Sex for America: Politically Inspired Erotica

BOOK: Sex for America: Politically Inspired Erotica
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SEX
FOR
AMERICA

 

Politically Inspired Erotica

 

Edited by Stephen Elliott

 

 

CONTENTS‌

 

I
NTR O D U C TI O
N
V

 

Jerry Stahl
Li’l Dickens
1
Michelle Tea
Music from Earth
11
Mistress Morgana
An Open Letter to the Bush
Administration
25
Avital Gad-Cykman
Tamar’s Prayers
31
Anthony Swofford
Escape and Evasion
39
Jami Attenberg
Victory Garden
65
Lydia Millet
Desert Shield
77
Daphne Gottlieb
Undone
91
Jonathan Ames
Womb Shelter
99

 

Eric Orner
Fear and Loathing in Chelsea
107
Alison Tyler
Measure A, B, or Me?
121
James Frey
The Candidate’s Wife
131
Charlie Anders
Transfixed, Helpless, and Out of Control:
Election Night 2004
145
Nick Flynn
A Crystal Formed Entirely of Holes
157
Rick Moody
Notes on Redevelopment
167
Tsaurah Litzky
Purple Tulip
177
Michelle Richmond
Milk
193
Stephen Elliott
Social Contract
199
Keith Knight
War-gy
and
Energy Policy
207
Vanessa Norton
Dirty Heaven
211
Liz Henry
Capitol Punishment
229
Peter Orner
The Last Socialist
237
Susan O’Doherty
My Most Memorable Encounter
243
Steve Almond
The True Republic
255
C
ON T R I B U T OR S
265
About the Editor
Also By Stephen
Elliott Credits
Cover Copyright
About the Publisher

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

The war on sex begins, most likely, with a blow job in the Oval
Office. Monica’s stained dress. The right’s squealish protest, it’s not about a blow job, it’s about lying under oath. Ken Starr’s deci- sion to release the report, a giant mass of political porn uploaded and downloaded to the World Wide Web.
It’s been seven years since the George W. Bush administra- tion moved into the White House following a disputed election decided by the Supreme Court. George W. Bush would win two elections as the anti-sex candidate. He would fulfill his prom- ise—lobbying for a constitutional ban on gay marriage, funding abstinence education across America, keeping condoms out of the classroom, packing the courts in preparation for an offensive on
Roe v. Wade.
Meanwhile, an anti-obscenity squad is formed in the FBI. Resources are pulled from the war on terror and diverted to porn patrol. So while the administration is practicing torture on our behalf all over the world, websites depicting consensual S&M are being shut down at home.
In 2004, gay marriage was a crucial issue on many state bal- lots. The administration sided heavily with the forces against gay marriage. Meanwhile, the vice president’s own daughter was gay. Now you can read Jerry Stahl’s story of his own affair with Dick Cheney, which took place in the back of a gun store in Wyoming. There is something profoundly sexual about campaigning for office. I’ve worked on campaigns where the tension was so tight, the hours so long, that passion was the only release. Every two years, marriages across the country are destroyed by the pressures of campaign season. This tension formed the starting point for
James Frey’s story, “The Candidate’s Wife.”
And it’s not just the campaigns. We eroticize our political leaders. Something about being on the stage, wielding power. They smile at us. They represent our parents and our most base desires and provide targets for our anger. They betray us all the time, and we feel their abandonment, and this, too, needs re- lease. In Charlie Anders’s “Transfixed, Helpless, and Out of Con- trol: Election Night 2004,” we meet a young liberal, devastated by the election returns, surrendering control to a woman she’s just met.
One purpose of fiction has always been to show a deeper truth than can be arrived at through journalism. In fiction we can examine an emotional truth, explore our interior selves. Like Mi- chelle Tea, whose protagonist, a lesbian returned home to Florida,
has sex with an old friend because he has joined the military and will be leaving in the morning for Iraq.
It would be fine to keep sex private, something behind closed doors. Unfortunately, when that happens, the politicians read that as a lack of public support. So now it’s okay to block sex-ed materi- als, to outlaw practices arbitrarily judged obscene. Straight, gay, or kinky, to keep our freedoms, we have to be out of the closets.
In 2008 we’re going to be given a chance to vote on what kind of control over our bodies we want the government to have. We’re going to choose between candidates who believe in honest sex education and abstinence education. Those who believe in equal rights for gays and lesbians and those who believe sex between consenting adults is a sin.
The arts, of course, are on the front line of every cultural war. In this collection, I present you with twenty-four original stories by some of the best writers of our generation. These patriotic men and women are out of the closet having Sex for America.

 

—S
TE P H E N
E
LLI O T T

 

LI’L DICKENS

JERRY STAHL

 

I did not mean to sodomize Dick Cheney.
I mean, I’m not even gay. Or not usually. But when, to my sur- prise, I bumped into him—literally—at the counter of Heimler’s Guns and Ammo, in Caspar, something clicked. And I’m not talk- ing about the safety on my Mauser.
You see, there’s another side to “Li’l Dickens,” as the VP liked to refer to himself. Or, at least, a certain part of himself.
En privato.
He’s tender. He’s funny. He’s pink. And he’s a gun man, just like me.
But there I go, getting ahead of myself. . . . See, I was in Wyo- ming to pick up some German pistols. Not, you know, that I’m some kind of Nazi gun freak. Not even close. I just like the work- manship. The craft. A taste, as it happens, shared by Mr. Cheney.
“Schnellfeuerpistole,”
he smiled, eyes aglow as he surveyed the weapon.
“Model 1912,” I smiled back. “Recoil, single-action.” “May I?”
He held out his hand. I had yet to recognize him. In his black- and-red hunting cap, flaps down, he could have been any pudgy hunter. Some sneering Elmer Fudd. But his nails were beautiful. Buffed as a showroom Bentley. I slapped the gun into his palm, butt first. “Good heft.” His lips parted—fleshy magenta outside, meat-red within. “What are we looking at, ten inches?”

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