What do you get when a rad smut-writer and a 95-year-old storyteller join forces? Throw in a crapload of other awesome authors and what you get is First Floor Fantasy – an erotic storytelling event at this year’s Footscray West Writers Fest. Mx. Sly – the author behind TRANSLAND: Consent, Kink & Pleasure and one of the readers at First Floor Fantasy – chats with us ahead of the festival about smut, sex work, and why it’s more important than ever to protect trans and queer literature in erotic spaces (and everywhere else).

Tell us about First Floor Fantasy and what attendees can expect. The theme of this year’s Footscray West Writers Fest is “Words and Action” – and a night of intergeneration smut is a great way to interpret that theme. It makes me think of the importance of what words we use for what is most personal to us – our gender identities, our sensuality, our imagination, our boundaries, our chosen families and our sense of play. Those words can set loose new actions yet to be embodied.

I haven’t read what every author is going offer up at First Floor Fantasy, but I’ll be reading from my debut memoir TRANSLAND: Consent, Kink & Pleasure. Maybe I’ll read a bit about wanting to be peed on? Maybe about the joy of puppy play? I have no doubt that authors Samantha Byres, Aud Pitch, Ty A, Liz Hicklin and host Emily Westmoreland will all offer something challenging, touching, generous and free from shame.

 

 

 

 

 

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How did the decision come about to have Liz Hicklin narrate one of the “spicy” scenes that will be presented? 95-year-old Liz Hicklin is a brilliant and accomplished storyteller and human who has lived more in one of her pinky fingers than most of us will in our whole lifetime. I have to imagine that the decision came about the same way all decisions at the Footscray West Writers Fest do – through conversations over coffee, through seeking out and welcoming west-side writers already beloved as well as new, and with genuine respect for the audiences who attend the festival by programming lineups we don’t get to see every day. I can’t wait to hear about what Liz – with all that she’s witnessed and experienced – can imagine doing with pinky fingers.

Why has it been important to bring intergenerational voices into the mix at the event? Sex is a basic human need that adults at all stages of life, as well as through all stages of ability and disability, have the right to. Even though the Footscray West Writers Fest is only in its second year, it has already developed a reputation for being a community-driven festival which holds space for the genuine diversity that makes the inner west one of the most dynamic and creative places in live in Melbourne/Naarm. FWWF is a catalyst for intergenerational and cross-cultural connection. I’m thrilled that FWWF is bringing together various levels of life experience in order to explore writing about what is erotic.

 

 

 

 

 

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Tell us about your relationship with literary smut and how it can be used to sculpt a better world. The start of my career is inextricably linked to smut and sex work. When I got my start as a professional writer it was in 2010s Toronto/Tkaronto, and it happened accidentally. I was having a lot of kinky sex at the time and journalling explicitly about my experiences on social media. A friend of mine, Mike Mishke, was writing about gay leather culture for a local queer magazine called Xtra. Mike saw me writing about BDSM from a non-binary perspective and he told me I should start getting paid for sharing my underrepresented views. Xtra was, at the time, a place of literary freedom because it was funded primarily by the escort ads that made up back pages. Mike brought me into Xtra for a meeting, and for a few years thereafter I wrote a very personal column about the BDSM I was engaging in and how those experiences were reshaping my sense of sexuality, improving my mental health, exploding my sense of what gender is, and setting me free.

Within the increasingly divisive times we live in, where it’s harder for sex workers to advertise and where the idea of sex work funding free thought would be stigmatised by publishers and arts funders, literary smut is crucial to re-learning empathy and re-centring authenticity and individuality. For people in the trans community, our identities are being turned into a partisan issue in order for politicians and influencers to gain clout. It hurts, physically and emotionally, to have your existence attacked so that someone else can use bigotry to benefit themselves personally. It hurts.

But the flipside of pain is pleasure. Trans erotica reminds us that trans lives are ones of pleasure, allowing us to rise above the hateful actions, policies and discourse of now and to feel, physically and emotionally, that our trans bodies are eternal and that we are both desiring and desired. Literary smut is a way of telling stories that creates a closer bond between processing a narrative intellectually and physically because, when done right, it resonates equally in the reader’s mind and in their junk. It’s harder to ignore a story, and the universal human experiences it contains, when you feel it in your own body.

As we see a rise in the censorship of queer and trans literature on the basis of “protecting” readers, we aren’t seeing a decrease in the amount of overall sexualised content we’re exposed to – we’re just seeing a narrowing of what’s allowed to be sexy. No one’s being protected from what’s erotic – but what consenting adults are allowed to view as erotic is being policed, so that only some human experiences are viewed as valid. So, when writers like everyone on the First Floor Fantasy lineup come together to share smut – we’re doing more than giving people a good time. We’re clambering to ensure that the people we call friends, lovers and community keep feeling seen.

That said, when it comes to smut it helps if a writer really is trying to tell a story through intimacy, as opposed to describing intimate acts without sharing a perspective. Prior to First Floor Fantasy, I’m facilitating the workshop Writing Sex Scenes as Character Development as part of the Footscray West Writers Fest, where we’ll explore scenes of intimacy in writing as a narrative device.

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Mx. Sly (@tendercontainer)

Any smut recommendations for frankie readers? Samantha Byres, Aud Pitch, Ty A, and Liz Hicklin of course! And a personal recommendation of mine would be the poem Devotion by Ocean Vuong. It’s the most beautiful queer writing I’ve ever read about sucking dick.

Nab a ticket to Footscray West Writers Fest’s First Floor Fantasy event here. For more stories exploring queerness, make sure to peep your eyes at Sean Szeps’ writing or our chat with design duo Katie-Louise and Lilian Nicol-Ford. If you’re a fan of the smutty, check out Shannon Jenkins' ode to smut literature in issue 130. Plus, sign up to our newsletter to never miss a ripper read.