WRITING KINKS WELL(-ADJUSTED)
Catch my latest piece 'Corporate Head' in After Dinner Conversation.
Hi! I’m Jacob, and this is Fslur.
Content Disclosure: Explicit Sexual Content; BDSM Themes; Strong Language; Hate Speech; High Intensity
That’s the content warning accompanying my latest piece. ‘Corporate Head’ was published in this month’s issue of After Dinner Conversation, a literary magazine curating works which ask philosophical and ethical questions. While I’m excited to share the piece, it’s harder to share than anything I’ve published before, as it’s the first time my work has been behind a paywall. If you’d like to order a digital or print (!!) copy of the issue, please click here. I’m also happy to lend you a copy — just hit me up.
‘Corporate Head’ centers on an attempt at blackmail which exposes a senior professional’s submissive side to his colleagues. I feel that the content disclosure, while for sure accurate, is somewhat sensational. The sexual content and BDSM themes are relatively vanilla. There are a few f-bombs and one fslur. High intensity applies mostly to the ending. I hope the piece reads as serious, but not gratuitous.
The piece engages questions of shame. Who gets to define shame? What should make us ashamed? And what do we do with shame? Can we — and should we — pursue justice when we feel ashamed? What justice is appropriate? What justice goes too far?
I’ve often found that ‘coming out’ stories and other narratives about the shame and stigma associated with queerness tend to reinforce that shame and stigma, even if the narrative seeks an uplifting resolution (such as overcoming that shame and embracing queerness). I don’t want to read or write about being ashamed of queerness, particularly if that queerness is maximally assimilationist (the golden boy who perfectly conforms to hetero-patriarchy except in that he likes other perfectly conforming golden boys).
I’m interested in edging queerness away from hetero-patriarchy. Kink can be (and in ‘Corporate Head’ very much is) part of that.
Much of kink, particularly BDSM, relates to power, sometimes subverting expected power dynamics among genders. Other kinks engage more with actions and aesthetics deemed taboo by our social structures, which are religiously-infused hetero-patriarchy all the way down. I’m not here to argue a blanket defense of kink, and personally have no interest in uplifting the worst of kink. But I’m also not here to yuck anyone’s yum. I’m more interested in kinks, like safe and consensual BDSM, which open up conversations about power between individuals and within systems.
With this in view, kink scans similarly to queerness. Both involve subversion of the puritanical norms of hetero-patriarchy. But kink feels like a more complicated, maybe more intense, manifestation of that subversion, which makes the question of shame feel more pressing. The golden boy who likes golden boys may feel shame just about being queer, but our cultural conversation is ready to go deeper. Today, for the most part, gay is okay. But a golden boy ashamed to admit that he likes to tie up and spank other golden boys, or likes to get tied up and spanked himself? Now we’re getting somewhere.
I can feel myself struggling to write about kink and queerness, and here’s why — I’m trying to write about writing kink, but I haven’t really written that much kink. My challenge to myself is to write more and better representation of kink interests and identities.
My characters in ‘Corporate Head’ are right out of American Horror Story, toxic and unhealthy and bad (here I’m talking about their choices and personalities, not their kinks). The discussion questions following my piece reflect this. To be clear, I did not write these. When I first read them, I honestly found them a bit aggressive. One reads, What do you think caused the narrator to develop his sexual preferences? Can a well-adjusted person have these same sexual preferences?
My instinct was to balk at the suggestion that one can’t be well-adjusted and also into kink. But upon reflection, I realized that the characters in ‘Corporate Head’ are clearly far from well-adjusted. So it’s a fair question, as much for me the writer as you the reader. Through my writing, I can work toward an answer, and work on bringing kink and queerness together in more healthy and uplifting ways.
Kink, like queerness, can be liberating, not to mention hot as fuck. So I can’t let ‘Corporate Head’ stand as the sum of my writing on kink. Garth Greenwell, if you’re reading this, I’m coming for you. I’ll write my subs more well-adjusted than you can imagine. This isn’t my new full-time focus. This newsletter isn’t going to become all kink every time. This is just one piece of queerness I want to continue unpacking. Publishing ‘Corporate Head’ is a step in that direction.
Thank you to After Dinner Conversation for giving ‘Corporate Head’ a home. Thank you to my mucus group comrades for helping me with revisions of the piece. And thank you for reading.
Thanks for reading! Do you have thoughts? Do you know someone else who might? Please pass me around, and don’t hesitate to hit me up with comments, questions and fresh ideas. Catch you next time!
#FSLUR ON TUMBLR
FSLUR BOOK REC
So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color by Caro De Robertis
I really can’t rave enough about this book, and I may have to follow up with a full post pulling out some of my favorite sections. There’s so much brilliant insight and perfect articulation of the queerness of gender, drag, art, kink, community and just living, all smartly edited together to create a unique and precious dialogue among these queer elders of color. The chapter on gender is mind-blowing. Some of these icons describe faggot and jotería as part of their gender. Some speak so movingly about being trans, nonbinary, genderqueer or two-spirit before the language for those identities existed. Some of them reject gender, or indicate that there are as many genders as people, as stars in the sky. There are anecdotes connecting personal identities to the evolving context of queer community in recent history, but the true gift is the way the twenty elders interviewed articulate their ideas about identity, queerness and community. This is a blueprint for future generations of queer artists, thinkers and people. I’m so grateful to have read it, and I’m sure I’ll be coming back to it for years to come.