Ellen Sussman - Dirty Words

On a Night Like This
Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave

A LITERARY ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SEX

ELLEN SUSSMAN

Copyright 2008 by Ellen Sussman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Dirty words : a literary encyclopedia of sex / Ellen Sussman.1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-59691-472-2 (hardcover)

1. SexDictionaries. 2. SexSlangDictionaries. 3. SexHumor.
I. Sussman, Ellen, 1954

HQ9.D58 2008
818.5402dc22
2008001460

First published by Bloomsbury USA in 2008
This e-book edition published in 2011

E-book ISBN: 978-1-60819-780-4

www.bloomsburyusa.com

To Neal, with love, the word Ive saved for you

ELLEN SUSSMAN

When my brother was eleven years old, my father invited him for a car ride.

Where are we going? my brother asked.

Nowhere, my father said. Were just going to drive around.

I wanna go! I wailed, ten years old and desperate for my fathers attention.

Boys only, my father said.

My brother flashed me a triumphant grin, and the two of them marched out of the house and into my dads Rambler station wagon.

About an hour later, they returned. I was waiting on the front steps, imagining what wonderful adventures they were having without me.

They got out of the car and walked up the path. My brother avoided me. He had a smug, secretive look on his face, and I was ready to kill him for it. They strode right past me and into the house.

I might have used torture; it wasnt beneath me. Somehow in the next few days I twisted an arm and extracted this information: they did really just drive around. But during that time, my father told my brother that he was going to tell him the Facts of Life.

Whats that? I asked.

I dont know, my brother said. Dad told me I could tell him all the dirty words I knew, and he would tell me what they meant.

Did you?

Yep.

And he told you? I asked.

Yep. And my brother sauntered away.

This is my revenge. Instead of a car ride with Dad, swapping curse words for stories, I got a lousy pamphlet: Your Changing Body. No spicy language thereno fuck, no blow job, no slut. Who cares about fallopian tubes? Give me an orgy of dirty words.

This is my orgy of dirty words. You might learn the Facts of Life in these pages; you might learn the Mysteries of Life. I gave my contributors this assignment: pick a sexual word or term. Let it be your madeleinelet it summon up memory. Or take that word and toss it around, juggle it, work it through your teeth. I invited these remarkable writers to create stories or essays, rants or riffs, poems or persuasions. And they delivered the goods: a sexual literary feast.

This book is not porn or erotica, but tucked between these covers is some of the most erotic writing I have ever read. This book is not a social science textbook, but on these pages the sexual temperature of our culture is recordedfeel its heat. This book is not a dictionary, but in these essays and stories and poems, sexual terminology gets defined through bedtime romps, through wordplay and etymology and historical reference, through whimsy and happenstance.

I asked my contributors to offer up their musings in short pieces that would range from 250 to 1,000 words. I wanted them to boil down their material until they could offer us the essence of experience or thought. I wanted the heady rush of so much flavora taste that explodes in your mouth. I want the impact of that literary experience to linger, so that long after the book has been placed back on the shelf, the reader might still savor that rich concoction.

I gave my contributors the freedom to pursue their definitions in the format of their choice: fiction or nonfiction, poetry or play. This stylistic range seems fitting for the wildly different ways in which sex moves us, affects us, shakes us up, feeds us.

My contributors range in age: theyre twenty-four years old and theyre elder statesmen. Ive learned that dirty words change with each generation. A year from now there will be new words and sexual curiosities to explore. If Ive missed some words, let me know. Ill collect new words and missing words on my Web site: www.ellensussman.com . This isnt a complete listits an offering, a smorgasbord. And Ive chosen to include words that arent dirty at all: kissing, monogamy, virginity, for example. In fact, in my mind, no words are dirty: thats part of my intention here. Lets put it all on the table and talk about it. Something surprising happens: the words are mere words. Its what they represent that so intrigues us.

Why did I choose to gather literary essays about sex? I think that in writing about sex, writers get a chance to tap into unexplored territory. They push below the surface of relationships, of passion, of our urges and needs and dreams. They reveal truth about human behavior and about our society. Sometimes they even get closer to that illusive concept: love.

Pick a word. Any word.

ELLEN SUSSMAN

DEFINITION: simultaneous and mutual oral sex.

The term, originating in the French soixante-neuf, suggests the shape of bodies engaged in cunnilingus and fellatio.

6 and 9 swim with the help of their fine tails, they flip with those perfect circles tucked inside them, they somersault in a wild circus act of tumbles.

6 is 9, 9 is 6.

I remember sitting on the floor in my yellow nursery-school classroom writing a perfect 6. Bravo, Miss DQuilla says. 9! 6, I say, my lips quivering. I had worked so hard! 6! she says, turning the paper upside down. I look at my 6. Its 9. Its 6. Its my eyes that swim, that nudge tail over circle, set the number spinning, and no matter where it settles, the number is 6 or 9.

Later I find out Im dyslexic. 6 and 9 unmoor me. I cant catch them, cant make them stick.

Im in bed with a man. His body flips and suddenly his head is gone, tucked somewhere below the covers, and his penis appears where his face once was. His mouth seems to have found my other mouth, and weve taken each other in, and in a quick instance Ive lost my bearings. Is that him or me? I cant concentrate. If I think about what Im doing, then I cant think about what hes doing. If I give in to what hes doing, then I cant keep doing what Im doing.

I push away.

Im confused, I say.

Dont think, he says.

He dives back under the covers.

I stop thinking. All my life Ive wrangled to keep the 6 and 9 in order, and suddenly Im told, give it up. There is no order. A 6 is a 9 is a 6. Let it go.

So I do. 69. I give up years of struggling to hang on, to make sense of numbers and letters that swim before my eyes. Im not doing it to him, hes not doing it to me. Its a whirlwind, a wild storm, were in this together.

The 6 and the 9 come together. Oh! O. O. It works no matter how you flip it. I can barely catch my breath. O!

DONOVAN BRIGHT

DEFINITION: voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and someone other than his or her partner.

One mans folly is often another mans wife