Originally published in Concrete Queers 6: Smut
Gemma Mahadeo
Gemma Mahadeo | she/her & they/them
Gemma is a Melbourne-based writer and occasional musician who edits reviews for Melbourne Spoken Word, an blogs about drinks and zines at eatdrinkstagger.com
Originally published in CQ6: Smut.
Frank Candiloro | xe/xem/xyr
Franklin is a comic artist and rad hip-hop DJ currently residing in Melbourne. Xe is also on the hunt for the perfect HSP, and invites others to join xem on xyr journey. frankcandiloro.com
Your cock shrivelled caked in used condom and I whisper in sharp wet sobs, a
waterfall in verse. In this piercing moment nothing can possibly be good. With
fingertip I circle the red hard pimple on your thigh. Breathing slows my head
soggy cotton and I nudge my damp face against your neck.
Your neck breathes her smell of damp wood and lavender. I can see the ghost of
her can see her drift onto your lap, air stained with sighs your auburn hair heavy
from touch and sweat. I am her mirror getting harder with each grip colour-in
the bruises she made on your skin.
In the mirror glint of shop window I see skin downy like baby scalp and I’m lost
in the performance of it, the incline of head: pout smile wink. Later, I take myself
home. A ritual undress for worship to count each freckle each slope. Hand glide
to scoop black wet hair and have myself again and again because what is more
fulfilling than the thrill of discerning hands?
Originally published in CQ6: Smut.
Rae White | they them
Rae White is a non-binary transgender writer and zinester living in Brisbane. Their poetry collection Milk Teeth won the 2017 Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the 2018 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry. Rae is the editor of #EnbyLife, a journal for non-binary and gender diverse creatives.
I’ve been writing smut, or porn, or erotica, or whatever you want to call it, for just about half my life, according to the spreadsheet that I keep to track such things. (Not just smut writing, but pretty much all the writing I do.) I have the date for my first R-rated story, and before that there was M-rated content, and gods only know what I was reading before then.
There have been a lot of reasons over that time, which amounts to about sixteen years. Obviously a big reason is that it’s for the audience: people give me prompts and I write responses. Or I get a kink bingo card and try to fill it out (it never works). Or I have an idea of my own and write that, which happens more often than I think I’ve made it sound like it does.
I’ve realised lately that the smut I write lets me do some genuinely fun exploring of genders and sexualities other than my own. Maybe it’s not all that recent a realisation, but it’s only in the last year or so that I’ve really looked at it and thought that it’s not just an exploration, but an expression.
In my smut, I can have whatever genital configuration I feel like, whatever sexuality I feel like, and whatever gender I feel like. I can vicariously experience a lot of scenarios through my characters that I can’t physically experience due to the limitations of my body as it exists in the real world. I love that level of escapism. I love the fun of trading scenes back and forth with my writing partner and knowing they’re enjoying the experience as much as I am.
For some people, fantasy or sci-fi is their escapism. For me, it’s smut. Because that’s where I get to be both someone else, and who I really am.
Originally published in CQ6: Smut.
Lauren E. Mitchell | they/them
Lauren E. Mitchell has been writing since forever. There’s a mostly complete list of their publications on laurenmitchell.net. Right now they’re too busy pinning badges and ribbons and a smaller hat onto their sunhat for Pride to write a proper bio. You can follow them on Twitter @LEBMitchell.
While we often look to science fiction, fantasy and horror to push our social boundaries, there is a genre spoken of only in whispers that has them all beaten. These books have been at the frontier of literature since the beginning of their existence, doing things no one else dared to do. Not just in terms of depicting sex – though that in itself is a more noble pursuit than might be immediately apparent – but in terms of depicting social relationships and dealing with taboos that are sex-adjacent.
In many ways, the obscene literature of yore is the spiritual ancestor of the queer literature of today, so there’s little wonder that their subject matter so often intertwines. The case of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a novel by D. H. Lawrence depicting the sexual and romantic relationship between two people who, as far as polite society was concerned, should not have been in one. It’s highly likely, in fact, that it inspired E. M. Forster to write Maurice, the first ever gay romance.
Australians have a particular debt to Lady Chatterley’s Lover, as it was directly responsible for massive reforms to Australia’s censorship policies when it was smuggled into the country and made widely available illegally. You can look to sci-fi for depictions of governments gone mad that are meant to teach us something with varying degrees of subtlety, but you can look to smut for real-world social reform.
The argument over Lady Chatterley’s Lover was framed as one of language – it used the words ‘fuck’ and ‘cunt’ when those where unprintable, and was banned as pornography in the UK. However, this framing eventually came back to bite the censors when the issue finally went to trial, as late as 1960 (the book was written in 1928).
The crux of the issue, according to modern scholars, was the depiction of a truly intimate relationship – and a genuine meeting of the minds – between a member of the aristocracy and the working class. This would seem to hold up, considering pornography was by no means new to England at the time – there was a quiet but booming industry, and while it was often shut down, this tended to be for show when someone complained, as publications would spring up again almost immediately. In any case, smut was available to the upper classes at the time with almost no restraint.
The point here is that smut has, historically, fulfilled the role of forcing whole societies to question their views on censorship, personal autonomy, and what is taboo. We still have this argument today: Fifty Shades of Grey may not be a work of literary genius, but why should it have to be? Surely it has a right to exist regardless. And however you feel about it, it has made a serious dent in the social taboo of talking about sex in public, especially for women.
As Tom Lehrer said with a great deal of flair and far more social insight than many give him credit for, “We take a stand, and hand in hand, we fight for freedom of the press. In other words, smut!”
Originally published in CQ6: Smut.
Cecil Wilde | they/them
Cecil is very tired, always writing at least one book, and pretty convinced elves are basically tall cats.
It’s raining outside
when you fuck him in your car
rivers beat on the windows,
pulse beats in your cock
as you fight your way
inside each other’s space
and clothes
and defences.
On hands and knees
on leather
on bitching suspension,
the car creaks and
calls you a cocktease ‘cos
you’re screwing him so shallow,
spit-shined knob reeling him in slow
before fucking him hard
like a bass chord
like a John Paul Jones
one.
There’s pounding on the roof
when, beneath your hands,
he twists under you
and looks up and back,
pins you naked like you aren’t
right now
and tells you
“I like this song.”
Originally published in CQ6: Smut.
Welton B. Marsland
Still tickled I managed to get cars, fucking, bass guitars & Led Zep into one short poem. Twitter at me here – @wbmarsland
Concrete Queers 