Justin Taylor—
If anybody is wondering why I religiously re-blog the Brights’ Jezebel posts, it’s simple: I think they’re really fun geniuses and I want them to be friends with me a lot. In this installment of their mother/daughter sex advice column, a couple looking to open their relationship up asks where to find positive role-models for conscientious and fulfilling non-monogamy.
Aretha: Well! This cracked me up because all I could think was, “My mom could tell you A LOT more about this than I can!”- lol.
Susie: Yeah, har-de-har-har.
Aretha: Thinking about what happened with you and Dad made me want to caution this girl that picking who you open your relationship with is super-duper important. Stay away from needy stalker people who want more than you can give them.
Susie: In my defense… in all the years I’ve been with your dad (21)- all non-monogamous- I can only think of two (and in retrospect, mercifully brief) times that we went through some real grief. I don’t blame it on being “open” – it’s just the hard things relationships go through at times, be they social, platonic, or battles with your own relatives.
You never knew about all the times everything worked out copacetic or drama-free, because part of our “open relationship” ethos was protecting our family life: Kids come first, privacy is a big deal, and discretion is definitely the better part of valor.
God, the sanity! The well-adjustedness! It’s breathtaking, really.
5
(some of) Mark Sanford’s (old) emails to “Maria”
Not pictured: Argentine sex kitten.
[Hat tip to my friend Pete for the link.] Well kids, another day, and another Republican turns out to be a lyin’ cheatin’ AWOL SOB. But I give the presumably-soon-to-be-ex-Governor credit for one thing–he’s a pretty decent prose stylist. He’s erotic, but not too trashy, and he’s upfront about his emotions and his mixed feelings, but you never get the impression he’s at loose ends. Check out this passage, from July 8 of last year.
[…] I went out and ran the excavator with lights until the sun came up. To me, and I suspect no one else on earth, there is something wonderful about listening to country music playing in the cab, air conditioner running, the hum of a huge diesel engine in the back ground, the tranquillity that comes with being in a virtual wilderness of trees and marsh, the day breaking and vibrant pink coming alive in the morning clouds – and getting to build something with each scoop of dirt.
Fuckin’ poetry, man. As I was just saying to Jeremy Schmall in gchat, if I was sleeping with this guy, and he was writing me letters like this, I’d totes be sticking around to see how things panned out. Read all they’ve got up so far (they promise more to come) here.
RELATED (in a sense): Greta Christina’s classic essay, “Are We Having Sex Now Or What?” (via Susie & Aretha Bright at Jezebel)
pr—
I know, I know, lots of Susie Bright posts lately, but I have to share what she shared. I really want to buy this book she mentions on her blog, How to Make Love to Adrian Colesberry by Adrian Colesberry. It sounds brilliant.
Getting to Know Furry Girl & Feminisnt
Susie Bright was plugging this on her facebook yesterday, and it popped up in the feed on my page, and it seemed pretty neat. This is all NSFW, so caveat whatever. …
Seriously Not Safe For Work! Ernie Conrick’s GOLDEN HEMORRHOIDS
This is my second inappropriate post in a row. I feel like a fifteen year old boy with a constant hardon who skips school to look at porn magazines behind the 7/11. Any day now, I’m going to write a nice book review, but in the meantime….what follows is a video of the writer Ernie Conrick reading a very outrageous story called “Golden Hemorrhoids”. I had the great pleasure of hearing him read the story that night- it was very much the highlight of the evening in a “Holy Shit” sort of way. Mixing politcs and anal sex, man. I had a drink with him afterward- I love this guy. He also has a fucking brilliant, different story in the Susie Bright edited anthology, X: The Erotic Treasury (click here to go to the incomparabe Susie Bright’s blog and to learn more about her latest book). Oh, and he’s also the author (under a different name) of The Upside Down Tree: India’s Changing Culture, which you can read more about by clicking here.
Pot Psychology is back! Also, Susie Bright has been hanging around Jezebel all week
Is anyone else over here in lit-land also a fan of the dynamic duo pictured above? I’m generally a fan of Jezebel, but these guys are always an extra dose of fun. If you’ve never seen it, the premise of Pot Psychology is simple- Rich and Tracie get stoned (off-camera) and then give sex advice (on-camera) to people who write in. There’s usually an episode (they run under 10 minutes) posted every Friday, but then there was a silence after 12/26/08, broken only by the terse, uninformative announcement on 1/16/09 that “FYI for those who have been wondering: Pot Psychology will be on hiatus until further notice. Sorry, folks.” So how happy was I this morning, when I saw Pot Psychology listed as a headline link at the top of Gawker this morning? Very happy. Still no explanation as to where it went, or why it’s back, or if we can expect it to be a regular feature once more–but let’s save the truth commission for another day. On this day, we are just glad it is here.