Big Sex Little Death: A Memoir by Susie Bright

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Fragments of stories weave in and out of my thoughts after reading Susie Bright’s memoir, Big Sex Little Death. Stories that Susie experienced, with guts, audacity, and sexual independence.

She begins with her family and by no means is she excusing them. They are necessary for her tale to be told. Beginning where she herself began, from the lives and union of two complicated people—- her parents. Perhaps the raw emotions and scars are still too palpable to fully express her feelings about her parents, but Susie does well in illustrating her childhood nonetheless.

Susie, “intellectually precocious but socially inappropriate,” wearing glasses and hand-sewn dresses, artfully explains her parents’ divorce that coincided with the deterioration of her mother’s mental state. Her mother, Elizabeth Halloran from Fargo, North Dakota, and the Halloran family, her mother’s Irish side of the family tree— they come, arms full of all the misgivings that bring her to where she is now. The darkness can create beauty, as the old-fashioned photographic process of a darkroom exhibits, how photo paper placed into developing fluid, magically transforms paper into details of captured light. Her prose of memories develops from the darkness, her childhood desires to be held and loved, but instead hurt in so many ways.

As difficult as it is to describe a relationship between mother and child, Susie is honest in her description of her mother. You can feel her unspoken words in between the lines. The pain, anger, and sense of abandonment, layered with the remnants of love, and the longing to be loved by the one person she came from, that gave her life. It is heartbreaking and messy. Gracefully, eloquently, she carries on, and discovers her strengths. With a valiant spirit and strong sense of power, she is a lotus rising from the dark mud.

Susie is a natural born rule breaker, a non-conformist, and a sexual revolutionary. Her words glimmer and spark through the pages, multi-colored, glittering. A firecracker, a wild thing. She is a cosmic kaleidoscope of a human being. Bi-sexual, lesbian, heterosexual, there is no box. There have been many who wanted to box her in, put her in a category. There is no category for Susie Bright. She is coloring outside the lines, she is messy finger painting, she is strong and delicate all at once, and she is beyond it all.

Her first menstrual cycle marked the beginning of her teen angst. She skipped school during lunchtime for a luxurious moment of solitude, reading, watching Petticoat Junction on TV, and ironing her grilled cheese sandwich on the ironing board, using it as a sandwich press. Suddenly, bleeding from her first menstruation, she figured out a tampon insertion before returning to class:

“I saw a blue box on the laundry hamper I hadn’t paid attention to before. Tampax. Yes! A new box. It had a paper diagram. Annette Laurence, who sat behind me in algebra, had said tampons would ruin your virginity. But I felt like ruining something. I slid the tampon into my vagina, and it was like folding a perfect paper crane. I felt nothing— in a good way— and the blood was no longer running down my leg. Now I just had to clean everything up. I was really late for class.”

When Susie (or ‘Susannah’ when she is in trouble) returns to class, she is sent to the school principal’s office:

“I walked into Dr. Shalka’s office like a mad bear. A mad menstruating bear with Germaine Greer on my tongue.
“This is not right,” I said, before he could motion me to sit down. “My period just started at noon, and I had to figure out the Tampax all by myself and I am never late and you can’t discriminate against me just because I am menstruating—“
I probably didn’t get that far, actually. I remember the look on his face when I said the “female” word. Was it period or the one that started with m? You would’ve thought I had sat on his face with my “vagina.” He flushed, his giant hands fluttered at his desk, and he coughed repeatedly into his cloth hankie.”

Thus begins the tale of Susie Bright.

I have much more to say about her memoir, but feel my words inadequate. I get the sense that I need to read this memoir again. No words can capture the essence better than “Sexual Freedom” to express the life path of Susie Bright. So many moments where society and people want to put her in a category. I won’t do that to her. I cannot, therefore, say enough about Susie, outside the lines, outside of paragraphs and sentences, where she exists, free and wild and wonderful and 100% herself.

I did post this review back in May here on Erotica du Jour. A few things I did want to note: Susie’s memoir contains a lot of chutzpah and gunpowder, so the thing is, with her life story, it must have been hard for Susie to write it all down. It did feel like she skimmed over surfaces, and I know she’s got more in her. Brave to write a memoir, so I give her much credit. Also, on a personal note, I myself identified with her life— and felt an understanding of her rough path, as my own has had similar challenges, and moments of being lost in the teenage wilderness where most don’t go. Emotional, abuse and abandonment, sex, coming of age, and wandering. A gun-packing Lolita of the Comrades. This book spoke to my soul. It was an honest account of her life that was wild and raw, but made her the strong woman that she is. Bravo Susie.

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“Tired of bein’ lonely, tired of bein’ blue,

I wished I had some good man, to tell my troubles to

Seem like the whole world’s wrong, since my man’s been gone

I need a little sugar in my bowl,

I need a little hot dog, on my roll

I can stand a bit of lovin’, oh so bad,

I feel so funny, I feel so sad”

~ “I NEED A LITTLE SUGAR IN MY BOWL” BESSIE SMITH 1931

Where to begin? This is a phenomenal read. The stories, personal essays, and confessions of sex, love, sexuality, and all that connect, by women, are real, timeless, and full of life. Real life.

This anthology of “Real Women Writing About Real Sex” is a treasure of experiences and stories by women. These women speak about their lives, They tell us about sex in all its many forms: marriage struggles, love and getting pregnant while abroad in Spain (“A Fucking Miracle” by Elisa Albert), stories about childhood sexuality: caught kissing and playing doctor in the closet (“Peekaboo I See You” by Anne Roiphe) and hilarious motherhood observations, parenting dilemmas, and marital-bed sex (“The Diddler” by J.A.K. Andres). There are internal contradictions, secret erotica publishings and prudish thoughts of a sex novelist (“Prude” by Jean Hanff Korelitz) and love discovered during one-night stands (“Sex With a Stranger” by Susan Cheever). Longing, first time sex, losing virginity, and a bottle of Cointreau (“My Best Friend’s Boyfriend” by Fay Weldon). Take a wild ride with hot sex (“Love Rollercoaster 1975″ by Susie Bright) and fall back into an ex-boyfriend’s arms for a one-night fling in a luxury hotel to indulge before a double mastectomy (“Everything Must Go” by Jennifer Weiner). There are so many touching, moving, and brilliant stories by a myriad of amazing women writers, telling their tales of sex and everything that goes with it. There is also, to our delight, a short, short story by Erica Jong titled “Kiss” about her encounter with “a kiss that moistened oceans, grew the universe, swirled through the cosmos.”

Erica Jong begins in her introduction: “Why are we so fascinated with sex? Probably because such intense feelings are involved—- above all, the loss of control. Anything that causes us to lose control intrigues and enthralls. So sex is both alluring and terrifying.”

Elegantly, poetically, Erica Jong introduces the book by exploring the subject of women writing about sex, her process in handling the emotions of contributors, and her observations on what has changed much, and what has changed little, in the realms of women writing about sex. She comes to a conclusion that “writing about sex turns out to be just writing about life.”

Erica Jong, the author: award-winning poet, novelist, and essayist best known for her eight bestselling novels, including the international bestseller Fear of Flying. She is also the author of seven award-winning collections of poetry.

Her contributors, all marvelous real voices of women writers, telling us about their experiences, ranging from fiction to non-fiction. A well-crafted crazy quilt of sexual patches, making up a whole of fabric, many colors and stories of sex. The  innocent curiosity of childhood sexuality, losing virginity, sex and illness, pregnancy, urgency of lust, desire, the best sex, the worst sex,— all aspects, facets, and layers of sex and sexuality in the experiences of women.

“Sex is life— no more, no less. As many of these stories demonstrate, it is the life force.” Sex is about being human.

SUGAR IN MY BOWL

AVAILABLE JUNE 14th 2011

“One Zipless Fuck of a read… get it while it’s hot. Sugar melts.”

~ Butterfly du Jour

Contributors:

Karen Abbott, Elisa Albert, J.A.K. Andres, Susie Bright, Susan Cheever, Gail Collins, Rosemary Daniell, Eve Ensler, Molly Jong-Fast, Susan Kinsolving, Julie Klam, Jean Hanff Korelitz, Min Jin Lee, Ariel Levy, Margot Magowan, Marisa Acocella Marchetto, Daphne Merkin, Honor Moore, Meghan O’Rourke, Anne Roiphe, Linda Gray Sexton, Liz Smith, Jann Turner, Barbara Victor, Rebecca Walker, Jennifer Weiner, Fay Weldon, Jessica Winter, Erica Jong

**I have worked very hard to find all the links above, but cannot find J. A. K. Andres mentioned anywhere except for Erica Jong’s Sugar in my Bowl mention. Please authors: if you are linked (or unlinked) and need to update me, please contact me at [email protected] or twitter: @butterflydujour

{photo of Sovereign Syre by Angelo de la Fuente}

Goddess du Jour

To begin this post, I bring you Sovereign Syre… a brainy beauty that I have come to discover while meandering the multitude of erotic art realms. Sovereign Syre is the stage name for this Goddess du Jour— tells us about her sultry self in her BIO:

Sans-Culotte/Sans-Papier. Louve/fillette. Sex-Object. The Dollface Killah. Co-Foundrix http://darlinghouse.net I produce & perform in explicit erotic content. I started in the industry in 2009 as a model for the alt.porn site God’s Girls.

Since I started in the industry, I’ve shot with George Pitts, Tony Stamolis, Kenn Lichtenwalter, Andrew Einhorn, Nathan Appel, Keith Major, Dave Dawson, Ken Penn, Corwin Prescott, Ellen Stagg, Holly Randall, Collin J. Rae and many others.  I can be found on godsgirls.com, zivity.com, staggstreet.com, hollyrandall.com, latenightfeelings.com, and have been featured many times on fleshbot.com.

I’ve kept a blog of my adventures in and out of adult modeling, Sans Jupe.  I was featured in the 2011 NYC Sex Blogger’s Calendar and my blog has been reviewed by Hustler in their July 2011 issue.  Sans Jupe is slated for publication next year in an expanded version. I’ve been featured as a model and poet in Whore magazine and interviewed/featured in various others.

I am becoming intrigued by this Goddess of Alt Porn. She is a woman that has that feminine mystique, that mystery, even ‘sans jupe’. As Nora Charles (Myrna Loy) in the Thin Man put it, “A woman needs a little mystery,” and Sovereign Syre has that ‘ol’ black magic’ that puts you under a spell.

Eroticism and Women

Anais Nin wrote about ‘eroticism and women’ (among other topics) in her book, “In Favor of the Sensitive Man and other Essays,” and I felt it important to quote a few passages from this insightful piece of women’s wisdom. Whenever I read Anais Nin’s writings, regardless of it being “erotica” per se, or a non-fiction “essay,” it demonstrates the timelessness of her thoughts, perceptions, ideas. I am always astounded by her ability to capture these thoughts and put them to the page. Anais speaks of women as a true feminist, breaking the old patriarchal concepts, letting in new light, fresh air, to the collective of female sexuality:

“Women through their confessions reveal a persistent repression. In the diary of George Sand we come upon this incident: Zola courted her and obtained a night of lovemaking. Because she revealed herself as completely unleashed sensually, he placed money on the night table when he left, implying that a passionate woman was a prostitute.

But if you persist in the study of women’s sensuality, you will find what lies at the end of all studies, that there are no generalizations, that there are many types of women as there are women themselves. One point established, that the erotic writings of men do not satisfy women, that it is time we write our own, that there is a difference in erotic needs, fantasies, and attitudes. Explicit barracks or clinical language is not exciting to most women. When Henry Miller’s first books came out, I predicted women would like them. I thought they would like the honest assertion of desire which was in danger of disappearing in a puritan culture. But they did not respond to the aggressive and brutal language. The Kama Sutra, which is an Indian compendium of erotic lore, stresses the need to approach women with sensitivity and romanticism, not to aim directly at physical possession, but to prepare her with romantic courtship. These customs, habits, mores, change from one culture to another and from one country to another. In the first diary by a woman (written in the year 900), the Tales of Genji by Lady Murasaki, the eroticism is extremely subtle, clothed in poetry, and focused on areas of the body which a Westerner rarely notices: the bare neck showing between the dark hair and the kimono.

There is a common agreement about only one thing,—- that woman’s erogenous zones are spread all over her body, that she is more sensitive to caresses, and that her sensuality is rarely as direct, as immediate as man’s. There is an atmosphere of vibrations which need to be awakened and have repercussions on the final arousal.”

Writing About Susie

Susie Bright recently put out a blazing memoir, Big Sex Little Death.

Fragments of stories weave in and out of my thoughts after reading Susie Bright’s memoir, Big Sex Little Death. Stories that Susie experienced, with guts, audacity, and sexual independence.

She begins with her family and by no means is she excusing them. They are necessary for her tale to be told. Beginning where she herself began, from the lives and union of two complicated people—- her parents. Perhaps the raw emotions and scars are still too palpable to fully express her feelings about her parents, but Susie does well in illustrating her childhood nonetheless.

Susie, “intellectually precocious but socially inappropriate,” wearing glasses and hand-sewn dresses, artfully explains her parents’ divorce that coincided with the deterioration of her mother’s mental state. Her mother, Elizabeth Halloran from Fargo, North Dakota, and the Halloran family, her mother’s Irish side of the family tree— they come, arms full of all the misgivings that bring her to where she is now. The darkness can create beauty, as the old-fashioned photographic process of a darkroom exhibits, how photo paper placed into developing fluid, magically transforms paper into details of captured light. Her prose of memories develops  from the darkness, her childhood desires to be held and loved, but instead hurt in so many ways.

As difficult as it is to describe a relationship between mother and child, Susie is honest in her description of her mother. You can feel her unspoken words in between the lines. The pain, anger, and sense of abandonment, layered with the remnants of love, and the longing to be loved by the one person she came from, that gave her life. It is heartbreaking and messy. Gracefully, eloquently, she carries on, and discovers her strengths. With a valiant spirit and strong sense of power, she is a lotus rising from the dark mud.

Susie is a natural born rule breaker, a non-conformist, and a sexual revolutionary. Her words glimmer and spark through the pages, multi-colored, glittering. A firecracker, a wild thing. She is a cosmic kaleidoscope of a human being. Bi-sexual, lesbian, heterosexual, there is no box. There have been many who wanted to box her in, put her in a category. There is no category for Susie Bright. She is coloring outside the lines, she is messy finger painting, she is strong and delicate all at once, and she is beyond it all.

Her first menstrual cycle marked the beginning of her teen angst. She skipped school during lunchtime for a luxurious moment of solitude, reading, watching Petticoat Junction on TV, and ironing her grilled cheese sandwich on the ironing board, using it as a sandwich press. Suddenly, bleeding from her first menstruation, she figured out a tampon insertion before returning to class:

“I saw a blue box on the laundry hamper I hadn’t paid attention to before. Tampax. Yes! A new box. It had a paper diagram. Annette Laurence, who sat behind me in algebra, had said tampons would ruin your virginity. But I felt like ruining something. I slid the tampon into my vagina, and it was like folding a perfect paper crane. I felt nothing— in a good way— and the blood was no longer running down my leg. Now I just had to clean everything up. I was really late for class.”

When Susie (or ‘Susannah’ when she is in trouble) returns to class, she is sent to the school principal’s office:

“I walked into Dr. Shalka’s office like a mad bear. A mad menstruating bear with Germaine Greer on my tongue.

“This is not right,” I said, before he could motion me to sit down. “My period just started at noon, and I had to figure out the Tampax all by myself and I am never late and you can’t discriminate against me just because I am menstruating—“

I probably didn’t get that far, actually. I remember the look on his face when I said the “female” word. Was it period or the one that started with m? You would’ve thought I had sat on his face with my “vagina.” He flushed, his giant hands fluttered at his desk, and he coughed repeatedly into his cloth hankie.”

Thus begins the tale of Susie Bright.

I have much more to say about her memoir, but feel my words inadequate. I get the sense that I need to read this memoir again. No words can capture the essence better than “Sexual Freedom” to express the life path of Susie Bright. So many moments where society and people want to put her in a category. I won’t do that to her. I cannot, therefore, say enough about Susie, outside the lines, outside of paragraphs and sentences, where she exists, free and wild and wonderful and 100% herself.

I’m so excited about my mailbox today, because I’ve received a wonderful gift:

SUGAR IN MY BOWL : Real Women Write About Real Sex

I’ve opened the galley up like an excited child that cannot wait— tearing off the wrapper, ripping the taped areas off in my imagination, and delving into the electronic pages. Of course, I must admit that previous to this act of hurriedly scanning the writings of women in this new book, I was scolding my eleven year old son for reading on his laptop under his bed covers. Mommy says turn off the laptop now. It’s like telling your kids not to eat cookies, and then eating them while whisking the cookies away from their hands. Well. I know I’m guilty.

Yesterday, I received the most exciting notification in my Twitter account:

Erica Jong is now following you on Twitter! Really? Erica Jong?

My childhood memory suddenly flashed back to the visual of Jong’s book Fear of Flying which decorated our living room coffee table. I see the book in my mind’s eye, there. My prepubescent body, a young girl— and the book, Fear of Flying, on the coffee table where, on the corner, I used to press my pubic area on, to get that funny tingling feeling that felt so good. I pressed and leaned against the edge of that table, unaware that Fear of Flying was about a woman’s liberation, sex, and full of all the things my own life experience would come to know. Leaning on the edge of the table, staring at the cover of that book. It was stacked there, among other books. I hadn’t read Fear of Flying yet, because I was only seven or so. I had, however, flipped through The Joy of Sex and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, secretly. Can’t remember when exactly, but it was in that same living room, where Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying lay, imprinted in my childhood memory, in the sunny yellow-walled living room, on the coffee table. One day, when practicing piano, I noticed it had moved to the bookshelf. Then I noticed the book in various other places in our house; my mother’s nightstand by her bed, on her pool lounge next to her large tortoiseshell sunglasses, by the reading chair with her glass of chardonnay. A woman’s story. Like lingerie and lipstick, it carried within it, a deeper message to my soul— becoming a woman is more than the surface of a book cover, or lacy fabric, or a slick of color to the lips. It was another world that I was yet to know. Not even Rainier Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet or Kahlil Gibran’s poetry could assuage my longing to know the complexities of {a woman’s} life experience. No, it had to come from the mouths, from the hearts and souls of women writers. Instinctively I knew that as a young girl.

After lecturing my son about the importance of sleep and how reading an actual book in print was better for him than staring at a laptop screen, I shut his bedroom door and scrolled through this book, SUGAR IN MY BOWL, on my own laptop. There is so much rich, wonderful content, I don’t know where to  start.  Even though I have this galley, I will buy the book in print. I love handling books, the feel of the bound pages. Even the introduction by Erica Jong is marvelous. She begins:

“Why are we so fascinated with sex? Probably because such intense feelings are involved—- above all, the loss of control. Anything that causes us to lose control intrigues and enthralls. So sex is both alluring and terrifying.”

Elegantly, poetically, Erica Jong introduces the book by exploring the subject of women writing about sex, her process in handling the emotions of contributors, and her observations on what has changed much, and what has changed little, in the realms of women writing about sex. She comes to a conclusion that “writing about sex turns out to be just writing about life.”

Her contributors, all marvelous real voices of women writers, telling us about their experiences, ranging from fiction to non-fiction. A well-crafted crazy quilt of sexual patches, making up a whole of fabric, many colors and stories of sex. The  innocent curiosity of childhood sexuality, losing virginity, sex and illness, pregnancy, urgency of lust, desire, the best sex, the worst sex,— all aspects, facets, and layers of sex and sexuality in the experiences of women.

I cannot wait to read everything. “Sex is life— no more, no less. As many of these stories demonstrate, it is the life force.” Sex is about being human.

SUGAR IN MY BOWL

AUTHOR:
EDITED by ERICA JONG , With Contributions from: KAREN ABBOTT, SUSIE BRIGHT, HONOR MOORE, ELISA ALBERT, SUSAN CHEEVER, GAIL COLLINS, EVE ENSLER, JULIE KLAM, ARIEL LEVY, DAPHNE MERKIN, MEGHAN O’ROURKE, ANNE ROIPHE, LIZ SMITH, REBECCA WALKER, JENNIFER WEINER, FAY WELDON, JESSICA WINTER, MOLLY JONG-FAST, JEAN HANFF KORELITZ,LINDA GRAY SEXTON, ROSEMARY DANIELL, J.A.K. ANDRES, JANN TURNER, BARBARA VICTOR, MARISA ACOCELLA MARCHETTO, SUSAN KINSOLVING, MIN JIN LEE, MARGOT MAGOWAN & ERICA JONG

PUBLISHER: ECCO/Harper Collins

DATE OF RELEASE: June 14, 2011