Take Me There
Page 1
Table of Contents
Praise
Title Page
Introduction
COCKSURE
NOW, VOYAGER
HOLD UP
ALL-GIRL ACTION
THE THERAPIST AND THE WHORE
SHOES ARE MEANT TO GET YOU SOMEWHERE
ON HYS KNEES
TEL AVIV
TAKING THE TOLL
DIXIE BELLE THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
THAT’S WHAT LITTLE GIRLS ARE MADE OF
SEA OF CORTEZ
THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN
PAYBACK’S A BITCH
FEMME FATIGUE
SMALL BLUE THING
THE VISIBLE WOMAN
SOMEBODY’S WATCHING ME
PUNCHING BAG
YOU DON’T KNOW JACK
CANADIAN SLIM
THE HITCHHIKER
OUT ON LOAN
FROM FUCKTOY TO FOOTSTOOL
SELF-REFLECTION
FACE PACK
THE BOY THE BEAST WANTS
THE MAN WITH THE PHOENIX TATTOO
BIG GIFTS IN SMALL BOXES: A CHRISTMAS STORY
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
ABOUT THE EDITOR
TO OUR READERS:
Copyright Page
Advance Praise for Take Me There
“Take Me There is a smokin’ hot sampling of sassy smart smut that took me where I’d never been before in print—this is the most gender-diverse erotica collection I’ve ever seen anywhere.”
—Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History
“As someone who is androgynous-identified, it feels positively monumental to hold in my hands an erotica anthology where trans desire is not the token, but the topic! In making our desires visible—within our own communities and beyond—our gender expressions, our fantasies, our very lives are made real. Take Me There brings us HERE.”
—Jiz Lee, genderqueer porn star
“There are multiple theories of desire out there; many histories of sexuality; lots of studies of sexual practices, but, until now, there were few accounts, fictional or otherwise of the multiple ways that queer people eroticize gender-variant bodies. This collection is hot and steamy, boiling with new lust, bubbling with new languages of desire, new ways of naming the body, different modes of telling each other ‘I want you.’ Ask what you need from this book, it will take you there. I promise.”
—Jack Halberstam, author of Female Masculinity
“Finally, a satisfying resource that more of us can offer, with a sly smile, when they ask us what exactly we do with one another.”
—Scott Turner Schofield, author of Two Truths and a Lie
INTRODUCTION:
GENDER/ FUCKING
Where are the representations of the erotic identities, sex lives and fantasies of transgender and genderqueer people? In mainstream media, they are oversimplified, sensationalized or mostly invisible. Some occupy a niche in mainstream pornography: the so-called “chicks with dicks” genre. Although transwomen are the objects of desire in these films, they are still stigmatized for their difference and portrayed as secret keepers, circus freaks or evil dommes for a straight male viewer. Transwomen without dicks (or who don’t consider their genitals dicks), lesbian transwomen, and transmen of all kinds are absent from the traditional adult industry. There is one exception: Buck Angel, a successful FTM porn star and self-proclaimed “man with a pussy.” Angel has made tremendous strides to increase the visibility of transmen in porn. Plus, there is a small but growing body of independent porn that features trans and genderqueer people on websites like nofauxxx.com, by studios like Pink and White Productions and Trannywood Pictures and from directors like Morty Diamond and Courtney Trouble.
But what about depictions of transgender desire in erotic writing? For those of us who appreciate the written word’s power to not just get us off but bring nuance and complexity to erotic storytelling, we don’t have all that much to choose from. As the spouse of a person who identifies as trans and genderqueer, I believe it’s time for transpeople to be the authors and central characters of a book of their own, to be enjoyed by other transpeople along with their partners, admirers, allies, fuckbud-dies, friends and lovers. I want to see folks who challenge gender norms as leading men, ingénues, crush objects and sex symbols on the page. That’s why I put together this collection. So, what exactly is transgender and genderqueer erotica? It’s erotica by, for and about transfolk, FTMs, MTFs, genderqueers, gender outlaws, as well as two-spirit, intersex and gender-variant people. It is about people who like to genderfuck and fuck gender.
Among the diverse array of voices in the book, one theme that emerged is the power of seeing and being seen as beautifully illustrated in Patrick Califia’s story about a gay transman longing for his identity and desire to be not just acknowledged, but treasured. It’s not simply about passing or not passing, which is an idea often explored with transgender characters, but about being acknowledged and desired in a sexual context. Being truly seen for who you are by a lover is where affirmation and want collide, as in Andrea Zanin’s story of a baby butch dyke and the transwoman she picks up in a small-town café. Likewise, the main character in Helen Boyd’s “All-Girl Action” longs to be touched as a woman by other queer women. Amidst a neighborhood blackout in “The Visible Woman,” by Rachel K. Zall, two women leave behind how others perceive them and focus on how they see each other. In “On Hys Knees,” Evan Swafford’s narrator articulates this hunger for recognition but also safety as he looks at his boi: “The naked female sex, which this boi usually hides under baggy jeans and men’s clothes, is uncovered for Daddy. I warrant this trust and take it seriously. Because I see my boi as hy truly is. And hy knows that I’ll protect hym, keep hym safe. It’s what we both need.” It is this recognition and trust that allows the boi to surrender to his Daddy in a scene full of fisting, sadism and love.
Throughout the stories, no one is all that surprised about anyone’s gender, which bucks the trend of having a transperson’s “real” or former gender revealed. But there are revelations of other kinds. Jack tries to have what he calls The Conversation with a trick at a bar, but his pants are down before the talk actually happens, in Michael Hernandez’s “You Don’t Know Jack.” In “The Therapist and the Whore” by Giselle Renarde, Manny is a butch dyke struggling with her identity who can’t seem to talk honestly about it to her therapist; she feels most at ease fucking a transsexual sex worker whose comfort with her own identity creates a space where Manny can be Manny. For Ivan Coyote’s narrator in “Hold Up,” too much talking and processing is an absolute boner killer: “I would rather be fucking or fisting or tangling tongues or pulling each other’s hair and deciding by willpower and whim just who is going to suck whose what, and when and exactly how.”
Most of the characters in these stories don’t fit into neat little boxes and those that appear to fit, do it not-so-neatly. A lustful homecoming is full of sacred tradition and modern queerness in “Tel Aviv” by Jacques La Fargue: “I go from fresh-faced yeshiva boy to breasted bride as the layers come off, and I don’t care. It’s your cock I want.” In Kiki DeLovely’s “Taking the Toll,” a femme describes her genderqueer lover: “She has this edge about her—not completely hard yet deeply masculine. This is the edge where my lust resides.” That lust takes them both all the way to the confession booth. Anna Watson wrote to me before submitting her piece, “Femme Fatigue,” inquiring if femmes as main characters were part of my vision for the book. I welcome her contribution since we both agree that many femmes consider themselves genderqueer, because they consciously choose to fuck with female and femininity norms. There are femmes throughout this book, including one who surprises her boyfriend when her gender changes mid-fuck in
S. Bear Bergman’s “Payback’s a Bitch.”
In her story “Dixie Belle,” Kate Bornstein imagines Huckleberry Finn transformed into Sassy, a prostitute at a New Orleans brothel. Before there were identities like transgender, there were struggles and longing like those of the characters in “Sea of Cortez” by Sandra McDonald. Both of these pieces are the imagined histories of prototypical gender radicals grounded in the sights, sounds and language of their time periods. Considering the recent controversy—about NewSouth Books’ decision to release a version of Huckleberry Finn without the words nigger and injun in response to the removal of the book from public schools and libraries—Bornstein’s piece is especially provocative. It also speaks to the power of language to define and redefine cultural identities over time.
As befits an anthology about genderfucking, there are several pronoun variations you’ll come across in the text, including ze/hir/hir (which some readers will be familiar with) and hy/ hym/hys. Slowly, these new words are beginning to seep into our consciousness and people are using them more frequently in conversation and writing. Although this departure from she/ her/her and he/him/his may distract you at first, I challenge you not to get caught up in their newness and miss the depth of these stories in the process. The writers who chose to use these words have done so deliberately, because they best describe their characters. In the process, they push the language about gender-variant people to be more descriptive and less binary. And those who use he/she pronouns, do so in wonderful ways; there is something deliciously dissonant about reading about his clit, her dick, his tits and her scrotum. What all this reveals, of course, is just how limited our language is for describing people of other genders.
Our language is also severely limited when it comes to describing the bodies of transpeople, bodies that don’t conform to norms and may not look like other bodies. How do we eroticize these bodies, talk about them in dirty ways, worship and respect them? In several of the pieces, there is a tension between body image and the bodies we imagine. The spectrum of bodies we were born with, bodies we live in, bodies we want and bodies we create is present in some way in all of the stories. As characters work to quiet discomfort and shame and embrace acceptance, it’s clear that the body is a place of much more than simply pleasure. It can be a site of self-doubt, pain and memory, but it’s also one of craving, fantasy, transgression and, ultimately, freedom. In Julia Serano’s “Little Blue Thing,” when the narrator’s body betrays her, she finds a humorous way to overcome it. The couple in “Somebody’s Watching Me,” by Alicia E. Goranson, shape-shift into different bodies as they have sex. With a nod to both a narcissistic phase of gender transition and transdyke desire, the woman in Tobi Hill-Meyer’s “Self Reflection” has the opportunity to explore the body of her future self—and gladly takes it. The main character in “Face Pack,” by Penelope Mansfield, manages to turn a misogynist Japanese porn trope on its head—rolling a celebration of her smooth skin and an empowered filthy girl fantasy into one surprising scene. The Daddy in Toni Amato’s “That’s What Little Girls Are Made Of” rides a dangerous line, as he takes a sharp blade to a cunt that has seen a different kind of knife.
Be prepared for cock to have multiple delicious meanings in these stories. Get ready for what you might think is a pussy or a cock to be called something else entirely. Some cocks are strapped on then thrown off to the side, as happens in one guy’s beach adventure in “The Hitchhiker,” by Sinclair Sexsmith. Some stay put no matter what. Others are always there, but not always accessible, as in Dean Scarborough’s “Shoes Are Meant to Get You Somewhere,” where a submissive gets a taste of a new kind of cock. “He had never, ever heard that tone in Hayden’s voice before—sometimes the man had moaned and whispered dirty things to him before when Oscar had sucked Hayden’s cock, but never this cock, and his voice had never sounded like this before.”
Speaking of cocks, I worked diligently to represent a diversity of genders, sexual orientations, identities and bodies in the anthology. However, I want to acknowledge there is one group that feels the least represented: transwomen who’ve had bottom surgery. I can speculate about a number of reasons why this might be, but I want to challenge writers to tell the erotic stories of these women, and editors, including me, to seek them out and publish them.
Many of the people who populate these pages consciously invent, reimagine and play with gender during sex. The names they give themselves or call each other—cocksucker faggot, bad boy, bitch, Daddy, good little girl, filthy slut, gangsuck cumshot facial whore—can taunt or tease, but they always signify the presence of gender among sweaty bodies, lube bottles, latex gloves and leather harnesses. Gender is always there, usually front and center. Some of the pieces illuminate how gender can complicate sex, as when Rahne Alexander’s narrator struggles with anxiety about revealing herself to a new lover in “Now, Voyager.” Gender can also simplify sex—like it does in Gina de Vries’s role-play fantasy “Cocksure,” where a virgin teenage boy is seduced by his friend’s older sister. He straddles a sense of sureness and shyness, and ultimately his gender frames his desire: “He’s breathing that heavy way he does, the way he gets sub-verbal and breathy when he really goes under; becomes nothing but his hard cock and hungry mouth, big eyes and smooth hands.”
On the other hand, there are some compelling examples of how sex complicates gender. In “Canadian Slim,” Shawna Virago’s trans narrator is discouraged by sexual partners who treat her like a fetish object: “I was both a source of desire and shame, and it didn’t feel good.” But sex can simplify gender, too, reduce it to its base of want and need. In Zev Al-Walid’s “From Fucktoy to Footstool,” a transboy gets to fuck his Daddy for the first time. Put in very compromising bondage and a hood, his body is whittled down to one single hand.
Bondage isn’t simply rope and knots: passion and pleasure reside at the intersection of gender and power. Nearly half of the stories in this anthology feature some kind of BDSM. Two trans guys embrace their masculinity through masochism and submission in contributions from Arden Hill and Rachel Kramer Bussel. At the other end of the kinky spectrum, Skian McGuire’s sadistic narrator spins a dark, unrelenting and revealing tale that takes us on a wild ride as he conjures up “The Boy the Beast Wants.” Laura Antoniou wrote an original story for this book that stars Chris Parker, one of the main characters in her S/M erotic novel series The Marketplace. Whether you’re a fan of the series or not, you’ll enjoy tagging along as Parker undergoes a series of visits to a tattoo artist to mark and transform his body, while his longtime lover Rachel experiences a different kind of pain, potentially both physically and emotionally scarring.
Where are the stories about the erotic identities, sex lives, and fantasies of transgender and genderqueer people? Well, twenty-nine of them are here. This collection will take you from San Francisco to Israel, from heartache to lust, from stranger sex to a ten-year anniversary, from a pair of ballet shoes to a butt plug bondage table, from fumbling teenagers to leatherclad bears, from M to F and F to M—and in between and beyond. These stories celebrate the pleasure, heat and diversity of transgender and genderqueer sexualities. The thread that runs through each of the stories is a glimpse at where our sexual imagination can take us.
I chose the title Take Me There for several reasons. Bodies can be tricky territory: minefields or playgrounds or both, and the power of giving and taking is a gift. I want to acknowledge that moment of surrendering a part of your body, a piece of your sexuality that may feel scary, but through the fear owning it, asking for it, even commanding it, as in, “Take me there.” Throughout the book, people harness their desire and imagination to go places that transcend bodies and language. They craft new worlds, rituals, and experiences beyond borders. I love all the fantasies these authors have designed, and I want to visit more of their worlds, as many as our sexual minds can create. My bags are already packed. So take me there.
Tristan Taormino
New York
COCKSURE
Gina de Vries
He’s so nervous, this one. Fidgety. Tapping his hands against his denim-clad thighs, then playing with the worn cuffs of his plaid shirt—plaid like the early ’90s grunge boys’, I note. A good touch. I’m wearing lip gloss, a very short skirt with fishnets, a disintegrating halter top with layers of lingerie underneath. The more clothes I have to take off, the more I can fluster him. I’m playing bigger and older, but not by much. Seventeen to his fourteen, punk to his nerd, slut to his virgin. As soon as I get him up to my room—all it took was the line, “My brother’s not home yet. Come listen to music with me while you wait for him”—I pull the halter off. His eyes flutter to my tits, then back to his hands. I can literally smell him getting uncomfortable, the scent of piney boy deodorant and sex entering the room. He shifts his eyes around to everything but me. He takes in the posters on my walls, the three overstuffed shelves of books. He clears his throat when he gets to the dildos on my nightstand, the whips hanging on the wall above them. Looks down suddenly again. I’d considered putting them away to make my room look more like a teenager’s. Then it occurred to me that the kind of girl I’m playing just might be bold enough to sneak into stores where she’s not wanted, pass for older, buy sex toys with her allowance and leave them out in plain view.
He’s clearly spooked by it all. But he’s polite, this one. He asks where he should set his stuff. “Oh, just throw your bag and your coat anywhere and sit on my bed.” He stills at that. “I…can’t just sit at your desk?”
I choose my next words carefully. I’m gentle, coaxing, “No, no, no, peach. Sit on my bed.” I try to say it like sitting on my bed is a special honor, but he’s dubious. He pauses, not at all sure of what he’s gotten himself into by accepting my invitation. He sets down his bag and coat very precisely in the corner by my bookshelf and walks over to my bed.