Tracy Clark-Flory - Want Me: A Sex Writers Journey into the Heart of Desire

Tracy Clark-Flory is among the first of a generation of young women to grow up in a digital world, an Alice shaped by the webs wonderland. Her journey reveals possibilities, but also the impact of turbo-charged messages that present empowered female sexuality as all about performance: being desirable rather than recognizing your desires; pleasing others rather than understanding your pleasure; being wanted rather than asking for what you want. This book is absolutely, crucially important to read in order to understand the world in which all girls, and boys, now come of age.

Peggy Orenstein, New York Times bestselling author of Girls & Sex

This book is about much more than sexits a candid and brave story about the collision of fantasies, ideals, and truths; its a story about the search for self.

Daniel Bergner, author of What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire

I loved reading Want Meits joys and sorrows, laughter and pain, all the memories and mysteries that resonate with women of all ages who wonder how we got here. A compelling, important read.

Debby Herbenick, author of Because It Feels Good

Tracy Clark-Flory is one of the best journalists of our generation writing about sexuality. When she turns her incisive lens on herself, the results are revelatory. The book is everything I want a memoir to bea bracingly honest, messy, self-aware, inspiring road map to sexual selfhood.

Tristan Taormino, sex educator and bestselling author of Take Me There

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WANT ME

Tracy Clark-Flory is a senior staff writer at Jezebel. Her work has been published in Cosmopolitan, Elle, Esquire, Marie Claire, Salon, the Guardian, Womens Health, and the yearly Best Sex Writing anthology. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.

PENGUIN BOOKS

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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Copyright 2021 by Tracy Clark-Flory

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

Names: Clark-Flory, Tracy, author.

Title: Want me : a sex writers journey into the heart of desire / Tracy Clark-Flory.

Description: New York : Penguin Books, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2020045383 (print) | LCCN 2020045384 (ebook) | ISBN 9780143134619 (paperback) | ISBN 9780525506423 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Clark-Flory, Tracy. | Clark-Flory, TracySexual behavior. | JournalistsUnited StatesBiography. | Self-realization in women.

Classification: LCC PN4874.C54 A3 2021 (print) | LCC PN4874.C54 (ebook) | DDC 070.4/49306092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045383

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045384

Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

Cover design and illustration: Lynn Buckley

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For Mom

Im in a warehouse in Los Angeless San Fernando Valley anxiously scribbling in my reporters notebook while waiting for a porn shoot to begin. Charles Dera, a performer with jet-black hair and a well-groomed beard to match, is crouched in front of me, stretching his calves. Tommy Gunn, a legendary performer named after his biceps, is sitting on the floor flipping through a release form. He hops to a stand and asks to borrow my pen.

Were in a fluorescent-lit office with paneled ceiling tiles and shuttered vertical blinds. A metal gurney and hospital privacy curtain are pushed into a corner alongside a rolling cart of textbooks and a plastic houseplant. Fake eyelashes and foundation in various shades of beige are spread out on a vintage wooden desk that practically purrs, The principal will see you now. As a reporter writing about sex, Ive been on porn sets more times than I can count, but this shoot is making me uncommonly nervous.

I started watching porn as a teenager in the late nineties with a spotty dial-up connection. It seemed a vibrant human sexuality textbook next to lackluster sex-ed classes featuring black-and-white anatomy diagrams and condoms rolled onto bananas. When I started actually having sex, porn became my aspirational guide to seductive moans, gymnastic positions, and superior blow jobs. One person I saw receive lots of superior blow jobs was Tommy Gunn, who is now standing next to me, handing back my pen. That explains the anxious scribbles: Im starstruck.

Then I hear something that yanks me from my distracted state: Girls these days. Girls. These. Days. Three such innocuous words, until they are strung together in that particular order. Im not even sure who said it, but I start taking notesreal ones underneath my scribbles. Girls watch our porn, because its free everywhere, and then they grow up thinking thats what sex is, says Dera. Gunn joins him in delivering the last four words such that they resound in stereo: Thats what sex is. They go and have sex with a normal dude, Dera continues, and hes like He screws up his face in mock horrorthe kind of face, actually, that women give in those tube site ads where theyre surprised by a home intruder, snooping stepdad, or photoshopped monster cock.

This riff is a reversal of the usual media narrative: that boys spring pornographically inspired moves on unsuspecting young women. Nevertheless, Gunn nods knowingly. When I have my private sex, Im not trying to be like, Huh-huh-huh, he says, theatrically grunting while aggressively humping the air. Its a parody of the work hes done for well over a decade.

They turn to me, a rapt audience of one with a notebook and digital recorder on my lap, and recount stories of the young women who send them naked selfies on Instagram and ask them to fuck them like a porn star. That means choking, gagging, and face slapping, they explain. Then pay me, because this is work now. Im not enjoying this, Im putting on a performance, says Dera, as if talking to one of these girls. Its, like, not even my cup of tea. I want to go to dinner and have a fucking nice meal and take it from there. Where the ladies at anymore? Gunn shakes his head and says, Its a whole nother generation.

At this, I hear what Ive already heard from conservative culture warriors, misogynistic internet trolls, and feminist critics alike: todays young women are sexually misguided, dreadfully warped. Im brought back to the years I spent as a feminist blogger, attempting to defend against generational attacks on everything from hookups to raunch culture. Its only on future listens to the audio on my recorder that I will recognize something other than familiar girls these days hand-wringing. These men are speaking to the way that they are conflated with their work, reduced to what they portray, and assumed to be sexually available. They are talking about the confusion of fantasy and reality, and how it impacts them as sex workers. But my vision is restricted, my focus folded inward. All I hear is: