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SMUT STAND REPORT: Oct 13, 2015 (New Orleans)

WHEN: 4.5 hours (7:45pm-12:15am), Oct 13, 2015. WHERE: Frenchmen Street (in front of Bicycle Michael’s), New Orleans. OUTPUT: four full-length pieces, including an unexpectedly kinky lesbian wake-up vignette and a hetero pussy-eating scene with bonus appearance by an NJOY toy (this was their suggestion, by the way, and I enthusiastically wove it in).

I’ll be honest here: I’ve had a hard time going out to the Smut Stand for the past few days. One of the girl poets started poaching my potential customers by aggressively answering people’s vague drive-by questions of “what the hell is smut while U wait?” with “I will write smut for you right here on the spot!” or “I’ve got a special on smut tonight.” It happened first on Saturday, and wrecked my serenity for the evening. I have checked my reaction with a couple of busker friends and UK Muse, and even with Matt the Poet; if you remember, he and I had a tense week or two last year, where he asked me to go to the other side of the street because he felt that my genre was detracting from his business, and then he invited me back and we made up. Point is, I felt a little weird bringing this up with Matt, but he agreed with everyone else I talked to: her actions are disrespectful at the least and super-shady business practice, besides.

Depending on how brazen she gets about it, I may yet have a little conversation with her, but for the time being, I have eliminated the large overhead sign from my set-up—casts too broad of a draw, makes it too easy for her to snag people, and I don’t need it on the Bicycle Michael side of the street anyway—and try to set up next to her whenever I can. When I did that on Monday night, she didn’t do any poaching; she obviously knows that what she is doing, or rather, how she’s doing it, is wrong. And she hasn’t talked to me much since Saturday, either, beyond the greeting that I have to initiate. It has been pretty awkward out there, but I just have to keep showing up and live with the awkward, I guess.

I hate feeling this brittle out there. I want to relax and enjoy my evenings, and I resent the hell out of the fact that she is riding on my marketing like that. I mean, I know that I don’t own the concept of smut. But I also know that what I do, and the process for it, is different and better, and as Matt the Poet says, “Quality will out.” Actually, that’s not always true with literature, but it’s a nice thought, anyway.

Meanwhile, I continue to have enough good customer encounters out there that my faith in the Sidewalk Smut experience remains unshaken. One of my commissions tonight came from a heterosexual couple who brought a charming mix of English-as-a-decent-but-second-language and a sort of gentle kink. They said they weren’t really kinky, but then brought up that he was definitely dominant and that they enjoyed lots of role-playing with that power dynamic, including as 1950s husband and wife (?!). I had her putting on the last touches of lipstick when he got home, helping him out of his jacket, and then ruining the lipstick with a good, properly submissive blow-job. He was grinning from ear to ear when I finished reading the piece, and she had slid her hand around his waist, leaning to kiss his neck. Added bonus: she is 16 years older than him. I love to see older women with younger men, subverting cultural standards and preconceptions for both age and power-play.

Speaking of preconceptions, another piece tonight brought me face to face with a couple of my own. I try my damnedest to slough them off, but apparently they’re still there. The customer was an older woman, maybe early 60s. She looked like a Florida retiree: tanned, well-dressed, frosted hair, careful makeup, a fair bit of what I consider flashy jewelry. She and two friends approached me as many a hen party does: loudly, with lots of laughter. She decided to step up for a piece, and after she agreed to the rules of engagement, the interview began.

So, do you like men or women?

“Women.”

<pause> You like women.

“Oh, yes. And this piece is for my wife, she’s not here with us, but she’s going to love this.”

I was momentarily ashamed at my internal startlement, but hoped that she didn’t see that and carried on with the interview. This woman was so profoundly in love with her wife of seven years, it was a joy to talk with her. The tenderness was so obvious, and she was so still over the moon about her love. But lest you think I ended up wandering into a cottage with the curtains blowing in the breeze, let me tell you the answer she gave me to the last question, e.g. has there been anything recently or vividly that was a pleasant discovery for you in sex?

“Anal.”

Really.

“Oh, yes, it’s WONDERFUL.”

Anal. <pause and regroup> Yes! It is wonderful! One hundred percent! High Five! So, uh… inside or outside or both. You said earlier that you don’t use toys…

“That’s right. Just my fingers.”

<my eyes flick involuntarily to her heavily be-ringed fingers> Ah! Yes! That is a lovely thing.

“Isn’t it though? It’s just amazing!”

She doubled the rate when she paid after the interview, told me to be sure to make it extra romantic, brought me a drink midway through, and when I read it to her at the end… well, let’s just say SPOT ON. These are not the only reasons I consider her a hyper-successful smut encounter, though. Talking with her also really made me consider my own ageist and femme-phobic assumptions.

For starters, SHE and people like her is why I build the gender preference question into my interview. I have to ask, even in environments like Frenchmen Street, where heterosexuality is most definitely the norm. Otherwise I apparently am still in danger of occasionally assuming the answer to one of the most important points in the interview. Straight people do mishear that question sometimes and make mistakes, and then correct themselves, but still. (I have been thinking about how to consistently present trans-inclusive options of gender, in a way that is still accessible to all of the cis-gendered people I talk with. I welcome suggestions.)

And then, the fact that my mind stuttered about her sex practices… that was strictly an age thing. What could a lady of a certain age be doing with her fingers down there? I need to get over that shit a little faster, because in 25 years, that could be me. I could be the one talking about butt sex or sounding or having my pussy belted—in an otherwise appropriate context, like a sex-ed conference or something—and some younger-than-me person will be looking at me and saying, “Holy fuck, Grandma, really?”

*****

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