June 21st is GLBT Night!

IN THE FLESH EROTIC READING SERIES
GAY, LESBIAN, BISEXUAL & TRANSGENDER (GLBT) EROTICA NIGHT
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21 at 8 PM
AT HAPPY ENDING LOUNGE, 302 BROOME STREET
(B/D to Grand, J/M/Z to Bowery, F to Delancey, http://www.happyendinglounge.com)
Admission: Free
Happy Ending Lounge: 212-334-9676
http://inthefleshreadingseries.blogspot.com

This Gay Pride month, come celebrate queerness in all its rainbow of colors with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender erotica at In The Flesh! Delight in these lusty tales by Cheryl B. (Coming Out of the Closet Again, Small Spiral Notebook), Trebor Healey (Through It Came Bright Colors, Sweet Son of Pan), Gena Hymowech (Afterellen.com, First-Timers, Black Table), Sam J. Miller (Best Gay Erotica 2006, Velvet Mafia), Scott Pomfret (Romentics, Hot Sauce) and Jane Vincent (Educated Slut blog, Everything You Know About Sex Is Wrong), and host Rachel Kramer Bussel. Rachel will be celebrating and signing copies of her latest anthologies, First-Timers: True Stories of Lesbian Awakening and Glamour Girls: Femme/Femme Erotica. Books will be given away as door prizes and free candy and mini cupcakes will be served.

In the Flesh is a monthly reading series hosted at the appropriately named Happy Ending Lounge, and features the city's best erotic writers sharing stories to get you hot and bothered, hosted and curated by Village Voice sex columnist and acclaimed erotic writer and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel. From erotic poetry to down and dirty smut, these authors get naked on the page and will make you lust after them and their words. Future themed nights include GLBT stories, porn star night, and erotic memoirs.

Rachel Kramer Bussel is a New York City-based author and editor. She is Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations and a Contributing Editor and columnist for Penthouse, writes the Lusty Lady column for The Village Voice, and conducts interviews for Gothamist.com and Mediabistro.com. Her erotic stories have appeared in over 60 anthologies, including Best American Erotica 2004 and 2006, and she’s edited her own collections, including Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z 1 and 2, Up All Night, First-Timers, Glamour Girls, and the forthcoming Ultimate Undies, Sexiest Soles, Secret Slaves, and Caught Looking: Erotic Tales of Voyeurs and Exhibitionists. Rachel has also written for AVN, Bust, Metro, New York Post, Punk Planet, Time Out New York and Velvetpark. http://www.rachelkramerbussel.com

Cheryl B. is an award-winning poet and writer. Her work appears in dozens of print and online publications including; BLOOM, Small Spiral Notebook, The Guardian, Reactions 5, and Pills, Thrills, Chills and Heartache. She has received a fellowship from the
New York Foundation for the Arts and has been a resident at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She curates and hosts the monthly ATOMIC Reading Series and she is the creator and producer of PVC: The Poetry vs. Comedy Variety Show. Cheryl is the editor of the forthcoming anthology Coming Out of the Closet Again: Queer Women on Loving Men (2007, Suspect Thoughts Press). She lives in Brooklyn and online at www.cherylb.com.

Trebor Healey is the author of a novel, Through It Came Bright Colors (Harrington Park Press, 2003), and a book of erotic poems, Sweet Son of Pan (Suspect Thoughts Press, 2006). His work has appeared in Best Gay Erotic 2003, 2004, 2006 and Best of Best Gay Erotic; the Bad Boy Book of Erotic Poetry; Queer Dharma; Holy Titclamps; Van Go’s Ear; and,dozens of other anthologies and journals. He wrote the hit single “Denny” for the Queercore band, Pansy Division.

Gena Hymowech is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in over 20 venues, including the New York Post, Time Out New York Kids, Complete Woman, Black Table and AfterEllen.com. Her first anthology work will be appearing (under a pseudonym) in First-Timers: True Stories of Lesbian Awakening. She used a pseudonym for that essay because the event happened at one of her last jobs and she really doesn’t want to be sued. If you get her drunk enough at the In the Flesh event though, she might tell you where it occurred, among other things. She lives in Brooklyn.

Sam J. Miller is a community organizer. His writing has been published in Velvet Mafia, Smut!, In The Fray, and Best Gay Erotica 2006, among others. He lives in the Bronx with his partner of four years. When he's not writing or organizing poor people to fight for social justice, he's binging on old movies and punk rock. Drop him a line at samjmiller79@yahoo.com.

Scott Pomfret puts fun and romance back into gay erotica with his funny, tender yet still smokin' hot stories. Together with his real-life boyfriend (also named Scott), he writes the Romentics series of romance novels for gay men (www.romentics.com). His stories have appeared in Best Gay Erotica, Playguy, Honcho, In Touch for Men, Hot Gay Erotica, Alyson Books' Friction series, Best Gay Love Stories 2005 and 2006, and numerous other anthologies. For more information, see http://www.scottpomfret.com.

Jane Vincent is a sexuality educator, smut writer, and certified sex coach who holds a BS in human sexuality. She has published diverse works ranging from A Baby Dyke Learns to Score to Gonorrhea – Questions & Answers. As the educated slut, she takes it to the streets and the sheets and lives to blog the tale at educatedslut.blogspot.com. She currently practices her unique blend of sexual activism in Houston, TX.

Perhaps the best In The Flesh photo ever

Perhaps the best In The Flesh photo ever
Originally uploaded by rkb1.

Hotties Josh Kilmer-Purcell (I Am Not Myself These Days) and Jessica Cutler (The Washingtonienne) vamp it up after they wow the crowd at In The Flesh Reading Series, Happy Ending Lounge, April 20th, 2006. FYI, they are joking around! But it's funny nonetheless. I'm gonna be totally unprofessional and say that I wouldn't kick any of the readers that night out of bed for eating crackers. Hotness all around, and major guts for spilling their true sex confessions.

Photo by Brian Van

Handmade prop courtesy of Jessica

And now for May 17th...

IN THE FLESH EROTIC READING SERIES
WEDNESDAY MAY 17 at 8 PM
AT HAPPY ENDING LOUNGE, 302 BROOME STREET
(B/D to Grand, J/M/Z to Bowery, F to Delancey, http://www.happyendinglounge.com)
Admission: Free
Happy Ending Lounge: 212-334-9676
http://inthefleshreadingseries.blogspot.com

In May, celebrate spring with an assortment of New York’s finest authors, from the fiction of Ron Bass, to CAKE co-founder Emily Scarlet Kramer, “Ivy League Homegirl” Sofia Quintero (aka Black Artemis), Edges: O Israel, O Palestine author Leora Skolkin-Smith, all the way from San Francisco, Charlie Anders (Choir Boy, She's Such a Geek) and the racy words of Polly Frost who wrote Vivid Girl Tawny Roberts’s novel Private Access, along with new work by host Rachel Kramer Bussel. Copies of Divas Don't Yield, Edges: O Israel, O Palestine, Private Access and Polly Frost's Eros Comic will be raffled off as door prizes. Free candy and mini cupcakes will be served.

In the Flesh is a monthly reading series hosted at the appropriately named Happy Ending Lounge, and features the city's best erotic writers sharing stories to get you hot and bothered, hosted and curated by Village Voice sex columnist and acclaimed erotic writer and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel. From erotic poetry to down and dirty smut, these authors get naked on the page and will make you lust after them and their words. Future themed nights include GLBT stories, porn star night, and erotic memoirs.

Rachel Kramer Bussel is a New York City-based author and editor. She is Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations and a Contributing Editor and columnist for Penthouse and writes the Lusty Lady column for The Village Voice. Her erotic stories have appeared in over 50 anthologies, including Best American Erotica 2004 and 2006, and she’s edited her own collections, including Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z 1 and 2, Up All Night, Glamour Girls, First-Timers and the forthcoming Ultimate Undies, Sexiest Soles, Secret Slaves and Caught Looking. Rachel has also written for AVN, Bust, Metro, New York Post, Punk Planet, Time Out New York and Velvetpark. http://www.rachelkramerbussel.com

Charlie Anders can jump up to 100 feet in the air, but can't walk. She lives in a hot air balloon over Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Her novel Choir Boy (Soft Skull Press 2005) is a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award. She's the co-editor of the anthology She's Such A Geek (Seal Press 2006), publisher of other magazine and organizer of the Writers With Drinks reading series. www.charlieanders.com

Ron Bass recently read in the Swift Ink reading series at Swift Hibernian Tavern. His short story The Varieties of Orgasmic Experience and his interview with the writer/director Dan Roentsch have been published on the Erotic Authors Association website. He is currently working on To My Twenty-Fifth Century Biographers, a novel about the life and times of the controversial Pultizer Prize winning poet, Brockden ("Bronc") White.

Polly Frost's short story collection Deep Inside: Extreme Erotic Fantasies will be published next year by Tor. She also recently collaborated with the artist Jess Fink on the "Head 14" anthology of graphic stories for Eros Comix, which will be out in February. She also wrote the Vivid Girls Tawny Roberts novel Private Access, which has just been published. With her husband, Ray Sawhill, Polly co-writes the ongoing erotic soap opera, "Sex Scenes," that's read by actors in monthly performances at Cornelia Street Cafe and other venues. In addition to her erotica, Polly has written on movies, books, food and music, and her humor pieces were published in the New Yorker. Her website is http://pollyfrost.com/

Emily Scarlet Kramer is the co-founder of CAKE, an entertainment company dedicated to providing education and information about female sexual culture, and the co-author of A Piece of CAKE: Recipes for Female Sexual Pleasure. She received her B.A. in Women and Gender Studies from Columbia University and has spent the last five years writing about female sexuality and actively educating women on the subject. http://www.CAKEnyc.com

Self-proclaimed "Ivy League homegirl," Sofia Quintero was born and raised in a Puerto Rican-Dominican family in the Bronx where she still resides. She is the author of the "chica lit" novel Divas Don’t Yield and also pens hip hop fiction under the pseudonym Black Artemis. She co-founded the nonprofit Chica Luna Productions (www.chicaluna.com) as well as Sister Outsider Entertainment (www.sisteroutsider.biz) Sofia's first erotic novella will appear in an anthology of Latina authors to be published by Atria/Simon & Schuster in 2007. http://www.myspace.com/sofiaquintero

Leora Skolkin-Smith’s novel Edges: O Israel, O Palestine, was selected by Grace Paley for Glad Day Books. Also nominated for this years 2006 PEN/Hemingway Award by Grace Paley, Edges is Skolkin-Smith’s first published full-length novel. Born in Manhattan in 1952, Leora spent her childhood between New York and Israel, traveling with her family to her mother's birthplace in old Jerusalem every three years. http://www.leoraskolkinsmith.com

And now for the recaps from the readers and audience members

Audacia Ray had a fabulous time and here's audio Audacia

So did Judy McGuire

Jessica Cutler wishes she'd had a hairbrush - we need a photo of her prop pronto to really do the reading justice!

Felicia Sullivan was thrilled to talk about porn and her John Holmes obsession

Dan Allen's entire tale is online

Josh Kilmer-Purcell is probably still recovering from our apperance on The Joey Reynolds Show - okay, he finally posted his recap.

Miriam Datskovsky is too busy to blog but said it was a great relief from the stress of school

From attendees (send me your writeup if you don't see it here to rachelkb at gmail.com):

Nerve.com's Scanner correspondent F. Russell captures Jessica Cutler's tampon story with syntax.

The lovely Viviane weighs in on her favorite readers and just how filthy things got!

AM NY columnist Julia Allison on why she's glad she came out to the event - us sex and dating columnist chicas need to stick together!

Gillian Leigh has also posted some great photos

Nichelle, my fellow cupcake blogger and co-producer of Chicks and Giggles, who said the sweetest thing:

The talent and beauty in Happy Ending was almost overwhelming. I got to see old friends and meet people who I previously only knew via email. I am so proud of RKB, because as a fellow producer, I know how good it feels put on an event, entertain and bring people together. It was a smashing success!

Flora Fling on the "f*ckability factor:"

There were no boundaries last night. One-night stands, sex in public, fisting, the lousiest lay ever, you name it, these readers wrote it. Quality, heartfelt writing no matter how filthy the subject. Each reader was as entertaining as the previous one.

Next up, reader number 4 and the first male reader for the evening, Dan Allen. A tall, skinny comedian and blogger. Not a guy I would immediately be attracted to....but then there's the f*ckability factor

The title of Urban Gypsy's post is "Cock & Dumplings" - you've gotta read it just for that, though it's omstly about food and fucking and not so much the reading series, though if In The Flesh inspires people to sex things up, that's cool by me.

Audacia Ray at the mic

Audacia Ray
Originally uploaded by brianvan.

Audacia Ray asked and answered the question: "What's a Little Fisting Between Friends?"

See all of Brian Van's photos from last night's In The Flesh

The adorable Miriam Datskovsky at In The Flesh

The adorable Miriam Datskovsky at In The Flesh
Originally uploaded by rkb1.

Miriam Datskovsky laughs at her failure to have sex in the Butler stacks

Taken by Brian Van on April 19th, 2006 at In The Flesh Reading Series

True Sex Confessions TONIGHT at In The Flesh!!!

As seen in Flavorpill and Jossip and the Hoboken Reporter (and now on YouTube!), tonight is the BIG night. All my readers are fabulous and are going to kick ass, and I'm also going to be on the radio at 1 am with Josh Kilmer-Purcell on The Joey Reynolds Show on WOR 710 radio. Get to Happy Ending early to get a seat!

We've got a comedian, a blogger/Playboy model/novelist/scandal star, a college sex columnist, a former drag queen who has a special surprise during his set, an advice columnist, an editor/sex worker/nude model and an editor/memoirist (and me!) all sharing their true sex confessions. And free candy and mini cupcakes. What more could you ask for?

Here's a teaser: someone's talking about their porn obsession, someone's shoving candy up their ass (or mimicking it), someone's talking about trying to have sex in the stacks, someone's talking about unprotected sex, someone's talking about bad reasons to have sex, someone's talking about a visit with a prostitute, and someone's talking about fisting. You have to show up tonight to find out who's who!

IN THE FLESH EROTIC READING SERIES
TRUE SEX CONFESSIONS NIGHT
WEDNESDAY APRIL 19 at 8 PM
AT HAPPY ENDING LOUNGE, 302 BROOME STREET
(B/D to Grand, J/M/Z to Bowery, F to Delancey, http://www.happyendinglounge.com)
Admission: Free
Happy Ending Lounge: 212-334-9676
http://inthefleshreadingseries.blogspot.com

In April, New York’s hottest personalities share their 100% true sex confessions. From bad sex to porn obsessions to prostitutes and more, they’ll make you cringe, laugh, and turn you on (maybe even all three at once!). Featuring comedian Dan Allen, blogger and novelist Jessica Cutler (The Washingtonienne), Columbia Spectator sex columnist Miriam Datskovsky, memoirist and ex-drag queen Josh Kilmer-Purcell (I Am Not Myself These Days), Dategirl columnist Judy McGuire, nude model, porn reviewer, and sex worker Audacia Ray (WakingVixen.com), memoirist and editor Felicia Sullivan, and your host, Rachel Kramer Bussel. Audience members will have the opportunity to anonymously submit their own true sex confessions to be read aloud. Free refreshments of the sweet variety will be served. Plus there are many, many books and magazines being raffled off as door prizes in between readers.

In the Flesh is a monthly reading series hosted at the appropriately named Happy Ending Lounge, and features the city's best erotic writers sharing stories to get you hot and bothered, hosted and curated by Village Voice sex columnist and acclaimed erotic writer and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel. From erotic poetry to down and dirty smut, these authors get naked on the page and will make you lust after them and their words. Future themed nights include GLBT stories, porn star night, and erotic memoirs.

Flavorpill!

Okay, now you really better get there early and be prepared to stand!

Flavorpill on tomorrow's In The Flesh

Everyone likes a dirty story. From housewives and their throbbing-member paperbacks to the literati giggling over Joyce's letters to Nora, there's always been a place in literature for the felicitous four-letter word. Happy Ending Lounge indulges this age-old yearning in its new erotic reading series. As host, the Voice's own Lusty Lady, Rachel Kramer Bussel, instructs us on the dangers of drunk sex while encouraging us to get drunk and talk about sex. Although this month's topic is true confessions, we're sure Bussel will only be satisfied if you come again and again.

-CA

Note: In the Flesh takes place the third Wednesday of every month.

In The Flesh in Metro

Thanks to Dacia (her summary: "bar, free event, candy, story about fisting") for snagging this and to Amy Benfer at Metro for listing it! Seriously, people, it's gonna be packed from all that I'm hearing. And I wrote a witty line that's the highlight of my piece that you really won't want to miss - let's just say, a woman scorned and all that . . .