About Fern: I had eaten fiddlehead ferns for the first time while visiting Vermont in early May, prime fiddlehead season. It seemed strange and wonderful, to eat this spiral plant that had not yet unfurled. I was taking a cla.s.s in sustainable treehouse building at a school called Yestermorrow and the cook had carefully foraged for the edible fiddleheads that are not poisonous for us. We enjoyed them chilled in a balsamic dressing in the common kitchen.

About Reading: This poem is based on a real event in which someone I know who is basically kind but who rattles me started talking to me on public transit. I pulled out a book and suggested reading so we wouldn't have to talk. I had forgotten I'd marked a poem of Louise Gluck's called "Dream of l.u.s.t." We took turns reading aloud and my reading companion proclaimed, "that was great" when we finished. I did kiss her cheek and was charmed that poetry could soften me toward someone I had wanted to dodge. I also wondered if sharing a s.e.xy poem in the public s.p.a.ce of a trolley might even turn strangers into lovers.

Reading Joy West In the spine lay the edge of the rectangle slicing two pages of DREAM OF l.u.s.t, 46-47.

I forgot what I had marked.

We were on the trolley.

Let's read poems.

I offered to silence her chatter: Temp. jobs, overqualified for mailroom, and what are your plans after layoff?

I move to the back, so does she.

Let's read poems. She held the right side and I the left of the hardcover.

Open to Gluck's dream. Aloud, she read: unexpected animal ...

You are ridiculously young ...

People in front but no one turns. This, ours with ... odd lumbering gaucheness that became erotic grace.

22nd St., 19th., I rush to finish before City Hall That was great! she said, hug and I kiss her cheek. Glance mouth, so close.

the human body a compulsion, a magnet.

Indented quotes from Louise Gluck "Dream of l.u.s.t" in The Seven Ages, 2001.

Fern Joy West I eat Spring.

Fiddleheads. Snap the spirals. Facing each other but wound, they grow shy.

Savor this curl.

"Literature-creative literature-unconcerned with s.e.x, is inconceivable."

- Gertrude Stein Gina de Vries Bio Gina de Vries is a writer, cultural worker, queer cripple, genderqueer femme, Paisano strega, fat s.e.x worker, and devout pervert born, raised, and currently living in San Francisco. Ze is founder of s.e.x Workers' Writing Workshop, founder of the Girl Talk performance series, and on the Advisory Board at The Center for s.e.x & Culture. Ze's performed, taught, and lectured everywhere from chapels to leatherbar backrooms to the Ivy Leagues, and hir writing has been anthologized dozens of places. Ze is currently at work on How To Have A Body, a book of experimental prose. Read more at ginadevries.com Mini-Interview How did you start writing about s.e.x? I write for a ton of different reasons, but one of the biggest ones is that writing is a tool that helps me make sense of my life and the world around me. I started to develop an awareness of myself as a s.e.xual being-and, specifically, as a queer s.e.xual being-when I was very young (I came out as queer in middle school). I would say that I started writing about s.e.x and s.e.xuality around that time (p.u.b.escent diaries absolutely count, in my book!). So I was writing about s.e.x and desire and embodiment long before I ever actually had s.e.x with another human being, and I just kinda ... never stopped. Middle-school diaries that I never showed a soul eventually morphed into embarra.s.singly earnest queer feminist erotic poetry that I published in 'zines as a teenager ... which eventually morphed into what I do as a writer, performer, and cultural worker today. It's honestly very hard for me to differentiate between my erotic and non-erotic work at this point in my life. While not all of my work is explicitly p.o.r.nographic or written to get the reader off, the overwhelming majority of my writing is about s.e.xuality and embodiment in some way, shape, or form. I've never for a second been interested in leaving the s.e.x out of my work, or "toning it down" for the sake of some hypothetical conservative audience. I'm gonna end by quoting from How To Have A Body (my current ma.n.u.script in progress) here, because it feels relevant to this question, and to how I work and how I understand my artistic vision and process: "I know in my heart of hearts that creative drive and erotic drive are inextricably and undeniably linked. I can't write if I can't come. I can't feel the peak of a story or a poem if I can't feel the peak of my own o.r.g.a.s.m. I don't wanna write when I don't wanna f.u.c.k, and I don't wanna f.u.c.k when I don't wanna write."

Bambino Gina de Vries I'd told him to dress like a teenager going on a first date, and he came over that night looking sharp-all James Dean tough and tender. Black curls coiffed into a greaser pompadour, leather jacket and dark jeans and pressed b.u.t.ton-down shirt hugging his tall, slim frame. He'd just seen East of Eden, he said. "The hype is real-James Dean really is that hot. I'm kind of in love."

I grinned. "So that's why you're dressed like a greaser!"

He nodded. "Yeah. The movie's probably better when you're stoned, because it's a little slow. But it's awesome, and James Dean ..." His eyes got all dreamy again.

"Do you wanna f.u.c.k him or do you wanna be him, Bambino?" "Um. Both." He blushed.

He made me wish I had a record player, that boy. A record player and a clawfoot tub, real silk stockings and a rotary phone. A collection of vintage garter belts and a smart little sixties miniskirt that inched up my thighs slowly when I spread my legs. A dress for him to unzip down the back while I insisted that of course I wasn't doing anything untoward and really, I was getting tired of him insinuating something. He made me want a beret and a first edition of Howl, a couple of joints and a bottle of red wine to seduce him into the wicked Bohemian lifestyle. He made me want an ap.r.o.n collection, a real kitchen, and a real dining room. A table where I could feed him after-school snacks and help him with his homework, undo his belt while he struggled with a Math problem and tried to ignore how good my hands felt.

What I had to work with was a tiny rent-controlled apartment, thrift store lingerie, and a limitless imagination. We started dating right before I started graduate school and moved into an impossibly cheap in- law studio in the South Mission. The day after our first date, he offered to help me move. He ended up stuck in transit on a trip back from Oregon-never made it to move-in. But five days later, he was the first person I f.u.c.ked in my new bedroom.

I'd never lived alone before. This was a place with a fig tree in the backyard, an old-school San Francisco Chinese grandmother landlord who offered to let me pay rent in cash, and a sketchy little alleyway between buildings that led up to my doorstep. I wanted to throw him around in that alley, but there was zero privacy-no way to do it without alerting my new neighbors to the intimate details of my s.e.x life. This was a place with a kitchenette table that doubled as a counter, and a main room that just barely held my bed, my bookshelves, my desk, and my clothes. But it didn't matter that it was tiny-it was mine, all mine. I could put whatever I wanted on the walls, have loud s.e.x without disturbing my housemates, sing opera at three in the morning if the whim struck me. Everything about that month felt limitless, imbued with magic and newness-my new school, my new apartment, my new neighborhood, my new cat. And him.

And I didn't have an ap.r.o.n collection or a first edition of Howl, so I worked with what I did have. I started scouring thrift store racks, looking for the slips with 42-inch bustlines and lots of give in the t.i.ts. I grabbed every H&M size 12 camisole off the rack and stretched them over my curves. I bought $9 stay-up stockings at Madame S and $2 fishnets from MultiKulti Dance Accessories on 16th and Valencia. I justified every new purchase, no matter how extravagant or frivolous, with "Well, I can use it in a role-play, right? This slip is actually a very reasonably priced s.e.x toy!" I started wearing more makeup. Dangly earrings instead of my tough-girl gauged lobes. Flowers in my hair. "h.e.l.lfire" from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab dabbed into the sweet spots behind my ears and between my b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

I was only a year older than him, but when we went out together, we really did look the part. Me like Mrs. Robinson in my leopard-print skirt and garters and stockings. Him like Benjamin in his pressed pants and shirt, that dark mop of curls, big eyes and pale creamy skin. The adorable jolty way he moved when he was nervous, or excited-so much boy energy to burn. Dimples in his cheeks when he smiled. The tentative, tender, teenage way he'd ask permission to touch me, or lean into the crook of my neck and sigh, so happy.

I was wearing fishnets with stompy boots in the pit at Cypher in Snow shows by the time I was fourteen, calling myself queer and punk and femme even then. Pervert came a few years later, when I was still a teenager. When I met him, I'd been a die-hard Daddy's girl for years; I'd even been Ma'am and Mistress a few times. But I'd never been in charge all the time. I'd never been anyone's Mama before.

"So much of this," he said to me, "is about getting to have the adolescence I didn't get to have." We were stretched out in my bed, him in his greaser finery, me in my lingerie, catching up on our weeks before we got carried away by s.e.x.

"I thought you might say something like that," I said. I still didn't know much about his life, then. But I know what it is to be raised to be a good girl, what it is to be expected to grow into a proper woman; and I know what it is to fail at that. I can't imagine what it's like to be held up to the Girl Standard when you're actually a boy waiting to grow into a man. "You know ... It's like that for me, too," I said, "When I play Mama with you, sometimes. And when we both pretend we're teenagers ..."

And he looked surprised. "But weren't you, like, the cool punk girl who came out all early? Like, didn't you do zines and all this awesome writing and-?"

"Yeah, I mean, I was punk and I was queer, but I was a nerd and I was a fat girl, too. Publishing a zine didn't get me laid in high school, dude." And we both cracked up at that.

"It's funny," I said, "I mean, I think the kids I went to school with thought I was a s.l.u.t because I was queer, so, you know, that automatically makes you hypers.e.xual-"

"Right, of course, they always think that-"

"-and, I mean, I dressed the part, and I talked about s.e.x. But I only had s.e.x with one person in high school. I wanted to be s.l.u.tty, but ..." I trailed off. Tried to find the words. "It wasn't something I had access to. Some of what I do with you, when we pretend like that ... It's about getting to be who I would have been if I'd actually been in my body. If I'd believed I was pretty. Believed I could be s.e.xy like that."

Sometimes I felt myself existing in the timeline of all the characters we played. Not just frozen at that age, but frozen in that time period. So when we pretended I was a bossy riot grrrl and he was the shy, younger grunge-rock boy who was friends with my dorky little brother, it wasn't 2009 in my studio. It was 1999 at my parents' house, and I was seventeen, playing him my Bikini Kill 7-inch and inching too close to him on my bed. I knew better than to be fooling around with my kid brother's friend-it was kinda questionable around the age thing, it was even more questionable when it came to the crowds we hung out in. But it was so much fun to make him squirm and swear him to secrecy, and G.o.d, he was such a quick study with that mouth, those hands, that c.o.c.k.

The night he came over dressed up like a greaser I was in a red slip, fishnets, red heels. A glittery red cloth rose in my hair. Could I be a fifties housewife in this? I thought as we chatted. He was telling me more about James Dean. Maybe. A very seductive one, at least. We were lying on my bed together, close but not cuddling. I caught his chin in my hand and pulled him in for a kiss. He wrapped his arms around me, but he pulled his lips away after a minute.

"We're doing that thing we do," he murmured into my neck, kissed it. "Mmm. We're doing that thing, where we start before the scene starts ..."

"Oh, so you wanna work for it?" I grabbed his pompadour and pulled. He winced at first, cried out. But then he giggled. Nodded.

"I wanna work for it. Yes. I want a story." I let him go. It was hard not to touch him.

"Okay, Bambino ... How old do you wanna be? "Sixteen? Seventeen, maybe?"

"Okay, I think ... I'm a housewife. You're my son's friend ..." "I've had a crush on you for a long time, yeah."

"And you've come over ... And my husband happens to be on a business trip. And my son's out with those hoods he runs with." I felt my voice start to change, subtly. It got lower. More serious. "Why are you over here, kid? Shouldn't you be out with those boys, too? Not that I approve ..."

His eyes got big. He had never looked more earnest to me. "No, I'm good, Ma'am. I don't hang out with those boys. I don't like that your son hangs out with them." Then he cracked a smile. Started laughing. "Wait, wait-I'm sorry, I just thought of something. Can I be f.u.c.king your son, too?!"

That got me laughing. "Pervert!"

"No, no, hear me out. So you want me, but you're angry with me, because I'm taking your son away from you. You want me, but you think I'm a bad influence."

"You're a glutton for punishment, little f.a.ggot." I grabbed a curl and pulled again.

He shrieked, but he looked like the cat with the canary in his mouth. "Guilty as charged."

I listened to Diamond Dogs over and over again the summer we got together. If I'd had the record player, I would have worn out the vinyl, I'm sure. Music takes on a different meaning when you're falling for someone, and I was falling, hard-for him, but for my new self, too. The whole relationship was a coming out moment, coming out into something different and new, and like most people who are newly out and overzealous, I ran into it full-tilt, no holds barred, not a single stop or hesitation. No checking to see if there were any obstacles. No worries that maybe I'd trip over that rock and skin my knee. I didn't think. I just ran. Everything was intense; everything felt like a whirlwind of emotions and s.e.x. I still use words like pivotal and formative to describe our months together, and G.o.d, I fear I'm being grandiose, melodramatic, talking that way. But that's what it was. It's how we were with each other.

So that month, falling for him, listening to Diamond Dogs because it happened to be what I'd picked up from the library on a whim-suddenly, I took the alb.u.m very personally. It was the soundtrack to the crush, and it was the soundtrack to my newfound Mama persona. It felt like every line of every song was written especially for me. "Sweet Thing" was an anthem, Bowie's creepy-s.e.xy snarl in my ear, the perfect music for dating this boy who was glam rock and choir boy, French new wave and f.a.ggotry, lisp and snarl, James Dean and Lou Reed, c.o.c.ksure and shy violet. Dating this boy who wanted nothing more than to suck my c.o.c.k, who wanted nothing more than to f.u.c.k me so good, just right. When you rock'n'roll with me, there's nowhere else I'd rather be. We're taking it hard all the time. I love you in your f.u.c.k-me pumps, and your nimble dress that trails. Boys, boys, it's a sweet thing. Mmm, if you want it, boys? Get it here.

His hands on my t.i.ts were sweet, that night. Tentative. "Oh, honey. You're not so tough, are you? You're just a little p.u.s.s.ycat under all that bravado, huh?" He made a little whimpering noise-the pink rose to his cheeks and his eyelashes fluttered. But he didn't take his hands away. Something about how soft and unsure he was made me want to up the ante.

"n.o.body's touched me like this for a long, long time. Not my husband. Not my son." I heard him catch his breath at that. Good. "n.o.body." I leaned in to kiss him. He was so pliant in my arms, a rag doll of a boy, a marionette, but G.o.d, the noises he made. Little moans and sighs, and he licked the crook of my neck and whispered. "Oh, your skin tastes so sweet, Ma'am. I like it."

I pushed him back on the bed. He kept looking up at me in wide- eyed wonder. Or was it fear? Uncertainty? His breathing was heavy, and he was moaning, though. He'd tell me if he was real-life scared, right? I pulled his leather jacket off. Leaned down between his legs and started to unbuckle his belt. "Have you done this before, baby?"

"In a way," he said. Smirking. "In a way?"

"I can't talk about it." And suddenly, the smirk melted from his face, and he looked so little. "Ma'am ... There's a woman I do this with in my dreams."

"In dreams?" I hated that I was repeating everything he said. But I wasn't expecting that from a greaser boy. In dreams? What do I say to that? "Do you touch yourself in these dreams?"

He shuddered. "Sometimes, Ma'am."

So I put my hand on his zipper and stroked. "Show me how you like to do it."

He reached down and started to unzip. But then he froze. Turned over on his side, and curled up into a fetal position. "I need to stop-I'm sorry." I'd never seen him cry before. I was dumbfounded. What had I done? Was this about gender? s.e.xual a.s.sault? Shame? Maybe even just not being h.o.r.n.y any more? Swallow your ego, I said to myself. He needs you right now.

"Baby. It's okay. No apologies."

"I-" He blinked. He looked so surprised. "The character's too repressed and f.u.c.ked up. I'm getting too into it. I feel real-life ashamed." "No worries, Bambino." I pulled him into my arms. "You're so sweet. Honey, you're so good." But what I most wanted, in that moment, was to be told those things myself.

I started calling him Bambino after I saw Murmur of the Heart for the first time. It's the Louis Malle film about the adventures of a precocious-s.e.xually, intellectually, otherwise-fourteen-year-old boy named Laurent. It's most famous for its frank but somehow uncreepy depiction of incest. The boy has s.e.x with his mother at the end, consensually. He said the boy in the movie was a big influence on him, made an impression when he was first coming into s/m and wanted to cultivate a boy persona. So I felt like I was learning as much about him as I was about the movie when I watched it over salad and pizza one night after cla.s.s.

"I'm making this movie out to be supererotic," he'd said, "But it's probably not that s.e.xy. I think I just get off on the c.o.c.ky rich French boy thing." From the first moment, the opening wail of Charlie Parker, where towheaded Laurent and his friend are out on the cobblestoned French streets scamming tourists out of their pocket change by pretending to collect for the Red Cross, I was just riveted. I could not take my eyes off the screen. The boy is called Laurent by his French family, but Venzino by his Italian mother, a gorgeous, doe-eyed woman from a meager background. I read her as a s.e.x worker, even though I'm not sure if that's what Malle intends. She's not whoring in the film, but you get the distinct sense that she married the boy's father for money. That they met under less than proper circ.u.mstances. It's a story full of s.e.x and jazz and the intense push/pull between love and resentment. Venzino has a lot of h.o.m.oerotic encounters with his brothers-not quite s.e.x, and not quite s.e.xy, so they are somehow less shocking than when he and his mother touch each other, but it is still surprising. The s.e.x scene with his mother at the end is so bizarrely normal that you almost forget that it's an incest scene. Except that that's also what gives it a charge, a spark-that they are fundamentally not supposed to desire each other this way, mother and son, teenage boy and middle-aged woman, but they do.

In the movie, Laurent's mother calls him "Venzino" as a pet name, a kind of sweet Italian diminutive of his French name. And it occurred to me that my boy should have a pet name, and for some reason, it was "Bambino." It just was. It's Italian for "baby boy," which seemed perfect. Growing up, it was the nickname I heard my Calabrese grandmother and great-aunts bestow upon all my boy cousins. It also refers to manifestations of the Baby Jesus, which was less perfect. But I liked it, and I started calling him that, casually. "Bambino, how are you?" "Bambino, fetch that for me."

It took him a while to ask me what it meant. I'd been calling him Bambino for a couple weeks, and he finally said "Whoa! I just looked up this thing you're calling me. Are you calling me the little baby Jesus?!!!" This was over an instant message conversation. He put three exclamation points at the end of the sentence, he was that taken aback. "No, no. Sweetie, it's Italian for 'little boy.' I'm calling you a little boy." And he sent me back a smileyface.

He started to change, curled up in my arms. I could feel the desire returning to him-whatever demon he'd wrestled with was floating away. "I want to keep going," he said. "Maybe we could do something lighter? Just jerk off together? But be the same characters?"

"Of course, honey."

"No, or maybe. I mean." He was talking fast, now, I could see the wheels in his head spinning. "I mean, do you want me to f.u.c.k you?"

"I ... I mean, if you want to, I'd love that."

"Okay. Maybe we can do that, as long as you're running it, showing me how." He smiled big. "I really want to, Mama."

"Mmm." I kissed his eyelids. "You want to touch me?" He kissed my neck. "Yes."

"You want to show me how you touch yourself?" And the minute I said it, I regretted it. f.u.c.k. That's what hurt him before. How could I be so dumb?

But he was reaching for his fly again, saying, "Yes." He got his jeans down over his hips and a.s.s. Then he crumpled.

"f.u.c.k. I'm sorry. I need to stop."

"I'm sorry. G.o.d, I'm so sorry. I f.u.c.ked up. s.h.i.t."

So we held each other for the rest of the night. Read each other stories. Ate ice cream. Went to sleep curled up in each other's arms.

We woke up that morning curled around each other like kittens. I started stroking his hair, absentminded, half-asleep; he stroked my face, and suddenly, everything felt electric again. My hands were all over him in a flash. He rolled over onto his belly, grinding his hips into my sheets and sighing as I raked my nails over his back. "I-you really wanna do this?" I was still gun-shy from the night before. I couldn't believe I was back-pedaling out of s.e.x with someone I was so hot for, but I wanted to make sure. "Honestly, I didn't intend to be Evil Molesting Mommy and f.u.c.k you awake ..."

"No, it's my favorite way to wake up. Please don't stop."

I didn't need to be told twice. "Do you want me in the back or the front hole?"

"The front, please."

"Do you want my hands or my c.o.c.k?"

"Your c.o.c.k, please." That edge in his voice, so full of desire it was hoa.r.s.e, guttural.