Чарли Андерс: Best Lesbian Erotica 2010

I’ve never written a foreword before, but I’ll stick by a rule of thumb that works well when giving speeches: start off by saying thank-you, and meaning it. Tristan Taormino gave birth to, and grew, a great, important series in Best Lesbian Erotica; it’s helped define a genre that has grown exponentially in the last decade or so, and Tristan has been one of its guiding hands (sometimes holding a whip). She’s handed off a strong, fertile garden of delights for me to keep tending and nurturing. Our publishers at Cleis have made a commitment to keeping this series active and influential when its founder moved on.

How did I get here? I knew Tristan when we were both starting out as writers, and on the downtown New York City queer and women’s rock/literary/whatever scenes. I bought copies of her ’zine Pucker Up , and thought I might try to write some of that lesbian erotica stuff (of course, I had to come out first). Eventually I did (come out and start writing erotica), and started publishing it in Best Lesbian Erotica .

In that monumentally creative downtown scene, I sometimes ran into Tristan at a popular lesbian rock party called Fragglerock, where woman-fronted and all-girl bands were featured, and fabulous musicians played in all-star pickup bands, doing tributes to their musical godmothers and godfathers. One night, I watched Elizabeth Ziff of the band BETTY lead a Queen tribute that included about forty people doing a cover of “Bohemian Rhapsody” with a full chorus. People held up tinfoil stars, stood on benches at the side of the room and sang their hearts out.

BETTY was another longtime favorite of mine: I’d first seen Alyson, Amy and Elizabeth in the late ’80s, and they seemed to be wherever there was something interesting going on: at Fragglerock and Squeezebox, playing for marches on Washington, and always touring, singing in that tight harmony that’s their trademark.

Smart women, I thought—talented, serious and fun. I read Elizabeth’s review of Tipping the Velvet in Bust , so I can thank her for introducing me to the work of Sarah Waters. When I interviewed BETTY for ROCKRGRL magazine, they told me they were working on a musical. I got to see the development of the show, and even though they didn’t use my title (“BETTY’s Big Bang”), I was thrilled to see “BETTY RULES” receive a strong reception off-Broadway and continue to live as a touring show.

When I was asked to assume the position… of editorship of Best Lesbian Erotica , I thought about who to bring in as guest judge, and wanted to start with someone who had the mad intuitive skills and taste to judge both what is hot and what is well-written, and maybe from a slightly different point of view, genre-wise.

Songwriters have the task of telling a life or a moment in a couple of dozen lines. It’s a form that requires form, as well as style, craft, tempo, rhythm and talent to pull off successfully. So I approached Elizabeth (who had moved on to work on a television show you may have heard of: The L Word), and she told me she was being treated for breast cancer, and recommended her sister, Amy. And, well, if you’ve got Elizabeth and Amy, you’ve got to have Alyson.

So the power of three, which is about the power of ten thousand when those three are BETTY, dove into the manuscripts and came back with a remarkable array of choices. Together they cover the waterfront (and then some) of what lesbians are longing for and coming over, the things we are both afraid of and attracted to simultaneously.

Of the many manuscripts that poured in, I noted a strong international wave of submissions this year: this volume contains the work of writers from Ireland, Australia, Sweden, France and Germany (as well as from someone who lives in my neighborhood). There are some familiar voices from previous editions, as well as a few writers who are publishing for the first time. I also solicited (in every sense of the word) artists who hadn’t yet written erotica, but whom I thought could make something hot happen. I’m proud to say that a playwright, a travel writer, and a sci-fi writer/blogger who accepted my challenge to submit something made it into this book. I’ve got my eye on a few other writers in different genres for next time, so consider this your notice, you poets, memoirists, and menopausal stoners.

I’m also pondering who I might ask to be next year’s judge.

So, you know, expect the unexpected.

Enjoy Best Lesbian Erotica 2010.

Everyone has a pet peccadillo, caged or free-range. I have yet to meet a woman—gay, straight or otherwise—who didn’t admit to even the teeniest fantasy that swelled beyond the rim of a 100 percent pure vanilla encounter. One of the more titillating aspects of working as a traveling musician is having strangely intimate conversations with people all over the world. Quite often, the stories shared by strangers are laid bare, stripped by the demands of time and airline departures to their most compelling facts—desire and fulfillment. That fascinates me.

After a BETTY gig in Atlanta, I sat alone under the stars on the outside deck of a dance club, happy to nurse a beer in a slight breeze with the faint scent of distant flowers. A woman sitting nearby sighed. We started chatting and within a very short time I was glad we were outside in the dark because I was blushing inside from her story. If she had seen me squirm, I’m sure she would have stopped talking, but I didn’t want that. I was captivated.

I am definitely the most old-fashioned member of my band. I am the product of the Karilagan Finishing School and endless diplomatic functions with my parents at which the raciest remarks were wrapped in so much innuendo and clever wordplay that it wasn’t until much later that juicy gossip could be deciphered. I assume that’s why I choose to work with two women who speak their minds loudly and proudly about everything, even intimate details. After two decades, Elizabeth and Amy Ziff can still shock me, and delight in doing so. Luckily, I enjoy it as well, being unwilling to speak so nakedly.

Would an audio voyeur be called an Auditeur? I guess that’s what I am. Like Scheherazade’s King, I am a glutton for delicious stories.

The woman in Atlanta lowered her head as she told me about her Daddy. She loved her new girlfriend but couldn’t give up the woman who made her sigh in the humid Georgia night from unappeased need. She knew that her ex-Daddy was a dead-end road, but she couldn’t move past her dangerous desires into the simple, open arms of a new love. I sat in the crackling campfire of her story, asking honest questions and having my mind blown.