Sending Nudes E-Book

• Herausgeber: Guts Publishing
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 112

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

An intimate collection of fiction, nonfiction and poetry about the various reasons people send nudes. Some touch on feminist issues, while others focus on aging and our flawed human bodies. Some are light and playful, and others go deeper. The common thread is: they all raise interesting questions about the nude, and why we are compelled to send it.Our contributors: Lynda Scott Araya, Glen Armstrong, Claire Askew, Issy Flower, Edward Ginn, Emma Grae, Katy Haber, Michael Wayne Hampton, Liam Hogan, Shyama Laxman, Rebekah LS, Karla Linn Merrifield, Molly McLellan, Ellie Nova, Michał Kamil Piotrowski and Miriam Navarro Prieto.

Leseprobe

S e n d i n g N u d e s

short stories & poetry

Edited by Julianne Ingles

Guts Publishing

Published in London by Guts Publishing, 2020

The moral right of Julianne Ingles to be identified as the editor of the work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act of 1988.

The moral right of the contributing authors of this anthology to be identified as such is asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

The list of individual titles and respective copyrights to be found on page 137 constitutes an extension of this copyright page.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Cover art © 1913 John Sloan / Delaware Art Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Cover haiga ‘Tangibility’ © 2020 Karla Linn Merrifield

Cover design © 2020 Julianne Ingles

ISBN 9781999882389 (paperback)

9781999882396 (ebook)

Printed in the UK

www.gutspublishing.com

“Nudity is the uniform of the other side... nudity is a shroud.”

— Milan Kundera

CONTENTS

Editor’s Note — Julianne Ingles

Sending Nudes: Then, Now, Ever — Karla Linn Merrifield

Dick Pic — Michał Kamil Piotrowski

Send Nudes — Ellie Nova

8 ways to lie in a hotel bed alone — Claire Askew

The Nudes Editor — Shyama Laxman

The Photograph — Lynda Scott Araya

Sex for the Quarantined — Michael Wayne Hampton

Unthinkable — Rebekah LS

I Dare You — Miriam Navarro Prieto

Ender — Molly McLellan

Digital Flesh — Katy Haber

Turtleneck Andy — Emma Grae

Today’s Photography — Glen Armstrong

The Giver — Liam Hogan

Marble — Issy Flower

Easter Island Head — Edward Ginn

Copyrights for Individual Titles

Contributor Bios

EDITOR’S NOTE

While I was editing our 2nd anthology, Cyber Smut, and thinking about what our next anthology might be, I was working on a short story called ‘Send Nudes’, a nonfiction narrative by Ellie Stewart (now Ellie Nova). The writing was experimental, a mix of prose and poetry, and as I trimmed away I found that the main underlying story was about a young woman experimenting with and trying to understand her sexuality by sending nudes. What captivated me most was the honesty with which it was written.

My favorite line is: ‘I never send nudes from a happy place.’

I started to wonder: Are there millions of other Ellie Stewarts out there?

Whether a person has sent nudes or not, mainly what I wanted to know was what they think about sending nudes. But I also wanted to know why people send nudes, not that I haven’t, and yes I understand the obvious, but beyond that I thought maybe it was some kind of modern-day courtship. Or something to do to spice up a boring day—lockdown comes to mind. Or maybe just a way to connect with another person if you’re feeling lonely. But I also had to ask myself: has this been going on for ages, and now it’s just much easier to do, and is this the age-old exploration of the beauty of the human form, like Titian’s painting Sleeping Venus, and is our modern day sending of nudes some diluted version of this?

If that is the case, whether a photo or a painting, is there much more to it as Milan Kundera suggests: “Nudity is the uniform of the other side... nudity is a shroud.”

I didn’t know if I’d actually get the answers I was looking for, but I did know this: the sending of nudes in the present day is widespread and common. And I thought, yeah, and I bet there are some ballsy writers out there who’d like to write about it.

In mid-June, I posted the call for submissions for Sending Nudes. By 1 October I had an inbox full of stories and poems. As I read, I discovered many different attitudes and experiences and creative takes on the topic. My questions weren’t all answered but I began to understand what people thought about sending nudes, in this day and age, and what kind of meaning they assigned to this, shall we say, activity.

In the end we selected seven poems, seven short stories (five fiction, two nonfiction), one essay and one haiga (painting and poetry) which is on the cover. Interspersed throughout the anthology are quotes from the authors with their personal thoughts on sending nudes, or creating stories about sending nudes.

To my assistant, Katy Dadacz, I send an enormous heartfelt thank you for her dedication and persistence, for hours of reading and discussion, for finding stories that I had overlooked, and for helping to bring this project into its present form.

An equally enormous thank you goes to our contributors and their ballsy stories and poems. It’s not easy to tackle this kind of a topic, much less publish it. So, hats off to our contributors, for their boldness, for their talent and originality, for their professionalism, for putting up with my steady stream of emails, in particular when I was gathering quotes. Which I greatly appreciate and believe has added something very special to this anthology.

If you’d like to find out more about our contributors, we’ve interviewed everyone – some written and some video – and posted these on our blog: www.gutspublishing.com/blog

Many thanks for your support and I hope you enjoy reading these stories and poems as much as I have.

Julianne Ingles

11 December 2020

S e n d i n g N u d e s

(Here we go, ready?)

(And so we’ll start with Karla Linn Merrifield, whose haiga adorns the cover of this book —‘Tangibility’. Haiga being a Japanese form of art, painting and poetry, which in this case is a painting by the American artist John Sloan, from 1913, with a poem written by Karla. Today, after I interviewed Karla, I asked if she would like to write something about how sending nudes has evolved or changed over the years. The essay that follows is what she sent.)

KARLA LINN MERRIFIELD

Sending Nudes: Then, Now, Ever

Love, lust, pleasure, desire, beauty, anatomical study, self-expression, egotism… The impulse behind sending nudes are many. Creating nudes and sharing them seems to be part of human nature. Even the Ancient Puebloans of the American southwest, widely known for their pictographs and petroglyphs, have “sent” us nudes from their cliff dwellings and canyon walls, including, to my surprise, an image painted in ochre on sandstone of a couple copulating!

I imagine most readers of Sending Nudes grew up in a world where Western Art, from its inception, examined the naked human form in painting and sculpture, from the Greeks and Romans to the Renaissance all the way through to the modern era. I remember seeing Michelangelo’s statue of David for the first time when I was a college student traipsing around Europe one summer. As I grew closer to the massive sculpture, tears welled and spilled down my cheeks at the sublimity of the master’s depiction of the muscular male physicality of the Biblical king and poet.

Thousands of artists have sent us their nudes over the centuries, celebrating the human form in a multitude of styles that encompass Marcel Duchamp’s oil painting Nude Descending a Staircase; Robert Mapplethorpe’s sensuous photographs of male nudes; Henry Moore’s hefty, smooth-bodied sculptures; and John Sloan’s tender nudes in ink, pastels, oils, etchings, and pencil creations that so captivated me through the 108 haiga I created with his work, of which ‘Tangibility’ is perhaps my favorite.

And, keep in mind, for decades Hugh Hefner has sent us nudes every month in PlayboyMagazine, a staple of sent-nudity that continues to this day.

Then, perhaps unique to me, there were those drawings of stooped, hairy Australopithecus “sent” to me in my high school physical anthropology textbook that stimulated my teenage libido!

Now, in the digital age, anyone can be an artist of the nude (and many of us have), and send our creations off with the touch of a keystroke. “Dick pics” and “pussy shots” are commonplace, and sending nudes has become egalitarian—sexting is widespread among both men and women. It’s a cultural phenom with pros and cons. I like to believe most nude selfies are innocent courtship gestures between potential and current lovers. Alas, privacy isn’t guaranteed in cyberspace. Think of the politicians and journalists who have fallen from grace when caught in the sexting act. Worse, much worse, are the young women who have been victimized by sexual predators. Still we persist.

We’re fascinated by the human form because we’re, well, human, and this landmark anthology celebrates that impetus. There’s nothing new about sending nudes.

(What I love most about being an editor is the writers I get to know. Like Karla. She sent the sweetest email a few days ago with a recording of her ‘Big Ben Tonal Poem’, in which she played the guitar and sang the poem for all her British friends. It was very touching. And so, now I would like to introduce you to another poet, Michał Piotrowski, who I met in December 2019 at the Poetry Café in Covent Garden, when we had a reading for our Stories About Penises anthology, and the first thing he did when I met him was teach me how to say his name — Mee-how — that is phonetically how you say it in Polish, which I found very endearing about Michał, that he loves his name and his native language that much. After the readings I found out he was a poet, and later he sent me one of his poems. But it was not anything ordinary, just as he is not anything or anyone ordinary, but an experiment of poetry and imagery. I loved it and wished he had sent it to me for the Stories About Penises anthology. Eight months later when I announced the call for submissions for Sending Nudes, Michał sent the poem again, and my heart leapt with joy at this nude sent to me, and now sent to you, which you will see when you turn the page.)

MICHAŁ KAMIL PIOTROWSKI

Dick Pic

(while I was putting this anthology together I kept thinking about Ellie Stewart’s story ‘Send Nudes’, because it really was the inspiration for this anthology, and some pretty ballsy writing too. And then I decided to get in touch with Ellie (now Ellie Nova) and see if she wanted to publish this in Sending Nudes. To my delight, she said yes.)

“When I sent nudes to men in my early adulthood, there was a mismatch between the experience of the sender and the receiver. For the men, I think, it was a brief thrill. But for me it was an attempt to find connection and reassurance that, despite my darkest beliefs, I was lovable after all.”

— Ellie Nova

Ellie Nova

Send Nudes

He wants more.

Please. A naked one.

They always want more.

You’re so hot.

A copy/paste job. The same words, sent to whichever woman.

I want to see your hot body.

When the image appears, he lets himself believe he’s the only man who’s seen it.

You make me so hard.

* * *

I met Sam when I was 18 years old. I had been at university in Leeds for a few weeks and was invited to a second-year students’ house party. I arrived already drunk1. Sam was two years older than me; his voice was low and he was tall. But he was also a little overweight and dressed so scruffy: shorts, a hoodie and flip flops, and in October. Later I found out he had gone to Eton, and had money, but he didn’t dress like it.

He followed me round the house all night, through all my changing moods. I’d be chatting merrily one moment and arguing furiously the next. I found myself in a dark bedroom with a group of boys passing round cocaine, and I got upset. He followed me downstairs to make sure I was OK.

‘I never do that stuff,’ he said as we stood on the landing. ‘Sorry that happened.’

* * *

He was the first person to post on my Facebook wall:

How are you? Hope you’ve had a good day.

He didn’t have my number yet. When his friend Martin was round our flat, eating Sunday lunch, he said:

‘Sam asked me for your number.’

I sighed.

‘Fine,’ and gave it to him.

I was flattered that he hadn’t given up, even though I’d made it clear I hadn’t fancied him.

That changed.

* * *

Over that year we spoke often through digital means: on Facebook, MSN messenger, text. We met IRL only occasionally. But by the time the academic year was drawing to a close I was tied-to-the-mast crazy about him and he was intermittently interested in me.

In the spring, he invited me to his birthday pub crawl.

I turned up at the third pub on the route. He was sitting at a table surrounded by his mates and he ignored me. As if I was just some blonde he didn’t know.