CARNAL NATION

I have always been a reader. I don’t remember learning to read: I was three, my mother says Sesame Street taught me. Books have always been my go-to when I don’t understand something. Even now, in this digital age, though I do utilize Google faster than you can say "you should Google that," my second go-to is nypl.org/books and finding a title to put on hold, to pick up at my nearby Mid-Manhattan library.

I don’t remember a time when that wasn’t my answer to any given question plaguing me.

Before I was out, and before I was an "adult" with one of those "real" jobs, I worked in independent bookstores. My specialty and sections were always social sciences. When the shelving had been done, when the desks were tidy and the isles were mostly empty of customers, I would sneak into the slightly secluded corner with psychology, eastern religion, relationships, sex, and gay & lesbian studies, and pull the queer books off the shelves.

I remember Nothing But the Girl, a photography book edited by Susie Bright and Jill Posener, published in 1998, with the subtitle "the blatant lesbian image," featuring a rather butch woman on the cover: seated, shown from the knees up, legs comfortably open, in jeans, one hand behind her head, which was slightly turned left and down, a lovely profile for her early Elvis-like pompadour (which, curiously, is precisely the haircut I am sporting as I write this), elbow up and out, shirtless, bare-breasted and unselfconscious. I remember a dozen other photographs and photos from that book: Kitty Tsui, "Jack’s Back," Tee Corrine, Jill Posener. I remember Herotica 3 with the purple cover, my favorite story being a double date of two hetero couples which ends with the girls making the boys play with each other, after they keep making girl-on-girl jokes. I remember Best Lesbian Erotica 1998, oh God I remember that book, specifically the story by Karlyn Lotney—aka Fairy Butch—called "Clash of the Titans," and the story "Ridin’ Bitch" by Toni Amato. I remember sliding those books back behind the others, or burying them in the stockroom, to ensure they wouldn’t be purchased.

I could’ve just purchased them, I know, but that wasn’t an option then. I was closeted, unaware of myself. I had no idea why I liked those books so much—no, maybe I did, on another level, perhaps it was an "unthought known," something I’d never thought of but somehow, somewhere, knew.

Well, I hadn’t told myself yet. I had a long-term (3 years, then) boyfriend who was suddenly threatened by my attraction to women—what was bisexual fun for the whole family became lesbian flight that threatened to wreck his relationship. I couldn’t bring lesbian books home. Nor could I surf lesbian websites without erasing the browser history, or look out the window of the car without being accused of checking out that girl.

But it wasn’t always that way. I used to be shameless about my acquisition of knowledge about sex, especially about purchasing sex books. My small town’s only bookstore and library had policies that they’d let anyone purchase anything, so as soon as I saved up my babysitting money, I bought all kinds of things. Most memorably, I had all three Nancy Friday books on women’s sexual fantasies published in the 1970s and 1980s: Women on Top, Forbidden Flowers, and the original My Secret Garden. The latter I actually snatched from a babysitting job—I found it very unhidden on their bookcase and after reading it a few times after the two kids were asleep, I stole it. Not that I’m proud of that. I was probably thirteen, still working out my respect for other people’s possessions.