Readings in Bed and the Literary Death Match

Litquake Gets in bed with Erotica Authors

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Day seven of Litquake found me celebrating Halloween early: zombie-style. The first part of the day went well-enough - despite waking up after only two hours of sleep I rose with gusto. Supperclub and literary death match! Erotica followed by boisterous contestery. I was stoked, not tired.

Supperclub's event, curated by Nina Lesowitz, was quite a shocking surprise for me. I was excited to return to supperclub but not ecstatic about the authors. Nothing against them - I'm simply unfamiliar and largely uninterested in the genre, and therefore did not know any authors except Stephen Elliott (thanks to an ex-girlfriend).

But the scene was set for success. It's hard to go wrong when you put five prolific sex writers on the same bed and surround them with other beds full of avid listeners, dim LED mood-changers, and an exuberant host. In retrospect, supperclub's readings made the Literary Death Match look like a children's game. But we'll get to that.

Each of the readers got six minutes. Stephen, who founded the Progressive Reading Series and edits The Rumpus, read from his new book The Adderrall Diaries a passage of masochism that moderator David Henry Sterry called "twisted and grotesque" but I found to be tender and sensitive, if a sign of the protagonist's weaknesses. I don't understand the need to be dominated or to have one's sex represent a "capacity for pain." I'll admit my inexperience, though, and move on.

Before SFGate columnist, bestselling author and sex educator Violet Blue read a friend's piece entitled "This Call May be Monitored for Quality Assurance," she gave us a sneak peek of what was to go on after the readings and Q&A: spankings! For a good cause, of course. All donations went to Litquake to keep the quality coming. ...er. umm...

The story recounts a phone call between a telemarketer and sex operator and includes, and really begins with, the line "Telemarketing is naughty." Funny and sexy, the room's atmosphere changed quite tangibly.

Things did not get any less charged when Penthouse contributing editor and CarnalNation columnist Rachel Kramer Bussel read a selection from her new book Peep Show entitled "I've Only Got Eyes for You." She skipped from hot passages to sexier ones, recounting a woman's willingness to be videotaped out of love for her lover and raising some interesting questions in the process. How much of yourself do you give out of love for another person? The thought made her blush, but she still grabbed her toes to show her lover as much of her "sex" as she could. And the blushing brought about her very own thrills.

Film writer and author of The Riddle of the Sands Geoff Knight was next. Who doesn't love an Aussie accent? He prefaced his reading by saying "It actually says ass in the book, but I'm going to say ozz because I sound like an ozz when I say ass." Every character in his book, he explained, is basically a porn star, and the hero is a "gay Indiana Jones." The book's back claims "hot gay Tomb Raiders." Yes! Who doesn't love that? As with the others, Explicit Contents, Parental Advisory:

Carol Queen, Founding Director of the Center for Sex and Culture and Staff Sexologist at Good Vibrations, finished the reading off with a very appropriate piece she calls "The Gallery," in which a couple's sex makes the scene in the middle of an art gallery. I was really impressed with her writing because she kept trying to draw her attention away from the sex (but couldn't seem to). A commentary on the genre?

The readings were followed by a Q&A in which the authors talked about the parallels between their writings and their own sex lives. Yes, writing about sex does improve your sex life. No, it's not because you can write crafty sentences. You learn about yourself and about the boundaries that make or break relationships, what is legitimate and desirable and what is not even appropriate. These differ from person to person and, in addition to self-discovery, of course, writing about sex and relationships helps the authors achieve a more sympathetic and patient attitude toward what other people actually want from an experience and, indeed, out of their partners. I tend to think of erotica as an immature form of literature but it is, or is sometimes, quite the contrary.

I left, pre-spankings, to get over to the Verdi Club for the Literary Death Match. I wanted to have a drink beforehand so I could keep up with the madness. The Death Match is always a high-energy, loud affair, and I knew my powers would soon be waning. I moved around a lot at supperclub to resist the temptation of reclining, and it was only a matter of time, I knew, before my left and right eyes started moving with conflicting agendas.

Turns out, comic relief was not what I needed. In an attempt to rejuvenate literature and to bring a new energy to the scene, Todd Zuniga, Elizabeth Koch & Dennis DiClaudio created this spectacle in 2006 and it has grown steadily and even rapidly since then, being performed in various US cities, Paris, and Beijing. Looking back over the week though, from the readings at the main library to the Gay Agendas and Punk Rock storytelling, the Poets in the Pews (which I missed), a select group of fiery barely published authors, the conversation between scientists and writers at the Mechanics Institute, even the roast in honor of Amy Tan - at which we were inevitably, I think, asked to consider what we were doing in a luxury theatre dressed in gowns and celebrating the quirks of a distinguished writer in the name of literature - the Death Match seemed a detractor more than a supplement in my 9-day long celebration of literature.

Sure, I was tired. My eyes got heavy and I stopped filming from time to time. But I found myself asking: What here is really worthy of capture? And my response was continually 'I don't think any of this needs to be preserved,' and to me if literature is not about deciding or by some alchemical process discovering what is worth being saved - and, in fact, what needs to be saved - then literature no longer has the value for which it used to be sacred.

I respect Todd Zuniga and Sky Hornig and the energy they bring and the personality. My favorite parts are when they banter and make actual commentary on the culture we represent and are striving to create. I love Opium Magazine. But I have a hard time respecting even these readings anymore because I know they are selected (if not tailored) to shock or provoke extreme reactions and as a result otherwise good writing goes unnoticed, unselected, neglected. We have power at these events and with this power we make statements on what is valuable. It is we who decide what is worth propagating and emulating, what should be published and why. Literary Death Match is a serious event because it has a lot of attraction. People come to these events, and a lot of them I haven't seen all week at other Litquake functions.

I thought Frances Dinkelspiel's story about the skunks was the best overall story, even though James Nestor's selection from Get High Now was great. The thing is he was distracting when he interrupted his reading to bring up human props, and even though this was a 'first' for the Death Match it should in no way have been a deciding factor in who won the contest - unless in a negative way. David Wiegand said this himself, and I think we can learn something from the fact that the judge of 'literary merit' voted No against the winner for the very reason he was chosen. This means 'performance' and 'intangibles' are more important than 'literary merit.' 2-1, sure. But this argment sounds like something we might expect from a fascist government that parades itself as a democracy. 'The votes, we have the votes. Plus, performance! You were entertained. And intangibles. It's hard to say!'

Again, I know I was tired. But I felt the same way at the last Literary Death Match that was held in San Francisco, and I left feeling like the program needs to refocus. They really had a great idea and so far it's done incredible things for attendance and overall interest in literary gatherings. But they need to be more responsible and I think open-minded to what they can accomplish besides attendance. Todd always urges people to get drunk even beyond the point of being able to drive home. This is fun. But it has nothing to do with literature, and unless we want more functions where attendees are merely shopping for literate bunk-mates, as he suggested himself, we need to be serious about who wins and why and what we're looking for. We're all pumped up and enthused by words. We all want to let out some pent-up aggression, sexuality, performance, intangibles. But we should all hold on to our values, too, and I think we've forgotten that.

As I was awaiting the Dublin/Pleansanton BART I wrote:

Why do we need to make light of everything?

Why do we need to drink up and not care who the winner is?

I don't need a pointless charade as reprieve from the thing I'm here to celebrate.

The card game at the end was fun to put together, I'm sure, but I wish I hadn't missed the previous train for it, and the way they decide the winners speaks for itself. Last time the winner was declared because he was able to walk across the stage with a copy of Infinite Jest on his head faster than the other contestant. Are our literary champions really decided with such arbitrariness? If you want to or need to make light, why do it with something valuable? This is not just a game and should not be played with the whimsy of a middle school art project.

I've got the readings recorded but am going to race on over to Mouthy Dames now instead of loading them. I'll review them later and see if I think it's worth my time. The progam suggested that it isn't.

Wish my articles were organized by topic in a handy table with feature pictures? They are!