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Sex Simon Tonkin John Biggs Eli Goldstone Lauren Seidman Simon Kearns Stuart Snelson
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Book now ‘A super seductive art world enigma’ The Guardian
Mariko Mori Rebir th 13 December 2012– 17 February 2013 www.royalacademy.org.uk Mariko Mori, Tom Na H-Iu II (detail), 2006. Glass, stainless steel, LED, real time control system, 450 x 156.3 x 74.23cm. Courtesy of: Mariko Mori Studio Inc. © Mariko Mori. Photo: Richard Learoyd
ADVERTISING Durham University’s Oriental Museum is the only museum in Northern Britain devoted entirely to the art and archaeology of the Orient. Founded in 1960 to support teaching and research at Durham University, it is now open to everyone and welcomes thousands of tourists and local visitors each year. Learning remains central to its role however, and the museum and its collections continue to be used to support research and teaching at university level, as well as being a hugely popular destination for the region’s schools. The museum is home to an extraordinary selection of artworks and archaeological artefacts from Ancient Egypt, the Ancient Near East, the whole continent of Asia and the Islamic cultures of North Africa and the Near and Middle East. The collections contain more than 23,500 objects, including over 6,700 from Ancient Egypt and in excess of 10,000 from China. The date range covered by the museum stretches from prehistory to the present day. Visitors can see finely carved Egyptian stone vessels dating back to the 3rd millennium BC, headhunting swords from Borneo and contemporary Japanese graphic art. The museum is currently part way through a major redevelopment project. This started in 2009 with the creation of the first of two new Ancient Egypt galleries, designed to provide an appropriate setting for the display of the highlights of the Egyptian collection. In 2011 the second Egyptian gallery opened, this time with a strong emphasis on supporting our work with schools and engaging with visiting families. Two new Chinese galleries have followed.
FEATURE Marvels of China offers visitors an introduction to this amazing culture through thematic displays exploring topics ranging from symbolism in Chinese art to festivals, scholarship and agriculture. The newest display space is the Malcolm MacDonald gallery, which focuses on the museum’s internationally important Chinese ceramic and jade collections in more detail, providing detailed information for those with a specialist interest as well as the general visitor. China has also been the theme chosen by young people working in the museum this year as part of Stories of the World, a London 2012 Cultural Olympiad project. As their contribution to the Cultural Olympiad these young people, aged 15 to 25, curated the exhibition ‘Made in China: exports and experiences’. This exhibition explored relations between Britain and China over the last 500 years, drawing both on historic collections and on the real-life experiences of members of the North East’s vibrant Chinese community. The young curators chose to use not just the Chinese collections housed at the Oriental Museum, but also the local history archives housed in Durham University’s Palace Green Library and ceramics exported from China in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and subsequently discovered during the course of archaeological excavations conducted in Durham’s historic core. In this way the exhibition explored local links to China, the kind of Chinese objects that were owned by local families in the North East of England in the past and how these objects were used.
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Litro Magazine Sex
EDITORIAL We’re not very happy about sex. At least, that seems to have been the general theme of the stories we received this month. And it’s not as though that’s just a disgruntled few, either – this month equaled our record number of submissions for our recent Magic issue. (We’ll save the discussion of the connection between the two themes for a later date.) In the stories we read, characters simply weren’t thrilled with sex. They wanted more of it. Or they wanted it to last longer. Or be different. Or to be having it with other people. Or several people. Or not to have it at all. In short, there wasn’t much in the way of satisfaction. Mick Jagger would sympathise. So what’s going on? You could suggest it’s to do with a sense of insecurity when it comes to intimacy. Or perhaps it’s a result of the pervasiveness of online pornography – another common thread in this month’s stories – that our expectations have been so distorted by the camera’s lens that we’re no longer capable of being satisfied by the real thing. Or maybe writers just aren’t very good at it. Though to be fair, they’re very good at writing about it. But here’s the thing. There’s something else at work in these stories. Something that trumps all the angst, and fear, and disappointment, and boredom and whatever else flies out of the Pandora’s Box of all things carnal – hope. These stories are almost all charged with hope – a little glimmer that holds out for the possibility of something better next time. It’s almost – dare I say it – romantic. But perhaps it’s not that surprising. After all, the promise of sex is something we all tend to be pretty optimistic about, whatever our circumstances. Which is just as well, given the importance of sex to, you know, the continuation of the species. So this month, we’re excited, aroused even, to offer you Werewolf Night by John Biggs, a dark story of sexual transformation and subversion; The Recovery Position by Stuart Snelson, which eloquently describes the type of sexual practice you’re unlikely to find anywhere (else) on the internet; Eli Goldstone’s OK Cupid, a gem of a flash piece which, despite its digital inspiration, is timeless in its concerns; The Magnet and the Needle by Simon Kearns, which delicately navigates us through the course of one couple’s romantic getaway; a beautifully candid – and artistic – piece of non-fiction by Lauren Seidman, Purple Bra; and finally, leaving you on an unashamedly romantic note, an excerpt from Simon Tonkin’s forthcoming novel, The Writing Shed. Sex sells. We’re pretty much surrounded by it every day of our lives – whether it’s commercials on television or headlines in tabloids or pharmaceutical emails in our inbox. And of course, this month we’re just as guilty as the rest. But we think sometimes there’s more to it than just a fast buck, and we hope – no, we know – this issue’s stories are evidence of that. Andrew Lloyd-Jones Editor January 2013
CONTENTS John Biggs WEREWOLF NIGHT
Eli Goldstone OK CUPID
Lauren Seidman PURPLE BRA Non-Fiction
Simon Kearns THE MAGNET AND THE NEEDLE
Stuart Snelson THE RECOVERY POSITION
Simon Tonkin THE WRITING SHED Excerpt
Events
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WEREWOLF NIGHT
John Biggs
Sleep always takes Jack by surprise now that he’s turned fifty. His legs can’t find a comfortable spot, his mind won’t turn off, he doesn’t feel as tired as he did a minute ago, but when he’s about to give it up—Pop! He’s in a brand new world. Somewhere he doesn’t recognize. Somewhere things sneak up on him. Like the final exam for a college class he never attended. Like standing in a crowded room where no one notices his pants are missing. Like the most sexually exciting thing in the world that isn’t really sex at all. Not quite anyway. The image shimmers with erotic detail, too hot and far away to stay in focus, but its theme is as bright and clear as a full moon on werewolf night. For years this image hid in the glow of more acceptable passions, but those have faded now. Fifty birthdays will do that to a man. This thing is as shiny as the day it popped into existence, when Jack was a thirteen-year-old late bloomer, all alone and thinking about the prettiest girl in the eighth grade. Margaret somebody. Her last name is gone, but not what Jack was thinking about her, back when the world was young and his fetish didn’t have a name. Things like that never go away. They hide in the undergrowth and wait until the wolf bane blooms and the Autumn moon is bright.
Jack wakes with a start. Totally rested for the first time in years, alert, ready to put his dream on paper before it boils away like liquid nitrogen. This dream can’t be reduced to words, but that’s no problem for the best fantasy illustrator in Manhattan. That’s what people call him nowadays on fan sites and blogs, where everybody is a critique. All the slippery details turn solid as he slides them onto paper. First, there is woman, naked except for a pair of Italian shoes. They have six-inch heels. They’ll be red when the drawing is complete, the color of an honest to goodness claret from the province of Bordeaux. 6
OK CUPID Eli Goldstone
“Do you like to listen to music during sex?” The website is asking me. I tick ‘no’. I think, who is listening to music during sex? I feel sorry for them. An old boyfriend of mine used to put music on before we had sex. It was how I knew he was about to pin me to the sofa. We were always drunk. I took his prescription medication. With his blessing, of course. He’d pin me in to the corner of the sofa like a dog, with one knee on the floor, until I was sort of supine. He held my hands above my head. Actually he wasn’t really my boyfriend. The music always seemed inappropriate. It took me a while to get into it. He’d whisper things into my ear, things like “You’re weird.” Now his wife is very beautiful. Or what I mean to say is that she’s always been very beautiful, but has only recently become his wife. They have a baby, whose name I don’t know. “Can you name everybody you’ve had sex with?” I tick yes. I actually have them all written down somewhere, because it’s for some reason important to me. There are a couple without surnames, I admit. I think about making up surnames for them. Sometimes I look at the list with indifference, sometimes with horror. But I think that’s how I look at everything. I’m answering these questions because my boyfriend left me for a woman who wears fancy underwear. I know this because I carried on having sex with him, and we sometimes did it in their shared flat. I can’t understand it, honestly. I’m basically unconcerned by clothing myself. Last time I was at the flat, he was lying on the bed with his feet on the floor, still in shoes, with his boxers and trousers folded like playroom shackles around his ankles. Men look idiotic like that, but that’s how he was. I said “Close your eyes,” and then I put on one of her bras. It fit pretty much perfectly, which just goes to show that he does only like thin women I guess. The straps had diamantes on them, as well as frills. When he opened his eyes I pulled one of the cups down and rubbed my nipple hard. He started to masturbate. After a while we were having sex and my mind started wandering. I thought, where the hell is this woman anyway. We have sex at least twice a week and it’s never at a time inconvenient for either of us. I thought maybe she had an exercise class. I thought, what the fuck is this man doing fucking me and a woman with frilly pants who goes to an exercise class. He has no preference. I don’t know for sure if she had an exercise class or not, but we stopped seeing each other. I mean my boyfriend and I stopped. I’d never seen the woman with the fancy underwear in my life. I let his calls go to voicemail. He’s the last name on my list. At first 13
PURPLE BRA Non-Fiction Lauren Seidman
Following a 2003 retrospective of his work at the Whitney Museum, the artist John Currin fell into a long dry spell, what he described in an interview with the Independent as “impotence with the brush.” Two years into the funk, he found a cartoon a friend had torn from a dirty magazine and sent to him in hopes of lifting his spirits. On the other side of the cartoon was a pornographic photo of a woman in a corset, her legs spread wide. He began a painting based on the image. Inspired, he prowled the Internet for more porn shots, and started more pieces. His sexual paintings are graphic, luscious, and fearless. In one, a man and a woman, naked, kiss open mouthed, their wet tongues fused, the woman with her right hand around the man’s rigid penis, the man with his left middle finger inside the woman; in another, two women fondle a third. I am not interested in art but I am interested in sex, so after I first learned of Currin in a New Yorker profile in January, 2008, his name and his work stayed with me. I didn’t think about him, however, until nearly a year later, when my writing stalled. Not being able to write when you want to is like not being able to come. It is impotence with the pen, or a premature menopause drying up the creative juices. Lucky for me, recent conversations among my friends about erotica brought Currin to mind. I hope he and his work will do for me what the picture on the back of the cartoon did for him. *** Though my talent for art is as meager as my knowledge of and interest in the world of art, in college I took both printmaking and drawing, assuming those classes would be easy credits and a nice break from writing and literature. For our final printmaking assignment, students were told to select the technique they most enjoyed—woodcut or linocut, etching or silk-screening— and create a print of a body part. Little amused me more than my ability to shock people with my writing (easy for a blunt New Yorker to do to an audience of sheltered undergrads), and my choice of body part was a no-brainer. I did not have the skill to design something beautiful, nor the understanding needed to make a print based on theories deeper than beauty. It takes an extraordinary talent to paint a vagina as sumptuously as John Currin does; it takes no talent to simply draw one. In my room I sat naked before the mirror, opened my legs, and sketched. Back in the studio, I began etching: rounded 15
THE MAGNET AND THE NEEDLE
Simon Kearns
She resented his apology for the display of power it was. The silence had been building for some miles, compressed by the confined space of the car, and it was clear the thin statement of contrition was on its way. He had the tilt to his head that signalled an imminent announcement on a difficult subject. Changing lanes to come off the main road, he began. ‘I have to say,’ he said in a tone that suggested the very opposite of obligation, and carried on to throw out a checklist of reasons for his behaviour, forming a trellis of self-supporting justifications to which his excellent opinion of himself would be able to cling. The apology came in the midst of this soliloquy. It slipped out sotto voce, as the slip road arced them away from the motorway, under the flyover, and onto the B-road that would lead them to the foothills and their destination. Night came on quickly, as if it had been held up back east and was making time. The car’s headlights honourably dipped to oncoming traffic but the deeper into the hills they went, switchbacking the gradients, the more the full beam shone. Dashboard glow gave the interior a somber, submerged aspect. The radio, tuned to classical music and turned down low, did not have to compete with the engine, which handled the hairpin gear changes without complaint. GPS confidently filled the gaps in his talking. It was a woman’s voice, polite but firm with her directions. About thirty miles from the motorway, the first glitch was noticed. ‘Is this still the same road?’ he asked, and she wondered if he was talking to her, or the machine. They were put right in the next village, where, after a crawl of speed bumps, they saw for the first time their objective written on a sign. Sandra experienced a minor jolt of localisation. Some nights ago she had found the place online, read all about it, looked at the gallery, and it was odd now to see its name in the real world. She was pleased by the thought that the signpost was still there, even though she could no longer see it. ‘Right,’ he said, and took one. The hills rose around them, great hulking shadow patches against the gleaming stars. There were few dwellings up here, the handful they passed were shut up and dark. He was talking again, something about work, and she 22
THE RECOVERY POSITION Stuart Snelson
Ever the stickler, he was the sort of man who bristled at the misuse of the word dilemma. Insistent upon correct usage, he never tired of pointing out to his students that technically, it should be used only when one was faced with two options, both of which were unfavourable. His thoughts turned to this as he lay naked, prostrate on the floor, waiting in vain for the pain to stop. Through good intentions and perverse execution, he had found himself in his present predicament. It had started as an effort to extend his bedroom repertoire, to inject an element of surprise into the act of lovemaking. Of late, he and his wife had flagged, sexually. Adamant that he would not let explicit thrills slip so readily from his grasp, and with their anniversary as a deadline, he worked towards reinvigorating their moribund relationship. To this end, he had purchased a copy of the Kama Sutra. Alone he had flicked distractedly, absorbed plethoric permutations he had never considered. Opting, of necessity, for an illustrated edition, he nevertheless eschewed lavishly photographed offerings; lithe youngsters would not be his guides. There would be no intimations of mortality, of his advancing years; cartoons would be his illustrious instructors, delicate pencil renderings outlining the mechanics. These sketchy fornicators lent the exercise a sense of deja-vu. Upon publication, he and his wife had dallied briefly with the Joy of Sex, its sinful lineations. Summoning images from the time, he saw a bearded man perpetually locked in the wheelbarrow. He supposed there were worse ways to spend eternity. But it was some time since they had experimented with new positions, and by some time he meant since the seventies. Rather than negotiate the book’s exotic offerings with his wife he had decided to take a more academic approach. In her absence, his approach was one of geometry, not so much impassioned as diagrammatic amassment. In the manner of martial art forms, routines would be drilled until second nature. Whilst he accepted that his methodology was not best suited to the task, it was, he felt, the only way to offset his wife’s objections. With a rigorous meticulousness, he set about committing the book to memory. Through the book’s numerous positions he would seduce his wife once more, would impress her with his flexibility. He reasoned that she would be more receptive to suggestions with an erotic heritage. They would not be re-enacting pornography, tentative mimicry beneath a flat screen, but by candlelight he hoped to usher in similar results under the umbrella of Eastern mysticism; lascivious intentions cloaked in a cloud of patchouli. Prior to his mishap, he had envisaged the ways in which he would take her, engage her with his suddenly broadened palette, leaving her breathless, astonished, by his dynamic gymnastics. That seemed unlikely now. *** 25
THE WRITING SHED Excerpt
Simon Tonkin
Katja’s room was right at the top of the house; in fact it was set into the roof. The ceiling in the small room was comfortably low and the single, bare sash window began just above the floor. The walls were plain, save for a poster of Janis Joplin bedecked in bangles and beads and sat astride a Harley Davidson. Padam knew the photograph from an L.P. cover and had always been impressed by the singer’s look of debauched innocence. There was a Dansette record player on the floor and beside it a cardboard box containing a meagre collection of albums. Clothes were strewn around areas of the whole room. He made out dresses, jeans and slight, delightful panties. The garments even cascaded over an old walnut chest of drawers. Padam realised there was no wardrobe but then he couldn’t imagine where you could put one in here. The bed was simply a double mattress on the floor with what he took to be an Eiderdown on top of it and a couple of bolster pillows. On a recessed shelf above the bed were three framed photographs, all with people with their arms around each other and, to his mind, obviously American. Whether it was the clothes, the hairstyles, the expressions that made him think that he couldn’t decide. He considered asking but didn’t want to bring the homely into this room just now. Such a decision made him quiet. He feared disturbing what was seemingly ordained. And now, as if a sign, he noticed on the end of the shelf, the open packet of contraceptive pills; the empty, ragged foil circles. That meant he could avoid the always ill-timed question. She, meanwhile, was making her way to turn off the main light, after lighting an assortment of candles around the room. After considering this exchange of light, she decided to bring another candle to life on the small window sill … “A signal?” he asked her. “Uh? He saw his reflection move against the night in the window. “Reminded me of ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’.” “What’s that, a poem?” she replied, now from somewhere behind him. There was a preoccupied tone to her voice to it so he didn’t answer. She didn’t press him for a reply and he felt he’d got away with trying to sound clever; he’d not interrupted the consecration. He thought they must have been in what were intended as the servant quarters of the house when it was originally built. The 31
EVENTS THIS MONTH Book Slam The Clapham Grand, St John’s Hill, South London, Clapham, SW11 1TT Thu Feb 7 £8, £6 adv
The always entertaining Book Slam has got a great line-up tonight, including the highly imaginitive, EM Forster Awardwinning author Dan Rhodes – whose debut novel was the wonderfully witty and engaging, if a trifle harrowing, ‘Timolean Vieta Come Home’.
Alexander Armstrong Matcham Room, London Hippodrome , WC2H 7JH Fri Feb 1 - Sat Feb 2 £25-£35
The comedian known for TV work turns to cabaret, backed by his own band and promising ‘an evening of mirth and music’. We’re intrigued to see if he can pull of the transition.
Guardian Review Book Club Kings Place 90 York Way, England, N1 9AG Wed Feb 13 £11.50, adv £9.50 Poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy joins John Mullan to discuss her new collection, ‘Love Poems’. Ansel Adams: Photography from the Mountains to the Sea National Maritime Museum Park Row, Greenwich, SE10 9NF Thu Jan 31 - Sun Apr 28 £7, £6 concs A retrospective of the twentieth-century landscape photographer Ansel Adams. The exhibition, which focuses on the photographer’s life-long fascination with water, features images of seascapes, rapids, waterfalls, geysers, clouds, ice, snow, ponds and rivers, many famous, some that have never before been on display in the UK. The show brings together some of the most famous photographs of the twentieth century, along with lesser-known examples.
Death: A Self-portrait Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Rd, London, NW1 2BE This dead good exhibition features 300 ancient and modern artworks and artefacts exploring the iconography of death, all gathered together by Chicago-based print dealer Richard Harris. Works range from Inca skulls and a chandelier made from plaster casts of bones to rare prints by Rembrandt, Dürer and Goya. 37
EVENTS THIS MONTH Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind British Museum, Great Russell St, London, WC1B 3DG £10, concs £8, Thu Feb 7 - Sun May 26
This exhibition features some of the worlds oldest sculptures, drawings and portraits, created across Europe between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago. To illustrate the idea that the minds of these long ago artists were not that different from our own the pieces are presented alongside modern works by Henry Moore, Mondrian and Matisse.
Gypsy Hotel The Lexington, 96-98 Pentonville Rd, N1 9JB Sat Feb 16 The sort of night you’d go to if you had just£12, adv £9.99
12 hours to live: Gypsy Hotel presents a bourbon-soaked sleazefest filled with Balkan boogie bands, burlesque, swing, magicians and vaudeville sideshows with a heaving, sweaty dancefloor. There’s also the sounds of resident DJ Scratchy on the decks, and a free shot of bourbon for the first 50 through the door. Torture Garden Valentine’s Ball The Coronet, 26-28 New Kent Rd, London, SE1 6TJ £35. Sat Feb 16
The massive fetish event returns for Valentine’s weekend with another gargantuan gropetastic affair. It’ll be hugely popular with show-offs, goths, industrial punks, burlesque beauties and circus freaks as usual, especially as they go for three areas of titillating fun including dancefloors, aerial performances, cabaret, erotic installations, pole dancing, body art, medical equipment and, of course, their infamous couples’ playrooms. Dress in your latex, fantasy, drag, burlesque, medical, uniform…finest and prepare to explore. DC: No street clothes. For full details, see website.
Gingerline HQ A Secret Location on the Overground Line Until Sat Mar 16, £50. From the pioneers of underground immersive dining comes the ultimate night out for East London’s food adventurers: Gingerline HQ. Part hideout, part parallel reality, Gingerline HQ is a clandestine and chameleon dining adventure held in a secret 38
location along the East London Line (or ‘ginger line’, as they call it). The destination and concept is as mysterious as the menu. To take part, hover near any station on the East London Line (London Overground stations between Highbury and Islington and Crystal Palace) at 6pm on the evening of your booking; you’ll receive a text message telling you where to go. Once there, you’ll be dined and delighted with a welcome cocktail, five courses of delicious seasonal cuisine and a piece of take-home menu art. After being treated to a night of fine food and unexpected pleasures, all diners will be sworn to keep the secrets of the Gingerline safe. Over-18s only.
Doctors, Dissection and Resurrection Men Museum of London, 150 London Wall, London, EC2Y 5HN Until Sun Apr 14, £9, £7 concs. The Museum of London’s rip-roaringly theatrical exhibition sets the scene by presenting a map of the capital from the period detailing the city’s hospitals, graveyards and anatomy schools and their sometimes shadowy connections. The show goes on to trace developments in surgery in tandem with what medical journal The Lancet described as ‘The horrid traffic in human flesh’. The exhibition was triggered by museum archaeologists’ excavation in 2006 of a forgotten burial ground at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, where evidence of dissection, autopsy and amputation was discovered, revealing how the hospital used its own supply of unclaimed or friendless bodies on which to practise dissection.
Codebreaker: Alan Turing’s Life and Legacy Science Museum, Exhibition Rd, London, SW7 2DD Until Sun Jun 2 An exhibition to mark the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing (1912-1954). The show looks at the achievements of the man whose wartime codebreaking helped to shorten WWII by years and whose influence on computer science is still felt today. On display are artefacts including machines devised by Turing, such as the Pilot ACE computer (the fastest computer of its time), along with the electromechanical ‘bombe’ machines which were used to crack codes during the war. The show aims to give a rounded picture of the man known at Bletchley Park as ‘the Prof ’, exploring the events that led to his untimely death in 1954 when, after being convicted for indecency and chemically castrated, he committed suicide by taking cyanide.
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Publisher & Editor-in-Chief: Eric Akoto eric.akoto@litro.co.uk Magazine Short Fiction Editor: Andrew Lloyd-Jones andrew.lloydjones@litro.co.uk Online Short Fiction Editor: Katy Darby Contributing Editor: Sophie Lewis Listings Editor: Alex James listings@litro.co.uk Contributing Editor & Web Designer: Emily Ding emily.ding@litro.co.uk Co-Literary Editor & Online Short Fiction Editor: Robin Stevens robin.stevens@litro.co.uk Co-Literary Editor & Litro Lab Producer: Emily Cleaver litrolab@litro.co.uk Magazine Layout & Design: Laura Hannum Film & Arts Editor Social Media Manager: Becky Ayre becky.ayre@litro.co.uk Sales & Marketing: Angelina Wangsha and Emma Osment Litro Magazine is published by Ocean Media Books Ltd. General inquiries: contact info@litro.co.uk or call 020 3371 9971. Litro Magazine is a little lit mag with a big worldview, pocket-sized so you can bring it anywhere. Our mission: to discover new and emerging writers and publish them alongside stalwarts of the literary scene. We also publish regular features on literature, arts and culture online at www.litro.co.uk. Please keep this copy of Litro safe or pass it on to someone else to enjoy—we like to think of Litro as a small, free book.
LITRO | 122 Sex
Enjoying porn is a sort of voyeurism; producing sexually explicit material based on your own experiences is a sort of exhibitionism. Because writing any personal nonfiction is much like masturbation—the concentrated devotion to self, culminating, when it goes well, in a deep sense of satisfaction—the author of erotic essays is, essentially, pleasuring him or herself in front of an audience. From Purple Bra by Lauren Seidman Cover Art: Au Centre de la Terre II by Nadege Meriau www.litro.co.uk ISBN 978-0-9554245-5-7
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