CREATIVE NONFICTION 9
be willing to shrug off anxieties and
previous identities. To connect with
our reader, we must also nurture a
sense of patience and generosity—a
consideration of our reader’s presence
and needs as much as our own. Does
our storytelling come, ultimately,
from a place of narcissism or of love?
Is there a place in our work for the
tease, and if there is, is that teasing
ethical? Are we connecting honestly
with ourselves and our reader? Can
our writing, in fact, be love? Writing
may or may not be sex, but it’s the
journey, shared or otherwise, as well
as the tenderness we bring to the
endeavor, that gives it meaning.
We have to take the enterprise
seriously; ourselves, not so much.
Writing this, I am excited, buzzed;
the effort is both lovely and fully ex-
hausting. I want you to be roused by
7 I want to be very careful here: I do not in any way wish to suggest that we must feel fear in order to be aroused; fear and sex do not
belong together in a healthy relationship.
the sweep of my words and go away
satisfied, but my life shouldn’t depend
on it. If I focus on your pleasure, on
how you might respond, in the end,
I’m rewarded with a sense of outward
release. I’ve said what I think, and it’s
enough: over, now, to you.harnessing the energy of fear
We engage our story and stimulate
this release, in part, by bringing
together our reading and notetaking
with the swelling up of our courage
each time we sit down to write (this
essay, for example: freaky, scary stuff ),
and in this way, I think, we are both
more indebted to our fear and more in
control of our own inspiration than
we might imagine. A writing session
might come at us out of the blue, or
we might prepare for it for years;
you have to take your opportunitieswhere they arise. I do not subscribe to
the notion that you are not somehow
“a real writer” if you don’t (or can’t)
write every day. But if it’s fear that
holds us back—of failure or some
revelation of hard truths—it’s worth
remembering that the part of the brain
that processes both intense memories
and fear is the same part that processes
lust. Science suggests there’s a complex
interplay between our early sense
of comfort and fear that guides our
reactions to erotic stimuli—what are
known as “sexual arousal cues”—and
that these experiences condition how
we get turned on later in life (think:
thrill of the unknown, the “I dare
you” glance, the appeal of strong
hands, the lure of the unattainable.) I
don’t want to pretend to understand
these complexities, or to sound in any
way glib,^7 but it seems reasonable that
in denying ourselves the opportunity
to embrace fear—importantly, one we
choose, not fear that’s imposed on us
by outside forces—we can also deny
ourselves the possibilities of pleasure
and connection available to us in our
writing. As in life, we have to be open
to being open.
Many of the writers I’ve admired
most in recent years and looked to
for inspiration happen to be queer
practitioners, like Jeanette Winterson,
Bernard Cooper, and Maggie Nelson,
each of whom explores personal and
erotic experience with a particularly
intimate courage, digging deep to lay
bare explosive truths and questions
about identity. Works like Cooper’s
Tr u th S e r u m, Nelson’s The Argonauts,
and Winterson’s Why Be Happy When
You Could Be Normal? explore the
human relationship in all its facets,
with descriptions of the physical and
erotic acting as a sort of neurological