Boas, rings, books and cupcakes at Shag, yummy guacamole outside Knitting Factory

Last night I stopped by Williamsburg, Brooklyn sex and art store Shag to drop off more copies of my books - THANK YOU, Brooklyn, for buying my books! I love getting those checks every month telling me that my neighbors are reading my smut. Buy local! Also, I can't stop into Shag and not get immediate lust for jewelry and other beautiful things. It was a hard week, so I bought myself a ring (see below). And Leah Foster's cupcake art (made of cupcakes) is hanging there. Woo-hoo! Then I stumbled upon Gorilla Guac outside Knitting Factory and bought my dinner of chips and guacamole for $5. Brooklyn happiness.

For extra happiness, please visit Cupcakes Take the Cake, where I just blogged shark cupcake pops and pretty flowers. I would totally take shark cupcakes or cake pops to my family next weekend on Martha's Vineyard. Well, more cake pops than cupcakes cause I plan to take SeaStreak and the water can be rough. All my next 3 trips are family-related (Vineyard, Oregon, Vermont), then in September I go to Vegas for the Erotic Authors Association Conference. Excited, but urgently need a silent weekend away that I won't be getting for a while. Maybe for my birthday. Seems quite fitting. First, though, I have to earn it. Making strides toward that and setting weight, home, finance and book goals. I would love to look on back on this year as the year I changed so many of my self-destructive ways. You can get so good at those ways that they seem to a twisted mind like mine like the only way, and there's always another way. Always.

Lingerie exhibitionism at Shag

I can’t lie – I like getting my photo taken. And I really, really like how these photos came out. They’re good for me at a time when I am not that into various aspects of my body and am trying to figure out, aside from diet and exercise, what to do about that. Ditch my sneakers and wear heels during the day? Glam up my non-makeup look? Or just accept that real life is not going to be like being pampered at a photo shoot?

I bought a skirt the other day at The Gap and I hate trying things on first, so I didn’t. I bought it cause I’d been walking all over in my new favorite dress and didn’t feel like wearing it the next day and didn’t have time to go home and change. I was worried it wasn’t going to fit and when I first put it on, it was really snug. It’s a size 8 which is often, but not always my size. And then I realized it’s not that it didn’t fit, it’s just snug. Or, um, bootylicious. And I wore it to walk all over Queens and was very happy with how it fit. Not too tight or too loose, not trying to make my body look some way that it’s not, just me, and my ass, in a black skirt.

For me, it's not just body image that's such an up-and-down roller coaster, it's, well, image. Confidence. Self-esteem. If I feel like my life in general is going well, and often by "life" I mean writing/money/apartment, I'm confident. If they're not, I'm not. And I think part of why last year there was that giant disconnect between my love life and the rest of my life is that so much was falling apart and I was looking for romantic attachments in all the wrong places to the exclusive of just living that roller coaster and accepting it. I wanted to either drag whoever I was into on the roller coaster with me or presume that they had the power to control it. It's not like that. I mean, it's great if, say, my boyfriend thinks I look good. That pleases me but it doesn't automatically mean I think that. We're separate people and I think the same thing applies to the rest of my life too. I want to be someone who can take constructive criticism, even though I'm not that great at it, but I also know that I'm stubborn and willful (and that those are pretty much synonyms) and have to figure a lot of stuff out for myself, often taking the long, twisted, meandering way.

I'm guilty of the same thing in reverse. I was/am dealing with such ridiculously over-the-top jealousy issues in part because it's much easier to imbue someone else with all the qualities you wish you had than to figure out how to embody those qualities yourself. The latter is much harder. But it is, ultimately, not only the more honest way to live but the more rewarding. I was so stuck in these horrible patterns of thinking and acting and it's not like they disappear overnight. I'm not just some magical new and improved RKB 2.0 just like that. But I am striving to be someone better than I was, someone not more cynical or bitter or anything along those lines, but someone still open, with all the risks that entails. I'm starting to see that everything involves risks of some kind and sometimes the result is you crash and burn...and pick yourself back up again. And that's what I hope I'm doing, in my own slow, stubborn way. And some of the risks pay off with really fucking brilliant odds.

Anyway, these photos also reminded me that somewhere in my scattered belongings I have the black nightie I’m wearing here from Sweet Paine! It felt incredible. I think part of why I and apparently some of you like these photos is that I felt amazing when they were being taken. The makeup artist did an amazing job, as did photographers Constance and Eric, and wearing Sweet Paine’s sexy lingerie made me feel slinky and sexy and glamorous. So…here are some of my favorites. Shot at Shag, where you can buy my books, Ellen Stagg's gorgeous photos, skull panties, a tissue holder shaped like a female butt, butterfly pasties and so much more.











And my very favorite...

Glamour time!

I'm so excited that these came out so well...I had so much fun getting my makeup done (fake eyelashes=true love!) and slipping into the slinky, sexy lingerie of Sweet Paine and vamping it up at Shag for photography team Constance and Eric. I think one of the best parts was that afterward Constance and Eric emailed me and were like, "We didn't know you were you." They paid me a compliment on one of my stories that they remembered which was super touching. Love the small worldness and how they worked; I've never been shot by two people in that way (trading off the camera) and it was cool to get to spy on them a little. Not spy, exactly, but when I didn't have to be totally "on" and posing I was observing them, as I tend to do. I also learned that fake eyelashes rock my world. I hope I have a chance to wear them again for something glamorous (and someone to put them on me!).

My column next week at SexIs is about why I've taken the rest of the year until I turn 36 on November 10th off from sex and dating, and I'm still exploring and thinking about that decision and why it was so crucial right now. One thing I'm trying to retain during this time is a sense of playfulness, eroticism and sexiness that has nothing to do with being physically intimate with someone else in a sexual way. The only people seeing me naked are doctors, waxers and masseuses and yet...when I took these photos I felt hot. Glamorous. Beautiful. All those things I was vainly looking for from relationships that were never in a million years going to give them to me. So I'm grateful that this opportunity came my way and I was able to live up to it. I had a blast and will hopefully be doing another shoot down the road.

False eyelashes, real sex kitten charm

I've discovered that it's really challenging to take a good self-portrait, even with that cool camera-turning-around function on the iPhone. So I will just say that as I sit at Starbucks, I'm still rocking my false eyelashes and glam makeup. And very excited about the sexy lingerie I modeled today at Shag - I loved it so much I purchased it. It's by Sweet Paine and soon there will be lots of photos for you to ogle.

I had thought I wasn't up for it. I thought I was recovering from my trip, I thought and still think I need to lose a good 25 pounds. I ran around in the rain buying up a ton of lingerie at Victoria's Secret, wondering how I'd look, and then an hour in hair and makeup and I felt totally hot. That is also a function of the photography team taking the photos, who not only were full of compliments, but switched off the camera to each other. I sipped champagne, tossed my tall hair around, crawled, arched my back against a pink brick wall, licked my lips, fluttered my lashes, stuck out my ass, bit my lip, held onto my gold champagne glass heel, and much more. I had so much fun and it reminded me that lingerie isn't just for lovers.

These days, I don't have anyone to share lingerie with, mostly by choice, or by choice/circumstance. I could definitely find someone to share it with, but I feel like I finally grew up, all in a very short time period, when it comes to standing up for what I want. Maybe it took hanging around couples who actually are so happy together they made me think that might be possible, even for me, and that settling for anything less, despite what Lori Gottlieb says, is not what I want.

But that feeling of invincibility, for lack of a better word, was so wonderful. I love that this single piece of clothing wrapped around all 150 or so pounds of me and made me feel beautiful. It made me want to show off for the camera, and just for the camera. I have to wean myself off of trying to get that attention in ways that are unhealthy. I started to slip down that rabbit hole recently and I could see myself caring way too much about someone who isn't into me like that, and I am starting to take care of all the things I need to in order to look at myself in the mirror and want to wow that girl as much as I wanted to wow that camera. That's a loooooong process, and I can't be all glammed out like this every day, but I want to try to retain that feeling for as long as I can.



A funny aside - because I had these crazy eyelashes and eye makeup, I decided to skip the glasses during the photo shoot. After I got dressed and put them on, one of the photographers, Eric, was like, "You wear glasses?" He seemed really disappointed that I hadn't worn them during the shoot. That made me laugh. "I wear them all the time," I said. Therefore, to me, they are boring, everyday. I guess it depends how you look at it. So I'll include this one of me from the not-glam-at-all Starbucks I'm working in.




shoe porn (none of these are mine, by the way)


colorful rope and handcuffs

And some snaps from Shag, where I highly recommend you get your Valentine's Day cards if you find yourself in Williamsburg. I just may buy some of these (okay, the first one) for next year!








And a fabulous Do Not Disturb sign - of particular interest to me!

How your bondage erotica gets made: Megan Butcher on "The Apiary" from Best Bondage Erotica 2011

I taught a few classes at Shag in Williamsburg, Brooklyn this year. I always hope my students will submit work to my anthologies, but sadly, it rarely happens. Megan Butcher was an exception, and I'm proud to include her story "The Apiary" in Best Bondage Erotica 2011 and to have had her read at In The Flesh. Because it wasn't financially feasible for me, right now I don't have any erotic writing classes planned, but if you'd like to host one, feel free to contact me at rachelkramerbussel at gmail.com - I am open to arranging these with my 2011 travel plans as well, which include London, Seattle, Denver, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Madison (Wisconsin), Los Angeles and possibly other cities.

Here she is at Venus Envy:

The story had its genesis in a writing class I took with Rachel in Brooklyn last February. I walked in thinking that the class would be huge and I'd be able to lose myself a bit if I didn't want to stick out. It was in a nice little shop called SHAG. I walked down the steep and narrow stairs into a white-washed, low-ceilinged basement and saw 5 chairs ranged behind two perpendicular tables. Oh boy.

It was great, though it passed in a bit of a blur. Mostly I remember what I saw in my mind during the 5 minute writing exercises. It was during the first one, I believe, that we were to write something about a chair, and The Apiary was born.