Dare: Spring/Summer 1999 Volume 1, No. 2

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Index

• Editorial
• Needs & Wants
• Tell It
• Like It Is
• Chick Stuff
• Guy Speak

Editorial

Of Passion, Pornography, & Things...
by R. M. Schmitt

Well, we've managed to survive our inaugural issue... I am pleased to announce that your response to Dare thus far has been overwhelmingly positive - and I thank you truly for that! (There was that annoying legal hassle that cropped up - corporate America trying to put the squeeze on us - but thanks to a few supportive legal friends of our own - that seems to have gone away for the time being - cryptic I know - but let's just say "don't ask" - and I won't tell.) So, here we are, ripe and ready for our second issue. I've been pondering what exactly to write about this time around... It is after all the "Spring/Summer" issue and since this is my favorite time of year I find myself musing on what these seasons bring to mind. I could go on about the inherent rebirth of life so synonymous with Spring, or the hot and sultry days that define the southern Summer. Rather though, I think I'll encapsulate this time of year by simply saying it is a soulful, spontaneous time, one that is rapt with anticipation and energy and passion... Yes, I do so love this time of year...

Passion is something that drives us all in different ways. You can be passionate about your job, about something you love to do - "he's so passionate about his golf game" - or you can seek passion to satisfy the basic wants and needs and desires that define who you are. We all have our "instinctual" passions whether we choose to acknowledge or face them - or not. I had an interesting conversation with someone dear to me not long ago. We were talking about Dare - about this little E-zine that has been incarnated from the depths of my mind and the minds of my editorial staff. It is only fair to say at this point that the person I was speaking with is not of my generation - but from one that came before. A child of the 1950s - she may have felt and thought and even secretly done some of the things that today's Generation X and Y women don't think twice about, but for her "women just didn't talk and act like that" back then. It wasn't so much a startling revelation as much as it was a revealing one.

Revealing in that it once again underscores for me how very basic life is - how very basic the passions are that drive us. I find it hard to believe that despite the mores and stereotypes and boundaries that society demands of us that any of us can honestly say we are unmoved, or unaroused by the sensuality of photographs such as those by George Holz featured in this issue's Dare to Bare page. Ironically, Holz' photo exhibition is entitled "Original Sin" - and I would put to you that I believe this is precisely the root of our running battle with our own personal suppressed and expressed passions...

Holz' photos (and other works that explore art through the human form) may be labeled pornographic by some - Dare would argue nothing could be further from the truth. Without actually intending to - you'll see that in this issue the subject of pornography crops up in several different places... Check out the Melange page and our link to Susie Bright's latest column, there's also a news item about smut-king Larry Flynt (while you may not agree with Flynt's business dejour - his politics in support of the First Amendment are noteworthy). I suppose it goes without saying there are plenty of folks who would also pick up a copy of Dare (that's right one day when we finally make it to the big time and find our selves in real slick glossy print - if you're gonna dream - might as well dream big) and discard it as nothing more than pornographic smut. I feel supremely confident that Dare is nothing of the sort and rather is finding a way to bridge the gap between what is truly unadulterated pornography and something that smacks of being far too much "beefcake" and "fluff" to be worth your while. Being Dare's Editrix, it's only natural that I step up on a promotional soap box from time to time - I'll get down now.

Getting back to this issue, we also seem to be preoccupied with orgasms - but who's really keeping track (see Chick Stuff and Truth or Dare's new "Daring Letter" feature). There's also another round of sumptuous and tantalizing fiction selections in our Dare Erotica section along with much, much more. As always we welcome your thoughts and feedback.

So, I'll finish my errant monologue for this issue by saying - if you're looking for smut - well maybe Dare will satisfy you - maybe it won't. But, if you're looking for something to peak your erotic edge, to make you sit back and think, to titillate the basic instincts you choose to either secretly enjoy or announce to the world - well - then I'm sure this issue of Dare is more than all that... Damn - and I thought I'd put that soap box away... Enjoy...

R. M. Schmitt
DareEditrix

Needs & Wants

What I Need...
by Shiloh

I feel so lost. But I feel so safe. I feel so out of control sometimes. I wonder what it's doing to us. And nothing ever changes.

Yeah, I'm talking about love.

Needs and wants, wants and needs... It occurred to me just how hard it would actually be able to write something on this subject. And I can't be alone. How many people DO know what they want and need? Isn't that the problem?

So, how many relationships are in your past? The ones where the only sex you remember was the time he hurt you and you didn't say no... Or the only excitement you remember was the time some old lady in a three-ton Cadillac pulled out heading the wrong way and almost killed you both? What the hell do you remember about what you wanted and needed, that somehow wound up in tears of confusion on the sheets that still smelled like him?

To be honest, I couldn't even begin to say -- like most people I guess. Maybe love isn't about wants and needs at all. Maybe it's just about love -- whatever in hell that is! Maybe love is to wants and needs like his wings are to an ostrich... Fly? Sure, whatever. Who needs to fly? I've got a perfectly good hole-in-the-ground love nest right here!

Nah. Something tells me that's not right. Something tells me love has a lot to do with need. Maybe not so much with want. But what do I need? Do I just need sex with another human being, from time to time, an orgasm every now and then -- not always, but good when it happens? Do I just need someone to lay next to in bed? I could always get a smaller bed. Hell, I could sleep on the floor if I wanted! Hold on, let me lie down for a second......

Nope, I definitely need a bed! The ceiling looks too far up from the floor. Maybe that's part of it... The heavens look too far up without someone else in my bed. So far up they're almost teetering. The sky is falling, the sky is falling! Quick, I need a man!

It's one thing to catalog the needs I have. And yeah, some of them are fulfilled by a mate of some description. But there's something else about him, something that's kind of like an always-smile on the ghost of his face which dances with the front of my brain: I'm still here, when you're done typing... When you've filed and sorted, chewed on nails and pulled out your hair and dug up all the needs you can think of... I'm still here. Because there's one need you forgot to mention -- Me. You need me, that's all. You can deny it all you want (and you have). You can sell yourself a bridge after you've dug yourself a river, but I'll still be here smiling with the simple answers you try to avoid. Me, you need me. That's all. Just me.

Shiloh, when asked about herself says: "I grew up all over the place, and that's where my mind calls home. I don't abstain from sex, just its lifeform by-products. Someday I'll clone myself and build a family, but until then I will live in my dreams." Her favorite web 'zines are Cleansheets and The Blue Review. She has been published in both on more than one occasion.

Tell It Like It Is

Mother Nature's Blessings... and Curses...
by Lybbe

"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful."

How many times have you seen that shampoo ad and said to yourself, "Yeah. Right." On the surface the statement seems just a bit too much. Too conceited. Too sure. The truth is, beautiful women have an extra strike against them before they even open their mouths. People assume that if a woman is beautiful, she has other flaws. Probably a horrid personality. Let's not even talk beautiful here. Let's talk average good looking with a nice figure.

Put yourself into a room with twenty women. The conversation will sooner or later turn to diet and clothing. Chubby women can complain about how they look. Let a thin woman complain, and somebody will invariably point out that she has nothing to complain about. If she bitches about her legs being too long, or her knees being too knobby, she's fishing for compliments.

Let's go out for lunch. Everybody orders. You can bet that the only order anybody will notice is the thin woman's. Somebody will say, "No wonder you're so thin. You don't eat enough to keep a bird alive." If the thin chick (and don't rail on me for being anti-feminist, I'm as feminist as they come… I prefer chick to dame ok?) says she really doesn't like dessert, but orders fruit because everybody else is having something, somebody will say, "Oh sure, make the rest of us look bad." As if eating is a contest of will.

Why do women do this to each other? We are our own worst enemies. How many times have you heard a well-padded woman say she would rather be a little overweight than a stick? I sure don't like being a stick. I'd love to add a few pounds to strategic spots around the old skeleton. Do you think I like being the only adult woman I know who can go without a bra and nobody notices? How I lust after a set of 34 D's. Notice I said 34. I don't want to push my luck. What if I couldn't walk upright? What if my shoulders ached? What if ? What if?

Dating. It is assumed that an attractive woman will always have a full social calendar. She may well have, but sometimes the full calendar is filled by her own hand. Men are leery of women who look good. They are hesitant to ask for a phone number or even a lunch date, because they assume the attractive woman will already be busy. Many beautiful women stay home on Saturday night because they have nowhere to go. Or they stay home because they prefer their own company to the company of the shallow types looking for a trophy. Larry the Lounge Lizardalways knows how to find the unlisted phone number. And he doesn't take no for an answer. Until you get rude. Then you get a rep for being a bitch.

Combine good looks with a brain. What have you got? A stuck-up bitch who knows everything. She's stuck up because she's pretty. She must be, right? Did you ever talk to her? Did you ever try to know what makes her tick? Do you think she got to be an engineer on her looks? Half the men in her graduating class will say she blew the prof to get the grades and the other half will spend the rest of their lives trying to be better than she is. A few will accept her and treat her as an equal. Which, when it comes down to brass tacks, is about the best any of us can ever hope for.

Lybbe is a Canadian woman who has at times been a sweetheart, a lover, a scholar, a friend, and a first class bitch. Visit her web site - Lybbe's Erotic Fantasies - and hear her read some of her poetry in RealAudio format.

Chick Stuff

The Big "O" - Part I
by Rachel Lancaster

Orgasm – the epitome, or to be perfectly droll – for women the climaxof all sexual subject matter. That much sought after, at times elusive, pinnacle of sexual gratification. So what if anything did your mother tell you about it? If I remember correctly, not a damn thing, other than a cursory mention that orgasm was to a woman what ejaculation was to a man. A true, but all together too clinical dissection of the facts. And one that still left me wondering – exactly what the hell is it? And how the hell am I supposed to know when and if I have one?

I think it would not be an exaggeration to say that the majority of women fake orgasm before they actually learn how to have one. Yes, that's right, learn how to have one. Let's face it – we've all seen the movies (porno or otherwise) where the woman is depicted in the throws of passion, moaning, writhing, eyes closed (chewing off her lower lip for all intensive purposes) until her body shudders and the miracle of “orgasm” is apparently achieved. It looks simple enough and it is - don't tell me you've never faked it!

That's how I started off – by faking it that is. Since I wasn't sure exactly what an orgasm was, or how it was supposed to feel, when my boyfriend began asking me “Did you come?” I began to feel pressured, as if somehow I wasn't doing something right. Hence, I fell into a long and self-deprecating pattern of faking climax, the result of which did nothing other than to bolster my partner's ego. The truth of the matter is that after a time, and when you and your partner have enough experience, he won't have to ask you “did you come” – he'll know and so will you. Any man that has to continually ask if you've climaxed, obviously hasn't been doing his homework or is just selfishly more preoccupied with his own pleasure than with satisfying you. Unfortunate, yes, but true.

Let's face it ladies, men aren't the only ones preoccupied with getting off. You can easily go to any bookstore these days and find dozens and dozens of books on orgasm - Five Minutes to Orgasm: Every Time You Make Love (For Women Only), How to Have an Orgasm... As Often As You Want, Woman's Orgasm: A Guide to Sexual Satisfaction, The Woman's Book of Orgasm: A Guide to the Ultimate Sexual Pleasure, Becoming Orgasmic: A Sexual and Personal Growth Program for Women, and the list goes on and on. These “reference texts” are all well and good, but too often you'll still find yourself with unanswered questions. Things that the experts for one reason or another don't, won't, or can't tell you. That's where your girlfriends can lend a hand, sometimes the only thing that answers the unanswerable is a good old dish session with the gals... So how about all those questions you've yet to find answers too? Or better yet the unaskable questions? Well pull up a chair and let's see what we can do...

But how does it really feel?

Okay - so first things first. The mechanics of achieving orgasm are relatively simple. Since I'm no sex-therapist and just a regular "chick" like the rest of you - let me borrow a bit here from Dr. Ruth:

All women's orgasms come from stimulation to the clitoris. About 20 percent of women get enough stimulation to their clitoris from intercourse alone to have an orgasm. There are some women who can learn to develop this ability. If they are stimulated to a very high level during foreplay, they can then build on this during intercourse in order to trigger an orgasm. But many, many women just cannot have an orgasm from the stimulation they receive from intercourse alone.

Pretty straight forward and to the point I'd say. I know, I know - maybe it isn't quite that simple, but the mechanics are really that basic. So before we go off on a tangent on techniques and what works and does not - let's get back to the question that we began this paragraph with: But how does it really feel? You've seen the movies, you've read those sappy romance novels with their orgasmic descriptions such as:

She felt her legs twining around his, holding him, as the rhythm grew shuddery and strong. She whispered something, and cried out. The heat was there again, like a brand, burning her, filling her with molten flame. She bit into his shoulder helplessly as the waves washed over her and lifted her, convulsively, into heaven.

Whoa - pretty steamy, but what the hell are all those "waves" about anyway? Someone throw me a life preserver... Okay - time to cut the crap and hear about orgasm from someone other than fictional heroines or textbook "sexperts." I at least can give you commentary as a real red-blooded American woman who's been there. Yeah, yeah, I know discussing orgasms just isn't one of those things "nice girls" talk about - but who said anything about me being nice... When it comes down to it, many of us really are just bad girls trapped in good girl's bodies... So, as I mentioned before, my introduction to sexual climax began as a dismal display of theatrics, albeit Oscar-worthy – I was a great faker! So how does it really feel? Well, check out a couple of quotes from The Good Girls' Guide to Great Sex:

I scream, twitch, and explode like a firecracker. Georgia, 21, flight attendant

Sometimes I explode like Roman candles. Bobby, 36, bank teller

It would seem that explosive pyrotechnics are about as close as we can come (no pun intended - really) to describing the way it feels. Personally, I wish I could be more original, but I’d have to say that an orgasm feels like an incredible concentration of heat and energy centered around that most sensitive of areas – the clitoris – that eventually supernovas. Even that sounds superficial (and theatrical – old habits die hard), the bottom line is, an orgasm feels great! In the B.C. days – that being "Before Climax" - I wouldn't have known the first thing about trying to describe how an orgasm feels, about the only thing I did know was that I’d for sure never had one. There was no flash-bang exploding release, or rush of spine-tingling warmth welling from my innermost recesses – I felt nothing – absolutely nothing. I think that the biggest hurdle to overcome was that in truth most of the guys I’d slept with I’d never really wanted to be with, but rather they just wanted to sleep with me, and so I did. The turning point came when I finally found myself wanting to be with someone - that someone turned out to be my fiancee. I can still remember vividly the first time the two of us got really involved in some heavy petting on the sofa in his parents living room. He put his hand down my pants and I literally catapulted off the couch from beneath him, the sensation that swept through me from his touch was so completely unexpected and overwhelming – it literally scared the shit out of me!

In retrospect, I know now that it was, in fact, a brief explosive orgasm, but at the time I hadn't a clue. I was so frazzled by the experience that I actually tried to suppress that same sensation when it arose in future encounters - so naïve and uneducated was I. Fortunately for me, after I was married my husband quickly discovered that I had yet to experience the full “mystery” of orgasm and subsequently he was more than happy to help me figure things out. I still laugh about the whole thing now, but at the time it was really quite unnerving.

Well, it would seem that I've rattled on quite long enough for one issue, so next time (that is, if they invite me back) I'll finish off my "rant-O-rama" by examining such stimulating questions as: What about simultaneous climax? When I come does he have to too? and How do I know if I'm multi-orgasmic? And in the meantime, why not tell us how you'd describe how the big "O" really feels - give us your most romance novelesque, clinical, biblical, or theatrical description - whatever floats your boat. To please to powers that be, guess I'll have to close by saying... We Dare ya...

Rachel Lancasterwrites, works, lives, and dreams in New York City.

Guy Speak

On Writing and Women - Sort of...
by Paul Miller

Writers are funny people. So are women, but that's another story. Lots of folks want to be writers, until they find out how much most writers get paid. And until they find out that it's kinda sorta hard work. And until they realize that a writer has to spell right.

If you are like most people, you hate spelling, you can't do it well, you hate the myriad teachers who tried to make you do it well, and you'd like to beat them within an inch of their collective life with an unabridged Webster's. Hopefully, in the process, you'll tear the book apart, too. Right? After all, dictionaries are just symbols of the whole subject that got you so worked up in the first place. Actually, I've come to believe that dictionaries are good things. You can discover all kinds of interesting trivia. For instance, I once looked up "paradigm," and found out that I now am the only guy in the free world who really knows what the word means. Soon after, I flipped to the word arbutus. It seemed the natural thing to do at the time. Sure, we all know that Arbutus today is the proper thing to say when pointing to any tree or shrub of the heath family. But who knew that back in the Roman Empire it only meant a wild strawberry tree?

Ah, those wacky, dress wearing Romans. Just what were they thinking with those togas and sandals? Appearances aside, modern guys have a natural affinity with the ancient Romans. We like to build stuff; they liked to build stuff. We like to destroy what other guys build. Them, too.

Romans were pretty good at war. At least they were until they started losing. Well, we remember them as being pretty good, what with legion after legion marching around in precise formation. Some dead guy once said that men like to make war because it's the only way to stop women from laughing at us. Maybe so. Whatever the reason, wars belong to us. Women may be better at the art of conversation, but clearly men have established ownership over the art of war. It's our domain.

This, by the way, is precisely why we don't like women in the military. Imagine investing 3 months of labor toward the construction of the male dream: a bathroom in the basement. All the planning, cutting, measuring, knocking down, driving to Home Depot, hammering, gluing, wrench turning... only to wake up one morning and find your little sanctuary invaded by color-coordinated hand towels and toilet seat covers. It's enough to make you wonder if bullets come in different flavors. And, while I'm ranting along these lines, have you noticed how many women are running up and down the aisles at Home Depot lately? I'm telling you, there's something afoot.

But back to war. It's pretty much still ours. Women may think logic is a four-lettered word (especially those who don't have dictionaries), but they're smart enough to stay away from flying ordnance. Okay, okay, before someone starts wondering if I'm a Dallas tower sniper in the making, I should put the usual disclaimer here. War is bad. It causes a lot of suffering. But there is a lingering attraction. Some other dead guy once said that it was a good thing wars are so miserable; else we would come to love them too much.

Because war is so messy, we usually are fairly cautious before starting one. This, however, doesn't keep us from talking again and again about ones that have already been fought. We love to examine past wars, dissect why they were won or lost. In particular, we love to analyze the great gambles, the commanders who bucked convention and rolled the dice. There's a fine line between genius (how we characterize the guys who tried something risky and won) and foolhardiness (yep, the risk takers who lost), and we all can imagine ourselves straddling that line, yet always ending up on the right side of it.

We hail the risk takers. Washington crossing the Delaware to launch a surprise attack against a superior foe. Nelson charging headlong into the combined French and Spanish fleet. Lee splitting his outgunned forces at Chancellorsville. Patton outrunning allied flanks and supply lines while slashing his tanks across Europe. All of 'em should have lost. But didn't. And we like 'em for it. They saw an opportunity others couldn't. For one fleeting moment, they were "the guy," and they made it work. Nobody knows how they did it. Was it sheer mental ability, painstaking analysis, super-human calculation? Or was it something less tangible, like intuition laced with a heavy dose of luck? I tend to think so. Remember John Paul Jones immortal words: "Damn conventional wisdom, I'm in the zone." Or something to that effect.

Doing the unexpected. Throwing Sun Tzu outta the window. Telling Clausewitz to pack sand. Declaring out loud for all the gods to hear, "I don't need no stinkin' principles of war." It's the hallmark of military genius. This is why I believe we should be so excited about our current little war. For those who have wondered where all the great commanders have gone, rest assured that its nothing else than military genius residing at 1600 Pennsylvania. Hell, our current guru makes Lee look conservative. We want to stop ethnic cleansing; he bombs television towers. We want to stop terrorism; he takes out aspirin factories. We want to divert attention away from Chinese campaign donations; he bombs the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Okay, I know what you're thinking. It's only genius if you win, right? And we're certainly not winning in Yugoslavia, right? Wrong. Here's where we find what I call the "Commander-in-Chief Hedge Fund." Our current great commander gets to make up the rules as he goes along. Since this isn't a real war, where we have to worry about Serbs bombing Hawaii or anything like that, he can simply say we're winning whenever he wants. He starts a war to prevent ethnic cleansing, and when that doesn't work out so well, he just says that now we're going to reverse ethnic cleansing... eventually... sometime. And we're making progress. After all, we just hit another television generator. See, now we're winning. Pure genius. There's only one thing that bothers me. What happens when the Native Americans figure out that our new national policy supports ethnic cleansing in reverse? Oh well, Nelson did die at Trafalgar. Lee did end up surrendering to an alcoholic who barely graduated from West Point. And the George C. Scott version of Patton did say that all glory was fleeting. So remember, if Great White Chief fall on own tomahawk, don't be surprised; you heard it first in this magazine for squaws.

Paul Miller is a Dare contributing editor.