she is in the hot tub with her husband. His hands are wandering, touching her leg,
her thigh. He moves closer, wrapping his legs around her and caressing her breasts,
then leaning over for a deep kiss. And they are both more than a little surprised:
he because he has an erection and she because she had assumed that, after a year of
abstinence, she would never have sex with her husband again. Not since his diagnosis
of Alzheimer’s disease.
Cut to another scene. A man is washing his face in the restroom, looking into the
mirror and giving himself a pep talk: “You can do this. Your whole life has been a
perfect preparation for this moment.” This, it turns out, is to help another man—a
grown adult, middle-aged—have his first ever sexual encounter. The first man is a
licensed partner therapist, and after a long training program, this is his first real life
assignment.
These are the captivating scenes that begin two of the essays in this issue: “Slip-
ping Away” by Sue Fagalde Lick and “He Was My First, Too” by Roger Tolle. Like
the rest of the essays we’ve collected here, these stories depict sexually explicit and
mostly hidden slices of real life. And I must say that, after editing Creative Nonfiction
for twenty-five years, I am surprised—and pleased. This and many other literary
publications could never—would never—have published these essays twenty-five
years ago. Perhaps not even ten years ago. We would have feared losing some of our
audience and perhaps our financial supporters.
Not that writers of creative nonfiction are timid or modest or afraid to confront
reality and, if necessary, “out” themselves. But editors and publishers of literary
magazines have always had to be careful and cautious. You could go off the deep
end with poetry and fiction—one could always say poets and fiction writers were
being imaginative, expansive, fantastical, improbable, way-out, etc. But nonfiction
stories touched a nerve. Real people, real problems, real names. Too much informa-
tion? Too personal? Too close to home?
In the middle 1990s, when we first started publishing Creative Nonfiction, there
were heated and often very awkward debates in our office about how much read-
ers wanted to learn about the personal lives of writers. Back then, most literary
publications weren’t publishing creative or narrative nonfiction, so the controversy
mostly played out in the trade press, with literary and book critics taking the lead.
“Navel gazing” was the popular criticism in those days, with women writers like
Kathryn Harrison, Daphne Merkin, and Mary Karr taking the brunt of the heat.
Harrison, in particular, was criticized for her memoir The Kiss, about a period in
her late teens and early twenties when she was enmeshed in a sexual affair with her
Presbyterian minister father. The prestigious critic for the Washington Post, Jonathan
Yardley, was so incensed by Harrison’s revelations that he actually wrote three
reviews of the book, nearly back to back. I’m not sure he accomplished what he was
trying to do: discourage readers. I would take three reviews in the Washington Post
anytime, even if they were mean spirited, which Yardley’s certainly were, callingWhat’s the Story?
It takes great
courage for
writers to bring
the realities and
secrets of their
lives to the surface
to share.
From the Editor
LEE GUTKIND