Partying with [not] Playboy, writing with BARE magazine
For reasons that require (I hope) no explanation, I’ve been reading a lot about sex lately. All kinds of things–poetry, feminist criticism, Medium articles of sex tips, and articles about consent and building a consent culture.
Lately I discovered this older but perennial “Top Ten Party Commandments” from…well, not actually from Playboy. The site is a parody. But as “the ultimate guide to a consensual good time,” this list isn’t just a joke.
And when I say perennial, I mean it–rules #2, 3, 4, 6, and 7 could just as easily be guidelines for Cunning Linguists. I mean, actually, they’re in the guidelines. It’s not often I get to be on the same page as (parody) Playboy!
Anyway, by looking up the source of Commandment #7, “Love All Bodies,” I discovered Skidmore College’s student-run erotic lit magazine, BARE.
I’m not sure if the magazine is still running (its Twitter account hasn’t been updated since 2014, its Facebook page since 2019, and its WordPress has ‘Fall 2015’ as a header). But like the ‘Playboy’ Party Commandments, its message is perennial–at least as long as people continue having and/or writing about sex, which I don’t see coming to an end anytime soon.
For instance, there’s so much good stuff on their prompts page–which I also feel might be a sister to the Cunning Linguists guidelines. Just check out these ideas from them:
- Write about any sexual feeling you have had – lust, desire, etc… and where in your body you feel like it stems from – avoid clichés – when you feel pleasure of course it radiates from your pelvis, but do you feel an uplifting in your sternum? Does the top of your head tingle?
- Have you ever felt angered by someone’s reaction to your sexuality? VENT! Write down your reasoning! This is your chance to make them aware, and help them understand!
- Have you ever felt confined by your sexuality? Why? How? Imagine the moment that you break free and what it would be like?
- What’s the best sexual experience you ever had? What’s the worst? Develop the context of the situation – characters, emotional background, setting – draw people into the story
- Make lists
- Write short sentences or very long, allow your sentences to communicate how you’re feeling in the moment you’re writing about.
- Write in diary entries
- Write a letter to someone else
- Make metaphors – writing about sex or sexuality does not have to be described in literal sexual terms – does sex make you think of something else? Use that action or moment to describe sex or your sexuality Ex: a tennis match, a flower blooming (very cliché example)
- Write instructions for someone else on how to do something sexual, or how live a certain lifestyle that you have experience with – Ex: ‘How to be a Lesbian at Skidmore, How to have a threesome with your two best friends’
- Write “a day in the life of” Ex: “A Day In the Life of a Trans Man”
- Write a conversation – via text, email, AIM or real dialogue that conveys something important – let the words speak for themselves
- Don’t be afraid to be funny, sex is funny, people respond well to funny
- Don’t be afraid of poetry – it doesn’t have to rhyme or be cliché – play with word choice, punctuation, alignment, and spacing. Make sure the words you use count because you will use less of them than you do in prose.
Do you ever see an idea you’ve been acting on for years suddenly put into words and feel ridiculous for not spotting it before? That’s my feeling when I read “VENT!” Yes! So much fruitful writing can stem from venting–from digging into your emotions, exposing them, telling the world, in the words of Kazuo Ishiguro, “This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it feel this way to you?”
Or maybe from the opposite of venting–if writing about the best sex you ever had is the opposite of venting? But there can be anger in pleasure, a sense of justice, and there can be joy in a good vent session. (In any event, I’m sticking a pin in a potential anthology call titled The Best Sex of Their Lives).
This isn’t just what I want to write but what I want to read, too. When I feel an energy, and urgency behind the writer’s voice, I lean in toward their story to listen more closely. When a story asks me how it feels, when it tells me something I thought only I had felt, it wins its way into my memory and heart forever.
Avoid clichés. Vent. What’s the best sexual experience you’ve ever had?
This is the way it feels to me. Does it feel this way to you?
I think this post is turning into a sort of found-poetry ars poetica.
What about you? Which of these would you like to write, or read? Do you have your own suggestion for a prompt or guideline? A rule? A party tip?
Maybe leave it in the comments. Or, although I’m not sure if BARE is taking submissions on these topics anymore, the New Smut Project certainly is. Or share it on your own blog, or in a story you submit somewhere else, self-publish. But share it.
The world needs more honest, thoughtful sex talk, and I’m always up for reading it.