I don't know about all of you, but Monday mornings are often times not an especially favorite time for me. However as I sat down to breakfast this morning, mentally thanking my partner for being the sweetest butch in the world for not only doing all the grocery shopping while I was away at a gig on Saturday but buying a huge container of fresh strawberries which now accessorised my cerial I was linked to a video, and because I wanted to procrastinate getting out of my apartment and off to my office when all I really want to do is take my typewriter to the park and write in the sun i decided to watch it.  I can't tell you how glad I am that I clicked that link. In fact, I'm so glad that I watched the video that I'm further procrastinating (don't worry I won't actually be late) by sharing it with all of you!

I can't embed the video here so you're going to have to just follow the link, but trust me it's worth it.  The video is of Ivan Coyote reading something titled "The Femme Piece." It's  a wonderful, sexy, funny, and emotional thank you "to all the beautiful kick ass, full bodied and fierce femmes out there." Seriously, watch this.

p.s. I've got a few more posts almost ready to go up including a story about the magic of community and meeting a femme on a bus on the way to my aforementioned gig on Saturday, as well as an interview with one of my favorite rockstar (literally) femmes out there.

p.s.s. there are lots of lines that I wanted to choose as the title for this post, but I'm wearing my favorite green 50's inspired housedress today, and my partner a mint green button down. Our complementary fashion brought us a laugh this morning as ze headed out the door to work so this felt somehow appropriate.

No doubt about it, Tristan Taorino’s new anthology “sometimes she lets me: Best Butch/Femme Erotica” is hot! My review copy came in the mail last Saturday afternoon right as my partner and I were preparing to head to the airport for a much needed vacation----needless to say this made for some very fun airport reading!

I knew ‘sometimes she lets me’ was going to be a winner when I read Tristan’s introduction which succeeds in defining what Butch/Femme means better than anyone I’ve ever seen, and certainly better than I am capable of:

“Butch/femme is bulging jeans, smeared lipstick, stiletto heels, and sharp haircuts. It’s about being read and being seen. Sometimes it’s about passing or not passing. It’s about individual identity and a collective sense of community. It’s personal, political. It’s performance and it’s not. It’s the visceral space between the flesh and the imagination.”

One of the things that I love best about this book are the pieces that don’t turn me on (I know sounds crazy when reviewing an Erotica book). One of the biggest strengths in this book is that the anthology is incredibly diverse, having everything from butch on butch to femme on femme, femme tops, butch bottoms, switching, and of course my personal favorite some hot dominant butch takes submissive femme all thrown into 226 of the hottest pages I’ve read in quite some time.  I adore that the book doesn’t give privilege any one way of negotiating butch & femme identities separately or in relation to each other. Instead, it gives space for the sexy diversity that is our little corner of the queer universe.

The quality of the writing is also superb and contains the work of more than a couple of my favorite writers, with a special shout out to Toni Amato of Write Here, Write Now whose writing blew me away.  This is one of those books that to me goes beyond good one-handed reading (not that there is anything wrong with that) and into the category of great writing.  Butch/femme dynamics are by their nature sexually charged, and so it makes sense that it’s through beautifully crafted explicit sexual writing that we can learn more about ourselves, our dynamics, and our community as a whole.

if you’re a femme author, artist or zinester I’d love to review your work for the site! If you’re interested, please shoot me an email at Sassafras@PoMoFreakshow.com