queers

Happy Friday! And to all you homos out there (alright, LGBTQ folks, for those who prefer to be PC, but I like homo better!), Happy Pride Month! This weekend Philly celebrates the whole Pride shebang, and of course I’ll be flitting around being the glamorous lesbo that I am. Also happening this weekend is Philly’s annual Dyke March – the antithesis to the corporate sponsorship and consumerism of gay culture. It’s an awesome rally/march that goes on all over the country – organized inside the queer community. Pretty awesome, right? You know I’ll be there!

So, why am I telling you this? Well, other than the fact that I am excited, after the marching festivities are finished, us queers gather in the park for a bunch of delicious performances, including a recap of the winning show piece of Mr. Philly Drag King 2010. And this year’s winner is none other than one of my favorite people ever – Pumpernickel!  This lady is ah-mazing!  And she won a freaking royal title on her first drag performance! Beat that!

Anyway, to get pumped up for her performance tomorrow, I’ve decided to Mixtape Rewind Pumpernickel’s drag music of choice – The Dresden Dolls’ “Coin Operated Boy.”  Hurray!

Can not wait for the weekend!

xoxo
-J.D. Bauchery

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Picture via The Chicago Queer Books Meetup

While The Porn Librarian may be the obvious pick when it comes to readers here are HMFH, all of us smut peddlin’ gals are actually avid readers.

I learned about masturbation from a Betty Dodson book. When I was younger, I found it in my house and just had to see what exactly “the joy of self love” was. Life pretty much changed after that.

But who learns about jerkin’ off from reading a book?! Bookworms, that’s who! People that immerse themselves in page upon page of words – be they narrative, non-fiction or just plain nuts. Books have always had an effect on me. Whether it was finding out info I didn’t know, or just escaping to a different life, I really relied on books to get me where I needed to go. Hell, I still do.

This morning when I saw Sinclair Sexsmith’s awesome post on Carnal Nation about how queer books saved his life, I just knew I had to write about how queer books have affected my own life and which ones have a particular place in my heart.

While I will readily admit that I had a very easy coming out experience compared to some of the nightmares I’ve been told, I think most people that come out as queer are looking for allies and safe spaces where they can be themselves with no disapproving stares or fear. And I think that sometimes it feels safer to find that in a story than in the real world, especially if you are without support.

I would be remise to start my list with any book other than Leslie Feinberg’s “Stone Butch Blues” – a fictional memoir that chronicles the life of Jess Goldberg, from confused child, to butch, to trans man and everything in between. I may not have identified with Jess’ gender identity questions, but hir honest, raw emotion and determination to be true to hirself kept me glued to the book. Really, it was the first look I had at trans/gender-queer identity other than the friend that originally lent me the book.

I was so connected to “Stone Butch Blues” that I wrote my undergrad thesis for Women’s Studies on it – Any Way You Want It, That’s The Way You Need It: Gender Identity and the Journey Home in Leslie Feinberg’s ‘Stone Butch Blues.’ That’s right… I quoted Journey in the title. FTW! While I knew I wasn’t the only one that was affected so profoundly by this book, when I told The Porn Librarian about this blog post early today, she asked me to mention “Stone Butch Blues” as topping her list. Great perverts think alike.

Back when I was in college, I shared a little sublet with a bunch of folks that had friends coming in and out of it all the time. My next absolute favorite queer book was left behind by a roommate’s friend that I was sleeping with at the time. If my memory serves me correctly, I believe she had just bought the book and accidently left it at the house; and I, of course didn’t end up reading it till years later, though it really would have been the perfect book to read at that time. I’m talking about Michelle Tea’s “Valencia” – a dykey memoir of Tea’s first few years living in San Francisco.

Chock full of raunchy sex, whirlwind queer romances and lots of angst and drama, “Valencia” quickly spurred a longtime love for Michelle Tea, as well as a longing for a romantized version of queer urban life that I can more or less say that I eventually grew into at some point. Reading”Valencia” made me feel like it was ok to write self indulgent, dirty stories that ended with girls fucking in the bathroom at the bar. And I don’t know about you, but to me, that’s all I ask of a book.

About a million queer books have influenced my homo development over the years, but as I don’t want to write a novel myself, so I’ll just give them little shouts out now that I’ve swooned over my top two favies. To start, I was never really one to love classics. I’ve never read anything by Jeanette Winterson and only one book by Rita Mae Brown, but I do have a total soft spot in my heart for anything young adult – especially young adult coming out books. I love em! Over the years I seem to have amassed myself a little collection which includes radical queer baby dyke manifestos like “Sister Safety Pin” and “Punk Like Me” in it, as well as standards such as “Annie On My Mind.” And we can’t forget about comics by Ariel Schrag, about her high school experience and falling in love with girls all over the place. I really wish I read then when I was in school myself. Sigh. All of these books have created the person that I am today and each and every one of them has a catalogued space in my brain.

Sinclair Sexsmith said in best at the end of his essay:

I have queer books to thank for that, for teaching me my story could and should be told, that my desires are worth the fight and the struggle and the work, that there are people like me out there, and that we make beautiful, beautiful sense of our complicated worlds.

So, thank you books, not necessarily for saving my life, but for definitely making it more interesting.

xoxo
-J.D. Bauchery

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