Standing in line at the post office right before closing, we squeezed past the deadline to make our first literary award nomination.
Introduction to the Ageless Sexuality Series and its Origin
This month I urbanize myself in the philosophic sense with the sense of impending change. The season is changing. The government is in limbo and I live underneath my aging skin with a sense of defiance, not toward others necessarily, but toward the looming sense of fear that permeates the public spaces around me. Intimacy is shaped by the subterfuge.
Once I set foot outside the security of my car I flaneur the park, the street that leads to the ocean and then the dock around my local library. I listen to the one inside as Sam Shepard puts it in his novel of that name.
The philosopher Walter Benjamin gave voice to the state that takes over when I roam my city, intimately connecting yet maintaining distance. I check into the computer station at the library and open a piece I wrote while the pandemic was raging in Peru. I think of the last great, bone nourishing embrace with a friend there on the cobblestone street by the mercado.
Surrounded by the Andes from the north and my indigenous Quechua neighbors to the East, I watch as a new phenomenon intermittently occurs in the dark of my bedroom at night. I chafe uneasily under the alpaca blankets warming my skin against the Andean chill. Episodic memories hover after midnight. They wait, transparent to waking life on the walkway outside my cottage door. Their presence informs my dreams, and even my breathing changes when they hover at the Sacsayhuaman ruins near up the hill from my Peruvian home. The horse trainer visits me one night and we sit, me in his lap, on my patio under the Calca sky.
He saddles a Pinto. I put my boot into his laced fingers as he raises me to the level of the ride. The horse and I gallop across the pastures to the edge of the mountain behind our houses. We take a rocky path, dogs from villagers napping at our heels part of the way. We crest to a plateau, lay in the grass overlooking the valley while the horses meander chewing juicy Bermuda cud.
I return to Los Angeles with a sense of curiosity about the state of the post quarantine metropolis. I walked the beaches along the surf on a rare rainy day. In my twenties as an actor this was my city in every sense; I avoided the blase attitude that the sociologist Georg Simmel thought the defining patterns of constancy with which being a city dweller confined you. It was a survival mechanism, he thought, that kept you from being overwhelmed. I didn’t need that in my twenties and now in the last third of my life it doesn’t seem to be available. And then, a stranger at a Tango lesson tales my hand and leads me toward a place my body drinks in the dance. Unspoken, ageless, a form of primal movement requiring trust. What does the flux we’re in mean for us 21st century inhabitants of cities around the globe? Where is our psychic suit of protection? Is it in the small gesture? Does it transcend time?
I find solace in my roots. I learned as a child the fluidity of nature because I was surrounded by pastures and wet weather creeks and cows and forests that yawned fluid and flexible as an umbrella over my budding sense of self. I call forward the dexterity of my rural youth today as I drive along ribbons of traffic, sit amidst the well and the struggling, allowing the one inside to shift the gears, turn the wheel and apply the brakes when necessary. The perceptions of the urban flaneur penetrate the Now with shades of gray, leaving the extremes of black and white as night seeps in gradations across the sky to day.
As I prepare each week’s new work for Limit Experience Magazine’s Ageless Sexuality series, I feel the work turn from dark to light and back again, sometimes with humor and ever punctuated with moments of quiet, stillness, and rage. No judgement, just lived experience opened to the digital page. The work, new and old brings me joy, contemplation and sometimes rubs against me. evening out rough spots it elucidates change, the only guarantee in life.
After all, perspective is everything; when on the way to meet a friend, Uruguay refused my American passport. Shortly after a long ride into dawn, I stood in the border station watching the bus drive away. Several motorcyclists offered me a ride. We stopped and bought I ought a helmet, slung a leg over a tall stranger’s Harley and the took me to the nearest airport. I took a plane to my friend’s mountain town where we spent several days together. We ate nectarines in the shaft of sunlight over the sheets and communicated through out translation devices about our lives as parents, as visual artists and as new friends we bridged vast gaps on time. I never met his daughter but since I had seen her the year before in my vision in the desert of Joshua Tree I felt I knew her. I never told the man about this earlier meeting. The clock didn’t exist in that space but our connection somehow expanded even as I left post breakfast a week later. The liminal world can do this just as literature can. Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote a book about the kidnappings that took place in Argentina and I read it after I left the man. I went South to the end of the continent and in that city felt his presence and then eventually he again appeared. He’d been handed a Paris assignment and his plane stopped in Buenos Aires where I was lodged at their Congreso. I walked endlessly tracing paths I knew he had taken when he lived there when his daughter was a baby. I got messages he was nearby but I had immersed myself in Marquez; I missed his visit and have not seen him since. Perhaps I write submission calls for Limit Experience Magazine about the dynamics of this time curious about others’ rendezvous with timelessness and love.
AGELESS SEXUALITY SERIES
Andreia Rodrigues, author of Sin & Other Stories, is a Brazilian writer based in Europe. Alongside her work in erotica, she has written a memoir, a romance novel, and a collection of autobiographical essays. Her work has appeared in literary collectives such as Bare Back Magazine and Feminine Collective. Through fiction and autobiographical narratives her writing is dedicated to helping women heal and transcend.
Diane Funston lives in Marysville, CA and is originally from Rochester, NY. She began writing in adolescent angst which ultimately led her to a degree in English from CSU San Marcos. Diane has been published in numerous poetry journals. Her first chapbook was published by Foothills Publishing in 2022
Linda Malm was published as a teen and only returned to poetry after she retired as a college dean. She won a competition to write with the Robert Redford/NM Film Board enterprise and now is publishing poetry. In 2023 Kelsay Books published her first chapbook, “Winded from the Chase.”
John Davis is the author of Gigs, Guard the Dead and The Reservist. His work has appeared in DMQ Review, Iron Horse Literary Review and Terrain.org. He lives on an island in the Salish Sea and performs in several bands.
Andrew Parkinson lives and writes fiction in Vancouver, Canada. His recent work has appeared in DarkWinter Literary Magazine, Porch Literary Magazine, and a ‘long short story’ in The Write Launch. Forthcoming writing will appear in Queen’s Quarterly and Gaslamp Pulp.
FALL 2025
We’re putting the next series together from our most recent Ageless Sexuality: Libidinal Innocence and Wisdom call for submissions.
Next Friday, October 3, we’ll announce the new LE Authors lineup. Take a peak here on LEM in a week.
And, on Wednesday, October 1, a new call for submissions about the chaos of sexuality both personally and collectively begins:
READ the CALL: Figuring Feral: The Great Ephemeral Skin
“That is, to be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others, and yet to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves.” – Clarissa Pinkola Estes
“Sex is kicking death in the ass while singing.” – Charles Bukowski
“Open the so-called body and spread out all its surfaces: not only the skin with each of its folds, wrinkles, scars, with its great velvety planes.” – Jean-Francois Lyotard
Share this opportunity to become a part of the Limit Experience Magazine Contributor’s Mission with your writer groups and friends.
Shan LYU
I.
I stepped into a street buried behind a hidden corner.
The sound of coffee grinding weaves through the streets and alleys,
French toast is sliced, a knife scraping against a porcelain plate, across the street under the gaze of a pale gray Gothic statue.
Blue pinpricks cover the stretched-out skin.
A woman in pain, a body indistinguishable and bodies tangled.
The air carries an inescapable scent of death.
A wave of dizziness washed over me.
II.
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Shan Lyu is an artist and writer based in London. Having completed an MA from the University of the Arts London fine art program, she is taking on a creative writing and artistic practice based in UAL. She works across the mediums of prose, composition and sound art.
DREAMS AND DEMONS
May 02 – Alaina Hammond – Theatre
May 10 – Editor’s Letter
May 16 – Christie Chandler Stahl – Poetry
May 23 – Shan Lyu – Poetry
May 30 – Kelly Piner – Fiction
June 06 – Craig Matsu-Pissot
June 13 – Robert Pope – Fiction
June 20 – Gerrard Sarnat – Poetry
June 27 – Thomas Penn Johnson – Nonfiction
July 04 – Hugh Findlay – Poetry
LEM NEWS
July 04 – Limit Experience Magazine’s SEVEN YEAR CELEBRATION!
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Recently, I went to a screening of the movie, Dune 2. I had an opportunity to attend when Javier Bardem would be there have a conversation after we’d seen it. Without his presence I wouldn’t have been interested in getting myself together early on a Sunday morning even for an epic film in a state of the art theater.
As often happens, the reason I thought I was there, to get some insight about the craft of acting from someone I’ve considered a master at it since his appearance in the Coen Brothers’, No Country for Old Men, 2007. Bardem’s portrayal of the psychopath, Anton Chigurh didn’t just scare me, the character’s implacable machine like propensity to kill rattled primal fear. The movie itself won best picture that year and put the Spain born Bardem on the map as an actor in English language cinema.
Unfortunately, Dune 2’s overblown sense of importance which is magnified by extremely loud bass augmented sound design forgets what Bardem told us yesterday in his talk. Bardem is adept at capturing nuances of evil as witnessed in his work with the Coen Brothers and that same capacity can safely be extended to his 2012, Skyfall portrayal of the madman, Raoul Silva.
In an answer to an audience member’s question he amicably referenced a collaborative effort with Dune director, Denis Villeneuve, to capture the human propensity for humor in dark situations. Bardem can be counted on to use his considerable wit deftly in his work but to trigger that subtle sensorial tickle in the chest that occurs when a dangerous situation is imbued with an actor’s considerable intellect and skill.
However, when Bardem’s character, Stilgar, attempts to insert a moment of transcendence into yet another thundering worm eliciting rhythm to the perpetual wars his people are enduring the tension that surrounds him and is reflected on the faces of much of the rest of the cast constricts instead of amplifies the tone which Stilgar’s supporting cast bounce into the focus of the camera lens. A good laugh breaks into darkness with the power to erase a stilted reality with common sense.
Dune 2 with all it’s seriousness about the life giving essence of water which is so rare as to necessitate certain tribal members appointment as tribal extractors of a the precious substance using tubular objects and needles that they insert in the bodies of living enemies and cadavers alike.
In fact, the overarching theme of Dune 2’s year 10191 plot evolves around the element we take in the 2000s for granted, water. Since scientists have begun to attach a fourth power to H2O by the year of the movie’s release, 2024, what the plot of Dune might have added to Hebert’s story was the fascinatingly mysterious way that water is emerging as a truly mysterious shape-shifting source of contention among theorists and researchers. In a nutshell the fourth power of water transcendes the three we learned about in elementary school. Solid, liquid and gaseous states are familiar and taken for granted. As such the preciousness that water is given in the Dune plot would be much more cogent and effective if this new power, the ability to tunnel through small spaces, very small spaces, with its EZ status, the exclusion state.
Since the Dune universe exists insidie the epitome of grandeur as size the macro aspect of the centerpiece the seemingly endless desert sand dunes of Arrakis which house humongous worms entreated with chariot like service to the tribal lords would give a strong counterpoint to this emerging theory about water’s micro abilities. The contrast might have made the elusiveness of water that the movie struggle to transcribe from the novel to the screen could have been strengthened and made Villaneurve’s remake more engaging because no matter what planet humans inhabi, subliminally we know we need the substance of water. Thus, the world of Dune 2 might have provided Bardem’s talent as well as the rest of the cast with fodder on which to land humor, a much needed fifth element to story, direction, sound design, and cinematography in this two hour and two minute epic.
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My childhood best friend’s social media post about the recent death of her mother, a renowned artist, triggered a memory for me as the tributes and condolences poured in for the family who mourned the loss of a powerful matriarch, the rock of their particular clan. This woman’s middle daughter (my friend’s older sister), as well as, I believe, a young cousin, had been assaulted by an uncle and had sought abortions in the late 1970s. These facts were common knowledge in our small Ontario community, but the general feeling seemed to be that “Uncle T” had issues because he and his wife had never been able to have children of their own, and they subsequently adopted… a preteen girl.
Those were the days! I wonder what happened to the girl who was adopted into that family clan. She was my age, but never fit in with nor was accepted by our friend group, though my best friend would have been her adoptive cousin; we teased her as being a “Lezzie” and were unspeakably cruel in the way that only preteens can be. Of course all of that is water under the bridge of time. It’s not time to remember that; it’s time to celebrate the life of the family matriarch, the artist: all her achievements and the lives she touched. Who knows what she struggled with in the Uncle T years? Was he her brother? Brother-in-law? I don’t even know.
Does every family have a dark secret that may or may not eventually come to light? It’s a bold claim that we all have an Alice Munro skeleton in the family closet, because Munro’s condoning of her husband’s abuse of her daughter seems unthinkably horrific, incomprehensible. Not every family holds that particular secret–though no doubt a fair number of them actually do–but the differences between that situation and those of other families may be simply ones of degree. And of course we’re not simply talking about a secret within a family; rather, it is a question of a suppressed truth. So much sacrificed for the sake of decorum, in that case the preservation of a grande dame of the Canadian literary scene. In other cases, perhaps less extreme (or perhaps not), other sacrifices were made as transgressions were (the cliche is so apt I can’t help but use it) swept under the rug.
Are we about to enter the Me Too Two era? I almost hope so, though (again I can’t resist the cliche) the shit will totally hit the fan. Without even stopping to think, I can list a litany of parallels. My late mother condoned sexualized behaviour initiated by her partner (and others) towards me, on the commune where we both lived in the 1970s. She died without my forgiveness. Without revealing details that would compromise anyone, I can allude to the crimes I’m aware of in my friends’ lives, perpetrated by parents, siblings, roomers, priests, teachers, family friends. I sometimes think that anyone who does not have such a story… simply hasn’t told it yet. Is there a common thread? Yes. Power. The corruption of it, the colonialism of it, the condoning of it.
And what can we do? Fight it, yes. But first, let’s at least acknowledge what has happened. Let’s own it, and let’s try not to be complicit in the great cover-up. One more cliche: Let the chips fall where they may.
Deborah Blenkhorn is a writer and teacher living on Bowen Island in British Columbia. Her work fuses memoir and fiction, and has appeared in such venues as Blank Spaces, Dreamers Creative Writing, and DarkWinter Literary Magazine.
Desire is such a curious thing, universal yet utterly subjective. The earliest teachings of Buddha instruct that the root of suffering is found in desire. If you want more than you presently have, then you will never be satisfied with what exists at your fingertips. This may be true but it is my belief that the root of success may also be located squarely at the center of desire. Desire instructs us. Propels us into motion. Why did the chicken cross the road? Desire. Why else?
I have always been curious about what makes other people tick. WHY they do WHAT they do? I can spend hours sitting quietly on a bench in the mall, watching people walk by. I wonder about what they are wearing, who they are with, what they may be buying. I am a bit of a voyeur, I suppose, but really, people are just so fascinating. Recently, I had an opportunity to explore the nature of desire. It was my intention to find something new and unique to say about it. Legitimate research using books, professional journals and citable sources. Instead, I stepped quite close to the subject and found myself considering desire on a more personal level. What I discovered was not at all what I had set out to find, but in the end, I believe it was exactly what I was looking for.
Note: Upon reflection, I am aware that this story may become a little unseemly. Still, if you continue reading, it is important that you try to consider exactly how these sorts of things develop. In hindsight, it is always easy to see the size and shape of choices, but life doesn’t happen in hindsight. Instead, each progression of events is a ripple, so natural and seamless, as to appear almost inconsequential. After the fact, everything is obvious. Fortunately, the things I gained from this experience turned out to be immeasurably valuable. (And the rest? Eh, the rest was easily discarded.)
Here’s how it happened:
I had been ruminating about an independent study project slotted for my summer break. I needed a way to make-up a few academic hours but I also needed a summer job. The subject of my proposed research project was Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Culture. A large canvas to cover indeed. I enjoy both pop-culture, and an academic examination of Gender and Sex, as much as the next person, maybe even a bit more than some. Still, no one, least of all my academic adviser, wanted to read a 50 page document in which I regurgitated statistics about television vixens or sexist food advertising strategies. Serendipitously, right before summer break began, someone suggested I try exploring the “specificity of desire” – the unique fingerprint of individual desires. This idea sounded as good as any I had considered. What follows is the evolution of that project. This is the (almost) completely true story of how I became a phone-sex operator.
NOTE: At this point in the story, I want to make a confession. I really want you to like me so I feel inclined to tell you what I think you want to hear, and I think you want to hear that I am not the kind of girl who would consider taking a job as a phone-sex operator. At the risk of disappointing you, dear reader, the truth is far less flattering. Taking the job was not a difficult decision to make. Almost as soon as the idea popped into my head, on some level I already knew that I was going to make it happen. That is just the way I operate. “Wow, that stove eye looks hot. I think I’ll touch it and find out.”
As it turned out, the real challenge was not deciding to take the job. The real challenge was explaining this plan in a way that did not make me (1) sound like a lunatic or (2) feel like a prostitute. Nevertheless, I did rationalize this peculiar decision, to my closest friends, to my academic advisor, and to myself. I explained that I only intended to be employed in this questionable profession for a short time and then I reminded everyone that it would be criminal to decline the chance to make money by earning class credits. Privately, the thought of doing something so naughty was absolutely irresistible. I was bored and I needed to be reminded that I was still capable of surprise. Besides, how hard was it really going to be, sitting in an air-conditioned house, talking on the telephone?
NOTE: In case you are thinking that I am very clever for coming up with this money-making / credit-earning scheme, please consider carefully. Nothing can prepare you for phone sex with strangers. Nothing, that is, except maybe previous phone sex with strangers.
In order to get approval for this unusual scheme, I performed a little song-and-dance routine for my academic advisor and eventually got a (reluctant) thumbs-up. I poked around the internet for a while, called a few friends, peeked into a few cyber-windows, and eventually found an agency. Within two weeks of submitting an online application to a national chat line service, I was hired, trained, and given an access number. The training consisted of some dirty Instant Messaging with a professional operator. She typed something dirty and I typed an equally dirty response, then she analyzed my banter. After only about an hour or so, she suggested I say ‘cock’ more often and then she pronounced me ready-for-service.
NOTE: This leads me to a frequently ignored fact about phone sex: Only men call. It does not matter who answers, the caller is almost always male. The reasons for this gender anomaly are perhaps better left for another day, but I thought it was worth mentioning – men make almost all of the dirty calls. But really, is that surprising to anyone?
Once training was complete, my next task was to design a character that would entice potential callers into pulling out their credit cards and picking up the telephone. I was instructed to try to sound sexy but remain accessible. I was warned to avoid cliché stripper names, which meant I had to abandon my hopes of calling myself Hunny Potter. “Choose a name that won’t make you giggle when introducing yourself” my trainer suggested “Choose something feminine and familiar.” I decided to choose a name that was enough like my own that I would not forget who I was supposed to be. With my name chosen and my identity outlined, it was time to set up my first audio profile.
Hi, I’m Jenny. I’m 5’8”, 27 years old, long dark hair with an athletic build. I have a boring day-job so at night I really want to get WILD. There’s no need to keep listening to these recordings. Go ahead and choose me, at extension blah, blah, blah. We’re gonna have so much fun.
(Wait for it, wait for it… my purring tagline)
Come on, you know you want to.
And although NOTHING in this description was even remotely true, they did want to. They wanted to call and they wanted to talk to Jenny. They began calling within twenty minutes of signing-on and they called regularly until I finally deleted my listing. Suffice it to say that at a minimum of twenty calls per week, it doesn’t take long to decide if professional telephone sex operator is the right occupation for any reasonable person.
The calls ranged in length from thirty second calls to thirty minute ‘pre-paid’ calls. Every call was different. Some callers wanted to tell me things, some wanted me to tell them things. Some calls were lewd and disturbing while others were ordinary and tame. No matter the call, my objective was the same: be good at the job, but not TOO good. Keep them engaged for a minimum of six minutes. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how to earn maximum dollars as a phone sex operator. Long calls equal more money.
The pay scale for most agencies breaks down about the same: under six minutes and the operator earns .10 cents per minute; over six minutes and s/he earns up to .40 cents per minute. It is easy to see that a few minutes can make a substantial difference over a week’s time. Unfortunately, anyone who has ever tried to slow down sex, without stopping it completely, knows how tricky that can be. When it comes to sex, there is a kind-of ‘point-of-no-return’ and that point is not always easy to recognize, especially with a total stranger who is panting obscenities into the telephone receiver. Add a price tag of $1.99 per minute and you can see why this is a skill that must be cultivated in order to be a successful operator.
Once I had secured my employment, it occurred to me that I might actually be bad at phone sex. Admittedly, I have been kissed before but I do not have much experience talking about it. I wondered if my imagination would hold up under close inspection. My trainer’s only advice, “In for a penny, in for a pound.” (Sadly, her advice was far less valuable once I realized she was a phone sex operator who billed herself as a “telephone actress” without an ounce of irony.)
In addition to my concern about my own sexual imagination, I had worried about a couple of other things. Firstly, I was afraid that phone-sex might be too weird or terrible or disturbing. Although I am not a complete innocent, I really did not know what to expect. Secondly, and maybe worse, I was afraid that the illicit nature of the job might actually turn out to be something I enjoyed. I knew that it would be understandable, possibly even redeeming, if I was a terrible phone sex operator. If, on the other hand, I sat around all day with my hand shoved down the front of my pants, waiting for the telephone to ring…well, that would be very unfortunate.
As it turns out, although I wasn’t a “natural”, I adjusted far more quickly than I had expected. By the end of the first week, I was quietly doing house work or eating dinner while engaging in some pretty salty conversations. Luckily, when an operator purrs “Mmmm” into the telephone, it is almost impossible to discern whether it is sexual ecstasy or simply that she has a mouth full of red beans and rice. During most of the calls, I was either totally disinterested or mildly repulsed. There were a lot of times when I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing, and a couple of times when I wanted to hang-up and take a shower. Still, hidden amongst the sometimes silly, frequently vile, interactions were a couple of times when I was genuinely engaged and even once or twice when I was a little turned-on. Not many times, of course, but to be completely honest, there were a few.
I remained an awkward operator, embarrassed most of the time, and that NEVER got any easier for me. Each time I said hello, my hands trembled a little and my stomach flipped. I stumbled through the initial greetings and struggled to make small talk. It was difficult not to ask personal questions to ease the awkwardness. “Where do you live?” “What do you do for a living?” After a while I realized that if I could make it through the first few minutes, I usually picked up a kind-of rhythm. I never got very good at it but after a while, I also was not completely terrible. Turns out, when it comes to phone sex, not being terrible is pretty much all that is required. These men are not calling for subtlety or nuance; they are calling for telephone sex. I did not have to be talented; I just had to be willing.
To clock-in each day, I dialed an 800 number and typed in a code. After that, my telephone would only ring from the chatline switchboard, until I called again and retyped the code to clock-out. When working, I would pick up the receiver after the first ring and immediately hear a ‘whisper message’, the switchboard operator preparing me for the caller. The best whisper messages announced ‘prepaid’ calls. A 15 to 30 minute call prepaid with a credit card. These calls offered just enough time to relax and get acquainted, but not so long as to fall in love. 15 minutes may not sound like a lot of time, I know, but once the call has been made and the caller is sitting with his cock in his hand, I imagine it can feel like an eternity if done properly.
Bad calls were known as ‘hard-core’ or ‘cum’ calls. The whisper message before one of these calls was hissed into the phone like an air-raid siren announcing incoming fire. “John wants a blowjob. HARD CORE, HARD CORE!” Sexline operators translate “hard core” to mean a battle of wills. A battle to postpone orgasm by any means necessary. Sometimes I would try a sneaky-distraction: “Tell me where you’re sitting so I can imagine you. Sofa, recliner? Mmmm, I love a big old recliner.” Inside, I would be thinking, “Really, Jenny? Really? A recliner. Is that what does it for you?” With other callers, I would use the subtle shame approach, “God, I love a man who knows what he wants but waits on me. You don’t want to finish TOO fast and leave me all hot and bothered. That wouldn’t be very nice.” Again, I’d have to wonder if nice was a real concern to this man whose only instruction thus far had been, “Suck it good, slut.”
Note: I am sure if given a few minutes and a frosty mug or two, most of you could come-up with almost every scenario. A dude in lacy panties, a guy who wants to be called names because his penis is tiny and (my personal favorite) the man who wants you to put your feet on his ‘junk.’ Simply try to imagine all the things no self-respecting person would admit to enjoying and that is what phone sex involves.
The biggest surprise during my experience was the nature of the hang-up. The closing of every call was exactly the same. Click, THE END. It never varied, not one bit. No matter the call type or the caller’s disposition, every call ended with, “Pant, pant… click…” No one ever said “Thanks Jenny, that was great.” Or even a simple “Good-bye.” Nope, all I got was a grunt and a dial tone, every single time. EVERY! SINGLE! TIME! The embarrassing part is that sometimes I would still be talking, right in the middle of saying something filthy, and they’d finish and hang-up. It might be a minute or two before I realized I was whispering into a dead line. Look, I was not expecting a love song or a gift card to Target, but for heaven’s sake, an acknowledgement might have been nice.
After one very strange summer, I decided that I had probably learned everything I could from phone sex. I did not hate the men who had called but I disliked most of them a little. I was not irreparably damaged by the experience but I was altered in some fundamental way. I had come into the project with a fairly broad sense of sexual ethics, believing healthy sex to be any informed and consensual act of shared pleasure by two (or more) consenting adults. As long as there was no coercion, no children, and no animals, whatever grown people wanted to do together was just fine. It could be tender and loving, but it did not have to be. I was comfortable knowing that some couples would caress each other gently while others would make use of a brass-handled hair brush and a couple of little wooden clothespins. What I mean to say is— I knew from the start that pleasure for one might not be pleasure for another and that made perfect sense to me. These men, however, managed to reduce sex to a bodily function, like having a shit or blowing your nose, and that, though not surprising, was a little disappointing.
On the day I told my best friend that I had finally decided to resign my position as a “telephone actress” and begin the process of piecing together my research, his only question was, “Did you learn anything from the experience?” I did not know the answer to that question then, but after taking some time to process, I believe I do now. The answer is both yes, and no. Yes, I did learn a bit about professional phone sex (say cock a lot) and about kink culture (say cock a lot), but I did not have any startling revelations about the nature of desire. Working as a phone sex operator simply confirmed many of the things I had already come to believe over the years:
(1) People usually desire most things which are forbidden to them.
(2) No one is ever as normal as they seem.
(3) Sex without context is no more significant than a finger in another person’s ear.
(4) Pushed far enough, every open-minded, sexually-evolved person will eventually furrow their brow and say, “Well now, THAT is just plain weird!”
I am still not sure whether desire is located at the heart of suffering or the center of success but perhaps these two locations are not mutually exclusive. As Lawrence Block famously said, “Look for something, find something else, and realize that what you’ve found is more suited to your needs than what you thought you were looking for.” If desire is wanting, then perhaps happiness is seeking and that, dear reader, makes perfect sense to me.
Suzanne Lea is a coffee drinking, bleeding-heart liberal, book-worm with an affinity for dark chocolate and swear words. She has been published in numerous ‘zines and journals, as well as the print anthology Crooked Letter i: Coming Out in the South, with a foreword by Dorothy Allison, published by New South Books.
LE Limit Experience Journal’s mission revolves around giving voice to the libidinally marginalized. Had you worked explicitly with this topic before submitting your piece to LEJ? If so, what aspect of the topic keeps you engaged. If it’s a new arena, what enticed you this time?
SCB I love the phrase “Libidinally marginalized!” I have lived with the topic for the better part of my life although I’ve more recently begun to write from and about it. My forthcoming collection, Transitory, from BOA Editions, is a chronicling of and reckoning with murders of Transgender people in 2020 interspersed with stories of my own experience as a Queer person. My new work in progress is more explicitly exploring the forces of family, community, and society that marginalized me in this way.
LE Sigmund Freud considered the libidinal energies to center around sexuality. His protege Carl Jung expanded the notion of the libido to include a more generalized richness of creative output. In terms of your work how would you describe your professional relationship to the libidinal realm?
SCB Interestingly (to me, at least) my first engagement with LEJ was with the Sacral/Sacred issue which featured some poems of mine that are more aligned with Jung’s interpretation. How do we characterize embodied consciousness, which to me is the “creation point” for all of life? So for me, the libidinal energies are interwoven: the sexual and the creative cannot be separated. My exploration of the sexual has fed and been fed by the explosion of greater creativity.
“For me, being embodied is a form of libidinal well being.” – SCB
LE How do you contextualize libidinal well being and is it necessarily part of a circuitous self-discovery process that you enlist in when putting time into the endeavor you’ve set before yourself as a creative?
SCB Wellness of Being is my innate state. Even when I am experiencing discomfort, which is fairly regularly on a day-to-day, moment-by-moment basis in the world we live in, I am sourced by Being and resting in it. For me, being embodied is a form of libidinal well being. I’m alive with my own creative source. I feel my own sexual energy as inextricable from creativity.
LE Describe your relationship to the ego while working in terms of how you deal with what some consider the last effort of the creative process, offering the effect of your process to the external gaze.
SCB There’s a way that ego is the driving force in creating. We are; I am. There’s a driving force in me that moves me to attune, listen, feel, and then create. The end point, or what you call the “last effort” feels essential to me. I write to be read, to share my lived experience with others who can relate to or glean something from it. Even though I am part of two writing groups who help me to refine my work, editors do a big part of that. I send work out, often in the white heat of “completion,” and then when work is declined by editors, after a point I revisit the work to see how I might continue to refine it.
LE What percentage of your creative engagement is never seen by anyone but you? What does it mean to you to maintain this private space with the passage of an idea, an image, an impulse?
SCB The best metaphor for this for me is the iceberg. So much of my creative force is internal. I spend a lot of time alone and alone in nature–a very wild, spare, unpopulated place. A lot of my creation happens there. Or it happens inside of me as a feeling, or an impulse. All of that is essential and private and unseen. Then it emerges above water so to speak and is seen by others. It’s essential for me to have this privacy. Without it, there would be no externalized “work.”
LE Which writers, filmmakers, musicians, and artists inspire you to be more daring and dangerous with your transparency as a person and as a creator?
SCB Joni Mitchell has long been an inspiration for daring and dangerous transparency. I think of albums like Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter which is a great examination of collective and individual shadow. For poets: Diane Seuss, Dana Levin, Dustin Pearson, Luther Hughes, Nickole Brown, Jennifer Martelli–these are the ones that first come to mind. I’m drawn to and nourished by poets who reveal themselves with daring and authenticity.
LE What question would you most like to ask an experiencer of your work?
SCB Do you feel me? Did I move you? (that’s two, but they’re closely related).
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