Sex Still Spoken Here: An Anthology (26 page)

“Literature—creative literature—unconcerned with sex, is inconceivable.”

-
Gertrude
Stein

Gina de Vries

Bio

Gina de Vries is a writer, cultural worker, queer cripple, genderqueer femme, Paisano strega, fat sex worker, and devout pervert born, raised, and currently living in San Francisco. Ze is founder of Sex Workers’ Writing Workshop, founder of the Girl Talk performance series, and on the Advisory Board at The Center for Sex & Culture. Ze’s performed, taught, and lectured everywhere from chapels to leatherbar backrooms to the Ivy Leagues, and hir writing has been anthologized dozens of places. Ze is currently at work on
How
To
Have
A
Body
, a book of experimental prose. Read more at
ginadevries.com

Mini-Interview

How did you start writing about sex?
I write for a ton of different reasons, but one of the biggest ones is that writing is a tool that helps me make sense of my life and the world around me. I started to develop an awareness of myself as a sexual being—and, specifically, as a queer sexual being—when I was very young (I came out as queer in middle school). I would say that I started writing about sex and sexuality around that time (pubescent diaries absolutely count, in my book!). So I was writing about sex and desire and embodiment long before I ever actually had sex with another human being, and I just kinda … never stopped. Middle-school diaries that I never showed a soul eventually morphed into embarrassingly earnest queer feminist erotic poetry that I published in ‘zines as a teenager … which eventually morphed into what I do as a writer, performer, and cultural worker today. It’s honestly very hard for me to differentiate between my erotic and non-erotic work at this point in my life. While not all of my work is explicitly pornographic or written to get the reader off, the overwhelming majority of my writing is about sexuality and embodiment in some way, shape, or form. I’ve never for a second been interested in leaving the sex out of my work, or “toning it down” for the sake of some hypothetical conservative audience. I’m gonna end by quoting from
How
To
Have
A
Body
(my current manuscript in progress) here, because it feels relevant to this question, and to how I work and how I understand my artistic vision and process: “I know in my heart of hearts that creative drive and erotic drive are inextricably and undeniably linked. I can’t write if I can’t come. I can’t feel the peak of a story or a poem if I can’t feel the peak of my own orgasm. I don’t wanna write when I don’t wanna fuck, and I don’t wanna fuck when I don’t wanna write.”

Bambino

Gina de Vries

I’d told him to dress like a teenager going on a first date, and he came over that night looking sharp—all James Dean tough and tender. Black curls coiffed into a greaser pompadour, leather jacket and dark jeans and pressed button-down shirt hugging his tall, slim frame. He’d just seen
East
of
Eden
, he said. “The hype is real—James Dean really is that hot. I’m kind of in love.”

I grinned. “So that’s why you’re dressed like a greaser!”

He nodded. “Yeah. The movie’s probably better when you’re stoned, because it’s a little slow. But it’s awesome, and James Dean …” His eyes got all dreamy again.

“Do you wanna fuck him or do you wanna be him, Bambino?” “Um. Both.” He blushed.

***

He made me wish I had a record player, that boy. A record player and a clawfoot tub, real silk stockings and a rotary phone. A collection of vintage garter belts and a smart little sixties miniskirt that inched up my thighs slowly when I spread my legs. A dress for him to unzip down the back while I insisted that of course I wasn’t doing anything untoward and really, I was getting tired of him insinuating something. He made me want a beret and a first edition of
Howl
, a couple of joints and a bottle of red wine to seduce him into the wicked Bohemian lifestyle. He made me want an apron collection, a real kitchen, and a real dining room. A table where I could feed him after-school snacks and help him with his homework, undo his belt while he struggled with a Math problem and tried to ignore how good my hands felt.

What I had to work with was a tiny rent-controlled apartment,
thrift store lingerie, and a limitless imagination. We started dating right before I started graduate school and moved into an impossibly cheap in- law studio in the South Mission. The day after our first date, he offered to help me move. He ended up stuck in transit on a trip back from Oregon—never made it to move-in. But five days later, he was the first person I fucked in my new bedroom.

I’d never lived alone before. This was a place with a fig tree in the backyard, an old-school San Francisco Chinese grandmother landlord who offered to let me pay rent in cash, and a sketchy little alleyway between buildings that led up to my doorstep. I wanted to throw him around in that alley, but there was zero privacy—no way to do it without alerting my new neighbors to the intimate details of my sex life. This was a place with a kitchenette table that doubled as a counter, and a main room that just barely held my bed, my bookshelves, my desk, and my clothes. But it didn’t matter that it was tiny—it was mine, all mine. I could put whatever I wanted on the walls, have loud sex without disturbing my housemates, sing opera at three in the morning if the whim struck me. Everything about that month felt limitless, imbued with magic and newness—my new school, my new apartment, my new neighborhood, my new cat. And him.

And I didn’t have an apron collection or a first edition of
Howl
, so I worked with what I did have. I started scouring thrift store racks, looking for the slips with 42-inch bustlines and lots of give in the tits. I grabbed every H&M size 12 camisole off the rack and stretched them over my curves. I bought $9 stay-up stockings at Madame S and $2 fishnets from MultiKulti Dance Accessories on 16th and Valencia. I justified every new purchase, no matter how extravagant or frivolous, with “Well, I can use it in a role-play, right? This slip is actually a very reasonably priced sex toy!” I started wearing more makeup. Dangly earrings instead of my tough-girl gauged lobes. Flowers in my hair. “Hellfire” from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab dabbed into the sweet spots behind my ears and between my breasts.

I was only a year older than him, but when we went out together, we really did look the part. Me like Mrs. Robinson in my leopard-print skirt and garters and stockings. Him like Benjamin in his pressed pants and shirt, that dark mop of curls, big eyes and pale creamy skin. The adorable jolty way he moved when he was nervous, or excited—so much boy energy to burn. Dimples in his cheeks when he smiled. The tentative, tender, teenage way he’d ask permission to touch me, or lean into the crook of my neck and sigh, so happy.

I was wearing fishnets with stompy boots in the pit at Cypher in Snow shows by the time I was fourteen, calling myself queer and punk and femme even then. Pervert came a few years later, when I was still a teenager. When I met him, I’d been a die-hard Daddy’s girl for years; I’d even been Ma’am and Mistress a few times. But I’d never been in charge all the time. I’d never been anyone’s Mama before.

***

“So much of this,” he said to me, “is about getting to have the adolescence I didn’t get to have.” We were stretched out in my bed, him in his greaser finery, me in my lingerie, catching up on our weeks before we got carried away by sex.

“I thought you might say something like that,” I said. I still didn’t know much about his life, then. But I know what it is to be raised to be a good girl, what it is to be expected to grow into a proper woman; and I know what it is to fail at that. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be held up to the Girl Standard when you’re actually a boy waiting to grow into a man. “You know … It’s like that for me, too,” I said, “When I play Mama with you, sometimes. And when we both pretend we’re teenagers …”

And he looked surprised. “But weren’t you, like, the cool punk girl who came out all early? Like, didn’t you do zines and all this awesome writing and—?”

“Yeah, I mean, I was punk and I was queer, but I was a nerd and I was a fat girl, too. Publishing a zine didn’t get me laid in high school, dude.” And we both cracked up at that.

“It’s funny,” I said, “I mean, I think the kids I went to school with thought I was a slut because I was queer, so, you know, that automatically makes you hypersexual—”

“Right, of course, they always think that—”

“—and, I mean, I dressed the part, and I talked about sex. But I only had sex with one person in high school. I wanted to be slutty, but …” I trailed off. Tried to find the words. “It wasn’t something I had access to. Some of what I do with you, when we pretend like that … It’s about getting to be who I would have been if I’d actually been in my body. If I’d believed I was pretty. Believed I could be sexy like that.”

***

Sometimes I felt myself existing in the timeline of all the characters we played. Not just frozen at that age, but frozen in that time period. So when we pretended I was a bossy riot grrrl and he was the shy, younger grunge-rock boy who was friends with my dorky little brother, it wasn’t 2009 in my studio. It was 1999 at my parents’ house, and I was seventeen, playing him my Bikini Kill 7-inch and inching too close to him on my bed. I knew better than to be fooling around with my kid brother’s friend—it was kinda questionable around the age thing, it was even more questionable when it came to the crowds we hung out in. But it was so much fun to make him squirm and swear him to secrecy, and God, he was such a quick study with that mouth, those hands, that cock.

The night he came over dressed up like a greaser I was in a red slip, fishnets, red heels. A glittery red cloth rose in my hair. Could I be a fifties housewife in this? I thought as we chatted. He was telling me more about James Dean. Maybe. A very seductive one, at least. We were lying on my bed together, close but not cuddling. I caught his chin in my hand and pulled him in for a kiss. He wrapped his arms around me, but he pulled his lips away after a minute.

“We’re doing that thing we do,” he murmured into my neck, kissed it. “Mmm. We’re doing that thing, where we start before the scene starts …”

“Oh, so you wanna work for it?” I grabbed his pompadour and pulled. He winced at first, cried out. But then he giggled. Nodded.

“I wanna work for it. Yes. I want a story.” I let him go. It was hard not to touch him.

“Okay, Bambino … How old do you wanna be? “Sixteen? Seventeen, maybe?”

“Okay, I think … I’m a housewife. You’re my son’s friend …” “I’ve had a crush on you for a long time, yeah.”

“And you’ve come over … And my husband happens to be on a business trip. And my son’s out with those hoods he runs with.” I felt my voice start to change, subtly. It got lower. More serious. “Why are you over here, kid? Shouldn’t you be out with those boys, too? Not that I approve …”

His eyes got big. He had never looked more earnest to me. “No, I’m good, Ma’am. I don’t hang out with those boys. I don’t like that your son hangs out with them.” Then he cracked a smile. Started laughing. “Wait, wait—I’m sorry, I just thought of something. Can I be fucking your son, too?!”

That got me laughing. “Pervert!”

“No, no, hear me out. So you want me, but you’re angry with me, because I’m taking your son away from you. You want me, but you think I’m a bad influence.”

“You’re a glutton for punishment, little faggot.” I grabbed a curl and pulled again.

He shrieked, but he looked like the cat with the canary in his mouth. “Guilty as charged.”

***

I listened to
Diamond
Dogs
over and over again the summer we got together. If I’d had the record player, I would have worn out the vinyl, I’m sure. Music takes on a different meaning when you’re falling for someone, and I was falling, hard—for him, but for my new self, too. The whole relationship was a coming out moment, coming out into something different and new, and like most people who are newly out and overzealous, I ran into it full-tilt, no holds barred, not a single stop or hesitation. No checking to see if there were any obstacles. No worries that maybe I’d trip over that rock and skin my knee. I didn’t think. I just ran. Everything was intense; everything felt like a whirlwind of emotions and sex. I still use words like
pivotal
and
formative
to describe our months together, and god, I fear I’m being grandiose, melodramatic, talking that way. But that’s what it was. It’s how we were with each other.

So that month, falling for him, listening to
Diamond
Dogs
because it happened to be what I’d picked up from the library on a whim—suddenly, I took the album very personally. It was the soundtrack to the crush, and it was the soundtrack to my newfound Mama persona. It felt like every line of every song was written especially for me. “Sweet Thing” was an anthem, Bowie’s creepy-sexy snarl in my ear, the perfect music for dating this boy who was glam rock and choir boy, French new wave and faggotry, lisp and snarl, James Dean and Lou Reed, cocksure and shy violet. Dating this boy who wanted nothing more than to suck my cock, who wanted nothing more than to fuck me so good, just right.
When
you
rock’n’roll
with
me
,
there’s
nowhere
else
I’d
rather
be
.
We’re
taking
it
hard
all
the
time
.
I
love
you
in
your
fuck
-
me
pumps
,
and
your
nimble
dress
that
trails
.
Boys
,
boys
,
it’s
a
sweet
thing
.
Mmm
,
if
you
want
it
,
boys
?
Get
it
here
.

***

His hands on my tits were sweet, that night. Tentative. “Oh, honey. You’re not so tough, are you? You’re just a little pussycat under all that bravado, huh?” He made a little whimpering noise—the pink rose to his cheeks and his eyelashes fluttered. But he didn’t take his hands away. Something about how soft and unsure he was made me want to up the ante.

“Nobody’s touched me like this for a long, long time. Not my husband. Not my son.” I heard him catch his breath at that. Good. “Nobody.” I leaned in to kiss him. He was so pliant in my arms, a rag doll of a boy, a marionette, but god, the noises he made. Little moans and sighs, and he licked the crook of my neck and whispered. “Oh, your skin tastes so sweet, Ma’am. I like it.”

I pushed him back on the bed. He kept looking up at me in wide- eyed wonder. Or was it fear? Uncertainty? His breathing was heavy, and he was moaning, though. He’d tell me if he was real-life scared, right? I pulled his leather jacket off. Leaned down between his legs and started to unbuckle his belt. “Have you done this before, baby?”

“In a way,” he said. Smirking. “In a way?”

“I can’t talk about it.” And suddenly, the smirk melted from his face, and he looked so little. “Ma’am … There’s a woman I do this with in my dreams.”

“In dreams?” I hated that I was repeating everything he said. But I wasn’t expecting that from a greaser boy. In dreams? What do I say to that? “Do you touch yourself in these dreams?”

He shuddered. “Sometimes, Ma’am.”

So I put my hand on his zipper and stroked. “Show me how you like to do it.”

He reached down and started to unzip. But then he froze. Turned over on his side, and curled up into a fetal position. “I need to stop—I’m sorry.” I’d never seen him cry before. I was dumbfounded. What had I done? Was this about gender? Sexual assault? Shame? Maybe even just not being horny any more? Swallow your ego, I said to myself. He needs you right now.