Cheyenne Blue - Best Lesbian Erotica 2014

It’s been half a decade since Tristan Taormino and Cleis handed the curating duties of this series on to me. Half a decade, and I’ve read well over five hundred stories, worked with six different judges, corresponded with writers whose work has been chosen (and not) from all over the globe, and spent many a late night line-editing, negotiating changes and sitting with the chosen stories before me like a jigsaw puzzle, fitting them into an order that makes sense, has an energy, an arc to it, and finishing up all the housekeeping tasks: assembling bios, noting which pieces have been published before, collecting contracts and turning it all in. And then I’m done… until it’s time to look at the proof files, then the dummies (as we used to call them in publishing), and set up the first reading, and start visiting my PO box to collect next year’s submissions.

I’m not complaining, mind you. I’m delineating the parts that make the whole. Sometimes, when I tell people that I edit lesbian erotica, they say: “Well that must be fun!” And I usually respond: “Well, when the stories are good, it is.”

I am of the tribe that can appreciate a well-crafted piece of erotica, then sit there and debate if a word should be in italics, when to use the past perfect tense, or whether correcting a character’s grammar changes the voice of the writer. I can also shout at my computer screen over the words of a would-be writer who can’t tell the difference between “your” and “you’re”; “their,” “there” and “they’re”; or “its” and “it’s.” It can grow into a personal grudge for a story full of spelling and grammatical errors, a story submitted in a funny font or a story that’s by someone writing to “sell” a story rather than tell one.

I relish the exchanges with the writers who are just coming into their own: when I send them an edited version of their story, and break down what I did. Some may disagree with the changes, but others say: I see what you were doing there. I know something about my own work that I didn’t before, and I’m going to use it as I go on.

It’s because I tend to love writers, and want them to hear an encouraging word, want to let them know that someone else believes in their work, or perhaps give them permission to believe in it themselves. Oh sure, there are some crazy mean ones, and people I would prefer not to ride in a car with, but even then, I know that’s the result of the journey they’ve been on, and their work is their way of trying to find some kind of meaning in a life that is sometimes awful or tragic.

I also make it a point to acknowledge people who are already good at what they do. Each year, I seek out the people whose work I published in previous years and ask them to submit something new. It’s a mark of respect, letting them know that their work is something I look forward to reading. Of course that also means every year there is a larger pool of people to disappoint if their work isn’t chosen.

And they sometimes email me afterward, frosty or penitent, snarky or mock-carelessly, asking why their work wasn’t picked. Because no matter how long you’ve been at this, no matter how good you know your own work is, rejection stinks. It’s an arrow in the heart.

What makes it worth it?

I always say: try again next year. It has become my custom to take stories that I particularly like that didn’t get in one year, and throw them into the pool of submissions for the next. What doesn’t suit one volume might suit another. And I’ve been happy to see stories find a place in the series in later editions.

That’s why it’s always a pleasure to sit there puzzling over the final lineup, knowing that the stories chosen will become a new whole. And even though this is a “best of” book, there always seems to be a theme, something that’s on everyone’s mind. This year, there seems to be a lot of reaching, of needing, of people fighting themselves to get what they want or need. Maybe that’s why this foreword is taking the shape it has.

Sometimes I think the writing of erotica is about being afraid of something, and needing to say it, to have it, to own it. No one can define it, except the person at the keyboard, who is by herself, even if her lover is asleep in the next room. No one can know if a story is the one that should be told, or how, except the one telling it.

And then sending it out, hoping to find someone to read it, to listen, to understand.

To me, that’s an honorable life, well lived. That makes it worth it.

You check out my ass in the mirror across from mine, and that’s when I know that you want me. I’ve got one of those too-small towels wrapped around my waist and another too-small towel draped over my shoulders, and so do you. The half-dozen girls in the locker room are wearing their towels up over their breasts, with a second one twisted up on their heads. But we don’t need that. Your hair is the same length as mine, cut way above the ears, but yours has that faux-hawk, which tells me you might be a few years younger than I am. Mine I sweep up and over in a wave like I took a palm full of product and ran my hands over my head—which I did.

I wash my hands and head for the steam room, catching your eyes in the mirror for just the quickest inviting smile. I can feel the pulse in my muscles from the 5k run I just finished on the treadmill and the quick set of weights I lifted to keep my shoulders strong and open. My neck feels loose, my fingers feel heavy, my thighs feel solid.

When you chose the treadmill next to mine, I didn’t think much of it. I read you as a guy for a full minute until you stopped walking and started running, and I stole a glance and noticed the smooth girl curve of your chin. Your run was lithe—supple and graceful, full of ease. I struggled with my breath and concentrated on my feet hitting the treadmill. I slowed down and caught my breath, sped up and pushed myself, slowed down again. You stayed steady, one foot in front of the other, sweating but not out of breath, listening to your iPod while I watched a rerun of “Sex and the City” on one of the flat screens.

When I left the weights to head down to the locker room, I thought I felt your eyes on me, but I didn’t turn around to look. You were doing assisted pull-ups by then, your blue basketball shorts bunched by your knees as you knelt on the machine, your biceps popping. I heard you groan only once.

Not that I was watching.

And now I lay myself out on the high bench in the steam room. I’m the only one in here. I unwrap the towel and let my skin sweat the work out of me, feeling my muscles relax, the blood still pumping inside, the tingling sensation that rises after using my body. I breathe in and out, focusing on the place where my body hits the air, the place at my nasal septum where the air is leaving my body, cooler from inside my lungs than it is in the steam. I can’t stay in here too long, but I love how it leaves my body supple. It feels like a cleanse, a good sweat, while working out feels like a release of toxins.

I always have the urge to run my hands over my body, feel my skin slick with sweat, open my legs and let everything get washed by the hot steamy air. I always think of that story from Nancy Friday’s book, My Secret Garden, where two women in the steam room get it on—definitely a story that told me I liked what these women did together a little bit more than I expected.