I don't know if it's being a Bostonian or being a Virgo but sometimes I forget the sex.  Not in my personal life (my spouse is happy to report) but in writing.  At the Q & A session after a campus reading I did some years ago one of the students said they were surprised there was no sex in my novel.  I guess because it was a vampire novel or maybe because the primary characters are lesbians...I don't know.  But it made me think about how little sex is in much of my writing.

I wrote one explicitly erotic story in the mid-80s in response to the Puritanical pressures of some conservative feminists.  But I thought as a feminist I not only had a right to sexual expression I had a responsibility to express female sexuality after the years it has been co-opted by male dominance.  But when I think about my 'oeuvre' as they say, it's kind of prim.  Sensual, yes, but sexual...not so much.

So for my collection of short stories, Don't Explain, I wrote some explicitly sexual stories, including a new Gilda story with a kind of sexy scene for my vampire.  That was great fun!  Looking at a story idea from the angle of desire changed so much of where the story might go.  The story about a glib young professional who works in a department store leaves  yuppie angst territory when sex moves onto the land.  The clothing buyer emerges in a different landscape where she has a regular partner for sex play  and it's about how they keep sex from ruining their relationship.

Since then I always think specifically about sexual activity and where it might fit in a story.  It comes more easily now...so to speak.

In a recent reading of my play about James Baldwin, the director, Brian Freeman, really pulled out the sexual subtext and I was thrilled to realize I'd actually included it.  There on the stage were two actors entwined with each other reflecting the sexual desire that I knew filled Baldwin.  The desire that was at the root of the fear and anger he faced every day of his writing life.  The words I'd written on the page about need and desire were coaxed up onto the stage and two actors wrapped themselves in that energy and shot it back at the audience.  It was amazingly sexy and satisfying.  I want to do it again.