An Interview with Simon Sheppard by Shane Allison

Shane Allison: Can you tell us a little about your new book "Sex Parties 101"?

Simon Sheppard: It's a guide for orgygoers and sex party throwers, with advice on everything from how to set up a dungeon to how to approach Mr. Right Now, from what snacks to serve to how to get fucked in public. By way of research, I talked to veteran party hosts, party virgins, and hardened sluts—and, at great personal cost, even went to sex parties myself—and I had a great time writing it. It is, as far as I know, the first book of its kind, and I hope it's both thoroughly useful and fabulously entertaining.

Allison: It's quite a change from your stories.

Sheppard: Maybe not. My erotic fiction is, I hope, dedicated to the proposition that queer desire is great, and that all kinds of men are entitled to have all sorts of sex. Likewise, Sex Parties 101 is intended to be inclusive, encouraging, and celebratory. I'm just not one of those sex writers who say, "Here's how you should be having sex."

Allison: I read your poems in a book called the Badboy Book of Erotic Poetry. Have you always been a writer of erotica?

Sheppard: Actually, I was publishing erotic poetry way back in the 1970s, in Mouth of the Dragon, which I think was the first gay men's poetry magazine. Even then, a lot of my poetry had a strong narrative element, so it was kind of natural for me to move to fiction. I've been writing porn stories for over a decade, ever since zine editor Bill Brent asked me to write a short story and the late Scott O'Hara picked it up for a book he edited.

Allison: What's the difference between erotica and porn? Is there a difference?

Sheppard: Oh, that old question. It might be a matter of literary quality, or whether a story is intended as anything more than jack-off fodder. Some people have suggested it's a matter of the class of the reader, or the prestige of the publisher. I sometimes think the distinction is that in porn, sex has no consequences beyond a puddle of cum, while erotica deals with characters who are more than just their dicks.

I recently read something critic James Woods wrote about a crime novel: "The book gestures not toward any recognizable reality, but merely toward the narrative codes already established by pulp thrillers and action films." A lot of porn is like that, too. It takes place in a never-never land demarcated by the traditions of gay porn, not by the truths of queer lives and desires. The realities of the market are such that many porn authors, including some really good writers, frequently write about things they know nothing about firsthand, and often they've gotten their ideas about whatever from other porn, which also might well have been written by authors who knew nothing firsthand etc. And then some young guy will read those fifteenth-hand stories and figure, "Aha! That's what gay sex is supposed to be like!" Listen, I know it's very postmodern to say "All writers are liars," but I'm old-fashioned enough to believe that good writers tell, in one way or another, their truth.

Be all that as it may, I mostly use "porn" and "erotica" interchangeably. Depends on how much coffee I've had.

Allison: What's your secret for writing good "suck and fuck" erotica?

Sheppard: Hmmm. Thanks, but there's no "secret," I don't think. I'm a careful writer, and I think good language is sexy. And I do try to find something interesting to say about queer desire every time out, and to remember that sex is never just about sucking and fucking. But mostly I love queer men and gay sex, and I love writing about dick. I know some porn writers—including some very good ones—who don't. They think of writing erotica as a way to pay the bills, or to get their names in print, or to enable them to write what they really want to write. But I think of writing gay erotica as being on a mission from God. Thank you, Jesus!

Allison: I love that you identify yourself as a pornographer. What does that mean for you and why do you think there's still a stigma attached? Why do you think people cringe so when it's mentioned?

Sheppard: Well, I like saying "pornographer" because it's so in-your-face, and part of me never grew up and still wants to shock the prudes. Face it; a lot of people are really fucked up about sex. And face it, there's a lot of porn out there that's really, really, really badly written. But I try, without being pretentious and arty, to come up with stuff that's both well crafted and suitable as jack-off fodder. If someone tells me that my work has given him a hard-on, that pleases me as much as a good review. Neither, of course, pleases me as much as a good blowjob.

Allison: How do ideas for stories come to you? Can you talk a bit about your process?

Sheppard: A lot of my story ideas actually come from calls for submissions. And a good deal of my work, while usually not directly autobiographical, incorporates bits and pieces from my personal experience. Here's an example: I came across a call for submissions for Aqua Erotica, a book of water-related porn. Well, I'd learned to scuba dive in Honduras, and I'd done some breath-control scenes with a bottomboy I'd been playing with. So I came up with a story about horny divers in Honduras, complete with breath control. That story, "In Deep," eventually was published in an edition of Susie Bright's The Best American Erotica and later became the title story of my second collection of short fiction.

Allison: Who are your favorite writers in the genre?

Sheppard: I think there are a lot of great ones, and if I made a list, I'm afraid I'd leave too many folks out. I'm most admiring of people who use their writing to do something in the greater world, who put their asses on the line to make things safer and sexier for us all. People who do that—authors like Patrick Califia, Carol Queen, and the late Scott O'Hara—have been inspirations to me. And two editors, Susie Bright and Richard Labonte, who edit The Best American Erotica and Best Gay Erotica, respectively, have done a whole lot to further quality erotic writing. Kudos.

Allison: How does one approach writing a good fetish story and what's your fetish?

Sheppard: I guess by understanding what makes that particular fetish hot to its fans. Empathy. And then conveying that to readers, including those not into that particular kink. I love it when someone says something like, "I never understood how someone could enjoy worshipping boots until I read your story."

To go back to the writing-market thing for a minute... There are a finite number of projects out there to write for, and though I have a wide-ranging libido, I'm not into everything. So if I see a call for submissions for a book about jockstraps—a fetish I don't happen to share—I'll try to use my experience in underwear-worship scenes as a pathway into the jockstrap thing. But there are certain fetishes that are far enough from my experience that I'd feel reluctant to write about them from the point of view of an enthusiast. I'd be afraid to misrepresent peoples' desires, or worse, to write absolute bullshit. So if I did a story about...oh, furries, for instance...I'd be less likely to write from the point of view of a furry than from the POV of a non-furry who discovers his partner gets turned on by dressing up like a squirrel.

As far as my particular fetishes...there are a bunch of 'em, really. I wrote a whole nonfiction book, Kinkorama: Dispatches From the Front Lines of Perversion, about things that turn me on. I love sucking toes, eating ass, pissing on a guy, sniffing stinky armpits...you know, the usual.

Allison: I think the average reader of erotica just want to get off. What do you try to get across to your readers?

Sheppard: I think it was movie mogul Sam Goldwyn who said, "Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union." Still, I hope my stories convey a sense of sexual generosity, of bemused acceptance of the weirdnesses of life, and, comes to that, that there's really nothing better than getting off. One thing I have done is set a lot of my stories in the past: the Old West, the 1950s Red Scare, pre-AIDS San Francisco, Ellis Island 100 years ago. I research those things pretty carefully, and I love the idea that a reader might come away from my stories knowing a bit more about the White Night Riots or the Cockettes. Which is not to say that I don't want him to get turned on, too.

When I started writing, I was doing a lot of downbeat, edgy stuff, which was the transgressive trend back then. My stories have become less cruel-for-cruelty's-sake since. Sure, the world is full of awful things, but I'd rather not feel I'm punishing my characters for having queer desires. I may make them suffer, but I hope I'm doing it compassionately.

Allison: Cut or uncut? Your thoughts.

Sheppard: I write a column, "Sex Talk," and the most (mostly negative) reaction I ever got to it was when I suggested that being circumcised isn't the end of the world. I'm cut, and frankly I don't feel mutilated, or like I'm missing something...well, except a foreskin. But I do get turned on by long skins, you know, the nipple-y ones.

Allison: Describe yourself in 5 words.

Sheppard: Smart, amusing, neurotic, furry, hung.

Allison: What is Simon Sheppard passionate about?

Sheppard: Queers, politics, queer politics, roller coasters, Indian food, sexuality of course, and my partner most of all.

Allison: Whose ass would you like to kick?

Sheppard: Oh, the usual suspects: the Pope, Dubya, Osama...you know, God's Bullies. I was alone in an elevator with the horrendously antigay Reverend Lou Sheldon, but I behaved myself. I told him he was an asshole, but not in so many words. You can read what happened at simonsheppard.com. I'm tickled to note that when you Google "Reverend Lou Sheldon," my story comes up as one of the first few results.

Allison: What makes Simon Sheppard's dick hard?

Sheppard: The sexiest thing I can come up with at this exact moment? Being stoned at a great rock concert next to a skinny, wildly dancing boy who reeks of body odor. I almost hate to admit it, since it seems such an unimaginative cliché, but at this point in my life I'm into younger guys, though far from exclusively. Actually, I'm fairly constantly surprised by what does turn me on. I guess if I weren't, I'd have gotten bored writing about sex a long time ago.

Allison: What is it that we don't know about you?

Sheppard: That I'm a middle-aged straight woman in Missouri writing under a pen name. Oh, just kidding. Sexually speaking, anyone who's read Kinkorama knows pretty much the lot. And in case that's not enough, I do a twice-a-month column, "Perv," for gay.com's pay site, "Men After Dark," that's all about my erotic adventures…as well as politics, religion, culture, and anything else I can jam in there.

Allison: What do you love about San Francisco?

Sheppard: The physical beauty of the place, riding my motorcycle down from Twin Peaks on a clear day. The sense of possibility. So much cultural diversity in such a small place. The fact that it really is the queerest city in the country. Other places—Palm Springs, Fort Lauderdale—may be very gay, but they're not so queer. And New York...well, it's the most of everything, isn't it? But at the moment, it's 95 degrees in Manhattan and 73 in San Francisco, and I don't like to sweat. Or shovel snow.

Allison: What do you hate about it?

Sheppard: That the sense of possibility is shrinking, which has a lot to do with economics. High rents during the dot-com boom chased out a lot of less-rich artists and cultural institutions, and the shrinking of resources caused by the dot bomb kept things spiraling downward. It's increasingly a place for the well-to-do and smug and the poor and desperate, and it's harder to be in-between. But hey, it's home.

Allison: What pisses Simon Sheppard off?

Sheppard: Bullies. Blind faith. People who talk on cell phones while driving monster SUVs.

Allison: Straight men on the homo down low. Any thoughts?

Sheppard: It's not the part-time nature of it I find distressing; it's the dishonesty. And I can't stand closeted guys who are vociferously homophobic. Not that all the down-low guys are. I'm thinking of Roy Cohn, pre-fall Jim Bakker, that asshole mayor of Spokane, and, if rumors are to be believed, a certain highly-placed gentleman in the Bush Administration.

Allison: What do you think you would be doing if you weren't writing?

Sheppard: Shoplifting from the Salvation Army.

Allison: How did you spend last night?

Sheppard: Writing about my last three-way. Planning a trip to Ecuador. Watching "Six Feet Under." Boring, really. I guess I should have said, "Having an orgy in the back of a stretch limousine."

Allison: What's next for you?

Sheppard: I'm starting work on an historical survey of gay erotica, American queer sex writing from the present day to as far back as I can find. If anyone has any suggestions, please email me at simon@simonsheppard.com. I need all the help I can get.

For more information on Simon Sheppard, visit him online at: SimonSheppard.com.

Shane Allison is the author of Black Fag (Future Tense Books), Ceiling of Mirrors (Cynic Press), Cock and Balls (Feel Free Press) and Black Vaseline. (Blaze Vox Books). His fourth, I Want to Fuck a Redneck is forthcoming from Scintillating Publications. He has a Simon Sheppard fetish.