Title: With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn Author: Amber Dawn and Trish Kelly, eds. Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press Publish Date: 2005 Pages: 153 Genres:: Lesbian Pulp, Compilation Reviewer: Chris R. Morgan

Rating:

As the amount of extreme visual porn seems to crowd the market in all the major media facets, it seems that text-derived extreme sex is ever more endangered to go the way of the etching. That isn't to say that the printing presses have yet to go dry. Take Arsenal Pulp Press for instance. While they might not print on actual pulp paper, this collection of rough and ready literary lesbian porn will surely make anyone who reads it feel like it should have been purchased for 50 cents at some corner newsstand and stuffed in a trench coat for a glance during a lonely commute.

Editors Amber Dawn and Trish Kelly and the other, mostly Canadian smutsmiths don't fuck around when describing the collection and simply label it what it is: porn. In the minds and mouths of these writers, porn is no more than a genre that can be molded into whatever tastes the writer/viewer/reader wants. The two introductions by the editors explain their involvement both in feminist/riot grrl movements and the adult film industry and how they overcame such a complication. What results from such a set of beliefs is a very different kind of pornographic writing, one that liberates while it stimulates at the same time.

The writers featured come from various backgrounds. A good deal of them is squarely in the lesbian erotica circuit, while others also serve as journalists and even zinesters. However distinct the writers may be from each other, it is positive that they all share a common theme, to not pussyfoot around with romantic notions and featherweight erotica. These girls and their characters open their mouths and lap their salivating tongues with the dirtiest of connotations. The stories are brief and to the point, which may or may not hinder the carnal nature of the book for some readers. They breeze with light, poetic passages before suddenly shifting into the girl-on-girl savagery that commences in all its splendor. Once dangerously unsexy words such as 'cunt' and 'turf' are scattered throughout the stories, not so much for shock effect (well, maybe a little) or to take it back from the totalitarian patriarchy, but to add weight to stories that don't flinch from the rough stuff.

The stories do vary from each other in plot. Some are simple fuck stories that turn up the heat on traditional erotic fare (Suki Lee's "Through Winter Sun") and the sexual awakening/revealing of the shy girl (Sara Graefe's "Butt Really"). Some are more naturalistic (Trish Kelly's "A Quiet Evening at Home"). Others are more non-traditional, rougher and toy with gender roles with such masculine inclusions of drag queens and strap-ons (the back-to-back stories of Miss Cookie LaWhore's "A Free Ride" and May Lui's "Yes Means Yes"). The word 'cock' is thrown in for good measure in some stories during fuck passages as well. That said, one of the central themes in the collection is the manipulation of the notions of gender roles and who controls who to a degree that could be almost absurdist in the hands of another writer.

While other pornography is subject to the whim of commercial generics and repetition, With a Rough Tongue turns many of those tired industry standards on their heads for a read that is simultaneously liberating and arousing. The book may, in some cases, be polarizing due to the range of the content. Some stories are more extreme while others more vanilla. Though some of prose is reminiscent of the pretension found in the third draft of college creative writing assignment, the adventurous, sensual reader will find satisfaction in the provocative ideas brought forth on the pages.