Sexting with Jake

FIRST by Jacob Louder – available 4/4/14! Click image for excerpt.

Jacob Louder’s literary porn novella, FIRST, launches tomorrow. Jake’s book is a radical porn utopia, and you shouldn’t read it unless you’re comfortable with young folks who are under the “legal age of consent” having powerful and connected sex with one another–sex that helps them to be and discover who they are. (Hats off here to Nabakov, who we pretty much idolize at GDP.) Anyhoo, I asked Jake to send me five texts–or “sexts,” if you will–explaining why he decided to write about kids having sex, in First. Here’s what he sent:

1. I’m continually impressed with kids who can identify who they are as sexual beings at such an early age. Even if they can’t identify who they are just yet, it seems like they’re more open to exploration and less consumed with labels. In First, I romanticized this idea. Everyone does what they want with people who want it, with no thought on the past or present. They all live in the moment. There is no shame. These kids are ideal human beings. If they were real, and if there were more of them–lots, lots more–the world could have the most loving, compassionate future.

2. I think I wrote First for me and for everyone else who came out young-ish in the early 90s. It was a completely different climate, with the HIV/AIDS crisis completely snubbed by the U.S. government, very full “closets” in almost every industry, city, and suburb, and not nearly as much representation in the media as there is today. There was no marriage equality. (I have to note, though, that in almost every way, my generation had it much better than the generations before me. I have to thank the love and fight in every single person, in every single activist, who ensured that my coming out and my young existence as queer wasn’t nearly as fucked up as theirs may have been.) At Nico’s age, I never thought I’d be happy with who I was. I thought that I’d have to figure out how to be heterosexual one way or another. I thought I was the only kid who felt the way I did. I had no role models (until I turned about 17 or so). So, Nico is the boy I wish I had been, living a very different life in a very different climate, and fully recognizing that love can be with anyone, as long as there’s honesty and respect. I’m living a bit vicariously.

3. Kids watch porn. Kids have sex. I’m sorry, Moms and Dads, but they do.

4. I think it was easy to write this young utopia because I see kids as being “romantically unblemished.” This isn’t to say that those of us over the age of 18 can’t live or don’t live like the characters in First. But when I think of wide-eyed openness and trust, I think of young humans, of anyone who hasn’t had their hearts ripped out of their chests, like most of us have, one way or another. It was important for me to have every heart on a sleeve. (Except for the case of Rory and John, but their “relationship” is another slice of life that I find kind of interesting to explore.)

5. I wanted to show young people as smart, grounded, and capable of significant amounts of kindness and intimacy. I wanted to show them as nonjudgmental and open and accepting of everyone and everything, as long as that everyone-and-everything are from places of love. I wanted to show them as better than us.

Thanks a million, Jake. I was so moved by your sexts. And folks, FIRST will be available on Friday 4/4/14. Can’t wait!

Cover Reveal: Jacob Louder’s Porn Novella, FIRST

FIRST by Jacob Louder – available soon! Click image for excerpt.

Jake Louder’s FIRST is to be launched this April — and here’s the cover reveal. The cover, by the way, is by our talented Angela Tavares, who will soon be available for indie cover design services via our Here Booky Booky one-stop publishing shop (website soon!)

Read the opening of Jake’s FIRST here. FIRST is a porn novella, so, depending on your workplace, may be NSFW. It’s hot and daring from line 1.

Meet Benji Bright, Part 2

Available at queeryoungcowboys.com

Here’s Part 2 of my interview with the amazingly effin’ talented Benji Bright. I bet it killed you, waiting this long! Here’s the thing: If you haven’t screamed, “Oh my God! I love this guy!” you’ll do so now. And here’s a little help on the front end. You can  buy Candid right now right here. Don’t forget to drop by Benji’s blog at www.theeroticledger.com. Tell him Go Deeper Press sent you.

Candid contains 10 fictional interviews with mostly queer men from seriously all different walks of life. How did your “subjects” come to you? I’d imagine it would have been a long process to create each and every one of them, but please tell me I’m wrong if I am. 

Benji: A lot of the subjects from Candid come from my own experiences, anxieties, fantasies, and those of people I’ve known. I’ve referred to the project in the past as a kind of exorcism, as in putting all of the voices in your head on paper. I knew that Candid would be too niche and too short and too personal to be any definitive survey of whom the contemporary gay male is, so I didn’t worry about that. I wrote (what I hoped was) realistic dialogue for people who were already a part of me in some way. So, it was a fairly quick process. All I had to do was figure out who was speaking and let them speak. I did try to balance sex and sentiment so that no particular character came off like agitprop with a ten-inch dick.

I will say that the editing was harder. I read every line of the novella aloud multiple times to see if it held up to a voice, if it had a natural cadence. I don’t know if I was totally successful, but I was impressed when I watched (listened to?) the trailer that Johnny Murdoc made. It sounded like people talking, so I guess I did my job.

I want to ask you about Dennis Cooper’s The Sluts and whether or not it influenced the format of your book. It’s similar, I think, in the way it captures these men in a moment of time, in sort of a “full-confessional” way.

That’s funny, actually. I was going to mention Dennis Cooper in my list of writing heroes, but then I hedged. I’m not sure why. I think, ultimately, that the first work I read by Dennis Cooper (Frisk) and subsequent reads speak to the darkness behind sexual impulses, which my writing largely skirts. I don’t mean to suggest that my writing is uniformly rosy, but maybe it has a few less thorns. I guess I might as well take this opportunity to formally say that Dennis Cooper is one of my writing heroes, whether I write like him or not. His work stays with you, haunts you. That’s a skill (talent?) worthy of praise.

It was refreshing—I think that’s the best word—to find moments of serious fucking introspection on the topic of sex spoken by your characters, especially in a novella that’s focused on the retelling of sexual encounters that’s meant to make your readers want to get off. I’m thinking specifically of lines like these, courtesy of your interviewer in the second interview: “Maybe it helps if you think of sex as a protected space, an area of your life without judgment. That it’s something primal and ancient that you belong to as much as it belongs to you.” From my experience with erotica, this is atypical dialogue, and it’s awesome. How important was it for you to create these men—some of them, anyway—that could emphasize the importance of connected sex (dare I say healing sex?), ones without the typical “smut” or gay-erotic-lit focus of chiseled chin, ripped abs, gaping hole?

I wanted to create something with characters who had concerns. As much as I love sex (and I definitely do), I struggle with aspects of it. Should I be paying more attention? Should I be more vocal about what I like? Is my ass too small? Where should I put my glasses if this guy doesn’t have a nightstand? Why doesn’t this guy have a nightstand? Should you fuck somebody who doesn’t have a nightstand?

I wanted to write characters who had issues. The idea of connected sex was one of them. There’s the importance of being present during sex, but there’s also another character who totally rejects that notion and equates being mentally elsewhere during sex to channel-surfing or tuning into a different wavelength. There’s a married character who has a dynamic relationship with his partner and others who decry the entire institution.

I absolutely needed my characters to be able to talk about these things. I settled on the title Candid because I wanted to say some real things. Sprinkle a little deeper thinking in with all the sex.

What do you do when you’re not writing smut? When you’re not writing smut, how much do you miss writing smut?

For now, I work as a server in a restaurant where a decent amount of the staff has read my book. So, basically, they know I’m a pervert, which is fine by me. I also write poetry and attempt to teach myself different skills on a revolving basis (CSS, Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, drawing, French, game-making).

When I’m not writing smut, I miss the response I get from writing smut. I think there’s something really honest and great about someone telling you that they read some erotica you wrote and it really got them going. There’s a certain amount of bullshit that you’ve skipped by just having that conversation. I miss that a lot when I stay away from smut for too long.

This is where you get to say something unforgettable. Have at it!

Dear person reading this,

If you didn’t know me before you read this interview, then hi, I’m Ben. I’m usually sketchy about strangers giving me advice, so I’ll understand if you brush off this next thing I’m about to say.

You are the best sexual partner you’re ever going to have, so be nice to yourself. Don’t beat yourself up about what turns you on. Don’t force yourself to fall in line with any narrow view of sexuality. Be nice to yourself.

—

Thanks for supporting Go Deeper press by reading our blog.  If you’d like to browse our erotic, sex-positive e-books for brain and brawn, you can find our website here.

Healing Erotica (Or Smut That Changed My Life)

I wrote a post for Spirituality & Health recently entitled “Healing Erotica,” in which I argue that erotic writing can be  therapeutic.  As a survivor of sexual trauma, I first took back my power when I started reading and writing erotica.  What many have dismissed as “smut” (and I’m thrilled to see us taking back that term!) has actually helped to heal my life.

The post speaks for itself, but I will add this:  You don’t have to have experienced sexual trauma in order to feel broken by sex.  In our society, lies about sex are used to shut us up, thwart our creativity, push us into powerlessness, silence who we are.  And as anyone who has suffered sexual difficulties will know, the social silence surrounding sex can make it hard to come out about sexual pain and receive the support we need.  After all, if you can’t talk about ecstatic sex, how on earth do you talk about sexual assault?

Erotica can give voice to us sexually, while also embracing us all as sexual beings.  Yet it has a reputation for being “frothy” and “superficial.”  Well, we’re not enemies of “frothy” at Go Deeper.  Frothy can be transformative too, and a helluva lot of fun.  But we also know how deep erotica can be.  Wanna explore how tying someone up can transform you?  Then you’ll adore Alison Tyler‘s novelette Those Girls.  Wanna consider how sexual longing can threaten to destroy us?  Then you’ll fall in love with Zoe More‘s paranormal Hunger.  And that’s not to mention the sublime talents of Georgia E. Jones, Abyssinia Grey, Maricia Verma, and a host of others who are publishing with GDP.

These stories are hot.  These stories are deep.

And that ain’t no contradiction.