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Sex (Writing) and Stage Fright by Rachel Kramer Bussel

You might think that after

giving and organizing readings since 2001, I’d have the hang of it by now. While I can, indeed, get up before people and read my work, usually of the X-rated variety, I’ll never be a natural performer like some of my comedian friends, able to command any stage I stand on before I’ve even opened my mouth. If anything, my stage presence says, “Nervous girl. Let’s get this over with as quickly as possible.” I run a monthly erotic reading series, In The Flesh, in a cozy downtown New York bar where I bring people in to tell dirty stories, the kind that use words like “cock,” “cunt,” and “pussy.”

As much as I may advise them to be fearless and speak loud and proud, when I start to read one of my smutty tales, I often revert to my most petrified state. The setting for my series, a former massage parlor turned bar called Happy Ending, features plush red velvet banquets and very supportive crowd, but even there, I sometimes find myself faltering. It’s a challenge to really own the words on the page, to enunciate them as proudly and powerfully as when I write them. There’s a line I’ll read from my story “Like This” in my latest book Hide and Seek: 21 Tales of Exhibitionism & Voyeurism, that goes, “I know exactly how powerful my pussy is to him, and how hungry he is for it, and I will gladly open wide to offer myself as his own private sexual all-you-can-eat buffet.” I like how the words work in the story, but am sure my cheeks will turn bright red when I utter them aloud.

I’ve gotten used to making eye contact when I can, pausing for laughs, sensing the audience’s comfort level, and usually hit my stride about a third of the way through. I’ve made my peace with knowing I very well may be causing erections and arousal with my words, a heady though powerful sensation. If I’m doing my job right, there should be some heavy breathing in the room . . . but not too heavy. Yet I sense that even if I were reading something completely tame, my heart would still be pounding like crazy.

Recently, I did a reading that had me literally trembling. It was a launch party for a new website called Sex in the Public Square held at a spacious local cafe. I had chosen to read a story I wrote under a male pseudonym I’ve come to adopt when I want to go to a different place in my writing. Writing as a guy allows me to be macho, dominant, horny, and simply filthy in ways writing as a woman just doesn’t. It’s not that my female-bylined writing is more passive or flowery, but simply that my metaphorical cock swells and grows, able to wield all its might when I don’t have to worry about attaching my name to the naughty words I’m penning. (That being said, I just wrote a story with my byline about a woman who orchestrates her own bukkake party.)

I’m not sure why I was shaking so badly, the words tripping, tumbling, skipping and jumping out of my mouth, rather than moving at a smooth, even pace. I could hear my voice echoing back at me and wondered if I was losing some of the narrator’s authoritativeness to my own shakiness. I stopped earlier than I’d planned to, and left the stage feeling like I’d somehow failed but was reassured that I was a hit and had successfully grabbed people’s attention, nerves and all.

The dirty little secret of erotica is that over half of us, by my estimation, are using pseudonyms for various reasons. Some write in other genres and don’t want to confuse the two. Some only feel free to be as X-rated as they want to be when they know nobody in their real life can attack their smut to them. One writer I’ve published doesn’t even want copies of the anthologies his work is published in because his wife doesn’t approve of his writing. I say, use whatever will get you to put the words on the page and out into the world.

In person, though, we can’t hide behind pseudonyms. Even if you’re being introduced as “Writer X” and you’re really “Writer Y,” all those lurking fears can rise to the surface. As much as it makes me nervous, I love the feeling right after I’m done reading, when people are clapping, and I know I’ve gotten through something difficult. Part of the reason I landed a two book deal with Bantam, part of Random House, is that an editor at another house saw me read once, liked my work, and let my agent know. That feedback and encouragement spurred me on. You never know who’s watching and listening, or what parts they’ll pick up on. I’ve found that audiences are hungry for erotic material read aloud to them, because it’s such a rarity. There’s an intimacy that comes with this type of writing, and a power as well, and I’m thrilled to get the chance to share that energy with people month after month.

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