Filth, beauty, love and trouble: I’m back

Image of Rose by elaisted. A more explicit image of Rose is after the jump.

Nowhere to begin but the present: I’m back in front of the cinema display after a week so soaked in sex ed, erotica and writing that I can barely timeline the events of the past several hundred hours: I’ve been on deadline, and from the sheer volume of work I fucking blew the deadline from the first to the third (not the good kind of blowing, sadly). But I *did* it: I turned the book in last night around 4am, then re-edited my column also on deadline and turned that in on top of it all. The column is going to make some people really pissed off and it’s already touching nerves. To put it lightly. Did you all know I have a very conservative editor who fights for me, on my side, every week? It’s a story in a story… but in tomorrow’s column “Killing A Doctor”, I talk about reaching through the internet and slapping certain Valleyskank writers upside the head, take a swipe at a few other head-up-the-ass writers, scream a lot about insanely irresponsible journalism (and its connection to the death of abortion doctor Tiller, heralded by a certain Fox News star) and all at the same time I still managed to have some of my column nonconsensually neutered by SF Gate at the last minute before they paste my shit up to post it.

In all, I still got away with a lot. But my argument got handicapped by the removal of some of my text, and I’ll explain why tomorrow when I post the lovely beast.

My inbox is a trainwreck of porn, sexual hilarity, sex and science articles — all on its way to this blog. My subject lines are also a waterfall of black (unread, but starred) with offers from media peeps for interviews and book excerpts and friends who are royally pissed off that I dropped off the face of the earth.

Maybe they’re not all really my friends; most people have no idea what it takes to make a book. Granted, I’m spoiled: I know what I’m doing like no one else in the world. This is what I know how to do, and I love it. And since breaking up with Hacker Boy I went from feeling like I’d ripped my own skin off to save my own heart to now being happier, more powerful, and more on fire about filthyfun, beauty, love, and trouble than ever. The passion for what I’m in, from SFSI to writing and editing the books, and sex-fueled media disruption is not giving me time for games that do not entertain, or make something positive, or sexy. Last night I was 18 floors above the world in a downtown high rise surrounded by the firefly lights of San Francisco’s moneyed downtown dwellers (and the stressed all-nighter Charles Schwab employees) when the rain hit. I’d been writing and editing all day. I’d gotten texts from angry friends, people pissed that I’d missed plans, hadn’t gotten back to anyone. Over 300 submissions for this book, distilled to 21 finalists, and I have to email and talk to all of them and tell them yes, or no, or hey what about this…? Authors send me their hopes and their hearts and heads in their keystrokes from the most personal places — in the click of an email. Other people, like the 14-year-old girl in Texas, send me emails saying I’m her hero and thank me for helping her give her friends accurate sex information. My rent is due. My landlord just died. I write about gay marriage for teh Chronic and commenters call me a stupid whore. (Nope, never did that.) You all know I used to be the teen girl on the streets sleeping in the doorway under the high rise just like the one I was in last night. I don’t have to beg for food anymore. My heart no longer aches; opposite — it’s full. And last night, working and working and reading and checking every extra space between words and worlds, reading erotica so beautiful I wanted to fling myself into the Bay so I could die happy, having given and been consumed into my work beyond reason… Contrasts in sex and the work. Not writing here on the blog has made me feel crazy, too; that’s been a white noise hissing at me in the background the whole time; last night as the rain was hitting his windows I realized my life is threatened from inside if I do not write.

Like love, survival instincts always win.

This ain’t a fucking movie, or someone elses’ pageview. It’s my life.

It’s raining, I told him. Excitedly, we shut off all lights and sounds and looked at the City. My laptop — my other heart — was the only glow in the room. 3 am. If you fell from a building like the one I was in, from where I was, you’d soon be traveling too fast to grab a ledge or try to clutch a railing — and you’d know it was too late to get back to your starting place. That’s what this tweet was about. I wasn’t sure what I’d have to come back to. Still landing. Status report needs to be done. Bills are late.

When I sent the .zip file to my publisher in the rain and the dark and the no sleep and the love and hate, and I collapsed on the carpet in tears. Everything unraveled and dissolved, and then came back into form. My work does have the power to heal me — even when on the outside, it’s actually carefully crafted hot candy that turns people on. Fun. Fuck, it’s delicious.

Best Women’s Erotica 2010 is going to be fucking tight and hot and will get under your skin in the best ways; it’s a collection of the most unexpected literary erotica I’ve ever seen. Tomorrow’s column will get me in a fight. Or several. My sex ed book due in ten days will be gorgeous. The next anthology due in two months is already burning me up. To paraphrase one of the stories in Best Women’s 2010:

follow me.

Image of Rose by elaisted.