For Reading Out Loud

For a Friday evening's reading at Good Vibrations, San Francisco's venerable feminist sex toy/sex book/sex education/sex-everything store, what does a writer of "erotic literary delights" wear?

Well, if you're this particular writer -- moi -- who'd just celebrated her 38th wedding anniversary the night before, a red silk scarf around the neck seemed like a good idea (a la Nora Ephron's essay collection I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being A Woman). And I did, at least, wear high-heeled boots. But otherwise, I'm afraid I had to leave the glam standard-bearing to my beautiful and talented young co-readers and co-conspirators, Eden Bradley, Lillian Feisty, and our own Lacy Danes (who looked fantastic in -- well, what else but lace? -- black lace and fine black wool and fantastic stockings with straight straight black seams).

In any case, it was great appearing with these hot and elegant, charming and fun creatures. Great to be reading and listening too. Because reading out loud in public isn't as much a part of the romance-writing culture as it should be. I'm not sure why this is, though I'm guessing that it has something to do with mass-marketing. We sign and sign and sign, but (as with Jane and Colette last week) usually only read aloud as part of the erotica scene. A pity, that. I hope it changes.

I drank too much wine, but my husband (who was there) told me I managed to read clearly, and even slowly enough. Unlike my three co-readers, I've read a fair amount in public, but I still haven't completely learned to swallow the ends of my sentences. I think I'm improving, though. And Friday night was the first time in more than a decade that I read something not yet published -- which I think I'm going to keep trying to do. Even though I read out loud a lot as I write, there's something different about how one's words vibrate in the air when there are listeners around.

And what can be great about reading with a group (especially if it's a simpatico bunch), is to hear the themes and variations that weave themselves through the very different pieces the writers choose to read.

For us four last Friday night, negotiation was one of the themes. I found it interesting how seriously our work took that particular element of eroticism. For a certain sort of female erotic imagination, exotic, kinky sex seems to need a certain modicum of rule-making between participants -- and the talk, the working it out, the exchange of power and the exposure of desire are all definitely a part of the turnon. I read a little bit from the beginning of Carrie's Story where the talk of rules and procedures suddenly makes the adventure she's entering seem realer to her.

And it seemed that we writers also shared certain fascination with -- well, if not bondage, at least immobilization. It's been a perennial theme in my work, this fascinating business of, as essayist Sallie Tisdale put it, "the dream of being dominated by sex itself -- being forced, as it were, by the intensity of the sex to submit to and accept sex, be bound by sex, mastered by sex," of somehow needing to be forced to do what you most want to do.

My own contribution, from the novel I'm working on now (which still must not be named), was about the possibilities for immobilization that a tight corset might provide, for a woman in the right position (the book's set in 1829, and styles aren't really Regency anymore -- waists are getting longer and tighter by the minute). I loved trying out the images in front of an audience, and I also loved hearing how the other writers handled the situations they'd imagined their heroines into.

Anyway, it was great. To meet the readers and other writers as well. To hear our contrasting voices. Oh, and to find out when I got home, that my husband had managed to buy me a little anniversary present at Good Vibes when I wasn't looking.

So... writers, what kinds of experiences have you had reading your work in front of audiences?

And readers, do you enjoy going to this sort of event?

Why do you think romance writers do so little reading out loud?

And... (off topic but oddly important to me), what was your response to J. K. Rowling's announcement that Harry Potter's Professor Dumbledore is gay?