitments, their heart and their body. I encourage them to honor their commitments if that feels good to them. And sometimes it does. And sometimes it doesn’t.

My lovers have been in complicated relationships that are basically over but they can’t break up, and they are exhausted and need the kind of nurturing that you can only get when you are getting ridden hard and kissed passionately. I’ve had lovers with agreements that are unclear and undefined, with no way to clarify before one of us left town. I’ve had lovers who were very newly and casually trying out monogamy with someone and found that our long-term friendship carried more strength, connection, healing and passion than their new quasi-relationship did. More than once I’ve had lovers who were separated, but not divorced, and we kept things under wraps for legal or emotional purposes.

I’m not going to tell you that I ever just get carried away and oops, something happened. Far from it. In fact, I have been known to say, “Look, if I come over to your house, it will be very hard for me to be well-behaved. I don’t want us to pretend we don’t know what’s happening here. I don’t want us to say, ‘Oh my, who knew we’d end up sleeping together?’” I like men who make conscious choices, and sometimes when I give that speech, they say, “You’re right, we’d better not, good night.” No hard feelings there. I would always rather everyone feel right about it. I have sacrificed sex that I know I could have had because I demanded we go into it with full knowledge and intent, and they only wanted to sleep with me if it was drunk or “accidental.” I don’t do unconscious sex—girlfriend or not.

I trust people to navigate the decisions that work for them, and think it isn’t my place to police their morals. I’m not monogamous now, but when I have been, it’s been my willpower and my promises and my decision to honor my commitments that has kept me from straying.





Get it here!:


Amazon | BN | Cleis Press

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6 comments:

  1. Is it strange to say that I've never read a Best Sex Writing antho despite having read, my god, HUNDREDS of other Cleis anthologies? What's taken me so long? Anyway, LOVE this year's lineup!

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    1. This one is a first for me as well! My review should be up the 28th. Good luck if you entered to win :)

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  2. I don't think I've ever read a Best Sex Writing anthro either, to be honest. No time like the present!

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